Doomsday? not in 2012

NASA said last week that the world was not ending — at least anytime soon. Last year, CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, said the same thing, which I guess is good news for those of us who are habitually jittery. How often do you have a pair of such blue-ribbon scientific establishments assuring us that everything is fine?

On the other hand, it is kind of depressing if you were looking forward to taking a vacation from mortgage payments to finance one last blowout.

Interactive Graphic The Long Count

The announcements by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in the form of several Web site postings and a video posted on YouTube, were in response to worries that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, when a 5,125-year cycle known as the Long Count in the Mayan calendar supposedly comes to a close.

The doomsday buzz reached a high point with the release of the new movie “2012,” directed by Roland Emmerich, who previously inflicted misery on the Earth from aliens and glaciers in “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow.”

Some people's imagination jis way too vivid.

New Ring Discovered Around Saturn

A new ring of tiny dust particles has been discovered 8 million miles from Saturn's surface. The halo is approximately 50 times farther from Saturn than the other rings, and scientists believe it's the product of debris from small impacts on Saturn's moon Phoebe. Experts suggest the dust from the impacts then migrated toward the planet and was picked up by another of Saturn's moons, Iapetus. "The particles smack Iapetus like bugs on a windshield," explained a University of Virginia professor, adding that the discovery explains Iapetus' two-tone nature. The newly found disc is distinct not only in its size and distance, but also its angle: It is tilted 27 degrees to the plane encompassing Saturn's other rings, which is likely due to Phoebe's inclined path around the planet.

Read it at BBC

Fixing the 'scope

Hands On

STS-125 astronaut Andrew Feustel selects his next tool to use while participating in the first of five scheduled spacewalks to perform final hands-on servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope. Feustel and veteran astronaut John Grunsfeld (out of frame) are scheduled to participate in three of those spacewalks.

Dark Energy Stunts Galaxies’ Growth

NASA/CXC/SAO/A.Vikhlinin et al

A composite image of the galaxy cluster Abell 85, located about 740 million light years from Earth. Observations of it helped astronomers trace how dark energy has stifled the growth of galaxies over the last five billion years.

Hubble looks out

Now in Sight: Far-Off Planets

NASA, via Associated Press

A dust ring, seen in red, surrounds the star Fomalhaut, which is located at the center of the image, but is not visible. The Hubble Telescope captured a fuzzy image of the planet, known as Fomalhaut b, which is no more than a white speck in the dust ring that surrounds the star.

Galaxies

A picture in El Universal, Mexico, from NASA.