NMDHS Marauders

The landscapes of other planets have long been the source of fantasies and speculation, but in the last few decades we've finally been able to get a close-up view of the surfaces of alien worlds. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been orbiting Mars since 2006, and on board is the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, or HiRISE.

Pop Sci asks a question you where probably dying to have answered.

What would the sky look like if the Earth had rings like Saturn?

"Lava from a volcano in a sparsely populated area of the Democratic Republic of Congo is threatening rare chimpanzees, wildlife officials say."

Canadian author Watts (Starfish) explores the nature of consciousness in this stimulating hard SF novel, which combines riveting action with a fascinating alien environment. In the late 21st century, when something alien is discovered beyond the edge of the solar system, the spaceship Theseus sets out to make contact. Led by an enigmatic AI and a genetically engineered vampire, the crew includes a biologist who's more machine than human, a linguist with surgically induced multiple personality disorder, a professional soldier who's a pacifist, and Siri Keeton, a man with only half a brain. Keeton is virtually incapable of empathy, but he has a savant's ability to model and predict the actions of others without understanding them. Once the Theseus arrives at the gigantic and hideously dangerous alien artifact (which has tellingly self-named itself Rorschach), the crew must deal with beings who speak English fluently but who may, paradoxically, not even be sentient, at least as we understand the term. Watts puts a terrifying and original spin on the familiar alien contact story. (Oct.)\nCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated Manipulation of Spherical Objects in Three Dimensions Using a Gimbaled Air Jet. Developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Canadian scientist Willard S. Boyle received the Nobel for physics Thursday, a prize he's sharing with two other physicists honoured for their work in optics.

Newly discovered Alcor B orbits its larger sibling and was caught in the act with an innovative technique called "common parallactic motion" by members of Project 1640, an international collaborative team that includes astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History, the University of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, the California Institute of Technology, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Informative video on the world's largest physics experiment.

"Salute the Spirit of exploration"

"A passive crossover has no active filters as were used in the electronic crossover. It uses coils (inductors) and capacitors to cause a rolloff of the audio level."

"Building your own 2 Way/3 Way Passive Crossover Networks"