News and opinions from Glenn Elert

The first beam in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) was successfully steered around the full 27 kilometres of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator at 10:28 in the morning on 10 September 200…

Viking Mission Page

Engineers at Harvard University had been having problems with a Mark II electromechanical computer on this day in 1947.

A piece of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 4 was found in the middle of the road in front of 610 North 8th Street in Manitowoc, Wisconsin on 5 September 1962.

Voyager 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket on 5 September 1977.

Thomas Edison did not invent the electric light bulb or the electric generator.

First Color Image of the Viking Lander 2 Site

Pioneer 11 made its closest approach to Saturn on 1 September 1979.

The ban on the manufacture, importation, and sale of incandescent light bulbs of 100 W or greater went into effect in the European Union on this day in 2009.

The maiden flight of Discovery (STS-41-D) was supposed to take place on 26 June 1984.

The termination shock is the locus of points in space where the solar wind basically stops blowing outward from the sun and begins to drift with the background gases of interstellar space.

According to Terminator 2: Judgement Day, the military-designed artificial intelligence system called Skynet became self-aware on 29 August 1997 at 2:14 AM and turned against its creators on what became known as Judgement Day.

Entry from Faraday’s lab notebook dated 29 August 1931.

Scientific American is part of the Nature Portfolio, which is a British division of the German Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck.

Michael Faraday died 25 August 1867 at the age of 76.

Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Neptune on 25 August 1989.

Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Saturn on 25 August 1981.

Date: 24 August 1968 (8:30 AM Tahiti Time) Code Name: Canopus Type: two-stage fusion Yield: 2.6 million tons of TNT Location: Fangataufa Atoll, French Polynesia

Voyager 2 launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket on 20 August 1977.

Sputnik 5 was launched on 19 August 1960 with the dogs Белка (Belka), which means squirrel, and Стрелка (Strelka), which means arrow, 40 mice, 2 rats and a variety of plants on board.

Sixty years ago today in August… An hour and thirty-one minutes after launch, my pressure altimeter halts at 103,300 feet.

A widespread power outage that affected parts of Michigan, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts began at approximately 4:10 PM on 14 August 2003.