Google Inc. is bankrolling a $30 million out-of-this-world prize to the first private company that can safely land a robotic rover on the moon and beam back a gigabyte of images and video to Earth, the Internet search leader said Thursday…
If the competition produces a winner, it would prove a major boon to the emerging private spaceflight industry and mark the first time that a non-government entity has flown a lunar space probe.
Heavenbound: A scientific exploration of how we have come to believe in God.
In short, are we hard-wired to believe in God? And if we are, how and why did that happen?
God has always been a puzzle for Scott Atran. When he was 10 years old, he scrawled a plaintive message on the wall of his bedroom in Baltimore. “God exists, he wrote in black and orange paint, “or if he doesn’t, we’re in trouble… Atran has been struggling with questions about religion ever since. Wondering why he himself no longer believes in God and why so many other people, everywhere in the world, apparently do.
Oil prices finished above $80 a barrel for the first time Thursday and gasoline prices rose as refiners reported production problems after Hurricane Humberto hit Texas.
Oil first traded over $80 a barrel on Wednesday after the Energy Department reported declines in crude and gasoline inventories and a drop in refinery activity, but ended the day below that psychologically important mark.
On Thursday, Humberto added to the supply concerns by cutting power to several refineries in the Port Arthur, Texas, area. Another tropical system gaining strength in the Atlantic also supported prices.
This week, the chairman of the St. Petersburg, Florida, City Council was accused of having sex with his two adopted daughters and their nanny. And he could have been in real trouble, too, if it turned out the nanny was an illegal. But he got ahead of the story when he killed himself by sitting in the garage with the doors closed and the riding lawn mower on.