Willard Frank Libby (December 17, 1908 - September 8, 1980) was an American physical chemist noted for his role in the 1949 development of radiocarbon dating, a process which revolutionized archaeology. Read more
The Aztec calendar stone, Mexica sun stone, Stone of the Sun (Spanish: Piedra del Sol), or Stone of the Five Eras, is a large monolithic sculpture that was excavated in the Zócalo, Mexico City's main square, on December 17, 1790. It was discovered whilst Mexico City Cathedral was being repaired. The...
Orbital elements:
2012 XO144
Epoch 2012 Sept. 30.0 TT = JDT 2456200.5 MPC
M 346.93816 (2000.0) P Q
n 0.09215174 Peri. 144.33373 -0.22413676 -0.95616681
a 4.8543790 Node 317.69737 +0.81657238 -0.07871769
e 0.5120551 Incl. 16.25861 +0.53195138 -0.28204352
P 10.70 H 15.8 G 0.15 U 2 MPEC 201...
Adam Guy Riess (born 16 December 1969) is an American astrophysicist at The Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute and is known for his research in using supernovae as cosmological probes. Riess shared both the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Phy...
Alexander Ross Clarke (1828-1914) was a British geodesist, primarily remembered for his work defining different reference ellipsoids approximating the shape of the geoid. Clarke was born on December 16, 1828 in Reading, Berkshire, England. He spent his childhood in the British colony of Jamai...
Giovanni Battista Donati ; 16 December 1826, Pisa, Italy - 20 September 1873, Florence, Italy) was an Italian astronomer. Donati pioneered spectroscopy of comets to determine their physical composition, in particular with the comet 1864b, which spectrum he found containing three emitting lin...
1920 Haiyuan earthquake, was an earthquake that occurred on December 16, 1920. The epicenter was 36.50°N 105.70°E, in Haiyuan County, Ningxia Province, Republic of China. It was also called the 1920 Gansu earthquake because Ningxia was a part of Gansu Province when the earthquake occurred. Rea...
On Dec. 16, 1811, residents of New Madrid, US, were wrested from sleep by violent shaking and a deafening roar. A short time later, church bells hundreds of miles away in Boston began to ring. It was the first of three massive earthquakes that rocked the central United States between December 1811 and...
Edward Emerson Barnard (December 16, 1857 - February 6, 1923) was an American astronomer. He was commonly known as E. E. Barnard, and was recognized as a gifted observational astronomer. He is best known for his discovery of Barnard's Star in 1916, which is named in his honour. Read more
Johann Wilhelm Ritter (16 December 1776 - 23 January 1810) was a German chemist, physicist and philosopher. Many of Ritter's researches were guided by a search for polarities in the several "forces" of nature, and for the relation between those "forces" two of the assumptio...
Arthur C Clarke has turned 90, and he has released a short video of his birthday reflections... "Hello! This is Arthur Clarke, speaking to you from my home in Colombo, Sri Lanka. As I approach my 90th birthday, my friends are asking how it feels like, to have completed 90 orbits around the Sun.&qu...
The Argonaut was a class of submarines built by engineer Simon Lake. When used without clarification generally refers to the second built and larger one launched in 1897 at Baltimore. She was 11 m long, cigar shaped and built of steel. She had a gas engine and propeller, dynamo, searchlight, and pump...
The discovery of a new type of fission turns a tenet of nuclear theory on its head. The observation of an unexpected nuclear reaction by an unstable isotope of the element mercury has thrown up a rare puzzle. The enigma is helping theorists to tackle one of the trickiest problems in physics: developin...
Orbital elements:
2012 XO144
Epoch 2012 Sept. 30.0 TT = JDT 2456200.5 MPC
M 346.84874 (2000.0) P Q
n 0.09185492 Peri. 144.95437 -0.23294196 -0.95397291
a 4.8648310 Node 317.60439 +0.81596696 -0.08606257
e 0.5140654 Incl. 16.26783 +0.52908975 -0.28727848
P 10.73 H 16.0 G 0.15 U 6 MPEC 201...