People inject all kinds of unhealthy things into their bodies for fun, but most stick to illegal drugs and stop short at electronics. But that doesn’t mean it’s not possible; scientists have developed LEDs so small you can shoot them up, and they literally light up your brain. More »
The Kepler telescope that launched in 2009 is is no slouch when it comes to hunting for exoplanets. The system is charged with investigating the more than 145,000 stars within its view in the hopes of finding habitable planets but those stars constitute just 0.28 percent of the sky. Luckily, there’s a new orbital telescope from MIT that will survey the rest. More »
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has beamed back some very interesting images of Saturn’s largest moon Titan. The images were sent back by the Cassini spacecraft and show that an icy cloud is beginning to grow over the south pole of the moon. NASA says that that icy cloud indicates that fall has begun on Titan’s southern hemisphere.
Scientists and researchers don’t know what the cloud is made up of, but a similar cloud has been dissipating over Titan’s north pole where springtime has begun. The NASA researchers associate the cloud forming over the southern pole of the moon with winter weather. NASA says that the interesting thing about the cloud forming over the south pole is that this is the first time this sort of cloud has been detected anywhere other than the north pole of the moon.
Titan is very interesting to astronomers and scientists, it is the second largest moon in the entire solar system. Titan is also the only moon that has clouds and a dense atmosphere similar to a planet. Observations made by the Cassini spacecraft have noted that warmer air from the southern hemisphere of the moon rises into the atmosphere and then gets dumped on the moon’s North pole.
As that air descends from high in the atmosphere to the North pole of Titan it cools and forms the icy cloud. While here on earth we get several seasons in a single calendar year, Titan has a much longer seasonal pattern. The north pole of Titan begin transitioning from winter to spring in August of 2009. However, the first signs of the ice cloud in the southern hemisphere weren’t spotted until July of 2012. While scientists don’t know what the clouds on Titan are made from, they do know a few things the cloud cover isn’t made from. Scientists have ruled out chemicals such as methane, ethane, and hydrogen cyanide.
[via Space.com]
Icy clouds over Titan’s south pole hint that fall has come is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
We’ve already seen the Obama administration announce its latest budget for NASA this week, and now President Vladimir Putin has announced that Russia will be spending more than $50 billion on its space-related efforts by 2020. The most immediate result of that will be the completion of the Vostochny Cosmodrome near Russia’s border with China, which Putin says is still on track to see its first rocket launch as soon as 2015 and its first manned launch in 2018. With NASA decommissioning its shuttle program, all manned space launches currently take place at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (as pictured above), and Putin says the new launch base will also be open for other countries to use.
Beyond that, Putin says that Russia will also have what’s being described as a space weapon deterrent system by the year 2030, although specifics on it unsurprisingly remain a bit light for the time being. Russia says it also remains committed to sending cosmonauts beyond Earth’s orbit in the future, including to a permanent base on the moon that it says could be used as a future launching pad for flights to Mars. Unmanned missions will precede that, though — indeed, a new Moon probe is set to be the first launch from the aforementioned Vostochny Cosmodrome.
[Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls]
Stanford scientists have developed a technique which lets them turn a brain completely transparent—without causing any damage at all to its structure. More »
Before satellites, getting from A to B without radio signals involved cumbersome inertial systems found only on advanced civilian and military aircraft. Those are still the best backup for GPS, and working with the University of Michigan, DARPA has found a way to reduce the once fridge-sized units to half the width of your fingernail. The chips contain everything needed for precise navigation including an accurate master clock, a three-axis gyroscope and three accelerometers, all contained in three hair-width layers. If it gets out of the lab, it would give soldiers another option in the event of an enemy GPS attack or when they’re in a tunnel, and might even guide you to that Macy’s restroom if it ever hits civilian form.
Via: Gizmag
Source: DARPA
On Thursday, April 11, the sun let off an M6.5 solar flare and its accompanying coronal mass ejection, more commonly called a CME, which is directed at Earth. The solar particles that result from such an event are traveling at a speed of about 600 miles per second, and are expected to reach Earth Friday night into the weekend. Such an event disrupted some radio communications.
Before you begin imaging a scenario similar to certain end-of-times movies where characters go from innocently watching television to being shrouded in darkness and chaos, keep in mind this event will be far less eventful, possibly disrupting radios and GPS starting Friday night. Because the event was observed, some preparations can be made in anticipation of the incoming solar particles, helping protect satellites and other vulnerable equipment from damage.
A CME that is Earth-bound, according to NASA, can result in a geomagnetic storm as it colides with the magnetosphere. In addition, this particular event caused what is reported as a weak solar energetic particle event close to our planet, which results when charged particles are thrust towards Earth. Harmful radiation can result from such an event, but is of no concern to us because it is blocked by the atmosphere.
Says NASA, an M-class solar flare is ten times weaker than an X-class solar flare, and is the weakest flare still capable of creating solar storms near our planet. The result from this particular event was an R2 radio blackout, which is low on a scale that ranges from R1 to R5. Still, this is the strongest solar flare that has happened this year, and is ahead of anticipated increased activity later this year. This is the result of the sun’s 11-year activity cycle approaching solar maximum in the ebb and flow of things.
[via NASA]
Sun unleashes solar flare and Earth-bound coronal mass ejection, disrupts radios is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Iran could be home to the world’s first time machine, if claims from an Iranian scientist are to be believed (color us skeptical). According to The Telegraph, a scientist based in Tehran, Iran has registered with the Center for Strategic Inventions a device called “The Aryayek Time Traveling Machine,” which can reportedly allow individuals to peer into the future – up to 8 years into the future, that is.
The time machine isn’t of the police box or compact car variety, however, with the 27-year-old inventor Ali Razeghi stating that it can fit in a briefcase. Likewise, it doesn’t work in the conventional ways a time machine is imagined to work. Rather than whisking users away to the past or future, this device is said to make its predictions based on the touch of a user.
Supposedly by touching the time machine device, it will make a reading 5 to 8 years into that person’s future, providing a print out of the data with 98-percent accuracy. He has created 179 other inventions, and says this particular one has been a work-in-progress since he was 10-years-old. As you might suspect, the government application of such a device has already been discussed.
Said Razeghi: “Naturally a government that can see five years into the future would be able to prepare itself for challenges that might destabilise it. As such we expect to market this invention among states as well as individuals once we reach a mass production stage.” The reason for why it has not been revealed yet? The inventor says China will steal it.
[via Telegraph]
Iranian scientist claims to have invented time machine is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
In 1971, the Soviets landed a spacecraft on Mars, which ultimately met an unfortunate fate and died in a somewhat unknown location. Now, over four decades later, it is believed parts of that spacecraft were photographed by NASA‘s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter years ago, only to have been overlooked for half a decade and eventually spotted by enthusiasts on an Internet forum.
The community at VK.com/Curiosity_Live crowdsourced a mission to find the Soviet Union’s long-lost Mars 3 spacecraft, with the site’s leader, Vitali Egorov of St. Petersburg, Russia, creating models of what hardware from the spacecraft should look like. With this reference, the community combed through a large image taken five-years ago by NASA’s MRO, identifying what is believed to be the craft’s parachute, lander, terminal retrorocket, and heat shield.
The HiRISE image in which the possible spacecraft parts were discovered is massive with 1.8 million pixels, which NASA says would require approximately 2500 average computer monitors to view. In light of the discovery, it was recommended that a new image be taken of the location where the hardware parts were discovered, which ultimately happened on March 10 of this year. The new image looks at the area in color and in different angles, which should provide a better idea of what the original image shows.
Said Alfred McEwen, HiRISE Principal Investigator from the University of Arizona, said: “Together, this set of features and their layout on the ground provide a remarkable match to what is expected from the Mars 3 landing, but alternative explanations for the features cannot be ruled out. Further analysis of the data and future images to better understand the three-dimensional shapes may help to confirm this interpretation.”
[via NASA]
NASA’s orbiter possibly spots lost 1970′s Soviet lander is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Rocket engines require two important ingredients to fire: fuel, and an oxidizer. And to get the most bang for your buck with those ingredients, you need to find the perfect recipe. As the BBC series Bang Goes the Theory demonstrates with three plastic soda bottles, maxing out on either ingredient doesn’t produce as effective a chemical reaction as ensuring the two are in perfect balance. There’s a reason they call it rocket science after all. [YouTube via The Awesomer] More »
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