Ocean Exploration

In contrast to the excitement of moon exploration and the colonization of outer space, there is less interest in a realm closer to home: the ocean. (Seaquest) Our oceans are less well known than the moon.When will ocean exploration be accessible to more people? When will ocean exploration become tourism? There is so much exploration left to be done, so many canyons, geolocgical strucutres (underwater volcanoes, sinkholes, mountains) and so many species left to discover and understand. There are lots of resources like minerals, energy, underwater forests. New species to be found and geological structures to be understood.

MIR submersibles, for example, can dive to a maximum depth of 6,000 metres (19,685 ft). This makes them two of only seven manned submersibles in the world that can dive beyond 3,000 metres (9,843 ft), the others being the US submersibles Alvin, Sea Cliff and Deepstar 20000, the Japanese owned Shinkai and the French owned Nautile. Up to 98% of the world’s oceans are under 6,000 metres deep.

In the mid 1990s and early 2000s, the MIR vehicles were used by American producer James Cameron to film the wreck of the RMS Titanic, resting at a depth of 3,821 metres, for his 1997 film Titanic and documentaries such as Ghosts of the Abyss, and to film the wreck of the Bismarck, resting at a depth of 4,700 metres, for his 2002 documentary film Expedition: Bismarck. In July 2008 both Mirs initiated a two-year expedition to Lake Baikal, the world's largest freshwater reservoir. The expedition is being led by the Russian Academy of Sciences.[10] During the expedition around 160 descents are planned to the bottom of the lake, which is largely unexplored to this point.

Another interesting research vessel is the RSS James Cook.

John Delaney at the University of Washington: The approach, dubbed the Neptune Project, would string 10 semiautomated geobiological labs across the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate off Washington, 8,000 feet underwater. The approach, dubbed the Neptune Project, would string 10 semiautomated geobiological labs across the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate off Washington, 8,000 feet underwater. Each would have cameras, lights, robots, and sensors, all connected to the surface via optical cable to transmit data on everything from the biomass of microbes to the effects of ocean temperature on weather

Astronomy Applets

Solar System
Jupiter

Galaxies

Understanding the motion, shape, structure, density and quantity of galaxies in the universe is the largest scale scientific pursuit of mankind with many questions still remaining.

At the level of the galaxy itself, astronomers have found that stars revolve around the center of galaxies at a constant speed over a wide range of distances from a galaxy's center. This behavior was not expected, assuming a free Newtonian potential. This contradiction has led scientists to speculate on the existence of extra mass called Dark Matter or the need for extra parameters in for Modified Newtonian Dynamics.

Other astronomical models predict that small galaxies in the early Universe evolved into the massive galaxies of today by coalescing. Recent observations by the Hubble Space Telescope have found some of these early galaxies, existing only 100 years after the big bang. Scientists were surprised to see their density so low raising many questions about how the early galaxies must have formed. Three of the galaxies appear to be slightly disrupted – rather than being shaped like rounded blobs, they appear stretched into tadpole-like shapes. This is a sign that they may be interacting and merging with neighbouring galaxies to form larger, cohesive structures. Other observations using wide field telescopes looking back to a time when it was a fifth of its present age have revealed an enormous string of galaxies about 300 million light-years long. This new structure defies current models of how the Universe evolved, which can't explain how a string this big could have formed so early.

Space X Launch

Space X successfully launched into orbit earlier this year, making it the first private industry to do so. I'm just a little late in reporting this.

Iran's Satellite Completes Mission

here.

Sout Korea's First Rocket Launch

here.

Space Elevator

NASA offers $4M in prizes for bold technology that leads to space elevator.