Blog Heap o'Urantiana Links 14 May 2009

This morning the European Space Agency successfully launched two new science heavyweights — the Herschel Space Observatory and the Planck Surveyor — onto journeys deep into space, where they will begin their much-awaited missions. With its far-infrared vision, Herschel will help astronomers learn more of how stars are born today and how galaxies formed in the early universe. Planck will look even earlier. It should help unravel the origin of the universe as a whole by mapping in new detail the microwaves radiated 380,000 years after the Big Bang.