Dawn Stover

New York is the most photographed city in the world. The Eiffel Tower is the most photographed landmark. And in what may be a sign of the times, the Apple retail store in midtown Manhattan is the 28th-most-photographed place in the world.

Even with a vehicle that has 4WD and high clearance, there are a few times each winter when I can't make it up my 1,000-foot-long driveway without a little extra help. Usually that means untangling a set of ice-cold chains and then trying to secure them to my wheels before my fingers go numb...all while holding a flashlight between my teeth. Chaining up is never as quick or as easy as the instructions would suggest.

The B-2 stealth bomber, assisted by midair refuelings, can fly a 44-hour mission to the other side of the world, take out targets using laser-guided smart munitions, then sneak out of enemy territory undetected. Yet it runs on Intel 286 processors -- state of the art in 1982, but these days, not so much.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin is not playing nice with the Obama transition team, according to a post by Robert Block of the Orlando Sentinel. He reports that Griffin is resisting efforts by former NASA associate administrator Lori Garver, who heads Obama's space transition team, to "look under the hood" of the space program.

When lunar astronauts flick on their televisions after a long day of prospecting, they’ll have a trashcan-size nuclear reactor to thank for their nightly dose of prime time. NASA, looking past the already daunting task of simply getting humans to the moon by 2020, recently started considering proposals for ways to power lunar habitats. Batteries and fuel cells provide only short-term solutions. Solar power would be limited where a single night lasts as long as 354 hours. So space-agency officials have started making plans to go nuclear.

When the newest commercial imaging satellite opened its eye in the sky, this is the first thing it saw: a university campus located midway between Reading and Allentown, Pennsylvania. GeoEye, the Virginia-based company that owns the satellite, released the image on October 8.

Named GeoEye-1, the satellite was launched on September 6 but spent its first month undergoing initial testing. The quality of its pictures may get even better as its owners continue calibrating the onboard camera.

In earthquake-prone California, where geologists say that the “Big One” is virtually certain to strike before 2040, a few seconds of warning could save lives. Allowing more time to duck and cover is one of the major goals of the new Quake-Catcher Network (QCN), an affordable, citizen-based earthquake-detection system that turns idle laptop computers into seismic sensors.