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"bio": "\u003cstrong>Benjamin Burress\u003c/strong> has been a staff astronomer at Chabot Space & Science Center since July 1999. He graduated from Sonoma State University in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in physics (and minor in astronomy), after which he signed on for a two-year stint in the Peace Corps, where he taught physics and mathematics in the African nation of Cameroon. From 1989-96 he served on the crew of NASA’s Kuiper Airborne Observatory at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA. From 1996-99, he was Head Observer at the Naval Prototype Optical Interferometer program at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ.\r\n\r\nRead his \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/author/ben-burress/\">previous contributions\u003c/a> to \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/\">QUEST\u003c/a>, a project dedicated to exploring the Science of Sustainability.",
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"title": "Our Top Science Stories from 2013",
"headTitle": "Our Top Science Stories from 2013 | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>From the debut of the world’s largest solar plant to Comet ISON, zombified bees to the physics of sailing — it’s been another year of diverse storytelling from the KQED Science team. Here’s a round-up of our top 10 stories (based on page views) that you’ve enjoyed in 2013. Please let us know what other stories you’ve enjoyed in the comments section below and if there’s anything you’d like to see in the coming season!\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/as-worlds-largest-solar-thermal-plant-opens-california-looks-to-end-solar-wars/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">As World’s Largest Solar Thermal Plant Opens, California Looks to End Solar Wars\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>[gallery type=\"slideshow\" link=\"file\" ids=\"5477,5479,5480,5478,5482,5481,5484\" width=\"640\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After controversy over a threatened species delayed several large solar projects, state officials are trying to broker an agreement between conservation groups and solar companies on a path forward for renewable energy. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/as-worlds-largest-solar-thermal-plant-opens-california-looks-to-end-solar-wars/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/video/zombees-flight-of-the-living-dead/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ZomBees: Flight of the Living Dead\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cobject width=\"639\" height=\"359\" classid=\"d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\">\u003cparam name=\"src\" value=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/jw-player-plugin-for-wordpress/player/player.swf\">\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\">\u003cparam name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\">\u003cparam name=\"flashvars\" value=\"&bandwidth=2841&controlbar=over&dock=false&file=WS405_zombees.flv&image=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.kqed.org%2Fscience%2Fwp-content%2Fblogs.dir%2F48%2Ffiles%2F2013%2F10%2FZombees-side-640x360.jpg&gapro.accountid=UA-1538528-1&gapro.height=359&gapro.pluginmode=FLASH&gapro.trackpercentage=true&gapro.trackstarts=true&gapro.tracktime=true&gapro.visible=true&gapro.width=639&gapro.x=0&gapro.y=0&plugins=gapro-1&skin=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.kqed.org%2Fscience%2Fwp-content%2Fplugins%2Fjw-player-plugin-for-wordpress%2Fskins%2Fglow.zip&streamer=rtmp%3A%2F%2Fkqed-flash02.streamguys.us%2Fquest%2F&viral.allowmenu=true&viral.bgcolor=0x333333&viral.fgcolor=0xffffff&viral.functions=embed&viral.matchplayercolors=true&viral.oncomplete=false&viral.pluginmode=FLASH\">\u003cembed width=\"639\" height=\"359\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/jw-player-plugin-for-wordpress/player/player.swf\" flashvars=\"&bandwidth=2841&controlbar=over&dock=false&file=WS405_zombees.flv&image=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.kqed.org%2Fscience%2Fwp-content%2Fblogs.dir%2F48%2Ffiles%2F2013%2F10%2FZombees-side-640x360.jpg&gapro.accountid=UA-1538528-1&gapro.height=359&gapro.pluginmode=FLASH&gapro.trackpercentage=true&gapro.trackstarts=true&gapro.tracktime=true&gapro.visible=true&gapro.width=639&gapro.x=0&gapro.y=0&plugins=gapro-1&skin=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.kqed.org%2Fscience%2Fwp-content%2Fplugins%2Fjw-player-plugin-for-wordpress%2Fskins%2Fglow.zip&streamer=rtmp%3A%2F%2Fkqed-flash02.streamguys.us%2Fquest%2F&viral.allowmenu=true&viral.bgcolor=0x333333&viral.fgcolor=0xffffff&viral.functions=embed&viral.matchplayercolors=true&viral.oncomplete=false&viral.pluginmode=FLASH\">\u003c/embed>\u003c/object>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Something strange and unsettling is happening to Bay Area honeybees. Entomologists at San Francisco State University have identified the culprit: a tiny parasitic fly is causing the bees to exhibit bizarre nocturnal behaviors before suffering a gruesome demise. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/video/zombees-flight-of-the-living-dead/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/video/silicon-valley-goes-to-space/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Silicon Valley Goes to Space\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cobject width=\"639\" height=\"359\" classid=\"d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\">\u003cparam name=\"src\" value=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/jw-player-plugin-for-wordpress/player/player.swf\">\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\">\u003cparam name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\">\u003cparam name=\"flashvars\" value=\"&bandwidth=2841&controlbar=over&dock=false&file=KS101_svspace.flv&image=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.kqed.org%2Fscience%2Fwp-content%2Fblogs.dir%2F48%2Ffiles%2F2013%2F11%2F703_KQEDSci_Space_JRoy_Masten_14044207_2.jpg&gapro.accountid=UA-1538528-1&gapro.height=359&gapro.pluginmode=FLASH&gapro.trackpercentage=true&gapro.trackstarts=true&gapro.tracktime=true&gapro.visible=true&gapro.width=639&gapro.x=0&gapro.y=0&plugins=gapro-1&skin=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.kqed.org%2Fscience%2Fwp-content%2Fplugins%2Fjw-player-plugin-for-wordpress%2Fskins%2Fglow.zip&streamer=rtmp%3A%2F%2Fkqed-flash02.streamguys.us%2Fquest%2F&viral.allowmenu=true&viral.bgcolor=0x333333&viral.fgcolor=0xffffff&viral.functions=embed&viral.matchplayercolors=true&viral.oncomplete=false&viral.pluginmode=FLASH\">\u003cembed width=\"639\" height=\"359\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/jw-player-plugin-for-wordpress/player/player.swf\" flashvars=\"&bandwidth=2841&controlbar=over&dock=false&file=KS101_svspace.flv&image=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.kqed.org%2Fscience%2Fwp-content%2Fblogs.dir%2F48%2Ffiles%2F2013%2F11%2F703_KQEDSci_Space_JRoy_Masten_14044207_2.jpg&gapro.accountid=UA-1538528-1&gapro.height=359&gapro.pluginmode=FLASH&gapro.trackpercentage=true&gapro.trackstarts=true&gapro.tracktime=true&gapro.visible=true&gapro.width=639&gapro.x=0&gapro.y=0&plugins=gapro-1&skin=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.kqed.org%2Fscience%2Fwp-content%2Fplugins%2Fjw-player-plugin-for-wordpress%2Fskins%2Fglow.zip&streamer=rtmp%3A%2F%2Fkqed-flash02.streamguys.us%2Fquest%2F&viral.allowmenu=true&viral.bgcolor=0x333333&viral.fgcolor=0xffffff&viral.functions=embed&viral.matchplayercolors=true&viral.oncomplete=false&viral.pluginmode=FLASH\">\u003c/embed>\u003c/object>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Commercial space ventures are taking off and opening up space like never before. With its culture of risk and game-changing startups, Silicon Valley is playing a starring role in many of these new space companies. But risks and costs emerge with the increasing privatization of space. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/video/silicon-valley-goes-to-space/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/could-rooftop-solar-kill-utilities-california-grapples-with-solars-success-2/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Could Rooftop Solar Kill Utilities? California Grapples with Solar’s Success\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_2790\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/NetMetering.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2790 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/NetMetering.jpg\" alt=\"As rooftop solar power grows, the electric utility business model could change. (Photo: Lauren Sommer/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">As rooftop solar power grows, the electric utility business model could change. (Photo: Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As increasing numbers of Californians generate their own electricity, they rely less on electric utilities. That’s raising major questions about the future of California’s utilities. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/could-rooftop-solar-kill-utilities-california-grapples-with-solars-success-2/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/09/11/how-do-these-boats-sail-faster-than-the-wind/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">How Do These Boats Sail Faster Than the Wind?\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8511\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/americascup-featured.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8511 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/americascup-featured.jpg\" alt=\"Emirates Team New Zealand and Oracle Team USA during race three of the America's Cup finals on September 8, 2013. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Emirates Team New Zealand and Oracle Team USA during race three of the America’s Cup finals on September 8, 2013. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It isn’t magic; it’s just physics. And it’s an idea as simple as rocket science, which in this case really breaks down to what you learned from riding a bike. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/09/11/how-do-these-boats-sail-faster-than-the-wind/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/09/06/comet-ison-comet-of-the-century-or-fanciful-fluff/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Comet ISON: Comet of the Century or Fanciful Fluff?\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_7956\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/cometISON-hst-april2013.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7956 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/cometISON-hst-april2013.jpg\" alt=\"Hubble Space Telescope Image of Comet ISON, April 2013\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hubble Space Telescope Image of Comet ISON, April 2013\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A comet named ISON has been hailed as a possible “comet of the century.” But scientists aren’t sure yet if it will survive a hairpin turn around the sun. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/09/06/comet-ison-comet-of-the-century-or-fanciful-fluff/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/12/02/garcinia-cambogia-the-fastest-fat-buster-or-another-fad-diet/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Garcinia Cambogia: The Fastest Fat-Buster or Another Fad Diet?\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11529\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/GarciniaGummi-Gutta_wikimedia_Vssun_640x360.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11529 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/GarciniaGummi-Gutta_wikimedia_Vssun_640x360.jpg\" alt=\"garcinia cambogia fruit\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Garcinia cambogia fruit, photograph courtesy of \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%81%E0%B4%9F%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%81%E0%B4%B3%E0%B4%BF.JPG\">Vssun\u003c/a> via Wikimedia Commons.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Garcinia cambogia has been called the ”newest, fastest fat-buster” and a “magic ingredient that lets you lose weight without diet or exercise,” but scientific research questions its effectiveness. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/12/02/garcinia-cambogia-the-fastest-fat-buster-or-another-fad-diet/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/09/19/birders-flock-to-see-blue-footed-boobies/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Birders Flock to See Blue-Footed Boobies\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9087\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 960px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/bluefootedbooby.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9087 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/bluefootedbooby.jpg\" alt=\"A blue-footed booby fails to blend in with the pelicans and cormorants at Año Nuevo State Park earlier this week. It's the brown and white bird at the lower left. (Photo: Jennifer Rycenga)\" width=\"960\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A blue-footed booby fails to blend in with the pelicans and cormorants at Año Nuevo State Park earlier this week. It’s the brown and white bird at the lower left. (Photo: Jennifer Rycenga)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Blue-footed boobies are most commonly seen down in the Gulf of California or the Galapagos, but this week they’ve been flooding the Southern California coast, and making their way up north, where very few have come before. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/09/19/birders-flock-to-see-blue-footed-boobies/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/10/11/californas-tarantulas-are-on-the-move-during-mating-season/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">California’s Tarantulas Are on the Move During Mating Season\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9837\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 480px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/dussau-holds-tarantula-e1381367430751.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9837 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/dussau-holds-tarantula-e1381367430751.jpg\" alt=\"Wandering male tarantulas go searching for females in the fall, never to return home again. Photo by Robert Kanagaki, EBRPD\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wandering male tarantulas go searching for females in the fall, never to return home again. Photo by Robert Kanagaki, EBRPD\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Male California tarantulas are now roaming through the Bay Area looking for love. Find out more about where you can see them, what they’re doing and what dangers they face from naturalist Sharol Nelson-Embry. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/10/11/californas-tarantulas-are-on-the-move-during-mating-season/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/11/21/its-official-toxic-flame-retardants-no-longer-required-in-furniture/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">It’s Official: Toxic Flame Retardants No Longer Required in Furniture\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11324\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/sofa.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11324 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/sofa.jpg\" alt=\"Starting next year, shoppers will be able to buy sofas that don't contain flame retardant chemicals. \" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Starting next year, shoppers will be able to buy sofas that don’t contain flame retardant chemicals.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California overturns a nearly 40-year-old law that made your sofa potentially menacing. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/11/21/its-official-toxic-flame-retardants-no-longer-required-in-furniture/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "From the debut of the world's largest solar plant to Comet ISON, zombified bees to the physics of sailing — it's been another year of diverse storytelling from the KQED Science team. Here's a round-up of our top 10 stories (based on page views) that you've enjoyed in 2013.",
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"description": "From the debut of the world's largest solar plant to Comet ISON, zombified bees to the physics of sailing — it's been another year of diverse storytelling from the KQED Science team. Here's a round-up of our top 10 stories (based on page views) that you've enjoyed in 2013.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After controversy over a threatened species delayed several large solar projects, state officials are trying to broker an agreement between conservation groups and solar companies on a path forward for renewable energy. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/as-worlds-largest-solar-thermal-plant-opens-california-looks-to-end-solar-wars/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/video/zombees-flight-of-the-living-dead/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ZomBees: Flight of the Living Dead\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cobject width=\"639\" height=\"359\" classid=\"d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\">\u003cparam name=\"src\" value=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/jw-player-plugin-for-wordpress/player/player.swf\">\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\">\u003cparam name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\">\u003cparam name=\"flashvars\" value=\"&bandwidth=2841&controlbar=over&dock=false&file=WS405_zombees.flv&image=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.kqed.org%2Fscience%2Fwp-content%2Fblogs.dir%2F48%2Ffiles%2F2013%2F10%2FZombees-side-640x360.jpg&gapro.accountid=UA-1538528-1&gapro.height=359&gapro.pluginmode=FLASH&gapro.trackpercentage=true&gapro.trackstarts=true&gapro.tracktime=true&gapro.visible=true&gapro.width=639&gapro.x=0&gapro.y=0&plugins=gapro-1&skin=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.kqed.org%2Fscience%2Fwp-content%2Fplugins%2Fjw-player-plugin-for-wordpress%2Fskins%2Fglow.zip&streamer=rtmp%3A%2F%2Fkqed-flash02.streamguys.us%2Fquest%2F&viral.allowmenu=true&viral.bgcolor=0x333333&viral.fgcolor=0xffffff&viral.functions=embed&viral.matchplayercolors=true&viral.oncomplete=false&viral.pluginmode=FLASH\">\u003cembed width=\"639\" height=\"359\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/jw-player-plugin-for-wordpress/player/player.swf\" flashvars=\"&bandwidth=2841&controlbar=over&dock=false&file=WS405_zombees.flv&image=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.kqed.org%2Fscience%2Fwp-content%2Fblogs.dir%2F48%2Ffiles%2F2013%2F10%2FZombees-side-640x360.jpg&gapro.accountid=UA-1538528-1&gapro.height=359&gapro.pluginmode=FLASH&gapro.trackpercentage=true&gapro.trackstarts=true&gapro.tracktime=true&gapro.visible=true&gapro.width=639&gapro.x=0&gapro.y=0&plugins=gapro-1&skin=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.kqed.org%2Fscience%2Fwp-content%2Fplugins%2Fjw-player-plugin-for-wordpress%2Fskins%2Fglow.zip&streamer=rtmp%3A%2F%2Fkqed-flash02.streamguys.us%2Fquest%2F&viral.allowmenu=true&viral.bgcolor=0x333333&viral.fgcolor=0xffffff&viral.functions=embed&viral.matchplayercolors=true&viral.oncomplete=false&viral.pluginmode=FLASH\">\u003c/embed>\u003c/object>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Something strange and unsettling is happening to Bay Area honeybees. 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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Commercial space ventures are taking off and opening up space like never before. With its culture of risk and game-changing startups, Silicon Valley is playing a starring role in many of these new space companies. But risks and costs emerge with the increasing privatization of space. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/video/silicon-valley-goes-to-space/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/could-rooftop-solar-kill-utilities-california-grapples-with-solars-success-2/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Could Rooftop Solar Kill Utilities? California Grapples with Solar’s Success\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_2790\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/NetMetering.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2790 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/NetMetering.jpg\" alt=\"As rooftop solar power grows, the electric utility business model could change. (Photo: Lauren Sommer/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">As rooftop solar power grows, the electric utility business model could change. (Photo: Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As increasing numbers of Californians generate their own electricity, they rely less on electric utilities. That’s raising major questions about the future of California’s utilities. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/could-rooftop-solar-kill-utilities-california-grapples-with-solars-success-2/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/09/11/how-do-these-boats-sail-faster-than-the-wind/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">How Do These Boats Sail Faster Than the Wind?\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8511\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/americascup-featured.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8511 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/americascup-featured.jpg\" alt=\"Emirates Team New Zealand and Oracle Team USA during race three of the America's Cup finals on September 8, 2013. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Emirates Team New Zealand and Oracle Team USA during race three of the America’s Cup finals on September 8, 2013. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It isn’t magic; it’s just physics. And it’s an idea as simple as rocket science, which in this case really breaks down to what you learned from riding a bike. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/09/11/how-do-these-boats-sail-faster-than-the-wind/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/09/06/comet-ison-comet-of-the-century-or-fanciful-fluff/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Comet ISON: Comet of the Century or Fanciful Fluff?\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_7956\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/cometISON-hst-april2013.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7956 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/cometISON-hst-april2013.jpg\" alt=\"Hubble Space Telescope Image of Comet ISON, April 2013\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hubble Space Telescope Image of Comet ISON, April 2013\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A comet named ISON has been hailed as a possible “comet of the century.” But scientists aren’t sure yet if it will survive a hairpin turn around the sun. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/09/06/comet-ison-comet-of-the-century-or-fanciful-fluff/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/12/02/garcinia-cambogia-the-fastest-fat-buster-or-another-fad-diet/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Garcinia Cambogia: The Fastest Fat-Buster or Another Fad Diet?\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11529\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/GarciniaGummi-Gutta_wikimedia_Vssun_640x360.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11529 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/GarciniaGummi-Gutta_wikimedia_Vssun_640x360.jpg\" alt=\"garcinia cambogia fruit\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Garcinia cambogia fruit, photograph courtesy of \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%81%E0%B4%9F%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%81%E0%B4%B3%E0%B4%BF.JPG\">Vssun\u003c/a> via Wikimedia Commons.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Garcinia cambogia has been called the ”newest, fastest fat-buster” and a “magic ingredient that lets you lose weight without diet or exercise,” but scientific research questions its effectiveness. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/12/02/garcinia-cambogia-the-fastest-fat-buster-or-another-fad-diet/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/09/19/birders-flock-to-see-blue-footed-boobies/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Birders Flock to See Blue-Footed Boobies\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9087\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 960px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/bluefootedbooby.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9087 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/bluefootedbooby.jpg\" alt=\"A blue-footed booby fails to blend in with the pelicans and cormorants at Año Nuevo State Park earlier this week. It's the brown and white bird at the lower left. (Photo: Jennifer Rycenga)\" width=\"960\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A blue-footed booby fails to blend in with the pelicans and cormorants at Año Nuevo State Park earlier this week. It’s the brown and white bird at the lower left. (Photo: Jennifer Rycenga)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Blue-footed boobies are most commonly seen down in the Gulf of California or the Galapagos, but this week they’ve been flooding the Southern California coast, and making their way up north, where very few have come before. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/09/19/birders-flock-to-see-blue-footed-boobies/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/10/11/californas-tarantulas-are-on-the-move-during-mating-season/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">California’s Tarantulas Are on the Move During Mating Season\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9837\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 480px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/dussau-holds-tarantula-e1381367430751.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9837 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/dussau-holds-tarantula-e1381367430751.jpg\" alt=\"Wandering male tarantulas go searching for females in the fall, never to return home again. Photo by Robert Kanagaki, EBRPD\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wandering male tarantulas go searching for females in the fall, never to return home again. Photo by Robert Kanagaki, EBRPD\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Male California tarantulas are now roaming through the Bay Area looking for love. Find out more about where you can see them, what they’re doing and what dangers they face from naturalist Sharol Nelson-Embry. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/10/11/californas-tarantulas-are-on-the-move-during-mating-season/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/11/21/its-official-toxic-flame-retardants-no-longer-required-in-furniture/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">It’s Official: Toxic Flame Retardants No Longer Required in Furniture\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11324\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/sofa.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11324 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/sofa.jpg\" alt=\"Starting next year, shoppers will be able to buy sofas that don't contain flame retardant chemicals. \" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Starting next year, shoppers will be able to buy sofas that don’t contain flame retardant chemicals.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California overturns a nearly 40-year-old law that made your sofa potentially menacing. \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/11/21/its-official-toxic-flame-retardants-no-longer-required-in-furniture/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Historic San Jose Observatory Faces Closure",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12134\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 717px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/lick_vpanicker.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12134\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-12134 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/lick_vpanicker.jpg\" alt=\"Mt. Hamilton's Lick Observatory houses the most powerful telescope in Northern California. (flickr/vpanicker)\" width=\"717\" height=\"538\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mt. Hamilton’s Lick Observatory houses the most powerful telescope in Northern California. (flickr/vpanicker)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>An historic observatory near San Jose is in danger of being mothballed, if University of California officials can’t come up with new sources of revenue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When James Lick built his observatory on top of Mount Hamilton in 1888, it offered the most powerful telescope in the world. He even had himself buried under it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But UC officials say in lean times, funds should go instead to the more modern Keck observatory in Hawaii, as well as an international collaboration, the Thirty-Meter Telescope, or TMT, also in Hawaii.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"thumb embedly-thumbnail-small\" src=\"http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site568/2013/1216/20131216__lick~1.JPG\" alt=\"\">\u003ca class=\"embedly-title\" href=\"http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_24734951/lick-observatorys-astronomy-research-could-end\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lick Observatory’s astronomy research could end\u003c/a>The future of astronomical research at the iconic Lick Observatory is in peril, as the University of California threatens to cut funding and perhaps even convert most of its once-cutting-edge Mount Hamilton telescopes into museum relics.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float: right\">\u003ca title=\"Powered by Embedly\" href=\"http://embed.ly/code?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mercurynews.com%2Fscience%2Fci_24734951%2Flick-observatorys-astronomy-research-could-end\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">via \u003ca class=\"media-attribution-link\" href=\"http://www.mercurynews.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mercurynews\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cbr>\nFor younger researchers working on smaller projects, as well as long-term projects like the search for supernovae and exoplanets, Lick has been a workhorse, says UC Santa Cruz Astronomy Professor Garth Illingworth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These are things that could be done better with a big telescope,” says Illingworth. “But you don’t get very much time on a big telescope.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A UC Panel is recommending that the University of California stop funding the Lick Observatory in 2018.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12134\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 717px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/lick_vpanicker.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12134\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-12134 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/lick_vpanicker.jpg\" alt=\"Mt. Hamilton's Lick Observatory houses the most powerful telescope in Northern California. (flickr/vpanicker)\" width=\"717\" height=\"538\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mt. Hamilton’s Lick Observatory houses the most powerful telescope in Northern California. (flickr/vpanicker)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>An historic observatory near San Jose is in danger of being mothballed, if University of California officials can’t come up with new sources of revenue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When James Lick built his observatory on top of Mount Hamilton in 1888, it offered the most powerful telescope in the world. He even had himself buried under it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But UC officials say in lean times, funds should go instead to the more modern Keck observatory in Hawaii, as well as an international collaboration, the Thirty-Meter Telescope, or TMT, also in Hawaii.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"thumb embedly-thumbnail-small\" src=\"http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site568/2013/1216/20131216__lick~1.JPG\" alt=\"\">\u003ca class=\"embedly-title\" href=\"http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_24734951/lick-observatorys-astronomy-research-could-end\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lick Observatory’s astronomy research could end\u003c/a>The future of astronomical research at the iconic Lick Observatory is in peril, as the University of California threatens to cut funding and perhaps even convert most of its once-cutting-edge Mount Hamilton telescopes into museum relics.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float: right\">\u003ca title=\"Powered by Embedly\" href=\"http://embed.ly/code?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mercurynews.com%2Fscience%2Fci_24734951%2Flick-observatorys-astronomy-research-could-end\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">via \u003ca class=\"media-attribution-link\" href=\"http://www.mercurynews.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mercurynews\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cbr>\nFor younger researchers working on smaller projects, as well as long-term projects like the search for supernovae and exoplanets, Lick has been a workhorse, says UC Santa Cruz Astronomy Professor Garth Illingworth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These are things that could be done better with a big telescope,” says Illingworth. “But you don’t get very much time on a big telescope.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A UC Panel is recommending that the University of California stop funding the Lick Observatory in 2018.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Farewell, Comet ISON, but There's Other Celestial Visitors This Month",
"headTitle": "Farewell, Comet ISON, but There’s Other Celestial Visitors This Month | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11923\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/cometisonperhelion.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11923\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11923\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/cometisonperhelion.jpg\" alt=\"Comet ISON perihelion sequence. Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comet ISON perihelion sequence. Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Comet ISON: “Rumors of my demise have not been exaggerated…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, it was a great ride while it lasted. Comet ISON took us on a storybook-esque ride of what turned out to be the final months in its 5 billion year long life, and a thrilling story it was. Discovered only last year as it approached the inner solar system from the cold distant depths of the Oort Cloud, its erstwhile home, ISON was found to be plunging almost straight toward the sun—generating a lot of speculation in the process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Would it survive its 730,000 mile closest-approach to the sun—perihelion–on Thanksgiving Day and emerge with a coma and tail bright and energized by solar heating? Or would it perish, torn apart by tidal forces and cooked beyond an inch of its life?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Speculation is over, and the result is that ISON has disintegrated and is now at best only so much debris drifting back toward deep space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though we don’t have a comet of the century to enjoy this holiday season, ISON was by no means a failure. Far from it. \u003ca title=\"Comet ISON Postmortem - Phil Plait\" href=\"http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/12/01/comet_ison_post_mortem.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ISON’s ultimately fatal close approach\u003c/a> to the sun was a chance for us to witness and study more than just a pretty veil of gas and dust shed from a comet’s outer layers. It has literally been a comet dissection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An array of Earth-and space-based telescopes (plus Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter out at Mars, ISON’s first port of call in the inner solar system) were able to observe ISON from when it was still more or less a pristine frozen nucleus of primordial ices left over from the solar system’s formation all the way to a very close perihelion. Along the way, ISON surprised us with sudden, unexpected outbursts of gas, and finally a complete breakup, \u003ca title=\"Comet ISON's demise caught on video\" href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-investigating-the-life-of-comet-ison/#.Uqd4_dJDt8E\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">all caught on video\u003c/a> by the European SOHO and NASA’s STEREO spacecraft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It must have been an incredible sight. Can you imagine a mountain-sized ball of ice completely breaking up and vaporizing in only a few days’ time? If Hollywood were to make this dramatic breakup into a movie, they probably could not go over the top with special effects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though there may be little to nothing left of ISON to latch our eyes and telescopes onto, ISON’s departure hasn’t left us with empty skies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another comet, \u003ca title=\"Comet C/2013 R1 Lovejoy\" href=\"http://www.sci-news.com/space/science-c2013r1-comet-lovejoy-01607.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">C/2013 R1 Lovejoy\u003c/a>, has been quietly shadowing its media-hog cousin ISON. Discovered only in September Lovejoy has already made its closest approach to Earth, back on November 19th, but has yet to reach perihelion, which takes place on December 22nd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whereas ISON’s perihelion on Thanksgiving was a harrowing 730,000 miles from the sun’s surface (less than one solar diameter), Lovejoy’s is a more sober 75 million miles—not even within Venus’ orbit. At this distance Lovejoy isn’t in any danger of breaking up or being vaporized, but also isn’t enjoying as much sunlight or media attention as ISON did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a way, Lovejoy is the mythical Daedalus to ISON’s Icarus. In the Greek myth, Daedalus was a master craftsman, and along with his son, Icarus, was imprisoned on Crete by King Minos. Daedalus constructed two sets of wings from feathers and wax for himself and Icarus so that they could escape (think Iron Man and hang-gliders.) Daedalus cautioned his son not to fly too close to the sun, but Icarus, giddy with the ability to fly, ignored the advice. The sun melted his wings and he plummeted into the sea and drowned. The wiser and more level headed Daedalus kept his distance from the sun and flew a safe course to freedom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Speaking of sun-grazing comets and mythical flying figures, there is a sun-grazer of a third variety making its presence known this month: \u003ca title=\"3200 Phaeton\" href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/27nov_rockcomet/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">3200 Phaethon—a “rock comet.”\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Greek myth, Phaethon was the son of the sun god, Helios. Wanting recognition as the son of a deity, Phaethon was given the keys to his dad’s chariot, but ended up driving so recklessly that he put the entire Earth in peril—so dad was forced to end the joy ride with a thunderbolt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>3200 Phaethon is a sun-grazing asteroid that produces outbursts of dust as it orbits, leaving behind a trail of dust much as a comet does. Exactly how it sheds dust particles isn’t clearly understood, but may have something to do with the solar heating of hydrated minerals that outgas water vapor and carry dust with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Earth passes through 3200 Phaeton’s dust trail, which it is currently doing, we enjoy the annual Geminid meteor shower, which reaches a peak in meteor activity on December 13/14 this year. Ordinarily we associate meteor showers with Earth’s passage through the dust trails of comets, so the Geminid shower has added value as originating from a mysterious object that blurs the distinction between comets and asteroids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The good news is, unlike Phaeton the reckless teen of myth, Phaeton the rock-comet poses no danger to the Earth.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Comet ISON is gone, Comet Lovejoy remains and a sun-grazing asteroid, 3200 Phaeton, is showing comet-like behavior. An interesting December to say the least.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11923\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/cometisonperhelion.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11923\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11923\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/cometisonperhelion.jpg\" alt=\"Comet ISON perihelion sequence. Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comet ISON perihelion sequence. Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Comet ISON: “Rumors of my demise have not been exaggerated…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, it was a great ride while it lasted. Comet ISON took us on a storybook-esque ride of what turned out to be the final months in its 5 billion year long life, and a thrilling story it was. Discovered only last year as it approached the inner solar system from the cold distant depths of the Oort Cloud, its erstwhile home, ISON was found to be plunging almost straight toward the sun—generating a lot of speculation in the process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Would it survive its 730,000 mile closest-approach to the sun—perihelion–on Thanksgiving Day and emerge with a coma and tail bright and energized by solar heating? Or would it perish, torn apart by tidal forces and cooked beyond an inch of its life?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Speculation is over, and the result is that ISON has disintegrated and is now at best only so much debris drifting back toward deep space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though we don’t have a comet of the century to enjoy this holiday season, ISON was by no means a failure. Far from it. \u003ca title=\"Comet ISON Postmortem - Phil Plait\" href=\"http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/12/01/comet_ison_post_mortem.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ISON’s ultimately fatal close approach\u003c/a> to the sun was a chance for us to witness and study more than just a pretty veil of gas and dust shed from a comet’s outer layers. It has literally been a comet dissection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An array of Earth-and space-based telescopes (plus Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter out at Mars, ISON’s first port of call in the inner solar system) were able to observe ISON from when it was still more or less a pristine frozen nucleus of primordial ices left over from the solar system’s formation all the way to a very close perihelion. Along the way, ISON surprised us with sudden, unexpected outbursts of gas, and finally a complete breakup, \u003ca title=\"Comet ISON's demise caught on video\" href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-investigating-the-life-of-comet-ison/#.Uqd4_dJDt8E\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">all caught on video\u003c/a> by the European SOHO and NASA’s STEREO spacecraft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It must have been an incredible sight. Can you imagine a mountain-sized ball of ice completely breaking up and vaporizing in only a few days’ time? If Hollywood were to make this dramatic breakup into a movie, they probably could not go over the top with special effects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though there may be little to nothing left of ISON to latch our eyes and telescopes onto, ISON’s departure hasn’t left us with empty skies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another comet, \u003ca title=\"Comet C/2013 R1 Lovejoy\" href=\"http://www.sci-news.com/space/science-c2013r1-comet-lovejoy-01607.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">C/2013 R1 Lovejoy\u003c/a>, has been quietly shadowing its media-hog cousin ISON. Discovered only in September Lovejoy has already made its closest approach to Earth, back on November 19th, but has yet to reach perihelion, which takes place on December 22nd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whereas ISON’s perihelion on Thanksgiving was a harrowing 730,000 miles from the sun’s surface (less than one solar diameter), Lovejoy’s is a more sober 75 million miles—not even within Venus’ orbit. At this distance Lovejoy isn’t in any danger of breaking up or being vaporized, but also isn’t enjoying as much sunlight or media attention as ISON did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a way, Lovejoy is the mythical Daedalus to ISON’s Icarus. In the Greek myth, Daedalus was a master craftsman, and along with his son, Icarus, was imprisoned on Crete by King Minos. Daedalus constructed two sets of wings from feathers and wax for himself and Icarus so that they could escape (think Iron Man and hang-gliders.) Daedalus cautioned his son not to fly too close to the sun, but Icarus, giddy with the ability to fly, ignored the advice. The sun melted his wings and he plummeted into the sea and drowned. The wiser and more level headed Daedalus kept his distance from the sun and flew a safe course to freedom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Speaking of sun-grazing comets and mythical flying figures, there is a sun-grazer of a third variety making its presence known this month: \u003ca title=\"3200 Phaeton\" href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/27nov_rockcomet/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">3200 Phaethon—a “rock comet.”\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Greek myth, Phaethon was the son of the sun god, Helios. Wanting recognition as the son of a deity, Phaethon was given the keys to his dad’s chariot, but ended up driving so recklessly that he put the entire Earth in peril—so dad was forced to end the joy ride with a thunderbolt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>3200 Phaethon is a sun-grazing asteroid that produces outbursts of dust as it orbits, leaving behind a trail of dust much as a comet does. Exactly how it sheds dust particles isn’t clearly understood, but may have something to do with the solar heating of hydrated minerals that outgas water vapor and carry dust with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Earth passes through 3200 Phaeton’s dust trail, which it is currently doing, we enjoy the annual Geminid meteor shower, which reaches a peak in meteor activity on December 13/14 this year. Ordinarily we associate meteor showers with Earth’s passage through the dust trails of comets, so the Geminid shower has added value as originating from a mysterious object that blurs the distinction between comets and asteroids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The good news is, unlike Phaeton the reckless teen of myth, Phaeton the rock-comet poses no danger to the Earth.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Jupiter's Moon Has Vast Geysers, Says NASA",
"headTitle": "Jupiter’s Moon Has Vast Geysers, Says NASA | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11981\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 404px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/artistsconcept_13-371.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11981\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-11981 \" title=\"Vapor plumes on Europa\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/artistsconcept_13-371.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"404\" height=\"523\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist’s concept of a giant geyser erupting from the icy surface of Europa, about 500 million miles from the sun. (NASA/ESA/K)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today in San Francisco, NASA scientists \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/december/hubble-space-telescope-sees-evidence-of-water-vapor-venting-off-jovian-moon/#.Uqnyz439qmE\">announced\u003c/a> that Europa — one of dozens of moons belonging to the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter – appears to have giant geysers erupting from its southern pole.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The existence of geysers bolsters the current belief that Europa’s icy crust covers a vast saltwater ocean, possibly with underwater volcanoes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there’s life swimming around down there, the geysers are most certainly spewing it onto Europa’s surface and into the atmosphere — at a rate of approximately seven tons of material per second — where future NASA missions might be able to grab and study it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If the vapor comes from the oceans below, then we have a new way to explore its composition,” said NASA’s Kurt Retherford, also of Southwest Research Institute, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Who would have thought that a moon around a giant planet could have the conditions necessary for life to begin?” – James Green, NASA\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The observations come from the Hubble Space Telescope’s spectrograph, which captures ultraviolet images. They wouldn’t have been possible without astronauts who, in 2009, completed one of the longest \u003ca href=\"http://www.space.com/6712-astronauts-repair-key-hubble-device-tough-spacewalk.html\">space walks\u003c/a> in history — over eight hours — to fix the instrument.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists have long suspected that Europa could harbor life. But without a way to puncture the moon’s thick icy crust, further understanding seemed elusive. The vapor plumes could change that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far, scientists have only spotted the plumes at Europa’s south pole, but north pole plumes may exist as well, said scientists at the press conference. “We want to explore those too,” said James Green, NASA’s Chief of Planetary Science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plumes appear to come and go as the moon is influenced by Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When Europa gets close to Jupiter,” said Francis Nimmo, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, the moon “gets stretched and the poles get squished. And so when the poles are getting squished, all the cracks close up. And then as it moves further away, it becomes unsquished, the poles move outwards. And that’s when the cracks open.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11985\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 278px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/pia17657-full.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11985\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-11985 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/pia17657-full.jpg\" alt=\"Artist's concept of an explosion on Europa's surface resulting from an impact from a space rock. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)\" width=\"278\" height=\"289\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist’s concept of an explosion on Europa’s surface resulting from an impact from a space rock. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With its liquid water and internal heat source, Europa is starting to look like one of, if not the best, candidate for finding extra-terrestrial life in our solar system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This comes as a surprise to astronomers who long believed the solar system’s “habitable zone” — where heat from the sun would allow for the presence of liquid water — ended at Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we saw Europa and realized that it had the energy, the organics, and certainly the water,” said Green, “it changed our ideas to where habitable zones can exist. We now believe habitable zones can exist around these large planets.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">A spectacular collision with an asteroid or comet could have delivered the building blocks of life.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>This week scientists also announced new findings based on 15-year old data collected by NASA’s Galileo Mission, showing that clay-type minerals on Europa’s surface appear to have been delivered by a spectacular collision with an asteroid or comet about the size of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/meet-comet-ison-our-icyfiery-visitor-from-the-oort-cloud/\">Comet ISON\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That object may have delivered organic materials that could, over time, give rise to life in Europa’s ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jim Shirley, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, says if life exists on Europa, it might be comparable to life found near deep-sea vents here on Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know on Earth that life can evolve in the absence of light, with the right chemistry,” said Shirley. “And so one of the questions about this is how would we get carbon, the building blocks of life, into the ocean? And we have evidence now that impacts can bring the carbon.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With the energy, the water, and now organics,” said Green, “that really means life could exist on Europa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One mission, called \u003ca href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper/\">Clipper\u003c/a>, currently in the concept stage, could send a spacecraft into Europa’s plumes to sample and analyze the vapor and any traces of life. But with an estimated price tag of several billion dollars – similar to the cost of the Curiosity Mars Rover – that mission could be a decade off, or more, said Green.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "If there’s life swimming around in Europa's ice-covered oceans, the geysers are most certainly spewing it into the atmosphere, where future NASA missions might be able to grab and study it.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11981\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 404px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/artistsconcept_13-371.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11981\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-11981 \" title=\"Vapor plumes on Europa\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/artistsconcept_13-371.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"404\" height=\"523\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist’s concept of a giant geyser erupting from the icy surface of Europa, about 500 million miles from the sun. (NASA/ESA/K)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today in San Francisco, NASA scientists \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/december/hubble-space-telescope-sees-evidence-of-water-vapor-venting-off-jovian-moon/#.Uqnyz439qmE\">announced\u003c/a> that Europa — one of dozens of moons belonging to the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter – appears to have giant geysers erupting from its southern pole.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The existence of geysers bolsters the current belief that Europa’s icy crust covers a vast saltwater ocean, possibly with underwater volcanoes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there’s life swimming around down there, the geysers are most certainly spewing it onto Europa’s surface and into the atmosphere — at a rate of approximately seven tons of material per second — where future NASA missions might be able to grab and study it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If the vapor comes from the oceans below, then we have a new way to explore its composition,” said NASA’s Kurt Retherford, also of Southwest Research Institute, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Who would have thought that a moon around a giant planet could have the conditions necessary for life to begin?” – James Green, NASA\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The observations come from the Hubble Space Telescope’s spectrograph, which captures ultraviolet images. They wouldn’t have been possible without astronauts who, in 2009, completed one of the longest \u003ca href=\"http://www.space.com/6712-astronauts-repair-key-hubble-device-tough-spacewalk.html\">space walks\u003c/a> in history — over eight hours — to fix the instrument.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists have long suspected that Europa could harbor life. But without a way to puncture the moon’s thick icy crust, further understanding seemed elusive. The vapor plumes could change that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far, scientists have only spotted the plumes at Europa’s south pole, but north pole plumes may exist as well, said scientists at the press conference. “We want to explore those too,” said James Green, NASA’s Chief of Planetary Science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plumes appear to come and go as the moon is influenced by Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When Europa gets close to Jupiter,” said Francis Nimmo, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, the moon “gets stretched and the poles get squished. And so when the poles are getting squished, all the cracks close up. And then as it moves further away, it becomes unsquished, the poles move outwards. And that’s when the cracks open.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11985\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 278px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/pia17657-full.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11985\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-11985 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/pia17657-full.jpg\" alt=\"Artist's concept of an explosion on Europa's surface resulting from an impact from a space rock. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)\" width=\"278\" height=\"289\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist’s concept of an explosion on Europa’s surface resulting from an impact from a space rock. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With its liquid water and internal heat source, Europa is starting to look like one of, if not the best, candidate for finding extra-terrestrial life in our solar system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This comes as a surprise to astronomers who long believed the solar system’s “habitable zone” — where heat from the sun would allow for the presence of liquid water — ended at Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we saw Europa and realized that it had the energy, the organics, and certainly the water,” said Green, “it changed our ideas to where habitable zones can exist. We now believe habitable zones can exist around these large planets.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">A spectacular collision with an asteroid or comet could have delivered the building blocks of life.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>This week scientists also announced new findings based on 15-year old data collected by NASA’s Galileo Mission, showing that clay-type minerals on Europa’s surface appear to have been delivered by a spectacular collision with an asteroid or comet about the size of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/meet-comet-ison-our-icyfiery-visitor-from-the-oort-cloud/\">Comet ISON\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That object may have delivered organic materials that could, over time, give rise to life in Europa’s ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jim Shirley, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, says if life exists on Europa, it might be comparable to life found near deep-sea vents here on Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know on Earth that life can evolve in the absence of light, with the right chemistry,” said Shirley. “And so one of the questions about this is how would we get carbon, the building blocks of life, into the ocean? And we have evidence now that impacts can bring the carbon.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With the energy, the water, and now organics,” said Green, “that really means life could exist on Europa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One mission, called \u003ca href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper/\">Clipper\u003c/a>, currently in the concept stage, could send a spacecraft into Europa’s plumes to sample and analyze the vapor and any traces of life. But with an estimated price tag of several billion dollars – similar to the cost of the Curiosity Mars Rover – that mission could be a decade off, or more, said Green.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"headTitle": "En Route to Jupiter, Juno Sends First-Ever Video of Earth and Moon | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11936\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11936\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/329218main_juno200904_SCALE-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"NASA's Juno spacecraft is expected to reach Jupiter, our solar system's largest planet, in July 2016. (NASA)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA’s Juno spacecraft is expected to reach Jupiter, our solar system’s largest planet, in July 2016. (NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Twenty-four years ago, NASA’s Voyager One space probe sent back the mesmerizing image of what Carl Sagan called “\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot\">a pale blue dot\u003c/a>,” Earth captured from a distance of 3.7 billion miles. The image seemed to condense all our earthly concerns into one tiny fleck of light, as Sagan put it, “a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“This is what Earth would look like to an alien, looking at us with a telescope like Galileo had.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Now NASA’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html#.Uqi6bfRDt8E\">Juno spacecraft\u003c/a>, currently on its five-year journey to Jupiter, has brought back another perspective: the first-ever video of the moon as it orbits Earth, presented on Tuesday at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is what Earth would look like to an alien, looking at us with a telescope like Galileo had,” said Juno’s principal investigator, Scott Bolton. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the movie, you ride aboard Juno as it approaches Earth and then soars off into the blackness of space. No previous view of our world has ever captured the heavenly waltz of Earth and moon.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/_CzBlSXgzqI\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Juno is looking for clues into the formation of the solar system’s largest planet. Launched in 2011, the spacecraft completed a speed-gathering \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/earthflyby.html#.Uqiy1PRDt8E\">slingshot orbit\u003c/a> around the Earth, necessary to propel the spacecraft 400 million miles to Jupiter.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\nPlus: 1400 ham radio operators say “hi” to Juno. \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>That fly-by gave Juno scientists a rare opportunity to film what Bolton called the “cosmic dance” between the Earth and its moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fly-by also provided a chance to try out some citizen science. During the four hours that Juno dipped closest to the Earth, at least 1400 amateur radio operators from around the world transmitted a greeting in Morse code, hoping the collective signal would be strong enough to be picked up by Juno. It worked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[soundcloud url=https://soundcloud.com/amystanden-1/1400-ham-radio-ops-say-hi-to]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those six beeps — four, then two — say, in Morse code, “Hi!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the first time a NASA spacecraft has picked up radio signals sent intentionally from citizen scientists on Earth, says NASA’s Scott Bolton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At first we weren’t sure whether it would work,” says Bolton, “but if you had enough ham radio operators working together, there would be enough power, enough energy in their signal for us to see it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If all goes according to plan, Juno will fall into orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11936\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11936\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/12/329218main_juno200904_SCALE-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"NASA's Juno spacecraft is expected to reach Jupiter, our solar system's largest planet, in July 2016. (NASA)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA’s Juno spacecraft is expected to reach Jupiter, our solar system’s largest planet, in July 2016. (NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Twenty-four years ago, NASA’s Voyager One space probe sent back the mesmerizing image of what Carl Sagan called “\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot\">a pale blue dot\u003c/a>,” Earth captured from a distance of 3.7 billion miles. The image seemed to condense all our earthly concerns into one tiny fleck of light, as Sagan put it, “a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“This is what Earth would look like to an alien, looking at us with a telescope like Galileo had.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Now NASA’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html#.Uqi6bfRDt8E\">Juno spacecraft\u003c/a>, currently on its five-year journey to Jupiter, has brought back another perspective: the first-ever video of the moon as it orbits Earth, presented on Tuesday at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is what Earth would look like to an alien, looking at us with a telescope like Galileo had,” said Juno’s principal investigator, Scott Bolton. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the movie, you ride aboard Juno as it approaches Earth and then soars off into the blackness of space. No previous view of our world has ever captured the heavenly waltz of Earth and moon.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/_CzBlSXgzqI'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/_CzBlSXgzqI'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Juno is looking for clues into the formation of the solar system’s largest planet. Launched in 2011, the spacecraft completed a speed-gathering \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/earthflyby.html#.Uqiy1PRDt8E\">slingshot orbit\u003c/a> around the Earth, necessary to propel the spacecraft 400 million miles to Jupiter.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\nPlus: 1400 ham radio operators say “hi” to Juno. \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>That fly-by gave Juno scientists a rare opportunity to film what Bolton called the “cosmic dance” between the Earth and its moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fly-by also provided a chance to try out some citizen science. During the four hours that Juno dipped closest to the Earth, at least 1400 amateur radio operators from around the world transmitted a greeting in Morse code, hoping the collective signal would be strong enough to be picked up by Juno. It worked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cdiv class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__shortcodes__shortcodeWrapper'>\n \u003ciframe width='undefined' height='undefined'\n scrolling='no' frameborder='no'\n src='https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https://soundcloud.com/amystanden-1/1400-ham-radio-ops-say-hi-to&visual=true&undefined'\n title='https://soundcloud.com/amystanden-1/1400-ham-radio-ops-say-hi-to'>\n \u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/div>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those six beeps — four, then two — say, in Morse code, “Hi!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the first time a NASA spacecraft has picked up radio signals sent intentionally from citizen scientists on Earth, says NASA’s Scott Bolton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At first we weren’t sure whether it would work,” says Bolton, “but if you had enough ham radio operators working together, there would be enough power, enough energy in their signal for us to see it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If all goes according to plan, Juno will fall into orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Cassini or Curiosity: Budget Cuts Could Force NASA to Make A Tough Choice",
"headTitle": "Cassini or Curiosity: Budget Cuts Could Force NASA to Make A Tough Choice | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11571\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/curiosity-versus-cassini.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11571\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11571\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/curiosity-versus-cassini.jpg\" alt=\"Curiosity Versus Cassini\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Curiosity Versus Cassini\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>If you had to make a choice to shut down either the Mars rover \u003ca title=\"NASA Curiosity\" href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Curiosity \u003c/a>or that explorer of the Saturn system \u003ca title=\"NASA Cassini Mission\" href=\"http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cassini\u003c/a>, how would you choose? Would you deliver a pink slip to the young, eager, energetic newbie, Curiosity, who’s been doing a great job and has only begun its work investigating Mars? Or would you force an early retirement on a veteran explorer who has delivered volumes of knowledge of Saturn and its moons in its nine year career?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A hard choice to say the least, especially for two such exciting and high-profile exploration missions, but a decision that \u003ca title=\"Budget Cuts Leave Curiosity and Cassini In Limbo\" href=\"http://www.npr.org/2013/11/22/246734545/budget-cuts-leave-curiosity-and-cassini-in-limbo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">could be necessary\u003c/a> due to budget cuts at NASA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s nothing new. Choosing to end a mission earlier than planned has been part of the space exploration budget calculus for a long time. Even the greatest space adventure epic of all time, the Apollo missions to the moon, were curtailed earlier than planned when public interest dipped below a critical cost-benefit analysis threshold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not every robotic employee of NASA faces layoff or early retirement, however. I recall a time back in the mid 1990’s when I worked at NASA’s Ames Research Center and was visiting the building across the street from my own. I was walking down a hall looking for someone’s office when I passed by an open door and decided to poke my head in. What appeared to be a rather large computer lab opened up before me, and the room had a single occupant: a man probably in his mid-to-late seventies sitting before a computer quietly doing his work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What do you do in here?” I asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I,” the man said with a mixture of pride and wistfulness, “am the last employee on the Pioneer mission.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca title=\"NASA Pioneer\" href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/pioneer/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pioneer\u003c/a>! Those early interplanetary probes, Pioneers 10 and 11, launched in 1972 and 1973, were still sending signals from deep space. NASA was still listening to them with the ear of the Deep Space Network of radio dishes. In fact, those missions only ended in 1995 for Pioneer 11 and in 2003 for Pioneer 10, when the strength of their radio transmissions faded to silence with great distance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pioneer’s successors, \u003ca title=\"NASA Voyager\" href=\"http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Voyagers 1 and 2\u003c/a>, after their primary mission of exploring the giant planets from Jupiter to Neptune, are to this day in an active extended mission exploring the more distant boundaries of the solar system where the sun’s outward-blowing gases meet those of interstellar space: the heliopause.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And speaking of extended missions consider the Mars rover \u003ca title=\"NASA Opportunity\" href=\"http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Opportunity\u003c/a>, which landed in 2004 to begin a 90-day primary mission exploring Meridiani Planum and is now entering Year 10 of its extended mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what about Curiosity and Cassini, NASA’s flagship missions of planetary exploration? If the off switch must be flipped on one of them (which would likely happen sometime in 2015), which should it be?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the one hand, Cassini will run out of fuel in 2017 anyway and no longer be able to make orbital corrections that have allowed it to target close flybys of Saturn’s moons. On the other hand, with the wealth of information still pouring from Cassini’s radio transmitter back to earth, how can we shut off the fire hose early?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for Curiosity, which is preparing to begin its climb up the slopes of Mount Sharp, the basis of the decision takes on a different form. Whereas with Cassini it would be a decision to cut off the flow of goodies we’ve been enjoying for years, at this point the goodies that Curiosity promises to deliver are still only potential. Curiosity has sent back good intelligence on the chemistry and geology at the foot of Mount Sharp. But the design of its mission is to analyze the stack of sedimentary layers of the mountain that were built up over a major portion of Mars’ past, probing the history of Mars in addition to its geography.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early retirement for a proven veteran with volumes of discoveries to its credit or pink slip for a rising star with a promising career ahead?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If ever NASA needed an “easy” button….\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "If you had to make a choice to shut down either the Mars rover Curiosity or that explorer of the Saturn system Cassini, would you deliver a pink slip to the young, eager, energetic newbie or force an early retirement on a veteran explorer who has delivered volumes of knowledge?",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11571\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/curiosity-versus-cassini.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11571\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11571\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/curiosity-versus-cassini.jpg\" alt=\"Curiosity Versus Cassini\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Curiosity Versus Cassini\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>If you had to make a choice to shut down either the Mars rover \u003ca title=\"NASA Curiosity\" href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Curiosity \u003c/a>or that explorer of the Saturn system \u003ca title=\"NASA Cassini Mission\" href=\"http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cassini\u003c/a>, how would you choose? Would you deliver a pink slip to the young, eager, energetic newbie, Curiosity, who’s been doing a great job and has only begun its work investigating Mars? Or would you force an early retirement on a veteran explorer who has delivered volumes of knowledge of Saturn and its moons in its nine year career?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A hard choice to say the least, especially for two such exciting and high-profile exploration missions, but a decision that \u003ca title=\"Budget Cuts Leave Curiosity and Cassini In Limbo\" href=\"http://www.npr.org/2013/11/22/246734545/budget-cuts-leave-curiosity-and-cassini-in-limbo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">could be necessary\u003c/a> due to budget cuts at NASA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s nothing new. Choosing to end a mission earlier than planned has been part of the space exploration budget calculus for a long time. Even the greatest space adventure epic of all time, the Apollo missions to the moon, were curtailed earlier than planned when public interest dipped below a critical cost-benefit analysis threshold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not every robotic employee of NASA faces layoff or early retirement, however. I recall a time back in the mid 1990’s when I worked at NASA’s Ames Research Center and was visiting the building across the street from my own. I was walking down a hall looking for someone’s office when I passed by an open door and decided to poke my head in. What appeared to be a rather large computer lab opened up before me, and the room had a single occupant: a man probably in his mid-to-late seventies sitting before a computer quietly doing his work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What do you do in here?” I asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I,” the man said with a mixture of pride and wistfulness, “am the last employee on the Pioneer mission.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca title=\"NASA Pioneer\" href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/pioneer/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pioneer\u003c/a>! Those early interplanetary probes, Pioneers 10 and 11, launched in 1972 and 1973, were still sending signals from deep space. NASA was still listening to them with the ear of the Deep Space Network of radio dishes. In fact, those missions only ended in 1995 for Pioneer 11 and in 2003 for Pioneer 10, when the strength of their radio transmissions faded to silence with great distance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pioneer’s successors, \u003ca title=\"NASA Voyager\" href=\"http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Voyagers 1 and 2\u003c/a>, after their primary mission of exploring the giant planets from Jupiter to Neptune, are to this day in an active extended mission exploring the more distant boundaries of the solar system where the sun’s outward-blowing gases meet those of interstellar space: the heliopause.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And speaking of extended missions consider the Mars rover \u003ca title=\"NASA Opportunity\" href=\"http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Opportunity\u003c/a>, which landed in 2004 to begin a 90-day primary mission exploring Meridiani Planum and is now entering Year 10 of its extended mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what about Curiosity and Cassini, NASA’s flagship missions of planetary exploration? If the off switch must be flipped on one of them (which would likely happen sometime in 2015), which should it be?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the one hand, Cassini will run out of fuel in 2017 anyway and no longer be able to make orbital corrections that have allowed it to target close flybys of Saturn’s moons. On the other hand, with the wealth of information still pouring from Cassini’s radio transmitter back to earth, how can we shut off the fire hose early?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for Curiosity, which is preparing to begin its climb up the slopes of Mount Sharp, the basis of the decision takes on a different form. Whereas with Cassini it would be a decision to cut off the flow of goodies we’ve been enjoying for years, at this point the goodies that Curiosity promises to deliver are still only potential. Curiosity has sent back good intelligence on the chemistry and geology at the foot of Mount Sharp. But the design of its mission is to analyze the stack of sedimentary layers of the mountain that were built up over a major portion of Mars’ past, probing the history of Mars in addition to its geography.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early retirement for a proven veteran with volumes of discoveries to its credit or pink slip for a rising star with a promising career ahead?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If ever NASA needed an “easy” button….\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Meet ISON, the \"Comet of the Century\" That, Sadly, Wasn't",
"headTitle": "Meet ISON, the “Comet of the Century” That, Sadly, Wasn’t | KQED",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2013/11/20131202science.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11589\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/Peach-c2012_s1_2013_11_15dp_SCALE-1024x576.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11589\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11589\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/Peach-c2012_s1_2013_11_15dp_SCALE-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Comet ISON (Damian Peach)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comet ISON (\u003ca href=\"http://www.damianpeach.com\">Damian Peach\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Updated 12/1/13\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, it was exciting while it lasted. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we interviewed Foothill College Astronomy Professor Andrew Fraknoi just before Thanksgiving, hopes were high that Comet ISON, a Mt. Diablo-sized hunk of ice and rock that had been hurtling through our inner solar system, might put on a dazzling show for us in early December. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What made ISON so thrilling to astronomers was its “sun-grazing” trajectory. After being mysteriously dislodged from its home in the Oort Belt, ISON was flung into our inner solar system, culminating in a boomerang-like swing around the sun. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ISON passed Earth in early November on its way toward the sun, and was due for another fly-by in late December, with astronomers hoping for a particularly good view in the first days of the month. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, that’s looking less likely. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While it’s too soon to say exactly what ISON’s fate will be, the comet seems to have been mostly destroyed by the heat and gravitational pull of the sun. \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCSX4yumoY4\">Striking videos\u003c/a> from NASA’s SOHO Spacecraft show the comet dimming, then flaring, then dimming again as it shoots away from the Sun. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ISON really is not looking at all healthy now… fading fast, no nucleus…” \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/sungrazercomets\">tweeted\u003c/a> Karl Battams, a comet scientist for the Naval Research Laboratory, on Saturday, November 30th.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, says Andrew Fraknoi, ISON has given astronomers plenty to be excited about, and provided some spectacular imagery from telescopes on land and in space. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What makes a really great comet?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What people look for in a comet is both that the evaporated material from this chunk of dirty ice should make a beautiful cloud, and that there should be a long tail. A really magnificent comet will have a tail that goes across a considerable part of the sky, and is just a beautiful display in the night sky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>When is the last time we had a comet like that? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best northern hemisphere comet was Comet Hale Bopp, which happened in the late 1990s. We are now some time away from the last good Northern hemisphere comet, although the southern hemisphere has been graced by a comet or two since then.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">In a way, we’re getting a glimpse into the material that formed the solar system five billion years ago.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Let’s talk about what comet ISON is doing. Where is it coming from? Where is it going?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What we think is that it’s coming from the deep freeze of something called the Oort Cloud, a vast reservoir of comets way, way beyond the orbit of the outermost planet or dwarf planet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s falling in toward the sun and then will speed around the sun and back out to the depths of space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11585\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 121px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/ISON-Nov-13-14-2013-8btjpsm-121x162.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11585\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11585\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/ISON-Nov-13-14-2013-8btjpsm-121x162.jpg\" alt=\"These two images show how much brighter the comet became after flaring up in an outburst in mid-November. (Chabot Space & Science Center/ Conrad Jung)\" width=\"121\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">These two images show how much brighter the comet became after flaring up in an outburst in mid-November. (Chabot Space & Science Center/ Conrad Jung)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sort of like a boomerang?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes, like a boomerang, except a boomerang will go back to where it started; this comet will go back to the depths beyond the planets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tell me more abut the Oort Cloud. What’s it like out there? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=KBOs&Display=OverviewLong\">Oort Cloud\u003c/a> is roughly 50,000 times further from the sun than the Earth is. And it is a reservoir of icy leftover chunks, a couple of miles across, typically, which mostly stay out there minding their own business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But occasionally a couple collide or something comes by and launches one of them toward the inner solar system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s what we think happened with Comet ISON, that it came from this great reservoir of icy leftover chunks, then something knocked it inward toward the sun and toward our vantage point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This animation from NASA Goddard shows ISON’s trajectory as it enters the inner solar system and boomerangs around the Sun:\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nhttp://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a004000/a004017/CometISON2.slate.HD720.mp4\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>When was comet ISON discovered and by whom?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Comet ISON was discovered in September of 2012 by two young Russian observers, who are part of a network of people who are looking not so much for comets, but for asteroids that are coming near the earth and might represent a danger by crashing into the Earth. Their cameras revealed this new comet for the first time. And in honor of their network, the initials “ISON” became part of the name of the comet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This is probably a good time to point out that ISON is not going to hit us. But it’s still very interesting to astronomers.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We are going to study the heck out of it. We have not just telescopes on Earth, but we have \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasas-hubble-sees-comet-ison-intact/#.UpZXR8RDt8E\">telescopes in space\u003c/a>. There are telescopes \u003ca href=\"http://cometison.gsfc.nasa.gov/%20The%20Solar%20Dynamics%20Observatory,%20a%20TKTK,%20will%20be%20taking%20pictures%20of%20ISON%20as%20it%20whizzes%20past.%20Here's%20where%20to%20find%20those\">near the Sun\u003c/a>; we have a telescope orbiting\u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/main/#.UpZXCcRDt8E\"> the planet Mercury\u003c/a>. So, we are going to study the heck out of this little comet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s important because it is fresh stuff. It’s never been processed by the Sun, by interactions with material in the inner solar system. So in a way, we’re getting a glimpse into the material that formed the solar system five billion years ago. The virgin stuff out of which everything in the solar system originally was made, and learning something about what the gases are, what the dust is, the composition is of the material.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“About half the water we have was delivered by comets that crashed to Earth in the early history of the solar system.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>That’s a clue to our own origins five billion years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is it pure science fiction, this idea that a comet may have crashed into Earth carrying the seeds of some primordial life form that gave rise to us?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It sounds like science fiction, but it’s actually a very serious part of astronomy these days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We know for a fact that when the early Earth formed, all that intense heat of forming the Earth probably drove away a lot of the water that was originally part of the material of our planet. So we believe comets that later crashed into Earth were a water delivery system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About half the water we have was delivered by comets that crashed to Earth in the early history of the solar system. That’s well understood. Whether or not some of the actual building blocks of life, which we do see in other places in the universe, might have hitched a ride on a comet, and arrived on Earth after the Earth cooled, and helped life on Earth to form? That’s more speculative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s certainly something that gives us an extra interest in comets: The idea that comets could be the frozen delivery system of, not life itself, but some of the chemical building blocks of life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11584\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/cISON-Nov14-2013-11x50sec-iso3200-8bt-CombineFilesAdpHDRAddv2Bv1jpsmcrop-1024x710.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11584\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11584\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/cISON-Nov14-2013-11x50sec-iso3200-8bt-CombineFilesAdpHDRAddv2Bv1jpsmcrop-1024x710.jpg\" alt=\"Comet ISON on November 14 (Chabot Space & Science Center/Conrad Jung)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"710\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comet ISON on November 14 (Chabot Space & Science Center/Conrad Jung)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11589\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/Peach-c2012_s1_2013_11_15dp_SCALE-1024x576.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11589\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11589\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/Peach-c2012_s1_2013_11_15dp_SCALE-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Comet ISON (Damian Peach)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comet ISON (\u003ca href=\"http://www.damianpeach.com\">Damian Peach\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Updated 12/1/13\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, it was exciting while it lasted. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we interviewed Foothill College Astronomy Professor Andrew Fraknoi just before Thanksgiving, hopes were high that Comet ISON, a Mt. Diablo-sized hunk of ice and rock that had been hurtling through our inner solar system, might put on a dazzling show for us in early December. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What made ISON so thrilling to astronomers was its “sun-grazing” trajectory. After being mysteriously dislodged from its home in the Oort Belt, ISON was flung into our inner solar system, culminating in a boomerang-like swing around the sun. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ISON passed Earth in early November on its way toward the sun, and was due for another fly-by in late December, with astronomers hoping for a particularly good view in the first days of the month. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, that’s looking less likely. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While it’s too soon to say exactly what ISON’s fate will be, the comet seems to have been mostly destroyed by the heat and gravitational pull of the sun. \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCSX4yumoY4\">Striking videos\u003c/a> from NASA’s SOHO Spacecraft show the comet dimming, then flaring, then dimming again as it shoots away from the Sun. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ISON really is not looking at all healthy now… fading fast, no nucleus…” \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/sungrazercomets\">tweeted\u003c/a> Karl Battams, a comet scientist for the Naval Research Laboratory, on Saturday, November 30th.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, says Andrew Fraknoi, ISON has given astronomers plenty to be excited about, and provided some spectacular imagery from telescopes on land and in space. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What makes a really great comet?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What people look for in a comet is both that the evaporated material from this chunk of dirty ice should make a beautiful cloud, and that there should be a long tail. A really magnificent comet will have a tail that goes across a considerable part of the sky, and is just a beautiful display in the night sky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>When is the last time we had a comet like that? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best northern hemisphere comet was Comet Hale Bopp, which happened in the late 1990s. We are now some time away from the last good Northern hemisphere comet, although the southern hemisphere has been graced by a comet or two since then.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">In a way, we’re getting a glimpse into the material that formed the solar system five billion years ago.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Let’s talk about what comet ISON is doing. Where is it coming from? Where is it going?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What we think is that it’s coming from the deep freeze of something called the Oort Cloud, a vast reservoir of comets way, way beyond the orbit of the outermost planet or dwarf planet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s falling in toward the sun and then will speed around the sun and back out to the depths of space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11585\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 121px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/ISON-Nov-13-14-2013-8btjpsm-121x162.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11585\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11585\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/ISON-Nov-13-14-2013-8btjpsm-121x162.jpg\" alt=\"These two images show how much brighter the comet became after flaring up in an outburst in mid-November. (Chabot Space & Science Center/ Conrad Jung)\" width=\"121\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">These two images show how much brighter the comet became after flaring up in an outburst in mid-November. (Chabot Space & Science Center/ Conrad Jung)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sort of like a boomerang?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes, like a boomerang, except a boomerang will go back to where it started; this comet will go back to the depths beyond the planets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tell me more abut the Oort Cloud. What’s it like out there? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=KBOs&Display=OverviewLong\">Oort Cloud\u003c/a> is roughly 50,000 times further from the sun than the Earth is. And it is a reservoir of icy leftover chunks, a couple of miles across, typically, which mostly stay out there minding their own business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But occasionally a couple collide or something comes by and launches one of them toward the inner solar system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s what we think happened with Comet ISON, that it came from this great reservoir of icy leftover chunks, then something knocked it inward toward the sun and toward our vantage point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This animation from NASA Goddard shows ISON’s trajectory as it enters the inner solar system and boomerangs around the Sun:\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nhttp://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a004000/a004017/CometISON2.slate.HD720.mp4\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>When was comet ISON discovered and by whom?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Comet ISON was discovered in September of 2012 by two young Russian observers, who are part of a network of people who are looking not so much for comets, but for asteroids that are coming near the earth and might represent a danger by crashing into the Earth. Their cameras revealed this new comet for the first time. And in honor of their network, the initials “ISON” became part of the name of the comet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This is probably a good time to point out that ISON is not going to hit us. But it’s still very interesting to astronomers.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We are going to study the heck out of it. We have not just telescopes on Earth, but we have \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasas-hubble-sees-comet-ison-intact/#.UpZXR8RDt8E\">telescopes in space\u003c/a>. There are telescopes \u003ca href=\"http://cometison.gsfc.nasa.gov/%20The%20Solar%20Dynamics%20Observatory,%20a%20TKTK,%20will%20be%20taking%20pictures%20of%20ISON%20as%20it%20whizzes%20past.%20Here's%20where%20to%20find%20those\">near the Sun\u003c/a>; we have a telescope orbiting\u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/main/#.UpZXCcRDt8E\"> the planet Mercury\u003c/a>. So, we are going to study the heck out of this little comet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s important because it is fresh stuff. It’s never been processed by the Sun, by interactions with material in the inner solar system. So in a way, we’re getting a glimpse into the material that formed the solar system five billion years ago. The virgin stuff out of which everything in the solar system originally was made, and learning something about what the gases are, what the dust is, the composition is of the material.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“About half the water we have was delivered by comets that crashed to Earth in the early history of the solar system.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>That’s a clue to our own origins five billion years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is it pure science fiction, this idea that a comet may have crashed into Earth carrying the seeds of some primordial life form that gave rise to us?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It sounds like science fiction, but it’s actually a very serious part of astronomy these days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We know for a fact that when the early Earth formed, all that intense heat of forming the Earth probably drove away a lot of the water that was originally part of the material of our planet. So we believe comets that later crashed into Earth were a water delivery system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About half the water we have was delivered by comets that crashed to Earth in the early history of the solar system. That’s well understood. Whether or not some of the actual building blocks of life, which we do see in other places in the universe, might have hitched a ride on a comet, and arrived on Earth after the Earth cooled, and helped life on Earth to form? That’s more speculative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s certainly something that gives us an extra interest in comets: The idea that comets could be the frozen delivery system of, not life itself, but some of the chemical building blocks of life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11584\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/cISON-Nov14-2013-11x50sec-iso3200-8bt-CombineFilesAdpHDRAddv2Bv1jpsmcrop-1024x710.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11584\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11584\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/cISON-Nov14-2013-11x50sec-iso3200-8bt-CombineFilesAdpHDRAddv2Bv1jpsmcrop-1024x710.jpg\" alt=\"Comet ISON on November 14 (Chabot Space & Science Center/Conrad Jung)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"710\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comet ISON on November 14 (Chabot Space & Science Center/Conrad Jung)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>A conversation with Silicon Valley venture capitalist \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jurvetson\">Steve Jurvetson\u003c/a> is the intellectual equivalent of an amusement park ride – thrilling and dizzying, with unexpected turns and twists taken at a breakneck pace. Jurvetson has an uncanny ability to find connections between scientific fields ranging from nanotechnology to renewable energy, with a high-octane curiosity and enthusiasm. I interviewed Jurvetson at \u003ca href=\"http://www.dfj.com/\">DFJ\u003c/a>, the venture capital firm where he has backed top tier startups such as Hotmail, Skype and Baidu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11212\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/Jurvetson-Still-049-e1384911218495.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11212\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/Jurvetson-Still-049-e1384911218495.jpg\" alt=\"Silicon Valley venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson stands next to some of his space memorabilia, including a prototype of the American flag planted on the moon. Image by Arwen Curry / KQED Science.\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Silicon Valley venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson stands next to his space memorabilia, including a prototype of the American flag planted on the moon. Image by Arwen Curry / KQED\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Jurvetson is also an unabashed space geek, with a love for rockets and engineering instilled as a boy during summer stints at \u003ca href=\"http://www.spacecamp.com/\">Space Camp\u003c/a>. Today, he fires off amateur rockets with his children and collects uber-rare space memorabilia, including an original Apollo-era fuel cell, the prototype of the US flag planted on the moon by Buzz Aldrin and a control panel salvaged from a Soviet-era Soyuz spacecraft, all on display at his Menlo Park office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jurvetson has secured tens of millions of dollars for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s startups, including the electric car maker Tesla Motors and SpaceX, a rocket-building and launch services company based near Los Angeles that has Jurvetson on its board. When I interviewed him this spring for the new KQED Science documentary, \u003ca title='\"Silicon Valley Goes to Space\"' href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/video/silicon-valley-goes-to-space/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Silicon Valley Goes to Space”\u003c/a>, I was keen to get his thoughts about the new flurry of commercial space ventures launched by Musk and other successful, tech-savvy entrepreneurs, including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Richard Branson and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“You’re dealing with big things that blow up on the pad. And in many cases, the need for a lot more money to get into space.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>As Jurvetson pointed out, some of these new space startups aren’t based in Silicon Valley. But the world’s capital of high-tech innovation has played an out-sized role in influencing and spurring the innovations and efficiencies that are allowing companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic to compete with and, it could be argued, out-innovate Boeing, Lockheed and other titans of the aerospace sector.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Part of it is the culture, the willingness to take risk,” Jurvetson said. “Whether it’s Tesla Motors and electric cars, SpaceX with rockets, some of the satellite companies that are thriving here, they are willing to approach things differently, re-engineer the problem, and radically change the landscape.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What do venture capitalists look for when evaluating startups in need of funding to overcome some hefty hurdles in the space industry?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re dealing with nation states as your competitors,” he said. “You’re dealing with political processes. You’re dealing with big things that blow up on the pad. And in many cases, the need for a lot more money to get into space.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Jurvetson, succeeding in the space startup world requires attributes common to any successful high-tech startup.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, one of the defining features of the new space era now underway is the appropriation of design and engineering strategies commonplace within the tech sector. This means that it’s much easier today than just five or 10 years ago to test and modify rocket designs, launch systems and robotic landers and innovate the “modular reuse” of hardware components such as SpaceX is doing with its Falcon 9 rockets. Ultimately, making it in the cutthroat world of startups requires perseverance, focused leadership and innovation, he said – traits that could apply just as readily to a startup making software or a startup making rocket ships to possibly ferry passengers to a space hotel or even Mars some day.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A conversation with Silicon Valley venture capitalist \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jurvetson\">Steve Jurvetson\u003c/a> is the intellectual equivalent of an amusement park ride – thrilling and dizzying, with unexpected turns and twists taken at a breakneck pace. Jurvetson has an uncanny ability to find connections between scientific fields ranging from nanotechnology to renewable energy, with a high-octane curiosity and enthusiasm. I interviewed Jurvetson at \u003ca href=\"http://www.dfj.com/\">DFJ\u003c/a>, the venture capital firm where he has backed top tier startups such as Hotmail, Skype and Baidu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11212\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/Jurvetson-Still-049-e1384911218495.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11212\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/Jurvetson-Still-049-e1384911218495.jpg\" alt=\"Silicon Valley venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson stands next to some of his space memorabilia, including a prototype of the American flag planted on the moon. Image by Arwen Curry / KQED Science.\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Silicon Valley venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson stands next to his space memorabilia, including a prototype of the American flag planted on the moon. Image by Arwen Curry / KQED\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Jurvetson is also an unabashed space geek, with a love for rockets and engineering instilled as a boy during summer stints at \u003ca href=\"http://www.spacecamp.com/\">Space Camp\u003c/a>. Today, he fires off amateur rockets with his children and collects uber-rare space memorabilia, including an original Apollo-era fuel cell, the prototype of the US flag planted on the moon by Buzz Aldrin and a control panel salvaged from a Soviet-era Soyuz spacecraft, all on display at his Menlo Park office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jurvetson has secured tens of millions of dollars for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s startups, including the electric car maker Tesla Motors and SpaceX, a rocket-building and launch services company based near Los Angeles that has Jurvetson on its board. When I interviewed him this spring for the new KQED Science documentary, \u003ca title='\"Silicon Valley Goes to Space\"' href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/video/silicon-valley-goes-to-space/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Silicon Valley Goes to Space”\u003c/a>, I was keen to get his thoughts about the new flurry of commercial space ventures launched by Musk and other successful, tech-savvy entrepreneurs, including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Richard Branson and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“You’re dealing with big things that blow up on the pad. And in many cases, the need for a lot more money to get into space.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>As Jurvetson pointed out, some of these new space startups aren’t based in Silicon Valley. But the world’s capital of high-tech innovation has played an out-sized role in influencing and spurring the innovations and efficiencies that are allowing companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic to compete with and, it could be argued, out-innovate Boeing, Lockheed and other titans of the aerospace sector.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Part of it is the culture, the willingness to take risk,” Jurvetson said. “Whether it’s Tesla Motors and electric cars, SpaceX with rockets, some of the satellite companies that are thriving here, they are willing to approach things differently, re-engineer the problem, and radically change the landscape.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What do venture capitalists look for when evaluating startups in need of funding to overcome some hefty hurdles in the space industry?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re dealing with nation states as your competitors,” he said. “You’re dealing with political processes. You’re dealing with big things that blow up on the pad. And in many cases, the need for a lot more money to get into space.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Jurvetson, succeeding in the space startup world requires attributes common to any successful high-tech startup.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, one of the defining features of the new space era now underway is the appropriation of design and engineering strategies commonplace within the tech sector. This means that it’s much easier today than just five or 10 years ago to test and modify rocket designs, launch systems and robotic landers and innovate the “modular reuse” of hardware components such as SpaceX is doing with its Falcon 9 rockets. Ultimately, making it in the cutthroat world of startups requires perseverance, focused leadership and innovation, he said – traits that could apply just as readily to a startup making software or a startup making rocket ships to possibly ferry passengers to a space hotel or even Mars some day.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Editor’s Note:\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>On the morning of October 31, 2014, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo crashed during a test flight 25 miles north of the Mojave Air and Space Port, killing one of the two pilots flying the craft. “Space is hard and today was a tough day,” said Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides at a press conference held a few hours later. Hundreds of wealthy would-be space tourists have put down deposits for a $250,000 rocketship ride into the edge of space, with Virgin Galactic’s flights scheduled to begin as early as 2015. The tragedy capped a tumultuous week for private space ventures, with the explosion a few days earlier of an unmanned Orbital Sciences rocket just moments after takeoff from Wallops Island in Virginia. Investigations are ongoing into the cause of both accidents. For more information, read the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2014/10/31/virgin-galactics-spaceshiptwo-destroyed-in-test-flight\">KQED News Fix blog post\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In May 2012, \u003ca href=\"http://spacex.com/\">SpaceX\u003c/a> became the first company to make a commercial mission to the International Space Station, successfully ferrying more than 1,000 pounds of supplies to the station. But SpaceX’s founder and CEO, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, has a larger prize in mind: flying people to Mars aboard SpaceX rockets within 10 or 15 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, \u003ca href=\"http://www.virgingalactic.com/\">Virgin Galactic\u003c/a>, founded by billionaire British entrepreneur Richard Branson, is on track to launch its first commercial spacecraft next year, rocketing “space tourists” on a $250,000 ride to the edge of space. So far, the company has collected deposits from more than 600 passengers, including wealthy children of the space age and celebrities like Justin Bieber and Leonardo DiCaprio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today’s space exploration efforts look far different than the historic exploration of space pioneered by \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/\">NASA\u003c/a> during the Apollo missions of the 1960s and ’70s. Then, during the height of the Cold War, the US locked technological and ideological horns with the Soviet Union to prove that American ingenuity and technological prowess would triumph in the race to land a man on the moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But now, in the age of cutbacks and federal furloughs, NASA is turning to the private sector to more cheaply get to Low Earth Orbit, a region roughly 100 to 600 miles above earth where the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/\">International Space Station\u003c/a> is located. From space tourism to plans to mine the moon, dozens of for-profit companies, many with the business models, characters and the high-tech, risk-taking culture of Silicon Valley, are reshaping American space exploration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stanford Aeronautics Professor G. Scott Hubbard, who worked at NASA for 20 years, and served as the director at one of its centers, the NASA Ames Research Center, said the space agency’s growing partnership with the private sector is critical for America to work more efficiently and cheaply in space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the old days, with all of these specifications, the reviews would get down to every nut and bolt,” he said. “In this new age, now, in ‘new space’, companies like SpaceX, like \u003ca href=\"http://www.orbital.com/\">Orbital Sciences\u003c/a>, are building their own vehicles, and NASA is saying, ‘OK, if you give us a service meeting this type of a milestone and this level of reliability, we’ll just take it…we’re not going to investigate every nut and bolt.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11241\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/703_KQEDSci_Space_JRoy_GShotwell_19563123.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11241\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/703_KQEDSci_Space_JRoy_GShotwell_19563123.jpg\" alt=\"Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX, shows off rocket engines being built at the company's headquarters near L.A. Image by Jayme Roy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX, shows off rocket engines being built at the company’s headquarters near L.A. Image by Jayme Roy\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But the private sector isn’t simply providing lower-cost services to NASA. More fundamentally, it is disrupting the space industry by creating new technologies that make getting into space cheaper. And that is expanding the commercial, scientific and even extreme adventure possibilities of space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the country’s new space entrepreneurs hail from the tech sector and some, like Elon Musk, rocketed to prominence with startup success in the early days of e-commerce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Elon Musk didn’t come from an aerospace background, he is a computer scientist by training,” said Silicon Valley venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, a SpaceX board member and investor in the company. “And he thinks about the rocket like computer scientists would – modular reuse, modern programming languages, everything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clearly, there are risks associated with these new, for-profit space ventures. Not only does the threat of commercial failure loom large, so too is the threat of accidents aboard the rocket ships gearing up to fly wealthy thrill-seekers and space buffs dozens of miles above earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we fly in space often enough, people will die. That’s not a pleasant truth but it is the truth,” said Jeff Greason, CEO of \u003ca href=\"http://www.xcor.com/\">XCOR Aerospace\u003c/a>, a Mojave, California company that, like Virgin Galactic, is also accepting deposits for rides aboard its rocket ship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tragically, this sentiment became reality on Oct. 31, 2014, when Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo crashed during a test flight, killing Michael Alsbury, a Scotts Valley native and one of the two pilots on board.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The disaster came just three days after the explosion of an unmanned Orbital Sciences rocket in Virginia. The rocket was scheduled to make a resupply mission to the International Space Station, as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo program, under which the company, along with its competitor, SpaceX, had won lucrative, billion-dollar contracts to haul cargo to and from the ISS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hubbard said the disasters occurred in two different areas of the private space sector, so the impact of the crashes should be examined separately.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“NASA’s commercial cargo and crew program represents one industry and it has almost nothing to do with the Virgin Galactic crash, which has to do with suborbital space tourism,” Hubbard said. “Orbital Sciences will have to stand down and evaluate their vehicle until they fly again. I don’t see NASA deviating in any substantial way from their commercial cargo and commercial crew program.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hubbard served as the sole NASA official on the investigation into the February 2003 crash of the Space Shuttle Columbia, which killed all seven crew members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said he thinks that the crash of SpaceShipTwo will not derail the launch of space tourism, adding that the risks are not unlike those of the early days of aviation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think within the next five years, you will see space tourism,” he said. “Flying cross country is safer per seat mille that it is per seat mile driving in your car, but that occurred over a period of 100 years, from Kitty Hawk to now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And I think Richard Branson will need to restore the faith of his paying customers that he has a safe operation,” he added. “But I don’t see the interest in suborbital space tourism going away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Orbital Sciences and Virgin Galactic struggle to move on from their setbacks, other private space companies have seen major successes in recent months.\u003cs>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11239\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/703_KQEDSci_Space_BMcHugh_Skybox_07343803_2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11239\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/703_KQEDSci_Space_BMcHugh_Skybox_07343803_2.jpg\" alt=\"Technicians at Skybox Imaging work on a satellite in a clean room at the company's headquarters in Mountain View. Image by Blake McHugh.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Technicians at Skybox Imaging work on a satellite in a clean room at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View. Image by Blake McHugh.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.skyboximaging.com/\">Skybox Imaging\u003c/a>, based in Mountain View, sees itself as building “the iPhone of satellites.” The company is carving out a new niche in the satellite imaging industry with lower-cost imaging satellites that are built with the latest computer processors to transmit rapid satellite imagery and video of practically any location on the planet, said the company’s co-founder and executive vice president, Dan Berkenstock.\u003cs>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The potential applications include monitoring deforestation activity to tracking shipping activity in a busy California port, from day-to-day and month to month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skybox says its customers will be able to access online current satellite imagery of locations they’re interested in tracking for presumably a lot less than the “couple of thousand dollars” that Berkenstock said it costs today for a customer to order a new satellite image and receive it months later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trade-off, however, is quality: although Skybox’s satellites will provide high-resolution images, they won’t be as sophisticated as what the SUV-sized, expensive imaging satellites can provide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can count how many cars are in a parking lot, but we probably can’t tell you it’s a Buick versus a Honda,” said Berkenstock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company launched its first two satellites from rockets in Kazakhstan in November 2013. In August 2014, Google acquired Skybox Imaging for $500 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Editor’s Note:\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>On the morning of October 31, 2014, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo crashed during a test flight 25 miles north of the Mojave Air and Space Port, killing one of the two pilots flying the craft. “Space is hard and today was a tough day,” said Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides at a press conference held a few hours later. Hundreds of wealthy would-be space tourists have put down deposits for a $250,000 rocketship ride into the edge of space, with Virgin Galactic’s flights scheduled to begin as early as 2015. The tragedy capped a tumultuous week for private space ventures, with the explosion a few days earlier of an unmanned Orbital Sciences rocket just moments after takeoff from Wallops Island in Virginia. Investigations are ongoing into the cause of both accidents. For more information, read the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2014/10/31/virgin-galactics-spaceshiptwo-destroyed-in-test-flight\">KQED News Fix blog post\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In May 2012, \u003ca href=\"http://spacex.com/\">SpaceX\u003c/a> became the first company to make a commercial mission to the International Space Station, successfully ferrying more than 1,000 pounds of supplies to the station. But SpaceX’s founder and CEO, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, has a larger prize in mind: flying people to Mars aboard SpaceX rockets within 10 or 15 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, \u003ca href=\"http://www.virgingalactic.com/\">Virgin Galactic\u003c/a>, founded by billionaire British entrepreneur Richard Branson, is on track to launch its first commercial spacecraft next year, rocketing “space tourists” on a $250,000 ride to the edge of space. So far, the company has collected deposits from more than 600 passengers, including wealthy children of the space age and celebrities like Justin Bieber and Leonardo DiCaprio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today’s space exploration efforts look far different than the historic exploration of space pioneered by \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/\">NASA\u003c/a> during the Apollo missions of the 1960s and ’70s. Then, during the height of the Cold War, the US locked technological and ideological horns with the Soviet Union to prove that American ingenuity and technological prowess would triumph in the race to land a man on the moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But now, in the age of cutbacks and federal furloughs, NASA is turning to the private sector to more cheaply get to Low Earth Orbit, a region roughly 100 to 600 miles above earth where the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/\">International Space Station\u003c/a> is located. From space tourism to plans to mine the moon, dozens of for-profit companies, many with the business models, characters and the high-tech, risk-taking culture of Silicon Valley, are reshaping American space exploration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stanford Aeronautics Professor G. Scott Hubbard, who worked at NASA for 20 years, and served as the director at one of its centers, the NASA Ames Research Center, said the space agency’s growing partnership with the private sector is critical for America to work more efficiently and cheaply in space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the old days, with all of these specifications, the reviews would get down to every nut and bolt,” he said. “In this new age, now, in ‘new space’, companies like SpaceX, like \u003ca href=\"http://www.orbital.com/\">Orbital Sciences\u003c/a>, are building their own vehicles, and NASA is saying, ‘OK, if you give us a service meeting this type of a milestone and this level of reliability, we’ll just take it…we’re not going to investigate every nut and bolt.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11241\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/703_KQEDSci_Space_JRoy_GShotwell_19563123.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11241\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/703_KQEDSci_Space_JRoy_GShotwell_19563123.jpg\" alt=\"Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX, shows off rocket engines being built at the company's headquarters near L.A. Image by Jayme Roy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX, shows off rocket engines being built at the company’s headquarters near L.A. Image by Jayme Roy\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But the private sector isn’t simply providing lower-cost services to NASA. More fundamentally, it is disrupting the space industry by creating new technologies that make getting into space cheaper. And that is expanding the commercial, scientific and even extreme adventure possibilities of space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the country’s new space entrepreneurs hail from the tech sector and some, like Elon Musk, rocketed to prominence with startup success in the early days of e-commerce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Elon Musk didn’t come from an aerospace background, he is a computer scientist by training,” said Silicon Valley venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, a SpaceX board member and investor in the company. “And he thinks about the rocket like computer scientists would – modular reuse, modern programming languages, everything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clearly, there are risks associated with these new, for-profit space ventures. Not only does the threat of commercial failure loom large, so too is the threat of accidents aboard the rocket ships gearing up to fly wealthy thrill-seekers and space buffs dozens of miles above earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we fly in space often enough, people will die. That’s not a pleasant truth but it is the truth,” said Jeff Greason, CEO of \u003ca href=\"http://www.xcor.com/\">XCOR Aerospace\u003c/a>, a Mojave, California company that, like Virgin Galactic, is also accepting deposits for rides aboard its rocket ship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tragically, this sentiment became reality on Oct. 31, 2014, when Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo crashed during a test flight, killing Michael Alsbury, a Scotts Valley native and one of the two pilots on board.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The disaster came just three days after the explosion of an unmanned Orbital Sciences rocket in Virginia. The rocket was scheduled to make a resupply mission to the International Space Station, as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo program, under which the company, along with its competitor, SpaceX, had won lucrative, billion-dollar contracts to haul cargo to and from the ISS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hubbard said the disasters occurred in two different areas of the private space sector, so the impact of the crashes should be examined separately.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“NASA’s commercial cargo and crew program represents one industry and it has almost nothing to do with the Virgin Galactic crash, which has to do with suborbital space tourism,” Hubbard said. “Orbital Sciences will have to stand down and evaluate their vehicle until they fly again. I don’t see NASA deviating in any substantial way from their commercial cargo and commercial crew program.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hubbard served as the sole NASA official on the investigation into the February 2003 crash of the Space Shuttle Columbia, which killed all seven crew members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said he thinks that the crash of SpaceShipTwo will not derail the launch of space tourism, adding that the risks are not unlike those of the early days of aviation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think within the next five years, you will see space tourism,” he said. “Flying cross country is safer per seat mille that it is per seat mile driving in your car, but that occurred over a period of 100 years, from Kitty Hawk to now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And I think Richard Branson will need to restore the faith of his paying customers that he has a safe operation,” he added. “But I don’t see the interest in suborbital space tourism going away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Orbital Sciences and Virgin Galactic struggle to move on from their setbacks, other private space companies have seen major successes in recent months.\u003cs>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11239\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/703_KQEDSci_Space_BMcHugh_Skybox_07343803_2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11239\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/703_KQEDSci_Space_BMcHugh_Skybox_07343803_2.jpg\" alt=\"Technicians at Skybox Imaging work on a satellite in a clean room at the company's headquarters in Mountain View. Image by Blake McHugh.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Technicians at Skybox Imaging work on a satellite in a clean room at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View. Image by Blake McHugh.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.skyboximaging.com/\">Skybox Imaging\u003c/a>, based in Mountain View, sees itself as building “the iPhone of satellites.” The company is carving out a new niche in the satellite imaging industry with lower-cost imaging satellites that are built with the latest computer processors to transmit rapid satellite imagery and video of practically any location on the planet, said the company’s co-founder and executive vice president, Dan Berkenstock.\u003cs>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The potential applications include monitoring deforestation activity to tracking shipping activity in a busy California port, from day-to-day and month to month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skybox says its customers will be able to access online current satellite imagery of locations they’re interested in tracking for presumably a lot less than the “couple of thousand dollars” that Berkenstock said it costs today for a customer to order a new satellite image and receive it months later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trade-off, however, is quality: although Skybox’s satellites will provide high-resolution images, they won’t be as sophisticated as what the SUV-sized, expensive imaging satellites can provide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can count how many cars are in a parking lot, but we probably can’t tell you it’s a Buick versus a Honda,” said Berkenstock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company launched its first two satellites from rockets in Kazakhstan in November 2013. In August 2014, Google acquired Skybox Imaging for $500 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "NASA Launches its New Mars Mission",
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"content": "\u003cp>NASA’s newest Mars probe, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/main/#.UoppjcSshcY\">MAVEN\u003c/a> is now shooting through the solar system. A mere 440 million miles stand between the robotic explorer and its final destination: the Martian atmosphere. MAVEN launched this morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA engineers described the launch as “flawless.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh_nyFIwPy0\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists from \u003ca href=\"http://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/\">University of California, Berkeley\u003c/a> helped design MAVEN, or Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, which seeks to clues to the question: What makes Mars appear to be a barren wasteland, while Earth is verdant and full of life?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer may lie in Mars’ atmosphere, which is too thin to protect the planet from the Sun’s harsh glare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mars rovers, including \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/video/searching-for-life-on-mars/\">Curiosity\u003c/a>, have found telltale signs that water once flowed over the Martian surface. This suggests that Mars must once have had a thicker atmosphere, as Earth does, protecting the planet from the Sun and fostering a climate that could sustain water and maybe even life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The evidence for a much warmer climate in the distant past is very compelling,” says UC Berkeley space scientist David L. Mitchell. “So then the question is: Where did the atmosphere go?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mitchell’s team designed an instrument on MAVEN called the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/maven-solar-wind-electron-analyzer-seeks-answers-at-microscopic-levels/#.Uoqhg-IhGGk\">Solar Wind Electron Analyzer\u003c/a> (or SEWA), which will analyze tiny particles of the Martian atmosphere, sending data about its chemical composition back to Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This NASA video shows what a younger Mars may have looked like, billions of years ago when it had a thicker atmosphere and oceans of water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKPrwY0Ycno\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>NASA’s newest Mars probe, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/main/#.UoppjcSshcY\">MAVEN\u003c/a> is now shooting through the solar system. A mere 440 million miles stand between the robotic explorer and its final destination: the Martian atmosphere. MAVEN launched this morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA engineers described the launch as “flawless.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/rh_nyFIwPy0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/rh_nyFIwPy0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Scientists from \u003ca href=\"http://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/\">University of California, Berkeley\u003c/a> helped design MAVEN, or Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, which seeks to clues to the question: What makes Mars appear to be a barren wasteland, while Earth is verdant and full of life?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer may lie in Mars’ atmosphere, which is too thin to protect the planet from the Sun’s harsh glare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mars rovers, including \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/video/searching-for-life-on-mars/\">Curiosity\u003c/a>, have found telltale signs that water once flowed over the Martian surface. This suggests that Mars must once have had a thicker atmosphere, as Earth does, protecting the planet from the Sun and fostering a climate that could sustain water and maybe even life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The evidence for a much warmer climate in the distant past is very compelling,” says UC Berkeley space scientist David L. Mitchell. “So then the question is: Where did the atmosphere go?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mitchell’s team designed an instrument on MAVEN called the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/maven-solar-wind-electron-analyzer-seeks-answers-at-microscopic-levels/#.Uoqhg-IhGGk\">Solar Wind Electron Analyzer\u003c/a> (or SEWA), which will analyze tiny particles of the Martian atmosphere, sending data about its chemical composition back to Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This NASA video shows what a younger Mars may have looked like, billions of years ago when it had a thicker atmosphere and oceans of water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/sKPrwY0Ycno'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/sKPrwY0Ycno'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Comet ISON's Solar-Coaster Ride is Heating Up",
"headTitle": "Comet ISON’s Solar-Coaster Ride is Heating Up | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11047\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/CometISON-Nov142013.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11047\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/CometISON-Nov142013.jpg\" alt=\"Comet ISON - Nov 14 2013 - Conrad Jung, Chabot Space & Science Center\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11047\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comet ISON – Nov 14 2013 – Conrad Jung, Chabot Space & Science Center\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In our last exciting episode back in September, Comet ISON was just about to cross the orbit of Mars and enter the inner solar system for the first time in its existence. With every passing day, ISON draws closer to the sun, accelerating ever fast on the “downhill” plunge of its solar-coaster ride. This week ISON has passed the orbit of Venus, and things really seem to be heating up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s been a great deal of anticipation surrounding this particular comet, which was discovered last year by a telescope in the International Sky Observer Network—and a great deal of debate about whether it will become a “Comet of the Century”, or fizzle out like so many other comets of the century have in the past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The crux of the arguments of both camps—the cautiously optimistic and cautiously pessimistic crowds alike—is how close to the sun ISON will get on November 28th: a scorching perihelion distance of only about 700,000 miles from the sun’s surface, or less than one solar diameter. Will it or won’t it? Will it survive the intense radiation and gravitational tidal forces of its sun-grazing trajectory or break apart and vaporize? If it survives, will the heating it receives during its flyby pump up its gaseous coma and tail to highly visible proportions?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even now, before perihelion, ISON has produced a sizeable tail. It has been \u003ca title=\"Comet ISON visible in binoculars\" href=\"http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/comet-ison-view-reveal-deep-secrets-article-1.1514621\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">spotted through binoculars\u003c/a> in the early morning skies, within the constellation Virgo. This bodes well for a showy performance as the weeks go on—though doesn’t guarantee anything; comets never come with guarantees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Comet ISON is of a class of “sun-grazing” comets that likely originate far out in space in the \u003ca title=\"Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud\" href=\"http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=KBOs&Display=OverviewLong\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Oort Cloud\u003c/a>, an expansive shell of material that surrounds our solar system and extends perhaps a light year into interstellar space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the \u003ca title=\"Solar System Formation\" href=\"http://www.windows2universe.org/our_solar_system/formation.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">solar system formed\u003c/a> from the protosolar nebula—its “birth cloud” of gas and dust—almost 5 billion years ago, most of the material condensed at the center, forming the sun and the planets of the inner and outer solar system. As the sun and planets “snowballed” into larger and more massive bodies, they dominated the space around them, sweeping up the remaining gas, dust, and rock and ice chunks with their gravity. When the sun lit into an active star, its heat vaporized much of the ices near it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But at greater distances from the sun and planets the effects of their gravity and the sun’s radiation drops off, leaving objects in the realm of the Oort Cloud more or less unaltered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Oort Cloud consists of perhaps billions of icy objects–planetesimals and comets—that are mostly in the same condition they were billions of years ago. These frozen bits constitute “fossils” of a sort, buried in the deep dark reaches where the sun appears merely as a bright star. Billions of tiny time capsules, they preserve information about the earliest times of the solar system’s formation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Occasionally one is dislodged, perhaps by the gravity of another passing object, and sent falling toward the sun, like ISON. Some time in the distant past ISON’s orbit in the Oort Cloud was disturbed, and it has spent the entire time since then falling toward the sun, carrying its cargo of information from the earliest times of the solar system with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, for an exceedingly brief time, ISON is in the sunlight, its ancient ices vaporizing and lighting up in all a comet tail’s glory.\u003cbr>\nThen, assuming it survives that defining moment of perihelion, ISON will begin the long coasting climb back toward the Oort Cloud, maybe never to return.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I hope you can catch a \u003ca title=\"Comet ISON Heats Up\" href=\"http://www.universetoday.com/106205/comet-ison-heats-up-grows-new-tail/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">glimpse\u003c/a>….\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "There's been a great deal of anticipation surrounding Comet ISON—and a great deal of debate about whether it will become a Comet of the Century, or fizzle out like so many other comets of the century have in the past. ISON is now visible in binoculars, which may bode well for a good sky show in the coming weeks. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11047\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/CometISON-Nov142013.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11047\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/CometISON-Nov142013.jpg\" alt=\"Comet ISON - Nov 14 2013 - Conrad Jung, Chabot Space & Science Center\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11047\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comet ISON – Nov 14 2013 – Conrad Jung, Chabot Space & Science Center\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In our last exciting episode back in September, Comet ISON was just about to cross the orbit of Mars and enter the inner solar system for the first time in its existence. With every passing day, ISON draws closer to the sun, accelerating ever fast on the “downhill” plunge of its solar-coaster ride. This week ISON has passed the orbit of Venus, and things really seem to be heating up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s been a great deal of anticipation surrounding this particular comet, which was discovered last year by a telescope in the International Sky Observer Network—and a great deal of debate about whether it will become a “Comet of the Century”, or fizzle out like so many other comets of the century have in the past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The crux of the arguments of both camps—the cautiously optimistic and cautiously pessimistic crowds alike—is how close to the sun ISON will get on November 28th: a scorching perihelion distance of only about 700,000 miles from the sun’s surface, or less than one solar diameter. Will it or won’t it? Will it survive the intense radiation and gravitational tidal forces of its sun-grazing trajectory or break apart and vaporize? If it survives, will the heating it receives during its flyby pump up its gaseous coma and tail to highly visible proportions?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even now, before perihelion, ISON has produced a sizeable tail. It has been \u003ca title=\"Comet ISON visible in binoculars\" href=\"http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/comet-ison-view-reveal-deep-secrets-article-1.1514621\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">spotted through binoculars\u003c/a> in the early morning skies, within the constellation Virgo. This bodes well for a showy performance as the weeks go on—though doesn’t guarantee anything; comets never come with guarantees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Comet ISON is of a class of “sun-grazing” comets that likely originate far out in space in the \u003ca title=\"Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud\" href=\"http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=KBOs&Display=OverviewLong\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Oort Cloud\u003c/a>, an expansive shell of material that surrounds our solar system and extends perhaps a light year into interstellar space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the \u003ca title=\"Solar System Formation\" href=\"http://www.windows2universe.org/our_solar_system/formation.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">solar system formed\u003c/a> from the protosolar nebula—its “birth cloud” of gas and dust—almost 5 billion years ago, most of the material condensed at the center, forming the sun and the planets of the inner and outer solar system. As the sun and planets “snowballed” into larger and more massive bodies, they dominated the space around them, sweeping up the remaining gas, dust, and rock and ice chunks with their gravity. When the sun lit into an active star, its heat vaporized much of the ices near it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But at greater distances from the sun and planets the effects of their gravity and the sun’s radiation drops off, leaving objects in the realm of the Oort Cloud more or less unaltered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Oort Cloud consists of perhaps billions of icy objects–planetesimals and comets—that are mostly in the same condition they were billions of years ago. These frozen bits constitute “fossils” of a sort, buried in the deep dark reaches where the sun appears merely as a bright star. Billions of tiny time capsules, they preserve information about the earliest times of the solar system’s formation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Occasionally one is dislodged, perhaps by the gravity of another passing object, and sent falling toward the sun, like ISON. Some time in the distant past ISON’s orbit in the Oort Cloud was disturbed, and it has spent the entire time since then falling toward the sun, carrying its cargo of information from the earliest times of the solar system with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, for an exceedingly brief time, ISON is in the sunlight, its ancient ices vaporizing and lighting up in all a comet tail’s glory.\u003cbr>\nThen, assuming it survives that defining moment of perihelion, ISON will begin the long coasting climb back toward the Oort Cloud, maybe never to return.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I hope you can catch a \u003ca title=\"Comet ISON Heats Up\" href=\"http://www.universetoday.com/106205/comet-ison-heats-up-grows-new-tail/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">glimpse\u003c/a>….\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Why Astronauts and Telecommunications Companies Fear the 'Solar Maximum'",
"headTitle": "Why Astronauts and Telecommunications Companies Fear the ‘Solar Maximum’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10857\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/20131110-hmi_smaller-1024x1024.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10857\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/20131110-hmi_smaller-1024x1024.jpg\" alt=\"This region of sun spots is about the size of the planet Jupiter. It emerged on Nov. 2, 2013 and has been producing powerful solar flares. (NASA/SDO)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1024\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10857\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This region of sun spots is about the size of the planet Jupiter. It emerged on Nov. 2, 2013 and has been producing powerful solar flares. (NASA/SDO)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There sun is about to flip.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an event that takes place every 11 years, the magnetic field of the sun will change its polarity (in fact, this is already happening) sending a ripple of changing current way past Pluto, to the outer reaches of the heliosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the peak of this cycle – what’s called a “solar maximum” — there can be more dramatic \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/halloween_storms.html\">aurora displays\u003c/a> in the northern latitudes, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm\">power outages,\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/03jun_fakeastronaut/\">scared astronauts\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, at Stanford’s \u003ca href=\"http://wso.stanford.edu/\">Wilcox Solar Observatory\u003c/a>, scientists will be paying close attention. Todd Hoeksema directs the observatory, which has been monitoring the Sun’s magnetic field since 1975.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(The Wilcox is not, by the way, the source of all the pretty pictures on this page – those come from NASA’s \u003ca href=\"http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/\">Solar Dynamics Observatory\u003c/a>, which is profiled in this \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/video/journey-into-the-sun/\">KQED Science video\u003c/a> back in 2010.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoeksema, reached in his office, told KQED Science that this year’s reversal – “Cycle 24” – is a lot less dramatic than previous cycles, but still exciting enough to have him and others glued to their screens, watching sun spots come and go on the surface of our star.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So when, exactly, is this flip going to happen?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>It happening right now. It’s a gradual process, not something that happens over the course of a few hours or even a day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s kind of like a tide coming in and out. When does it reach high tide? You can specify a moment after the fact, but as you’re experiencing it, you can’t tell so well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In six months, I’ll be able to tell you pretty closely at which point the sun reversed its polarity, but I can’t do it now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What does that mean to say that the polarity reverses?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>Magnetic fields point one direction or the other. And at the surface of the sun, they point into the surface, or out of the surface. And right now, the polar field in the south is changing from pointing out of the sun, to pointing into the sun. We call that going from positive to negative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>is a big deal because the sun’s magnetic field is what determines how solar wind is organized, and solar wind goes all the way past the planets to the edge of the heliosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Which is the part of space that’s influenced by the Sun. Didn’t the Voyager 1 spacecraft just \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/voyager20130912.html#.UoGAEeJxXY8\">reach the edge\u003c/a> of the heliosphere?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are two Voyager spacecrafts. And people are pretty sure that one of them has recently passed outside the heliosphere for the first time, past Pluto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is that we don’t know what it’s going to look like outside the bounds of the heliosphere. So it’s a little bit hard to say for sure that you’ve done it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8XwfyNm5XQ\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So the reversal, when it hits, will affect this entire heliosphere. Will we feel it here on Earth?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well the Earth has a really good shield, so changes in the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field don’t affect us on the surface much. What you \u003cem>do\u003c/em> see are changes in the Earth’s geomagnetic field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that can affect our technological system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At solar maximum you see more solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Those can cause things like power outages. It can interfere with reception of data from satellites. Or even airplanes sometimes have trouble communicating at high latitudes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the most spectacular things you can see are auroras, so the northern lights will be more common at northern latitudes. People see those when there’s a lot of activity on the sun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>And when the solar maximum is happening, we also see a lot more sun spots. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes. A sun spot is a large area on the surface of the Sun where the magnetic field is strong. They’re about the size of the Earth. And they’re dark because they’re a little bit cooler than the rest of the surface.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s where the activity happens. When the magnetic field is complicated, you can get these big explosions [solar flares]. The interesting thing is when there are a few sun spots next to each other, that’s when you get the big explosions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>But it sounds like this particular solar maximum has been a bit of a letdown, right?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Based on past experience, we’ve probably reached, or are very close to the maximum this cycle, and it hasn’t been a very impressive one. There have been a few large storms – a lot of activity over the last couple weeks, for example — but not many.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So there may still be a big storm coming, but we seem to be at the peak, or just passing the peak of this cycle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10860\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 162px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/20131110_051548_2048_0131_0-162x162.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10860\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/20131110_051548_2048_0131_0-162x162.jpg\" alt=\"NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare on Nov. 10, 2013. (NASA/SDO) \" width=\"162\" height=\"162\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10860\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare on Nov. 10, 2013.\u003cbr>(NASA/SDO)\u003cbr>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This weak cycle is great for satellites, not so great for funding of space weather research. 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"excerpt": "Every 11 years, the magnetic field of the sun changes its polarity (in fact, this may already be happening) sending a ripple of changing current out way past Pluto, to the outer reaches of the heliosphere. This solar \"flip\" is happening now. ",
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"description": "Every 11 years, the magnetic field of the sun changes its polarity (in fact, this may already be happening) sending a ripple of changing current out way past Pluto, to the outer reaches of the heliosphere. This solar "flip" is happening now. ",
"title": "Why Astronauts and Telecommunications Companies Fear the 'Solar Maximum' | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10857\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/20131110-hmi_smaller-1024x1024.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10857\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/20131110-hmi_smaller-1024x1024.jpg\" alt=\"This region of sun spots is about the size of the planet Jupiter. It emerged on Nov. 2, 2013 and has been producing powerful solar flares. (NASA/SDO)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1024\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10857\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This region of sun spots is about the size of the planet Jupiter. It emerged on Nov. 2, 2013 and has been producing powerful solar flares. (NASA/SDO)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There sun is about to flip.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an event that takes place every 11 years, the magnetic field of the sun will change its polarity (in fact, this is already happening) sending a ripple of changing current way past Pluto, to the outer reaches of the heliosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the peak of this cycle – what’s called a “solar maximum” — there can be more dramatic \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/halloween_storms.html\">aurora displays\u003c/a> in the northern latitudes, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm\">power outages,\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/03jun_fakeastronaut/\">scared astronauts\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, at Stanford’s \u003ca href=\"http://wso.stanford.edu/\">Wilcox Solar Observatory\u003c/a>, scientists will be paying close attention. Todd Hoeksema directs the observatory, which has been monitoring the Sun’s magnetic field since 1975.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(The Wilcox is not, by the way, the source of all the pretty pictures on this page – those come from NASA’s \u003ca href=\"http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/\">Solar Dynamics Observatory\u003c/a>, which is profiled in this \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/video/journey-into-the-sun/\">KQED Science video\u003c/a> back in 2010.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoeksema, reached in his office, told KQED Science that this year’s reversal – “Cycle 24” – is a lot less dramatic than previous cycles, but still exciting enough to have him and others glued to their screens, watching sun spots come and go on the surface of our star.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So when, exactly, is this flip going to happen?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>It happening right now. It’s a gradual process, not something that happens over the course of a few hours or even a day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s kind of like a tide coming in and out. When does it reach high tide? You can specify a moment after the fact, but as you’re experiencing it, you can’t tell so well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In six months, I’ll be able to tell you pretty closely at which point the sun reversed its polarity, but I can’t do it now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What does that mean to say that the polarity reverses?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>Magnetic fields point one direction or the other. And at the surface of the sun, they point into the surface, or out of the surface. And right now, the polar field in the south is changing from pointing out of the sun, to pointing into the sun. We call that going from positive to negative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>is a big deal because the sun’s magnetic field is what determines how solar wind is organized, and solar wind goes all the way past the planets to the edge of the heliosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Which is the part of space that’s influenced by the Sun. Didn’t the Voyager 1 spacecraft just \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/voyager20130912.html#.UoGAEeJxXY8\">reach the edge\u003c/a> of the heliosphere?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are two Voyager spacecrafts. And people are pretty sure that one of them has recently passed outside the heliosphere for the first time, past Pluto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is that we don’t know what it’s going to look like outside the bounds of the heliosphere. So it’s a little bit hard to say for sure that you’ve done it.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/K8XwfyNm5XQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/K8XwfyNm5XQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So the reversal, when it hits, will affect this entire heliosphere. Will we feel it here on Earth?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well the Earth has a really good shield, so changes in the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field don’t affect us on the surface much. What you \u003cem>do\u003c/em> see are changes in the Earth’s geomagnetic field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that can affect our technological system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At solar maximum you see more solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Those can cause things like power outages. It can interfere with reception of data from satellites. Or even airplanes sometimes have trouble communicating at high latitudes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the most spectacular things you can see are auroras, so the northern lights will be more common at northern latitudes. People see those when there’s a lot of activity on the sun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>And when the solar maximum is happening, we also see a lot more sun spots. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes. A sun spot is a large area on the surface of the Sun where the magnetic field is strong. They’re about the size of the Earth. And they’re dark because they’re a little bit cooler than the rest of the surface.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s where the activity happens. When the magnetic field is complicated, you can get these big explosions [solar flares]. The interesting thing is when there are a few sun spots next to each other, that’s when you get the big explosions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>But it sounds like this particular solar maximum has been a bit of a letdown, right?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Based on past experience, we’ve probably reached, or are very close to the maximum this cycle, and it hasn’t been a very impressive one. There have been a few large storms – a lot of activity over the last couple weeks, for example — but not many.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So there may still be a big storm coming, but we seem to be at the peak, or just passing the peak of this cycle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10860\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 162px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/20131110_051548_2048_0131_0-162x162.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10860\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/20131110_051548_2048_0131_0-162x162.jpg\" alt=\"NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare on Nov. 10, 2013. (NASA/SDO) \" width=\"162\" height=\"162\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10860\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare on Nov. 10, 2013.\u003cbr>(NASA/SDO)\u003cbr>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This weak cycle is great for satellites, not so great for funding of space weather research. You know, in a bad year everyone sort of loses interest by the next time it comes around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cembed src=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/files/jw-player-plugin-for-wordpress/player/player.swf\" height=\"359\" width=\"639\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" flashvars=\"&bandwidth=2841&controlbar=over&dock=false&file=407a_sun.flv&image=http%3A%2F%2Fscience.kqed.org%2Fquest%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fposter_frames%2F407a_sun640.jpg&gapro.accountid=UA-1538528-1&gapro.height=359&gapro.pluginmode=FLASH&gapro.trackpercentage=true&gapro.trackstarts=true&gapro.tracktime=true&gapro.visible=true&gapro.width=639&gapro.x=0&gapro.y=0&plugins=gapro-1&skin=http%3A%2F%2Fscience.kqed.org%2Fquest%2Fwp-content%2Fplugins%2Fjw-player-plugin-for-wordpress%2Fskins%2Fglow.zip&streamer=rtmp%3A%2F%2Fkqed-flash02.streamguys.us%2Fquest%2F&viral.allowmenu=true&viral.bgcolor=0x333333&viral.fgcolor=0xffffff&viral.functions=embed&viral.matchplayercolors=true&viral.oncomplete=false&viral.pluginmode=FLASH\">\u003c/embed>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"marketplace": {
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
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"masters-of-scale": {
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"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
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},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
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"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
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"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"order": 11
},
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"on-the-media": {
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"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
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},
"pbs-newshour": {
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
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},
"perspectives": {
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"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
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"planet-money": {
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
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},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e0c2d153-ad36-4c8d-901d-f1da6a724824/political-breakdown",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
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"source": "Possible"
},
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