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NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will make an unprecedented “in your face” flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus on Wed., March 12.

The spacecraft, orchestrating its closest approach to date, will skirt along the edges of huge Old-Faithful-like geysers erupting from giant fractures on the south pole of Enceladus. Cassini will sample scientifically valuable water-ice, dust and gas in the plume.

The source of the geysers is of great interest to scientists who think liquid water, perhaps even an ocean, may exist in the area. While flying through the edge of the plumes, Cassini will be approximately 200 kilometers (120 miles) from the surface. At closest approach to Enceladus, Cassini will be only 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the moon.

“This daring flyby requires exquisite technical finesse, but it has the potential to revolutionize our knowledge of the geysers of Enceladus. The Cassini mission team is eager to see the scientific results, and so am I,” said Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.  

Scientists and mission personnel studying the anatomy of the plumes have found that flying at these close distances poses little threat to Cassini because, despite the high speed of Cassini, the plume particles are small. The spacecraft routinely crosses regions made up of dust-size particles in its orbit around Saturn.

Cassini’s cameras will take a back seat on this flyby as the main focus turns to the spacecraft’s particle analyzers that will study the composition of the plumes. The cameras will image Enceladus on the way in and out, between the observations of the particle analyzers.

Images will reveal northern regions of the moon previously not captured by Cassini. The analyzers will “sniff and taste” the plume. Information on the density, size, composition and speed of the gas and the particles will be collected.

“There are two types of particles coming from Enceladus, one pure water-ice, the other water-ice mixed with other stuff,” said Sascha Kempf, deputy principal investigator for Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. “We think the clean water-ice particles are being bounced off the surface and the dirty water-ice particles are coming from inside the moon. This flyby will show us whether this concept is right or wrong.”

In 2005, Cassini’s multiple instruments discovered that this icy outpost is gushing water vapor geysers out to a distance of three times the radius of Enceladus. The moon is only 500 kilometers (310 miles) in diameter, but despite its petite size, it’s one of the most scientifically compelling bodies in our solar system. The icy water particles are roughly one ten-thousandth of an inch, or about the width of a human hair. The particles and gas escape the surface at jet speed at approximately 400 meters per second (800 miles per hour). The eruptions appear to be continuous, refreshing the surface and generating an enormous halo of fine ice dust around Enceladus, which supplies material to one of Saturn’s rings, the E-ring.

Several gases, including water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, perhaps a little ammonia and either carbon monoxide or nitrogen gas make up the gaseous envelope of the plume.

“We want to know if there is a difference in composition of gases coming from the plume versus the material surrounding the moon. This may help answer the question of how the plume formed,” said Hunter Waite, principal investigator for Cassini’s Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer at the Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio.

This is the first of four Cassini flybys of Enceladus this year. In June, Cassini completes its prime mission, a four-year tour of Saturn. Cassini’s next flyby of Enceladus is planned for August, well into Cassini’s proposed extended mission. Cassini will perform seven Enceladus flybys in its extended mission. If this encounter proves safe, future passes may bring the spacecraft even closer than this one. How close Cassini will be allowed to approach will be determined based on data from this flyby.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

For images, videos and a mission blog on the flyby, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini . More information on the Cassini mission is also available at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

 BORDEAUX, France (Reuters) - The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.

Salamanders can regrow types of tissue to make limbs like completely growing a new tail.  A study published in the Nov 2. 2007 issue of the Journal of Science, discusses how a protein called nAG helps in the process of stem cells forming new limbs in red-spotted newts.  Studying red-spotted newts has helped us better understand the process of regrowing boddy parts.

 In the future, will people be able to regrow missing arms or legs? Some researchers think we will get there. Children under five years old have been known to regrow the tip of a fingerif left untreated.

Facetious and abstemious are the only words that contain all the vowels in the correct order.

“Adcomsubordcomphibspac” is the longest acronym. It is a Navy term standing for Administrative Command, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet Subordinate Command.

“Almost” is the longest commonly used word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

“Flushable” toilets were in use in ancient Rome.

“Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson was the first video to air on MTV by a black artist.

“Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.

“Duff” is the decaying organic matter found on a forest floor.

“Fickleheaded” and “fiddledeedee” are the longest words consisting only of letters in the first half of the alphabet.

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Want to see some crazy stuff? In some areas of the world, you can zoom in to an absurd level. Pretty close to being able to actually identify an individual.

Let’s take this scene for example… some people in Africa with their herd of camels and cows, gathered around a well. I mean come on… you can see footprints, and some dude who must have known his picture was being taken, because he’s looking right at the camera.

Click here to see screenshot!

Almost looks fake huh? Well you can see it for yourself here:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f…m=1&iwloc=addr

So like maybe Google could use some of their satellites and computing power to find Osama bin Laden and collect whatever huge reward there is for him… just a suggestion for anyone listening…

The origins of Valentine’s Day trace back to the ancient Roman celebration of Lupercalia. Held on February 15, Lupercalia honored the gods Lupercus and Faunus, as well as the legendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus.

In addition to a bountiful feast, Lupercalia festivities are purported to have included the pairing of young women and men. Men would draw women’s names from a box, and each couple would be paired until next year’s celebration.

While this pairing of couples set the tone for today’s holiday, it wasn’t called “Valentine’s Day” until a priest named Valentine came along. Valentine, a romantic at heart, disobeyed Emperor Claudius II’s decree that soldiers remain bachelors. Claudius handed down this decree believing that soldiers would be distracted and unable to concentrate on fighting if they were married or engaged. Valentine defied the emperor and secretly performed marriage ceremonies. As a result of his defiance, Valentine was put to death on February 14.

After Valentine’s death, he was named a saint. As Christianity spread through Rome, the priests moved Lupercalia from February 15 to February 14 and renamed it St. Valentine’s Day to honor Saint Valentine.

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The First Secret:
Have a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing.

The Second Secret:
Don’t die with your music still in you.

The Third Secret:
You can’t give away what you don’t have.

The Forth Secret:
Embrace silence.

The Fifth Secret:
Give up your personal history.

The Six Secret:
You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it.

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Being a parent is a learning experience. It’s about learning to take care of someone who is unable to care for themselves. Above all, being a parent teaches you about yourself. Here are a few things you may not have known about your new baby.

Tears contain stress hormones, so we cry to release stress. No other animal does this. Your baby can’t cry tears for at least three weeks, sometimes not until they are four or five months old.

Kissing has origins in primitive practices of weaning. Originally people would chew their baby’s food and then pass it from their mouth to their baby’s mouth. You can obsere primates doing this.

Nearly all mothers will carry their baby’s on their left side so that baby’s head is next to mother’s heart. Hearing a mother’s heartbeat soothes a baby.

We instinctively rock our babies at a heartbeat pace. Again this soothes them. When inside the womb, the mother’s heartbeat was the one constant noise a child heard. Hearing a mother’s heartbeat reminds them of the womb; a place of refuge and safety.

During her first six months of life your baby can distinguish more sounds then she will be able to in later life. This is so that she could adapt to any human language. As time passes she will become ‘tuned’ to her native language.

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Well it is groundhog day week! February 2 brings the most-watched weather forecast of the year—and the only one led by a rodent. Legend has it that on this morning, if a groundhog can see its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter. If it cannot see its shadow, spring is on the way.

Why the Groundhog?

Since a groundhog (or woodchuck or “whistle pig”) hibernates for the winter, its coming out of the ground is a natural sign of spring. In Europe centuries ago, people watched for other hibernating animals, including badgers, bears, and hedgehogs, as signs of winter’s end. Germans who immigrated to Pennsylvania in the mid-1800s began keeping an eye on the groundhog. The widespread population of the rodent made it a handy agent for this particular weather superstition.

And a superstition it is. But there’s a grain of truth: the winter days when you can see your shadow clearly are often especially cold, because there are no clouds overhead to insulate the earth.

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Many creatures that we are familiar with are venomous or poisonous. Perhaps because they have not produced a large number of human fatalities we are not warned of their dangers. Nevertheless it is wise to know what these creatures are capable of doing. This is a list of the 7 animals you didn’t know were venomous or poisonous. They are in no particular order.

7. Cuttlefish

The cuttlefish is closely related to the squid and octopus. It has 10 arms covered with tiny suckers and at the base is their beak. This beak injects a fast acting venom which is not harmful to humans. The venom works by attacking the victim’s nervous system.

6. Hooded Pitohui

A songbird from New Guinea. Its skin as well as feathers contain a very powerful poison called: homobatrachotoxin. This is the same poison found in the South American dart frogs, although it is severely less toxic then the frogs and a whole bird would have to be eaten for any real harm to occur. The poison is transferred easily to humans by merely touching or handling the bird.

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