Monthly Archives: June 2010

Deep Impact/EPOXI will fly past Earth this Today

It’s one of those hitch hiking deals:

NASA’s Deep Impact/EPOXI spacecraft will fly past Earth this Sunday (June 27). Mission navigators have tailored this trajectory so the spacecraft can “hitch a ride” on Earth’s gravity field, which will help propel the mission toward its appointment with comet Hartley 2 this fall. At time of closest approach to Earth, the spacecraft will be about 30,400 kilometers (18,900 miles) above the South Atlantic.

“Earth is a great place to pick up orbital velocity,” said Tim Larson, the EPOXI project manager from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “This flyby will give our spacecraft a 1.5-kilometer-per-second [3,470 mph] boost, setting us up to get up close and personal with comet Hartley 2.”

Press release is here.

How did the victims of the Plinean Eruption of Vesuvius die?

Even at the most extreme edges of the flow of stuff out of the volcano Pompeii, at the far edge of the mud and ash that came from the volcano’s explosion, the heat was sufficient to instantly kill everyone, even those inside their homes.

ResearchBlogging.orgAnd that is how the people at Pompeii, who’s remains were found trapped and partly preserved within ghostly body-shaped tombs within that pyroclastic flow, died. They did not suffocate. They did not get blown apart by force. They did not die of gas poisoning. They simply cooked. Instantly.
Continue reading How did the victims of the Plinean Eruption of Vesuvius die?

Church Suspects Treated like Possible Criminals. Vatican Shocked.

I’m not going to say anything about the methods the Belgian authorities have used, because I don’t know anything about due process in that country. (Though I did notice that that Belgian police carry big machine guns, at least when I’ve been there.)

Anyway, the Vatican has it’s shorts in a twist because civilian police have, apparently, treated church property and priests as non-sacred.
Continue reading Church Suspects Treated like Possible Criminals. Vatican Shocked.