Published: Feb 19, 2012
GARDEN CITY, N.Y. LIKE most of the fifth graders on a recent visit to the Long Island Children’s Museum , Gianna Bloom, 10, was fascinated by the skeleton, the dark passageways and the fearsome gods in the exhibition “The Mystery of the Mayan Medallion.” The archeology-themed exhibition, which runs through May 6, allows visitors
Read original article Topics: Astronomy
Published: Feb 17, 2012
‘The Festival of the Vegetables’ Gingerbread men may run, and sugarplums dance, but vegetables in children’s stories tend to act like, well, vegetables. Even the beanstalk that carries Jack to the Giant is a supporting player. But broccoli, peas, asparagus and their fellows are beginning to have their moment. Far from vegetating,
Read original article Topics: Astronomy
Published: Feb 12, 2012
THIRTY-FIVE years ago, a gold-plated record was lofted into the cosmos with a greeting card for the first extraterrestrials who found it. The golden plaque, attached to the Voyager spacecraft, was etched with a medley of Earth sounds, from a baby's cry to musical selections ranging from a Bach fugue to Chuck Berry's upbeat ''Johnny B. Goode.'' Not
Read original article Topics: Astronomy
Published: Feb 10, 2012
Janice Voss, a space shuttle astronaut and scientist who explored the behavior of fire in weightlessness, how plants adapt to extraterrestrial flight and an array of other phenomena while logging nearly 19 million miles circling Earth, died on Monday at a hospital in Scottsdale, Ariz. She was 55 and lived in Houston. The cause was cancer, her
Read original article Topics: Astronomy
Published: Jan 30, 2012
HAT CREEK, Calif. -- E.T. might be phoning, but do we care enough to take the call? Operating on money and equipment scrounged from the public and from Silicon Valley millionaires, and on the stubborn strength of their own dreams, a band of astronomers recently restarted one of the iconic quests of modern science, the search for extraterrestrial
Read original article Topics: Astronomy
Published: Jan 30, 2012
''Most of my life I went to parties and heard a little groan when people heard what I did,'' says Robert Tibshirani, a statistics professor at Stanford University. ''Now they're all excited to meet me.'' It's not because of a new after-shave. Arcane statistical analysis, the business of making sense of our growing data mountains, has become high
Read original article Topics: Astronomy
Published: Jan 27, 2012
Around Town Museums and Sites American Museum of Natural History: Astronomy Live: NASA Missions (Tuesday) A look at NASA missions of the past and for the future, offered by museum personnel, with images and visualizations. At 6:30 p.m., Central Park West and 79th Street, (212) 769-5200, amnh.org/calendar/event/NASA-Missions; $15, or $13.50 for
Read original article Topics: Astronomy
Published: Jan 22, 2012
AFTER 35 years at Columbia University, where he was chairman of the astronomy department and co-director of the Astrophysics Laboratory, David J. Helfand is on leave to serve as president of Quest University Canada, a tiny liberal arts college in British Columbia that graduated its first class last spring. It is Canada's only private, secular
Read original article Topics: Astronomy
Published: Jan 19, 2012
On Thursday, the world will go to battle over a second. In Geneva, 700 delegates from about 70 nations attending a meeting of a United Nations telecommunications agency will decide whether to abolish the leap second. Unlike the better-known leap year, which adds a day to February in a familiar four-year cycle (with a few well-defined exceptions),
Read original article Topics: Astronomy
Published: Jan 19, 2012
On Thursday, the world will go to battle over a second. In Geneva, 700 delegates from about 70 nations attending a meeting of a United Nations telecommunications agency will decide whether to abolish the leap second. Unlike the better-known leap year, which adds a day to February in a familiar four-year cycle, the leap second is tacked on once
Read original article Topics: Astronomy