Preparing for a Trip to Mars . . . the Long Haul

Can you imagine being confined to the same, tight, place with five other people for 105 days?  Well, according to this New York Time article, that is exactly what 6 Russian Cosmonauts are going to get to do.  The objective of this long confinement is to study the possible effects of such enclosure on a crew en-route to Mars.  I think it is a fascinating experiment, but one that I would never have any desire to be a part of.  It is something like prison, but willingly.  I just wonder how human psychology can cope with such situations.

Does anybody know how long the astro/cosmonauts spend in the International Space Station?  I imagine a pretty long time seeing as I don’t hear about too many missions to replace the crews.  I am curious as to what tests have been done on the psychological soundness of the ISS crews.

While I find space quite interesting, I really have no desire to ever go there.  Everything about space travel in our day and age just seems too cramped and uncomfortable and potentially deadly.  I prefer to keep my feet on the relatively safe ground of this planet.

Animal Weaponry

via New York Times’ article “Extravagant Results of Nature’s Arms Race“

Wonderful stuff . . . check out the slide show too!

Ornithishian Dinos with Feathers

If there was going to be anything to stir up the paleontolgy community these days it is most likely the finding that a ornithishian dinosaur had protofeathers (as described in this BBC article).

Feathers on dinosaurs isn’t really that big news by itself, seveal examples of this have been documented over the years.  What is a big deal is that Tianyulong confuciusi is clasified as a member of ornithishia, or bird-hipped, dinosaurs, whereas all previous examples of feathers were found amongst saurichia, or lizard-hipped, dinos.  Saurichia contains the theropds which are now thought to be the direct evolutionary predesessors of modern day birds.  If ornithishian dinosaurs had feathers too then it might cause a whole rethinkining of all dinosaurs.  Perhaps feathers were standard throughout all dinosaurs.

Interestingly, albeit somewhat confusing, saurichia are closer to birds than ornithishia even though the latter means “bird-hipped.”

Cool stuff.