I have always wondered how people, especially the UFO/Ghost Hunter/Sasquatch crowd give so much importance to eye witness reports of events. This is really an eye opener. Our eyes are only the beginning of vision. It is our mind that creates the image!

Drosophila Melanogaster (Fruit fly) is very dear to me. In my early school years, it was the answer to a quiz competition that put me in front of my arch rival. From that day onwards, I have had this warm feelings for this small fly. It probably is the most used fly for genetic research and has produced enormous contributions to science.

But, now, the cruel International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature rejected a petition to protect the name despite the confusion about the genus. The full article is here (http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100407/full/464825a.html)

According to the new taxonomy, poor Fruitfly will be, possibly, called Sophophora Melanogaster!

All I can say is, you will always be my beloved Drosophila Melanogaster, whatever the big wigs of the commission says.

View Full Album

First of my last years bulbs started flowering. Here is the pictures from yesterday and today. Yes I know they are short lived, but, that is the wonderment.

Zoologist Mark Carwardine had a rare opportunity to be the unwilling mate of a rare Kakapo. Words can’t describe it. Watch it for yourself.

View Full Album

They are blooming.

My Tulips just showed their heads out. Last weekend’s rain and warmer weather must have signaled them to come out. I have put over 50 of them. Looks like most of them are coming out. The extended snow cover has made the soil perfect for an early spring, provided we are not getting a freezing before April.

Here are the first pictures.

View Full Album

ABE (Autonomous Benthic Explorer), which pioneered so many discoveries from deep sea was lost in the depths of pacific. (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/03/11/pioneering-deep-sea-robot-is-lost-to-a-watery-grave/)

This robot was instrumental in mapping the mid-ocean ridge and studying the strange life that flourish in the volcanic vents.

Deep sea exploration (well, easy chair exploration in my case) is such a fascinating area. The secrets deep ocean still keeps are as big as any other secrets in the universe.

It is a shame that the resources we spend on exploring the seas is meager compared to what is spend on space exploration. The technical challenges it faces are much more than space exploration as well.

Robots like ABE and its newer cousins are valuable assets to scientific exploration and in understanding the largest areas of our own earth. Wired magazine called it one of the 50 best robots ever.

The robot is assumed to have succumbed to its death due to an implosion of its glass domes followed by a cascade failure of other domes.

These were posted to SkyDrive for a while. Now that we have the next storm in full swing, I thought it is a good time to share.

View Full Album

This is the first of the record breaking snow storm.

View Full Album

After the announcement of 2011 budget by Obama administration, a lot of people who love science, technology and space travel (like me) has been complaining about the lack of funding to NASA to pursue the back to moon program. These comments were anywhere from mild protests to complete denouncement.

I got to thinking! Is NASA the right place to innovate? It is basically a huge bureaucratic conglomerate involved in everything from Defense research to space flight. It is completely dependent on the government to fund, which, in turn has a very low tolerance to failures. Over the years, it has made NASA into this overly protective, extremely secretive organization with very low risk thresholds. It is not the bunch of mavericks from the 60s who were driven by the nationalist agenda of beating USSR.

On the other hand, I do not think the commercial ventures are going to be the way either. There is still a lot of basic research and technology development needed in space travel. The current industrial climate, which only rewards quick money making schemes with a potentially prolonged recession is not the most conducive of such research to be undertaken in private sector.

May be what we need is a global agency that operates in a very transparent way. Currently national space agencies work in extremely secretive manner. This causes a lot of duplication (reinventing the wheel) and sub-optimal production processes. If there was a global agency, even with a fraction of the money that all the nations spend on space research, we could have achieved much more. Especially if the agency works in a transparent manner with as much participation from everyone.

There is also the question of manned versus robotic missions. Here too, I am not sure which one is better. It is true there are so many things a human being can do on the surface of mars than a robot like Sprit or Opportunity. But, there are a lot of things a robot like the MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) can do that no human beings could ever. Our robotic and remote sensing capabilities are growing exponentially (sadly powered by the wars) and there are a lot of things a robot can do that human beings cannot in remote planets. For e.g. I would be more excited to hear the mission to Europa to explore the underlying ocean (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1786) like Endurance.

But again, is space research the right priority? We are still struggling to get a consensus on climate change and how to resolve it. Going to mars is a very good thing. Going to Alpha Centauri phenomenal. But I am sure we can wait a few more decades to do all that. They are not going to go away.

Will knowing about life in other planets finally make us think more rationally? Most of the religions will have a problem to accommodate extraterrestrial life. Undermining religion is always a good thing. May be, it is worth to look for ET.