(I missed week one for both of my classes — it was lots of stories about last week’s solar flare from both Solar System & Physical Geology classes)
My Solar System class has dug up the following stories for the time period of 25. – 31. January:
- the newly launched Mars rover was in the right place with the right equipment to monitor the solar storm
- also an article about how solar storms are going to be more frequent until 2013
- the solar flares also made an appearance in a discussion about scientists being able to predict when a CME will hit Earth
- scientists wonder about whether or not Pluto has rings & the impact they could have on the New Horizons satellite
- latitude and altitude control dune morphology on Titan — who knew that Titan had dunes?
- one student went for Gingrich’s moon base plan
- despite being well-beyond its predicted mission life expectancy, Chandra provided images of a “sloshing” galaxy cluster recently (snark due to being related to the project engineer for the X-ray detector)
The dunes on Titan were popular with several students finding a variety of articles about them. The other recurring theme was the impact Pluto’s suspected rings could have on New Horizons.
(Physical is due Thursday night, so hopefully I’ll post them Friday.)
Elli Goeke
