The Daily Galaxy: Great Discoveries Channel

The Dragon -Beijing's New Monster Airport

Shaped like a giant two-mile long Medieval dragon rising from the dry plains to the east, Beijing's new airport -the world's largest- is larger than all the terminals at London's Heathrow combined.

Planet X Redux!

The search for the mythical Planet X may not be over yet. Scientists at Kobe University, Japan, announced that they believe another planet is orbiting within our solar system, up to two-thirds the size of the Earth. Yes, Trekkers, Planet-X is back!

The Kuiper Belt terminates suddenly at a distance of 55 Astronomical Units from the Sun, and there is some speculation this may be caused by the presence of an object with a mass between that of and Earth located beyond what is known as the Kuiper cliff at 55 AU.

NASA's New Mission: Project Moon Explosion

Perhaps inspired by all the stellar explosions they've been watching on telescope recently, NASA have decided to take a more direct strategy in investigation of the moon.  And by "strategy" we mean "ramming it at top speed and then exploding".  Either that, or they're planning to punch a big hole and ask all the conspiracy nuts "Okay, tell us how we faked THAT!"

A Holistic View of the Cosmos -Videos of Microsoft's Worldwide Telescope & Google Sky

Don't miss this cool video of Microsoft's new Worldwide Telescope, which will access images from NASA's great fleet of space-born telescopes and earth-bound observatories such as the future Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, partially funded by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, which is projected for ‘first light’ in 2014 in Chile's Atacama Desert -the world's Southern Hemisphere space-observatory mecca. The 8.4-meter telescope will be able to survey the entire visible sky deeply in multiple colors every week with its 3-billion pixel digital camera. The telescope will probe the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, and it will open a movie-like window on objects that change or move rapidly: exploding supernovae, potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids and distant Kuiper Belt objects.

LSST is truly an Internet telescope, which will put terabytes of data each night into the hands of anyone that wants to explore it. The 8.4-metre LSST telescope and the 3-gigapixel camera are thus a shared resource for all humanity — the ultimate network peripheral device to explore the universe.

Worldwide Telescope Video
Google Sky & NASA's Great Observatories Video
Worldwide Telescope Site

21st-Century Map of the Moon's South Pole

The best place for landing man on the moon is on the South Pole at  Aitken Basin .

Much of the area around the Moon's south pole is within the Aitken Basin (shown in blue on the lunar topography image), a giant impact crater 1,550 miles in diameter and 7.5 miles deep at its lowest point. Many smaller craters exist on the floor of this basin. Many of those craters never see sunlight and are thought to contain water ice.

Simulated Lunar South Pole Manned Landing

You Create the Caption

Your New Borg Companion

You know how you’ve been wanting a hot android companion programmed to reply, "Yes dear, you're absolutely right” in response to everything you say? Well, here’s some scientific justification for it; a new study has found that robot companionship is as good as the real thing. Well, at least when it comes to dogs. But in theory it may apply to human companionship too, since previous studies have found that a dog companion is better than a human friend in regards to health benefits.

The Realworld "Minority Report"

The Department of Homeland Security recently announced the development of futuristic sounding technology with a bizarre “Minority Report” twist. The criminals they’re looking for haven’t committed a crime yet.

The program called Project Hostile Intent is part of the Human Factors Division of the DHS. DHS says that they need a way to detect possible “future” terrorists without a criminal past and with no known ties to terrorist organizations and therefore do not appear in any government databases. The technology will use advanced biometric technology in an attempt to “read minds” of people in public places, like airports.

Invisible Eyes -Gov't Surveillance in Europe

With the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the rise of the terror threat in the sands of the Middle East, governments across Europe are under pressure to help their security services fight terrorism.

The increased intensity of global USA and British electronic and satellite surveillance of al Qaeda has forced the leadership of the global terrorist groups to go "dark," an unintended consequence of successful surveillance by USA's National Security Agency and other intelligence sources. Terrorists have switched from using satellite phones and email to employing centuries-old hand-delivered courier networks and cutouts at Internet cafes.

Coming Soon: An Asteroid Lasering Spaceship

A laser-equipped spacecraft has been designed to go and intercept Apophis, but not as a season-finale cliffhanger mission for the folks at Stargate Command - this Apophis is an Earth-approaching asteroid expected to fly by in 2036.  Expected to fly by, but there's a small chance it might decide to drop in for a bit of extinction-generation while it's in the area.