The Daily Galaxy: News from Planet Earth & Beyond

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 Mars 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!"

Rim of Fire: Megaquakes Predicted

As the years go by, you can become more and more certain that no matter what natural phenomenon is thrown our way, someone, somewhere, has run a simulation on how to deal with it. A team of researchers from San Diego State University (SDSU) have done just that, looking at what a 9.0 scale earthquake would do to the Northwest of America.

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

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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.

Captain Crunch & Co -A Video: The Secret History of Hacking

Don't miss this spellbinding Discovery Channel video on the history of hackers and hacking from Captain Crunch to Apple founder Steve Wozniak and the Homebrew Computer Club to the infamous cyber  outlaw, Kevin Mitnick.

Posted by Jason McManus.

If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on Digg, Reddit, or StumbleUpon.Thanks!

History of Hacking

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Life Found Teeming Deep in Antarctic Abyss

Scientists using a submersible remotely operated vehicle (ROV)  have discovered Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) living and feeding down to depths of 3,500 metres in the Southern Ocean waters around the Antarctic Peninsula. Until now this shrimp-like crustacean was thought to live only in the upper ocean. The discovery completely changes scientists’ understanding of the major food source for fish, squid, penguins, seals, and whales.

As Temperatures Hit Record Lows, Global Warming Takes a Punch to the Gut

Snow cover around the world is greater than it’s ever been in over four decades. The Arctic Sea ice that was hysterically lamented this past year for having hit the "lowest levels on record” (which actually weren’t even kept for the region before 1972) is on the rebound. Temperatures in the US are at record-breaking lows. According to the National Weather Service, temperature were just one degree shy of beating a record low held since 1888 earlier this month, as temperatures fell to an extreme 40 below zero in Embarrass, Minnesota. (Yes, that is the real name of the city, and it’s purely a humorous coincidence that the name appears to cleverly poke fun at global warming alarmists everywhere.)

Did a "Big Bang" in Our Solar System Create Venus as We Know It?

Over the past several years the formation of our own solar system has been of high importance in scientific circles. Many scientists have focused their attention on the inner four planets, and found that we bounced around like a ball in a pinball machine in our early formative years.

Now an impact theory is arising as an explanation for the formation of our evil twin: Venus (xray image left).

Search for the "God Particle" Continues

Hoping for Higgs: Scientists worldwide have been anticipating the Large Hadron Collider more keenly than a child waiting for Christmas after Santa announces he has a twin brother, and this year they're both giving presents.  You may have heard of this - you may even know they're after the Higgs boson - but for those of us without multiple PhDs, what does this thing actually do?

The Earth's 6th Great Mass Extinction is Occurring as You Read This

"In one sense we know much less about Earth than we do about Mars. The vast majority of life forms on our planet are still undiscovered, and their significance for our own species remains unknown. This gap in our knowledge is a serious matter: we will never completely understand and preserve the living world around us at our present level of ignorance.

"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos."

Edward O. Wilson, The world's leading authority on Biodiversity, Emeritus Professor of Biology at Harvard and author of "The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth."

"Encyclopedia of Life" -Online 'Macroscope' Launched

“The launch of the Encyclopedia of Life will have a profound and creative effect in science. It aims not only to summarize all that we know of Earth’s life forms, but also to accelerate the discovery of the vast array that remain unknown. This great effort promises to lay out new directions for research in every branch of biology.” EOL Video

Edward O. Wilson, Harvard evolutionary biologist and naturalist.

Now Showing in a Cosmos Near You

In further proof that the universe can kick our butt at just about anything, the double galaxies of NGC4676 are putting on a pyrotechnics display that Jerry Bruckheimer couldn't imagine if he mainlined LSD and directly applied two thousand volts to his visual cortex.  They're colliding in a process leading astrophysicists describe as "totally awesome".  They've got a sense of cinema style to it too, drawing the stellar spectacular out in extreme slow-motion - a few hundred million years, now showing in a cosmos near you.

Our Extraterrestrial Littering Problem

Imagine how unglamorous it would be to die by getting hit by an orbiting pair of pliers rather than a blazing comet. Unfortunately for spacefarers of the future, our embarrassing extraterrestrial littering problem already poses a much more significant threat, and the situation is only expected to get exponentially worse. You may have heard of the Adopt-a-Highway program that has helped so many boy scouts earn another well-deserved badge, but what we need now is an Adopt-an-Orbit program. Any volunteers?

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Clinton's Superdelegate Endgame Gambit

We occasionally do a post on politics. Today is one of those days: I just finished reading one of the most astounding pieces of political insanity I ever encountered on the New York Times Op-Ed page. Former Mondale VP candidate and Clinton advocate, Geraldine Ferraro, justifies how Hillary Clinton will try to steal the nomination and invalidate the popular delegate vote for Barak Obama. How the Times can even publish such tone-deaf nonsense is beyond me.

SuitSat One -The Coolest and Craziest Project NASA Ever Made

The international space station orbits the Earth, sunlight reflecting from communications dishes and solar panels.  Suddenly a door opens and a figure in a Russian spacesuit is thrown out, to orbit the planet before plunging to a fiery death.  But this isn't James Bond enforcing cold war action movie justice - this was the worlds first functioning DIY communications satellite.

SuitSat was one of the coolest and craziest NASA projects ever made, and considering that their whole mission statement is "Let's go up into space and do cool stuff", that's saying a lot.

NASA's "New Worlds Observer" Will be Able to Spot Oceans, Continents and Clouds on Small Rocky Planets

NASA has committed $3 billion for a new space telescope powerful enough to discover planets like Earth and even signs of alien life. The New Worlds Observer will be able to identify planetary features like oceans, continents, polar caps and cloud banks and even detect biomarkers (image) like methane, oxygen and water if they exist.