Surprising Science — October 20, 2009

Saturnine Equinox

Stunning new images of Saturn at Equinox cast new light on the beautiful and distant planet.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which is currently 1.5bn kilometres from Earth on its way to Saturn, has gathered images of the Saturnian system at equinox. Sunlight casts long shadows across Saturn’s rings during this time of year revealing some never-seen-before detail of the distant planet. The spacecraft also captured images of some of Saturn’s moons and even caught footage of Janus, one of its smaller moons, showing strips of light and shadows passing over its face. Cassini is orbiting Saturn as part of its extended equinox mission which will continue until next September.

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

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7 min

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with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

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