Cosmos 2251 was an ordinary satellite designed to transmit signals across the vast Russian landmass. Then something happened to Cosmos. It may have sprung a small leak; perhaps it struck a tiny asteroid or a piece of debris. Nobody knows for sure, but for one reason or another, Cosmos drifted off course. NASA noticed that the orbits of Cosmos and Iridium were bringing the two satellites closer to each other all the time: two intact satellites had collided head on. The resulting explosion was catastrophic, generating a massive cloud of cosmic debris. Experts calculate that debris will now strike one of the 900 active satellites in LEO every two or three years. For the first time, junk is the single biggest risk factor to equipment in some orbits. The reason: debris is now so dense that objects will continue to crash into each other, creating even more objects, expanding the rubbish cloud geometrically. Each time an astronaut lost a bolt or a wrench, the object would take its place in the debris cloud. The Soviet Union may have been the most egregious polluter. In the 1970s and ’80s, it launched 32 radar satellites, designed to track the positions of U.S. Navy ships, each powered by its own nuclear reactor. When one object slams into another, they splinter into hundreds of pieces, each moving like a projectile at high speed. These objects in orbit cause a lot of accidents to occur. Making it more difficult for scientist to maintain and operate satellites. I didn’t think that debris like that could stay in the planets orbit. I thought that it would have to burn up or something like that. I wonder how much debris is really up there, and who we can manage to keep them away for satellites.

I always wanted to read an article on what heavy metal really does to people, because everyone I know that are anti-metal think that that kind of music is just bad for you. They say its Satan’s music and you’ll go crazy listening to that music. Well I thought this article was interesting because of the outcomes of the results. Some studies have found that individuals become more hostile, aggressive or angry after listening to heavy metal music, whereas others have found no aggressive response. Some researchers have even found that subjects who were angry to begin with become happier, calmer and more relaxed after listening to heavy metal when it is their preferred musical genre. I am a person that releases a lot of emotions thought music (I can’t go anywhere without my iPod), and I know that metal is possible the most complex music to understand. They also do studies on suicide, academic performance, intelligence, risk taking, and drug, but the result were likely due to aspects of personality or environment (such as high stress) rather than any direct effects of the music itself. I love this article and thought one part was hilarious. A student named David Merrill subjected mice to the music of a heavy metal band called Anthrax 24-hours a day to discover how it would affect their ability to learn new things, but instead of completing Merrill’s maze, the heavy metal mice all killed one another. HA HA HA HA HA

Between Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, the Crown is 10 million acres of the West as it once was, and as it would have been. The effects of global warming are magnified two to three times in the Crown. Now winter snow melts nearly a month earlier in the Crown than it did just a century ago. Unseasonable warmth is a problem for hares for a not-immediately-obvious reason: it isn’t the heat itself but what it does to the single most important constant in the Crown—the snow. The hare being one of the largest perennial food prizes in the ecosystem, snowshoe hares have just one good trick—turning white in winter, brown the rest of the year. This means that a snow-white hare will end up sitting on brown earth—and have no idea. Snowshoe hares, a de-fault prey species for nearly all predators in the Crown, cling to this protected setting, and where the hares are, so are the lynxes. But in a fast-decoupling world, expecting snowshoe hares to survive by adaptation is like trying to engineer a genetic jackpot.  If the hare can’t evolve and create a better niche than then hare will have no other choice but to become extinct. If the hare were to become extinct, I wonder how many other species would go on a decline because of the hare. But the major problem isn’t the high population of the lynx or wolves. The major cause is what we as people are doing to our environment. We are contributing too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If we can somehow manage our reliance on fossil fuels, we can help our environment and the animals that call it home.

 Forty years can weather a memory like soft sandstone, but certain that people everywhere were similarly excited. After all, there were several thousand print, radio, and TV journalists there that day, reporting the event as it was happening second by second, minutia by minutia, in hundreds of languages and fonts, to the farthest corners of the planet. Impossible for anyone to be unmoved by the courage of these three men; impossible not to be awed by the skills and ingenuity of the tens of thousands of engineers and technicians who built that rocket and that spaceship; impossible not to admire America’s technological prowess. There were critics, back in 1961, when President John F. Kennedy committed the U.S. to “achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth,” who ridiculed the idea as a stunt, a day-late/dollar-short project to negate the Soviets’ earlier triumphs of Sputnik. Apollo 11 set sail for the moon on July 16, 1969, a Wednesday while Apollo 11‘s launch fit this process nicely, its intended landing—on Sunday, July 20—did not. Thus it was almost 11 p.m. before Armstrong opened the small hatch of the lunar lander and backed down its ladder. Aldrin followed some 20 minutes later and the two men ran through their paces: planting an American flag, setting out scientific instruments and gathering up almost 50 pounds of lunar rocks and pulverized moon matter. Well I loved this article because of the way the editor ended the article. He says “we came, we saw, we walked away”. To me that makes’ a lot of sense, because that’s exactly what we did with the 40 years after accomplishing a great feat. I think we should have continued our quest for answering question about other things other than on earth. We should have taken the Apollo 11 as a stepping stone for something far greater. I have a lot of respect for all the scientist and astronauts who participated in this historic achievement.  A trip to space to space would be fun and scary at the same time. The fun part about being in space would have to be the no gravity part. I would do like 500 push up and not feel a single thing. In contrast to the fun, the scary part would have to be the launch and return. I would be so afraid looking striaight up and seeing nothing but space.

Shekila Kemp received notice last year that she was facing eviction from her Bronx apartment for failure to pay rent. She fought the case, but there was a serious problem with the paperwork filed against her in the Housing Court. The Bronx lawyer who claimed to represent the landlord, Robert Klein, is listed in the court paper as having an office at 2925 Mickle Avenue in the Bronx. There are no Robert Klein’s at that address registered to practice law. In fact, the authorities now suspect Mr. Klein does not exist. The case raises questions about the role a man named Curtis Brooks played in seeking Ms. Kemp’s eviction. Mr. Brooks lives, and works, at 2925 Mickle Avenue, the office address listed for Mr. Klein. Mr. Brooks, who says Mr. Klein does exist and that he had helped him with similar eviction cases. Claims Mr. Klein never made any money on the cases, but took the cases to establish his reputation as a housing lawyer. In addition, there was another case brought upon Ms. Kemp for her eviction. This case one was from the real share owner of the co-op apartment. Ms. Kemp was ultimately evicted, but feels that the two cases brought upon her were unjust. Well reading this article it makes you have to wonder who was to blame in this situation. I think Mr. Brooks created this whole scam by creating this imaginary housing lawyer, Robert Klein. If that is true he should be brought to court to face charges for Ms. Kemp’s case  and the other 125 cases the claimed to be in connection with.

In Iran, many protesters are protesting last week’s presidential election. Iranian authorities declared a landslide victory for the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In Iran’s theocracy, the supreme leader has vast power over the military, the judiciary and broadcasting. The Iranian people demand social and economic freedoms, which have spark friction between protesters and government authorities. The Iranian government is trying to hide the civil unrest in the country. Banning coverage of demonstrations, arresting journalist, threatening bloggers and trying to block websites like Facebook and Twitter, which are outlets for information about the confrontation. Protests accuse authorities of arresting prominent figures, including a former prime minister. Well I’m wondering about all this controversy in the Middle East. What’s going to happen next? Well I’m wondering about all the different scenarios and the outcome doesn’t look promising. I think about it and wonder if someone has a solution, because I believe that civil unrest can only have a negative outcome. In the article it say a senior prosecutor in the central province of Isfahan, went so far as to say protesters could be executed under Islamic law. Well that just about takes it to a new level, don’t you think? I know standing up for what you believe in is righteous and everything, but willing to die for it is just a whole new threat on the confrontation.