Mars Society – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Mon, 22 Feb 2016 02:47:27 +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 Mars Society – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 Mammoth Blood & Crowdsourced Telescope | SciByte 96 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/38226/mammoth-blood-crowdsourced-telescope-scibyte-96/ Mon, 03 Jun 2013 20:42:42 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=38226 We take a look at Woolly Mammoth blood, University Rover Challenge, conductive paint, crowdsourcing a telescope, frozen moss, and much more!

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We take a look at Woolly Mammoth blood, University Rover Challenge, conductive paint, crowdsourcing a telescope, frozen moss, viewer feedback, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

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Book Pick:

Woolly Mammoth Blood!?!?!?

  • The Wooly Mammoth
  • An expedition led by Russian scientists earlier this month uncovered the well-preserved carcass of a female mammoth on a remote island in the Arctic Ocean
  • The head of the expedition, said the animal died 10,000 to 15,000, at the age of around 60 some, making it the first time that an old female had been found
  • Wooly mammoths are thought to have died out around 10,000 years ago
  • Scientists think small groups of them lived longer in Alaska and on Russia\’s Wrangel Island off the Siberian coast.
  • The Claim on the Body Preservation
  • The lower part of the carcass was very well preserved as it ended up in a pool of water that later froze over
  • The upper part of the body including the back and the head are believed to have been eaten by predators
  • The team was surprised that the carcass was so well preserved that it still had blood and muscle tissue, and that when they broke the ice beneath the stomach, very dark blood flowed out
  • The muscle tissue is also said to be red, the colour of fresh meat
  • The temperature at the time of excavation was -7 to – 10 degrees Celsius [19.4 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit]
  • Because these temperatures are below freezing it may be assumed that the blood of mammoths had some cryoprotective properties
  • To Be Studied
  • If these claims are true, it will be the most well-preserved tissue found from a Woolly Mammoth
  • Mammoth specialists from South Korea, Russia and the United States are expected to study the remains which the Russian scientists are now keeping at an undisclosed northern location
  • \”Jurassic Park Prize\”
  • Scientists already have deciphered much of the genetic code of the woolly mammoth from balls of mammoth hair found frozen in the Siberian permafrost
  • The discovery gives researchers a really good chance of finding live cells which can help in cloning a mammoth
  • Last year the researchers signed a deal with cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-Suk of South Korea\’s Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, who in 2005 created the world\’s first cloned dog.
  • Those who succeed in recreating an extinct animal could claim a \”Jurassic Park prize\”, the concept of which is being developed by the X Prize Foundation
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Russians Find Mammoth Carcass With Liquid Blood | AssociatedPress
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Russian scientists make rare find of \’blood\’ in mammoth | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

University Rover Challenge

  • What is the University Rover Challenge?
  • The competition is hosted by the Mars Society, a non-profit research organization dedicated to promoting the exploration and eventual settlement of Mars
  • The competition site is located at the society\’s Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), a rocky barren landscape that\’s similar to Martian terrain
  • Each team was allowed to spend up to $15,000 on their rovers, which can weigh no more than 50 kilograms – about 110 lbs.
  • The URC is based on the assumption that the rovers are telerobots, which means they would be operated by astronauts on or orbiting Mars
  • Team members must guide their rovers via a remote connection, such as a computer in the back of a truck, as long as it\’s shielded so the team can\’t see their rovers
  • Teams compete in four challenges, which change year to year, designed to replicate the activities of NASA\’s rovers on Mars.
  • The Tasks for 2013
  • Teams will guide their rovers to collect the subsurface soil samples most likely to contain photosynthetic bacteria, lichen and other bits of living material
  • Deliver a series of packages, such as emergency supplies to \”astronauts\” (URC staff) in the field
  • Fix a dust-covered solar panel (without water, of course)
  • Navigate an obstacle course that will include climbing steep grades, getting over boulders and passing through PVC pipe gates, aimed to test each rover\’s maneuverability
  • The Teams
  • This year\’s teams represent universities and colleges in Canada, India, Poland and the United States
  • These include two-time returning champions Toronto\’s York University (2012 and 2009) and Oregon State (2010 and 2008)
  • Full list of entries for the 2013 URC
  • Winners
  • First Place with 493 out of 500 points (highest ever scored) | The Hyperion Team from Bialystok University of Technology, Poland
  • Second Place with 401 out of 500 points | Scorpio 3 team from Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland
  • Third Place with 350 out of 500 points | OSU Mars Rover Team from Oregon State University, USA
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Bialystok University of Technology – Hyperion Team
  • YouTube | Wroclaw University of Technology – Scorpio 3 Team
  • YouTube | University Rover Challenge Clips | Jeremy LeFevre
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • The Rocky Road to Building the Next Mars Rover | Space.com
  • Contest Challenges Students to Design Next Mars Rover | University Rover Challenge | Space.com
  • University Rover Challenge | MarsSociety.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Conductive Paint

  • What Is It?
  • The substance allows the painting of \”liquid wiring\” on any surface, except for skin
  • Radio Shack stocks paint pens, which the inventors emphasized, is the first non-toxic electrically conductive paint available and it dries at room temperature
  • The inventors also say that they hope to appeal to a wide creative range of hobbyists, artists, and engineers for innovative ways to use their products
  • In addition the substance is child friendly, which opens the door to educational projects, including toys, and touch-sensitive paper drawings that play sounds
  • Applications
  • Generally split into two simple classifications, signaling and powering
  • Signaling could include using the Paint as a potentiometer while interfacing with a micro-controller, as a conduit in a larger circuit or as a capacitive sensor
  • Powering a device would include lighting LED\’s or driving small speakers
  • According to the company, Bare Paint has a surface resistivity of approximately 55 ohms/square at 50 microns layer thickness (human hair is ~100 microns)
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Bare Conductive Paint | Adafruit Industries
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • BareConductive.com
  • Conductive paint lands in pens and pots for creatives | Phys.org

Crowdsourced Telescope

  • A commercial asteroid-mining company aiming to launch a crowdfunded space telescope raised more than $200,000 on the first day of its campaign
  • Total raised by the morning of filming this show (June 3) $714,473
  • The Plan
  • Planetary Resources, a private venture aiming to mine near-Earth space rocks announced on May 29 that it would build and launch a space telescope for public use if it could raise at least $1 million in 33 days.
  • The telescope will be a twin copy of the Arkyd spacecraft the company is developing to detect, track and study asteroids in preparation for its mining mission
  • A test version of the spacecraft is set for its maiden trial flight in April 2014, while the crowdfunded model would launch in early 2015
  • What the Backers Get
  • Public backers would use it to study celestial objects of their choice, they also have the option of sponsoring research projects at schools, universities or museums that could use the instrument.
  • The telescope will also take self portraits that show the telescope in orbit, with a user-submitted photo displayed on the instrument\’s screen, a camera mounted on the hull of the spacecraft will snap the photo.
  • Where Does the Name \”ARYKD\” Come From?
  • To some Star Wars fans, it might sound familiar
  • In the start of the project while looking for a code name the idea was to make a derivation of Arakyd Industries from the Star Wars universe
  • According to the StarWars.wikia : \”Arakyd Industries was a major manufacturer of droids, heavy weapons, and starships, dating back to the days of the Galactic Republic\”
  • They made such things as the Viper probe droid model, which the Empire used to locate the Echo Base on the planet Hoth
  • The Viper probe droids themselves were based on earlier probe droids that were the first true probe droids to search planets and asteroids for valuable resources, such as metals to fuel the processing plants of industry
  • Other Random/Interesting Facts
  • The space shuttle had room for 1 Hubble Space Telescope in its payload bay, it could have fit 1,000 ARKYD Space Telescopes
  • Going at 5 mi/sec it will travel 8x faster than an SR-71 Blackbird flying at mach 3, that\’s going from San Francisco to Boston in 10 min
  • At those speeds it will have a few min each orbit to download information at DSL speeds, the primary/first ground station will be in Seattle
  • Once the mission is going it will take 150 \”selfies\” and make 15 astronomical observations per day
  • It will run off of only 50 W, the same amount as a standard household light … or 111 hamster wheels
  • ARYKD Dimensions
  • Weight : 15 kg / 33 lb
  • Height 200 mm / 7.8 in
  • Wingspan Deployed : 600 mm / 23.6 in
  • Peak Power : 50 W
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone | PlanetaryResources
  • YouTube | Planetary Resources Announces ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone | PlanetaryResources
  • YouTube | Planetary Resources Kickstarter Community Event with Star Trek\’s Brent Spiner (Lt. Cmdr Data) | PlanetaryResources
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Space Telescope Crowdfunding Project Raises $167,000 | Space.com
  • Asteroid Mining Company Puts Orbital Telescope On Kickstarter | Popular Science
  • Find out more on Kickstarter

Frozen Moss, Back to Life

  • Zombie Moss?
  • Scientists have recently found that even after hundreds of years buried under ice, mosses can regrow
  • The revived plants come from Canada’s Ellesmere Island, where the Teardrop Glacier has retreated since the end of a cold period in 1550 to 1850 known as the Little Ice Age
  • On recently exposed ground they found clumps of mosses that looked dead. But among the brown tangles, the team noticed a few green sprigs
  • The team took brown moss samples back to the lab and used radiocarbon dating to determine that they had lived about 400 years ago
  • Based on the glacier’s retreat rate, the researchers estimated the plants had been uncovered for less than two years.
  • The team then ground up some of the plants and gave them nutrients, water and light
  • From seven of 24 samples, a total of four moss species grew
  • The budding plants didn’t come from seeds or spores because in moss, any cell can be reset, almost like a stem cell, to grow a new plant
  • How long a moss cell can stay viable is “anyone’s guess,”
  • The findings suggest that the regenerated mosses may help repopulate ecosystems after glaciers retreat
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mosses frozen in time come back to life | Life | Science News

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

EyeSpy an Exoplanet!

  • The Hubby | Check This Out! | Exoplanet Directly Observed
  • A newly discovered gaseous planet has been directly photographed orbiting a star about 300 light-years from Earth
  • Only a few planets have been directly observed so far, and this world may be the least massive planet directly observed outside of the solar system
  • The Planet
  • The photo released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) on June 3 depicts the suspected gas giant (called HD 95086 b) circling its young star (named HD 95086) in infrared light
  • The planet was discovered by ESO\’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. Based on the planet\’s brightness, scientists estimate that it is only about four or five times more massive than Jupiter
  • The planet orbits its star at about twice the distance from the sun to Neptune and about 56 times the distance between Earth and the sun, the blue circle in the photo represents the distance between the sun and Neptune.
  • The star is relatively young, at only 10 million to 17 million years old, making the formation of the exoplanet and the dusty disc surrounding the star potentially intriguing to researchers
  • Formation
  • The planet might have grown by assembling the rocks that form the solid core and then slowly accumulated gas from the environment to form the heavy atmosphere
  • It also might have started forming from a gaseous clump that arose from gravitational instabilities in the disc
  • Interactions between the planet and the disc itself or with other planets may have also moved the planet from where it was born
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Never-Before-Seen Alien Planet Imaged Directly in New Photo | Space.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Lunar Gravity Map

  • Mascons
  • Mascons, or gravitational anomalies, were discovered on the moon in the 1960s, as NASA officials were planning for the Apollo moon missions, but the cause of these anomalies was unknown
  • By mapping the moon\’s gravity field, the Grail probes uncovered the locations of lunar mascons, and offered unprecedented views of the moon\’s interior structure
  • This enabled scientists to study two basins – one on the lunar nearside and one on the far side of the moon – to develop sophisticated computer models for how mascons form
  • New Ideas How They Formed
  • Billions of years ago, massive asteroids that collided with the moon left deep craters that reached into the mantle material that lies beneath the thin lunar crust
  • What had been unexplained until now was how these big impact sites could support extremely dense material, and how the gravity field in these basins could be in such disequilibrium
  • Mascon basins on the near side of the moon were partially filled in with ancient flows of dense lava, which seemed able to account for the mass excess and positive gravity anomalies
  • For some basins, however, the observed lava flows were too thin to explain the mass excess, some basins were even found that exhibited mascons but lacked lava infill altogether
  • The researchers determined that ancient asteroid impacts excavated large craters on the moon, causing surrounding lunar materials and rocks from the moon\’s mantle to melt and collapse inward
  • This melting caused the material to become denser and more concentrated than the strong lunar crust, which also slides down into the impact hole, eventually forms a curved but rigid barrier over the basin, holding the dense materials down
  • New models from this data gave the researchers a glimpse of how the moon\’s mascons formed in the aftermath of huge asteroid impacts
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mystery of Moon\’s Lumpy Gravity Explained | Moon Missions | Space.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • Radiation Findings
  • Curiosity\’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) is the first instrument to measure the radiation environment during a Mars cruise mission from inside a spacecraft that is similar to potential human exploration spacecraft
  • The findings,indicate radiation exposure for human explorers could exceed NASA\’s career limit for astronauts if current propulsion systems are used.
  • Forms of Radiation
  • GCR\’s. Galactic cosmic rays are particles caused by supernova explosions and other high-energy events outside the solar system.
  • SEP\’s. Solar energetic particles are associated with solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the sun
  • Radiation Exposure
  • NASA has established a three percent increased risk of fatal cancer as an acceptable career limit for its astronauts currently operating in low-Earth orbit
  • Only about three percent of the radiation dose was associated with solar particles because of a relatively quiet solar cycle and the shielding provided by the spacecraft
  • The radiation detected for the accumulated dose during the trip was about what you would get if you had a whole-body CT scan once every five or six days
  • Shielding
  • Current spacecraft shield much more effectively against SEPs than GCRs. To protect against the comparatively low energy of typical SEPs, astronauts might need to move into havens with extra shielding on a spacecraft or on the Martian surface, or employ other countermeasures
  • GCRs tend to be highly energetic, highly penetrating particles that are not stopped by the modest shielding provided by a typical spacecraft.
  • The Future
  • RAD data collected during Curiosity\’s science mission will continue to inform plans to protect astronauts as NASA designs future missions to Mars in the coming decades
  • Radiation
  • The MSL spacecraft structure (which includes the backshell and heat shield as well as the Curiosity rover and its descent stage) provided significant shielding from the deep space radiation environment
  • The spikes in radiation levels occurred in February, March and late May of 2012 because of large solar energetic particle events caused by solar activity
  • Multimedia
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Data From NASA Rover\’s Voyage To Mars Aids Planning | mars.jpl.nasa.gov+ Comparison of Some Radiation Exposures to Mars-Trip Level | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
  • Calculating Radiation Dose for Biological Tissue | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
  • Radiation Measurements During Trip From Earth to Mars | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • June 6, 1878 : 135 years ago : Liquid air : In 1878, liquid air obtained at a temperature of -192ºC was exhibited by Professor James Dewar at the Royal Institution, London. His work followed the small-scale production of liquid air by Raoul Pictet of Geneva (Dec 1877) and Cailletet of Paris (Jan 1878). In March 1893, Dewar produced solid air. He gave six well-illustrated Christmas Lectures on “Air: gaseous and liquid” at the Royal Institution between 28 Dec 1893 and 9 Jan 1894. (Some of the air in the room was liquefied in the presence of the audience, and remained so for some time, when enclosed in a vacuum jacket.) He demonstrated several physical properties of liquid air, and produced solid air at the Friday 19 Jan 1894 meeting of the Royal Institution

Looking up this week

The post Mammoth Blood & Crowdsourced Telescope | SciByte 96 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Bilingualism & A Smart Dog | SciByte 95 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/37926/bilingualism-a-smart-dog-scibyte-95/ Tue, 28 May 2013 20:27:50 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=37926 We take a look at Bilingualism, cancer cell mortality, one smart dog, bringing Mars to Earth, spacecraft updates, and more!

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We take a look at Bilingualism, cancer cell mortality, one smart dog, bringing Mars to Earth, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

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

Path of Destruction: Star Wars: Darth Bane, Book 1

  • 2,000 years after KOTOR
  • 1,000 years before New Hope
  • Before, but general area of Yoda being born (+/- 50 or so)
  • Connected to prophesy from Dark Forces Books/Game, dealing directly with Kyle Katarn

Brains and Bilingual Language

  • According to new research, individuals who learn two languages at an early age seem to switch back and forth between separate \”sound systems\” for each language
  • Previous Ideas on the Brain and Languages
  • One idea was that people who speak more than one language have different processing modes for their two languages
  • One mode for processing speech in one language and then a mode for processing speech in the other language
  • Another view was that bilinguals just adjust to speech variation by calibrating to the unique acoustic properties of each language
  • New Research Supports…
  • Kalim Gonzales, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Arizona, research supports the first view
  • When most people think about the difference in languages they think of the different words and grammar, but at the root of the languages are different sounds
  • The Study – Setup
  • The study looked at 32 Spanish-English early bilinguals, who had learned their second language before age 8
  • Participants were presented with a series of pseudo-words beginning with a \’pa\’ or a \’ba\’ sound and asked to identify which of the two sounds they heard
  • \’pa\’ and \’ba\’ sounds exist in both English and Spanish, how those sounds are produced and perceived in the two languages varies subtly
  • For example, for English speakers \’ba\’ typically begin to vibrate their vocal chords the moment they open their lips
  • Spanish speakers begin vocal cord vibration slightly before they open their lips and produce \’pa\’ in a manner similar to English \’ba.\’
  • English-only speakers might, in some cases, confuse the \’ba\’ and \’pa\’ sounds they hear in Spanish
  • The Study – Bilingual Participants
  • The bilingual participants were divided into two groups. One group was told they would be hearing rare words in Spanish, while the other was told they would be hearing rare words in English
  • Both groups heard audio recordings of variations of the same two non real words bafri and pafri
  • Both groups heard the same series of words, but for the group told they were hearing Spanish, the ends of the words were pronounced slightly differently, with the \’r\’ getting a Spanish pronunciation
  • Participants perceived \’ba\’ and \’pa\’ sounds differently depending on whether they were told they were hearing Spanish words, with the Spanish pronunciation of \’r,\’ or whether they were told they were hearing English words, with the English pronunciation of \’r.\’
  • When they put people in \”English mode,\” they actually would act like English speakers, and then if you put them in Spanish mode, they would switch to acting like Spanish speakers
  • Hearing the exact same \’ba\’s and \’pa\’s would label them differently depending on the context
  • The Study – Bilingual Participants
  • When the study was repeated with 32 English monolinguals, participants did not show the same shift in perception
  • They labeled \’ba\’ and \’pa\’ sounds the same way regardless of which language they were told they were hearing
  • What Does That Mean?
  • Difference between the two groups provided the strongest evidence for two sound systems in bilinguals
  • This is primarily true for those who learn two languages very young
  • If you learn a second language later in life, you usually have a dominant language and then you try to use that sounds system for the other language, which is why you end up having an accent
  • Bilinguals who learn two languages early in life learn two separate processing modes, or \”sound systems\”
  • One of the reasons it sounds different when you hear someone speaking a different language is because the actual sounds they use are different
  • Someone might sound like they have an accent if they learn Spanish first is because their \’pa\’ is like an English \’ba,\’ so when they say a word with \’pa,\’ it will sound like a \’ba\’ to an English monolingual
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Study shows how bilinguals switch between languages | MedicalXPress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Diet Help Makes Cancer Cells Mortal

  • New research suggests that a compound abundant in the Mediterranean diet takes away cancer cells\’ \”superpower\” to escape death
  • By altering a very specific step in gene regulation, this compound essentially re-educates cancer cells into normal cells that die as scheduled.
  • Apigenin
  • One way that cancer cells thrive is by inhibiting a process that would cause them to die on a regular cycle that is subject to strict programming
  • Researchers, found that a compound in certain plant-based foods, called apigenin, could stop breast cancer cells from inhibiting their own death.
  • Parsley, celery and chamomile tea are the most common sources of apigenin, but it is found in many fruits and vegetables
  • Through additional experimentation, the team established that apigenin had relationships with proteins that have three specific functions
  • Among the most important was a protein called hnRNPA2, which influences the activity of messenger RNA, or mRNA, which contains the instructions needed to produce a specific protein
  • Splicing
  • The production of mRNA results from the splicing, or modification, of RNA that occurs as part of gene activation, abnormal splicing is the culprit in an estimated 80 percent of all cancers
  • In cancer cells, two types of splicing occur when only one would take place in a normal cell – a trick on the cancer cells\’ part to keep them alive and reproducing.
  • Researchers observed that apigenin\’s connection to the hnRNPA2 protein restored this single-splice characteristic to breast cancer cells, eliminating the splicing form that inhibited cell death
  • This suggests that when splicing is normal, cells die in a programmed way, or become more sensitive to chemotherapeutic drugs.
  • Multimedia
  • XKCD | Cancer Cells
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • The compound in the Mediterranean diet that makes cancer cells \’mortal\’ | MedicalXPress.com

Dog Understanding Grammer

  • In experiments directed by her owner a 9-year-old border collie has demonstrated a grasp of the basic elements of grammar by responding correctly to commands such as “to ball take Frisbee” and its reverse, “to Frisbee take ball.”
  • Word Training
  • The dog had previous, extensive training to recognize classes of words including nouns, verbs and prepositions
  • Throughout the first three years of the dogs life she was trained to recognize and fetch more than 1,000 objects by name
  • Researchers also taught the meaning of different types of words, such as verbs and prepositions and sentence training at age 7
  • The dog learned that phrases such as “to Frisbee” meant that she should take whatever was in her mouth to the named object.
  • An experimenter would say, for instance, “to ball take Frisbee.” In initial trials, the experimenter pointed at each item while saying its name.
  • After several weeks of training, two experiments were conducted
  • The Experiments – \’Eyeing the Prize\’
  • In one experiment the dog had to choose an object from one pair to carry to an object from the other pair
  • Researchers read commands that included words for those objects. Only some of those words had been used during sentence training
  • To see whether Chaser grasped that grammar could be used flexibly student also read sentences in the reversed form of “take sugar to decoy.”
  • In 28 of 40 attempts, the dog grabbed the correct item in her mouth and dropped it next to the correct target.
  • The Experiments – Hidden in Plain Sight
  • Another experiment tested the dogs ability to understand commands when she couldn’t see the objects at first
  • Researchers placed two objects behind her at the other end of the bed, after hearing a command, the dog turned around and nabbed one of the objects.
  • Then ran to the living room and delivered the item to one of another pair of objects. She succeeded on all 12 trials
  • What is Exactly Happening
  • Exactly how the dog gained her command of grammar is unclear although researchers suspects that she first mentally linked each of two nouns she heard in a sentence to objects in her memory
  • Multimedia
  • Chaser – The intelligent Border Collie | PetfansDotnet
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Dog sniffs out grammar | Psychology | Science News

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

A Year on Mars, on Earth

  • The Mars Society has just announced a year long simulation of astronauts on Mars in the arctic
  • The proposed Mars Arctic 365 (MA365) mission on Canada’s Devon Island would take place at Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station
  • According to the Mars Society the arctic is a lot like Mars in that it is cold, isolated, and dangerous
  • The society is asking for $50,000 from supporters in the next 24 days before starting the first phase (basically retrofitting the station and adding equipment) in July
  • More information on MA365 – perhaps with information on crew selection – should come in August, when members of the Phase 1 crew issue a report at the 16th Annual International Mars Society Convention
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars Society Proposes A Year-Long Arctic Mission To Better Prepare for the Red Planet | UniverseToday.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Kepler Strategies

  • What\’s the Latest?
  • Kepler engineers are now strategizing about how to remotely repair one of two broken reaction wheels that precisely point the telescope
  • It will take at least several weeks before they beam commands up to the $600-million telescope, and they admit that a fix is a long shot.
  • Kepler Exoplanet History
  • When Kepler was launched into space astronomers knew that the galaxy contained at least 350 exoplanets, nearly all of them the size of Jupiter or larger
  • Kepler’s then spent four years adding nearly 3,000 planets
  • Now astronomers are convinced that the Milky Way contains hundreds of billions of planets, roughly one for every star, with at least 17 billion of them Earth-sized
  • Kepler’s main goal was to determine the frequency of Earthlike planets in the galaxy while they now have enough data to make an intelligent extrapolation about what that number is, determining a more exact number will remain in limbo unless the telescope comes back online
  • What\’s the Next Mission
  • NASA’s next exoplanet-hunting mission, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS, is scheduled for a 2017 launch
  • Whereas Kepler has fixed its gaze on distant stars, TESS will focus on bright, nearby stars so that powerful telescopes like the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will be able to probe the atmospheres of planets that TESS discovers
  • While less sensitive than Kepler, will nonetheless uncover plenty of planets in our neighborhood, including a handful of Earth-sized worlds
  • Astronomers hope to pair size measurements of planets observed by telescopes such as TESS with mass readings from ground-based scopes that look for subtle wobbles in stars’ motion caused by the gravitational pull of orbiting planets.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Gone perhaps, but Kepler won\’t soon be forgotten | Atom & Cosmos | Science News

Opportunity, Still Hard at Work

  • Opportunity, has just discovered the strongest evidence to date for an environment favorable to ancient Martian biology
  • Opportunity’s analysis of a new rock target named “Esperance” confirmed that it is composed of a “clay that had been intensely altered by relatively neutral pH water
  • Esperance is unlike any rock previously investigated by Opportunity; containing far more aluminum and silica which is indicative of clay minerals and lower levels of calcium and iron.
  • Most, but not all of the rocks inspected to date by Opportunity were formed in an environment of highly acidic water
  • This represents the most favorable conditions for biology that Opportunity has yet seen in the rock histories it has encountered
  • Water that moved through fractures during this rock’s history would have provided more favorable conditions for biology than any other wet environment recorded in rocks Opportunity has seen
  • Opportunity accomplished the ground breaking new discovery by exposing the interior of Esperance with her still functioning Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) and examining a pristine patch using the microscopic camera and X-Ray spectrometer on the end of her 3 foot long robotic arm.
  • This discovery comes at the conclusion of a 20 month long science expedition circling around a low ridge called “Cape York,” the team even committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it
  • Esperance stems from a time when the Red Planet was far warmer and wetter billions of years ago.
  • What’s so special about Esperance is that there was enough water not only for reactions that produced clay minerals, but also enough to flush out ions set loose by those reactions
  • Opportunity can clearly see the alterations caused by that process
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Opportunity Discovers Clays Favorable to Martian Biology and Sets Sail for Motherlode of New Clues | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • Self-Portrait
  • This self-portrait of NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity combines dozens of exposures taken by the rover\’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 177th Martian day, or sol, on Mars (Feb. 3, 2013)
  • In addition three exposures were taken during Sol 270 (May 10, 2013) to update the appearance of part of the ground beside the rover
  • The updated area, which is in the lower left quadrant of the image, shows gray-powder and two holes where Curiosity used its drill on the rock target \”John Klein.\”
  • The rover\’s robotic arm is not visible in the mosaic. MAHLI, which took the component images for this mosaic, is mounted on a turret at the end of the arm.
  • Wrist motions and turret rotations on the arm allowed MAHLI to acquire the mosaic\’s component images. The arm was positioned out of the shot in the images, or portions of images, used in the mosaic
  • Radiation Reading Findings
  • Announcement coming on Thurs, May 30
    Multimedia
  • May\’s Planet Dance | SkyandTelescope
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Updated Curiosity Self-Portrait at \’John Klein\’ | mars.jpl.NASA.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • May 25, 2011 : 2 years ago : SciByte 1 : After appearing on a few shows on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network, most specifically after doing \”Space Wednesday\’s\” on Jupiter@Night, Heather (chatroom handle : Mars_Base) started doing a science based show with Jeremy. The show had a short hiatus between SciByte 16 and 17, leading to a change in style and co-host, Chris. Throughout it\’s life the show has been about spreading science information, and in general making Science Happy.

Looking up this week

The post Bilingualism & A Smart Dog | SciByte 95 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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