Why microscopic black holes are harmless....

Quoted: There's a book by Larry Niven called Hole Man, where a group of explorers on Mars come across an alien communications device. One of the scientists thinks

Looks like a really cool lecture at the Museum of Flight this Saturday.

Quoted: Near-Earth objects (NEOs, asteroids & comets) have been impacting Earth episodically for the past 4.5 billion years. They don't hit often, but when they do they are a serious threat to life & property. Ask the dinosaurs... they lost it all.

On March 18th, a very large gamma-ray and optical burst occurred. The source is reported as being 7 billion light years - yet it would have been visible to the naked eye for several minutes before dimming again.

Due to automated systems for sky monitoring, coupled with gamma-ray burst alerts coming from satellites, the even was recorded here in the optical spectrum.

NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/science/space/21bangw.html?_r=2&em&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Mercury's rotation in very slow - with a sunrise every 176 days. The surface temperature fluctuates between -300 F and 800 F, but the region in twilight can be more Earth-like, 80 degrees. I wonder if you can park yourself comfortably at the pole (even at the equator - you only have to move at 2 mph to keep the sun at the same relative position).

Also note that Mercury is 3 times as close to the sun as Earth. So, no, the Sun does not cover the whole sky - in fact, it would only be about 1.5 degrees across (as compared to 0.5 degrees as seen from Earth) .... but 9 times as bright!

Quoted: "The spider feature is unlike anything seen anywhere else in the solar system," said Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution in Washington and Messenger's principal investigator. Experts speculate that it could have been caused by something pushing up from below.

Watch video streaming of NASA TV here.

Amazing image of Saturn viewed from above the ecliptic!

Quoted: The international Cassini spacecraft has beamed back to Earth never-before-seen angles of Saturn from high above and below its majestic rings. The planet is fully surrounded by the rings in images released Thursday by NASA.

When I'm 76, this asteroid has a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting the Earth. It's about 1,000 feet across - so it's a pretty good sized puppy. The impact is equivalent to 880 megaton explosion.

That's bigger than the Tunguska event by a factor of 40.

Large images here on NASA's Hubble Site.

M104 "Sombrero" Galaxy taken by Hubble.

I love this picture of Saturn with the sun behind. You can not only see rings that are not visible from any other vantage point, but also the "ring-shine" on the surface of Saturn. You can never have a truly dark night on a planet with a ring system!

The Earth also makes an appearance in this photograph - at the 10 o'clock position - appearing as a "Pale Blue Dot".