Space (Page 24)

We may soon be able to take a vacation in space. But why take a plane, when we may eventually be able to take an elevator?

Virgin Atlantic has designed a plane that will eventually take passengers into space, starting in 2010. BBC News quotes CEO Richard Branson as saying, “I think it’s very important that we make a genuine commercial success of this project. If we do, I believe we’ll unlock a wall of private sector money into both space launch systems and space technology. This could rival the scale of investment in the mobile phone and internet technologies after they were unlocked from their military origins and thrown open to the private sector.” As long as these tourists don’t litter!

Art credit: gimp-savvy.com
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Not only is China polluting the earth, now it’s throwing trash into space as well.

A year ago, China intentionally destroyed its own aging weather spacecraft with an anti-satellite (ASAT) device, creating in the process a lingering cloud of dangerous space junk?the largest amount of orbital debris in five decades of worldwide space activities. In other words, they left so much litter in space that NASA had to execute a collision-avoidance maneuver with its spacecraft in order to evade it.
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According to the Bible, when Jesus was born three Magi saw a star in the East that signaled the birth of a new king. But just what was it, from an astronomical point or view, that the Magi actually saw? Astronomer Fred Grosse says there are several popular theories that may answer this question. According to him, “Astronomical objects or events which would be of interest to serious stargazers of the time include comets and meteors, nova or supernova, and auroras.” But the favorite candidate for the star of Bethlehem is a planetary conjunction.
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Some scientists think that our ability to study the universe with space craft and telescopes might actually be destroying it. It’s all part of quantum physics. It’s also surfer wisdom.

In the November 21st edition of the Telegraph, Roger Highfield explains that our ability to measure the universe may actually shorten its life, because our observations could trigger another “big bang,” which would be the end of our world and the start of another one.

In the November 13th issue of the Telegraph, Highfield writes about “an impoverished surfer [who] has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists.”
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