Phobos – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Mon, 22 Feb 2016 02:48:05 +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 Phobos – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 Hibernation & Updates | SciByte 101 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/42922/hibernation-updates-scibyte-101/ Tue, 10 Sep 2013 20:23:50 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=42922 We take a look at hibernation, suspended-animation, Apollo 11 Engines, Earth in pixels, updates, Curiosity news, and more.

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We take a look at hibernation, suspended-animation, Apollo 11 Engines, Earth in pixels, updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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— Show Notes: —

2013 Summer SciByte

Hibernation

  • Lemur Hibernation
  • Fat-tailed dwarf lemurs are the only primates that can hibernate
  • Lemurs are unique in that they can go the entire hibernation period-up to eight months-without fully sleeping
  • During hibernation, a lemur’s breathing can slow to one inhalation every 20 minutes, and its heart rate drops from a normal 200 beats per minute to just 4 beats per minute
  • Lemurs can hibernate, surviving three-quarters of a year without deep sleep,
  • When lemurs hibernate, scientists speculate that they experience only REM sleep. Though no one can prove whether lemurs actually dream
  • Lemurs in captivity often don’t hibernate
  • In the wild some of [the lemurs hibernated] 40 feet off the ground in the middle of the forest in coastal Madagascar
  • So the team that visited the primates in their natural habitat-Madagascar had a hard time getting data
  • By placing the lemurs in special nesting boxes and attaching EEGs to their tiny foreheads while they hibernated, they were able to record their vital signs
  • Researchers found that when it was warm outside, close to 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius), the primates would only hibernate in REM sleep.
  • Sleep Deprivation Study
  • A 1989 study by sleep scientist demonstrated the lethal consequences of sleep deprivation
  • When the researcher kept ten rats awake, depriving them of non-REM sleep, they developed skin lesions, lost weight, and experienced an erosion of their gastrointestinal tracts.
  • After 32 days, all of the rats were dead
  • Rats Induces Into Hibernation / Suspended Animation
  • Rats spent hours in a state of chilly suspended animation after researchers injected a compound into the animals in a cold room
  • The animals’ heart rates slowed, brain activity became sluggish and body temperature plummeted.
  • Lowering Body Temperature
  • Lowering the body temperature of a non hibernating mammal is really hard
  • As temperatures inside the body fall, several failsafe systems spring into action
  • Blood vessels near the skin squeeze tight to hold warmth in, the body starts to shiver and brown fat, a tissue that’s especially plentiful in newborns, starts to produce heat
  • The scientists in the study bypassed the rats’ defenses against the cold with a compound that’s similar to adenosine, a molecule in the body that signals sleepiness
  • Suspended Animation Experiment
  • After about an hour in a room chilled to 15* Celsius, the rats grew lethargic
  • Their brain waves slowed, their blood pressure dropped and their heart grew sluggish, occasionally skipping beats
  • The rats’ core temperature dropped from about 38* to about 30* C, or 80* Fahrenheit
  • The researchers measured even lower temperatures in further experiments – rats’ core body temperature reached 15* C or about 57* F.
  • The rats weren’t in a coma, nor were they asleep or truly hibernating
  • Hibernating animals’ metabolisms plummet and their temperatures sink much lower
  • The Arctic ground squirrel, for instance, cools to about -3* C when it hibernates
  • This is a new state that the scientists don’t really know what it is
  • In the experiment, loud noises and tail pinches failed to arouse the rats.
  • They didn’t eat or drink. Occasionally, one would slither into a corner, but for the most part, the animals stayed still for up to 6 hours
  • In unpublished experiments, Tupone has kept the animals in the unresponsive state for 24 hours, he says.
  • Warming the room coaxed the rats out of their torpor, the recovery process takes about 12 hours, during which the animals ate and drank voraciously
  • After recovering, the animals were alert, moved around their cages normally and slept when tired
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Could People Hibernate? Lemurs Give Clues – News Watch | newswatch.nationalgeographic.com
  • Rats induced into hibernation-like state | Life | Science News | sciencenews.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Apollo 11 Engines Found! || Summer SciByte August 01, 2013

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Earth in Pixels || Summer SciByte August 01, 2013

  • As Seen On
  • Summer SciByte | August 01, 2013 | SciByte
  • The Image
  • On July 19 the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn took a picture of every living thing on Earth.
  • At 898.4 million miles away scientists turned the spacecraft to take a picture of Saturn eclipsing the Sun, in the background was the Earth and Moon.
  • It reminded me of the famous \’pale blue dot\’ image. Bringing the entirety of human history, and all life that we know of into a few pixels reminds me that we are only one tiny corner of a grand universe.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • What the Earth and Moon Look Like From Saturn | UniverseToday.com

+

— Updates —

ARKYD Telescope

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • September 17, 1822 : 191 years ago : Rosetta Stone decyphered : At the French Academie Royale des Inscriptions, Jean-François Champollion read a paper, Lettre a M. Dacier, describing his solution to the mystery of the triple inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone which had been unearthed July of 1799, by Napoleon\’s army near the Rosetta branch of the Nile. (Baron Joseph Dacier, to whom he addressed the letter, was Secretary of the Academie.) Champollion\’s work to decipher the hieroglyphics had began in 1808. Thomas Young did some preliminary fragmentary work, but otherwise it was Champollion\’s major accomplishment. In 1823 he gave more details in a series of memoirs read at the Institute, published the following year
  • Rosetta Stone – Wikipedia

Looking up this week

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]]> Chocolate & Black Holes | SciByte 65 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/25436/chocolate-black-holes-scibyte-65/ Tue, 02 Oct 2012 22:14:39 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=25436 We take a look at a scientific excuse to eat chocolate, measuring a black hole, a possible new element, comet's, updates on Google Maps, and more!

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We take a look at a scientific excuse to eat chocolate, shifting plate tectonics, measuring a black hole, a possible new element, comet’s, statue’s, updates on Google Maps, crowdsourcing science, spacecraft and Curiosity updates, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Chocolate and Memory

  • A recent study shows that chocolate might help increase your memory
  • The low down
  • “Superfood” is an unscientific term sometimes used to describe food with high nutrient or phytochemical content that may confer health benefits, with few properties considered to be negative
  • Some places even say that dark chocolate can have beneficial effects
  • However scientific studies on these claims are fairly sparse
  • A University of Calgary undergraduate became curious about how dietary factors might affect memory
  • Despite his misgivings he decided to concentrate on a group of compounds, flavonoids that found in a wide range of ‘superfoods’ including chocolate and green tea, focusing on one particular flavonoid, epicatechin (epi).
  • Significance
  • Figuring out how a single component of chocolate might improve human memory is almost impossible as there are too many external factors influence memory formation
  • Instead the team used the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis, to find out whether the dark chocolate flavonoid, epicatechin (epi) could improve their memories
  • To test their memory the snails were trained to remember a simple activity: to keep their breathing tubes (pneumostomes) closed when immersed in deoxygenated water
  • Pond snails usually breathe through their skins, but when oxygen levels fall, they extend the breathing tube above the surface to supplement the oxygen supply
  • The test snails were trained to remember to keep the breathing tube closed in deoxygenated water by gently tapping when they try to open
  • The strength of the memory depends on the training regime.
  • Of Note
  • A half-hour training session in deoxygenated water allows the snails to form intermediate-term memories (lasting less than 3 h) but not long-term memories (lasting 24 h or more)
  • When the snails received the dark chocolate flavonoid they were able to remember to keep their breathing tubes closed
  • And when they provided the snails with two training sessions, the animals were able to remember to keep their breathing tubes shut more than 3 days later
  • The flavonoid was able to boost the molluscs’ memories and extended the duration, but how strong were the epi-memories
  • Memories can be overwritten by another memory in a process called extinction, where the original memory is not forgotten and if the additional memory is stored weakly it can be lost and the original memory restored
  • To test this the researchers tried to replace it with a memory where the snails could open their breathing tubes
  • Instead of learning the new memory, the epi-trained snails stubbornly kept their breathing tubes shut.
  • The memory was too strong to be extinguished.
  • They also found that instead of requiring a sensory organ to consolidate the snails’ memories, like their memories of predators triggered by smell, it directly affects the neurons that store the memory
  • The fact that the cognitive effects of half a bar of dark chocolate could even help your grades is good news for chocoholics the world over.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Chocolate makes snails smarter | Phys.org
  • How to improve snail memories with chocolate | ScientificAmerican

— NEWS BYTE —

Plate Tectonics

  • Indo-Australian plate is breaking into two or perhaps three pieces because it is colliding with Asia in the northwest, which slows down the western part of the plate, while the eastern part of the plate continues moving more easily by diving or “subducting” under the island of Sumatra to the northeast in a geologic process that will take millions of years to form a new plate boundary, and will likely take thousands of similar large quakes for that to happen
  • The low down
  • The great Indian Ocean quake of April 11, 2012 previously was reported as 8.6 magnitude, has a new estimate that means the quake was 40 percent larger than had been believed
  • Studies show that tectonic plates continued to resonate around the globe, triggering big aftershocks as far away as Mexico
  • The first quake disturbed four perpendicular faults one after another in less than two minutes, all four faults were strike-slip faults well below magnitude 5
  • The first one ruptured along a roughly 90-mile length, where the seafloor on one side of the fault slipped about 100 feet past the seafloor on the fault’s other side
  • The second fault, which slipped about 25 feet, began to rupture 40 seconds after and extended an estimated 60 miles to 120 miles north-northeast to S-SW perpendicular to the first fault and crossing it
  • The third fault was parallel to the first fault and about 90 to the miles southwest which started breaking 70 seconds after the quake began along a length of about 90 miles
  • The fourth fault paralleled the first and third faults and began to rupture 145 seconds after the quake began, the rupture was roughly 30 miles to 60 miles long and the fault slipped about 20 feet past ground on the other side
  • Significance
  • The number of quakes of magnitude 5.5 or greater, located more than 1,500 kilometers from the April 11 quakes, went up nearly fivefold for six days afterward
  • The biggest of which was a magnitude 7 in Baja California, about 22 hours afterward
  • The strike-slip fault geometry allows the stress of a crustal movement to propagate much farther across the planet’s surface
  • Of Note
  • According to prevailing theories of plate tectonics, the Indo-Australian plate began to deform internally about 10 million years ago, thrusting the Himalayas up and slowing India down, creating twisting tensions
  • This theory comes from the stress changes shortly before the 2012 earthquakes
  • The great quake of last April 11 "is possibly the largest strike-slip earthquake ever seismically recorded although a similar size quake in Tibet in 1950 was of an unknown type
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Intraplate Quakes Signal Tectonic Breakup | ScienceNews.org
  • Unusual Indian Ocean Earthquakes Hit at Tectonic Breakup | Scientific American
  • Sumatra quake was part of crustal plate breakup: Study shows huge jolt measured 8.7, ripped at least 4 faults | Phys.org

Black Hole Size

  • An international team, has for the first time measured the radius of a black hole at the center of the distant M87 galaxy, the closest distance at which matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole.
  • The low down
  • Not everything can cross the event horizon to squeeze into a black hole
  • The area in which gas and dust build up, creates a flat pancake of matter known as an accretion disk
  • This disk orbits the black hole at nearly the speed of light, feeding the black hole a steady diet of superheated material
  • Over time, this disk can cause the black hole to spin in the same direction as the orbiting material
  • Caught up in this spiraling flow are magnetic fields, which accelerate hot material along powerful beams above the accretion disk
  • The resulting high-speed jet, launched by the black hole and the disk, shoots out across the galaxy, extending for hundreds of thousands of light-years
  • Because M87’s jet is magnetically launched from this smallest orbit, astronomers can estimate the black hole’s spin through careful measurement of the jet’s size as it leaves the black hole
  • Significance
  • Until now, no telescope has had the magnifying power required for this kind of observation
  • The “Event Horizon Telescope” enables scientists to view extremely precise details in faraway galaxies.
  • Astronomers linked together radio dishes in Hawaii, Arizona and California to create a telescope array called the “Event Horizon Telescope” (EHT) that can see details 2,000 times finer than what’s visible to the Hubble Space Telescope.
  • The “Event Horizon Telescope” uses a type of astronomical interferometry used in radio astronomy called Very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI)
  • VLBI observations are made simultaneously by many telescopes to be combined, which then synthesizes a telescope with a size equal to the maximum separation between the telescopes
  • Each observation is correlated to a local atomic clock to be combined and analyzed later
  • Using this technique the team measured the innermost orbit of the accretion disk to be only 5.5 times the size of the black hole event horizon
  • According to the laws of physics, this size suggests that the accretion disk is spinning in the same direction as the black hole
  • Of Note
  • This is the first direct observation to confirm theories of how black holes power jets from the centers of galaxies
  • The team plans to expand its telescope array, adding radio dishes in Chile, Europe, Mexico, Greenland and Antarctica, in order to obtain even more detailed pictures of black holes in the future.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Event Horizon Telescope
  • For the first time, astronomers have measured the radius of a black hole | Phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Element 113

  • Japanese researchers claim they’ve seen conclusive evidence of the long-sought element 113, a super-heavy, super-unstable element near the bottom of the periodic table
  • The low down
  • Super-heavy elements do not occur in nature and must be produced in the lab, using particle accelerators, nuclear reactors, ion separators and other complex equipment
  • Science have been hunting for element 113 for nine years, and there has been evidence a few times already, but it has never been this clear,
  • Super heavy element discoveries
  • Elements 93 to 103 were discovered by the Americans
  • Elements 104 to 106 by the Russians and the Americans
  • Elements 107 to 112 by the Germans
  • The two most recently named elements, 114 and 116, by cooperative work of the Russians and Americans.
  • *August 12 experimental data
  • Japanese scientists created element 113 by speeding zinc ions through a linear accelerator until they reached 10 percent of the speed of light.
  • The ions then smashed into a thin bismuth layer, when the zinc and bismuth atoms fused, they produced a very heavy ion followed by a chain of six consecutive alpha decays identified as products of an isotope of the 113th element
  • Of Note
  • The discovery has not yet verified by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
  • If the IUPAC grants its blessing, the researchers could be the first team from Asia to name one of nature’s fundamental atoms.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Search for element 113 concluded at last | Phys.org
  • Japanese Team Claims Discovery Of Elusive Element 113, And May Get To Name It | Popular Science

DyslexicFonts.com

  • DyslexicFonts.com
  • For some people with dyslexia a bottom-heavy font helps, There is a new free app for that, try it on iPhone, Android, Kindle …
  • Mars_Base / Heather @JB_Mars_Base

Comet ISON, 2013

  • The low down
  • Is due to shine in the sky next March, perhaps rivalling the fondly-remembered Comet Hale Bopp from 1996
  • Initial calculations of its orbit show it will pass ridiculously close to the Sun next November
  • Although it looks promising, very promising in fact, it’s very early days.
  • We will need more observations before we know exactly what’s in store, and it is impossible to predict this far ahead what it will look like
  • Of Note
  • It could live up to the most breathless predictions and blaze in the sky, tail spanning half the sky, becoming visible as soon as the Sun has set
  • Or it could break up passing the sun and develop no tail
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Guest Post: Comet Kerfuffle | UniverseToday.com
  • Newfound Comet C/2012 S1 May Dazzle in 2013 | Space.com

Statues from space

  • A 1,000 year-old ancient Buddhist statue which was first recovered in 1938 has been analysed by scientists and has been found to be carved from a meteorite
  • The low down
  • The statue, known as the Iron Man, weighs 22lb [10kg] and is believed to represent a stylistic hybrid between the Buddhist and pre-Buddhist Bon culture
  • It was discovered in 1938 by an expedition of German scientists
  • It is unknown how the statue was discovered however it is believed that the large swastika carved into the centre of the figure may have encouraged the team to take it back to Germany
  • It only became available for study following an auction in 2007.
  • At that time the first team was able to study the origins of the statue
  • The team was able to classify it as an ataxite, a rare class of iron meteorite with high contents of nickel.
  • Of Note
  • It is thought that the statue was chiseled from a fragment of the Chinga meteorite which crashed into the border areas between Mongolia and Siberia about 15,000 years ago
  • The fragment that the statue was carved out of is believed to have been collected many centuries before
  • The first debris from that meteorite crash was officially discovered in 1913 by gold prospectors
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Buddhist statue, discovered by Nazi expedition, is made of meteorite, new study reveals | Phys.org

— Updates —

Crowdsourcing Cyclone’s

  • Cyclone Center
  • The global intensity record contains uncertainties caused by differences in analysis procedures around the world and through time. Scientists are enlisting the public because patterns in storm imagery are best recognized by the human eye
  • *Further Information
  • Cyclone Center
  • ZooNiverse

Google Maps – Great Barrier Reef

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft and the asteroid Vesta

  • New analysis supports the notion troughs seen Vesta are faults that formed when a fellow asteroid smacked into Vesta’s south pole. The research reinforces the claim that Vesta has a layered interior, a quality normally reserved for larger bodies, such as planets and large moons.
  • The low down
  • New measurements taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft last year indicate that a large collision could have created the asteroid’s troughs
  • Previous research has found signs of igneous rock on Vesta, indicating that rock on Vesta’s surface was once molten, a sign of differentiation
  • If the troughs are made possible by differentiation, then the cracks aren’t just troughs
  • The troughs could be possible if the asteroid is differentiated, meaning that it has a core, mantle and crust
  • The longest of those troughs, named Divalia Fossa, surpasses the size of the Grand Canyon by spanning 465 kilometers (289 miles) long, 22 km (13.6 mi) wide and 5 km (3 mi) deep
  • Such information would indicate that Vesta was a planet trying to form
  • Significance
  • Observations indicate that Vesta is also unusually planet-like for an asteroid in that its mantle is ductile and can stretch under a lot of pressure
  • Unlike the larger asteroid Ceres, Vesta is not classified as a dwarf planet because the large collision at its south pole knocked it out of its spherical shape
  • However if Vesta has a mantle and core, that would mean it has qualities often reserved for planets, dwarf planets and moons—regardless of its shape
  • Of Note
  • Scientists are not yet fully convinced that Vesta’s troughs are graben however
  • There are other qualities of Vesta that could be clues to how the troughs formed
  • The pole collision may caused the equator to bulge outward so far and so fast that the rotation, once per 5.35 hours, caused the troughs rather than the direct power of the impact
  • Dawn has already left to explore Ceres, so scientists will continue to analyze the data already collected and improve computer simulations of Vesta’s interior
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Dawn’s Greatest Hits at Vesta | JPLnews
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Vesta’s Deep Grooves Could Be “Stretch Marks” From Impact | UniverseToday.com
  • Asteroid’s troughs suggest stunted planet | Phys.org

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –

  • Longest drive
  • On Sep 26 (Sol 50) Curiosity rolled about 160 ft [48.9 m] making it the longest drive in day for the mission so far
  • The rover has now drive roughly a quarter mile [416 m] during the course of the mission so far
  • Photo of Phobos
  • On September 21 Curiosity’s right Mastcam was able to take a daytime view of the Martian sky and see a crescent Phobos
  • There have been pictures of Phobos before, most recently during the transit on September 13
  • This is the first time that the 8 mi [13 km] wide Phobos has been seen during the day
  • Ancient River
  • Scientists have now seen for the first time evidence of water-transported gravel on Mars
  • The site is between the north rim of Gale Crater and the base of Mount Sharp, a mountain inside the crater
  • A channel named Peace Vallis originates in the rim of a nearby crater and feeds into the alluvial fan where Curiosity is now
  • The number of channels in the fan between the rim and conglomerate suggests flows continued or repeated over a long time, not just once or for a few years.
  • The discovery comes from examining two outcrops, called “Hottah” and “Link,” with the telephoto capability of Curiosity’s mast camera
  • The first outcrop, “Link,” exposed by thruster exhaust as Curiosity touched down
  • The latest outcrop, ‘Hottah,’ looks like someone jackhammered up a slab of city sidewalk, but it’s really a tilted block of an ancient streambed
  • It appears similar to another outcrop seen at the landing site that was exposed by the exhaust thruster
  • The gravel in the conglomerates at both outcrops range in size from a grain of sand to a golf ball. Some are angular, but many are rounded
  • From the size and shape of the gravel scientists are able to interpret that the water was roughly ankle to hip deep and moved at about 3 ft/s [1 m/s]
  • The rounded shape of some stones in the conglomerate indicates long-distance transport from above the rim
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Curiosity Rover Report (Sept. 28, 2012) Mars Streambed | JPLNews
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • NASA Rover Finds Old Streambed On Martian Surface | Mars.JPL.NASA.gov
  • Longest Drive Yet | Mars.JPL.NASA.gov
  • NASA Rover Finds Old Streambed on Martian Surface | NASA.gov
  • Curiosity Finds Evidence of An Ancient Streambed on Mars | UniverseToday.com
  • A Crescent Moon in the Martian Sky | UniverseToday.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Oct 04, 1957 : 55 years ago : Sputnik : The Space Age began as the Soviet Union, to the dismay of the United States, launched Sputnik, the first manmade satellite, into orbit around the earth. The craft circled the earth every 95 minutes at almost 20,000 miles per hour 500 miles above the Earth. The Sputnik (meaning “companion” or “fellow traveller”) was launched from Kazakhstan. It stayed in orbit for about three months. Sputnik fell from the sky on 4 Jan 1958. The 184-lb satellite had transmitted a radio signal picked up around the world, and instrumentation for temperature measurement.

Looking up this week

The post Chocolate & Black Holes | SciByte 65 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Spacecraft Updates | SciByte 23 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/14486/spacecraft-updates-scibyte-23/ Tue, 29 Nov 2011 23:28:59 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=14486 Find out the latest on Russia’s failed attempt to reach Mars, NASA’s new mission, and we’ll update you on the biggest stories of the month!

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Find out the latest on Russia’s failed attempt to reach Mars, NASA’s new mission, and we’ll update you on the biggest stories of the month, including a few updates that could have huge impacts for physics!

Too much out there is just plain distraction, why can’t we have our cake and eat it too? There are a lot of interesting things going on out there in science, but getting to the interesting bits without all the hype you get from major media outlets is a trick we at Jupiter Broadcasting are hoping to pull off.

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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Do some holiday shopping through our store

Phobos-Grunt : Update

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory “Curiosity” Rover : Updates and more

YU55, the molten asteroid : Update

Faster than light Neutrinos : Update

*— NEWS BYTE — *

Super Saturnian storm

Gumby-Bot

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

  • Dec 04, 1819 : 192 years ago : Watermarking – A triple paper was patented in Britain by Sir William Congreve that could incorporate a colored watermark visible when the paper was held up to the light, to make currency harder to counterfeit
  • Dec 6, 1830 : 181 years ago : US Navel Observatory – One of the oldest scientific agencies in the U.S., was established as the Depot of Charts and Instruments in Washington, D.C. Its primary mission was to care for the U.S. Navy’s chronometers, charts and other navigational equipment.
  • Dec 6, 1850 : 161 years ago : Ophthalmoscope – Hermann von Helmholtz announced his invention, the ophthalmoscope, to the Berlin Physical Society. It revolutionized ophthalmology, enabling a view inside a person’s eye to see the details of the living retina, diagnose eye diseases and prevent blindness. Ophthalmoscope Retina from Ophthalmoscope
  • Dec 06, 1945 : 66 years ago : Microwave Oven – The microwave oven was patented.
  • Nov 30, 1954 : 57 years ago : The Sky WAS Falling – In Alabama, USA, Ann Hodges, was bruised on the arm and hip by a meteorite that fell through the roof of her house, smashed the case of her wooden radio and struck her as she lay resting on her sofa. The meteor made a fireball visible from three states, even though it fell early in the afternoon Image Image Image of Meteorite
  • Dec 01, 1997 : 14 years ago : Planets align – Eight planets from our Solar System lined up from West to East beginning with Pluto, followed by Mercury, Mars, Venus, Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, and Saturn, with a crescent moon alongside that lasted until Dec 8. The planets also aligned in May 2000, but too close to the sun to be visible from Earth. It will be at least another 100 years before so many planets will be so close and so visible.IMAGE

Looking up this week

  • Keep an eye out for …

  • All this week during dawn hours, Saturn and Spica remain 5 degrees apart all this week, or about half the width of your fist held at arm’s length. IMAGE

  • Friday, Dec 2nd : Moon hits first quarter IMAGE

  • Monday, Dec 5th : Jupiter will be to the lower left of the Moon at nightfall. Only the Moon and Venus outshine it.

  • More on whats in the sky this week

  • Sky&Telescope

  • AstronomyNow

  • SpaceWeather.com

  • HeavensAbove

  • StarDate.org

The post Spacecraft Updates | SciByte 23 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.

Direct Download:

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Show Notes:

Feedback

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

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