Space and Science News
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on January 10, 2003 at 5:37:33 PM
Interesting stuff...
Really really old Quasar.
Columbia to launch next week.
Radiation resistant bacteria.
Really really old Quasar.
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Images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have yielded several distance records in recent years. The newest record-setting quasar is seen as it was when the universe was only about 800 million years old, or roughly 13 billion years ago. This means its light took 13 billion years to reach us.
Columbia to launch next week.
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Last month, a crack was discovered in the plumbing of shuttle Discovery. The surface crack was in a 2.25-inch (5.7-centimeter) metal ball located in a liquid oxygen line; the sphere allows the line to flex at the joint.
Engineers have spent the past month conducting tests to see whether such a crack would impair the propellant lines or cause metal fragments to be sucked into a main engine during liftoff.
Radiation resistant bacteria.
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A RADIATION-PROOF superbug which could survive a nuclear holocaust with ease has given up its secrets to scientists.
The bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans can withstand 1.5 million rads of ionising radiation - more than 1,000 times higher than the lethal level for all other forms of life.