Things that matter: Satellite goes fishing and catches comet, Alaska goes red, and Cell Phones and brain tumors.

European Satellite went fishing and it caught something.

In the annals of fishing today was a doozie, a small European Space Agency satellite/robot went fishing for a comet and guess what....it caught one!!! Very cool stuff!!

Wait, we're landing on a comet?

Yes!

Which comet?

It's called 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko; it was discovered in 1969 (and named, as you may have guessed, for its discoverers). And it's small. Its nucleus—the solid part of a comet, sometimes called an "icy dirtball"—is only about 2.5 miles, or 4 kilometers, wide.

The comet is 311 million miles from Earth, and traveling through space at more than 34,000 miles an hour.

And what's actually doing the landing?

A robot named Philae—a lander about the size of a washing machine, andweighing 220 pounds. It's named after Philae Island in the Nile—the site of the discovery of the obelisk that was used, along with the Rosetta Stone, to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

So how do you land a robot on a comet that's hurtling through space?

It involves, in this case, a pair of spacecraft. The Rosetta craft, which the European Space Agency launched in 2004, has spent the past 10 years traveling to 67P. It has been orbiting the comet since this August. And, today, it's essentially dropping Philae onto the comet.

Here is access to an ESA provided live stream and twitter account courtesy of Obsidian Wing's.

Alaska falls Red.

It is now being reported that the state of Alaska has fallen into GOP hands, extending their control in the Senate officially to fifty-three seats. Only Louisiana is left with a run-off between incumbent Democrat, Mary Landrieu and Republican challenger, Bill Cassidy.

Republican Dan Sullivan won Alaska's U.S. Senate race, defeating first-term incumbent Democrat Mark Begich. 

Sullivan led Begich by about 8,100 votes on Election Night last week and held a comparable edge after election workers had counted about 20,000 absentee, early-voted and questioned ballots late Tuesday. Thousands more ballots remained to be counted, but the results indicated that Begich could not overcome Sullivan's lead. 

The Alaska seat was initially considered key to the Republicans' hopes of taking control of the U.S. Senate, but that goal was accomplished before the Alaska race was decided. 

Sullivan, in a statement, said he was humbled and sounded a note of inclusion. While it was a hard-fought race, moving forward "I want to emphasize that my door will always be open to all Alaskans," he said. 

"While we have challenges to address, the opportunities in Alaska and our country are limitless," Sullivan said. "Today, we are going to begin the process of turning our country around and building a brighter future for our children." 

Begich was not conceding. His campaign manager, Susanne Fleek-Green, said in a statement that Begich believes every vote deserves to be counted and will follow the Division of Elections as it continues toward a final count.

Smartphones may be smartly killing you.

Remember when cell phones really became popularized in American culture there was a certain amount of hullabaloo that overt use might cause brain cancer?  Most of the claims, if I remember correctly, were dismissed rather early and fell away. Well a new report might be bringing it back to vogue.

The link between cell phones and brain cancer could ring true after all. 

Swedes who talked on cell or cordless phones for more than 25 years had three times the risk of one type of brain cancer, compared with people who used those phones for under a year, a new study in the journal Pathophysiology suggests. 

The longer someone talked on their phone — in terms of hours and years — the more likely they were to develop glioma, a deadly form of brain cancer. 

The new evidence contradicts the biggest study so far on the topic: The international Interphone study, funded in part by cell phone manufacturers, didn't find strong evidence that cell phones increased brain tumor risk. But the good news about the latest study results is that the odds of developing glioma — even when they're tripled — are still low. Slightly more than five out of 100,000 Europeans (.005%) got diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor between 1995 and 2002, according to one 2012 study. That rate tripled is just .016%.