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Will Obama Nominate a Lesbian Law Professor for the Supreme Court?

That's "lesbian" as in "a lesbian person" not a lawyer who specializes in "lesbian law," whatever that might be. Most people think Obama will pick a woman, in part because only one of the nine seated justices is female at present. But it appears that at least one short list is forming up that includes even additional diversity. The list of candidates that has been circulated by the AP includes Kathleen Sullivan, openly gay, who if memory serves would have overlapped with Obama at Harvard Law (he may well have taken classes from her). Kathleen Sullivan, former dean of Stanford Law School.…

New Banner

Long-time readers have noticed that I tend to hype free software and resources from time to time.   After SB redesigned the skin for our blogs, I decided that I should redo the banner.  The old one was done in brown, specifically to match the old page style.  It looked dorky after the redesign. So, I used GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, to design a new one.  It's a free program that runs on Linux/Unix, Windows, or Mac.   align="right" height="81" width="210">The images were taken from an href="http://www.cnsforum.com/resources/imagebank/">image bank at CNS Forums,…

ESC AS "SPECULATIVE SCIENCE": Sen. Brownback Pushes Uncertainty Angle on ESC; Says Distracts from Adult SC Research; Bishops Argue Adult SC Offers Ethical Alternative

In this news release from Focus on the Family, Senator Sam Brownback pushes the SCIENTIFIC UNCERTAINTY frame in arguing against the Spector-Castle ESC bill, claiming that ESC is "speculative" science and diverts funding from research on adult stem cell sources. To emphasize the message, Brownback stole a page from pro-research advocates, gathering patients treated with adult stem cell therapies to give personal testimonials at a news conference held here in DC on Tuesday. Brownback was joined at the press conference by representatives from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who argued…

Artificial MIND

Click to enlarge From the August 1962 issue of Science and Mechanics: Artificial MIND--Next from Science COMPUTER experts keep reassuring us that Man and his mind will never be replaced by their electronic marvels. But a small, doughnut-shaped electronic neuron has been announced that artificially duplicates part of the human nervous system. And it carries out learning processes, according to Aeronutronic Division of Ford Motor Co. The device is called MIND for Magnetic Integrator Neuron Duplicator. Like a living cell, MIND can remember experiences and learn new…

The snack-bar security syndrome

From the old blog: I thought I would share an abstract I ran across while paging through some journals that I ordered from the stacks. Human Ethology: The snack-bar security syndrome By David P. Barash From State University College (SUC?!), Oneonta, N.Y. Psychological Reports, 1972, 31, 577-578. Summary.-- I studied the behavior of Homo sapiens in an eating-place and found indications of security-seeking behavior, perhaps suggesting an unconscious, species-preserving fear of predators. Solitary individuals showed a significant preference for wall tables over center tables while grouped…

SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Activity Report for 11/25-12/1/2009

We get a new update from the Smithsonian/USGS Global Volcanism Program ... Highlights (not counting Soufriere Hills or Gaua) include: The Weekly Report mentions the mystery eruption/noneruption of Karkar in PNG. Specifically, they report: The report also stated that ash had merged with a thunderstorm cloud and had become unidentifiable. Two ash plumes (11/25, 26) that reached at least 9.1 km / 30,000 feet were reported by the Darwin VAAC ... but as we know, it is far from clear that anything actually happened at Karkar last week. Activity has quieted significantly at Chaiten in Chile, with…

A genetic map of the United States?

From the comments: When I first saw this, the first thing that popped in my head was "big [vulgarity expurgated] surprise." Has someone done a PC analysis on people from all over the United States? That would probably be pretty interesting, given that it almost certainly wouldn't reflect geography as strongly. I wonder what kind of clustering you would get... A substantial number of Americans are derived from the settler population; those Europeans who arrived during the colonial period. In New England most of the population in 1776 was descended from a large wave of Puritans who arrived…

Cosmological Gravitational Radiation

Interesting new paper coming out in Nature this week, presenting early scientific results from LIGO on the amplitude of stochastic gravitational radiation background of cosmological origin. LIGO went into science operation a few years ago, achieving phase I design sensitivity at the end of that set of operation, the S5 science run from Nov 5th 2005 till Sep 30th 2007. During that time a year of coincident operation at the Hanford and Livingston interferometers was achieved, and the results of this data set are coming out. LIGO Hanford (click to embiggen) LIGO shut down for interim…

Weekend Diversion: Do Tinfoil Hats Work?

As a new tradition since we're on a new site, in addition to giving you a post about fun stuff on the weekend, I'm going to try exposing you to some new music, either by an uncommon artist or a song that really caught my fancy. This week's artist is Chicago-based bluegrass musician Colby Maddox, singing the old classic Shady Grove. Feel free to listen while you read on: So I was looking around the internet the other day, and I came across this scientific study, which -- I kid you not -- is on the effects of tinfoil hats. Now, the whole idea is that you can shield yourself from…

Something From Nothing

Science, as a discipline, is driven by the desire to understand everything. The immensity of such a project necessitates that science be undertaken not by one group of men and women in one time, but all men and women for all time. However, the final goal always eludes us: to understand this, we must first understand this, but to understand that, we must understand this, ad infinitum. In fact, the very notion of there being a final point in science has become so abstract as to be almost irrelevant; the more we know, the more we know that we do not know, and the end of the game is nowhere to…

Big Island Trip 1 - the flight there.

Note: During my trip to the Big Island last weekend, I wrote several blog posts. I didn't have internet access, so I didn't post any of them at the time. I'm posting them now, as originally written. The 50th State is a group of islands, and if you want to travel from one to another you're probably going to wind up flying. At the moment, there's no commercial ferry boat service between islands - one is planned, but the launch was just delayed again. Unless you're massively opposed to human flight, though, the air travel isn't that bad an experience. Our flight to Hilo was actually quite…

Cod Cures All

The recent post over at Dynamics of Cats, Pensive on Penzim, discusses the hype about a new cod-based cure for avian flu. So, what is the big deal? Well, probably nothing, there are no clinical trials or safety studies yet, but since the stakes are high, it is worth contemplating. I should point out another issue about Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua, they're tasty overfished in the Atlantic. Extremely overfished. From the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch. Avoid Atlantic cod; it has been fished heavily for the past 50 years, resulting in massive population declines. Scientists agree that we…

Chaiten to bury Chaiten

I've been trying to keep up with the Chaiten eruption in Chile, but the news is just beginning to sound like a broken record: eruption continues, ash falls, don't know much else. However, it does sound like Chile is being realistic about people's chances of moving back to the town of Chaiten - 10 km from the vent(s) - in the near future ... and those chances are zero to none. This doesn't entirely surprise me. If the town isn't already buried, when the pyroclastic flows do start, whether they be from the collapse of the the eruptive column or from the vents themselves, the town will be…

A plate of tomato and pepper stew a la FDA, hold the credibility

by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure The FDA is saying they still aren't sure how over 1200 Salmonella stpaul cases resulted from food chain contamination but they are saying its from jalapeno peppers grown in Mexico. This from a press release July 25: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is advising consumers that jalapeño and Serrano peppers grown in the United States are not connected with the current Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak.However, the FDA continues to advise consumers to avoid raw jalapeño peppers--and the food that contains them--if they have been grown, harvested or…

Student guest post: The Fallacious Fad of Foregoing Vaccinations

It's time for this year's second installment of student guest posts for my class on infectious causes of chronic disease. First one this year is by Dana Lowry. Humans have a long history of illness and death from infectious diseases. It wasn’t until the 1790s that we had a solution. Edward Jenner recognized that milkmaids never contracted smallpox but suffered from a more mild disease, cowpox. Jenner took pus from a cowpox lesion on a milkmaid’s hand and placed it in an incision he made in an eight year-old boy’s arm. He then exposed the boy to smallpox; the boy didn’t contract the disease,…

Introduced Parasite Suspected of Killing Wild Bumblebees in Canada

tags: researchblogging.org, Bombus impatiens, Bumblebees, pathogen spillover, epidemiology, pollinating insects, greenhouses Common Eastern Bumblebee, Bombus impatiens. This species is often relied upon to pollinate commercial food crops, such as tomatoes, that are often grown in agricultural greenhouses. Image: Wikipedia Commons [larger view]. A mysterious decline in North American bumblebee populations is apparently the result of "spillover" of pathogen-infected commercial bumblebees, Bombus species, from agricultural greenhouses where tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers are commonly grown…

Americans say they respect life and the rule of law, but not so much when it involves workers' lives and safety hazards

After 35 years of service, Mr. Sherman Lynn Holmes, 55, retired from the Pine River School District. Before long though, he gave up the life of a retiree to work as a woodsman. It was his true calling and lifelong passion. He knew the woods and trees of northern Michigan like the back of his hand. He was well-known in the region as the go-to logger. Mr. Holmes was working on February 1, 2011 for K & K Forest Products with two other men near Evert, Michigan. As he trimmed up a felled tree in a wooded area, his co-worker felled another large tree and it struck Mr. Holmes. He was fatally…

Distances, Position, and Motion in the Universe

At the end of last week, I wrote a post explaining how the Universe is so big (93 billion light years across) when it's only 13.7 billion years old. The key visualization is to think of space as being the surface of an expanding balloon, while all the things in the Universe (stars, galaxies, etc.) are like ants on that surface. Now, I explained to you that two ants will appear to move apart from one another due to the expansion of the Universe, even though neither ant is moving relative to the surface of the balloon. If I use light to measure whether this other ant is moving away from me, I…

An ecosystem of one in the depths of a gold mine

Most of the planet's ecosystems are made of a multitude of different species, rich tangles of living things all interacting, competing and cooperating in order to eke out an existence. But not always - in South Africa, within the darkness of a gold mine, there is an ecosystem that consists of a single species, a type of bacteria that is the only thing alive in the hot, oxygen-less depths. It is an ecosystem of one, living in complete isolation from the Sun's energy. This incredible and unique habitat was discovered by Dylan Chivian from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, leading a…

Gut bacteria reflect diet and evolutionary past

Our bodies are rife with genes and the majority of them aren't even ours. We all have a strong sense of our own individuality, but the truth is that our bodies are hotels for a diverse array of microbes including bacteria and fungi. The numbers are simultaneously creepy and humbling. Tot up all the cells in our bodies and the microbial ones would outnumber our own by a factor of ten. The five feet of our large intestine houses the majority of these microorganisms and contain up to 100 trillion of them. These single-celled tenants are known as the microbiota and they carry their own sets of…

An entire bacterial genome discovered inside that of a fruit fly

This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. A humble species of fruit fly is the genetic equivalent of a Russian doll - peer inside its DNA and you will see the entire genome of a species of bacteria hidden within. The bacteria in question is Wolbachia, the most successful parasite on earth and infects about 20% of the world's species of insects. It's a poster child for selfishness. To further its own dynasty, it has evolved a series of remarkable techniques for ensuring that it gets passed on from host to host. Sometimes it gives infected…

Evidence for an ancient lineage of modern humans

It almost seems like there are two separate research project under way regarding the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens. One focuses on recent humans, tends to use DNA as a major source of information, and from this base projects back into the past. This approach tends to confirm the idea that humans share an African origin with a subsequent spread from Africa, with various degrees of complexity in that series of historical events. The other focuses on early human remains, sometimes including remains that would be placed by some in a separate species or sub species. This sort of…

Schwarzenegger Approves Condor Protection Bill, but Damage Already Done

Along with thousands of other bloggers, I'm observing the inaugural Blog Action Day by blogging about the environment today. We heard some good news out of California on Saturday. Going against pressure from his own party and particularly from the National Rifle Association (NRA), governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law AB 821 (the Ridley-Tree Condor Preservation Act), which outlawed the use of lead ammunition by large game hunters in California within the range of the highly endangered condor. Although their numbers in the wild are slowly increasing, these majestic birds are still…

Publishing Original Research on Blogs - Part 5

Previous entries: Part 1 - Introduction Part 2 - The Backstory Part 3 - Obtaining Sequences Part 4 - Obtaining More Sequences This post is part of a series exploring the evolution of a duplicated gene in the genus Drosophila. Links to the previous posts are above. Part 5 of this series (Examining the Outgroups) can be found below. Examining the Outgroups In the previous post I mentioned that the two outgroup species in our analysis, the mosquito Anopheles gambiae and the honeybee Apis mellifera, have only one copy of the aldolase gene. If that's the case, then it's likely that the gene…

Microbiology in 2012

Last Sunday I was on a panel at the American Society for Microbiology meetings.  I'll post a slidecast of the talk in a few days, and get into the topic of the panel in more detail then.   Since I was presenting, I got a free pass to the rest of the conference, which was fascinating.  I'm a macrobiologist by training and by avocation; I worked one summer in a fruit fly lab studying Wolbachia infections, and quickly moved on to animals one can see and touch.  So I was curious to find out what microbiologists spend their time talking about. What struck me most was how few of the techniques…

Small Girls with Sharp Rocks

When we speak of the Hobbit, let us not forget her tools. Last year, scientists reported discovering fossils of a three-foot-tall hominid that they named Homo floresiensis, and which I can't keep myself from calling the Hobbit. Its bones turned up in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, dating from 97,000 to 12,000 years ago. The scientists argued that the Hobbit represented an ancient lineage of hominids, perhaps descending from Homo erectus, a human-sized species that existed in Asia 1.8 million years ago, or perhaps belonging to even an older lineage, known as australopithecines.…

Chemotherapy versus death from cancer

I know I've been writing a lot about the Daniel Hauser case, and forgive me if I may be beating a dead horse, but cases like these reprsent supreme "teachable" moments that don't come along that often. The antivaccine movement, for instance, will be with us always (or at least, I fear, as long as I still walk this earth and beyond), but cases like that of Daniel Hauser don't come along that often. As tragic as they are, they always bring up so many issues that I have a hard time leaving them alone. This time around, I wanted to touch on an issue that has come up frequently in the discussions…

Friday Cephalopod: Kawaii gallery

Representatives of the Antarctic and deep-sea genera of octopuses. (a) Pareledone charcoti, a shallow-water species from the Antarctic Peninsula. (b) Thaumeledone gunteri, a deep-water species endemic to South Georgia. (c) Megaleledone setebos, a shallow water circum-Antarctic species endemic to the Southern Ocean. Specimen shown is juvenile; adults reach a total length of nearly 1 m. (d) Adelieledone polymorpha, a species endemic to the western Antarctic. All specimens illustrated are adult unless speciï¬ed and were collected from the South Shetland Islands except T. gunteri from South…

Viking Arm Ring Re-Imagined

Here's another artisan taking inspiration from archaeology: Ted Bouck made the above arm ring out of brass sheet, punch-decorated and silver-plated it. Ted comments, "I left the perimeter wave from stamping because I liked the organic look. The diamond with dot inside is a period stamp, though not from the York armring. I did not want to make my armring an exact duplicate." He is currently working with new versions of the Small Punched type of domed oblong brooch that was common in south-east Sweden in the early 8th century. Below is the original: a gold arm ring from the Vale of York hoard…

If Coleman does win the recount, he'll have to be replaced anyway

... because it is hard to be a Senator from Prison. The latest from Fox News: The FBI is reportedly investigating allegations that a Minnesota businessman tried to funnel $75,000 in campaign contributions to Sen. Norm Coleman through the senator's wife, Laurie, at the same time Coleman was going into debt because of extensive home renovations. According to a report from MyFOXTwinCities.com, two lawsuits allege that in the spring of 2007, Nasser Kazeminy began making $25,000 payments from Deep Marine Technology, a Texas company he controls, to Laurie Coleman's employer, insurer Hayes…

Sun Devils triumph

Last time I wrote about ASU basketball was early January when we beat the University of Arizona Wildcats 64-59 in overtime to go 3-0 in Pac10 play. Much moaning came from Wildcat supporters with claims that, had they had their phenom freshman (Bayless) the score would have been different. Soon after that game the Sun Devils entered a tail-spin and went to 4-5 in conference before finding themselves today facing the full strength Wildcats away from home. Wildcat supporters predicted a massacre. Well, guess what? ASU came back from a sixteen point deficit to win 59-54. I wonder what the…

Music Plug: The Dan Band

You know the scene from Old School where they wedding band is playing. The band from the movie is called The Dan Band, and I saw them last night. They were awesome, and in honor of that I have a horde of YouTube videos. (Warning: A lot of these videos are rather vulgar.) For those of you who don't remember, here is the scene from Old School: Here is the complete video of that song: So they actually have a Christmas album out -- called "Ho", and they performed a couple of their songs at the concert. They were really good, and I recommend picking it up. Anyway, here is one of the songs…

Mark Steyn, plagiarist

Quoting myself: One of the less pleasant parts of my job is talking to students that I have caught plagiarizing assignments. All too often, rather than admit to copying they will tell me clumsy lies and blame somebody else. Like Mark Steyn. When he was caught stealing from a blog post by Geoff Pullum, instead of apologizing and giving Pullum appropriate credit, he implausibly claimed that he had independently came up with the same examples and wording. From John Quiggin and PZ Myers, who got it from Bitch, Phd, who got it from Unfogged. My previous posts on Steyn are here. Update: See John…

Researchers in Asian Countries Raise Their Scientific Profiles Worldwide

According to the Thomson Reuters National Science Indicators, an annual database that records the number of articles published in about 12,000 internationally recognized journals: - The Asia-Pacific region increased its global share of published science articles from 13 percent in the early 1980s to just over 30 percent in 2009 - China is leading the way, having increased its share of articles to 11 percent in 2009 from just 0.4 percent in the early 1980s - Japan is next, accounting for 6.7 percent, followed by India with 3.4 percent - The proportion of articles from the United States dropped…

Makin' A Lastin' Impression

A lesson in Swedish from the mall at Sickla. Last = noun from the verb lasta, "to load". In = in Fart = noun from the verb fara, "to travel", cf. "wayfarer" and "fare thee well". Load-in-travel. Delivery entrance.

Comments of the Week #2: From the Sun's death to the light elements

"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." -Soren Kierkegaard After all is said-and-done this week, and after all the new posts over at the main Starts With A Bang on Medium, you've had a chance to have your say here on our forum! And Kierkegaard would likely change his tune if everyone he came across left comments like yours. Image credit: Mark Garlick / HELAS. From the end of the Sun's life to the light elements, let's take a look at your best comments this week! From Ted Lawry concerning Ask Ethan #27: Will the Earth and Moon…

SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Report 2/3-9/2010 - stymied by weather!

Sally Sennert from the Smithsonian Institution sent me an email to say that this week's USGS/Smithsonian Institute Weekly Volcanic Report will be delayed due to the inclement weather in the Washington DC area. She can't connect with the server, so the report can't be updated on the Smithsonian website ... so here it is! Look for it to show up on the Smithsonian site with all the bells and whistles as soon as DC thaws out. And a big thanks to Sally for sending me the Report to post. ***PLEASE NOTE: Website posting of the SI/USGS Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for 3-9 February 2010 will be…

A Reader Request and a Programming Note

While I'm hardly the first blogger to ever wonder about what the bloggysphere likes and dislikes, I'm curious to find out if anyone actually reads the posts about antibiotic resistance. Typically, I get the occasional comment or email from someone who has suffered personally from these infections. But other than that, I don't get many site hits or comments (this post was one exception). Mind you, this won't stop me from commenting on this problem, but I still wonder: does anyone actually read this stuff? Would there be issues related to this topic people would like to hear about? Because…

Bronze Age Axe

I've started to assemble pictures and maps for my Bronze Age book. Almost all known objects from deposition sites in the Lakes Mälaren and Hjälmaren areas have already been illustrated elsewhere. But here's an exception: a socketed bronze axe found before 1963 in a bog at Eklunda in Bred parish, near Enköping, Uppland province. It's 3,000 years old, dating from Period IV, 1100-950/20 cal BC. Axes like this were fitted onto hafts shaped like a V with one very short arm, and held in place by a string or strap through the little lug near the base – which is damaged in this case. The verdigris…

Tom Petty Was Right

The last step in the tenure review process (from my end) is the approval of the Procedure section of the report. By rule, the ad hoc committee sends the candidate a copy of the section describing what they did in the course of the review (with the names removed), and the candidate gets a chance to respond. I'm not quite sure what I would object to in this, as it's a really sketchy outline of what they did, most of which is directly determined by the official procedures spelled out in the faculty manual. It's a part of the process, though, so I read it over, and sent my official acceptance in…

Silly scurrilousness against the sanctimonious

I've been slacking off on Pharyngula lately — I've had a week to relax and get caught up on a few other things. Here, though, are a few links to ridiculous religiosity that have been piling up in the mailbox. Cockroaches are God's wrath. And did you know Jesus had a roach problem? Vera Ivie knows what GW Bush's problem is: we haven't been praying hard enough for him. Get on your knees now! How to edit a webpage like Jesus. You know what would help Christianity's image problem? If all the ministers were clowns. Oh, wait…they already are. Never mind. Pope Ratzi has a chief exorcist (…

Naturopathy in Minnesota: I blame Dave Matthews

I'm even later to the game on this story than my blogging colleague, Orac: ERV, Pharyngula, and denialism blog have each given their takes on the Minnesota's plan to authorize NDs, doctors of naturopathy, to use the title of "Doctor." For two views on what naturopathy is, here is one from the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians and another from Quackwatch. We link - you decide. As I read the story, it sounds as though the new legislation allows naturopaths to practice without being prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license. No word yet on whether they can be sued…

Personal genomics links

Some worthwhile recent links from the world of personal genomics: A great piece in Newsweek by Mary Carmichael summarising the recent regulatory furore over direct-to-consumer genetic testing, and the potential implications for the industry. Emily Singer has two articles at MIT Technology Review summarising important messages from the Consumer Genetics Conference last week. Firstly, early results from the Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative suggest that risk information from individual genetic test results is a stronger motivator for healthy behaviour than risk prediction from…

The SkepDoc reviews Callous Disregard

The week is coming to a close, and the Memorial Day holiday beckons for those of us in the U.S. I've spent most of this week blogging about the anti-vaccine movement, and I do need a rest. Next week, I promise to try to stay away from this issue as much as possible, not just to keep you from getting bored with it but, more importantly, to give myself the periodic rest from the concentrated idiocy to preserve my sanity. True, I can never guarantee that something won't come up that will force me to break my self-imposed vacation from the craziness, but I think that a few days away from this…

Gerrymandering Doesn't Work

This is why you don't cheat. From the WSJ: Gerrymandering was supposed to cement Republican control of the House of Representatives, offering incumbents a wall of re-election protection even as public opinion turned sharply against them. Instead, the party's strategy of recrafting district boundaries may have backfired, contributing to the defeats of several lawmakers and the party's fall from power. The reason: Republican leaders may have overreached and created so many Republican-leaning districts that they spread their core supporters too thinly. That left their incumbents vulnerable to…

PZs pit bull

FereÅte-mÄ, doamne, de prieteni, cÄ de duÅmani mÄ feresc eu singur. Defend me, Lord, from my friends, because from enemies I can defend myself. Thank you, Ms Stephanie Zvan. One might say you were sent from Heaven. *bows*

Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses #26--Chimps at risk from antibiotic-resistant bacteria

When we think of the spread of antibiotic resistance between animals and humans, we tend to think of it going from Them to Us. For example, much of the research over the past 20 years on the sub-clinical use of antibiotics in animal feed has looked how this use of antibiotics as a growth promotant breeds resistant organisms in animals, which can then enter the human population via the food we eat. Along a similar line, I just mentioned Burt's post post on cephalosporin use in cattle and the evolution of antibiotic resistance, where the worry is that use of these broad-spectrum antibiotics…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 21 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Vertebrate DNA in Fecal Samples from Bonobos and Gorillas: Evidence for Meat Consumption or Artefact?: Deciphering the behavioral repertoire of great apes is a challenge for several reasons. First, due to…

It's Coming Right For Us!!!

"Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into darkness and as often as not into oblivion. Every event, however brief, has to be sure a contribution to make, lights up some dark corner or even some wide vista of history... illumined by the intermittent flare of the event." -Fernand Braudel The spectacular event of the day, however, isn't something that started on Earth. Rather, 93 million miles away, it was our Sun, early yesterday morning (about 38 hours ago as I write this), that had a brief... shall we say...…

Why Star Corpses Go Green (and so will we!)

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." -William Shakespeare In January of 2006, the Hubble Space Telescope -- equipped with the greatest telescope camera ever designed -- took this detailed picture of globular cluster NGC 1846. Image credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA, and P. Goudfrooij. Like most globular clusters, this is a very tight, dense collection of perhaps a few hundred thousand stars, contained in a roughly spherical region just a few light years in size. Unlike most of the globular clusters we know, this one is not located within our own galaxy, but…