The space shuttle Discovery split a nearly cloudless sky with thunder and fire at 2:38 this afternoon, and roared safely into orbit on schedule.

And Memestreams user Palindrome and I were there along with a number of friends of ours! A perfect way to celebrate the 4th of July! Certainly the biggest rocket I've ever seen and one that truely inspires on many levels. I've got lots of links to post, but access is limited from my cellphone. More to follow.

Shuttle Roars Safely Into Orbit on Schedule - New York Times

The first person to note that the Aleutian Cleveland Volcano was spewing ash was astronaut Jeffrey N. Williams aboard the International Space Station.

Looking down on the Alaskan Aleutian Islands two weeks ago, Williams noted, photographed, and reported a spectacular ash plume emanating from the Cleveland Volcano.

APOD: 2006 June 7 - An Alaskan Volcano Erupts

The Aymara, especially the elderly who didn’t command a grammatically correct Spanish, indicated space behind themselves when speaking of the future – by thumbing or waving over their shoulders – and indicated space in front of themselves when speaking of the past – by sweeping forward with their hands and arms, close to their bodies for now or the near past and farther out, to the full extent of the arm, for ancient times.

This is a very interesting perspective on time.

Backs to the Future

In one new study, six objects ranging in heft from five to 15 times the mass of Jupiter were observed. None are bound to stars. All are young and have disks of gas and dust that resemble disks found around young stars. Our own Sun had such a disk, out of which asteroids, comets and planets formed, theorists say.

SPACE.com -- Strange New Worlds Could Make Miniature Solar Systems

Heathyr wrote:
Willy Wonka could have powered his Great Glass Elevator on hydrogen produced from his chocolate factory.

E. Coli is a critical ingredient in the coming robopocolypse, in which evil robots hunt, kill, and eat people and use their flesh to generate electric power.

RE: New Scientist Tech - Technology - Chocolate generates electrical power

Porting the hacker ethic to the nonvirtual world, magazines like Make and blogs like Boing Boing are making it cool for geeks to get their hands dirty again...

But the hands-on revival is leaving home chemists behind.... “There are very few commercial supply houses willing to sell chemicals to amateurs anymore because of this fear that we’re all criminals and terrorists,” Carlson says. “Ordinary folks no longer have access to the things they need to make real discoveries in chemistry.”

To Bill Nye, the “Science Guy,” says unreasonable fears about chemicals and home experimentation reflect a distrust of scientific expertise taking hold in society at large.

This Wired article is very apropos in light of my CACM article. Apparently between trying to prevent terrorism, meth production, and fireworks accidents, state and federal regulators have pretty much made amateur chemistry illegal in the United States, which is going to do wonders for our future.

There was a debate on MemeStreams about whether product liability and tort law restricted individual freedoms. This is also a perfect example of that.

Wired 14.06: Don't Try This at Home

Well, generally the most important thing we learned is how diverse the bodies of the solar system are. Each one is unique and that's because they've had a different history, different evolution. Jupiter, with it's great red spot is just the largest of dozens of giant hurricane-like storm systems. And two of Jupiter's moons, Io, has a 100 times more volcanic activity than Earth. Europa has an ice crust probably on the liquid water ocean. On to Saturn, we've found Saturn's rings are riddled with wakes from moons, which are orbiting inside the rings and outside the rings. And there is a moon there called Enceladus, which is the whitest, brightest object in the solar system and has a very fresh surface. And there's the moon Titan, which has an atmosphere in which liquid natural gas rains on the surface.

I think many MemeStreamers will enjoy this interview with one of the Voyager scientists.

JPL.NASA.GOV: Voyager Interview

Stop worrying about Avian flu already!

According to a significant study published in the prestigious British journal Nature recently, the H5N1 bird flu virus is at least two large mutations and two small mutations away from being the next human pandemic virus. This virus attaches deep in the lungs of birds but cannot adhere to the upper respiratory tract of humans. Since we can't transmit the virus to each other, it poses little immediate threat to us.

So why did the "flu hunter," world-renowned Tennessee virologist Robert Webster, say of bird flu on ABC that there are "about even odds at this time for the virus to learn how to transmit human to human," and that "society just can't accept the idea that 50 percent of the population could die . . . I'm sorry if I'm making people a little frightened, but I feel it's my role."

I'm sorry, Dr. Webster, but your role is to track influenza in the test tube, not to enter into broad speculation on national television. By your way of thinking, we should all be either building an escape rocket ship or killing every bird we see before it can kill us.

A Pandemic of Fear

NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon.

There are still many questions that enshroud this discovery. Although other moons in our solar system contain icy crusts, the real discovery here is that liquid water is apparently just below the surface of the moon. Scientists will now beginning exploring the possibility that lifeforms could have existed at one point in this environment...

NASA - NASA's Cassini Discovers Potential Liquid Water on Enceladus

I’m willing to bet the scientific method 400 years from now will differ from today’s understanding of science more than today’s science method differs from the proto-science used 400 years ago. A sensible forecast of technological innovations in the next 400 years is beyond our imaginations (or at least mine), but we can fruitfully envision technological changes that might occur in the next 50 years.

Based on the suggestions of the observers above, and my own active imagination, I offer the following as possible near-term advances in the evolution of the scientific method.

Compiled Negative Results

This is interesting. One of the core failings of modern science is its focus on "exciting" results. It turns what should be a methodological pursuit of the truth into a popularity contest in which people keep secrets and cut corners to reach interesting answers and gain fame and fortune. A failed experiment is just as useful as a successful one ifr your goal is to understand, and we now have the information technology needed to make use of a vast increase in the volume of published results. Some culture changes could be positive.

Kevin Kelly -- The Technium