State of the art

NASA is about ready to send seven astronauts into space on a dangerous mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope. The goal of the mission is to replace a worn-out, piano-sized camera with a new one. Just a few days ago, on May 4, the old camera produced one of its last images, showing a nebula called Kohoutek 4-55 (above). The repair work will require five risky space-walks. This will be the last repair done on the aging Hubble, but it will allow the telescope to make even more awesome images than it already has.

Amazon has now officially announced the launch of its Kindle DX, a larger and more expensive version of its Kindle 2 e-reader. It is big enough, says the company, to display text books, but there is also much anticipation that new larger-size devices like this will be delivery systems for newspapers and magazines. It doesnt look to me like the new Kindle will be up to that particular task--it seems more geared to the text-book market.

Sometimes the lines between art, nature photography, and science blur. And sometimes the definitions that scientists give things get blurry, too. The results, in both cases, can be amazing. Take, for instance, the photos you see here. They show a virus that was originally found infecting amoebas in a Parisian water tank in 1992. This virus, however, was much, much bigger than viruses usually are--indeed, it was almost the size of a bacteria.

Life.com ives us the list, derived from Flickr it was number two on the list. The winner? Look for your jolly old self.--David Schonauer