Ontario and Quebec decide to address global warming despite Ottawa - Ontario and Quebec, fed up with Ottawa's handling of climate issues, have signed a joint accord to fight global warming by establishing a cap-and-trade program. Specifically, companies that generate more greenhouse gases than allowed under the program pay fees to those companies who generate less than the limits. They hope that other provinces will also sign onto the accord.
Smallest planet yet found around smallest star yet - A planet only 3 times larger than Earth has been detected around a star 1/20th the mass of our own sun.
Ice! Ice, baby! - At least that is the hope of scientists viewing an image from the Phoenix lander. The images (I'll post one later) appears to show a solid white patch blown clean by the Phoenix's landing rockets. If it is, indeed, ice then the lander will only have to dig through a relatively thin layer of topsoil before getting to the ice it was intended to analyze. At the moment, the lander is being thoroughly tested, including methods to work around short circuit in one of its gas analyzers.
Mars may have been a salty dog - too salty for life, according to a recent study of 4 billion year-old salt deposits from Mars found by the Mars rover Opportunity. This study indicates that the water which flowed on mars might have been extremely briny, making it unlikely that life evolved, or if it did evolve that it would have survived to the present day.
More stories will have to wait until Bloglines is back up.
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