Heard on Gliese 581d: "Mohammad?...Nah...we never heard of him..."

It probably wouldn't feel exactly like home. But the planet known as Gliese 581d has a lot more in common with Earth than astronomers first thought.

New measurements of the planet's orbit place it firmly in a region where conditions would be right for liquid water, and thus life as we know it, astronomer Michel Mayor, from Geneva University in Switzerland, announced today.

"It lies in the [life-supporting] habitable zone, and it could have an ocean at its surface," Mayor said during the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science conference, being held this week at the University of Hertfordshire in the U.K.

First discovered in 2007, Gliese 581d was originally calculated to be too far away from its host star—and therefore too cold—to support an ocean.

But Mayor and colleagues now show that the extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, orbits its host in 66.8 days, putting it just inside the cool star's habitable zone.

You know...should a planet ever be found with "human-like" entities dwelling there in any capacity...it's really going to mess up a number of religions on this planet. Personally, I'm sort of looking forward to that scenario.

I need to buy a decent telescope...

"I wanna name her Dottie after my wife. She's a vicious life-sucking bitch from which there is no escape." (Armageddon-1998)

However, it turns out that this Comet already has a name... "Lulin." It seems like a bit of an esoteric call sign to me...if I ever discovered a Comet, I'd pick a name that was a bit more entertaining. For example...imagine the Anchorman trying to keep a straight face while doing a story on the comet "Everybody Wang Chung Tonight."

Enjoy the discomfiture as the pert little anchorwoman grimaces each time she has to refer to the comet "Over the shoulder boulder holder from outer space."

Would I do that...could I be so immature?

Of course not. I'd negotiate a sweet deal with a major corporation and turn the naming over to them in exchange for a disgusting amount of money so that they can incorporate the name of the comet with a new line of products (I'm thinking that the cosmetic companies would be falling all over themselves to place a bid).

"Lulin?" Well, it was the finder's call...and he named it after the observatory...but I think he missed a great opportunity.

What happened to our innovative nature?

BRUSSELS: As France presses ahead with building more next-generation nuclear reactors, new evidence emerged Friday to suggest that industry and governments may be unprepared to handle the increasingly toxic waste that will result.

Okay...it doesn't take a rocket scientist to solve this problem...

...or maybe it does.




LOOK!!! A DUMPING GROUND THAT DOESN'T HAVE ITCHY FINGERED POLITICIANS FIGURING OUT HOW THEY CAN TAX THE DISPOSAL OF WASTE!!! AND, IT'S HUGE!!!!

I am depressed...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's pledge to seek a worldwide ban on weapons in space marks a dramatic shift in U.S. policy while posing the tricky issue of defining whether a satellite can be a weapon.

Moments after Obama's inauguration last week, the White House website was updated to include policy statements on a range of issues, including a pledge to restore U.S. leadership on space issues and seek a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites.

Crap!!!!

Obama just soiled my childhood. Lucas, Roddenberry, Weber, Ringo, Herbert, Card, Fleming & Douglas…call your office(s). And, Lucas… Han shot first.

SPACE between your ears...

KOUROU, French Guiana: Not so long ago, French Guiana was etched into the public imagination as a depraved prison colony by books with titles like "Horrors of Cayenne," "Hell Beyond the Seas" and, of course, "Papillon," Henri Charrière's classic memoir of his incarceration on Devil's Island.

But now this overseas sliver of France offers something altogether different - a bit of insight into the shifting fortunes of the United States in at least one corner of the evolving world economy.

From Kourou, where 20,000 people, many of them transplanted cosmopolitans, live sandwiched between jungle and ocean, it is easy to see how much Americans, who once dominated the commercial space industry, have been reduced to just another competitor - or, worse, a partner in joint ventures with Russians - on a global field of play.

Well, that's a nice story...but let's discuss how France and the rest of the European Union does business.

Today's topic...the European satellite navigation system, Galileo.

It seems that the European Union wanted their own Global Positioning System, so the United States provided them with the technology to do so with the understanding that the encoding would be made available without charge. The European Union refused to provide the encoding when requested by Mr Psiaki, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University and co-leader of Cornell's GPS Laboratory. They regretted that decision.

Three months later he and his group of scientists had cracked the codes "just with an antenna and lots of signal processing," and with a basic algorithm to extract the codes.

"An antenna and lots of signal processing"...

"That means free access for consumers who use navigation devices," said the scientist who broke the code, Mark Psiaki, in a statement.

The following year, the EU released the final codes or what is known as the GIOVE-A Signal-in-Space Interface Control Document. If you're a cynic like me, you believe that originally they had no intention of doing so, but a bunch of American "Yahoos" at Cornell kept them honest...looks like the EU space program is leaving NASA in the dust....How did that Christmas Day 2003 Mars landing go for them? Anyone remember?