Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon 43 years ago, has tried to live a private life since Apollo 11 came back to Earth, but he did agree to give a rare interview -- to the head of an Australian accounting group. In an hour-long conversation with Alex Malley of CPA Australia, Armstrong retold the story of his life as an astronaut, culminating in the 1969 landing, with his crewmate Buzz Aldrin, on the lunar plain they called Tranquility Base. "I should say I thought we had a 90 percent chance of getting back to Earth on that flight," Armstrong said in this rare interview, "but only a 50-50 chance of making a successful landing on the first attempt." The landing was ... Continue reading →
May 23, 2012 3:36pm MIT’s LiquiGlide Solves Ketchup Bottle Frustrations (Image credit: Getty Images) The days of tirelessly smacking the ketchup bottle, only to have it explode on your plate, are finally over. Dave Smith, a Ph.D. candidate at MIT, has spent the last two months at the Varanasi Research Group developing a slippery non-toxic coating that will end all of your ketchup frustrations. The coating, named LiquiGlide, keeps condiments like mayo or mustard from sticking to the inside of the container, so that they smoothly slide onto your plate. LiquiGlide is a “kind of a structured liquid — it’s rigid like a solid, but it’s lubricated like a liquid,” Smith told Fast Company. “It’s funny: Everyone is always like, ‘Why bottles? What’s the big ... Continue reading →
Had a recent spat with your mate? Chances are he or she knew you were angry, but didn't realize you were also very sad. That can make a difference in a healthy relationship. A continuing line of research from Baylor University shows that couples are pretty good at recognizing emotions in each other, but they are less likely to detect sadness if their partner is angry. "When it comes to perceiving emotion in a partner, anger trumps sadness," said psychologist Keith Sanford, author of a study in the Journal of Family Psychology. Sanford, who is also a clinical psychologist, specializes in how people resolve conflicts, and in this study he sought the answer to a basic question. Are spouses any good at detecting the emotions ... Continue reading →
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket safely launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station before dawn today, carrying a Dragon capsule with 1,000 pounds of supplies for the International Space Station -- and, much more important, the hopes for a new way of doing space travel. "Falcon flew perfectly! Dragon in orbit, comm locked and solar arrays active!!" came a tweet from SpaceX's founder, Elon Musk. "Feels like a giant weight just came off my back." The SpaceX launch was, in many ways, routine. It was an unmanned rocket taking off from Launch Complex 40, a pad NASA and the Air Force have used since the 1960s. If all goes well, it will make a rendezvous with the space station early Thursday morning, and if that's ... Continue reading →
A solar eclipse seen from Xiamen in southeastern China's Fujian province, May 21, 2012. Millions watched as a rare "ring of fire" eclipse crossed their skies late Sunday or early Monday, depending on their time zones. (AP Photo ) Continue reading →
If you live in a band across the southwestern United States, twilight will seem to come early on Sunday afternoon, well before the sun actually sets. The cause: a rare annular solar eclipse -- a ring of sunlight as the new moon, passing between Earth and the sun, blocks most, but not all, of the sun's disc. This is not the kind of total eclipse of which you usually see pictures -- the moon blocking the sun completely, creating a few moments of near-night in the middle of the day, with only the sun's ethereal corona visible around the moon's edges. The sky will darken a bit, but there will still be a blindingly bright ring (an "annulus" in Latin) of sun, and it's dangerous ... Continue reading →
If you live in a band across the southwestern United States, twilight will seem to come early on Sunday afternoon, well before the sun actually sets. The cause: a rare annular solar eclipse -- a ring of sunlight as the new moon, passing between Earth and the sun, blocks most, but not all, of the sun's disc. This is not the kind of total eclipse of which you usually see pictures -- the moon blocking the sun completely, creating a few moments of near-night in the middle of the day, with only the sun's ethereal corona visible around the moon's edges. The sky will darken a bit, but there will still be a blindingly bright ring (an "annulus" in Latin) of sun, and it's dangerous ... Continue reading →
When SpaceX launches its Falcon 9 rocket it will secretly be carrying celebrities. Actor James Doohan, who played Scotty on the original "Star Trek" series, died in 2005. His ashes will be on board this mission -- as will those of Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper and 306 other people. If you have the money, Celestis, a space services company, will send your loved one's ashes up to orbit Earth. l Sound familiar? This is the second time around for Celestis and Space X; the companies tried to launch Doohan and Cooper and 206 others back in August 2008. When SpaceX launched the remains on its Falcon1 rocket, the rocket never made it to space. When the rocket failed to get to orbit, neither did the ... Continue reading →
