Tech & Science

__NOTOC__ A 182-page report issued September 1 by the United States National Research Council warns that the amount of debris in space is reaching "a tipping point", and could cause damage to satellites or spacecraft. The report calls for regulations to reduce the amount of debris, and suggests that scientists increase research into methods to remove some of the debris from orbit, though it makes no recommendations about how to do so. NASA sponsored the study. A statement released along with the report warns that, according to some computer

The SETI Institute, shut down since mid-April due to budget cuts, has announced that it will reopen in mid-September due to a recent influx of funds from several donors. Over 2,500 donors, including actress Jodie Foster who popularized SETI ("Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence") in the movie Contact, provided $220,000 to keep the Institute's telescopes functioning. "We are absolutely thrilled that thousands of people from all over the world stepped forward to declare their support for SETI science just when help was needed the most," sa

Andrey Kapitsa, the Russian geographer best known for his part in the discovery of Lake Vostok in Antarctica, has died in Moscow at the age of 80. He participated in four Soviet expeditions to the South Pole during his career. Kapitsa was born to Physics Nobel Prize laureate Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa in Cambridge, England in 1931. He graduated from the Moscow State University's Faculty of Geography in 1953, and took part in the first of his four expeditions to the South Pole two years later. In 1967, he led the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences on

On Wednesday NASA released details of a giant convective storm on Saturn gathered from the international Cassini spacecraft orbiting the planet. The storm, known as a "Great White Spot", is around 6,200 miles (10,000 kilometers) wide and visible from Earth. The White Spot storms have been observed since 1876 and occur approximately every 30 years; only five previous storms have been seen in the last 137 years. The first signs were detected on December 5, 2010 by instruments aboard the Cassini spacecraft when it recorded lightening outbursts i

NASA's Cassini–Huygens spacecraft has discovered evidence for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft's direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon. The study has been published in this week's edition of the journal Nature. Data from Cassini's cosmic dust analyzer show the grains expelled from fissures, known as tiger stripes, are relatively small and usually low in salt far away from the moon. Closer to the moon's surface, Cassini

At the company's own Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote at the Moscone West center in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the next generation of software products from Apple. Apple unveiled Lion, the new version of their Mac OS X operating system for desktop and laptop computers that brings new features to the software. They also demonstrated iOS 5, a new version of the operating system that powers iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads. Alongside both announcements, Jobs also announced a new iCloud service to sync data among a

YouTube on Thursday announced that a new section of its free online video editor is now hosting content released under Creative Commons licenses. Videos licensed under Creative Commons may be reused by anyone, including for commercial purposes, so long as the reusers credit the original creators of those videos. A software engineer at the video sharing company said that their video editor would hold 10,000 Creative Commons videos, and that they would be working with organizations like C-SPAN, Public.Resource.org, Voice of America, and Al Jaze

Ferenc Mádl, President of Hungary from August 4, 2000 to August 5, 2005, died aged 80 on Sunday. During his time in office, Mádl became co-chairman of the World Justice Project and was recognized for his work in securing peace and solidarity in Europe. Mádl studied law at Budapest's Eötvös Loránd University, graduating in 1955. He went on to work in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences before becoming head of its law department. After a career in law, Mádl entered politics, becoming a minister without portfolio in the first post-communist governm

The Expedition 27 crew returned to Earth safely from the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday. The crew landed in Kazakhstan aboard the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft, the same craft they launched on last December. The crew, consisting of commander Dmitri Kondratyev and flight engineers Catherine Coleman and Paolo Nespoli, spent approximately five months in space aboard the ISS. After landing, recovery teams helped the crew exit their Soyuz capsule and adjust to surface gravity again. While Kondratyev returned to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Traini

Pope Benedict XVI spoke with astronauts aboard the International Space Station yesterday, marking the first time a pope has conversed with astronauts in orbit. Organized by the European Space Agency (ESA), the call originated from the Vatican Library at 7:11 am Eastern time. German ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter, president of the Italian Space Agency Enrico Saggese, and General Giuseppe Bernardis of the Italian Air Force were also in the room at the Vatican. Aboard the spacecraft were Italian, U.S., and Russian crew members of the Endeavour STS-

A suspected gunman has been taken into custody today after a university in Missouri, U.S. was locked down when he entered the campus with an AK-47 assault rifle. Cody Nathaniel Willcoxon reportedly arrived at Missouri University of Science and Technology around 9:00 a.m. CDT (14:00 UTC) Thursday morning after shooting at officers in a police chase. Officials say no one has been injured after Willcoxon—described as a Caucasian male with sandy blonde hair—entered McNutt Hall, a building on the campus. He had earlier escaped from police custody a

Civil liberties campaigners have reacted angrily to the announcement that the largest police force in Britain has purchased a revolutionary computer system which will allow them to track everything a person does online in a three-dimensional graphic. The Metropolitan Police service, responsible for policing London, announced the purchase of Geotime, a computer program which can correlate information from satellites, mobile phones, social networking websites, IP logs and financial transactions. The software is already used by the U.S. military.