A Brief History On September 13, 1987, two thieves took advantage of a guard being absent from an abandoned Brazilian hospital site to help themselves to whatever they could scavenge. The men made the blunder of taking a 3.3-ounce capsule of caesium chloride, a highly radioactive substance used in radiation therapy. Digging Deeper The same night of the theft, the thieves exhibited signs of radiation poisoning. Visiting a local clinic, they were diagnosed with radiation sickness. About three days after the theft, the thieves opened the capsule and picked out some of the glowing blue substance inside. The thieves sold…
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A Brief History On September 12, 1992, NASA launched mission STS-47, an historic flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour. Digging Deeper Among the notable facts about this particular flight, is that this mission marked the 50th space shuttle flight. Another first, was the first African American woman in space, Mae Carol Jemison. Mamoru Mohri became the first ever Japanese astronaut aboard a US spacecraft, and the first married couple to be together in space when Mark Lee and Jan Davis made the space flight as crew members. Endeavor made a total of 25 successful space flights from 1992 until retirement in…
A Brief History On September 9, 1972, an exploration team mapping the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky discovered that the Mammoth Cave system was linked to the Flint Ridge cave network, making it the longest cave passageway in the world. Digging Deeper Upon the discovery by the Cave Research Foundation team, the entire cave system is now known as the Mammoth–Flint Ridge Cave System. In fact, the Flint Ridge portion is even longer than the part previously just called Mammoth Cave. A 52,830-acre National Park since 1941, the caves boast over 426 miles of surveyed passages, one and a half…
A Brief History On September 8, 2016, NASA launched its OSIRIS-Rex mission to near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu with the goal of returning to Earth with a sample of the asteroid. The sample size is to be at least 2.1 ounces. Digging Deeper The sample is to be returned to the Earth about September 24, 2023. The rendezvous with the asteroid took place in 2018 and the sample was not collected until October of 2020 when the spacecraft made a landing on the space rock. Despite mechanical difficulty, a sample between 400 and 1,000 grams was collected. NASA hopes to find…
A Brief History On September 7, 1936, Benjamin died. Ben was the last Thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian Tiger or Tasmanian Wolf, a carnivorous marsupial of Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea. The introduction of Dingoes and climate change cut into their population, and hunting pressure did the rest. Digging Deeper Now that we have no living Thylacines, should scientists use cloning to resurrect the species? Are there any moral or practical reasons not to? What about other extinct species? Some of the critters we would like to see brought back through cloning include the Wooly Mammoth and the Wooly…