The universe is full of surprises. More than once I have read an article about a new discovery and told myself something like this: “That can’t be right! They must have messed up somewhere, and we’ll read about how in a few weeks.” Sometimes I’ve been right. Far more often, I’ve been wrong. Such was [...]
On Saint Patrick’s day, the MESSENGER spacecraft will slip into orbit around Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, and the smallest of the eight classical planets. It will be the first to do so. You would think this would have happened before now. After all, there are numerous spacecraft in orbit around Mars, and [...]
