A fabulous image and a great article from The Planetary Society all about the Tunguska event, which happened 100 years ago today.

Almost one in four secondary schools in England no longer has any specialist physics teachers, a survey suggests.

These are the top stories from the Digg Space category for the week ending Saturday 28th of June 2008:

• 1 APOD: M81 Feeding a Black Hole
• 2 Shocked scientists say Martian soil could support life
• 3 Scientists: It Once Rained on Mars
• 4 What is Hanny”s Voorwerp?
• 5 Scientists Think Big Impact Caused Two-Faced Mars

To find…

It doesn’t seem that long ago I hosted my first Carnival and that was number 40. Now the Carnival gets a bus pass as it turns 60.

There is a lot more to the universe than the light you and I can pick up with our eyes and brains. Although its a shame that we can’t see them naturally we can use technology to reveal the wavelengths of light normally invisible to us. Visible light is only part of the electromagnetic spectrum (a very small part) and I thought it would be interesting to see some familiar objects in unfamiliar ways.

Black Hole Hunter is an online game. This relates to a post of mine from last week about the sounds of gravity waves. If you like listening to white noise and looking at graphs then this is the game for you!

A nifty graphic showing the sizes of the planets, moons, comets, asteroids and plutoids in relative font sizes. Best viewed very large!

An awesome page about atmospheric effects on Mars, including a great dust devils animation. Mars has a rich atmosphere and this is the first planet for which we are really starting to understand the climate.

Wordle is a website that lets you create word clouds of text. I have been playing with astronomy and astrophysics text to see what comes out the other end. Some of them are very pretty!

August 1st 2008 will see a solar eclipse visible across much of Asia, Europe, the Middle East and some portions of North America. The eclipse is often being called the 2008 Olympic Eclipse because it comes just days before the commencement of the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

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Here is a short science experiment at home. They guy seems to be showing us how to create a plasma inside our microwaves (please be very careful if you actually want to try it). The video is hilarious though…

Researchers have found a way to generate the shortest-ever flash of light. It was just 80 attoseconds long. That’s 80 billionths of a billionth of a second.

These are the top stories from the Digg Space category for the week ending Saturday 21st of June 2008:

• 1 Life In Outer Space? Japan Astronomers Hunt Aliens
• 2 Martian Skies [PICS]
• 3 The Next Einstein? This is Amazing
• 4 "We have ICE!!!!! Yes, ICE, *WATER ICE* on Mars! w00t!!!"
• 5 APOD: Solstice Moonrise, Cape Sounion…

This week’s Carnival is up so get over there and get reading!

Also found this image via the Carnival which I rather liked.

There is ice on Mars. Phoenix has made a significant step with this great shot of ice turning into vapour.

The future of eMerlin, a crucial upgrade to the world-famous Jodrell Bank observatory, in Cheshire, is starting to look brighter.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Jodrell Bank future looks better

From Wired, a nice, little, true story about some twelfth century monks and the crater they may have seen being formed.

According to Dr. Tegmark, “there is only mathematics; that is all that exists.” In his theory, the mathematical universe hypothesis, he updates quantum physics and cosmology with the concept of many parallel universes inhabiting multiple levels of space and time. This is a cool idea. read more | digg story

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Astronomy and agriculture - yet more ways astronomy has advanced mankind without much notice. How humble astronomy can be! Also, Stuart has made a connection between IYP2008 and IYA2009.

Astronomy Blog

The startling reaction between Diet Coke and Mentos sweets, made famous in thousands of YouTube videos, finally has a scientific explanation.

If you drop a pack of Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke, you get this huge fountain of spray and Diet Coke foam coming out,” says Tonya Coffey, a…

Gravity waves can be interpreted as sounds. Here are some of the gravity-sounds that would be made by black holes, pulsars and other massive objects.

A peculiar little way of visualising your own brief existence with that of the whole universe: in pixels. Illustrates the point nicely. read more | digg story

These are the top stories from the Digg Space category for the week ending Saturday 14th of June 2008:

• 1 Super Black Holes: NASA mission seeks new laws of physics
• 2 Next-Gen Space Gear for Humanity”s Return to the Moon
• 3 How Do You Go #2 in Space?
• 4 APOD: At Last, GLAST
• 5 NASA:…

Universe Today is reporting what I have seen other sites reporting on over the past few days: a lack of sunspots. It seems there is “a small worry” that something untoward may be afoot with the current lack of magnetic activity on the Sun two years after Solar minimum.

The 58th Carnival is up and it is being hosted by Universe Today, who of course operate and run the Carnival on behalf of the community. It’s a good collection. Go and check out Ethan’s three-part series on the Natural history of the Universe on the ‘Stars with a Bang’…

A great xkcd comic about the sciences and their pecking order.

Astronaut Ron Garan works on assigned tasks during the last scheduled spacewalk of the STS-124 mission specialist. A great photo of one of Colbert’s heroes at work.

Pareidolia is something that Phil often covers on Bad Astronomy. Whilst browsing the excellent Worth1000 archives, I came across this image of someone that looks just like Phil! The competition title: pareidolia. Who’s have thought?

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YouTube - Phoenix Descends - a video from Bad Astronomy which I rather enjoyed.

GLAST has now launched after a few delays in the last couple of weeks. But no worries! Soon the £350 million mission between NASA and the US Department of Energy will begin showing us the gamma-ray sky. GLAST will orbit about 350 miles above the Earth has a five year…

Stuart has the lowdown on the agreed name for a certain type of object that orbits beyond the distance of Neptune. Formerly an icy dwarf planet-type thing, now they shall be known as ‘plutoids’.