Green and pleasant landing
A 鈥済reen valley鈥� on the Red Planet is to be the landing site of NASA鈥檚 Phoenix probe, which will arrive in Mars orbit in two months. That is 20 kilometres from the site it was originally headed for, which images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show are too rocky for a safe landing.
Watch out EPA
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The US Environmental Protection Agency is under scrutiny. In December, it blocked California鈥檚 sweeping state regulations aimed at reducing vehicle emissions. The chairman of the congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform suspects the White House meddled in the decision, and has requested all related documents to find out.
Bombed-out coral
What does a coral reef look like 50 years after being nuked? Not so bad, it seems. Ecologists say 65 per cent of the species have returned to the 2-kilometre-wide crater left by nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll (Marine Pollution Bulletin, ).
Pioneer mystery explained?
An explanation of why NASA鈥檚 Pioneer spacecraft are mysteriously drifting off course comes from Slava Turyshev of NASA鈥檚 Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He reckons uneven heat emission within the probes may be slowly changing their trajectory. He described his findings at a meeting of the American Physical Society in St Louis, Missouri.
Dumb Neanderthals
What would a Neanderthal sound like? A computer model based on the vocal tracts of fossil Neanderthals created by Robert McCarthy of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton shows that they lacked the sound called a 鈥渜uantal vowel鈥�, without which speech is restricted. He presented the findings at a meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Columbus, Ohio.