Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are going camping. They set up a tent under the stars and go to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night Holmes wakes Watson up and says: "Watson, look up and tell me what you see."

Watson replies, "I see millions and millions of stars."

"And what do you deduce from that?" Holmes asks.

Watson replies: "Well, if ( Read more... )

Asteroid passing Earth at a closer distance than the moon's orbit
Scientists say there is absolutely no chance of a collision between our
planet and the asteroid, which is about a quarter of a mile in diameter,
or roughly the size of an aircraft carrier. Although YU55 is the
largest asteroid to come this close to Earth since 1976, it will still
come ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

found via slashdot

The first pictures from yesterday's flyby of Enceladus are now public. At closest approach, Cassini was set spinning to cancel out the apparent motion of Enceladus so as to capture unsmeared images during the 40,000-mph flyby. Although it wasn't clear that this would work (errors in pointing could easily have made the cameras miss ( Read more... )