I decided to create my list of Best Astronomy Pictures of 2006. I went through hundreds of images (maybe thousands), checking NASA, APOD, the ESA, BAUT, and a few dozen amateur and professional sites featuring pictures as well.

Bad Astronomy Blog - The Top Ten Astronomy Images of 2006

I shall not here defend the views held by the scientific establishment. I am among those who have done that elsewhere, in many books. My purpose in this article is only to convey the full magnitude of the error into which, if Burgess and McIntosh are right, the scientific establishment has fallen.

First, the age of the Earth. McIntosh thinks, on biblical authority alone, that it is less than 10,000 years.

Comment is free: Big mistake | Richard Dawkins

NASA, seeking to give the public easy access to its massive trove of images and data about Earth and outer space, has entered into a formal agreement with Google to post material from the agency's many missions on the Internet. As the technology improves and the collaboration grows, officials said, viewers could one day be treated to live video from the moon, Mars and elsewhere.
...
Megan Smith, the company's director of new business development, said many Google employees first got excited about computer technology through NASA, so it is especially meaningful for them to be working with the agency.

NASA Launches Google Collaboration - washingtonpost.com

NASA photographs have revealed bright new deposits seen in two gullies on Mars that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years.

NASA Images Suggest Water Still Flows in Brief Spurts on Mars

Very recently, a new software side-channel attack, called Branch Prediction Analysis (BPA) attack, has been discovered and also demonstrated to be practically feasible on popular commodity PC platforms. While the above recent attack still had the flavor of a classical timing attack against RSA, where one uses many execution-time measurements under the same key in order to statistically amplify some small but key-dependent timing differences, we dramatically improve upon the former result.

[...]

The successful extraction of almost all secret key bits by our SBPA attack against an openSSL RSA implementation proves that the often recommended blinding or so called randomization techniques to protect RSA against side-channel attacks are, in the context of SBPA attacks, totally useless.

Simple Branch Prediction Analysis

Geysers spewing sand and dust hundreds of feet into the "air" have been discovered on Mars, scientists say.

Ice geysers discovered on Mars

Now Josef Penninger of the Austrian Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna and Min Zhao of the University of Aberdeen, UK, have demonstrated that natural electric fields and currents in tissue play a vital role in orchestrating the wound-healing process by attracting repair cells to damaged areas.

The researchers have also identified the genes that control the process. "We were originally sceptical, but then we realised it was a real effect and looked for the genes responsible," Penninger says. "It's not homeopathy, it's biophysics."

I wonder if further research could lead to a reconciliation of sorts between eastern and western medicine?

NewScientist: To heal a wound, turn up the voltage

The genetic code specifies all the proteins that a cell makes. The second code, superimposed on the first, sets the placement of the nucleosomes, miniature protein spools around which the DNA is looped. The spools both protect and control access to the DNA itself.

Scientists Say They’ve Found a Code Beyond Genetics in DNA - New York Times

Objects like ISS and the Space Shuttle are fairly large and relatively low. Its possible to see them with the naked eye. This Nasa site helps you figure out when they'll be visible in your area.

Human Space Flight (HSF) - Orbital Tracking

Our aim is to provide you with all the information you need to observe satellites such as the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle, spectacular events such as the dazzlingly bright flares from Iridium satellites as well as a wealth of other spaceflight and astronomical information.

Another great site for figuring out when you can see stuff in space from your backyard.

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