Science and Technology Brief

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     The Science and Technology Brief is a biweekly glance at interesting science and technology news and profiles on science and technology that is or will affect us all. For Thursday: ‘The Modern Stonehenge?, Boldly Going Where No Spacecraft Has Gone Before’, and ‘Under the Sea’.

The Modern Stonehenge?

World Magazine

     Gene Veith is a profound and prolific writer on the doctrines of the confessional church, which makes his appearance in this Science and Technology Brief post all that more intriguing. It turns out that Veith, in addition to being a confessor and defender of sound doctrine is also a pretty good judge of nature, be it human now or in 10,000 years.

     You see, the US Government is currently burying massive quantities of radioactive waste in an abandon salt mine deep beneath the mountains and desert near Carlsbad, New Mexico. As part of this operation, the US Government plans to build a monument to what lies beneath in an effort to warn future generations, ‘Danger: Horrible Radioactive Death Below.’

     Unfortunately, as Veith observes, such a monument is likely to garner more curiosity than caution, with unfortunate results for the curious. So, the question becomes: warn future generations that the threat is there, or hide it and hope they never find it. Either way, monuments or radioactive hotspot, it seems likely that some future archeologists are going to dig into a nasty surprise…

Boldly Going Where No Spacecraft Has Gone Before

CNN

     Voyager II has left the Solar System… Hot on the heels of Voyager I, which detected the so-called ‘terminal shock’ that marks the edge of the Solar System about a year ago, Voyager II has found the same edge, albeit sooner than some astrophysicists expected. The prevailing explanation is that the magnetic field of some neighboring star has distorted this Solar System’s boundary, pushing one edge of it closer.

     More importantly, V’Ger is now on its way to being rescued by a distant techno-civilization and returning to us as the first of many space probes that return to Earth bent on finding their creators or destroying Earth in the process. I really love space exploration…

Under the Sea

CNN

     A new Roman era ruin has been found under the waters of the Mediterranean off of the coast of Egypt, representing the latest in a list of submerged finds around the Sea. It will be interesting to see what snapshots of mid-to-late Roman era life will be found in this city, adding to our understanding of what that era of history was like.

DLH