July 2013

Astronaut Luca Parmitano (Photo ESA - A. Le Floc'h)

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On July 16, astronaut Luca Parmitano started a “spacewalk”, an extravehicular activity (EVA) outside the International Space Station along with his colleague Chris Cassidy to carry out some maintenance and repair. The operation was to last about six and a half hours but after less than two hours it was interrupted because water was pouring into Parmitano’s spacesuit’s helmet. Now more details have been released about this problem.

Artistic concept of the planet HD 189733b transiting its star. The small insert shows The star HD 189733 A with its companion HD 189733 B and another externa object seen by the Chandra space telescope (Image X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Poppenhaeger et al; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss)

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The Chandra X-ray space telescope was used for the first time to detect the presence of an exoplanet. This is not a discovery because the planet in question is HD 189733b, more formally HD 189733 Ab, which was already in the spotlight a few weeks ago because the observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope established that its color is blue.

Dagger of the Mind by Bob Shaw (Italian edition)

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The novel “Dagger of the Mind” by Bob Shaw was published for the first time in 1979.

John Redpath works as a guinea pig in a telepathy research project. One morning he sees out the door of his house someone with his face flayed but blames the horrific vision on a new drug he was injected to try to stimulate his mental abilities. Therefore he decides to abandon the research even if it’s his only source of income.

Scheleton of Tyrannosaurus Rex at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh

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For common people, the T.Rex, scientifically called Tyrannosaurus rex (photo of the skeleton ©ScottRobertAnselmo), is the most ferocious predator in world’s history. Instead, among paleontologists for almost a century there’s been a dispute about whether it was a predator or a scavenger. Recently, a group of researchers has found in South Dakota the remains of a hadrosaur with the tooth of a T.Rex wedged between the vertebrae of its tail. This discovery is considered a proof that this animal was indeed a predator.

Astronaut Randy Bresnik about to enter Boeing CST-100 spacecraft (Photo NASA/Robert Markowitz)

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In recent days, NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik and Serena Auñón have made some evaluations of a test version of Boeing’s CST-100 spacecraft wearing a space suit. For the company, it was an opportunity to introduce to the world the spacecraft being developed to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.