NASA Competition for High School and College Student

The Fundamental Aeronautics Program of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters just announced a new competition for high school and college students for the 2007-2008 academic year. Students are asked to think about a next generation type of aircraft which would revolutionize transportation of both goods and people. High school students are invited to write an essay describing how this might be revolutionized with a new type of aircraft, while college level are invited to design the aircraft, using guidelines provided by NASA, and suggest a minimum of three valid operational scenarios for their proposed vehicle. Prizes include cash up to $1500 For more information, please go to http://aero.larc.nasa.gov/competitions.htm, and good luck!

Sorry...

... for the lack of updatesm the lack of a Thanksgiving show, and the broken link below to the interview with Dr. Tran (it has been fixed now), but I was out of the country and unfortunately did not have internet access. Weekly shows will resume tomorrow with a program devoted to Astronomy results which came out during the last two weeks. Thanks a lot for your patience, and hope you had a great Thanksgiving.

Interview with Dr. Kim Vy Tran...

... on the formation of the most massive galaxies is now available here, uninterrupted by Emergency Broadcast System or anything else. Have questions? Please leave them below, and I'll do my best to get the answers.

November 14th show...

... is now online here. The program was on:

• News: ESA comet chaser Rosetta had its second fly-by around the Earth, NASA committee has narrowed down list of potential landing sites for future Mars rover "Mars Science Laboratory" to six, planning has started for future ESA (European Space Agency) X-ray satellite XEUS, CSIRO (Australian equivalent of NSF and DOE) announces new initiatize to figure out how to deal with massive datasets expected from future Astronomy facilities like the Square Kilometer Array, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA announces two conferences for high school teachers and students: "Basics of Interplanetary Space Flight" from 2007 December 1-2 and "Space Exploration's Rich History" from 2008 January 26-27, go here for more details.
• Extragalactic: Pierre Auger (in Argentina, not Chile as erroneously and stupidly say on the show) announces the ultra high energy cosmic rays are correlated with active galactic nuclei (AGN), Hubble detects shells of stars around quasar MC2 1635+119, analysis of Spitzer and Chandra images of other galaxies discovers that many more have active galactic nuclei than previously thought, rotating wind discovered around quasar PG 1700+518, Hubble images interaction between galaxies NGC 3808 and NGC 3808a (Arp 87), Hubble detects warp in spiral galaxy NGC 134.
• Galactic: Analysis of velocity of stars in seven dwarf satellites galaxies around Milky Way strongly suggests they contain lots of dark matter, Spitzer observes bubble of hot gas around young star HH46/47.
• Solar System: Modulation in bursts of radio emission from Saturn result of interaction with solar wind, tail of Comet 17P/Holmes has broken away from the comet
• Calendar
• Interview: with Dr. Kim Vy Tran of University of Zurich on the formation of the most massive galaxies. Sorry for the interruption by the emergency broadcasting system.
  

Please email or leave questions, comments, suggestions, corrections below. Thank you very much for listening, and hope you enjoy -- Yosi

November 7th show...

... is online here. Since I didn't get a chance to do any news on Halloween, and there actually has been a lot to talk about, this was (yet another) all-news show. The outline of this show was:

• News: Congrats to Prof. Charbonneau (Harvard University), Dr. Bakos (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), and Dr. Kaltenegger (Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory); NASA creates new Lunar Science Institute, offers $2 million prize for a lunar lander competition; NASA tests a long duration balloon mounted Solar telescope; China launches Moon satellite; new era of space exploration based on international cooperation?; Comet Holmes P still very bright but getting fainter and expanding,
  
• Wednesday Morning Astronomer (A discussion of any Astronomy issues raised in Gregg Easterbrook's weekly column on ESPN Page 2, which last week was found here): Earth studies very controversial now, not surprising that funding agencies shying away from it, and star formation, even of massive stars, is quite common in the Milky Way.
  
• Solar System: Mechanism to transport material from hot regions near the sun to the cold outer edges of the solar system when it was forming has been identified; ice used to extend all the way to the equator on Mars; bizarre feature on Martian Surface called MFF is likely a combination of ice and dust; asteroid Vesta might be source for weird composition meteorites which have landed on the Earth; new evidence that rings on Saturn created in catastrophic break-up of a moon.
• Astronomy Calendar in the New York City area
  
• Galactic: WASP project found three new planets around other stars, all very close (closer than Mercury to Sun) to parent star with masses similar to Jupiter; fifth planet identified around 51 Cancerae; magnetic filed powered collimated outflow observed from a forming star.
  
• Extragalactic / Cosmology: New most massive black hole created in the collapse of a single star identified; peculiar supernova observed - believed to be result of merger of two white dwarfs; exploding white dwarfs at earlier times produced more energy that exploding white dwarfs today; very short burst of radio emission observed from some unknown object outside the Milky Way.
  

Thanks a lot for listening, hope you enjoy it, and as always, please leave comments and questions below. And don't forget about the upcoming special Thanksgiving Q & A show!

Special Thanksgiving Show

I unfortunately will not be able to do my radio show on November 21st live, so I would like to do a pre-recorded show devoted to answering listener-submitted (aka. you) questions on anything Astronomy related, including about news items you've heard on this program and questions raised by the interviews which have been broadcast and I've put online.

Please submit questions either below or by email, and if you email me please include your address so I can send you some "Astronomy goodies". Only questions received by 5 PM EST (or is it EDT? Whatever time it is in New York now) November 16th can be answered.

Halloween show...

... would have been online, if not for the Halloween gremlins which struck during the show so I wasn't able to record it. Thankfully, however, they did not get their little hands on the interview I did with Josh Schroeder at Columbia University, available here, on pseudo-science on the internet, which is really interesting and I encourage all of you to listen to it. Pseudo-science is not incorrect science, but philosophy masquerading as science.

Thank you very much for everyone who tuned in, and - as always - if you have any questions or comments please leave them below.

Pretty sight this Monday

Tomorrow morning, Nov. 5th, space shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station will be gliding over many US towns and cities, hopefully easily visible and moving quickly across the sky. Should be need, and for more info, go here.