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Mars Base

NASA - Curiosity Rover Hits Paydirt - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...curiosity20130315.html

scibyte86 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 17 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • This week the Curiosity science team released its initial findings from its first ever drilled sample on Mars
  • Curiosity obtained her first drill sample and passed that sample on to her onboard analytical lab instruments, called CheMin and SAM
  • These powerful instruments tell us about what minerals are present in these rocks and whether they contain the ingredients necessary to sustain life as we know it.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • When we combine what we have learned from our remote sensing and contact science instruments with the data that's coming in from CheMin and SAM, we get a picture of an ancient watery environment, which would have been habitable had life been present in it.
  • the information that we're getting from the CheMin instrument, tells us that the minerals that are present in this lakebed sedimentary rock at John Klein are very different from just about anything we've ever analyzed before on Mars
  • they tell us that the John Klein rock was deposited in a fresh water environment
  • This is an important contrast with other sedimentary environments that we've visited on Mars, like the Meridiani Planum landing site where the Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, has been operating since 2004.
  • At that site, the sedimentary rocks record evidence of an environment that was only wet on a very intermittent basis, and when it was, the waters that were there were highly acidic, very salty, and not favorable for the survival of organic compounds.
  • direct contrast to the fresh water environment we're seeing here at the John Klein Site
  • The SAM instrument is telling us that these rocks contained all of the ingredients necessary for a habitable environment
  • We found carbon, sulfur and oxygen, all present and a number of other elements in states that life could have taken advantage of.
  • these few tablespoons of powder from a Martian rock have provided the Curiosity science team with an exciting new dataset
Mars Base

Distant planets' atmospheres revealed | Atom & Cosmos | Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...t_planets_atmospheres_revealed

scibyte86 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 15 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Astronomers have gotten the most detailed look yet at the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system
  • The study is among the first to directly analyze the chemical makeup of an exoplanet
  • In the past, astronomers inferred the existence of exoplanets and their gases by looking for subtle changes in the light streaming from the planet’s star
  • ...42 more annotations...
  • Now, with improved instruments, a team
  • has detected light coming directly from a planet light-years away
  • The data have high enough resolution to reveal not only the presence but the abundance of carbon monoxide and water in the planet’s atmosphere
  • Such information could shed light on how the planet formed
  • studies could also reveal the presence of life on a distant planet, but the planet’s size and orbit have already ruled it out as a habitable world
  • In 2008
  • the first image of a multiplanet system outside the solar system, showing three gas giants orbiting the star HR 8799
  • HR 8799 is about 130 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Pegasus
  • The planets are scorching hot, making them bright enough for astronomers to detect directly
  • In 2010, the researchers imaged a fourth planet around HR 8799
  • In the new study
  • focused on one of these planets, HR 8799c.
  • Five to 10 times as massive as Jupiter, HR 8799c sits about eight times farther away from its star than Jupiter does from the sun
  • Because of that great distance, the astronomers could block the star’s light and record infrared light
  • Because different gases absorb and emit light in distinct ways, the team could identify carbon monoxide and water but found no methane, which scientists had thought might be present.
  • In another new study
  • researchers simultaneously collected infrared light from the atmospheres of all four planets
  • A team led by
  • an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, found hints of ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and acetylene in the planets’ atmospheres
  • The chemistry of each planet varies
  • different from anything in our own solar system
  • Although the teams looked at different wavelengths of light, which pick up different types of molecules, the two studies appear consistent
  • by peering at just one planet, Konopacky’s team obtained more detailed data that allowed the researchers to get a sense of how much carbon and oxygen is in HR 8799c’s atmosphere
  • Knowing the ratio of carbon to oxygen in the atmosphere may reveal how the planet formed
  • Astronomers have two competing theories of how planets arise from the disk of gas and dust encircling a young star
  • In the gravitational instability model, some of the gas and dust suddenly clumps and collapses, simultaneously creating a planet’s core and atmosphere
  • In this scenario, the chemical composition of a planet should match that of its star
  • In the other model, known as core accretion, planet building is a two-step process
  • First, material from the disk accumulates into a core.
  • Later, the core captures gases swirling in the disk to form an atmosphere.
  • In this case, the carbon-to-oxygen ratio of the planet may differ from the star because the accretion of cores may deplete the disk of certain elements
  • Compared with its star, HR 8799c appears to have slightly more carbon relative to oxygen, suggesting the planet originated via core accretion
  • surmise that when the disk around HR 8799 formed, water froze into particles of ice.
  • The bits of ice collided to form the planet’s core, leaving behind little water vapor, and therefore less oxygen, when the planet accumulated its atmosphere later on
  • Other researchers are not convinced by this conclusion
  • “We don’t really understand planetary formation enough to make a strong case either way,”
  • the data from both new studies may help astronomers refine their simulations of planetary formation
  • astronomers have directly imaged planets around three distant stars
  • researchers are poised to capture light from many more planets
  • Project 1640,
  • is looking for Jupiter-sized planets around some 200 stars
  • “Ultimately, with better instruments, people will be able to use these methods on Earthlike planets.”
Mars Base

Microbes May Slim Us Down After Gastric Bypass - ScienceNOW - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...robiomes-surgical-weight-.html

scibyte88 WeightLoss

shared by Mars Base on 28 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • In many people with type 2 diabetes, the disease vanishes almost immediately after surgery, too quickly to be explained by the gradual weight loss that happens later
  • Patients also describe not being as hungry, or craving foods like salad that they hadn't liked much before
  • Because it bypasses part of the stomach and small intestine, the surgery alters the intestinal environment, changing elements such as pH and bile concentrations
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Another important question
  • is whether the transplants will have the same effect in animals who weren't raised in a sterile environment and who already have their own gut microbiome
  • These animals would more closely mimic people undergoing gastric bypass surgery
Mars Base

New Kind of "Runt" Supernovae Could be Lurking Unseen - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...rnovae-could-be-lurking-unseen

scibyte88 Supernova

shared by Mars Base on 27 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Until now, supernovae have come in two main versions
  • In one scenario, a huge star, 10 to 100 times more massive as our Sun, collapses causing a colossal stellar explosion
  • Type Ia supernovae, occurs when material from a parent star streams onto the surface of a white dwarf. Over time, so much material falls onto the white dwarf that it raises the core temperature igniting carbon and causing a runaway fusion reaction. This event completely disrupts the white dwarf and results in a colossal stellar explosion
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Now astronomers have found a third type that is fainter and less energetic than a Type Ia. Called a Type Iax supernova
  • essentially a mini supernova
  • only about one-hundredth as bright as their supernova siblings
  • calculates that Type Iax supernovae are about as third as common as Type Ia supernovae
  • The researchers also did not find them in elliptical galaxies, filled with older stars, suggesting that Type Iax supernovae come from young star systems
  • team identified 25 examples of this new type of supernova
  • Based on observations, the team found that the new Type Iax supernovae come from binary star systems containing a white dwarf and a companion star that has burned all of its hydrogen, leaving an outer layer that is helium rich
  • not sure what triggers the Type Iax supernova
  • One explanation involves the ignition of the outer helium layer from the companion star. The resulting shockwave slams into the white dwarf and disrupts it, causing the explosion.
  • Alternately, the white dwarf might ignite first due to the overlying helium shell it has collected from the companion star.
  • it appears that in many cases the white dwarf survives the explosion unlike in a Type Ia supernova where the white dwarf is completely destroyed
  • Supernovae explosions release so much energy as heat and light that they outshine entire galaxies for brief periods of time
  • The extremely hot conditions naturally create new heavier elements, such as gold, lead, nickel, zinc and copper
  • Type Iax supernovas aren’t rare, they’re just faint
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: Remaining Martian Atmosphere Still Dynamic - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte89 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 09 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Evidence has strengthened this month that Mars lost much of its original atmosphere by a process of gas escaping from the top of the atmosphere
  • Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument analyzed an atmosphere sample
  • using a process that concentrates selected gases
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • The results provided the most precise measurements ever made of isotopes of argon in the Martian atmosphere
  • found
  • the clearest and most robust signature of atmospheric loss on Mars
  • Isotopes are variants of the same element with different atomic weights
  • SAM found that the Martian atmosphere has about four times as much of a lighter stable isotope (argon-36) compared to a heavier one (argon-38)
  • This removes previous uncertainty about the ratio in the Martian atmosphere from 1976 measurements from NASA's Viking project and from small volumes of argon extracted from Martian meteorites
  • The ratio is much lower than the solar system's original ratio, as estimated from argon-isotope measurements of the sun and Jupiter
  • This points to a process at Mars that favored preferential loss of the lighter isotope over the heavier one
  • Curiosity measures several variables
  • with the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS),
  • daily air temperature has climbed steadily since the measurements began eight months ago and is not strongly tied to the rover's location
  • humidity has differed significantly at different places along the rover's route
  • Trails of dust devils have not been seen inside Gale Crater
  • REMS sensors detected many whirlwind patterns during the first hundred Martian days of the mission, though not as many as detected in the same length of time by earlier missions
  • Curiosity will be drilling into another rock where the rover is now, but that target has not yet been selected. The science team will discuss this over the conjunction period
  • For the rest of April, Curiosity will carry out daily activities for which commands were sent in March, using DAN, REMS and the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD).
  • ChemCam reveals a complex chemical composition of the dust that includes hydrogen, which could be in the form of hydroxyl groups or water molecules
Mars Base

Dog sniffs out grammar | Psychology | Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...Dog_sniffs_out_grammar

scibyte95

shared by Mars Base on 22 May 13 - No Cached
  • Chaser isn’t just a 9-year-old border collie
  • She’s a grammar hound.
  • In experiments directed by her owner
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • Chaser demonstrated her grasp of the basic elements of grammar by responding correctly to commands such as “to ball take Frisbee” and its reverse, “to Frisbee take ball.”
  • The dog had previous, extensive training to recognize classes of words including nouns, verbs and prepositions
  • Throughout the first three years of Chaser’s life, Pilley and a colleague trained the dog to recognize and fetch more than 1,000 objects by name
  • researchers also taught Chaser the meaning of different types of words, such as verbs and prepositions
  • Chaser learned that phrases such as “to Frisbee” meant that she should take whatever was in her mouth to the named object.
  • Exactly how the dog gained her command of grammar is unclear
  • suspects that
  • first mentally linked each of two nouns she heard in a sentence to objects in her memory. Then
  • held that information in mind while deciding which of two objects to bring to which of two other objects.
  • Chaser started sentence training at age 7. She stood facing a pair of objects she knew by name
  • An experimenter would say, for instance, “to ball take Frisbee.” In initial trials, the experimenter pointed at each item while saying its name.
  • After several weeks of training, two experiments conducted
  • had to choose an object from one pair to carry to an object from the other pair
  • read commands that included words for those objects. Only some of those words had been used during sentence training
  • To see whether Chaser grasped that grammar could be used flexibly
  • student also read sentences in the reversed form of “take sugar to decoy.”
  • In 28 of 40 attempts, Chaser grabbed the correct item in her mouth and dropped it next to the correct target.
  • Another experiment tested Chaser’s ability to understand commands when she couldn’t see the objects at first
  • with two objects behind her at the other end of the bed
  • After hearing a command, Chaser turned around and nabbed one of the objects.
  • then ran to the living room and delivered the item to one of another pair of objects. She succeeded on all 12 trials
Mars Base

Concentrator solar cell with world's highest conversion efficiency of 44.4% - 0 views

phys.org/...-world-highest-conversion.html

scibyte98 scibyte99 SolarPower

shared by Mars Base on 16 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Sharp Corporation has achieved the world's highest solar cell conversion efficiency of 44.4%, using a concentrator triple-junction compound solar cell
  • Measurement of the value—which sets a record for the world's highest concentrating conversion efficiency—was confirmed
  • Compound solar cells typically offer high conversion efficiency while utilizing photo-absorption layers made from compounds of multiple elements, such as indium and gallium
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • triple-junction compound solar cells use a proprietary technology that enables the efficient conversion of sunlight into electricity by means of a stack of three photo-absorption layers
  • o achieve a concentrating conversion efficiency of 44.4%, Sharp worked to widen the effective concentrator cell surface and ensure uniformity of width at the interface of the connecting concentrator cell and electrodes.
  • Because of their high conversion efficiency, compound solar cells have thus far been used primarily on space satellites
Mars Base

Another tiny miracle: Graphene oxide soaks up radioactive waste - 0 views

phys.org/...raphene-oxide-radioactive.html

scibyte77

shared by Mars Base on 09 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Graphene oxide has a remarkable ability to quickly remove radioactive material from contaminated water
  • A collaborative effort by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour and the Moscow lab of chemist Stepan Kalmykov
  • microscopic, atom-thick flakes of graphene oxide bind quickly to natural and human-made radionuclides and condense them into solids
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  • flakes are soluble in liquids and easily produced in bulk
  • The discovery
  • could be a boon in the cleanup of contaminated sites like the Fukushima nuclear plants
  • could also cut the cost of hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") for oil and gas recovery and help reboot American mining of rare earth metals
  • Graphene oxide's large surface area defines its capacity to adsorb toxins
  • high retention properties are not surprising
  • What is astonishing is the very fast kinetics of sorption, which is key
  • the collaboration took root when
  • a graduate student
  • graduate student in Kalmykov's group, met at a conference several years ago.
  • researchers focused on removing radioactive isotopes of the actinides and lanthanides – the 30 rare earth elements in the periodic table – from liquids, rather than solids or gases
  • Naturally occurring radionuclides are also unwelcome in fracking fluids that bring them to the surface in drilling operations
  • When groundwater comes out of a well and it's radioactive above a certain level, they can't put it back into the ground
  • Companies have to ship contaminated water to repository sites around the country at very large expense
  • The ability to quickly filter out contaminants on-site would save a great deal of money
  • even greater potential benefits for the mining industry
  • Environmental requirements have "essentially shut down U.S. mining of rare earth metals, which are needed for cell phones
  • China owns the market because they're not subject to the same environmental standards
  • this technology offers the chance to revive mining here, it could be huge
  • capturing radionuclides does not make them less radioactive, just easier to handle
  • Where you have huge pools of radioactive material, like at Fukushima, you add graphene oxide and get back a solid material from what were just ions in a solution
  • Then you can skim it off and burn it
  • Graphene oxide burns very rapidly and leaves a cake of radioactive material you can then reuse
  • The low cost and biodegradable qualities of graphene oxide should make it appropriate for use in permeable reactive barriers, a fairly new technology for in situ groundwater remediation,
Mars Base

IBM researchers make world's smallest movie using atoms (w/ video) - 0 views

phys.org/...orld-smallest-movie-atoms.html

scibyte92 scibyte93

shared by Mars Base on 02 May 13 - No Cached
  • Scientists from IBM
  • unveiled the world's smallest movie, made with one of the tiniest elements in the universe: atoms
  • Named "A Boy and His Atom," the Guinness World Records -verified movie used thousands of precisely placed atoms to create nearly 250 frames of stop-motion action.
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  • This movie is a fun way to share the atomic-scale world while opening up a dialogue with students and others on the new frontiers of math and science
  • In order to make the movie, the atoms were moved with an IBM-invented scanning tunneling microscope
  • weighs two tons, operates at a temperature of negative 268 degrees Celsius and magnifies the atomic surface over 100 million times
  • IBM Research lab one of the few places in the world where atoms can be moved with such precision.
  • Remotely operated on a standard computer, IBM researchers used the microscope to control a super-sharp needle along a copper surface to "feel" atoms
  • Only 1 nanometer away from the surface, which is a billionth of a meter in distance, the needle can physically attract atoms and molecules on the surface and thus pull them to a precisely specified location on the surface
  • moving atom makes a unique sound that is critical feedback in determining how many positions it's actually moved
  • scientists rendered still images of the individually arranged atoms, resulting in 242 single frames
  • the same team of IBM researchers who made this movie also recently created the world's smallest magnetic bit. They were the first to answer the question of how many atoms it takes to reliably store one bit of magnetic information: 12.
  • it takes roughly 1 million atoms to store a bit of data on a modern computer or electronic device
  • atomic memory could one day store all of the movies ever made in a device the size of a fingernail.
Mars Base

Scientists study rare dinosaur skin fossil to determine skin colour for first time - 0 views

phys.org/...rare-dinosaur-skin-fossil.html

shared by Mars Base on 04 May 13 - No Cached
  • this is only the third three-dimensional dinosaur skin specimen ever found worldwide
  • One of the only well preserved dinosaur skin samples ever found is being tested at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron to determine skin colour and to explain why the fossilized specimen remained intact after 70-million years.
  • the hadrosaur, a duck-billed dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period (100-65 million years ago), was found close to a river bed near Grande Prairie, Alberta.
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  • One question is whether the hadrosaur skin was green or grey, like most dinosaurs are portrayed, or was it a completely different colour
  • the CLS to look at unique structures called melanosomes, cellular organelles the contain pigments that control the color of an animal's skin.
  • "If we are able to observe the melanosomes and their shape, it will be the first time pigments have been identified in the skin of a dinosaur
  • There has been research that proved the colour of some dinosaur feathers, but never skin
  • Using light at the CLS mid-infrared (Mid-IR) beamline, Barbi and CLS scientists are also looking for traces of organic and inorganic elements that could help determine the hadrosaur's diet and why the skin sample was preserved almost intact
  • the sample is placed in the path of the infrared beam and light reflects off of it.
  • , chemical bonds of certain compounds will create different vibrations
  • For example, proteins, sugars and fats still found in the skin will create unique vibrational frequencies that scientists can measure
Mars Base

Apollo Moon Rocks Challenge Lunar Water Theory: Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte83 moon

shared by Mars Base on 22 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Finding water in the moon's crust, the scientists say, implies that the moon's rocks could have taken longer to crystallize than previously thought
  • NASA's Clementine spacecraft found evidence of water ice after scanning the surface with radar in 1996
  • follow-up observations with the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico suggested the spots where it found ice were in areas with too much sun for ice to survive
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  • Instead of ice, later researchers chalked up the observations to piles of rubble.
  • NASA's Lunar Prospector found possible water in 1998 at both of the moon's poles, but the instrument was only able to detect the presence of hydrogen, not other elements
  • Then in 2008, new lab work on Apollo lunar samples found hydrogen in lunar volcanic glasses
  • in September 2009, however, three spacecraft orbiting the moon found "unambiguous evidence" of water on the lunar surface
  • in November 2009, however, scientists for the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission announced the spacecraft had found large deposits of ice at the moon's south pole
  • Scientists then discovered a trove of ice in the south pole's Shackleton Crater in 2012
Mars Base

Alien Super-Earth Light Seen for 1st Time | Exoplanet Search | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/light-detected-55-cancrie.html

scibyte45 exoplanet Spitzer

shared by Mars Base on 09 May 12 - No Cached
  • Light from an alien "super-Earth" twice the size of our own Earth has been detected by a NASA space telescope for the first time
  • spotted light from the alien planet 55 Cancri e, which orbits a star 41 light-years from Earth
  • A year on the extrasolar planet lasts just 18 hours
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • 55 Cancri e was first discovered in 2004 and is not a habitable world
  • The world is about twice the width of Earth and is super-dense, with about eight times the mass of Earth.
  • until now, scientists have never managed to detect the infrared light from the super-Earth world.
  • pioneering the study of atmospheres of distant planets and paving the way for NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope
  • Spitzer first detected infrared light from an alien planet in 2005
  • that world was "hot Jupiter," a gas giant planet much larger than 55 Cancri e that orbited extremely close to its parent star
  • other telescopes have performed similar feats
  • Spitzer's view of the 55 Cancri e is the first time the light from a rocky super-Earth type planet has been seen
  • Since the discovery of 55 Cancri e, astronomers have pinned down increasingly strange features about the planet
  • already knew it was part of an alien solar system containing five exoplanets centered on the star 55 Cancri in the constellation Cancer
  • But 55 Cancri e stood out because it is ultra-dense and orbits extremely close to its parent star
  • 26 times closer than the distance between Mercury and our own sun
  • observations revealed that the star-facing side of 55 Cancri e
  • temperatures reaching up to 3,140 degrees Fahrenheit (1,726 degrees Celsius).
  • likely a dark world that lacks the substantial atmosphere needed to warm its nighttime side
  • the planet is oozing
  • Past observations of the planet by the Spitzer Space Telescope have suggested that one-fifth of 55 Cancri e is made up of lighter elements, including water
  • the extreme temperatures and pressures on 55 Cancri e would create what scientists call a "supercritical fluid" state
  • Supercritical fluids can be imagined as a gas in a liquid state, which can occur under extreme pressures and temperatures
  • On Earth, water can become a supercritical fluid inside some steam engines.
  • This graphic illuminates the process by which astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have for the first time detected the light from a super-Earth planet, the alien world of 55 Cancri e 41 light-years from Earth.
  • planet is likely a rocky world covered with water in a supercritical fluid state and topped off with a steam blanket
  • could be very similar to Neptune, if you pulled Neptune in toward our sun and watched its atmosphere boil away
  • detailed in the Astrophysical Journal
  • Spitzer Space Telescope launched in 2003
  • telescope engineers modified several settings on the observatory to optimize its alien planet vision
  • conceived of Spitzer more than 40 years ago
Mars Base

Exeter biologist rediscovers 'forgotten' 19th century illustrations - 0 views

phys.org/...ediscovers-forgotten-19th.html

scibyte45f CollectionDigitized

shared by Mars Base on 09 May 12 - No Cached
  • unique collection of nineteenth century visual teaching aids belonging to the University of Exeter has been rediscovered after more than six decades
  • created by local naturalist Charles Thomas Hudson FRS to illustrate his lectures
  • They are framed paintings of microscopic animals and plants, all masked with thick brown paper
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • When backlit in a darkened room the transparencies are transformed
  • illuminating the various organisms
  • have been kept in a dark room in the University’s Hatherly Laboratories since the 1960s.
  • storage conditions have proved ideal and the collection is still in excellent condition.
  • University of Exeter zoologist Dr. Robin Wootton, whose cataloguing project has brought the slides out of obscurity
  • painstakingly photographed each individual painting, using Photoshop Elements to optimise lighting and visibility.
  • the history of the transparencies
  • the University had acquired them from a Mrs F.R. Rowley on the death of her husband
  • in the late 1930s
  • it is possible that he may have known Hudson personally
Mars Base

Data support theory on location of lost Leonardo da Vinci painting - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...ry-lost-leonardo-da-vinci.html

scibyte38 art daVinci

shared by Mars Base on 14 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Evidence uncovered during research conducted in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio late last year appears to support the theory that a lost Leonardo da Vinci painting existed on the east wall of the Hall of the 500, behind Giorgio Vasari's mural "The Battle of Marciano."
  • data supporting the theoretical location of the da Vinci painting "The Battle of Anghiari" was obtained through the use of an endoscopic probe that was inserted through the wall on which the Vasari fresco was painted
  • Using endoscopic technology
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  • researchers were able to view the wall behind the Vasari mural and obtain samples for analysis
  • data from chemical analysis, while not conclusive, suggest the possibility that the da Vinci painting, long assumed to have been destroyed in the mid-16th century when the Hall of the 500 was completely remodeled, might exist behind the Vasari.
  • Although we are still in the preliminary stages
  • data are very encouraging
  • still a lot of work to be done to solve this mystery
  • evidence does suggest that we are searching in the right place."
  • team report four lines of evidence supporting the hypothesis that the lost Leonardo painting is located behind the Vasari mural
  • sample containing a black material was analyzed with SEM-EDX
  • scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy), which identifies the chemical elements present in a sample
  • material found behind the Vasari wall shows a chemical composition similar to black pigment found in brown glazes on Leonardo's "Mona Lisa" and "St. John the Baptist," identified in a recently published scientific paper by the Louvre, which analyzed all the da Vinci paintings in its collection.
  • Flakes of red material were found
  • these samples seems to identify them as organic material, which could be associated with red lake (lacquer). This type of material is unlikely to be present in an ordinary plastered wall.
  • research team confirmed the existence of an air gap, originally identified through radar scans conducted of the Hall, between the brick wall on which Vasari painted his mural and the wall located behind
  • finding suggests that Vasari may have preserved da Vinci's masterpiece by building a wall in front of it at this location. No other location in the Hall presented this type of air gap.
  • opportunity to conduct an endoscopic investigation through the Vasari wall
  • identified 14 areas to be explored
  • six points of entry were ultimately implemented
  • chosen by the restorers of the Opificio delle Peitre Dure in areas free of original Vasari paint
  • including cracked or previously restored areas, to ensure that drilling would not cause any damage to the original Vasari mural
  • Testing on those samples was conducted with portable instruments on the scaffolding itself
  • The painting commemorated the 1440 victory of the battle on the plain of Anghiari between Milan and the Italian League led by the Republic of Florence
  • 1503, da Vinci was commissioned
  • to paint the "The Battle of Anghiari"
Mars Base

Listen to solar storm activity in new sonification video - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...-storm-sonification-video.html

scibyte38 solar flare

shared by Mars Base on 14 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • What does a solar storm sound like
  • Take a listen
  • sonification of the recent solar storm activity turns data from two spacecraft into sound
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • measurements from the NASA SOHO spacecraft and the University of Michigan's Fast Imaging Plasma Spectrometer (FIPS) on NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft at Mercury
  • creator is Robert Alexander, a design science doctoral student at the University of Michigan and NASA fellow.
  • a composer with a NASA fellowship to study how representing information as sound could aid in data mining.
  • raw information to an audio waveform
  • To sonify the data
  • in its original sampling rate of 44,100 hertz, it played back in less than a quarter of a second
  • benefits of sonifying data. You can zip through days' worth of information in an instant
  • Sonification is the process of translating information into sound
  • used in Geiger counter radiation detectors, which emit clicks in the presence of high-energy particles
  • not typically used to pick out patterns in information, but scientists on the U-M Solar and Heliospheric Research Group are exploring its potential in that realm. They're looking to Alexander to make it possible.
  • used to looking at wiggly-line plots and graphs, but humans are very good at hearing things. We wonder if there's a way to find things in the data that are difficult to see."
  • his approach led to a new discovery
  • a particular ratio of carbon atoms that scientists had not previously keyed in to can reveal more about the source of the solar wind than the ratios of elements they currently rely on. The solar wind is a squall of hot plasma, or charged particles, continuously emanating from the sun.
  • hopes to build a bridge between science and art.
  • movies were silent and people just accepted that that's the way it
  • this high res footage of what's happening on the surface of the sun, and it's silent. I'm creating a soundtrack
Mars Base

Jellyfish inspires latest ocean-powered robot (w/ video) - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...ocean-powered-robot-video.html

scibyte39 robot MarMedia

shared by Mars Base on 21 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • American researchers have created a robotic jellyfish, named Robojelly, which not only exhibits characteristics ideal to use in underwater search and rescue operations, but could, theoretically at least, never run out of energy thanks to it being fuelled by hydrogen.
  • Constructed from a set of smart materials
  • ability to change shape or size as a result of a stimulus, and carbon nanotubes, Robojelly is able to mimic the natural movements of a jellyfish when placed in a water tank and is powered by chemical reactions taking place on its surface.
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  • To our knowledge, this is the first successful powering of an underwater robot using external hydrogen as a fuel source
  • jellyfish is an ideal invertebrate to base the vehicle on due to its simple swimming action
  • replicated in the vehicle using commercially-available shape memory alloys (SMA) – smart materials that "remember" their original shape – wrapped in carbon nanotubes and coated with a platinum black powder.
  • powered by heat-producing chemical reactions between the oxygen and hydrogen in water and the platinum on its surface
  • renewable element means Robojelly can regenerate fuel from its natural surroundings and therefore doesn't require an external power source or the constant replacement of batteries.
  • heat given off by these reactions is transferred to the artificial muscles of the robot, causing them to transform into different shapes.
  • robot still needs development to achieve full functionality and efficiency
Mars Base

Shuttle Enterprise Beneath Shelter on NYC Museum Flight Deck | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/le-enterprise-nyc-display.html

scibyte52 shuttle enterprise

shared by Mars Base on 22 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Two weeks after "landing" on top of the aircraft carrier-turned-Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City, NASA's prototype space shuttle Enterprise is now underneath the inflatable canopy that will house its public display.
  • Enterprise was covered by the opaque-white fabric shelter on Tuesday (June 19) 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.
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  • 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
  • display is set to open to the public on July 19
  • visitors the chance to closely view and circle around the prototype winged orbiter
  • The location for the permanent Enterprise exhibit is still to be decided. Intrepid officials told collectSPACE that they are considering locations across the street from where the aircraft carrier is docked and also alongside the museum on the pier.
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Mars_Science_Laboratory

scibyte22 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - Cached
  • Launch vehicle Atlas V 541
  • Mission duration 668 Martian sols (686 Earth days)
  • Landing August 5, 2012 (planned
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  • Mass 900 kg (2,000 lb)[
  • Power Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG)
  • the general public had an opportunity to rank nine finalist names through a public poll on the NASA website
  • Curiosity was selected, which was submitted by a sixth-grader, Clara Ma, from Kansas in an essay contest
  • 10 ft (3.0 m) in length
  • radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), as used by the successful Mars landers Viking 1 and Viking 2 in 1976
  • Radioisotope power systems are generators that produce electricity from the natural decay of plutonium-238, which is a non-fissile isotope of plutonium used in power systems for NASA spacecraft. Heat given off by the natural decay of this isotope is converted into electricity, providing constant power during all seasons and through the day and night, and waste heat can be used via pipes to warm systems, freeing electrical power for the operation of the vehicle and instruments
  • designed to produce 125 watts of electrical power from about 2000 watts of thermal power at the start of the mission
  • lifetime of 14 years, 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
  • 256 kB of EEPROM, 256 MB of DRAM, and 2 GB of flash memory
Mars Base

Jupiter Moon's Buried Lakes Evoke Antarctica | Jupiter Moon Europa | Subsurface Lakes P... - 0 views

www.space.com/arth-antarctica-analogues.html

scibyte22 Europa

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • 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
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  • , a combination of these elements could very well be at work on Jupiter's moon
  • "It looks like crushed ice,
  • 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'
  • irregular areas contain domes and iceberglike blocks that no theoretical models have been able to replicate
  • "On Earth, it is the volcano [melting the ice]," Schmidt said. "On Europa, it is the warm ice plume coming up from below."
  • estimated that it contained as much water as all of the North America's Great Lakes combined, about 1.5 miles (3 kilometers) beneath the surface.
  • One such lake
  • several liquid lakes are likely to exist near the surface today
  • The material cycled into the ocean via these lakes may make Europa's ocean even more habitable than previously imagined
  • The lakes may even be habitats themselves
Mars Base

NASA - NASA Rover Finds Old Streambed on Martian Surface - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...msl20120927.html

scibyte65 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 27 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • this evidence -- images of rocks containing ancient streambed gravels -- is the first of its kind
  • sizes and shapes of stones offer clues to the speed and distance of a long-ago stream's flow
  • can interpret the water was moving about 3 feet per second, with a depth somewhere between ankle and hip deep
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  • This is the first time we're actually seeing water-transported gravel on Mars
  • transition from speculation about the size of streambed material to direct observation of
  • finding site lies between the north rim of Gale Crater and the base of Mount Sharp, a mountain inside the crat
  • Earlier imaging of the region from Mars orbit allows for additional interpretation of the gravel-bearing conglomerate
  • rounded shape of some stones in the conglomerate indicates long-distance transport from above the rim
  • channel named Peace Vallis feeds into the alluvial fan.
  • abundance of channels in the fan between the rim and conglomerate suggests flows continued or repeated over a long time, not just once or for a few years.
  • discovery comes from examining two outcrops, called "Hottah" and "Link," with the telephoto capability of Curiosity's mast camera during the first 40 days after landing
  • observations followed up on earlier hints from another outcrop, which was exposed by thruster exhaust as Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory Project's rover, touched down
  • Hottah looks like someone jack-hammered up a slab of city sidewalk, but it's really a tilted block of an ancient streambed
  • gravels in conglomerates at both outcrops range in size from a grain of sand to a golf ball. Some are angular, but many are rounded
  • shapes tell you they were transported and the sizes tell you they couldn't be transported by wind
  • team may use Curiosity to learn the elemental composition of the material, which holds the conglomerate together, revealing more characteristics of the wet environment that formed these deposits
  • stones in the conglomerate provide a sampling from above the crater rim, so the team may also examine several of them to learn about broader regional geology.
  • slope of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater remains the rover's main destination
  • sulfate minerals detected there from orbit can be good preservers of carbon-based organic chemicals that are potential ingredients for life
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