Hubble – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Mon, 22 Feb 2016 02:47:21 +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 Hubble – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 Bionic Ear & Atomic Movie | SciByte 93 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/37221/bionic-ear-atomic-movie-scibyte-93/ Tue, 14 May 2013 20:41:41 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=37221 We take a look at 3-D printed ears, a tiny movie, a light pollution app, treating grey hair and vitiligo, picture books, and more.

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We take a look at 3-D printed ears, a tiny movie, a light pollution app, treating grey hair and vitiligo, picture books, corrections, updates, viewer feedback, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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3D Printing Bionic Ears

  • -Scientists at Princeton University used off-the-shelf printing tools to create a functional ear that can \”hear\” radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability
  • -The primary purpose was to explore an efficient and versatile means to merge electronics with tissue
  • Building Bionics
  • -Previously, researchers have suggested some strategies that typically happens between a 2D sheet of electronics and a surface of the tissue
  • -This new work suggests a new way to build and grow the biology up with the electronics synergistically and in a 3D interwoven format
  • -Creating organs using 3D printers is a recent advance; several groups have reported using the technology for this purpose in the past few months
  • -This project is the team\’s first effort to create a fully functional organ: one that not only replicates a human ability, but extends it using embedded electronics
  • Manufacturing Bionic Ears
  • -Ear reconstruction \”remains one of the most difficult problems in the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery\” so this team turned to a manufacturing approach called 3D printing
  • -Researchers used an ordinary 3D printer to combine a matrix of hydrogel and calf cells with silver nanoparticles that form an antenna. The calf cells later develop into cartilage
  • -Two wires lead from the base of the ear and wind around a helical \”cochlea\” – the part of the ear that senses sound which can connect to electrodes, the finished ear consists of a coiled antenna inside a cartilage structure,
  • -This is the first time that researchers have demonstrated that 3D printing is a convenient strategy to interweave tissue with electronics
  • The Future
  • -Further work and extensive testing would need to be done before the technology could be used on a patient
  • -The ear in principle could be used to restore or enhance human hearing if electrical signals produced by the ear could be connected to a patient\’s nerve endings, similar to a hearing aid
  • -The current system receives radio waves, but he said the research team plans to incorporate other materials, such as pressure-sensitive electronic sensors, to enable the ear to register acoustic sounds
  • Multimedia
  • -YouTube | 3D Printed Bionic Ears Listening to Beethoven in Stereo | McAlpineResearch
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • –Printable \’bionic\’ ear melds electronics and biology | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

It’s a Small, Small Movie

  • -Scientists from IBM have released the world\’s smallest movie, made entirely of atoms
  • The Instrumentation
  • -In order to make the movie, the atoms were moved with an IBM-invented scanning tunneling microscope
  • -The Microscope weighs two tons, and operates at a temperature of negative -450 Fahrenheit / -268 Celsius and magnifies the atomic surface over 100 million times
  • -The IBM Research lab one of the few places in the world where atoms can be moved with such precision.
  • -Remotely operated on a standard computer, IBM researchers used the microscope to control a super-sharp needle along a copper surface to \”feel\” atoms
  • -Only 1 nanometer away from the surface, which is a billionth of a meter in distance, the needle can physically attract atoms and molecules on the surface and thus pull them to a precisely specified location on the surface
  • -Moving atom makes a unique sound that is critical feedback in determining how many positions it\’s actually moved
  • The Movie
  • -Named \”A Boy and His Atom,\” the Guinness World Records -verified movie used thousands of precisely placed atoms to create nearly 250 frames of stop-motion action.
  • -Scientists rendered still images of the individually arranged atoms, resulting in 242 single frames
  • Also From the Team
  • -Recently created the world\’s smallest magnetic bit, answering the question of how many atoms it takes to reliably store one bit of magnetic information: 12.
  • -It takes roughly 1 million atoms to store a bit of data on a modern computer or electronic device, atomic memory could one day store all of the movies ever made in a device the size of a fingernail.
  • Multimedia
  • -YouTube | A Boy And His Atom: The World\’s Smallest Movie | IBM
  • -YouTube | IMB \’The Worlds Smallest Movie\’ Channel
  • -Image | Star Trek Logo made of atoms
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • –IBM researchers make world\’s smallest movie using atoms | Phys.org
  • –Tiny Bubbles: Star Trek Gets An Atomic Look | UniverseToday.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Light Pollution App

  • -Researchers from the German \”Loss of the Night\” project have developed an app for Android smart phones, which counts the number of visible stars in the sky
  • The App
  • -The smartphone app will be used by scientists to understand and evaluate sky brightness, also known as light pollution or skyglow, on a worldwide scale
  • -Currently satellites that observe Earth at night measure the light that is radiating into the sky, not the brightness that is experienced by people and other organisms on the ground
  • -The data can be used to map the distribution and changes in sky brightness, and will eventually allow scientists to investigate correlations with health, biodiversity, energy waste and other factors
  • -With this app, people from around the world can collect data on skyglow without needing expensive equipment.
  • -You simply use an interactive view of a portion of the night sky where you can adjust it so that it corresponds to the number of stars you see in the sky
  • -Some of the testers found that without intending too they learned the names of several stars and constellations
  • -Development of the app was sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education, and is based on the widely used Google Sky Map application
  • Website
  • -GoolgePlay | Loss of the Night
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • –Twinkle, twinkle little star: New app measures sky brightness | Phys.org

Reversing Grey Hair and Vitiligo

  • Grey Hair
  • -People who are going gray develop massive oxidative stress via accumulation of hydrogen peroxide in the hair follicle, which causes our hair to bleach itself from the inside out
  • -A new report shows that this massive accumulation of hydrogen peroxide can be remedied with a proprietary treatment described as a topical, UVB-activated compound called PC-KUS (a modified pseudocatalase)
  • Vitiligo
  • -The study also shows that the same treatment works for the skin condition vitiligo, a condition that causes depigmentation of sections of skin
  • -To achieve this breakthrough, Schallreuter and colleagues analyzed an international group of 2,411 patients with vitiligo
  • -They found that for the first time, patients who have a certain nerval distribution involving skin and eyelashes show the same oxidative stress as observed in the much more frequent type of vitiligo
  • -The more common Vitiligo is associated with decreased antioxidant capacities including catalase, thioredoxin reductase, and the repair mechanisms methionine sulfoxide reductases
  • –Further Reading / In the News
  • –Gray hair and vitiligo reversed at the root | MedicalXPress

‘Reading’ Picture Books

  • -Researchers have found that children hear more complex language from parents when they read a storybook with only pictures compared to a picture-vocabulary book
  • -Often, parents dismiss picture storybooks, especially when they are wordless, as not real reading or just for fun
  • -These findings show that reading picture storybooks with kids exposes them to the kind of talk that is really important for children to hear, especially as they transition to school
  • Last time on the … FauxShow?
  • –FauxShow 139 | Story Time | May 9 2013
  • The Study
  • -A graduate student, recorded 25 mothers while they read to their toddlers both a wordless picture storybook and a vocabulary book with pictures
  • -Moms in the study used forms of complex talk when reading the picture storybook to their child more often than the picture vocabulary book
  • -The team was especially interested in looking at the language mothers use when reading both wordless picture storybooks and picture vocabulary books
  • -They paid close attention to see if parents provided extra information to children like relating the events of the story to the child\’s own experiences or asking their child to make predictions.
  • What This Means
  • -The results of the study are significant for both parents and educators because vocabulary books are often marketed as being more educational
  • -This shows that even short wordless picture books provide children with exposure to the kinds of language that they will encounter at school and can lay the foundation for later reading development
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • –Reading wordless storybooks to toddlers may expose them to richer language | MedicalXpress.com

— CORRECTIONS —

Haiku to Mars Corrections

  • Viewer Feedback – Check This Out
  • -NASA launches the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft in
  • Last Time on SciByte
  • –SciByte 92 | Habitable Exoplanets & Diabetes [May 7, 2013]
  • -I mistakenly attributed this to Curiosity
  • The Mission
  • -NASA launches the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft in November, to gather information that should help scientists figure out what happened to the atmosphere and water that once existed on Mars
  • -The Mission launch window opens on November 18, 2013
  • And Earthly DVD to Mars
  • -The team wants to pack onboard a DVD containing the names of each person who sends a poem, but only the three most popular haikus will be on the DVD
  • -The top three most popular entries will be sent to Mars on board the orbiting MAVEN spacecraft and will be prominently displayed on the MAVEN website
  • Student Art Contest Timeline
  • -Contest Ran from March 15-April 8, Public Voting was between April 16-May 6
  • -Contest Winner Will Be Announced on May 20
  • Send Your Name and Haiku to Mars
  • -Submissions | May 1 – July 1
  • -Public Voting | July 15 – July 29
  • -Message Contest Winner Announced | August 8
  • Haiku
  • -A poem with three lines where the first and the last lines must have exactly five syllables, and the second line must have exactly seven syllables.
  • Example
  • Listening and learning, [5]
  • and information gathering, [7]
  • makes Happy Science [5]
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • –Going to Mars » Send your name & message to Mars!
  • –NASA Wants To Send Your Haiku To Mars | Popular Science

— UPDATES —

Awesome Second-Hand Telescopes

  • -A pair of space telescopes that were donated to NASA from the secretive National Reconnaissance Office could be repurposed for a wide variety of science missions the middle of last year
  • Last Time on SciByte
  • –SciByte 51 | Talking Robots and Voyager 1 – Space Telescope Donations | June 19, 2012
  • The Story of the Telescopes
  • -The two spy scopes were originally built to carry out surveillance missions under a multibillion-dollar NRO program called Future Imagery Architecture
  • -Cost overruns and delays killed the program in 2005, and NASA announced in June 2012 that the NRO had bequeathed the instruments to the space agency
  • -The cost to keep them in storage is about $70,000 a year, which is not insignificant, but it\’s not something that\’s unmanageable
  • -The telescopes\’ 8-foot-wide (2.4 meters) main mirrors are comparable to that of Hubble, the NRO instruments are designed to have a much wider field of view
  • -NASA does not anticipate being able to dedicate any funding to the newly acquired telescopes until the James Webb Space Telescope successfully launches
  • Finding Ideas
  • -When NASA asked scientists to suggest missions for the telescopes, more than 60 serious proposals came in, the most promising of which were presented in early February
  • Seven Big Ideas
  • -Mars-orbiting space telescope
  • -Exoplanet observatory
  • -General-purpose faint object explorer
  • -Advanced, Hubble-like visible light/ultraviolet telescope
  • -Optical communications node in space (which would aid transmissions to and from deep-space assets)
  • -Geospace dynamic observatory (which would study space weather and the sun-Earth system)
  • -Research of Earth\’s upper atmosphere (from a spot aboard the International Space Station)
  • The Future
  • -Whatever missions NASA ultimately assigns to the NRO scopes, the instruments are a long way from launch
  • -There are currently no instruments on the two telescopes right now, just primary and secondary mirrors and the support structures so it would take a while to develop the instruments and integrate them into the structure
  • -The funding to bring the scopes up to speed, launch them into space and maintain their operations has not been granted, and there\’s no guarantee that it will be with current budgetary concerns
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • –NASA Mulling Missions for Donated Spy Telescopes | National Reconnaissance Office | Space.com

Reality TV on Mars [MarsOne]

  • -By May 7th about 78,000 people applied to become Red Planet colonists with the nonprofit organization Mars One since its application process opened on April 22
  • -78,000 applications in two weeks is a good start to their goal of half a million applicants
  • -Mars One estimates that landing four settlers on Mars in 2023 will cost about $6 billion
  • -Plans are to pay most of the bills by staging a global reality-TV event, with cameras documenting all phases of the mission from astronaut selection to the colonists\’ first years on the Red Planet.
  • Last Time on SciByte
  • –SciByte 92 | Habitable Exoplanets and Diabetes – MarsOne and Life on Mars and Science | May 7, 2013
  • –SciByte 61 | ‘Tatooine’ Exoplanets and Eye’s – Martian Reality TV | September 4, 2012
  • Application Process
  • -The application process extends until Aug. 31. Anyone at least 18 years of age can apply, by submitting to the Mars One website a 1-minute video explaining his or her motivation to become a Red Planet settler.
  • -There is an application fee, which ranges from $5 to $75 depending on the wealth of the applicant\’s home country. United States citizens pay $38
  • -Reviewers will pick 50 to 100 candidates from each of the 300 regions around the world that Mars One has identified
  • -By 2015, this pool will be whittled down to a total of 28 to 40 candidates, then the core group will be split into groups of four, which will train for their one-way Mars mission for about seven years
  • -Finally, an audience vote will pick one of these groups to be humanity\’s first visitors to the Red Planet.
  • From All Over the World
  • -People from more than 120 countries have already send in applications
  • -As of May 7 the greatest number of submissions by country are the United States (17,324), China (10,241), and the United Kingdom (3,581)
  • -Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Argentina and India round out the top 10.
  • Multimedia
  • –Mars 2023 – Inhabitants wanted | MarsOneProject
  • -YouTube Channel | Mars One – Human Settlement of Mars
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • –Mars Colony Project Gets 78,000 Applications in 2 Weeks | Mars One | Space.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

First Music Video in Space

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • After Conjunction Updates
  • -New software was uploaded what was developed and tested on Earth on the \’testbed\’ that will allow more autonomous navigation that will help Curiosity select safe routes by itself
  • -Additional safety checks have been added to the onboard software for the ChemCam instrument to make sure it is never directly pointed at the sun for a long period of time
  • Plans
  • -Calibration data for the navigation cameras, to make sure the B-side computer navigation camera\’s are working properly before moving to a new location
  • Second Drilling Location
  • -The team operating NASA\’s Curiosity Mars rover has selected a second target rock for drilling and sampling. The rover will set course to the drilling location in coming days.
  • -\”Cumberland,\” lies about nine feet (2.75 meters) west of the rock where Curiosity\’s drill first touched Martian stone in February
  • -Both rocks are flat, with pale veins and a bumpy surface. They are embedded in a layer of rock on the floor of a shallow depression called \”Yellowknife Bay.
  • -This second drilling is intended to confirm results from the first drilling, which indicated the chemistry of the first powdered sample from John Klein was much less oxidizing than that of a soil sample the rover scooped up before it began drilling.
  • -Cumberland and John Klein are very similar, Cumberland appears to have more of the erosion-resistant granules that cause the surface bumps, concretions, or clumps of minerals, which formed when water soaked the rock long ago
  • -Mission engineers recently finished upgrading Curiosity\’s operating software following a four-week break rover continued monitoring the Martian atmosphere during the break, but the team did not send any new commands
  • Multimedia
  • -YouTube Curiosity Rover Report (May 9, 2013): \’Spring Break\’ Over: Commanding Resumes | JPL
  • -Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • -Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • –Mars Science Laboratory: NASA Curiosity Rover Team Selects Second Drilling Target On Mars | Mars.jpl.nasa.gov
  • –Mars Rover Curiosity Gears Up for Drilling, Epic Drive | Space.com
  • –Bizarre Mars Mountain Possibly Built by Wind, Not Water | Space.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • May 20, 1901 : 112 years ago : 3D Projector : Claude Grivolas, one of Pathe\’s main shareholders in Paris, France, patented a projector for three-dimensional (stereoscopic) movies viewed wearing spectacles with one red and one blue lens (French patent No. 310,864). He received a British patent on 23 May 1901 (No. 10,695) For filming, he used a dual camera arrangement which photographed images alternately. He then created one composite master film with the left camera images alternated with the right camera image. His projector had a shutter with one red and one blue transparent sections, with opaque quadrants between them. Left-eye images were projected through the blue filter followed by right-eye images in red light. The movie appeared black and white when viewed using red/blue spectacles

Looking up this week

The post Bionic Ear & Atomic Movie | SciByte 93 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> iPhone Nurse & “Warp Drive” | SciByte 64 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/25081/iphone-nurse-warp-drive-scibyte-64/ Tue, 25 Sep 2012 21:23:12 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=25081 We take a look at house calls for ear infections, ig-nobel awards, distant galaxies, UK's fireball, Alcubierre “Warp Drive", Curiosity updates and more!

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We take a look at house calls for ear infections, ig-nobel awards, distant galaxies, UK’s fireball, updates on the Jupiter Impact, Red Bull Stratos, the Shuttle Endeavour, Alcubierre “Warp Drive”, Curiosity updates and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes

Is it an ear infection? There could be an app for that

  • An iPhone attachment designed for at-home diagnoses of ear infections
  • The low down
  • Pediatricians currently diagnose ear infections using the standard otoscope to examine the eardrum
  • With a new technology and an app parents could receive a diagnosis at home
  • Significance
  • With Remotoscope, parents would be able to take a picture or video of their child’s eardrum using the iPhone and send the images digitally to a physician for diagnostic review
  • Remotoscope’s clip-on attachment uses the iPhone’s camera and flash as the light source as well as a custom software app to provide magnification and record data to the phone
  • Current data transmission capabilities seamlessly send images and video to a doctor’s inbox or to the patient’s electronic medical record.
  • This system has the potential to save money for both families and healthcare systems,
  • Receiving serial images of a child’s ear over several days via the Remotoscope could allow physicians to wait and see if a child’s infection improves or whether antibiotics are warranted
  • Allowing physicians to implement the “watchful waiting” plan rather than prescribing antibiotics right away
  • Clinical trials for the Remotoscope is currently underway to see if the device can obtain images of the same diagnostic quality as what a physician sees with a traditional otoscope
  • A Emory medical student is recruiting families who come into the emergency department at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta hospitals for treatment of ear infection-type symptoms
  • Once a family agrees to be in the trial and the child has seen the emergency room doctor
  • Video is taken of the child’s ear with Remotoscope and a traditional otoscope linked to a computer.
  • A panel of physicians will review the quality of the samples, make a diagnosis from the Remotoscope video and see if it matches the original diagnosis by the ER doctor.
  • Parents are also being asked their opinions on using the device, so far the parents are saying that they would like to use it
  • Of Note
  • The Food and Drug Administration, through the Atlanta Pediatric Device Consortium, is partially funding the trial
  • Although they are not ready for consumer use they are hoping to publish the trial’s results by the end of the year
  • Multimedia
  • Remotoscope: Checking for Ear Infections From Home | GeorgiaTech
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • iPhone attachment designed for at-home diagnoses of ear infections | Medical/xpress

— NEWS BYTE —

Not the Nobel awards but the IG-Nobel awards

  • Ig-Nobel awards are prizes that are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative
  • Psychology
  • “Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller”
  • Peace Prize
  • Converting old Russian ammunition into new diamonds.
  • Acoustics
  • SpeechJammer, disrupts a person’s speech, by making them hear their own spoken words at a very slight delay. (even at only a few hundred milliseconds)
  • Neuroscience
  • demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, that can see meaningful brain activity anywhere
  • Chemistry
  • For solving the puzzle of why, in certain houses in the town of Anderslöv, Sweden, people’s hair turned green.
  • Literature
  • The US Government General Accountability Office, for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports.
  • Physics Prize
  • calculating the balance of forces that shape and move the hair in a human ponytail
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • the dynamics of liquid-sloshing, to learn what happens when a person walks while carrying a cup of coffee.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube The 22nd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony | ImprobableResearch
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • ImprobableResearch
  • Shut up! Speech jammer among 2012 Ig Nobel winners | Phys.org

An ancient galaxy

  • With the combined the power of NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes as well as a cosmic magnification effect, a team of astronomers has spotted what could be the most distant galaxy ever detected.
  • The low down
  • Objects at these extreme distances are mostly beyond the detection sensitivity of today’s largest telescopes
  • For these objects have to rely on “gravitational lensing” (predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago) when the gravity of foreground objects warps and magnifies the light from background objects
  • In this case it brightening the remote object some 15 times and bringing it into view.
  • Significance
  • This galaxy is the most distant object we have ever observed with high confidence
  • The light from the galaxy came from when the 13.7-billion-year-old universe was just 500 million years old, or 3.6% it’s current age
  • The galaxy is small and compact, containing only about 1 percent of the Milky Way’s mass
  • This observation supports leading cosmological theories that the first galaxies should indeed have started out tiny, then progressively merged
  • Of Note
  • Future work involving this galaxy, as well as others like it that we hope to find, will allow us to study the universe’s earliest objects and how the Dark Ages ended
  • Astronomers plan to study the rise of the first stars and galaxies and the epoch of reionization with the successor to both Spitzer and Hubble, NASA’s James Webb Telescope, slated for launch in 2018
  • The newly described distant galaxy will likely be a prime target
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Astrophysicists spy ultra-distant galaxy amidst cosmic ‘dark ages’ | Phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

UK’s Sep 21st fireball

— Updates —

Sep 10th Jupiter Impact

Red Bull Stratos is targeting Oct. 8 for final record-breaking ‘flight’

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

Shuttle program

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Alcubierre “Warp Drive”

  • Thanks guys!
  • Ben Morse ‏@Benathon
  • Ted Hynes ‏@MrUnbridledMind
  • Last time on SciByte
  • Warp Drive | SciByte 15 [September 6, 2011]
  • The low down
  • The basic concept of the Alcubierre warp drive is to warp space and time around a ship was suggested in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre
  • It would cause space-time to warp around the starship, creating a region of contracted space in front of it and expanded space behind
  • While the starship itself would stay inside a bubble of flat space-time that wasn’t being warped
  • Calculations at the time found that such a device would require prohibitive amounts of energy.
  • Significance
  • Previous studies estimated the warp drive would require a minimum amount of energy about equal to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter
  • Recently it was calculated what would happen if the shape of the ring encircling the spacecraft was adjusted into more of a rounded donut, as opposed to a flat ring
  • In those calculations the warp drive could be powered by a mass about the size of a spacecraft like the Voyager 1
  • Of Note
  • If the intensity of the space warps can be oscillated over time then the energy required is reduced even more
  • Although the basic concept is still impractical these new calculations make it more plausible and worth further investigation
  • Scientists have already begun experimenting with a mini version of the warp drive in their laboratory.
  • They are hoping to generate a very tiny instance of this in a tabletop experiment, to try to perturb space-time by one part in 10 million
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Warp Drive May Be More Feasible Than Thought, Scientists Say | Space.com
  • The warp drive: hyper-fast travel within general relativity | IOPSciece

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Sep 28, 1858 | 154 years ago : 1st Picture of a comet : Donati’s comet (discovered by Giovanni Donati, 1826–1873) became the first to be photographed. It was a bright comet that developed a spectacular curved dust trail with two thin gas tails, captured by an English commercial photographer, William Usherwood, using a portrait camera at a low focal ratio. At Harvard, W.C. Bond, attempted an image on a collodion plate the following night, but the comet shows only faintly and no tail can be seen. Bond was subsequently able to evaluate the image on Usherwood’s plate. The earliest celestial daguerreotypes were made in 1850–51, though after the Donati comet, no further comet photography took place until 1881, when P.J.C. Janssen and J.W. Draper took the first generally recognized photographs of a comet

Looking up this week

The post iPhone Nurse & “Warp Drive” | SciByte 64 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Neil Armstrong & Dinosaur Footprints | SciByte 60 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/23826/neil-armstrong-dinosaur-footprints-scibyte-60/ Tue, 28 Aug 2012 21:40:40 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=23826 We take a look at the life of Neil Armstrong, dinosaurs at NASA, a Hubble contest update, a Curiosity Rover update much more!

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We take a look at the life of Neil Armstrong, dinosaurs at NASA, musical training, an update on a Hubble contest, Curiosity update and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes

Neil Armstrong



YouTube Channel NASAexplorer

  • For the famed astronaut’s funeral set on Friday, August 31, flags will be flown at half-staff as ordered by President Obama as “a mark of respect for the memory of Neil Armstrong”.
  • Before NASA
  • He was licensed to fly at 16, before he got his driver’s license
  • Armstrong was active in the Boy Scouts and he eventually earned the rank of Eagle Scout
  • Recognized with the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award and Silver Buffalo Award
  • July 18, 1969, while flying towards the Moon inside the Columbia, he greeted the Scouts: “I’d like to say hello to all my fellow Scouts and Scouters at Farragut State Park in Idaho having a National Jamboree there this week; and Apollo 11 would like to send them best wishes”. Houston replied: "Thank you, Apollo 11. I’m sure that, if they didn’t hear that, they’ll get the word through the news. Certainly appreciate that
  • NASA
  • He became a test pilot with what evolved into NASA, flying more than 200 kinds of aircraft from gliders to jets.
  • Gemini 8
  • Armstrong and pilot David Scott achieved the first docking of two spacecraft in orbit, linking up with an unmanned Agena target vehicle
  • The mission was a near disaster, suffering the first critical in-space failure of a U.S. spacecraft after a stuck thruster set the Gemini spacecraft spinning
  • Armstrong ultimately regained control by using their re-entry system thrusters, steadying the spacecraft and forcing an early, but safe end to the mission
  • Apollo 11
  • Armstrong privately concluded that they had a 90 percent chance of returning safely to Earth but only a 50–50 chance of pulling off a successful landing.
  • It was crucial to land without any sideways motion, lest they risk tipping over at touchdown but the blast of the descent rocket was kicking up moon dust
  • Armstrong fixed his gaze on rocks sticking up through the blowing dust; using them as reference points and guided Eagle slowly downward, about as fast as an elevator
  • In those first few moments on the moon, Armstrong stopped in what he called “a tender moment” and left a patch to commemorate NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in action.
  • An estimated 600 million people [a fifth of the world’s population] watched and listened to the moon landing, the largest audience for any single event in history.
  • In Wapakoneta, media and souvenir frenzy was swirling around the home of Armstrong’s parents where people were pulling grass out of their front yard.
  • After Apollo 11
  • Soon after returning from the moon, Armstrong announced he would not fly in space again.
  • Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were given ticker tape parades in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and later made a 22-nation world tour. A homecoming in Wapakoneta drew 50,000 people to the city of 9,000.
  • In 1970, Armstrong was appointed deputy associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA but left the following year to teach aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
  • Words of remembrance
  • Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 11 lunar module pilot and second man to walk on the moon | “Whenever I look at the moon it reminds me of the moment over four decades ago when I realized that even though we were farther away from Earth than two humans had ever been, we were not alone.”
  • Apollo 11 command module pilot Michael Collins | “He was the best, and I will miss him terribly,”
  • NASA Administrator Charles Bolden | “As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind’s first small step on a world beyond our own.”
  • NASA Administrator Charles Bolden | “As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind’s first small step on a world beyond our own. Besides being one of America’s greatest explorers, Neil carried himself with a grace and humility that was an example to us all. When President Kennedy challenged the nation to send a human to the moon, Neil Armstrong accepted without reservation.”
  • U.S. President Barack Obama | “Neil was among the greatest of American heroes – not just of his time, but of all time. When he and his fellow crew members lifted off aboard Apollo 11 in 1969, they carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation. They set out to show the world that the American spirit can see beyond what seems unimaginable – that with enough drive and ingenuity, anything is possible. And when Neil stepped foot on the surface of the moon for the first time, he delivered a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten.”
  • Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney | “Neil Armstrong today takes his place in the hall of heroes. The moon will miss its first son of Earth.”
  • House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) | “Neil Armstrong blazed trails not just for America, but for all of mankind. He inspired generations of boys and girls worldwide not just through his monumental feat, but with the humility and grace with which he carried himself to the end.”
  • In the words of Neil Armstrong
  • “[The moon was] simply magnificent, beyond any visual experience that I had ever been exposed to.”
  • “In my own view, the important achievement of Apollo was a demonstration that humanity is not forever chained to this planet, and our visions go rather further than that, and our opportunities are unlimited.”
  • “I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer,” “And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession.”
  • “I can honestly say—and it’s a big surprise to me—that I have never had a dream about being on the moon”
  • The space race was “the ultimate peaceful competition: USA versus U.S.S.R. It did allow both sides to take the high road, with the objectives of science and learning and exploration.”
  • From his family
  • "Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.
  • Multimedia
  • Image Gallery Neil Armstrong – American Icon Remembered | Space.com
  • YouTube NASA | Highlight Reel of Partially Restored Apollo 11 Video | NASAexplorer
  • YouTube NASA | The 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 | NASAexplorer
  • YouTube NASA: Neil Armstrong Remarks from Congressional Gold Medal July 21, 2009 | tvspace
  • YouTube The Åpollo–11 Channel | TheApollo11Channel
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Neil Armstrong Info
  • Biography : Neil Armstrong | NASA.gov
  • The Apollo 11 Flight Journal | history.NASA.gov
  • Debunking myths about Neil Armstrong | NBCnews
  • For Neil Armstrong, the First Moon Walker, It Was All about Landing the Eagle | ScientificAmerican
  • Neil Armstrong, 1st man on the moon, dies at 82 (Update) | phys.org
  • Neil Armstrong, First Man on the Moon, Dies at 82 | UniverseToday.com
  • Neil Armstrong: First Man on the Moon | Space,com
  • Neil Armstrong (1930–2012): NASA Remembers an American Icon | Space.com
  • Neil Armstrong Remembered: Tributes to 1st Man to Walk on the Moon | Space.com
  • Neil Armstrong, First Man to Walk on Moon, Dies at 82 | Space.com

— NEWS BYTE —

NASA and Dinosaurs?



Credit: NASA/GSFC/Rebecca Roth

  • The low down
  • Footprints of ankylosaur have been found on the property of a NASA‘s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
  • Significance
  • Ankylosaur are members of the heavily-armored ankylosaur subgroup that lacked tail clubs but often sported prominent spike’s along their sides
  • At least two, possibly a mother and child tracks of two nodosaurs have been confirmed
  • A smaller print was discovered within the first, evidence that they were made around the same time and leading researchers to suggest it may have been a mother-and-child pair.
  • The track has started to erode, and may have been damaged by a lawnmower, the roughly 112-million-year-old track still shows four toe imprints
  • The tracks were found earlier this summer and recently NASA scientists were taken out to the site to see the fossil depression at that time
  • Researchers found several more possible dinosaur tracks, the NASA facility may have been founded on a Cretaceous dinosaur stomping ground.
  • Of Note
  • Officials are already moving to protect the fossil, and they plan to bring in paleontologists to look for other dinosaur tracks
  • What happens next will depend on the laws that regulate how fossils can be removed and curated.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Multiple Dinosaur Tracks Confirmed at NASA Center | UniverseToday.com
  • NASA’s Nodosaur Track | Smithsonian.com

Musical training as a child has a life long affect

  • A little music training in childhood goes a long way in improving how the brain function
  • The low down
  • Researchers for the first time have directly examined what happens after children stop playing a musical instrument after only a few years
  • Compared to peers with no musical training, adults with one to five years of musical training as children had enhanced brain responses to complex sounds
  • Making them more effective at pulling out the lowest frequency in sound crucial for speech and music perception, allowing recognition of sounds in complex and noisy auditory environments.
  • Significance
  • For the study, young adults with varying amounts of past musical training were tested by measuring electrical signals from the auditory brainstem in response to eight complex sounds ranging in pitch
  • Forty-five adults were grouped into three matched groups based on histories of musical instruction
  • One group had no musical instruction, another had 1 to 5 years the others had to 6 to 11 years
  • Both musically trained groups began instrumental practice around age 9
  • Musical training during childhood led to more robust neural processing of sounds later in life
  • The study suggests that short-term music lessons may enhance lifelong listening and learning
  • Of Note
  • Prior research on highly trained musicians and early bilinguals revealed that enhanced brainstem responses to sound are associated with heightened auditory perception, executive function and auditory communication skills.
  • The team believes that a few years of music lessons also confer advantages in how one perceives and attends to sounds in everyday communication situations, such as noisy restaurants
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Practicing music for only few years in childhood helps improve adult brain: research | MedicalXPress
  • Musical Training During Childhood Shapes Brains As Adults | medicalnewstoday.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Documentary : Chasing Atlantis

— Updates —

Hubble’s Hidden Treasures

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –



Credit: JPLnews

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • August 1971 | 41 years ago | Neil Armstrong Retires from NASA

Looking up this week

The post Neil Armstrong & Dinosaur Footprints | SciByte 60 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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

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

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Show Notes

Upcoming spinning medical diagnostic tool



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

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

— NEWS BYTE —

Fish and magnetic fields

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

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Plutonian system grows

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

Lunar X Prize

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

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

Expedition 32



Credit: NASA/Victor Zelentsov | YouTube channel : NASATelevision

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

The next chapter in the Dragon spacecraft

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

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

Looking up this week

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

]]> Egyptian Astronomy & Smog | SciByte 45 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/19382/egyptian-astronomy-smog-scibyte-45/ Tue, 08 May 2012 21:23:32 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=19382 How the Egyptians are helping astronomical models today, a star being eaten, strange smog contributors, the upcoming Venus transit, SpaceX spacecraft update

The post Egyptian Astronomy & Smog | SciByte 45 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at how the Egyptians are helping astronomical models today, a star being eaten, strange smog contributors, the upcoming Venus transit, viewer feedback, SpaceX spacecraft update, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Egyptian Astronomy helping further today’s models



Credit: astro.physics.uiowa.edu | Credit: nightskyinfo.com

*— NEWS BYTE — *

Black hole munching on stars



Image Credit: NASA, S. Gezari, A. Rest, and R. Chornock

See smog, think cows



Credit: NASA | Credit : USDA.gov

  • The low down
  • People typically blame Southern California’s smog on automobiles, a new study suggests that cows may be just as responsible, if not more so
  • A large fraction of the region’s smog, especially the particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, is ammonium nitrate
  • Ammonia is generated by cars with certain types of catalytic converters and by bacteria that consume cattle waste
  • When the ammonia reacts with nitrogen oxides that are produced in large quantities in automobile emissions
  • Significance
  • Data gathered during low-altitude flights in and around the Los Angeles basin in May 2010 suggest that the region’s 9.9 million autos generate about 62 metric tons of ammonia each day
  • White ammonia emissions from dairy farms in the eastern portion of the basin—home to about 298,000 cattle—range between 33 and 176 metric tons per day
  • * Of Note*
  • In addition ammonia emissions from the dairy farms are concentrated, boosting atmospheric levels of the gas to more than 100 times background levels
  • So efforts to curb the farms’ emissions (perhaps by feeding the animals different diets) might reduce smog more than those targeting cars.
  • Also theorized to contribute are vapors from paint, fumes from outdoor barbecues, and even the fresh scent emitted by trees
  • Multimedia
  • California Smog | NASA.gov
  • Cow | USDA.gov [Photo by N. Wade Snyder]
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Smog: It’s Not All Cars’ Fault | Science Magazine
  • ScienceShot: There’s Cow in Your Smog | news.sciencemag.org

*— TWO-BYTE NEWS — *

Venus Transit Upcoming on June 5th / 6th


  • * Last time on SciByte*
  • Meteorites & Lasers | SciByte 38 – Venus Transit [March 20, 2012]
  • Curiosity Rover | SciByte 22 – Science Calender [November 22, 2011]
  • The low down
  • On June 5 (June 6 in Australia and Asia), it will pass between the Earth and Sun… an event which only happens about twice and century and won’t happen again until the year 2117!
  • The transit this year will last about 6.5 hours and will be visible from more than half of the Earth’s surface
  • The Sun will set while the transit is still in progress from most of North America, the Caribbean, and northwest South America
  • It will also already be in progress at sunrise for observers in central Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and eastern Africa
  • No portion of the transit will be visible from Portugal or southern Spain, western Africa, and the southeastern 2/3 of South America
  • Between each occurrence is happens at uneven occurrences at 121.5, then 8 then 105.5, then 8 years again. So only four times every 243 years and only in early Dec or early June
  • The next pair of Venus transits occur over a century from now on 2117 Dec 11 and 2125 Dec 08
  • * Of Note*
  • You can start preparations now to view the transit of Venus
  • Many retailers, like amazon, are are carrying special eclipse/transit viewing glasses and lenses
  • Make sure all glasses are sealed and that no sunlight can enter
  • Binoculars and telescopes require special lenses, if you have those you might want to practice before the event
  • Start thinking about what time it will occur in your area
  • Even the Hubble space telescope is getting in on the transit action by looking away from the Sun, more information on that in the SciByte near the transit.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube VIDEO : NE Live – Transit of Venus Promo for Sun-Earth Day 2012 | SunEarthDay
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Sun Earth Day
  • 2012 Venus Transit – The Countdown Is On! | UniverseToday.com

*— VIEWER FEEDBACK — *

  • SOFTWARE : MetalFreak
  • “Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go."
  • Screenshots
  • On stellarium.org you can download in Linux, Mac, or Windows
  • [on cnet](https://download.cnet.com/Stellarium/3000–2054_4–10072276.html
  • on Softpedia

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

SpaceX Dragon flight delay

  • * Last time on SciByte*
  • Mining Asteroids & Shuttle Discovery | SciByte 44 – SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket [May 1, 2012]](https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/19186/mining-asteroids-shuttle-discovery-scibyte–44/)
  • Solar Storms & Private Space Flight | SciByte 30 – SpaceX Space Station resupply mission resceduled [January 24, 2012]](https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/16276/solar-storms-private-space-flight-scibyte–30/)
  • The low down
  • On May 2nd it was announced that the launch will likely shift to a later date, possibly May 10
  • A SpaceX spokesperson said that “SpaceX is continuing to work through the software assurance process with NASA. We will issue a statement as soon as a new launch target is set.”
  • The flight was previously delayed from an April 30 launch date to allow more time for tests of Dragon’s flight software. The new delay is also meant to allow for further checkouts.
  • Social Media
  • SpaceX @SpaceX
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • SpaceX
  • SpaceX Says Delay Likely for 1st Private Launch to Space Station | Space.com

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

  • May 9, 1893 : 119 years ago : First motion picture
     : The first motion picture exhibition was given by Thomas Alva Edison in Brooklyn, New York to an audience of 400 people at the Dept of Physics, Brooklyn Institute, Brooklyn, N.Y. using Edision’s Kinetograph. An optical lantern projector showed moving images of a blacksmith and his two helpers passing a bottle and forging a piece of iron. Each filmstrip had 700 images, each image being shown for 1/92 sec. The event was reported in the Scientific American of 20 May 1893.
  • May 9, 1962 : 50 years ago : Moon reached by laser light : A laser beam was bounced off the moon from earth by MIT scientists. The area of the light beam on the surface was estimated at a diameter of 4 miles.

Looking up this week

The post Egyptian Astronomy & Smog | SciByte 45 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Martian Dust Devils & The Shuttles | SciByte 43 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/18926/martian-dust-devils-the-shuttles-scibyte-43/ Tue, 24 Apr 2012 21:06:56 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=18926 We take a look at aurora on Uranus, Martian dust devils, counting penguins, Apollo 8 images, the high altitude jet stream, the latest on the shuttles, and more!

The post Martian Dust Devils & The Shuttles | SciByte 43 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at aurora on Uranus, Martian dust devils, counting penguins, Apollo 8 images, the high altitude jet stream, the latest on the shuttles, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Uranus Aurora



Credit: Laurent Lamy

*— NEWS BYTE — *

Martian Dust Devils

Credit: MSSS / JPL / NASA

Studying the high-altitude jet stream



Credit: NASA Wallops

  • The low down
    • After several days of delays due to the weather NASA launched the 5 ATREX rockets within 5 min of each other on March 27
    • Each of the rockets released a chemical tracer that was used to get more data of the high-altitude jet stream located 60–65 mi [95–105 km]
    • Two of the rockets also contained instruments to measure temperature and pressure
    • Hopefully this data will help us to better understand the processes behind this jet stream
  • Significance
    • The high-altitude jet stream that this project was looking at is much higher than the one in the nightly weather report
    • The upper jet-stream typically has winds of about 200–300 mph [320–480 km/hr] and is a region of electrical turbulence that can affect satellites and radio
  • Of Note
    • NASA will release more information about the outcome of the mission after scientists have had time to review the data
  • Multimedia
  • Further Reading / In the News

*— TWO-BYTE NEWS — *

Counting Penguins from space



Credit: (left) DigitalGlobe; (right) British Antarctic Survey

  • The low down
    • A simple snap of a photograph of a penguin colony, and some marking can help scientist accurately count the number of penguins in a colony
    • Those numbers are hard to get however in remote places, especially in the Antarctic
    • A new technique uses satellite imaging to report results
  • Of Note
    • Scientists have now found twice as many Emperor penguins than thought to exist
    • This brings the total colonies to 44 (7 new ones) and ~595,000 (+/- 81,000)
  • Further Reading / In the News

The view from Apollo 8

  • The low down
    • December 24, 1968, Apollo 8 : Commander Frank Borman and crew members William A. Anders and James A. Lovell, Jr. became the first humans to photograph the Earth rising over the moon.
    • This video recreates what they saw, and interweaves the photographs they took and hear the original audio recording
  • Multimedia

Asteroid Lutetia Flyby

  • The low down
    • Images from ESA’s robotic Rosetta spacecraft were compiled to make a video of the bly-by it made
  • The mission was focused on determining the origins of the asteroid and it’s unusual colors by taking data and images
  • Multimedia

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

The Shuttle Shuffle



Credit: Ken Kremer

Private deliveries to the Space Station

  • The historic flight of the first commercial transport to the International Space Station, The Dragon, now has a launch date of around May 7.

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

  • April 25, 1990 : 22 years ago : Hubble Space Telescope Deployed : In 1990, the $2.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope was deployed in space from the Space Shuttle Discovery into an orbit 381 miles above Earth. It was the first major orbiting observatory, named in honour of American astronomer, Edwin Powell Hubble. It was seven years behind schedule and nearly $2 billion over budget. In orbit, the 94.5-in primary mirror was found to be flawed, giving blurred images and reduced ability to see distant stars. However, correcting optics were successfully installed in 25 Dec 1993. The telescope 43-ft x 14-ft telescope now provides images with a clarity otherwise impossible due to the effect of the earth’s atmosphere. Instrument packages capture across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Looking up this week

The post Martian Dust Devils & The Shuttles | SciByte 43 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Baby Mammoths & Feathered Dinosaurs | SciByte 41 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/18692/baby-mammoths-feathered-dinosaurs-scibyte-41/ Tue, 10 Apr 2012 22:03:30 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=18692 We take a look at baby mammoth hair color, feathered dinosaurs, plasma, NASA funding, Apollo 13 and as always take a peek back into history and up into the sky.

The post Baby Mammoths & Feathered Dinosaurs | SciByte 41 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at baby mammoth hair color, feathered dinosaurs, plasma, NASA funding, Apollo 13 and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Well preserved mammoth discovered in Siberia



Left Image/Video Credit: BBC YouTube Channel || Right Image/Video Credit: news.bbcimg.co.uk

  • Thanks Peregrine Falcon for making sure I saw this
  • The low down
  • Extinct animals are mostly studied from bones, teeth and tusks, because these parts decompose over a relatively long time
  • Soft tissues like muscle, skin, and internal organs are rarely found on older carcasses because they decompose much quicker
  • Because of this information about a species or specimen is constrained to the slowly decomposing parts, vital information is unavailable
  • Most permafrost-preserved mammoth specimens consist solely of bones or bone fragments that currently provide little new insight into the species’ biology in life
  • Now a remarkably well preserved frozen juvenile mammoth carcass, nicknamed “Yuka,” was found entombed in Siberian ice
  • Although carbon dating is still in the works, it is believed to be at least 10,000 years old, it was found as part of a BBC/Discovery Channel-funded expedition
  • The mammoth was in such good shape that much of its flesh is still intact
  • The skin retained its pink color, and the blonde-red hue of the woolly coat also remains.
  • Significance
  • Yuka is the first mammoth carcass with soft tissues preserved it was also the first to show human interaction in the region
  • The soft tissues actually included strawberry-blonde hair, which could help reveal whether or not mammoths had all of the same hair colors that humans do
  • Analysis of the tusks and teeth researchers estimate that the animal was about 2.5 years old when it died.
  • Healed scratches found on the skin indicate a lion attack that Yuka survived earlier in its relatively short life
  • Judging by deep, unhealed scratches in the hide and bite marks on the tail suggest it was most likely pursued by one or more lions right before its death
  • Based on evidence of a freshly broken leg it probably took a bad fall and broke a lower hind leg
  • Scientists have guessed that the extinct subspecies of the African lion (Panthera leo spelea) were present in the area at the same time as the mammoths, and that they hunted mammoths.
  • Yuka provides fairly solid evidence that that was correct
  • Fifteen to thirty scalloped marks on the skin are an indication of possible saw-like motion of a human tool
  • Humans may have moved in either right before or after it died, suggesting that humans at that time ‘stole’ kills from hunting lions
  • The removed parts that could be of use immediately, and probably buried the rest of the body for possible later use
  • No longer with the animal are the main core mass of Yuka’s body, including the skull, spine, pelvis, organs, vertebrae, ribs, associated musculature, and some of the meat from upper parts of the legs
  • The skull and pelvis were found nearby
  • * Of Note*
  • The scientist to publish the genetic code of mammoth hemoglobin a few years ago
  • Both this specimen and the near complete specimen of a baby mammoth discovered in 2007 will help researchers with genotype (DNA sequences) which could lead the application of cloning to bring a mammoth back to life
  • The ability to bring it back the mammoth from extinction using cloning would probably take years to decades
  • Watch for Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice on BBC Two at 21:00 BST on Wednesday 4 April and will be shown on the Discovery Channel in the US at a future date.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube VIDEO : The Perfectly Preserved Frozen Yuka Mammoth Mummy – Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Well-preserved strawberry-blond mammoth discovered in Siberia | Fox News
  • Woolly mammoth carcass may have been cut into by humans | BBC

*— NEWS BYTE — *

More Fine Feathered Dinosaurs



Left Image Credit: Zhang Hailong | Right Image Credit: Zhang Hailong

  • * Last time on SciByte*
  • Solar Storms & Higgs Boson | SciByte 37 [March 13, 2012] – More Dinosaur feathers get color
  • Feedback & Space Lego’s | SciByte 31 [Jan 31, 2012] – Dinosaur feather colors
  • The low down
  • New fossils of one adult and two younger dinosaurs show evidence of an extensively feathers dinosaur, the largest species to date
  • The region the new discoveries have been made is well known for keeping soft tissues of ancient animals well-preserved
  • Significance
  • Yutyrannus hauli, Y.huali, a mix of latin and mandarin translated into “beautiful feathered tyrant”, weighed up to about 3,000 lb (1,400 kg) and stretched 30ft (9m) from nose to tail
  • The species had include a high, bumpy nose plate, known as a midline crest and likely stood 8ft (2.5m) tall, although its posture is unknown
  • Y.huali, although differs in growth strategy, has the type of skeletal features that make it in the same family as the Tyrannosaurus Rex, and would have reached T. rex’s chest.
  • The feathers of the Y.Hauli were at least 6in (15cm) long, although the color of the feathers is not known
  • There is some evidence that shows the coverage was a bit patchy which, might have given the dinosaur a shaggy appearance
  • Although its appears that the feathers might have entirely covered the dinosaurs skin, scientists are unable to confirm because the specimens aren’t complete.
  • * Of Note*
  • Some scientists hypothesize that smaller dinosaurs used a fluffy layer of feathers to stay warm
  • Other dinosaur specimens have shown evidence of being fully feathered, however all of those were far have been much smaller
  • Thanks to small surface-to-volume body ratios, large-bodied animals tend to maintain heat easily.
  • This hypothesis further goes on to suggest that the larger species found lost their feathers the bigger they got or were just not as extensively covered.
  • Other scientists point out that in warmer climates animals like the modern giraffes and wildebeests, have external covering but don’t need it for insulation
  • Another hypothesis is that the feathers were simply used to show off and attract mates.
    • Either hypothesis has some scientists reimagining the appearance of the Tyrannosaurus rex, and other dinosaurs
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube VIDEO : T-Rex Relative had Soft, Downy Feathers | NewsyScience
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • T. rex has another fine, feathered cousin | ScienceNews.org
  • A gigantic feathered dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of China | Nature.com
  • Warm and fuzzy T. rex? New evidence surprises | Phys.org
  • Giant Feathered Tyrannosaur Found in China | Wired.com

Killing bacteria with plasma

  • The low down
  • Plasma is the fourth state of matter (solids, liquids and gases) has previously shown its worth in the medical industry by effectively killing bacteria and viruses on the surface of the skin and in water.
  • Plasmas are produced in electrical discharges, these gases of free electrons and ions
  • Medical science has high hopes for plasmas. and they have already been shown to destroy pathogens, help heal wounds, and selectively kill cancer cells
  • It seems that the highly reactive oxygen species generated oxidized cell membranes and damage DNA.
  • These oxygen species are also found in our immune system
  • Significance
  • Killing harmful bacteria in hospitals is difficult; out in the field, it can be an even bigger problem
  • Now researchers may have found a remote disinfection in a portable “flashlight” that shines a ray of cold plasma to kill bacteria in minutes.
  • In an experiment the ‘flashlight’ was put over a thick biofilm of one of the most antibiotic- and heat-resistant bacteria which often infects the root canals during dental treatments.
  • Biofilms created in this experiment were incubating bacteria for seven days, and were around 0.0001 in (25 micrometres) thick and consisted of 17 different layers of bacteria.
  • After five minutes of treatment the plasma not only inactivated the top layer of cells, but penetrated deep into the very bottom of the layers to kill the bacteria.
  • * Of Note*
  • Adding to the safety of the device was that the UV radiation in the jet created by the plasma flashlight was so low
  • In addition temperature of the plume of plasma in the experiments was between 20–230C, which is very close to room temperature and therefore prevents any damage to the skin
  • The device now costs less that $100 so produce, before making it ready for commercialisation
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Plasma Flashlight Zaps Bacteria | sciencemag.org
  • Handheld plasma flashlight rids skin of notorious pathogens | phys.org

*— Updates — *

James Cameron makes a Titanic correction

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

Extended funding for a few NASA programs



Credit: NASA

  • The low down
  • Because of tight budgets a number of programs including Kepler were slated to run out of funds this November
  • Scientists were particularly worried about Kepler Since it requires several years of observations are required in order for Kepler to confirm a repeated orbit as a planet transits its star
  • Other planets to receive additional funding are Hubble, Fermi and Swift
  • Only the Spitzer infrared telescope, as of right now, will be closed out in 2015, which is sooner than requested.
  • Hubble Space Telescope will continue at the currently funded levels
  • Kepler
  • The Kepler mission, launched in 2006 has discovered more than 2,300 potential alien planets to date, and 61 confirmed alien planets
  • The Kepler Mission is designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover Earth-size planets in the habitable zone.
  • Hubble Space Telescope
  • Is the first major optical telescope to be placed in space,
  • Scientists have used Hubble to observe the most distant stars and galaxies as well as the planets in our solar system.
  • Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, formerly GLAST
  • NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope (formerly GLAST) studies the extreme energy universe!
  • Explore the most extreme environments in the Universe, where nature harnesses energies far beyond anything possible on Earth
    • Search for signs of new laws of physics and what composes the mysterious Dark Matter
    • Explain how black holes accelerate immense jets of material to nearly light speed.
    • Help crack the mysteries of the stupendously powerful explosions known as gamma-ray bursts.
    • Answer long-standing questions across a broad range of topics, including solar flares, pulsars and the origin of cosmic rays.
  • Swift
    ultraviolet, and optical wavebands.
  • A multi-wavelength observatory dedicated to the study of gamma-ray burst (GRB) science.
    • Determine the origin of gamma-ray bursts
    • Classify gamma-ray bursts and search for new types
    • Determine how the blastwave evolves and interacts with the surroundings
    • Use gamma-ray bursts to study the early universe
    • Perform the first sensitive hard X-ray survey of the sky
  • Social Media
  • NASA Kepler @NASAKepler
  • NASAFermi NASAFermi
  • NASA Swift mission @NASASwift
  • Hubble @NASA_Hubble
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • FREE Kepler Explorer App By OpenLab
  • NASA Extends Kepler, Spitzer, Planck Missions | NASA.gov
  • Kepler Mission Extended to 2016 | UniverseToday.com
  • NASA Extends Planet-Hunting Kepler Mission Through 2016

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

  • April 11, 1970 : 42 years ago : Apollo XIII Launch : The mission began with a little-known smaller incident: during the second-stage boost, the center (inboard) engine shut down two minutes early. The four outboard engines burned longer to compensate, and the vehicle continued to a successful orbit. The third manned lunar landing mission, was launched from Cape Canaveral with crew James Lovell, Fred Haise, and John Swigert. Swigert was a late replacement for the original CM pilot Ken Mattingly, who was grounded by the flight surgeon after exposure to German measles.
  • April 13, 1970 : 42 years ago : Apollo XIII Rescue : Disaster struck 200,000 miles from earth. A liquid oxygen tank exploded, disabling the normal supply of oxygen, electricity, light, and water. Swigert reported: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” The lunar landing was aborted. After circling the moon, the crippled spacecraft began a long, cold journey back to earth with enormous logistical problems in providing enough energy to the damaged fuel cells to allow a safe return.
  • April 17, 1970 : 42 years ago : Apollo XIII Return : Apollo 13 landed safely with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, four days after the spacecraft aborted its mission while it was four-fifths of the way to the moon. Upon his return, astronaut A. J. Lovell, Jr. was the first American astronaut to travel over 700 hours in space.

Looking up this week

The post Baby Mammoths & Feathered Dinosaurs | SciByte 41 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Apollo 11 & James Cameron | SciByte 40 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/18543/apollo-11-james-cameron-scibyte-40/ Tue, 03 Apr 2012 22:33:51 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=18543 We take a look at recovering Apollo 11 hardware, James Cameron's ocean dive, sprinting planets, Lego science, coffee, Hubble image competition, and more!

The post Apollo 11 & James Cameron | SciByte 40 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at recovering Apollo 11 hardware, James Cameron’s ocean dive, sprinting planets, Lego science, coffee, Einstein’s writings, Hubble image competition, viewer feedback and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Apollo 11 Engines found at the bottom of the ocean

*— NEWS BYTE — *

James Cameron dives deep

*— TWO-BYTE NEWS — *

Runaway planets

  • The low down
  • In 2005, astronomers found evidence of a runaway star that was flying out of the Milky Way galaxy at a speed of 1.5 million mph (2.4 million kph).
  • In the seven years since, 16 of these hypervelocity stars have been found
  • Significance
  • A new study has found that planets themselves could be ejected from their star, and even escaping the Milky Way at a speedy to 30 million miles per hour, or a fraction of the speed of light
  • A typical runaway planet would likely dash outward at 7 to 10 million mph (11.3 to 16.1 million kph),
  • Under the right circumstances, a few could have their speeds boosted to up to 30 million mph (48.3 million kph)
  • At those speeds they could be the fastest large solid objects, and could cross the diameter of the Earth in 10 sec
  • These hypervelocity planets could escape the Milky Way and travel through interstellar space
  • * Of Note*
  • Planets that are in tight orbits around a runaway star could travel with them, and be visible from dimming as it transits
  • This is the first time that scientists are discussing searching for planets around hypervelocity stars
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • ‘Warp-Speed’ Planets Flung Out of Galaxy on Wild Ride @ space.com

Lego’s can help build bones too

  • The low down
  • Bone has excellent mechanical properties for its weight
  • Synthetic bone has a range of applications; from the obvious, such as medical implants, to a material used in building construction
  • Researchers at Cambridge making synthetic bone have turned to legendary children’s toy Lego for a helping hand.
  • Significance
  • To ‘grow’ a synthetic bone like substance, the researchers first dip a sample into a beaker of calcium and protein, then rinse it in some water and dip in into another beaker of phosphate and protein
  • The process must be repeated over and over to build up the structure, which is time consuming and tedious
  • So the team looked into ways of automating the process, ideally a robot that could simply run while the team worked on other things and/or overnight
  • One solution for acquiring a robot was to purchase an expensive kit off the shelf from a catalog
  • Looking for a cheaper solution the team realized Lego could be the simplest, and cheapest, solution
  • So the team decided to build cranes from a Lego Mindstorms robotics kit
  • They programmed it to perform basic tasks on repeat, using microprocessors, motors, and sensors
  • The sample is tied to string at the end of the crane which then dips it in the different solutions
  • * Of Note*
  • The researchers are also working on hydroxyapatite–gelatin composites to create synthetic bone, of interest because of its low energy costs and improved similarity to the tissues they are intended to replace.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube VIDEO : Google Science Fair 2012: How can robots aid scientific research ? ( with LEGO) |Google Science Fair
  • YouTube VIDEO :
  • IMAGE : @
  • Social Media
  • Twitter Results for [#]()
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Growing bones with Lego @ University of Cambridge
  • Growing bones with Lego @ physorg.com

Sorry some coffee lovers

  • The low down
  • While stimulants may improve unengaged workers’ performance, a new University of British Columbia study suggests that for others, caffeine and amphetamines can have the opposite effect, causing workers with higher motivation levels to slack off.
  • Significance
  • Researchers studied the impacts of stimulants on “slacker” rats and “worker” rats, and sheds important light on why stimulants might affect people differently
  • For slacker rats, amphetamine sharpened the mental work ethic, making them more likely to choose the harder task.
  • For workers; however, amphetamine caused the animals to choose the easier option more.
  • Researchers can’t yet explain why stimulants would cause workers to choose the easier task
  • One possibility is that hard workers are already performing optimally, so any chance to the system could cause a net decrease in productivity.
  • * Of Note*
  • This study indicates that people being treated with stimulants would better benefit from a more personalized treatment programs.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Slacker rat, worker rat @ sciencenews.org
  • Coffee, other stimulant drugs may cause high achievers to slack off: research @ medicalxpress.com

Einsteins library

  • The low down
  • Albert Einstein’s complete archive is gradually becoming available through the Einstein Archives Online
  • The archive when fully uploaded will have more than 80,000 documents.
  • The archive will contain everything from manuscripts containing the famous E=mc^2 equation written in Einstein’s handwriting to postcards to his mother
  • * Of Note*
  • Einstein was an excellent student, who left school because he couldn’t handle the strict discipline and authority.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Einstein Was a Good Student, New Online Archive Suggests @ space.com

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

You could bring about the next great Hubble picture

  • The low down
  • Since 1990, Hubble has made more than a million observations
  • The main way to get Hubble data is the Hubble Legacy Archive website, where a search box lets you look for objects based on their name or coordinates or even which camera on Hubble
  • Realize that Hubble has not been able to observe all objects in the night sky and that scientists get the first chance to work with their data, releasing it to the public a year after they have been made
  • Significance
  • Over a million observations of the Universe have been made by the Hubble Space Telescope. Spacetelescope.org is asking the public to sift through the archives, adjust the colors of their favorite photos with an online tool, and submit to the contest
  • You can search Hubble’s archive for hidden treasures even if you don’t have advanced knowledge
  • It is recommend that people narrow their search to give only results from ACS, WFC3 and WFPC2 – Hubble’s general purpose cameras, as not all of Hubble’s observations are images
  • An interactive tool on the website allows you to look at the image in more detail, and carry out basic image processing such as adjusting the zoom and changing the contrast and colour balance
  • You can save your work as a JPEG
  • The process is entirely browser-based, however you can download the image in a FITS format so you use more advanced software to process the images
  • * Of Note*
  • Images from Hubble are look at the image in more detail, and carry out basic image processing such as adjusting the zoom and changing the contrast and colour balance, containing far more information that the eye can see
  • The beautiful iconic Hubble images seen by the public have been extensively tweaked and optimised by hand, in order to reveal as much of the data as possible
  • Multimedia
  • VIDEO : Hubblecast 53: Hidden Treasures in Hubble’s Archive @ spacetelescope.org
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Hubble’s Hidden Treaures Website
  • Hubble Legacy Archive
  • What is image processing?
  • Hubble Treasures Contest : iPad and iPod Touch up for Grabs
  • Join the 2012 Hubble’s Hidden Treasures Competition

*— VIEWER FEEDBACK — *

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

  • Apr 07, 1927 : 85 years ago : First Television Broadcast : In 1927, the first public display of a long distance television transmission was viewed by a group of newspaper reporters and dignitaries in the auditorium of AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories, New York. The research at AT&T was led by Herbert Ives, who introduced the system to the audience, followed by a broadcast speech by the then Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover from Washington, D.C.. Both the live picture and voice were transmitted by wire, over telephone lines. Hoover said,“Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the world’s history,” and also, “Human genius has now destroyed the impediment of distance in a new respect, and in a manner hitherto unknown.” The accomplishment was heralded with great acclaim by the press
  • Apr 06, 1930 : 82 years ago : Twinkies!!! : In 1930, Hostess Twinkies snack cakes were invented by James “Jimmy” A. Dewar, plant manager at Continental Baking Company, Chicago as an inexpensive product at the time of the Great Depression. He realized the factory had baking pans for sponge cakes used only during the summer strawberry season, and that they could be made useful year-round for a new product: sponge cakes injected with a banana creme filling. They originally sold at two for a nickel. Vanilla creme was substituted during the WW II banana shortage. The name is said to have come to him based on a billboard he saw for “Twinkle Toe” shoes.

Looking up this week

The post Apollo 11 & James Cameron | SciByte 40 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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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.

]]> Asteroids and Black Holes | SciByte 20 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/13622/asteroids-and-black-holes-scibyte-20/ Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:29:06 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=13622 We take a look at asteroid flyby's, black hole data, new elements, Mars water, the brain, headaches, Mars500, and take peek at what’s up in the sky this week.

The post Asteroids and Black Holes | SciByte 20 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at asteroid flyby’s, black hole data, new elements, Mars water, the brain, headaches, Mars500, health sensors in our cars and game systems, and take another peek at what’s up in the sky this week.

SciByte will provide you with a treasure trove of small talk for your next cocktail party, the knowledge to show off to friends and family, and provide you the means, with the help of our trusty show notes, to further investigate the things that interest you the most.

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Nov. 8 Asteroid Flyby

Direct Observations of disk around black hole

*— NEWS BYTE — *

Three New Elements Added To The Periodic Table

Mars’ history is a fluid situation

  • The low down
  • The picture painted by a review paper in the November 3 issue of Nature.
  • An international team of researchers crafted a tale of Mars’ parched, frigid history
  • Four billion years ago, the Martian surface may have been cold and dry — not warm, watery and more Earthlike than it is today, as many scientists have suggested.
  • Instead of saturating the dusty surface, fluids appeared only occasionally, quickly shaping channels and other landforms that bear watery footprints.
  • Beneath the planet’s reddish, rocky sands lurked a warm and wet subterranean environment, a potential incubator powered by hydrothermal activity and revealed when meteorite impacts blasted telltale minerals from the planet’s crust.
  • Water-carved landscapes, like snaking channels and river deltas, played a large role in producing the current view of a warm and watery Martian past.
  • Significance
  • If the authors are right, scientists hunting for evidence of past Martian life might be better off using a shovel
  • While the evidence for subterranean hydrothermal activity is strong, Bishop says it’s unlikely that transient or small amounts of surface water quickly crafted some of the river features, valley networks, or layered beds seen across Mars.
  • In September, NASA announced that Opportunity had found a rock at the edge of Endeavour Crater that looked as though it had been formed in a subterranean hydrothermal system.
  • Whether life might have evolved in the Martian subsurface is an open question. But on Earth, even multicellular organisms can live in the deep.
  • Multimedia
  • Mars WHERE’S WATER?
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars’ history is a fluid situation @ ScienceNews.com
  • ‘Tisdale 2’ Rock, Next Stop for Opportunity @ NASA.gov

Researchers identify brain cells responsible for keeping us awake

Headache tree is a pain in the brain

  • The low down
  • One whiff of bay laurel tree can spur intense, excruciating pain — and now scientists know why.
  • An ingredient in the tree sets off a chain of events that eventually amps up blood flow to the brain’s outer membrane.
  • The protein tickles the same cellular detector that responds to painfully cold stimuli and the sinus-clearing scent of wasabi and mustard oil
  • This protein prompts blood vessels to swell, and scientists think this swelling puts pressure on the skull and nerves, causing pain.
  • Significance
  • Other headache triggers interact with some of the same cellular machinery, suggesting they all work via the same pain-inducing mechanism.
  • Stimulating this chemical detector ultimately triggers the release of a particular protein implicated in migraine headaches
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Headache tree is a pain in the brain @ ScienceNews.org

Mars500 experiment ends

Health check on the road

  • The low down
  • A research team at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), in collaboration with researchers at the BMW Group develop a sensor system integrated into the steering wheel that can monitor the driver’s state of health while driving
  • monitors vital signs such as heart rate, skin conductance and oxygen saturation in the blood via simple sensors in the steering wheel
  • A driver’s skin conductance, for instance, reveals whether he or she is under severe stress, or whether his or her blood pressure exceeds a critical value
  • Two commercially available sensors are key elements of the integrated vital signs measurement system
  • One of them shines infrared light into the fingers and measures the heart rate and oxygen saturation via reflected light
  • One of them shines infrared light into the fingers and measures the heart rate and oxygen saturation via reflected light
  • Significance
  • the device might be used recognize the onset fainting spells or heart attacks
  • When a stress situation is detected by means of skin conductance values, phone calls can be blocked, for instance, or the volume of the radio turned down automatically.
  • With more serious problems the system could turn on the hazard warning lights, reduce the speed or even induce automated emergency braking
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Health check on the road @ PhysOrg.com
  • Health Check on the Road: Safe Stop When the Driver Can’t Go On @ ScienceNEwslineTechnology

Sony Patent Reveals Biometric Controllers

  • The low down
  • Measuring skin moisture, heart rhythm and muscle movement
  • The last time biometric feedback was introduced to mainstream games was Nintendo’s vitality sensor, which was announced at E3 2009 but never released.
  • Mentioned in the application
  • Character changes based on biometric feedback, such as a character sweating when you’re nervous.
  • Tensing up your muscles to absorb an attack or power up shields
  • Weapons that become more accurate or less steady depending on your level of stress
  • A boost to run faster, jump higher and punch harder while stressed
  • Rapid decreases in health if your stress increases
  • Different attacks based on stress levels.
  • Background music that matches your stress level, or becomes more relaxing if you’re stressed
  • Scaling difficulty based on stress level.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Sony Patent Reveals Biometric Controllers

Largest Sunspot in Years Observed on the Sun

LAUNCHING THIS WEEK

Phobos-Grunt and Yinghuo–1

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back this week

  • Nov 11, 1572 – 439 years ago : Tycho’s Supernova – Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe began his meticulous observations of the supernova. Brahe was at the beginning of his career in 1572, and it was this supernova that inspired him to devote his lifetime to making accurate measurements of the positions of the stars and planets. Thus 16th-century astronomers learned that the heavens were not immutable, as had been believed. Brahe’s book on his observations, De Nova Stella, originated the word “nova.”
  • Nov 14, 1666 – 345 years ago : First blood transfusion – the English physician, Samuel Pepys, made an record in his diary describing Richard Lower making the first documented blood transfusion.
  • Nov 10, 1885 – 126 years ago : Motorcycle – the world’s first motorcycle, designed by Gottlieb Daimler, made its debut. The frame and wheels were made of wood. A leather belt transfered power from the engine to large brass gears mounted to the rear wheel. The single cylinder engine had a bore of 58mm and stroke of 100mm giving a displacement of 264cc’s. The engine gave 0.5hp at 700 rpm. The top speed for the motorcycle was 7mph [12 km/h]
  • Nov 12, 1901 – 110 years ago : First Nobel Prize in Physics – The first Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Wilhelm Roentgen for his discovery of X-rays.
  • Nov 11, 1925 – 86 years ago : Cosmic rays – the discovery of cosmic rays was announced in Madison, Wisconsin by Robert A. Millikan who coined their name.
  • Nov 12–13, 1927 – 84 years ago : Holland Tunnel – the Holland Tunnel connecting N.Y. and N.J., the world’s first underwater vehicular tunnel, officially opened.
  • Nov 13, 1946 – 65 years ago : Artificial snow – artificial snow from a natural cloud was produced over Mount Greylock, Mass., for the first time in the U.S. An airplane spread small pellets of dry-ice (frozen carbon dioxide) for three miles at a height of 14,000 ft. Although the snow fell an estimated 3,000 feet, it evaporated as it fell through dry air, and never reached the ground.
  • Nov 09, 1957 – 54 years ago : Laser invented – Gordon Gould began to write down the principles of what he called a laser in his notebook during a sleepless Saturday night. By Wednesday morning he had a notary witness and date his notebook. Unfortunately, he misunderstood the patent process, and did not file promptly. But, other scientists, did file for a patent on their similar but independent discovery of how to make a laser. When Gould belatedly tried to get a patent, it took decades to eventually establish priority and gain what had then grown to be profitable royalties from the established laser industry.
  • Nov 13, 1971 – 40 years ago : Mars satellite – Mariner–9, the first man-made object to orbit another planet, entered Martian orbit. The mission of the unmanned craft was to return photographs mapping 70% of the surface, and to study the planet’s thin atmosphere, clouds, and hazes, together with its surface chemistry and seasonal changes.
  • Nov 10, 1983 – 28 years ago : First computer virus – U.S. student Fred Cohen presented to a security seminar the results of his test – the first documented virus, created as an experiment in computer security.In the paper, he defined a virus as “a program that can ‘infect’ other programs by modifying them to include a … version of itself”.
  • Nov 09, 1991 – 20 years ago : Nuclear fusion power – In Culham, England, nuclear fusion was first harnessed to produce a significant amount of power. Though lasting for only two seconds, about 1.7 megawatts of electric power was produced.

Post Show Correction

  • One letter can make a world of difference …
  • Today’s power plants use fission to generate heat and do useful work. The creation of the first man-made fission reactor, known as Chicago Pile–1, achieved criticality on December 2, 1942. Fusion differs from the fission reactions used in current nuclear power plants for it occurs when light nuclei travelling at high speed combine, without radioactive waste as a byproduct.

Looking up this week

  • You might have seen …

  • Tuesday, Nov. 8 : The bright “star” near the Moon is Jupiter. Although they look close together, Jupiter is 1,400 times farther away.

  • Tuesday, Nov. 8 : 2005 YU55 passed closer to us than the Moon; closest approach was at 6:28 p.m. EST. ’s visible across North America in the ensuing hours, dim at 11th or 12th magnitude and moving fast Chart

  • Keep an eye out for …

  • Wednesday, Nov. 9 : In bright twilight just 20 or 30 minutes after sunset, bring binoculars to a location with a clear view practically down to the southwest horizon. There will be Venus

  • Thursday, Nov. 10 : Full Moon

  • Thursday-Sunday Nov. 10–13 : Mars moves past Regulus, the brightest star of Leo, the lion. They rise shortly after midnight and are high in the southeast at first light. Mars looks like a bright orange star with Regulus quite close to the right or lower right.

  • Friday, Nov. 11 : Venus and Mercury are quite lo

The post Asteroids and Black Holes | SciByte 20 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Dark Matter | SciByte 3 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/9221/dark-matter-scibyte-3/ Tue, 07 Jun 2011 20:32:00 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=9221 We take a look dark matter and dark energy, why some scientists still believe they exist, where the theories came from, and how they affect the universe.

The post Dark Matter | SciByte 3 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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This week on SciByte …
We take a look dark matter and dark energy, why even though we can’t see them directly some scientists still believe they exist, where the theories for them came from, what they are, and how they affect the universe.

We’ll also take a look at a few satellites and studies looking for either direct or in-direct evidence of these mysterious phenomenon.

All that and more, on SciBye!

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Show Notes:

Fritz Zwicky  

  • Found a total of 120 supernovae, over a stretch of 52 years.  Involved in using Tpe 1A supernovae as ‘standard’ candles.  In 1937 posited that galaxy clusters could act as gravitational lenses like previously discovered Einstein effect, confirmed in 1979.
  • The first person to provide evidence and infer the presence of dark matter
  • Virial Theorem – for a stable, self-gravitating, spherical distribution of equal mass objects (stars, galaxies, etc), the total kinetic energy of the objects is equal to minus 1/2 times the total gravitational potential energy. In other words, the potential energy must equal the kinetic energy, within a factor of two.

Dark Matter

  • most stars in spiral galaxies orbit at roughly the same speed which suggest that either Newtonian gravity does not apply universally or that, conservatively, upwards of 50% of the mass of galaxies was contained in the relatively dark galactic halo [stars and globular clusters surrounding the galaxy]
  • Astrophysicists predicted the mass would be low in density, but high in temperature (~million degrees Celsius)
  • Theory states there should be about double the amount of matter in the local Universe compared to what is observed
  • the majority of this missing mass should be located in large-scale cosmic structures called filaments – a bit like thick shoelaces
  • “Through A Universe Darkly” – A Cosmic Tale of Ancient Ethers, Dark Matter, and the Fate of the Universe

Dark Energy

  • Edwin Hubble first noticed that the Universe was actually expanding, in 1932.
  • Believed to be behind the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe
  • Visual representation of the expansion of the Universe
  • Is Einstein’s vision of gravity, general relativity, incorrect on large cosmological scales?
  • Does “empty space” possess its own energy?

Measuring the Expansion of the Universe [ Hubble constant, or H0 ]

  • Named after Edwin Hubble who first measured the expansion of the universe nearly a century ago
  • Einsteins ‘biggest blunder’ not actually a blunder
  • Type Ia supernovae : produces consistent peak luminosity because of the uniform mass of white dwarfs that explode via the accretion mechanism
  • Cepheid variable stars are the backbone of the distance ladder because their pulsation periods, which are easily observed, correlate directly with their luminosities
  • Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), two of the nearby satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way Galaxy, since they contain large number of Cepheids, they can be used to calibrate the distance scale
  • Redshift / Blueshift : How fast are things moving away from us? [Red=away]

Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)

  • Cosmic Background Radiation Image
  • The radiant heat left over from the Big Bang. (first observed in 1965)
  • properties of the radiation contain a wealth of information about physical conditions in the early universe and a great deal of effort has gone into measuring those properties since its discovery.
  • The hot spots and cold spots, which differ in temperature by only millionths of a degree, can be interpreted as very slight differences in the crowding together of matter in the young universe. Hot spots had slightly more matter than average; cold spots a bit less

Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe

  • 3D model [proposed to NASA in 1995, launched in 2001]
  • cooled microwave radiometers measure the properties of the cosmic microwave background radiation over the full sky
  • Measuring the temperature of the microwave sky to an accuracy of one millionth of a degree revealing conditions as they existed in the early universe
  • using differences in temperature measured from opposite directions (anisotropy).
  • Orbits at Lagrange point 2 :provides for a very stable thermal environment and near 100% observing efficiency since the Sun, Earth, and Moon are always behind the instrument’s field of view

Anisotropy

  • property of being directionally dependent
  • defined as a difference, when measured along different axes, in a material’s physical or mechanical properties [light coming through a polarizer]

Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe results

  • Complete census of the universe finds that dark matter (not made up of atoms) make up 23.3% (to within 1.3%)
  • Accuracy and precision determined that dark energy makes up 72.1% of the universe (to within 1.5%), causing the expansion rate of the universe to speed up.
  • making accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background fluctuations, WMAP is able to measure the basic parameters of the Big Bang model including the density and composition of the universe
  • Microwave light seen by WMAP from when the universe was only 380,000 years old, shows that, at the time, neutrinos made up 10% of the universe, atoms 12%, dark matter 63%, photons 15%, and dark energy was negligible. In contrast, estimates from WMAP data show the current universe consists of 4.6% percent atoms, 23% dark matter, 72% dark energy and less than 1 percent neutrinos.
  • Mapped the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation (the oldest light in the universe)
  • WMAP definitively determined the age of the universe to be 13.73 billion years old to within 1% (0.12 billion years)
  • Reported the first direct detection of pre-stellar helium, providing an important test of the big bang prediction. [Jan26, 2010]
  • Nailed down the curvature of space to within 1% of “flat” Euclidean
  • Started to sort through the possibilities of what transpired in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a second, ruling out well-known textbook models for the first time

Australian Student Uncovers the Universe’s Missing Mass

  • Conducted a targeted X-ray search for the hidden matter and within just three months made a very exciting discovery
  • Dark Matter theories have been based solely on numerical models

WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey

  • Einstein Confirmed Again: Dark Energy Present In The Universe
  • Firstly, observed how dark energy opposes gravity by speeding up the overall rate of expansion of the Universe
  • Secondly, observed how dark energy opposes gravity by slowing down the growth of clusters and superclusters with time
  • mapped the distribution of galaxies over an unprecedented volume of the Universe
  • WiggleZ scientists have made a 3-D map of more than 150,000 galaxies near and far to trace the universe’s evolution over time
  • 10min Podcast on WiggleZ

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The post Dark Matter | SciByte 3 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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