antarctic – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Mon, 22 Feb 2016 02:48:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.3 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/cropped-favicon-32x32.png antarctic – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 Glacial Lava & Artificial Intelligence | SciByte 110 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/47007/glacial-lava-artificial-intelligence-scibyte-110/ Tue, 26 Nov 2013 21:34:18 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=47007 We take a look at lava under Antarctica, teaching artificial intelligence, neutrino data, and greenhouses in the desert.

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We take a look at lava under Antarctica, teaching artificial intelligence, neutrino data, greenhouses in the desert, studying the Moon\’s atmosphere, hope for Kepler, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Eyeing Magma Under the Antarctic Ice

  • Marie Byrd Land is a desolate region of Antarctica buried deep beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet now researchers have shown that molten rock still stirs deep underground
  • Lava?
  • Historic eruptions have punctured the ice sheet, creating a chain of volcanoes amid the ice
  • Only the largest eruptions could melt all the ice above them and poke through to the surface, but even smaller eruptions could potentially cause global sea level to rise, although no one knows how big the rise might be
  • The crust is thinned by the West Antarctic Rift System, a series of giant rift valleys beneath the ice sheet
  • \”Data in the Data\”
  • Erupted lava from underground magma chambers has burst through the ice repeatedly over geological history as the plates moved over the top
  • No one knew whether magma was still stirring until seismic monitoring stations were installed on the ice between 2007 and 2010.
  • Researchers built the stations to essentially to weight the ice sheet to help study the shifting crustal blocks of the West Antarctic Rift System
  • One way to do that is to measure how the Earths crust responds to the weight of the ice, and would depend on weather it was hot and fluid or cool and vicious, but seismologist found another use
  • They noticed a series of small earthquakes, mainly occurring during two “seismic swarms” in January and February 2010 and March 2011
  • These earthquakes were unusual: The ground was shaking much more slowly during the quakes (2-4/sec) than one would expect from the plates grinding against each other (10-20/sec)
  • The Earthquakes
  • Researchers looked at two different types of waves that come in-the P wave, which is the primary wave, and the S wave, which is the secondary wave
  • Calculations revealed that the waves had come from 25 to 40 kilometers below Earth\’s surface and were centered approximately at a point that followed a linear trend of volcanoes to the south
  • The exact cause of these deep quakes is not understood, but they are thought to result from the movement of magma deep below active or soon-to-be active volcanoes
  • Other Data
  • The area showed a slightly higher magnetic field than the surrounding area and that there was a bump in the crust-common signals of magmatic activity
  • Radar mapping also indicated a layer of volcanic ash embedded in the ice, probably from an eruption of Mount Waesche about 8000 years ago-very recent geological history
  • There is no evidence of an actual eruption since then, but, because magma is still moving deep under the Earth, an eruption could occur at any time
  • What About Now?
  • The current center of volcanic activity is covered by at least 1 kilometer of ice, and it would take an exceptionally large eruption to melt all this
  • An eruption could make its presence felt in subtler ways. As fresh snow adds to their own mass, ice sheets flow downward into the sea
  • Melting the base of the ice sheet, an eruption could speed up this flow, potentially raising the level of the ocean. No one knows how significant such a rise might be
  • Any effect on the ice sheet above, and thus any effect on the oceans, would probably be quite small; however, a proper study is needed to find out how significant volcanic activity could be to future sea levels
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | S and P waves | Atkinson Physics
  • YouTube | Mount Erebus: clip from BBC\’s Volcano Live | Clive Oppenheimer
  • YouTube | Volcano: Mount Etna erupts for the 16th time this year sending lava 600 metres into the air | ITN
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Wikipedia | Seismic wave | Usefulness of P and S waves in locating an event
  • Magma Boils Beneath Antarctic Ice | Science/AAAS
  • Active Volcano Discovered Under Ice Sheet in West Antarctica Sci-News.com

— NEWS BYTE —

A.I. Common Sense

  • “Researchers are trying to teach common sense to an artificial intelligence by watching the internet”
  • What they are doing is to let the artificial intelligence browse millions of pictures and decide for itself what they all mean
  • Never Ending Image Learning, NEIL
  • The system at Carnegie Mellon University is called NEIL, short for
  • In mid-July, it began searching the Internet for images 24/7 and, in tiny steps, is deciding for itself how those images relate to each other
  • The goal is to recreate what we call common sense-the ability to learn things without being specifically taught
  • In just over four months, the network of 200 processors identified 1,500 objects and 1,200 scenes and has connected the dots to make 2,500 associations
  • NEIL leverages recent advances in computer vision that enable computer programs to identify and label objects in images, to characterize scenes and to recognize attributes, such as colors, lighting and materials, all with a minimum of human supervision
  • Humans vs Computers
  • Having a computer make its own associations is an entirely different type of challenge than programming a supercomputer to do one thing very well, or fast
  • Humans constantly make decisions using \”this huge body of unspoken assumptions,\” while computers don
  • Humans can also quickly respond to some questions that would take a computer longer to figure out
  • \”Could a giraffe fit in your car?\” | Humans can have an answer without having made the precise calculations that a computer would do
  • Some of NEIL\’s Computer-Generated Associations
  • \”Rhino can be a kind of antelope,\”
  • \”Actor can be found in jail cell\”
  • \”News anchor can look similar to Barack Obama.\”
  • Searches and Categorizing
  • The computers have figured out that zebras tend to be found in savannahs and that tigers look somewhat like zebras
  • A search for \”apple\” might return images of fruit as well as laptop computers
  • The team had no idea that a search for F-18 would identify not only images of a fighter jet, but also of F18-class catamarans
  • As its search proceeds, NEIL develops subcategories of objects
  • Tricycles can be for kids, for adults and can be motorized, or cars come in a variety of brands and models
  • It begins to notice associations – that zebras tend to be found in savannahs, for instance, and that stock trading floors are typically crowded
  • The Future
  • In the future, NEIL will analyze vast numbers of YouTube videos to look for connections between objects
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • NEIL: Never Ending Image Learner
  • Carnegie Mellon computer searches web 24/7 to analyze images and teach itself common sense | Phys.org
  • New research aims to teach computers common sense | Phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Neutrinos Spotted

Desert Farming

  • A pilot plant built by the Sahara Forest Project (SFP) produced 75 kilograms of vegetables per square meter in three crops annually, comparable to commercial farms in Europe, while consuming only sunlight and seawater
  • This is not particularly a recent publication but was recently found by me and I thought it was interesting
  • The Plant
  • The heart of the SFP concept is a specially designed greenhouse. At one end, salt water is trickled over a grid like curtain so that the prevailing wind blows the resulting cool, moist air over the plants inside
  • This cooling effect allowed the facility to grow three crops per year, even in the scorching summer
  • At the other end of the greenhouse is a network of pipes with cold seawater running through them
  • Some of the moisture in the air condenses on the pipes and is collected, providing a source of fresh water
  • The third key element of the SFP facility is a concentrated solar power plant
  • This uses mirrors in the shape of a parabolic trough to heat a fluid flowing through a pipe at its focus. The heated fluid then boils water, and the steam drives a turbine to generate power
  • The plant has electricity to run its control systems and pumps and can use any excess to desalinate water for irrigating the plants
  • Bonus Effects
  • One of the surprising side effects of such a seawater greenhouse, seen during early experiments, is that cool moist air leaking out of it encourages other plants to grow spontaneously outside
  • Qatar plant took advantage of that effect to grow crops around the greenhouse, including barley and salad rocket (arugula), as well as useful desert plants
  • The pilot plant accentuated this exterior cooling with more “evaporative hedges” that reduced air temperatures by up to 10°C.
  • The Future
  • The fact that this small greenhouse produced such good yields, suggests that a commercial plant-with possibly four crops a year-could do even better
  • Much larger greenhouses are being looked at to test whether or not this could be a long term solution and how much it would take to grow nearly or as much as the imported foods that could be grown there
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Feeding 9 Billion: Turning the Desert Green – Qatar |Journeyman Pictures
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Desert Farming Experiment Yields First Results | Science/AAAS

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

LADEE Starts to Study the Lunar Atmosphere

  • NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) has descended to its planned low altitude orbit and begun capturing science data on the Moon’s ultra tenuous atmosphere and dust
  • The purpose of LADEE is to collect data that will inform scientists in unprecedented detail about the ultra thin lunar atmosphere, environmental influences on lunar dust and conditions near the surface
  • The Mission
  • The approximately 100 day long mission length is dictated by the residual fuel available for thruster firings.
  • By circling in a very low altitude equatorial orbit, the washing machine sized probe will make frequent passes crossing from lunar day to lunar night
  • This will enable it to precisely measure changes and processes occurring within the moon’s tenuous atmosphere while simultaneously sniffing for uplifted lunar dust in the lunar sky
  • These data will lead to a better understanding of other planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond
  • Maybe Solving a Mystery
  • By studying the raised dust, scientists also hope to solve a 40 year old mystery
  • Why did the Apollo astronauts and early unmanned landers see a glow of rays and streamers at the moon’s horizon stretching high into the lunar sky
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | NASA Ames LADEE Mission Animation: Science Collection / Orbital Variation / Lunar Atmosphere |NASA Ames Research Center
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • NASA\’s LADEE Probe Starts Science Study of Thin Lunar Atmosphere and Dusty Mystery | UniverseToday.com

The Return of Kepler?

<img src=”https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/226xvariable_height/public/kepler-2nd-light_12x12_300_22nov_2.jpg?itok=VdzrPlp-\” width=250 align=right>

  • The Kepler Space telescope may soon start searching the sky again.
  • A new mission concept, dubbed K2, would continue Kepler\’s search for other worlds, and introduce new opportunities to observe star clusters, young and old stars, active galaxies and supernovae
  • Last Time on SciByte
  • SciByte 94 | Kepler & Ancient Water | Kepler’s Last Dance? – May 21, 2013
  • The Original Mission
  • For four years, the space telescope simultaneously and continuously monitored the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, recording a measurement every 30 minutes.
  • In May, the Kepler spacecraft lost the second of four gyroscope-like reaction wheels, which are used to precisely point the spacecraft,
  • Gyroscope Problems
  • The loss of the additional gyroscope ended new data collection for the original mission, which required three functioning wheels to maintain the precision pointing necessary to detect the signal of small Earth-sized exoplanets
  • With the failure of a second reaction wheel, the spacecraft can no longer precisely point at the mission\’s original field of view. The culprit is none other than our own sun which pushes the spacecraft around
  • Pressure is exerted when the photons of sunlight strike the spacecraft
  • Without a third wheel to help counteract the solar pressure, the spacecraft\’s ultra-precise pointing capability cannot be controlled in all directions.
  • A Possible Solution
  • Kepler mission and Ball Aerospace engineers have developed an innovative way of recovering pointing stability by maneuvering the spacecraft so that the solar pressure is evenly distributed across the surfaces of the spacecraft
  • To achieve this level of stability, the orientation of the spacecraft must be nearly parallel to its orbital path around the sun
  • This technique of using the sun as the \’third wheel\’ to control pointing is currently being tested on the spacecraft and early results are already coming in
  • Initial Test
  • During a pointing performance test in late October, a full frame image of the space telescope\’s full field of view was captured showing part of the constellation Sagittarius
  • Photons of light from a distant star field were collected over a 30-minute period and produced an image quality within five percent of the primary mission image quality
  • Additional testing is underway to demonstrate the ability to maintain this level of pointing control for days and weeks.
  • The Future
  • A decision to proceed to the 2014 Senior Review – a biannual assessment of operating missions – and propose for budget to fly K2 is expected by the end of 2013
  • The K2 mission concept has been presented to NASA Headquarters
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • A Sunny Outlook for NASA Kepler\’s Second Light | NASA

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • Operations Temporarily Suspended
  • Science observations by NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity were suspended for a few days while engineers ran tests to check possible causes of a voltage change detected on Nov. 17
  • \”The vehicle is safe and stable, fully capable of operating in its present condition, but we are taking the precaution of investigating what may be a soft short,\” said Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager
  • The electrical issue did not cause the rover to enter a safe-mode status, in which most activities automatically cease pending further instructions, and there is no indication the issue is related to a computer reboot that triggered a \”safe-mode\” earlier this month
  • \”Soft Short\”
  • The team detected a change in the voltage difference between the chassis and the 32-volt power bus that distributes electricity to systems throughout the rover, from about 11 volts to about 4
  • The rover\’s electrical system is designed with the flexibility to work properly throughout that range and more, \”floating bus.\”
  • A soft short can cause such a voltage change
  • A \”soft\” short is a leak through something that\’s partially conductive of electricity, rather than a hard short such as one electrical wire contacting another
  • Soft shorts reduce the level of robustness for tolerating other shorts in the future, and they can indicate a possible problem in whichever component is the site of the short
  • Curiosity had already experienced one soft short on landing day in August 2012, that one was related to explosive-release devices used for deployments shortly before and after the landing
  • It lowered the bus-to-chassis voltage from about 16 volts to about 11 volts but has not affected subsequent rover operations
  • Diagnosis and the Cause
  • Analysis determined that the change appeared intermittently three times during the hours before it became persistent
  • The work to determine the cause of the voltage change gained an advantage from an automated response by the rover\’s onboard software when it detected the voltage change
  • The rover stepped up the rate at which it recorded electrical variables, to eight times per second from the usual once per minute, and transmitted that engineering data in its next communication with Earth
  • The likely cause is an internal short in Curiosity\’s power source, the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator
  • The short does not affect operation of the power source or the rover
  • Similar generators on other spacecraft, including NASA\’s Cassini at Saturn, have experienced shorts with no loss of capability
  • Testing of another Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator over many years found no loss of capability in the presence of these types of internal shorts
  • In subsequent days, the rover performed diagnostic activities commanded by the team, such as powering on some backup hardware to rule out the possibility of short circuits in certain sensors
  • Early Nov. 23 the rover had returned to its pre-Nov. 17 voltage level, this reversal is consistent with their diagnosis of an internal short in the generator on Nov. 17, and the voltage could change again
  • Return to Science
  • Science operations were suspended for six days while this analysis took priority when the team made a list of potential causes, and then eliminated the possible causes one by one
  • The decision to resume science activities resulted from the success of work to diagnose the likely root cause of the Nov. 17 change in voltage
  • Activities after analysis resumed included the use of Curiosity\’s robotic arm to deliver portions of powdered rock to a laboratory inside the rover
  • The powder has been stored in the arm since the rover collected it by drilling into the target rock \”Cumberland\” six months ago
  • Several portions of the powder have already been analyzed. The laboratory has flexibility for examining duplicate samples in different ways
  • Multimedia
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity Resumes Science After Analysis of Voltage Issue | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
  • Mars Science Laboratory: Rover Team Working to Diagnose Electrical Issue | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
  • Mars Rover Curiosity Sidelined by Electrical Glitch | Space.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Dec 03, 1732 : 281 years ago : Artificial respiration : James Blair was rescued from a fire in a coal mine. William Tossach, a Scottish surgeon, found that “there was not the least pulse in either heart or arteries, and not the least breathing could be observed: So that he was in all appearance dead. I applied my mouth close to his, and blowed my breath as strong as I could… I blew again my breath as strong as I could, raising his chest fully with it; and immediately I felt six or seven very quick beats of the heart.”This appears to be the first recorded use of the ventilation technique since it was commented upon by 16th century Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius, who investigated the effect on an animal upon which he had performed a tracheotomy and related ventilation to heart function
  • The technique is believed to have been in use from ancient times, so Tossach was probably not the first to utilize expired air ventilation. However, he left what appear to be the first clinical description of the procedure in the medical literature, which he wrote twelve years later.

Looking up this week

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]]> Strange Exoplanet & Cancer Therapy | SciByte 98 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/39077/strange-exoplanet-cancer-therapy-scibyte-98/ Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:44:46 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=39077 We take a look at a rule breaking exoplanet, non-toxic cancer therapy supplement, hidden antarctic mountains, a new astronaut class, and more!

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We take a look at a rule breaking exoplanet, non-toxic cancer therapy supplement, hidden antarctic mountains, a new astronaut class, story updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

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Book Pick:

Mysterious ExoPlanet

  • The gap in the cloud seen in the dust surrounding one star, probably arose when a planet under construction swept through the dust and debris in its orbit
  • This small planet (6 to 28 times Earth’s mass) if we can confirm it, shouldn’t be there according to conventional planet-forming theory
  • Current Formation Theories
  • Seeing such a gap follows what we think we know about planetary formation
  • You start with a cloud of debris and gas swirling around a star, then gradually the bits and pieces start colliding, sticking together and growing bigger into small rocks, bigger ones and eventually, planets or gas giant planet cores
  • If there is a planet and there is no dust larger than a grain of sand farther out, that would be a huge challenge to traditional planet formation models
  • How we Think it Should Have Formed vs. How it Appears
  • This planet is far from its star, TW Hydrae, about twice Pluto’s distance from the sun
  • TW Hydrae is a red dwarf star, which lies about 176 light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra
  • Given that alien systems’ age, that world shouldn’t have formed so quickly.
  • Astronomers believe that Jupiter took about 10 million years to form at its distance away from the sun
  • This planet near TW Hydrae should take 200 times longer to form because the alien world is moving slower, and has less debris to pick up
  • TW Hydrae is only 55 percent as massive as our sun and is believed to be only 8 million years old.
  • What This Might Mean
  • Astronomers are seriously investigating other theories about how this potential planet can to be formed
  • If we can actually confirm that there’s a planet there, we can connect its characteristics to measurements of the gap properties
  • These observations will add to planet formation theories as to how you can actually form a planet very far out
  • One alternative brought up in the press release: perhaps part of the disc collapsed due to gravitational instability
  • If that is the case, a planet could come to be in only a few thousand years, instead of several million
  • Direct collapse” theory, though: astronomers believe it takes a bunch of matter that is one to two times more massive than Jupiter before a collapse can occur to form a planet
  • This world is no more than 28 times the mass of Earth, as best as we can figure and Jupiter itself is 318 times more massive than Earth
  • There are also intriguing results about the gap, the dust grains in this system, orbiting nearby the gap, are still smaller than the size of a grain of sand
  • Astronomers plan to use ALMA and the James Webb Space Telescope, which should launch in 2018, to get a better look
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Should This Alien World Even Exist? This Young Disk Could Challenge Planet-Formation Theories | UniverseToday.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Non-Toxic Cancer Therapy Supplement

  • A research team from the Hyperbaric Biomedical Research Laboratory at the University of South Florida has found that a combination of nontoxic dietary and hyperbaric oxygen therapies effectively increased survival time in a mouse model of aggressive metastatic cancer
  • The research shows the effects of combining two nontoxic adjuvant cancer therapies, the ketogenic diet and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, in a mouse model of late-stage, metastatic cancer
  • This study demonstrates potential cost-effective, nontoxic therapies to contribute to current cancer treatment regimens
  • The Study
  • Metastasis, the spreading of cancer from the primary tumor to distant spots, is responsible for over 90 percent of cancer-related deaths in humans
  • In the study, mice with advanced metastatic cancer were fed either a standard high carbohydrate diet or carbohydrate-restricted ketogenic diet
  • Mice on both diets also received hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which uses a special chamber to increase the amount of oxygen in the tissues
  • Ketogenic Diet
  • The ketogenic diet forces a physiological shift in substrate utilization from glucose to fatty acids and ketone bodies for energy
  • Normal healthy cells readily adapt to using ketone bodies for fuel, but cancer cells lack this metabolic flexibility, and thus become selectively vulnerable to reduced glucose availability
  • Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
  • Solid tumors also have areas of low oxygen, which promotes tumor growth and metastatic spread
  • Hyperbaric oxygen therapy involves breathing 100 percent oxygen at elevated barometric pressure, saturating the tumors with oxygen
  • The Combination
  • When administered properly, both the ketogenic diet and hyperbaric oxygen therapy are non-toxic and may even protect healthy tissues while simultaneously damaging cancer cells
  • Both therapies slowed disease progression independently, animals receiving the combined ketogenic diet and hyperbaric oxygen therapy lived 78 percent longer than mice fed a standard high-carbohydrate diet
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Talk| UCLA Health
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Nontoxic cancer therapy proves effective against metastatic cancer | MedicalXPress

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Buried Antarctic Mountain

  • The British Antarctic Survey, Bedmap2 has used millions of new measurements of the frozen continent\’s surface elevation, ice thickness, and bedrock topography from a wide variety of sources collected over several decades
  • The original Bedmap relied mostly on ground-based measurements, which limited the scientists in terms of how much land they could cover
  • A NASA program called Operation IceBridge sends out airplanes that fly over the entire continent.
  • The airplanes part of Operation IceBridge are equipped with lasers that measure the surface mountains\’ heights and other features, as well as ice-penetrating radar that maps subglacial bedrock-\”giving [scientists] a more 3-D picture of the ice sheet itself
  • The new data has revealed several smaller features-both on Antarctica\’s surface and buried under the ice-that were missed in the previous Bedmap effort
  • Scientists want to know the shapes of mountains and rocks to model how fast ice will move across these features on its way to the ocean, where the ice can melt and contribute to sea level rise
  • Multimedia
  • IMAGE | Interactive Slider of Two Views
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Antarctic\’s Mountains Revealed By Sharpest Map Yet | NationalGeographic.com

New NASA Astronaut Class of 2013

  • The 2013 astronaut candidate class comes from the second largest number of applications NASA ever has received — more than 6,100
  • This group might be among the first to ride commercial spacecraft to the Space Station, or NASA says perhaps even missions to an asteroid or Mars
  • The new astronaut candidates will begin training at NASA\’s Johnson Space Center in Houston in August
  • The Astronauts
  • Josh A. Cassada, Ph. D | A former naval aviator is a physicist by training and currently is serving as co-founder and Chief Technology Officer for Quantum Opus
  • Victor J. Glover, Lt. Commander, U.S. Navy | An F/A-18 pilot and graduate of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School currently serving as a Navy Legislative Fellow in the U.S. Congress
  • Tyler N. Hague, Lt. Colonel, U.S. Air Force | Currently is supporting the Department of Defense as Deputy Chief of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization
  • Christina M. Hammock | Currently is serving as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Station Chief in American Samoa
  • Nicole Aunapu Mannl, Major, U.S. Marine Corps | Is an F/A 18 pilot, currently serving as an Integrated Product Team Lead at the U.S. Naval Air Station, Patuxent River
  • Anne C. McClain; Major, U.S. Army | Is an OH-58 helicopter pilot, and a recent graduate of U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station, Patuxent River
  • Jessica U. Meir, Ph.D. | Currently is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
  • Andrew R. Morgan, M.D, Major, U.S. Army | Has experience as an emergency physician and flight surgeon for the Army special operations community, and currently is completing a sports medicine fellowship
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube NASA Unveils 2013 Astronaut Class | VideoFromSpace
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • NASA Selects 2013 Astronaut Candidate Class | NASA.gov

— Updates —

ARKYD Telescope Upgrade Available

LEGO Curiosity Rover

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • Answering Camera Questions
  • The team has received a lot of questions about the cameras on the rovers and are now trying to answer some of them
  • The Curiosity rover actually has 17 cameras on it, which is the most of any NASA planetary mission ever.
  • Many of the black and white images that come back from the rover are black and white, or gray scale, because that\’s all the rover really needs in order to detect rocks and other obstacles
  • Other cameras are color, such as the Mastcam imager, because the scientists use the color information to learn about the soil and the rocks
  • There are 1-megapixel black and white imagers for the engineering cameras and 2-megapixel color imagers for the science cameras
  • Camera Rundown
  • MARDI, or the Mars Descent Imager, took pictures as the rover was landing on Mars
  • MAHLI is the camera mounted on the end of the arm, and that takes close-up, high-resolution color photos
  • Hazard avoidance cameras, or the HazCams, there are four of these in the front and four in the back, and they\’re used to take pictures of the terrain near the wheels and nearby the rover
  • Mast Cameras, which are color imagers, which are used to do geology investigations
  • Navigation Cameras, which take pictures that are used to drive the rover
  • A remote microscopic imager, is part of the ChemCam laser instrument and is used to document the laser spots, that the rover makes on the surface
  • Video
  • In addition to the video taken when the rover was descending to the surface, the team has taken movies of the soil being shaken in the scoop
  • Since video files are pretty large and because they have a limited downlink each day, the scientists prefer to take still images of new targets
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Curiosity Rover Report (June 13, 2013): Curiosity\’s Cameras | JPLnews
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Video Transcript: Curiosity\’s Cameras | jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • June (18?), 240 BC : 2253 years ago : Eratosthenes : A Greek astronomer and mathematician, estimated the circumference of the earth. As the director of the great library of Alexandria, he read in a papyrus book that in Syene, approaching noon on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, shadows of temple columns grew shorter. At noon, they were gone. The sun was directly overhead. However, a stick in Alexandria, far to the north, could cast a pronounced shadow. Thus, he realized that the surface of the Earth could not be flat. It must be curved. Not only that, but the greater the curvature, the greater the difference in the shadow lengths. By measurement on the ground and application of geometry, he calculated the circumference of the earth.

Looking up this week

The post Strange Exoplanet & Cancer Therapy | SciByte 98 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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