Americans' Concerns About Global Warming on the Rise

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What to Watch This Weekend: Mad Men Is Back, McCarthy Hosts SNL, NCAA ...

April 6, 2013 08:00 AM PDT

On TV this weekend: The Mad Men (and women) are back in ad-making action, Mike Molly star Melissa McCarthy presides over Saturday Night Live for a second time, the NCAA Basketball Tournament‘s Final Four face off and Shameless, Californication and House of Lies wrap for the season. As a supplement to TVLine’s original features (linked within), here are 15 programs to keep on your radar.

SATURDAY, APRIL 6

6 pm NCAA Basketball Tournament Final Four (CBS) | As the contest draws to a close, Wichita State goes up again Louisville. In the evening’s second match-up, which is slated to begin at 8:30, Syracuse battles Michigan.

8 pm Doctor Who (BBC America) | The Festival of Offerings is in full swing on the rings of Akhaten. Clara meets the Queen of Years, but something’s stirring in the pyramid, and a sacrifice must be made.

9 pm Orphan Black (BBC America) | With a body in her car and nowhere to turn, Sarah continues her con. And, oh look â€" there’s another woman who looks just like her! (Watch a video preview.)

9 pm Smash (NBC) | Time slot premiere: Tom enlists Liza Minnelli to plan a surprise for Ivy, while Richard asks Eileen to spend less time at work and more time with him.

11:30 pm Saturday Night Live (NBC) | Melissa McCarthy returns to host, with musical guest Phoenix.

SUNDAY, APRIL 7

8 pm Academy of Country Music Awards (CBS) | Blake Shelton (The Voice) and Luke Bryan host the three-hour awards ceremony, which features performances by Sheryl Crow, Brad Paisley, Garth Brooks, Kelly Clarkson, Stevie Wonder, The Band Perry, Lady Antebellum, Taylor Swift and more.

PREVIEW | Mad Men Season 6 â€" Can You Guess What’s Going on in 10 Premiere Photos?

9 pm Mad Men (AMC) | Two-hour Season 6 premiere: Don and Megan take a tropical trip, Peggy handles a commercial crisis and Roger experiences loss.

9 pm Game of Thrones (HBO) | It’s an eventful night for the Stark girls: Sansa says too much, and Arya runs into the Brotherhood Without Banners. (And for those who’ve been waiting, Jaime Lannister returns.)

9 pm Chopped All-Stars (Food Network) | Season 3 premiere: In Round 1, Food Network and Cooking Channel favorites Nadia G, Jeff Mauro, Gabriele Corcos and Sunny Anderson brave the baskets as they battle to be the last chef standing.

9 pm Shameless (Showtime) | Season 3 finale: Lip is graduating from high school, and Frank wins a bet. (Get scoop!) (Yep, already renewed.)

9 pm Army Wives (Lifetime) | Jackie’s son comes home with some surprising news; Holly is disappointed when she can’t talk to Tim after his squad is ambushed.

9:30 pm The Cleveland Show (Fox) | Arianna the Bear is rude to Donna, and it somehow leads to Cleveland being accused of murder.

RELATED | Vikings Renewed for Season 2

10 pm Vikings (History) | Ragnar, weak and still hurt, engages the Earl in a fight to the death after it comes to light that Haraldson ordered Rollo tortured.

10 pm House of Lies (Showtime) | Season 2 finale: Marty’s dealings lead to unintended consequences. (Yep, already renewed.)

10:30 pm Californication (Showtime) | Season 6 finale: Hank, Charlie and Marcy all make big decisions â€" and at least one of those momentous choices involves marriage. (Yep, already renewed.)

Hit the comments with your must-see picks from tonight’s lineup!

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NASA selects MIT-led TESS project for 2017 mission

Following a three-year competition, NASA has selected the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) project at MIT for a planned launch in 2017. The space agency announced the mission â€" to be funded by a $200 million grant to the MIT-led team â€" this afternoon.

TESS team partners include the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI) and MIT Lincoln Laboratory; NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center; Orbital Sciences Corporation; NASA’s Ames Research Center; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; The Aerospace Corporation; and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

The project, led by principal investigator George Ricker, a senior research scientist at MKI, will use an array of wide-field cameras to perform an all-sky survey to discover transiting exoplanets, ranging from Earth-sized planets to gas giants, in orbit around the brightest stars in the sun’s neighborhood.

An exoplanet is a planet orbiting a star other than the sun; a transiting exoplanet is one that periodically eclipses its host star.

“TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission,” Ricker says. “It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth.”

TESS relies upon a number of innovations developed by the MIT team over the past seven years. “For TESS, we were able to devise a special new ‘Goldilocks’ orbit for the spacecraft â€" one which is not too close, and not too far, from both the Earth and the moon,” Ricker says.

As a result, every two weeks TESS approaches close enough to the Earth for high data-downlink rates, while remaining above the planet’s harmful radiation belts. This special orbit will remain stable for decades, keeping TESS’s sensitive cameras in a very stable temperature range.

With TESS, it will be possible to study the masses, sizes, densities, orbits and atmospheres of a large cohort of small planets, including a sample of rocky worlds in the habitable zones of their host stars. TESS will provide prime targets for further characterization by the James Webb Space Telescope, as well as other large ground-based and space-based telescopes of the future.

TESS project members include Ricker; Josh Winn, an associate professor of physics at MIT; and Sara Seager, a professor of planetary science and physics at MIT.

“We’re very excited about TESS because it’s the natural next step in exoplanetary science,” Winn says.  

“The selection of TESS has just accelerated our chances of finding life on another planet within the next decade,” Seager adds.  

MKI research scientists Roland Vanderspek and Joel Villasenor will serve as deputy principal investigator and payload scientist, respectively. Principal research scientist Alan Levine serves as a co-investigator. Tony Smith of Lincoln Lab will manage the TESS payload effort, Lincoln Lab will develop the optical cameras and custom charge-coupled devices required by the mission.

“NASA’s Explorer Program gives us a wonderful opportunity to carry out forefront space science with a relatively small university-based group and on a time scale well-matched to the rapidly evolving field of extrasolar planets,” says Jackie Hewitt, a professor of physics and director of the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. “At MIT, TESS has the involvement of faculty and research staff of the Kavli Institute, the Department of Physics, and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, so we will be actively engaging students in this exciting work.”

Previous sky surveys with ground-based telescopes have mainly picked out giant exoplanets. NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has recently uncovered the existence of many smaller exoplanets, but the stars Kepler examines are faint and difficult to study. In contrast, TESS will examine a large number of small planets around the very brightest stars in the sky.

“The TESS legacy will be a catalog of the nearest and brightest main-sequence stars hosting transiting exoplanets, which will forever be the most favorable targets for detailed investigations,” Ricker said.

The other mission selected today by NASA is the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER). It will be mounted on the International Space Station and measure the variability of cosmic X-ray sources, a process called X-ray timing, to explore the exotic states of matter within neutron stars and reveal their interior and surface compositions. NICER’s principal investigator is Keith Gendreau of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The MKI group, lead by Ricker, is also a partner in the NICER mission.

“The Explorer Program has a long and stellar history of deploying truly innovative missions to study some of the most exciting questions in space science,” John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science, said in the space agency’s statement today. “With these missions we will learn about the most extreme states of matter by studying neutron stars and we will identify many nearby star systems with rocky planets in the habitable zone for further study by telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope.”

The Explorer Program is NASA’s oldest continuous program and has launched more than 90 missions. It began in 1958 with the Explorer 1, which discovered the Earth’s radiation belts. Another Explorer mission, the Cosmic Background Explorer, led to a Nobel Prize. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages the program for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Lundqvist Stops 48 Shots and Saves 2 Precious Points for Rangers

With every point crucial in their battle with the Islanders and the Devils for the final two playoff berths in the East, these were 2 points the Rangers needed to bank. And they did, with a 4-1 victory over a Carolina team that turned out to be far from a pushover.

Henrik Lundqvist saved the Rangers, stopping a season-high 48 shots, and a three-goal burst in the second period allowed them to come away with their third victory in four games. Derek Stepan, Ryan Callahan and Rick Nash scored in the decisive second period, with Brian Boyle adding an empty-net goal in the final second of the game.

The Rangers and the Islanders remained tied in points in the race for the final two playoff spots. They each have 42 points, but the Rangers are in seventh because they hold a tiebreaker. The Islanders defeated Tampa Bay, 4-2, on Saturday. The Devils fell 3 points back after a 2-1 loss to Toronto.

Lundqvist had 14 saves for the Rangers in what could have been a disastrous first period, and he kept the Hurricanes from coming back in the third with 20 more saves. He has allowed two goals or fewer in each of the last 10 games.

“That’s the best I’ve seen him play since I’ve been here,” Rangers Coach John Tortorella said. “He stole us one. I thought we had a good second period, but first and third we were nowhere to be found.”

Perhaps, but the Rangers seem to have found their game of late. That is at least in part because of the recent additions of Ryane Clowe, Derick Brassard, Mats Zuccarello and John Moore.

“It’s a different atmosphere in the room,” Lundqvist said. “Not only did we get some really skilled players, but it changed the dynamic in the room where you get the new guys.”

He added, “It’s just a lot better feeling in here.”

The Rangers scored twice in 31 seconds early in the second period to pull away. Brad Richards set up Stepan in the slot, and he broke a scoreless tie with a power-play goal two minutes into the period. Moments later, Carolina goalie Dan Ellis was caught out of the net trying to play the puck along the end boards. Nash poked it away, sending it to Callahan in front for an easy goal into the open net.

Nash added a power-play goal at 11 minutes 19 seconds when he stickhandled through the slot, turned around and wristed a low shot past Ellis.

The Rangers were 2 of 5 on the power play.

“We knew they were coming and we didn’t weather it too well in the first, but we did create some chances, too,” Richards said. “The second, it was important to bury some goals and we did, and then Hank took us home.”

Lundqvist lost his shutout bid when Zac Dalpe buried a one-timer from the slot at 9:27 of the third. It was the only blemish on a busy, busy night.

“I’m just so tired I don’t know what to say right now,” Lundqvist said. “I’m exhausted.”

Slap Shots

Hurricanes centers Eric and Jordan Staal are now wearing visors on their helmets after the injury to their brother Marc Staal, the Rangers defenseman who has been out since March 5 after a puck hit him near the right eye. The Staals had resisted wearing visors, but put them on for the first time March 26 against Winnipeg. … The Hurricanes’ Alexander Semin was out with an upper-body injury. … Rangers defenseman Michael Del Zotto did not face league discipline for what he called an inadvertent elbow to the jaw of Pittsburgh wing James Neal on Friday in the Penguins’ 2-1 shootout victory. Neal was dazed by the blow and did not return to the game. Del Zotto said Saturday morning that he had not been contacted by the N.H.L. for a disciplinary hearing, and he was in the lineup Saturday night.

Hubble spies most distant star explosion ever

Astronomers have spotted the most distant massive star explosion of its kind, a supernova that could help scientists better understand the nature of the universe.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists recently caught sight of Supernova UDS10Wil (nicknamed SN Wilson) which exploded more than 10 billion years ago. It took more than 10 billion years for the light of this violent star explosion to reach Earth.

‘This opens a window into the early universe.’

- David Jones of Johns Hopkins University

SN Wilson is known as a Type Ia supernova â€" a particular kind of star explosion that gives scientists a sense of how the universe has expanded over time.

“This new distance record holder opens a window into the early universe, offering important new insights into how these stars explode,” research leader David Jones of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., said in a statement. “We can test theories about how reliable these detonations are for understanding the evolution of the universe and its expansion.” [See Amazing Pictures of Supernovas]

SN Wilson is only four percent more distant than the last most distant supernova of its kind found by Hubble, NASA officials said in a statement. However, that is still 350 million years further back in time than any other previously found star explosion.

By understanding when massive stars began exploding, scientists can get a sense of how quickly the universe was seeded with the elements needed to create planets and other cosmic bodies.

“If supernovae were popcorn, the question is how long before they start popping?” Adam Riess, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., said in a statement. “You may have different theories about what is going on in the kernel. If you see when the first kernels popped and how often they popped, it tells you something important about the process of popping corn.”

This work also might contribute to other work being done on what triggers these massive explosions, a question that has plagued astronomers since the discovery of Type Ia supernovas.

This discovery is also part of a three-year-initiative by the Hubble program to find the most distant supernovas. Scientists with the program hope to understand if the star explosions have changed in some way since the Big Bang birthed the universe 13.8 billion years ago.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990. It is expected to continue functioning for the next five years or so, and its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is scheduled for launch in 2018.

The new findings will be published in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Angelina Jolie's Youngest Son Knox Looks All Grown Up at FAO Schwarz Visit

The family that plays together, stays together! On Friday, April 5, Angelina Jolie treated sons Pax and Knox to a little playtime at New York City toy store FAO Schwarz, where the boys were spotted gleefully surveying the huge selection of games and other goodies.

PHOTOS: The Jolie-Pitts take Europe!

The 37-year-old Maleficent actress looked chic and sophisticated in black Christian Louboutin boots, aviator sunglasses, and a full-skirted black coat cinched at the waist with a wide leather belt. Her boys, meanwhile, were outfitted in equally stylish but slightly more casual duds. Pax, 9, rocked jeans, sneakers, a puffy black vest over a black shirt, and goggles. Knox, 4, looked all grown up in gold shoes, jeans, and a shiny, red and beige varsity jacket. With his sporty clothes and blonde hair, he looked a little like older sister Shiloh.

Jolie — who arrived in New York earlier this week for the 2013 Women in the World gala on April 4 — spoke about her children in a recent interview with British movie publication Total Film. (She and fiance Brad Pitt are also parents to Maddox, 12, Zahara, 8, Shiloh, 6, and Knox’s twin sister Vivienne, 4.)

PHOTOS: Angelina’s Us Weekly covers through the years

“The great thing about having a bunch of kids is they just remind you that you’re the person who takes them to go poop,” the mom of six told the mag. “That’s who you are!”

The Oscar winner went on to say that she and Pitt, 49, work hard to maintain “a very normal, very grounded home” for their family. Which is not to say there’s no magic in their lives. “I’m not somebody that thinks about destiny and fate, but I don’t walk away from it when something unfolds,” she said of her kids and her relationship with Pitt.

PHOTOS: How Brangelina’s love has evolved

“It’s like my children. Especially when you adopt in some countries. All my other children were just, ‘This is the child that’s been chosen for you,’” she explained. “I suppose it’s like a child you give birth to, as you can’t have a say in it. I see that when I look at my kids. It just seems to be right. It’s hard to understand how it could unfold so beautifully.”

Scientists Discover that Jupiter's Io's Volcanoes Are In The Wrong Place [VIDEO]

NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) said that hundreds of volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io aren’t where they’re supposed to be.

With hundreds of volcanoes, some erupting lava fountains up to 250 miles high, Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanically active world in our Solar System. Researchers said that concentrations of volcanic activity are significantly displaced from where they are expected to be based on models used to predict how the moon’s interior is heated.

The findings of this study were published in a recent issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

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Io’s clustered volcanoes seem to be lying 30 to 60 degrees eastward of where they were expected, according to a paper published this year in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, suggesting that the exotic, volcanic Jupiter moon Io is even more mysterious than researchers had previously thought. The study could shed light on the internal dynamics of Jupiter’s volcano-pocked moon.

“It’s really a place that’s very much alive and very much changing,” said study lead Christopher Hamilton, an Earth and planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

“The unexpected eastward offset of the volcano locations is a clue that something is missing in our understanding of Io,” Hamilton said in a statement. “In a way, that’s our most important result. Our understanding of tidal heat production and its relationship to surface volcanism is incomplete.”

Hamilton called the results surprising and suggested some potential explanations. Perhaps it could be that Io is harboring a magma ocean within. Hamilton goes on to say that that would be an exciting discovery as Magma oceans were thought to be a mark of the early planets and moon as they formed and cooled.

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