HAPPY BOXING DAY!

Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. It falls on December 26th, which is also St. Stephen’s Day.

Boxing Day is so called because on this day it was the customary for tradesmen to collect their Christmas boxes or gifts in return for good service throughout the year. Also, it included giving money and other gifts to charitable institutions, and the needy.

The holiday may date from as early as the Middle Ages, but the exact origin is not known. It may have begun with the Lords and Ladies of England, who gave there Christmas boxes/gifts to their servants on December 26, or maybe by priests, who opened the church’s alms (charity boxes), and distributed the contents to the poor and needy.

To all of our friends in the English speaking world…have a happy, relaxing day!

HUYGENS ON ITS WAY TO TITAN

The European Space Agency’s hitchhiking Huygens spacecraft has detatched successfully from its mother ship Cassini and is on its way to a rendevous with the atmosphere of Titan on January 14.

For years, scientists have speculated about Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Larger than the planet Mercury and almost as big as Mars, Titan is the only moon in the solar system known to have an atmosphere. What has scientists excited about the results to be gleaned from the Huygens probe is the probability that Titan’s atmosphere, which contains nitrogen, methane, and carbon, could give us a glimpse of what planet Earth looked like before life arose. What complex processes contributed to the formation of proteins that resulted in life? Could those processes be duplicated in the atmosphere of Titan? And what about the surface of Titan? Is it solid? Or is it more like a swamp, with liquid nitrogen in place of water?

It’s unknown whether the Huygens probe will survive all the way to the surface of the moon. It’s primary function is to explore the atmosphere of Titan, taking as long as two hours to float through the dense, foggy, perhaps even mushy atmosphere taking temperature readings and analyzing the chemical make-up of what is surely one of the more exotic locations in the solar system. If Huygens batteries survive, we may get as much as 2 additonal hours worth of data from the surface of that moon…assuming there is such a thing as a “surface.”

Some scientists have speculated that the surface of Titan could be made up of liquid methane and nitrogen, meaning that Huygens would land on something with the consistency of clam chowder. With a surface temperature of 290 degrees, Titan ranks as one of the more inhospitable places in the solar system.

CONSPIRACY MUCKMUCKS WILL HAVE A FIELD DAY WITH THIS

The Yahoo headline says it all:

Mystery Martian ‘Carwash’ Helps Space Buggy

Apparently, an unknown atmospheric process is cleaning the solar panels on the Martian lander Opportunity…but leave it to the press to fan the flames of conspiracy for the “Face on Mars” believers and others who don’t know their ass from a hole in the wall.

Here’s Reuters trying to be funny:

It said something—or someone—had regularly cleaned layers of dust from the solar panels of the Mars Opportunity vehicle while it was closed down during the Martian night.

The cleaning had boosted the panels’ power output close to their maximum 900 watt-hours per day after at one stage dropping to 500 watt-hours because of the heavy Martian dirt.

Someone??? Oh fer cryin’ out loud. The press covers science stories rarely enough as it is…but to deliberately entertain the notion that Martians are doing us a favor by cleaning the rover’s solar panels has Reuters performing a huge disservice to its readers.

The historic nature of these two little rover’s accomplishments (Opportunity’s twin Spirit is exploring the other side of the red planet) have been the most underreported science story of 2004. We now know conlcusively that Mars at one time had water…lots of water. That the water flowed over large portions of the planet and that it was present long enough to at least give life a chance to arise. These discoveries have confirmed for the first time that liquid water existed on another body in the solar system. The prospects for life arising elsewhere in the Universe have gone up astronomically (from a scientific perspective).

Instead of reporting on these extraordinary findings, Reuters chooses to hint at “little green men.”

Shameful.