Show Notes: extras.show/70

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

Show Notes: extras.show/35

The post Brunch with Brent: Jacob Roecker | Jupiter Extras 35 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Hello everyone and welcome back to SciByte!

We take a look at resurrecting a space probe, classroom decorations, brain control, viewer feedback, a three year look back at SciByte, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Bringing an Abandoned Satellite Back to Life and Use

• An independent team of engineers recovering old imagery on magnetic tape reels from the first lunar orbiter missions decided to accomplish a landmark achievement: to turn on, command and maneuver a NASA spacecraft long ago abandoned
• Original mission : Sun/Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3)
• Originally the mission was cooperative effort between NASA and ESRO/ESA to study the interaction between the Earth’s magnetic field and the solar wind.
• Examine in detail the structure of the solar wind near the Earth and the shock wave that forms the interface between the solar wind and Earth\’s magnetosphere
• Investigate motions of and mechanisms operating in the plasma sheets, and continue the investigation of cosmic rays and solar flare emissions in the interplanetary region near 1 AU
• Second mission: International Cometary Explorer
• On June 10, 1982, after completing its original mission, ISEE-3 was repurposed. It was renamed the International Cometary Explorer (ICE)
• The primary scientific objective of ICE was to study the interaction between the solar wind and a cometary atmosphere
• ICE carried no cameras. It instead carried instruments for measurements of energetic particles, waves, plasmas, and fields
• It was sent on a trajectory intercepting that of Comet Giacobini-Zinner and on 11 September 1985, the craft passed through the plasma tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner
• It transited between the Sun and Comet Halley in late March 1986, when other spacecraft were in the vicinity of Comet Halley, ICE flew through the tail
• Heliospheric mission
• This phase of the mission was approved by NASA in 1991, which consisted of investigations of coronal mass ejections in coordination with ground-based observations
• End of mission
• On May 5, 1997, NASA ended the ICE mission, and ordered the probe shut down, with only a carrier signal left operating
• Further contact
• In 1999, NASA made brief contact with ICE to verify its carrier signal and discovered that it had not been powered off after the last contact
• On September 18, 2008 a status check revealed that all but one of its 13 experiments were still functioning, and it still has enough propellant
• Bringing It Back to Life?
• Earlier in 2014, officials with the Goddard Space Flight Center had said that the Deep Space Network equipment necessary to transmit signals to the spacecraft had been decommissioned in 1999, and that replacing it was not economically feasible
• An independent team of engineers recovering old imagery on magnetic tape reels from the first lunar orbiter missions decided to accomplish a landmark achievement: to turn on, command and maneuver a NASA spacecraft long ago abandoned
• They began to study the feasibility and challenges involved in reviving the \’dead\’ satellite
• A team webpage said, \”We intend to contact the ISEE-3 (International Sun-Earth Explorer) spacecraft, command it to fire its engine and enter an orbit near Earth, and then resume its original mission…If we are successful we intend to facilitate the sharing and interpretation of all of the new data ISEE-3 sends back via crowdsourcing.\”
• Crowdsourcing
• To cover the costs of writing the software to communicate with the probe, searching through the NASA archives for the information needed to control the spacecraft, and buying time on the dish antennas
• On May 15, 2014, the project reached its crowdfunding goal, and they further met a \’stretch\’ goal of $150,000
• Window of Opportunity
• The team needed to contact the spacecraft before the end of May because the next close approach to the Earth won’t be until 30-40 years
• The ISEE-3/ICE spacecraft was never really designed to be an interplanetary cruiser and thus the thrusters on board are very small
• The project members are working on deadline: if they get the spacecraft to change its orbit by late May or early June 2014, it can use the Moon\’s gravity to get back into a useful halo orbit.
• The team estimates that if they wait until mid-June to do the course correction that it will take 17 hours of thrusting to get the course change of about 40 meters/second that they will need at that time
• Hardware and Software
• It has been 30 years since the original project was started and and documents and magnetic tapes have disappeared.
• The software and hardware to program, command and transmit to ISEE-3 are long gone
• Amateur radio operators now have technology sufficient to acquire the signal and through the internet are also a part of the recovery effort
• Even without the original hardware transmitter, today’s high-speed electronics are able to emulate in software the hardware from 36 years ago
• Project members obtained the needed hardware (power amplifier, modulator/demodulator and installed it on the 305-meter Arecibo dish antenna on May 19, 2014
• Technical Progress
• This is an ongoing process and the team has dug some of the pertinent information out of 35 year old IEEE or AIAA papers that are publicly available
• Most of the best information the team found was from the people who worked on the project in the 1980\’s when the spacecraft was fully operational
• They also obtained several documents from NASA as part of the development of thier Space Act Agreement
• Since there is no computer on board the ISEE-3 spacecraft the task is actually much easier since we are going to be directly commanding various subsystems
• Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement
• Although NASA is not funding the project, it made advisors available and gave approval to try to establish contact
• On May 21, 2014, NASA announced that it had signed a Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement with the ISEE-3 Reboot Project
• \”This is the first time NASA has worked such an agreement for use of a spacecraft the agency is no longer using or ever planned to use again,\” officials said
• Multimedia
• Twitter | ISEE3 Reboot Project (ISEE3Reboot)
• YouTube | ISEE-3 Reboot | Mike Loucks
• YouTube | ISEE-3 Reboot Project – Recovering a 30 year old space probe Scott Manley
• Further Reading / In the News
• NASA Signs Agreement with Citizen Scientists Attempting to Communicate with Old Spacecraft | NASA.gov
• ISEE-3 Reboot Project Status and Schedule for First Contact | Space College
• Guest Post: No turning back, NASA ISEE-3 Spacecraft Returning to Earth after a 36 Year Journey | UniverseToday.com
• International Cometary Explorer – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• ISEE-3 Reboot Project | Astronomy News | NinePlanets.org
• ISEE-3 Reboot Project: Stretch Goal – NASA Watch
• ISEE-3 Reboot Project by Space College, Skycorp, and SpaceRef | RocketHub

— NEWS BYTE —

Distracted by Classroom Decorations?

• New research from Carnegie Mellon University shows that too much materials covering a classroom wall may end up disrupting attention and learning in young children
• The Low Down
• Researchers looked at whether classroom displays affected children\’s ability to maintain focus during instruction and to learn the lesson content
• They found that children in highly decorated classrooms were more distracted, spent more time off-task and demonstrated smaller learning gains than when the decorations were removed
• The Study
• 24 kindergarten students were placed in laboratory classrooms for six introductory science lessons on topics they were unfamiliar with
• Three lessons were taught in a heavily decorated classroom, and three lessons were given in a sparse classroom.
• Results
• The results showed that while children learned in both classroom types, they learned more when the room was not heavily decorated
• Children\’s accuracy on the test questions was higher in the sparse classroom (55 percent correct) than in the decorated classroom (42 percent correct).
• When the researchers tallied all of the time children spent off-task in both types of classrooms, the rate of off-task behavior was higher in the decorated classroom (38.6 percent time spent off-task) than in the sparse classroom (28.4 percent time spent off-task)
• The Future
• The researchers are interested in finding out if the visual displays were removed, whether the children\’s attention would shift to another distraction
• Additional research is needed to know what effect the classroom visual environment has on children\’s attention and learning in real classrooms
• They say that they do not suggest by any means that this is the answer to all educational problems but that teachers should consider whether some of their visual displays may be distracting
• Further Reading / In the News
• Heavily decorated classrooms disrupt attention and learning in young children | ScienceDaily.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Flying With Only A Thought

• Scientists have now demonstrated the feasibility of flying via brain control, with astonishing accuracy
• First Breakthrough
• Seven subjects took part in the flight simulator tests
• They had varying levels of flight experience, including one person without any practical cockpit experience whatsoever
• The accuracy with which the test subjects stayed on course by merely thinking commands would have sufficed, in part, to fulfill the requirements of a flying license test
• Several of the subjects also managed the landing approach under poor visibility
• In The Future
• Scientists are now focusing in particular on the question of how the requirements for the control system and flight dynamics need to be altered to accommodate the new control method
• Normally, pilots feel resistance in steering and must exert significant force when the loads induced on the aircraft become too large
• This feedback is missing when using brain control
• The researchers are thus looking for alternative methods of feedback to signal when the envelope is pushed too hard, for example
• Further Reading / In the News
• Using thoughts to control airplanes | ScienceDaily.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Jupiter\’s Great Red Spot Shrinking?

• Twitter | Michael Thalleen ‏@ThalleenM
• Jupiter\’s Great Red Spot Shrinks to Smallest Size Ever Seen
• The Great Red Spot
• “Recent Hubble Space Telescope observations confirm that the spot is now just under 10,250 miles (16,500 km) across, the smallest diameter we’ve ever measured,” said Amy Simon of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
• Using historic sketches and photos from the late 1800s, astronomers determined the spot’s diameter then at 25,475 miles (41,000 km) across
• Changes
• Starting in 2012 amateur observations revealed a noticeable increase in the spot’s shrinkage rate
• They showed that the spot’s “waistline” is getting smaller by just under 620 miles (1,000 km) per year while its north-south extent has changed little
• This has caused the spot to become more circular in shape
• Cause
• There are no firm answers yet as to what is causing the drastic downsizing,
• New observations however show that very small eddies are feeding into the storm which may be responsible for the accelerated change by altering the internal dynamics of the Great Red Spot
• The storm appears to be conserving angular momentum by spinning faster the same way an ice skater spins up when they pulls in their arms
• The faster winds might also help shrink the spot further or bring about its rejuvenation.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Jupiter\’s Great Red \’Shrinking\’ Spot Spied By Hubble | VideoFromSpace
• Further Reading / In the News
• [Hubble Sees Jupiter\’s Red Spot Shrink to Smallest Size Ever | UniverseToday.com(https://www.universetoday.com/111907/hubble-sees-jupiters-red-spot-shrink-to-smallest-size-ever/)

— Updates —

SciByte

• Hosts
• Jeremy | Co-Hosted for ep 1-13
• Nikki | Summer SciByte | August 06, 2013; August 13, 2013; August 27, 2013; July 23, 2013; SciByte September 03, 2013
• Chris | Episodes 14+ [minus a few \”Summer SciByte\” or \”Summer SciByte Style\” with Nikki]
• Formats Over the Years
• Totally edited video in a virtual studio with Jeremy
• Totally video in a virtual studio with Chris
• Video once a month and \”Enhance Audio\” with Chris
• \”Enhanced Audio\” with Chris
• Google Hangout\’s with Nikki
• Science as an Adjective, a Noun, and a Verb
• Adjective = \’describing\’ a word; Noun = person, place, thing, animal, idea; Verb = conveys an action
• \”Science is Sad\” | Large Hadron Collider | SciByte 8
• Watching Science Progres
• Private Space Travel Advances | From an idea, to engineering, to testing, to implementation [i.e. SpaceX and Virgin Galactic]
• Mars Landers | Opportunity (continuing science and solar panel ‘cleaning’ events) and Curiosity (Confirmation of running/standing water in Mars history, ancient habitable locations, drilling into rocks, switching to searching for the building blocks of life)
• Watching science progress | Alzheimer\’s research, Voyager 1, Exoplanets, medical research helping senses
• Breaking Science | \’Faster Than Light Neutrinos\’, Higgs-Boson Particle
• Further Reading / In the News
• SciByte | JupiterBroadcasting.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• The Image from Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI)
• Shows the rock target \”Windjana\” and its immediate surroundings after inspection of the site by the rover
• The researchers drilled a test hole and a sample collection hole produced the mounds of drill cuttings that are markedly less red than the other visible surfaces
• This preparatory \”mini drill\” hole, to lower right from the open hole, was drilled on Sol 615 (April 29, 2014) and subsequently filled in with cuttings from the sample collection drilling.
• The open hole from sample collection is 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter. It was drilled on Sol 621 (May 5, 2014).
• The vigorous activity of penetrating the rock with the rover\’s hammering drill also resulted in slides of loose material near the rock
• Gathering Samples
• Since then, the 1 ton robot carefully scrutinized the resulting 2.6 inches (6.5 centimeters) deep borehole, the scientists then hit the fresh bore hole with a pinpoint series of parting laser blasts
• The mound of dark grey colored drill tailings, much darker and greyer that the exterior of the rock, that are piled around for an up close examination of the texture and composition with the MAHLI camera and spectrometers
• The team has successfully delivered pulverized and sieved samples to the pair of onboard miniaturized chemistry labs [Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars instrument (SAM)] for chemical and compositional analysis.
• Researchers decided that one drill campaign into Kimberley was enough, so the rover will not be drilling into any other rock targets at this location
• There will be further analysis of the ‘Windjana’ sample along the way since there’s plenty of leftover sample material stored in the CHIMRA sample processing mechanism to allow future delivery of samples when the rover periodically pauses during driving.
• The Future
• It may be a very long time before the next drilling when the rover arrives at the foothills of Mount Sharp
• The current location, Windjama, lies some 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) southwest of Yellowknife Bay
• It still has about another 4 kilometers to go to reach the foothills of Mount Sharp sometime later this year
• Multimedia
• Images – Mars Science Laboratory | mars..jpl.nasa.gov
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Curiosity says \’Goodbye Kimberley\’ after Parting Laser Blasts and Seeking New Adventures Ahead | UniverseToday.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• May 29, 1919 : 95 years ago : Einstein\’s Relativity Theory Proved : A solar eclipse permitted observation of the bending of starlight passing through the sun\’s gravitational field, as predicted by Albert Einstein\’s theory of relativity. Separate expeditions of the Royal Astronomical Society travelled to Brazil and off the west coast of Africa. Both made measurements of the position of stars visible close to the sun during a solar eclipse. These observations showed that, indeed, the light of stars was bent as it passed through the gravitational field of the sun. This was a key prediction of Albert Einstein\’s theory that gravity affected energy as in addition to the familiar effect on matter. The verification of predictions of Einstein\’s theory, proved during the solar eclipse was a dramatic landmark scientific event.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Wed, May 28 | New Moon (exact at 2:40 p.m. EDT)
• Fri, May 30 | 20-30 min after sunset | | Very low in the W-NW you can see the hairline crescent Moon with Mercury to its right, they both set fairly quickly. You can see Jupiter to the far upper left.
• Sat, May 31 | ~1hr after sunset | Jupiter stands to the upper right of the Moon in the early evening
• Sun, Jun 03 | ~1hr after sunset | Jupiter is now to the left and slightly higher than the moon
• Planets
• Mercury | Twilight | It is at it\’s highest point for 2014 for mid-N lat, and is fading this week. As twilight deepens, look for it in the W-NW to the lower right of bright Jupiter as it fades this week
• Venus | Dawn | The \”Morning Star\” is low in the E during dawn, moving to it\’s highest point in the south in late twilight
• Mars | Is at it\’s highest point in the S in late twilight, it sets in the W around 3 or 4 a.m. DST
• Jupiter | Twilight | Is in the west at twilight, sinking during the evening and sets around 11 or midnight. Jupiter is on the far side of the Sun from us and is nearly its minimum apparent size that we see

• Saturn | Evening | Appears SE in the evening moving to it\’s highest point in the S ~11-12

• Further Reading and Resources

• Sky&Telescope | Sky at a Glance
• 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 ISEE-3 Back To Life | SciByte 132 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at an infant possibly cured of HIV, a new dinosaur in Europe, antibiotics, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

2nd Infant Possibly Cured of HIV

• A second American baby born with the AIDS virus may have had her infection put into remission and possibly cured by very early treatment, in this instance, four hours after birth.
• Last Time on SciByte …
• Scibyte 84 | HIV & SpaceX Troubles | March 5, 2013
• The \’First Case\’
• The girl was born in LA a month after researchers announced the first case in Mississippi last year that led doctors worldwide to rethink how fast and hard to treat infants born with HIV
• The Mississippi baby is now 3 1/2 and seems HIV-free despite no treatment for about two years although she is still getting AIDS medicines, so the status of her infection is not as clear.
• Treatment
• Most HIV-infected moms in the U.S. get AIDS medicines during pregnancy, which greatly cuts the chances they will pass the virus to their babies
• The LA baby was born mother was not taking her HIV medicines although the mom was given AIDS drugs during labor to try to prevent transmission of the virus
• Doctors started the baby on AIDS drugs within a few hours after birth before test results came back, tests later confirmed she had been infected
• The infant remained on antivirals until 18 months of age, at which point the child was lost to follow-up for a while
• Ten months after discontinuation of treatment, the child underwent repeated standard blood tests, none of which detected HIV presence in the blood
• Tests
• A host of sophisticated tests at multiple times suggest the LA baby has completely cleared the virus
• Doctors are cautious about suggesting she has been cured, instead of being in remission but it looks like a cure
• The baby\’s signs are different from what doctors see in patients whose infections are merely suppressed by successful treatment
• Adult AIDS-related Development
• Only about 1 percent of people have two copies of the gene that gives this protection
• Scientists have modified genes in the blood cells of a dozen adults to help them resist HIV from a donor with natural immunity to the virus
• HIV usually infects blood cells through a protein on their surface called CCR5. A California company, Sangamo BioSciences Inc., makes a treatment that can knock out a gene that makes CCR5.
• They tested it in 12 HIV patients who had their blood filtered to remove some of their cells. The treated cells were infused back into the patients
• Four weeks later, half of the patients were temporarily taken off AIDS medicines to see the gene therapy\’s effect
• The virus returned in all but one of them; that patient turned out to have one copy of the protective gene
• Researchers knew that the virus was going to come back in most of the patients, but the hope is that the modified cells eventually will outnumber the rest and give the patient a way to control viral levels without medicines
• Further Reading / In the News
• Doctors hope for cure in a second baby born with HIV | MedicalXPress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Tracking SeaTurtles

• Small satellite-tracking devices attached to sea turtles swimming off Florida\’s coast have delivered first-of-its-kind data that could help unlock the mystery of what endangered turtles do during the \”lost years.\”
• \”Lost Years
• \”Lost years\” refers to the time after turtles hatch and head to sea where they remain for many years before returning to near-shore waters as large juveniles
• The time period is often referred like this because not much has been known about where the young turtles go and how they interact with their oceanic environment
• Before this study, most of the scientific information about the early life history of sea turtles was inferred through genetics studies, opportunistic sightings offshore, or laboratory-based studies
• With real observations of turtles in their natural environment, scientists are able to examine and reevaluate existing hypotheses about the turtles\’ early life history
• Tracking
• A team of scientists tracked 17 loggerhead turtles for 27 to 220 days in the open ocean using small, solar-powered satellite tags
• The goal was to better understand the turtles\’ movements, habitat preferences, and what role temperature may play in early sea turtle life history
• While the turtles remain in oceanic waters (traveling between 124 miles to 2,672 miles) off the continental shelf and the loggerhead turtles sought the surface of the water as predicted
• The Study
• The study found that the turtles do not necessarily remain within the currents associated with the North Atlantic subtropical gyre
• It was historically thought that loggerhead turtles hatching from Florida\’s east coast complete a long, developmental migration in a large circle around the Atlantic entrained in these currents
• The team\’s data suggest that turtles may drop out of these currents into the middle of the Atlantic (Sargasso Sea)
• The team also found that while the turtles mostly stayed at the sea surface, where they were exposed to the sun\’s energy, the turtles\’ shells registered more heat than anticipated (as recorded by sensors in the satellite tags
• Hiding in the Seaweed
• A new hypothesis about why the turtles seek refuge in seaweed (Sargassum). It is a type of seaweed found on the surface of the water in the deep ocean long associated with young sea turtles.
• Scientists propose that young turtles remain at the sea surface to gain a thermal benefit, which makes sense because the turtles are cold blooded animals by remaining at the sea surface
• By associating with Sargassum habitat, turtles gain a thermal refuge of sorts that may help enhance growth and feeding rates, among other physiological benefits.
• The Importance
• Findings are important because the loggerhead turtles along with other sea turtles are threatened or endangered species
• Florida beaches are important to their survival because they provide important nesting grounds in North America, more than 80% along Florida\’s coast
• There are other important nesting grounds and nursing areas for sea turtles in the western hemisphere found from as far north as Virginia to South America and the Caribbean.
• There\’s a whole lot that happens during the Atlantic crossing that we knew nothing about and this work helps to redefine Atlantic loggerhead nursery grounds and early loggerhead habitat use
• Further Reading / In the News
• Sea turtles \’lost years\’ mystery starts to unravel | Phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

New European Dinosaur

• A new dinosaur species found in Portugal may be the largest land predator discovered in Europe, as well as one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs from the Jurassic
• Torvosaurus Gurneyi
• Scientists discovered bones belonging to this dinosaur north of Lisbon, they were originally believed to be a dinosaur species from North America
• Closer comparison of the shin bone, upper jawbone, teeth, and partial tail vertebrae suggested a new species, Torvosaurus Gurneyi
• The mouth bones have a different shape and structure, the number of teeth, as well as size and shape of the mouth, may differentiate the European and the American
• It had blade-shaped teeth up to 10 cm long, which indicates it may have been at the top of the food chain in the Iberian Peninsula roughly 150 million years ago
• Scientists estimate that the dinosaur could reach 10 meters long and weigh around 4 to 5 tons
• With a skull of 115 cm, it would be one of the largest terrestrial carnivores at this era
• An active predator that hunted other large dinosaurs, as evidenced by blade shape teeth up to 10 cm
• Evidences of closely related dinosaurs suggest that this large predator may have already been covered with proto-feathers
• Further Reading / In the News
• New dinosaur found in Portugal, largest terrestrial predator from Europe — ScienceDaily | ScienceDaily.com
• Torvosaurus gurneyi: New Giant Dinosaur Discovered in Portugal | sci-news.com

New Antibiotic to Fight Drug-Resistant Bacteria

• A team of researchers have discovered a new class of antibiotics to fight drug-resistant bacteria
• Oxadiazoles, was discovered in silico (by computer) screening and has shown promise in the treatment of MRSA in mouse models of infection
• Researchers screened 1.2 million compounds found that the oxadiazole inhibits a penicillin-binding protein
• The oxadiazoles are also effective when taken orally, currently there is only one marketed antibiotic for MRSA that can be taken orally.
• Further Reading / In the News
• New class of antibiotics discovered by chemists — ScienceDaily |ScienceDaily.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Continuing On
• Engineers will now occasionally commanding Curiosity to drive backwards in a newly tested bid to minimize serious damage to the six 20 inch diameter wheels
• Curiosity is well on the way to her next near term goal, which is a science waypoint, named Kimberly (formerly called KMS-9), which lies about half a mile ahead.
• \”Kimberley,\” features ground with striations and is where researchers plan to suspend driving for a period of science investigations
• The map shows the route driven by NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity through the 561st Martian day, or sol, of the rover\’s mission on Mars (March 5, 2014)
• Multimedia
• Big-Context Traverse Map Through Sol 561 | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back | March 13

• 1781 : 233 years ago : Uranus : Sir William Herschel announced his discovery of Uranus, the first planet discovered with a telescope. At the time of discovery he labeled it as a comet, by 1783 he finally acknowledged it was a planet, and by 1787, he had also observed the Uranian satellites Titania and Oberon (11 Jan 1787), which were later given these names by his son, John Herschel.
• 1930 : 84 years ago : Pluto : Clyde W. Tombaugh telegraphed the discovery of Pluto to the Harvard College Observatory. After nearly a year of searching, Tombaugh discovered a possible moving object on photographic plates taken on January 21, 23 and January 29 confirmed the movement and discovery of Pluto.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Thurs, March 13 | ~hour after sunset | To the lower left of the Moon you can see the star Regulus (actually two binary stars). Regulus is the bottom star of the handle of the sickle of the constellation Leo (looks like a backwards question mark)
• Fri, Mar 14 | Tonight Regulus is above the moon
• Planets
• Venus | \”Morning Star\” | Before and during dawn Venus is in the SE
• Mars | 9pm | Rises in the SE, with Spica 6* to its right. The two are their highest point around 2am with Spica now 5-6* to the lower right
• Jupiter | Is the only planet visible right now in the evenings and is high in the SE, it crosses nearly overhead (for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes) around 8 or 9 p.m. and sets in the West before dawn

• Saturn | 11pm | Rises around 11 or and is highest in the south at the beginning of dawn. By then it\’s far to the left of Mars and Spica

• 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 HIV Treatment & European Dinosaur | SciByte 123 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at typing on autopilot, more data on the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, dying silk, bone grafting, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Typing on Autopilot

• A conclusion of a recent study conducted by a team of cognitive psychologists shows that when you are typing away at your computer, you don\’t know what your fingers are really doing
• It found that skilled typists can\’t identify the positions of many of the keys on the QWERTY keyboard and that novice typists don\’t appear to learn key locations in the first place
• The Study
• The researchers recruited 100 university students and members from the surrounding community to participate in an experiment
• The participants completed a short typing test, then they were shown a blank QWERTY keyboard and given 80 seconds to write the letters in the correct location
• On average, they typed 72 words per minute, moving their fingers to the correct keys six times per second with 94 percent accuracy
• By contrast, they could accurately place an average of only 15 letters on a blank keyboard.
• What the Results Mean
• The fact that the typists did so poorly at identifying the position of specific keys didn\’t come as a surprise
• For more than a century, scientists have recognized the existence of automatism: the ability to perform actions without conscious thought or intention
• Automatic behaviors of this type are surprisingly common, ranging from tying shoelaces to making coffee to factory assembly-line work to riding a bicycle and driving a car
• What did come as a surprise, however, was evidence that conflicts with the basic theory of automatic learning which holds that it starts out as a conscious process and gradually becomes unconscious with repetition
• Automating Actions
• According to the widely held theory, when you perform a new task or the first time, you are conscious of each action and store the details in working memory, then as you repeat the task, it becomes increasingly automatic
• This allows you to think about other things while you performing the task but your conscious recollection of the details gradually fades away
• Researchers were surprised when they found evidence that the typists never appear to memorize the key positions, not even when they are first learning to type.
• Evidence for this conclusion came from another experiment included in the study
• The \”Sub-Set Study\”
• The researchers recruited 24 typists who were skilled on the QWERTY keyboard and had them learn to type on a Dvorak keyboard, which places keys in different locations.
• After the participants developed a reasonable proficiency with the alternative keyboard, they were asked to identify the placement of the keys on a blank Dvorak keyboard
• On average, they could locate only 17 letters correctly, comparable to participants\’ performance with the QWERTY keyboard.
• \’Memorizing\’ without Memorizing, One Theory
• According to the researchers, the lack of explicit knowledge of the keyboard may be due to the fact that computers and keyboards have become so ubiquitous that students learn how to use them in an informal, trial-and-error fashion when they are very young
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Automatic Typing | VanderbiltUniversity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Study gives new meaning to \’let your fingers do the walking\’ | MedicalXPress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

2011 Tohoku Earthquake

• In March 2011, a devastating tsunami struck Japan\’s Tohoku region
• Now, researchers have uncovered the cause of this tsunami, shedding light on what displaced the seafloor off the northeastern coast of Japan
• The Study
• Scientists underwent a 50-day expedition on the Japanese drilling vessel Chikyu
• They then drilled three holes in the Japan Trench area in order to study the rupture zone of the 2011 earthquake
• A fault in the ocean floor where two of Earth\’s major tectonic plates meet deep beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean.
• The Conventional View
• Deep beneath the seafloor, where rocks are strong, movements of the plates can generate a lot of elastic rebound
• Closer to the surface of the seafloor, where rocks are softer and less compressed, rebound effect was thought to taper off
• The Tohoku Earthquake
• The largest displacement of plates before the 2011 tsunami occurred in 1960 off the coast of Chile when a powerful earthquake displaced sea floor plates by an average of 20 meters
• The Tohoku earthquake, in contrast, displaced its own plates by 30 to 50 meters.
• The fault itself is very thin–less than five meters thick in the area sampled, making it the thinnest plate boundary on Earth.
• In addition, clay deposits that fill the narrow fault are made of extremely fine sediment, which makes it extremely slippery
• Looking to the Future
• These findings don\’t just show researchers a bit more about the past; they also have implications for the future
• Learning more about the 2011 tsunami and its causes is an important step for monitoring future events and could help researchers provide earlier warnings
• Other subduction zones in the northwest Pacific where this type of clay is present–from Russia\’s Kamchatka peninsula to the Aleutian Islands–may also be capable of generating similar, huge earthquakes
• Further Reading / In the News
• Scientists Identify Cause of Japan\’s Devastating 2011 Tsunami | ScienceWorldReport.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Coloring Silk Worm Silk

• How It’s Done Now
• Coloring fabric normally uses enormous amounts of fresh water
• The water gets contaminated with dangerous chemicals in the process, requiring costly treatment before factories can dump it back into waterways—or wreaking havoc when factory owners dodge cleanup rules
• A New Idea
• A team fed ordinary silkworms mulberry leaves that had been sprayed with fabric dyes.
• Out of seven tested dyes, only one worked, producing a thread that reminded me of pink-dyed hair.
• The worms themselves take on some color before they weave their silk cocoons. Their colorful diets did not affect their growth
• Scientists are just starting to study this idea, however, it remains to be seen if it\’s commercially viable
• In this experiment, the Indian team tested seven azo dyes, which are cheap and popular in the industry
• The scientists found different dyes moved through silkworms\’ bodies differently. Some never made it into the worms\’ silk at all
• Others colored the worms and their cocoons, but the color molecules settled mostly in the sticky protein the worms add to their cocoons
• That sticky stuff gets washed away before the silk is turned into fabric
• Only one dye, named \”direct acid fast red,\” showed up in the final, washed silk threads. By the time it made it there, it was a pleasant, light pink.
• Media
• YouTube | Silkworms Timelapse | mtwlg
• Further Reading / In the News
• Scientists Color Silk By Feeding Silkworms Fabric Dyes | Popular Science

Bone Grafting

• Scientists have now discovered a way to refine sea coral properties so that it is more compatible with natural bone.
• One Biomaterial Problem
• When biomaterials do not biodegrade, they can continuously cause problems
• In extreme conditions, it is possible that the different mechanical properties of the artificial bone graft may cause a re-fracture or become a source for bacterial growth in infection
• Finding Solutions
• In order to get around this issue researchers decided to study the calcium carbonate found in the exoskeleton of sea coral and convert it into coralline hydroxyapatite (CHA)
• They then refined the material to produce coralline hydroxyapatite/calcium carbonate (CHACC)
• This CHACC composition contained 15 percent of CHA in a thin layer around the calcium carbonate
• The strong, porous structure has made CHA commercially successful, but contained significantly improved bio-degrading properties to support natural bone healing.
• Not Ready for Wide Use Quite Yet
• There is a ways to go before the material can match the benefits of an autograft and can be used by the several million people worldwide that undergo bone grafting procedures each year
  +The development of the CHACC material could provide an important step toward creating a biodegradable material that could help patients in the future
• Further Reading / In the News
• Sea Coral in Bone Grafting? How the Material is Made Compatible with Natural Bone | ScienceWorldRepoert.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

China’s ‘Yutu’ Lunar Lander

• China’s moon landing probe successfully entered lunar orbit on Friday, Dec. 6
• China’s ‘Yutu’ lunar lander is riding piggyback atop the four legged landing probe
• Chang’e 3 is due to make a powered descent to the Moon’s surface on Dec. 14, firing the landing thrusters at an altitude of 15 km (9 mi) for a soft landing in a preselected area called the Bay of Rainbows or Sinus Iridum region.
• The Bay of Rainbows is a lava filled crater located in the upper left portion of the moon as seen from Earth. The Sea of Tranquility, where Apollo 11 landed is the mid-upper right. Moon Map | Wikipedia
• Further Reading / In the News
• China’s Maiden Moon Rover Mission Chang’e 3 Achieves Lunar Orbit | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• 100,000 ChemCam Laser Shots
• Chemistry and Camera instrument (ChemCam) uses the infrared laser to excite material and analyzes the spectrum of light to identify elements in the target
• As of the start of December, ChemCam has fired its laser on Mars more than 102,000 times, at more than 420 rock or soil targets, and has also returned more than 1,600 images taken by its remote micro-imager camera
• Each pulse delivers more than a million watts of power for about five one-billionths of a second
• The 100,000th shot was one of a series of 300 to investigate 10 locations on a rock called \”Ithaca\” in late October
• The shots were at a distance of 13 feet, 3 inches (4.04 meters) from the laser and telescope on rover\’s mast
• More Habitable Lake Information
• Curiosity rover has discovered evidence that an ancient Martian lake had the right chemical ingredients that could have sustained microbial life
• The shallow ancient lake may have been about 30 miles long by 3 miles wide (50 by 5 kilometers)
• The research team estimates that the lake existed for at least tens of thousands of years, as recent as 3.7 Billion years ago, perhaps even longer on an off-and-on basis, even when the lake might have been dry, the groundwater\’s still there
• It could have potentially supported a class of microbes called chemolithoautotrophs, which obtain energy by breaking down rocks and minerals
• Here on Earth, chemolithoautotrophs are commonly found in habitats beyond the reach of sunlight, such as caves and hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor
• Cold Lake
• The lack of weathering on Gale Crater\’s rim suggests that the area was cold when the lake existed
• It\’s possible that a layer of ice covered the lake on a permanent or occasional basis
• Even with that it still is a entirely viable habitable environments for chemolithoautotrophs
• Mission Shift
• Researchers announced that they are shifting the missions focus from searching for habitable environments to searching for organic molecules – the building blocks of all life as we know it.
• The team believes they have found a way to increase the chance of finding organics preserved in the sedimentary rock layers
• This means that the mission is now dedicated to the search for that subset of habitable environments which also preserves organic carbon
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Curiosity Rover Report (Dec. 9, 2013): Dating Younger Rocks | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Laser Instrument on NASA Mars Rover Tops 100,000 Zaps | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Ancient Mars Lake Could Have Supported Life, Curiosity Rover Shows | Space.com
• Curiosity Discovers Ancient Mars Lake Could Support Life | UniverseToday.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• Dec 14, 1962 : 51 years ago : Mariner 2 Venus Mission : The U.S. space probe Mariner 2 approached within about 34,000 kilometers (21,600 miles) of Venus, transmitting first time information about this planet. Launched 27 Aug 1962 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on an Atlas- Agenda rocket, the Mariner 2 was the world\’s first successful interplanetary spacecraft. It sent back new information about interplanetary space and the very hot, heavy, mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere. The temperature was found to be about 500 ºC (900 ºF). Also for the first time, the spacecraft\’s solar wind experiment measured the density, velocity, composition and variation over time of the solar wind. It discovered that Venus lacks a strong magnetic field and radiation belts. Contact was lost 3 Jan 1963.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Fri, Dec 15 | starting 9-10pm local |The Geminid meteor shower should be at its peak tonight, from 9 or 10 p.m. until dawn Saturday morning. The best viewing time is after your local moonset: in the hour before the beginning of morning twilight on the 14th.
• Planets
• Venus | \”Evening Star\” | Rising after dusk in the SW, Venus won\’t set until more than an hour after dark
• Mars | rises ~1am loca | Rising to the high S skies by dawn
• Jupiter | After Dark | Rises in the E-NE, with Castor and Pollux to it\’s left

• Saturn |Dawn | Low in the SE, to the far lower left of Mars

• 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 Typing & Dying Silk | SciByte 112 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at how sounds are connected to coma patients, water on Mercury, Subglacial lakes, long lasting bread, updates on Voyager 1 and Curiosity and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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The post Curiosity & Subglacial Life | SciByte 73 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at olympic science, an innovative writing technique, morse code, music, an update on the Red Bull Stratos mission, spacecraft update and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes

Olympic Science

_{Credit: International Olympic Committee for 2012 Summer Olympics}

• Measuring times
• Time is measured in 1,000th of a second that has to be that close to both actual time and consistent
• Races are started by electronic starter guns, with starting blocks that indicate when a runner reacts faster than humans can respond, making the runners re-start the race
• More than 2,000 digital frames a second aid the timing system for the most accurate and precise system possible
• For longer racing event with a lot of competitors RFID, Radio Frequency Identification, attached to shoes or bicycles allow accurate timing and tracking for each competitor
• Technology
• Some Long Jumpers utilize stereoscopic cameras, from BMW, to measure speed and angles of launch
• Swimmers usitize fluid dynamic measurements so that they can train and compete in the most aerodynamic way as possible to
• Runners can also use treadmill technology that provides support to minimize the weight of the athlete affecting the legs by creating a pressure bubble that can support part of the athletes weight
• The Olympic pool utilize a number of different technologies to minimize waves including adjustable depth, gutters along the edges of the pool and lane lines
• Mechanical engineers analyze top athletes to be able to both help athletes improve their technique and expand knowledge that could help provide information to be used for people with movement disorders, it can also used design more realistic and stronger robotic arms
• Changing Technology Rules
• The LZR Racer Suit is a line of extremely high-end swimsuits manufactured by Speedo using a high-technology swimwear fabric composed of woven elastane-nylon and polyurethane.
• Swimmers wearing the LZR suit at the 2008 Beijing Olympics consisted of : 94% of all swimming races won, 98% of all medals won, and 23 out of the 25 world records broken
• By 24 August 2009, 93 world records had been broken by swimmers wearing a LZR Racer
• These results prompted FINA to reevaluate suit policies making the LZR banned for use in competitions
• Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA) is the International Federation (IF) recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for administering international competition in the aquatic sports
• **Oscar Pistorius
• South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius is the first double-amputee athlete to compete at the Olympics.
• Pistorius is competing in the regular olympics using prosthetics Carbon fiber spring-like prosthetics designed for sprinter
• Although the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) deemed him ineligible for the 2008 Summer Olympics based on the belief that he held an unfair advantage further scientific studies have shown he hold no advantage or able-bodied athletes
• Safety Equipment
• Safety headgear in different for each sport it will be used in dependent upon the specific needs for the sport
• Helmet safety foam comes in both the stiff and flexible to maximize the needed protection and comfort
• Paralympics
• Paralympic wheelchairs are specifically designed for each sport. With designs for speed, mobility, toughness, etc.
• Of Note
• A google search for “London 2012 _” will show a display of the schedule and results of competition on the right side of the window
  Multimedia
• Video Gallery Science Of The Summer Olympics: Engineering In Sports | Science360
• Social Media
• London 2012 @London2012
• Further Reading / In the News
• 2012 London Olympics official page
• Science Of The Summer Olympics: Engineering In Sports | Science360.gov
• Fina extends swimsuit regulations | news.bbc.co.uk
• High-Tech Swimsuits: Winning Medals Too | time.com
• Fast Times: Speedo, Like Michael Phelps, Goes For World Domination in an LZR Suit | The Wall Street Journal: Sports
• Phelps secures his place in the history books after landing his eighth gold medal! | Speedo.com
• Best Inventions of 2008 | TIME

— NEWS BYTE —

Writing with your eyes

_{Credit: YouTube channel h2so4hurts | Credit: Lorenceau et al., Current Biology}

• The low down
• People “locked in” by paralyzing disorders have long relied on blinks or facial twitches to build sentences one letter at a time
• Jean Lorenceau of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris may have a new technology might allow people who have almost completely lost the ability to move their arms or legs to communicate freely
• Significance
• Eye-writing technology tricks the neuromuscular machinery into doing something that is usually impossible: to voluntarily produce smooth eye movements in arbitrary directions
• Smooth pursuit, this eye motion is different from saccadic motion, in which we rapidly shift our eyes to, say, skim lines of text or scan a crowd
• Smooth movements are normally impossible to control those movements smoothly in any direction
• Lorenceau found by accident with another experiment that he was able to learn to do so.
• To determine if other people could learn to do this he designed his own reverse-phi display with 200 disks that switch between black and white and are projected on a gray background.
• When we see two images that are the photographic negatives (dark to light & light to dark) in rapid succession our brain sees the object in the image moving away from the negative image
• This gives us the impression of motion when there is none
• Over three 30-minute sessions, he was able to trained six volunteers
• For the volunteers, who couldn’t see what they were writing, it was like writing with a pen that had run out of ink
• Although some participants had a harder time of learning to control their eye movements than others by the end of the sessions most could freely draw legible letters and numbers
• Of Note
• This technology might also help to improve eye movement control in people with certain conditions such as dyslexia or ADHD and/or for experts, such as athletes or surgeons, whose activities strongly rely on eye movements
• Now working on a better version of his eye writer, tests should start next year
• Multimedia
• YouTube Writing in Cursive with Your Eyes Only | h2so4hurts
• YouTube Reverse Phi Motion | porrophagus
• Further Reading / In the News
• Writing in cursive with your eyes only | MedicalXPress
• Write to Me Only With Thine Eyes | ScienceMag.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Morse Code in space

_{Credit: fit.ac.jp}

• The low down
• Satellite is a 10 cm cube, weighing 2.9lb [1.33kg]
• The main mission of the satellite to demonstrate the high speed transmitter
  developed.
• It can send a jpeg VGA-picture(480×640) within 6 seconds, and will write messages in the night sky with Morse code as
• The beacon signal is a standard Morse code CW signal starting with “HI” with telemetry data following
• Multimedia
• YouTube Deployment of small satellites from the ISS and F–1 CubeSat mission version 2 | FSpacelab
• Further Reading / In the News
• FITSAT–1 (NIWAKA) : A Small Artificial Satellite Developed at the Fukuoka Institute of Technology
• Tiny Japanese Satellite Will Write Morse Code Messages in the Sky | Space.com

Musical Variety

• The low down
• The Million Song Dataset is a freely-available collection of audio features and metadata for a million contemporary popular music tracks.
• The songs come from nearly 45,000 artists with only 2,650 songs released between 1955 and 1959 and 177,808 songs released between 2005 and 2009.
• Quantitative analysis for this study examined three aspects of those songs; timbre, pitch, and loudness of nearly half a million songs
• Timbre accounts for the sound color, texture, or tone quality
• Pitch roughly corresponds to the harmonic content of the piece, including its chords, melody, and tonal arrangements
• Timbral variety peaked in the 1960’s and has been in steady decline to the present day and implies a homogenization of the overall timbral palette, which could point to less diversity in instrumentation and recording techniques
• While it may be no surprise that music has gotten louder the same notes and chords that were popular in decades past are popular today
• Musicians today seem to be less adventurous in moving from one chord or note to another, instead following the paths well-trod
• Of Note
• The Million Song Dataset, huge as it is, may not provide a representative slice of pop music, especially for old songs
• The database draws on what’s popular now, as well as what has been digitized and made available for download
• The older digitised music may not be the same that people enjoyed when those songs first came out.
• Million Song Dataset

— Updates —

Red Bull Stratos dives again

_{Red Bull Stratos}

• Last time on SciByte
• Meteorites & Lasers | SciByte 38 – Skydiving at the orbital extreme [March 20, 2012]
• The low down
• On July 25, 2012, Baumgartner completed the final milestone before his attempt of jumping from 120,000ft [36,500 meters]
• The test launch had twice been delayed due to bad weather
• Significance
• The helium-filled balloon for this test flight was over four times as large as the one that carried Baumgartner for the first test flight in March and took about 90 minutes to reach the desired altitude
• Baumgartner rode his specially-made pressurized capsule via the helium balloon and jumped from an altitude of over 29,455 meters (96,640 feet),
• He was in freefall for 3 minutes, 48 seconds, reaching speeds of 862 km/h (536 mph), then floated down on his parachute for about 10.5 min
• Of Note
• He landed in the New Mexico desert, just about 15 minutes by helicopter from his launch site
• His final jump will break the current jump record held by Joe Kittinger a retired Air Force officer, and Baumgartner’s current adviser and mentor, who jumped from 19.5 miles [31.5 km] in 1960.
• There is no official date for the record-setting attempt, since it is subject to favorable weather conditions and critical post-jump assessments of the capsule and equipment
• For his final jump he hopes to not only break the sound barrier with his body, but also break the record for the longest freefall
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : Felix Baumgartner’s Test Jump Teaser
• YouTube VIDEO :Jump testing in Roswell New Mexico – Red Bull Stratos
• YouTube VIDEO : The Capsule – Red Bull Stratos 2012
• Social Media
• Red Bull Stratos @RedBullStratos
• Further Reading / In the News
• Home | Red Bull Stratos
• Skydiver Baumgartner Takes Test Jump from 30 kilometers | UniverseToday.com
• Skydiver Leaps from 18 Miles Up in ‘Space Jump’ Practice | Space.com

— Spacecraft Updates —

Curiosity Rover lands on Sunday … stay tuned next week for more

• Next time on SciByte …
• Next week’s SciByte will be 2 days after the landing, expect me to say a few things
• The low down
• NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter will relay near real time signals the moment that NASA’s Curiosity rover touches down onto the Martian surface
• Multimedia
• [NASA TV online live coverage of Curiosity landing](https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov or www.nasa.gov)
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars Science Laboratoty, Curiosity rover
• GetCurious
• T Minus 9 Days – Mars Orbiters Now in Place to Relay Critical Curiosity Landing Signals | UniverseToday.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• August 1, 1774 : 238 years ago : Oxygen : Joseph Priestley, British Presbyterian minister and chemist, identified a gas which he called “dephlogisticated air” – later known as oxygen. Priestley found that mercury heated in air became coated with “red rust of mercury,” which, when heated separately, was converted back to mercury with “air” given off. Studying this “air” given off, he observed that candles burned very brightly in it. Also, a mouse in a sealed vessel with it could breathe it much longer than ordinary air. A strong believer in the phlogiston theory, Priestley considered it to be “air from which the phlogiston had been removed.” Further experiments convinced him that ordinary air is one fifth dephlogisticated air, the rest considered by him to be phlogiston

Looking up this week

Keep an eye out for …

• Wed | Aug 1 | Full Moon

• Wed | Aug 1 | Before Dawn | Jupiter will the the

• Fri | Aug 3 | Evening | The Summer Triangle approaches its greatest height. Face east and look almost straight up after nightfall. The brightest star there is Vega. Toward the northeast from Vega (by two or three fist-widths at arm’s length) is Deneb. Toward the southeast from Vega by a greater distance is Altair.

• Before Dawn | Jupiter & Venus are in the East they are now about the distance of you pinky finger to your pointer finger stretched out at arm’s length, 14*. Venus is the brighter of the two to the lower left, making Jupiter the higher of the two.

• Before Dawn | Betelgeuse, the red giant star, is still to the lower right of Venus by about the same distance apart as Jupiter and Venus

• At Dusk | Mars & Saturn are low in the west-southwest. Saturn is above Spica, by about three finger widths are are nearly the same brightness

• Further Reading and Resources

• More on what’s in the sky this week

• 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 Olympic Science & Red Bull Stratos | SciByte 56 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at the latest on the Higgs Boson, dinosaurs,smart headlights, old minerals, Carl Sagan, spacecraft updates and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes

To Higgs-Boson or not to Higgs-Boson

_{YouTube Channel : linktv | YouTube Channel : minutephysics}

• Last time on SciByte
• Solar Storms & Higgs Boson | SciByte 37 – HiggsBoson [March 13, 2012]
• Higgs Bosons & Tough Materials | SciByte 25 – Higgs-Boson confirmation just around the corner? [December 13, 2011]
• Large Hadron Collider | SciByte 8 – So what is the Higgs-Boson Theory ? [July 20, 2011]
• The low down
• In 1964 physicists like Peter Higgs, François Englert and Robert Brout theorized about the existence of the Higgs boson and Higgs mechanism
• CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, will hold a seminar early in the morning on July 4 to announce the latest results from ATLAS and CMS, two major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that are searching for the Higgs boson
• The Standard Model
• The theory about electromagnetic, weak, and strong nuclear interactions, and the actions of known subatomic particles
• It has more than 100 free parameters, making it impossible to obtain predictions without assigning fixed values to some
• Boson
• Sub-atomic particles are either fermions or bosons.
• Fermions (electrons, protons, neutrons, …) and can be made up of other sub-atomic particles like quarks combine to form protons
• There are different types of bosons, who can all occupy the same space
• Gluons : carry the strong force but operate only at close range
• W and Z bosons : W and Z bosons carry the weak force and operate at close range.
• Photons : Photons are massless wave-like particles that are the basic building blocks of light and carry the electromagnetic force
• ??graviton boson?? – not yet been proven
• Higgs Field
• A field that is integral role in the model of the Weak Nuclear Force (radioactive decay)
• Because it’s too tangled with the Weak Nuclear Force it has been very hard to detect
• Would be responsible for how particles come together to form matter, and without it, the universe would have remained a particles shooting around at the speed of light.
• Higgs-Boson
• An excitation from the Higgs Field
• The Standard Model hypothesizes only one Higgs-Boson, while the Supersymmetric Model says there could be up to five
• The Discovery
• Two different, independent, teams working at the CERN have announced that they have data about a new boson
• Both the CMS (top) and the ATLAS (bottom) detectors see evidence of the Higgs boson decaying into a pair of photons in the form of a peak in a so-called mass plot
• CMS researchers also see evidence of the Higgs decaying to a pair of particles called W bosons or a pair of particles called Z bosons
• ATLAS team sees a similar peak in the mass plot for Higgs decaying into photon pairs and also see the Higgs decaying into Z bosons and other combinations of particles
• All the data points to it being the heaviest boson ever found, with the energy that the theory says the Higgs-Boson should have, 126 GeV (gigaelecton volts) and weighing roughly 125 times the mass of the proton
• Neither team said it was the Higgs-Boson because they don’t yet have information about the properties of the new boson yet
• They were able to announce it because the statistics have now reached a level called 5 sigma, that there is only a one in 3.5 million chance the signal isn’t real.
• What’s Next
• Further information will be released later this year after more experimental data has been taken determining the nature of the new boson
• Should the decay properties be different that we expect from a Higgs-Boson it could indicate there are more than one type of Higgs-Boson
• There are still holes in the theories, in the standard model interactions between the Higgs and the other particles ought to force the mass of the Higgs to skyrocket to a value a trillion times larger
• Most physicists suspect there are new particles out there that somehow counteract ballooning of the Higgs mass.
• But will such particles have low enough masses to be discovered with any conceivable human-made atom smasher? “There’s absolutely no guarantee,”
• After the start of the year the LHC is being upgraded, and will then be able to run at higher energies
• Multimedia
• YouTube : The Moment: CERN Scientist Announces Higgs Boson ‘God Particle’ Discovery | linktv
• YouTube : Peter Higgs rection to the anoucement
• YouTube : “Peter Higgs’ reaction on the day itself” / Peter Higgs, François Englert | Paul0de0Haas
• YouTube : Higgs Boson Discovery announcement by Peter Higgs | MuonRay
• YouTube : The Higgs Boson, Part I | minutephysics
• YouTube : Higgs Boson ‘God Particle’ – What is it? BBC World News | mangstarrr
• Social Media
• CERN @CERN
• ATLAS Experiment @ATLASexperiment
• CMS Experiment CERN @CMSexperiment
• Further Reading / In the News
• Higgs-like Particle Discovered at CERN | UniverseToday.com
• At Long Last, Physicists Discover Famed Higgs Boson | news.sciencemag.org
• CERN physicists report strong evidence of Higgs boson | Phys.org
• New boson could pave the way towards new discoveries | QuantumDiaries
• New Particle at World’s Largest Atom Smasher is Likely Higgs Boson | space.com
• New baby boson is born, weighing in at about 126 GeV | QuantumDiaries.org
• Physicists bet they’re homing in on Higgs | ScienceNews.org
• More clues soon in hunt for Higgs particle | Phys.org
• Understanding what’s up with the Higgs boson | Phys.org
• Physicists on alert for Higgs announcement | ScienceNews.org
• Still Confused About the Higgs Boson? Read This | TheAtlantic.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Warm Blooded Dinosaurs?

_{Credit: Walter Myers /Stocktrek Images/Corbis | Credit:Meike Köhler}

• A quick note
• A newly discovered, in southern Germany, nearly complete fossilized skeleton hints that all dinosaurs may have sported feathers, which would make it the oldest known meat-eating dinosaur with feathers
• The hatchling had a large skull, short hindlimbs, and long, hairlike plumage on its midsection, back, and tail.
• Sciurumimus is from a completely different branch of the dinosaur family tree then other feathered dinosaur fossils found, suggesting feathered dinosaurs were the norm, not the exception
• The low down
• Yearly cycles of growth and nutrition are stamped in the bones of dinosaurs and reptiles like the rings of a tree
• In lean times only thin sheets of new bone are laid down, and in ‘fat’ months larger sheets are laid down as animals pack on blood vessel-rich bone tissue
• Under a microscope, the slender sheets of bone look like dark lines
• These strips in the bones are seen in reptiles and dinosaurs, leading scientists to assume that dinosaurs were cold-blooded like reptiles
• Significance
• A new study analyzed bone slices, some as thin as a strand of hair, from 115 species of mammals all of which showed cyclical growth
• The banding in the study looks just like those seen in dinosaur fossils.
• The dinosaur fossils also provided evidence that dinosaurs probably had a high metabolic rate to allow fast growth, another indicator of warm-bloodedness
• Of Note
• Although this does not mean that dinosaurs were warm-blooded, but we can no longer assume they are cold-blooded either
• Further Reading / In the News
• Dinosaur debate gets cooking | ScienceNews.org
• Dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded: study | Phys.org
• Dinosaurs Might Have Had Warm-Blooded Animals’ Fast Metabolism | ScientificAmerican.com
• ScienceShot: Dino Bones Heat Up | news.ScienceMag.org
• All dinosaurs may have had feathers | ScienceNews.org
• “Beautiful” Squirrel-Tail Dinosaur Fossil Upends Feather Theory | news.NationalGeographic.com

Smart Headlight

_{YouTube Channel : LabEquipment}

• The low down
• In rain and snow conditions headlights reflect off of the precipitation back to driver
• Carnegie Mellon professor and his team are working on ‘smart’ headlights that can streamlight in between the drops
• Significance
• The system consists of a co-located imaging and illumination system– camera, projector, and beamsplitter
• The camera uses a 5 ms exposure time and the system has a total latency of 13 ms when the system runs at 120Hz. with an operating range about 13 feet in front of the headlights
• The camera images the precipitation at the top of the field of view, the processor can tell where the drops are headed and sends a signal to the headlights, headlights then make their adjustments and react to dis-illuminate the particles all in about about 13 ms.
• Simulations
• Computer simulations predict system effectiveness for different systems set ups during a heavy rainstorm [25 mm/hr] on a vehicle traveling 30 km/hr
• Simulations show that a system operating near 1,000 Hz, with a total system latency of 1.5 ms, and exposure time of 1 ms can achieve 96.8% accuracy, with 90% light throughput expected
• The system would still have a significant [>= 70%] visibility improvement at 400 Hz
• A prototype system has already validated simulations on laboratory-generated rain operating at 120 Hz
• Simulations show that it is possible to maintain light throughput well above 90 percent for various precipitation types
• Of Note
• The prototype consists of a camera with gigabit ethernet interface (Point Grey, Flea3), DLP projector (Viewsonic, PJD62531), and desktop computer with Intel architecture (Intel i7 quad core processor).
• The team says that it may take three to four more years of development and “commercializing it as a product will take additional years.”
• Multimedia
• YouTube : Smart Headlights Improve Visibility in Rain | LabEquipment
• Further Reading / In the News
• Smart headlights let drivers see between the raindrops | Phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

New mineral in old rock

• The low down
• A meteorite that fell in 1969 as an exploding fireball in the skies over Mexico, scattered thousands of pieces of meteorites across the state of Chihuahua
• It is largest carbonaceous chondrite ever found on our planet and is considered by many the best-studied meteorite in history
• Scientists have now discovered a new mineral embedded in that meteorite
• Panguite is an especially exciting discovery since it is not only a new mineral, but also a material previously unknown to science
• The mineral could be among the first solid objects formed in our solar system, dating back to over 4 billion years ago, before the formation of Earth and the other planets.
• Further Reading / In the News
• New Mineral Found in Meteorite is From Solar System’s Beginnings | UniverseToday.com

Carl Sagan’s personal archive

• Last time on SciByte
• SpaceX & Easter Island | SciByte 47 – The return of COSMOS? [May 22, 2012]
• The low down
• Carl Sagan’s personal archive – a comprehensive collection of papers contained within 798 boxes – was delivered to the Library of Congress recently for sorting
• “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane provided an “undisclosed sum of money” to the Library to purchase the collection from Sagan’s widow Ann Druyan, who had kept the papers preserved in storage
• The collection “ranges from childhood report cards to college term papers to eloquent letters”
• Multimedia
• Image : [Carl Sagan](
  https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/CarlSagan_20080903-browse–580×317.jpg)
• Social Media
• Library of Congress @librarycongress
• Further Reading / In the News
• Library of Congress Acquires Sagan’s Personal Collection, Thanks to Seth MacFarlane | UniverseToday.com

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

ISS Crew Returns to Earth

_{Credit: | Credit:}

• The low down
• On July 1, 2012, the Expedition 31 crew landed safely on the steppe of Kazakhstan near the town of Dzhezkazgan using a Soyuz TMA–03M spacecraft
• Expedition 31 Commander Oleg Kononenko, NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers landed
• Multimedia
• YouTube Soyuz Undocks; Crew Heads Home – Undocking | NASAtelevision
• YouTube Space Travelers Make Safe Return to Earth – landing | NASAtelevision
• IMAGE GALLERY: Soyuz Landing Photos: 31st Space Station Crew Returns to Earth | Space.com
• IMAGE : Landing Location | Credit: NASA TV
• IMAGE : Flight Engineer Don Pettit Lifted Out | Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Full Fuselage Trainer finds new home

• Last time on SciByte
• Mining Asteroids & Shuttle Discovery | SciByte 44 – The Shuttle Shuffle Continues [May 1, 2012]
• The low down
• The Full Fuselage Trainer (FFT), is a life-size space shuttle mockup that was used by every person who flew on the shuttle while training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston
• The FFT is a 28-foot (8.5 meters) long compartment – comprising the shuttle’s iconic nose with its dual level flight- and mid-decks
• NASA’s Super Guppy cargo aircraft delivered it to Seattle’s The Museum of Flight on Saturday, June 30
• The Super Guppy is a wide-bodied turboprop aircraft previously used to deliver the room-size modules of the International Space Station to their Florida launch site.
• Multimedia
• YouTube : NASA Suppy Guppy fly by at Paine Field, Everett, WA June 30, 2012 | suds777
• YouTube : NASA Super Guppy – Arrival Museum of Flight Seattle | SABredhawkn
• YouTube : Paine Field Everett, Washington~ NASA Super Guppy Flyby 6–30–2012 | ClearBlueSea100
• IMAGE : NASA Super Guppy Cargo Plane unloading the front part of the FFT
• IMAGE : Space Vehicle Mockup Facility
• Social Media
• Museum of Flight @MuseumofFlight
• Further Reading / In the News
• NASA Space Shuttle Trainer Lands at Seattle’s Museum of Flight | Space.com
• Space Shuttle Trainer Lifts Off for Seattle on NASA Aircraft

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• July 16, 1994 : 18 years ago : Shoemaker-Levy Comet : The first of 21 asteroids, major fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broken-up 2 years earlier, hit Jupiter, creating a 1200-mile wide fireball 600 miles high to the joy of astronomers awaiting the celestial fireworks, giving scientists their first chance to observe such a collision as it happened, and others through July 22. Jupiter is a gas giant, made up mostly of hydrogen and helium in gas and liquid form.When we observe Jupiter, we are looking not at a solid surface, but a banded atmosphere with swirling clouds and huge storms.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for … ~1 hour before Sunrise

• Venus and Jupiter remain the brightest ‘stars’ in the early morning sky in the East. With Venus being the brighter of the two, while Jupiter ‘on top’ the higher of the two.

• The red star above and to the right of Venus is actually a real star called Aldebaran

• The Pleiades star cluster can be seen above Venus and Jupiter, in nearly a straight line with the two planets and about the same distance.

• Sun, July 15 | ~1 hour before Sunrise | Most of Europe and parts of Asia will get to see the Moon pass in front of Jupiter, called an occultation, Time and location tables

• More on what’s in the sky this week

• 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 Higgs Boson | SciByte 53 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at extreme exoplanets, saving languages, the 50 gigapixel camera, a positive work environment, medical diagnostic tools, Spacecraft updates, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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No SciByte next week, July 3rd

Extreme exoplanet discoveries

_{You Tube Channel pacargile | Credit: NASA; Frank Melchior}

• Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) North
• – Telescope
• Roughly as powerful as a high-end digital camera, making it slightly more diminutive than Kepler
• KELT North scans the northern sky from Arizona
• KELT South covers the southern sky from Cape Town, South Africa.
• Rather than staring at a small group of stars at high resolution, the twin KELT North and KELT South telescopes observe millions of very bright stars at low resolution
• The small ground-based KELT telescopes provide a low-cost alternative for exoplanet hunters by primarily using off-the-shelf technology. The hardware for a KELT telescope costs less than $75,000
• – KELT–1b
• Located approximately 825 light-years away in the constellation of Andromeda
• Mostly metallic hydrogen, is slightly larger than Jupiter, but contains a whopping 27 times the mass
• It tentatively been classed as a brown dwarf due to its mass
• Completes one orbit in a mere 29 hours
• Surface temperature is likely above 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (~ 2,200 degrees Celsius)
• Receiving 6,000 times the amount of radiation that Earth receives from the sun
• – Kelt–2Ab
• Located about 360 light-years away in the constellation of Auriga
• 30 percent larger than Jupiter with 50 percent more mass.
• KELT–2Ab’s parent star is so bright it can be seen from Earth through binoculars and is slightly bigger than the sun, within a binary system
• One star is slightly bigger than our sun, and the other star is slightly smaller. KELT–2Ab orbits the bigger star, which is bright enough to be seen from Earth with binoculars
• The star is so luminous that researchers will be able to make direct observations of the planet’s atmosphere by examining light that shines through it when the star passes within KELT North’s field of view again in November.
• Follow-up observations are also being planned from both ground based and orbiting observatories including the Hubble Space Telescope and the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope.
• Closely Orbiting Planets
• Astronomers have discovered two alien planets around the same star, 200 light-years from Earth, whose orbits come so close together that each rises in the night sky of its sister world
• This means they are closer than any other pair of planets known, and are about 20 times closer together than any two planets in our solar system
• At their closest approach, the two planets are roughly three times closer to their host star than Mercury
• The two planets meet up every 97 days in a conjunction that would make each dramatically visible in the other’s sky.
• While they are as different in density as Earth and Saturn they are separated by five times the distance between the Earth and the moon [1.2 million miles/1.9 million kilometers]
• The larger planet is pushing the smaller planet around more, so the smaller planet was harder to find
• The timing of their orbits means they’ll never collide
• – Kepler 36a
• A star likely a bit hotter than our star
• Several billion years older than our Sun, and at this time is known to have just two planets
• – Kepler–36b
• Has an orbit of about 14 days and sits about 11 million miles (18 million km) from the star.
• Kepler–36b, appears to be a rocky “super-Earth” 4.5 times as massive as our planet
• Probably has lava flows on its surface
• A super-Earth just 1.5 times wider than our planet. Iron likely constitutes about 30 percent of its mass, water around 15 percent and atmospheric hydrogen and helium less than 1 percent
• Probably formed relatively close to the star
• – Kepler–36c
• Has an orbit of about 16 days, at an average distance of 12 million miles (19 million km)
• A gaseous, Neptune-size world about eight times as massive as Earth
• About 3.7 times wider than Earth, likely has a rocky core surrounded by a substantial atmosphere filled with lots of hydrogen and helium
• Likely took shape farther out
• Multimedia
• YouTube : KELT–2Ab Discovery Light Curve | pacargile
• YouTube : KELT–1 LC| pacargile
• Twitter Image : The orbit of the exoplanets Kepler–36 b and c | @ExoplanetApp
• Twitter Image : Kepler–36a/b are 20 times more closely spaced than any adjacent planets in the Solar System! | @ExoplanetApp
• Social Media
• Exoplanet App ‏ @ExoplanetApp
• NASA Kepler ‏ @NASAKepler
• Spitzer Telescope ‏ @SpitzerScope
• Further Reading / In the News
• Planetrise: Astronomers spy two planets in tight quarters as they orbit a distant star | [phys.org]
• What a View! Exoplanet Odd Couple Orbit in Close Proximity | UniverseToday.com
• Odd Alien Planets So Close Together They See ‘Planetrise’ | Space.com
• ‘Weird’ Alien Planets Found by Small Telescope | Space.com

— NEWS BYTE —

50 Gigapixel Mega Camera

• The low down
• Traditionally, one way of making better optics has been to add more glass elements, which increases complexity
• Researchers have developed a prototype “supercamera” that stitches together images from 98 individual cameras to create a 960-million-pixel image
• Significance
• This camera captures up to 50 gigapixels of data, which is 50,000 megapixels, while most consumer cameras range from 8 to 40 megapixels
• The resolution of this camera, five times better than 20/20 human vision, have enough resolution to spot a 3.8-centimeter-wide object 1 kilometer away
• The prototype camera itself is two-and-half feet square and 20 inches deep, with only about 3% of the camera is made of the optical elements
• The camera is so large now because of the electronic control boards and the need to add components to keep it from overheating
• Other camera systems can generate gigapixel-and-larger images, those composite views are stitched together from individual images taken sequentially with one camera as it is panned across the scene
• This new system takes all 98 images simultaneously, providing a “stop action” view of a scene, with some overlap
• Of Note
• Researchers believe that within five years, gigapixel cameras should be available to the general public
• The camera is being developed by Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, University of Arizona, University of California, and Distant Focus Corp
• Multimedia
• Credit: Duke University Imaging and Spectroscopy Program
• Further Reading / In the News
• ScienceShot: Get Ready for Gigapixels | new.ScienceMag.org
• Engineers build 50 gigapixel camera | phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Words heard round the world

_{YouTube Channel : endangeredlanguages}

• The low down
• Only half of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken today are expected to survive past the end of this century
• Wed, June 21 Google introduced an Endangered Languages Project website where people can find, share, and store information about dialects in danger of disappearing.
• Significance
• Endangeredlanguages.com is designed to let users upload video, audio, or text files and encourages them to memorialize recordings of rare dialects.
• A range of collaborators have already begun to contribute content ranging from 18th-century manuscripts to modern teaching tools like video and audio language samples and knowledge-sharing articles
• Technology can strengthen these efforts, by helping people create high-quality recordings of their elders (often the last speakers of a language)
• Of Note
• Google’s philanthropic arm seeded the project, leadership of which will be ceded in coming months to the First People’s Cultural Council and the Institute for Language Information and Technology at Eastern Michigan University.
• Endangered Languages Catalog (ELCat), is sponsored by the University of Hawaii, will also be contributing to the project.
• Multimedia
• YouTube : Introducing the Endangered Languages Project | endangeredlanguages
• Further Reading / In the News
• Endangeredlanguages.com
• Google sets out to save dying languages | phys.org

A win for a positive work environment

• The low down
• A new study challenges previous research that says the threat of penalty is more effective for getting increased effort
• Significance
• A scientific experiment in which participants played the role of supervisor and employee
• Some employees were subjected to a bonus program implemented by the supervisor, others worked under a penalty system.
• Employees subjected to the bonus exhibited more effort and this was driven by greater trust in the supervisor
• Those subjected to penalties tend to distrust the supervisor and, because of that, work less hard
• Of Note
• This study is the first to identify this trust factor.
• This suggests that employees who receive bonuses for their efforts will work even harder, increasing productivity and potentially bolstering profits
• Examples of penalties in the business world include pay reduction, demotion and sanction or other disciplinary action, such as a salesperson with lower performance getting less territory to work.
• Multimedia
• Credit: Michigan State University
• Further Reading / In the News
• Carrots, not sticks, motivate workers | phys.org

A possible new diagnostic tool for Parkinson’s Disease

• The low down
• Parkinson’s is a degenerative disease that slowly rob those afflicted of their faculties
• Currently there is no blood test for the disease
• Some notable people that have it are Michael J. Fox, Muhammad Ali, Andy Grove (one of the founders of chip maker Intel)
• Mathematician Max Little has found a computer program he’s devised, is remarkably good at diagnosing the disease by analyzing voice alone.
• Working on his PhD at Oxford applying math algorithms to voice disorders
• During his work he found a repository of vocal recordings by Parkinson’s patients
• The recordings were meant to be used as anecdotal testimony to help researchers learn more about the progression of the disease
• Comparing 50 patient voices to non-afflicted people he found he was able to detect which voices belonged to those with the disease in 86% of cases
• To increase the number of voices in the system Little has set up a website with phone numbers for people, both affected and not, to call in and leave a voice message to add to the database
• Further Reading / In the News
• Parkinson’s Voice Initiative
• Mathematician develops vocal method of testing for Parkinson’s disease | MedicalXPress

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

The Shuttle Enterprise’s Tent

• Last time on SciByte
• SciByte 50 | Dinosaurs & Neutrinos : Shuttle Enterprise’s last landing
• Significance
• Two weeks after arriving on top of the aircraft carrier-turned-Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City, Enterprise is now underneath the inflatable canopy that will house its public display.
• On Tuesday (June 19) Enterprise was covered by an opaque-white fabric shelter to protect it from exposure to the elements and to meet NASA’s display requirements for a climate-controlled facility
• Some final work configuring the canopy is still underway however, including the removal of scaffolding that supported the fabric being raised, which led to it being deflated again.
• The now pressurized enclosure extends over Enterprise’s tail, which tops out at 57 feet (17 meters) high, and beyond the shuttle’s 78-foot (24-meter) wingspan.
• It occupies the rear of the Intrepid’s flight deck with the shuttle’s nose pointed out toward the Hudson River
• The display is set to open to the public on July 19 when visitors will get the chance to closely view and circle around the prototype winged orbiter
• Of Note
• The location for the permanent Enterprise exhibit is still to be decided.
• Intrepid officials have said that they are considering locations across the street from where the aircraft carrier is docked and also alongside the museum on the pier.
• Multimedia
• Credit: Intrepid/Earthcam
• Social Media
• Intrepid Museum @IntrepidMuseum
• Further Reading / In the News
• Shuttle Enterprise Lands on the Deck of Intrepid in Manhattan
• Space shuttle ‘grazes’ wing in final river voyage

New SpaceX Competition

• Last time on SciByte
• Dinosaurs & Neutrinos | SciByte 50 : Dragon back on the ground (June 13, 2012)
• Venus Transit & Dragon Spacecraft | SciByte 48 (May 29, 2012)
• SpaceX & Easter Island | SciByte 47 – VenSpaceX – Dragon shipment to ISS [May 22, 2012]
• The low down
• The new ’space race’ is going on, as Florida, Texas and Puerto Rico all compete for the change to be the location of a new launchpad for Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, and its ambitious line of Falcon rockets.
• Hundreds of good-paying jobs at SpaceX and supporting companies that would pop up around its operation, as well as the prestige – at a time when NASA is no longer flying its own rockets – of serving as home to the commercial space industry’s most successful startup.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Race is on to lure new SpaceX launchpad | phys.org

Want to know more about the space station? There’s an app for that

• The low down
• NASA has created a free app for smartphones and tablet computers
• Users can navigate through a realistic 3-D recreation of the station’s flight control room in Houston
• Space Station data, including temperatures and work timelines for each of the six crew members living on board
• It also shows where the space station is in orbit, as relative to the real positions of the Earth, moon and Sun.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Space Station Live!
• collectSpace
• Space Station Live! NASA App Puts Orbiting Lab at Your Fingertips | Space.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• June 30, 1908 : 104 years ago : Tunguska Meteorite
• At around 7:15 am, northwest of Lake Baikal, Russia, a huge fireball nearly as bright as the Sun was seen crossing the sky. Minutes later, there was a huge flash and a shock wave felt up to 650 km (400 mi) away. Over Tunguska, a meteorite over 50-m diameter, travelling at over 25 km per second (60,000 mph) penetrate Earth’s atmosphere, heated to about 10,000 ºC and detonated 6 to10 km above the ground. The blast released the energy of 10–50 Megatons of TNT, destroying 2,200 sq km of forest leaving no trace of life. Taurid Meteor storm that crosses Earth’s orbit twice a year. The first scientific expedition for which records survive was made by Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik in 1927
• In 1938, Kulik arranged for an aerial photographic survey of the area covering the central part of the leveled forest (some 250 square kilometres [97 sq mi]). The negatives of these aerial photographs (1,500 negatives, each 18 × 18 cm or 7.1 x 7.1 in) were burned in 1975 by order of Yevgeny Krinov, then Chairman of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Tunguska event | Wikipedia

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …

• Wed, June 27 | Evening | The moon forms a triangle with Spica (blue-white) and Saturn (golden), with Saturn at the highest point

• Thurs, June 28 | Evening | Saturn and Spica are now the right of the moon and remain about 5*, 3 fingers, above Saturn

• Thurs, June 28 | Low at Dawn | Jupiter and Venus are inching higher each day, Jupiter about 5*, or 3 fingers, above Venus

• Fri, June, 29 | ~45 min before Dawn | Jupiter and Venus are pointing to the Pleiades star cluster just a little higher than Jupiter than Jupiter is from Venus.

• Fri, June, 29 | ~45 min before Dawn | The red star below Venus is not Mars but is Aldebaran, a red giant star

• Further Reading and Resources

• More on what’s in the sky this week

• 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 Extreme Exoplanets & Language | SciByte 52 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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

Direct Download:

MP3 Download | Ogg Download | HD Video | Mobile Video | YouTube

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Uranus Aurora

_{Credit: Laurent Lamy}

• The low down
  • Unlike the other planets Uranus has a bizarre 98-degree tilt relative to the solar system’s orbital plane and its magnetic axis is 60 degrees off from that
  • This unusual configuration makes the planet appear to roll around on its side as it orbits the sun every 84 years
  • When magnetic field lines converge, at a planet’s poles, they funnel incoming charged solar particles into the planet’s atmosphere
  • When those particles collide with air molecules, making the molecules glow producing Aurora
  • Now an international team of astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to capture the first aurora seen on Uranus from Earth
• Significance
  • Scientists first observed the planet’s auroras only once, during a Voyager flyby in 1986 on the night side of the planet
  • There the probe’s instruments had a much better view of the glows, which lasted longer, covered a larger area, and covered the unlit side of Uranus
  • Scientists unsuccessfully tried to again detect this phenomenon in 1998 and 2005 from the Earth
  • The new observations of the Aurora seemed to indicate they lasted for only a couple of minutes
  • Different planetary arrangements could explain the significant differences in the two observations
  • In 1986 planet’s rotational axis was pointed almost directly at the sun, whereas in in 2011 the axis lay almost perpendicular to the flow of solar wind
  • When the team learned of an impending solar storm directed toward Uranus, timed their Hubble observations specifically to coincide with the solar storm
  • The storm would hit 3 months after the strong gust in the solar wind raced past Earth on its way to Uranus
  • In November 2011 researchers caught their first glimpse of the brief auroras from our planet’s neighborhood six weeks later
  • This new observational data should help scientists better understand Uranus odd magnetic field
• Of Note
  • Further investigations into Uranus’ auroras and magnetic field could provide insight into Earth’s own magnetosphere and how it interacts with the solar wind
  • This information will become invaluable with our ever increasing technological society
• Multimedia
  • Uranus IMAGE GALLERY: @ space.com
• Further Reading / In the News
  • Uranus auroras glimpsed from Earth | agu.org
  • Rare Photo: Auroras on Uranus Spotted by Hubble Telescope | livescience.com
  • Hubble Reveals Curious Auroras on Uranus | universetoday.com
  • Auroras Seen on Uranus For First Time | nationalgeographic.com
  • ScienceShot: Hubble Spots Auroras on Uranus | news.sciencemag.org

*— NEWS BYTE — *

Martian Dust Devils

_{Credit: MSSS / JPL / NASA}

• Last time on SciByte
  • Amazon & Martian Weather | SciByte 39 (March 27, 2012) : Martian Storm Chasing
  • Solar Storms & Higgs Boson | SciByte 37 (Mar 13, 2012) : Martian Dust Devil
• Thanks Angela for pointing this out
• The low down
  • Unlike a tornado, a dust devil typically forms on a clear day
  • The ground is heated by the sun, warming the air just above the ground, heated air near the surface rises quickly through a small pocket of cooler air above it and the air may begin to rotate, if conditions are just right.
  • The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been examining Mars with six science instruments since 2006
  • Mars orbiters, rovers and landers have all captured devils in action before
• Significance
  • Typical tornadoes on Earth are less than 10 miles tall, while dust devils on our planet seldom reach more than 300–900 feet [100–300 yards]
  • The Feb 16 dust devil lofted a twisting column of dust more than half a mile [800 meters] high, and had approximately a 90 ft [30 yards] radius
  • The March 14 dust devil stretched 12 miles [20 kilometers] up from the planet’s surface and had a 230 ft [70 m]
  • The mass of an dust devil column on Mars is less than 1 percent than that of one on Earth, allowing their incredible heights on Mars
  • In addition more thermal convection from the surface make makes if possible for the dust devils to go higher into the atmosphere of Mars then they do here on Earth
• Of Note
  • Although you would be blasted by sand and dust these dust devils are unlikely to knock you over because of the low density of the Martian atmosphere
  • This mission has returned more data about Mars than all other orbital and surface missions combined and can reveal features as small as a desk
  • More than 21,700 images taken by HiRISE are available for viewing on the instrument team’s website
• Multimedia
  • YouTube VIDEO : Mars’ Whirling Dust Devil | JPLnews channel
  • YouTube VIDEO : Storm Chaser on Mars| JPLnews channel
• Social Media
  • HiRISE @HiRISE
• Further Reading / In the News
  • A Monster Dust Devil Stalks the Martian Landscape | uahirise.org
  • New Gigantic Tornado Spotted on Mars | universetoday.com
  • The Serpent Dust Devil of Mars | uahirise.org
  • Huge Dust Devil on Mars Captured in Action @ UniverseToday.com
  • Mars orbiter catches twister in action @ PhysOrg.com
  • Photo from NASA Mars orbiter shows wind’s handiwork (Jan 2012) @ PhysOrg.com

Studying the high-altitude jet stream

_{Credit: NASA Wallops}

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

*— TWO-BYTE NEWS — *

Counting Penguins from space

_{Credit: (left) DigitalGlobe; (right) British Antarctic Survey}

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

The view from Apollo 8

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

Asteroid Lutetia Flyby

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

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

The Shuttle Shuffle

_{Credit: Ken Kremer}

• Multimedia / Further Reading
  • YouTube : Discovery’s Journey Playlist | NASA
  • Welcome, Discovery! | Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
  • Space Shuttle Discovery Buzzes D.C. Monuments (Pictures) | news.nationalgeographic.com
  • Discovery & Enterprise – Historic Nose to Nose Shuttle Image | universetoday.com
  • Photos: Space Shuttle Discovery’s Final Voyage (to Museum) | space.com
  • Shuttle Discovery Flies Over Washington D.C. to New Home | universetoday.com
  • Discovery Does Dulles & DC | universetoday.com
  • Gallery: Discovery Leaves Kennedy Space Center for the Final Time | universetoday.com/
  • flickr |Space Shuttle Discovery | flickr.com
  • Discovery Poised for Final Takeoff on April 17 | universetoday.com
  • Discovery Enters Eternal Smithsonian Home as Historic Relic | universetoday.com
  • Space Shuttle Discovery Enters Smithsonian for Museum Display | space.com
  • Managers Defer Ferry Flight Decision until Monday | NASA.gov

Private deliveries to the Space Station

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

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

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

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …

• Wed, April 25 : Orion is to the lower left of the Moon

• Sat, April 28 : Mars and Regulus are in the South and Saturn and Spica are in the SE with about 5* between the pairs (three fingers at arms length)

• April 28 – Mar 01 : Venus is high in the W just after sunset, setting around 11

• Mars is high in the S at dusk

• Jupiter is low in the W in the sunset, far below Venus

• Saturn is low in the SE peaking in height around midnight

• The southern hemisphere should, Keep an eye out for …

• Wed, April 25 : Orion is the ot upper left of the moon and Venus

• Further Reading and Resources

• More on what’s in the sky this week

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

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

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

]]>

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

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Purchase anything at Amazon.com Purchase anything at Think Geek using this link Grab the SciByte Audible.com pick Star Wars: Heir to the Empire The Thrawn Trilogy, Book 1

Show Notes:

Apollo 11 Engines found at the bottom of the ocean

• The low down
• On July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr became the first humans to step foot on the moon
• A few days earlier Apollo 11 was launched and the five F–1s burned for just a few minutes, and then plunged back to Earth into the Atlantic Ocean.
• The F–1 is still the most powerful single-chamber liquid-fueled rocket engine ever developed producing one and a half million pounds of thrust, burning 6,000 pounds of rocket grade kerosene and liquid oxygen every second
• Now Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has located the Apollo 11 F–1 rocket engines and plans to recover them
• Significance
• Using state-of-the-art deep sea sonar, the team has found the Apollo 11 engines lying 14,000 feet below the surface
• It is unknown so far what condition these engines might be in since they hit the ocean at high velocity and have been in saltwater for more than 40 years
• * Of Note*
• NASA has confirmed that they retain ownership of any artifacts recovered
• They do however under long-standing arrangement with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington and would likely offer one to them
• If the Smithsonian declines or if a second one is recovered NASA will work to have it available for display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, as requested
• Further Reading / In the News
• Jeff Bezos Plans to Recover Apollo 11 Rocket Engines From Ocean Floor @ wired.com
• Brazos Expeditions Blog
• NASA Administrator Supports Apollo Engine Recovery @ NASA.gov
• The F–1 Engine Powered Apollo Into History @ NASA.gov
• Amazon Founder Finds Apollo 11 Moon Rocket Engines On Ocean Floor @ space.com
• Apollo 11′s Rocket Engines Found on the Bottom of the Ocean @ UniverseToday.com
• Has Bezos Really Found the Apollo 11 Engines? @ Time.com

*— NEWS BYTE — *

James Cameron dives deep

• * Last time on SciByte*
• Amazon & Martian Weather | SciByte 39 (Mar 27, 2012)
• The low down
• Cameron used a specially designed submarine, called Deepsea Challenger, to dive into the Mariana Trench
• The Mariana Trench is the deepest point in the Earth’s Oceans, nearly seven miles below the surface
• Significance
• He reached the ocean’s deepest point on Earth – a place where only two men had gone before – early on Sunday, March 25
• There were however technical troubles that made sample collection of the deep-sea dive unavailable
• * Of Note*
• He is making a 3D movie of this expedition that will be released later
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : James Cameron to Dive to Ocean’s Deepest Point | NationalGeographic
• YouTube VIDEO : ‘Titanic’ director explores ‘desolate’ ocean floor | AFP
• YouTube VIDEO : Long Way Down: Mariana Trench | National Geographic
• YouTube VIDEO : Mariana Trench 1st-ever look: Cameron releases video from 7-mile deep
• Further Reading / In the News
• First Footage Released of James Cameron’s Trip to Challenger Deep @ pcmag.com
• Titanic 3D’s red carpet launch @ news.sky.com
• James Cameron returns from the deep @ nature.com

*— TWO-BYTE NEWS — *

Runaway planets

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

Lego’s can help build bones too

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

Sorry some coffee lovers

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

Einsteins library

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

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

You could bring about the next great Hubble picture

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

*— VIEWER FEEDBACK — *

• Thanks Charlie Ebert

• NOVA | Extract Your DNA | PBS :: Your home DNA extraction kit!

• The low down

• DNA is a supercoiled alpha helix. It contains two strands wrapped together and then tightly coiled. If you were to uncoil it, it would be about 3 feet. If you were to unwrap the 2 strands, you’d have 6 feet.

• If you unraveled all of your DNA if would stretch from the Earth to the Moon

• Multimedia

• YouTube VIDEO : NOVA | Extract Your DNA | PBS

• YouTube VIDEO : Bill Nye Genes DNA and Chromosomes

• Further Reading / In the News

• Extract Your Own DNA @ PBS.org

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

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

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …

• April 4–6 : As the moon is nearing full, it will pass by Saturn and Spica on the 6th.

• Friday, April 6 : Full moon is just to the east of Spica slightly farther away is Saturn

• Sat April, 7 : Moon rises about twilight below Saturn and Spica

• Further Reading and Resources

• More on what’s in the sky this week

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

]]> https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/17692/atmospheric-moon-pacemakers-scibyte-36/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 23:28:54 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=17692 Possible atmosphere on one of Saturn's moons, heart powered pacemakers, acidity levels of a moon a Jupiter, and what your Facebook page says about you

The post Atmospheric Moon & Pacemakers | SciByte 36 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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Support the Show:

Purchase anything at Amazon.com Purchase anything at Think Geek using this link Grab the SciByte Audible.com pick [11-22-63: A Novel]

   

Show Notes:

Saturn moon with an atmosphere

• The low down
• The Cassini mission was launched in 1997 and it has been orbiting Saturn since its arrival at the ringed planet in 2004, as a joint effort by NASA and the space agencies of Europe and Italy, and has been extended several times, most recently until 2017.
• Dione is one of Saturn’s smaller moons 698 miles (1,123 km) wide, and orbits Saturn once every 2.7 days at a distance roughly the same as that between Earth and its moon, about 234,000 miles [377,400 km].
• Discovered in 1684 by astronomer Giovanni Cassini, it is one of 62 known moons orbiting the ringed planet.
• According to new findings from the Cassini-Huygens mission announced Friday, March 2 molecular oxygen ions were seen near Dione’s icy surface, giving it a wispy oxygen atmosphere.
• Significance
• An ion is an atom or molecule in which the total number of electrons is not equal to the total number of protons, giving it a net positive or negative electrical charge.
• The oxygen on Dione may potentially be created by solar photons or high-energy particles that bombard the Saturn moon’s ice-covered surface, kicking up oxygen ions in the process
• Another idea suggests that geologic processes on Dione could feed the moon’s atmosphere, researchers added.
• Scientists used the measurements to estimate the density of the molecular oxygen ions to be in the range of one oxygen ion for every 2,550 cubic feet (90,000 cubic meters, 0.01 to 0.09 ions per cubic centimetre
• The atmosphere is 5 trillion times less dense than the air at Earth’s surface, equivalent to conditions 300 miles [480 kilometers] above Earth.
• * Of Note*
• This study shows that molecular oxygen is actually common in the Saturn system and reinforces that it can come from a process that doesn’t involve life
• It now looks like oxygen production is a universal process wherever an icy moon is bathed in a strong trapped radiation and plasma environment
• Further Reading / In the News
• Oxygen discovered at Saturn’s moon Dione @ physorg.com
• Saturn’s Icy Moon Dione Has Oxygen Atmosphere @ Space.com
• BBC News - Oxygen envelops Saturn’s icy moon
• Oxygen Detected in Atmosphere of Saturn’s Moon Dione: Discovery Could Mean Ingredients for Life Are Abundant On Icy Space Bodies @ ScienceDaily.com

*— NEWS BYTE — *

Heart Powered Pacemaker

• The low down
• The device harvests energy from the reverberation of heartbeats through the chest and converts it to electricity to run a pacemaker or an implanted defibrillator.
• It would be powered from an unlikely source: vibrations from heartbeats itself
• The device would be placed in the thoracic artery, an extra blood vessel often removed in heart surgery.
• Significance
• New energy harvester could save patients from repeated surgeries. That’s the only way today to replace the batteries, which last five to 10 years.
• It would generate 10 micro-watts of power, which is about eight times the amount a pacemaker needs to operate
• The researchers have precisely engineered the ceramic layer to a shape that can harvest vibrations across a broad range of frequencies
• Piezoelectric materials’ claim to fame is that they can convert mechanical stress (which causes them to expand) into an electric voltage and would essentially catch heartbeat vibrations and briefly expand in response
• If they incorporate magnets, whose additional force field can drastically boost the electric signal that results from the vibrations.
• * Of Note*
• The technology was originally designed the harvester for light unmanned airplanes, where it could generate power from wing vibrations
• Researchers haven’t built a prototype yet, but they have made detailed blueprints and run simulations demonstrating that the concept would work.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Heart-powered pacemaker could one day eliminate battery-replacement surgery @ University of Michigan
• This Is a Blood-Powered Heart Turbine @ gizmodo.com
• Heart-powered pacemaker could one day eliminate battery-replacement surgery @ esciencenews.com
• Heart-powered pacemaker could one day eliminate battery-replacement surgery @ PhysOrg.com

Hot-Spring Fossil Forest

• The low down
• In southern Argentina, in Patagonia, geothermal deposits include animals, plants, fungi and bacteria, preserved in three dimensions and with their internal structure largely intact.
• The fossils date from around 150 million years ago, and is the first time a hot-spring habitat from the Mesozoic era (from about 250 to 65 million years ago) has ever been discovered.
• Significance
• The newly uncovered area was preserved in such a way that we were where they had stood and how big they had grown
• This is not the type of fossilization typically thought of where living tissues were crushed into a two-dimensional film
• Instead plant tissues and cells were permeated by water containing dissolved silica, which was precipitated prior to plant decay and resulted in magnificent three-dimensional preservation of complete plants
• By cutting, polishing, and thinly sectioning blocks from the deposit and then examining the preserved fossils with high-powered microscopes, scientists are able to describe in intricate detail the anatomy and morphology.
• This type of process allows scientists to literally walk among the trees, noting what kind they were
• * Of Note*
• The remains of everything from the bacteria living right around the hot spring vents all the way to the plants, crustaceans and insects living in wetlands further away and the trees and ferns from the forests around the margins.
  +The discovery of a rich assemblage of fossils from between these extremes could transform scientists’ understanding of a vital stage in life’s development
• Further Reading / In the News
• Floor of Oldest Fossilized Forest Discovered: 385 Million Years Old @ sciencedaily.com
• Floor of oldest forest discovered in Schoharie County @ physorg.com
• Hot-spring fossils preserve complete Jurassic ecosystem @ physorg.com

*— TWO-BYTE NEWS — *

Europa’s ocean may be acidic

• The low down
• Europa, which is roughly the size of Earth’s moon, could possess an ocean about 100 miles deep
• Europa’s interior. The moon is thought to have a metallic core surrounded by a rocky interior, and then a global ocean on top of that surrounded by a shell of water ice
• The ocean underneath the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa could be too acid to support life
• Recent findings even suggest its ocean could be loaded with oxygen, enough to support millions of tons worth of marine life like the kinds that exist on Earth
• Significance
• Oxidants from Europa’s surface might react with sulfides and other compounds in this moon’s ocean before life could nab it generating sulfuric and other acids
• The ocean could become relatively corrosive, with a pH of about 2.6, about the same as the average soft drink
• Life that could form there would be analogous to microbes found in acid mine drainage on Earth, like the bright red Río Tinto river in Spain
• The dominant microbes found there are acid-loving “acidophiles” that depend on iron and sulfide as sources of metabolic energy microbes there have figured out ways of fighting their acidic environment
• If life did that on Europa, Ganymede, and maybe even Mars, that might have been quite advantageous
• Further Reading / In the News
• Europa’s Acidic Oceans May Prohibit Life @ universetoday.com
• Acidic Europa may eat away at chances for life @ physorg.com

Facebook and Job Performance

• The low down
• Can a person’s Facebook profile reveal what kind of employee he or she might be? The answer is yes, and with unnerving accuracy
• A prospective employer might be able to glean from your Facebook profile is a openness to new experiences (vacation pictures from a glacier off New Zealand), emotional stability (are your friends constantly offering you words of comfort?) and agreeableness (are you constantly arguing with "friends
• Significance
• Six people with experience in human resources were asked to rate a sample of 500 people in terms of key personality traits using only 5–10 minutes on a persons Facebook page as a guideline.
• They evaluators were asked to rate members of the sample group on what is known as the “Big Five” personality traits : extroversion, conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeableness and openness to new experiences
• Members of the sample group were asked to give a self-evaluation and took an IQ test.
• High ‘Facebook’ scores were an indication of future good job performance
• These ratings were followed up with the employers in the sample group six months after their personality traits were rated, to ask questions about job performance.
• Raters were generally in agreement about the personality traits expressed in the sample group’s Facebook page
• Ratings also correlated strongly with self-rated personality traits
• In fact the Facebook ratings were a more accurate way of predicting a person’s job performance than an IQ test
• * Of Note*
• Facebook page can provide a lot of information that it would be illegal for an employer to ask of a candidate in a phone interview gender, race, age and whether they have a disability
• In fact 90 percent of recruiters and hiring managers look at an applicant’s Facebook page whether they should or not.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Study: Facebook profile beats IQ test in predicting job performance

Transistors the Crumple

• The low down
• Thanks to the flexible yet robust properties of carbon nanotubes, researchers have previously fabricated transistors that can be rolled, folded, and stretched
• Japan has made an all-carbon-nanotube transistor that can be crumpled like a piece of paper without degradation of its electrical properties
• This study could lead to active electronic devices that are applied like a sticker or an adhesive bandage, as well as to wearable electronics.”
• Further Reading / In the News
• All-carbon-nanotube transistor can be crumpled like a piece of paper @ physorg.com

*— VIEWER FEEDBACK — *

Chronic pain

• The low down
• It has long been known that the central nervous system “remembers” painful experiences, that they leave a memory trace of pain.
• Researchers have now found the key to understanding how memories of pain are stored in the brain
• The best example of a pain memory trace is found with phantom limb pain
• When the brain remembers that pain there is a new sensory input, the pain memory trace in the brain magnifies the feeling so that even a gentle touch can be excruciating
• There is evidence that any pain that lasts more than a few minutes will leave a trace in the nervous system
• It is this memory of pain, which exists at the neuronal level, that is critical to the development of chronic pain.
• Until now however it was not known how these pain memories were stored at the level of the neurons
• Significance
• Recent studies have now that the the protien kinase PKMzeta both maintains memory and strenghtens the connections between neurons
• The level of PKMzeta increases persistently in the central nervous system (CNS) occurs after painful stimulation
• New research shows that by blocking the activity of the PKMzeta at the neuronal level, they could reverse the hypersensitivity to pain that neurons developed after applying an irritating stimulation on the skin.
• In fact, erasing this pain memory trace was found to reduce both persistent pain and heightened sensitivity to touch
• * Of Note*
• Most of the current medications for persistent pain from arthritis, injury, fibromyalgia or other nerve diseases simply apply analgesia systems in the brain or reduce inflammation to reduce the feeling in the brain
• With PKMzeta could actually target the pain memory trace itself as a way of reducing pain hypersensitivity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Neuron memory key to taming chronic pain

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

• Mar 10, 1876 : 136 years ago : Pass GO, collect $200 : In 1933, the game “Monopoly” was created and trademarked by Charles Darrow in Atlantic City. It was preceded by other real estate games. The first, called “The Landlord’s Game,” was invented by Lizzie Magie of Virginia (patented 1904). In it, players rented properties, paid utilities and avoided “Jail” as they moved through the board. Darrow set about creating his own version, modeled on his favorite resort, Atlantic City. He made numerous innovations for his game, which had a circular, cloth board. He color-coded the properties and deeds for them, allowing them to be bought, not just rented. The playing pieces were modelled on items from around his house. It was mass marketed by Parker Brothers in 1935.
• Mar 07, 1933 : 79 years ago : Alexander Graham Bell : In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made what was, in effect, the first telephone call. His assistant, Thomas Watson, located in an adjoining room in Boston, heard Bell’s voice over the experimental device say to him, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.” This was Bell’s first successful experiment with the telephone, which is recorded in the 10 Mar entry of his Lab Notebook. That same day, an ebullient Bell wrote his father of his “great success” and speculated that “the day is coming when telegraph [phone] wires will be laid on to houses just like water and gas - and friends converse with each other without leaving home.” Bell had received the first telephone patent three days before. Later that year, Bell succeeded in making a phone call over outdoor lines.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …

• Wed, Mar 07 : Mars shines left of the full Moon in the East and Venus and Jupiter shine in the West.

• Thurs, Mar 08 : This is the time of year when Sirius, the brightest star after the Sun, shines due south at nightfall.

• Sat, Mar 10 : The waning gibbous Moon forms a nice triangle with Saturn and Spica once they’re well up by 10 or 11 p.m. + **

• Planet Byte

• Venus and Jupiter continue to shine bright in the SW getting closer and closer, this week they go from 10* to 4*, from a fist at arms length to just 4 fingertips.

• Don’t forget daylight-savings (for most of North America) Sunday Mar 11, at 2am, spring your clocks forward 1 hour

• Further Reading and Resources

• More on whats in the sky this week

• 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 Atmospheric Moon & Pacemakers | SciByte 36 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/17213/satellites-robonaut-2-scibyte-34/ Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:38:54 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=17213 We take a look at support class satellites, the newest space station crew member Robonaut, spray on antennas, drunk fruit flies, viewer feedback and more!

The post Satellites & Robonaut 2 | SciByte 34 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at support class satellites, the newest space station crew member Robonaut, how science once again has caught up to an ancient herbal remedy, spray on antennas, drunk fruit flies, viewer feedback and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Download | Ogg Download | HD Video | Mobile Video | YouTube

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Support the Show:

Purchase anything at Amazon.com Purchase anything at Think Geek using this link

Show Notes:

Support Satellites

• Metalfreak also wanted to make sure I saw this story, Thanks!
• Cleanup Satellite – The low down
• Orbiting the Earth is a growing crowd of abandoned satellites, spent rocket stages, bits of broken spacecraft, and fragments from collisions are rocketing around the planet at breathtaking speeds
• NASA keeps close tabs on at least 16,000 of these objects that are larger than 10 cm in diameter.
• If a collision destroys a satellite, the collision itself then generates thousands more fragments, further exacerbating the problem.
• Cleanup Satellite – Significance
• CleanSpace One will grab and stabilize a target, a mission that’s extremely dicey at high speeds with a potentially rotating satellite.
• To accomplish the task, scientists are planning to develop a gripping mechanism inspired from a plant or animal example.
• Once it’s coupled with the satellite, CleanSpace One will “de-orbit” the unwanted satellite by heading back into the Earth’s atmosphere, where the two satellites will burn upon re-entry.
• The first model is destined to be destroyed, but the CleanSpace One adventure will not be a one-shot deal
• The company wants to offer and sell a whole family of ready-made systems, designed as sustainably as possible, that are able to de-orbit several different kinds of satellites
• Recycling Satellite – The low down
• United States Department of Defense is looking for ways to repurpose space junk thousands of miles above Earth back into valuable satellite parts, or even completely new spacecraft
• A program called Phoenix, which seeks to recycle still-functioning pieces of defunct satellites and incorporate them into new space systems on the cheap.
• Recycling Satellite – Significance
• The Phoenix program aims to use a robot mechanic-like vehicle to snag still-working antennas from the many retired and dead satellites in geosynchronous orbit and attach them to smaller “satlets,” or nanosatellites, launched from Earth.
• Phoenix could save the military a lot of money on launch costs, DARPA officials said. Antennas are big and bulky, requiring a lot of fuel to get off the ground, while lofting the antenna-less “satlets” would be much cheaper.
• Satellites in GEO are not designed to be disassembled or repaired, so it’s not a matter of simply removing some nuts and bolts
• The Phoenix program can look to some ground-based tech as a starting point, officials said. For example, it may incorporate elements of today’s telerobotics systems that allow doctors to perform surgery on patients thousands of miles away, as well as advanced remote imaging systems that enable oil drillers to view the ocean floor thousands of feet underwater.
• Refueling Satellite – The low down
• Canada-based aerospace firm MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. is designing a spacecraft that will serve as an orbiting gas station and mechanic
• Rocket fuel is cryogenic, meaning super-cold substances like liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen
• NASA awarded contracts to four companies with plans to study how to store and transfer fuel in space.
• Refueling Satellite – Significance
• Often a satellite becomes ‘defunct’ when it runs out of fuel
• Canada-based aerospace firm MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. is designing a spacecraft that will serve as an orbiting gas station and mechanic
• * Of Note for all three support type satellites*
• Reduce orbital debris. Depending on the funding and industrial partners, this first orbital debris rendez-vous could take place within three to five years.
• Reuse Satellites after being refueled. Depending on the funding and industrial partners, this first refueling orbital rendez-vous could take place within three to five years.
• Recycle Old satellite dishes and parts for new satellites. Should the Phoenix program work space debris would become a space resource
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : CleanSpace One – a Swiss satellite to tackle space junk
• VIDEO : Phoenix DARPA Satelite Recycling Program @ Space.com
• IMAGE GALLERY: Space Debris Images & Cleanup Concepts @ space.com
• Social Media
• Twitter Results for [#]()
• Further Reading / In the News
• Cleaning up Earth’s orbit: A Swiss satellite to tackle space debris @ actu.eplf.ch
• Swiss satellite to tackle space debris (w/ video) @ phys.org
• DARPA Wants to Recycle Space Junk Into New Satellites @ Space.com
• Latest News About Space Junk and Orbital Debris @ Space.com
• NASA Wants Gas Stations In Space @ PhysOrg.com
• Plans Scrapped for Private Robotic Gas Station in Space @ Space.com
• Robot Gas Attendants Could Keep Old Satellites Chugging @ Space.com
• Robot Space ‘Gas Attendant’ Could Salvage Old Satellites by 2015 @ Space.com

*— NEWS BYTE — *

Robonaut 2

• The low down
• Robonaut is a dexterous humanoid robot
• It was designed to meet the challenge to build machines that can help humans work and explore in space
• They can work side by side with humans, or going where the risks are too great for people and could expand our ability for construction and discovery
• The value of a humanoid over other designes, is that they have the ability to use the same workspace and tools
• Not only does humanlike dexterous manipulation improve efficiency in the types of tools, but also removes the need for specialized robotic connectors
• A suite of cameras in its head not only provide R2’s operators in space and on the ground with a view of what it’s working on, they can also be used by the robot to verify the configuration of a switch its flipped or ensure that other work it has done is correct
• Significance
• On Feb 15, 2012 it completed its initial checkouts on board the International Space Station it made history with the first human/robotic handshake to be performed in space
• After the handshake it sent down a message in sign language. “Hello World,” the robot signed in American sign language
• Following the tests, R2 was powered down and put back into storage until time for the robot
• * Of Note*
• Robonaut 2 (R2) marks the first dexterous humanoid robot in space
• R2, launched to the International Space Station on space shuttle Discovery as part of the STS–133 mission a year ago
• Next steps include a leg for climbing through the corridors of the Space Station, upgrades for R2 to go outside into the vacuum of space, and then future lower bodies like legs and wheels to propel the R2 across Lunar and Martian terrain
• After vision characterization, the robot will be able to work with the taskboards sent into space
• Following the tests, R2 was powered down and put back into storage until time for the robot
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : Seventh Station “Crewmember” Conducts Historic Handshake
• Show Clip : Seventh Station “Crewmember” Conducts Historic Handshake
• YouTube Channel : Robonaut
• Robonaut 2 Video Gallery @ NASA.gov
• Social Media
• Twitter : Robonaut @AstroRobonaut
• Further Reading / In the News
• Robonaut 2 Home
• Historic Handshake for Robonaut 2
• Robonaut 2 Shakes Hands With Station Commander

Science figures out an Ancient herbal remedy again

• Last time on Sci-Byte
• Space Station and Lizards | SciByte 19 – Nov 1, 2011 (Snake Oil)
• Moons Here & There | SciByte 28 – Jan 10, 2012 (The anti-alcohol drug that lessens hangovers too?)
• The low down
• An autoimmune disease is when the immune system mistakes some part of the body as a pathogen and attacks its own cells.
• A central challenge for improving autoimmune therapy is preventing inflammatory pathology without inducing generalized immuno-suppression
• For roughly two thousand years, Chinese herbalists have treated Malaria using a root extract, commonly known as Chang Shan
• Researchers from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine have discovered the molecular secrets behind this herbal extracts power, Halofuginone.
• Significance
• Halofuginone (HF), a compound derived from this extracts bio-active ingredient, could be used to treat many autoimmune disorders.
• Halofuginone received FDA orphan drug status (pharmaceutical agents that have been developed specifically to treat a rare medical condition) and has been used to treat sclerderma, a connective tissue disease, since 2000.
• Hydroxylation, an oxidative process adding -OH, of proline is a critical biochemical process for maintaining the connective tissue of higher organisms.
• Halofuginone, targeted and inhibited a particular enzyme (tRNA synthetase EPRS) responsible for incorporating proline into proteins that normally contain it.
• This process kick started an amino acid response pathway, or AAR, response and produced the therapeutic effects of HF-treatment.
• When a cell senses a limited supply of amino acids for building proteins, AAR will block signals that promote inflammation because inflamed tissues require lots of protein.
• Halofuginone triggers a stress-response pathway that blocks the development of a harmful class of immune cells
• The researchers think that HF treatment mimics cellular proline deprivation, which activates the AAR response and subsequently impacts immune regulation. .
• Researchers do not yet fully understand the role that amino acid limitation plays in disease response or why restricting proline inhibits Th17 cell production.
• Recognized only since 2006, Th17 cells are implicated in many autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and psoriasis
• * Of Note*
• Halofuginone prevents the autoimmune response without dampening immunity altogether
• This compound could inspire novel therapeutic approaches to a variety of autoimmune disorders
• Solving the molecular mechanisms of traditional herbal medicines can lead both to new insights into physiological regulation and to novel approaches to the treatment of disease
• Multimedia
• IMAGE : A blue evergreen hydrangea (Dichroa febrifuga) @ the San Francisco Botanical Garden.
• IMAGE : Chemical structure of halofunginone @ Wikipedia
• Further Reading / In the News
• [Halofuginone Inhibits TH17 Cell Differentiation by Activating the Amino Acid Starvation Response @ ScienceMag.org](Halofuginone Inhibits TH17 Cell Differentiation by Activating the Amino Acid Starvation Response)
• Chinese Herb Targets Immune System @ WebMD.com
• Scientists discover molecular secrets of 2,000-year-old Chinese herbal remedy

Spray on antennas

• The low down
• The idea of a spray-on antennas on surfaces does have a history.
• In 2001 Researchers were studying applications and materials for creating radio antennas that are sprayed onto a surface. Made from commercially available materials, these devices consist of a conductive substance sprayed over a template with a radio aerial pattern on it.
• Researchers have continued studying applications and materials for creating radio antennas that are sprayed onto a surface.
• Now a startup company has unveiled at Google’s Solve for X “conference” a spray-on signal booster in a can that promises an improved signal.
• Significance
• The company, Chamtech Enterprises, tested the spray on a tree, among other tests, and the team was able to send a VHF signal up to 14 miles away using only the treated tree.
• The company is upbeat over successful tests that were run to examine the spray’s signal performance submerged at periscope depth, communicating over a nautical mile at 50Mhz, 3W
• Technology could be used by weather and oceanographic researchers and underwater welders.
• * Of Note*
• The company also hopes for a wider customer base including mobile phone makers and manufacturers of medical devices.
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO :Solve for X: Anthony Sutera on low power wireless everywhere
• Further Reading / In the News
• [Spray-on antenna gets great reception at Google event]https://www.physorg.com/news/2012–02-spray-on-antenna-great-reception-google.html()
• Spray-on Antennas Make Their Mark @ SignalOnline

Liquor help fruit flies kill parasites

• Last time on Sci-Byte
• Curiosity Rover | SciByte 22 – Nov 22, 2011 (Why are flies attracted to beer?)
• The low down
• The common fruit fly is the annoying little flying things that swirls around browning bananas in your kitchen
• Significance
• According to a study published online in Current Biology, fruit flies will actually seek out alcohol to kill off blood-borne parasitic wasps living within them.
• They consume alcohol to self-medicate, a behavior that greatly increases their survival rate
• The scientists believe the results are the first to show alcohol consumption can have a protective effect against infectious disease, and in particular against blood-borne parasites
• * Of Note*
• The amount of alcohol in their natural habitat can range from 5 to 15 percent, as fruit flies are really good at detoxifying alcohol
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : ‘Drunken’ fruit flies use alcohol as a drug
• Further Reading / In the News
• Fruit flies use alcohol as a drug to kill parasites
• Flies Infected With Parasites Drink Alcohol as an Antibiotic @ DiscoverMagazine.com
• Fruit Flies Take Medicinal Nips @ ScientificAmerican
• Fruit Flies Use Alcohol as a Drug to Kill Parasites @ ScienceDaily.com
• To kill off parasites, an insect self-medicates with alcohol @ e! Science News

*— VIEWER FEEDBACK — *

Desalination Water

• Thanks Allan from TechSnap
• The low down
• Desalination, desalinization, or desalinisation refers to any of several processes that remove some amount of salt and other minerals from saline water
• Water is desalinated in order to convert salt water to fresh water so it is suitable for human consumption or irrigation.
• Most of the modern interest in desalination is focused on developing cost-effective ways of providing fresh water for human use in regions where the availability of fresh water is, or is becoming, limited.
• Many of today’s desalination plants use reverse osmosis or evaporation, both of which require enormous amounts of energy to supply heaters or high-pressure pumps.
• To find cheaper, room-temperature, energy-efficient solutions, many researchers are looking to nanomaterials and electrochemistry.
• * Of Note*
• It first draws ions from seawater into a pair of electrodes.
• As the researchers pass current through the electrodes, electrochemical reactions drive chloride ions into a silver electrode and sodium ions to an electrode made from manganese oxide nanorods.
• Next, the researchers remove the desalinated water and release the trapped ions into a separate stream of waste seawater by reversing the direction of the electrical current
• pilot experiments were not automated, the researchers say that a pump could automate the process.
• The desalination system is a spinoff from a Stanford University project to create new sources of clean energy
• The desalinated water that comes from the battery still contains too much salt for drinking, La Mantia says: “We removed up to 50% of the original salt, but we need to arrive at 98%.”
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO :
• IMAGE GALLERY: @
• IMAGE : @
• Further Reading / In the News
• Battery Desalinates Seawater @ C&EN
• A Desalination Battery @ NANOLetters

*— TWO-BYTE NEWS — *

NASA Pit Crews

• The low down
• Seven aerospace companies have teamed up with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program in Partner Integration Teams
• NASA PIT Crews are equipped with the intimate knowledge of what is takes to design, develop, manufacture, process and launch space transportation systems
• Lately, those teams have been making significant progress under Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2).
• CCP is very much like a venture capitalist endeavor because NASA is investing in systems and laying out expectations, but not dictating how companies make their systems work.
• Multimedia
• POSTER
• Further Reading / In the News
• NASA PIT Crews Essential to Commercial Space Endeavor @ NASA.gov

Driving with your tongue

• The low down
• A new intraoral Tongue Drive System is being developed at Georgia Tech which is embedded in this dental retainer worn in the mouth
• The system interprets commands from seven different tongue movements to operate a computer (left) or maneuver an electrically powered wheelchair.
• Multimedia
• IMAGE
• Further Reading / In the News
• Tongue drive system goes inside the mouth to improve performance and user comfort @ PhysOrg.com

IceAge Pollen

• The low down
• Once a squirrel made a burrow of fruit and seeds, including Silene stenophylla, it sat under 125 feet of permafrost for over 30,000 years. Not Russian scientists have regenerated the
• This is the oldest plant material by far to have been brought to life, the last record was a mere 2,000 years
• Of note is that this means the oer 200 million seeds from over a 100 nations in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Northern Norway are nearly guaranteed to be able to be regenerated
• Multimedia
• PICTURE
• Further Reading / In the News
• Russians revive Ice Age flower from frozen burrow @ PhysOrg.com

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

• Feb 26, 1935: 76 years ago : The fight against Tuberculosis : Dr Selman Abraham Waksman announced his discovery of the antibiotic streptomycin, the first specific antibiotic effective against tuberculosis. For this work, he was awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize. Although it was technically Albert Schatz, a twenty-three-year-old graduate student diligently working alone in a basement laboratory to find an antibiotic to treat tuberculosis. Finding Dr. Schatz: The Discovery of Streptomycin and A Life it Saved
• Feb 26, 1946: 66 years ago : Radar gives us eyes to the skies : The feasibility of radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging) was demonstrated to Air Ministry officials at Daventry, England, by Robert Watson-Watt, a Scottish physicist. Earlier, while working on methods of using radio-wave detection to locate thunderstorms in order to provide warnings to airmen, he realized that it could be used to track enemy aircraft for air defense. The test showed that a RAF Heyford bomber flying in the main beam of a BBC short-wave radio transmitter gave back reflected signals to the ground on three occasions that the aircraft passed overhead. By 1939, the outbreak of WW II, the military installed a chain of radar stations along the east and south coasts of England to prevent a German invasion. The Invention That Changed the World: How a Small Group of Radar Pioneers Won the Second World War

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
  
  

• Wed, Feb 22 : You might be able to spot Mercury about 30min after sunset near the crescent Moon, although binoculars might help. The constellation Orion and the brightest star, Siruis climb across the Southern skies.

• Thurs, Feb 23 : The thickening crescent Moon hangs far lower right of Venus and over Mercury in bright twilight

• Friday, Feb 24 : Jupiter and Venus form a line pointing down to the crescent Moon during and after twilight. Jupiter will remain to the upper left of Venus over the next few days.

• Sat, Feb 25 : Jupiter, Venus, and the Moon now form a triangle with the Moon closer to Venus

• Sun, Feb 26 : Jupiter, Venus, and the Moon again form a triangle with the Moon now closer to Jupiter

• Mars : Rises in the E at twilight

• Saturn : Rises in the E late at night and shines until a few hours before dawn

• Further Reading and Resources

• More on whats in the sky this week

• 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 Satellites & Robonaut 2 | SciByte 34 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/16951/sub-glacial-lakes-updates-scibyte-33/ Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:27:22 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=16951 We take a look at sub-glacial lakes and updates on Alzheimer's, balloons arsenic life the future of NASA’s space exploration, spacecraft updates, and more!

The post Sub Glacial Lakes & Updates | SciByte 33 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]>

We have a Rockin’ Roller coaster of a show as we take a look at sub-glacial lakes and updates on Alzheimer’s, balloons arsenic life the future of NASA’s space exploration, spacecraft updates, viewer feedback and take a peek back into history..

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Show Notes:

Sub Glacial Lakes

• *Sub Glacial Lakes? *
• The idea of lakes hidden under Antarctic ice was first put forward by Russian scientist Prince Pyotr Kropotkin
• Russian geographer noted the likely location of the lake
• It wasn’t until 1994 that Russian and British scientists got
  sonar and satellite imagining to reveal one of the world’s largest undisclosed fresh water reservoirs
• These kind of lakes would be kept from freezing into a solid block by the mammoth crust of ice across it that acts like a blanket, keeping in heat generated by geothermal energy underneath.
• * Meet Lake Vostok *
• Lake Vostok is 160 miles [250 kilometers] long and 30 miles [50 km] across at its widest point, similar in area to Lake Ontario
• Making Lake Vostok the largest of nearly 400 sub glacial lakes in Antarctica
• Hidden under ice for millions of years beneath an almost impenetrable layer of ice if will provide a unique closed ecosystem captured in time below four kilometers of ice
• According to Russian scientists the quantity of oxygen there exceeds that on other parts of our planet by 10 to 20 times
• * The opposition *
• There have been fears of any expedition reaching and possible contaminating the lakes
• The Russian team has been using 60 metric tons (66 tons) of lubricants and antifreeze used in the drilling
• There were many fears and concerns that those lubricating fluids could contaminate the pristine lake
• The Russian team had waited for several years to receive international approval for it’s drilling technology before proceeding and was doing its best “to try really hard to do it right” and avoid contamination
• * The Russian Journey *
• Lake Vostok is about 800 mi [1,300 km] southeast of the South Pole in the central part of the continent.
• At –126 F [–89C] and more than 11,000ft [3.300m] above sea level surface conditions mean that there is a limited window of opportunity to work each year
• After more than two decades of drilling in Antarctica the head of Russia’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute likened ii to the race to the moon
• In February 2011 after drilling 3720 meters last February, time ran out for the team and the project was stymied just 29.5 meters from its destination as winter set in.
• With the Antarctic summer season nearing it’s end this year, some reports had the team going silent for a week
• Then the news started trickling in that they had achieved breakthrough
• They knew they had breakthrough when about 50 cubit ft [1.5 cubic m] of kerosene and freon poured up to the surface tanks from the bore-shaft, proof that the lake water streamed up from underneath, froze and then blocked the hole, sealing off the chance that any toxic chemicals could contaminate.
• Scientists will return during the next Antarctic summer season, in December, to remove the frozen sample for analysis
• * Other Expeditions *
• American and British teams are drilling to reach their own smaller and younger sub glacial Antarctic lakes
• British scientists that hopes to retrieve samples next year from another sub glacial lake, Lake Ellsworth in West Antarctica
• Americans scientists are drilling at Lake Whillans, west of the South Pole
• Another U.S. team is seeking to reach the river-fed Whillans Ice Stream, also in West Antarctica
• * Of Note *
• Russian ice cores retrieved so far have suggested the presence of heat-loving microorganisms called thermophiles, suggesting hot geothermal vents like those in the ocean may exist at the bottom of the lake
• If a life form could exist here, it could also exist in similar environments such as Jupiter’s satellite, Europa.
• In the future, Russian researchers plan to explore the lake using an underwater robot equipped with video cameras that would collect water samples and sediments from the bottom of the lake, a project still awaiting the approval of the Antarctic Treaty organization.
• Multimedia
• IMAGE : National Science Foundation IMAGE : The Subglacial Lake Vostok System @ NASA.gov @https://www.nasa.gov/images/content/170956main_SubglacialLakesVostok_lg.jpg
• Further Reading / In the News
• Ancient Antarctic Ice Sampled In Lake Vostok Drill @ UniverseToday.com
• In scientific coup, Russians reach Antarctic lake @ PhysOrg.com
• Russians Drill Into Subglacial Antarctic Lake Vostok @ ScienceMagazine.org

*— NEWS BYTE— *

Another exciting step against Alzheimer’s

• * Last time on SciByte*
• SciByte 24 | Habitable Planets & Chimps
  (Dec 07, 2011)
• The low down
• Studies have identifies a link between the primary genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease and a potential therapy to address it.
• Humans have three forms of ApoE: ApoE2, ApoE3, and ApoE4. Possession of the ApoE4 gene greatly increases the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
• It has been seen that the main cholesterol carrier in the brain, Apolipoprotein E (ApoE), facilitates the clearance of the amyloid beta proteins
• New hope is now coming from a drug that has been used to treat T-cell lymphoma often after other treatments have failed for more then a decade
• Significance
• The study mentioned before was using a synthetic liver x-receptor to remove amyloid beta from the brain.
• Bexarotene acts by stimulating retinoid X receptors (RXR), which control how much ApoE is produced and seems to be reprogramming the brain’s immune cells to “eat” or phagocytose the amyloid deposits.
• Researchers were struck by the speed with which bexarotene improved memory deficits and behavior even as it also acted to reverse the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease.
• Just hours after treatment levels started falling, with 25% clearing after 24 hours, more than half within 72 hours and 75% after 14 days.
• Even more impressive, the effect lasted as long as three days.
• * Of Note*
• The next step is to ascertain if it acts similarly in humans.
• Since this drug has already been approved by the FDA and has a good safety and side-effect profile it likely to move into human trials much quicker than a new drug would.
• Correct dosing presents another challenge as giving bexarotene over several doses appeared to be less effective than giving it once.
• One reason may be that the drug degrades itself within the body.
• Multimedia
• IMAGE : A mouse brain with A-beta plaques (red) and after 3 days of treatment @ Sciencenews.org
• Further Reading / In the News
• FDA-approved drug rapidly clears amyloid from the brain, reverses Alzheimer’s symptoms in mice
• Cancer drug may have Alzheimer’s benefits

Baloons iiin spaaaace

• * Last time on SciByte*
• SciByte 31 | Feedback & Space Lego’s
  (jAN 31, 2012)
• The low down
• The Canadian teens were inspired by a similar near-space photography experiment by a pair of MIT students, who captured impressive views of the stratosphere with a digital camera attached to a helium balloon that 16 miles [25 kilometers]
• Significance
• MIT has been sending out acceptance letters to students in tubes, and the school challenged the potential newcomers to “hack” them in creative ways.
• One ecstatic studens who had worked on balloon experiments before and is a Ham Radio operator in her spare time, came up with the idea to turn her tube into a high-altitude balloon experiment.
• * Of Note*
• The canister was equipped with tracking devices and an onboard camera,.
• It reached a maximum altitude of approximately 17.2 miles [27.7 kilometers]
• She predicted the path very accurately using a software algorithm to predict the wind patterns based on current weather information from regional airports
• It only 75 miles east of its launch site after a two-hour flight
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO :MIT’16 EA Tube goes to Near Space!
• Show Excerpt of YouTube VIDEO :
• Further Reading / In the News
• Ecstatic Student Launches MIT Acceptance Letter Near Edge of Space

Arsenic life forms?

• * Last time on J@N*
• J@N | World Changing Fail
• The low down+ They found microbes in a lake HERE ON EARTH that have arsenic in their protein structure in the place of phosphorous.
• This is akin to the science-fiction theory that lifeforms could thrive replacing carbon with silicon
• Scientists attempting to duplicate the finding have come up empty-handed
• Significance
• One problem was that the original team didn’t do certain experiments, such as attaching a radioactive tag to the arsenate and locating exactly where it turned up in GFAJ–1’s DNA.
• The microbe in question clearly thrives in the presence of the usually toxic substance, there is no evidence that the bacterium requires arsenic to live or incorporates the element in its DNA
• The original team did note that there sample could have been contaminated by a little phosphate.
• When the new team did so, GFAJ–1 grew in densities similar to those reported before
• * Of Note*
• The researcher who lead the original team has reported much of her work on her research blog as it was being conducted, said the samples did contain trace amounts of arsenate.
• Any microbe that can tolerate a bit of arsenic here or there without any serious effects would incorpersate some arsenate
• The original researcher won’t comment further until the details of the new paper are published in a peer reviewed paper.
• She also said that the original paper never actually claimed that arsenate was being incorporated in GFAJ–1’s DNA, and that other had ‘jumped to that conclusion’
• This is again an issue that some of the scientific community the point discussion is essentially over, while others sill still wait for further results to clarify the issue.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Arsenic-based life finding fails follow-up @ sciencenews.org
• Is This New Study the Nail in the Coffin of “Arsenic Life”? @ popsci.com

The future of space

• At home
• Because of skyrocketing costs for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), NASA is being forced to gut the Mars program and other science missions
• The only approved US mission to Mars is the MAVEN orbiter due to blastoff in 2013 – and there are NO cameras aboard MAVEN.
• Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory rover will be America’s last Mars rover for a long, long time.
• and abroad
• NASA had already notified ESA that the US could not provide funding for the Atlas V launchers in 2016 and 2018.
• The 2016 and 2018 ExoMars probes were designed to look for evidence of life on Mars and set the stage for follow on missions to retrieve the first ever soil samples from the Red Planet’s surface
• ESA is now inviting Russian participation to replace the total American pullout
• * Of Note*
• The NASA budget represent about 0.5 percent of the total federal budget.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Budget Axe to Gore America’s Future Exploration of Mars and Search for Martian Life @ universetoday.com
• NASA Invites Twitter Fans to 2013 Space Budget Announcement @ Space.com
• Big NASA Budget Cuts to Slash Mars Missions, Experts Say @ Space.com
• Ed Weiler Says He Quit NASA Over Cuts to Mars Program @ news.sciencemag.org
• Spaced out: Obama to cut funding for Mars program @ news.cnet.com

SPACECRAFT UPDATE – Curiosity Rover

• * Last time on SciByte*
• SciByte 32 | Habitable Planets & Plant Power (Feb 07)
• SciByte 23 | Spacecraft Updates (Nov 30)
• SciByte 22 | Curiosity Rover (Nov 22)
• SciByte 18 | Planets & Brains (Oct 25)
• * Of Note*
• A smartphone-size plaque at the end of the robotic arm on Curiosity looks like an eye chart supplemented with color chips and the attached penny.
• Researchers will use Curiosity’s calibration plaque to test one of the six-wheeled rover’s five science cameras.
• Curiosity’s 1-cent piece is not just any old penny, purchased on private funds it is a penny from the first year Lincoln pennies were minted in 1909.
• Further Reading
• NASA – Mars Science Laboratory, the Next Mars Rover
• Multimedia
• IMAGE GALLERY: Mars-Bound NASA Rover Carries Coin for Camera Checkup @ JPL.NASA.gov
• Further Reading
• A Penny for Mars: US Coin Riding NASA Rover to Red Planet @ Space.com

*— VIEWER FEEDBACK — *

6 Myths Everyone Believes about Space (Thanks to Movies) | Cracked.com

• Angela, from the FauxShow

• Asteroid Belts Are Deadly

• In the media : Many times in movies or television shows the characters are dodging and weaving through colliding rocks of death.

• In reality : Asteroids are actually not at all that packed together. Scientists at NASA have said that the odds of one of their probes traveling through the asteroid belt colliding with as asteroid were less than one in a billion. Some calculations provide an average of 400,000 square miles for each asteroid.

• Black Holes Are Cosmic Vacuum Cleaners

• In the media : They eat planets, and in general are trying to eat everything in the universe.

• In reality : If we replaces our sun with a black hole of the same mass? … It would get colder. Something the mass of the sun, even a black hole, can not exert any more gravitational force.

• The Sun Is Yellow

• In the media : Get your crayons, draw the sun … hope you grabbed yellow …

• In reality : The sun, at a warm 6,000K, has to be white. It’s the Earths atmosphere bends the light that keeps yellow crayons in business. The pictures we get from space are color enhanced based often based on composition, approximations or color filters.

• Meteorites Are Hot

• In the media : Oh no! A huge ball of flaming rock with a huge trail of smoke is headed for … fill in city/building/location here

• In reality : In space they are about 3K, and have been so for billions and billions of years. They spend a few minutes in our atmosphere, and generally land lukewarm. What about the bright light you see when they are coming down? As the meteor comes down it is pushing the air in front of it away, the compression heats the air to the point where the air catches on fire.

• People Explode in the Vacuum of Space

• In the media : In space no can hear you scream … or explode … or at least have your eyes try to pop out.

• In reality : Our skin actually does a pretty good job of protecting us. If you were in space your skin would keep you from exploding, and your blood would continue too pump until space absorbed enough of your body heat. Breathing is the real issue, and lung trauma. You will still die in space, but nothing as exciting as the movies would like you to believe

• There Is a Permanent Dark Side of the Moon

• In the media : In the dark wastelands of the dark side of the moon, which we never see ancient alien technology can remain frozen forever …

• In reality : The moon may be in a tidally locked orbit so that we only see one side. There is a far side of the moon, that we never wee, it does the light of day .. or space. Simply speaking when there is a solar ecplise the moon blocks the sun from view, and is only one side of the moon ever faces us, the far side of the moon is completely bathed in the light of the sun.

• Further Reading / In the News

• 6 Myths Everyone Believes about Space (Thanks to Movies) | Cracked.com

• New Horizons Crosses The Asteroid Belt @ SpaceDaily.com

• List of named asteroid’s

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

• Feb 16, 1923 : 89 years ago : Tutankhamen says Hello World : Archaeologist Howard Carter opened the sealed doorway to the sepulchral chamber of King Tutankhamen’s tomb in Thebes, Egypt. A group of invited visitors and officials was present, including Lord Carnarvon, the aristocratic Englishman who had funded the excavation. On 18 Feb 1923, the Queen of the Belgians and numerous visitors attended an official opening. The following day, the press was admitted. The pharoah reigned around 1350 B.C. The famous “Yes, wonderful things” quote came when they breached the tomb and peered in the door the November before
• Feb 21, 1953 : 59 years ago : Deoxyribose Nulclei what? : Francis Crick and James Watson reached their conclusion about the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. They made their first announcement on Feb 28, and their paper, A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid, was published in the 25 Apr 1953 issue of journal Nature.
• Feb 18, 1977: 35 years ago : The Enterprise takes a test drive : The first space shuttle orbiter prototype, the Enterprise, was flight tested for two hours in “inert captive mode,” attached to the top of a 747 jumbo jet. The flight was the first of five captive flights in the nine-month-long Approach and Landing Test testing program (Feb-Nov 1977) at the Dryden Flight Research Facility. The orbiter was originally to be known as Constitution (to honour the U.S. Constitution’s Bicentennial). However, a write-in campaign by fans of the TV show Star Trek convinced the White House to name the vehicle Enterprise. PIC : Inert Flying Mode
  Historical topics from TodayInSci.com

The post Sub Glacial Lakes & Updates | SciByte 33 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/16521/feedback-space-legos-scibyte-31/ Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:12:49 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=16521 We take a look at lego’s in space, dinosaur feathers, spacecraft updates, breaking science, viewer feedback and as always take a peek back into history.

The post Feedback & Space Lego’s | SciByte 31 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]>

We take a look at lego’s in space, dinosaur feathers, spacecraft updates, breaking science, viewer feedback and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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.

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[asa default]B0064NLQYG[/asa]

• Purchase anything at Amazon.com
• Purchase anything at Think Geek using this link

Support the Show:

• Grab Star Trek: The Next Generation – Next Level [Blu-ray]
• Purchase anything at Amazon.com
• Purchase anything at Think Geek using this link

One small flight for a Lego man, one giant leap for Lego Kind?

• The low down on Weather Balloons
• Made of latex for synthetic runner typically about 0.002in [0.051mm] thick on the ground and 0.000098in [0.0025mm] at bursting altitude
• On the ground they are about 6ft [1.8m] wide and expand to 20ft [6.9m] in diameter at altitude and can be filled with either hydrogen or helium
• Can reach altitudes of 25mi [40km] and twice a day, every day of the year, weather balloons are released simultaneously from almost 900 locations worldwide!
• Where does space begin? – It’s a complicated answer because there is no definitive answer. NASA awards astronaut wings to anyone who reaches 49.7mi [80km.] Other instruments and scientists argue that it begins at around 62mi [100km]
• Significance
• Two 17 years old Canadians, used a helium filled weather balloon that brought a homemade styrofoam capsule that included two video cameras, four digital cameras, a GPS-enabled cell phone, and a tine Lego man holding a Canadian flag
• They launched from a soccer field up to a heights of 16mi [25km] and reached a height of 6mi [25km] where the helium balloon burst in what is technically known as the stratosphere.
• * Of Note*
• Technically they reached the stratosphere, which is 6–30 mi [10–50km] above sealevel.
• Commercial airliners typically cruise at altitudes of 9–12 km (30,000–39,000 ft)
• There have been a few sightings and evidence that birds can fly in the lower stratosphere
• Several Lego toys are constantly flying even higher above the Earth at this very moment aboard the International Space Station as part of an educational outreach effort by NASA and Lego.
• Actually Inadvisable generally when launching a balloon of that size you have to check in with the local airports to make sure it will be in a clear flight path.
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : Lego man in Space
• Further Reading / In the News
• Toronto Teens Launch “Lego Man in Space” @ UniverseToday
• Canadian teens send Legonaut 15 miles into atmosphere @ c|net
• Pilot warns against copycat weather balloon experiments as they ‘could bring down an airplane’ @ DailyMail

*— NEWS BYTE — *

Dinosaur feather colors

• The low down
• Archaeopteryx is the most ancient bird species known, who spread their wings amid the branches of Late Jurassic trees
• Archaeopteryx got its name in 1861 based on a lone fossil feather.
• Significance
• Examining the original dark trace of feather, scientists turned to a specialized scanning electron microscope in Germany.
• Checking points along the feather revealed evidence of rod-shaped nubbins like the structures that hold pigments called melanin’s inside the cells of modern feathers.
• In a procedure that has identified colors on several dinosaurs as well as fossil penguins
• The pigment-carrying structures, called melanosomes, grouped with modern birds’ black ones instead of the brown or gray ones, or the oddball melanosomes found in penguins
• * Of Note*
• There have been questions about whether Archaeopteryx feathers would have been strong enough for the early bird to fly
• The substance of the feather material was pretty tough stuff due to the melanin, black feathers are typical of this
• It doesn’t necessarily follow that the feather as a whole had the aerodynamic stiffness for sustained, powered flight
• Archaeopteryx was probably a pretty clumsy flier or glider.
• Multimedia
• YouTube Clip from show : Fit for flight
• Further Reading / In the News
• Archaeopteryx wore black @ SciencenNews.org
• Feathered Dinosaur Had Black Wings? @ NationalGeographic
• Wikipedia : Archaeopteryx

Old photographic plates reveal new star data

• The low down
• Photographic plates preceded photographic film as a means of photography.
• A light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts was applied to a glass plate
• Glass plates were far superior to film for research-quality imaging because they were extremely stable and less likely to bend or distort, especially in large-format frames for wide-field imaging
• There were in wide use by the professional astronomical community as late as the 1990s.
• Starting in the 1990s, photographic plates were replaced with more sensitive CCDs (charge-coupled devices), which are digital light sensors
• Significance
• A century’s worth of astronomical photographic plates have revealed a slew of new variable stars, many of which alter on timescales and in ways never before seen.
• * Of Note*
• The discoveries come from a new analysis of the 500,000 plates made by the Harvard College Observatory from the 1880s through the 1980s, covering the whole sky.
• Scientists are trying to digitize the plate collection, basically using CCDs to image the plates, then applying an algorithm to quantify how bright stars appear and search for variations over time.
• Multimedia
• IMAGE : @ Space.com
• Further Reading / In the News
• New Star Discoveries Found in Antique Telescope Plates

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

• NASA’s Day of Remembrance
• Jan 26 marks NASA’s Day of Remembrance, an occasion to recall the seventeen astronauts who have died in pursuit of space exploration as well as other members of the NASA family who lost their lives supporting the mission of exploration
• The anniversaries of each accident [Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia] fall close together, a period for everyone interested in space exploration to stop and think.
• Apollo1
• On January 27, 1967, the Apollo 1 crew was killed when a fire broke out in the command module during a routine prelaunch test. Engineers outside the spacecraft were unable to open the hatch and the crew died of asphyxiation.
• The cabin was filled with pure oxygen and the hatch could only open after at least 90seconds of venting atmosphere
• The Crew of Apollo 1](https://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/)
• Commander Gus Grissom [first NASA astronaut to fly in space twice]
• Senior pilot Ed White [the first American to complete extra-vehicular activity]
• Mission’s pilot Roger Chaffee [1st flight]
• The first successful manned Apollo mission was flown by Apollo 1’s backup crew on Apollo 7 in October, 1968.
• Space Shuttle Challenger STS–51
• On January 28, 1986, the Challenger Shuttle was lost just 73 seconds after the launch of STS–51, when one of the external booster rockets failed.
• It did not explode in the common definition of that word. When the fuel tank tore apart, it spilled liquid oxygen and hydrogen which formed a huge fireball.
• The Crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger
• Commander Dick Scobee
• Mission Specialist Ronald McNair
• Mission Specialist Ellison Onizuka
• Mission Specialist Judith Resnick
• Pilot Michael Smith
• Payload specialist Gregory Jarvis [1st flight]
• Christa McAuliffe [1st teacher][1st flight]
• The next flight was the Space Shuttle Discovery on September 29, 1988.
• Space Shuttle Columbia STS–108
• On February 1, 2003, the orbiter Columbia disintegrated during reentry; NASA lost contact with the crew just 16 minutes before its planned landing, from a piece of foam had fallen from one of the external solid rocket boosters during launch.
• The first flight, reuse of a manned orbital space vehicle, and only landing at the White Sands back up landing area was the Columbia
• The Crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia
• Commander Rick husband
• Mission Specialists Kalpana “K.C.” Chawla
• Mission Specialists Michael Anderson
  –Pilot Willie McCool [1st flight]
  –Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon [1st flight]
  –Mission Specialist Laurel Salton Clark [1st flight]
  –Mission Specialist David Brown.[1st flight]
• The next flight was the Space Shuttle Discovery on July 26, 2005.
• Continuing the mission
• Ronald Reagan- Challenger Tragedy Speech
• Space Shuttle Columbia Tragedy Address
• Challenger Center
• In the words of Gus Grissom
• “There will be risks, as there are in any experimental program, and sooner or later, inevitably, we’re going to run head-on into the law of averages and lose somebody. I hope this never happens… but if it does, I hope the American people won’t feel it’s too high a price to pay for our space program.”

SPACECRAFT UPDATE – SPACE STATION

• * Last time on SciByte*
• SciByte 29 | Exoplanets & Social Media
  (Jan 17, 2012)
• * Of Note*
• Earlier this month, the space station fired its thrusters to avoid debris from a 2009 satellite crash between an U.S. and Russian spacecraft.
• On Jan. 28 the space station had to avoid space junk from the Chinese satellite Fengyun 1C
• Rocket thrusters on the space station’s fired in a 1-minute, four-second burn to slightly raise the laboratory’s orbit, leaving it on a path that reaches just over 251 miles (404 kilometers)
• The space station is currently home to a six-man crew that includes three Russians, two Americans and one Dutch astronaut
• When there is not enough time to plan a dodging maneuver, station astronauts can take shelter inside the Russian Soyuz vehicles that ferry them to and from the station until a piece of space junk has safely zoomed by.
• The Soyuz capsules, two of which are docked at the station now, each seat three people and can double as lifeboats.
• Also the Progress 46 cargo ship successfully docked to the International Space Station’s Pirs Docking Compartment late on January 27 to deliver almost three tons of food, fuel and supplies
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : Space Freighter Docks to ISS
• Further Reading
• Space Station Dodges Debris From Destroyed Chinese Satellite
• Progress Resupply Ship Docks at the International Space Station

SPACECRAFT UPDATE – Curiosity Rover

• * Last time on SciByte*
• SciByte 30 | Solar Storms & Private Space Flight
  (Jan 24, 2012)
• * Of Note*
• Curiosity’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD), is going to be used to measure the radiation level on the surface on Mars and the space between Earth and Mars
• The solar storm previously mentioned on the show sunspot 1401 contributed to the largest radiation storm since 2003, passed by the Curiosity spacecraft
• The solar particles released were so abundant they were enough to be registered by Curiosity’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD)
• This event also allowed the detector to measure how much radiation astronauts might be subjected to during a journey to Mars
• Further Reading
• Mars-Bound Rover Feels Wrath of Sun’s Radiation @ news.discovery.com
• Mars-Bound NASA Rover Detects Radiation from Huge Solar Storm @ Space.com

SPACECRAFT UPDATE – Phobos Grunt

• * Last time on SciByte*
• SciByte 30 (Jan 24)
• SciByte 29 (Jan 17)
• SciByte 28 (Jan 10)
• SciByte 27 (Jan 5)
• SciByte 23 (Nov 30)
• SciByte 21 (Nov 15)
• SciByte 20 (Nov 8)
• * Of Note*
• The Russian space chief said that an investigation pointed to cosmic radiation as the likely culprit in the failure
• He also suggested that an imported spacecraft component may not have been adequately hardened for the harsh radiation environment in space
• A televised remark said “The most likely reason [for the glitch] is the impact of heavy charged space particles.”

*— VIEWER FEEDBACK — *

What is my favorite space movie?

• Currently
• Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
• Trailer @ YouTube
• Audible : [Dramatized] Narrated by Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Billy Dee Williams
• Amazon :
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
• Trailer @ YouTube
• Audible : [Abridged] Narrated by Leonard Nimoy, George Takei
• Amazon :
• Growing Up
• Flight of the Navigator (1986)
• Trailer @ YouTube
• Amazon DVD
• Explorers (1985)
• Trailer @ YouTube
• Amazon DVD
• Accuracy
• From the Earth to the Moon is a twelve-part HBO television miniseries (1998)
• Trailer @ YouTube
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (film) (1968)
• Trailer @ YouTube

Time Travel

• Gravitational Slingshot
• A number of space probes have used gravitational slingshot (Gravity assist) to gain speed
• A Gravity Assist Primer @ NASA.gov
• YouTube VIDEO : NASA original voyager animation
• SciByte Clip
• Gravitational time dialation
• The Theory of General Relativity, states that the rate of time passing depends on the strength of the gravitational field at the observer’s location.
• The gravitational well of the Sun would change the apparent rate of time flow depending upon your point of observation
• **Combining the two to get time travel?
• Science does not support getting a Klingon bird of prey to 1986 by fling close to the sun, although it would make your trajectory faster going away on the other side
• Star Trek clip from trailer

How can I submit Feedback or Stories?

• Feedback
• There are as many questions about science as there are stars in the universe, send yours in and we’ll do our best to answer it and provide links where you might find out more.
• Did we get something wrong? Let us know! We are more than happy to correct any missteps or assumption as quickly and as accurately as we can.
• Submit a story
• SciByte has a wide range of listeners including experts in many fields of science with various years of experience and degrees.
• Have you seen or heard something that you would like to know more about, know of a story in your field that is exciting and would like to share some links or thoughts? Go ahead and submit it. We will try to at least mention every story in the show and include more information, links and your thoughts in the show notes.
• Contact Page
• Fill out our contact form and select where you want your feedback sent
• *You can also get information on: *
• Sending us an audio question or comment and we’ll try to play it in the show
• Have Our Google Voice Connect you for free to our Voice Mail
• Or find out where our IRC Chat Room is

*— BREAKING NEWS — *

Interstellar Matter

• The low down
• NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has captured the best and most complete glimpse yet of what lies beyond the solar system.
• The new measurements give clues about how and where our solar system formed, the forces that physically shape our solar system, and the history of other stars in the Milky Way.
• VIDEO’S
• VIDEO : Alien Atoms : First contact made by NASAhttps://www.space.com/14420-alien-atoms-contact-nasa-satellite.html:
• YOUTUBE : NASA | IBEX Spacecraft Observes Matter from Interstellar Spacehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXfoAYqhGVE:
• Further Reading
• IBEX: Glimpses of the Interstellar Material Beyond our Solar System @ NASAhttps://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ibex/news/interstellar-difference.html:
• NASA Spacecraft Reveals New Observations of Interstellar Matter – NASAhttps://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012/jan/HQ_12–036_New_IBEX_Findings.html?utm_content=SPACEdotcom&utm_campaign=seo%2Bblitz&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social%2Bmedia:
• Documenting Discovery: NASA, Archivists Work to Record Space Shuttles’ History @ Space.comhttps://www.space.com/14421-nasa-space-shuttle-recordation-retirement.html?utm_content=SPACEdotcom&utm_campaign=seo%2Bblitz&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social%2Bmedia:
• Photos: NASA’s IBEX Probes Solar System’s Edge @ Space.comhttps://www.space.com/14409-photos-nasa-ibex-mission-solar-system-edge.html?utm_content=SPACEdotcom&utm_campaign=seo%2Bblitz&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social%2Bmedia:

Looking up this week

• You might have seen …

• Solar storms like the one that just went by may shoot varying kinds of energy out into space and occasionally at the Earth but it also helps clear space debris

• Keep an eye out for …

• Thurs, Feb 2 : Orion sits below the moon

• More on whats in the sky this week

• 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 Feedback & Space Lego’s | SciByte 31 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/16276/solar-storms-private-space-flight-scibyte-30/ Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:40:15 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=16276 We take a look at the recent solar flare, SpaceX's plans for reaching the space station, dolphin speech, getting energy from seaweed, and more!

The post Solar Storms & Private Space Flight | SciByte 30 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]>

We take a look at the recent solar flare, SpaceX’s plans for reaching the space station, dolphin speech, exoplanets, getting energy from seaweed, crowd sourcing earthquake data, spacecraft updates, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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• Grab the SciByte Audible.com pick, Contact Audio Book by Carl Sagan
• Purchase anything at Amazon.com
• Purchase anything at Think Geek using this link

   

Show Notes:

You might have seen meets ‘Breaking’ Science with Coronal Mass Ejection

• The low down
• Solar flares are categorized into five classeshttps://spaceweather.com/glossary/flareclasses.html, A, B, C, M, and X. C class hacing few affects on the earth, while X-class flares are big; they are major events that can trigger planet-wide radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms.
• The classification is further broken down into subdivisions from one-to-nine, based on intensity and brightness in the x-ray spectrum.
• Last week, a separate sunspot group unleashed several M-class flares, and scientists say these types of flares are occurring almost daily as the sun’s rotation slowly turns the region toward Earth.
• Significance
• There was a solar flare with an earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME), and a burst of fast moving, highly energetic protons known as a “solar energetic particle” event, the strongest since 2005.
• Precise eruption time was Jan 22, 10:59 pm EST / 0359 GMT Jan. 23
• What is means on Earth
• This flare was a M8.7 M-class flares can cause brief radio blackouts that affect Earth’s polar regions
• Fights that fly over or near the polar regions are taking precautions by diverting flight paths or flying at lower altitudes to increase protection from the Earths atmosphere.
• There have been reports of sporadic radio-communication blackouts in high-latitude regions
• Despite the precautions and it’s 15min of media fame, this solar storm is actually considered to be moderate and isn’t expected to cause major disturbances to ground- or space-based assets.
• What is means in Space
• The astronauts in the Space Station were in no danger from this solar flare and coronal mass ejection (CME).
• Both Earths magnetic fields and the station walls protect the astronauts from most particles, although space walkes are not permitted during similar situations.
• For the more energetic and more damaging cosmic rays, as strange as it might sound, during solar flares occur the amount of cosmic radiation the Space Station receives actually decreases. The flare sweeping away most of the energetic particles away from the Earth.
• * Of Note*
• Last week, a separate sunspot group unleashed several M-class flares, and scientists say these types of flares are occurring almost daily as the sun’s rotation slowly turns the region toward Earth.
• With all the different probes and telescopes aimed at the sun, scientists were able to pinpoint the arrival of the CME more accurately than ever before. Predicting the arrival time to earth within 13-minutes of error, while models in the past gave an average error of seven hours
• Multimedia
• YOUTUBE VIDEO : Solar Storm Makes for European Light Show
• YOUTUBE VIDEO : NASA | Biggest Solar Storm Since 2005
• IMAGE GALLERY : Auroras from around the world @ UniverseToday.com](https://www.universetoday.com/92855/stunning-auroras-from-around-the-world-january–22–23–2012/)
• IMAGES : Huge Solar Flare Sparks Major Radiation Storm @ Space.com
• IMAGES @ EarthObservatory.nasa.gov
• IMAGE : January Aurora Over Norway @ apod.nasa.gov
• Social Media
• Space Weather @spaceweather
• Further Reading / In the News
• Classifying Solar Eruptions @ Nasa.gov
• Catagorizing Solar Flares @ SpaceWeather.com
• Auroral Forecast @ https://helios.swpc.noaa.gov
• Strongest Solar Radiation Storm Since 2005 @ ScienceDaily.com
• Space Weather Arrives: Relatively Minor Impacts Expected from Solar Storm @ ScienceDaily.com
• Biggest Solar Storm in Eight Years Now Pummeling Earth @ news.NationalGeographic.com
• Spots on the Sun Firing Off Strong Solar Storms @ Space.com
• ‘Space Hurricane’: Huge Solar Storm Is Pounding Earth Now @ space.com
• Northern Lights head south @ AstronomyNow.com
• M8.7 Solar Flare and Earth Directed CME @ NASA.gov
• Huge Solar Eruption Sparks Strongest Radiation Storm in 7 Years @ Space.com
• Stunning Auroras From Around the World (January 22–23, 2012) @ Universe.com
• ALMOST-X FLARE AND CME (UPDATED) @ SpaceWeather.com
• Astronauts in Space Safe from Huge Solar Radiation Storm @ Space.com
• NASA Captures Biggest Solar Storm Since 2005 @ flickr

*— NEWS BYTE — *

SpaceX Space Station resupply mission resceduled

• The low down
• Just over a year ago SpaceX launched a test version of the Dragon capsule
• SpaceX had originally planned to launch the official Dragon supply ship for the International Space Station on on Feb. 7 from Cape Canaveral
• Significance
• The company has now confirmed that the launch date has been pushed back to late March
• They are looking forward to being the first private launch to the space station, but that more testing is needed
• NASA is counting on private companies to take provisions and re-supply materials to the space station, as well as allow the station a way to discard used materials
• In the meantime space agencies from Russia, Europe, and Japan are are sending up regular shipments to the space station as best they can.
• The first Dragon capsule that arrives at the station will be carrying several hundred pounds of non-critical provisions, ensuring that the space station will have enough supplies in the case of catastrophic failure of the Dragon capsule
• * Of Note*
• When it arrives at the Space Station the astronauts will use the large robotic arm to grab and attach the Dragon capsule
• Because the craft can survive re-entry termperatures, which no other country has done so far. Scientific samples could actually be returned to earch whenever a re-supply mission returns to Earth
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : Video of SpaceX Falcon 9 Dragon Capsule Launch for NASA
• YouTube VIDEO : SpaceX: Dragon to the ISS [COTS-D]
• YouTube VIDEO : SpaceX announces the Falcon Heavy rocket [April 5, 2011]
• VIDEO GALLERY @ SpaceX.com
• Social Media
• SpaceX @SpaceXer
• Further Reading / In the News
• SpaceX.com
• Delay for space station’s 1st private cargo run (Update) @ PhysOrg.com
• 1st Private Rocket Launch to Space Station Delayed Until March @ Space.com

Do dolphins talk in their sleep?

• The low down
• A group of dolphins born in captivity were performing in their shows every day
• Performing dolphins are primed to learn and remember information
• During their show music and sounds were played in the background, a new track included music, sea gulls, dolphin whistles and humpback whale calls
• Significance
• Because little is known about the nighttime sounds of dolphins researchers had hand hung underwater microphones into the dolphins tank at night
• One night they discovered that they had produces 25 new sounds that they had never made before
• When playing back the tapes the researcher found that the new sounds sounded similar to whale songs
• A new sound track including
• When analyzed by a computer program the two sounds were very similar
• When 20 human volunteers were asked to listen to and identify the dolphin nocturnal sounds and humpback whale songs, 76% of the time they classifies the imitations as sounds from real whales
• Since the dolphins did not make the noises during the day, it indicates that they wanted to wait to practice the sounds at night
• Of interest is finding out if the dolphins are asleep and dreaming during the time they are making the noises
• If the dolphins are dreaming it might indicate that, like humans, they etch new information into memories during sleep
• Next for the research is to take electroencephalogram recordings of the dolphins’ brains at night to determine if they are asleep during the time they make the sounds
• * Of Note*
• Before the whale sounds sound track was added to the show the dolphins did not make produces the ‘humpback whale song’
• Some scientists are not convinced saying that dolphins make so many different sounds that it would be too difficult to quantitatively identify one as an imitation of a particular sound
• Dolphins are known for mimicry and songbirds rehearse imitations of sounds at night, it is not all that unlikely that if they mimicking dolphins might do the same
• Multimedia
• Page with clips of sounds
• Social Media
• Science Mag News @ScienceNOW
• Facebook : ScienceNOWhttps://www.facebook.com/ScienceNOW.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Do Dolphins Speak Whale in Their Sleep? @ news.sciencemag.org
• Do dolphins rehearse show-stimuli when at rest? Delayed matching of auditory memory @ frontiersin.org

Supercritical water and homeless exoplanets

• The low down
• The size of a planet can be measured indirectly by analyzing the amount of dimming of a star when the planets transits, and the mass can be identified though ground based measurements of how much gravitational force the planet excerpts on it’s star.
• From those measurements the density of a planet can be roughly calculated
• Exoplanets themselves are estimated to outnumber the stars in out galaxy by almost two-to-one
• One such planet scientist have been analyzing is 55 Cancri, a rocky planet about 7.8 times the size of the Earth, orbiting relatively closely to it’s sun and 40 light-years away from Earth .
• Significance
• New observations of a this explanet suggest that about a fifth of the planet’s mass must be made up of light elements and compounds, including water
• Since this planet if thought to have surface temperatures as high as 4,800 F [2,700 C] this planet is a much weirder planet than originally thought to be
• The high temperature and pressure conditions on this planet are so extreme the liquids likely exist in a supercritical state
• Super-critical fluids can best be imagined as liquid-like gases in high pressure and temperature conditions, water becomes supercritical in some steam turbines
• These superritical fluids could be seeping up from the outer layers of the planets crust, giving scientists an interesting study of a planet
• * Of Note*
• Perhaps even stranger is that almost 75% of the exoplants in our galaxy might be ‘free-floating’ planets no longer orbiting a star
• Some suspected free-floating planets have already been observed and it has been speculated that those free-floating exoplanets would be from gravitationally unstable orbits
• Recent computer simulations indicate there may be more exotic reasons for the planets to be ejected.
• One simulation blames end of life stars that expand into red giants litterely pushing their planets into interstellar space
• Another simulation blames gravitational forces by passing stars, planetary system moving either in or out of a galacy’s dense spiral arms, or interactions with dense molecular clouds
• The most likely reason for ejection of exoplanets would be from parent stars being gravitationally acted upon in tightly packed star clusters
• Multimedia
• VIDEO : Oozing planet @ Space.com
• Further Reading / In the News
• Weird World! ‘Oozing’ Alien Planet Is a Super-Earth Wonder @ Space.com
• ScienceShot: Why So Many Homeless Planets? @ news.sciencemag.org

Running your car with … seaweed?

• The low down
• Biofuel is energy from biological material from living or recently living organisms, biomass, that use carbon to grow
• Using seaweed to create biomass has been a sought after source of biofuel for years as it is full of the sugars needed for the process
• Seaweed also grows very fast, does not compete for land with crops, and requires no fertilizer or freshwater
• If a process could be made to meet a certain efficiency it would broaden the biofuels possibilities
• Significance
• Unfortunately the gummy cell walls of seaweed make it very hard to get the needed components to make biofuel, making it difficult to compete with other forms of biomass.
• Researchers have now engineered a bacterium that has the ability to break down those cell walls so that ethanol and other useful products can be gained
• The process was developed by combining several enzymes that could convert the interior into fuel,
• The researchers then used the cellular transportation system to inject the combination so that it would secrete the enzyme
• * Of Note*
• Currently the bacteria yields approximately 80% of it’s theoretical maximum of ethenol, with further tweaking that number may go even higher
• Partially broken down product could be used in processes for making nylons or plastics
• The newly engineered E.coli has no danger of escaping into the environment and consuming seaweed, as it lives best in the human gut, and would likely die in an ocean environment in a short period of time
• Multimedia
• IMAGE GALLERY: Top 10 Sources for Biofuel @ news.discovery.com
• Further Reading / In the News
• Genetically Engineered Stomach Microbe Converts Seaweed into Ethanol @ scientificamerican.com
• Seaweed Biofuel Breakthrough Found @ News.Discovery.com
• Seaweed study fuels bioenergy enthusiasm @ ScienceNews.org

Crowd sourcing hits earthquakes

• The low down
• We mentioned before what social media can do to help the medical community track outbreaks of communicable diseases
• Seismologists are now getting on the social media tracking band wagon
• In the past seismologists have relied on sensors in the vicinity of an earthquake and post anecdotal evidence from interviews of people who experienced it
• Significance
• There have already been instances where citizen-generated reports have had value in information gathering for earthquakes
• Scientists had begun to set up websites specifically for people to add what they know about an earthquake to existing data
• Being a public system seismologists can filter Twitter messages so focus on earthquake related messages, giving researchers real time data as people message about the earthquake
• Also available to the public are seismic monitors that can attach to building, public or private, to send data via WiFi to designated research facilities
• In addition to social media there are also Smartphone apps that are available that can be used to turn the phone itself into a vibration sensing device when it is not being carried
• Other new sensors will become available as interest increases
• * Of Note*
• As these new sources of information become available it increases the amount and density of the observational and scientific data
• More data from earthquakes gives scientists more detailed information about earthquakes, which increases the understanding of them
• The ability to understand the precursors of an earthquake or even what leads to earthquakes will increase the prediction models
• Multimedia
• VIDEO : Page with video about crowdsourcing earthquakes @ physorg.com
• Social Media
• Twitter Results for [#earthquake](https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23earthquake)
• Further Reading / In the News
• Scientists turning to crowdsourcing to gather more information about earthquakes @ PhysOrg.com
• Transforming Earthquake Detection? @ sciencemag.org

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

New Horizons

• * Last time on SciByte*
• Habitable Planets & Chimps | SciByte 24 (Dec 7, 2011)
• * Of Note*
• New Horizons spacecraft headed for Pluto started it’s 9 year journey on Jan 19, 2006.
• This January has marked the 6th anniversary of the probes launch and means it has complete 2/3 of the journey
• New Horizons has put about 2.14 billion miles (3.45 billion km) on its odometer
• Another 1 billion miles (1.6 billion km) left to go before the close encounter.
• This summer, it will have a 24-hours near-encounter rehearsal, and will make every maneuver and scan that it will do when it arrives at Pluto
• The actual encounter itself will only last approximately a day as the craft flies by the Plutonian system
• Not only will this dress rehearsal check out all seven instruments, it will collect more science data then any other spacecraft wake up, and will receive a software update, including a bug in the program that causes it to reset
• the New Horizons team will also be able to use on board telescopes to probe the Plutonian system for other satellites, rings and other debris
• Data New Horizons sends back — maps, spectra, plasma data, radio science and more — will provide a detailed view of Pluto and its system of moons
• Fun Pluto factoids
• Everything we currently know about Pluto would fill less than a page in a textbook
• Surface temperatures are around –375 F [–225 C] but nonetheless manages to hold onto an atmosphere of Nitrogen, Methane, and Carbon Dioxide that extends about 1,860 mi [3,000 km] from the surface
• Some scientist currently think it is comprised of 70% rock and 30% ice
• Multimedia
• NewHorizons2015 @NewHorizons2015
• Multimedia
• Pluto: A Dwarf Planet Oddity (Infographic) @ Space.com
• IMAGE GALLERY: Meet the Solar System’s Dwarf Planets @ Space.com
• IMAGE GALLERY: Science Photos @ pluto.jhuapl.edu
• Further Reading
• New Horizons Web Site @ pluto.jhuapl.edu
• NASA Spacecraft in Home Stretch of Journey to Pluto @ Space.com
• Countdown: 5 Strange Facts About Pluto @ lifeslittlemysteries.com
• Meet the Solar System’s Dwarf Planets @ Space.com
• Pluto: A Dwarf Planet Oddity (Infographic) @ Space.com

Opportunity Rover

• * Last time on SciByte*
• Moons Here & There | SciByte 28 (Jan 10, 2012)
• * Of Note*
• After roaming the surface of Mars for nearly eight years and hunkering down for the winter Opportunity is ready to investigate the interior of the Red planet, not by digging but just by calling home
• By analyzing the signals from Mars scientists will be able to more precise measurements of the planets rotational speed
• Analyzing how Mars’ spin and spin access has changed since the Viking missions in the mid–70’s should allow scientists to get a better handle on the interior of the planet
• My measuring the minute variations of the planets rotation could reveal weather Mars has a solid or liquid core.
• The team that after about three-to-six months researchers will have enough data to get an in-depth picture of the Martian interior
• Multimedia
• Opportunity Rover – Raw Images Gallery @ NASA.gov
• Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Rover Multimedia Gallery: @ NASA.gov
• Mars Rover Missions Page – Multimedia Gallery: @ NASA.gov
• Further Reading
• 8 Years on Mars: ‘Amazing’ NASA Rover Still Going Strong @ Space.com
• NASA Rover Spends Martian Winter Probing Inside Red Planet @ Space.com
• New App Downlinks Mars Rover Images Straight to Your Smartphone @ popsci.com
• Opportunity arrives at Greeley Haven – 5th Winter Haven Worksite on Mars @ UniverseToday.com

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

• Jan 27, 1888 : 124 years ago : National Geographic Society founded : The National Geographic Society was established with Gardiner Greene Hubbard as its first president. Two weeks earlier, on 13 Jan 1888, 33 founders in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., had met at the Cosmo Club in Lafayette Square, across from the White House. Their mission was to establish “a society for the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge.” By Oct 1888, the first National Geographic Magazine was published as a society membership benefit, which continues its monthly issues to the present with photographs and popular articles now expanded from topics of geography and exploration to science, history and world cultures. The society has awarded over 9,000 grants for scientific research, and sponsors a museum and travelling exhibits.
• Jan 27, 1957 : 55 years ago : Hearts get a portable jump-start](todayinsci.com) : In 1957, an external artificial pacemaker with internal heart electrode is first used. To maintain a patient’s heartbeat rhythm an electrode was sewn to the wall of the heart and connected through the chest to an external desk-top pulse generator. A team of scientists at the University of Minnesota, led by Dr C. Walton Lillehei, made this medical advance. However, such bulky equipment was not a good long-term solution since infection often occurred along the electrode wires, and the device required no interruption in the house electricity. So Dr. Lillehei also initiated research on the use of a small portable external pacemaker for these patients with heart block. This ultimately led to the development of the billion-dollar pacemaker industry.
• Jan 30, 1958 : 54 years ago : Please be careful stepping on or off the platform](todayinsci.com) : Although the first moving sidewalk was a whopping 119 years ago, at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893. The first two-way, moving sidewalk, 1,425 feet long, was put in service at Love Field Air Terminal in Dallas, TX. It consisted of three loops. In each loop a continuous rubber carpet was attached to a continuous train of wheeled pallets, flexibly interconnected so they could follow vertical or horizontal curves as required. It was known not only as a moving sidewalk, but also as a passenger conveyor. more icon

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …

• Wed, Jan 25 : Venus is to the upper left of the crescent moon at twilight

• Thur, Jan 26 : Venus is now below and slightly to the left of the moon at twilight

• Fri, Jan 27 : Venus now appears right below the moon at twilight in the WSW

• Sat, Jan 28 : To the right of the moon is a star in the Great Square of Pegasus, Jupiter is about twice the distance and to the upper left

• Sun, Jan 29 : The brightest star in the sky to the SW is Sirius the dog star

• The southern hemisphere should, Keep an eye out for …

• Fri, Jan 27 : Venus will appear with the Moon

• Mon, Jan 30 : Jupiter takes is turn above the moon in the NW sky

• More on whats in the sky this week

• 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 Solar Storms & Private Space Flight | SciByte 30 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/15092/planets-feedback-scibyte-26/ Wed, 21 Dec 2011 23:22:37 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=15092 We answer questions concerning the sun, solar cells, and even Space Camp. We also look at the news about some new extra-solar planets, black holes and more!

The post Planets & Feedback | SciByte 26 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]>

We take a look at some of your feedback and questions concerning the sun, solar cells, and even Space Camp. We will also look at the news about some new extra-solar planets, black holes and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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• Grab the SciByte Audible.com pick: The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite
• Purchase anything at Think Geek using this link

*— FEEDBACK — *

Questions about the sun

• If the sun can’t fuse gold and such why are they there?
• Do scientists take these into account with calculating life of the sun?
• Do they account for them with the weight of the sun?
• Should we look to Mercury Venus for heavier elements?
• Formation of the Solar System
• Throughout the galaxy there are dust clouds containing mostly Hydrogen and heavier elements
• The heavier elements are from the cores of Type II super nova, when they explode they seed the surrounding areas with those heavier elements
• The cloud will start contracting, eventually forming a star with a surrounding dust cloud
• The Sun
• The sun is 4.5 billion year old main sequence star
• It has converted about half of the hydrogen in its core into helium, so it still has about 5 billion years before the hydrogen runs out.
• Each second, more than four million metric tons of matter are converted into energy within the Sun’s core, producing neutrinos and solar radiation
• The sun manufactures elements from lighter ones in the process of nuclear fusion. Helium is a byproduct of nuclear fusion, and beryllium, lithium, boron, and other atoms are part of the ordinary fusion process.
• Planets
• The inner Solar System, the region of the Solar System inside 4 AU, was too warm for volatile molecules like water and methane to condense, so the planetesimals that formed there could only form from compounds with high metals (like iron, nickel, and aluminium) and rocky silicates.
• These compounds are quite rare in the universe, comprising only 0.6% of the mass of the nebula, so the terrestrial planets could not grow very large
• The composition of the inner planets are very similar, as are the compositions of the asteroids in the asteroid belt
• * Of Note*
• Mining other inner planets for metals might be feasible if we were able to safely travel there and back, and for less money that would require to aquire it on Earth
• Another reason to mine other inner planets would be to increase the supplies of rare metals on Earth
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO :Naked Science: Birth of the Solar System
• YouTube VIDEO : Moon Formation Annimation
• VIDEO : The Composition of the Sun @ NASA.gov
• IMAGE : Hubble image of protoplanetary discs
• Further Reading / In the News
• Hubble Confirms Abundance of Protoplanetary Disks around Newborn Stars @ https://hubblesite.org
• Formation of the Solar System @ universetoday.com

From Twitter : First Solar Cell to break the rules?

• A Twitter follower pointed out this story
• The low down
• Researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have reported the first solar cell that produces a photocurrent that has an external quantum efficiency greater than 100 percent when photoexcited with photons from the high energy region of the solar spectrum.
• Quantum efficiency for photocurrent, usually expressed as a percentage, is the number of electrons flowing per second in the external circuit of a solar cell divided by the number of photons per second of a specific energy (or wavelength) that enter the solar cell
• Significance
• The company’s tiny solar cells, each a dot the size of a ballpoint pen tip, have been validated to convert 41 percent of solar energy to electricity
• They can grow a tiny semiconductor on a substrate and then a machine transfers those cells to a wafer.
• Additional layers are automatically added to the wafer so that a very efficient, triple-junction solar cell is constructed
• Quantum dots, by confining charge carriers within their tiny volumes, can harvest excess energy that otherwise would be lost as heat – and therefore greatly increase the efficiency of converting photons into usable free energy.
• The semiconductor printing technique can be used for many applications, including improving LED lighting performance, better hard drives, or sensors for medical device.
• The company that was chosen to build concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) collector that uses lenses to concentrate light 1,000 times onto its tiny solar cells.
• The mechanism for producing a quantum efficiency above 100 percent with solar photons is based on a process called Multiple Exciton Generation (MEG)
• Multiple Exciton Generation (MEG) is where a single absorbed photon of appropriately high energy can produce more than one electron-hole pair per absorbed photon.
• The first built concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) collector that uses lenses to concentrate light 1,000 times onto its tiny solar cells
• Photons of different colors have different amounts of energy. In the visible spectrum, reds and oranges have less energy, while blues, violets, and ultraviolet photons carry progressively more.
• When high-energy photons hit a semiconducting material in a solar cell, they give up this energy to the semiconductor’s electrons, exciting them from a static position so that they are able to conduct.
• In many cases, high-energy photons—violets and ultraviolets—carry far more energy than is needed to give electrons the nudge to conduct. But this excess energy is lost as heat.
• These solar cells captures some of the excess energy in sunlight normally lost as heat.
• * Of Note*
• The key in making the device, Nozik says, was coming up with a recipe for chemically synthesizing and then processing quantum dots.
• When synthesized, the dots—which are clusters of lead and selenium about 5 nanometers in diameter—end up decorated with long organic molecules that prevent separate dots from clumping together.
• The company’s target to build a system that generates electricity at under 10 cents per kilowatt hour
• Further Reading / In the News
• Peak External Photocurrent Quantum Efficiency Exceeding 100% via MEG in a Quantum Dot Solar Cell Abstract @ sciencemag.org
• Scientists report first solar cell producing more electrons in photocurrent than solar photons entering cell @ physorg.com
• Tiny solar cell dots printed for powerful array @ news.cnet.com
• Solar Cells Capture Lost Energy @ news.sciencemag.orgSolar Cells Capture Lost Energy @ news.sciencemag.org
• Tiny solar cell could make a big difference @ physorg.com
• NREL Scientists Report First Solar Cell Producing More Electrons In Photocurrent Than Solar Photons Entering Cell @ nrel.gov

Space Camp, only for the cool kids

• From a 4th grade listener
• Space Camp Website
• Space camp is 6 days of training
• There are different programs for various ages, and family groups : Space Camp for ages 12–14, Space Academy for ages 15–18, Adult Programs, Family Programs, Educators Programs
• There are also programs for those more interested in high performance flying : Mach I for ages 9–11, Mach II for ages 12–14, Mach III for ages 15–18, Adult Programs, Family Programs
• As alternative, I suggest taking a look at the Challenger Center if there is one near you

*— THE NEWS — *

Earth sized planets discovered!

• The low down
• Prior to this discovery, the smallest known planet orbiting a sun-like star was Kepler–10b with a radius of 1.42 that of Earth, which translates to 2.9 times the volume.
• The star with the new planetary discoveries is a G8 yellow star a little less hot than the Sun and located 950 light-years from Earth.
  +The system has five planets, all circling within a distance roughly equivalent to Mercury’s orbit in our solar system.
• The ordering of the letters in the planet names reflects the time at which the planets were initially discovered.
• Significance
• Both planets discovered are most likely rocky planets much like Earth but have scorching temperares.
• Kepler–20e has an orbital period of 6.1 days and is slightly smaller than Venus, 0.87 times the radius of Earth. The surface temperature is more tha 1,400F [760C] and could melt glass.
• Kepler–20f has an orbital period of 19.6 days and is a bit larger than Earth, 1.03 times the radius of Earth. The temperature at the surface of the planet is about 800F [426C], similar to Mercury.
• * Of Note*
• Kepler–22b discovered earlier this year in the habital zone has the right temperature, but it is too big.
• These planets are the right size but are to hot.
• Normally ground based observations in minute changes in the spectrum of a star are used to determine it’s wobble caused by the planet orbiting.
• These planets are too small to detect a wobble, so a software called Blender was developed by nearly 30 collaborators to run millions of simulations to rule out other sources of stellar dimming.
• The analysis found that Kepler 20-e is 3,400 times more likely to be a planet than a false positive; the ratio for Kepler 20-f is 1,370.
• The Kepler space telescope images 150,000 stars every 30 minutes.
• You too can help sieve through data taken by the NASA Kepler space mission
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : Kepler Discovers First Earth-Sized Planets Outside Solar System
• Kepler Galleries
• Social Media
• Twitter : NASA Kepler @NASAKepler
• Further Reading / In the News
• Kepler Discoveries Page
• Kepler–20 system: 5 planets including two that are Earth-size @ kepler.nasa.gov
• NASA Discovers First Earth-size Planets Beyond Our Solar @ nasa.gov System
• NASA: First Earth-Size Planets Found Outside Our Solar System @ pcmag.com
• What Exoplanets Might Really Look Like @ wired.com
• First Earth-Sized Planets Orbit Distant Star @ news.discovery.com
• Discovered: The First Earth-Sized Worlds Outside Our Solar System @ popsci.com
• It’s a Small World: Kepler Spacecraft Discovers First Known Earth-Size Exoplanets @ scientificamerican.com
• How Did Astronomers Find the New Earth-Size Planets? @ space.com
• First True ‘Alien Earth’ May Be Found in 2012 @ space.com
• Kepler Team Confirms Two Hot Earths @ skyandtelescope.com
• Found! 2 Earth-Size Alien Planets, the Smallest Exoplanets Yet @ space.com
• Kepler finds first earth-size planets beyond our solar system @ physorg.com
• [First Earth-sized planets netted @ sciencenews.org](https://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/337052/title/First_Earth-sized_planets_netted

*— NEWS BYTE — *

Smallest Black hole

• The low down
• Black holes reside at the centres of galaxies and swallow everything that falls into their gravitational clutches such that nothing, not even light, can escape.
• The largest supermassive black holes, capable of swallowing our Solar System whole several times over, were reported just last week
• Significance
• Scientists have now found a black hole that could represent the lower boundary for a black hole’s mass at just three solar masses.
• The distinct pattern of X-ray emission, which resembles the pattern printed on an electrocardiogram in response to a heartbeat
• * Of Note*
• That there are only two possibilities to explain the differences: either the new source is farther away or its mass is lower
• There is a limit to how distant it could be as it would be very unlikely to have it lying outside our Galaxy.
• In addition the fact that its ‘heart’ beats faster is compatible with a lower mass
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : NASA | RXTE Detects ‘Heartbeat’ Of Smallest Black Hole Candidate
• Further Reading / In the News
• NASA’s RXTE Detects ‘Heartbeat’ of Smallest Black Hole Candidate @ nasa.gov
• Smallest black hole just a heartbeat @ astronomynow.com

Plant-eating dinosaur discovered in Antarctica

• The low down
• For the first time, the presence of large bodied herbivorous dinosaurs, Sauropoda, in Antarctica has been recorded.
• Sauropoda is the second most diverse group of dinosaurs, with more than 150 recognized species.
• Significance
• The team’s identification of the remains of the sauropod dinosaur suggests that advanced titanosaurs (plant-eating, sauropod dinosaurs) achieved a global distribution at least by the Late Cretaceous
• The Cretaceous Period spanned 99.6–65.5 million years ago, and ended with the extinction of the dinosaurs.
• A detailed description of an incomplete middle-tail vertebra its distinctive ball and socket articulations, lead the authors to identify it as an advanced titanosaur.
• * Of Note*
• Until now, remains of sauropoda had been recovered from all continental landmasses, except Antarctica.
• Other important dinosaur discoveries have been made in Antarctica in the last two decades.
• Multimedia
• [IMAGE : Pictures and drawings of what was found @ sciencedaily.com(https://images.sciencedaily.com/2011/12/111219102054-large.jpg)
• Further Reading / In the News
• Plant-eating dinosaur discovered in Antarctica @ physorg.com
• Plant-Eating Dinosaur Discovered in Antarctica @ sciencedaily.com

Comet Lovejoy survives it close encounter with the sun

• The low down
• Lovejoy is a sun-grazing (not sun-colliding) comet. That simply means that it makes a very close pass as it goes around the sun. . It’s often close enough to destroy a comet.
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : The End of Comet Lovejoy – Live on the NASA SDO Website
• YouTube VIDEO : Comet Lovejoy
• Further Reading / In the News
• Details on the expected demise of Comet Lovejoy tonight @ geeked.gsfc.nasa.gov
• Lovejoy survived! 2 geeked.gsfc.nasa.gov

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

• * Last time on SciByte*
• SciByte 22-Nov 22
• SciByte 23-Nov 30
• The low down
• Launch Date: Nov. 26, 2011
• On Earth it weights roughly 1,982 lbs [899 kg]
• On Mars is will weight roughly 743 lbs [337 kg]
• Mars it will weigh 3/8 that due to the lower gravity)
• That first of six planned course adjustments had originally been scheduled for Nov. 26. The correction maneuver will not be performed until later in December or possibly January.
• Landing scheduled for : Aug 6, 2012
• * Of Note*
• Already 32 million miles from Earth on its interplanetary trek to Mars, the Curiosity rover has begun collecting useful scientific data about the radiation conditions that astronauts would encounter on the way to the red planet.
• The Radiation Assessment Detector, an instrument mounted the rover, has begun obtaining measurements on energetic particles penetrating the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft.
• The device, about the size of a coffee can and weighing 3.8 pounds, was powered up and started gathering data on Dec. 6, some two weeks ahead of schedule. It will downlink data every 24 hours.
• Scientists are seeing, even inside the spacecraft, about four times higher doses of radiation than the baseline we measured on the launch pad.
• RAD was designed for the science mission to characterize radiation levels on the surface of Mars, but an important secondary objective is measuring the radiation on the almost nine-month journey through interplanetary space, to prepare for future human exploration
• Social Media
• Facebook page for NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover
• Twitter for Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading
• Where in the solar system is Curiosity? @ nasa.gov
• Mars Science Laboratory rover page @ nasa.gov
• • Mars Science Laboratory rover interactive page @ nasa.gov
• Course Excellent, Adjustment Postponed @ nasa.gov
• NASA Launches Most Capable and Robust Rover to Mars @ nasa.gov

Of Note

• Fill that Ebook Reader with free books from NASA in three formats

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

• Dec 25 1758 – 253 years ago – predicted return of Halley’s comet : Clear records of the comet’s appearances were made by Chinese, Babylonian, and medieval European chroniclers dating back to 240 BC. It was not until 1705 that Edmund Halley hypothesized that a number of the observation were the same comet. He predicted it would return in 75.5 years and in 1758 it was first sighted by German farmer and amateur astronomer, Johann Georg Palitzsch. Halley’s orbital period over the last three centuries has been between 75 and 76 years, though it has varied between 74 and 79 years. It also has a retrograde orbit, orbiting in the opposite direction of the planets. It’s shape if vaguely resembles a peanut and measures 9.3 x 4.9 x 4.9 mi [15x8x8 km]. Halley’s comet last appeared in the inner Solar System in 1986 and will next appear in mid–2061.
• Dec 22 1938 – 73 years ago – First coelacanth (re)discovered : Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, curator of the museum of East London, South Africa, discovered the fish among the catch of a local fisherman. She spotted an unusual 5-ft fish in his “trash” fish pile, believed to have been extinct since the end of the Cretaceous period (145.5 to 65.5 million years) The coelacanth was pale mauvy-blue with iridescent silver markings, and they can grow up to 5.9 ft [1.8 m.] The heart of the coelacanth is shaped differently than most modern fish and its structure is that of a straight tube. The coelacanth braincase is 98.5% filled with fat; only 1.5% of the braincase actually contains any brain.Since 1938, Latimeria chalumnae have been found in the Comoros, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, and in iSimangaliso Wetland Park, Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa. YouTUBE Video
• Dec 23 1986 – 25 years ago – Voyager – first non-stop, round- the- world flight without refueling : It was piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager and took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California on December 14, 1986. It flew easterly 24,986 mi [40,211 lm] in a little over 9 days, 3 minutes and on Dec 23 in completed the first non-stop, round- the- world flight without refueling. A cockpit was only roughly the size of a phone booth, which complicated the flight and sleep rotation of the pilots. It returned safely to Edwards Air Force Base in California after travelling 24,986 miles in 216 hours, at an average speed of 115.8 mph.This has since been accomplished only one other time, by Steve Fossett in the Global Flyer. YouTube VIDEO

Looking up this week

• You might have seen …
  Commander of the International Space Station, sends holiday greetings to folks back on Earth
• Spacecraft Monumental Moments of 2011

• Keep an eye out for …

• Wed, Dec 21 : Marks the longest night of the year (in the Northern Hemisphere).

• Thurs and Fri Dec 22–23 : The Ursids meteor shower peak on the Moon-free nights and despite low rates of 10–15 meteors per hour should make for good observations

• Sat, Dec 24 : New moon.

• Sat, Dec 24 : Go out around 8pm and you can spot Orion in the SE, look down for the bright star Sirius, which often twinkles vigorously with vivid, flashing colors.

• More on whats in the sky this week
• Sky&Telescope
• AstronomyNow
• SpaceWeather.com
• HeavensAbove
• StarDate.org

The post Planets & Feedback | SciByte 26 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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

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

]]>

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

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• Grab the SciByte Audible.com pick, The Lost Fleet: Dauntless
• Purchase anything at Think Geek using this link

Higgs-Boson confirmation just around the corner?

• The low down
• The Higgs mechanism explains how most of the known elementary particles obtain their mass and would make up a field of particles stretching the entire universe
• The Higgs particle would be the carrier of that field, and is thought to give mass to other particles, and thus to objects and creatures in the Universe.
• The Higgs boson is a pivotal part of the standard model of particle physics
• The Standard Model concerns all interactions which control dynamics of known subatomic particles but does not incorporate the physics of dark energy nor of the full theory of gravitation
• Significance
• The Higgs theory has been around now for almost 50 years
• Finding the Higgs Boson was one of the main reasons of why the Large Hadron Collider was built
• Finding it would be an enormous scientific breakthrough for physics and would help explain why different particles have different masses.
• This year the LHC has generating 400 trillion proton-proton collisions, almost six times more than expected
• The tricky part is figuring out whether the tracks really are evidence of a Higgs boson – or just unrelated noise.
• Higgs Boson particle are thought to have a mass of between 114 and 185 GeV, gigaelectronvolts. A proton, the positively charged particle in the nucleus in an atom, is 1GeV.
• Reports in July showed tantalizing data spikes between 120 and 140 GeV suggest that the Higgs mass might lie in that range, but the data was not reliable enough to make any scientific claims
• Prior results from particle colliders had effectively ruled out a Higgs outside the range of 114 GeV to 141 GeV.
• On Dec 13, two Large Hadron Collider teams reveal the results of their research, highlighting ten candidates that had shown evidence of Higgs
• Those ten candidates were found from the remains of about 350 trillion collisions using the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) and CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) detectors.
• * Of Note*
• Tuesday’s data will not be confirmed until they are able to produce repeated evidence in future experiments, the confirmation is expected to happen around summer 2012.
• Atlas and CMS said they see “spikes” in their data at roughly the
  same mass: 124–125 gigaelectronvolts (GeV; this is about 130 times as
  heavy as the protons found in atomic nuclei).
• 124GeV = 212 quintillionths of a gram (that’s period followed by 14
  zero’s thena 1)
• ATLAS has observed a signal of a Higgs particle at 125 GeV with a significance level of 3.5 sigma — with 3 being enough to claim evidence but 5 needed for a discovery — and that CMS has seen one at 2.5 sigma
• what we see is consistent either with a background fluctuation or with the presence of the boson
• A level of “five sigma” is required to claim a discovery, meaning there is less than a one in a million chance the data spike is down to a statistical fluke.
• The “three sigma” level represents about the same likelihood of tossing more than eight heads in a row
• Five sigma, on the other hand, would correspond to tossing more than 20 in a row
• Multimedia
• VIDEO : Large Hadron Rap @ YouTube
• VIDEO : NatureNewsteam : Hunting for the Higgs @ YouTube
• IMAGE : Restricting the mass of the Higgs @ nature
• Social Media
• CERN @CERNhttps://twitter.com/#!/cern/
• CERN-approved Android app
• Further Reading / In the News
• LHC: Higgs boson ‘may have been glimpsed’ @ BBC
• CERN physicists find hint of Higgs boson @ cnet
• Scientists Find Higgs Boson Clues, But ‘God Particle’ Hunt Continues @ pcMag
• Scientists excited over hints of finding an elusive particle @ PhysOrg
• Scientists About to Find The Force @ Gizmodo
• Physicists to Make Major ‘God Particle’ Announcement Next Week @ Space.com
• Scientists excited over hints of finding an elusive particle @ PhysOrg
• Has the ‘God Particle’ Been Found? Major Announcement Expected Tuesday @ FoxNews
• LHC to narrow search for Higgs boson @ PhysOrg
• Hints fade of elusive physics ‘God particle’ @ PhysOrg
• Could the Higgs boson explain the size of the Universe? @ PhysOrg
• CERN manages expectations around Higgs rumours @ nature
• Higgs hunt enters endgame @ nature
• Hunting season for Higgs ends @ nature

Tougher than diamond?

• Background
• Superhard materials, are used in many scientific and technological applications, the most famous and widely used of these are diamond and cubic boron nitride
• Both of those are however unstable at high temperatures, which limit their applicability
• Carbon nanotubes, Nanotubes were observed in 1991, are long, hollow structure with the walls formed by one-atom-thick sheets of carbon and are sometimes made of grapene
• Graphene, a material often used in carbon nanotubes is the densest two-dimensional material
• The low down
• Applying pressure to some carbon allotropes, different structural forms of the same element, can change the bonds
• That pressure results in different forms of carbon with novel electronic and mechanical properties
• Since the 1980s, scientists have been synthesizing newer allotropes, including carbon nanotubes, graphene, and fullerenes, all of which have had a significant scientific and technological impact.
• Directly compressing carbon nanotube bundles could synthesize novel metastable (long lived but not truly indefinite stability) carbon allotropes
• This compression results in different forms of carbon with novel electronic and mechanical properties
• Significance
• Scientists have discovered a new carbon polymer that simulations show is hard enough to crack diamond
• A material doesn’t have to be stronger than diamond to be able to crack it, it only need a higher compression strength.
• Compressive strength is the capacity of a material or structure to withstand axially, kind of like wood grain, directed pushing forces.
• The scientists are now using a recently developed technique called the Crystal Structure Analysis by Particle Swarm Optimization, a computational method
• * Of Note*
• Harder, stronger, and the ability to cut along specific axes of a material are all unique physical properties ering various compressed allotropes of carbon that defeat diamond in various ways and some have only been proven in simulation
• There is a long-standing puzzle in astronomy known as the ‘carbon crisis’ in interstellar dust
• Observations by the Hubble telescope reveal carbon dust distortions in light, deep red, that would require more carbon that we have previously thought was there
• Multimedia
• VIDEO : Graphene: Strongest Material on Earth @ YouTube
• IMAGE : T-carbon from different directions @ PhysOrg
• IMAGE : Prediction of a new form of carbon @ PhysOrg
• IMAGE : Superhard structures of carbon found in the calculations @ PhysOrg
• IMAGE : Views of supercell of bct-Carbon @ PhysOrg
• IMAGE : Folding and distorting Carbon atoms @ PhysOrg
• IMAGE : Rotating carbon nanotube gif @ Wikepedia
• Further Reading / In the News
• Superhard carbon material could crack diamond @ PhysOrg
• Structure of new form of super-hard carbon identified @ PhysOrg
• Researchers develop algorithm to predict new superhard crystals @ PhysOrg
• Researchers predict material ‘denser than diamond’ @ PhysOrg
• New carbon allotrope could have a variety of applications @ PhysOrg
• Scientists Discover Material Harder Than Diamond @ PhysOrg

*— NEWS BYTE — *

Tricking the eye in photographs

• The low down
• Humans can quickly detect photo fraud. They can do so in spotting lighting inconsistencies in a doctored photograph
• Significance
• A team at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign set out to extract the 3-D scene information from single images, to allow for seamless object insertion, removal, and relocation
• They created an algorithm that recreates the 3-D geometry and lighting of a scene for an artificial object to be inserted into
• The user defines walls, objects and light source
• The program then adds shadows and highlights to the object before converting it back to 2-D.
• The team can simulate lighting conditions so that the object looks realistic.
• The involves three phases luminaire inference, perspective estimation (depth, occlusion, camera parameters), and texture replacement
• * Of Note*
• Decorators might take a photo of a room and experiment with different furniture and object insertions.
• The entertainment and gaming industries could make use of this as well
• Multimedia
• VIDEO : Rendering Synthetic Objects into Legacy Photographs :
  @ YouTube
• VIDEO : Siggraph 2011 Showreel : @ YouTube
• IMAGE : Examples of the program @ PhysOrg
• Further Reading / In the News
• UIUC team will show can’t-tell photo inserts at Siggraph (w/ video) @ PhysOrg
• Rendering Synthetic Objects into Legacy Photographs
• University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign

Scientific papers from Hubble hit a milestone

• The low down
• Launched : April 24, 1990
• Mass : 24,500 lb / 11,110 kg
• Orbit height : 347 mi / 559 km
• Orbit velocity 25,000 ft/s [7,500 m/s]
• Orbit Period: ~96 min, 14–15 per day
• Obervational Wavelengths : visible light, ultraviolet, near-infrared
• Five space shuttle servicing missions to Hubble from 1993 to 2009 repaired various components of the telescope and upgraded it with ever more powerful instruments.
• Deorbit planned ~2013–2021
• Significance
• Hubble Space Telescope has accumulated 10,000 science papers based on its observations.
• Thousands of astronomers around the world in over 35 countries have been engaged in Hubble research
• The five top referenced science papers are, in order: the search for distant supernovae used to characterize dark energy; the precise measurement of the universe’s rate of expansion; the apparent link between galaxy mass and central black hole mass; early galaxy formation in the Hubble Deep Field; and the evolutionary models for low-mass stars and brown dwarfs.
• The 10,000th paper reports on the identification of the faintest supernova ever associated with a long-duration gamma-ray burst – an intense gusher of high-energy radiation following the death of a star.
• * Of Note*
• Hubble’s archive contains data from over 1 million exposures and the number of science papers written based on Hubble archival data has increased to the point where it has eclipsed the number of papers resulting from new observations.
• Multimedia
• VIDEO : This Week @NASA @ YouTube @ ~7:50
• IMAGE : Hubble Space Telescope Science Publications : @ Space.com
• Social Media
• Hubble @NASA_Hubble
• Further Reading / In the News
• Hubble Space Telescope @ NASA
• Hubble Space Telescope Passes Major Science Milestone @ Space.com
• Here are 10,000 reasons to be excited about deep-space exploration @io9.com
• Hubble Site
• Statistics about Hubble papers from refereed journals
• Hubble Space Telescope science site

The North American “terrible (large) lizard”

• The low down
• North America’s biggest dinosaur has been unearthed
• Alamosaurus sanjuanensis, a cousin of the Diplodocus, once called New Mexico home.
• The Alamosaurus was one of many breeds of long-necked, long-tailed sauropods to roam the continent 69 million years ago.
• Significance
• Paleontologists stumbled upon the bones during a dig in the New Mexico desert back in 2004
• After the full bone had been freed, the trip back to the truck was the hardest part of the entire process, with only two people to move it the 1.2 miles.
• The Alamosaurus vertebra found puts the dinosaur in the same category as other Titanosaurus sauropods discovered in South America
• Titanosaurus was documented in a recent issue of Acta Palaeontologica Polonica published on Dec. 6.
• A full skeleton has yet to be found
• * Of Note*
• The name Alamosaurus comes from Ojo Alamo, the geologic formation in which it was found and which was, in turn, named after the nearby Ojo Alamo trading post
• New questions have emerged as to the behavior of sauropods in North America
• These dinosaurs are found primarily in the south, only getting as far north as Utah, leading some researchers to wonder about their preferred environment
• Perhaps they actually emigrated in from South America during this time, and maybe they just haven’t got as far north quite yet
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : Discover the Alamosaurus:
• YouTube VIDEO : Tour the MNS Fossil Prep Lab
• YouTube VIDEO : Taking Alamosaurus for a Walk
• IMAGE : A speculative representation on how the Alamosaurus sanjuanensis could have been @ en.wiki
• IMAGE : Researchers pose with the complete reconstruction of the neck vertebra of an Alamosaurus
• Further Reading / In the News
• JOURNAL OF PALEONTOLOGY
• Acta Palaeontologica Polonica
• A JUVENILE SPECIMEN OF THE SAUROPOD DINOSAUR ALAMOSAURUS SANJUANENSIS FROM THE UPPER CRETACEOUS OF BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, TEXAS @ Journal of Palaeontology. 76(1): 156–172
• North America’s Biggest Dinosaur Unearthed in New Mexico @ FoxNews
• https://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/07/9282139-meet-americas-biggest-dinosaur

Polly want an explanation for how parrots talk

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

Learning by the Matrix/Chuck way

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

Lunar eclipse, with a twist

• The low down
• A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes behind the Earth so that the Earth blocks the Sun’s light from striking the Moon.
• This can only happen during a full moon when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are aligned exactly, or very closely so, with the Earth in the middle.
• This total lunar eclipse offered a rare chance, for most places in the United States and Canada, to see a strange celestial sight
• A sight that celestial geometry seems to dictate can’t happen
• Significance
• Selenelion, selenehelion, and occurs when both the sun and the eclipsed moon can be seen at the same time.
• Atmospheric refraction causes astronomical objects to appear higher in the sky than they are in reality
• When you see the sun sitting on the horizon, it is not there really.
• It’s actually below the edge of the horizon, but our atmosphere acts like a lens and bends the sun’s image just above the horizon, allowing us to see it.
• We end up seeing the sun for a few minutes in the morning before it has actually risen and for a few extra minutes in the evening after it actually already has set.
• The same holds true with the moon, as well.
• There was be a short window of roughly 1-to–6 minutes when it was possible to simultaneously spot the sun rising in the east-southeast and the eclipsed full moon setting in the west-northwest
• * Of Note*
• This was the last total lunar eclipse of 2011, and the last one until April 15, 2014 (SciByte 155)
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : “Impossible” Eclipse
• YouTube VIDEO : Impossible “selenelion” eclipse
• YouTube VIDEO : “Impossible” Eclipse
• YouTube VIDEO : ScienceCasts: A Super-Sized Lunar Eclipse
• Further Reading / In the News
• A Blood-Red Moon @ Universe Today
• Saturday’s Lunar Eclipse Will Include ‘Impossible’ Sight @ foxnews
• Total Lunar Eclipse On Saturday, Western States Get Rare View @ npr
• How to catch tomorrow morning’s lunar eclipse @ io9

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

DAWN Spacecraft reachest closts orbit to the asteroid Vesta

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

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

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

Looking up this week

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

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

]]> https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/14177/curiosity-rover-scibyte-21/ Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:49:34 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=14177 We take a look at the Curiosity Rover launching this week, Europa’s water, bugs, Voyager, telescopes and as always take a peek back into history!

The post Curiosity Rover | SciByte 22 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]>

We take a look at the Curiosity Rover launching this week, Europa’s water, bugs, Voyager, telescopes and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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*— LAUNCHING THIS WEEK — *

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory “Curiosity” Rover

• The low down
• Length : 9 feet / 2.8 meters
• Total Weight : 1,984 pounds / 900kg
• Weight of Scientific Instruments = 176 pounds / 80kg
• Launch vehicle Atlas V 541
• Mission duration 668 Martian sols (686 Earth days)
• Landing August 5, 2012 (planned)
• Power Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG), which were also used by the successful Mars landers Viking 1 and Viking 2 in 1976 [Plutonium–238]
• Designed to produce 125 watts of electrical power at the start of the mission, after 14 years, the electrical power output is down to 100 watts
• “Rover Compute Element” (RCE), contain radiation hardened memory to tolerate the extreme radiation environment from space and to safeguard against power-off cycles
• The onboard computer has 256 kB of EEPROM, 256 MB of DRAM, and 2 GB of flash memory
• Not going to use the ‘airbag’ landing that the other rovers have used
• Parachute slows the rover’s descent toward Mars [Diameter of 51 feet /16 meters]
• Rocket-powered backpack will lower the rover on a tether during the final moments before landing YouTube Video – @
• Instruments
• MSL Entry, Descent and Landing Instrumentation (MEDLI)
• MEDLI isn’t one of Curiosity’s 10 instruments
• will measure the temperatures and pressures the heat shield experiences as the MSL spacecraft streaks through the Martian sky
• will tell engineers how well the heat shield, and their models of the spacecraft’s trajectory, performed
• Mars Descent Imager (MARDI)
• small camera located on Curiosity’s main body, will record video of the rover’s descent to the Martian surface
• will click on a mile or two above the ground (when Curiosity jettisons its heat shield)
• instrument will then take video at five frames per second until the rover touches down
• footage will help the MSL team plan Curiosity’s Red Planet rovings
• should also provide information about the geological context of the landing site
• Mast Camera (MastCam)
• Capture high-resolution color pictures and video of the Martian landscape
• Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI)
• will function much like a high-powered magnifying glass
• instrument will take color pictures of features as tiny as 12.5 microns — smaller than the width of a human hair
• sits on the end of Curiosity’s five-jointed, 7-foot (2.1-meter) robotic arm
• Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)
• makes up about half of the rover’s science payload
• The rover’s robotic arm will drop samples into via an inlet on the rover’s exterior
• it has three separate instruments — a mass spectrometer, a gas chromatograph and a laser spectrometer
• it can search for carbon-containing compounds, the building blocks of life as we know it
• it can also look for other elements associated with life on Earth (hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, ect)
• Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin)
• will identify different types of minerals on Mars and quantify their abundance
• help scientists better understand past environmental conditions on the Red Planet
• has an inlet on Curiosity’s exterior to accept samples delivered by the rover’s robotic arm
• shine a fine X-ray beam through the sample, identifying minerals’ crystalline structures based on how the X-rays diffract
• Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam)
• will fire a laser at Martian rocks from up to 30 feet (9 meters) away and analyze the composition of the vaporized bits
• help the mission team determine from afar whether or not they want to send the rover over to investigate a particular landform
• sits on Curiosity’s mast, along with a camera and a small telescope
• Three spectrographs sit in the rover’s body, connected to the mast components by fiber optics
• spectrographs will analyze the light emitted by excited electrons in the vaporized rock samples
• Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS)
• sits at the end of Curiosity’s arm, will measure the abundances of various chemical elements in Martian rocks and dirt
• will shoot out X-rays and helium nuclei
• the barrage will knock electrons in the sample out of their orbits, causing a release of X-rays
• Scientists will then be able to identify elements based on the characteristic energies of these emitted X-rays
• Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN)
• near the back of Curiosity’s main body, it will help the rover search for ice and water-logged minerals beneath the Martian surface
• The instrument will fire beams of neutrons at the ground, then note the speed at which these particles travel when they bounce back.
• Hydrogen atoms tend to slow neutrons down, so an abundance of sluggish neutrons would signal underground water or ice
• should be able to map out water concentrations as low as 0.1 percent at depths up to 6 feet (2 m)
• Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD)
• will measure and identify high-energy radiation of all types on the Red Planet, from fast-moving protons to gamma rays
• Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS)
• Located partway up Curiosity’s mast, it is a Martian weather station
• it will measure atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, air temperature, ground temperature and ultraviolet radiation
• It will integrate all the weather data it collects into daily and seasonal reports
• Significance
• Curiosity will be five times as large, and carry more than ten times the mass of scientific instruments as the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit or Opportunity
• Primary goal of the mission is to search for clues as to whether Mars was ever habitable
• The radiation detector is designed specifically to help prepare for future human exploration of Mars, measuring
• It will perform the first-ever precision landing on Mars
• It will be able to continue operating during the Martian winter, and will be able to handle the cold Martian winters more heartily
• the launch was delayed one day to allow time for the team to remove and replace a flight termination system battery
• The launch day of Nov 26 has a one hour and 43 minute launch window opens at 10:02 a.m. EST
• * Of Note*
• WATCH LAUNCH LIVE ONLINE @ JPL.NASA.GOV
• Mentioned in J@N Red Rover the send your name to Mars Participation Maps US and World
• Curiosity was selected, (in a public poll on the NASA website) which was submitted by a sixth-grader, Clara Ma, from Kansas in an essay contest
• An instrument on NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity can check for any water that might be bound into shallow underground minerals along the rover’s path.
• The generator for the instrument scouting for water will be able to emit a total of about 10 million pulses during the mission, with about 10 million neutrons at each pulse.
• We will be able to see how the shallow subsurface may differ from what the rover sees at the surface
• The rover based instrument measuring water will also offer calibration for the measurements that the gamma-ray and neutron detectors on Odyssey orbiting Mars shows
• Multimedia
• WATCH LAUNCH LIVE ONLINE @ JPL.NASA.GOV
• VIDEO @ YouTuve.com : Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity Rover) Mission Animation
  
• VIDEO @ YouTuve.com : Mars in a Minute: Is Mars Really Red?
• VIDEO @ YouTuve.com : Building Curiosity: Landing System Drop Test
• VIDEO @ YouTuve.com : Mars Curiosity Rover – First Test Drive
• VIDEO @ YouTuve.com : Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover Animation
• VIDEO @ YouTuve.com : Curiosity Update: Curiosity’s Stunt Double Takes a Spin
• ‘Curiosity Cam’ @ Ustream provided live video from the construction
• VIDEO : Curiosity Rover’s Perculiar Mars Landing Described @ Space.com
• VIDEO : New Mars Rover Powered by Plutonium @ Space.com
• VIDEO : New Mars Science Rover Landing Site – Birds Eye View @ Space.com
• VIDEO : Tumbleweed Rovers Could Explore Mars @Discovery News Videos
• Photo Gallery: Last Look at Mars Rover Curiosity Before Launch @Space.com
• Photos: Curiosity Rover, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory @ Space.com
• Photos: Gale Crater on Mars, Curiosity Rover’s Landing Site @ Space.com
• Photos of Mars: The Amazing Red Planet @ Space.com
• Slide Show : When Discovery News Met Mars Rover ‘Curiosity’ @ Discovery.com
• Infographic : Inside Huge Mars Rover’s Sky Crane Landing @ Space.com
• Photo : Mock up’s size comparison @ NASA.gov
• Rendition Size comparison – landers @ NASA.gov
• Photo of parachute to be used @ NASA.gov
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• NASA JPL @NASAJPL
• Further Reading / In the News
• 11 Amazing Things NASA’s Huge Mars Rover Can Do @ Space.com
• Complete Coverage: NASA’s Huge New Rover Launching to Mars @ Space.com
• Mars Science Laboratory @ marsprogram.jpl.NASA.gov
• MSL launch delayed to Saturday, Nov. 26 @ NASA.gov
• A Mars Rover Named “Curiosity” @NASA.gov
• NASA’s Curiosity Set to Search for Signs of Martian Life @ universetoday.com
• 7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars @ Space.com
• New NASA missions to investigate how Mars turned hostile @ PhysOrg.com
• Journey to the Red Planet: A Mars Missions Timeline @ Space.com
• Mars rover carries device for underground scouting @ PhysOrg.com
• Mars Rover Curiosity Gets Sealed Up @ Discovery.com
• Could New Rover’s Wheels Deliver Germs to Mars? @ Discovery.com
  
• Curiosity Rover Testing in Harsh Mars-like Environment @ UniverseToday.com
• Encapsulating Curiosity for Martian Flight Test @ UniverseToday.com
• Assembling Curiosity’s Rocket to Mars @ UniverseToday.com
• Closing the Clamshell on a Martian Curiosity @ UniverseToday.com
• Curiosity Rover Bolted to Atlas Rocket – In Search of Martian Microbial Habitats @ UniverseToday.com
• NASA’s Next Mars Rover Hoisted Atop Rocket @ Space.com
• Curiosity Mars Rover Almost Complete @ UniverseToday.com
• Mars Science Laboratory @ Wikipedia.org

Jupiter’s ice-moon Europa

• The low down
• Patches of broken ice unique to the moon have puzzled scientists for over a decade
• Some have argued they are signs of a subterranean ocean breaking through, while others believe that the crust is too thick for the water to pierce
• studies of ice formations in Antarctica and Iceland have provided clues to the creation of these puzzling features
• Significance
• New research on Jupiter’s ice-covered moon Europa indicates the presence of a subsurface lake buried beneath frozen mounds of huge jumbled chunks of ice
• It’s estimate that one such lake contained as much water as all of the North America’s Great Lakes combined, about 1.5 miles (3 kilometers) beneath the surface.
• In Iceland, volcanoes lay beneath the ice. Their heat melts the base of glaciers and ice sheets, causing the surface to buckle in on itself and allowing stress fractures to form
• There’s no evidence for volcanoes on Europa, and the makeup of the ice is likely different from Earth’
• On Europa, it could be warm ice plumes coming up from below.
• Several liquid lakes are likely to exist near the surface today
• * Of Note*
• The material cycled into the ocean via these lakes may make Europa’s ocean even more habitable than previously imagined and the lakes may even be habitats themselves
• scientists finally have a model that demonstrates how Europa’s deep liquid ocean interacts with the ice near its surface
• Multimedia
• VIDEO From the Earth to (Jupiter’s) moon @ Space.com
• Europa’s “Great Lake.” @ Space.com
• Europa @Space.com
• Artist Rendition of Europa’s surface @ NASA/JPL-Caltech
• Topographic data shows the chaos terrain elevations above the surrounding surface. Credit NASA
• Chaos terrain on Europa points to subsurface lakes. (NASA/JPL/Ted Stryk)
• Europa’s “chaos terrain” @ YouTube.com
• Social Media
• NASA JPL @NASAJPL
• [UTAustin @UTAustin
• NASA’s Juno Mission @NASAJuno
• Further Reading / In the News
• Europa’s Hidden Great Lakes May Harbor Life @ UniverseToday
• ScienceShot: Icy Europa Looking More Inviting @ Science Magazine
• Jupiter Moon’s Buried Lakes Evoke Antarctica @ Space.com
• Scientists Find Evidence for Subsurface ‘Great Lake’ on Europa @ John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
• NASA Probe Data Show Evidence of Liquid Water on Icy Europa @ NASA
• Scientists Find Evidence for “Great Lake” on Europa and Potential New Habitat for Life @ University of Texas
• NASA Juno mission to Jupiter
• NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

*— NEWS BYTE — *

Why are flies attracted to beer?

• The low down
• Insects use their taste system to glean important information about the quality and nutritive value of food sources
• Taste becomes important only after the fly makes physical contact with food
• A fly first locates food sources using its odor receptors – crucial for its long-range attraction to food
• Then, after landing on food, the fly uses its taste system to sample the food for suitability in terms of nutrition and toxicity
• Significance
• Flies are attracted to beer because they detect glycerol, a sweet-tasting compound that yeasts make during fermentation.
• A receptor (a protein that serves as a gatekeeper) that is associated with neurons located in the fly’s mouth-parts is instrumental in signaling a good taste for beer
• * Of Note*
• How do you get information from the chemical environment to the brain – not just in flies but other insects as well
• Social Media
• UC Riverside @UCRiverside
• Further Reading / In the News
• The buzz around beer @ PhysOrg
• University of California – Riverside

Amoeba-Sized Insect

• The low down
• The fairy wasp (Megaphragma mymaripenne), which at a mere 200 micrometers in length is one of the world’s smallest animals [roughly 2 strands of human hair / or 10 could fit between between pins in DIP]
• Roughly the size of an amoeba, the wasp shrink so small that it can avoid most predators and invade the eggs of other insects
• When the scientist compared the neurons of adult and pupae fairy wasps, he discovered that more than 95% of adult neurons lack a nucleus.
• Significance
• suggest that while a complete set of neurons is needed to grow, far less are required to live
• Further Reading / In the News
• ScienceShot: Amoeba-Sized Insect Is Missing Some Pieces @ Science Magazine

Voyager tune-up

• The low down
• Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are each equipped with six sets, or pairs, of thrusters to control their movement
• Voyager 2 is currently using the two pairs of backup thrusters that control the pitch and yaw motion of the spacecraft
• Significance
• NASA’s Deep Space Network personnel sent commands to the Voyager 2 spacecraft Nov. 4 to switch to the backup set of thrusters that controls the roll of the spacecraft
• This will allow engineers to turn off the heater that keeps the fuel line to the primary thruster warm, saving about 12 watts of power
• Voyager 1 changed to the backup thrusters in 2004 and is now using all three sets of its backup thrusters
• * Of Note*
• The change will allow the 34-year-old spacecraft to reduce the amount of power it requires to operate, so that the spacecraft can continue to operate for another decade even as its available power continues to decline.
• Still, at the rate of decay, the Voyager spacecraft won’t have sufficient electric power to its instruments sometime by the mid–2020
• Multimedia
• Voyager 1 and 2 are now in the ‘Heliosheath’ @ NASA
• The Golden Record
• Voyager Images & Video @ NASA
• Voyager 2 flyby Animation – Neptune and Triton (1989) @YouTube
• Social Media
• NASAVoyager2 @NASAVoyager2
• Further Reading / In the News
• Voyager The Interstellar Mission @ NASA
• Voyager 2 to Switch to Backup Thruster Set @ NASA
• Venerable Voyager 2 Spacecraft Gets a Tune-up 14 billion Kilometers From Earth @ UniverseToday
• What is the Golden Record? @ NASA

To telescope or not to telescope for the holidays

• Types of Telescopes
• Newtonian reflector telescopes are good for observations of faint deep sky objects, such as Galaxies and Nebulae
• Refractor telescopes are good for achieving high power and contrast when viewing the planets and the moon
• Dobsonian Telescopes are one of the best choices for a general telescope
• Decoding Binocular Names
• defines how much magnification they provide and also the diameter of the big (or objective) lenses at the front of the binoculars.
• For example: 7×50 binoculars would yield a magnification of 7-times, with an objective lens diameter of 50 millimeters.
• Higher power isn’t everything it narrows the field of view, magnifies the dancing of the stars when the instrument is held in the hands, and is that much heavier
• In general
• Take note of how dark the skies in your backyard, or how far the person would have to go to find dark skies
• If possible get a hands on feel for what you want to purchase, keep in mind who’s going to be moving it around
• Planispheres and star charts are your friend. Find ones that are clearly labeled and have the types of objects on them that the person would be interested in
• Find a local club. Show up to a meeting, talk to the people…
• *Further Reading *
• The Holidays Are Coming! A Beginner’s Guide to Telescopes @ UniverserToday.com
• Dobsonian Telescopes @ Meteor Watch
• Newtonian Telescope @ Meteor Watch
• Refractor Telescopes @ Meteor Watch
• How to Choose a Telescope @ Sky&Telescope
• Buying a telescope @ Astronomy
• How to Choose a Telescope @ Discovery.com
• How to Choose a Telescope @ astronomy-education.com
• Choosing Binoculars @ astronomy-education.com

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back this week

• Nov 24, 1639 – 372 years ago : First Transit of Venus : Jeremiah Horrocks, an English astronomer and clergyman, measured a transit of Venus, the first ever to be observed.
• Nov 24, 1859 – 152 years ago : The Origin of Species : The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Darwin’s groundbreaking book, was published in England to great acclaim
• Nov 26, 1885 – 126 years ago : First meteor photo : The first meteor trail was photographed in Prague, Czechoslovakia. On the next evening, 27 Nov, he declared “meteors were falling so thickly as the night advanced that it became almost impossible to enumerate them.”
• Nov 23, 1897 – 114 years ago : Pencil Sharpener : patent was issued for a pencil sharpener to its inventor , John Lee Love of Fall River, Mass.
• Nov 25–27, 1922 – 89 years ago : Tut’s tomb approached : Archaeologist Howard Carter opened the two doorways to the tomb of King Tutankamun. The sepulchral chamber itself was not opened until 16 Feb 1923
• Nov 29, 1961 – 50 years ago : Animal astronaut : Enos, a five-year-old chimpanzee, became the first chimp to orbit the Earth on a 2-orbit ride for 3-hr 20 min. During the flight, Enos carried out the lever-pulling performance and psychological tests that he had trained on for the past 16-months. NASA Animals in Space
• Nov 27, 2001 – 10 years ago : Sodium atmosphere : Sodium was detected in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet by the Hubble Space Telescope. The planet, was the first transiting planet discovered (5 Nov 1999). It was later seen to have Oxygen, Carbon, and Hydrogen in it’s atmosphere. Osiris / HD 209458b

Looking up this week

• You might have seen …

• In arctic countries like Norway, they saw the last sunrise/sunset until January

• While sunspot activity has remained high, solar activity has been low recently

• Keep an eye out for …

• Wed, Nov 23 : The Moon will be at perigee, its closest point to Earth for its current orbit. It will pass less than 224,000 miles away, or about 15,000 miles closer than its average distance.

• Fri, Nov 25 : Antarctic Solar Eclipse – The Moon will pass in front of the sun, slightly off-center, producing a partial solar eclipse visible from Antarctica, Tasmania, and parts of South Africa and New Zealand. Maximum coverage occurs about 100 miles off the coast of Antarctica where the sun will appear to be a slender 9% crescent

• Sat, Nov 26 : At twilight, low in the SW sky you can see the thin crescent moon, and to the upper left is Venus.

• More on whats in the sky this week

• Sky&Telescope

• AstronomyNow

• SpaceWeather.com

• HeavensAbove

• StarDate.org

The post Curiosity Rover | SciByte 22 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/13418/space-station-and-lizards-scibyte-19/ Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:35:47 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=13418 We take a look at the Space Station resupply mission, dinosaurs, Mars, Snake Oil, Asteroids, cryptography, and take another peek at what’s up in the sky.

The post Space Station and Lizards | SciByte 19 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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Hello everyone and welcome back to SciByte!

We take a look at the Space Station resupply mission, dinosaurs, Mars, Snake Oil, Asteroids, cryptography, and take another peek at what’s up in the sky this week.

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The Master Swtich: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

Space Station Re-Supply Mission

• The low down

• Progress 45 cargo ship successfully launched from Kazakhstan on Oct. 30, 2011, bound for the ISS.

• Progress 45 will automatically link up with the ISS at the Pirs Docking Compartment on Nov. 2

• Progress 45 is carrying nearly 3 tons of supplies to the ISS, including food, water, clothing, spare parts, fuel, oxygen and science experiments for use by the resident crews.

• Deliver 1,653 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen and air, 926 pounds of water and 3,108 pounds of spare parts, experiment hardware and other supplies

• Significance

• Soyuz rocket booster is used for both the Progress cargo resupply missions and the Soyuz manned capsules

• If this Progress flight had failed, the ISS would have had to be left in an uncrewed state for the first time since continuous manned occupation began more than 10 years ago and would have significantly increased the risk for survival of the ISS in the event of a major malfunction and no human presence on board to take swift corrective action.

• Multimedia

• Successful Launch for Soyuz Flight @ NASA TV

• Further Reading / In the News

• Success ! Launch Video of Crucial Russian Rocket to ISS puts Human Flights back on Track

• First Progress Launch Since Accident Looms Large for Space Station Program

• Russian Space Agency Sets Dates for Resuming Progress, Soyuz Launches

• Progress Crash Investigation Update

• ISS Crew Provides Light-Hearted Look at Current Space Flight Plight

• Cause of Progress Crash May Have Been Determined

• International Space Station Could be De-Crewed by November

• Managers Still Assessing How Progress Crash Will Affect ISS Operations

• Breaking: “Emergency Situation” as Russian Progress Re-Supply Ship Fails

— NEWS BYTE —

Migrating Dinosaurs

• The low down
• studying chemical variations in the teeth of the chewing-challenged sauropod
• When animals drink water, the oxygen in that water gets incorporated into the blood stream and eventually into tooth enamel
• water from a mountain tarn and water from a lowland swamp will have different amounts of a particular form, or isotope, of oxygen that has two extra neutrons in its nucleus
• Significance
• oxygen isotopes extracted from the tooth enamel of eight fossils remains from the western United States, and then compared the enamel isotope levels to those of minerals found in nearby sediments
• isotopic variation suggests, that they were moving around
• Multimedia
• By comparing the levels of a chemical tracer found in the enamel of sauropod teeth
• Social Media
• Twitter account for Colorado College @ColoradoCollege
• Further Reading / In the News
• Giant dinosaurs may have migrated

Mars feels the Suns Wrath

• The low down
• A bright CME blasted off the sun Oct. 22nd, heading for Mars. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab expected the cloud to reach the Red Planet on Oct. 26th
• Significance
• Mars is constantly losing part of its atmosphere to space and pressure from solar wind pulses is a significant cause.
• unlike Earth, Mars has no planet-wide magnetic field to redirect the atmosphere-eroding solar wind around and away from the planet
• How does it manage to have any atmosphere at all? Mars depends on comet impacts, polar dry ice and perhaps underground water that de-gasses over time to keep the red planet from being entirely airless
• It is believed Mars suffered a cataclysmic impact event in its early history that damaged the planet’s internal “dynamo.” Therefore, its magnetosphere was shut down and any residual magnetic field acts as mini-magnetic “umbrellas.”
• Multimedia
• predicted solar system path of the Mars-directed CME in the Space Weather Laboratory simulation
• CME launched toward Mars orbit on Oct. 22, as seen here by the LASCO instrument on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (NASA/ESA)
• NASA Spacecraft Photographs Avalanches on Mars
• Avalanches on North Polar Scarps @NASA.gov
• Dust Devils on Mars from the rovers @ NASA.gov
• Social Media
• Twitter account for Space Weather @spaceweather
• Twitter account for iNtegrated Space Weather Analysis System NASAiSWA
• Further Reading / In the News
• Martian Air Blown Away by Solar Super Wave @ Discovery.com
• Mars Feels Sun’s Wrath @ FoxNews.com
• Martian Air Blown Away by Solar Super Wave @ Discovery.com

Snake Oil

• The low down
• snakes naturally enlarge their own hearts by some 40 percent in two to three days after eating one of their huge but rare meals
• A mix of compounds called fatty acids identified in pythons can spur an exercise-like boost in the size of mouse hearts
• three fatty acids identified in the blood of Burmese pythons boosted the mass of a heart chamber in lab mice by 10 percent in just a week
• Significance
• Enlarging heart tissue can be a danger sign for humans
• the growth seen in the mice looks more like an athlete’s healthful heart growth than a heart disease patient’s worrisome one
• These ubiquitous compounds perform a variety of functions in reptiles and humans alike. Just the right mix of three of them — myristic, palmitic and palmitoleic acid — turns out to trigger a quick upsizing in heart muscle cells
• many questions remain about how the snakes’ fatty acids actually work to trigger heart muscle cells to bulge
• Further Reading / In the News
• Python’s heart-restoring elixir works in mice

Story of a Molten Asteroid

• The low down
• Lutetia and its asteroid cousins are thought to be relics from the early solar system
• rocky fossils that have recorded a history of the solar system’s early days in their pits and fractures
• In July 2010, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft flew within 3,200 kilometers of Lutetia, peered at the asteroid and attempted to read its stony story.
• Images from the OSIRIS camera reveal that parts of Lutetia’s surface are around 3.6 billion years old. Other parts are young by astronomical standards, at 50–80 million years old.
• Astronomers estimate the age of airless planets, moons, and asteroids by counting craters.
• Lutetia’s weak gravity tugged on Rosetta. The slight change in Rosetta’s path was reflected in radio signals received back at Earth
• Significance
• Scientists now think it is a leftover planetary seed, booted into the main belt
• Lutetia turns out to have one of the highest densities of any known asteroid: 3400 kg per cubic metre.
• The density implies that Lutetia contains significant quantities of iron, but not necessarily in a fully formed core.
• The only explanation appears to be that Lutetia was subjected to some internal heating early in its history but did not melt completely and so did not end up with a well-defined iron core.
• Multimedia
• ESA Rosetta Images of Lutetia
• ESA Rosetta Images of Lutetia
• Social Media
• Twitter account for ESA Science Team @esascience
• Twitter Results for [#Lutetia](https://twitter.com/#%21/search?q=%23Lutetia)
• Further Reading / In the News
• Chronicles of Lutetia
• Asteroid Lutetia: postcard from the past @ ESA

Cracking a 250 year old puzzle

• The low down
• Code breaking still relies on good guesses and flashes of insight more than brute force
• more than three centuries after it was devised, the 75,000-character Copiale Cipher finally has been broken.
• To break the cipher the team tracked down the original manuscript, and transcribed a machine-readable version of the text, using a computer program created by Knight to help quantify the co-occurrences of certain symbols and other patterns.
• reveals the rituals and political leanings of an 18th-century secret society in Germany
• handwritten message in abstract symbols and Roman letters meticulously covering 105 yellowing pages hidden in the depths of an academic archive.
• rituals detailed in the document indicate the society had a fascination with eye surgery and ophthalmology
• Knight now is targeting other coded messages, including ciphers sent by the Zodiac Killer and other famous unsolved codes
• Significance
• There are quite a number of antique documents that remain mysterious, despite cryptologists’ best efforts
• opens up a window for people who study the history of ideas and the history of secret societies
• Historians believe that secret societies have had a role in revolutions
• * Of Note*
• Translation remains a tough challenge for artificial intelligence
• Copiale cipher. Translation from German (August 2011)
• Multimedia
• • USC Scientist Cracks Mysterious “Copiale Cipher” @ YouTube
• Social Media
• Twitter account for University of Southern California USC
• Further Reading / In the News
• Computer Scientists Crack “Unbreakable” Code, Find Minutes of 250-Year-Old Secret Society
• Computer Scientist Cracks Mysterious ‘Copiale Cipher’ @ ScienceDaily.com
• For more information about the method of decipherment
• Modern Algorithms Crack 18th Century Secret Code @ Wired.com

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back this week

• Nov 06, 1572 – 439 years ago : Tycho’s Supernova – A supernova was first noted in the W-shaped constellation of Cassiopeia but was seen by many observers throughout Europe and in the Far East. For two weeks it was brighter than any other star in the sky and visible in daytime. By month’s end, it began to fade and change colour, from bright white to yellow and orange to faint reddish light. It was visible to the naked eye for about 16 months
• Nov 08, 1895 – 116 years ago : X-rays – Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays during an experiment at Würzburg University
• Nov 07, 1908 – 103 years ago : Single atom – Prof. Ernest Rutherford announced in London that he had isolated a single atom of matter
• Nov 07, 1918 – 93 years ago : Goddard rocket – Goddard demonstrated a tube-launched solid propellant rocket, using a music stand as his launching platform,. Goddard began work for the Army in 1917 to design rockets to aid in the war effort.
• Nov 04–05, 1922 – 89 years ago : Tutankhamen’s tomb – The entrance to King Tutankhamen’s tomb was discovered in Egypt in the Valley of the Kings where the English archaeologist Howard Carter had been making extended excavations. One of Carter’s labourers stumbled upon a stone step, the first step in a sunken stairway that ran down into the rock. Howard Carter excavated a further 11 steps and exposed a large part of a plastered and sealed doorway to Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, Egypt. The tomb was the most complete ancient Egyptian royal tomb ever found.
• Nov 07, 1940 – 71 years ago : Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse – at approximately 11:00 am, the first Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge collapsed due to wind-induced vibrations. Situated on the Tacoma Narrows in Puget Sound, near the city of Tacoma, Washington, the bridge had only been open for traffic a few months. Video of Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse “Gallopin’ Gertie”
• Nov 02, 1947 – 64 years ago : Spruce Goose – Howard Hughes piloted his huge wooden airplane, known as the Spruce Goose on its only flight, which lasted about a minute over Long Beach Harbor in California. It was the first test of a U.S. plane with eight engines. Wing span was 319 feet, 11 inches. Originally conceived by Henry J. Kaiser, a steelmaker and builder of Liberty ships, the aircraft was designed and constructed by Hughes and his staff. The original proposal for the enormous, 400,000-pound wooden flying boat, with its spectacular 320-foot wingspan, came from the U.S. government in 1942. The entire airframe and surface structures are composed of laminated wood (primarily birch, not spruce).
• Nov 03, 1957 – 54 years ago : Laika – Sputnik 2 was launched, with the first live animal sent into space – a Siberian husky dog, Laika (“barker” in Russian). By design, the craft which was built in only 4 weeks. Biological data, the first data of its kind, was transmitted back to Earth while she lived. The data showed scientists how Laika was adapting to space – information important to the imminent planned manned missions. The 508-kg satellite remained in orbit 162 days. The true cause and time of Laika’s death was not made public until 2002, Laika likely died within hours after launch from overheating.
• Nov 05, 1963 – 48 years ago : Vikings in America – Archaeologists found Viking ruins in Newfoundland predating Columbus by 500 years. Leif Ericson, Icelandic explorer, second son of Eric the Red, is believed by most historians to have been the first European to reach the North American mainland.

Looking up this week

• You might have seen …

• A small comet dove into the sun during the late hours of Oct. 30th. Watch the movie to see what SOHO saw

• Keep an eye out for …

• Wednesday, Nov. 2 : 1st Quarter Moon

• Thursday, Nov. 3 : Look lower left of the Moon this evening, by two or three fist-widths at arm’s length, for Fomalhaut, the Autumn Star.

• Friday, Nov. 4 : Jupiter’s Great Red Spot should be crossing the planet’s central meridian.

• Sat November 5, 2011 : The planet Saturn is quite low in the east at first light. It looks like a golden star, with the true star Spica to its lower right. Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is visible through modest telescopes as a tiny “star” quite near Saturn.

• Mars, the red planet, is a morning object among the stars of Leo during November

• In the Southern Hemisphere : Mercury and Venus get together in the evening sky

• Early November : The Taurids meteor shower is active in early November and although rates are not high with no well-defined peak, around five meteors per hour can be expected with hopefully some unusually bright and slow moving events. Although Eastern Europe and the Middle East are most favoured, it is essential that observers head out as soon as the Sun is a few degrees below the horizon also be aware you will

• Saturday, Nov. 5 : Daylight-saving time ends (for most of North America) at 2 a.m. Sunday morning. Clocks “fall back” an hour.

• More on whats in the sky this week

• Sky&Telescope

• AstronomyNow

• SpaceWeather.com

• HeavensAbove

• StarDate.org

The post Space Station and Lizards | SciByte 19 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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