Show Notes: extras.show/70

The post The Resilience of the Voyagers | Jupiter Extras 70 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Hello everyone and welcome back to SciByte!

We take a look at a theory breaking exoplanet, a theory confirming star, Saturn moon Titan, lunar formation theories, story and spacecraft 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:

Breaking Planetary Formation Theories Again

• Astronomers have announced that they have discovered a new type of planet – a rocky world weighing 17 times as much as Earth
• Past theories believed such a world couldn’t form because anything so hefty would grab hydrogen gas as it grew and become a Jupiter-like gas giant
• This planet; however. is solid and much bigger than previously discovered “super-Earths,” making it a “mega-Earth.”
• Kepler-10c
• It is located about 560 light-years from Earth in the constellation Draco
• It’s orbit lasts 45 days
• The system also hosts a 3-Earth-mass “lava world,” Kepler-10b, in a remarkably fast, 20-hour orbit
• Discovery
• Kepler-10c was originally spotted by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft.
• By measuring the amount of dimming, astronomers can calculate the planet’s physical size or diameter
• However, Kepler can’t tell whether a planet is rocky or gassy
• Kepler-10c was known to have a diameter 2.3 times as large as Earth
• This suggested it fell into a category of planets known as mini-Neptunes, which have thick, gaseous envelopes
• It’s a Rocky Planet
• The team used the HARPS-North instrument on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) in the Canary Islands to measure the mass of Kepler-10c
• They found that it weighed 17 times as much as Earth – far more than expected, this showed that Kepler-10c must have a dense composition of rocks and other solids.
• It is so massive that it would have been able to hold onto an atmosphere if it ever had one
• Planetary Formation Theories
• Planet formation theories have a difficult time explaining how such a large, rocky world that need elements like silicon and iron, could develop
• The Kepler-10 system is about 11 billion years old, which means it formed less than 3 billion years after the Big Bang
• The early universe contained only hydrogen and helium
• Heavier elements are created and scattered through the universe when a star goes supernova, when help create later generations of stars and planets
• This process should have taken billions of years; however, Kepler-10c shows that the universe was able to form such huge rocks even during the time when heavy elements were scarce.
• What This Means
• This tells us that rocky planets could form much earlier than we thought
• This research implies that astronomers shouldn’t rule out old stars when they search for Earth-like planets
• If old stars can host rocky Earths too, then we have a better chance of locating potentially habitable worlds in our cosmic neighborhood
• Further Reading / In the News
• Astronomers find a new type of planet: The ‘mega-Earth’ | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

A New Sneaky Star Type

• A Thorne-Zytkow Object, or TZO are actually two stars in one: a binary pair where a superdense neutron star has been absorbed into its less dense supergiant
• Thorne-Zytkow Object
• First theorized in 1975 they are difficult to find in real life because of their similarity to red supergiants, it is only through detailed spectroscopy that the particular chemical signatures can be identified.
• While normal red supergiants derive their energy from nuclear fusion in their cores, TOs are powered by the unusual activity of the absorbed neutron stars in their cores
• Discovery
• The astronomers were examining the spectrum of light emitted from apparent red supergiants, which tells them what elements are present
• When the spectrum of one star, HV 2112, was analyzed the scientists were quite surprised by some of the unusual features
• They took a close look at the subtle lines in the spectrum they found that it contained excess rubidium, lithium and molybdenum
• Past research has shown that normal stellar processes can create each of these elements; however, high abundances of all three of these at the temperatures typical of red supergiants is a unique signature of TŻOs
• Only by absorbing a much hotter star – such as a neutron star left over from the explosive death of a more massive partner – is the production of such elements presumed to be possible
• Formation Theory
• TOs are thought to be formed by the interaction of two massive stars-a red supergiant and a neutron star formed during a supernova explosion-in a close binary system
• The much more massive red supergiant essentially swallows the neutron star, which spirals into the core of the red supergiant
• Scientists are careful to point out that HV 2112 displays some chemical characteristics that don’t quite match theoretical models
• There are some minor inconsistencies between some of the details of what we found and what theory predicts, but the theoretical predictions are quite old, and there have been a lot of improvements in the theory since then
• What This Might Mean
• Studying these objects represents a completely new model of how stellar interiors can work
• In these interiors we also have a new way of producing heavy elements in our universe
• Further Reading / In the News
• Astronomers discover first Thorne-Zytkow object, a bizarre type of hybrid star | ScienceDaily
• Astronomers Find Evidence of a Strange Type of Star | UniverseToday.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Waves on Saturns Moon?

• Cameras on NASA’s spacecraft Cassini recently saw what appear to be waves on one of Titan’s largest methane lakes, if confirmed, the discovery would mark the first time waves have been seen outside Earth.
• What Did They See?
• The team found patterns in the sunlight reflecting off a northern lake called Punga Mare that they interpret as two-centimeter-high waves
• It may simply be a mudflat instead of a deep lake, and a shallow film of liquid on top may be the cause of the unique light signature
• What it Might Mean
• Waves on Titan would confirm that the lakes actually are deep reservoirs of methane and ethane,
• If life on Titan exists, the best place to look is in large bodies of liquid, the kind that form waves
• True liquid bodies would also make a robotic spacecraft mission to explore Titan’s habitability more feasible
• More Certainty
• By 2017 scientists should know for certain whether what they are seeing is indeed caused by waves
• Cassini has been observing the moon during its northern winter, when weak winds are at work
• As spring starts over the next few years, it brings stronger winds to kick up seas, so the probe should capture more definitive evidence of waves if they exist
• Further Reading / In the News
• Lake on Saturn’s Largest Moon May Have Waves | Scientific American

Lunar Formation Theory Evidence?

• Current Lunar Formation Theory
• According to one lunar formation theory billions of years ago a Mars-sized body (sometimes called “Theia”) smashed into Earth
• Earth survived and the fragments from the crash gradually coalesced into the Moon that we see today
• The problem with this was that no evidence had been found of “Theia”
• Scientists now believe they have found traces of Theia in lunar rocks pulled from the Apollo missions
• Oxygen Isotopes
• Before, the “resolution” of microscopes couldn’t find any significant differences isotopes or types of oxygen of any of the Lunar samples of the Moon brought back by the Apollo missions
• New research appears to show a difference between the Earth and the Moon which implies that a body of different composition caused the changes
• The new data reveals the moon rocks have 12 parts per million more oxygen-17 than the Earth rocks
• “The differences are small and difficult to detect, but they are there,” | lead researcher Daniel Herwartz
• What This Means
• First, scientists can now be reasonably sure that the giant collision took place
• Second, it gives us an idea of the geochemistry of Theia
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Where Did The Moon Come From? – Do We Really Need the Moon? – Preview – BBC Two | BBC
• Further Reading / In the News
• The work was published in Science and will also be presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in California on June 11.
• Hulk Smash! Collision That Formed Our Moon Shows Up In Lunar Rocks, Study Says | UniverseToday.com
• New isotopic evidence supporting moon formation via Earth collision with planet-sized body | phys.org

—UPDATE—

Asteroid UQ4 Catalina Turns Comet – Still Looking Promising

• Last Time on SciByte …
• SciByte 130 | Solar Sibling & Comets | May 13, 2014
• Asteroid Turns Comet
• On October 23, 2013, astronomers with the Catalina Sky Survey picked up a very faint asteroid with an unusual orbit more like a that of a comet than an asteroid
• 2013 UQ4 belongs to a class of objects known as damocloids, these are thought to be inactive varieties of comet nuclei
• By May 7, the asteroid had grown a little fuzz, making the move to comethood, soon afterwards it displayed a substantial coma or atmosphere
• It is brightening on schedule and should be a binocular object greater than +10th magnitude by the end of June
• It will reach perihelion on July 6th only four days before its closest approach to the Earth
• At that point, the comet will have an apparent motion of about 7 degrees a day — that’s the span of a Full Moon once every 1 hour and 42 minutes
• Further Reading / In the News
• Asteroid-Turned-Comet 2013 UQ4 Catalina Brightens: How to See it This Summer | UniverseToday.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

ISEE-3 Reboot Project

• The team is now receiving information from the spacecraft’s magnetometer
• Last Time on SciByte …
• SciByte 132 | ISEE-3 Back To Life | May 27, 2014
• SciByte 133 | Orion Heat Shield & Dragon V2 | June 3, 2014
• What ISEE-3 Really Looks Like
• Spacecraft Mass: 479 kg [1,056 lb]
• Spacecraft Dimensions: 16-sided body 1.7m [5.6ft] diameter, 1.6m [5.2ft] high
• Spacecraft Power: solar cells
• Maximum Power: 173.0 W (nominal power)
• It has 4 large antennas that span 91 meters and it spins ~ once every 3 seconds
• The spacecraft is spinning at 19.16 rpm, the mission specification is 19.75 +/- 0.2 rpm so the spin rate of spacecraft is slightly below what it should be
• Image | ISEE-3 Status Report 5 June 2014 (Morning) | Space College
• Image | ISEE-3 Propulsion System Overview | Space College
• Using GNU Radio to Talk to ISEE-3
• The amazing accomplishment of successfully designing a deep-space uplink modulator in a couple of days was accomplished through a lot of team work, strong leadership, and generous support from the community at large
• The uplink commands to the spacecraft uses products like the Ettus Research USRP, the open source SDR framework GNU Radio have made this exceedingly easy
• Transmitting Rate Change
• On Just 9, the team was able to switch ISEE-3’s B transmitter to a data rate of 64 bps, they hope to eventually leave it this way so as to allow dishes smaller than Arecibo to complete the link and have solid two-way communication with ISEE-3.
• After this they were able to detect signals from the craft with an 8 foot dish
• Telemetry Data
• On June 12, telemetry from ISEE-3 indicating that its entire suite of science instruments is powered up and has been powered up since NASA last commanded the spacecraft many years ago
• The engineers are getting data back from the magnetometer that indicates that science data is coming back; however, just because an instrument is powered up doesn’t mean that it is functioning normally
• Some of the ISEE-3 instruments had begun to fail or become partially functional as early as 1982
• Spinning Up
• The team plans to briefly fire two of the spacecraft’s thrusters on 21 June so as to spin it up from 19.16 rpm to the mission specification of 19.75 +/- 0.2 rpm [the spin-up target is 19.733 rpm]
• This optimal spin rate is required in order to properly fire the axial thrusters during the much longer trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) we need to perform to adjust the spacecraft’s course
• Multimedia
• Image | ISEE-3 Status Report 5 June 2014 (Morning) | Space College
• Twitter | @ISEE3Reboot
• YouTube | ISEE-3 Reboot Channel
• Further Reading / In the News
• Space College: ISEE-3 Reboot Project Archives
• Contact With 36-Year Old Spacecraft Results in Dancing, Hugs. Now Comes Even Bigger Challenge | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• The Road Trip Continues
• Curiosity is currently driving toward Mount Sharp, the layered mountain at the middle of Mars’ Gale Crater.
• The rover is carrying with it some of the drilled powdered sample material from the Windjana location that can be delivered for additional internal laboratory analysis during pauses in the drive.
• Mercury Transit
• The observations were made on June 3, 2014
• Mercury fills only about one-sixth of one pixel as seen from such great distance, so the darkening does not have a distinct shape, but its position follows Mercury’s expected path based on orbital calculations.
• This is the first transit of the sun by a planet observed from any planet other than Earth, and also the first imaging of Mercury from Mars
• The same Mastcam frames show two sunspots approximately the size of Earth. The sunspots move only at the pace of the sun’s rotation, much slower than the movement of Mercury.
• Mercury and Venus transits are visible more often from Mars than from Earth, the next Mercury transit visible from Earth will be May 9, 2016.
• Mercury Passes in Front of the Sun, as Seen From Mars – Mars Science Laboratory | Mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Testing Future Landing Technologies
• Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) | nasa.gov
• The Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) will gather data about landing heavy payloads on Mars and other planetary surfaces
• As NASA plans increasingly ambitious robotic missions to Mars, laying the groundwork for even more complex human science expeditions to come, accommodating extended stays for explorers on the Martian surface will require larger and heavier spacecraft
• This test will use a helium balloon (that, when fully inflated, would fit snugly into Pasadena’s Rose Bowl) to lift the vehicle to 120,000 feet
• A fraction of a second after dropping from the balloon, and a few feet below it, four small rocket will stabilize the saucer
• A half second later, a solid-fueled rocket engine will send the test vehicle to the edge of the stratosphere
• “Our goal is to get to an altitude and velocity which simulates the kind of environment one of our vehicles would encounter when it would fly in the Martian atmosphere,” | Ian Clark, principal investigator of the LDSD project at JPL
• Two supersonic decelerator technologies that will be thoroughly tested during two LDSD flight tests next year.
• The SIAD-R, is essentially an inflatable doughnut that increases the vehicle’s size and, as a result, its drag to quickly slow the vehicle
• A second system being tested is the largest supersonic parachute ever flown, to be used when the craft first hits the supersonic flow
• NASA’s flying saucer-shaped test vehicle was not able to be flight tested during the reserved testing launch period unfavorable weather conditions, NASA is continuing to look at options for a future launch window.
• Multimedia
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mercury Passes in Front of the Sun, as Seen From Mars – Mars Science Laboratory | Mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• NASA’s LDSD ‘Flying Saucer’ Test–Update – Mars Science Laboratory | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• June 25, 1997 : 17 years ago : Space Station Mir Accident : The space-station Mir suffered a near-fatal mishap when a Progress ferry being docked via remote control by Russian cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev accidentally rammed into the Spektr science module, putting a hole in the pressure vessel and damaging its solar arrays beyond use. To salvage the station, which consisted of a core, a connecting node, and five science modules, crew members severed electrical and data connections between Spektr and the rest of the station and then sealed off the module. They saved the station but lost about half of their electrical power
• The One Martian Year Birthday to Curiosity June 24, 2014. The length of time for Mars to complete one orbit around the Sun is its sidereal year, and is about 686.98 Earth solar days.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Planets
• Mercury | Hidden by the sunrise
• Venus | Dawn | Low in the East
• Mars | Twilight | High in the SW, with the Blue-White giant star Spica to its left. Mars sets in the W ~ 1AM DST
• Jupiter | Twilight | Low in the W-NW in twilight, setting by nightfall

• Saturn | Evening | S sky in the evening

• Further Reading and Resources

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

The post Super-Earth & Lunar Formation | SciByte 134 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at marijuana\’s effect on the brain, an \”Earth-like\” exoplanet, the brains distraction controls, a possible new moon for Saturn, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Marijuana’s and Changes to the Brain

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

— NEWS BYTE —

Another Earth-sized Exo-Planet

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

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

The Brains Distraction Control

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

A New Moon for Saturn?

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

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

SpaceX Dragon Delivery Mission

• Last Time on SciByte …
• SciByte 126 | Paraplegic Therapy & Exomoon – International Space Station (ISS) Glitch | April 15, 2014
• Latest Delivery
• The SpaceX 3 Dragon commercial cargo freighter successfully arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Easter Sunday morning, April 20
• The mission is the company’s third cargo delivery flight to the station and is loaded with nearly 2.5 tons of science experiments, it will remain attached to the station until May 18
• There are over 150 science experiments loaded aboard the Dragon capsule for research to be conducted by the crews of ISS Expeditions 39 and 40
• CRS-3 mission will deliver some 5000 pounds of science experiments, a high definition Earth observing imaging camera suite (HDEV), a pair of hi tech legs for Robonaut 2, a laser optical communications experiment (OPALS) and essential gear, the VEGGIE lettuce growing experiment, spare parts, crew provisions, food, clothing and supplies to the six person crews
• Included in this delivery is equipment needed for the repair of the Multiplexer-Demultiplexer (MDM) that controls a robotics mobile transporter, but also radiators and a joint to move the station’s solar arrays, among other things.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | U.S. SpaceX Dragon Ship Arrives at the International Space Station with Important cargo | NASA
• Further Reading / In the News
• Easter Sunday Space Station Rendezvous and Berthing for SpaceX Dragon Freighter Succeessful | UnivrseToday.com

New Horizons and Questions About Pluto

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

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

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

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

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

Looking up this week

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

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

• Keep an eye out for …

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

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

• Further Reading and Resources

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

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

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.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

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— Show Notes: —

2013 Summer SciByte

• A HUGE thank you to Nikki for joining me as a special science co-host
• SciByte YouTube Channel

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

• Previously on SciByte
• Summer SciByte | August 01, 2013 | SciByte
• SciByte 98 | Strange Exoplanet & Cancer Therapy | ARKYD Telescope Upgrade Available | June 18, 2013
• SciByte 40 | Apollo 11 and James Cameron – Apollo 11 Engines found at the bottom of the ocean | April 3, 2012
• Recovery Expedition
• In March 2012, Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos funded an expedition to find and recover Apollo engines
• Following the flight paths of the various missions they tried searching in the area where they thought the Apollo 11 engines might have landed
• In March 2013, Bezos revealed that his team had raised the parts for at least two F-1 engines although they weren\’t sure what mission the engines were from
• Multimedia
• Photos | First look at Amazon CEO\’s historic moon rocket engines | collectSpace.com
• YouTube | Apollo F-1 rocket engines raised off ocean floor by Amazon CEO | collectSPACE
• YouTube | Clip – Uncovering Thruster | collectSPACE
• YouTube | Clip – Lifting Thrusters | collectSPACE
• YouTube | Apollo-Era Saturn V F-1 Engines Arrive at Cape Canaveral | collectSpace
• Identification
• Because of the launch conditions, their fall to the ocean, and the heavy corrosion from 43 years underwater accurate identification was difficult
• A conservation team at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, Kansas took on that task
• While scanning one of the components with a black light and a special lens filter they discovered a Rocketdyne [company] serial number that correlates to NASA \”Unit No 2044\”, which is the serial number for F-1 Engine #5 from Apollo 11
• Restoration
• The Kansas Cosmosphere expects that it will take about two years to complete the conservation of the engines
• During that time, the public can view the parts and see the work being done to preserve them through a special tour offered at the museum\’s SpaceWorks facility, a website with a live camera view of the same facility is also being developed
• Ownership
• While NASA retains ownership of the artifacts and will ultimately decide where they go on museum display, Bezos has expressed an interest in having one of the engine\’s parts displayed at The Museum of Flight in Seattle
• Further Reading / In the News
• Rocket Engine Part Recovered by Amazon CEO Has Apollo 11 History | Space.com
• Rocket engine part recovered by Amazon CEO has Apollo 11 history | collectSpace.com

— 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

• Last Time on SciByte
• SciByte 98 | Strange Exoplanet & Cancer Therapy – ARKYD Telescope Upgrade Available
  | June 18, 2013
• SciByte 96 | Mammoth Blood & Crowdsourced Telescope – Crowdsourced Telescope | June 3, 2013
• Crowdsourcing Telescope
• Planetary Resources raised more than $1.5 million in 33 days to launch a small space telescope into low Earth orbit in 2015
• 17,614 people donated money for the crowdsourced Arkyd-100
• The company hit that goal June 19, then raked in another $505,366 in the final 10 days of the campaign, including $100,000 on June 30 from Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson.
• Planetary Resources, Bellevue, Wash., began a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign May 29 seeking to raise at least $1 million by June 30
• 14,919 space selfies, according data from Kickstarter
• Kicktraq.com, shows that Planetary Resources raised an average of $45,614 a day, with the 17,614 donors contributing an average of $85 each
• 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
• Planetary Resources Raises $1.5M for Crowdfunded Space Telescope | Space.com
• Asteroid Miners\’ Crowdfunded Space Telescope May Hunt Exoplanets | Space.com
• ‘Space Selfie’ Telescope Could Hunt Alien Planets … If It Raises A Cool $2M | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Phobos Creates a Annular Eclipse
• Phobos does not completely cover the sun as seen from the Red Planet\’s surface, so the event was technically an annular or \”ring of fire\” eclipse
• Even though Phobos is just 22 km (14 miles) on average it appears relatively big against the sun because the moon orbits so close to Mars, at a mere 6,000 km (3,700 mi)
• The distance from Michigan, Detroit to Lisbon Portugal is 6,073 km (3,774 mi)
• GoogleMap | Michigan, Detroit to Lisbon, Portugal
• Multimedia
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report (Aug. 23, 2013): The Odometer Keeps Turning
• YouTube Mars\’ Moon Phobos Eclipses the Sun, as Seen by Curiosity | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Curiosity Rover Snaps Best Mars Solar Eclipse Photos Ever

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

• Keep an eye out for …
• Friday, Sep 13 | ~ 1 hour after sunset | In the W-SW Saturn is 6* to the upper left of Venus (5* is roughly three fingers held at arms length
• Planets
• Venus and Saturn | Evening Twilight | Low in the W-SW, Venus the brighter of the two, and Saturn to the upper left and getting a little closer as the week goes by

• Mars and Jupiter | Before / During Dawn | In the E, Jupiter being the brighter with the dimmer Mars to the lower left and getting further apart

• Further Reading and Resources

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

The post Hibernation & Updates | SciByte 101 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at a possible atmosphere on one of Saturn’s moons, heart powered pacemakers, three dimensional fossils, acidity levels of a moon a Jupiter, what else your Facebook page says about you, transistors that crumple, viewer feed back
and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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