NASA is spending $63 million per astronaut to send them to space on Russian rockets. But a pair of Toronto teens did it for $400. Okay, their astronaut was made of plastic and stood just a couple of inches tall. And he only made it about a quarter of the way to the internationally accepted boundary of outer space which is 62 miles or more than 328,000 feet in altitude.

So let’s say he went to nearer space like so many iPhones and other (ahem) electronics before him. Nevertheless this near space adventure captured the hearts and minds of thousands as well as some amazing images of the edge of space.

Gripping tightly to a Canadian flag, the first Lego man flew almost 16 miles straight up. The two teens who piloted the plastic man’s ride documented the hour-and-a-half-long journey, which has turned into a YouTube hit. And in just a few days Lego man’s Facebook page has gained thousands of fans.

Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad Show Lego Man at Press Conference in Toronto

Muhammad was inspired by something similar at MIT and other YouTube videos. But he also gives credit to his Earth and Space science teacher, Steven Tors.

The Lego man made it to 85,000 feet — in the middle stratosphere – before the weather balloon popped and a homemade parachute returned him and his precious video cargo to Earth.

Four cameras — two still and two video — captured all the images of Lego man’s trip to the edge of space, which took 97 minutes. In addition to 97 minutes of video capturing the entire experience, Ho and Muhammad snapped over 1,500 digital images. They also included a cellphone with a GPS tracker app in the styrofoam cargo container housing the electronics.

Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad Retrieve Lego Man after Trip to Edge of Space

Muhammad says, “It sent us the coordinates of its position and that’s basically how we tracked it down.” But for an hour of the decent the GPS tracker didn’t transmit any data. But then at about 6,000 feet the tracker started recording again, allowing the teens to find the Lego Man 97 miles from their Toronto area launch site.

In preparing for the flight the Agincourt Collegiate Institute seniors say that after filling a 12-foot weather balloon with helium, doing some final instrument checks, they launched the Lego man who rose at a rapid 27-feet per second.

But they had to wait a week to see if their experiment was a success. When they retrieved the Lego man the following weekend (it was too dark when they initially tried to find him and school prevented them from reacquiring their citizen science project right away) they say they jumped for joy. But they were scared and excited at the same time, wondering if the cameras captured good images.

They did.

Lego Man Flies to Space (almost), Curvature of the Earth in the Background

Muhammad says, “When we first saw those photos it really makes us think what we are really doing to our Earth and what it is when you look at it from the outside. And, it was really inspiring and emotional too.”

They say they both got goosebumps and were grateful to be able to look at the Earth from a different vantage point.

But these two budding space engineers are not the first to send a weather balloon to the edge of space just to see what it looks like.

Boy Scout troops and pioneering pranksters have been equipping weather balloons with payload containers housing inexpensive video cameras and GPS units and floating them to the edge of space for a few years — since the equipment has become inexpensive enough to be considered disposable if something goes awry.

The next goal for the two Toronto 17-year-olds is to complete 12th Grade.

As a precaution planes that travel over the North Pole are being rerouted. Satellites are bracing for a direct hit and technicians are watching energy grids with unblinking eyes. The reason for all the hub-bub is a big solar storm. The Space Weather Prediction Center issued a warning on Monday when the sun released a coronal mass ejection and sent it hurtling toward Earth.

At first blush, the NOAA-run prediction center called it the worst solar storm since May 2005. But this morning as the

Sunspot 1402 Releases Large Coronal Mass Ejection Jan. 23

So if you’re cell phone isn’t working quite right for the next couple of days, you’ll know why.

But most people will remember this solar storm because it’s going to produce an incredible light show as the Northern Lights and Southern Lights dance across the sky at lower latitudes.

Reports of stunning Northern Lights visible in England, Ireland and Scotland are already being reported. More pics here.

The space weather prediction center created a map, estimating where the auroras will be visible. And it looks like anyone north of Idaho in the U.S. will be able to see a spectacular show as solar radiation smashes into Earth’s magnetic field, releasing light in the process.

Earth Sky recommends, “To see the aurora, you’ll need a nice clear sky with no obscuring clouds. It’s also good to have no moon, which, luckily, is what we have tonight. The moon is traveling across the sky with the sun today and won’t be visible again until tomorrow night (January 25, 2012) when, by the way, it’ll be spectacularly beautiful near Venus in the west after sunset. Finally, you should do yourself a favor and ride half an hour or so beyond the lights of the city to view tonight’s aurora. You might be able to glimpse it from within the city, but more likely city lights will drown the aurora from view.”

The sun is in an active phase of its 11-year solar cycle. More frequent solar storms are likely as the sun reaches is peak activity next year before slowly settling down again.

Rating Solar Storms

If it’s December it’s time to count the birds. For 112 years the National Audubon Society has been documenting the avian world with its annual Christmas Bird Count. The oldest citizen science (and longest running) project now utilizes the bird-spotting expertise of over 60,000 volunteers from around the country.

The task is simple. Go outside and count birds. Then add your observations the massive bird database, doing your part for science.

In Vermont, the annual Christmas bird count is a time to spot snowy owls and other winter rarities. But for biologist Kent McFarland from the Vermont Center for Ecostudies it’s more about familiar favorites like the tufted titmouse.

He says, “I’m really into whats going on over time with the common birds.”

Tufted Titmouse Forages in the Snow

He says, “The tufted titmouse is giving us an indicator here that yeah there is stuff going on across the landscape.”

The Audubon Society has been tracking the species of bird off and on since 1927 so there is a reliable dataset over a long period of time.

McFarland says, “I knew it was going to be an interesting bird to talk about.”

The annual Christmas count continues through January 5. So if you like birds or are looking for a fun family activity, head outside and start counting birds. Taking time to stop and watch the birds is a great way to appreciate nature this Holiday season.

NOTE: There is a $5 fee to participate in the Christmas Bird Count for all field participants aged 19 or older.

Principia Mathematica, Original Manuscript

Cambridge University Library houses the Newton Papers, which includes the 17th Century thinker’s papers, research and the writings. In a combined grant with the Newton Project at University of Sussex, Cambridge is unveiling many never before seen writings by the man who revolutionized science in the 17th Century.

Grant Young helped digitize the Newton Papers and says that before the works went online this week researchers would have to write to the university librarian and get special permission to go to Cambridge to look at the documents. Now, people from all over the world can see the same documents, written in tight, tiny prose from the comfort of their own homes.

Cambridge librarian Anne Jarvis says, “Cambridge University Library contains evidence of some of the greatest ideas and discoveries over two millennia. We want to make our collections accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world with an internet connection and a thirst for knowledge.”

Since 1998 the Newton Project has created a place for Newton’s work online. It now contains 4.8 billion words comprising over 130 of Newton’s documents, correspondence and notebooks.

Isaac Newton Notes on What Becomes Calculus

The project to put Cambridge’s science superstars online began last year and will continue through 2013 thanks to a generous donation from Dr. Leonard Polonsky.

The Newton Papers is the first foray for the university but will be followed by other science luminaries. In addition to the extensive Newton collections, the library holds the papers of Charles Darwin, Lord Kelvin, Adam Sedgwick, J.J. Thomson, Ernest Rutherford, James Clerk Maxwell and Sir George Gabriel Stokes. The Library also holds the archives of Cambridge’s famous Cavendish Laboratory and is the repository of the Royal Greenwich Observatory archives, which includes the papers of the Astronomers Royal and the Board of Longitude.

Young tells the BBC, “Anyone, wherever they are, can see at the click of a mouse how Newton worked and how he went about developing his theories and experiments.”

The university says that another 8,000 pages of the Newton Papers will be added over the next few months so the archive will be grow over time until most of Newton’s works are online.

Last week, a Minnesota science class got more than they bargained for when a combustible demonstration being done by the physical sciences teacher caught chemicals on a lab table on fire and burned several students, including 15-year-old Dane Neuberger.

The burned student says, “I started screaming and he was on me fast to put the fire out and my shirt and face were on fire.” The 9th Grade teacher, Matt Achor wrapped Neuberger in a fire blanket, smothering the flames as soon as they erupted.

The student was sitting in the front row of his science class with three others when a methanol experiment went terribly awry, putting him in the hospital with second-degree burns covering his hands, face and neck. Luckily the resilient teen is stable and could be released by mid December and doctors say he may not require skin grafts and could have no permanent scarring.

But the Maple Grove Junior High School teacher who conducted the experiment is on paid administrative leave until the school can conduct a full investigation of the accident.

Neuberger’s father wants the school to implement stricter safety policies governing science labs.

A week after Thanksgiving students gathered in Mr. Achor’s class for a final at the end of the term. After the test was over the teacher rewarded the students with a dangerous display, demonstrating how methanol vaporizes into the air and becomes combustible. This demonstration is dangerous and should only be conducted under the proper circumstances. And even then, something can go wrong.

In this case, left over chemicals from another experiment dotted the lab table where the combustion experiment was being done. The flash of methanol flame didn’t stay in the five gallon water jug as planned. It escaped and mixed with the chemical residue on the lab table, burning the students closest to the flash fire.

Neuberger says it caught his shirt and some papers on fire. A fire extinguisher in the room was used to stop the burning papers.

The school district says the school is no longer conducting the lab experiment that led to the students getting burned.

The Internet has about 300 videos of this experiment being done, including one by science educator Steve Spangler. He suggests the demonstration makes a great classroom experiment because it allows a teacher to show students how combustion works. They get to see a flash of fire and an impressive spectacle. But they also learn that the fire which heats the vaporized methanol releases carbon dioxide and leaves water as a byproduct.

The latest additions to the periodic table of the elements finally have placeholder names. It was earlier this year when elements 114 and 116 were admitted onto the coveted list of elements. At the time they were referred to by their numerical Latin ununquadium and ununhexium.

They might be called flerovium (Fl) and livermorium (Lv), unless the public can come up with better names. Now that the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has accepted these two names, the public gets to weigh in on these heavy elements.

The IUPAC and its physics equivalent have spent years sifting through data and in June decided to admit the two new elements which were jointly created by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley and at the Russian Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna.

But naming the elements has been just about as difficult as confirming their existence. Each lab decided it would get to name one of the elements.

The team at Livermore submitted three names and out of that Livermorium became one contender. Since Dubnium already occupies the 105th element on the periodic table, the Russian team decided to submit their suggested name based on the scientist who started the lab, Georgii Flerov. Thus Flerovium was submitted as the other contender.

For the next five months, the IUPAC will take suggestions from the public, allowing citizens to get in touch with their inner scientist. Anyone can comment on these names or raise objections before the two selected names become official.

Terry Renner, the chemistry union’s executive director says, “It’s a desire to be fair and recognize everyone’s right to contribute as a scientist.”

And silly or serious all suggestions will be considered. To submit your thoughts about the proposed elements Livermorium and Flerovium leave a comment below.

After the five-month public comment period, the inorganic chemistry division will review the comments made and either revise the recommendations or recommend approval by the full IUPAC Council.

Dr. Renner says that barring any naming issues that arise in the meantime the new elements will be confirmed and officially become part of the periodic table next May.

Yves “Jetman” Rossy is a Swiss aviator and engineer who has created personalize jet flight. In 2008 he became the first person to fly independently without the aid of an airplane. He just had a fixed wing attached to his back.

Jetman, Yves Rossy Soars above The Alps

He’s been perfecting his airplane-less wing for 15 years and since 2010 has been a regular sight high above the Swiss Alps. Earlier this year he made news by flying himself across the Grand Canyon.

Jetman in Formation with Breitling Jet Team

Before attempting his latest stunt he returned from the Abu Dhabi Science Festival where he gave a talk and soared over the United Arab Emirates, inspiring a new generation of jet enthusiasts.

After his exhilarating run with the jet planes recently, Rossy told CNN, “Hey, I’m flying almost naked with nothing. But I am with jets and fast.” And he describes his experience as, “Like unreal.”

Jetman Races Two Fighter Jets

For his latest feat he dropped from a helicopter and then turned on his jets to zip into formation with the larger jets. But in the past he has begun his flights from other airplanes and even a hot air balloon.

Jetman Leads the Flight Formation

An aircraft carrier-sized asteroid is hurtling through our cosmic neighborhood. 2005 YU55 is going to be zipping by on November 8 in what scientists are calling a close encounter. The asteroid is not going to hit Earth but it will be about 15 percent closer to Earth than the moon, making it quite an astronomical event.

This is the first time that scientists will have a front row seat to view an asteroid that they know is on close approach.

Barbara Wilson, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tells the Daily Mail in the UK, “While near-Earth objects of this size have flown within a lunar distance in the past, we did not have the foreknowledge and technology to take advantage of the opportunity.”

For the occasion NASA is pulling out the big radio telescope guns to get a clear picture of what will whiz by next week. Radar, visual and infrared imaging will follow the track of the big space rock and gather as much information as possible. This will help scientists better track its course, which does pose a minor threat to Earth. The next time this asteroid will be close to Earth will be in another hundred years.

NASA says, “Although 2005 YU55 is in an orbit that regularly brings it to the vicinity of Earth (and Venus and Mars), the 2011 encounter with Earth is the closest this space rock has come for at least the last 200 years.”

The next time a rock of this size will buzz Earth will be in 2028.

Scientists have been following 2005 YU55 and for six years and have been preparing for its near-Earth arrival for months. Generally space-based telescopes and instruments study asteroids up close. But this will be a “science target of opportunity” for spacecraft Earth to scan the asteroid.

Dr. Wilson says, “When it flies past, it should be a great opportunity for science instruments on the ground to get a good look.”

Starting November 4, the Deep Space Network antennas in Goldstone, California will begin tracking the asteroid from the ground. Then on November 8 — the day the asteroid makes its closest pass of Earth — the giant radio telescope at Arecibo Planetary Radar Facility in Puerto Rico will begin bouncing radio waves off the giant rock to understand its composition, size, surface features and other physical properties.

Asteroid 2005 YU55 Approach Animation, Showing Relation of Earth and The Moon (click image to view)

The closest 2005 YU55 will get to Earth is about .85 lunar distances or 201,000 miles. That distance is not enough to have any affect on anything here on Earth, including tides or tectonic plates.

Radar observations made in April 2010 by the Arecibo telescope show the asteroid to be about 1,300-feet wide and sphere shaped. It slowly spins, with one rotation about every 18 hours. The asteroid’s surface is likely dark. And amateur astronomers who want to get a glimpse at 2005 YU55 will need a telescope with an aperture of 6 inches or larger.

NASA Goldstone Antenna Points Skyward

The Arecibo radar is 30 times more sensitive than Goldstone but not fully steerable. Goldstone is fully steerable but not as sensitive. Together, the two instruments are complimentary.

JPL radar astronomer Steve Ostro says, “The closer the target, the better the echo.” Using the radio wave echos astronomers generate detailed three-dimensional models of the asteroid, define its rotation and get a good idea of its internal density distribution. Dr. Ostro says, “You can even make out surface features. A good echo can give us a spatial resolution finer than 10 meters.”

2005 YU55 will be close enough for astronomers to get high resolution, somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 meters, which means scientists will be able to see any features that are just over six feet across on the surface of the asteroid, including any moons that might be accompanying the big rock.

The last time a space rock as big came this close to Earth was in 1976, although astronomers did not know about the flyby at the time.

NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground- and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called “Spaceguard,” discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them, and plots their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

Generally people in the far northern latitudes get to see the solar wind dancing with the magnetic field around Earth. But because of increased solar activity, the northern lights have been more visible further south, including Alabama, Georgia and even Florida.

An automated NASA camera that takes a picture of the sky every minute in Huntsville, Alabama captured 20 minutes of the vibrant red and green aurora borealis.

Northern Lights in Arkansas, courtesy of Brian Emfinger, realclearwx.com

Arkansas photographer Brian Emfinger called the view “extremely vivid, the most vivid I have ever seen.” And he says this is only the second time he’s seen the northern lights so far south in a decade.

NASA scientist Bill Cooke found the aurora photos in the Alabama camera’s archive and posted them on the Marshall Space Flight Center’s blog. He says, “They are very rare events and we don’t see them this far south that often.”

Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado monitors solar activity and solar storms, which trigger the colorful auroras. Space weather chief Bob Rutledge says that the solar storm that created the vivid light show was only in the moderate range and shouldn’t have been visible south of Iowa. He also says the storm was unusual because it arrived 8 hours ahead of schedule.

An aurora begins when the sun blasts a magnetic solar wind toward Earth. The wind hits the Earth’s magnetic field, compressing it. That compression excites electrons of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere. When those excited electrons return to their normal state, they release a photon burst seen as red and green colored light.

The most commonly seen northern lights color is green, often seen in nighttime pictures of Norway and the Arctic. Green results from excited oxygen.

Monday night’s display featured the not often seen red light. In fact, most of the sightings in northern Michigan described seeing a blood-red sky. Red auroras also result from excited oxygen atoms. The difference in color comes from the altitude of the excited atoms returning to their ground state. Red northern lights occur higher in the atmosphere while green is at a lower altitude.

The strongest color emissions from nitrogen are in the deep violet end of the rainbow spectrum, which are generally invisible to the human eye. A Nitrogen excited state can also create a red lower border to the northern lights.

According to NOAA this storm was classified as a G2 on a scale of G1-G5. It was spectacular but didn’t pose a threat to satellites or power grids. As solar activity increases in this new 11-year solar cycle more solar storms will give way to more brilliant sky shows. And some will even be seen as far south as the Gulf Coast.

So keep your eyes peeled.

For leaf peepers Fall is the time for the best leaves. They turn from bright green to yellow, then orange and if the conditions are right red and purple too. But what makes fall colors so spectacular?

Science can explain.

First just about everybody knows that chlorophyll gives leaves their green color. But chlorophyll is more than just a molecule that gives plants a green pigment. Chlorophyll absorbs sunlight and uses its energy to create carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. Trees drink in water through their roots and they breathe in carbon dioxide from the air.

That process we all know is called photosynthesis. It’s what all land-based and many sea-based plants rely on for food. That’s why we call leaves nature’s food factories.

Like all things in nature plants and trees are built for efficiency. As the hours of sunlight decrease during the second half of the year deciduous trees begin to conserve energy so they don’t freeze during the winter. They accomplish this by shedding their leaves. But each tree doesn’t consciously decide to drop the excess baggage. That’s also part of the process which leads to fall foliage being so brilliant.

Before dropping their leaves, trees slow down production in their food factories by producing less chlorophyll. That allows other colors to become visible. First, the yellow pigment which was there all along begins to emerge. That is created by molecules called carotenoids. The two common leaf carotenoids are carotene and xanthophyll.

They are the pigments that gives carrots and sweet potatoes their color. Carotenoids are masked by chlorophyll until fall approaches. When the chlorophyll production slows down carotenoids become visible. They are responsible for yellow and orange leaves.

Ever present but hidden by other colors is another pigment called anthocyanin. Anthocyanin is part of a third pigment family called flavonoids. Lycopene is a flavonoid that gives tomatoes their red color. But anthocyanin acts as the natural sunscreen for plants, blocking harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun. As chlorophyll production shuts down for the year, anthocyanin production ramps up. These give tree leaves their deep red, magenta and purple colors. That increase in anthocyanin is in response to surging sugar concentrations, building up in the leaves.

That glucose glut tends to concentrate where leaf meets stem, making the extra weight a target point for wind or rain to knock the leaves from the trees. After all, that’s the trees’ goal. Get rid of the leaves so they can survive the sunless winter without dying of starvation or freezing to death.

While trees go through this incredibly complicated process to get ready for winter, we marvel at their transformation from vibrant green blowing in the mid-summer sun to yellows, oranges, reds and purples buffeted by fall storms. Perhaps we watch in awe as the slow and steady march of time goes on before our very eyes.

Key Leaf Chemistry

The color of leaf we get is highly dependent on the types and amounts of pigments that are present. Internal plant chemical interactions, especially from variable soil acidity or pH level can have a dramatic impact on leaf color.

With the steadily decreasing length of day and cooler temperatures as fall approaches trees biologically trigger the formation of a corky layer of cells called the abcission layer across the base of the leaf where it attaches to the tree. This formation gradually decreases the supply of water and minerals to the leaf, reduces the manufacture of chlorophyll and traps sugars in the leaf.

In some trees, like maples, glucose is trapped in the leaves after photosynthesis stops. Sunlight during the day and the cool nights of autumn cause the leaves turn this glucose into a red color. With enough sunny days, those anthocyanins turn leaves bright reds and purples.

The muted brown color of oak leaves is made from wastes left in those leaves.

Why is so hard to predict when the leaves will be the best and brightest? In short, it depends on the weather.

Warm wet springs, summers that don’t scorch and bright sunny fall days with cool nights all lend to the brilliance of fall color. The degree of visual splendor and leaf vibrancy requires a lot of variables lining up just right. And when they do, the beauty is unparalleled.

Phenology of Fall Foliage

Phenology is the study of the timing of nature. This ranges from the dates that tulips bloom in the spring to the fall migration of Canadian geese. And it definitely includes watching the leaves turn color in the fall.

But scientists have been struggling to find a direct link between later leaf drops and climate change in the U.S. Europe and Asia have been conducting studies that seem to point to later fall foliage. But it’s been a difficult case to prove in the U.S. Part of that reason could be the wildly fluctuating weather from year to year.

A wet spring, followed by the deluge of Hurricane Irene, a mind-summer drought and normal-ish fall have trees in New England all confused. Some tree leaves are bypassing fall colors, turning brown and dropping early. Some plant biologists believe that’s due to a fungus that relished the wetness and took hold.

Those factors make identifying long term trends difficult at best.

Several organizations are enlisting the help of the public to collect data in hopes of finding the signal for such change in the noise or fluctuating weather.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

“There are signs everywhere that things are changing — how is the question. Some species are being affected while others are not,” said Esperanza Stancioff of the University of Maine cooperative extension and Maine Sea Grant, who has trained 195 citizen scientists to enter data online in her “Signs of the Season” phenology project.

To assist both backyard observers and researchers alike, the National Phenology Network has spent the last four years coming up with standards to be used by observers in reporting foliage color changes. Final tweaks on the uniform reporting standards should be completed in a few weeks, Weltzin said.

Another part of the effort to study climate change through the lens of fall foliage is being conducted from space by the U.S. Geological Survey utilizing satellites from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Right now, the effort is focused on Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, where scientists are attempting to understand the factors that go into the metrics to ensure proper analysis of the photos taken from above, said John W. Jones, a research geographer with the USGS outside of Washington, D.C.

It may be the fastest invasion of a slow-moving creature but people in Miami-Dade County are taking care not to mess with the new snail in town.

The east African land snail is making a home in south Florida and causing all sorts of problems. They reproduce at an exponential rate and grow fast. They slime everything they touch, destroy most plants and even eat the stucco off homes to build up their shells.

But the biggest worry for public officials is the health problems the snails pose. They come fully loaded with worms that can pass to humans by just making skin contact with the slow-moving invaders. The worms can get into the brain and cause a type of meningitis that currently has no cure.

So if you are in the south Florida area, steer clear of giant land snails and if you must touch one, use rubber gloves to protect yourself from a serious illness.

Officials are trying to figure out what will best get rid of the invasive pest.

Richard Gaskalla, director of plant industry at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services says, “It’s us against the snails.”

Here’s what you should know about these snails.

They grow to 10 inches long and four inches wide and are considered one of the most damaging land snails in the world. They eat at least 500 species of plants, lay about 1,200 eggs a year, and can carry a strain of non-fatal meningitis. They are prolific breeders and contain both female and male reproductive organs. And the little house-eating buggers can live as long as nine years.

The outbreak started on September 16, when two sisters waved down a fruit fly inspector conducting a routine check in their neighborhood. They told him that the snails were everywhere. Since local and national agriculture inspectors were alerted ten days ago they have removed over 1,000 snails from a one-square-mile area of Coral Gables.

Some older residents remember the last time there was a giant snail invasion in Miami. It was 1966. After a boy brought three snails back from a trip to Hawaii, his grandmother released them in her garden. It took ten years and $1 million to eradicate the slimy pest and is the only known giant African snail eradication program on record.

Because they are so destructive, the snails are allowed into the U.S. only with special permits and for scientific research.

When an out of control satellite is plummeting to Earth a few minutes makes a big difference. In the case of the decommissioned Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite arriving a few minutes ahead of schedule meant that the two dozen or so pieces that survived re-entry hit a remote part of the South Pacific, near the Christmas Islands, half way between Australia and Hawaii. If the satellite had traveled through the atmosphere a few minutes later and debris could have hit a west coast U.S. city like Seattle.

The much anticipated return of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite ended early Saturday morning as it fell from low-Earth orbit, penetrated the atmosphere and spread a 500-mile debris field of burnt metal. Early reports suggested that pieces of the 6.5-ton satellite landed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean but NASA wasn’t saying where, until Tuesday.

Concerns that it may have hit land had people staring skyward last Friday night, trying to catch a glimpse. By looking up in the sky amateur astronomers and average citizens caught a few meteors and interesting streaks of light.

A man in Carlsbad, New Mexico says it sounded like a bomb going off at his neighbor’s house. When he went outside to look he found searing hot soot covered pieces of metal which he describes as large ball bearings. A three-inch hole in a tin roof was among the evidence that a high-velocity object left as it fell from the sky. But the timing doesn’t line up with the return of the UARS satellite, though local authorities have filed a report with NASA.

NASA won’t say how it figured out the location of the satellite but some speculate that it used missile tracking systems and other military tools to track and locate the spent satellite.

NASA did say that it determined the exact time the satellite entered Earth’s atmosphere because sensors in the U.S. based satellite surveillance network no longer picked up the satellite signal, indicating it was no longer in space.

NASA is still looking for reports of debris sightings from the small islands near the crash zone and also any reports form airplanes or boats in the area. Since the landing site is so remote they believe that it is likely no one actually saw any pieces of the satellite crash into the ocean, which will then make any efforts to recover the space junk more difficult.

If you want to follow the path of the International Space Station or specific satellites still in orbit go to Real Time Satellite Tracking.

For years, scientists have been saying that some of the biggest discoveries in science will come from non-scientists. And now that prediction is showing promise as two teams of online video game players have helped solve the structure for an important enzyme found in the HIV virus.

After medical researchers had repeatedly failed to piece together the structure of a class of enzymes called retroviral proteases, they turned to the biology video game Foldit, an online puzzle that has users score points by folding proteins and ultimately helping science make key advances like this. The protease enzyme plays a critical role in how the AIDS virus matures and multiplies.

In the hunt for AIDS drugs and a vaccine, scientists are focused on blocking these enzymes but until now they have been stuck, trying to figure out what the molecule looks like.

Foldit was created in 2008 by computer scientists at the University of Washington Center for Game Science in collaboration with biochemist David Baker’s lab.

In the last three years the game has evolved. To piece together the retrovirus enzyme structure, Seth Cooper, the game’s co-founder says, “Gamers used a new alignment Tool for the first time to copy parts of known molecules and test their fit in an incomplete model.”

The puzzle they were working on was called “Unsolved Monkey Virus Protein” and within three weeks two teams had solved the problem, which Dr. Baker then took from the 3-D computer world into the real world.

For the monkey virus problem, Foldit players began with a scientific rough draft of the protease enzyme. During three weeks of play, hundreds of teams and individuals generated over a million structure predictions. And the solution, found by the winning team in 10 days, is nearly perfect. It gives Baker and his colleagues all the information they needed to pinpoint the structure down to almost the last atom.

Postdoctoral researcher Firas Khatib says, “It’s the power of citizen science.”

Before Foldit launched, Dr. Baker’s lab created a program called Rosetta@home which allowed computers to run simulated protein folding while the machines sat idle. It worked much like the SETI@home screensaver. Instead of searching for extra terrestrial signals from space it ran quick simulations of protein folding. It used distributed processing to crunch massive amounts of data but it was all automated. The user could just sit back and watch the process unfold.

Foldit came into being after some Rosetta users suggested that the computer was making wrong assumptions because it could only follow a logical path. And the solutions to these complex proteins probably required some intuition and exploration, two things a computer can’t stomach.

Once Dr. Baker’s lab combined the power of its artificial intelligence with human intelligence he stumbled on a winning combination that could lead to a cure for HIV and other diseases.

Foldit Contenders Group and Foldit Void Crushers Group are the two teams that received co-authorship on the protease structure paper which was just published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

A member from the Foldit Contenders named “Mimi” says, “It is a team thing. Everybody contributes.”

And that’s just the motivation Dr. Baker is using to solve the big biological questions.

He says, “Competitive social interaction is a very strong driving force.”

Video all about Foldit (By the end you’ll want to sign up. It’s infectious.)

Surfers are a group of ocean super users. They spend a great deal of time in the water and on top of the waves. They notice slight variations. And they depend on a clean, safe environment to catch a wave and hang ten. As a result they are first responders when it comes to anything encroaching on their territory.

In Hawaii, development stands in the way of surfers chilling in the swells near the Kewalo Basin. Now a group of surfers that has failed to stop a big development project are going to measure the health of the water before construction so there will be a scientific baseline for them to compare. For the Friends of Kewalos, it’s a way to say “I told you so” in advance.

Working with Bob Richmond at the University of Hawaii Kewalo Marine Laboratory, the group bought a $2,000 instrument to measure temperature, salinity, acidity, oxygen levels and dissolved solids. They will continue to take readings regularly to monitor any changes that occur as a result of planned construction to increase the size of the marina.

Dr. Richmond says, “This is all information that really matters for the life in the ocean and also the people who are surfing in the ocean as well.”

Some surfers are worried that a bunch of “stuff” will get dredged up when construction begins and that will foul the crystal blue water where they like to surf. Ron Iwami says, “We figure during construction all the nasty things at the bottom will flow out and go out where we surf.”

Dr. Richmond sees the surfers as a valuable asset and one that has a vested interest in the outcome of this data collection.

Hawaii surfers aren’t the only ones monitoring the world’s waters.

The Surfrider Foundation tracks more than 60 campaigns surfers have going in the U.S. and Canada to make sure the ocean stays surf safe.

Ranging from water monitoring projects in Hawaii to fighting against plastic pollution, surfers are taking an active role in watching out for their waves.

Since 2006 the organization claims 172 victories. While some of those “victories” are to stop utilities from dumping waste or banning oil drilling in surfing waters, many wins involve getting local laws passed to ban plastic bags at grocery stores or to ban Styrofoam food containers.

The organization says it is trying to raise awareness about single-use plastics and clean water.

Ask any surfer and he will tell you the ocean is undergoing a seismic shift. Jellyfish swarms are becoming more common. Algal blooms are turning clear waters murky and choking the oxygen from the water when they die. Oceans are heating up and animal habitats are shifting. There is so much going on in the oceans and just not enough scientists to monitor all the changes.

U.S. surf champion Mary Setterholm says, “Surfing is being in harmony with the ocean.”

With such an intimate relationship with the water, surfers are among the best positioned to watch for significant changes in their surf spots. Perhaps it’s time they start documenting those changes as part of a global ocean change surfer network.

Surf’s up. Now let’s help keep it that way.

A couple of years ago San Diego surfers faced a fouling problem. But theirs was from garbage not construction. Surfers were offered free hepatitis A vaccines because runoff from Mexico and other waste from north of the border was making surfing downright dangerous. Doctors in 2009 warned that the hepatitis levels were high enough to make surfers sick.

Bre Pettis used to be a school teacher in Seattle. Then he began doing weekend projects and podcasting about them for Make: magazine. But when he found 3-D printing he found a home and turned that passion into a company, where he is bringing science fiction-style replicators a step closer to reality.

Now he is democratizing manufacturing by turning a digital model into a physical object, using computer aided design software originally built for the architecture industry.

While moving from 2-D blueprints for buildings to the 3-d models plastic is the medium of choice for the MakerBot for now. Those days of conjuring up a four-course meal with a voice command while cruising through interstellar space are a long, long way off. But 3-D printing is making big strides. A few years ago only engineering departments at universities and a few medical researchers had clunky oversized printers that could make ceramic or plastic models.

Now 3-D printing is moving to the real world, where it has the possibility of turning consumers into creators. The first company called MakerBot Industries began just over two years ago. Now over 5,000 Thing-O-Matics are out in the world, making…well, things.

From shower curtain rings to plastic paperweights and piggybanks, the 3-D printer is turning manufacturing on its head.

For about $1,300 anyone can purchase a Thing-O-Matic, a funky, scruffy-looking box that you assemble. It may not look like much but it might change the way we build everything.

Pettis says, “My mission in life is to provide infrastructure that gives rise to creativity in humans.”

In August, the New York-based company secured $10 million in venture capital to grow the business and create the next generation micro-manufacturing unit.

Those 5,200 Thing-O-Matic owners gather at Thingiverse.com to compare notes, share ideas and show their wares.

According to a new study it could take 1,200 years, 300,000 researchers and $364 billion to identify and catalog all the species on Earth.

New research in the online journal PLoS Biology, a publication of the Public Library of Science uses a new way of calculating just how many plants and animals inhabit Earth. So far of the estimated 8.8 million we have discovered just 1.9 million.

Recent discoveries have been small and weird. They include a psychedelic frogfish, a dime-sized lizard and a blind, hairy lobster found on the ocean floor near Antarctica. Some scientists are actively searching for species to fill in the big gaps on the species pyramid. Others just happen across new species.

Describing the wild world in which we live biologist and study co-author Boris Worm from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia says, “We are fairly ignorant of the complexity and colorfulness of this amazing planet.”

Scientists from the U.S. and Canada who are part of the Census of Marine Life released the study this week. It found the previous estimate of global species a bit too difficult to pin down. The range of 3 million to 100 million didn’t sit well and researchers have been trying to narrow the number.

Using a new computer modeling method Dr. Worm and Camilo Mora from the University of Hawaii now believe the number to be somewhere between 7.5 million and 10.1 million. Even with the more improved method for counting the study admits it could be off by as much as 1.3 million.

In 1758 Carl Linnaeus built the system that is still used today to name, describe and catalog species. In the 253 years since, about 1.25 million species — roughly 1 million on land and 250,000 in the oceans — have been described and entered into central databases. But there are about 700,000 more species that have yet to reach the central databases. They are sitting in limbo between discovery and classification, many waiting patiently in backroom of major museums like the Smithsonian.

Based on the new way of estimating the number of species on Earth, the biologists estimate there are 6.5 million species found on land and 2.2 million or 25 percent living in the ocean depths. They suggest that about 86 percent of all species on land and 91 percent of those in the seas have yet to be discovered, described and catalogued.

According to the Associated Press, evolutionary biologist Blair Hedges from Penn State University says the new study isn’t good enough and could be off by millions. He thinks there are many tiny species lurking in corners of the unexplored Earth. And he should know. In 2001 while rooting around in dead leaves in the Dominican Republic in 2001 he found the world’s smallest lizard, a half-inch long Caribbean gecko. And then in 2008 he discovered a four-inch snake in Barbados that lays a very long egg.

Who Cares?

Scientists don’t want to classify every living creature on Earth just for the sake of saying they did it. They are trying to identify new species which could potentially have benefits for humans, ranging from medicine to climate adaptation.

Famed biologist E.O. Wilson says undiscovered species need to be found before they disappear taking possible cures with them. He says, “We won’t know the benefits to humanity from these species, which potentially are enormous.”

In order to advance medical and other science he says we need to know what’s in the environment.

Dr. Mora says, “Many species may vanish before we even know of their existence, of their unique niche and function in ecosystems, and of their potential contribution to improved human well-being.”

Lord Robert May, a past president of the British Royal Society praised the new system for estimating species numbers. He says, “It is a remarkable testament to humanity’s narcissism that we know the number of books in the U.S. Library of Congress on 1 February 2011 was 22,194,656, but cannot tell you — to within an order-of-magnitude — how many distinct species of plants and animals we share our world with.”

But fledgling projects like the Census of Marine Life and the Encyclopedia of Life are trying to speed the process given that human activity appears to be hastening the demise of habitats that could contain undiscovered species.

If the 8.8 million number is right, Erick Mata says, “Those are brutal numbers.” The executive director for the Encyclopedia of Life says even with an accelerated rate of discovery, “We could spend the next 400-500 years trying to document the species that actually inhabit our planet.”

Do Something that Counts

The International Union for Conservation of Nature monitors 59,508 species and classifies 19,625 as somehow threatened. Right now this is the most sophisticated system for monitoring known species and it is only looking at about one percent of the entire list.

That’s where citizen scientists come in. Scientists believe that some of the yet-to-be-discovered species could be found in our own backyards.

What will you do to help find, describe and catalog species that scientists discover?

What started out as an educational lesson turned into real-world adventure for five high school students from Sagniaw, Michigan. The students from Arthur Hill High School, near Michigan’s Shipwreck Alley on Lake Huron located two missing ships at the bottom of the lake.

In a science outreach collaboration called Project Shiphunt, Sony and Intel partnered with NOAA’s Dr. Mark Delgado, the chief scientist responsible for mapping the Titanic wreck and invited the students to map the lake bottom in an effort to locate the Merrick and the Laurentian, both of which sank in the late 1800s.

Much to their surprise the students were able to find the exact location of the shipwrecks after creating millions of sonar data points and mapping the bottom of Lake Huron. They then directed divers and a submersible robot with a camera to go inspect the wreckage.

Tiesha Anderson researched historic shipping lanes on Lake Huron and the other Great Lakes before embarking on their ship hunt. The students learned how to plot possible shipwreck locations. James Willett helped plot possible wreck locations with the help of Stan Stock, a local shipwreck hunter.

After eliminating several locations to narrow the search, the students worked with a hydrographer to learn about tracking coordinates before hitting the water to look for the ships.

The teen team consisted of James Willett, Cody Frost, Tiesha Anderson, Yer Vang and Tirrea Billings.

17-year-old sophomore James Willett dabbles with guitar when he isn’t searching for shipwrecks. In school he likes math and is going to try out for the football team this year. He wants to be a video game designer.

A Junior at Arthur Hill, Cody Frost helps out his dad at the family-run auto body shop when he’s not busy looking for 100 year old ships. He describes himself as a laid back, glass half-full kind of guy. Rather than worrying about not having enough he focuses on what he can do with what he has.

Tiesha Anderson is a 15 year old sophomore who has been playing basketball since she was in 3rd Grade. That instilled a competitive drive in her that has motivated her to be a straight-A student. She likes science because she is a curious person with a big imagination. She is hoping that finding ships will help her decide what she wants to do in life. She just knows it will be in the sciences.

Yer Vang struggled her first year of high school because she was quiet. But her sophomore year she helped find two ships and discovered that high school can be pretty fun. She’s not sure if she wants to be an astronaut but she definitely wants to ride a rocket into space some day.

Tirrea Billings is a 16 year old junior who loves math and science. She is interested in how the environment is being destroyed by pollution and forest degradation. Until Project Ship Hunt she had never been on a ship and says she really had no intention of going on one.

The rest of their story will be told in a one-hour documentary about the project on August 30 on Current TV.

All of the space data that the Hubble Telescope is broadcasting is far too much for a handful of scientists to sift through in a timely manner. So using the power of technology and the time and interest of citizen scientists several space-based science projects are underway through a project called Zooniverse.

The latest program is a joint effort with NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. The space agency is enlisting the help of thousands of citizen scientists to analyze images to identify Kuiper Belt Objects.

The Kuiper Belt is a field of icy rocks that begins where Neptune’s orbit ends. Pluto is no longer a planet but it is still the destination in 2015 for the New Horizons program. Once the space probe passes Pluto it will study two other large Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). And that’s where Icehunters comes in.

Citizen Scientists circle white dots in the search for Kuiper Belt Objects to help NASA find targets

The new Zooniverse citizen science initiative starts with all different quality images of the Kuiper Belt, complete with bright stars that wash out images, cosmic rays, asteroids and other noise. People from all over the world log in and pour over pictures, circling potential KBOs.

Scientists look at the objects that many independent participants circle and conduct further analysis in hopes of spotting a good target for the New Horizons misison to study.

Zooniverse has nine live projects looking at different scientific questions relating to the universe. Planethunters is perhaps the most well known, giving citizen scientists the opportunity to find a new extra solar planet.

An exhibition which doubles as a huge, interactive science experiment has opened in New York. The Dublin Science Gallery’s Biorhythm: Music and the Body show immerses its visitors in a world of sonic experiences to see how they respond to different musical stimuli. Tara Cleary from Reuters reports.

But it’s not just all fun. The exhibition is also a giant science experiment, gathering physical responses to music and measuring that against how people report they feel about the music.

Ben Knapp, the research director at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast, Ireland wires listeners up and then studies their reactions, their galvanic skin resistance and their heart rate as they listen to different kinds of music. The experiment called Emotion in Motion also records the listeners feelings about the music and compare that data to what their body says.

Knapp says the Internet and social media have created a social chasm where people prefer virtual relationships over real ones. This project will pinpoint empathy through music. He believes songs that make one person feel sad could be used to convey empathy to another person if they are unable to do so on their own.

He says, “If my physiology plays a particular song that’s sad for me, that may not make you sad. But if I then know what song makes you sad and I can say ‘Oh, okay, I’ll play this for you, maybe now we can identify more together.’”

The exhibition Biorhythm: Music and Body runs now through August 6 in New York City at the Eyebeam Art + Technology Center.

Attention smart phone toting leap peepers. If you’ve ever wondered what type of tree was nearby but didn’t have a guide book, finding the answer is now as easy as taking a snapshot with your smart phone.

LeafSnap is a new smart phone application developed by Columbia University and University of Maryland computer scientists under the direction of Smithsonian botanist John Kress.

Originally developed to help the Smithsonian build its 163-year-old collection of plant species, the app serves two masters. Smart phone users with curiosity about plants have the opportunity to take a picture of a tree’s leaf and discover what type of tree it is. Call it facial recognition for trees. When that picture is synched to the application the phone’s GPS marks the location of the sample and adds it to the collection. You find out what type of tree you are seeing and science gets another piece of data.

The software studies the leaf shape and pattern to discern the major tree families. From there the user is given a variety of choices to try to match the tree exactly. The app looks at the leaf’s lobes, angle and other characteristics to help narrow the possibilities.

This app will help scientists monitor changes in tree populations over time as well as identify new, never collected tree species.

In the future this app could be morphed to help create a butterfly or insect library.

This is a great way to contribute to science and your own learning. Next time you are strolling through a park, neighborhood woods or out in the mountains, look up from your texting and take a picture of an interesting tree. You will be lending your experience to science and helping to complete a very large project.

Seattle marketing director Nick Risinger quit his job to travel the world in search of the perfect picture of the night sky. The 29-year-old amateur astronomer took a year and traveled from the southwestern U.S. to South Africa, taking thousands of digital color photos of all billions of stars in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

After months of painstaking work to stitch them all together, he released his work of art online a few weeks ago. Photopic Sky Survey is the largest true color composite image of the entire night sky as viewed from Earth.

His purpose is to get kids to look up in the sky more and wonder what’s out there. He admits that this giant 5,000 megapixel image can’t be used for scientific purposes but that wasn’t his goal.

Now the astrophotographer has built a website where you can see the photo and even interact and zoom in on particular stars at skysurvey.org.

A new membership-based, do-it-yourself fabrication and manufacturing space allows engineers and inventors to work on their gadgets using the latest in high-tech equipment. Tech Shop has opened facilities in California with plans to expand across the country.

It’s like your father’s workshop but better. The two shops–in San Jose and in San Francisco–have all the latest in technological assistance combined with typical fabrication equipment.

Tech Shop allows inventors, entrepreneurs and curious dabblers to try their hand at creating something without having to invest in all the equipment.

Community science labs, creative craft studios and now tech shops are dotting the landscape of major cities, filling a gap that opens when curious dreamers run headlong into reality.

Tech Shop is spreading to Detroit where it is advertising itself as a hands on way to fix the auto industry.

If Jonas Salk and Carl Sagan are your celebrities, we have a trip for you. From researching global warming in Antarctica to monitoring space flight, Bloomberg Businessweek explores the growing tourism niche of science travel.

It’s a marriage of ecotravel and scientific research.

Here are some leading Science Travel companies.

Abercrombie & Kent
American Museum of Natural History — Explorers Program
Habitat Adventures
Wildland Adventures
Explorers Club
National Park Service
Earthwatch Institute

Search giant Google is launching the first online global science fair, tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. PST. A live event at the science fair YouTube page will have all the details.

The virtual science fair begins tomorrow and is geared toward students ages 13-18. But that’s all that the company is telling us. Teachers can sign up to participate at the Google Science Fair page.

Here’s what the company announced today.

Introducing the world’s first online global science competition, the Google Science Fair! Google has partnered with CERN, LEGO, National Geographic and Scientific American to create a new kind of online science competition that is more global, open and inclusive than ever before. Students aged 13 – 18 from around the world are invited to enter and compete for awesome once-a-lifetime experiences, scholarships and real-life work opportunities.

By tuning in live, you’ll get details about how you can submit your own project online and be inspired by some famous scientists so you’ll be ready to prove you’re the next Albert Einstein, Marie Curie or Dean Kamen.

The Google Science Fair is a global competition that any student aged 13-18 from around the world is eligible to enter. Students can enter as individuals or as teams of up to three. There is no entry fee and registration and submission will happen online. The deadline for submissions will be the 4 April, 2011.

The Science Fair will culminate in a “once in a lifetime” celebratory event at Google headquarters in California in July 2011 where finalists will compete for internships, scholarships and prizes in front of a panel of celebrity scientist judges including Nobel Laureates,
tech visionaries and household names.

Google hired “sensationalism service” company Syyn Labs to build a Rube Goldberg machine for tomorrow’s science fair launch, which is featured in the event trailer. Syyn Labs is the company behind the viral success of indie rock bandOK Go’s music video.

Children of Blackawton School in Devon, England learn about bee behavior

A group of UK primary school children have achieved a world first by having their school science project accepted for publication in an internationally recognized peer-reviewed Royal Society journal. No one will dispute that this is the youngest group of fledgling scientists to ever be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The paper, which reports novel findings in how bumblebees perceive color, is published in Biology Letters this week. The young science scholars didn’t just help with the research on bumblebees spatial and color recognition, they designed the experiment, collected data and even wrote the scientific paper that was just published.

“This paper represents a world first in high quality scientific publishing and I’m proud that Biology Letters is supporting this highly innovative approach to science education. This is a unique way of encouraging children’s engagement with science by getting a group to write about their work in a publishable format. I hope that it will inspire other groups to realise that science is not an exclusive club but something that’s available for everybody.” — Professor Brian Charlesworth FRS, Editor of Biology Letters

It’s not every day that the words “science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no-one has ever done before” appears in a scientific journal. But since it was written by kids, the published article reflected their excitement. The BBC has a podcast that accompanies its story about the bumble bees of Blackawton. But the interview with Beau Lotto the lead bee researcher on the Biological Letters site will give you a thorough overview of the experiment (17:03).

The National Audubon Society has sponsored an annual winter bird count for over 100 years. This year’s Christmas Bird Count will include 60,000 volunteers from all over the country who will look for and record birds for two weeks.

This is perhaps one of the oldest forms of citizen science. It allows people who care about birds and nature to pitch in and help scientists gather immense amounts of data that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to collect.

Jim Shallow at Audubon Vermont says, “The great thing about citizen science is that you add a lot more data points to your data and you have a lot more eyes out on the landscape.”

This information has helped scientists study the effects of climate change.

Shallow says that in New England, in particular, things have warmed up over the last 40 years. And that shows up as birds adapt by moving their ranges northward.

Noting that and other avian trends would not be possible without citizen scientists who are helping the Audubon Society count birds. You can participate in this time-honored Holiday tradition by visiting the society Christmas Bird Count get involved page.

NASA’s Kepler mission positioned a powerful telescope outside Earth’s atmosphere last year to begin taking pictures of a section of space known to house about 200,000 stars. For Yale astronomers this presents an incredible opportunity — to discover which of those stars have planets orbiting them.

Debra Fischer is an expert planet hunter. She says, “The Kepler mission will likely quadruple the number of planets that have been found in the last 15 years.”

These exoplanets — as planets outside our solar system are called — also provide a great opportunity to enlist the services of the public to help sift through the massive amounts of data in search of new planets.

Dr. Fischer adds, “And it’s terrific that NASA is releasing this amazing data into the public domain.”

To help analyze data, astronomers created Planet Hunters, a website where anyone can help discover new planets. It is part of Zooniverse, an online set of citizen science projects relating to space and weather.

Kevin Schawinksi, one of the founders of Galaxy Zoo, the first Zooniverse project says with the help of the Internet the project has assemble the largest distributed supercomputer dedicated to pattern recognition.

He says, “We’ve linked up over 300,000 human brains and turned it into a science machine.”

The whole Zooniverse is made of the following projects: (WARNING: Participation may be fun)
Planet Hunters
The Milky Way Project
Old Weather
Moon Zoo
Galaxy Zoo: Hubble
Solar Stormwatch
Galaxy Zoo: Mergers
Galaxy Zoo: Supernovae

Citizen scientists Chris and Helen Colvin from Ames, Iowa, and Daniel Gebhardt from Mainz, Germany participate in Einstein@Home, a distributed computing program that involves a quarter of a million volunteers worldwide.

They donated their idle computer time to analyze data gathered by the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Without even realizing it they discovered a fast rotating pulsar.

The citizen scientists remotely join National Science Foundation’s Lisa-Joy Zgorski along with Einstein@Home director Bruce Allen and Cornell astronomer and Arecibo researcher Jim Cordes for a lengthy (38:47) discussion. Their findings are published in the online journal Science Express.

Science enthusiast Bobby Russell launched his Quest for Stars program last week by sending a helium-filled weather balloon about 107,000 feet up, to the edge of space. On board, Russell outfitted the styrofoam payload bay with cameras, GPS and a Motorola Droid smartphone set to take pictures every seven seconds during the trip. The liftoff was picture-perfect.

But the return to Earth wasn’t as smooth. The balloon blew off course and landed near the windmill farm outside of Palm Springs. The GPS locator placed it in an area near what Russell calls and “illegal operation.” He called police and a team of advanced hikers to retrieve Android-1 sometime later this week.

The Quest for Stars program is designed to inspire students to think about science and aviation. Russell hopes to get schools to send similar experiments to the edge of space for about $300-$500.

Here’s your chance to make scientific history. NASA is inviting the public to help choose sites on Mars to point a high-powered camera as part of a visual survey of the Red Planet.

The HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has shot over 13,000 images already. Now NASA is opening up the opportunity to the public.

Use the new HiWish online tool to study the Mars map, decide what would be a worth target and why. Then submit your suggestion to the mission and wait to see if it gets selected.

The yellow dot pinpoints the landing site of Viking Lander 2 on Utopia Planitia. Viking 2 landed within the ejecta of 65-mile wide Mie Crater.

REALscience submitted a target suggestion — the southern crater wall of the Mie Crater, seen above. This giant crater, likely made by a big asteroid or comet impact, could reveal clues to early Mars and probably hides some of its icy secrets in the shadowy part of the crater.