The Daily Galaxy: Great Discoveries Channel

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MIT Scientist Discovers Living Amazon Language Without Numbers

An Amazonian language with only 300 speakers has no word to express the concept of "one" or any other specific number, according to a new study from an MIT team led by professor of brain and cognitive sciences Edward Gibson. The team found that members of the Piraha tribe in remote northwestern Brazil use language to express relative quantities such as "some" and "more," but not precise numbers.

The World's Biggest Camera to Survey 300 Million Galaxies

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) camera will map 300 million galaxies using the Blanco 4-meter telescope - a large telescope with new advanced optics at Chile’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. This instrument will consist of an extremely red sensitive 500 Megapixel camera, with a 1 meter diameter, 2.2 degree field of view prime focus corrector, and a data acquisition system fast enough to take images in 17 seconds.

(Extremely) High Fashion: NASA's New $200-Million Space Suit

NASA has commissioned a special outfit costing over two hundred million dollars.  It's intended to appear on that most exclusive of catwalks, which you may know as "the moon", which has only featured one outfit in the last fifty years.  Which frankly kicks the hell out of anything Versace has ever managed.

Barack Rocks -Obama Opens his iPod Playlist

Barack Obama showcased his musical taste In a cover-featured interview with Rolling Stone magazine, to be published this Friday, ranging from Bob Dylan to Jay-Z and Bruce Springsteen, after revealing the playlist on his iPod.

Obama said he had "pretty eclectic tastes," ranging from the Rolling Stones, with Gimme Shelter his favorite, to Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow and Ludacris. Dylan leads the playlist with 30 songs, with Maggie's Farm an alltime political favorite.

U.S. Intelligence Agencies Weigh Climate Change Impact on Global Political Stability

It seems to be a general rule that any government body will always get to an issue late in the game. For example, it seems that the U.S. intelligence community has just finished up an assessment of whether the changing weather patterns could affect political stability around the world.

One Weird Galaxy: The "Green Voorwerp"

The mystery object is unusually green, not of any clear galaxy type, and situated below relatively normal looking spiral galaxy IC 2497.

Ha!

Lunar Outposts Moving Closer to Reality

The three-day Lunar Capability Concept Review capped a nine-month study led by the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington that incorporated science and exploration objectives earlier developed by representatives of 14 countries. The study is part of NASA's Constellation Program, which has the responsibility for developing the next human space transportation system that will be used to extend a human presence throughout the solar system.

The Lunar Capability study looked at possible lunar mission scenarios and compared them to the capabilities of the emerging Ares V heavy lift launch vehicle and the Altair lunar lander design concepts.

Celestial Clues Support Story of Homer’s Odyssey

Much of ancient writing is clouded in mystery and fragments of faded papyrus. Whether it be who wrote it, whether the events that are recorded actually happened, or whether facts were manipulated for storytelling effect. One of the most contentious pieces of ancient literature is Homer’s Odyssey.

Most likely written towards the end of the eighth century, Odyssey is one of two major poems written by Homer, an ancient Greek epic poet (the other being the Iliad). The poem focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus (or Ulysses to the Romans) and the long journey he takes after the fall of Troy, following on from the story in the Iliad.