Subglacial lake – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Mon, 22 Feb 2016 02:46:57 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.3 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/cropped-favicon-32x32.png Subglacial lake – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 Strange Bacteria & Higgs-Boson | SciByte 85 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/33356/strange-bacteria-higgs-boson-scibyte-85/ Tue, 12 Mar 2013 20:45:31 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=33356 We take a look at dinosaur fight scars, possible sub-glacial bacteria, a robot that can throw, update on the Higgs-Boson, and more!

The post Strange Bacteria & Higgs-Boson | SciByte 85 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]>

post thumbnail

We take a look at dinosaur fight scars, possible sub-glacial bacteria, a robot that can throw, update on the Higgs-Boson, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

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

Show Notes:

Dino-Eat-Dino World

  • Scientists say that a scar recently found on the face of a duckbill dinosaur received after a close encounter is the first clear case of a healed dinosaur wound
  • The lucky dinosaur was an adult species of duck billed dinosaur, Edmontosaurus annectens, that lived about 65 to 67 million years ago
  • The Scar
  • A teardrop-shaped patch of fossilized skin about 5×5 inches (12×14 centimeters) that was discovered with the creature\’s bones and is thought to have come from above its right eye
  • Some scientists say that the scar pattern is nearly identical to those found on modern reptiles, including iguanas
  • Other scientists are not convinced, however, they say that the skin injury was not caused by a predator attack
  • They say the size of the scar is relatively small, and it would also be consistent with the skin being pierced in some other accident such as a fall.
  • Skull Injury
  • Paleontologist at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History say the skull also showed signs of trauma, and from the size and shape of the marks on the
  • They determined that the marks on the skull, are more consistent with Tyrannosaur-bitten bones
  • Prior to this discovery, scientists knew of one other case of a dinosaur wound
  • In that case however, it was an unhealed wound that scientists think was inflicted by scavengers after the creature was already dead
  • Escape
  • Although escaping from a T. rex is something that we wouldn\’t normally think might happen, duckbill dinosaurs were not without defenses.
  • They travelled in herds, grew up to 30 feet (9 meters) in length, and could swipe their hefty tail or kick its legs to take down predators, and traveled in herds
  • They also had very powerful running muscles, which would have made them difficult to catch once they\’d taken flight
  • The Puzzle Pieces
  • Figuring out the details of the story is part of what makes paleontology exciting
  • Though still unproven, it is thought that both the skin wound and the skull injury were sustained during the same attack, possibly a T. Rex
  • The wound \”was large enough to have been a claw or a tooth,\”
  • It\’s very likely that this particular dinosaur wasn\’t the only dinosaur to have scars, whether from battle wounds or accidents
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Scarred Duckbill Dinosaur Escaped T. Rex Attack | News.NationalGeographic.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Strange Bacteria From Under the Polar Cap? … Or Momentary Hope

  • Last Time on SciByte
  • SciByte 33 | Sub Glacial Lakes & Updates – Sub Glacial Lakes (February 14, 2012)
  • Collecting the Sample
  • This discovery comes from samples collected in an expedition in 2012 where a Russian team drilled down to the surface of Lake Vostok, the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica
  • Last year the Russian team drilled almost 2.34 miles (4 kilometers) to reach the lake and take the samples.
  • The lake is believed to have been covered by ice for more than a million years but has kept its liquid state.
  • The Sample, the Truth and Fiction
  • A Russian scientist at the genetics laboratory at the Saint Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics had believed they have found a wholly new type of bacteria in the mysterious subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica
  • He claimed that one particular form of bacteria whose DNA was less than 86 percent similar to previously existing forms, as far as DNA goes, basically zero
  • The head of the genetics laboratory at the same institute said on Saturday that the strange life forms were in fact nothing but contaminants.
  • New samples of water will be taken from Lake Vostok during a new expedition in May, if the same bacteria are found then the team will be sure that they have found new life on Earth that exists in no database
  • On the “Extra-Terrestrial” Scale
  • \”If this had been found on Mars everyone would have undoubtedly said there is life on Mars. But this is bacteria from Earth.\”
  • Exploring environments such as Lake Vostok allows scientists to discover what life forms can exist in the most extreme conditions
  • Whether life could exist on some other bodies in the solar system.
  • Saturn\’s moon Enceladus and the Jupiter moon Europa as they are believed to have oceans, or large lakes, beneath their icy shells.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Russia admits no new life form found in Antarctic lake | phys.org
  • Russia finds \’new bacteria\’ in Antarctic lake | Phys.org

Cheap Interplanetary Satellites

  • Two CubeSats, designed by NASA\’s JPL and three university partners, are soon to go where no CubeSats have gone before: beyond Earth orbit.
  • CubeSats are tiny satellites, some no bigger than four inches (10 cm) on each side, sent into orbit as secondary payloads on other launch vehicles
  • The Mission
  • The space agency’s twin satellites will be the first CubeSats to leave Earth\’s orbit for interplanetary space
  • If the interplanetary test launch succeeds, CubeSats could someday blanket the solar system, conducting cheap, high-risk missions to comets, asteroids, moons and planets
  • The INSPIRE project has been approved by NASA to launch sometime between 2014 and 2016, but a specific launch vehicle hasn\’t been selected.
  • Just where the pioneering CubeSats will go is still unclear, however, since it’s not known yet which model rocket will be used for launch
  • The first mission will be basically an escape trajectory in some unknown direction
  • Since they won\’t have much propulsion or scientific instrumentation, the INSPIRE craft are mainly just a test of whether tiny machines can survive the harsh environment of space.
  • The Challenges
  • One of the challenges of the project is figuring how the tiny satellites will communicate with Earth.
  • CubeSats are far cheaper than a traditional space mission but they lack room for complex communications systems or large power sources.
  • As they away from Earth they need larger antennas to communicate with the low-powered craft
  • In addition once they spacecraft leaves the protective magnetic field surrounding Earth, it\’s at risk of failure from solar radiation
  • Traditional satellites are built with more expensive \”radiation-hardened\” components
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Tiny Satellites\’ Big Mission: Going Beyond Earth Orbit | Space.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

“BigDog” Can Throw Things Now Too

— Updates —

Higgs-Boson

  • Last time on SciByte
  • SciByte 53 | Higgs-Boson (July 10, 2012)
  • SciByte 37 | Solar Storms and Higgs Boson
  • Physicists told a conference in La Thuile, Italy, that more analysis is needed before a definitive statement can be made on the Higgs-Boson
  • Inch-by-Inch
  • Since scientists\’ announcement last July that they had found a particle likely to be the Higgs, much data has been analysed, and its properties are becoming clearer
  • Key to a positive identification of the particle is a detailed analysis of its properties and how it interacts with other particles
  • Spin-Zero?
  • The existence of spin angular momentum is where particles are observed to possess angular momentum that cannot be accounted for by orbital angular momentum alone
  • Experiments indicate that the elementary particles are not made up of smaller particles rotating around a center point so the spin of an elementary particle is therefore seen as a truly intrinsic physical property, akin to the particle\’s electric charge and rest mass.
  • Current theories are that these elementary particles spin is simply a physical property, like electrical charge and mass
  • Rotating a spin-1/2 particle by 360 degrees does not bring it back to the same quantum state, but to the state with the opposite quantum phase; this is detectable, in principle, with interference experiments. To return the particle to its exact original state, one needs a 720 degree
  • Rotating a spin-2 particle 180 degrees can bring it back to the same quantum state and a spin-4 particle should be rotated 90 degrees to bring it back to the same quantum state.
  • A spin 0 particle can be imagined as sphere which looks the same after whatever angle it is turned through.
  • Several teams researching the particle determining the Higgs-Boson spin say it must be spin-zero
  • All the analysis conducted so far strongly indicates spin-zero, but it is not yet able to rule out entirely the possibility that the particle has spin-two
  • The Future …?
  • Until physicists can confidently observe the particle\’s spin, the particle will remain Higgs-like
  • New research will have to stop as the Large Hadron Collider is upgraded, but physicists will still have plenty of data to analyze
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Particle looking \’more and more\’ like Higgs, LHC scientists say | Phys.org

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • March 16, 1867 : 146 years ago : Antiseptic surgery : The Lancet published a paper by Joseph Lister, the first of a series of articles in the Lancet on his discovery of antiseptic surgery: On a New Method of Treating Compound Fractures, Abscess, &c. Lister applied Louis Pasteur\’s idea that the microorganisms causing gangrene might be controlled with chemical solutions. Since the use carbolic acid (phenol) was known as means of deodorizing sewage, Lister tested the results of using a solution of it for spraying instruments, on surgical incisions, and applied to dressings. Upon finding this procedure substantially reduced the incidence of gangrene, Lister published his results in series of articles in the Lancet on the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery

Looking up this week

The post Strange Bacteria & Higgs-Boson | SciByte 85 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Arthritis & Hawking’s Voice | SciByte 80 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/31326/arthritis-hawkings-voice-scibyte-80/ Tue, 05 Feb 2013 22:11:50 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=31326 We take a look at measuring arthritis, Stephen Hawking’s voice, building moons with a game, an update on subglacial lakes, viewer feedback, and much more.

The post Arthritis & Hawking’s Voice | SciByte 80 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]>

post thumbnail

We take a look at measuring arthritis, Stephen Hawking’s voice, building moons with a game, an update on subglacial lakes, viewer feedback, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

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

Support the Show:

Audible Book: Download Star Wars: The Truce at Bakura

Show Notes:

Arthritis

  • What if your doctor could actually listen to your body, monitoring the way your knees sound as they bend and flex
  • A new, noninvasive, and low-cost method for the early detection and monitoring of osteoarthritis (arthritis caused by wear and tear) may be on its way
  • It suggests that detecting this friction, may points to new research directions for getting to the root cause of arthritis
  • Osteoarthritis
  • The degeneration of cartilage is the most common cause of osteoarthritis: The pads wear away, leaving bone grinding against bone
  • Researchers have found that it isn\’t just any kind of friction that leads to the irreversible wear and tear on the material
  • It is currently believed that a high-friction force, or \’coefficient of friction,\’ is the primary factor in surface wear and damage, new research has found is that this is not the case
  • The critical feature is not a high-friction force, but what is known as \”stick-slip\” friction, or, sometimes, \”stiction.\”
  • Both are characterized by surfaces that initially stick together, and then accelerate away quickly once the static friction force is overcome
  • Stick-Slip Friction
  • Stick-slip is a common phenomenon, that is responsible for everything from computer hard drive crashes and automobile failures, to squeaking doors and music
  • The same thing happens with a violin string, even if you\’re pulling the bow steadily, it\’s moving in hundreds or thousands of little jerks per second, which determine the sound you hear
  • Each little jerk, no matter how submicroscopic, is an impact, and over time the accumulation of these impacts can deform surfaces, causing irreparable damage-first microscopically, then growing to macroscopic
  • It\’s not easy to tell the difference between types of friction at the microscopic level
    Smooth-sliding joints might feel the same as those undergoing stiction, or the even more harmful stick-slip, especially in the early stages of arthritis
  • Measuring the Types of Friction
  • An instrument called a Surface Forces Apparatus (SFA), measures the adhesion and friction forces between surfaces-in this case cartilage, the pad of tissue that covers the ends of bones at a joint.
  • By studying patterns of friction between cartilage pads, researchers have discovered a different type of friction that is more likely to cause wear and damage
  • When measured with an ultra-sensitive and high-resolution instrument like the Surface Forces Apparatus (SFA), each type of friction revealed its own characteristic profile
  • Smooth-sliding joints yielded an almost smooth constant line, friction force or friction trace
  • Stiction shows up as a peak, as the \”sticking\” was being overcome, followed by a relatively smooth line
  • Stick-slip shows the jagged sawtooth profile of two surfaces repeatedly pulling apart, sticking, and pulling apart again
  • These measurements could be recorded by placing an acoustic or electric sensing device around joints, giving a signal similar to an EKG
  • These reading could be a good way to measure and diagnose damage to the cartilage, to measure the progression, or even the early detection of symptoms related to arthritis which has been a priority for many years
  • The Future
  • Scientists will continue their work by studying synovial fluid, the lubricating fluid between two cartilage surfaces in joints
  • Synovial fluid plays a major role in whether or not the surfaces wear and tear, and the synergistic roles of the different molecules (proteins, lipids, and polymers) all involved in lubricating and preventing damage to our joints.
  • There are a number of directions to take, both fundamental and practical and currently it looks as if there is need to focus research on finding ways to prevent stick-slip motion, rather than lowering the friction force
  • Multimedia
  • Image Steady-state sliding profiles illustrate the different types of friction | UCSB
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Study of friction reveals clues about arthritis | phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Stephen Hawking\’s Voice

  • Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has long relied on technology to help him connect with the outside world despite the degenerative motor neuron disease he has battled for the past 50 years
  • A computer scientist indicated at this year\’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that he and his team may be close to a breakthrough that could boost the rate at which the physicist communicates, which has fallen to a mere one word per minute in recent years.
  • Current SetUp
  • Hawking\’s current setup includes a tablet PC with a forward-facing Webcam that he can use to place Skype calls
  • A black box beneath his wheelchair contains an audio amplifier, voltage regulators and a USB hardware key that receives the input from an infrared sensor on Hawking’s eyeglasses, which detects changes in light as he twitches his cheek
  • A hardware voice synthesizer sits in another black box on the back of the chair and receives commands from the computer via a USB-based serial port
  • Intel\’s Interface Technology
  • Intel has since the late 1990s supplied Hawking with technology to help the scientist express himself
  • For the past decade Hawking has used a voluntary twitch of his cheek muscle to compose words and sentences one letter at a time that are expressed through a speech-generating device connected to his computer.
  • Each tweak stops a cursor that continuously scans text on a screen facing the scientist.
  • In late 2011 Hawking reached out to inform the Intel cofounder that the physicist’s ability to compose text was slowing and inquiring whether Intel could help.
  • Possibly Improving Hawkings Interface Technology
  • They met with Hawking early last year around the time of the latter’s 70th birthday celebration in Cambridge, where the Intel CTO was one of the speakers
  • Intel chief technology officer noted that Hawking can actually make a number of other facial expressions as well that might also be used to restore the scientist’s ability to communicate at five words per minute, or even increase that rate to 10
  • Intel is now working on a system that can use Hawking’s cheek twitch as well as mouth and eyebrow movements to provide signals to his computer they have built a new, a character-driven interface in modern terms that includes a better word predictor
  • The company is also exploring the use of facial-recognition software to create a new user interface for Hawking that would be quicker than selecting individual letters or words
  • Even providing Hawking with two inputs would give him the ability to communicate using Morse code
  • Other Plans for This Technology
  • Intel’s work with Hawking is part of the company’s broader research into smart gadgets as well as assistive technologies for the elderly
  • The key to advancing smart devices-which have been at a plateau over the past five or six years-is context awareness
  • Devices will really get to know us the way a friend would, understanding how our facial expressions reflect our mood
  • Intel’s plan for identifying personal context requires a combination of hardware sensors-camera, accelerometer, microphone, thermometer and others with software that can check one’s personal calendar, social networks and Internet browsing habits, to name a few.
  • One approach to “pervasive assistance” is the Magic Carpet, a rug that Intel and GE developed with embedded sensors and accelerometers that can record a person’s normal routine and even their gait, sounding an alert when deviations are detected.
  • Such assistance will anticipate our needs, letting us know when we are supposed to be at an appointment and even reminding us to carry enough cash when running certain errands
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Chipmaker Races to Save Stephen Hawking’s Speech as His Condition Deteriorates | scientificamerican.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Moon Games

  • \”Selene: A Lunar Construction GaME\”
  • Is an online game that allows players to build their own moon and sculpt its features has won big praise in science art competition and received an honorable mention in the 2012 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge
  • The game measures how and when players learn as they discover more about how the Earth\’s moon formed and by extension, the solar system.
  • Playing the Game
  • In the first round, players aim asteroids of varying sizes, densities, and radiations so that they collide with one another
  • Too much force, and the rocks ricochet off one another and even if you overshoot your target, the gravity of the growing moon may tug just enough to pull the new piece into the pack
  • After all of the small asteroids have melted together to form a smooth new moon, it\’s time to scratch up the surface
  • Players can then aim asteroids of varying sizes at the body, and select areas where lava breaks through the crust
  • The players moon is constantly compared to the real-life one, and players strive to make as close a match as possible
  • When they look at the moon, players are seeing what actually created those features and makes moon observations more meaningful
  • Because the accretion and surface-sculpting processes for the moon echo that of the rest of the planets, players also develop an understanding of how the early solar system formed
  • Primary Goal
  • One of the primary goals of Selene is to allow the team to analyze the learning process, which means the game requires a login, and for minors, parental permission must be given.
  • Analyzation of the data takes time, but it is able to provide a quick overview of a persons game play so you can tell from looking at your data what your experiences were
  • That under-the-hood ability to study learning is why the project was so attractive in terms of funding to NASA and the National Science Foundation
  • History and Future
  • A prototype of the game was developed by CyGaMEs in May of 2007, and the first version was released in 2010. bit the game is constantly being improved as the understanding of the learning process grows
  • The team is also looking at expanding it to mobile platforms in the near future.
  • The team says that the recognition is of course a great honor and encouragement – but more importantly it may drive more players to the website so that we can collect more data about how participants learn
  • At the same time, more people can learn about how the moon formed, growing their understanding of the nearest celestial body.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Mountain State Science – Lunar Games | WVPublicBroadcasting
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Selene.cet.edu
  • Online Game on How Earth\’s Moon Formed Nabs Honors | Space.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE —

Kepler back on track

  • Last time on SciByte
  • SciByte 78 | Dyscalculia & the Flu- SPACECRAFT UPDATE – Kepler | January 22, 2013
  • What happened
  • Kepler went into a protective \”safe mode\” on Jan. 17 after engineers detected elevated friction levels in one of its reaction wheels
  • Engineers spun the wheels down to zero speed, hoping the break would redistribute lubricant and bring the friction back down to normal
  • The update
  • NASA\’s Kepler space telescope mission officials announced on Jan. 29 that it has resumed its search for alien planets after resting for 10 days to work out kinks in its attitude control system,
  • Though it will take time to determine if the problem is solved daily health and status checks with the spacecraft were normal during the safe mode
  • Over the next month, the engineering team will review the performance of reaction wheel #4 before, during and after the safe mode to determine the efficacy of the rest operation
  • The wheel has acted up before without causing serious problems with a variety of friction signatures, none of which look like reaction wheel #2, failed in July 2012, and all of which disappeared on their own after a time
  • Social Media
  • NASA Kepler @NASAKepler
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • NASA\’s Planet-Hunting Kepler Spacecraft Recovering from Glitch | Space.com

— Updates —

Antarctic Subglacial lake

  • Last time on SciByte
  • SciByte 33 | Sub Glacial Lakes & Updates | February 14, 2012
  • The search continues for life in subglacial Lake Whillans, 2,600 feet below the surface of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet-but a thrilling preliminary result has detected signs of life
  • **Sampling the Water
  • At 6:20am on January 28, four people in sterile white Tyvek suits tended to a winch winding cable onto the drill platform
  • One person knocked frost off the cable as it emerged from the ice borehole a few feet below
  • A gray plastic vessel, as long as a baseball bat, filled with water from Lake Whillans, half a mile below.
  • The bottle was hurried into a 40-foot cargo container outfitted as a laboratory on skis
  • Some of the lake water was squirted into bottles of media in order to grow whatever microbes might inhabit the lake
  • What Has Been Seen
  • When lake water was viewed under a microscope, cells were seen: their tiny bodies glowed green in response to DNA-sensitive dye.
  • Although this was the first evidence of life in an Antarctic subglacial lake, cultures could require weeks to produce results
  • Minerals in the Water
  • The half mile of glacial ice sitting atop Lake Whillans is quite pure-derived from snow that fell onto Antarctica thousands of years ago.
  • It contains only one-hundredth the level of dissolved minerals that are seen in a clear mountain creek, or in tap water from a typical city
  • However a sensor lowered down the borehole showed that dissolved minerals were far more abundant in the lake itself
  • The fact that we see high concentrations is suggestive that there’s some interesting water-rock-microbe interaction that’s going on
  • Microbes, in other words, might well be munching on minerals under the ice sheet
  • Munching on Minerals?
  • Lake bacteria could live on commonly occurring pyrite minerals that contain iron and sulfur
  • They would obtain energy by using oxygen to essentially “burn” that iron and sulfur, similar to the way that animals use oxygen to slowly burn sugars and fats
  • The team will perform experiments to see whether microbes taken from the lake metabolize iron, sulfur, or other components of minerals
  • Where Does the Oxygen Come From?
  • Oxygen comes from water melting off the base of the ice sheet-maybe a few penny thicknesses of ice per year
  • When you melt ice, you’re liberating the air bubbles trapped in that ice that’s 20 percent oxygen
  • The Future
  • In order to conclusively demonstrate that Lake Whillans harbors life, the researchers will need to complete more time-consuming experiments showing that the cells actually grow
  • Dead cells can sometimes show up under a microscope with DNA-sensitive but weeks or months will pass before it is known whether these cells represent known types of microbes, or something never seen before
  • The team will also analyze the DNA of those microbes to see whether they’re related to rock-chewing bacteria that are already known to science.
  • Taking What We Learn
  • Antarctica isn’t the only place in the solar system where water sits concealed in the dark beneath thick ice.
  • Europa and Enceladus (moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively) are also thought to harbor oceans of liquid water.
  • What is learned at Lake Whillans could shed light on how best to look for life in these other places
  • Multimedia
  • Image Gallery U.S. Team Penetrates Subglacial Lake Whillans | DiscoverMagazine.com
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • First Evidence of Life in Antarctic Subglacial Lake : The Crux | blogs.discovermagazine.com

World’s largest prime number

  • The number, 2 multiplied by itself 57,885,161 times, written mathematically as 257,885,161-1
  • It is the first prime discovered in four years and has 17,425,170 digits

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Finding an observatory

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • **Drilling Prep – “Pre-Load” test*
  • Curiosity drove about 3.5 meters to reach the John Klein outcrop that the team chose as the 1st drilling site, a shallow depression known as ‘Yellowknife Bay’
  • There is widespread evidence for repeated episodes of the ancient flow of liquid water near her landing site inside Gale Crater on Mars.
  • The Curiosity team placed its drill onto a series of four locations on a Martian rock and pressed down on it with the rover\’s arm, in preparation for using the drill, a \”Pre-load\” test
  • The next step was an overnight pre-load test, to gain assurance that the large temperature change from day to night at the rover\’s location does not add excessively to stress on the arm while it is pressing on the drill
  • Air temperature plunges from about 32 degrees Fahrenheit (zero degrees Celsius) in the afternoon to minus 85 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 65 degrees Celsius) overnight
  • The temperature swing, this large rover\’s arm, chassis and mobility system grow and shrink by about a tenth of an inch (about 2.4 millimeters), a little more than the thickness of a U.S. quarter-dollar coin
  • Drilling Prep – “Drill-on-Rock”
  • A \”drill-on-rock checkout\” will use the hammering action of Curiosity\’s drill briefly, without rotation of the drill bit, for assurance that the back-and-forth percussion mechanism and associated control system are properly tuned for hitting a rock
  • The bit in the rotary-percussion drill of NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity left its mark in a target patch of rock on Feb. 2, 2013, the test only used the hammering or percussive action of the drill, not rotary action.
  • The length of the gray divot cut by the drill bit is about two-thirds of an inch (1.7 centimeters)
  • Drilling Prep – upcoming “Mini Drill” test
  • Another preparatory test, called \”mini drill,\” will precede the full drilling
  • The mini drill test will use both the rotary and percussive actions of the drill to generate a ring of rock powder around a hole
  • This will allow for evaluation of the material to see if it behaves as a dry powder suitable for processing by the rover\’s sample handling mechanisms
  • The \”mini-drill\” is designed to produce a small ring of tailings, powder resulting from drilling the surface of the rock while penetrating less than eight-tenths of an inch (2 centimeters)
  • Other notes
  • The Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) was also placed in contact with the ground to determine the chemical composition of the rock drill test site and possible calcium sulfate vein and investigate its hydration state.
  • This will be the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars and Curiosity can drill to a depth of about 2 inches (5 cm) into rocks
  • Ultimately a powdered and sieved sample about half an aspirin tablet in size will be delivered to the SAM and CheMin analytical labs on the rover deck.
  • Multimedia
  • Preparatory Test for First Rock Drilling by Mars Rover Curiosity | Mars Science Laboratory: Images
  • Drill Bit Tip on Mars Rover Curiosity, Head-on View | Mars Science Laboratory: Images
  • Drill Bit Tip on Mars Rover Curiosity, Side View | Mars Science Laboratory: Images
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Curiosity Hammers into Mars Rock in Historic Feat | universetoday.com
  • Mars Science Laboratory: Weekend Test on Mars Was Preparation to Drill a Rock | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
  • Historic First Use of Drill on Mars Set for Jan. 31 – Curiosity’s Sol 174 | UniverseToday.com
  • Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity Maneuver Prepares for Drilling | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
  • NASA\’s Curiosity Rover Poised to Drill Into Mars | Space.com | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Feb 06, 1971 : 42 years ago : Golf on the Moon : Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard takes a few shots at some golf balls while on the moon. Near the end of the second moonwalk, and just before entering the lunar module for the last time, Shepard (an avid golfer) attached a 6-iron golf club to the end of a sample collecting tool. Despite thick gloves and a stiff suit that forced him to swing the club with one hand only, he hit two golf balls. The first landed in a nearby crater. The second was hit squarely, and in the one-sixth gravity of the moon, Shepard said it traveled \”miles and miles and miles.\” Then the U.S. Apollo IV astronauts prepared to head back to Earth after a 33-hour stay on the moon. The golf club is on display at the U.S. Golf Association headquarters in Far Hills, N.J.
  • YouTube APOLLO 14 Golf Shot On The Moon | MoonInGoogleEarth

Looking up this week

The post Arthritis & Hawking’s Voice | SciByte 80 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]>