The appearance of a new sunspot may not be cause for alarm, but the arrival of a new solar cycle might make you pause. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently reported that our sun may be entering a new 11-year cycle, called Solar Cycle 24.

The increase of sunspots associated with Solar Cycle 24 could have adverse effects on electronic technology, putting them at risk. To know more about the effect of Solar Cycle 24, head on over to the full article.

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA, it is highly possible that our Sun has finally reached a stage referred to as solar minimum. It means that it is currently almost without spots. A spotless sun signifies that there's minimal solar activities such as solar flares.

However, the area of concern here is that a solar minimum is followed by its exact opposite event, the solar maximum. Suns under this condition become very violent, oftentimes hurling billion-ton clouds of electrified gas into space caused by solar storms.

NASA reasoned that the next solar maximum could begin as early as March 2008. Maybe you're wondering right now as to how this affects our little quiet lives here on planet Earth. Take note that solar storms are capable of wreaking havoc to our satellites, power grids, and radio communication, including the Global Positioning System (GPS).

Given our dependency to technology, the worst thing that could happen is crashing world's tech-dependent industries. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Environment Center in Boulder, Colorado added that the solar maximum stage should reach its peak during late 2011 or 2012.

Sending men to the moon is a tall order, so NASA is being extra careful with its plans to send astronauts back there by 2020. Plans to establish a lunar outpost are being drawn up, and information is vital if we're ever going to make it happen.

To make sure that all is calculated and that minimum risks are taken, astronomers in the agency are going to send lunar robots to "scout" ahead of their masters ti survey the shadowy parts of the Earth's lone satellite. Though they're not alive, these machines need some preparation, too so NASA took them on a field test.
 
Scientists needed a place which can best simulate a trek on the lunar surface, so they had to pick one very carefully. Deserts were the prime candidates, but the one chosen isn't a place where you'd guess it would be: The frigid Arctic Circle.

According to NASA, a place called the Haughton Crater in Devon Island, Canada is the ideal place to go. It has a dry, rocky desert about 6.4 miles in radius and has a spot called Drill Hill which is similar in features to some lunar landing sites. The cold weather also simulates conditions in shadowy parts of the moon where temperatures drop to unearthly lows.

The robots are called K10 Red and K10 Black. They're similar in structure to small lunar rovers and they weigh about 160 pounds. They're equipped with high-tech laser sensors, GPS, cameras and terrain-penetrating radar to guide it and facilitate data collection. It can carry 110 pounds worth of samples in case lunar debris are required to be taken in.

Plans are also set to have these robots employed for the long term study of the moon. Even as humans make their way back to the moon, they will still be assisted by these robots which will serve as advance units in exploring uncharted parts. NASA's astronomers say that the images that the robots will bring home should be very crisp in high-resolution 3D.

Don't stock up on food and batteries just yet. This storm is unlike any other most in our age groups have ever seen. The storm isn't even on the Earth, it's on the sun.

Astronomer Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric research has predicted that come 2012, the Earth will experience a solar maximum, a phenomenon that last happened in 1958. This happens as a sunspot, a huge mass of violent magnetism, intensifies an area of the sun as it causes weird things to happen.

More than a heat storm, the solar max unleashes a barrage of magnetism that can be felt even in the Earth. Dikpati says he won't be surprised if modern electronics such as GPS and mobile phones will be affected.

That's not the only strange thing that can happen. As the sun spot drags on for years and prompts the solar max to rage on, atmospheric and astronomic frills can be seen on Earth. During the last solar max, Aurora Borealis was seen in Mexico.

Dikpati's prediction is bold in the sense that no scientists before him have come close to being able to accurately predict the cycle of sunspots. Once thought of as a semi=random occurrence, Dikpati asserts that there exists such a thing as a "solar conveyor belt" made of magnetism which drags sun spots along a path.

The National Space Science & Technology Center agreed with Dikpati. Solar Physicist David Hathaway said that Dikpati made all the points clear and true. However, he says that the solar max should come in 2011, not 2012. "History shows that big sunspot cycles 'ramp up' faster than small ones," he says.

In a recent official press release, NASA has announced that they will be offering their assistance to Santa Claus as he makes his annual global delivery today. In the announcement, they have noted that some of NASA's resources such as the Debris Imaging Radar System will be... ah, heck.

Here's the full announcement. It's best when you get to read the whole thing for yourself, and if you don't believe us, then feel free to NASA's official site.

RELEASE: 74-06

NASA's KSC Providing Assistance to Santa on Christmas Eve

The Debris Imaging Radar System, used during the night launch of NASA's space shuttle mission STS-116, is a new system at Kennedy Space Center in Florida that will now be made available to Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

Based on its success in identifying even the smallest amount of debris coming off the orbiter or the external tank, NASA has strong confidence the system will provide assistance in observing Santa's sleigh. Since the elves have the packages piled high, NASA can determine with great accuracy if any gifts planned for delivery fall off the sleigh. The radar system is capable of high-definition radar imagery, so the approximate shape, size and weight of the packages can be determined.

This could greatly help Santa recover the packages so that no child is disappointed by not receiving the presents the jolly fellow promised while he made the rounds in shopping malls before Christmas. The radar has an auto-track mode so that it can be left unattended on Christmas Eve and still perform its intended function. The system will be automatically activated once NASA's air traffic control radar located on north KSC has made radar contact with Santa's sleigh.

Also of assistance to Santa this year is the new Differential Global Positioning Satellite System ground station at the Shuttle Landing Facility. These new GPS antennas located near the control tower can help if there is an emergency. Since the sleigh is now GPS equipped, it can guide Santa to a landing within 10 feet of the runway's centerline, regardless of which end of the runway he needs to use.

Though Shuttle Landing Facility personnel will be on holiday leave, officials at the NASA Tower have agreed to provide the customary support by turning the landing lights on before they depart for Christmas, as well as turning on the TACAN radio homing beacon and the visual alternating green and white lighted rotating beacon.

NASA will use the orbiter Discovery to mimic Santa's sleigh during the STS-116 landing currently planned for Friday, in order to test the ability to operate these two new systems in auto-track mode. If the orbiter is waved off to land on the West Coast, the Shuttle Training Aircraft will be used to simulate Santa's sleigh.

If Santa needs help, one of the primary radio frequencies normally used for communication in restricted airspace will still be monitored by the Air Force Eastern Range and also NASA security.

For more information about KSC's assistance to Santa, contact the KSC News Center at 321-867-2468.

In the meantime, you can track Santa's progress right here.

The worlds of Entertainment, Finance, Gaming and Politics seem to have a new "Top Ten" list of their hot, young up-and-comers just about every other week. With the planet falling apart and technology our best hope for reversing the trend, it's refreshing to see a "Top Ten" list of the Science world. Here then, without further ado, are the top ten stars of research science:

NAME: Sara Seager
FIELD: Astrophysics
CONTRIBUTION: Aiding the discovery of Earth-like planets outside the solar system by studying the appearance of Earth from similar distances

NAME: Erich Jarvis
FIELD: Animal Linguistics
CONTRIBUTION: Research suggesting that vertebrate animals other than primates have innate language ability.

The full list awaits after the jump!

Thanks to the advent of new and more advanced technologies, scientists are now able to determine precisely the extent and causes of Earth's short-term wobbling.

Our planet actually displays many different wobbling motions, ranging in period from a few minutes to billions of years. Some of these wobbles are the Chandler wobble of 433 days and the annual wobble, which together can tilt Earth's axis up to 10 meters from its nominal center.

The irregular and oftentimes short-term wobbles are harder to examine and study because these are overshadowed by the more prominent wobbles. But now Belgian and French scientists have taken advantage of a quirk in the pattern of large-scale motions and the advent of the Global Positioning System (GPS) to pin down short-term wobbles that occurred from November 2005 through February 2006. Why did they decided to use this method on that particular date?

The reason is because the Chandler wobble (a more permanent wobble) and the annual wobble essentially cancelled each other out, an event that occurs  roughly every six and a half years, allowing the researchers to focus on the short-period wobbles.

Over these three and a half months, the pole position traced small loops, ranging in size from that of a sheet of your usual bond paper (8-1/2x11 inch) down to that of a cell phone, and it remained within a one meter square during these four months.

The study doesn't end there. The study also wants to know why these wobbles occurred when they did. They are speculating that weather patterns in the northern hemisphere played a significant role in the occurrence of short-term wobbles. Also, the ocean could also affect such short-term wobbles since during the said period of study, they were able to correlate oceanic and atmospheric pressure variations with the small observed wobbles during the study period.

The GIOVE-A, an experimental navigation spacecraft launched by the European Space Agency last December, has completed its primary objective this week when it was able to pick up signals from several Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites.

GIOVE-A will be part of the Galileo array, the EU's fleet of navigation satellites. The rest of the satellites should be launched by 2010, giving Europe an alternative to the GPS satellite positioning system, which is operated by the US military.

GIOVE-A has also allowed the European Space Agency to secure its use of the radio frequencies allocated for Galileo by the International Telecommunications Union (much to the chagrin of U.S. and multi-national telecommunication corporations, who were hoping the allocation would  lapse later this year).

The spacecraft's objective was to pick up the signals from positioning satellites currently in orbit. This would determine whether commercial geosynchronous spacecraft (which orbit in step with the Earth's spin) could use satellites, rather than ground-based instruments, to calculate their position in space. This cuts expenses significantly.

"Currently GEO satellites rely on expensive ground terminals to measure where they are," says engineer Max Meermanr at the UK's Surrey Satellite Technology, who developed GIOVE-A.

Once the entire Galileo array has been launched, the service will provide receivers on the ground with positioning information accurate to within about 4 metres.