Despite a 12-month delay in aerobraking into a circular orbit, the Mars Global Surveyor is already returning a wealth of data about the atmosphere and surface of the Red Planet.

Researchers have recently achieved a certain amount of success in using laser light to see through scattering media such as human tissue. The new technology could eventually have medical applications in situations where X rays are ineffective or downright dangerous. Researchers develop new plastic recording materialthat can be used to see through tissue without X rays February 1998 98

ACE satellite will be a benefit to weather forecasters in predicting solar flares as well as to astrophysicists in understanding the nature of the universe.

Submitted by Susan Rogers, Azusa, California, and answered by Dave Wald, visiting associate in geophysics at Caltech, and U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist.

Using a new approach to analyzing planetary gravity fields, two geophysicists, Mark Simons at the California Institute of Technology and Bradford Hager at M.I.T., have shown that incomplete glacial rebound can account for a substantial portion of the Hudson Bay gravity anomaly. Geophysicists Develop Model to Describe Huge Gravity Anomaly of Hudson Bay Region December 1997 97

Question of the Month Submitted by John Propst, Fullerton, California.

Answered by Ken Libbrecht, Caltech professor of physics.

Light travels at the speed of light, and is created traveling at light speed. When Einstein invented the theory of special relativity, he postulated that the speed of light was a constant.

Caltech biologists have pinpointed the sequence of reactions that triggers the duplication of DNA in cells. Caltech Biologists Pin Down Chain of Reactions That Turn On the Duplication of DNA October 1997 97

Caltech researchers have invented a "neurochip" that connects a network of living brain cells wired together to electrodes incorporated into a silicon chip. Caltech Scientists Devise First Neurochip October 1997 97