Issues Left Unresolved On Pensions The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear arguments that I.B.M. discriminated on the basis of age when it changed its pension plan resolves little for other companies that made similar changes.... Read Full Article I.R.S. Bars Investment Strategy Used To Sidestep Rule On Losses The Internal Revenue Service has banned a year-end investment strategy used to get around the so-called wash sale rules on harvesting tax losses.... Read Full Article Many Of The Self-Employed Are Simply On Their Own The small businesses that struggle the most with health insurance may be the smallest of all: those with only one employee.... Read Full Article When Works Are Staged As Well As Played Works & Process at the Guggenheim, the museum’s stimulating performing arts series, selected five compositions by Jo Kondo, then had Robert Wilson stage them.... Read Full Article Comment: Doomsday Clock Needed Updating In Dr Strangelove, the US President has to get on the hotline to beg a drunken Soviet premier not to retaliate when a rogue squadron of B-52s visits thermonuclear Armageddon on the entire Warsaw Pact.... Read Full Article |
Pictures Reveal Mercury’s Tumultuous PastWASHINGTON — The Messenger spacecraft that zipped past Mercury two weeks ago found more evidence of the innermost planet’s turbulent past, including ridges that run hundreds of miles and a unique feature made up of more than 100 troughs radiating in all directions, scientists said Wednesday. NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of WashingtonThis false-color image, taken as Messenger approached Mercury, combined three black-and-white images taken through different color filters More Photos Multimedia Slide Show A Closer Look at MercuryA preliminary look at data from the flyby, including 1,213 images, shows a small, cratered planet that superficially looks like Earth’s moon but is very different in reality, they said. The robot spacecraft, the first to visit the planet in more than three decades, passed 124 miles above Mercury’s surface on Jan. 14 before continuing on a path that is to bring it back three more times in the next three years before settling into orbit. During the encounter, the Messenger’s seven scientific instruments scanned the planet, its magnetic field and its wispy atmosphere in great detail. “Our little craft has returned a gold mine of exciting data,” said Dr. Sean C. Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the mission’s lead investigator. “We were continually surprised,” Dr. Solomon said at a NASA news conference. “It was not the planet we expected. It was not the moon.” Mercury remains a very dynamic planet and is a key to understanding the evolution of the inner solar system and its four rocky planets, including Earth, he said. NASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft, which made three flybys of Mercury in 1974 and 1975, mapped about 45 percent of the planet’s surface. The Messenger craft took pictures of another 30 percent during its first visit and should complete the portrait when it returns on its next flyby in October, scientists said. After that visit and another in September 2009 to slow the craft, the Messenger is to settle into orbit around Mercury on March 18, 2011, for at least a year of studies. Among the features spotted by the Messenger — short for the $446 million mission’s formal name, Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging — is one informally called “the spider.” It appears to be an impact crater 25 miles in diameter from which more than 100 flat-bottomed troughs shoot out in all directions, said Louise Prockter, an imaging instrument scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., which built and operates the spacecraft. “It’s a real mystery, a very unexpected find,” Ms. Prockter said, unlike anything ever observed in the solar system. It is unclear if the impact crater caused the shattered-looking feature or came later, after the troughs formed for another reason, she said. Tag CloudExternal InformationAdditional InformationScientists Would Turn Greenhouse Gas Into Gasoline...U.S. Given Poor Marks on the Environment... Mars Shot Is Put Off for 2 Years, NASA Says... Chihuahua or Great Dane? One Gene Sets Dog Size... Where Am I?News Main Page - Business - Pictures Reveal Mercury’s Tumultuous Past |
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