|  U.S. rocket launch pad repair set to halt in funding spat By irene klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - Work to repair a Virginia-owned launch pad damaged by an Orbital ATK rocket explosion is about to halt amid a debate about who should pick up the bill, officials involved in the dispute told Reuters. Orbital was launching its third Antares mission for NASA under a $1.9 billion contract to fly cargo to the International Space Station. Orbital had insurance to cover its losses at Wallops, as well as damage to federal property and other entities as required by the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees commercial launches in the United States. A funding solution may come as Orbital talks to Virginia officials and NASA, which owns and operates the Wallops Flight Facility. Read More » More Mysterious Craters Found in Siberia  | Last summer, the discovery of several new giant craters in Siberia drew worldwide interest, launching wild speculation that meteorites, or even aliens, caused the gaping crevasses. In July 2014, reindeer herders discovered a 260-feet-wide (80 meters) crater in northern Russia's Yamal Peninsula. Now, satellite images have revealed at least four more craters, and at least one is surrounded by as many as 20 mini craters, The Siberian Times reported. "We know now of seven craters in the Arctic area," Vasily Bogoyavlensky, a scientist at the Moscow-based Oil and Gas Research Institute, told The Siberian Times.
| Read More » Cool Pacific Ocean Slowed Global Warming  | The Pacific Ocean has been a planetary air conditioner for the past two decades, but the relief may soon end, a new study finds. The Pacific and Atlantic oceans undergo decades-long natural oscillations that alter their sea surface temperatures. Over the past 130 years, the tempo of global warming has revved up or slowed down in tune with changing ocean temperatures, researchers reported today (Feb. 26) in the journal Science. The Pacific Ocean wielded its mighty influence starting in 1998, when it interrupted the rapid climb of global temperatures, the study reported.
| Read More » US Needs a Mars Colony, Buzz Aldrin Tells Senators  | The United States must do more than just plant a flag on Mars if it wants to continue as a leader in the field of space exploration, Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin told senators this week. "In my opinion, there is no more convincing way to demonstrate American leadership for the remainder of this century than to commit to a permanent presence on Mars," Aldrin told members of the U.S. Senate's Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness during a hearing Tuesday (Feb. 24). Going to Mars without setting up a colony — launching only round-trip manned missions, in other words — would not be enough, nor would setting up human outposts on the moon, Aldrin said. Buzz Aldrin, who set foot on the moon just after Neil Armstrong in July 1969, has developed an architecture to establish a Mars colony, with the first manned Red Planet landings envisioned in 2038.
| Read More » New Space Telescope Tech Could Be 1,000 Times Sharper Than Hubble  | A new type of orbiting telescope could take images more than 1,000 times sharper than those snapped by NASA's famous Hubble Space Telescope, the technology's developers say. Researchers have dubbed their concept the "Aragoscope," after French scientist Francois Arago, who was the first to discover that light waves diffract around a disk. The Aragoscope could take images of plasma swaps between stars and of black hole event horizons, the points beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape a black hole's gravitational pull, said project leader Webster Cash of the University of Colorado, Boulder. "The heavier the space telescope, the more expensive the cost of the launch," said CU-Boulder doctoral student Anthony Harness.
| Read More » Stephen Hawking Thinks These 3 Things Could Destroy Humanity  | Stephen Hawking may be most famous for his work on black holes and gravitational singularities, but the world-renowned physicist has also become known for his outspoken ideas about things that could destroy human civilization. Here are a few things Hawking has said could bring about the demise of human civilization. Hawking is part of a small but growing group of scientists who have expressed concerns about "strong" artificial intelligence (AI) — intelligence that could equal or exceed that of a human. "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," Hawking told the BBC in December 2014.
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