Dragon – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Mon, 22 Feb 2016 02:46:55 +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 Dragon – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 Marijuana & “Exo-Earth” | SciByte 127 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/55667/marijuana-exo-earth-scibyte-127/ Tue, 22 Apr 2014 21:15:11 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=55667 We take a look at marijuana\’s effect on the brain, an \”Earth-like\” exoplanet, the brains distraction controls, a possible new moon for Saturn, spacecraft 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 | HD Video | Video […]

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We take a look at marijuana\’s effect on the brain, an \”Earth-like\” exoplanet, the brains distraction controls, a possible new moon for Saturn, spacecraft 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 | HD Video | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

Show Notes:

Marijuana’s and Changes to the Brain

  • Young adults who used marijuana only recreationally showed significant abnormalities in two key brain regions that are important in emotion and motivation
  • The Study
  • This is the first study to show casual use of marijuana is related to major brain changes
  • Through different methods of neuroimaging, scientists examined the brains of young adults ages 18 to 25, from Boston-area colleges; 20 who smoked marijuana and 20 who didn\’t. Each group had nine males and 11 females
  • The users underwent a psychiatric interview to confirm they were not dependent on marijuana
  • The changes in brain structures indicate the marijuana users\’ brains are adapting to low-level exposure to marijuana
  • Results
  • The degree of brain abnormalities in these regions is directly related to the number of joints a person smoked per week, the more joints a person smoked, the more abnormal the shape, volume and density of the brain regions
  • Some of these people only used marijuana to get high once or twice a week thinking a little recreational use shouldn\’t cause a problem; however, data directly says this is not the case
  • Scientists examined the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala-key regions for emotion and motivation, and associated with addiction-in the brains of casual marijuana users and non-users
  • Researchers analyzed three measures: volume, shape and density of grey matter to obtain a comprehensive view of how each region was affected.
  • Both these regions in recreational pot users were abnormally altered for at least two of these structural measures and the degree of those alterations was directly related to how much marijuana the subjects used
  • What is Means
  • The study results fit with animal studies that show when rats are given tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) their brains rewire and form many new connections. THC is the mind-altering ingredient found in marijuana
  • Think when people are in the process of becoming addicted, their brains from these new connections
  • In animals, these new connections indicate the brain is adapting to the unnatural level of reward and stimulation from marijuana. These connections make other natural rewards less satisfying
  • The brain changes suggest that structural changes to the brain are an important early result of casual drug use
  • Researchers did not know the THC content of the marijuana, which can range from 5 to 9 percent or even higher, the THC content is much higher today than the marijuana during the 1960s and 1970s, which was often about 1 to 3 percent
  • Further Reading / In the News

— NEWS BYTE —

Another Earth-sized Exo-Planet

  • The first Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of another star has been confirmed by observations with both the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Gemini Observatory
  • The initial discovery, made by NASA\’s Kepler Space Telescope, is one of a handful of smaller planets found by Kepler and verified using large ground-based telescopes
  • The System
  • The host star, Kepler-186, is an M1-type dwarf star relatively close to our solar system, at about 500 light years and is in the constellation of Cygnus
  • The star is very dim, being over half a million times fainter than the faintest stars we can see with the naked eye and is cooler than the Sun
  • Five small planets have been found orbiting this star, four of which are in very short-period orbits and are very hot
  • This Earth-sized planet, one of five orbiting this star, which is cooler than the Sun, resides in a temperate region where water could exist in liquid form
  • Observations
  • Neither Kepler (nor any telescope) is currently able to directly spot an exoplanet of this size and proximity to its host star all they can do is eliminate essentially all other possibilities so that the validity of these planets is really the only viable option
  • With such a small host star, the team employed a technique that eliminated the possibility that either a background star or a stellar companion could be mimicking what Kepler detected
  • Differential Speckle Survey Instrument (DSSI)
  • The team obtained extremely high spatial resolution observations from the eight-meter Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii using a technique called speckle imaging, as well as adaptive optics (AO) observations from the ten-meter Keck II telescope
  • The Gemini \”speckle\” data directly imaged the system to within about 400 million miles (about 4 AU, approximately equal to the orbit of Jupiter in our solar system) of the host star and confirmed that there were no other stellar size objects orbiting within this radius from the star
  • It works on a principle that utilizes multiple short exposures of an object to capture and remove the noise introduced by atmospheric turbulence producing images with extreme detail
  • The System
  • Kenny MacLeod ‏@siabost9deas
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Kepler-186f : First Earth-size Planet Discovered in the Habitable Zone of Another Star [HD] | The Mars Underground
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • First potentially habitable Earth-sized planet confirmed: It may have liquid water | Phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

The Brains Distraction Control

  • A new study to reveals that our brains rely on an active suppression mechanism to avoid being distracted by salient irrelevant information when we want to focus on a particular item or task
  • This discovery opens up the possibility that environmental and/or genetic factors may hinder or suppress a specific brain activity that the researchers have identified as helping us prevent distraction.
  • These results show clearly that this is only one part of the equation and that active suppression of the irrelevant objects is another important part
  • Psychologists say their discovery could help scientists and health care professionals better treat individuals with distraction-related attentional deficits
  • Distraction is a leading cause of injury and death in driving and other high-stakes environments
  • Disorders associated with attention deficits, such as ADHD and schizophrenia, may turn out to be due to difficulties in suppressing irrelevant objects rather than difficulty selecting relevant ones
  • Researchers are now turning their attention to understanding how we deal with distraction and why we can\’t suppress potentially distracting objects, whether some of us are better at doing so and why that is the case.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • ADHD: Scientists discover brain\’s anti-distraction system | ScienceDaily

A New Moon for Saturn?

  • A bright clump spotted orbiting Saturn at the outermost edge of its A ring may be a brand new moon in the process of being born
  • The effects of this now 1,200-kilometer-long, 10-kilometer-wide arc of icy material were first seen in May 2012 traveling along the edge of the A ring
  • The arc is thought to be the result of gravitational perturbations caused by an as-yet unseen embedded object about a kilometer wide – possibly a miniature moon in the process of formation
  • The half-mile-wide object has been unofficially named “Peggy,” eventually it may coalesce into a slightly larger moon and move outward, establishing its own orbital path around Saturn
  • This is how many of Saturn’s other moons are thought to have formed much further back in the planet’s history
  • While it is possible that the bright perturbation is the result of an object’s breakup rather than formation, researchers are still looking forward to finding out more about its evolution.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Is Saturn Making a New Moon? | UniverseToday.com
  • NASA Cassini Images May Reveal Birth of New Saturn Moon | NASA.gov
  • NASA Cassini Missiom Page

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

SpaceX Dragon Delivery Mission

New Horizons and Questions About Pluto

  • Compositional Model Theories
  • Two space researchers have published a paper where they describe three possible interior models of the former planet Pluto
  • The possibilities include: an undifferentiated rock/ice mixture, a differentiated rock/ice mixture, and an ocean covered with ice, the third possibility suggests the likelihood, they claim, of tectonic action on the dwarf planet
  • Scientists believe that Pluto came to exist as it does today, in part due to a collision billions of years ago that led also to the formation of its moon Charon
  • When celestial bodies collide, not only do they knock each other around, they produce heat—heat, the researchers suggest that could still be evident today
  • A theory that suggests that shortly after impact, Pluto and Charon were much closer together where the gravity attraction between them would have caused both to be egg shaped.
  • As time passed, melted ice from the impact would have created an icy crust on top of an ocean on Pluto
  • As Charon moved farther away, the attractive pull would have diminished, causing ice plates to form and crack against one another, a form of tectonics.
  • If that were the case, the two add, then in all likelihood, when New Horizons begins sending back images, they should see evidence of such tectonic action—plate edges thrust into the air
  • Pluto circles the sun in an elliptical orbit, thus sometimes it\’s much closer to the sun than other times, when near, it has a defined atmosphere, when far away however, its atmosphere actually freezes to its surface
  • Something that could hide ridges in the ice and thus evidence of both tectonic activity and an ocean beneath the crust of ice
  • New Horizons will arrive during a time when its atmosphere is frozen to the surface, it might be difficult to determine which of the three proposed models actually describes the relationship between its exterior and interior
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Research pair offer three possible models of Pluto ahead of New Horizons visit | Phys.org
  • New Horizons | NASA

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • New Science Location
  • Scientists using NASA\’s Curiosity Mars rover are eyeing a rock layer surrounding the base of a small butte, called \”Mount Remarkable,\” as a target for investigating with tools on the rover\’s robotic arm
  • The butte stands about 16 feet (5 meters) high. Curiosity\’s science team refers to the rock layer surrounding the base of Mount Remarkable as the \”middle unit\” because its location is intermediate between rocks that form buttes in the area and lower-lying rocks that show a pattern of striations
  • Depending on what the mission scientists learn from a close-up look at the rock and identification of chemical elements in it, a site on this middle unit may become the third rock that Curiosity samples with its drill
  • Multimedia
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • NASA Mars Orbiter Spies Rover Near Martian Butte | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • April 25, 1990 : 24 years ago : Hubble Space Telescope : In 1990, the $2.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope was deployed in space from the Space Shuttle Discovery into an orbit 381 miles above Earth. It was the first major orbiting observatory, named in honour of American astronomer, Edwin Powell Hubble. It was seven years behind schedule and nearly $2 billion over budget. In orbit, the 94.5-in primary mirror was found to be flawed, giving blurred images and reduced ability to see distant stars. However, correcting optics were successfully installed in 25 Dec 1993. The telescope 43-ft x 14-ft telescope now provides images with a clarity otherwise impossible due to the effect of the earth\’s atmosphere. Instrument packages capture across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Looking up this week

  • Solar Eclipse
  • On April 29th, an annular solar eclipse occurs over a small D-shaped 500 kilometre wide region of Antarctica
  • 2014 has the minimum number of eclipses possible in one year, with four: two partial solars and two total lunars
  • This month’s solar eclipse is also a rarity in that it’s a non-central eclipse with one limit, where the center of the Moon’s shadow – known as the antumbra during an annular eclipse – will juuuust miss the Earth and instead pass scant kilometres above the Antarctic continent
  • Out of 3,956 annular eclipses occurring from 2000 BCE to 3000 AD, only 68 (1.7%) are of the non-central variety
  • An annular eclipse occurs when the Moon is too distant to cover the disk of the Sun, resulting in a bright “annulus” or “ring-of-fire” eclipse
  • Several southern Indian Ocean islands and all of Australia will still witness a fine partial solar eclipse from this event, a scattering of islands in the southern Indian Ocean will see a 55% eclipsed Sun.
  • In Australia, Perth will see a 55% eclipsed Sun and Sydney will be able to see a 50% partial eclipse low to the horizon in west at sunset
  • Don\’t Forget to Use Safe Viewing Practices
  • The safest way | Pinhole camera/projector and telescope — pinhole projector
  • Optical Filters | Eclipse glasses, welder\’s goggles rated at 14
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Safely See the Sun — Build a Shoebox Pinhole Camera | VideoFromSpace
  • YouTube | The April 29th, 2014 Annular Eclipse: Sims from Space | astroguyz
  • Further Reading / In the News

  • Our Guide to the Bizzare April 29th Solar Eclipse UniverseToday.com

  • Keep an eye out for …

  • Fri, April 25 | Dawn | The thin crescent Moon is low in the E and left of Venus
  • Planets
  • Venus | \”Morning Star\” | Look to the E-SE as daylight approached
  • Mars | Just past opposition you can see it most of the night. In the evening is is in the SW with Spica below it, both will be at their highest point around local 12pm DST moving towards the NE as dawn approaches
  • Jupiter | Twilight | High in the SW sinking towards the W horizon as the night progresses

  • Saturn | End of Twilight | Highest in the S around 2am

  • Further Reading and Resources

  • Sky&Telescope
  • SpaceWeather.com
  • StarDate.org
  • For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
  • Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
  • Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
  • AstronomyNow
  • HeavensAbove

The post Marijuana & “Exo-Earth” | SciByte 127 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> HIV & SpaceX Troubles | SciByte 84 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/33016/hiv-spacex-troubles-scibyte-84/ Tue, 05 Mar 2013 22:17:22 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=33016 We look at a HIV-infected infant that is "Functionally Cured," a really old star, one big Antarctic meteorite, an update on a private Mars mission and more!

The post HIV & SpaceX Troubles | SciByte 84 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at a HIV-infected infant that is \”Functionally Cured,\” a really old star, one big Antarctic meteorite, renaming a NASA center, an update on a private Mars mission and the Dragon space station supply mission, 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:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

[asa]B007FTE2VW[/asa]

Show Notes:

\”Functional Cure\” in an HIV-Infected Infant

  • A team of researchers from Johns Hopkins Children\’s Center has described the first case of a so-called \”functional cure\” in an HIV-infected infant
  • The infant described in the report underwent remission of HIV infection after receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) within 30 hours of birth
  • Natural Viral Suppression
  • Natural viral suppression without treatment is an exceedingly rare phenomenon observed in less than half a percent of HIV-infected adults
  • HIV experts have long sought a way to help all HIV patients achieve elite-controller status
  • \”Elite controllers,\” whose immune systems are able to rein in viral replication and keep the virus at clinically undetectable levels
  • Functionally Cured
  • \”Functionally cured,\” a condition that occurs when a patient achieves and maintains long-term viral remission without lifelong treatment and standard clinical tests fail to detect HIV replication in the blood
  • A functional cure occurs when viral presence is so minimal, it remains undetectable by standard clinical tests, yet discernible by ultrasensitive methods
  • Sterilizing Cure
  • A sterilizing cure-a complete eradication of all viral traces from the body
  • A single case of sterilizing cure has been reported so far in an HIV-positive man treated with a bone marrow transplant for leukemia.
  • The bone marrow cells came from a donor with a rare genetic mutation of the white blood cells that renders some people resistant to HIV
  • Such a complex treatment approach, however, HIV experts agree, is neither feasible nor practical for the 33 million people worldwide infected with HIV
  • Medical Details
  • The child described was born to an HIV-infected mother and received combination antiretroviral treatment beginning 30 hours after birth.
  • A series of tests showed progressively diminishing viral presence in the infant\’s blood, until it reached undetectable levels 29 days after birth
  • The infant remained on antivirals until 18 months of age, at which point the child was lost to follow-up for a while
  • Ten months after discontinuation of treatment, the child underwent repeated standard blood tests, none of which detected HIV presence in the blood
  • Test for HIV-specific antibodies-the standard clinical indicator of HIV infection-also remained negative
  • Antiviral Treatment
  • Investigators say the prompt administration of antiviral treatment likely led to this infant\’s cure by halting the formation of hard-to-treat viral reservoirs
  • Prompt antiviral therapy in newborns that begins within days of exposure may help infants clear the virus and achieve long-term remission without lifelong treatment by preventing such viral hideouts from forming in the first place
  • Dormant cells are responsible for re-igniting the infection in most HIV patients within weeks of stopping therapy
  • Researchers say they believe this is precisely what happened in the child described in the report
  • What This Means
  • Currently, high-risk newborns-those born to mothers with poorly controlled infections or whose mothers\’ HIV status is discovered around the time of delivery-receive a combination of antivirals at prophylactic doses to prevent infection for six weeks and start therapeutic doses if and once infection is diagnosed
  • This particular case may change the current practice because it highlights the curative potential of very early ART
  • Investigators caution they don\’t have enough data to recommend change right now to the current practice of treating high-risk infants
  • This infant\’s case provides the rationale to start proof-of-principle studies in all high-risk newborns
  • The next step is to find out if this is a highly unusual response to very early antiretroviral therapy or something we can actually replicate in other high-risk newborns
  • Researchers say preventing mother-to-child transmission remains the primary goal as they already have proven strategies that can prevent 98 percent of newborn infections by identifying and treating HIV-positive pregnant women
  • Multimedia
  • Image Scanning electromicrograph of an HIV-infected T cell. (Credit: NIAID) | ScienceDaily.com
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Researchers describe first \’functional HIV cure\’ in an infant | MedicalXpress
  • Synthesized compound flushes out latent HIV | MedicalXpress
  • Researchers Describe First \’Functional HIV Cure\’ in an Infant | ScienceDaily.com

— NEWS BYTE —

A Star That’s Almost as Old as the Universe

  • Results from a new study show that a metal-poor star located merely 190 light-years from the Sun is 14.46+-0.80 billion years old, which implies that the star is nearly as old as the Universe
  • Such metal-poor stars are important to astronomers because they set an independent lower limit for the age of the Universe and can be used to corroborate age estimates inferred by other means
  • Amount of Metal vs Age of Star
  • Metal-poor stars can be used to constrain the age of the Universe because metal-content is typically a proxy for age
  • Heavier metals are generally formed in supernova explosions, which pollute the surrounding interstellar medium.
  • Stars subsequently born from that medium are more enriched with metals than their predecessors with each successive generation becoming increasingly enriched
  • The reliability of the age determined is likewise contingent on accurately determining the sample’s metal content, and is likewise contingent on the availability of a reliable distance
  • Analyses of globular clusters and the Hubble constant yielded vastly different ages, by billions of years, for the Universe, the discrepant ages stemmed partly from uncertainties in the cosmic distance scale
  • HD 140283
  • HD 140283 exhibits less than 1% the iron content of the Sun, which provides an indication of its sizable age.
  • Based on the microwave background and the Hubble constant, it must have formed soon after the big bang
  • This star had been used previously to constrain the age of the Universe, but uncertainties tied to its estimated distance (at that time) made the age determination somewhat imprecise
  • Scientists were recently also to obtain a new and improved distance for HD 140283 using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), namely via the trigonometric parallax approach
  • From that data the distance uncertainty for HD 140283 was significantly reduced by comparison to existing estimates, thus resulting in a more precise age estimate for the star
  • The age of HD 140283 does not conflict with the age of the Universe, 13.77 ± 0.06 billion years, within the errors
  • This study reaffirms that there are old stars roaming the solar neighborhood which can be used to constrain the age of the Universe
  • Multimedia
  • Image A new age estimate for the star HD 140283 implies that it was among the first few generations of stars created in the Universe | NASA, ESA, A. Felid (STScI) | UniverseToday.com
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Nearby Ancient Star is Almost as Old as the Universe | UniverseToday.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Antarctic Meteorite Season Findings

Voting to rename NASA Dryden after Neil Armstrong

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

SpaceX – Dragon Space Station Resupply Mission Glitch

  • The Glitch
  • The problem cropped up immediately following Dragon\’s separation from the rocket upper stage, nine minutes into the flight.
  • Three of the four sets of thrusters on the company\’s unmanned Dragon capsule did not immediately kick in, delaying the release of the solar panels.
  • The problem may have been caused by a stuck valve or a line blockage
  • Dragon\’s twin solar wings swung open two hours later than planned, an hour later, the Dragon was raised with the thrusters to a safe altitude.
  • Working Towards the Solution
  • SpaceX worked to bring up the idled thrusters and keep the capsule on track
  • The Dragon is equipped with 18 thrusters, divided into four sets, and can maneuver adequately even with some unavailable.
  • The capsule is designed to return to Earth with just two good sets of thrusters and, in \”a super worst case situation,\” conceivably just one although it would be \”a bit of a wobbly trip.\”
  • If SpaceX and NASA had determined that more time was needed to gain confidence that Dragon could safely carry out an attempt the Dragon could have stayed in orbit for several additional months if needed
  • By late Saturday afternoon sufficient recovery work had been accomplished to warrant NASA, ISS and SpaceX managers to give the go-ahead for the Dragon to rendezvous with the station early Sunday morning, March 3.
  • Capture
  • The capsule was captured 5:31 am EST (1031 GMT) on Sunday, March 3
  • More than 1 ton of space station supplies aboard this Dragon, which included some much-needed equipment for air purifiers
  • It is scheduled to spend more than three weeks at the space station before being cut loose by the crew
  • Despite the one-day docking delay, the Dragon unberthing and parachute assisted return to Earth will still be the same day as originally planned on March 25.
  • History
  • This has been the first serious trouble to strike a Dragon in orbit, none of the four previous unmanned flights had any thruster issues
  • On the previous flight in October, one of nine first-stage engines on the Falcon rocket shut down too soon, on this flight it performed \”really perfectly\” and that the thruster problem was isolated to the Dragon
  • Future Re-Supply Missions
  • SpaceX plans to launch its next Dragon to the station in late fall.
  • SpaceX says it has 50 launches planned-both NASA missions and commercial flights-totaling about $4 billion in contracts
  • NASA also has a $1.9 billion resupply contract for the station with Orbital Sciences Corporation, which will launch the first test flight of its Antares rocket from a base in Virginia in the coming weeks
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube SpaceX Dragon Carrying NASA Cargo Arrives at International Space Station | NASATelevision
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • SpaceX\’s capsule arrives at ISS | phys.org
  • SpaceX\’s capsule nears ISS for rendezvous on Sunday (Update) | Phys.org
  • SpaceX Dragon Recovers from Frightening Propulsion System Failure – Sunday Docking Set | UniverseToday.com
  • SpaceX rocket launched, but problem with thrusters (Update 3)
  • SpaceX working to fix Dragon capsule\’s thrusters (Update 2) | phys.org
  • SpaceX company fixes Dragon capsule problem | phys.org
  • Dragon Spacecraft Glitch Was \’Frightening,\’ SpaceX Chief Elon Musk Says | Space.com

— UPDATES—

Russian Meteorite Chunk Found

Dennis Tito\’s Honeymoon Suite to Mars

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • The \’Glitch\’
  • The spacecraft remained in communications at all scheduled communication windows on Wednesday, but it did not send recorded data, only current status information.
  • Status information revealed that the computer had not switched to the usual daily \”sleep\” mode when planned
  • On Thurs, Feb 28, the ground team for NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity switched the rover to a redundant onboard computer in response to a memory issue on the computer that had been active
  • Flash Memory
  • The condition is related to a glitch in flash memory linked to the other, now-inactive, computer.
  • Diagnostic work in a testing simulation at JPL indicates the situation involved corrupted memory at an A-side memory location used for addressing memory files
  • It appears to have caused the computer to get stuck in an endless loop.
  • Protections and History
  • Curiosity has protections against such high-energy disruptions, but the problem was compounded by what appears to have been the location of the strike-in the directory, or \”table of contents,\” of the computer\’s memory
  • Similar problems were caused by high-energy solar and cosmic ray strikes on other space missions
  • Previous rovers experienced many so-called \”anomalies\” during the early part of their treks
  • Like many spacecraft Curiosity carries a pair of redundant main computers in order to have a backup available if one fails
  • Each of the computers, A-side and B-side, also has other redundant subsystems linked to just that computer
  • Operations
  • Curiosity is now operating on its B-side, as it did during part of the flight from Earth to Mars. It operated on its A-side from before the August 2012 landing through Wednesday.
  • Although scientific investigations by the rover were suspended the team hopes that Curiosity would resume science work in about a week.
  • While resuming operations on the B-side, they are also working to determine the best way to restore the A-side as a viable backup
  • What Happens Next
  • Even if the rover is fully operational again in a week, the amount of science it can perform is limited.
  • The sun comes between Mars and the Earth in early April, partially blocking the path for radio commands for an entire month
  • The Curiosity team had planned to send back science data from Mars during that period-called \”solar conjunction,\” but had decided not to send up any commands.
  • Multimedia
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Image This artist concept features NASA\’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover | mars.jpl.NASA.gov
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Curiosity Rover Has Computer Problems | UniverseToday.com
  • Mars Rover Curiosity Has First Big Malfunction news.NationalGeographic.com
  • Mars Science Laboratory: Computer Swap on Curiosity Rover | mars.jpl.NASA.gov
  • Computer Swap on Curiosity Rover – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory | jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • March 10, 1797: 216 years ago : Thomas Jefferson on paleontology : Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) presented a paper on the megalonyx to the American Philosophical Society. It was published as \”A Memoir on the Discovery of Certain Bones of a Quadruped of the Clawed Kind in the Western Parts of Virginia,\” Transactions of American Philosophical Society 4:255-256, along with an account by Caspar Wistar (1761-1818). This is arguably the first American publication in paleontology, but the only paleontology paper written by Jefferson. In 1822, this huge extinct sloth was named Megalonyx jeffersoni by a French naturalist. (Megalonyx Gr. large claw). It was a bear-sized ground sloth, over 2 meters tall, widespread in North America during the last Ice Age

Looking up this week

  • Keep an eye out for …

  • Mercury, Venus, Mars | Now hidden in the Sun\’s glare

  • Jupiter | High in the S-SW after sunset, moving to the W/SW later in the evening

  • Saturn | ~10-11 pm | Rises in the E-SE moving to high in the Southern skies by dawn

  • Where to Find Comet PanSTARRS

  • 10* is about the width of your fist held at arm\’s length.
  • This diagram is drawn for a viewer near 40* north latitude (Denver, New York, Madrid) 30 minutes after sunset.
  • If you\’re south of there, the comet will be a little higher above your horizon early in the month than shown here.
  • North of 40°, it will be a little lower early in March than shown here.
  • SkyandTelescope.com/panstarrs

Daylight Savings Time

The post HIV & SpaceX Troubles | SciByte 84 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Resolutions & Martian Meteorite | SciByte 76 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/29861/resolutions-martian-meteorite-scibyte-76/ Tue, 08 Jan 2013 22:25:41 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=29861 We take a look at my version of the best and the worst science stories 2012, the science behind a few new years resolutions, IQ scores debunked, and more!

The post Resolutions & Martian Meteorite | SciByte 76 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at my version of the best and the worst science stories 2012, the science behind a few new years resolutions, IQ scores, a Martian Meteorite, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Support the Show:

Show Notes:

“Best” and “Worst” of 2012

  • Retraction | Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos
  • Back in October 2011, CERN researchers timed the roughly 16,000 neutrinos and said that, on average, the neutrinos made the 450 mi [730 km], 2.43-millisecond trip roughly 60 nanoseconds faster than expected if they were traveling at light speed. (~ 0.0025% faster)
  • By February 2012 there were questions about wiring, GPS satellite timing, or missing suspected radiation should they have been FTL
  • The OPERA team later discovered that a loose fiber optic cable had introduced a delay in their timing system that explained the effect
  • A month later they measured the speed of neutrinos fired from CERN and found that they do indeed travel at light speed, as predicted
  • Some OPERA team members thought the whole episode had besmirched the collaboration’s reputation, and in March 2012, two of the team’s elected leaders lost a vote of no confidence and tendered their resignations.
  • Retraction | Hyung-In Moon
  • The Korean scientist Hyung-In Moon took the concept of scientific peer review to a whole new level by reviewing his own papers under various fake names
  • Peer review is a process in which scientific peers in the same field judge the merit of a submitted journal paper
  • The editors at a Medical Journal grew suspicious when four of his glowing reviews came back within 24 hours, when most reviewers take weeks or months to reply
  • Moon’s research, included a study on alcoholic liver disease and another on an anticancer plant substance
  • He admitted to falsifying data in some of his papers, and 35 of his papers were retracted in 2012
  • Retraction | Cell-phone Cancer links
  • Studies proposing a link between cellphone use and cancer often rely on weak statistics.
  • In 2008, scientists published a paper stating that cellphones in standby mode lowered the sperm count and caused other adverse changes in the testicles of rabbits
  • Although small and published in a rather obscure journal, the study made the news rounds.
  • In March 2012, the authors retracted the paper because the lead author didn’t get permission from his two co-authors
  • According to the retraction notice, there was a “lack of evidence to justify the accuracy of the data presented in the article.”
  • Retraction | Failure is Better?
  • Dutch social psychologist Diederik Stapel claimed that “failure sometimes feels better than success”
  • It now appears that his research is either mostly or completely fabricated
  • So far, 31 papers have been retracted
  • Another one of his studies that is now under suspicion found that meat eaters are more selfish and less social than vegetarians
  • My # 4 Story | Extremes
  • James Cameron is the first to go alone to Challenger Deep to almost 36,000 feet below sea level, during the Deep Sea Challenge.
  • The Mariana Trench,in the western Pacific Ocean, is deeper than Mount Everest is tall and only two other humans have ever visited it.
  • YouTube | Tiny sub used in James Cameron’s deep sea dive | CNN
  • Apollo 11 & James Cameron | SciByte 40 (April 3, 2012)
  • Felix Baumgartner jumped from a world record 128,100 ft [39,045 m] or just over 24 mi [39 km] and landed in eastern New Mexico on 14 October 2012
  • Baumgartner broke the speed of sound and the record for highest jump that had been set in 1960 by Col. Joe Kittinger
  • YouTube Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic freefall from 128k’ – Mission Highlights | redbull
  • Red Bull Stratos & SpaceX | SciByte 66 (October 9, 2012)
  • My # 3 Story | Dragon Spaceship
  • On 22 May 2012 SpaceX successfully launched the Dragon C2+ with almost 900 pounds of cargo to the international space station in its first official mission in October
  • The pressurized section carried 1,014 pounds [460 kg] of non-critical cargo to the ISS, which included food, water, clothing, cargo bags, computer hardware, the NanoRacks Module 9 (student experiments and scientific gear) and other miscellaneous cargo
  • The vehicle returned with 1,367 pounds [620 kg]
  • On 23 August 2012, NASA announced that SpaceX and their Falcon 9-Dragon system was certified to begin their cargo delivery
  • Their $1.6 billion contract calls for at least 12 resupply missions. The first of those flights was launched on October 7, 2012
  • Mission Highlights: SpaceX’s Dragon Makes History | spacexchannel
  • My # 2 Story | Curiosity Touchdown Confirmed
  • The first-of-it’s-kind landing process included a supersonic parachute and a sky crane that brought the rover to less than 1.5 mi [2.4 km] away from the center of the target landing area
  • Spirit and Opportunity, have found compelling evidence that liquid water once persisted on the surface of Mars
  • With Curiosity scientists hope to determine if other things necessary for life were also present, these building blocks include six elements necessary to all life on Earth: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur.
  • It is also examining the history of the Martian atmosphere, an earlier thicker, wetter atmosphere may have provided better environmental conditions for supporting microbial life in Mars’ early history.
  • Mars Science Laboratory will study the rock and soil record in order to understand the geologic processes that created and modified the martian crust and surface through time. In particular, it would look for evidence of rocks that formed in the presence of water.
  • Curiosity has already found an ancient streambed where water flowed continuously for thousands of years long ago. It has also identified some simple organics on Mars, though researchers aren’t yet sure if the carbon within the molecules is native to the Red Planet.
  • YouTube | Curiosity Has Landed | JPLnews
  • My # 1 Story| Higgs-Boson
  • Scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, said they used the Large Hadron Collider to detect a particle whose characteristics matched those of the Higgs boson.
  • The Higgs-Boson particle is part of the Higgs field, that is responsible for the mass of all the matter in the universe
  • While we know it is a Boson particle we are still waiting for more details on the characteristics of the particle to confirm it’s the Higgs-BOson
  • More results are expected in March 2013
  • YouTube : The Moment: CERN Scientist Announces Higgs Boson ‘God Particle’ Discovery | linktv
  • YouTube : Peter Higgs rection to the anoucement
  • YouTube : “Peter Higgs’ reaction on the day itself” / Peter Higgs, François Englert | Paul0de0Haas
  • YouTube : Higgs Boson Discovery announcement by Peter Higgs | MuonRay
  • YouTube : The Higgs Boson, Part I | minutephysics
  • YouTube : Higgs Boson ‘God Particle’ – What is it? BBC World News | mangstarrr
  • Social Media
  • DeepSea Challenge @DeepChallenge
  • Red Bull Stratos @RedBullStratos
  • Dragon Spaceship @DragonSpaceship
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • CERN @CERN
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • COTS–2 Press Kit
  • Mars Rover Landing Guru Makes ‘Best of 2012’ List | Space.com

— NEWS BYTE —

New Years Resolutions | Dieting

  • The low down
  • Although cholesterol, blood pressure, triglycerides and blood sugar all improve with weight loss, with weight regain they all return to pre-diet levels and, in some cases, to even higher levels
  • Maintaining weight loss is just as important as losing weight
  • Even partial weight regain is associated with worsened diabetes and cardiovascular risk factors
  • Significance
  • More than 100 postmenopausal women took part in a five-month weight-loss program study and were continued to br monitor the women for a year
  • During the weight-loss program the women lost an average of 25 pounds
  • After a year, two-thirds of the women had regained at least four pounds, on average regaining about 70 percent of the weight they had lost
  • Women who regained 4.4 pounds or more in the year following the weight-loss intervention had several worsened cardiovascular and diabetes risk factors
  • Women who maintained their weight loss a year later managed to preserve most of the benefits
  • Of Note
  • This study highlights the importance of not just losing weight, but the need to develop effective and enduring strategies so that this weight loss can be successfully maintained long term
  • People should be focusing on being healthy, not skinny,
  • It is important to create strategies for reaching and maintaining a healthy weight throughout their lifetime
  • Start with simple changes such as swapping seltzer or soda, keeping a daily food record, adding a salad to lunch and substituting a second vegetable for half the starch at dinner
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Yo-yo dieting can hurt the heart, study finds | MedicalXPress.com

New Years Resolutions | Exercise

  • The low down
  • Olympic medallists live longer than the general population, regardless of country of origin, medal won, or type of sport played
  • However, those who engage in disciplines with high levels of physical contact, such as boxing, rugby and ice hockey, are at an increased risk of death in later life
  • Life Expectancy
  • Researchers compared life expectancy among 15,174 Olympic athletes who won medals between 1896 and 2010 with general population groups matched by country, sex, and age
  • All medallists lived an average of 2.8 years longer in eight out of the nine country groups studied.
  • Gold, silver and bronze medallists enjoyed roughly the same survival advantage, as did medallists in both endurance and mixed sports
  • Medallists in powersports had a smaller, but still significant, advantage over the general population.
  • While the study was not designed to determine why Olympic athletes live longer, possible explanations include genetic factors, physical activity, healthy lifestyle, and the wealth and status that come from international sporting glory
  • Intensity of Exercise
  • In a second study, researchers measured the effect of high intensity exercise on mortality later in life among former Olympic athletes
  • They tracked 9,889 athletes who took part in at least one Olympic Games between 1896 and 1936 and represented 43 disciplines requiring different levels of exercise intensity and physical contact
  • Two public health experts point out that people who do at least 150 minutes a week [~20min a day] of moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity also have a survival advantage compared with the inactive general population
  • They also found that athletes from sports with high cardiovascular intensity (such as cycling and rowing) or moderate cardiovascular intensity (such as gymnastics and tennis) had similar mortality rates compared with athletes from low cardiovascular intensity sports, such as golf or cricket
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Olympians live longer than general population… But cyclists no survival advantage over golfers | MedicalXPress

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

IQ Score is Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be

  • The low down
  • After conducting the largest online intelligence study on record a research team has concluded that the notion of measuring one’s intelligence quotient or IQ by a singular, standardized test is highly misleading
  • Significance
  • The study, which included more than 100,000 participants Utilized an online study open to anyone, anywhere in the world
  • The researchers asked respondents to complete 12 cognitive tests tapping memory, reasoning, attention and planning abilities, as well as a survey about their background and lifestyle habits.
  • While the team expected a few hundred responses, thousands and thousands of people took part, including people of all ages, cultures and creeds from every corner of the world
  • The results showed that when a wide range of cognitive abilities are explored, the observed variations in performance can only be explained with at least three distinct components: short-term memory, reasoning and a verbal component
  • Of Note
  • Scientists used a brain scanning technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to show that these differences in cognitive ability map onto distinct circuits in the brain.
  • Intriguingly, people who regularly played computer games did perform significantly better in terms of both reasoning and short-term memory
  • Smokers performed poorly on the short-term memory and the verbal factors
  • People who frequently suffer from anxiety performed badly on the short-term memory factor in particular
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Researchers debunk the IQ myth | MedicalXPress.com

— Updates —

Martian Meteorite

  • The low down
  • A rare Martian meteorite recently found in Morocco contains minerals with 10 times more water than previously discovered Mars meteorites
  • The black, baseball-sized stone, which weighs less than 1 pound, is 2.1 billion years old, meaning it formed during what is known as the early Amazonian era in Mars’ geologic history.
  • Officially known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, is the second-oldest of 110 named stones originating from Mars that have been retrieved on Earth
  • This discovery raises new questions about when and how long the planet most like Earth in the solar system had conditions suitable for life
  • Significance
  • Early Mars was believed to be warm and wet, but the planet lost most of its atmosphere and its surface water to become a cold, dry desert that appears today
  • The time from when our meteorite is from is maybe a transitional period in the climate, when Mars was losing its atmosphere, losing its water on the surface
  • The rock is relatively rich in water – about 6,000 parts per million – compared with typical Martian meteorites that contain about 200- to 300 parts per million
  • That’s 10 times more water than other Martian Meteorites
  • It is similar to basaltic rocks on Earth that form in volcanic eruptions
  • NWA 7034, nicknamed “Black Beauty,” also contains tiny bits of carbon, formed from geologic, not biological activity
  • Scientists don’t know why more meteorites like Black Beauty haven’t been found on Earth. + The period of time from which they originated may be relatively short, or most may not survive the trip through Earth’s atmosphere
  • Of Note
  • Because it was so different from other Martian meteorites it took several months to identify, otherwise it would have taken less than a day
  • After the initial battery of tests revealed the rock’s unique nature, meteorite hunters returned to the area where it was found to search for other similar stones
  • Four more pieces, all smaller than the original, have now been found
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Rare Water-Rich Mars Meteorite Discovered : Discovery News | news.discovery.com

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Jan 9, 1998 : 14 years ago : Cosmological Constant : Two teams of international collaborations of scientists announced the discovery that galaxies are accelerating, flying apart at ever faster speeds, by observing distant, ancient exploding stars. This observation – named as Science magazine’s “Breakthrough of the Year for 1998” – implies the existence of a mysterious, self-repelling property of space first proposed by Albert Einstein, which he called the cosmological constant. Researchers in England, France, Germany, and Sweden are among the members of the Supernova Cosmology Project based at Berkeley National Laboratory (headed by Saul Perlmutter) and the High-z Supernova Search Team based in Australia (led by Brian Schmidt).

Looking up this week

The post Resolutions & Martian Meteorite | SciByte 76 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Breast Cancer & Mayan Calender | SciByte 69 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/26761/breast-cancer-mayan-calender-scibyte-69/ Tue, 30 Oct 2012 20:38:10 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=26761 We take a look at strange quasars, fighting breast cancer, peek-a-boo, Mayan Calendar, and up in the sky this week.

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We take a look at strange quasars, fighting breast cancer, peek-a-boo, Mayan Calendar, updates on stories, spacecraft and Curiosity and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Crazy Quasar

  • What are Quasars?
  • Quasars (short for quasi-stellar object) are the brilliant cores of galaxies where infalling material fuels a supermassive black hole
  • The black hole is so engorged that some of the energy escapes as powerful blasts of radiation from the surrounding disk of accreting material
  • They are thought to be roughly 10–10,000 times the Schwarzschild radius of the black hole
  • The quasar can appear as a jet-like feature and if the beam shines in Earth’s direction and it can appear as a quasar that can outshine its surrounding galaxy a hundred or a thousand times.
  • They are among the most luminous, powerful, and energetic objects known in the universe emitting up to a thousand times the energy output of the Milky Way.
  • More than 200,000 quasars are known and only a handful of these very distant ultra-luminous quasars were found by the SDSS in about one quarter of the whole sky
  • The low down
  • Quasars have been the best and most easily observed beacons for astronomers to probe the distant Universe
  • Now, one of the most distant and brightest quasar is providing a bit of a surprise
  • Astronomers studying a distant galaxy, dubbed J1148+5251 and which contains a bright quasar, are seeing only the quasar and not the host galaxy itself
  • Significance
  • It has been thought that the quasar has been feeding on a handful of stars every year in order to bulk up to its size of three billion solar masses over just a few hundred million years.
  • However, we can not see the galaxy where all the stars would be
  • Near infrared views with the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 are only providing hints of what might be taking place
  • It is believed that the galaxy is so enshrouded with dust that none of the starlight can be seen and only the bright, glaring quasar shines through
  • Observations
  • The quasar was first identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the follow-up submillimeter observations showed significant dust but not how and where
  • Astronomers used Hubble to very carefully subtract light from the quasar image and look for the glow of surrounding stars.
  • Even after subtracting the quasar’s light remarkably Hubble didn’t find any of the underlying galaxy
  • Of Note
  • The early universe was dust-free until the first generation of stars started making dust through nuclear fusion most early galaxies contain hardly any dust
  • In order to make that much dust in an early galaxy it would need to make lots of short-lived massive stars earlier on that would lose their mass at the end of their lifetime
  • Because we don’t see the stars, we can rule out that the galaxy that hosts this quasar is a normal galaxy
  • This would be among the dustiest galaxies in the universe, so widely distributed that not even a single clump of stars is peeking through
  • Multimedia
  • Image An artist’s rendering of the most distant quasar | ESO.org | ESO/M. Kornmesser
  • Image Chandra Scores A Double Bonus With A Distant Quasar | chandra.harvard.edu | NASA/CXC/A.Siemiginowska(CfA)/J.Bechtold(U.Arizona)
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Ancient Quasar Shines Brightly, But All the Galaxy’s Stars Are Missing | UniverseToday.com
  • Quasar may be embedded in unusually dusty galaxy | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Suppressing tumors and metastases in breast cancer

  • The protein that is necessary for lactation, Elf5, in mammals inhibits the critical cellular transition that is an early indicator of breast cancer and metastasis
  • The low down
  • This is the first confirmed report that this protein, called Elf5, is a tumor suppressor in breast cancer
  • These findings provide new avenues to pursue in treating and diagnosing breast cancer and possibly cancers of other organs as well
  • Promising is that this includes findings from both animal and human breast cancer models.
  • Significance
  • Under normal circumstances, Elf5 is a transcription factor that controls the genes that allow for milk production
  • Elf5 keeps normal breast cells in their current shape and restricts their movement
  • When Elf5 levels are low or absent, epithelial cells become more like stem cells, morphing into mesenchymal cells
  • Mesenchymal cells, changing their shape and appearance and migrating elsewhere in the body which is how cancer spreads
  • The protein works suppressing the epithelial-mesenchymal transition by directly repressing transcription of Snail2, a master regulator of mammary stem cells known to trigger the EMT
  • Elf5 loss is frequently detected early and is also found that little or no Elf5 in human breast cancer samples correlated with increased morbidity.
  • Experiments conducted also show that this could also be an important diagnostic tool
  • Of Note
  • Research shows that the EMT-Snail 2 pathway is a valuable one to target for early breast cancer intervention
  • One way would be designing something to recapture the repressive effect of Elf5 or a drug that could mimic Elf5 activity
  • This is just one molecule, part of a big network, scientists are now creating a detailed map of this molecule and its associated partners in order to give a better idea of what to look for\
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Lactation protein suppresses tumors and metastasis in breast cancer, scientists discover | MedicalXPress.com

Peek-a-boo I don’t see you

  • The low down
  • Why do children think they can render themselves invisible if they cover their eyes, and why have nearly all young children come to this same conclusion?
  • Researchers at the University of Cambridge performed a variety of simple tests on groups of 3 and 4-year-old children to try and figure this out
  • Significance
  • They first placed children in eye masks and asked them whether they could be seen by the researchers
  • The researchers could see other adults if those adults were wearing eye masks
  • In addition nearly all the children felt that an adult would not be seen by other adults if those adults were wearing eye masks
  • Another test with a second group of children had them wearing one of two different sets of goggles
  • The first set of goggles were blacked out completely and the second set were one-way-mirrored
  • Most of the children wearing the mirrored goggles didn’t properly grasp the idea of one-way-mirrors
  • Those who did get it all thought they were hidden from view regardless of whether they were wearing blacked out goggles or the mirrored pair
  • When pressed on exactly what their invisibility meant, the children in both of the aforementioned phases of the study admitted that, their bodies were still visible when their eyes were covered
  • However their “self” that was hidden, or at least that is the implication
  • Of Note
  • The children in the study seem to draw a distinction between body and “self”
  • Self seems to be universally described as living in the eyes in some sense–unless the eyes of two people meet, they cannot actually perceive each other.
  • Another study seems to back this conclusion up
  • Researchers looked directly at the child subjects while the children averted their eyes and another group the with child looking on and researcher averting their gazes
  • In both instances, the children largely felt they were not being seen as long as the eyes didn’t meet
  • Now you know why your toddler won’t look at you when you’re delivering a scolding. The look-away is the perfect getaway
  • Multimedia
  • Peekaboo I see you. doctorlizardo via Flickr
  • Image Gallery |
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Why Do Children Think Covering Their Eyes Makes Them Invisible? | popsci.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

The Milky Way in Nine Gigapixels

Mayan Calendar

  • Guatemala’s Mayan people have accused the government and tour groups of perpetuating the myth that their calendar foresees the imminent end of the world for monetary gain
  • The low down
  • The Culture Ministry is hosting a massive event in Guatemala City—which as many as 90,000 people are expected to attend and tour groups are promoting doomsday-themed getaways.
  • Maya leader Gomez urged the Tourism Institute to rethink the doomsday celebration, which he criticized as a “show” that was disrespectful to Mayan culture.
  • Oxlajuj Ajpop is holding events it considers sacred in five cities to mark the event and Gomez said the Culture Ministry would be wise to throw its support behind their real celebrations
  • Of Note
  • The Mayan calendar has 18 months of 20 days each plus a sacred month, “Wayeb,” of five days
  • B’aktun" is the largest unit in the time cycle system, and is about 400 years
  • The broader era spans 13 B’aktun, or about 5,200 years
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Maya demand an end to doomsday myth | phys.org
  • Maya calendar | Wikipedia

Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Announcement on Thursday

  • The low down
  • NASA is planning to announce a discovery from its Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on Thursday (Nov. 1) that will shed light on the early universe, officials said.
  • The announcement will “discuss new measurements using gamma rays to investigate ancient starlight,”
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • NASA to Announce Early Universe Findings Thursday | Space.com

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

Increasing the population on the ISS

— Updates —

Oct 17 San Francisco Bay Area Meteor

  • Last time on SciByte
  • Exoplanets & Universal Translator | SciByte 68 [October 23, 2012]
  • The low down
  • A Novato, Calif. resident read about the fireball and recalled hearing a sound on her roof that night, she and neighbors found a ding on the roof
  • On closer inspection, that crust was thought to be a product of weathering of a natural rock, not from the heat of entry
    +When a second similar find 2.5 miles from that location was found, that person cut the rock in half which confirmed the meteor classification
  • Scientists are currently analyzing both unusual and hard to identify meteorites
  • Of Note
  • If you are in Marin or Sonoma counties W or NW of the San Pablo Bay area, check the map in the Show Notes to see if you are in the flight path
  • There is a map of the projected band (light area) where meteorites of different size may have fallen
  • If you live North-North-East of Novato and you saw an airship over (or within a few miles from) your property Friday, chances are that you could be the owner of a space rock.
  • The airship was following the path of the falling meteorites as calculated from the NASA/CAMS meteor video surveillance project.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance | cams.seti.org
  • Meteorite From California Fireball Is Meteor-wrong, Scientist Says | Space.com

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –

  • MastCam
  • On Oct. 24, it was used to view soil material on the rover’s observation tray.
  • These observations will help assess movement of the sample on the tray in response to vibrations from sample-delivery and sample-processing activities of mechanisms on the rover’s arm.
  • CheMin
  • A sieved portion from the fourth scoop of soil it collected at the “Rocknest” patch was delivered
    ChemCam
  • Did its very first depth profile, in which we shot the laser 600 times in a single location, in order to tunnel through the surface of the rock making a hole about 0.04 in [1 mm]
  • This can help scientists understand how the composition of the sample changes from the surface to the interior.
  • SAM [Sample Analysis at Mars]
  • Material from the fourth scoop is also being used to scrub internal surfaces of the rover’s sample-processing mechanisms in preparation for delivery of a sample from a later scoop to SAM
  • Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) / Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS)
  • Both monitoring of environmental conditions and analysis of an atmosphere sample
  • "Rocknest Analysis
  • One of the rocks in the area if called Zephyr, t is interesting because it appears to be made of 2 different types of materials.
  • A harder, more resistant material on the top about 1 in. long, capping it, and then beneath it has a lighter colored softer material that appears to erode more easily
  • When they went to analyze the material with the ChemCam they used 9 points instead of just 2, just to make sure we would hit the material of interest
  • They ended up hitting both the dark and the light material and found that there was indeed a compositional difference
  • In addition to composition, they have also been able to make a three-dimensional model of the surface of this target using images from the Remote Micro-Imager part of ChemCam
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Curiosity Rover Report (Oct. 26, 2012): Working with Curiosity’s ChemCam Laser | JPLNewshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDgv14Qtl1c
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Assessing Drop-Off to Mars Rover’s Observation Tray | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
  • Working with Curiosity’s ChemCam Laser | nasa.gov
  • Working with Curiosity’s ChemCam Laser | nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Nov 2, 2000 | 12 years ago | International Space Station| An American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts became the first permanent residents of the international space station, at the start of their four-month mission. After their Soyuz spacecraft linked up at 11:00am GMT, William Shepherd, Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko entered the station, turned on the lights and life support systems, and proceeded to set up a live television link with the Russian mission control to confirm that the move-in was going well. They were confined to two of the space station’s three rooms until space shuttle Endeavor arrived in early Dec. with giant solar panels that would provide all the necessary power.

NExt Week Thursday!!!

Looking up this week

The post Breast Cancer & Mayan Calender | SciByte 69 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Exoplanets & Universal Translator | SciByte 68 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/26421/exoplanets-universal-translator-scibyte-68/ Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:09:00 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=26421 We take a look at exoplanets, games, sleep, private space travel, the possible start of a universal translator, and so much more!

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We take a look at exoplanets, games, sleep, private space travel, the possible start of a universal translator, a climbing wheelchair Curiosity updates and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Earth’s nearest extra-solar neighbor

  • Stats
  • 4.4 light years away
  • 25 times closer than the Earth is to the sun 
  • A ‘year’ lasts just 3.236 days
  • Surface temperature of around 1,200 degrees Celsius
  • Significance
  • The fact that a rocky planet was found so close to Alpha Centauri B suggests there could be more planets in the same system
  • There’s also a good chance that Alpha Centauri A — the bigger, binary partner of Alpha Centauri B — also hosts planets
  • However, because Alpha Centauri A is bigger, brighter and more rambunctious, any small planets orbiting it would be harder to find.
  • Previous observations indicate that there are no planets more massive than Neptune hovering around any of Alpha Centauri’s three stars
  • Of Note
  • There is 10–15% chance that the planet passes between Alpha Centauri B and Earth. If so, astronomers could watch for dips in starlight
  • However Kepler isn’t pointed anywhere near Alpha Centauri
  • Canada’s MOST microsatellite, might be able to detect the planet’s dark fingerprint and determine its radius, allowing scientists to calculate its density and probable ingredients
  • Travel to?
  • A space probe accelerated to 10 percent the speed of light [~67 million mph / 107 million kph] would be in transit for 40 years.
  • The probe would also have to be capable of managing extreme temperature variations, remaining functional for decades, communicating with Earth from light-years away and orbiting a small planet close to its sun without becoming a stellar snack
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Earth-Size Planet Orbiting Nearest Star Discovered | VideoFromSpace
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • The alien next door | Atom & Cosmos | Science News

— NEWS BYTE —

‘Citizen Scientists’ and new Exoplanets

  • Last time on SciByte
  • Talking Robots & Voyager 1 | SciByte 51 – Eye spy an exoplanet [June 19, 2012]
  • The planet PH1
  • PH1 orbits its host stars every 137 days, and is thought to be a gas giant a bit larger than Neptune [~6x Earth]
  • The mass of the planet itself is not currently known but there is a limit of no more than half that of Jupiter, so this is definitely a planet.
  • The binary star systems
  • The binary star system it orbits has stars that are 1.5 and 0.41 times the mass of the Sun and orbit each other just over 20 days
  • Beyond the planet’s orbit at about 1000 AU (roughly 1000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun) is a second pair of stars orbiting the planetary system.
  • Although it may seem far, it is actually much closer than the nearest stars are to the Sun, so anyone viewing the sky from PH1 would have a spectacular view of all four stars
  • Of Note
  • Only six planets are known to orbit two stars
  • PlanetHunters has announced discoveries before, but this is the first that have been confirmed with further data from radial velocity measurements
  • Because they were able to detect the gravitational effect of the planet on the star it can be ‘officially’ labeled as a planet not simply a candidate
  • The PlanetHunters team has also ‘discovered’ a planet orbiting around both of a pair of binary stars, it didn’t make the news at that time because the Kepler team has already discovered it
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • PlanetHunters.org
  • Planet Hunters Candidates | planethunters.org
  • NASA – Citizen Scientists Discover Four-Star Planet with NASA Kepler | NASA.gov
  • Armchair astronomers find planet in quadruple star system | phys.org
  • PH1 : A planet in a four-star system « Planet Hunters | blog.planethunters.org
  • [[1210.3612] Planet Hunters: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet in a Quadruple Star System | arxiv.org](https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.3612)

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Games and Sleep

  • The low down
  • Research in a Sleep Laboratory found that prolonged video gaming immediately before bed caused significant sleep disruptions
  • 17 participants played either 50 or 150 minutes on two different nights
  • 27-minute loss in total sleep time after 150 minutes of gaming based on the polysomnography tests
  • There was a 39-minute delay in sleep onset according to the participants’ sleep diaries
  • In addition REM sleep was reduced by 12 minutes among the teens who played for over two hours
  • Winding down at night with a video game might not be the best idea
  • Significance
  • Teens who played for 50 minutes had almost no trouble falling or staying asleep
  • Sleep onset delay almost doubled to 39 minutes when they played for two and a half hours
  • While the study did not compare the effects of violent versus nonviolent video games past research showed little difference in teens who watched 50 minutes of the March of the Penguins documentary or played 50 minutes of Call of Duty 4, a violent videogame, before bed
  • Of Note
  • At the moment, one hour of gaming does not seem to affect sleep
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Gaming before bed negatively impacts teens’ sleep, research finds | MedicalXpress

Private Space Travel

  • The low down
  • The three different companies have been chosen by NASA to develop private space taxis
  • They are all making substantial progress toward launching people into orbit within the next few years
  • SpaceX
  • Work on the Dragon is now focused on outfitting the capsule to carry up to seven people by adding a launch abort capability and life support system, as well as designing spacesuits and the crew cabin layout.
  • SpaceX could make its first crewed test flights in mid–2015
  • Boeing
  • Is working on its CST–100 vehicle that will fly atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket
  • The Atlas 5 has a proven track record launching unmanned satellites
  • The CST–100 is designed to carry up to seven people, and return to touch down on land via parachutes and airbags.
  • The company just recently completed a preliminary design milestone called integrated systems review, and plans to set the vehicle’s final design plans with a critical design review in April 2014
  • Boeing could be ready for the first people to fly on CST–100 in 2016
  • Sierra Nevada’s
  • The Dream Chaser, differs from the Dragon and CST–100 cone-shaped capsules in its winged space plane design.
  • Even and launch on the Atlas 5, and is targeting a first manned launch in 2016 or 2017
  • Of Note
  • While all three companies are initially developing their spacecraft to serve NASA, they intend eventually to carry a wide range of passengers, including space tourists, scientists and astronauts from countries without their own launch vehicles
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Private Space Taxis on Track to Launch Astronauts | ISPCS | Space.com

‘Somewhat ‘ Universal Translating Phone

  • Japan’s biggest mobile operator, NTT DoCoMo, said Monday it will launch a translation service that lets people chat over the telephone in several different languages.
  • The low down
  • The free application for subscribers will give two-way voice and text readouts of conversations between Japanese speakers and those talking in English, Chinese or Korean with a several-second delay
  • It will be available for use on smartphones and tablet computers with the Android operating system
  • Customers will also be able to call landlines using the service
  • Of Note
  • Voice-to-text readouts will soon be available in French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Thai
  • The service does not offer perfect translations and has trouble deciphering some dialects
  • There is a separate service that lets users translate menus and signage using the smartphone camera
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube NTT DoCoMo real-time translation hands-on | Engadgets
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Japan firm launches real-time telephone translation | phys.org

Climbing Wheelchairs

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Oct 28, 1971 | 41 years ago | British satellite | Britain became the sixth nation with its satellite launched into orbit by a Black Arrow rocket from Woomera, Australia. The Prospero, a Black Knight 1 satellite, had 86-kg mass at launch, 4-m diam. and transmitted on 137.56 MHz (still heard in 2000, although the onboard tape recorder failed after 730 replays on 24 May 1973). Its mission was to test solar cells and other technology experiments. Prospero is the only satellite launched by a British rocket. The Black Arrow was a 3-stage rocket only 13 m high. The Royal Aircraft Establishment developed the space launcher Black Arrow from 1964 until the project was cancelled by the British government in July 1971. The USSR’s Sputnik was the first satellite

You May Have Seen

  • A spectacular meteor lit up the sky over California Wednesday, Oct. 17
  • It streaked across the sky at 7:44 p.m. PDT (0244 GMT),
  • The subsequent fireball and sonic boom triggered a flood of reports by witnesses to local news stations and authorities
  • Accounts coming in from across San Francisco and the Bay Area
  • The biggest question at the moment is whether this ended over land or ocean.
  • Spectacular Meteor Sparks Fireball Over California | Space.com

Looking up this week

The post Exoplanets & Universal Translator | SciByte 68 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Nobel & Stratos | SciByte 67 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/26116/nobel-stratos-scibyte-67/ Tue, 16 Oct 2012 21:04:57 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=26116 We take a look at the 2012 Nobel award in Physics, Felix Baumgartner’s jump, exoplanets, spacecraft and Curiosity updates and so much more!

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We take a look at the 2012 Nobel award in Physics, Felix Baumgartner’s jump, exoplanets, dentists, spacecraft and Curiosity updates and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

2012 Nobel in Physics

  • 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics
  • American physicist David Wineland and French physicist Serge Haroche were named winners of the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics “for groundbreaking experimental methods” that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems
  • Their experiments on quantum particles have already resulted in ultra-precise clocks and may one day help lead to computers many times faster than those in use today.
  • Their research is inventing methods to peer into the bizarre quantum world of ultra-tiny particles, work that could help in creating a new generation of super-fast computers
  • Quantum computers could radically change people’s lives in the way that classical computers did last century, but a full-scale quantum computer is still decades away
  • In a quantum computer, an individual particle can essentially represent a zero and a one at the same time
  • If scientists can make such particles work together, certain kinds of calculations could be done with blazing speed.
  • Why not Higgs?
  • There is a remote possibility that the new particle is not the Higgs, although this would be an even more ground shaking announcement.
  • Originally six physicists, each building on the work of others, published a flurry of papers on aspects of the theory within four months of each other back in 1964.
  • The first were Belgians Robert Brout, who died last year, and Francois Englert.
  • Followed by Higgs, who was the first to say only a new particle would explain the anomalies of mass
  • Further complicating the issue is that thousands of physicists worked in the two labs at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider near Geneva where Higgs experiments were conducted independently of each other.
  • Another question is whether theoreticians or experimentalists—or both—should get the glory.
  • At most three names, although they can include organisations, can share a Nobel and a prize cannot be given posthumously.
  • The Nobel will “eventually” go to the Higgs but it is not yet certain that the particle is indeed the Higgs Boson
  • The Nobel Peace Prize has often been awarded to organisations. But in the science prizes they have tried to “find the most prizeworthy individuals”
  • Of Note
  • The prizes are always handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.
  • Although they are announced before the Dec 10 anniversary
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Official website of the Nobel Prize
  • Frenchman, American win Nobel for quantum physics (Update 6) | phys.org
  • ‘God particle’ discovery poses Nobel dilemma | phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Red Bull Stratos


— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Exoplanet

  • The low down
  • The news is coming out that citizens utilizing Kepler data from PlanetHunters have found a planet in a 4-star system!
  • Also an Earth-sized exoplanet has been discovered about the nearest star
  • More information on this in next weeks SciByte!

Musical Dental Drill

  • The low down
  • A dental surgeon in the Indonesian city of Purworejo has connected an MP3 player to a dental drill that plays music loud enough to drown out the distinctive whine of the instrument
  • He discovered that many patients, especially children were not afraid of the dentist; instead, they were afraid of the drill
  • Patients are able to control its volume by opening and closing their mouths the wider they open, the louder the music grows which means the dentist doesn’t have to continually urge patients to open wider for better access to back teeth
  • It took Dr. Gustiana a year of research, effort, and 6 million rupiah (approximately $595) to configure the drill
  • He has been using it in his practice since 2006 and has noted that many adults also prefer the musical drill to the standard model.
  • Patients can make requests though he does try to limit the choices to songs that calm the nerves
  • Of Note
  • Doctor Gustiana presented his modified drill to attendees at the International Dental Congress held in Greece earlier this year.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Dentist Creates Singing Dental Drill to Ease Fears | NTDTV
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Dental surgeon adds music to drill to appease patients | MedicalXpress.com

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

Shuttle Endeavour moves into new home

Return of “Voyager 1 in Interstellar space?”

  • Inch by inch to interstellar space
  • Voyager team has said they have been seeing two of three key signs of changes expected to occur at the boundary of interstellar space
  • A jump in the level of high-energy cosmic rays originating from outside our Solar System and a drop in particles from the Sun
  • A third key sign would be the direction of the magnetic field
  • New tantalizing data
  • Scientists are now analyzing the data to see whether the magnetic field has, indeed, changed direction
  • Of Note
  • Complicating the issue is the fact we don’t really know what to expect, in fact data from 2010 broke what working models we had
  • The entire team will come to a resolute consensus before any announcement is made
  • Social Media
  • NASAVoyager2 @NASAVoyager2
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Did NASA’s Voyager 1 Spacecraft Just Exit the Solar System? | Space.com
  • Voyager 1 may have left the solar system | Phys.org

Orbcomm

  • Last time on SciByte
  • Red Bull Stratos & SpaceX | SciByte 66 – Red Bull Stratos [October 9, 2012]
  • The low down
  • The Orbcomm satellite, launched Oct. 7 into a bad orbit by a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) Falcon 9 rocket
  • It has however provided enough data to proceed with the launch of the full constellation starting next year.
  • In a statement, Orbcomm suggested that it had enough access to the satellite in less than four days in orbit to validate the performance of its major subsystems.
  • Also that had its satellite been the primary payload on SpaceX’s Oct. 7 flight, the mission would have been a success
  • The solar array and communications antenna deployments were successful
  • OG2 satellite bus systems including power, attitude control, thermal and data handling were also tested to verify proper operation
  • Orbcomm had requested that SpaceX carry one of their small satellites on this flight so that they could gather test data before we launch their full constellation next year.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Satellite Left Stranded by SpaceX Rocket Falls From Space | Space.com

Opportunity Rover

  • The low down
  • Opportunity is conducting science campaign at a location where orbital observations show the presence of clay minerals
  • The rover is positioning near a large, light-toned block of exposed rock outcrop, called “Whitewater Lake.”
  • On Sol 3092 (Oct. 4, 2012), the rover moved, likely the smallest amount ever, with less than an inch (1 centimeter) of total motion in order to position the robotic arm favorable on a dark-rind surface target
  • On Sol 3094 (Oct. 6, 2012), Opportunity performed a 15-minute brush of a surface target with the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT
    followed with the collection of a Microscopic Imager (MI) mosaic
    then the placement of the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) for an overnight integration
  • The total distance travelled during the mission is 21.78 miles (35,050.07 meters)
  • Multimedia
  • Image [Exposed rock outcrop, called Whitewater Lake(https://twitter.com/MarsRovers/status/256907735189299201/photo/1)
  • Social Media
  • Spirit and Oppy | @MarsRovers
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars Exploration Rover Mission: The Mission | marsrover.nasa.gov

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • October 18, 1962 : 50 years ago : Nobel Prize for DNA : Dr. James D. Watson of the U.S., Dr. Francis Crick and Dr. Maurice Wilkins of Britain won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for their work in determining the double-helix molecular structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).

Looking up this week

The post Nobel & Stratos | SciByte 67 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Red Bull Stratos & SpaceX | SciByte 66 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/25786/red-bull-stratos-spacex-scibyte-66/ Tue, 09 Oct 2012 21:39:42 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=25786 We take a look at Red Bull Stratos updates, an apple a day, new GPS satellites, SpaceX, and warp drive!

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We take a look at Red Bull Stratos updates, an apple a day, new GPS satellites, a Space Station mission, Endeavours final leg of its journey, warp drive, SpaceX and Curiosity updates and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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MP3 Download | Ogg Download | Video | YouTube

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Support the Show:

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Show Notes:

Red Bull Stratos

  • Last time on SciByte
  • iPhone Nurse & “Warp Drive” | SciByte 64 [September 25, 2012]
  • Olympic Science & Red Bull Stratos | SciByte 56 [July 31, 2012]
  • Launch Requirements
  • Winds of less than 2 mph [3 kph] up to 800 feet [244 m] in altitude
  • An FAA regulation prohibits balloons from ascending if skies are overcast such that horizontal visibility is less than 3 miles (4.8 kilometers)
  • Atmospheric air cool enough to enable Baumgartner’s falling body to surpass the speed of sound
  • Delays
  • The original launch date of Monday, October 8th was delayed due to high winds and less than horizontal visibility of 3 miles (4.8 kilometers)
  • On Tuesday early morning although winds were calm problems in Baumgartner’s custom-built capsule delayed liftoff for hours
  • Later on Tuesday
  • The Balloon
  • Helium filled balloon
  • Constructed of strips of high-performance polyethylene (plastic) film that is only 0.0008 inches thick
  • All of the strips combined would cover 40 acres if they laid out flat
  • At launch the uninflated balloon measures 592.41 ft [180.6 m]
  • At 120,000 feet: Height / Diameter of 334.82 ft / 424.37 ft [102.1 m/129.3 m]
  • Requires approximately 8 hours of preparation immediately before launch, including about 45 to 60 minutes for insertion of the helium.
  • The balloon once “unboxed” can not be used again as they are very fragile
  • The Descent
  • Expected freefall of 5 minutes, 35 seconds or more
  • Felix will deploy his parachute at 5,000 ft [1,524 m], after which it will take 10–15 minutes before reaching the ground
  • The total time in the air from the edge of space to Earth is estimated at about 15–20 minutes
  • The combined parachute system components – Felix’s overall rig – will weigh about 60 lbs./27 kg. In comparison, a typical skydiving rig weighs about 20 lbs./9 kg., and a BASE jumping rig weighs 10 to 12 lbs./4 to 5 kg.
  • Thermosphere
  • The outermost layer of the atmosphere
  • Solar radiation bombards this layer, striking sparse air molecules and causing them to emit flashes of light, the auroras
  • Mesosphere
  • At 53 miles [85 km] it has faint clouds
  • Electrical discharge events called red sprites and blue jets
  • Stratosphere
  • Goes from an altitude of 6 miles (10 kilometers) up to about 30 miles (50 km) above the surface.
  • Air pressure drops from 10 percent of its value at sea level to just 0.1 percent
  • Absorption of UV sunlight by ozone causes the temperature to actually increase as the altitude increases
  • The temperature coupling of temperature with altitude prevents convection from happening, and so the air in this layer is dynamically stable.
  • Troposphere
  • Includes everything from an altitude of 6 miles down over most of Earth
  • Weather and jet stream
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Free Fall Jump Aborted Cancelled due to High Winds | Red Bull Stratos Felix Baumgartner Upset | TheRobotCinema
  • Interactable Mission Timeline | RedBullStratos.com
  • Image Gallery RedBullStratos.com
  • Social Media
  • Red Bull Stratos @RedBullStratos
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Home | Red Bull Stratos
  • Drop Zone | Red Bull Stratos
  • How Supersonic Skydiver Will Freefall Through Earth’s Atmosphere | Felix Baumgartner Space Jump | Space.com
  • Record-Breaking Supersonic Skydive Attempt Delayed to Tuesday | Space.com
  • Supersonic Skydive’s 5 Biggest Risks: Boiling Blood, Deadly Spins, and Worse | National Geographic

Stitcher Radio

— NEWS BYTE —

An Apple a Day

  • In a study the consumption of one apple a day for four weeks lowered levels of a substance linked to hardening of the arteries by 40 percent blood
  • The low down
  • The difference between eating an apple or not was similar to that found between people with normal coronary arteries versus those with coronary artery disease
  • Apples seemed to lower LDL, “bad” cholesterol, levels during the study [LDL, low-density lipoprotein]
  • The cholesterol LDL is more likely to promote inflammation and can cause tissue damage.
  • There was a tremendous effect against LDL being oxidized with just one apple a day for four weeks
  • Significance
  • The study also showed that simply taking capsules containing polyphenols, a type of antioxidant found in apples, had a similar, but not as large of an effect.
  • The researchers believing that polyphenols in the apples contribute to the effects and tried to extract them
  • The extracted polyphenols did register a measurable effect although not as strong as straight apples
  • Higher doses that used in this study may improve the results although apples themselves could be doing better if there are other unknown compounds contributing to the effect
  • These possible unknown compounds could also contribute to the overall effect by aiding absorption
  • Of Note
  • Eating apples has also shown some effects on antioxidants in saliva, which has implications for dental health
  • The study is funded by an apple industrial group
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube An Apple a Day May Keep Heart Doctor Away | OARDC
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • An apple a day lowers level of blood chemical linked to hardening of the arteries | MedialXPress

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

New GPS Satellite System

  • A Delta IV rocket launched on Oct 4th, sending a next-generation Global Positioning System satellite into orbit
  • The low down
  • The satellite will be part of the GPS system that is used by both civilians and the military
  • This system will replace a 19-year-old navigation satellite in the global system that includes 31 operational satellites on-orbit which broadcast position
  • This particular launch is the the third of 12 planned launches to provide improved GPS signals
  • This satellite system features improved anti-jam technology, more precise atomic clocks, an upgraded civilian channel for commercial aviation and on-board processors that can be reprogrammed in flight
  • The new satellite should be available by November
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Launch of GPS IIF–3 on Delta IV Medium Rocket | SpaceVidsNet
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Liftoff! Delta IV Launches Next Generation GPS Satellite | UniverseToday.com

A Year in a Space Station

  • The low down
  • On October 5th NASA and the international partners of the International Space Station announced an agreement to send two crew members to the International Space Station on a one-year mission
  • This type of mission is designed to collect valuable scientific data needed to send humans to new destinations in the solar system
  • The crew on this mission would be one American astronaut and one Russian cosmonaut
  • The mission is scheduled to begin in spring 2015
  • Scientists say that if the mission proves to be effective, they will discuss making year long missions on a permanent basis
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Year-Long Missions Could Be Added to Space Station Manifest | UniverseToday.com

YouTube | 55 Years of Space Exploration, 1957 – 2012

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft re-supply mission

  • The flight, referred to as Commercial Resupply Services–1 (CRS–1), is the first of a dozen resupply flights for which NASA is paying SpaceX $1.6 billion to fly.
  • Mission Patch
  • The first of NASA’s contracted cargo resupply flights to the International Space Station now has its own mission patch
  • The CRS–1 mission patch, which borrows its shape from the Dragon capsule, shows the solar-powered spacecraft grappled by the space station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm as it is being brought in to connect with the stations Harmony module
  • Almost camouflaged with the patch’s green-colored North American continent is a four leaf clover. The symbol for luck, the clover has become a regular feature on SpaceX’s insignias since the Hawthorne, Calif.-based company’s first successful Falcon 1 launch in September 2008
  • Embroidered versions of the patch may be in the mission’s Official Flight Kit (OFK) of mementos to be presented to NASA and SpaceX team members for a job well done.
  • Launch
  • Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, launched its second-station bound Dragon capsule atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket at 8:35 p.m. EDT (0035 GMT Oct. 8) from Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
  • Engine Failure
  • 79 seconds into the launch one out of nine of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 suddenly lost pressure and was shut down [it did not explode as they continued to receive data]
  • None of the other 8 engines were affected and the Falcon 9 rocket re-calculated a new launch profile to arrive in the correct orbit
  • Careful analysis of all data to find the cause, identify the problem and find solutions for future missions
  • Eleven minutes after launch, when the Dragon was safely in orbit, two 15-foot (4.6 m) solar arrays were deployed to provide power to the spacecraft.
  • The ‘debris’ seen falling from the engine is most likely protective fairings around the engine from engine pressure releases
  • Theodore Kurita | SpaceX Falcon Engine Failure
  • @StarbaseUGC | SpaceX Falcon Engine Failure
  • Orbcomm satellite
  • Orbcomm operates a global machine-to-machine messaging service using a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit.
  • Its second-generation constellation is designed to provide faster and higher-volume messaging, and also to provide a global Automatic Identification Service on maritime traffic.
  • The New Jersey-based company had a piggybacked payload on the Falcon 9 launch, the OG2
  • The failure in one of Falcon 9’s engines prevented the OG2 to be deployed into an orbit that was lower than intended
  • Both companies are working together in communication with the satellite to determine if it can be raised into an operational orbit
  • No statement has been released as of the filming of todays show but it is thought that they will be able to get a few months work out of the prototype
  • Plans are still in place to launch 17 more OG2 satellites on two Falcon 9 rockets in 2013 and 2014
  • Sweet Treat for the Space Station Crew
  • GLACIER, or General Laboratory Active Cryogenic ISS Experiment Refrigerator, is primarily used to preserve science samples that require temperatures between minus 301 and 39 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 160 and 4 degrees Celsius)
  • The mini-fridge sized freezer has previously flown aboard the space shuttle and will be used to return frozen samples back to Earth
  • The vanilla with swirled chocolate sauce ice cream cups won’t melt on their three-day journey to the space station thanks to a freezer on board the Dragon capsule
  • The brand of ice cream flying in the Dragon’s GLACIER is Blue Bell Creameries, a Texas dairy that has a strong fan base in Houston
  • Blue Bell ice cream has been flown to the space station before. The creamery’s cups first launched to the orbiting laboratory in 2006 on board the space shuttle Atlantis
  • Of Note
  • The Dragon Spacecraft should arrive at the space station on Wed when it will be captured using the station arm
  • It’s two week visit will conclude on Oct 28 for a splashdown off the coast of S California
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Space X/Dragon Heads to ISS | NASAtelevision
  • Image Gallery SpaceX Dragon Launches on 1st Space Station Cargo Trip | Space.com
  • Social Media
  • Handle @
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Private Rocket Suffered Slight Glitch During Sunday Cargo Launch | Space.com
  • Astronaut Ice Cream: Frozen Dessert Launching to Space Station | Space.com
  • Station-Bound Dragon Spacecraft’s Mission Patch Unveiled | Space.com
  • Recovery Prospects Unclear for Orbcomm Craft Launched by Falcon 9 | SpaceNews.com
  • [SpaceX Rocket Launch Glitch Left Piggyback Satellite in Wrong Orbit | Space.com]https://www.space.com/17984-spacex-private-rocket-glitch-satellite.html)

Shuttle Endeavour Parade Coming

  • Last time on SciByte
  • iPhone Nurse & “Warp Drive” | SciByte 64 [September 25, 2012]
  • The low down
  • Nicknamed Mission 26, pre-dawn Friday morning [Oct 12] Endeavour will starts it’s 2-day 12 mile journey from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to its new exhibition at the California Science Center (CSC)
  • Mission 26 will take Endeavour through Inglewood and Los Angeles, including passing over the 405 freeway
  • Endeavour will make the journey atop a modified NASA overland transporter, driven most of the time by four self powered, computer controlled vehicles.
  • Los Angeles and Inglewood police departments have said that public viewing will be limited on Friday until Endeavour’s overnight crossing of the 405 is completed
  • Although original plans included a Toyota stock truck to tow the shuttle on its last quarter-mile (400 meters) to the science center. Instead, the pickup will be used to move Endeavour over the freeway due to its computer-driven transporters not being cleared for use on the overpass.
  • Travel Logistics
  • Police will have to shut down streets and sidewalks
  • Crews will have to temporarily remove and reinstall power lines, traffic signals and street lights
  • Although the route did involve the removal of several hundred trees, for every tree that was removed, up to four trees of higher quality will be planted in its place, in addition 2-years of of tree maintenance will be provided
  • Multimedia
  • Google Map of the Journey
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Space shuttle Endeavour to leave on L.A. road trip this week | CollectSpace.com
  • How to Steal a Space Shuttle | UniverseToday.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Dilithium Crystals

  • A new fusion impulse engine could cut the travel time to Mars from six months to six weeks
  • The low down
  • Since the sponsors of the project have ties to military funding the project will first be available for military uses, possibly for nuclear testing equipment
  • The process still has a few things to work through such as a way to harness the fusion energy
  • Also in question is turning the power generated by the fusion into thrust for an engine
  • Any craft that used this system would need to be assembled in space
  • This technology also has applications far beyond military or space exploration
  • Even with these issues scientists on the project are hoping to make the system a reality by 2030
  • The scientists are hoping to make impulse drive a reality by 2030
  • Of Note
  • The fuel that they are calling “basically dilithium crystals” is deuterium [a stable isotope of hydrogen] and Li6 [a stable isotope of the metal lithium] in a crystal structure
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • ‘Star Trek’ fusion impulse engine in the works | Crave – CNET
  • Newest Fusion Engine Is Powered On Star Trek Like Dilithium Crystals | Business Insider

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Oct 10, 1846 : 166 years ago : Triton : Neptune’s moon, Triton, is discovered by William Lassell while he was observing the newly discovered planet Neptune. He was attempting to confirm his observation of the previous week, that Neptune had a ring. Instead he discovered that Neptune had a satellite, Triton. Lassell soon proved that the ring he thought he had seen was a product of his new telescope’s distortion. This picture of Triton was taken in 1989 by the only spacecraft ever to pass Triton: Voyager 2, which found fascinating terrain, a thin atmosphere, and even evidence for ice volcanoes on this world of peculiar orbit and spin. Ironically, Voyager 2 also confirmed the existence of complete thin rings around Neptune – but these would have been quite invisible to Lassell!

Looking up this week

The post Red Bull Stratos & SpaceX | SciByte 66 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Apollo 11 & Spinning Diagnostics | SciByte 54 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/21826/apollo-11-spinning-diagnostics-scibyte-54/ Tue, 17 Jul 2012 21:10:20 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=21826 We take a look at Medical diagnostics on a disk, navigating fish, Pluto, Lunar X Prize, and a peek back at Apollo 11 and up in the sky this week.

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We take a look at Medical diagnostics on a disk, navigating fish, Pluto, Lunar X Prize, spacecraft updates and as always take a peek back into history to Apollo 11 and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes

Upcoming spinning medical diagnostic tool



Credit: SandiaLabs Channel | Credit: Randy Wong (Sandia National Laboratories)

  • The low down
  • Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a lab-on-a-disk platform that they believe will be faster, less expensive and more versatile than similar medical diagnostic tools
  • The unit can determine a patient’s white blood cell count, analyze important protein markers, and process up to 64 assays from a single sample, all in a matter of minutes.
  • Significance
  • The device uses a spinning disk, much like a CD player, to manipulate a sample. The disks contain commercially available reagents and antibodies specific to each protein marker.
  • The disks cost pennies to manufacture and results can be delivered to the physician’s computer in 15 minutes.
  • Sample take only a pin-prick sample of blood
  • Researchers envisions an approach where the physician could choose a “cardiac disk,” “immune disk” and similar options.
  • Of Note
  • Researchers recently led a National Institutes of Health grant to adapt the lab-on-a-disk platform for toxin diagnostics
  • That device could be the most accurate method available to detect the botulinum toxin
  • Laboratory mice remain the only reliable way to test for botulism, mouse bioassay is primitive, but remains the gold standard due to its sensitivity
  • SpinDx botulinum assay vastly outperformed the mouse bioassay in head-to-head tests, and requires absolutely no animal testing.
  • Although botulism is quite rare, only about 145 cases are reported in the United States each year, the lethality of the toxin brings concerns
  • Multimedia
  • SpinDx technology uses a spinning disk, much like a CD player, to manipulate samples. Image
  • YouTube | SpinDX medical diagnostic tool
  • Social Media
  • Sandia National Labs @SandiaLabs
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Faster, less expensive device gives lab test results in 15 minutes at point-of-care | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Fish and magnetic fields

  • The low down
  • Previous research has shown that many species of fish, as well as migratory birds, have the ability to detect differences in magnetic field
  • A Rainbow trout can swim straight back to its original hatching ground, following freshwater streams inland even after spending 3 years at sea and traveling up to 186 mi [300 km] away
  • They likely rely partially on their excellent eyesight and smell, they also seem to rely on Earth’s magnetic fields
  • Significance
  • Now for the first time scientists have isolated magnetic cells in the fish that respond to these magnetic fields
  • This study may even help researchers get to the root of magnetic sensing in a variety of creatures, including birds.
  • In addition the magnetism in each cell was tens to hundreds of times stronger than researchers had hypothesized
  • The fish may be able to detect small differences in magnetic field strength that can give them more detailed information about their precise latitude and longitude
  • Of Note
  • When analyzed between one and four cells rotated in turn with the rotating magnetic field
  • The team has now transferred the rotating cells to individual glass slides to study them further under the microscope.
  • Multimedia
  • Magnetite cells (white) found in the noses of rainbow trout, clustered near the cell’s membrane and not near the cell’s nucleus (blue). Image Credit: H. Cadiou
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • A Big Magnet in a Small Fish | ScienceMag.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Plutonian system grows

  • The low down
  • On July 11, almost almost exactly one year after Hubble spotted Pluto’s fourth moon, it discovered a fifth moon orbiting Pluto half as bright as the last moon discovered
  • Image sets were taken on 5 separate occasions in June and July
  • The Plutonian System
  • Pluto – 1433 mi [2,306 km] across : discovered in 1930 : orbiting 39 times farther than Earth
  • Charon – 648 mi [1,043 km] across : discovered in 1978
  • Nix – 20–70 mi [32–113 km] across : discovered in 2005
  • Hydra – 20–70 mi [32–113 km] across : discovered in 2005
  • P4 – 8–21 mi [13–34 km] across : discovered in 2011
  • P5 – 6–15 mi [10–24 km] across : discovered in 2012
  • Of Note
  • The New Horizons missions team is working closely with Hubble to try to find the safest route through the system
  • Multimedia
  • Image: Pluto’s fourth moon, temporarily dubbed P4 Credit: NASA/ESA/M.Showalter
  • Image : Newly discovered moon, designated P5, as photographed by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 on July 7. Credit: NASA/ESA/M. Showalter
  • Social Media
  • NewHorizons2015 @NewHorizons2015
  • Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) twitter anouncement ‏@AlanStern
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Fifth Moon Found Around Pluto | UniverseToday
  • Pluto Has a Fifth Moon, Hubble Telescope Reveals | Space.com
  • Hubble Space Telescope detects fifth moon of Pluto (Update) | Phys.org

Lunar X Prize

  • The low down
  • The Google Lunar X Prize, is a $30 million international challenge to land a robot on the lunar surface, have it travel at least 1,650 feet (500 meters) and send data and images back to Earth.
  • First prize will receive the $20 million grand prize
  • An additional $10 million is set aside for second place and various special accomplishments, such as detecting water, bringing the prizes total purse to $30 million.
  • Significance
  • The engineering director for the Google Books project, Jimi Crawford, has now signed on with Moon Express
  • He will serve as chief technology officer and software architect for a company competing in the Google Lunar X Prize, private race to the moon.
  • Of Note
  • The competition will end whenever all prizes are claimed or the end of 2015, whichever comes first
  • Multimedia
  • How Moon Express envisions its lunar lander can be used on future missions. Image CREDIT: Moon Express
  • YouTube Moon 2.0: Join the Revolution – HD High Definition | GoogleLunarXPRIZE
  • YouTube Channel Google Lunar X PRIZE
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Google Lunar X Prize
  • Ex-Google VIP Joins Private Moon Race Team | Space.com

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

Expedition 32



Credit: NASA/Victor Zelentsov | YouTube channel : NASATelevision

  • The low down
  • On July 14, three veteran space travelers from three different countries went to the International Space Station as part of the space station’s Expedition 32
  • Significance
  • NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency spaceflyer Akihiko Hoshide are due to stay for about four months.
  • They will be joining space station: commander Gennady Padalka of Russia, his cosmonaut colleague Sergei Revin, and NASA astronaut Joe Acaba, who have all been in space since May.
  • Of Note
  • Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, is a colonel in the Russian Air Force and will command the Soyuz spacecraft for Russia’s Federal Space Agency. He is making his third trip, his first long-duration spaceflight was aboard Russia’s Mir space station.
  • NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, is a U.S. Navy captain making her second long-duration spaceflight. She also currently holds the world record for most spacewalks by a woman (four) and the most time in space by a female astronaut (195 days)
  • Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide is making his second spaceflight. His first mission involved the delivery of Japan’s huge Kibo laboratory module to the International Space Station.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Warm Greetings for New ISS Residents | NASAtelevision
  • Photos: Space Station’s Expedition 32 Mission | Space.com
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Veteran Space Station Crew to Launch Into Orbit Tonight | Space.com

The next chapter in the Dragon spacecraft

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • July 21, 1969 | 43 years ago | That’s one small step … | In 1969, Apollo XI astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin blasted off from the moon after 21 1/2 hours on the surface and returned to the command module piloted by Michael Collins. The Lunar module was comprised of two stages. The descent stage had the landing gear, and was used as a launch pad for the ascent stage. The ascent stage was mainly the cabin, and had a fixed thrust engine (15,500-Newton-thrust) to propel it to 2000 m/s in Lunar orbit for docking. The lunar module’s lower section, left behind, has a plaque mounted upon it, reading, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”
  • YouTube “One small step for man, …”
  • TimeLine
  • Launched from Earth | July 16, 1969 [9:32am EST / 13:32:00 UTC]
  • Landing on the Moon | July 20, 1969 [ 4:17pm EST/ 20:17:40 UTC]
  • First Step on the Moon | July 20, 1969 [ 10:56pm EST / 02:56 UTC]
  • EVA Time | 2 h 36 m 40 s
  • Total time on Surface | 21 h 36 m 21 s
  • Launched from Moon | July 21 [ 13:54 pm EST / 17:54 UTC]
  • Landing on Earth | July 24, 1969, [ 12:50 pm EST / 16:50:35 UTC]
  • Left on the Moon
  • Patch from Apollo 1 [Virgil “Gus” Ivan Grissom, Edward Higgins White, Roger Bruce Chaffee]
  • Medals commemorating pioneering Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Komarov and Yuri Gagarin, who had died in flight
  • Goodwill messages from 73 world leaders
  • A small gold pin shaped like an olive branch, a symbol of peace.
  • Further Reading and Resources
  • Nixon Greets Astronauts in Quarantine
  • Interactive of Dec 1969 Vinyl supplement of National Geographic magazine
  • Apollo 11 Image Gallery | history.nasa.gov
  • Apollo 11 | nasa.gov
  • The Moon Is Toxic | UniverseToday.com

Looking up this week

The post Apollo 11 & Spinning Diagnostics | SciByte 54 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Dinosaurs & Neutrinos | SciByte 50 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/20542/dinosaurs-neutrinos-scibyte-50/ Wed, 13 Jun 2012 06:45:54 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=20542 We take a look at estimating dinosaur weight, pollution data, mosquitos, updates on Venus transit, Neutrinos and more!

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We take a look at estimating dinosaur weight, pollution data, exoplanets, mosquitos, Johnson Space Center, Io, updates on Venus transit and Neutrinos, spacecraft updates and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Dino’s on diets?

Image Credit | William Sellers

  • The low down
  • One of the most important things palaeobiologists need to know about fossilised animals is how much they weighed
  • In the past scientists have used several means of estimating dinosaur weight
  • One of those means of estimation include measuring the volume of an artist’s sculpture
  • Scientists have now developed a new technique to accurately measure the weight and size of dinosaurs and discovered they are not as heavy as previously thought.
  • Significance
  • Using lasers scientists have measured the minimum amount of skin required to wrap around the skeletons of modern-day mammals, including reindeer, polar bears, giraffes and elephants
  • This technique showed that the animals had almost exactly 21% more body mass than the minimum skeletal ‘skin and bone’ wrap volume
  • Previous estimates of the giant Brachiosaur weight have varied, with estimates as high as 80 tonnes
  • Applying this approach reduced that figure to just 23 tonnes
  • This calculation method has the advantage of requiring minimal user intervention and is therefore more objective and far quicker
  • This new technique will apply to all dinosaur weight measurements
  • Its primary limitation, for now, is that the specimen should consist of a complete skeleton as possible
  • Of Note
  • In general estimated weights for many species of dinosaur have been dropping since about the early 1960’s
  • The information from these calculations can also be applied to sophisticated locomotor reconstructions, such as the running simulations produced in the past
  • One problem with the technique is that none of the animals used in the laser calibration had the long fleshy tails that dinosaurs have, so this model may be to be altered in the future
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Dinosaurs were lighter than previously thought, new study shows | Phys.org
  • Dinosaurs Skinnier Than Previously Thought | news.Discovery.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Chinese Pollution Data

  • The low down
  • China has said foreign embassies are acting illegally in issuing their own air quality readings and that only the government could release data on the nation’s heavy pollution.
  • China says publishing China’s air quality are related to the public interests and as such are powers reserved for the government
  • According to the latest Environmental Performance Index compiled by Yale University, China ranked 128th out of 132 countries for air quality.
  • Until recently, official air quality measurements from China regularly rated their air quality as good while data from the US embassy in Beijing showed off-the-chart pollution
  • Most Chinese cities base their air-quality information on particles of 10 micrometres or larger
  • Beijing announced earlier this year it would change the way it measured air quality to include the smaller particles experts say make up much of the pollution in Chinese cities, after a vocal campaign
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • China tells US to stop reporting Beijing’s bad air | phys.org
  • China tells embassies to stop issuing pollution data | phys.org

Giant exoplanet imposters?

  • The low down
  • The Kepler spacecraft produces potential exoplanet data by watching for the darkening of a star, but not everything that darkens a star is a planet
  • A new study suggests that there is a one in three chance that it’s not really a planet at all when it’s a giant planet closely orbiting a star
  • Significance
  • Out of Kepler’s more than 2,300 possible planets, only 46 were categorized as very large exoplanets with estimated orbit very close to their star
  • 11 of those systems were already known and the team confirmed 9 more
  • Of the remaining 26 candidates were : 13 unknowns, two failed brown dwarf stars, and 11 members of binary star systems
  • From this the team arrived at the 35 percent false-positive rate
  • While this may seem very significant, scientists don’t consider it a serious flaw for Kepler
  • Even with a 35% false positive rate for very large, closely orbiting exoplanets the percentage is still very low compared to all other transit programs
  • Of Note
  • Short period transiting planets are exotic objects, not expected to be everywhere
  • In addition the false positive rate does not affect any smaller or long orbiting planets
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Some newfound planets are something else | ScienceNews.org

Mosquito



Channel : andrew52987 | Channel : coegatech

  • The low down
  • The collision between a raindrop and a mosquito is analogous to a collision between a human and a bus, except for the part where the mosquito survives
  • Significance
  • What makes the difference is the (relatively) huge, fast drop doesn’t transfer much of its momentum to a little wisp of an insect
  • Instead the falling droplet sweeps the insect along on the downward plunge
  • The drawback is that mosquitoes hitchhiking on water experience acceleration 100 to 300 times the force of Earth’s gravity, so survival is dependent on breaking away before hitting the ground
  • Of Note
  • This effect may inspire engineers designing swarms of tiny flying robots, or interest physicists and mathematicians studying complex fluid dynamics at this scale
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube : Mosquito raindrop BW | andrew52987
  • YouTube : Low Mass Saves Mosquitoes from Death by Raindrop | coegatech
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • How a mosquito survives a raindrop hit | ScienceNews.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Touring NASA’s Johnson Space Center


Image Credit : science.ksc.nasa.gov

  • Of Note
  • NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida has announced that beginning on Friday, June 15 a limited number of daily tours will take guests into the spaceport’s historic Launch Control Center (LCC)
  • This will be the first time in 30 years that the home of 152 countdowns to launch including both Apollo and shuttle programs has been opened to the public
  • The KSC Up-Close: Launch Control Center (LCC) Tour will run through the end of the year. It costs $25 for adults and $19 for children in addition to the regular admission to the visitor complex.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Inside Historic Launch Control Center | Space.com

Jupiter’s moon Io


Image Credit : NASA/JPL-Caltech/Bear Fight Institute

  • Of Note
  • A new map of Jupiter’s moon Io has revealed the most comprehensive ever compiled of Io’s hundreds of active volcanoes
  • When studying the layout of the volcanos the distribution of the heat flow is that it is not in keeping with the current preferred model of tidal heating of Io at relatively shallow depths
  • The main thermal emission occurs about 40 degrees eastward of where we would expect with tidal heating
  • In addition that heat comes from Io’s depths along with its shallower reaches
  • The study also found that known active volcanoes account for only about 60 percent of Io’s emitted heat
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Jupiter Moon Io’s Volcanoes Revealed in New Map | Space.com

— Updates —

Additional Venus Transit stories and photo’s

Neutrinos

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

Shuttle Enterprise’s last landing

Dragon back on the ground

NASA’s Aquarius measuring ocean salinity

Mars Curiosity Rover


Image Credit : NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS

  • Of Note
  • With a scheduled landing of Aug 5 and increased confidence in precision landing technology NASA has narrowed the target for its most advanced Mars rover, Curiosity
  • NASA has narrowed the target for its most advanced Mars rover, Curiosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • NASA Mars Rover Team Aims for Landing Closer to Prime Science Site | jpl.nasa.gov](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012–168)

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • June 13, 1611 : 401 years ago : Sunspots : A publication on the newly discovered phenomenon of sunspots was dedicated. Narratio de maculis in sole observatis et apparente earum cum sole conversione. (“Narration on Spots Observed on the Sun and their Apparent Rotation with the Sun”). This first publication on such observations, was the work of Johannes Fabricius, a Dutch astronomer who was perhaps the first ever to observe sunspots. On 9 Mar 1611, at dawn, Johannes had used his telescope to view the rising sun and had seen several dark spots on it. He called his father to investigate this new phenomenon with him. The brightness of the Sun’s center was very painful, and the two quickly switched to a projection method by means of a camera obscura.
  • June 15 1752 : 260 years ago : Lighting and Kites : In 1752, Franklin published a third-person account of his pioneering kite experiment in the The Pennsylvania Gazette, without mentioning that he himself had performed it It was at a later date that he admited to performing the experiment himself. Evidence shows that he was insulated from the kite, while others trying to repeat the experiment were electrocuted in the following months. The entire process, led to the invention of the lightning rod in September of the same year.

Looking up this week

The post Dinosaurs & Neutrinos | SciByte 50 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Spinal Cord Injuries & Venus Transit | SciByte 49 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/20252/spinal-cord-injuries-venus-transit-scibyte-49/ Tue, 05 Jun 2012 22:18:17 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=20252 We take a look at new rehabilitation for spinal cord injuries, nanotech medical diagnosis, Guinness bubbles, tomato's, spacecraft updates and back into history.

The post Spinal Cord Injuries & Venus Transit | SciByte 49 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at new rehabilitation for spinal cord injuries, nanotech medical diagnosis, Guinness bubbles, tomato’s, a quiet room, tornado map, spacecraft updates and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Spinal Cord injury treatment



YouTube channel Sergeytule | Credit: Courtesy of EPFL

  • The low down
  • Most spinal injuries in people do not sever the spinal cord completely
  • Spinal injuries cause paralysis because they sever or crush nerve fibers that connect the brain to neurons in the spinal cord that move muscles throughout the body
  • These fibers, or axons, are the long extensions that convey signals from one end of a neuron to another, and unfortunately, they don’t regrow in adults
  • Restoring axons’ ability to regrow using growth factors, stem cells, or other therapies has been a longstanding and elusive goal for researchers.
  • Significance
  • To approximate a spinal injury in rats, researchers made two surgical cuts in the spinal cord, severing all of the direct connections from the brain, but leaving some tissue intact in between the cuts (it wouldn’t work for a completely severed cord)
  • The rats then began a rehab regime intended to bypass the fractured freeway, as it were, by pushing more traffic onto neural back roads and building more of them
  • The physical therapy began about a week after the rats were injured, and lasted about 30 minutes a day
  • During each session, the researchers injected the animals with a cocktail of drugs to improve the function of rats’ neural circuits in the part of the spinal cord involved in leg movements
  • They then stimulated this area with electrodes to prime the spinal cord for action
  • A rat was then fitted into a harness attached to a robotic device that supported its weight and allowed it to walk forward on its hind legs to the extent that it was able
  • At first, the rats could not move their legs at all, after 2 or 3 weeks, the rodents began taking steps toward a piece of food after a gentle nudge from the robot
  • By 5 or 6 weeks, they were able to initiate movement on their own and walk to get the food
  • After a few additional weeks of intensified rehab, they were able to walk up rat-sized stairs and climb over a small barrier placed in their path
  • Rats suspended over a moving treadmill that elicited reflex-like stepping movement
  • The amount of recovery depending on making intentional movements, not just any movement
  • Additional experiments in the paper make a compelling case that the rats’ recovery is due to new neural connections forming to create a detour around the injury
  • This study suggests that all three components of the rehab strategy are needed; the drugs, the electrical stimulation, and the robot-assisted physical therapy
  • Of Note
  • A case study published last year reported some recovery of voluntary movements in a man paralyzed in a vehicle accident, after he underwent a combination of electrical stimulation and physical therapy
  • Two more patients are undergoing similar rehab now, and his group hopes to add drug therapy to enhance nerve repair in the future
  • For the rats they could only make voluntary movements while the electrical stimulation was turned on, and the same was mostly true of the human patient in case study
  • YouTube
  • Robotic Rehab Helps Paralyzed Rats Walk Again | Sergeytule
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Robotic Rehab Helps Paralyzed Rats Walk Again | news.sciencemag.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Nanotechnology meets medical diagnosis



Credit: Stephen Chou/Analytical Chemistry

  • The low down
  • A common biological test called immunoassay, mimics the action of the immune system to detect the presence of biomarkers
  • When biomarkers are present they produce a fluorescent glow (light) that can be measured in a laboratory
  • The greater the glow, the more of the biomarker is present; however, if the amount of biomarker is too small, the fluorescent light is too faint to be detected
  • Princeton researchers have tackled this limitation by using nanotechnology to greatly amplify the faint fluorescence
  • Significance
  • The key to the breakthrough lies in a new artificial nanomaterial called D2PA
  • The new material consists of a series of glass pillars in a layer of gold, speckled on their sides with gold dots and capped with a gold disk.
  • The sides of each pillar are speckled with even tinier gold dots about 10 to 15 nanometers in diameter Each pillar is just 60 nanometers in diameter, 1/1,000th the width of a human hair
  • The pillars are spaced 200 nanometers apart and capped with a disk of gold on each pillar
  • Using this material laboratory test used to detect disease and perform biological research could be made more than 3 million times more sensitive
  • Increased performance could greatly improve the early detection of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and other disorders by allowing doctors to detect far lower concentrations of telltale markers than was previously practical.
  • Of Note
  • When a sample such as blood, saliva or urine is added to small glass vials containing antibodies that are designed to “capture” or bind to biomarkers of interest in the sample
  • Another set of antibodies that have been labeled with a fluorescent molecule are then added to the mix
  • When biomarkers are not present in the vials the fluorescent detection antibodies do not attach to anything and are washed away
  • This new technology could play a significant role in other areas of chemistry and engineering, from light-emitting displays to solar energy harvesting
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Nanotechnology breakthrough could dramatically improve medical tests

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

The rise and fall of Guinness bubbles

Credit : E. S. Benilov, et al.

  • The low down
  • Why do the bubbles in a glass of stout beer such as Guinness sink while the beer is settling, even though the bubbles are lighter than the surrounding liquid?
  • Stout beers such as Guinness foam due to a combination of carbon dioxide and nitrogen bubbles, while other beers foam due only to carbon dioxide bubbles
  • In 2004 high-speed photography proved that bubbles do indeed sink
  • Significance
  • Simulations of the elongated vortices in a pint glass, where bubbles sink near the glass wall, and an anti-pint glass, where bubbles rise near the wall
  • A team of mathematicians from the University of Limerick has shown that the sinking bubbles result from the shape of a pint glass
  • As the glass narrows downwards and causes a circulation pattern that drives both fluid and bubbles downwards at the wall of the glass
  • It is not just the bubbles themselves that are sinking (in fact, they’re still trying to rise), but the entire fluid is sinking and pulling the bubbles down with it.
  • Of Note
  • Researchers are still uncertain of the specific mechanism responsible for reducing the bubble density near the wall for the pint geometry and increasing it for the anti-pint one.
  • The same flow pattern occurs with other types of beers, but the larger carbon dioxide bubbles are less subject to the downward drag than the smaller nitrogen bubbles in stout beers.
  • For a tilted straight-sided glass the side in the direction of the tilt represents the normal situation of a pint glass, while the opposite side is the “anti-pint” – and bubbles can be seen to both rise and fall in the same glass.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Irish mathematicians explain why Guinness bubbles sink | Phys.org
  • Falling stout bubbles explained | BBC News

You say tomato I say potato?

  • The low down
  • The genome of the tomato has been sequenced one from the “Heinz 1706” tomato as well as the sequence of a wild relative
  • Researchers report that tomatoes possess some 35,000 genes arranged on 12 chromosomes
  • Significance
  • The team has captured virtually all the genes for various characteristics, such as taste, natural pest resistance or nutritional content
  • Now that the genome sequence of one variety of tomato is known, it will also be easier and much less expensive for seed companies and plant breeders to sequence other varieties
  • The sequencing of the tomato genome has implications for other plant species such as Strawberries, apples, melons, bananas and many other fleshy fruits, share some characteristics with tomatoes
  • Information about the genes and pathways involved in fruit ripening can potentially be applied to them, helping to improve food quality, food security and reduce costs
  • Of Note
  • The gene sequencing confirms that the tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable
  • The tomato shares 92% of its more than 34,000 protein-coding genes with its close relative, the recently sequenced potato
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Tomato genome fully sequenced | phys.org
  • ScienceShot: Tapping the Tomato’s Secrets | news.sciencemag.org

Hear your own heart beat



Credit: Renee Jones Schneider / Minneapolis Star Tribune.

56 years of Tornado’s



Credit: John Nelson

  • The low down
  • Using information from data.gov, tech blogger John Nelson has created this spectacular image of tornado paths in the US over a 56 year period
  • The storms are categorized by F-scale with the brighter neon lines representing more violent storms
  • The tracker shows straight lines, but it is only because the data used in this study only tracked start and stop points
  • Also provided are some stats on all the storms in the different categories
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Stunning Visualization of 56 Years of Tornadoes in the US | UniverseToday.com
  • Data.gov

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo receives permit



Credit: VirginGalactic YouTube Channel | Credit: TSC

  • The low down
  • Virgin Galactic’s flight system consists of two vehicles, SpaceShipTwo and its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft
  • SpaceShipTwo is designed to launch six passengers and two pilots into suborbital space and offer a few minutes of weightlessness, then return to Earth
  • Significance
  • Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo suborbital space tourism vehicle has won U.S. regulatory approval to begin powered flight testing of the rocket-propelled craft later this year
  • The experimental launch permit from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorizes the Scaled Composites development team "to progress to the rocket-powered phase of test flight
  • Before the rocket-powered testing phase they will perform aerodynamic performance of the spacecraft with the full weight of the rocket motor system on board
  • Integration of key rocket motor components, already begun during a now-concluding period of downtime for routine maintenance, will continue in the autumn
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Video : SS2 First Feather Flight, Mojave, May 2011)
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • FAA Clears Virgin Galactic to Begin SpaceShipTwo Rocket Test Flights | Space.com

GRAIL Moon mission extension



Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT

Dragon SpaceCraft Splashdown



Credit: YouTube Channel ReelNASA

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • June 09 1822 : 190 years ago : False teeth : Charles Graham received the first patent for false teeth. His were not the first false teeth in use, however. In the Colonial years, rotten teeth were considered the cause of many illnesses, and they would be extracted. Varied ways of replacing them were tried. For example, George Washington had at least four sets of false teeth (though none were wooden, despite a myth to that effect). Washington’s first dentures were made using human teeth inserted into carved ivory. In 1789, dentist John Greenwood of New York, made Washington another set from gold, hippo teeth, and hippo and elephant ivory. The one natural remaining tooth was a molar, and a hole was left for that.
  • June 08 1937 : 75 years ago : Titan Arum : A specimen of the world’s largest flower, first bloomed in the U.S. in the NY Botanical Garden. The giant Sumatran Titan Arum, Amorphophallus titanum, measured 8½-ft high and 4-ft diam. Its putrid rotting-corpse fragrance repelled visitors. Native in Sumatran jungles of Indonesia, it is known there as the “corpse flower.” Dr. Odoardo Beccari, an Italian botanist, was the first western expert to find the Titan Arum in the Pading Province during 1878. Seeds he sent back to his patron, the Marchese Corsi Salviati were grown in Italy, and a few plants were at Beccari’s request sent to Kew Gardens in England in 1879. One of those seedlings flowered in June 1887. Another plant bloomed there in 1926, to wide attention.

Looking up this week : You May Have Seen

Looking up this week

The post Spinal Cord Injuries & Venus Transit | SciByte 49 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Venus Transit & Dragon Spacecraft | SciByte 48 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/20027/venus-transit-dragon-spacecraft-scibyte-48/ Tue, 29 May 2012 22:29:24 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=20027 We take a look at the Venus transit next Tuesday, water in our solar system, creative noise, a Dragon spacecraft update and more!

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We take a look at the Venus transit next Tuesday, a rare rabbit, water in our solar system, creative noise, a dinosaur with tiny arms, a Dragon spacecraft update and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Venus Transit



YouTube channels : extractorrr | ScienceAtNASA

— NEWS BYTE—

Rare Rabbit



Credit: UnivDeleware Channel | Credit: Kyle McCarthy / World Wide Fund for Nature Japan

—TWO-BYTE NEWS—

Water in our solar system



Credit: Kevin Hand (JPL/Caltech), Jack Cook (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), Howard Perlman (USGS)

Creative Noise

  • The low down
  • A professor of business administration at the University of Illinois has been studying how the level of ambient noise affects consumer sales
  • The research has shown that a moderate level of noise not only enhances creative problem-solving but also leads to a greater adoption of innovative products in certain settings
  • Significance
  • The study shows that noise levels equivalent to a passenger car traveling on a highway, about 70 decibels, enhances performance on creative tasks
  • Researchers also studied how a high level of noise, equivalent to traffic noise on a major road, 85 decibels, hurts creativity by reducing information processing.
  • The 70 decibel level is enough of a distraction that it helps you with abstract out-of-the-box thinking, allowing for increased creativity
  • A very high level of noise becomes a distraction that affects the thought process
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Scientists Say Ambient Noise Affects Creativity | sci-news.com
  • Is Noise Always Bad? Exploring the Effects of Ambient Noise on Creative Cognition | Journal of Consumer Research

Dinosaur with tiny arms

–SPACECRAFT UPDATE–

Dragon Spacecraft



YouTube Channels : NASATelevision |

–SCIENCE CALENDAR–

Looking back

  • June 02,1889 : 123 years ago : Hydroelectricity : A hydroelectric power plant generated alternating current electricity which was for the first time made available to consumers at a significant distance from its origin. A 13 mile power line linked the Willamette Falls Electric Co. power plant to Portland, Ore. Two 300 h.p. Stilwell & Bierce waterwheels together drove a single phase, 720 kilowatt generator. It was not the first hydroelectric power plant, for one had been demonstrated in Appleton, Wisc., 30 Sep 1882 with a small dynamo. Rather, it is the use of alternating current that is significant, for this makes possible long-distance transmission that overcomes the problems of direct current. AC generators driven by steam power had been in use elsewhere since 1886.
  • June 01, 1947 : 65 years ago : Photosensitive glass : The development of photosensitive glass was announced publicly in Corning, N.Y. It had first been made by the Corning Glass Works in Nov 1937. The glass is crystal clear, but exposure to ultraviolet light followed by heat treatment forms submicroscopic metal particles creating an image within the glass. This is believed to be the most durable form of photographic medium, and to be as permanent as the glass itself.

–Looking up this week–

The post Venus Transit & Dragon Spacecraft | SciByte 48 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> SpaceX & Easter Island | SciByte 47 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/19826/spacex-easter-island-scibyte-47/ Tue, 22 May 2012 22:21:50 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=19826 We take a look at the spaceward journey of SpaceX, ancient arthritic reptiles, Easter Island statues, bouncy exploration probes, and more!

The post SpaceX & Easter Island | SciByte 47 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at the spaceward journey of SpaceX, ancient arthritic reptiles, Easter Island statues, bouncy exploration probes, mousetrap IV dispenser, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

SpaceX – Dragon shipment to ISS



NASAKennedy Channel: | Credit: SpaceX

— NEWS BYTE —

Dispensing IV fluid with a mouse trap



Credit: YouTube Channel – RiceUniversity | Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

  • The low down
  • In severely underdeveloped parts of the world, conditions can be pretty primitive and may not even have electricity
  • In understaffed medical settings, monitoring IV-fluid delivery to patients can be a challenge
  • Physicians would like a tool that can better moderate IV-fluid delivery to children, who are often connected to adult IV-bags
  • Now a team of Rice University freshmen have taken a mousetrap and built a better way to treat dehydration among children in the developing world.
  • Significance
  • The goal of the project was to regulate the amount of fluid delivered to children so we could prevent overhydration and under-hydration
  • The device can be mounted on a wall or attached with clamps to a portable hospital IV pole
  • Mechanical, durable, autonomous and simple-to-operate volume regulator that uses a lever arm with a movable counterweight similar to a physician’s scale to incrementally dispense IV fluid.
  • The system uses the change in torque as an IV bag is drained of fluid to set off a mousetrap-like spring that clamps the IV tube and cuts off the flow of saline solution or other prescribed fluids
  • The most time-consuming part of assembling the device was calibrating the counterweight and determining the precise spacing of the notches the counterweight falls into and holds as the fluid drains
  • Tests have shown the device dispenses fluid within 12 milliliters of the desired volume in increments of 50 milliliters.
  • When the desired amount of fluids have been dispensed the clamp goes off and it folds the tubing in a V-shape, the way you would crimp a garden hose to make the water stop coming out
  • Of Note
  • Device designed by the IV DRIP team is inexpensive; it costs about $20 to manufacture
  • This summer four of prototypes will be sent to Malawi and Lesotho, to test them under practical field conditions
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube : Turning a mouse trap into an IV drip volume regulator at Rice University | Rice University
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • This ‘mousetrap’ may save lives: Students create mechanism to regulate IV fluids for children | phys.org
  • This ‘mousetrap’ may save lives | news.rice.edu

Arthritic Ancient sea reptile



Credit: Simon Powell

  • The low down
  • Scientists at the University of Bristol has found signs of a degenerative condition similar to human arthritis in the jaw of a pliosaur, an ancient sea reptile that lived 150 million years ago
  • This type of disease has never been described before in fossilized Jurassic reptiles.
  • This specimen is a 8 metre long pliosaur with a crocodile-like head, a short neck, whale-like body and four powerful flippers with huge jaws and 20 cm long teeth
  • Significance
  • This particular individual had an arthritis-like disease that had eroded its left jaw joint, displacing the lower jaw to one side
  • The creature probably lived with a crooked jaw for many years, because there are marks on the bone of the lower jaw where the teeth from the upper jaw impacted on the bone during feeding
  • The skeleton suggests that the animal could have been an old female who had developed the condition as part of the aging process, although was still able to hunt in spite of its unfortunate condition.
  • Of Note
  • Unhealed fracture on the jaw indicates that at some time the jaw weakened and eventually broke
  • They were at the top of their food chains, so there would not have been any predators to take advantage of an aging, disabled pliosaur
  • With a broken jaw, the pliosaur would not have been able to feed
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Ancient sea reptile with gammy jaw suggests dinosaurs got arthritis too| Phys.org

More than meets the eye of the Easter Island statues

  • The low down
  • Scientists generally accept that the statues on Easter Island were made sometime between 1250 and 1500 AD
  • When most people think of the Easter Island statues, moai, they think of the eerie heads popping out of the ground
  • Explorers have long known there was more to the 887 statues on Easter Island than just the statue heads made famous in photographs.
  • New images of the bodies of the statues now being circulated were from the October 2011, Easter Island Statue Project Season V expedition
  • The Easter Island Statue Project is the the longest collaborative and evolving artifact inventory ever conducted within the context of the Easter Island archaeological survey
  • Significance
  • Full-bodied statues have been known to exist on Easter Island for hundreds of years
  • A new archaeological survey shows that the statues go much deeper underground that had been anticipated
  • Some of the statues being uncovered tower more than 30 feet in height, from base to top, and weigh more than 80 tons.
  • Many of the statues now being uncovered have petroglyphs that have been preserved by the surrounding soil
  • The newly uncovered statues join one other statue, out of over 1,000 documented have multiple petroglyphs carved as a composition on their backs
  • Some of the new petroglyph writings on the recently excavated statues appear fairly unique, many with individual petroglyphs
  • Found near the statues
  • Some evidence of human burials
  • Tuna vertebrae near the bottom of a recent excavation
  • Evidence of ceremonies and very large quantities of paint
  • Over 500 stone carving tools, from large picks, to finer basalts, obsidian for finishing details
  • Evidence of post holes, some large enough for a tree trunk, and rope guides carved into some of the statues
  • Multimedia
  • Image Gallery : Easter Island statues have bodies, too | Yahoo.com
  • Image Gallery : Archaeologists excavate Easter Island’s statues | FoxNews
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Easter Island Statue Project
  • Easter Island archaeology project digs up island’s secrets | FoxNews
  • Easter island heads have bodies!?? | The ThinkBox.ca
  • Easter Island statues have full bodies and contain ancient petroglyphs | yahoo.com

—TWO-BYTE NEWS—

A swarm of exploring rover/spacecraft



Credit: Marco Pavone

  • The low down
  • As an alternative to the traditional rover/spacecraft exploration one researcher from Stanford University is suggesting we unleash a swarm of rover/spacecraft hybrids that can explore en masse.
  • Significance
  • The project has been developing a concept under NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program that would see small spherical robots deployed to small worlds, such as Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos, where they would take advantage of low gravity to explore, literally, in leaps and bounds.
  • Similar to what NASA has done in the past with the Mars rovers, except multiplied in the number of spacecraft and reduced in cost
  • Of Note
  • They could also be used to evaluate the resource potential of small bodies in view of future human missions beyond Earth.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Robotic spacecraft / rover hybrids for space exploration | phys.org
  • Space Exploration By Robot Swarm | universetoday.com

The return of COSMOS?

—SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

  • Curiosity, T minus 75 days to Curiosity Rover touchdown

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • May 29, 1919 : 93 years ago : Einstein’s relativity theory proved : A solar eclipse permitted observation of the bending of starlight passing through the sun’s gravitational field, as predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. Separate expeditions of the Royal Astronomical Society travelled to Brazil and off the west coast of Africa. Both made measurements of the position of stars visible close to the sun during a solar eclipse. These observations showed that, indeed, the light of stars was bent as it passed through the gravitational field of the sun. This was a key prediction of Albert Einstein’s theory that gravity affected energy as in addition to the familiar effect on matter. The verification of predictions of Einstein’s theory, proved during the solar eclipse was a dramatic landmark scientific event.
  • May 25 1961 : 51 years ago : Moon landing announced : The formal announcement of an American lunar landing was made by President John F. Kennedy speaking to the Congress: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space program in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.” YouTube : JFK Moon Speech
  • May 25, 2012 : 1 year ago : SciByte 1 Posted : The first SciByte was posted on Jupiter Broadcasting. The episode covered gravity, everything from quantum mechanics and black holes to gyroscopes

Looking up this week, you may have seen : Annular Solar Eclipse



Credit: Imelda Joson and Edwin Aguirre

Looking up this week

The post SpaceX & Easter Island | SciByte 47 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Mayan Calendar & Cancer Research | SciByte 46 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/19587/mayan-calendar-cancer-research-scibyte-46/ Tue, 15 May 2012 22:46:13 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=19587 We take a look at a new archeological site concerning the Mayan calendar, a new use for breathalyzers, cancer research, and more!

The post Mayan Calendar & Cancer Research | SciByte 46 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at a new archeological site concerning the Mayan calendar, a new use for breathalyzers, cancer research, exoplanet, retinal prostheses, spacecraft updates,and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Mayan prediction for end of the world?



YouTube channels : NationalGeographic | AP

  • Thanks for making sure I saw this story Michael Henriques
  • 6 Maya Apocalypse Myths Debunked
  • Magnetic Flip : while magnetic evidence in rocks confirms that continents have undergone such drastic rearrangement, the process took millions of years slow enough that humanity wouldn’t have felt the motion
  • Planet X crash : if there were a ( planet / brown dwarf / etc ) that was going to be in the inner solar system three years from now, astronomers would have been studying it, and it would be visible to the naked eye by now
  • Galactic Alignment : some worry the path of the sun in the sky would appear to cross through what, from Earth, looks to be the midpoint of our galaxy, but there is no alignment in 2012. A type of “alignment” occurs during every winter solstice, when the sun, as seen from Earth, appears in the sky near what looks to be the midpoint of the Milky Way.
  • End of Calendar : During the 2012 winter solstice, time runs out on the current era of the Long Count calendar, which began on what the Maya saw as the dawn of the last creation period
  • Sun to Savage Earth : While the sun isn’t always on schedule; the peak of solar activity this cycle probably won’t happen for a year or two
  • Predictions Calendar : The Maya did pass down a graphic end-of-the-world scenario, it was undated
  • The low down
  • Just 6 square miles (16 square kilometers) of jungle floor the Mayan city now known as Xultun was first discovered in 1915 in northeast Guatemala, and less than 0.1 percent of the city has been explored to date
  • Looters damaged much of the ancient city in the 1970s losing much of historical significance; archaeologists still don’t even know how far the boundaries of the town extend.
  • In 2010, archeologists (from Boston University) were mapping the city when one undergraduate student while looking into an old trench dug by looters, reported seeing traces of faint red and black lines of ancient paint.
  • Paint doesn’t preserve well in the rain forest climate of Guatemala, so it was assumed the find would not yield much information
  • In the end the professor decided he should excavate the room looters had tried to reach if only to be able to report the size of the structure along with the paint finding.
  • The Murals
  • They were shocked to run into a 1,200-year-old 6×6 foot room with a brilliantly painted portrait: a Mayan king, sitting on his throne, wearing a red crown with blue feathers flowing out behind him.
  • Other figures in the room are three loincloth-clad figures sit, wearing feathered headdresses and a man painted in brilliant orange wearing jade bracelets reaches out with a stylus
  • Unfortunately the name of the king pictured in the mural room has been lost, but the scribe and king are referred to as Older/Senior & Younger/Junior Obsidian
  • In front of the mural of the king talking to a kneeling attendant is a plaster bench that resembles those used by Mayan rulers at royal court meetings
  • The murals only survived, because, instead of collapsing the room, Mayan engineers filled it with rubble and then built on top of it.
  • The Calendars
  • Along the north and east walls of the room researchers noticed several barely visible hieroglyphic texts, painted and etched
  • The team scanned all of the paintings and numbers, digitally stitched them together, the images were then sent the images to a epigrapher who specializes in studying Maya inscriptions
  • Analysis revealed that at least five of the numerical columns were topped by hieroglyphs that Maya scribes once used to record lunar data
  • The numbers on the wall were calculations that scribes could refer to, much like those in the back of textbooks, to help them track vast amounts of time
  • The books the scribe would have written using these references would have been filled with elaborate calculations intended to predict the city’s fortunes.
  • The calendars mentioned are the 260-day ceremonial calendar, the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars.
  • Symbols of gods head the top of each lunar cycle, suggesting that each cycle had its own patron deity.
  • Near the calendars is a “ring number”-something previously known only from much later Maya books, where it was used as part of a backward calculation in establishing a base date for planetary cycles.
  • These newly discovered astronomical tables are 600 years older than the previous known examples.
  • The markings also suggest dates more than 7,000 thousand years in the future
  • Of Note
  • Until now, Maya astronomical tables were known from bark-paper books, the ‘Dresden Codex,’ created 400 years or more after the ancient civilization’s demise
  • Researchers believe that both these calculations and the ‘Dresden Codex’ came from earlier books that long ago rotted away
  • This room was likely the ancient workroom of a Maya scribe, a record-keeper of Xultún
  • This space is where someone important was living, this important household of the noble class, and here you also have a mathematician working in that space which shows how closely those roles were connected in Mayan society
  • It is likely that this type of room exists at every Maya site in certain periods of the Mayan civilization, but it’s currently the only example thus far
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube VIDEO : Mysterious Maya Calendar & Mural Uncovered | NationalGeographic
  • YouTube VIDEO : Doomsday Delayed? New Maya Calendar Unearthed | AP
  • VIDEO : History News: Mysterious Maya Calendar & Mural Uncovered | nationalgeographic.com
  • VIDEO : Explorers Journal | nationalgeographic.com (vimeo)
  • IMAGES : New Maya Mural, Calendars Debunk 2012 Myth | nationalgeographic.com
  • IMAGE : Calender | LiveScience.com
  • IMAGE GALLERY : Maya Murals: Stunning Images of King & Calendar
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Ancient Maya Astronomical Tables from Xultun, Guatemala | sciencemag.org
  • Painted ancient Maya numbers reflect calendar reaching well beyond 2012 (w/ Video) | phys.org
  • Looting Leads Archaeologists to Oldest Known Mayan Calendar | news.sciencemag.org
  • Nevermind the Apocalypse: Earliest Mayan Calendar Found | news.discovery.com
  • Mayan Ruins Describe Dates Beyond 2012 ‘Doomsday’ | news.discovery.com
  • Unprecedented Maya Mural Found, Contradicts 2012 “Doomsday” Myth | nationalgeographic.com
  • 2012 Pictures: 6 Maya Apocalypse Myths Debunked | nationalgeographic.com
  • End of the World Averted: New Archeological Find Proves Mayan Calendar Doesn’t End | universetoday.com
  • Painted ancient Maya numbers reflect calendar reaching well beyond 2012 (w/ Video) | phys.org
  • Maya wall calendar discovered | ScienceNews.org

*— NEWS BYTE — *

A breathalyzer that does more than find out how much you’ve had to drink



Credit: YouTube Channel VideoNSF

  • The low down
  • Blow into the Single Breath Disease Diagnostics Breathalyzer, and you get tested for a biomarker, a sign of disease
  • The unit is about half the size of your typical shoe box and weighs less than one pound
  • Lights on top of the box will give you an instant readout
  • Green light means you pass (bad breath is not indicative of an underlying disease; perhaps it’s just a result of the raw onions you ingested recently)
  • Red light means you might need to take a trip to the doctor’s office to check if something more serious is an issue.
  • Significance
  • Inside is a sensor chip that is coated with tiny nanowires that look like microscopic spaghetti and are able to detect minute amounts of chemical compounds in the breath
  • The nanowires enable the sensor to detect just a few molecules of the disease marker gas in a ‘sea’ of billions of molecules of other compounds that the breath consists of
  • The nanowires can be rigged to detect infectious viruses and microbes like Salmonella, E. coli or even anthrax
  • Of Note
  • Individual tests such as an acetone-detecting breathalyzer for monitoring diabetes and an ammonia-detecting breathalyzer to determine when to end a home-based hemodialysis treatment–are still being evaluated clinically now
  • Researchers envision developing the technology so that a number of these tests can be performed with a single device
  • It might be possible self-detect a whole range of diseases and disorders, including lung cancer, by just exhaling into a handheld breathalyzer.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube : Science Nation – This Breathalyzer Reveals Signs of Disease | VideoNSF
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • This breathalyzer reveals signs of disease (w/ Video) | cdn.physorg.com

—TWO-BYTE NEWS—

New cancer research

  • Cancer Inhibitor
  • Bowman-Birk Protease Inhibitor (BBI), has shown promise for preventing certain forms of cancer in clinical trials.
  • BBI is derived from the large amounts of soybeans in traditional Japanese diets might underpin low cancer mortality rates in Japan
  • The current method of extracting BBI from soybeans is time-consuming and involves harsh chemicals
  • Scientists have now found that soybean seeds incubated in water at 122 degrees Fahrenheit naturally release large amounts of BBI that can easily be harvested from the water
  • The protein appeared to be active, with tests showing that it stopped breast cancer cells from dividing in a laboratory dish.
  • Surviving chemotherapy
  • Some cancers are resistant to chemotherapy because they harbor an overactive gene called MGMT, which repairs the cancer cells after chemotherapy damages them.
  • To counteract the gene, physicians sometimes add an MGMT-blocking drug, benzylguanine, but is also makes healthy blood and bone marrow cells easy to kill.
  • Scientists wondered what would happen if healthy cells had mutated version of MGMT called P140K
  • Researchers inserted the P140K gene into the patient’s blood stem cells in bone marrow
  • Immediately after a chemotherapy session the team infused the tweaked stem cells back into each patient.
  • Within weeks, the stem cells had developed into mature blood and marrow cells, with 40% to 60% of them carrying the mutated gene.
  • The chemoresistant healthy cells helped patients undergo the benzylguanine treatments
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Soybeans soaked in warm water naturally release key cancer-fighting substance | phys.org
  • A Shield Against Chemotherapy | news.sciencemag.org

M2-F2 lifting body crash of 1967

  • The low down
  • A Lifting body is a fixed wing aircraft that is designed so that it produces its own lift, where a flying wing has no fuselage a lifting body does
  • On May 10, 1967, the NASA lifting body M2-F2 launched
  • When attempting roll maneuvers the craft unfortunately had a soft feel, which caused the pilot to overcompensate trying to bring the plane under control
  • This lead to “Pilot induced oscillations”, and while the pilot did eventually get control, the aircraft crashed when the pilot saw a rescue helicopter that seemed to pose a collision threat
  • While trying to land in a lakebed, altitude was very hard to judge and the aircraft hit the ground before the landing gear was fully deployed and locked
  • The pilot actually survived and recovered from the crash, but lost vision in his right eye due to infection
  • Significance
  • Portions of the video from that flight from the ground video of the oscillations and the pilot camera were seen in the TV movie The Six Million Dollar Man
  • A brief shot of a later HL–10 model was also seen as it released from its carrier plane
  • Of Note
  • The M2-F2, was reborn as the M2-F3, and was later given to Smithsonian Air and Space Museum You can see it hanging there now.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube VIDEO : M2-F2 03 | knightwizz
  • YouTube VIDEO : The Six Million Dollar Man TV Intro | The1970sChannel
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • A Crash Made Famous on TV | blog.nasm.si.edu

Light from another planet

  • The low down
  • In 2004, scientists discovered one of the first known stars to host an extrasolar planet, 55 Cancri, via radial velocity measurements
  • Infrared light from ’Hot Jupiters" has been seen from Spitzer, Hubble and Kepler telescopes
  • Spitzer became the first telescope to detect light from a planet beyond our solar system, when it saw the infrared light of a “hot Jupiter
  • When a telescope gazes at a star as a planet circles behind it, the planet disappears from view, the light from the star system dips ever so slightly, but enough that astronomers can determine how much light came from the planet itself
  • The information does however reveal the temperature of a planet, and, in some cases, its atmospheric components
  • Other current planet-hunting methods obtain indirect measurements of a planet by observing its effects on the star.
  • Now for the first time that same method has been used to detect light from a “SuperEarth”
  • At about 8.57 Earth masses Cancri e is tidally locked, so one side always faces the star
  • It was a radius 1.63 times that of Earth, a density is 10.9 ± 3.1 g cm–3 (the average density of Earth is 5.5 g cm–3)
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Light From a ‘SuperEarth’ Detected for the First Time | universetoday.com

Eye see you

  • The low down
  • A handheld computer processes images from a video camera that sits on specialized goggles.
  • Lasers using infrared light inside the goggles send that information to photovoltaic chips implanted in the eye, one-third as thin as a strand of hair
  • Electric currents from the photodiodes on the chip would then trigger signals in the retina, which then flow to the brain, enabling a patient to regain vision.
  • Scientists tested the process in rat retinas in vitro and how they elicited electric responses, which are widely accepted indicators of visual activity, from retinal cells
  • They are now testing the system in live rats, taking both physiological and behavioral measurements
  • There are several other retinal prostheses being developed, and at least two of them are in clinical trials.
  • Those devices require coils, cables or antennas inside the eye to deliver power and information to the retinal implant
  • This new device uses near-infrared light to transmit images, thereby avoiding any need for wires and cables, and making the device thin and easily implantable
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Solar-panel-like retinal prosthesis could better restore sight to blind | phys.org
  • Retinal implants could restore partial vision | sciencenews.org

The water of Earth

  • The low down
  • Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth’s surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth’s radius
  • This illustration shows what would happen is all of the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a ball
  • Further Reading / Media
  • All the Water on Planet Earth | Astronomy Picture of the Day; nasa.gov

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

Opportunity Rover



Credit: marsrover.nasa.gov

Curiosity Rover

SpaceX Dragon



Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

  • May 16, 1866 : 146 years ago : Rootbeer : Charles Elmer Hires a pharmacist from Pennsylvania formulated the eponymous Hires Root Beer. Some say Hires discovered root beer on his honeymoon in New Jersey where the woman who ran his honeymoon hotel served root tea. Hires thought that “root beer” would be more appealing to the working class. Originally, Hires packaged the mixture in boxes and sold it to housewives and soda fountains. They needed to mix in water, sugar, and yeast.He became a millionaire just for selling drinks.
  • May 18 1980 : 32 years ago : Mt. St. Helens : Following a weeklong series of earthquakes and smaller explosions of ash and smoke, the long-dormant Mount St. Helens volcano erupted in Washington state, U.S., hurling ash 15,000 feet into the air and setting off mudslides and avalanches. The eruptions caused minimal damage in the sparsely populated area, but about 400 people – mostly loggers and forest rangers – were evacuated. The explosion was characterized as the equivalent of 27,000 atomic bombs. The cloud of ash eventually circled the globe

Looking up this week

The post Mayan Calendar & Cancer Research | SciByte 46 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Mining Asteroids & Shuttle Discovery | SciByte 44 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/19186/mining-asteroids-shuttle-discovery-scibyte-44/ Tue, 01 May 2012 22:59:56 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=19186 We take a look at mining asteroids, recovery from strokes, lefties, talking to yourself, solar cells, a review of some recent major media stories, and much more.

The post Mining Asteroids & Shuttle Discovery | SciByte 44 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at mining asteroids, recovery from strokes, lefties, talking to yourself, solar cells, a review of some recent major media stories, viewer feedback, spacecraft updates, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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New Mining Resources



Credit: PlanetaryResources

  • Asteroid Mining
    • The idea of exploiting the natural resources of asteroids dates back over 100 years.
    • California Institute of Technology in Pasadena completed an in-depth study of the feasibility of asteroid mining
    • The study showed that, for the first time in history, this was now feasible using technology available in this decade
    • It is reasonable to assume we could identify, and bring an entire asteroid that is roughly 23 feet [7 meters] wide [~500 tons] into a high lunar orbit
  • Asteroid composition classifications
    • D class asteroids: They are also known as Trojan asteroids of Jupiter and are dark and carbonaceous in composition.
    • C class asteroids: They are found in the Earth’s outer belt and are darker and more carbonaceous than the ones found in the S class.
    • S class asteroids: They are found in the Earth’s inner belt, closer to Mars and are composed of mostly stone and iron.
    • V class asteroids: They are a far-out group of asteroids that follow a path between the orbits of Jupiter and Uranus, and are made of igneous, eruptive materials.
  • Why is mining asteroids feasible now?
    • The ability to discover and characterize enough sufficiently small near-Earth asteroids for mining.
    • An evolving ability to equip powerful enough solar electric propulsion systems to enable transportation of the captured asteroid.
    • A proposed human presence around the moon in the 2020s both enables exploration and exploitation of the returned near-Earth asteroid.
  • * Enter Planetary Resources, Inc.*
    • A new company Planetary Resources, Inc. is now making plans to be able to mine asteroids
    • The company, has been in existence for about three years, announced itself to the general public now because they are starting to aggressively search for the world’s best engineers, to help design and build a fleet of asteroid-mining robots [not Bruce Willis]
    • This company’s investors include Google execs Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, who are worth $16.7 billion and $6.2 billion
    • Their advisors include, filmmaker and adventurer James Cameron, former NASA astronaut Tom Jones and MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager
    • While it may be possible for this to happen, Planetary Resources is still years away from actually seizing an asteroid and staking a cosmic claim
    • Materials from such asteroids could be used for both the Earth and for planetary exploration, providing shielding galactic cosmic rays and propellant to transport a shielded
    • The initial focus will be developing Earth orbiting telescopes to scan for the best asteroids, and later, create extremely low-cost robotic spacecraft for surveying missions.
    • What we learn from such missions and a possible industry could someday help us deflect a much larger near-Earth object
  • The Legal angle
  • The legality of asteroid mining is in itself interesting
  • The 1967 Outer Space Treaty says that “Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”
  • Whether or not that applies to individuals or companies is one question
  • Anything launched into space remains the private property of its owner
  • However NASA and other entities ‘own’ and sell rocks and dirt from the moon
  • Even the sea-floor could be mined
    • Canada-based mining firm Nautilus Minerals said Tuesday it had signed China’s Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group as the first customer of its pioneering Papua New Guinean seafloor mine.
    • Currently it is slated to begin production in the fourth quarter of 2013 Nautilus claims the project to be the world’s first commercial seafloor mine
    • This area has deposits of rocks containing high grades of copper, gold, zinc and silver, what is known as “seafloor massive sulphides” from hydrothermal vents
    • Robots would be controlled remotely to drill for those sulphide deposits 5,250ft [1,600 m] below sea level
    • Then another machine would pump the material to a support vessel at the surface, which would then be dewatered for transport
    • These robots are currently under construction and are based on those used in deepwater oil and gas, terrestrial mining and marine dredging industries
  • Multimedia
  • Further Reading / In the News

— NEWS BYTE —

Recovery from Strokes

  • The low down
    • Currently the drugs administered for a stroke are to break up clots that caused the stroke, and need to be given within 4.5 hours after a stroke
    • Neuroscientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine were looking for alternatives
  • Significance
    • Brain-derived neurotrophic factor, BNNF, are powerful and long-studied nerve growth factor
    • BDNF is critical during the development of the nervous system and known to be involved in important brain functions including memory and learning.
    • A compound called LM22A–4, mimics this factor, is a small molecule that weighs less than one-seventieth that of BDNF
    • In a study the speed of recovery was improved rapidly, in fact those mice who had received the drug showed half as many stroked affected nerve cells as their counterparts without the drug
    • In fact the drug wasn’t even administered until a full three days after the strokes, showing that it does not limit a strokes damage but enhances recovery
    • These molecules stimulate the brain’s own stem cells to form new neurons
    • Stem-cell therapy is a somewhat invasive and expensive treatment for lost or damaged tissues, making a drug that could achieve the same results on the brain very promising and a welcome development
  • Further Reading / In the News

The competitive nature of lefties

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Talking to yourself isn’t crazy

Liquid Solar cells

— THE NEWS IS CATCHING UP—

Nine Planet System

Planet in habitable zone

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —



Credit: [Arizona State University]

Spirals on Mars

  • For making sure that we saw this, thanks to
  • Jacob Roecker & other JupiterBroadcasting staff members
  • The low down
  • What started as research into nighttime infrared temperatures of the plates, came in interest in the terrain between the plates, leading to a Arizona State University graduate student noticing spiral patterns in the lava
  • Here on Earth lava coils can be found on the Hawaiian islands(*seen in space.com article below) and near the Galapagos Rift on the Pacific Ocean floor
  • When lava flows move past each other at different speeds, or directions, rubbery lava crust can peel away or coil up to create wrinkles in the crust that can then be twisted around
  • In order to really make them out the images need to be zoomed and have their contrast tweaked a bit
  • The largest Martian coil is however bigger than any seen on Earth; at 98 ft [30 m] when the ones on Earth are about a third of that
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Researchers find new form of Mars lava flow | phys.org
  • Ancient Mars Lava Spirals Reveal Volcanic Secrets of Red Planet | space.com

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

The Shuttle Shuffle Continues



YouTube channel : daujla2

SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket

  • SpaceX is preparing for a scheduled launch of May 7th headed to the International Space Station!
  • Further Reading
  • SpaceX

You may have seen

California Meteorite



CREDIT: Lisa Warren | Credit : P. Jenniskens (SETI Institute) and Eric James (NASA Ames)

  • Last time on SciByte
  • The low down
    • Sunday April 22 over California a large fireball was seen along with a sonic boom characteristic of large meteors entering the Earth atmosphere
    • Scientists have confirmed that this meteor was between 4 to 5 billion years old and probably about the size of a minivan, about 154,300 pounds [69,989 kg]
    • Meteorites don’t actually ‘burn-up’ the friction against the air during re-entry actually causes it to vaporize
    • The sonic boom heard from this meteor was because it entered the atmosphere faster than the speed of sound, between 22,000 mph and 44,000 mph [35,000kph – 70,000kph]
  • Significance
    • The meteors reentry was seen from Sacramento, Calif., to Las Vegas and parts of northern Nevada.
    • The first pieces, discovered by Robert Ward, were neat where gold was first discovered in California in 1848
    • Ward has been hunting and collecting meteorites for more than 20 years and has found meteorites in every continent but Antarctica
    • Those two pieces were probably part of the same meteorite that broke apart on impact, each weighs about 10 grams, about the same as two nickels
    • Most nighttime meteors that you see are around the size of grain of sand or a tiny stone, and only last a few seconds
    • An meteor event of this size typically happens around the world once a year, and then most occur over ocean or uninhabited places
    • Although this event occurred just after the peak of the annual mid-April Lyrid meteor shower it is unlikely that it was a Lyrid meteor, although without more information about its trajectory it won’t be known for sure
  • Of Note
    • “NASA and the SETI Institute are asking the public to submit any amateur photos or video footage of the meteor that illuminated the sky over the Sierra Nevada mountains and created sonic booms that were heard over a wide area at 7:51 a.m. PDT Sunday, April 22, 2012.”
    • Also any security footage should be checked to see if the fireball was visible, which could also be used in pinpointing the area for fragments
  • Further Reading / In the News

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

  • May 08 1790 : 222 years ago : Metric System : Acting on a motion by a bishop, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (1754–1838), the French National Assembly decided to create a simple, stable, decimal system of measurement units. The earliest metre unit chosen was the length of a pendulum with a half-period of a second. On 30 Mar 1791, after a proposal by the Académie des sciences (Borda, Lagrange, Laplace, Monge and Condorcet), the Assembly revised the definition of the metre to be 1/10 000 000 of the distance between the north pole and the equator. On 7 Apr 1795, the Convention decreed that the new “Republican Measures” were to be henceforth legal measures in France. The metric system adopted prefixes: greek for multiples and latin for decimal fractions.
  • May 06 1937 : 75 years ago : Hindenburg : At 7:25 pm, the dirigible The Hindenburg burned while landing at the naval air station at Lakehurst, N.J. On board were 6l crew and 36 passengers. The landing approach seemed normal, when suddenly a tongue of flame appeared near the stern. Fire spread rapidly through the 7 million cubic feet of hydrogen that filled the balloon. Within a few seconds the Zeppelin exploded in a huge ball of fire. The ship fell tail first with flames shooting out the nose. It crashed into the ground 32 seconds after the flame was first spotted; 36 people died. Captain Ernst Lehmann survived the crash but died the next day. He muttered “I can’t understand it,” The cause remains the subject of debate even today.

Looking up this week

  • Solar Activity

  • Another CME will pass by the Curiosity rover around May 4th, Curiosity is actually equipped with instruments to sense and study solar storms

  • Keep an eye out for …

  • Thursday, May 3rd : Saturn and Spica are to the lower of the moon, Saturn being the farther from the Moon and to the left

  • Friday, May 4th : The Moon will now sit below both Saturn and Spica

  • Saturday, May 5th : The moon will be near the horizon below and to the left

  • Saturday, May 5th is Full Moon, called a ‘super moon’ because it is the one full moon of the year when the Moon is in its closest part of its orbit, appearing 14% larger and 30% brigher

  • Later this month there will be an Annular (ring) eclipse for the Western Americas, and a Partial eclipse for the rest.

  • The southern hemisphere should, Keep an eye out for …

  • Just remember to vertically flip all the things for the Northern hemisphere

  • Saturn and Spica will sitting above the Moon

  • Further Reading and Resources

  • More on what’s in the sky this week

  • Sky&Telescope

  • SpaceWeather.com

  • StarDate.org

  • For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au

  • Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org

  • Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz

  • AstronomyNow

  • HeavensAbove

The post Mining Asteroids & Shuttle Discovery | SciByte 44 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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