Higgs-Boson – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Mon, 22 Feb 2016 02:46:57 +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 Higgs-Boson – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 Strange Bacteria & Higgs-Boson | SciByte 85 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/33356/strange-bacteria-higgs-boson-scibyte-85/ Tue, 12 Mar 2013 20:45:31 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=33356 We take a look at dinosaur fight scars, possible sub-glacial bacteria, a robot that can throw, update on the Higgs-Boson, and more!

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We take a look at dinosaur fight scars, possible sub-glacial bacteria, a robot that can throw, update on the Higgs-Boson, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Dino-Eat-Dino World

  • Scientists say that a scar recently found on the face of a duckbill dinosaur received after a close encounter is the first clear case of a healed dinosaur wound
  • The lucky dinosaur was an adult species of duck billed dinosaur, Edmontosaurus annectens, that lived about 65 to 67 million years ago
  • The Scar
  • A teardrop-shaped patch of fossilized skin about 5×5 inches (12×14 centimeters) that was discovered with the creature\’s bones and is thought to have come from above its right eye
  • Some scientists say that the scar pattern is nearly identical to those found on modern reptiles, including iguanas
  • Other scientists are not convinced, however, they say that the skin injury was not caused by a predator attack
  • They say the size of the scar is relatively small, and it would also be consistent with the skin being pierced in some other accident such as a fall.
  • Skull Injury
  • Paleontologist at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History say the skull also showed signs of trauma, and from the size and shape of the marks on the
  • They determined that the marks on the skull, are more consistent with Tyrannosaur-bitten bones
  • Prior to this discovery, scientists knew of one other case of a dinosaur wound
  • In that case however, it was an unhealed wound that scientists think was inflicted by scavengers after the creature was already dead
  • Escape
  • Although escaping from a T. rex is something that we wouldn\’t normally think might happen, duckbill dinosaurs were not without defenses.
  • They travelled in herds, grew up to 30 feet (9 meters) in length, and could swipe their hefty tail or kick its legs to take down predators, and traveled in herds
  • They also had very powerful running muscles, which would have made them difficult to catch once they\’d taken flight
  • The Puzzle Pieces
  • Figuring out the details of the story is part of what makes paleontology exciting
  • Though still unproven, it is thought that both the skin wound and the skull injury were sustained during the same attack, possibly a T. Rex
  • The wound \”was large enough to have been a claw or a tooth,\”
  • It\’s very likely that this particular dinosaur wasn\’t the only dinosaur to have scars, whether from battle wounds or accidents
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Scarred Duckbill Dinosaur Escaped T. Rex Attack | News.NationalGeographic.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Strange Bacteria From Under the Polar Cap? … Or Momentary Hope

  • Last Time on SciByte
  • SciByte 33 | Sub Glacial Lakes & Updates – Sub Glacial Lakes (February 14, 2012)
  • Collecting the Sample
  • This discovery comes from samples collected in an expedition in 2012 where a Russian team drilled down to the surface of Lake Vostok, the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica
  • Last year the Russian team drilled almost 2.34 miles (4 kilometers) to reach the lake and take the samples.
  • The lake is believed to have been covered by ice for more than a million years but has kept its liquid state.
  • The Sample, the Truth and Fiction
  • A Russian scientist at the genetics laboratory at the Saint Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics had believed they have found a wholly new type of bacteria in the mysterious subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica
  • He claimed that one particular form of bacteria whose DNA was less than 86 percent similar to previously existing forms, as far as DNA goes, basically zero
  • The head of the genetics laboratory at the same institute said on Saturday that the strange life forms were in fact nothing but contaminants.
  • New samples of water will be taken from Lake Vostok during a new expedition in May, if the same bacteria are found then the team will be sure that they have found new life on Earth that exists in no database
  • On the “Extra-Terrestrial” Scale
  • \”If this had been found on Mars everyone would have undoubtedly said there is life on Mars. But this is bacteria from Earth.\”
  • Exploring environments such as Lake Vostok allows scientists to discover what life forms can exist in the most extreme conditions
  • Whether life could exist on some other bodies in the solar system.
  • Saturn\’s moon Enceladus and the Jupiter moon Europa as they are believed to have oceans, or large lakes, beneath their icy shells.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Russia admits no new life form found in Antarctic lake | phys.org
  • Russia finds \’new bacteria\’ in Antarctic lake | Phys.org

Cheap Interplanetary Satellites

  • Two CubeSats, designed by NASA\’s JPL and three university partners, are soon to go where no CubeSats have gone before: beyond Earth orbit.
  • CubeSats are tiny satellites, some no bigger than four inches (10 cm) on each side, sent into orbit as secondary payloads on other launch vehicles
  • The Mission
  • The space agency’s twin satellites will be the first CubeSats to leave Earth\’s orbit for interplanetary space
  • If the interplanetary test launch succeeds, CubeSats could someday blanket the solar system, conducting cheap, high-risk missions to comets, asteroids, moons and planets
  • The INSPIRE project has been approved by NASA to launch sometime between 2014 and 2016, but a specific launch vehicle hasn\’t been selected.
  • Just where the pioneering CubeSats will go is still unclear, however, since it’s not known yet which model rocket will be used for launch
  • The first mission will be basically an escape trajectory in some unknown direction
  • Since they won\’t have much propulsion or scientific instrumentation, the INSPIRE craft are mainly just a test of whether tiny machines can survive the harsh environment of space.
  • The Challenges
  • One of the challenges of the project is figuring how the tiny satellites will communicate with Earth.
  • CubeSats are far cheaper than a traditional space mission but they lack room for complex communications systems or large power sources.
  • As they away from Earth they need larger antennas to communicate with the low-powered craft
  • In addition once they spacecraft leaves the protective magnetic field surrounding Earth, it\’s at risk of failure from solar radiation
  • Traditional satellites are built with more expensive \”radiation-hardened\” components
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Tiny Satellites\’ Big Mission: Going Beyond Earth Orbit | Space.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

“BigDog” Can Throw Things Now Too

— Updates —

Higgs-Boson

  • Last time on SciByte
  • SciByte 53 | Higgs-Boson (July 10, 2012)
  • SciByte 37 | Solar Storms and Higgs Boson
  • Physicists told a conference in La Thuile, Italy, that more analysis is needed before a definitive statement can be made on the Higgs-Boson
  • Inch-by-Inch
  • Since scientists\’ announcement last July that they had found a particle likely to be the Higgs, much data has been analysed, and its properties are becoming clearer
  • Key to a positive identification of the particle is a detailed analysis of its properties and how it interacts with other particles
  • Spin-Zero?
  • The existence of spin angular momentum is where particles are observed to possess angular momentum that cannot be accounted for by orbital angular momentum alone
  • Experiments indicate that the elementary particles are not made up of smaller particles rotating around a center point so the spin of an elementary particle is therefore seen as a truly intrinsic physical property, akin to the particle\’s electric charge and rest mass.
  • Current theories are that these elementary particles spin is simply a physical property, like electrical charge and mass
  • Rotating a spin-1/2 particle by 360 degrees does not bring it back to the same quantum state, but to the state with the opposite quantum phase; this is detectable, in principle, with interference experiments. To return the particle to its exact original state, one needs a 720 degree
  • Rotating a spin-2 particle 180 degrees can bring it back to the same quantum state and a spin-4 particle should be rotated 90 degrees to bring it back to the same quantum state.
  • A spin 0 particle can be imagined as sphere which looks the same after whatever angle it is turned through.
  • Several teams researching the particle determining the Higgs-Boson spin say it must be spin-zero
  • All the analysis conducted so far strongly indicates spin-zero, but it is not yet able to rule out entirely the possibility that the particle has spin-two
  • The Future …?
  • Until physicists can confidently observe the particle\’s spin, the particle will remain Higgs-like
  • New research will have to stop as the Large Hadron Collider is upgraded, but physicists will still have plenty of data to analyze
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Particle looking \’more and more\’ like Higgs, LHC scientists say | Phys.org

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • March 16, 1867 : 146 years ago : Antiseptic surgery : The Lancet published a paper by Joseph Lister, the first of a series of articles in the Lancet on his discovery of antiseptic surgery: On a New Method of Treating Compound Fractures, Abscess, &c. Lister applied Louis Pasteur\’s idea that the microorganisms causing gangrene might be controlled with chemical solutions. Since the use carbolic acid (phenol) was known as means of deodorizing sewage, Lister tested the results of using a solution of it for spraying instruments, on surgical incisions, and applied to dressings. Upon finding this procedure substantially reduced the incidence of gangrene, Lister published his results in series of articles in the Lancet on the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery

Looking up this week

The post Strange Bacteria & Higgs-Boson | SciByte 85 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Meteorites & Asteroids | SciByte 82 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/32102/meteorites-asteroids-scibyte-82/ Tue, 19 Feb 2013 22:04:04 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=32102 We take a look at the Russian Meteorite ‘strike,’ a dark matter announcement, headaches, asteroid flyby, viewer feedback, and more!

The post Meteorites & Asteroids | SciByte 82 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at the Russian Meteorite ‘strike,’ a dark matter announcement, headaches, asteroid flyby, viewer feedback, an update on CERN, 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

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Picks of the Week:

[asa]B00B7VZN76[/asa]
[asa]B00BAXTY8U[/asa]
[asa]B0060MYM7O[/asa]

Show Notes:

2013 Russian Meteorite Strike

— NEWS BYTE —

Dark Matter Announcement Coming

  • Dark Matter
  • The dark matter theory was born 80 years ago when Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky discovered that there was not enough mass in observable stars or galaxies to allow the force of gravity to hold them together
  • The Standard Model only accounts for only around four or five percent of the stuff in the Universe that we see
  • It could be useful for identifying the stable of particles and forces that regulate our daily life, the Standard Model only tells part of the cosmic story
  • Dark matter, could make up 23 percent, and dark energy, an enigmatic force that appears to drive the expansion of the Universe, could accounts for around 72 or 73 percent
  • Some physics theories suggest that dark matter is made of WIMPS (weakly interacting massive particles), a class of particles that are their own antimatter partner particles
  • When matter and antimatter partners meet, they annihilate each other, so if two WIMPs collided, they would be destroyed, releasing a pair of daughter particles – an electron and its antimatter counterpart, the positron, in the process
  • Although we can not explain gravity, although we know how to measure gravity and exploit it for our needs
  • Announcement Coming Up
  • In about two weeks the first paper of results of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle collector mounted on the outside of the International Space Station, will be published
  • Researchers have said that the results bear on the mystery of dark matter, that \”It will not be a minor paper\” and that they rewrote the paper 30 times before they were satisfied with it
  • Even with this tease for a \’major announcement\’ scientists still say it represents a \”small step\” in figuring out what dark matter is, and perhaps not the final answer
  • Tracking Cosmic Particles
  • To track these phantom particles, physicists rely on several methods and tools
  • The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, the biggest particle smasher in the world
  • The South Pole Neutrino Observatory, tracks subatomic particles known as neutrinos, which, according to physicists, are created when dark matter passes through the Sun and interacts with protons
  • The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) aboard the International Space Station (ISS), captures gamma rays coming from collisions of dark matter particles.
  • Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer
  • Has the potential to detect the positrons and electrons produced by dark matter annihilations in the Milky Way
  • It was installed on the International Space Station in May 2011, and so far, it has detected 25 billion particle events, including about 8 billion electrons and positrons
  • This will first science paper from this instrument that will report how many of each were found, and what their energies are
  • If the experiment detected an abundance of positrons peaking at a certain energy, that could indicate a detection of dark matter,
  • What it Might Mean for What We Might Find
  • There is a lot of stuff that can mimic dark matter,\”
  • If the experiment detected an abundance of positrons peaking at a certain energy, that could indicate a detection of dark matter,
  • While electrons are abundant in the universe around us, there are fewer known processes that could give rise to positrons
  • The smoking gun signature is a rise and then a dramatic fall\” in the number of positrons with respect to energy
  • The positrons produced by dark matter annihilation would have a very specific energy, depending on the mass of the WIMPs making up dark matter
  • Another telling sign will be the question of whether positrons appear to be coming from one direction in space, or from all around
  • If they\’re from dark matter, scientists expect them to be spread evenly through space, but if they\’re created by some normal astrophysical process, such as a star explosion, then they would originate in a single direction
  • Regardless of whether AMS has found dark matter yet, the scientists said they expected the question of dark matter\’s origin to become clearer soon
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Has Dark Matter Finally Been Found? Big News Soon | Space.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Lightning and Headaches

  • The New Study
  • A new study has found a 31 percent increase of the risk of headache and a 28 percent increased risk of migraine for chronic headache sufferers on days that lightning struck within 25 miles (40 kilometers) of their homes
  • In addition new-onset headaches and migraines increased by 24 percent and 23 percent, respectively
  • The Correlation
  • This is the first study to show a correlation between lightning and associated weather phenomena and the squalls in our heads
  • How exactly lightning might trigger headaches is still unknown but there are a number of possible explanations
  • Electromagnetic waves emitted from lightning could trigger headaches
  • Another explanation might be that lightning produces increases in air pollutants like ozone, and can cause release of fungal spores that might lead to migraine
  • Still Unknown
  • This study does show an apparent link between lightning and headaches; however, the exact mechanisms through which lightning and/or its associated meteorologic factors trigger headache is still unknown
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Lightning = Headaches? | TheWeatherChannel
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Newsflash: Lightning May Cause Headaches – News Watch | newswatch.nationalgeographic.com

The February 15th Asteroid Fly-By

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Earth/Moon Relationship Simulations/Animations

  • Jason Null
  • What kind of program or software has a virtual model of the Earth and Moon
  • Free JAVA Simulators
  • Moon Phase and the Horizon diagram [free-java]
  • Lunar Phase Simulator [free-java]
  • Jonathan H
  • Why do I seem to see the moon in the sky during the day so often?
  • Different components to this
  • Lunar Phase Simulator [free-java]
  • The moon follow the same ‘orbital path’ as the sun, just as different speeds
  • Click [Start Animation] to the bottom left to get a feel for this
  • Higher latitudes have longer days and nights, which also gives the moon longer or fewer hours to be in the sky.
  • If you think about it each time the Moon sets or rises at night it is doing the opposite for someone on the daytime side of the Earth

— Updates —

CERN, the Higgs-Boson, and Upgrades

  • Upgrades
  • Over the past three years, CERN has slammed protons together more than six million billion times
  • Now seven months after the discovery announcement for a Boson, which they are now 99.9 percent certain is the Higgs-Boson, CERN scientists have brought CERN offline for an 18-month upgrade
  • The upgrade will boost the LHC\’s energy capacity, essential for CERN to confirm definitively that its boson is the Higgs, and allow it to probe new dimensions such as supersymmetry and dark matter
  • The Data
  • Scientists still have vasts amount of data to comb through during this downtime,
  • Even with the shutdown, CERN\’s researchers won\’t be taking a breather, as they must trawl through a vast mound of data
  • They expect that they will have much more information about the data from the last three years, and once they are able to go back through the data they will probably have more questions, some of which will lead to more tests under the new upgrades
  • What’s to Come
  • In 2011 the LHC has able to achieve collisions with an energy level of seven teraelectron volts
  • During 2012 CERN was able to increase to eight teraelectron volts
  • When it comes back online in 2015 after the upgrades are completed they will be able to achieve 13-14
  • It is expected that CERN will then run at those conditions for three to four years before more upgrades are installed
  • Social Media
  • CERN @CERN
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • CERN Website
  • After Higgs Boson, scientists prepare for next quantum leap

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Space Station Communication

  • NASA\’s Mission Control center in Houston lost communication with the International Space Station at 9:45 a.m. ET (1445 GMT). [19 Feb 2013]
  • They restored contact with the space station at 12:34 p.m. ET (17:34 GMT),
  • A NASA official said \”Flight controllers were in the process of updating the station’s command and control software and were transitioning from the primary computer to the backup computer to complete the software load when the loss of communication occurred,\”
  • A main data relay system malfunctioned, and the computer that controls the station\’s critical functions switched to a backup
  • \”Mission Control Houston was able to communicate with the crew as the space station flew over Russian ground stations before 11:00 a.m. EST and instructed the crew to connect a backup computer to begin the process of restoring communications,\”
  • This is not the first time Mission Control has lost direct communication with the orbiting science laboratory
  • In 2010, the space station briefly lost communication with the ground when a primary computer failed and the backup had to take over. Communications were out for about one hour before NASA restored the connection
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • NASA Restores Contact with Space Station | Space.com
  • Temporary Comm Loss Interrupts Crew’s Day | NASA.gov

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • February, 20 1962 : 51 years ago : Glenn in orbit : John Glenn piloted the Mercury-Atlas 6 Friendship 7 spacecraft on the first U.S. manned orbital mission. [The first manned orbital flight was Yu. Gagarin on the the Vostok 1 on 12 April 1961]
    Launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, he completed three-orbits around the earth, at a maximum altitude of approx. 162 miles and an orbital velocity of approx. 17,500 mph. He spotted Perth, Australia, when that city\’s residents greeted him by switching on their house lights in unison. A four-cent U.S. stamp was put on sale the same day, making it the first U.S. stamp issued on the day of the event it commemorated. Glenn returned to space 36 years later, making 134 more orbits as a crew member of the space shuttle Discovery (29 Oct – 7 Nov 1998) for investigations on space flight and the aging process.

Looking up this week

The post Meteorites & Asteroids | SciByte 82 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Multitasking & Tractor Beams | SciByte 79 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/30961/multitasking-tractor-beams-scibyte-79/ Tue, 29 Jan 2013 22:12:40 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=30961 We take a look at multitasking abilities, red pens, tractor beams, bicycle airbags, tracking twitter, spacecraft updates, viewer feedback, and more.

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We take a look at multitasking abilities, red pens, tractor beams, bicycle airbags, tracking twitter, spacecraft updates, viewer feedback, 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

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Support the Show:

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Audible Book: Download Star Wars: The Truce at Bakura

Show Notes:

Multitasking Proficiency

  • The low down
  • Most people believe they can multitask effectively, but a new study indicates that people who multitask the most – including talking on a cell phone while driving – are least capable of doing so.
  • The Study
  • The study participants were 310 University of Utah psychology undergraduates – 176 female and 134 male with a median age of 21 – who volunteered for their department\’s subject pool in exchange for extra course credit.
  • The subjects were put through a battery of tests and questionnaires to measure actual multitasking ability, perceived multitasking ability, cell phone use while driving, use of a wide array of electronic media, and personality traits such as impulsivity and sensation-seeking.
  • Research suggests that people who engage in multitasking often do so not because they have the ability, but because they are less able to block out distractions and focus on a singular task
  • The more people multitask by talking on cell phones while driving or by using multiple media at once, the more they lack the actual ability to multitask, and their perceived multitasking ability \”was found to be significantly inflated
  • The Results
  • To measure actual multitasking ability, participants performed a test named Operation Span, or OSPAN.
  • The test involves two tasks: memorization and math computation where participants must remember two to seven letters, each separated by a math equation that they must identify as true or false
  • A simple example of a question: \”is 2+4=6?, g, is 3-2=2?, a, is 4×3=12.\” Answer: true, g, false, a, true.
  • Participants also ranked their perceptions of their own multitasking ability by giving themselves a score ranging from zero to 100, with 50 percent meaning average, 70 percent of participants thought they were above average at multitasking
  • Study subjects reported how often they used a cell phone while driving, and what percentage of the time they are on the phone while driving
  • Subjects also completed a survey of how often and for how many hours they use which media, including printed material, television and video, computer video, music, nonmusic audio, video games, phone, instant and text messaging, e-mail, the Web and other computer software such as word processing
  • Multitasking, including cell phone use while driving, correlated significantly with sensation-seeking, indicating some people multitask because it is more stimulating, interesting and challenging, and less boring – even if it may hurt their overall performance
  • Of Note
  • The data suggest the people talking on cell phones while driving are people who probably shouldn\’t.
  • In fact the people who are most likely to multitask harbor the illusion they are better than average at it, when in fact they are no better than average and often worse
  • People who score high on a test of actual multitasking ability tend not to multitask because they are better able to focus attention on the task at hand
  • Study participants also reported spending 13 percent of their driving time talking on a cell phone, which Strayer says roughly squares with federal estimates that one in 10 drivers are on the phone at any given time
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Automated Operation Span Tutorial | zupef
  • Image Driving simulator they use in some research | David Strayer, University of Utah
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Frequent multitaskers are bad at it: Motorists overrate ability to talk on cell phones when driving | MedXPress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Attack of the red pens

  • The low down
  • Sociologists claim in a paper they\’ve had published that when teachers use a red pen to add comments to student papers, students perceive them more negatively than if they use another color pen
  • The Study
  • The two researchers enlisted the assistance of 199 undergraduate students – each was given four versions of an already graded essay by an unknown instructor
  • The graded remarks were deemed as high or low in quality with some written in red, others in blue
  • Students were asked to read the essay and the remarks given by the instructor and then to rate how they felt about what the instructor had written and to suggest what grade they would have given the essay
  • They were also asked how they felt about the instructor that had written the original remarks
  • The Results
  • After they\’d finished with their opinions, each was also given a questionnaire designed to provide the researchers with more concrete data.
  • The researchers found that the student volunteers didn\’t seem to be impacted one way or another by pen color when they agreed with the instructor\’s comments and grade
  • When they disagreed; however, there were definitely some differences – mainly negative
  • When the instructors\’ comments were written in red versus blue the volunteers judged them more harshly and as a result, rated them lower in \”bedside manner.\”
  • The volunteers didn\’t seem to judge the quality of the comments any differently – their negative feelings were aimed at the person that had written the remarks when they wrote in red ink
  • Of Note
  • The researchers theorize that red ink is akin to using all caps when writing e-mail or text messages – it\’s like shouting at a person
  • Those being graded naturally feel a little bit abused and respond by growing angry or sad, which, they note, doesn\’t really promote the learning process
  • The team suggest instructors stop using red pens and go with a shade of blue instead
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Study shows red pen use by instructors leads to more negative response | phys.org

Tractor Beams a reality?

  • Although light manipulation techniques have existed since the 1970s, this is the first time a light beam has been used to draw objects towards the light source, albeit at a microscopic level.
  • What is it?
  • Researchers have found a way to generate a special optical field that efficiently reverses radiation pressure of light.
  • The new technique could lead to more efficient medical testing, such as in the examination of blood samples
  • The team discovered a technique which will allow them to provide \’negative\’ force acting upon minuscule particles
  • The technique
  • Normally when matter and light interact the solid object is pushed by the light and carried away in the stream of photons
  • Such radiation force was first identified by Johanes Kepler when observing that tails of comets point away from the sun
    Over recent years researchers have realised that while this is the case for most of the optical fields, there is a space of parameters when this force reverses.
  • Scientists have now demonstrated the first experimental realisation of this concept together with a number of exciting applications for biomedical photonics and other disciplines
  • What does it mean to todays science?
  • The occurrence of negative force is very specific to the properties of the object, such as size and composition
  • This allows optical sorting of micro-objects in a simple and inexpensive device
  • Optical fractionation has been identified as one of the most promising biomedical applications of optical manipulation allowing
  • Scientists identified certain conditions, in which objects held by the \”tractor\” beam force-field, rearranged themselves to form a structure which made the beam even stronger
  • Multimedia
  • Image Example of comet with two tails | SpacePlace.nasa.gov
  • First video reveals working tractor beam in action | newscientist.com
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Star Trek\’s \’tractor\’ beam created in miniature by researchers | phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Bicycle Airbags

HIggs-Boson Twitter Rumors and Following

  • Last time on SciByte
  • SciByte 53 | Higgs Boson – To Higgs-Boson or not to Higgs-Boson | July 10, 2012
  • The low down
  • For the first time scientists have been able to analyse the dynamics of social media on a global scale before, during and after the announcement of a major scientific discovery.
  • The model is based on the spread of gossip on Twitter prior to the Higgs boson discovery announcement
  • The Data
  • According to the analysed data, the rumours that the Higgs boson had been discovered started around 1st July 2012
  • That means it was one day before the announcement at Tevatron, and three days before the official announcement from CERN on 4th July.
  • The research shows that rumours started to spread on Twitter firstly in the USA, UK, Spain, Canada, Australia, as well as Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany, all countries with strong scientific connections to the experiments at the LHC.
  • What it means
  • Other researchers on the project are also interested in how information spreads on social media
  • This is really useful for practical applications such as marketing, for example if you want to run a global marketing campaign you can identify key people on social media to help you to spread your message
  • Once you have identified these key advocates, you can change and steer the message in a different direction, potentially modifying opinions of millions of people or keep the interest in the topic going
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube The Anatomy of a Scientific Gossip – World View | networkedsystemslab
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Scientists analyse global Twitter gossip around Higgs boson discovery | phys.org

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE —

Opportunity rover still on the move

  • Last time on SciByte
  • SciByte 61 | ‘Tatooine’ Exoplanets & Eye’s – Opportunity, Driving Distance and life | September 4, 2012
  • Nine Years of Service
  • NASA\’s Opportunity rover landed on Mars the night of Jan. 24, 2004 PST (just after midnight EST on Jan. 25), three weeks after its twin, Spirit, touched down
  • Spirit and Opportunity were originally supposed to spend three months searching for evidence of past water activity on the Red Planet
  • Spirit finally stopped communicating with Earth in March 2010, after getting mired in soft sand and failing to maneuver into a position that would allow it to slant its solar panels toward the sun over the 2009-2010 Martian winter. NASA declared the rover dead in 2011 after 7 years of service
  • Opportunity, after 9 years of service, is currently inspecting clay deposits along the rim of Mars\’ huge Endeavour Crater. Clays form in relatively neutral (as opposed to acidic or basic) water, so
  • Rover road trips
  • So far, robotic rovers have been to the moon and Mars, with astronauts actually driving a lunar car on the moon during NASA\’s Apollo program
  • Soviet-era Lunakhod 2 : In the lead for total distance travelled the farthest is the the Soviet-era Lunakhod 2, which drove 23 miles (37 kilometers) during its 1973 mission
  • NASA\’s Apollo 17 moon rover : The next rover with the most driving distance is NASA\’s Apollo 17 moon rover, which was driven 22.3 miles (35.89 km) by astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt in 1972
  • Opportunity rover : Next, in a close third, is the Opportunity rover, which has been driving across the plains of Meridiani Planum on the Red Planet since 2004 and has driven more than 22.03 miles (35.46 km) and is still going today
  • This means that Opportunity is a mere one third of a mile (0.4 km) to being the second farthest driven, and a little under a mile (1.5 km) to being the farthest
  • I estimate, barring any delays for science or equipment and based on past mileage, that in the next 2 months it might overtake the distance travelled by Apollo 17 rover, and the distance by the Lunokhod in the next 6 months.
  • The latest to enter the race is Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity, which is just getting started with only 0.4 mile (0.7 km) traveled so far.
    the area may once have been capable of supporting primitive microbial life
  • Multimedia
  • Distances Driven on Other Worlds Infographic | Space.com
  • Social Media
  • Spirit and Oppy @MarsRovers
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Distance Traveled, Extraterrestrial Vehicles | Wheeled Vehicles, Moon & Mars | Space.com
  • NASA\’s Opportunity Rover Begins Year 10 on Mars | Space.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Dyscalculia

  • Last time on SciByte
  • SciByte 78 | Dyscalculia & the Flu – Dyscalculia | January 22, 2013
  • James Lewis
  • Suggests a concern that there is an overdiagnosis of \’labels\’
  • Could simply be that you could learn differently
  • Response
  • Almost certainly “the system” can over-diagnose students
  • Are you or were you “diagnosed”? If so learn what exemptions, etc, that you qualify for should you choose to utilize them
  • Try different ways of learning outside the classroom that can help in the classroom or supplement

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

THIS WEEK

  • NASA – Day of Remembrance
  • Apollo 1 | January 27, 1967 | Command Pilot Virgil \”Gus\” Grissom, Senior Pilot Edward H. White and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee
  • Challenger | January 28, 1986 | Francis R. Scobee – Mission Commander, Michael J. Smith – Pilot, Ellison S. Onizuka – Mission Specialist 1, Judith A. Resnik – Mission Specialist 2, Ronald E. McNair – Mission Specialist 3, Christa McAuliffe – Payload Specialist 1, Gregory B. Jarvis – Payload Specialist 2
  • Columbia | February 1, 2003 | Rick Husband, Commander; William C. McCool, Pilot; Michael P. Anderson, Payload Commander; David M. Brown, Mission Specialist 1; Kalpana Chawla, Mission Specialist 2; Laurel Clark, Mission Specialist 4; and Ilan Ramon, Payload Specialist 1

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Feb 01, 1972 : 40 years ago : Hand-held calculator : The first scientific handheld calculator was introduced for $395 by Hewlett- Packard, named the HP-35 for having 35 keys. It was the first handheld calculator able to perform logarithmic and trigonometric functions with one keystroke. The red LED display could give scientific notation up to 10 digits mantissa and 2 digits exponent. The price was reduced several times, eventually to $195. By Feb 1975 (when production of the model was discontinued), 300,000 had been sold. The numbers and functions for calculations were entered in “Reverse Polish Notation”(RPN), which used an “ENTER” key but needed no parentheses or “=” key. It ran on rechargeable batteries and had electronics with several integrated circuits in a 3.1\” x 5.8\” x 1.4\” (79 ×147×34 mm) case.
  • Image author : Seth Morabito | originally posted to Flickr as HP 35 Calculator

Looking up this week

The post Multitasking & Tractor Beams | SciByte 79 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!

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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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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.

]]> HIV & SpaceView | SciByte 72 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/28011/hiv-spaceview-scibyte-72/ Tue, 27 Nov 2012 21:21:10 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=28011 We take a look at HIV treatment, public help watching the skies, Space Station, Curiosity updates!

The post HIV & SpaceView | SciByte 72 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at HIV treatment, public help watching the skies, Space Station, Curiosity updates, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Storm Front: The Dresden Files, Book 1 and Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Book 1

Annihilation: Star Wars: The Old Republic Audio Book

Show Notes:

New combination of HIV–1 antiretroviral drugs

  • The low down
  • Michel Nussenzweig’s Laboratory of Molecular Immunology found that a combination of five different antibodies that effectively suppressed HIV–1 replication and kept the virus at bay for a 60 day period after termination of therapy
  • In addition this new combination has a longer half-life than current antiretroviral drugs that require daily intake.
  • Significance
  • These especially potent antibodies were only recently discovered
  • They were identified and cloned from HIV-infected patients whose immune systems showed an unusually high ability to neutralize HIV
  • The antibodies had been written off as a treatment for HIV/AIDS because previous studies showed only a limited effect on controlling the virus before these more potent antibodies were discovered
  • HIV–1 is notorious for evading the immune system’s attacks by constantly mutating
  • Antibodies target HIV–1’s surface protein gp160, a large molecule that forms a spike that seeks out host cells and attaches to them
    One antibody alone wasn’t enough to quell the virus; neither was a mix of three, five of them in unison proved too complicated for gp160 to mutate its way out of.
  • Of Note
  • Although HIV–1 infection in humanized mice differs in many important aspects from infection in humans, the results are encouraging to investigate these antibodies in clinical trials
  • It also may be that a combination of antibodies and the already established antiretroviral therapy is more efficacious than either alone
  • These antibodies could be used as a treatment one day, it is conceivable that patients would only need to take traditional drugs until the virus is controlled then receive antibodies every two to three months to maintain that control
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Potent antibodies neutralize HIV and could offer new therapy, study finds | MedicalXPress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

DARAPA’s SpaceView Program

  • The U.S. military is launching a far-out neighborhood watch. But instead of warding off burglars, these amateur watchdogs are tracking orbital debris and possible satellite collisions in Earth orbit.
  • Significance
  • The sky-monitoring project, called SpaceView, is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program that enrolls the talents of amateur astronomers
  • SpaceView should provide more diverse data from different geographic locations
  • It is envisioned as a long-term partnership. that could potentially include time-sharing on telescopes, upgraded hardware at the astronomer’s site or financial compensation
  • Of Note
  • SpaceView hopes to engage amateur astronomers by purchasing remote access to an already in-use telescope or by providing a telescope to selected astronomers
  • Telescopes used for astrophotography, asteroid hunting or simply high-quality astronomy are well suited for SpaceView’s needs
  • This new program provides the means to upgrade a skywatcher’s site to a state-of-the-art fully automated observer in late 2013, the process will start to select the first dozen members of the project
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • DARPA’s SpaceView project
  • DARPA Wants Amateur Help Tracking Space Junk | Space.com
  • DARPA unveils SpaceView program to engage amateur astronomers in helping to protect satellites | phys.org

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

  • Planetary Alignment
  • Mercury, Venus and Saturn will be aligned over the Giza Pyramids on Dec 3
  • While this is true they will not be perfectly aligned over the pyramids, they will be more vertically aligned in fact
  • These three planets formed a similar alignment in 2007

— Updates —

Higgs-Boson

  • Of Note
  • This information is from a blog on the Scientific American website
  • The Low Down
  • New data from the LHC continues to show promising results for Higgs-Boson particle
  • Further data is also following the Standard Model of particle physics limiting potential extensions
  • Including the concept of supersymmetry, the proposal that every elementary particle has a heavier, as-yet-unseen cousin
  • The LHC has yet to find any evidence for supersymmetric particles of any kind, although is has not been ruled out by our measurement, but it is strongly constrained
  • Only certain flavors of supersymmetry jibe with the new data, failure to find one variant of a theory is not evidence against other variants,”
  • The reigning theory of subatomic particles and forces, the Standard Model of particle physics, predicts just how often the effect should occur
  • The LHCb data match up well with the Standard Model predictions
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • LHC Experiment Yields No Insight into Post-Higgs Physics | blog.ScientificAmerican.com

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

Kepler gets mission extension

  • NASA is marking two milestones in the search for planets like Earth; the successful completion of the Kepler Space Telescope’s three-and-a-half-year prime mission and the beginning of an extended mission that could last as long as four years.
  • Highlights from the prime mission
  • Kepler was help identify more than 2,300 planet candidates and confirm more than 100 planets
  • Hundreds of Earth-size planet candidates have been found
  • confirmed the discovery of the first planetary system with more than one planet transiting the same star
  • the discovery of the first unquestionably rocky planet outside the solar system, 1.4 times the size of Earth in September 2011
  • Confirmed the existence of a world with a double sunset
  • Discoveries of six additional worlds orbiting double stars further demonstrated planets can form and persist in the environs of a double-star system
  • In December 2011 first planet in a habitable zone
  • In February 2012 transiting planet candidates totaled of 2,321
  • Recently the joint effort of amateur astronomers and scientists led to the first reported case of a planet orbiting a double star
  • Social Media
  • NASA Kepler | @NASAKepler
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Kepler wraps prime mission, begins extension | phys.org

Space Station Expedition 32/33 crew Returns Home

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –

  • Wind and Radiation
  • Radiation levels at the Martian surface appear to be roughly similar to those experienced by astronauts in low-Earth orbit and about half as high as the levels Curiosity experienced during its nine-month cruise through deep space
  • This add more support that astronauts can indeed function on the Red Planet for limited stretches of time.
  • These findings demonstrate that Mars’ atmosphere, though just 1 percent as thick as that of Earth, does provide a significant amount of shielding
  • Mars however lacks a magnetic field, which gives our planet another layer of protection.
  • Although these findings are preliminary, as Curiosity is just three months into a planned two-year prime mission
  • American Geophysical conference
  • Hard numbers on Martian surface radiation levels are planned to be released at the conference Dec 3
  • In a Nov 20 NPR radio interview Curiosity rover’s Principal Investigator, John Grotzinger, said that the team will soon make an announcement “for history books”
  • Organic molecules typically consists of carbon atoms in rings or long chains, where other atoms (e.g. hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen) are attached
  • While organics are a prerequisite to life. Life requires finding much more complex molecules, like amino acids and far more beyond that.
  • Hypotheses on the Announcement
  • They have already published preliminary surface radiation readings and there is evidence that they will be announcing the exact radiation reading on the surface on Mars.
  • The fact that surface levels of radiation do not preclude life will be part of the announcement, although they are still awaiting surface radiation readings from a CME
  • The SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) instrument was the last used before moving on and they retained some of the sample they could repeat the analysis. It looks for looks for and measure the abundances of light elements, such as hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen
  • In addition they have said they are analyzing data from the instrument and are not yet ready to discuss the results
  • There is a chance that they will announce evidence of organic compounds if they do it will most likely be a simple hydrocarbon. Neither of which means life on Mars
  • I believe a much less likely chance would be the announcement of nitrogen in the soil
  • Check back over the next two SciBytes for the actual announcements
  • They have already published preliminary surface radiation readings and there is evidence + Multimedia
  • YouTube Curiosity Rover Report (Nov. 15, 2012): Wind and Radiation on | JPLNews
  • Animation of Curiosity Rover’s First ‘Touch and Go’ | NASAJPL
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Astronauts Could Survive Mars Radiation, Curiosity Rover Finds | Space.com
  • Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity Rover Preparing for Thanksgiving Activities | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
  • [Mars Science Laboratory: NASA Rover Providing New Weather And Radiation Data About Mars | ](mars.jpl.nasa.gov](https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1393)
  • Curiosity providing new weather and radiation data about Mars | phys.org
  • Digging deep into Martian soil | Atom & Cosmos | Science News
  • Is Historic Discovery imminent concerning Martian Organic Chemistry? | UniverseToday.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back


+ Dec 01 1997 : 15 years ago : Planetary Lineup : Eight planets from our Solar System lined up from West to East beginning with Pluto, followed by Mercury, Mars, Venus, Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, and Saturn, with a crescent moon alongside, in a rare alignment visible from Earth that lasted until Dec 8. Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn are visible to the naked eye, with Venus and Jupiter by far the brightest. A good pair of binoculars is needed to see the small blue dots that are Uranus and Neptune. Pluto is visible only by telescope. The planets also aligned in May 2000, but too close to the sun to be visible from Earth. It will be at least another 100 years before so many planets will be so close and so visible

Looking up this week

  • Sunspots
  • VIDEO of Sunspot AR1620 doubling in size, it is now almost 10 times a wide as Earth
  • Although it has been relatively quiet the magnetic fields are now changing, leading forecasters to believe there is a 35% chance of it producing an M-class flare
  • M-class flares are medium-sized; they can cause brief radio blackouts that affect Earth’s polar regions
  • Keep an eye out for …
  • Wed, Nov 28 | Early evening | Jupiter is close and to the upper left of the Moon and the star Aldebaran, the “eye” of Taurus, the bull, to the right of the Moon.
  • Fri, Nov 30 | ~ hour after end of twilight | The waning Moon rises look right of it, by a bit more than a fist-width at arm’s length, for orange-red Betelgeuse sparkling in Orion’s shoulder.
  • Venus / Saturn | Before Dawn | Are together in the SESaturn to the lower left
  • Mars | Evening Twilight | Low in the SW
  • Further Reading and Resources
  • 1* = pinky finger
  • 5* = three middle fingers
  • 10* = closed fist
  • 15* = pointer and pinky spread \m/
  • 25* = pinky to thumb spread
  • 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 HIV & SpaceView | SciByte 72 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.

]]> Cool Pavement & Martian Snow | SciByte 63 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/24751/cool-pavement-martian-snow-scibyte-63/ Tue, 18 Sep 2012 21:06:09 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=24751 We take a look at keeping pavements cool, snow on Mars, volcano's, painless shots, updates on the Higgs-Boson, spacecraft updates, and more!

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We take a look at keeping pavements cool, snow on Mars, volcano’s, painless shots, tooth protection, updates on the Higgs-Boson, spacecraft updates, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes

Pavement Temperatures

  • New ‘Cool pavement’ technology could make parking lots cool, literally
  • The low down
  • In a typical city, pavements account for 35 to 50 percent of surface area, half is comprised of streets and about 40 percent of exposed parking lots
  • Pavements reflect as much as 30 to 50 percent of the sun’s energy, compared to only 5 percent for new asphalt (and 10 to 20 percent for aged asphalt)
  • Most of these are constructed with dark materials
  • Dark pavements absorb almost all of the sun’s energy, the pavement surface heats up, which in turn also warm the local air
  • Significance
  • Berkeley Lab scientists have been studying “cool pavement” technologies
  • Like cool roofs, which are lighter-colored roofs that keep the air both inside and outside the building cooler by reflecting more of the sun’s energy
  • Cool pavements can either be made from traditional pavement materials that are lighter in color such as cement concrete or it can consist of cool-colored coatings or surface treatments for asphalt surfaces
  • An ideal design goal would be a pavement with solar reflectance of at least 35 percent
  • Sealcoats are a common maintenance practice for parking lots and schoolyards since the asphalt pavement structure degrades over time
  • scientists will be collecting data from the exhibit to see how the coatings fare over time and at some point they will reach an equilibrium at which the solar reflectance won’t degrade much anymore
  • They are very interested to see what happens when it rains, which may help the coatings self-clean and restore higher reflectance
  • Cool pavement coatings can be used in lieu of a sealcoat, and is a good strategy for cities looking to introduce cool pavement technologies
  • Across an entire city, small changes in air temperature could be a huge benefit as it can slow the formation of smog
  • And just a couple of degrees can also reduce peak power demand, by reducing the energy load from air-conditioning
  • In addition more reflective parking lots could allow building owners and cities to save on energy needed to illuminate streets and parking lots
  • Chicago has already reported energy savings from using solar-reflective pavements in its alleys
  • More field studies are needed however to verify and quantify the results as many of these benefits have been confirmed by scientific models
  • Heat Island Group has converted a portion of a new temporary parking lot at Berkeley Lab into a cool pavement exhibit that will also allow them to evaluate the products over time
  • The exhibit provides an opportunity to feature cool pavement coatings that are applied directly to existing paved surfaces
  • It features six coatings donated by two manufacturers [Emerald Cities Cool Pavement and StreetBond]
  • The team will closely monitor the solar reflectance values and temperatures of 20 x 24 square-foot pavement sections of six different materials on a residential street on the UC Davis campus
  • Scientists hope to better understand how changes in solar reflectance over time affect heat transfer throughout the pavement structure
  • Of Note
  • These studies may assist policymakers and pavement professionals in making informed decisions regarding cool pavement requirements for building codes and project specifications
  • One hurdle is that the benefits of cool pavements are more for the public rather than the building owner as benefits are less immediately tangible than for cool roofs
  • The initial cost premium can potentially be offset over the lifespan of the product with increased durability and less need for ongoing maintenance
  • Cool pavements come in different hues, including green, blue and yellow, and their solar reflectance value depends on both color and material
  • Some colors that look dark but are actually more reflective in the near infrared spectrum
  • Schoolyards are a particular target because of the negative health implications of hot blacktops for schoolchildren
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Heat Island Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • ‘Cool pavement’ technologies studied to address hot urban surfaces | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Let it snow dry-ice on Mars

  • Spacecraft orbiting Mars has detected carbon dioxide snow falling on the Red Planet, making it the only body in the solar system known to show this weather phenomenon
  • The low down
  • Data was gathered by MRO’s Mars Climate Sounder instrument during the Red Planet’s southern winter in 2006–2007
  • The instrument measures brightness in nine different wavelengths of visible and infrared light, allowing scientists to learn key characteristics of the particles and gases in the Martian atmosphere, such as their sizes and concentrations.
  • One large cloud was 300 miles (500 kilometers) wide
  • Significance
  • One line of evidence for snow is that the carbon-dioxide ice particles in the clouds are large enough to fall to the ground during the lifespan of the clouds
  • Another comes from observations when the instrument is pointed toward the horizon
  • The infrared spectra signature of the clouds viewed from an angle clearly showed carbon-dioxide ice particles, and they extend to the surface
  • The snow on Mars fell from clouds around the planet’s south pole during the Martian winter spanning 2006 and 2007
  • The Martian south pole hosts a frozen carbon dioxide – or “dry ice” – cap year-round
  • This new discovery may help explain how it formed and persists, researchers
  • These observations were also the first definitive detections of carbon-dioxide snow clouds
  • The clouds were composed of carbon dioxide, flakes of Martian air, and they are thick enough to result in snowfall accumulation at the surface.
  • Of Note
  • Astronomers still aren’t entirely sure how the dry ice sustaining Mars’ south polar cap – the only place where frozen carbon dioxide exists year-round on the planet’s surface – is deposited.
  • It could come from snowfall, or the stuff may freeze out of the air at ground level, researchers said.
  • The finding of snowfall could mean that the type of deposition (snow or frost) is somehow linked to the year-to-year preservation of the residual carbon dioxide polar cap
  • Dry ice requires temperatures of about minus 193 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 125 Celsius) to fall, reinforcing just how cold the Martian surface is.
  • In 2008, NASA’s Phoenix lander observed water-ice snow, this find means Mars hosts two different kinds of snowfall
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Snow on Mars: ‘Dry Ice’ Snowflakes Discovered by NASA Probe | Space.com

Atlantis Volcano Active?

  • The island that was created 3,600 years ago when a volcano erupted that was the second-largest blast in human history is swelling with lava
  • The low down
  • The eruption that created the island of Santorini may have destroyed the Minoan civilization on nearby Crete, which may have started the myth of Atlantis
  • Santorini locals began to suspect last year that something was afoot with the volcano under their Greek island group
  • Wine glasses occasionally vibrated and clinked in cafes, suggesting tiny tremors, and tour guides smelled strange gasses.
  • Beginning in the January 2011 data, there were more than a thousand small quakes, most of them imperceptible
  • Satellite radar technology has revealed the source of the symptoms
  • A rush of molten rock swelled the magma chamber under the volcano by some 351–702 million cubic ft [13 to 26 million cubic yards] or about 15 times the volume of London’s Olympic Stadium between January 2011 and April 2012
  • This has forced parts of the island’s surface to rise upward and outward by 3 to 5.5 inches [8–14 cm, ) confirmed with satellite radar images and GPS receivers
  • Significance
  • The earthquake activity and the rate of bulging have both slowed right down in the last few months
  • Even with these events the volcano has been quiet for 60 years and recent events don’t indicate an imminent eruption
  • It is quite likely that it could remain quiet for another few years or decades.
  • Since scientists don’t know enough about the lifecycle of large volcanoes in between eruptions to be certain
  • Catastrophic eruptions on Santorini, which produce mostly pumice rather than lava, appear to occur here about 20,000 years apart
  • The last one, in 1950, oozed enough lava to cover a few tennis courts
  • Despite its relative quiet, Santorini is an ideal location to learn more about processes like the magma chamber’s rapid inflation
  • While satellite evidence of swelling magma chambers has rarely been available for an active volcano, the processes the data represent may not be all that unusual
  • Some large volcanoes like Santorini and Yellowstone spend hundreds or thousands of years in a state of what you’d call dormancy and often have these little restless patches
  • These types of phenomena are likely to be common, but you need the right instruments and technology to detect what are usually rather small changes in behavior.
  • Of Note
  • We aren’t any closer to knowing if, or when, the next lava eruption might happen
  • Scientist are comparing the recent events to to someone blowing a big breath into an invisible balloon when you don’t know how small or big the balloon is, and don’t know whether just one more breath will be enough for it to pop or not
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Santorini Bulges as Magma Balloons Underneath | news.nationalgeographic.com

Painless shots

  • A new laser-based system blasts microscopic jets of drugs into the skin could soon make getting a shot as painless as being hit with a puff of air
  • The low down
  • In previous studies, researchers used a laser wavelength that was not well absorbed by the water of the driving liquid which caused the formation of tiny shock waves that dissipated energy and hampered the formation of the vapor bub
  • The laser with a wavelength of 2,940 nanometers, which is readily absorbed by water. This allows the formation of a larger and more stable vapor bubble
  • Hypodermic needles are still the first choice for ease-of-use, precision, and control
  • Significance
  • This type of laser is commonly used by dermatologists, particularly for facial esthetic treatments
  • The laser is combined with a small adaptor that contains the drug to be delivered, in liquid form, plus a chamber containing water that acts as a “driving” fluid
  • A flexible membrane separates these two liquids
  • Each laser pulse, which lasts just 250 millionths of a second, generates a vapor bubble inside the driving fluid.
  • The pressure of that bubble puts elastic strain on the membrane
  • The impacting jet pressure is higher than the skin tensile strength and thus causes the jet to smoothly penetrate into the targeted depth underneath the skin
  • The drug to be forcefully ejected from a miniature nozzle in a narrow jet a mere 150 millionths of a meter (micrometers) in diameter or a little larger than the width of a human hair
  • To test the effectiveness of the drug delivery system, a special gel is used to mimic the behavior of human skin
  • Tests on guinea pig skin show that the drug-laden jet can penetrate up to several millimeters beneath the skin surface, with no damage to the tissue
  • Because of the narrowness and quickness of the jet, it should cause little or no pain and the region of the skin has no nerve endings, so the method "will be completely pain-free
  • Of Note
  • Researchers are now working with a company to produce low-cost replaceable injectors for clinical use
  • Further work would be necessary to adopt it for scenarios like mass vaccine injections for children
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Laser-powered ‘Needle’ Promises Pain-free Injections | BusinessWire
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Laser-powered ‘needle’ promises pain-free injections | Phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Tooth protection

  • Japanese scientists have created a microscopically thin film [0.00016 in/0.004 mm]that can coat individual teeth to prevent decay or to make them appear whiter, the chief researcher said
  • The film is a hard-wearing and ultra-flexible material
  • It is made from hydroxyapatite, the main mineral in tooth enamel
  • It could be five or more years before it could be used in practical dental treatment such as covering exposed dentin, the sensitive layer underneath enamel, but it could be used cosmetically within three years
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Japan tooth patch could be end of decay | https://medicalxpress.com

— UPDATES—

Higgs-Boson

  • The announcement two months ago that physicists have discovered a particle consistent with the famous Higgs boson has cleared a formal hurdle with publication in a peer-reviewed journal
  • Although CERN’s announcement was never doubted, it still had to be vetted by peers and then published in an established journal to meet benchmarks of accuracy and openness.
  • Further work is being carried out to confirm whether the new particle is the famous Higgs
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Higgs boson: landmark announcement clears key hurdle | Phys.org

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

Shuttle Endeavour

  • There have been a few weather delays so the schedule continues to change so watch my twitter feed and #SpotTheShuttle for the latest updates
  • JB Mars Base
  • [#spottheshuttle](https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23spottheshuttle)

Expedition 32

  • The low down
  • Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russian cosmonauts and an American spaceflyer (Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka, Sergei Revin and NASA astronaut Joe Acaba) has landed safely back on Earth
  • They landed at 02:54 UTC on Monday, September 17 (8:53 a.m. Kazakhstan time Monday, 10:53 p.m. EDT Sunday, September 16
  • The Mission
  • The Soyuz crew was in good health and spirits
  • The three signed their Soyuz spacecraft, which is destined for a Russian museum
  • Their 125-day spaceflight began in mid-May and included three spacewalks and several robotic cargo ship arrivals
  • The three spaceflyers were originally slated to blast off in March, but a pressure test incident cracked their first Soyuz capsule, causing a six-week delay while another spacecraft was readied.
  • They finally launched on May 14 and just eight days later, SpaceX’s robotic Dragon capsule docked with the station on a historic demonstration mission, becoming the first private vehicle ever to do so.
  • on Sep. 5, crewmates Sunita Williams and Akihiko Hoshide performed an extra spacewalk – the third for the mission
  • They replace a vital power unit on the station’s backbone-like truss. Using improvised tools such as spare parts and a toothbrush to remove a stuck bolt that had delayed the fix a week earlier
  • Expedition 33
  • Expedition 33 is now underway as Commander Suni Williams and Flight Engineers Aki Hoshide and Yuri Malenchenko continue their stay until Nov. 12
  • They will have the station to themselves until mid-October, when three more astronauts will float through the hatch and bring the expedition up to its full complement of six crewmembers.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube [[ISS] Expedition 32 Safely Landed | SpaceVidsNet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lN-nUBwCWs&t=30s)
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Touchdown! Soyuz Spacecraft Lands Safely with Russian-US Crew | Space.com
  • Expedition 32 Lands Safely in Kazakhstan | UniverseToday.com

Opportunity is still finding new things

  • A strange picture of odd, spherical rock formations on Mars from NASA’s Opportunity rover has scientists wondering what exactly they’re looking at.
  • The low down
  • Opportunity is currently exploring a location known as Cape York along the western rim of a giant Martian crater called Endeavour
  • A recent photo by Opportunity shows a close-up of a rock outcrop covered in blister-like bumps that mission scientists can’t yet explain
  • The rock, called Kirkwood, is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects
  • Significance
  • The photo is actually a mosaic of four images taken by a microscope-like imager on its robotic arm
  • At first the formations appear similar to so-called Martian “blueberries”, iron-rich spherical formations first seen by Opportunity in 2004
  • “Blueberries” are actually concretions created by minerals in water that settled into sedimentary rock, they were first spotted by Opportunity soon after its landing in 2004 and has seen them at many of its science site
  • However they actually differ in several key ways, and scientists have never seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars
  • In this new photo, many of the strange features are broken, revealing odd concentric circles inside that seem to be seem to be crunchy on the outside, and softer in the middle
  • These bumpy, spherical formations on the Kirkwood rock represent something new
  • The accumulations are different in concentration, structure, composition and in distribution
  • The science team have several theories, but none that truly stand out as the best explanation
  • Making this one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission, showing that Opportunity is still pumping out new discoveries after more than eight years on Mars.
  • Of Note
  • As the spring equinox is approaching on Mars, ensuring increasing levels of sunshine for Opportunity’s solar arrays and are currently at production levels comparable to what they were a full Martian year ago
  • The Kirkwood outcrop is just one science pit stop at Cape York for Opportunity
  • Mission scientists have already picked out another interesting rock outcrop nearby, a pale patch that may contain tantalizing clay minerals, for possibly study after Opportunity completes its current analysis.
  • Social Media
  • Spirit and Oppy ‏ @MarsRovers
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Strange Mystery Spheres on Mars Baffle Scientists | Space.com

–CURIOSITY UPDATE–

  • Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer [APXS] which is used to analyze mineralogy of samples was also tested
  • There is new panorama from Mars where you can zoom in and you can see actual rocks
  • Curiosity has nearly finished robotic arm tests. Once complete, the rover will be able to touch and examine its first Mars rock
  • It will drive some more and try to find the right rock to begin doing contact science with the arm
  • There is also a look ahead to the terrain to get to the foothill of Aeolis Mons, or Mount Sharp where there appear to be big dunes
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Curiosity Rover Report (Sept. 13, 2012) | JPLNews
  • Image Gallery Mars Science Laboratory
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Say Ahhh to Mars | UniverseToday.com
  • [Drive Time: Curiosity Rover Ready to Roll toward First Martian Destination: Scientific American Gallery

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • September 23, 1846 : 166 years ago : Neptune discovered : The German astronomer Johan G. Galle discovered Neptune after only an hour of searching, within one degree of the position that had been computed by Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier. Independently of the English astronomer John C. Adams, Le Verrier had calculated the size and position of a previously unknown planet, which he assumed influenced the irregular orbit of Uranus, and he asked Galle to look for it.

Looking up this week

Catch SciByte LIVE:

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The post Cool Pavement & Martian Snow | SciByte 63 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Solar Storms & Higgs Boson | SciByte 37 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/17947/solar-storms-higgs-boson-scibyte-37/ Tue, 13 Mar 2012 23:00:54 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=17947 We take a look at recent solar activity, new ideas and imaging of the Titantic, Higgs Boson particles, Dinosaur feathers, dust devils on Mars, and more!

The post Solar Storms & Higgs Boson | SciByte 37 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at recent solar activity, new ideas and imaging of the Titantic, Higgs Boson particles, Dinosaur feathers, transparent electrodes, dust devils on Mars, viewer feeedback and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

The power of the Sun

*— NEWS BYTE — *

How the moon might have affected the Titanic

  • The low down
  • There is some evidence that and unusually close approach by the moon on Jan. 4, 1912, may have caused abnormally high tides
  • An uncommon event occurred on that Jan. 4 when the moon and sun lined up in such a way their gravitational pulls enhanced each other, well-known as a “spring tide"
  • Significance
  • Researchers looked to see if configuration maximized the moon’s tide-raising forces on Earth’s oceans enhanced tides caused increased glacial calving to reach the shipping lanes by April
  • Normally, icebergs can not move southward until they’ve melted enough to re-float or a high enough tide frees them a process that can take several years
  • However the unusually high tide in Jan. 1912 would have been enough to dislodge many of those icebergs and move them back into the southbound ocean currents
  • The high tide would have allowed them to travel southward much faster than typical, could explain the abundant icebergs in April of 1912
  • * Of Note*
  • Researchers have recently assembled what’s believed to be the first comprehensive map of the entire 3-by–5-mile Titanic debris field
  • Sonar imaging and more than 100,000 photos taken from underwater robots have been assembled to create the map
  • The mapping took place in the summer of 2010 during an expedition to the Titanic led by RMS Titanic Inc., the legal custodian of the wreck who was joined by other groups, as well as the cable History channel
  • Details on the new findings have not being revealed yet, the network will air them in a two-hour documentary on April 15, exactly 100 years after the Titanic sank
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Full Titanic site mapped for 1st time @ physorg.com
  • The iceberg’s accomplice: Did the moon sink the Titanic? @ physorg.com

HiggsBoson

*— TWO-BYTE NEWS — *

More Dinosaur feathers get color

  • * You might Recall *
  • Feedback & Space Lego’s | SciByte 31 (Jan 31, 2012) – Dinosaur feather colors
  • The low down
  • A team of American and Chinese researchers have uncovered the color and detailed feather pattern for the Microraptor, a pigeon-sized, four-winged dinosaur that lived about 130 million years ago
  • Four-winged dinosaur’s feathers were black with iridescent sheen
  • The fossilized plumage, which had hues of black and blue like a crow, it the earliest record of iridescent feather color
  • Significance
  • Feather color is produced partially by arrays of pigment-bearing organelles called melanosomes, melanosome’s structure is constant for a given color
  • Using the power of scanning electron microscopes, paleontologists have begun to analyze the shape of the fossilized melanosemos and compating then to living birds.
  • Paleontologists have also made predictions about the purpose of the dinosaur’s tail
  • Once thought to be teardrop-shaped used in flight is actually much narrower with two elongate feathers
  • Researchers not believe it to be ornamental, and used in social interactions like courtship
  • * Of Note*
  • Although its anatomy is very similar to birds, Mircroraptor is considered a non-avian dinosaur placed in the group of dinosaurs called dromaeosaurs that includes Velociraptor
  • Previously the Microraptor was considered a nocturnal animal, but glossy plumage is not a trait found in modern day birds.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • ScienceShot: Flashy Feathers @ Sciencemag.org
  • Four-winged dinosaur’s feathers were black with iridescent sheen @ physorg.com

Transparent Electrodes

  • The low down
  • Scientists have shown that ultra-thin sheets of an exotic material remain transparent and highly conductive even after being deeply flexed 1,000 times and folded and creased like a piece of paper.
  • The basic structural is a five-layer sandwich made up of alternating single-atom sheets of selenium and bismuth stacked on top of each other as thicker samples are made
  • Selenium-selenium bonds between the units are weak which provides an overall material to flex durably without being damaged
  • Significance
  • Experiments also showed that bismuth selenide does not degrade significantly in humid environments or when exposed to oxygen treatments that are common in manufacturing
  • This material will solve the problem modern transparent electrodes on the surfaces of most cells as they are either too fragile or not transparent or conducting enough,
  • In solar cells roughly half the solar energy that hits the Earth comes in the form of infrared light, and few of today’s solar cells are able to collect it
  • It may also be useful in communications devices, by improving infrared sensors common in scientific equipment and aerospace systems.”
  • * Of Note*
  • The combination has been testing with sheets of bismuth and selenium, each just one atom thick, to form five-layer units.
  • The bonds between the units are weak, allowing the overall material to flex while retaining its durability
  • The material itself conducts electricity only on its surface while its interior remains insulating and is as good as gold as an electrical conductor
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Exotic material shows promise as flexible, transparent electrode @ physorg.com

Martian Dust Devil

  • The low down
  • The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been examining Mars with six science instruments since 2006
  • Mars orbiters, rovers and landers have all captured devils in action before
  • A towering dust devil, casts a serpentine shadow over the Martian surface in an image acquired by the High Resolution Imaging
  • Significance
  • Unlike a tornado, a dust devil typically forms on a clear day
  • The ground is heated by the sun, warming the air just above the ground, heated air near the surface rises quickly through a small pocket of cooler air above it and the air may begin to rotate, if conditions are just right.
  • It lofted a twisting column of dust more than half a mile [800 meters] high, and had approximately a 90ft [30 yards] radius Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
  • * Of Note*
  • Like on Earth, winds on Mars are powered by solar heating
  • Mars is now farthest from the Sun, and exposure to the Sun’s rays is now less, the dust devils are still moving dust around on Mars’ surface
  • This mission has returned more data about Mars than all other orbital and surface missions combined and can reveal features as small as a desk
  • More than 21,700 images taken by HiRISE are available for viewing on the instrument team’s website
  • Twitter : HiRISE@HiRISE
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Huge Dust Devil on Mars Captured in Action @ UniverseToday.com
  • Mars orbiter catches twister in action @ PhysOrg.com
  • Photo from NASA Mars orbiter shows wind’s handiwork (Jan 2012) @ PhysOrg.com

Fossilized circle of life

Accurate Clock

  • The low down
  • Atomic Clock – A precision clock that depends for its operation on an electrical oscillator regulated by the natural vibration frequencies of an atomic system
  • A new time-keeping device is tied to the orbiting of a neutron around a nucleus of an atom
  • The clock would remain accurate to within 1/20th of a second over 14billion years, making it nearly 100 times more accurate than the best atomic clocks we have now
  • You might ask or note that ‘Neutrons’ do not ‘orbit’, that the orbiting items are electrons
  • Scientists are proposing to use lasers to orient the electrons in a specific way, then observing the neutrons as they rotate around the nucleus
  • Because the neutron is so close to the center of the atom the oscillation rate is nearly unaffected by external perturbations compared to the electron
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube VIDEO : Atom Animation
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Proposed nuclear clock may keep time with the Universe @ spacedaily.com
  • Proposed nuclear clock may keep time with the Universe @ physorg.com

SPACECRAFT UPDATE – GRAIL Moon Probes Ebb and Flow

*— VIEWER FEEDBACK — *

Archeology in Space

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

  • March 19 1800 : 212 years ago : Electric eels : Electric eels were captured by Alexander von Humoldt with Aimé Bonpland. They were on a five-year expedition in the jungles of South America, on the way to the Orinoco river, where at Calabozo they discovered swamps crowded with electric eels, Electrophorus electricus. During their scientific investigation of the behaviour of the eels, the scientists received massive electric shocks. Humboldt reported a severe lack of feeling in his joints for the better part of a day after standing directly on an electric eel. They learned that horses had been killed by them. Humboldt published an article Observation on the Electric Eel of the New World in 1808
  • March 16, 1926 : 86 years ago : Goddard Rocket : The first US liquid-fuel rocket flight was launched by Robert Goddard in a field in Auburn, Mass. He thought stable flight could be obtained by mounting the rocket ahead of the fuel tank. The tank was shielded from the flame by a metal cone and was pulled behind the rocket by the lines for gasoline fuel and oxygen. The design worked, but did not produce the hoped-for stability. The rocket burned about 20 seconds before reaching sufficient thrust (or sufficiently lightening the fuel tank) for taking off. During that time it melted part of the nozzle. It took off to a height of 41-ft, leveled off and within 2.5 seconds hit the ground 184 feet away, averaging about 60 mph. The camera ran out of film, so no photographic record of that flight remains.

Looking up this week

The post Solar Storms & Higgs Boson | SciByte 37 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Higgs Bosons & Tough Materials | SciByte 25 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/14913/higgs-bosons-tough-materials/ Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:48:22 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=14913 We take a look at the breaking news on Higgs Bosons, materials tougher than diamonds, Hubble research hits a milestone, and some surpises from Science history!

The post Higgs Bosons & Tough Materials | SciByte 25 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at the breaking news on Higgs Bosons, materials tougher than diamonds, inserting objects in pictures become more realistic, Hubble research hits a milestone, dinosaurs, talking parrots, down-loadable knowledge, information on the unbelievable Lunar eclipse we just had, a quick spacecraft update and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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[asa default]B001CWXAP2[/asa]

Higgs-Boson confirmation just around the corner?

Tougher than diamond?

*— NEWS BYTE — *

Tricking the eye in photographs

Scientific papers from Hubble hit a milestone

The North American “terrible (large) lizard”

Polly want an explanation for how parrots talk

  • The low down
  • Parrots have neither lips nor teeth, but that doesn’t stop them from producing dead-on imitations of human speech
  • Significance
  • Part of the reason is that, like humans, parrots use their tongues to form sounds
  • Scientists took x-ray movies of monk parakeets
  • Parrots use their mobile, muscular tongues to explore their environment and manipulate food
  • Those capable organs also help parrots utter greetings in words that even humans can understand.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube VIDEO : X-ray movie of a vocalizing monk parakeet
  • Social Media
  • Twitter Results for [#]()
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • How Parrots Talk @ ScienceMag.org](https://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/12/scienceshot-how-parrots-talk.html?ref=hp)

Learning by the Matrix/Chuck way

  • The low down
  • Pictures gradually build up inside a person’s brain, appearing first as lines, edges, shapes, colors and motion in early visual areas
  • The brain then fills in greater detail
  • New research in the journal Science suggests it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort
  • Significance
  • Researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks
  • Think of a person watching a computer screen and have brain patterns modified to match those of a high-performing athlete or modified to recuperate from an accident or disease
  • This research is a novel learning approach sufficient to cause long-lasting improvement in tasks that require visual performance
  • None of these studies directly addressed the question of whether early visual areas are sufficiently plastic to cause visual perceptual learning
  • * Of Note*
  • The approached worked even when test subjects were not aware of what they were learning
  • The decoded neurofeedback method might be used for various types of learning, including memory, motor and rehabilitation
  • On the flip side the neurofeedback mechanism could just as soon be used for purposes of hypnosis or covert mind control
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Learning high-performance tasks with no conscious effort may soon be possible (w/ video) @ Midical Xpress
  • Download Knowledge Directly to Your Brain, Matrix-Style @ PopSci
  • Scientists say they’re getting closer to Matrix-style instant learning @io9

Lunar eclipse, with a twist

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

DAWN Spacecraft reachest closts orbit to the asteroid Vesta

  • Vesta:
  • Discovered: March 29, 1807 by Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers of Germany (fourth asteroid discovered)
  • Dimensions: About 578 by 560 by 458 kilometers (359 by 348 by 285 miles)
  • Shape: Nearly spheroid, with a massive chunk out of the south pole
  • Rotation: Once every 5 hours, 20 minutes
  • About the length of Arizona, it appears to have a surface of basaltic rock – frozen lava – which oozed out of the asteroid’s presumably hot interior shortly after its formation 4.5 billion years ago, and has remained largely intact ever since.
  • DAWN:
  • Launch Date : Sep 27, 2007
  • Mission will go through through July 2015
  • Framing Camera (FC) : Scientific imaging system of the Dawn Mission to the two complementary protoplanets, 1 Ceres and 4 Vesta.
  • Visible & Infrared Spectrometer (VIR) : Accomplishes the Dawn mission’s scientific and measurement objectives of producing spectral images. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft successfully maneuvered into its closest orbit around the giant asteroid Vesta today
  • Gamma Ray and Neutron Spectrometer (GRaND) : Measures elemental abundances on the surface of Vesta and Ceres.
  • Gravity Science : The team utilizes the radio link used for communications and carefully observe the Doppler shift in the link’s carrier frequency (when received at ground stations) due to
    gravitational forces acting on the spacecraft center-of-mass in the environment of Vesta and Ceres.
  • Multimedia
  • DAWN Media Gallery @ NASA
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • NASA DAWN website
  • NASA DAWN website

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

  • Dec 15 1612 – 399 years ago – A telescope meets the Andromedo galaxy : [Simon Marius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Marius, namer of Jupiter’s 4 inner satellites, is first to observe Andromeda galaxy through a telescope. Andromeda is the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, but not the closest galaxy overall. The Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi wrote a tantalizing line about it in his Book of Fixed Stars around 964, describing it as a “small cloud”.
  • **Dec 14 1807 – 204 years ago – Meteorite gets scienced ** : In Weston, (now called Easton) Connecticut at 6:30 am, a meteorite was seen with an aparent size of 2/3 the size of the moon. Eyewitnesses reported three loud explosions, as it fell and broke apart to fall in at least six locations. This meteor became the first to fall in the New World to be documented, collected, and chemically analyzed and received much attention in the national and international press. The largest and only unbroken specimen weighing in at 36.5 pounds (16.5 kilograms) was recovered and made a hole 5 ft long and 4.5 ft wide (1.5 m long and 1.4 m wide) now resides within the oldest collection of meteorites in the United States. Out of the approximately 350 pounds of the meteorite that fell on the town of Weston, less than 50 pounds can now be accounted for. Yale Peabody Museum – Weston Meteorite
  • **Dec 17 1903 – 108 years ago – The Wright brother fly ** : In 1903, the first powered flight was achieved by the [Wright brothers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers#Flights in the Kitty Hawk, at Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina. That morning, the biting cold wind had a velocity of 22 to 27 miles an hour. As ten o’clock arrived, the Wrights decided, nevertheless, to get the machine out and attempt a flight. Orville Wright launched from a track, taking off into the wind. The aircraft covered 120 feet, aloft for 12 seconds. Thus for the first time, a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full flight, had sailed forward without reduction of speed and had finally landed at a point as high as that from which it started. First flight photo

Looking up this week

  • You might have seen …
  • On Dec. 8th, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) observed an unusual event on the sun: An erupting cloud of plasma was eclipsed by a dark magnetic filament. VIDEO By studying how the light of the explosion is filtered by the foreground material, SDO mission scientists might be able to learn something new about dark filaments on the sun.
  • Keep an eye out for …>
  • Wed, Dec 14 : Orion is up in the east-southeast after dinnertime, and higher in the southeast later in the evening. IMAGE
  • Thurs, Dec 15 : The Moon has a bright companion as it rises late this evening: Regulus, the brightest star of Leo, the lion, sits to it’s upper left.
  • Fri, Dec 16 : Mars is close to the upper left of the Moon as they climb into view after midnight, and looks like a bright star.
  • Sat, Dec 17 : Last-quarter moon. Above it around midnight is Mars
  • More on whats in the sky this week
  • Sky&Telescope
  • AstronomyNow<
  • SpaceWeather.com
  • HeavensAbove
  • StarDate.org

The post Higgs Bosons & Tough Materials | SciByte 25 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Large Hadron Collider | SciByte 8 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/10433/large-hadron-collider-scibyte-8/ Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:26:01 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=10433 We take a look at Large Hadron Collider, what it is, what it’s doing and how it’s doing it.

The post Large Hadron Collider | SciByte 8 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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This week on SciByte …
We take a look at Large Hadron Collider, what it is, what it’s doing and how it’s doing it. Plus we take a peek at science behind the curtain of the Universe at some the smallest elements and more basic interactions that makes everything we know and see tick.

All that and more, on SciByte!

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Disclaimer!

Some of today’s episode will talk a little about particle physics, what we will cover is going to be a more broad spectrum quick look. Just giving enough of a glance at it so that looking at the research going on at the LHC will mean a little bit more. Feel free to research these topics more on your own or request that we go into it a bit more on a future SciByte and as always we’ll tell you more about how to do that at the end of the episode.

What IS The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in a nutshell?
  • It is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator.
  • It is expected to address some of the most fundamental questions of physics, advancing the understanding of the deepest laws of nature.
What does that mean and how does it do it?
  • What kind of particles are the experiments at the LHC looking at?
  • How does the LHC accelerate particles to produce the collisions that the experiments look at?
  • What are the components, dangers and basics of the LHC?
  • To get a better idea of what all of this actually means we’ll start by taking a quick look at the basic elements of the universe and what forces cause them and everything in the universe to interact.
We’ll start with The Standard Model Theory

Everything in the Universe is found to be made from basic building blocks called fundamental particles, governed by four fundamental forces.

What are those Four Fundamental Interactions of Nature ?
  • From the strongest to the weakest … Strong, Electromagnetic, Weak, Gravity
  • Strong Nuclear Force – Strong force carrier are gluons, they acts on quarks and act as the glue to hold them together to create neutrons and protons and the residual force holds nucleus together. About 100x stronger than the electromagnetic force, but the range is limited to about the size of a proton.
  • Electromagnetism – Electromagnetic force carrier is a photon and acts on charged particles and is responsible for propagation of light, and gives a magnet the ability to pick up a paperclip
  • Weak – Exchange particles of weak are the ‘w’ ‘z’ bozon and and explains the energy production of the sun and radioactive beta decay
  • Gravity – Assumed that since the other three forces have force carriers gravity does to, called the graviton. Gravitational force is a natural phenomenon by which physical bodies attract with a force proportional to their mass. [ If the graviton does exists, it must be massless (because the gravitational force has unlimited range) ]
That poses an interesting thought …
  • If electrons had a different mass, then electromagnetic field would be a different size, and therefore all matter would be a different size.
What are those ‘basic components’ of the Universe?
  • Some of these were mentioned talking about the fundamental interactions
  • Start off looking at the elements VIDEO
  • All ~118 elements were made of Electrons, Protons and Neutrons VIDEO
  • Beginning of the 20th century we found many other particles from cosmic rays, energetic charged subatomic particles, originating from outer space VIDEO
  • They started to organize these particles by : spin, charge, mass, and lifetime (how long till they decay into simpler particles) VIDEO
  • To simplify this picture, quarks were predicted VIDEO
  • Six quarks were predicted, then discovered; bringing confidence to the model
  • Boils down to basically Quarks, Bosons and Leptons [Electrons, Muons, Tau]
So what ARE Quarks ?
  • They are elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter that you can’t see directly, they and they have some unusual properties,
  • They make up and are permanently trapped inside other particles like neutrons and protons.
  • Six types / flavors that come in pairs [Up/Down ; Charm/Strange ; Top/Bottom] : only UP/DOWN are stable and make up all ‘normal’ matter
  • You can’t bring them out individually to study them, only be found within hadrons
Hadron … like in Large Hadron Collider? … what are they?
  • Things made up of Quarks (including protons, neutrons) and are composite particle that scientist call Hadrons. There are many theorized types of Hadrons but most exist only very briefly.
  • The best known Hadrons are protons and neutrons and excludes leptons and photons
  • Made of Quarks and held together by the strong nuclear force (while atoms and molecules are held together by the electromagnetic force) and categorized into two families
    • Baryon [ made of 3 quarks ]
    • Mesons [ one quark and anti-quark ]
Do these exotic particles exist anywhere outside of physics experiments?
  • They existed right after the Big Bang, and occur in cosmic-ray events when they strike atomic nuclei in the earth’s atmosphere, these rare particles can be produced.
The problem with the Standard model …
  • It does not explain everything.
  • Gravity is not fully explained in the Standard Model, instead it predicts (but we have not observed) the Higgs-Boson
So what is the Higgs-Boson Theory ?
  • Predicted for ~40 years
  • Permeates all of space acting like sticky bits that put a drag on other particles
  • Interact with all particle except for photon, graviton, and gluons
    • gravitons – undiscovered/theoretical force carriers for gravity
  • To detect a Higgs Boson in a lab; we must create a real one. We do this firing particles and anti-particle together, out of the collision can look for decay products that would indicate Higgs-Boson
Collisions? … that brings us to the Large Hadron Collider
Large Hadron Collider
  • Looking beyond the Standard Model (dark matter, extra dimensions, … ) VIDEO
  • What Hadron’s are used? : mostly lead ions (lead atoms stripped of electrons)
  • Underground, below the border of Switzerland and France
The Large Hadron Collider – Basic Stats
  • Circumference : ~ 17mi / 27 km
  • Diameter : ~ 5mi / 8km
  • Depth : roughly the height of a 42 story office building [ 175 m / 574 feet ]
  • Magnets : 9300 throughout the facility
  • Power : 120 MW [~roughly 5000 avg American homes] [ ~all the homes in Canton, Geneva]
  • Cryogenics : ⅛ of the total system would qualify as the worlds largest refrigerator
  • Operates at temperatures [1.9 K] even lower than outer space! [2.7 K]
  • Temperatures Generated : more than 100,000 times hotter than the heart of the Sun [when two beams of protons collide, concentrated within a minuscule space]
  • Pressure : 10 times less than the pressure on the surface of the Moon [internal pressure of the LHC is 10-13 atm]
Why Underground?
  • Cheaper to excavate a tunnel than to acquire the land to build on the surface, impact on landscape is reduced to a minimum. It also had to be at least 5m below the top ‘molasse’ green sandstone stratum
  • The moons tidal variations have to be taken into account then beams are injected into the collider
  • Between new Moon and full Moon the Earths crust rises by slightly more than the width of notebook paper [9.8in/25cm] in Geneva, causes a variation of diameter of a pinhead [1mm] in the circumference of the LHC
  • The Earth’s crust also provides good shielding for radiation.
LHC is not a perfect circle
  • made of 8 arcs and 8 straight intersections
  • Each arc contain 154 dipole ‘bending’ magnets
  • Each Intersection consists of a long straight section
LHC Vacuum
  • Insulation vacuum for the Cryomagnets
  • Insulation vacuum for the Helium distribution line
  • Beam Vacuum is kept at about 10x lower than on the Moon to avoid collisions with gas molecules
LHC Magnets
  • Total of about 9600 magnets
  • Contains about 10000 t of iron, that’s more iron than in the Eiffel Tower
  • LHC Dipole magnets are superconducting electromagnets, use niobium-titanium cables
  • dipole VIDEO : 1232; quadrupole VIDEO : 392; sextupole; octupoles; decapoles
  • Magnet Coils are wound from cable made up of 36 twisted 0.6in/15mm strands, each strand is made up of 6000-9000 filaments. These filaments can have diameters 10 x thinner than a normal human hair [as small as 7 micrometers]
  • Total strands for the LHC would circle the Earth 6x at the equator [270,000km]
  • Total Filaments, if unravelled, would stretch to the Sun and back 6x, with leftover for about 150 trips to the moon
The Large Hadron Collider() ( L.H.C ) Acceleration Video
  • Hydrogen atoms are fed into a linear accelerator at a precise rate.
  • The Hydrogen electrons are stripped off leaving hydrogen nuclei, protons in a strong magnetic field which accelerates the protons to 1/3 the speed of light
    • low pressure hydrogen in a sealed container with a couple of electrodes in it, then apply a high enough voltage difference betweeen the electrodes the hydrogen becomes ionised. This means the electrons are stripped away from the hydrogen atoms leaving bare protons. This is what happens in fluorescent lights.
  • Protons now enter a booster section, where it’s divided into 4 rings 0.6% of the LHC [515feet/157m] in circumference and accelerated with a pulsating electric field and kept bent with a magnetic field. The booster accelerates the protons to 91.6% the speed of light and squeezes them together
  • The 4 packets are re-combined and passed into the Proton Synchrotron, which is [4x larger than the booster/2% of the LHC] in circumference [2060feet/628m] which they travel in 1.2 seconds [99.9% speed of light] Now additional energy can’t add velocity, it instead manifests as increased mass, which translates to 25 times the resting mass of the protons
  • Now channeled into the Super Proton Synchrotron which is about [11x larger than the Proton Synchrotron/25% of the LHC] in circumference [7km/22965ft] and adds additional energy to the protons. Readying them to enter the Large Hadron Collider
  • LHC ( 27km / 88582 feet in circumference). It houses two vacuum pipes for protons traveling in opposite directions The opposing beans cross in four detector caverns where they can collide
  • The LHC adds extra energy from pulsed electric fields to the protons which now travel around the 27km/88582feet 11,000 times per second. The protons are now 7000 times heavier than they were at rest. Steering magnets bring them to collide
LHC Data
  • 150 million sensors deliver data 40 mill times per second, filtered to about 100 collisions of interest per second
  • Sampling Rate Capacity: sample / record the results of up to 600 million proton collisions per second
  • Data from all four experiments : 700 MB/s, ~= 15,000,000 GB / year (15 PB)
  • Data Recorded by each of the big experiments at the LHC will fill around 100 000 dual layer DVDs every year
  • Data from all 4 experiments would will a stack of CD’s 12.4mi/20km tall
Before we get to the LHC Energies involved, what units are involved and what to they mean?
  • TeV – teraelectronvolt : The amount of kinetic energy gained by a single unbound electron when it accelerates through an electric potential difference of one volt
  • 1 TeV = 1.602×10^-7 J = 0.0000001602 J
  • Watt is a J/sec [W = J/s] & conversely a Joule is a Watt*sec [ J = Ws ]
A TeV EXAMPLE : How long would a TeV light a a 60Watt bulb ?
  • 1TeV = [ 1.602×10^-7 J ] = [ 60W ] * [sec]
  • [ 1.602×10^-7 J ] / [ 60W ] = [sec]
  • 2.67 nano seconds = 0.00000000268 seconds`
LHC Energies
  • Each proton flying around the LHC has 7 TeV, which has the energy to light a 60W bulb for 18.69 nano seconds [0.00000001869 seconds]
  • When you clap your hands, you probably do a ‘collision’ at an energy higher than that, but much less concentrated.
  • 1 TeV is about the energy of a flying mosquito, the LHC is extraordinary for the ability to squeeze that energy into a space a million million times smaller
  • Total energy in each beam at max speed [350 MJ] is about the same as a 400 ton train travelling at 93 mi/h [150 km/h]
Is the LHC Dangerous?
  • Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the World Yet.com
  • Cosmic Rays have been bombarding the Earth, moon, Jupiter, Sun, … since our formation with no known affect, and in much larger numbers than the LHC will produce
  • Mini Big-Bangs? : at the very small scale, the energy concentration does represent the energy density just moments after the Big Bang; the TOTAL energy is produced by these collisions is still very low
  • LHC Black Hole? : Black holes are created by collapsing massive stars which contain enormous amounts of gravitational energy. Any microscopic black holes created by the LHC would be so microscopic that they could not interact with surrounding matter. In addition theories suggest that microscopic black holes would only exist for a few fleeting moments before they would evaporate and disappear.
  • Radiation : Studies have shown that radioactivity released in the air contributes to an dose to the public such that 10 years of ‘exposure’ gives about the same as 1 round trip from Europe to Los Angeles produces and is 240 times less per year than an average year in Switzerland.
It’s a particle accelerator … but what does that mean?
  • A particle accelerator is a device that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to high speeds and to contain them in well-defined beams.
LHC Beams
  • Might circulate for 10 hours, travelling the distance to get to Neptune and back again
  • Protons at full energy travel at 0.999999991 times the speed of light, and circles the 16.8mi / 27km ring 11,245 every second
  • Only 2 nanograms of Hydrogen are accelerated / day … at that rate it would take ~ 1 million years to accelerate 1 gram of Hydrogen
Is it like smashing an apple and an orange together and getting bananas?
  • Not really, it’s more like getting a whole bunch of apple and orange pieces, and also chips of banana and antibanana, grapes…
How does the LHC see particles?
  • For each collision, scientists count, track particles
  • If the detector is in magnetic field, the charge of a particle will be which way it bends, and the momentum ( mass x velocity ) can be determined based on the path of travel [high momentum particles travel in almost straight lines while low momentum particles make tight spirals]
– Main LHC Detectors –
ALICE – A Large Ion Collider Experiment
  • Produces ~100Mb/s during proton-proton run; 1/25 GM/s during heavy-ion run of data
  • Specializes in analysing lead-ion collisions
  • Studies properties of quark-gluon plasma [when quarks and gluons are no longer confined in hadrons/Lead-ions] Quark-gluon plasma probably existed just after the Big Bang
ATLAS – AToroidal LHC ApparatuS
  • Produces about 320 MB/s of data
  • General-purpose detector designed to cover the widest range of physics possible
  • The largest-volume collider-detector ever constructed
  • Searches for everything from the Higgs boson to supersymmetry and extra dimensions
    Consists of 8 25-m long superconducting magnet coils
CMS – Compact Muon Solenoid
  • Produces about 300 MB/s of data
  • General-purpose detector like ATLAS, but with different tech and design
  • Built around a huge superconducting solenoid
  • Can generate a magnetic field about 100,000 times that of the Earth
LHCb – Large Hadron Collider beauty
  • Produces about 50 MB/s of data
  • Studies asymmetry between matter and anti-matter
  • Uses a series of sub-detectors to detect mainly forward particles
– Additional LHC Detectors –
LHCf – Large Hadron Collider forward
  • Small experiment to measure particles produced close to the direction of the beams in proton-proton collisions
  • Testing models used to estimate energy of ultra high energy cosmic rays
TOTEM – TOTal Elastic and diffractive cross section Measurement
  • Measure effective size / cross section of proton
  • Detects particles produced close to the LHC beams
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