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PASADENA, Calif. — Of all colleges, it would seem, the California Institute of Technology should have the least problem doing the math. Yet its basketball team was left guessing about the precise length of its conference losing streak, which began in 1985. In the university’s cafeteria the other day, shortly after the Nobel Prize -winning chemist Robert Grubbs stopped by to chat, Caltech Coach Oliver Eslinger and part of his team debated the answer to a problem that began years before any of the players were born. “You guys all got 800s on your math S.A.T.’s,” Eslinger reminded the players....

Scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a new solar cell that they hope will cost a tiny fraction of current production. The new cells consist of tiny silicon wires that measure a mere 1-micron in diameter. These wires are embedded lengthwise and perpendicular into plastic plates where they convert light into electricity at an exceptional rate of efficiency. Any light that is leftover bounces around inside the wire matrix until it finds another wire that can absorb it, thus nearly all the light is captured and converted into electricity. Professor Harry Atwater at his namesake research...

PASADENA, Calif.— Roughly a billion years from now, the ever-increasing radiation from the sun will have heated Earth into inhabitability; the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that serves as food for plant life will disappear, pulled out by the weathering of rocks; the oceans will evaporate; and all living things will disappear. Or maybe not quite so soon, say researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), who have come up with a mechanism that doubles the future lifespan of the biosphere—while also increasing the chance that advanced life will be found elsewhere in the universe. A paper describing their...

NOTE: I post this because my nephew and Godson is thinking he might like to attend Cal Tech and will paying it a visit soon. ================================================= THE GREAT ROSE BOWL HOAX THE LONGEST LIST OF THE LONGEST STUFF AT THE LONGEST DOMAIN NAME AT LONG LAST The Great Rose Bowl Hoax The College Prank that Set the Standard Picture it: The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, January 2, 1961. The game is being played on the 2nd day of the New Year due to the 1st falling on a Sunday. The stadium is at capacity for the college championship battle...

Mars Patrol, Please Phone Home NASA Loses Contact With Mars Global Surveyor Orbiter By NED POTTER Nov. 13, 2006 — - Ten years ago -- 10 years last week, in fact -- a little ship named Mars Global Surveyor was launched from Florida, designed to spend two years in Martian orbit. It hasn't been heard from in a week now, and the engineers at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California are finally getting worried. Something on the ship apparently went awry when it sent a signal that it was having trouble orienting one of its solar panels to face...

Smaller and cooler than the gas giants, Neptune and Uranus are classified as ice giants. It’s a good name, since they do have large quantities of water ice mixed in with a largely hydrogen and helium atmosphere. There’s very little water at the cloud tops, but the percentage of water increases as you descend towards the heavier core. Could there be a layer on Neptune with enough pressure and temperature for liquid water to form into vast oceans? And if not Neptune, what about a Neptune-like planet orbiting another star? First, a little about Neptune. This “ice giant” planet orbits...

PASADENA - The drums are gone. The quivering lines on huge rolls of white paper that have come to represent the strength of an earthquake are a thing of the past, according to scientists at the California Institute of Technology and the U.S. Geological Survey. When the next big one hits - and scientists emphasize there is no good way of knowing when that will be - the temblor will be converted into a digital animation showing waves ripple across Southern California like the disturbed surface of an otherwise quiet pond. "The drums represent outdated technology," said Jeroen Tromp, director...

In the ongoing battle of the nerds between Caltech and MIT, the latest volley has been fired from a 130-year-old cannon. Actually, the latest volley is a cannon.Massachusetts pranksters, posing as professional movers, stole the beloved Fleming Cannon — traditionally fired at each year's commencement — from the Pasadena campus last week. On Thursday it popped up, pointed toward Pasadena and adorned with an oversized Massachusetts Institute of Technology school ring, at the Cambridge campus next to a plaque referring to Caltech as "its previous owners." The plaque explained that the students created the phony "Howe & Ser Moving Company"...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A graduate student was sentenced Monday to more than eight years in prison and ordered to pay millions of dollars in restitution for firebombing scores of sport utility vehicles. William Jensen Cottrell, 24, was convicted in November of conspiracy to commit arson and seven counts of arson for an August 2003 vandalism spree that damaged and destroyed about 125 SUVs. Prosecutors estimated the total damage was about $2.3 million. U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner sentenced Cottrell to 100 months and ordered him to pay $3.5 million in restitution. Cottrell hung his head upon hearing the...

Scientist foresaw Sumatran quake Research showed area was ripe for temblor By Kimm Groshong , Staff WriterArticle Published: Sunday, March 06, 2005 - 8:25:08 PM PST PASADENA -- When the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and resultant tsunami devastated Sumatra and much of the Bay of Bengal on Dec. 26, Kerry Sieh's premonition became a nightmarish reality. The Caltech geology professor had studied the history of giant earthquakes just south of the epicenter for about a decade and knew full well the damage such a major quake in that part of the world could inflict. He had tried to get the word out...

A LEADING geologist repeatedly warned Indonesian officials that an earthquake and tsunami would soon strike their shores, it emerged this weekend. Kerry Sieh, professor of geology at California Institute of Technology, has been studying the region for nearly a decade. Last July he became so concerned at the likely massive loss of life that he printed and distributed 5,000 posters and brochures around some of the islands later hit by the earthquake. He addressed church congregations and schools to tell people what to do in an earthquake. His main advice was for people to live away from shorelines. Sieh had...

My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression of belief will be my task today. Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to do. Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A graduate student was convicted Friday of setting fire to dozens of sport utility vehicles and causing more than $2 million in damage, but was cleared of the most serious charge against him. William Jensen Cottrell, 24, was found guilty in U.S. District Court of conspiracy to commit arson and seven counts of arson. But the jury acquitted him of attempting to use a destructive device in a crime of violence - Molotov cocktails - a charge that carried a sentence of at least 30 years in prison. He will be sentenced March 12, and faces...

Residents of Ohio's largest county, Cuyahoga, who are voting by absentee ballot this year have to solve a brainteaser. They were each given a ballot with candidates' names, arrows pointing to the right and small numbers. And they each got a punch card with hundreds of little boxes and a number inside each one. A voter is supposed to ignore the arrows on the ballot - which appear to be there by mistake - and punch out the chad in the box on the punch card whose number corresponds to the candidate selected. If, instead, the voter follows the arrow...

JPL Open House Jet Propulsion Laboratory News Release NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will hold an open house on Sat. and Sun., May 15 and 16, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., taking visitors on a virtual ride through the solar system with this year's theme, "The Spirit of Exploration." This fun-filled, family event has a little of everything for space enthusiasts and non-space buffs. You can explore the planets as you walk through a model of the solar system, build your own spacecraft, and have your picture taken in infrared light. Visitors will have the opportunity to...

<p>A California Institute of Technology graduate student was arrested Tuesday in connection with last summer's vandalism of 125 sport utility vehicles and fires set at a San Gabriel Valley auto dealership in apparent support of the Earth Liberation Front, the FBI said.</p>

Peering back in time to when the universe was just 750 million years old, a team of astrophysicists announced Sunday they have spied a tiny galaxy that is the most farthest known object. "We are confident it is the most distant known object," California Institute of Technology astronomer Richard Ellis said of the galaxy, which lies roughly 13 billion light-years from Earth. The team uncovered the faint galaxy using the two most powerful telescopes of their kind – one in space, the other in Hawaii – aided by the natural magnification provided by a massive cluster of galaxies. The gravitational...

A new window to the universe has opened with today's release of the first dazzling images from NASA's newly named Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility. The first observations, of a glowing stellar nursery; a swirling, dusty galaxy; a disc of planet-forming debris; and organic material in the distant universe, demonstrate the power of the telescope's infrared detectors to capture cosmic features never before seen. The Spitzer Space Telescope was also officially named today after the late Dr. Lyman Spitzer, Jr. He was one of the 20th century's most influential scientists, and in the mid-1940s,...

<p>One of the most oft-heard criticisms of what the whole world is watching in Iraq is that the American superpower is "going it alone."</p> <p>Going it alone? I guess so. America has been "going it alone" since about 1776. Or maybe it was 1492.</p>

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 April 14 RX J185635-375: Candidate Quark Star Picture Credit: M. van Kerkwijk (Institute of Astronomy, Utrecht), S. Kulkarni (Caltech), VLT Kueyen, ESO Explanation: Why is RJX J185635-375 so cool and so dim? Previously, this compact star held claim to being the closest neutron star -- only 150 light-years away. Now new observations and analysis indicate not only a cool temperature for RXJ J185635-375, pictured above, but also...