I was reading an article the other day and the author said something that was very true. He said that when someone had the title of scientist, the public puts him beyond reproach. When I have met with scientists while in the company of others, it was possible to see the expressions on the faces of those non scientific people when they found out that they were meeting a scientist. You would have thought that God came to earth, yet when we think about this logically there are many times where scientists are on two different sides of the same argument. This means that half of them could be wrong in such an instance. There are other times when scientists tow the company or government line, not because they believe it, but because it is the surest way to get ahead or maybe stay out of trouble. We have to remember to examine the substance of what they say, not automatically accept some of their findings as gospel all the time.

Dr. Alan Stern, who worked on the NASA mission to send a probe to Pluto, is moving to overturn the IAU's (International Astronomical Union) ruling that Pluto no longer be considered a planet. Not only does he not agree with the ruling, but he is not alone. The ruling bothers him because he states that usually these rulings are made after a general consensus and this was not the case when the status of Pluto was considered. The mission that Dr. Stern had helped launch is called New Horizons and the spacecraft is due to reach Pluto in 2015. The mission was designed to go to the solar system's furthest planet and now that Pluto is no longer a planet, it is just heading to a cold rock in space, or that is how it seems. We are talking about a place that is only 40 degrees above absolute zero. Another way to look at this is that the temperature is about minus 233C. Dr. Stern has stated, "The IAU definition is so flawed on so many levels," Dr Stern fumed. "It's an awful definition; it's sloppy science and it would never pass peer review." When NASA was asked why Pluto was considered a planet in the first place, it said, "Most people call Pluto a planet because it orbits the Sun and it is large enough for its own gravity to pull it into a spherical shape." I think that Pluto should be given planet status, what do you think?

Things have changed at the New York City police force. When we hear of detectives doing their job, most of us think about knocking on doors, tracing identifying marks and taking hours or days to find out of town license plate numbers. If you would have said this three years ago, you would have been correct, but all that has changed thanks to a new data retrievable center that looks more like a NASA control room than part of any police department. Oh there may still have to be some leg work involved in solving a case, but certainly no where as much. Today this control center can find things like who belongs to a particular tattoo, or a license plate number in a matter of seconds. This info can be sent directly to the detective on the scene of the crime while things are still fresh and giving the police a chance to arrest the perpetrator in a speedy manner that was not possible in the past.

Okay how did they do it? NASA has kept the Mar's rovers going for over 5 years. Here are two tiny machines that are crawling around over rocks, hills, valleys, subject to all types of dirt, freezing temperatures and who knows what else, that are behaving like the Energizer bunny. There are those that believe that we have a human presence on Mars via a military space program that is far more advanced than anything that NASA has shown us. If that is true, are there people there that are repairing these things when they break down? I personally think that even if we had humans there, it would serve no purpose to repair the rovers and draw attention to the fact that they are functioning far beyond their planned life spans. What I find amazing is the fact that they are interfaced with a computer and still everything seems to be going pretty smooth. There have been a few problems, but they were solved pretty quickly, except for the five weeks or so it took to get one of the rovers out of the sand. How long can your computer go without breaking down?

In 2008, Mars watchers almost went wild. NASA had released a photo of one of the landing sites that seemed to contain a wooden plank near the lander. We have seen thousands of photos of this area before, but this was the first one that had this object in it that I know of. The object is about nine or ten times the length of its width and about a fifth as thick as its width. It definitely has the dimensions of a plank, or beam and this is what is fueling the current optimism that it is a piece of wood. Could it be a strange shaped rock? I have to wonder what the odds makers in Vegas would have to say about it being wood? It seems to me that the chances of a rock looking like this are very slim, but I guess possible. Maybe this was once underwater and the currents smoothed it out to its current shape? While we can not be sure what this object really is, it definitely seems that the odds are far in favor of it being wood, or a man made (not human) object such as the blocks of stone that were carved and used in Egyptian and Roman buildings to name a few.

The temperature in the Arctic hit an all time high in 2007. They were more than 9 degrees Fahrenheit above the normal temperature for that region. The temperature remained about the same in 2008. What will it be by the end of 2009? That is anyone's guess, but let's hope that it does not go any higher. The Arctic has its own system for heat and cold. The temperature usually peaks in October and November because the ice shrinks during the summer and this causes less reflectivity, allowing the sun to heat more of the area. The reason that the temperature is rising is that there has been so much ice lost since 1990. This means that sunlight is being absorbed more than ever in this area and the result is more melting ice. Unless something happens to change this cycle, world wide flooding will eventually take place. Here is the strange part of this, the Bering Sea is in a cold spell and the glaciers in Alaska have become larger, yet the Greenland ice cap is shrinking. Because of this the ocean has risen by 0.1 inch last year.