Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Warp Speed Will Kill You
By Jeremy Hsu
SPACE.com Contributor
posted: 08 March 2010
08:29 am ET
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/warp-speed-kills-100308.html
Captain Kirk might want to avoid taking the starship Enterprise to warp speed, unless he's ready to shrug off interstellar hydrogen atoms that would deliver a lethal radiation blast to both ship and crew.
There are just two hydrogen atoms per cubic centimeter on average in space, which poses no threat to spaceships traveling at low speeds. But those same lone atoms would transform into deadly galactic space mines for a spaceship that runs into them at near-light speed, according to calculations based on Einstein's special theory of relativity.
The original crew of "Star Trek" featured as unfortunate examples at a presentation by William Edelstein, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University, at the American Physical Society conference in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 13. The physicist showed a video clip of Kirk telling engineer Scotty to go to warp speed.
"Well, they're all dead," Edelstein recalled saying. His words caused a stir among the audience.
Edelstein's personal interest in this thought experiment began 20 years ago, when his son Arthur asked him if there was friction in space. The father responded that yes, there would be hydrogen bumping off a spaceship. But he soon realized that the stray atoms of hydrogen gas would actually go right through the ship traveling close to light speed, and irradiate both crew and electronics in the process.
More recently, the physicist and his now-grown son calculated the scenario of a spaceship trying to travel halfway across our Milky Way galaxy in just 10 years. That's doable in theory, because special relativity states that time slows down and distances shrink for travelers approaching light speed.
Edelstein's work showed that a starship traveling at just 99 percent of the speed of light would get a radiation dose from hydrogen of 61 sieverts per second, when just one tenth of that number of sieverts would deliver a fatal dose for humans. And that's not even the 99.999998 percent of light-speed necessary to make the journey to the center of the Milky Way in 10 years
At the higher speed, the human crew of a starship would experience something like getting struck by the high-energy proton beam from the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. On top of killing the crew, such powerful levels of energy would also likely destroy the starship electronics.
"I'm not claiming this is a brilliant new discovery or anything," Edelstein told SPACE.com. "I'm just saying that it's interesting."
Some audience members at the American Physical Society event protested that Kirk, Spock and the "Star Trek" crew would all still live because of the starship Enterprise having shields. But Edelstein noted some of the existing difficulties with creating an electromagnetic shield with any resemblance to "Star Trek" technology.
Solid shields seem even more hopeless. A starship might need anywhere from a 4.4 -meter to 4,400-meter thickness of lead shielding to deflect the hydrogen radiation — added mass that would make travel at near-light speed even more impractical.
The physicist concluded by suggesting that extraterrestrials might not have visited Earth because of all the problems in traveling at near-light speeds, including how to deal with deadly hydrogen space mines. But for the record, he does believe that alien life exists.
"Getting between stars is a huge problem unless we think of something really, really different," Edelstein said. "I'm not saying that we know everything and that it's impossible. I'm saying it's kind of impossible based on what we know right now."
New Rocket Engine Could Reach Mars in 40 Days
By Jeremy Hsu
SPACE.com Contributor
posted: 05 March 2010
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/rocket-engine-mars-trip-100305.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+(SPACE.com+Headline+Feed)&utm_content=My+Yahoo
Future Mars outposts or colonies may seem more distant than ever with NASA's exploration plans in flux, but the rocket technology that could someday propel a human mission to the red planet in as little as 40 days may already exist.
A company founded by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz has been developing a new rocket engine that draws upon electric power and magnetic fields to channel superheated plasma out the back. That stream of plasma generates steady, efficient thrust that uses low amounts of propellant and builds up speed over time.
"People have known for a long time, even back in the '50s, that electric propulsion would be needed for serious exploration of Mars," said Tim Glover, director of development at the Ad Astra Rocket Company.
The rocket technology could drastically cut down the amount of time a spacecraft needs to send astronauts on Mars missions. Instead of half a year, a spacecraft could make the trip in just over a month using the engine and a large enough power source, according to an Ad Astra mission study.
NASA's recent course change has freed up some funding for new propulsion technologies. And the U.S. space agency has not lost sight of the red planet, NASA administrator Charles Bolden told Congress as he presented a new budget last month.
"While we cannot provide a date certain for the first human visit, with Mars as a key long-term destination we can identify missing capabilities needed for such a mission and use this to help define many of the goals for our emerging technology development," Bolden said.
Familiar chemical rockets that burn solid or liquid chemical propellants won't get humans to Mars fast because they would require too much propellant. They can create a huge boost for several minutes at the cost of huge inefficiency — not unlike a speed demon with poor gas mileage.
Slow but steady push
Some satellites and spacecraft already rely upon electric propulsion in their ion engines that create thrust based on energized gas. Similarly, Ad Astra's Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) ionizes gases such as xenon or hydrogen to create superheated plasma stream for thrust.
But VASIMR also has the advantage of relying upon electromagnetic waves to create and energize the plasma, rather than physical electrodes that get worn down due to contact with the superheated plasma. That translates into greater reliability over time and allows for a very dense plasma stream to create more thrust.
VASIMR can also adjust its thrust to speed up or slow down, and even has an "afterburner" mode that provides a temporary high-speed boost at the cost of efficiency.
"Our technology is different," Glover told SPACE.com. "It's one possibility. We certainly think it has the most potential at high power levels."
Yet even the most efficient rocket engine needs a power source. VASIMR may use gas as the propellant, but it also requires an electric power source that can ionize the gas to create its plasma.
I need more power!
A mission trajectory study estimated that a VASIMR-powered spacecraft could reach the red planet within 40 days if it had a 200 megawatt power source. That's 1,000 times more power than what the current VASIMR prototype will use, although Ad Astra says that VASIMR can scale up to higher power sources.
The real problem rests with current limitations in space power sources. Glover estimates that the Mars mission scenario would need a power source that can produce one kilowatt (kW) of power per kilogram (kg) of mass, or else the spacecraft could never reach the speeds required for a quick trip.
Existing power sources fall woefully short of that ideal. Solar panels have a mass to power ratio of 20 kg/kW. The Pentagon's DARPA science lab hopes to develop solar panels that can achieve 7 kg/KW, and stretched lens arrays might reach 3 kg/KW, Glover said. That's good enough for VASIMR to transport cargo around low-Earth orbit and to the moon, but not to fly humans to Mars.
Ad Astra sees nuclear power as the likeliest power source for a VASIMR-powered Mars mission, but the nuclear reactor that could do the job remains just a concept on paper. The U.S. only ever launched one nuclear reactor into space back in 1965, and it achieved just 50 kg/kW.
A way forward
VASIMR and the necessary power sources could get a boost in the coming years. NASA's new five-year budget includes more than $3 billion for developing heavy-lift and propulsion technologies, as well as a Game Changing Innovation program that similarly targets next-gen propulsion and power sources.
The U.S. space agency's new chief tech guru has also emphasized propulsion as a critical area, under NASA's new Space Technology program.
"The budget's emphasis on developing advanced technologies to make space exploration easier and cheaper is very encouraging to us," Glover noted.
VASIMR reached a milestone late last year by achieving 200 kilowatts of power with the VX-200 prototype. Since then, Ad Astra has worked on the flight-capable VF-200 version that could undergo testing at the International Space Station (ISS) within the next several years.
As for getting VASIMR into space, Ad Astra has discussed possible launch options with commercial spaceflight providers.
"Anybody who wants to send anything to ISS after the shuttle retires is talking with SpaceX, and Orbital Sciences," Glover said.
Yi describes frightening return to Earth
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080421/ap_on_sc/russia_space;_ylt=AtG87wpIi_e_KyNHyN2RShUE1vAI
By DAVID NOWAK, Associated Press Writer
Mon Apr 21, 8:52 AM ET
STAR CITY, Russia - South Korea's first astronaut said Monday she was "really scared" when the Russian space capsule she was in made an unexpectedly steep descent to Earth over the weekend.
"During descent I saw some kind of fire outside as we were going through the atmosphere," said Yi So-yeon, a 29-year-old bioengineer. "At first I was really scared because it looked really, really hot and I thought we could burn."
But then she said she noticed it was not even warm inside the Soyuz capsule. "I looked at the others and I pretended to be OK," Yi said.
The steeper-than-usual descent from the international space station subjected Yi, American astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko to severe gravitational forces during the re-entry Saturday.
The technical glitch also sent the TMA-11 craft off-course and it landed about 260 miles from its target on Kazakhstan's barren steppe.
All three members of the crew walked slowly and were unsteady on their feet Monday when arriving for the news conference at Russia's Star City cosmonaut training center outside Moscow.
Malenchenko said it was not yet clear what caused the unusual descent.
"There was no action of the crew that led to this," he said. "Time will tell what went wrong."
It was the second time in a row — and the third since 2003 — that the Soyuz landing had gone awry.
Officials said the craft followed a so-called "ballistic re-entry" — a very steep trajectory that subjects the crew to extreme physical force. Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said the crew had experienced gravitational forces up to 10 times those on Earth during the 3 1/2-hour descent.
Yi traveled to the international space station on April 10, along with cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, who have replaced Whitson and Malenchenko. South Korea paid Russia $20 million for Yi's flight.
Whitson and Malenchenko spent roughly six months performing experiments and maintaining the orbiting station and were replaced by Volkov and Kononenko. They joined American astronaut Garrett Reisman, who arrived last month on the U.S. space shuttle Endeavour.
According to NASA, Whitson, 48, set a new American record for cumulative time in space — 377 days.
NASA's Chandra Finds Black Holes Are 'Green'
04.24.06
News release: 06-057
Black holes are the most fuel efficient engines in the universe, according to a new study using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. By making the first direct estimate of how efficient or "green" black holes are, this work gives insight into how black holes generate energy and affect their environment.
The new Chandra finding shows most of the energy released by matter falling toward a supermassive black hole is in the form of high-energy jets traveling at near the speed of light away from the black hole. This is an important step in understanding how such jets can be launched from magnetized disks of gas near the black hole's event horizon, the distance from a black hole within which nothing, even light, can escape.
"Just as with cars, it's critical to know the fuel efficiency of black holes," said lead author Steve Allen of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford, Calif. "Without this information, we cannot figure out what is going on under the hood, so to speak, or what the engine can do."
Allen and his team used Chandra to study nine supermassive black holes at the centers of elliptical galaxies. These black holes, from .2 to 3 billion times the mass of our sun, are relatively old and generate much less radiation than quasars, the rapidly growing supermassive black holes seen in the early universe.
The surprise came when the Chandra results showed these "quiet" black holes are all producing much more energy in jets of high-energy particles than in visible light or X-rays. These jets create huge bubbles, or cavities, in the hot gas in the galaxies.
The efficiency of black hole energy-production was calculated in two steps. First, Chandra images of the galaxies' inner regions were used to estimate how much fuel is available for the black hole. Then, Chandra images were used to estimate the power required to produce the cavities. The galaxies were found to produce a lot of jet power with a surprisingly small amount of fuel.
"If a car was as fuel-efficient as these black holes, it could theoretically travel over a billion miles on a gallon of gas," said co-author Christopher Reynolds of the University of Maryland, College Park.
The findings explain how black hole engines achieve this extreme efficiency. Some of the gas first attracted to the black holes may be blown away by the energetic activity before it gets too near the black hole, but a significant fraction must eventually approach the event horizon, where it is used with high efficiency to power the jets. The study also implies that matter flows towards the black holes at a steady rate for several million years.
"These black holes are very efficient, but it also takes a very long time to refuel them," Allen said.
This new study also shows the energy transferred to the hot gas by the jets should keep hot gas from cooling, thereby preventing billions of new stars from forming. This would place limits on the growth of the largest galaxies.
These results will appear in an upcoming issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for the agency's Science Mission Directorate. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Mass.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/news/releases/2006/06-057_prt.htm
New IBM Supercomputer Aiming for Petaflop
September 7, 2006
By Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—IBM will build a next-generation supercomputer for the U.S. Energy Department with the potential to achieve a sustained speed of 1,000 trillion calculations per second, or one petaflop, the department said on Wednesday.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2013329,00.asp
It's been a long time coming, but Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 is finally here. As Microsoft starts to collect feedback from a broad spectrum of users in one of its largest test programs ever, the company will soon be in a position to decide whether the product is solid enough to meet announced ship dates of November for enterprise customers and January 2007 for consumers.
Earlier this week, I started using Vista build 5568, a version that Microsoft says should be virtually indistinguishable from the actual RC1 code. Since recent Vista revisions have been focusing on improving performance, compatibility, and stability rather than adding features, there's not a lot to highlight that's truly new. Instead, I've compiled a walkthrough of 100 screen shots recapping what Vista looks like from top to bottom.
The most pressing question for RC1 is whether it shows that Vista is good enough to ship. In my experience so far, it's getting a lot closer, but it's not quite there yet. Microsoft representatives acknowledge that the term "Release Candidate" might be slightly confusing, as it implies a non-zero probability that the code might be what actually goes into production—which clearly isn't the case for RC1.
With build 5568, I've encountered recurring problems when resuming from sleep, anomalous network behavior, and some performance issues. That said, for the most part, the experience is remarkably good—enough so that I'm thinking I may finally be able to start using Vista as a production platform. Most of the flaws I've encountered are minor nuisances rather than showstoppers.
Some of the improvements RC1 offers over beta 2 are substantial. Installation proceeds much more quickly—about 30 minutes on a newly-formatted partition, versus an hour or so in the past. My hardware devices have all been recognized during or immediately after the installation process. (Microsoft claims to have dramatically improved hardware support lately, particularly for wireless devices, printers, Serial ATA controls, and Media Center tuners.)
The UAC (User Account Control) security feature has been tuned to be far less intrusive—it can no longer steal focus from an active application, for example—and there's an easy way to turn it off if you find it unbearable. RC1 also lets non-administrator users install ActiveX controls approved by corporate IT.
Bundled applications like Windows Media Player 11 that were flaky in earlier builds have so far proved solid. Of a few dozen third-party software packages, only a couple have shown overt compatibility issues.
Vista now exhibits a level of interface polish and consistency that wasn't present in earlier versions. In some cases, it seems like minor features whose capabilities weren't quite solidified have simply been removed.
On the whole, I've found performance and stability in the builds leading to RC1 to be tolerable—and dramatically better than beta 2—but not yet what I'd expect from a release-quality product. Resuming a machine from sleep is especially slow, and I sometimes encounter cases where the Windows shell lags.
Although Vista doesn't explicitly include a lot of the core features that Microsoft initially touted, from the WinFS file system to the NGSCB (Next Generation Secure Computing Base) security infrastructure, it nevertheless incorporates a substantial portion of their capabilities and is clearly a step beyond Windows XP in many ways. But whether it's really ready to ship in the next couple of months will depend on what the larger ecosystem of PC software and hardware developers, system OEMs, enterprise customers, and consumers has to say about its experiences with RC1. If you're running RC1, tell us about your experience in the forums.
Check out our visual tour of Microsoft Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 (RC1)!
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2012792,00.asp
Modern Humans, Not Neandertals, May Be Evolution's 'Odd Man Out'
Could it be that in the great evolutionary "family tree," it is we Modern Humans, not the brow-ridged, large-nosed Neandertals, who are the odd uncle out?
Source: Washington University in St. Louis
Date: September 8, 2006
The most unusual characteristics throughout human anatomy occur in Modern Humans (right), argues Trinkaus, not in Neadertals (left). (Image courtesy of Washington University in St. Louis)
New research published in the August, 2006 journal Current Anthropology by Neandertal and early modern human expert, Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, suggests that rather than the standard straight line from chimps to early humans to us with Neandertals off on a side graph, it's equally valid, perhaps more valid based on the fossil record, that the line should extend from the common ancestor to the Neandertals, and Modern Humans should be the branch off that.
Trinkaus has spent years examining the fossil record and began to realize that maybe researchers have been looking at our ancient ancestors the wrong way.
Trinkaus identified fossil traits which seemed to be genetic markers - those not greatly influenced by environment, life ways and wear and tear. He was careful to examine traits that appear to be largely independent of each other to avoid redundancy.
"I wanted to see to what extent Neandertals are derived, that is distinct, from the ancestral form. I also wanted to see the extent to which modern humans are derived relative to the ancestral form," Trinkaus says. "What I came up with is that modern humans have about twice as many uniquely derived traits than do the Neandertals.
"In the broader sweep of human evolution," says Trinkaus, "the more unusual group is not Neandertals, whom we tend to look at as strange, weird and unusual, but it's us - Modern Humans."
The most unusual characteristics throughout human anatomy occur in Modern Humans, argues Trinkaus. "If we want to better understand human evolution, we should be asking why Modern Humans are so unusual, not why the Neandertals are divergent. Modern Humans, for example, are the only people who lack brow ridges. We are the only ones who have seriously shortened faces. We are the only ones with very reduced internal nasal cavities. We also have a number of detailed features of the limb skeleton that are unique."
Trinkaus admits that every paleontologist will define the traits a little differently. "If you really wanted to, you could make the case that Neandertals look stranger than we do. But if you are reasonably honest about it, I think it would be extraordinarily difficult to make Neandertals more derived than Modern Humans."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060908093606.htm
Lockheed to Build Orion Crew Vehicle
NASA has selected Lockheed Martin Corp. as the prime contractor to design, develop, and build Orion, America's spacecraft for a new generation of explorers.
The Orion crew capsule will carry astronauts back to the moon and later to Mars. The first flight with astronauts aboard is planned for no later than 2014. Orion's first flight to the moon is planned for no later than 2020.
Image above: An Orion crew vehicle in lunar orbit . Image Credit: Lockheed Martin Corp.
Orion improves on the best features of Project Apollo and the Space Shuttle Program, increasing the likelihood of success. Versatility will be Orion's trademark. It is being designed to fly to the moon, but could also be used to service the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/main/index.html
Liftoff! Atlantis is Space Station Bound
Image above: Space Shuttle Atlantis lifts off from Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center, Fla. Photo Credit: NASA
Sept. 9, 11:15 a.m. EDT
Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off from Kennedy Space Center and charged into the midday Florida sky on a mission to boost power on the International Space Station. The launch was on time, with liftoff at 11:15 a.m. EDT. Over the 11-day mission, the six-member crew will perform three spacewalks to install the P3/P4 integrated truss and solar arrays on the station, doubling the current power generating capability of the orbiting outpost.
NASA TV will carry a post-launch news conference at approximately one hour after liftoff.
+ Watch NASA TV
Follow our live coverage today!
+ NASA's Launch Blog
Atlantis' Crew and Mission
The STS-115 crew consists of Commander Brent W. Jett Jr., Pilot Christopher J. Ferguson and Mission Specialists Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper, Joseph R. Tanner, Daniel C. Burbank and Steven G. MacLean, who represents the Canadian Space Agency.
+ Learn more about the crew
With this mission, NASA is ready to get back to building the International Space Station, marking the first time in almost four years that a space station component has been added to the orbiting outpost. That also means the shuttle program is coming up on some of the most challenging space missions ever.
+ Learn more about the mission
During their three spacewalks, crew members of Atlantis will install the P3/P4 integrated truss and a second set of solar arrays on the space station, doubling the station’s current ability to generate power from sunlight and adding 17.5 tons to its mass.
+ Learn more about the truss
Media Resources
+ Press Kit (PDF 3.2 Mb)
+ STS-115 Fact Sheet (122 Kb PDF)
+ STS-115 TV Schedule
+ View Images
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html
History of Video Games (from Atari to Nintendo) 46mins 33secs
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3637639460474263178&q=movie+history&hl=en
Stephen Hawking's Universe videos on Google: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=stephen+hawking%27s+universe++
Video: The Day The Earth Stood Still 1951 public domain 1hr 28mins 23secs
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3232643887050775784
Ares: NASA's New Rockets Get Names
06.30.06
NASA announced on Friday the names of the next generation of launch vehicles that will return humans to the moon and later take them to Mars and other destinations. The crew launch vehicle will be called Ares I, and the cargo launch vehicle will be known as Ares V.
Ares Video:
+ Windows Low | + Windows High
+ RealPlayer Low | + RealPlayer High
Image left: The Ares-V (left) and Ares-I. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA
+ View Expanded Views of Ares-I, Ares-V (1.3 Mb PDF)
Fact Sheets: + Ares I (1.4 Mb PDF) | + Ares V (4.6 Mb PDF)
"It's appropriate that we named these vehicles Ares, which is a pseudonym for Mars," said Scott Horowitz, associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, Washington. "We honor the past with the number designations and salute the future with a name that resonates with NASA's exploration mission."
The "I and V" designations pay homage to the Apollo program's Saturn I and Saturn V rockets, the first large U.S. space vehicles conceived and developed specifically for human spaceflight.
The crew exploration vehicle, which will succeed the space shuttle as NASA's spacecraft for human space exploration, will be named later. This vehicle will be carried into space by Ares I, which uses a single five-segment solid rocket booster, a derivative of the space shuttle's solid rocket booster, for the first stage. A liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen J-2X engine derived from the J-2 engine used on Apollo's second stage will power the crew exploration vehicle's second stage. The Ares I can lift more than 55,000 pounds to low Earth orbit.
Ares V, a heavy lift launch vehicle, will use five RS-68 liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen engines mounted below a larger version of the space shuttle's external tank, and two five-segment solid propellant rocket boosters for the first stage. The upper stage will use the same J-2X engine as the Ares I. The Ares V can lift more than 286,000 pounds to low Earth orbit and stands approximately 360 feet tall. This versatile system will be used to carry cargo and the components into orbit needed to go to the moon and later to Mars.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/spacecraft/ares_naming.html
View of the Universe {Astronomy}
Photos put to music from Hubble Telescope
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7001068736029384499&q=astronomy&hl=en
Digital Life TV: http://digitallifetv.com/blogs/digitallifetv/default.aspx
They seem to have new shows (live) each Tuesday and Thursday at 4pm PDT, 7pm EDT, 23:00 GMT/UTC, and downloads are normally available the following day.
August 8, 2006 Windows Vista and the Future of Hardware
By Loyd Case
Whether you ever plan on upgrading to Windows Vista or not, one thing is clear: Its impact on the world of PC hardware will be huge. We've written about how to build a Windows Vista system. This time we're not talking about building a Vista system today, but rather, about what new types of hardware Windows Vista will spawn. We'll also consider how this new generation of hardware will affect your future buying decisions.
Windows Vista will alter design aspects of just about every subsystem on the PC—CPU, memory, storage, and graphics. Given Microsoft's dominance in the industry, the company is able to influence the hardware industry in a number of ways. We'll take a look at the key areas today and then analyze how Vista could affect the entire PC ecosystem, including non-Windows based systems.
And the changes don't only go in one direction: Redmond has adjusted some of its plans for Vista because of the way hardware is evolving as a result of other pressures. For example, Windows Vista will support an unprecedented level of DRM (digital rights management), but that's at the behest of the content providers rather than Microsoft itself.
With these thoughts in mind, let's take a look at Vista's impact on hardware, one component at a time. Continued...
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2000516,00.asp
Planet Earth May Have 'Tilted' To Keep Its Balance, Say Scientists
Source: Princeton University
Date: August 25, 2006
Imagine a shift in the Earth so profound that it could force our entire planet to spin on its side after a few million years, tilting it so far that Alaska would sit at the equator. Princeton scientists have now provided the first compelling evidence that this kind of major shift may have happened in our world's distant past.
By analyzing the magnetic composition of ancient sediments found in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, Princeton University's Adam Maloof has lent credence to a 140-year-old theory regarding the way the Earth might restore its own balance if an unequal distribution of weight ever developed in its interior or on its surface.
The theory, known as true polar wander, postulates that if an object of sufficient weight -- such as a supersized volcano -- ever formed far from the equator, the force of the planet's rotation would gradually pull the heavy object away from the axis the Earth spins around. If the volcanoes, land and other masses that exist within the spinning Earth ever became sufficiently imbalanced, the planet would tilt and rotate itself until this extra weight was relocated to a point along the equator.
"The sediments we have recovered from Norway offer the first good evidence that a true polar wander event happened about 800 million years ago," said Maloof, an assistant professor of geosciences. "If we can find good corroborating evidence from other parts of the world as well, we will have a very good idea that our planet is capable of this sort of dramatic change."
This graphic shows the tilting of the Earth that might occur if a dramatic imbalance in the planet's mass distribution ever developed in the Arctic. According to the theory of true polar wander, a heavy spot in the Arctic -- caused by a very large upwelling of magma, for instance -- would reorient the planet over 5 to 20 million years so that the heavy spot would lie at the equator, changing the orientation of the Earth in relation to its poles. New evidence uncovered by the team of Princeton geoscientist Adam Maloof shows that this sort of reorientation may have occurred in the planet's distant past. (Graphic: Maloof Laboratory)Ads by Google Advertise on this site
...for rest of story: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060825132321.htm
Launching of the Space Shuttle Is Delayed After Lightning Strike
By WARREN E. LEARY
Published: August 27, 2006
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Aug. 26 — One of Florida’s frequent summer lightning storms forced NASA on Saturday to postpone for at least one day Sunday’s planned launching of the shuttle Atlantis on a mission to resume construction of the International Space Station.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials said a large lightning strike at the launching pad during a storm on Friday afternoon initially appeared to cause no damage. However, a couple of indications of potential problems required them to postpone the launching and examine the shuttle and pad more carefully.
“We took a significant lightning strike,” said LeRoy Cain, director of shuttle integration at the Kennedy Space Center. The strike, carrying a current of about 100,000 amperes, struck a lightning rod atop the gantry around the shuttle and might have been the largest bolt ever to have struck a launching pad at the center, he said.
...for more: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/science/27Shuttle.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin
Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: August 25, 2006
Researchers Provide First Evidence For Learning Mechanism In Brain
Finally confirming a fact that remained unproven for more than 30 years, researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory report in the Aug. 25 issue of Science that certain key connections among neurons get stronger when we learn.
"We show what everyone has always believed: LTP (long-term potentiation) is indeed induced in the hippocampus when learning occurs," said Mark F. Bear, Picower Professor of Neuroscience. "This is a big deal for neuroscientists because such evidence has been absent for the 30-plus years we have known about LTP."
The findings described in the Bear paper and in a second, separate paper in the same issue of Science "substantially advance the case for LTP as a neural mechanism for memory," wrote Tim Bliss of the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in the UK, Graham Collingridge of the University of Bristol, and Serge Laroche of the Universite Paris Sud in a commentary on the work.
...for rest: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060824222608.htm
'Extreme Physics' Observatory Prepares for Flight
05.17.06
Scientists and engineers have completed assembly of the primary instrument for the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, a breakthrough orbiting observatory scheduled to launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in fall 2007.
The main instrument, called the Large Area Telescope, arrived on May 14, 2006, at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington for environmental testing.
The mission, led by NASA with the Department of Energy and international partners, brings together the astrophysics and particle physics communities.
"With GLAST, physicists will gain valuable information about the evolution of the universe and physicists will search for signals that may even force revision of some of the basic laws of physics," said the telescope's principal investigator, Peter Michelson of Stanford University. "The completion of the Large Area Telescope assembly and its shipment from the accelerator center are major milestones in its development."
The observatory will detect light billions of times more energetic than what our eyes can see or what optical telescopes such as Hubble can detect. Key targets include powerful particle jets emanating from enormous black holes and possibly the theorized collisions of dark matter particles. The Large Area Telescope will be at least 30 times more sensitive than previous gamma-ray detectors and will have a far greater field of view.
"The relative range of light energies that the instrument can detect is thousands of times wider than that of an optical telescope, which captures only a thin slice of the electromagnetic spectrum," said Project Scientist Steven Ritz of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "The observatory provides a huge leap in capabilities in this important energy band, and it opens a wide window for exploration and discovery."
Unlike visible light, gamma rays are too energetic to be focused by traditional telescope mirrors onto a detector. The Large Area Telescope will employ detectors that convert incoming gamma rays into electrons and their antimatter partners, called positrons. This technique, a change of light into matter as described by Einstein's equation E=mc^2, is called pair conversion. It will enable scientists to track the direction of gamma rays and measure their energy.
The telescope will now undergo three grueling months of ‘shake and bake’ testing to ensure it will survive the intense vibration and noise during launch and operate properly in space. Electromagnetic interference tests also will be performed to ensure Large Area Telescope operations do not interfere with the spacecraft. When testing is finished at the Naval Research Laboratory, the instrument will be shipped to Arizona, where engineers at General Dynamics C4 Systems will integrate the Large Area Telescope and a second instrument, the Burst Monitor, onto the spacecraft.
Goddard manages the GLAST mission. The Large Area Telescope was built with significant contributions from NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy and foreign collaborating institutions. The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center at Stanford University manages the instrument with collaborators at Goddard, University of Calif., Santa Cruz, University of Washington, Ohio State University, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and institutions in France, Italy, Japan, and Sweden. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., manages the Burst Monitor with a collaborator in Germany. General Dynamics C4 Systems is building the spacecraft and is responsible for instrument integration. Education and Public Outreach efforts for the mission are coordinated by Sonoma State University. For more information about the mission, visit: + GLAST website
Susan Hendrix
Goddard Space Flight Center
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/glast.html
August 15, 2006 Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) Team Wins Gruber Prize
BERKELEY, CA — John Mather, Project Scientist of NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer satellite mission, and eighteen members of COBE's Science Working Group, including George Smoot of the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, have jointly received the 2006 Gruber Cosmology Prize for their ground-breaking studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The COBE experiments not only confirmed that the universe was born in a big bang but shed light on its subsequent structure.
...for more: http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/Phys-Gruber-Prize-2006.html
Chandra independently determines Hubble constant
CHANDRA X-RAY CENTER NEWS RELEASE
Posted: August 8, 2006
A critically important number that specifies the expansion rate of the Universe, the so-called Hubble constant, has been independently determined using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This new value matches recent measurements using other methods and extends their validity to greater distances, thus allowing astronomers to probe earlier epochs in the evolution of the Universe.
...for more: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0608/08hubbleconstant/
{It's about time, they started to change this!}
Honey, I shrunk the solar system
NASA/JPL RELEASE
Posted: August 24, 2006
Credit: NASA/JPL
If you woke up Thursday morning and sensed something was different about the world around you, you're absolutely right. Pluto is no longer a planet.
The International Astronomical Union, wrapping up its meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, has resolved one of the most hotly-debated topics in the cosmos by approving a specific definition that gives our solar system eight planets, instead of the nine most of us grew up memorizing.
NASA has already visited all eight planets that retain their official title: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. In addition, the agency has its New Horizons spacecraft en route to Pluto, which the astronomical union has designated as the prototype for a new class of celestial objects, to be called "dwarf planets."
"NASA will, of course, use the new guidelines established by the International Astronomical Union," said Dr. Paul Hertz, Chief Scientist for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. "We will continue pursuing exploration of the most scientifically interesting objects in the solar system, regardless of how they are categorized."
Ceres, which orbits in a belt between Mars and Jupiter and is the largest known asteroid, is one of those interesting objects. In 2007, NASA will launch the Dawn spacecraft on a mission to study Ceres, which the astronomers have placed in the dwarf planet category, alongside Pluto. The dwarf planet family also includes 2003 UB313, nicknamed "Xena." When Dr. Mike Brown of Caltech and his colleagues announced last summer that they'd discovered the object, which is bigger and farther away than Pluto, many astronomers decided it was time to figure out once and for all, "What exactly is a planet, anyway?"
Here's how it all shakes out. The International Astronomical Union has decided that, to be called a planet, an object must have three traits. It must orbit the sun, be massive enough that its own gravity pulls it into a nearly round shape, and be dominant enough to clear away objects in its neighborhood.
To be admitted to the dwarf planet category, an object must have only two of those traits -- it must orbit the sun and have a nearly round shape. And no, moons don't count as dwarf planets. In addition to Pluto, Ceres and 2003 UB313, the astronomical union has a dozen potential "dwarf planets" on its watchlist.
What's to become of the other objects in our solar system neighborhood, the ones that are not planets, not dwarf planets and not moons? The organization has decided that most asteroids, comets and other small objects will be called "small solar-system bodies."
Despite the establishment of these three distinct categories, there are bound to be gray areas. As technologies improve and more objects are found, the International Astronomical Union will set up a process to decide which of the three categories are most appropriate for specific objects.
Even before the discovery of Xena, not all was calm in the planetary world. There was debate after Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930. With its small size, distant location and odd orbit, some questioned whether Pluto was really a planet or just an icy remnant of the planet-forming process.
That issue has been resolved by the International Astronomical Union. Among those most keenly following the debate -- Mike Brown, who has been awaiting word on Pluto and the object he found, Xena.
"I'm of course disappointed that Xena will not be the tenth planet, but I definitely support the IAU in this difficult and courageous decision," said Brown. "It is scientifically the right thing to do, and is a great step forward in astronomy."
Although the revamping of our solar system might seem unsettling, it's really nothing new. In fact, when Ceres was first discovered in 1801, it was called a planet, as were several similar objects found later. But when the count kept on growing, astronomers decided "enough is enough," and they demoted Ceres and its siblings, placing them in a new category, called asteroids.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0608/24planets/
Astronomers Find Direct Evidence of Dark Matter
Imagine the Universe News
The Latest on the Structure and Evolution of Our Universe
_______________________________________________
Vol 10. No. 8
22 Aug 2006
Astronomers Find Direct Evidence of Dark Matter
A team of astronomers has seen direct evidence for the exisitence of dark matter in the collision of two large clusters of galaxies. Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the team observed dark matter and normal matter being wrenched apart by this tremendous collision.
"This is the most energetic cosmic event, besides the Big Bang, which we know about," said team member Maxim Markevitch of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
These observations provide the strongest evidence yet that most of the matter in the universe is dark. Despite considerable evidence for dark matter, some scientists have proposed alternative theories for gravity where it is stronger on intergalactic scales than predicted by Newton and Einstein, removing the need for dark matter. However, such theories cannot explain the observed effects of this collision.
"A universe that's dominated by dark stuff seems preposterous, so we wanted to test whether there were any basic flaws in our thinking," said Doug Clowe of the University of Arizona at Tucson, and leader of the study. "These results are direct proof that dark matter exists."
In galaxy clusters, the normal matter, like the atoms that make up the stars, planets, and everything on Earth, is primarily in the form of hot gas and stars. The mass of the hot gas between the galaxies is far greater than the mass of the stars in all of the galaxies. This normal matter is bound in the cluster by the gravity of an even greater mass of dark matter. Without dark matter, which is invisible and can only be detected through its gravity, the fast-moving galaxies and the hot gas would quickly fly apart.
The team was granted more than 100 hours on the Chandra telescope to observe the galaxy cluster 1E0657-56. The cluster is also known as the bullet cluster, because it contains a spectacular bullet-shaped cloud of hundred-million-degree gas. The X-ray image shows the bullet shape is due to a wind produced by the high-speed collision of a smaller cluster with a larger one.
...for rest of story go here: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/news/news.html
Creation of Black Hole Detected
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 09 May 2005
12:52 pm ET
Astronomers photographed a cosmic event this morning which they believe is the birth of a black hole, SPACE.com has learned.
A faint visible-light flash moments after a high-energy gamma-ray burst likely heralds the merger of two dense neutron stars to create a relatively low-mass black hole, said Neil Gehrels of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. It is the first time an optical counterpart to a very short-duration gamma-ray burst has ever been detected.
Gamma rays are the most energetic form of radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum, which also includes X-rays, light and radio waves.
The merger occurred 2.2 billion light-years away, so it actually took place 2.2 billion years ago and the light just reached Earth this morning.
Quick global effort
Gehrels said the burst occurred just after midnight East Coast time. It was detected by NASA's orbiting Swift telescope. Swift automatically repositioned itself within 50 seconds to image the same patch of sky in X-rays. It just barely caught an X-ray afterglow, Gehrels said in a telephone interview.
The X-ray counterpart was barely detectable and only observed for a few minutes.
An email was sent out to astronomers worldwide, and large observatories then tracked to the location and spotted a faint visible-light afterglow.
Gamma ray bursts are mysterious beasts. They come from all over the universe. Long-duration bursts, lasting a few seconds, are thought to be associated with the formation of black holes when massive stars explode and collapse. In recent years, scientists have detected X-ray and optical afterglows of these long bursts.
Very short-duration bursts, like the one this morning, last only a tiny fraction a second. Until now, no optical afterglows from these bursts have been detected. Theorists think a burst like this represents the formation of a black hole a few times the mass of the Sun, but if so, then there should be flashes of X-rays and visible light, too.
The burst has been named GRB050509b.
What happened
Steinn Sigurdsson, a Penn State University researcher who is excited about the observations but was not involved in them, explained what theorists think happened:
Over a long time period, at least a hundred million years and perhaps billions of years, the two neutron stars spiraled toward each other. Neutron stars themselves are very dense objects, collapsed stellar remnants.
"A fraction of a second before contact, the lower mass neutron star is disrupted and forms a neutrino driven accretion disk around the higher mass neutron star," Sigurdsson told SPACE.com. "It implodes under the weight and forms a maximally spinning low-mass black hole."
Astronomers can't see black holes, because light and everything else that enters them is lost to observation. But just before material falls in, some high-energy process -- likely involving magnetism and speeds approach that of light -- vents some of the material back into space.
The gamma ray burst signals the formation of a superheated jet of gas being shot out from the chaotic region around the newly formed black hole at a significant fraction of light-speed, Sigurdsson said.
"This really does look like a merger scenario," said Gehrels, who heads up the scientific operations for the Swift satellite.
The first gamma-ray burst was detected by accident in 1967. It was found by U.S. satellites deployed to monitor possible violations of the nuclear test ban treaty. Researchers now know that one erupts roughly every day somewhere in the cosmos. Most originate many billions of light years away.
Each burst can briefly outshine an entire galaxy. Gamma-ray bursts in our own galaxy are very rare. Some scientists speculate that such bursts in the Milky Way's past might have caused mass extinctions on Earth
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050509_blackhole_birth.html
Atlantis Set for Sunday Launch
The Space Shuttle Atlantis is set to launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 4:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 27.
Commander Brent Jett and his five crewmates will travel to the International Space Station to install a new 17-ton segment of the station's truss backbone, adding a new set of giant solar panels and batteries to the complex. Three spacewalks are planned.
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/sts115_front/index.html
I have a great deal of interest in the sciences such as: Astronomy, Meteorology, Geology, Evolution, Paleontology, Biology, Psychology and so on. Let's talk about and discuss what is happening now, where we came from, and where we are going. NASA, Hubble and such things are welcome. Black holes, vortices, gravity, plate tectonics, and the study of life here on Earth...it's history and how and why it seems (from my p.o.v.) that life such as is occurring here is probably a very very rare thing. Other areas to consider perhaps are: beauty, intelligence, and health...always remembering it's from the human perspective/our perspective...ie. how it effects us, what it means, and why such perhaps exists.
We'll see where this board goes. I have a strong need to work with these subjects/consider and perhaps, discuss them (especially, the so called hard sciences). This board (and maybe others) will be balancing out my other current iHub boards...which though they are very valuable/important and necessary...can be extremely draining if, they are not balanced by other interests of mine...which also seek the truth but, which I enjoy just from the study and consideration of them. Seeking justice and freedom are very important but, they are not sufficient for my life to be complete and full. Knowledge, beauty and truth...as well as, deep study in other areas I like...are certainly desired too.
Followers
|
2
|
Posters
|
|
Posts (Today)
|
0
|
Posts (Total)
|
34
|
Created
|
08/26/06
|
Type
|
Premium
|
Moderator bartermania | |||
Assistants |
Volume | |
Day Range: | |
Bid Price | |
Ask Price | |
Last Trade Time: |