Hasta La Gadget!

NASA’s Kepler telescope launched in March and is still undergoing preliminary tests, but that hasn’t stopped it from making an early discovery.

The new telescope is sensitive to light changes enough that scientists were already able to determine that a planet orbiting a distant star has an atmosphere, only shows one side to the sun, and is so hot it glows, according to CNN. That sensitivity “proves we can find Earth-size planets,” said William Borucki, Kepler’s principal science investigator, in the report.

Over the next three and a half years, Kepler will survey thousands of stars in our galaxy in an attempt to find more Earth-sized planets, and get a better sense of how common they are. (Image credit: ESO)

After months of circling the planet and getting ever closer, a lost tool bag that belonged to one of NASA’s astronauts vaporized in a fiery burst as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and burned up Monday, according to Space.com.

Last November, the astronaut accidentally lost the tool bag during a spacewalk. At the time, it slowly drifted away from the International Space Station, forever out of reach. Ever since, the tool bag has been orbiting earth–and monitored by the U.S. Air Force’s Joint Space Operations Center, which tracks over 19,000 other pieces of space junk in orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the report said.

The tool bag weighed about 30 pounds and contained a scraper tool, grease guns, and trash bags. It was about the size of a small backpack, according to the article. This would have been a perfect video clip for YouTube, if someone could have, well, orbited the Earth and filmed it before burning up with the bag. Guess that wouldn’t have worked out.

(Another pic after the break.)

While the Mars Spirit rover is still stuck, its twin Opportunity has begun imaging a possible meteorite on the surface of the red planet. The chunk of iron isn’t the first one the two rovers have come across, but it’s the largest at about two feet wide and one foot high, according to Discover.

“When you’re driving around on relatively smooth, flat, boring plains for a long time, anything that looks like a decent-sized rock says, ‘Come get me!'” said rover team member Albert Yen, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in the article.

To study the possible meteorite, scientist are training the rover’s alpha particle X-ray spectrometer on it in order to study its composition, the report said. The goal is to gain insight as to what the meteorite saw–atmosphere and surface-wise–when it first landed on Mars however many eons ago.

Researchers at the University of Utah have developed a new, more precise way of placing microelectrodes on the surface of the brain to enable patients to turn thoughts into action. Led by Bradley Greger, a professor of bioengineering, the “Brain Carpet” as it’s called, represents a “modest advance” in techniques already in use. The Brain Carpet makes use of smaller microelectrodes, and also employs many more than are usually used. The method involves sawing off the skull of the patient, then placing 32 electrodes about 2mm apart on the surface of the brain. Though they’ve conducted tests on just a handful of patients — all epileptics — the technique, they believe could also be used to help people control their prosthetic limbs much more effectively. The electrodes allow detection of the electric signals in the brain which control arm and hand movements. In the tests, patients have successfully controlled a cursor on a computer screen following the operation, and they see applications for brain-machine interface devices in the future. There’s no word on when the Brain Carpet will move from the research to reality phase, but the group’s findings have just recently appeared in the journal Neurosurgical Focus.

Filed under: Science

Brain Carpet microelectrodes could help translate thoughts into actions more effectively originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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