It was smiles all around at the European Space Agency yesterday, after their small robotic spacecraft named Philea (“fee-lay”) touched down on a comet after a 10-year, multi-billion mile journey. We’re talking about the Rosetta mission of course and despite the celebrations, not everything went as planned. Tiny harpoons meant to tie the lander to the comet didn’t fire, so ESA scientists think the tiny lander landed softly, bounced up, then landed again. What kind of shape the lander is in is still being evaluated. Scientists suspect the comet is about 4.6 billion years old and if the lander is OK, they plan to drill into the surface to see what it’s made of.
One hope for the mission is to further investigate a theory that the water on earth – and maybe life itself – arrived via comets that hit our planet billions of years ago.
Megastar Taylor Swift famously rejected Spotify recently, calling the service a “grand experiment,” but many people, especially other artists, think she may have pulled the plug over royalty payments.
Spotify and other streaming music services have long been accused of short-changing artists, and now, CEO Daniel Ek has fired back at critics and Swift, saying his company has paid over two billion dollars in royalties so far. He also said that his service competes with what he says is how many people listen to music now for much cheaper – as in for free because they pirated it. Anyway, the story is generating comments from both sides, so jump in and give us your thoughts.
We’ve just updated our list of the top 10 most expensive cars you can buy, but one unspoken rule about the cars we chose is they have to be street legal, so I guess the newest Ferrari won’t be making the list.
It’s a track-only version of the new LaFerrari called the LaFerrari XX, and if you thought the original 950 horsepower the super hybrid makes just wasn’t quite enough, well, adding another 100 horsepower and lightening the car by stripping out all the creature comforts will hopefully do the trick. And proving once again that less is really much, much more – at least in terms of price – the XX will set you back at least $2,000,000, and maybe a bunch more. That’s about double the street legal car’s price.
Oh, and after your track outing, don’t even think about driving it home. Ferrari will actually take the car back and white-suited technicians in some clean room will prep it for your next round of high-speed antics. Who has a life like that, anyway? Certainly not us. Well, at least, not yet.
