Reported and Edited by Linda Moulton Howe
January 9, 2004 Ithaca, New York - As the New Year of 2004 gets underway, the Bush Administration announced this week that the President will soon propose a plan to send a manned American mission to Mars and to the moon.
January 2, 2004 Boulder, Colorado - In 1949, the U. S. Bureau of Standards produced the world's first atomic clock which counted the rates of vibration in cesium atoms. Then in 1972, the world adopted an international time keeping system based on atomic clocks. That's when it became necessary to synchronize the resonance of the cesium atom and earth time as measured by the earth's spin. After 1972, the Bureau of Standards had to insert what are called 'leap seconds' into the atomic time keeping system because the earth's rotation slowed a little bit each year.
December 19, 2003 Washington, D. C. - NASA Science News has released a story worth sharing about next Thursday's projected landing of the Beagle 2 spacecraft on Mars. NASA begins: "It's wintertime in the northern hemisphere of Mars and a flying saucer is about to land.
December 12, 2003 Alexandria, Virginia - American science might soon be challenged by the President of the United States with a request to get back to the moon. According to Washington insiders, Vice President Dick Cheney has been having a series of confidential meetings for some time to discuss with agencies and congressmen how to reinvigorate the depressed NASA space program. One idea that has caught a lot of attention and speculation is going back to the moon with astronauts - and maybe even building a permanent lunar base.
"The distributary fan's discovery provides clear, unequivocal evidence that some valleys on Mars experienced the same type of on-going, or persistent, flow over long periods of time as rivers do on Earth. ... and might be the strongest indicator yet that some craters and other depressions on Mars once held lakes."
Mike Malin, Ph.D., Planetary Geologist, Malin Space Science Systems
"OF THE 280 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES, WHAT PERCENTAGE WOULD END UP WITH THIS FUJIAN FLU THIS TIME?"
"I think at least 20%. So, we're talking about 50 million people at least in 2003-2004. And about 70,000 excess deaths."
- Paul Glezen, M. D., Virologist, Baylor College of Medicine
Updated - December 5, 2003 - Two influenza vaccine manufacturers announced today that they have shipped all their vaccines and will not have any more until the spring of 2004. So, if one doctor's office is out of flu shots, try another. Some offices and clinics have more flu vaccines than others.
October 29, 2003 Grenbelt, Maryland - Today at 20:48 UT (4:58 p.m. ET), the fifth intense solar X-Flare (10) in a week erupted on the sun. The massive Jupiter-sized sunspot known as 486 has been the source of two of the most powerful solar flares ever recorded in the X category that indicates most intense sunspot eruptions. The unprecedented series of five X-flares within a week began last Thursday, October 23, 2003, when there was a powerful X-sized solar flare, followed by two weaker X-flares. Then on Tuesday, October 28th, came the third largest solar flare ever recorded - an X 17.2. The strongest known is an X 20. That was followed on Wednesday, October 29th, with an X 10.
October 24, 2003 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - 2003 is turning out to be a pivotal year for cosmologists. In February, NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy (an-EYE-stro-pea) Probe - known as WMAP - made precise measurements of the oldest light in the universe, the microwave background radiation from the Big Bang. The map produced from the microwave data breaks our universe down this way:
October 5, 2003 Havana, Cuba - Three years ago when Paulina Zelitsky and Paul Weinzweig, co-owners of Advanced Digital Communications, saw the first side scan sonar images of the deep water structures off the western tip of Cuba, some underwater objects were dark as metals sometimes show up on magnetometers. I asked Paul if any more data supported the initial cesium magnetometer data which implied there might be metal coatings on some of the megalithic structures.