This program started in the 1970′s where it currently still resides at Voxtok Station, it being a simple drilling mission until 1996 when these Russian specialists along with their British counterparts discovered the lake. With sonar and satellite imaging, it was discovered that this lake was directly under the drill site and that it could be one of the world’s largest freshwater reservoirs. This lake is right around the size of Lake Ontario and is under 3623 meters of ice. RIA Novosti (the Russian news network) reported the following:

“Yesterday our scientists at the Vostok polar station in the Antarctic completed drilling at depths of 3,768 meters and reached the surface of the subglacial lake.” – RIA Novosti

Drilling started in the 1970′s and continued until 1998, just two years after it was discovered that the lake lie below. In 1998 it was feared that the lake would be contaminated by the process being used to drill. In 2003 a bit of technology that allowed the drilling continue was developed in St. Petersburg, and after testing the tech out, the drilling began again in 2005. It is the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute that predicts that the water will be:

“the only giant super-clean water system on the planet. …twice cleaner than double-distilled water.” – RAARI

Now the testing can commence and tiny samples of the water in the lake can be shown to contain all manner of wonderful things. There’s also the possibility that the lake contains absolutely nothing of interest: but we’re betting on the former option. What do you think they’ll find over 3500 meters under the ice and snow and who knows what else?

[via RT, Images via The Earth Institute Columbia University]

The host star in this system is called GJ 667C and is an M-class dwarf star. Two more stars sit in the same system and are a pair of orange K dwarfs. This area was not expected to be the best place for a habitable planet to be out of all those being concentrated on in this larger Kepler mission, but turned out surprisingly to be just what those watching were looking for. Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC, noted:

“This was expected to be a rather unlikely star to host planets. Yet there they are, around a very nearby, metal-poor example of the most common type of star in our galaxy. The detection of this planet, this nearby and this soon, implies that our galaxy must be teeming with billions of potentially habitable rocky planets.”- Vogt

This new planet receives 90 percent of the light that our Earth receives, and because most of the incoming light is infrared, a higher percent of the incoming energy is absorbed by the planet – in other words, lets go move in now!

“This planet is the new best candidate to support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it.” – Anglada-Escudé

Wouldn’t it be lovely to go live on a new planet? We won’t be getting there in our lifetimes, sadly enough – unless Zefram Cochrane hurries up and gets born so he can invite warp speed. Come on nerds, get to reproducin!

[via University of California Santa Cruz]

This planet is well within the livable range around the star it circles, the Kepler space telescope currently also studying 53 other candidates that its team reported back in February may be of similar specifications. This “22-b” planet is the first of the 54 total candidates in the study that has been formally confirmed using other telescopes, and is still part of the smaller group that remain in the study since a redefinition of the habitable zone around stars has reduced the number down to 48 since earlier this year. Kepler 22-b sits about 15% closer to the star it orbits than the Earth does to the Sun, its year consisting of 290 days to the Earth’s 365.

The star this planet orbits lets off about 25% less light than our Sun does, this keeping the planet at what the BBC calls a “balmy” temperature, one that could very well support the existence of liquid water. Before the Kepler team is able to change the planet from “candidate” to “confirmed,” it must wait for three passes of the planet around its star. NASA’s Ames Research Center’s principal investigator William Borucki noted the following on the discovery:

“Fortune smiled upon us with the detection of this planet. The first transit was captured just three days after we declared the spacecraft operationally ready. We witnessed the defining third transit over the 2010 holiday season.” – Borucki

Additional results announced at the first Kepler science conference included a total number of candidates for life-supporting planets to be 2,362. This staggering number includes 207 planets which are approximately Earth-sized, this suggesting that the number of Earth to Super-Earth sized planets in existence are much more common than previously thought. We’ll be hanging out on Floston in no time – Paradise awaits us all!

BONUS: hear Borucki speak about the Kepler space-telescope here, courtesy of the BBC:

[via BBC]

Days are estimated to have been shortened by 1.26 microseconds, and more visible changes include islands changing their position. One of them, Santa María, may have risen two meters as a result of the quake.  “It’s what we call the ice-skater effect,” David Kerridge, head of Earth hazards and systems at the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, provided an analogy, “As the ice skater puts when she’s going around in a circle, and she pulls her arms in, she gets faster and faster. It’s the same idea with the Earth going around if you change the distribution of mass, the rotation rate changes.”

It’s not the first time something like this has happened, but an 8.8 rating on the Richter scale is one of the most serious to date.

[BusinessWeek via Gizmodo]

The image of our planet measures a stunning 2048 x 2048 pixels, and is from a collection of Goddard images, tweeted by NASA.  Blue marble indeed.  Click on the images to view in high-resolution glory.

[NASA Twitter via Gizmodo]

“Among the aircraft are B-52 Cold War-era bombers that were retired in the 1990s under the the terms of the SALT disarmament treaties signed between the US and the Soviet Union.  Also, on show are dozens of F-14 fighter planes which were retired from the US Navy in 2006 and featured in the Hollywood movie, Top Gun. The Boneyard has also featured in a series of films, the most recent being Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

Officials at the base claims that for every tax dollar spent, $11 are returned through salvaged parts, so this should be one place that our tax dollars aren’t going to waste.  Check it out in-depth for yourself via Google Maps.

[BBC via Gizmodo]

LCD panels actually use a deadly gas called Nitrogen Trifluoride when in production. When inhaled the gas is extremely harmful to your kidneys and liver.

When it starts being released into the environment is about 17,200 times worse than carbon dioxide. Which means it will end up trapping heat into our atmosphere over a hundred year period. Hopefully they will fix this issue so I can have an HDTV at least mostly guilt free.

[via crunchgear]

For the mainstream category the vehicles must have 4 wheels, hold 4 people, go from 0-60 in 12 seconds or less, have a top speed of 100 mph or higher, a range of at least 200 miles, there is also a cargo space restriction that says these vehicles must have at least 10 cubic feet of cargo space. On the alternative vehicle side it has to carry at least 2 people, hit a top speed of 80 MPH, have a range of 100 miles or more and at least 5 cubic feet of cargo space.

The main requirement regardless of category is that they must be able to go 100 mile or more on one gallon of gas or less. Aptera and Tesla already have the clear lead with Aptera already making vehicles with 3 wheels that hold 2 people and go 157 MPG using diesel and Tesla has their Roadster which is a 2-seater all electric vehicle that I am pretty sure already exceeds all of those standards, and they are rumored to have already been working on a 4-seater version.

[via Wired]

For people like me there’s now a helpful gift/solution. You can buy a “first-aid” kit for the Earth in different packages depending on your living situation. There are dorm, apartment and home sizes ranging from $75-$100. Each kit would include items like thermostats, weather sensors, smart power strips, timers, fluorescent bulbs, LED night lights, low-flow shower head and pressure gauges.

These kits are made by Earth Aid Enterprises. They say that a family of three who uses the kit for one year could save $460 in energy bills and 7,442 pounds of carbon. With statistic like that, who wouldn’t want one of these?

Gift For Mother Earth: First-Aid Kits [via Crave]

And the picture quality, it has to be horrendous, but that’s not even the worst part, you have to work to take a photo. I thought my battery powered digital camera’s shutter speed was horrendous; imagine how long it would take you to take a second photo when you have to spin that donut looking thing for about 15 seconds.

The upside is you don’t have to spin it with just your hands, you can pick it up and run it along a flat surface to wind it up, and you have to do that every time you take a photo. Furthermore, it will probably cost a fortune when this thing is released. So you have to pay more for a crappy camera to save the Earth, personally, I’m kind of beginning to like the randomness of the seasons, I’ll keep using my gadgets and electronics just the way I do.

Sony debuts wind-up camera [via coolest-gadgets]

The Anti-Gravity globe is available for just $80. With a price and educational value like that it’s sure to be a hit with everyone, whether in the classroom or the home.

Anti-Gravity Floating Globe [via Coolest-Gadgets]

The images were shot by the Kaguya lunar explorer on November 7th, and released by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on November 13th. The images above were shot while the explorer was near the moon’s south pole. 

It’s really quite amazing. Congratulations to JAXA on a successful mission. The pictures alone were worth the effort.    

KAGUYA (SELENE) Image Taking of Earth Rise by HDTV [via BoingBoing]