MERCURY CAPSULE FAILS — Failure of the test shot of the Mercury space capsule and its pilot escape system will not “necessarily” delay putting a man in space, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration reported. NASA has scheduled a manned rocket launch for 1961. The Mercury spacecraft, designed to take an astronaut safely into outer space and return him to earth, failed to separate from its Little Joe rocket booster 13 miles from Wallops Island, Va., where it was launched. “If the cause of the malfunction is a minor mechanical failure, I see no reason why the Mercury Pr... (p. 4)

November 20 New York’s American Museum of Natural History opens its interactive brain exhibit. Go to www.amnh.org/exhibitions/brain December 2 San Francisco’s Exploratorium considers sugar, from its bodily functions to art. With cocktails. See www.exploratorium.edu December 2–3 Howard Hughes Medical Institute airs live classroom webcasts on infectious diseases. See www.holidaylectures.org (p. 4)

The Light Game. The Science News-Letter. May 12, 1928, p. 294. “Ray O. Light” summarizes the particle-wave dispute over the nature of reality as if it were a football game. “Uncertainty Principle” Enters Science. The Science News-Letter. April 27, 1929, p. 257. An introduction to Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Einstein Finds Past Events Not Knowable with Certainty. The Science News-Letter. March 28, 1931, p. 195. Einstein writes in a letter to Physical Review that past events cannot be described with certainty. Beyond Einstein. The Science News-Letter...

Underground particle hunts The dark matter experiments described in “Mining for missing matter” (SN: 8/28/10, p. 22) sound almost identical to those looking for neutrinos. Both are placed deep underground to help screen out background radiation, especially neutrons. How do particle hunters differentiate between neutrino hits and those by the putative dark matter particles? Also, the article makes it sound like investigators think there is only one type of [exotic] dark matter particle. Why is that when there is an entire zoo of normal matter particles and forces? James Smit... (p. 31)