Jawaan!

Scientists are eagerly anticipating the ROSETTA probe’s next pass of Earth, because they know that something they don’t know about might happen.  Probes passing by Earth to pick up a gravitational slingshot have been experiencing unexplained extra accelerations, and the reasons could reveal fundamental facts of existence – if we ever work them out.

After a successful touchdown of Apollo 11 on 20th July 1969, the Pope asked for a color television to be installed in his summer residence, while West Germany announced they were calling the day of the landing ‘Apollo Day’ and schoolchildren in Bavaria were given the day off. Meanwhile some 40 years later some still think the landing was filmed on a Hollywood backlot. You can lead a fool to proof, but you can’t make him think: right now six per cent of Americans believe that the moon landings, one of the most impressive achievements in the history of mankind, were faked – and short of radical surgery there’s no way to change their mind.? If you can find it

After a successful touchdown of Apollo 11 on 20th July 1969, the Pope asked for a color television to be installed in his summer residence, while West Germany announced they were calling the day of the landing ‘Apollo Day’ and schoolchildren in Bavaria were given the day off. Meanwhile some 40 years later some still think the landing was filmed on a Hollywood backlot

“We have 20 million genes which I call the design components of the future. We are limited here only by our imagination.” Craig Venter, Geneticist Craig Venter’s company, Synthetic Genomics, announced yesterday that it has struck a deal with ExxonMobil to develop biofuels from algae that cars and planes can use without having a modified engine. Exxon officials said they decided to invest in algal biofuel over other forms of biofuels because its production does not require arable land or fresh water and algae consumes large quantities of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

Venus is famous as a hellishly inhospitable burning world, choked with carbon dioxide and crushed under almost a hundred times Earth atmospheric pressure.  But recent data suggests that our nearest planetary neighbor might once have been a bit more like us. The European Space Agency’s ( ESA ) Venus Express mission arrived in orbit on May 7 th , 2006, and has been analyzing the world ever since.  Venus’s poisonous clouds are opaque to visible light, just like “regular” clouds, so the probe came equipped with the VIRTIS system (Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer.)  This allowed it to not only map the surface, which had previously been performed by radar, but also collect basic chemical composition data. The infra-red reflectivities recorded suggest that there are Venusian highlands composed of granite, and if that’s not immediately exciting don’t worry, it’s just that you’re not a geologist.  Granite is an igneous rock created from other rocks shoved back into a planet’s mantle by plate tectonics.  Since Venus no longer appears to have any of those it’s an exciting clue to the planet’s past

Both Robin Chase, the visionary founder of ZipCar, and San Francisco Mayor, Gavin Newsome believe that the electric car is an integral part of our future. San Francisco’s controversial mayor says America’s electric cars will soon be a viable prospect in the world’s cities as the infrastructure is put in place that allows for off-peak charging and as battery switching-stations replace gas stations. Chase says that the network we need for electricity can turn cars into nodes and that our electrical system should be a smart grid that should do more than carry electricity: it should carry information for a more intelligent, and efficient, use of power