The scream: The reddish sky in the background of this famous painting was possibly caused by the 1883 Krakatoa eruption. The ash that was ejected from the volcano left the sky tinted red in most of Europe and Asia from November 1883 to February 1884.
Courtesy Edvard MunchOn August 26 - 27, 1883 Krakatau, a stratovolcano that lies in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, erupted in what was one of the most violent volcanic events in modern times. It erupted with the force of 200 megatons of TNT and was heard as far away as Australia. The tsunamis generated by the eruption reached heights of 140 feet above sea level and washed away 165 coastal villages on Java and Sumatra, killing 36,000 people.
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The Orion crew exploration vehicle: This artist's rendering of Orion crew exploration vehicle in lunar orbit. (Depicts obsolete configuration.) Image courtesy: Lockheed Martin Corp.I was emailed this story today by a co-worker that had the subject line, "No Orion in 2013" which made me think something was going down with the constellation of Orion - but that's not it.
Officials at NASA announced yesterday that they have abandoned plans to get the Orion crew capsules, the replacement for the retiring U.S. space shuttles, into service by 2013. Officials site a lack of additional funds and technical issues as the cause. The original plan was to get the new launch systems in place by 2015, but since the shuttles are expected to retire in 2010, NASA was pushing to close the gap. They are now aiming for 2014. NASA will depend on Russian launch vehicles to get crews to the International Space Station in the interim.
Hiroshima after the atomic bomb
Courtesy WikipediaSixty-three years ago today, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The event marked the first of only two times atomic weapons were used in warfare (Nagasaki would be hit three days later). The Hiroshima bomb was released from the B-29 bomber Enola Gay about 8:15AM (Hiroshima time) and 57 seconds later detonated 2000 feet above the city. It's estimated that 140,000 people were killed directly and indirectly from the event. Japan officially surrendered to Allied Forces within a matter of days.
Here's the USGS data on the earthquake, and CNN's developing story.
Footprint on the Moon: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin took a moment to document his own footprint on the Moon.
Courtesy NASAOn this day in 1969, less than nine years after President John F. Kennedy set the seemingly impossible goal of sending a man to the Moon and back, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the Moon. He was joined a short time later by astronaut Edwin Aldrin. The two explorers spent two-and-a-half hours gathering moon rocks, setting up experiments, and planting the American flag, while astronaut Mike Collins orbited the Moon waiting to rendezvouz with the Lunar Module for the return trip to Earth. Here are lots of links about the Apollo lunar program
Last May, the Bureau of Land Management halted new projects for developing solar energy on public land, out of concern for the impact these might have on the environment. But on July 3, they lifted the ban in response to public concern over rising energy costs.
Evolution 150 year birthday
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace joint paper on their theory of evolution was read at the July 1, 1858 meeting of the Linnaean Society of London (click to read more from Wired.com).
Today is the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska event, a massive explosion in remote Siberia which flattened trees for miles around. To this day no one is quite sure what it was, though the leading candidates are a collision with a large meteorite or a small asteroid. You can learn more about the event here.
The first flying saucer was sighted 61 years ago today, inspiring a wave of bad science fiction (is there any other kind?) which continues unabated to this day. Supposedly, the craft, piloted by Bigfoot and Nessie, crashed 11 days earlier in Nevada, which is the kind of thing that happens when you mess around with the space-time continuum. Of course, there continue to be skeptics.
Sixty years ago today, in Manchester, England, a room-sized computer known affectionately as "Baby" successfully ran its first calculation using 128k of memory, and ushered in the era of the "modern PC".
Back in 1948, Baby's programmers had a whopping 1024 bits of memory available to work with while today's 1 GB DRAM chip can store about 8 billion bits. You do the math. Or just read the story.
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The fat tax? Alabama to charge overweight state workers extra for health insurance