Scribbles on the margins of science.
On the Record
“It is important because if you're driving down the highway and you saw a crash of a small spaceship and a car or a bus full of kids, you really wouldn't know what to do.”
Denver citizen Jeff Peckman explains his proposed ballot initiative to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission. The city is obliged to discuss the measure.
Showbiz news
This one's for you
Canadian singer/songwriter Neil Young now has a trapdoor spider named after him: the Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi (pictured). Long may you run … away from it.
Scorecard
Going up: Long-lived data
An engineer has extracted data from a partially melted hard drive that fell to Earth after the Columbia shuttle explosion in 2003.
Going down: Short-lived art
Curators at the New York Museum of Modern Art have had to kill an artwork consisting of a tiny jacket made of living stem cells after it grew too big.
3 good reasons
… to send astronauts to an asteroid
1. With the right asteroid it's easier than going to the Moon.
2. No one has been to an asteroid before.
3. Everyone loves Le Petit Prince.
A NASA study outlining such a plan is due to be published soon in Acta Astronautica.
Sources: Rocky Mountain News, Art Newspaper, Yahoo News, thestar.com
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sidelines. Nature 453, 269 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/453269a
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/453269a