Once every eleven years, the sun’s magnetic fields reset. When this happens, it can play havoc with things like wireless communications. Researchers at Stanford have been studying the underlying process and have cracked some of the secrets behind the mechanism that makes this happen.

The mechanism, known as meridional flow, works something like a conveyor belt. Magnetic plasma migrates north to south on the sun’s surface, from the equator to the poles, and then cycles into the sun’s interior on its way back to the equator.

The rate and depth beneath the surface of the sun at which this process occurs is critical for predicting the sun’s magnetic and flare activity, but has remained largely unknown until now.

Interesting article.

The last “soft” landing on the moon was by the Soviet Luna 24, which made its unmanned, non-destructive landing on Augsust 18th, 1976 and returned to Earth four days later. That was 37 years ago.

This week the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced that it has finished construction of its first lunar landing module. It is now ready to move Chang’e 3 to the “launch implementation phase,” and fully expects to launch China’s first moon landing mission by the end of the year. This will be an unmanned mission, but given that China only just launched its first lunar orbiter, Chang’e 1, in 2007, the military-led space agency is making remarkably quick progress.

China, Japan, India, Russia, and the US are currently the only countries to have put objects into a stable lunar orbit, and if Chang’e 3 is a success they will be just the third nation ever to achieve a “soft” landing on the moon — meaning that the lander will not be destroyed in the process.

This is a big deal for China, which will become the third nation (after the US and Russia) to make a successful “soft” landing on the moon.

This is fascinating.

Brain researchers say that for the first time one person has remotely triggered another person’s movement, a flicking finger, through a signal sent to him by thought.

Though this particular experiment is simplistic in nature, the implications are a bit staggering. Imagine someone hacking into the system and controlling people’s actions, all over the net. Yikes!

Last week, a panda cub was born to Mei Xiang at the National Zoo. Given the rarity of panda births, this was pretty big news, especially in the nation’s capital.

Turns out, that brand new panda baby instantly belongs to China. As do all other pandas on the planet. I was a little shocked by this. Every single giant panda in the world belongs to China.

Originally, China gave pandas to others — no strings attached. Starting in the 1950s, the Chinese government used the popularity (and adorableness) of giant pandas to curry favor with other nations, by gifting the creatures to governments around the world. In 1972, for example, China gave two giant pandas to the United States as thanks for President Nixon’s visit to their nation (which itself historically began to normalize the relationship between the two). First Lady Pat Nixon ensured that those two pandas, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, were housed at the National Zoo. The program was very successful. Other countries — many who had little in the way of relations with China — asked for pandas as well. But in 1984, China stopped giving pandas away. Instead, the Chinese government began loaning them out.

Under the terms of the revised Chinese plan, zoos were offered pandas only for a ten-year period. (There’s some evidence that renewals are possible.) Because all the pandas now in captivity outside of China were born after the 1984 change, “all giant pandas outside China are actually on loan from the country,” as NPR points out. The cost of renting a panda is $1,000,000 per year, to be payable to China’s Wildlife Conservation Association. And, perhaps most strikingly, the lease agreement requires that any cubs born to loaned-out pandas be returned to to China. So if Mei Xiang’s recent addition survives, the baby will likely go back to China at some point early on in its life. The good news, though, is that the baby will be reunited with its brother. Tai Shan, a panda born to Mei Xiang in 2005, was returned to China in 2009.

Pretty interesting and, seemingly, pretty ironclad.