Topic: =/\= room temp stars, R2 awakes, hubble successor threatened, iss resupply lost

[stoneyface]

awesome cool news in science today. i am excited for some and hate the one.

first up is a cool story (sorry couldn't help myself) about the newest stars to be discovered. can you imagine touching a dead star? i could happen. they are thought to be around 80F! the wise satellite found these new stars dubbed "Y dwarfs" they are cold, dark and very hard to spot. the best part is that these were discovered only 40 light years away from our own sun!!! read here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/news/wise20110823.html

today, robonaut 2 aka R2 has awakened from stasis aboard the iss and ruined the whole thing by tweeting... sigh i hate twitter. anyway, the robot has just been activated after a 6 month stasis. the busy schedule apparently meant they could not do anything until now with it. read here for details: http://deviceguru.com/humanoid-robot-wakes-in-space/

next is a sad story as it was reported that the latest resupply to the ISS has been lost. the unmanned resupply mission failed to achieve orbit and fell into the atmosphere. i am just thankful that it was an unmanned mission. my condolences to the russian space team and wish them luck in the future. they are great scientists and i am sure they will recover. 3 tons of supplies are now gone... read here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14653371

finally, more proof that the government are bastards. they have the james webb satellite telescope project on the chopping block. the webb satellite is to be the successor to hubble. nasa has been scrambling to try to save the project. i hope they do because this is as important as any other program in space. second only maybe to the mars mission. i would still put it first as we need to get to space to survive as a species and to do that we need to know where we are going. read here about the bastards: http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/07/07/0038247/Congress-Dumps-James-Webb-Space-Telescope

finally some fun. i found this awesome video that brings the game "portal" to life! a great video and well worth the watch!
http://www.tekgoblin.com/2011/08/23/new-video-brings-portal-to-life/