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Subheading: ‘2112’ can be considered many things – a band manifesto, a conceptual landmark, maybe even the birth of prog metal – but above all, it was the band’s play for creative independence.The year 1976 was a make-or-break time for Rush. It found them with ambition to spare, a growing cult audience, and a label that wasn’t sure what to do with them. It was time to pull together all of their disparate ideas into one major statement and they accomplish just that with their fourth studio album, 2112. This was the crucial turning point for the band, the album...

“At noontime, if you look at a glancing angle, you can see what seems to be haze,” said Christopher Russell, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Dawn principal investigator. “It comes back in a regular pattern.” According to Russell, who was speaking at a NASA exploration meeting at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the haze covers about half of the crater and reaches as far as the rim. So far, scientists have theorized that the bright spots could be concentrations of minerals or salts. Or they might be icy deposits; potentially evidence...

Naturally, when you try to capture details in something bright, your background will go dark. But that might be what’s needed here – a change in exposure to reveal more detail in the spots at the expense of the landscape. Doubtless NASA will release enlarged and detailed images of these enigmatic dots later this summer..... Scientists still don’t understand the nature of the spot cluster, but reflective ice or salt remain the strongest possibilities. “The bright spots in this configuration make Ceres unique from anything we’ve seen before in the solar system,” said Chris Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn...

As Dawn descends toward its closest orbit around Ceres, it has been imaging the spots along the way, gradually giving us a less pixelated view of the large crater containing what now appear to be several bright spots reflecting the sun back at us. What once looked to be a large bright spot near the center of the dwarf planet soon split into two smaller, nearly adjacent spots upon closer inspection. In the latest view from Dawn, shot on May 16, those two large spots seem to be resolving into several smaller bright spots. The leading guess from NASA scientists...

Ceres continues to baffle astronomers as the Dawn spacecraft gets closer to being captured into orbit around the dwarf planet. The latest images, taken nearly 29,000 miles (46,000km) from Ceres, reveal that a bright 'alien' spot that stands out in previous images lies close to yet another bright area. While Nasa has not provided an explanation, scientists suggest these spots may be frozen pools of ice at the bottom of a crater that reflect light. 'Right now, all we can say is that the material reflects 40 per cent or more of the light falling on it,' UCLA astronomer Chris...

Explanation: Framing a bright emission region this telescopic view looks out along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the nebula rich constellation Cygnus the Swan. Popularly called the Tulip Nebula the glowing cloud of interstellar gas and dust is also found in the 1959 catalog by astronomer Stewart Sharpless as Sh2-101. About 8,000 light-years distant and 70 light-years across the complex and beautiful nebula blossoms at the center of this composite image. Red, green, and blue hues map emission from ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Ultraviolet radiation from young, energetic stars at the edge of the Cygnus...

And it's actually (relatively) nearby. This is poor, unfortunate Ceres. Discovered in 1801, it was at first called a planet, then soon classified as an asteroid, and recently as a dwarf planet, not quite qualifying for real planet status despite residing in the solar system's asteroid belt. But now it can feel special: the Herschel Telescope has, the for the first time, detected water on the lil' planet--probably a whole lot of it, too. The telescope, using infrared vision, detected a signature of water vapor from Ceres. The researchers think when the 590-mile-wide Ceres moves closer to the sun, part...

Rush Wrestling With Faith On New Album Neil Peart September 11, 2006, 3:50 PM ET Jonathan Cohen, N.Y. Rush has penned eight songs for its next studio album, which should be out in early 2007, according to drummer Neil Peart. The artist tells Billboard.com his lyrics for the as-yet-untitled set were greatly influenced by his motorcycle journeys throughout the United States, chronicled in the new book "Roadshow: Landscape With Drums." Peart says he was struck by the ubiquity of religious billboards that have sprung up on America's highways, which got him thinking about some weighty topics. "Just seeing the power...

Treated like a fly by night outfit The rock and roll hall's shame J. Kelly Nestruck, National Post Published: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 Rush was given the brush-off by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame again yesterday, exasperating fans who have been petitioning for the Canadian rock giants' inclusion for six years. Yesterday, the Cleveland-based institution announced the induction of Black Sabbath, Blondie, The Sex Pistols, Lynyrd Skynyrd and even jazzman Miles Davis, but Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart once again felt the caress of steel as the Hall of Fame's door slammed in their faces. Since...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

With the general downfall of album oriented rock as a successful money-spinner, the grandiose concept albums that are now Sunday Morning rock show classics are no longer being made and released in large numbers. This comes as no surprise. Getting into a CD like The Wall, Court of The Crimson King, or 2112 doesn't always appeal to a wide audience. 2112 never got the acclaim it really deserved for two reasons. Rush played hard rock at that point in their careers. The sort of music that would headline The Castle Donnington Festival, but would never make the playlist for an...