Ninja Monkies, attack!

Police in Ariz. Seek Monkey for SWAT Team

MESA, Ariz. - The Mesa Police Department is looking to add some primal instinct to its SWAT team. And to do that, it's looking to a monkey.

"Everybody laughs about it until they really start thinking about it," said Mesa Officer Sean Truelove, who builds and operates tactical robots for the suburban Phoenix SWAT team. "It would change the way we do business."

Truelove is spearheading the department's request to purchase and train a capuchin monkey, considered the second smartest primate to the chimpanzee. The department is seeking about $100,000 in federal grant money to put the idea to use in Mesa SWAT operations.

The monkey, which costs $15,000, is what Truelove envisions as the ultimate SWAT reconnaissance tool.

No commentary. I just like typing "Ninja Monkey."

We're taking bets!

After some amusing moments this morning (to be detailed in a later post) Kirsten is going back to bed "to read." The betting pool is open!

[Poll #478572]

Blame the Ancients

NASA Spots Possible Asteroid Belt

A NASA telescope has spotted what appears to be an asteroid belt circling a star similar to the sun, a finding that could help astronomers in the hunt for Earth-like planets.

Asteroid belts are littered with remnants of rocky space bodies that sometimes collide with one another, discharging dust. Most asteroids in our solar system orbit in the "asteroid belt" between Jupiter and Mars. If the discovery is confirmed, it would be the first asteroid belt detected around a star similar in age and size to the sun.

Two other distant belts have previously been found, but they circle younger, denser stars.

Scientists peering through NASA's infrared Spitzer Space Telescope observed 85 sun-like stars and found one — HD 69830, located 40 light years away — that appears to have an asteroid belt. The belt is thicker than the asteroid belt in our system and holds 25 times as much material. It is also closer to its star than is the belt in our system.

In Traveller many of the asteroid belts in known space were the result of the Final War that wiped out the Ancients and their civilization some 200,000 years ago. This was written before we fully understood the effect of Jupiter on the accretion disk in the early solar system.

No mater what caused the belt, this is a really cool discovery.