Nepal Quake Moved Everest Southwest; Height Unchanged

A devastating earthquake that hit Nepal in April moved Mount Everest three centimeters (just over an inch) to the southwest, but did not change its height, according to Chinese research published on Tuesday.

The 7.8-magnitude quake reversed the gradual northeasterly course of the world’s highest peak, which straddles Nepal and China, the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation found.

But its height — usually given as 8,848 meters (29,029 feet) — was unchanged by the disaster, according to the research, published in Chinese state media.

The report said Everest has moved 40 centimeters to the northeast over the past decade at a speed of four centimeters a year, and risen three centimeters over the same period.

Nepal rests on a major fault line between two tectonic plates — one bearing India pushing northward into a plate carrying Europe and Asia at a rate of about two centimeters (three-quarters of an inch) per year — the process that created the Himalayas.

Roger Bilham, professor of geological science at the University of Colorado, agreed with the Chinese findings.

ut he said the focus should not be on Everest, calling the peak “a lump of uneroded rock that just happens to have survived a little bit higher than all the other rocks in the Himalaya.”

“The Everest region was a mere bystander, and was pulled slightly by this movement by a few centimeters south and a little bit down,” he told AFP in an email.

Kathmandu shifts south

More than 8,700 people were killed in the April 25 quake and a major aftershock on May 12, which also triggered landslides and destroyed half a million homes, leaving thousands without shelter.

Scientists say the densely populated Kathmandu Valley, around 80 kilometers (50 miles) southeast of the epicenter, moved south by nearly two meters during the quake.

Nepal’s government said it had not yet studied the impact on Everest, but that quake-affected areas had moved south.

“We have been studying the core areas affected by the quake and there has been a general southward movement,” said Madhu Sudan Adhikari, head of the survey department in Nepal’s land ministry.

“Kathmandu has shifted south by over 1.5 meters and was uplifted by nearly a meter.”

Read more at Discovery News

After Higgs, Supercharged LHC to Probe Physics Frontier

Don Lincoln is a senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab, America's largest Large Hadron Collider research institution. He also writes about science for the public, including his recent "The Large Hadron Collider: The Extraordinary Story of the Higgs Boson and Other Things That Will Blow Your Mind" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). You can follow him on Facebook. Lincoln contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Somewhere under the French-Swiss border, two protons have a date with destiny. Trapped inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, they follow a circular path in opposite directions with velocities very near the speed of light.

As they approach each other, their fate is clear: A collision is inevitable. One could imagine that an impact between two protons might look like a collision between subatomic billiard balls. But the rules of the microrealm are quite different from what familiar intuition developed in the corner pub would suggest.

Colliding with Success

After a hiatus of more than two years, the LHC is up and running again. After a broad program of refurbishments, retrofits and upgrades, the accelerator is essentially an entirely new facility. Operating at nearly double the energy and triple the number of collisions per second, the LHC will create collisions within the centers of four huge experiments, each ready to make the discovery of the century.

Since Einstein's 1905 papers on relativity, physicists have known of the equivalence between energy and mass. As described by Einstein's famous equation (E=mc2), energy can be converted into matter and vice versa. And that's one of the big things that happens inside a particle accelerator. The huge kinetic (i.e., moving) energy of the two incoming beam particles is converted into the mass of particles that didn't exist before the collision.

It is in this manner that two protons, each having a low mass (about 1 billion electron volts for the techno-crowd), can collide and make the Higgs boson, which is a particle with a mass about 125 times heavier than that of a proton. The motion energy of the protons is literally transformed into a very heavy particle.

When the LHC began operations in 2010, it had a clear mission. Two large experiments, each comprised of around 3,000 scientists, were focused predominantly on finding the Higgs boson. Predicted in 1964, the Higgs boson is connected to the Higgs field, which is thought to give the mass to fundamental (i.e., pointlike) subatomic particles. Finding the Higgs boson meant that the idea of the Higgs field was validated.

Prior to its discovery, the Higgs boson was the last missing component of the wildly successful Standard Model of particle physics. When combined with Einstein's theory of general relativity, the Standard Model can describe the behavior all of the matter ever observed — from the matter in you and me, to majestic galaxies careening through the cosmos.

While the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 was indeed an enormous success for the scientific community, the triumph came with a disappointment. Explaining this is simple: Essentially, the Higgs boson was like a final piece that completed the Standard Model puzzle. However, as any puzzle enthusiast will tell you, it is the tabs and blanks of pieces that allow one to build a puzzle. The hanging tab gives you a hint as to what the next piece will be. But a completed puzzle is silent on what to do next.

The Mysteries That Remain

It's not like we don't have mysteries in the world of physics. From our observation of galaxies, we know that they rotate faster than can be explained by the known laws of gravity and the matter we can detect. To explain that mystery, we invented an unobserved form of matter called dark matter. The fundamental nature of dark matter is certainly a big mystery.

Another mystery stems from that famous Einstein equation, E=mc2. It actually says that when energy is converted into matter, an equal amount of antimatter will be made. During the Big Bang, the universe was full of energy, and this energy transformed into equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Yet when scientists look at the universe, they see only matter. So where did the antimatter go? While physicists have had a few hints from previous experiments, we don't really know the answer. This is another mystery.

There are other mysteries, too, like wondering if there are smaller building blocks of the universe than those with which we are now familiar. Following the history of investigations into that question, we have learned of molecules and then atoms. Research in the early 1900s revealed protons, neutrons and electrons, and the 1960s brought to light the quarks and leptons that are currently considered the smallest particles of nature. However, it is natural to ask if there might be even smaller building blocks. While scientists don't know the answer, there must be some sort of deeper and more fundamental physics that can explain the patterns seen in the quarks and leptons. The answer to that question is yet another mystery.

The Curious Higgs boson Mass

Physicists don't know the answer to any of those fundamental questions, and, to be honest, it is possible that the LHC won't teach us about any of those secrets of nature. But there is one question for which LHC data is a surer bet.

It stems from mysteries that arise in calculations of the Higgs boson's mass. When scientists try to calculate this value directly from the theory, the result is much higher than the LHC data suggest.

Because of the laws of quantum mechanics, the Higgs boson can fluctuate into other types of particles (e.g., the top quark, the W and Z bosons, and even pairs of Higgs bosons). This behavior leads to predictions of the mass of the Higgs boson that are closer to the Planck mass which is a hundred quadrillion times heavier than the mass that scientists have measured. (The Planck mass is the highest mass our current theories could possibly apply and marks a frontier beyond which we are certain that we will have to rethink everything.)

Obviously, this is a problem, and physicists have spent several decades imagining possible explanations, even before the Higgs boson's discovery. (After all, it was clear even early on that this problem would exist if the Higgs boson had a mass that could be discovered.)

Supersymmetry
The most popular theoretical explanation is a principle called supersymmetry. This idea essentially postulates that the force-carrying bosons (particles with a subatomic spin that is integer multiple of ?, which is the natural unit for spin in the quantum world). For example, photons of spin 1 × ? and the matter-carrying fermions (particles with half integer subatomic spin, e.g. electrons of spin 1/2 x ?) should appear in the theory in a symmetric way. That means if you swap all the fermion and boson symbols, the equation will remain unchanged. Essentially this puts forces and matter on equal footing, making them conceptually interchangeable.

And in theories with supersymmetry, a new set of particles emerge, cousins of the familiar particles of the Standard Model. Supersymmetry says that the familiar quarks and leptons must come with new, related particles physicists now call squarks and sleptons. Similarly, supersymmetric analogs of the photon and gluon, called photinos and gluinos, must exist.

Mind you, no direct evidence for the existence of these supersymmetric particles has ever been found. However, if they do exist, scientists can use these particles' quantum mechanical properties to cancel the contribution of the familiar particles in calculations of the mass of the Higgs boson. With supersymmetry accounting for the other particles, the calculations result in a predicted mass of the Higgs boson that is small, in accordance with measurements.

Some scientists' enthusiasm for supersymmetry has been dampened by the fact that supersymmetric particles haven't been observed. Thus, researchers are exploring other possibilities, for example, the ideas that there might exist additional dimensions of space or that the Higgs boson might contain smaller particles within it. These ideas and others are alternative approaches for taming the unruly predictions of the mass of the Higgs boson.

Read more at Discovery News

Thunderstorms on Saturn May Drive Epic Polar Cyclone

Many thunderstorms in Saturn’s atmosphere could be driving the gas giant’s vast polar cyclones, according to new simulations inspired by observations from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. What’s more, this research could help astronomers study large-scale atmospheric phenomena on exoplanets light-years away.

For decades, the powerful, swirling hurricane-like features at Saturn’s poles have been a mystery — what drives these storms and why do they persist for so long? Associated with these vortexes are “hot-spots” as observed by Cassini.

In addition, Saturn’s north polar cyclone is surrounded by a mesmerizing hexagonal feature etched into the atmosphere. The hexagon is thought to be a product of turbulent eddies surrounding the central vortex, so scientists want to understand the driving forces behind these powerful atmospheric flows as an answer to the hexagon may also be found.

On Earth, cyclones are driven by the flow of moisture over oceans. However, Saturn certainly does not possess huge masses of water, making astronomers look for other clues as to how a cyclone could form.

Using a planetary model of Saturn, new research published in the journal Nature Geoscience suggests that it could be many small thunderstorms in Saturn’s tumultuous atmosphere that combine to form these vast swirling cyclones.

“Before it was observed, we never considered the possibility of a cyclone on a pole,” said lead author Morgan O’Neill, former PhD student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) and now a postdoc at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. “Only recently did Cassini give us this huge wealth of observations that made it possible, and only recently have we had to think about why [polar cyclones] occur.”

O’Neill’s team was able to create a simple model of Saturn’s atmosphere that generated many small thunderstorms over time. Taking simple atmospheric dynamics into account, they found that the many storms pulled atmospheric gases toward the poles — a mechanism known as “beta drift” — building up angular momentum (or spin) in the planet’s atmosphere, culminating in vast cyclones at the poles.

With this connection made, the researchers realized that whether or not a polar cyclone forms depends on 2 parameters: “the energy within a planet’s atmosphere, or the total intensity of its thunderstorms; and the average size of its thunderstorms, relative to the size of the planet itself,” writes an MIT press release. This means that the larger the average storm compared to the planet's size, the more likely a long-lived polar cyclone will occur.

So, looking at the other gaseous planets in our solar system, the team plugged in the numbers for Jupiter and Neptune. They found that, from their model, Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, is unlikely to ever have storm-driven cyclones at its poles, whereas Neptune will have transient (or short-lived) polar cyclones.

Their model seems to, so far, hold true for Saturn and Neptune, but we haven’t had a good look at Jupiter’s poles, so we have little idea whether or not the gas giant possesses powerful polar cyclones. But it just so happens that we have a probe, NASA’s Juno mission, heading toward Jupiter orbit in 2016 — a mission that will study the Jovian magnetic field and swing over its poles.

Read more at Discovery News

The LHC Needs to Take a Short Nap

The Large Hadron Collider may have only just gone back online, but it’s already going to take a vacation, shutting down data collection for 5 days. What gives?

Never fear, the LHC hasn’t gone workshy on us; this is the first of 3 planned “technical stops” of 2015 that give CERN engineers a chance to carry out maintenance tasks.

As described in a recent LHC news update, powering up the world’s largest particle accelerator after being shut down since 2013 for an upgrade isn’t as simple as “pressing a button.” In the build-up to Run 2, that officially began this month, recommissioning of the particle beam actually began in early April and the whole system was cryogenically cooled at the end of 2014.

In short, just because science wasn’t being carried out for the majority of the past few months, the LHC has been an engineering beast and work on the 17 mile ring of superecooled electromagnets and complex experiments never slowed down.

“The accelerator is made up of thousands of components that all have to work together harmoniously and need to be re-tuned at regular intervals,” writes the LHC news release. “Each year of LHC operation therefore includes five-day technical stops every ten weeks or so. The experiments take advantage of these intervals to carry out their own maintenance work.”

During this technical stop, several days will be dedicated to “scrubbing the beam pipes” in preparation for an increase in the accelerator’s luminosity in this higher-energy regime. Also, while one of the LHC’s smallest experiments (LHCf) gets dismantled for maintenance, there will be a low-energy beam run that will be used by the other experiments for calibration purposes while avoiding high-energy damage to the dismantled LHCf detector.

Read more at Discovery News

Origin of Mysterious 'Cannon Earthquakes' in Red Sea Found

Mysterious earthquakes that sound like cannon blasts have been puzzling people for decades, and now their origin has been traced way back to a giant block of volcanic rock hundreds of millions of years old, researchers say.

For generations, Bedouin nomads living in the region of the Egyptian coastal resort Abu Dabbab, by the Red Sea, have heard noises that sound like cannon blasts accompanying small quakes in the area.

“The name of Abu Dabbab are Arabic words that mean ‘the Father of Knocks,’ which is related to the sound heard in this area,” Sami El Khrepy, a seismologist at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, told Live Science.

Previous research had found that rocks in the region are about twice as warm as they are elsewhere in Egypt, suggesting that rising magma may be related to the origin of these “cannon earthquakes.” However, there has been no volcanic activity in the region in at least 65 million years, so the scientists ruled out that possibility.

So, to learn more about what could be causing these noisy earthquakes, El Khrepy and his colleagues analyzed the structure of the crust at Abu Dabbab as well as data collected by the National Seismic Network of Egypt, which was completed in 2002. Then, they applied a technique known as seismic tomography, which uses information on the speed of seismic waves to create a 3D map of rock types in the area — similar to the way ultrasound can produce images of pregnancies.

Earthquake swarms are common near Abu Dabbab. However, most of these quakes are weak, ranging in magnitude from 0.3 to 3.5. The largest well-documented earthquakes in the area, which reached magnitude 6.1 and magnitude 5.1, happened in 1955 and 1984, respectively.

The scientists found that the earthquakes at Abu Dabbab occur along an imaginary line that extends from the coast into the Red Sea. This seismic activity is apparently caused by an active fault that lies below a 6-mile-deep (10 kilometers) block of rigid volcanic or igneous rock that’s at least 540 million years old. The fault originated from the rifting of the Earth that created the Red Sea that began about 30 million years ago. (The African and Arabian tectonic plates have been spreading apart slowly in a rifting process for the past 30 million years.)

The researchers said the surface of the block slides along active parts of the fault, lubricated by water from the Red Sea that has penetrated the crust.

Read more at Discovery News

Cannibal Tribe Evolved Resistance to Fatal Disease

The practice of cannibalism in one Papua New Guinea tribe lead to the spread of a fatal brain disease called kuru that caused a devastating epidemic in the group. But now, some members of the tribe carry a gene that appears to protect against kuru, as well as other so-called “prion diseases,” such as mad cow, a new study finds.

The findings could help researchers better understand these fatal brain diseases, and develop treatments for people who have the diseases, the researchers said.

The Papua New Guinea tribe, known as the Fore people, used to conduct a funeral ritual that involved consuming the human brain. Early in the 20th century, tribe members began to develop kuru, a neurological disorder caused by infectious prions, which are proteins that fold abnormally and form lesions in the brain. This was the start of an epidemic of kuru among the Fore people, which at its peak in the 1950s, killed up to 2 percent of the tribe each year.

The tribe stopped practicing cannibalism in the late 1950s, which lead to a decline in kuru. But because the disease can take many years to show up, cases continued to appear for decades.

Recently, researchers discovered that some of the people who survived the kuru epidemic carry a genetic mutation called V127, whereas those who developed kuru did not have this mutation. This led the researchers to suspect that V127 conferred protection against the disease.

In a new study, researchers genetically engineered mice to have the V127 mutation, and then injected the animals with infectious prions. Results showed that mice with one copy of the 127V mutation were resistant to kuru, as well as a similar disease called classical Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Mice with two copies of V127 were resistant to those diseases, as well as another prion disease, called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which is sometimes referred to as the “human form of mad cow disease.”

Although the cessation of cannibalism among the Fore people led to a decline in kuru cases, the new study suggests that if the disease had continued to spread, the “region might have been repopulated with kuru-resistant individuals,” the researchers wrote in the June 10 issue of the journal Nature.

It’s important to note that the practice of cannibalism did not directly lead to development of resistance to kuru. Rather, this mutation was likely present in the population before the kuru epidemic, but it became much more common when it provided a genetic advantage — that is, people with the mutation were able to survive kuru. Such selection of genetic traits is the basis of evolution.

Read more at Discovery News

Life Was Miserable for Dinosaurs in the Tropics

Raging fires, droughts, food shortages and extreme climate change help to explain why most dinosaurs failed to populate the tropics for more than 30 million years after these iconic prehistoric animals first emerged, according to a new study.

Only a few small-bodied meat-eating dinosaurs eked out a living near the equator around 200 million years ago, reports the study, which is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Our data suggest it was not a fun place,” co-author Randall Irmis, curator of paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Utah and assistant professor at the University of Utah, said in a press release. “It was a time of climate extremes that went back and forth unpredictably and large, warm-blooded dinosaurian herbivores weren’t able to exist nearer to the equator — there was not enough dependable plant food.”

The researchers, led by geochemist Jessica Whiteside of the University of Southampton, focused on Chinle Formation rocks, which were deposited by rivers and streams between 205 and 215 million years ago at Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico. (This site in the subtropics is well known to art admirers too, as it’s where artist Georgia O’Keeffe lived and painted for much of her career. The multi-colored rocks of the Chinle Formation are a common sight on the Colorado Plateau at places such as the Painted Desert at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.)

The rock layers contain multiple clues for what the environment was like in the tropics and subtropics back in the dinosaur era. These include fossils, charcoal left by ancient wildfires, stable isotopes from organic soil matter, and carbonate nodules, which formed in ancient soils.

“Each dataset complements the others, and they all point towards similar conditions,” Whiteside said. “I think this is one of the major strengths of our study.”

Fossilized bones, pollen grains and fern spores revealed the past flora and fauna of the site, or lack thereof. Dinosaur remains were surprisingly rare for the time, given that they were much more prevalent then in more northern and southern latitudes. Here, closer to the equator, however, their remains accounted for less than 15 percent of all animals. Reptiles that later gave rise to today’s crocodiles and alligators instead dominated the food chain.

The dinosaurs that did manage to live at the site were small, carnivorous ones. Big, long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs were completely absent.

The charcoal remains discovered in the sediment layers show that numerous wildfires occurred, with some being incredibly intense. The scientists suspect that plant die-offs, due to climate change, fueled hotter fires, which in turn killed more plants, damaged soils and increased erosion.

Read more at Discovery News

Spanish Gangs Use Voodoo to Traffic Girls

Earlier this week Spanish police arrested a half-dozen members of a human trafficking gang that lured four girls from Nigeria to Spain with the promise of jobs but instead forced them into prostitution and kept them there under threat of juju, or voodoo magic retribution.

“The Local,” an English-language Spanish news organization, reported that “Officers rescued four victims and arrested six members of the organization that used juju voodoo rituals to sexually exploit women… The traffickers had put the women through a juju voodoo ritual that used the victims’ fingernails or (hair) and involved animal sacrifice in front of idols in a temple in order to ‘guarantee that the women complied with everything they demanded, under threat of death to them and their families.’”

The women had been taken from Nigeria overland to the Moroccan coast, where they then went by boat to Lanzarote, the easternmost of the Canary Islands. The operation was conducted as part of Spain’s “National Police Plan Against Trafficking in Human Beings for Sexual Exploitation,” launched in 2013.

The girls’ belief in -- and fear of -- powerful magic prevented them from going to authorities. In many countries throughout the world belief in witches is common, and black magic is considered part of everyday life. A 2010 poll of 18 countries in sub-Saharan Africa found that over half of the population believe in magic. Witch doctors are consulted not only for healing diseases but also for placing or removing curses, and many Africans fear that witch doctors -- or those who hire them -- have power over their lives and health.

In her book “The AIDS Conspiracy: Science Fights Back,” Nicoli Nattrass, director of South Africa’s AIDS and Society Research Unit, notes that there “is a rich South African literature suggesting that many black people believe that HIV may have spiritual causes, notably witchcraft attacks.”

Those who subscribe to this belief system may sincerely fear that they could get AIDS simply by disobeying their pimps and traffickers or going to the police. Whether the traffickers believe in magic or curses is irrelevant; what’s important is that the victims do.

Read more at Discovery News

Hello Earth! Comet Probe Philae Wakes Up

The European space probe Philae woke up overnight after nearly seven months in hibernation as it hurtled towards the Sun on the back of a comet, mission control said Sunday.

The tiny robot lab may be ready to resume science work, adding a fresh chapter to its extraordinary voyage, excited officials said.

"Hello Earth! Can you hear me?" the washing machine-sized lander tweeted under the hashtag #WakeUpPhilae.

"We got a two-minute... successful communication" at 2228 Central European Time (2028 GMT) on Saturday, mission manager Patrick Martin told AFP from the operations centre in Madrid.

"This was sufficient to confirm that Philae is healthy and that its sub-systems are OK in terms of energy and temperature for ongoing communication with Rosetta," he said, referring to the lander's mothership orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The mission seeks to unlock the long-held secrets of comets -- primordial clusters of ice and dust that scientists believe may reveal how the Solar System was formed.

The 100-kilogram (220-pound) robot lab touched down on "67P" on November 12 after an epic 10-year trek piggybacking on Rosetta.

But instead of harpooning itself onto the dusty iceball's surface, Philae bounced several times before settling at an angle in a dark ditch.

It had enough stored battery power for about 60 hours of experiments, enabling it to send home reams of data before going into standby mode on November 15.

As "67P" drew closer to the Sun, scientists hoped better light would recharge Philae's batteries enough for it to reboot, then make contact, and ultimately carry out a new series of experiments.

After two failed bids to make contact in March and April, a new attempt was launched in May.

"We were surprised, yes, because we didn't expect it at all last night, on a weekend -- it's really exciting," Martin said.

An ESA statement said Philae communicated with its ground team for 85 seconds, and preliminary analysis of the data showed it must also have been awake earlier but unable to make contact.

According to Martin, the lander's temperature was about minus 36 degrees Celsius (-29 Fahrenheit) and its energy at 24 watts -- both higher than the minus 45 C and 19 watts required to operate.

"Philae is doing very well," said Stephan Ulamec, Philae project manager with the German space agency DLR. "The lander is ready for operations."

Martin was more cautious, saying: "We have already lined up more communication windows which hopefully will see a repeat of this successful communication.

"If we get a stable communications pattern we should be able within a week or so to think about operating the instruments on board the lander."

A tweet in the name of Rosetta announced: "Incredible news! My lander Philae is awake!", before prompting the robot to "take it easy for now" while checks are run to see that it is "fit, healthy and warm enough".

This prompted a Twitter response from Philae: "Oh, OK... I’m still a bit tired anyway... talk to you later!"

NASA tweeted "Rise and shine!" while Britain's usually staid Royal Observatory shouted: "YES!!!"

The comet and its precious cargo are 215 million kilometers (134 million miles) from the Sun and 305 million km from Earth, racing at a speed of 31.24 km a second, according to ESA's website.

Read more at Discovery News

Book Shows Rare Snapshots from NASA's Early Days

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, in a rarely-seen photo from his spacewalk in 1966, is featured on the cover of "Spaceshots and Snapshots of Projects Mercury and Gemini" by J.L. Pickering and John Bisney.

J.L. Pickering usually doesn't take kindly to books claiming "never before seen" NASA photographs.

A space historian and one half of the team behind the new title, "Spaceshots and Snapshots of Projects Mercury and Gemini: A Rare Photographic History," now available from University of New Mexico Press, he has almost assuredly already seen the photos. In fact, it's not uncommon to find him calling out the false descriptions.

"When we would go into any bookstore, we would naturally check out the space books," John Bisney, Pickering's co-author, said about the catalyst that led to their new book, which presents some of the truly seldom reproduced shots from NASA's first piloted space programs. "We'd pull them out, look through them, and it would always be like, 'Seen that, seen that, seen that.'"

Worse still, was when the not-so-never-before-seen photos were also misidentified.

"There was this problem of just seeing 'the greatest hits,' but then there was also sloppiness in terms of identifying what was what," Bisney explained. "And J.L. kept showing me all these amazing images out of his collection. 'Never seen that, never seen that, never seen that.'"

"So why don't we do a book of photos people haven't seen instead of a book of photographs people have seen?" he recalled asking.

And so that's what they did.

The first of two volumes — the second, which is due out in September, will cover the Apollo moon landing program — "Spaceshots and Snapshots" captures the one and two man Mercury and Gemini flights using photos culled from the literally hundred of thousands of images Pickering has collected over the course of decades from veterans of the U.S. space program.

"At one point, I was hauling back two, three, four hundred, five hundred photos each trip," Pickering described. "And then it just kind of dawned on us at some point, maybe we can figure out a way to put all this stuff together."

The "way" was the 224-page "Spaceshots and Snapshots" with its almost 700 images of astronauts, space capsules, rockets and launch pads.

"It could have been much bigger," Pickering noted. "We started out with 60 to 75 pictures per mission. But we tried not to duplicate the same sort of event too often."

"If it was only up to me, there would be a night shot of the vehicle on the launch pad in every chapter, but John was the person of reason on that," he said.

Bisney, a former correspondent who covered the space program for more than 30 years for CNN, the Discovery Channel and SiriusXM Radio, organized the photos that he and Pickering selected for inclusion in the book and wrote their captions.

"When this first started out, it was just a photo book," said Pickering. "So what I would do, after we picked the photos we were using, I would give John the basic information, like the date that I had, anything about it that I would know about that photo."

"And we started out with these brief captions. But all of a sudden, it became these mega-captions, and that is what made the book, I think," he said.

The extended photo descriptions grew out of two factors. First, Bisney had never written captions for a book before, but even more than that, the more he stared at the photos, the more he wanted to know more about them.

"The more I looked at the pictures, the more I thought, 'What is that thing? Who is that person? What is going on there?" Bisney recalled. "And the more I would look at the pictures and blow them up sometimes, there were just so many tidbits you could talk about."

And that, in turn, led to Pickering and him learning even more about the history of Mercury and Gemini than they knew going into the project.

"We learned a lot of stuff doing this," Pickering noted. "I'm sure that just about anybody [reading the book] is going to learn some stuff."

Read more at Discovery News