It's the Moon's fault we're getting so hot!

Texas Republican asks: can we fix the moon’s orbit to fight climate change?

The Texas Republican congressman Louie Gohmert has asked a senior US government official if changing the moon’s orbit around the Earth, or the Earth’s orbit around the sun, might be a solution for climate change.

Bizarrely, the question was not posed to anyone from Nasa or even the Pentagon. Instead it was asked of a senior forestry service official during a House natural resources committee hearing on Tuesday.

Speaking with Jennifer Eberlien, associate deputy chief of the National Forest Service, Gohmert asked if it was possible to alter the orbits of the moon, or the Earth, as a way of combating climate change.

“I understand from what’s been testified to the Forest Service and the BLM [Bureau of Land Management], you want very much to work on the issue of climate change,” Gohmert said, adding that a past director of Nasa had once told him that orbits of the moon and the Earth were indeed changing.

“We know there’s been significant solar flare activity, and so … is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the moon’s orbit, or the Earth’s orbit around the sun?” Gohmert asked. “Obviously that would have profound effects on our climate.”

Saturday Stupidity...

Banks gone wild. Or at least completely bonkers. What's theirs is theirs, what's yours is theirs....

Methane, the new oxygen!

How safe are BPA-free plastics? Who knows?

Does our solar system have a giant gas planet four times bigger than Jupiter hiding out in the Oort Cloud?

Snape and Lily Potter.

Concern over our GMO foods.  And pesticides travel.

Well if the Pacific Ocean is already radioactive, why not let them frack it too?

But I repeat myself.

Tetris to torture.

Why we love Tetris.

Make your own solar system.

Clinging to their guns... so they can take down the government...

Dryer sheets are filled with toxic chemicals?

Mars mystery 'flower'.

A letter to Kathryn Bigelow on Zero Dark Thirty's apology for torture

Vote. Then stuff to look at after voting.

The complete youtubed War of the Roses (1965)... all eight hours of it.  Not sure if I want to start....

Bulldozing Mecca?

Chart to keep track of all the Obama conspiracies...

Looks like the Germans won....

Uh oh....VOYAGER 1 DETECTS WEIRDNESS AT SOLAR SYSTEM EDGE

Wow, China.

Time-lapse video: Space shuttle Endeavour’s trek across L.A.

Don't think an umbrella will help ....

This animation from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico plots the positions of all the known asteroids in the solar system in 1980, and adds new ones as they are discovered. The pace and patterns of asteroid discovery give a neat visual illustration of the history of solar system exploration.

New asteroids appear in flashes of white, to make them easy to pick out. The final color codes for how close the object comes to Earth: Asteroids that cross Earth’s orbit are shown in red, “Earth approachers” that come to 1.3 times the Earth-sun distance are yellow, and all others are green. The bunches of new asteroids follow Earth in its orbit, usually in the region directly opposite the sun (that is, in the Earth’s night sky). Some clusters appear on the line between Earth and Jupiter, the side effects of surveys looking for Jovian moons.

In the mid-1990s, the pace of discovery picks up, showing the results of automated sky surveys. By 2001, the area just outside the orbit of Mars is filled in by a bright green ring of asteroids, and it keeps getting denser.

The beginning of 2010 brings a new pattern of discovery, with new asteroids fanning out on either side of the Earth. This new pattern is thanks to the Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), an infrared space telescope that is expected to find hundreds of new asteroids by seeking their heat rather than their light.

And to follow up the theme:

Top 5 Ways the Universe Could Wipe Out Humankind

Update... this guy has waaaaaayyyyy too much fun with a simulated asteroid strike:

Mars has proof of ancient lakes and rivers

And still has ice. And now apparently Venus had them....

Our solar system really went through a major drought and didn't recover, didn't it?



Update:
Mars Flight Simulation: 6 Men Endure 105 Days Of Isolation In Simulated Flight

MOSCOW -- Russian engineers broke a red wax seal and six men emerged from a metal hatch after 105 days of isolation in a mock spacecraft, still smiling after testing the stresses that space travelers may face on the journey to Mars.

Sergei Ryazansky, the captain of the six-man crew, told reporters at a Moscow research institute near the Kremlin on Tuesday that the most difficult thing was knowing that instead of making the 172-million mile (276-million kilometer) journey they were locked in a windowless module of metal canisters the size of railway cars.

The men, chosen from 6,000 applicants, were paid euro15,000 ($20,987) each to be sealed up in the mock space capsule since March 31_ cut off almost entirely from the outside world.

They had no television or Internet and their only link to the outside world was communications with the experiment's controllers -- who also monitored them via TV cameras -- and an internal e-mail system. Communications with the outside world had 20-minute delays to imitate a real space flight.