Richard Leis

Month: June 2005

  • Review: Google Earth

    Google appears to be unstoppable. Their recent projects have involved turning static web pages into interactive presentations, each one more useful than the last. Often called “web services” these new features are taking the World Wide Web into a welcome direction. Google unveiled today their next step, a program called “Google Earth“. The Earth in…

  • Lake-Like Feature Sighted on Titan

    Scientists examining recent images of the surface of Titan have discovered a feature that resembles a lake. The feature is near persistent methane clouds and the smoothness of its boundaries suggests shorelines, but it could instead be a dry lake bed, a depression filled with solid hydrocarbons “snowing” out of the atmosphere, or a tectonic-related…

  • It’s Okay

    It’s okay to send a teenager against his will to be cured of his homosexuality. It’s okay to process animals through “rendering plants” if they are “unfit for human consumption.” It’s okay to seize someone’s home against their will if it’s in the public good. Yes, I use to wish that my homosexuality could be…

  • Astronomers Discover First Rocky Exoplanet

    Astronomers announced today the possible discovery of a rocky planet only twice as wide and seven and a half times as massive as the Earth orbiting a small red dwarf star about 15 light years away. Paul Butler from the Carnegie Institute of Washington, Geoffrey Marcy from the University of California, Berkeley, Jack Lissauer of…

  • Titan Ice Volcano?

    Titan may harbor “ice volcanoes” and scientists have presented evidence for a likely candidate in the June 9 issue of Nature. Several images of the possible volcano were released to the Internet today by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Ice volcanoes may explain the high level of methane present in Titan’s atmosphere. Methane generally breaks down…