Snow is falling on Mars!

The Mars Phoenix has discovered all sorts of nifty things - water, atmospheric dynamics and now snow!

From NASA:
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds. Spacecraft soil experiments also have provided evidence of past interaction between minerals and liquid water, processes that occur on Earth.

A laser instrument designed to gather knowledge of how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars has detected snow from clouds about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) above the spacecraft's landing site. Data show the snow vaporizing before reaching the ground.

The technology is Canadian and was designed under the watchful eye of Dalhousie prof Tom Duck.

It's beginning to feel a lot like a science christmas around the future soon... except for the baby Jesus bit.

Crows make monkeys out of chimps

The headline's so nice it had to be used twice.

It's well documented that we here at the future soon have a strong admiration for birds of the corvid family. Especially the crows. Well, New Scientist has given us even more reason to love the noisy little buggers.

Any non-human that can outperform a chimp on an intelligence test rates high in my book.


That photo is supposedly of a monkey being chased by a crow. But I don't know.

Thanks to Sterling for sending the link!

Six for Science

Science up, people!

1. First potential visual of an exo-solar planet!

2. If you're dying to find out where Mars's atmosphere is going, you'll have to wait until 2013. New robots to Mars, yeah!

3.The energy source of the future will resemble alpine meadows with flowers caressed by wind. Except nano-scale and made by Chinese researchers...

4. Cubans in Space! Welcome to 70's socialist sci-fi.

5. Blind ants of the Amazon rainforest.

6. Nothing alive on earth is faster than a fungus spore.

Worried about the LHC?

Check this site for updates on whether CERN's experiment has caused the world to end.

The world is not going to end

100 metres underground, crossing the border of Switzerland and France is a 27-kilometre cavern. Inside this cavern lies the greatest experiment humankind has ever undertaken. So great, in fact, that some crazies -- and some religious folks who don't believe in science -- believe it may cause the end of the world.

And the experiment begins tonight.

Yes, there is a chance that the Large Hadron Collider is going to create some small black holes. But that chance is extremely remote and, even if black holes are produced, no less than Stephen Hawking himself believes that nothing bad will come of them.

Hawking also, in the above-linked article, says that the LHC is at least as important as the space program. I don't know about you, but I'd take Hawking's word over that of a man in Hawaii who claims to be a botanist.

What the LHC can offer in terms of scientific discovery, if divided by the risks it poses, would be approaching infinity. But I'll let some much more qualified sources explain that:

• New Scientist (the first possibility, while supremely unlikely, would be quite amazing)
• Scientific American LHC Countdown

If you'd rather listen to a rap explaining the LHC, here's New Scientist freelancer and US/LHC Kate McAlpine collaborating with Future Soon favourite, MC Hawking:



Previously on the Future Soon: A theory of everything

Giant Mechanical Spider

Chris, can I have one?



This is a giant mechanical spider called "la princesse." Designed by the same people who brought you a giant elephant.

One day, Chris, one day the future soon will have such a noble beauty.

And the earth shall be confused.

Six for Science

It's a good month for posting, let's post too!

1. It pays off when you go looking for primates in the deep bush - first gorillas, now gibbons and langurs.

2. I can't believe there is only one dog in the world that's trained to find bees - my dog used to eat them.

3. Bad news - Tasmanian facial cancer is evolving into a more dangerous strain.

4. Coastal wolves prefer salmon over venison - although I'm sure a little surf and turf platter goes a long way to soothing the alpha male.

5. Where comets swarm is a great place to colonize - and HD 181327 is only 150 light years away and lousy with the iceballs.

6. Opportunity rover is out on the open Matian plain, and better for it.

Fun with Wordle

I stumbled across wordle, an graphic imager of website content. As you can see, I probably got a little carried away. But to throw futuresoon into an imager was too tempting.

The only thing I don't like about the site is that you need an rss feed for the program to work. I tried putting both Origin of Species and the works of Kropotkin into Wordle, with no success. I guess I'll have to wait for mark 2.

Which one of these images should I make into a t-shirt?

Six for Science

August will be better 'cause there's WATER ON MARS!
Here we go:

1. In the time before time the stars were Titans

2. The tropics were once frozen

3. Smallest snake in world discovered - vertebrates keep getting smaller!

4. Two arm transplants in one surgery - that's a bargain...

5. Reasons why medieval Italians danced themselves to death - the rhythm really did get them.

6. And just in case you missed it, the Antikythera mechanism keeps coming up with new uses.

Happy birthday, NASA

50 years ago today, U.S. President Eisenhower signed a very important piece of paper. The paper was legislation that, with the president's signature, brought the National Aeronautics and Space Administration into existence.

I was planning a big post about why NASA is so important, but most anybody reading this blog already knows. Also: Wired beat me to it.

Last year I was lucky enough to visit the Kennedy Space Center. If you're one of the people who doubt the sheer magnitude of NASA's accomplishments, I suggest you do as I did and visit one of the locations where a Saturn V (pictured above) is on display.

UPDATE: The BBC, in honour of NASA's golden anniversary, has posted a collection of videos marking some of the Agency's milestones. Definitely worth a look.