Hasta La Gadget!

There may be another contender for most Earth-like exoplanet found so far. New measurements of Gliese 581d’s orbit indicate a range where conditions would be right for liquid water, and thus life as we
know it, Geneva University in
Switzerland astronomer Michel Mayor announced today, according to National Geographic.

“It lies in the [life-supporting] habitable zone, and it could have an
ocean at its surface,” Mayor said at the European Week of Astronomy
and Space Science conference, which is taking place at the University of
Hertfordshire in the U.K.
this week.

It’s every child’s dream to one day walk through a trio of space robot legs as entering Silicon Valley, and if a proposed art project goes through, said dream will become a reality for budding tech superstars who land in Mineta San Jose International Airport. The $300,000 initiative would see a so-called Space Observer built and showcased prominently in the venue, allowing patrons to walk underneath its two-story-tall body and emit all sorts of “oohs” and “ahhs.” The monolithic space robot would sport three legs and propeller-tipped kinetic camera arms, the latter of which would collect live video to be displayed on embedded monitors within its body. San Jose Public Art Director Barbara Goldstein has already stated that “it won’t follow you anywhere,” but it’s not like she really has the power to control what this obviously sentient creature does / doesn’t do.

Filed under: Robots

Space Observer to innocently watch you at San Jose’s airport originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NASA has signed an agreement with TTTech, a German Ethernet vendor, to construct “highly fault-tolerant networks for space-based applications,” according to NetworkWorld. TTTech builds a series of time-triggered products called TTEthernet that sits on top of standard IEEE802.3 Ethernet, the report said. The goal is to enable reliable, synchronous, embedded computing and networking, and be tolerant of multiple faults, according to the company.

Essentially, the goal is to be able to send critical data back and forth into space without having to worry about network congestion or dropouts. In fact, NASA already uses some of the technology in its Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (pictured). The report said that ultimately, NASA and TTTech will collaborate on space network standards that will lead to an open
space Ethernet standard–one that’s suitable for deployment with upcoming NASA programs.

In an upset of astronomical proportions, the Super Pressure Balloon (SPB) project soared through a field of 64 entries to be voted NASA’s “Greatest Mission of All Time,” in the space program’s Mission Madness tournament, modeled on NCAA “March Madness.” In the final round, completed late Tuesday, SPB beat out the venerable and groundbreaking SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) by a 54-46% margin.

SPB employs new technology to add longevity and stability to balloon-borne scientific missions (see my description below, based on a discussion with SPB’s technical director). It provides important cost savings in lofting payloads to the edge of space that otherwise would have to be borne by orbiting satellites. But I’m flabbergasted that this development-stage project was voted NASA’s greatest mission ever, particularly as I have yet to meet anyone outside of NASA who had even heard of SPB before this contest.

Ever wonder what it would look like to get sucked into a black hole in space? Me neither, but scientists have developed a computer simulation that shows what you would see if you were drifting toward a brain-crushing singularity, according to New Scientist.

Two scientists at the University of Colorado in Boulder wrote code based on the equations of Einstein’s general theory of
relativity, which describes gravity as a distortion of space and time, the article said. “They follow the fate of an imaginary observer on an orbit that swoops
down into a giant black hole weighing five million times the mass of the
sun, about the same size as the hole in the center of our own galaxy.”

The report said that the research could eventually help physicists understand what happens to matter and energy in a black hole. For the rest of us, it’s pretty cool to watch. Follow the link to see a short (45-second) video of the sequence, as light from other stars near the hole is swallowed up by the event horizon (the point at which nothing can escape the black hole).