Monday, January 29, 2007

TUESDAY TALKERS

Among the stories most likely to be talked about on Tuesday:

James Wilson of St. Louis is everyone's new bestest friend. The Missouri man won $254 million in the Powerball lottery. According to Reuters, Wilson is 84. His wife is 79. Their sons -- ages 59, 54 and 53 -- all live in St. Louis.

•We recently lost power due to an ice storm. Residents of Juneau, Alaska, lost power over the weekend when, according to The Associated Press, "a bald eagle lugging a deer head crashed into transmission lines." The bird didn't survive the crash.

•The remains of "hobbits" found in Indonesia probably belong to a "completely new branch of our family tree," according to the BBC. Researchers at Florida State University say the skeletal remains are those of Homo floresiensis, a tiny human less than 4-feet tall.

•The main camera on the Hubble Space Telescope is permanently screwed, according to New Scientist:
Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) has malfunctioned several times in recent months, and engineers have been able to resuscitate it each time. Now, it appears that it will never regain use of two of its three camera-like channels.
NASA won't ask astronauts to fix the telescope during a 2008 mission. Kiss those lovely deep-space photos goodbye.

3 comments:

John Stone said...

For the entire sad story of how NASA screwed up the science of the Hubble, and sacrificed it to the silliness of the shuttle and the ISS, read "The Hubble Wars" by Eric Chaisson.

There is still raging debate on whether the "hobbits" actually represent a different species of human, or are genetic "outliers" in variability. Until clear evidence is forthcoming I think most biologists are falling into the more conservative group of variation, rather than new species.

Anonymous said...

That "hobbit" thing is freaking me out. Let's pretend that story was never released.

Anonymous said...

I can't believe that C.U. let that eagle fly into those power lines.
I demand an investigation!
Bring me Twitty's head.
Who's with me?
Anons?
John Moan?