Robert Wright interviews Edward O. Wilson
Edward O. Wilson is Pellegrino University Professor emeritus at Harvard. His awards include the National Medal of Science and two Pulitzer Prizes.
Edward O. Wilson
Robert Wright interviews John Maynard Smith
John Maynard Smith, who died in 2004 at the age of 84, was one of the major figures in 20th century evolutionary biology. He was professor ... all » emeritus at the http://www.biols.susx.ac.uk/faculty/biology/maynard.htm University of Sussex
John Maynard Smith
Saturn's Iapetus Fly-by
Scientists on the Cassini mission to Saturn are poring through hundreds of images returned from the 10th September 2007 flyby of Saturn's two-toned moon Iapetus. Pictures show a white hemisphere resembling snow, and the other as black as tar.
Images show a surface that is heavily cratered, along with the mountain ridge that runs along the moon's equator. Many of the close-up observations focused on studying the strange 20-kilometer high (12 mile) mountain ridge that gives the moon a walnut-shaped appearance.
This flyby was nearly 100 times closer to Iapetus than Cassini's 2004 flyby, bringing the spacecraft to about 1,640 kilometers (1,000 miles) from the surface. The moon's irregular walnut shape, the mountain ridge that lies almost directly on the equator and Iapetus' brightness contrast are among the key mysteries scientists are trying to solve.
The return of images and other data was delayed due to a galactic cosmic ray hit which put the spacecraft into a precautionary state called safe mode. This occurred after the spacecraft had placed all of the flyby data on its data recorders and during the first few minutes after it began sending the data home. The data flow resumed later that day and concluded on Wednesday. The spacecraft is operating normally and its instruments are expected to return to normal operations in a few days.
YouTube - Iapetus Fly-by
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