Nothing in life is to be feared

NASA just launched its Orion spacecraft! (You can watch the whole thing here)

It looks a bit like the Apollo 11 capsule, but it has a whole new mission: first, meeting an asteroid towed to earth’s orbit by a robot sometime in the 2020s, and maybe, eventually, traveling to Mars.

There weren’t any astronauts on board today’s test flight - just instruments and some mementos from the monsters on Sesame Street. The goal is to measure radiation levels as the craft passes through the Van Allen radiation belts. Read more here.

New revelations on dark matter and relic neutrinos

The Planck collaboration, which notably includes the CNRS, CEA, CNES and several French universities, has disclosed, at a conference in Ferrara, Italy, the results of four years of observations from the ESA’s Planck satellite.

Between 2009 and 2013, the satellite observed relic radiation (the most ancient light in the Universe). This light has been measured precisely across the entire sky for the first time, in both intensity and polarisation1, thereby producing the oldest image of the Universe. This primordial light lets us “see” some of the most elusive particles in the Universe: dark matter and relic neutrinos.

Temperature map of the relic radiation (bottom left), and close-ups showing, in relief, the polarisation of light in the 353 GHz channel (the colors correspond to the intensity of the thermal emission from galactic dust.

Credit: © ESA - Planck collaboration

NASA’s Orion spacecraft roars into space atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket, December 5, 2014, from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Are Nasty Comments Like These Keeping Women Out Of Science?

"It’s death by a thousand cuts. Every day you’re faced with some comment, some snide remark, some inability to get a name on a research paper. And with an accumulation of those experiences, women tend to walk with their feet."

The Tadpole Nebula