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This is what a chunk of Northwest Australia looks like from the International Space Station.

It was created as part of the EarthKAM project, “Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students.” Which should really be EarthKAMSS, but whatever.

The project grew out of Sally Ride’s “KidSat,” a (FREE!) camera that could be aimed by classrooms [...]

Last year, the Mars Rover Spirit got stuck in the dirt and NASA couldn’t get it out. But today, it still manages to deliver. Under those spinning wheels is proof that there’s liquid water on Mars:

But the soil exposed by Spirit’s spinning wheels carries clues that Mars may still be wet. The newly exposed surface layers include minerals thought [...]

CNN shares the latest US Geological Survey estimate of Alaska’s oil reserve. It’s a breathtaking 90 percent smaller than previously believed:

The group estimates about 896 million barrels of such oil are in the reserve, about 90 percent less than a 2002 estimate of 10.6 billion barrels.

The new estimate is mainly due to the incorporation of new data from recent [...]

Yeah, that headline sounds kind of dada, doesn’t it? But it’s exactly what The Register is describing as the latest Pentagon robotics breakthrough:

The manipulator works by pressing the soft balloon full of loose coffee grounds down on the object to be gripped. Then the air is sucked out of the balloon, causing the coffee granules to press together [...]

Font fans, run in fear. BBC is reporting on new research that finds the Helveticats and Arialites have it all wrong. If you really want a brainy, thought-provoking typeface, turn to Comic Sans:

The 28 volunteers in the Princeton study were given 90 seconds to try to memorise a list of seven features for three different species of alien.

The [...]

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This is a pile of unusual fish from The illustrated natural history, vol. 3, by John George Wood, London, circa 1863. The Brothers Dalziel were the most celebrated (perhaps) engravers of Victorian England. There were eight of them, although George and Edward did most of the engraving. The family firm handled material from the scientific, [...]

SONG: “Might As Well Be (Considering Inkayacu paracasensis)”. (To download: double right-click & “Save As”)

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: Based on “36 million-year-old penguin was five feet tall and had reddish-brown feathers”, io9.com (quoting Science), 30 September 10, as used in the post Red Super-penguin.
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ABSTRACT: Do I have to explain what I was thinking here? I probably [...]

Have I been posting more about Antarctica than usual lately? Doesn’t matter. Check out the astronomical project the Telegraph is looking into deep under the ice:

Professor Subir Sarkar, a particle astrophysicist at Oxford University who leads the British involvement in the IceCube experiment, said: “Cosmic rays were discovered 100 years ago, but we still have no idea where [...]

Scientific American notices that the mosquitoes that carry malaria seem to be splitting off into their own species:

“We can see that mosquitoes are evolving more quickly than we thought,” Mara Lawniczak, of the Division of Cell and Molecular Biology at the Imperial College London and co-author of the first study, said in a prepared statement. She and her [...]