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Mars Base

UIUC team will show can't-tell photo inserts at Siggraph (w/ video) - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...m-cant-tell-photo-inserts.html

scibyte25

shared by Mars Base on 09 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Humans can quickly detect photo fraud, maintains Karsch. They can do so in spotting lighting inconsistencies in a doctored photograph
  • In their computer program, a user is asked to select light sources in the picture.
  • An algorithm recreates the 3-D geometry and lighting of the scene and the artificial object is inserted into its new environment
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The program adds shadows and highlights to the object before converting it back to 2-D.
  • The team set out to extract the 3-D scene information from single images, to allow for seamless object insertion, removal, and relocation
  • involves three phases
  • luminaire inference, perspective estimation (depth, occlusion, camera parameters), and texture replacement
Mars Base

First Saturn-like rings circle alien world - 0 views

www.astronomynow.com/...11rings

scibyte29 exoplanet rings

shared by Mars Base on 13 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • 11 January 2012
  • Saturn-like ring system has been discovered 420 light years away
  • using the ground-based SuperWASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) and All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS),
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • do the rings encompass a planet or a companion star?
  • four defined rings stretch out tens of millions of kilometres from the central object
  • dubbed Rochester, Sutherland, Campanas and Tololo after the sites where the eclipsed star was first detected and analysed
  • similar in mass to our own Sun, but a fraction of its age at just 16 million years.
  • Usually a star’s light is temporarily and periodically dimmed as a planet passes in front of it
  • in this case the team observed an unusually long and deep eclipse with up to 95 percent of the star’s light being dimmed by what the team conclude is a dusty ring system.
  • the only plausible explanation was some sort of dust ring system orbiting a smaller companion
  • Saturn on steroids
  • the first time astronomers have detected an extrasolar ring system transiting a Sun-like star
  • astronomers are unable to conclude what the ring system is orbiting
  • could be a very low-mass star, a brown dwarf, or a gas planet
  • hope to find the answer
  • over the next two years
  • another mystery
  • two pronounced gaps located between rings
  • gaps are carved by moons that have enough mass to gravitationally clear a path along their orbits
  • Saturnian system
  • brown dwarf or star then we could be seeing the late stages of planet formation in action
  • a giant planet, then perhaps there is a moon in the making.
Mars Base

Spitzer Finds Possible Exoplanet Smaller than Earth - NASA Spitzer Space Telescope - 0 views

www.spitzer.caltech.edu/...e-Exoplanet-Smaller-than-Earth

scibyte55 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 18 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have detected what they believe is a planet two-thirds the size of Earth. The exoplanet candidate, called UCF-1.01, is located a mere 33 light-years away, making it possibly the nearest world to our solar system that is smaller than our home planet. 
  • strong evidence for a very small, very hot and very near planet
  • new-planet candidate was found unexpectedly
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • studying the Neptune-sized exoplanet GJ 436b, already known to exist around the red-dwarf star GJ 436
  • In the Spitzer data, the astronomers noticed slight dips in the amount of infrared light streaming from the star, separate from the dips caused by GJ 436b
  • review of Spitzer archival data showed the dips were periodic, suggesting a second planet might be orbiting the star and blocking out a small fraction of the star's light. 
  • diameter would be approximately 5,200 miles (8,400 kilometers), or two-thirds that of Earth
  • revolve
  • about seven times the distance of Earth from the moon, with its "year" lasting only 1.4 Earth days
  • the exoplanet's surface temperature would be more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (almost 600 degrees Celsius
  • might therefore resemble a cratered, mostly geologically dead world like Mercury
  • another possibility; that the extreme heat of orbiting so close to GJ 436 has melted the exoplanet's surface
  • colleagues noticed hints of a third planet
  • Spitzer has observed evidence of the two new planets several times each
  • even the most sensitive instruments are unable to measure exoplanet masses as small
  • mass is required for confirming a discovery
  • cautiously calling both bodies exoplanet candidates for now.
  • 1,800 stars identified by NASA' Kepler space telescope as candidates for having planetary systems, just three are verified to contain sub-Earth-sized exoplanets
  • only one exoplanet is thought to be smaller than the Spitzer candidates
Mars Base

areo.info: PanCam true color images from Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers - 1 views

areo.info/mer

scibyte58 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 09 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Every Martian day (Sol) new raw images are downloaded
  • raw images are black & white images, each taken through a colored glass (filter) by the Panoramic Camera on the Rover
  • using 3 filters, each one only letting pass red, green and blue light, a true color image can be created
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • in principle the same as every common photo or video camera creates color images
  • Rover Panoramic Camera differs from normal digital cameras by having filters with smaller bandwidth resulting in images with appear as having too much color saturation. To counteract this effect a special but simple processing
  • combining the black & white images from two filters a visual effect is created as the image would have been taken through one filter with wider bandwidth
  • is a good approximation to
  • Rover Panoramic Camera contains more than only red, green and blue filters there are more combinations available to create color images
  • images created with these additional filters (L2, L3 and L7) show slightly different colorizations as L2 and L3 pass only light of near infrared wavelengths and L7 pass only violet light
  • MER2RGB-process described above the overall colors approximate true colors sufficiently. That means, the soil looks still "Earth-like" and the sky is still blue to white.
  • How precise the true colors are reproduced
  • a 100% precise reproduction is not possible as the human visual system can only be approximated by technical devices
  • some scientist claim, that it is impossible to recreate the Martian colors
  • on Mars the same Sun is shining as on Earth with just reduced intensity by 40% and the same optical and physical laws are valid
  • Color is not always 100% correct, but the general colorization is represented so we can get the impression how it would look like on that location when viewing it with our own eyes
  • controversy about
  • colorization since the first color image was taken by the Viking Lander in 1976
  • color calibration problem seems to be unsolvable
  • from Spirit and Opportuniy Mars Exploration Rover
Mars Base

Nighttime smartphone use zaps workers' energy - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...140122170624.htm

scibyte117

shared by Mars Base on 23 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • In a pair of studies surveying a broad spectrum of U.S. workers
  • found that people who monitored their smart phones for business purposes after 9 p.m. were more tired and were less engaged the following day on the job.
  • More than half of U.S. adults own a smartphone
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Many consider the devices to be among the most important tools ever invented when it comes to increasing productivity of knowledge-based work
  • the National Sleep Foundation says only 40 percent of Americans get enough sleep on most nights
  • a commonly cited reason is smartphone usage for work.
  • the first study, the researchers had 82 upper-level managers complete multiple surveys every day for two weeks.
  • The second study surveyed 161 employees daily in a variety of occupations -- from nursing to manufacturing and from accounting to dentistry
  • both studies
  • showed that nighttime smartphone usage for business purposes cut into sleep and sapped workers' energy the next day in the office
  • The second study also compared smartphone usage to other electronic devices and found that smartphones had a larger negative effect than watching television and using laptop and tablet computers
  • In addition to keeping people mentally engaged at night, smartphones emit "blue light"
  • the most disruptive of all colors of light. Blue light is known to hinder melatonin, a chemical in the body that promotes sleep
  • nighttime use of smartphones appears to have both psychological and physiological effects on people's ability to sleep and on sleep's essential recovery functions
  • "There may be times in which putting off work until the next day would have disastrous consequences and using your smartphone is well worth the negative effects on less important tasks the next day,"
  • "But on many other nights, more sleep may be your best bet."
  • Johnson, MSU assistant professor of management
Mars Base

2013 in science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...2013_in_science

scibyte114 2013YearInReview

shared by Mars Base on 23 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Morocco in 2011, and report that it is a new type of Mars rock with an unusually high water content.[8][9][10] American researchers state that a gene associated with active personality traits is also linked to
  • Astronomers affiliated with the Kepler space observatory announce the discovery of KOI-172.02, an Earth-like exoplanet candidate which orbits a star similar to the Sun in the habitable zone
  • 13 January – Massachusetts doctors invent a pill-sized medical scanner that can be safely swallowed by patients, allowing the esophagus to be more easily scanned for disease
  • ...101 more annotations...
  • 17 January – NASA announces that the Kepler space observatory has developed a reaction wheel issue
  • 2 January A study by Caltech astronomers reports that the Milky Way Galaxy contains at least one planet per sta
  • 3 January
  • 8 January
  • 20 January – Scientists prove that quadruple-helix DNA is present in human cells
  • 25 January
  • An international team of scientists develops a functional light-based "tractor beam", which allows individual cells to be selected and moved at will. The invention could have broad applications in medicine and microbiology
  • 30 January – South Korea conducts its first successful orbital launch
  • 6 February
  • Astronomers report that 6% of all dwarf stars – the most common stars in the known universe – may host Earthlike planets
  • Scientists discover live bacteria in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Whillans
  • American scientists finish drilling down to the subglacial Lake Whillans, which is buried around 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) under the Antarctic ice
  • 10 February NASA's Curiosity Mars rover uses its onboard drill to obtain the first deep rock sample ever retrieved from the surface of another plane
  • 15 February A 10-ton meteoroid impacts in Chelyabinsk, Russia, producing a powerful shockwave and injuring over 1,000 people
  • 28 February
  • Astronomers make the first direct observation of a protoplanet forming in a disk of gas and dust around a distant sta
  • A third radiation belt is discovered around the Eart
  • 1 March – Boston Dynamics demonstrates an updated version of its BigDog military robot
  • 3 March – American scientists report that they have cured HIV in an infant by giving the child a course of antiretroviral drugs very early in its life. The previously HIV-positive child has reportedly exhibited no HIV symptoms since its treatment, despite having no further medication for a year
  • researchers replace 75 percent of an injured patient's skull with a precision 3D-printed polymer replacement implant. In future, damaged bones may routinely be replaced with custom-manufactured implants
  • 7 March
  • A study concludes that heart disease was common among ancient mummies
  • 11 March
  • 12 March NASA's Curiosity rover finds evidence that conditions on Mars were once suitable for microbial life after analyzing the first drilled sample of Martian rock, "John Klein" rock at Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater. The rover detected water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, chloromethane and dichloromethane. Related tests found results consistent with the presence of smectite clay minerals
  • 14 March CERN scientists confirm, with a very high degree of certainty, that a new particle identified by the Large Hadron Collider in July 2012 is the long-sought Higgs boson
  • 18 March
  • NASA reports evidence from the Curiosity rover on Mars of mineral hydration, likely hydrated calcium sulfate, in several rock samples, including the broken fragments of "Tintina" rock and "Sutton Inlier" rock as well as in the veins and nodules in other rocks like "Knorr" rock and "Wernicke" rock.[177] Analysis using the rover's DAN instrument provided evidence of subsurface water, amounting to as much as 4% water content, down to a depth of 60 cm
  • 27 March – A potential new weight loss method is discovered, after a 20% weight reduction was achieved in mice simply by having their gut microbes altered.
  • NASA scientists report that hints of dark matter may have been detected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station
  • 3 April
  • 15 April A functional lab-grown kidney is successfully transplanted into a live rat in Massachusetts General Hospital
  • 18 April – NASA announces the discovery of three new Earthlike exoplanets – Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, and Kepler-69c – in the habitable zones of their respective host stars, Kepler-62 and Kepler-69. The new exoplanets, which are considered prime candidates for possessing liquid water and thus potentially life, were identified using the Kepler spacecraft
  • 21 April The Antares rocket, a commercial launch vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, successfully conducts its maiden flight
  • After years of unpowered glide tests, Scaled Composites' SpaceShipTwo hybrid spaceplane successfully conducts its first rocket-powered fligh
  • 29 April
  • 1 May IBM scientists release A Boy and His Atom, the smallest stop-motion animation ever created, made by manipulating individual carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunnelling microscope
  • A new study finds that children whose parents suck on their pacifiers have fewer allergies later in life
  • NASA reports that a reaction wheel on the Kepler space observatory may be malfunctioning and may result in the premature termination of the observatory's search for Earth-like
  • 15 May
  • 16 May Water dating back 2.6 billion years, by far the oldest ever found, is discovered in a Canadian mine
  • 27 May Four-hundred-year-old bryophyte specimens left behind by retreating glaciers in Canada are brought back to life in the laboratory
  • 29 May
  • Russian scientists announce the discovery of mammoth blood and well-preserved muscle tissue from an adult female specimen in Siberia
  • A new treatment to "reset" the immune system of multiple sclerosis patients is reported to reduce their reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent
  • 4 June
  • During the Shenzhou 10 mission, Chinese astronauts deliver the country's first public video broadcast from the orbiting Tiangong-1 space laboratory
  • 20 June
  • China's Shenzhou 10 manned spacecraft returns safely to Earth, having conducted China's longest manned space mission to date
  • 26 June
  • 20 June
  • 20 June
  • 6 July
  • Scientists report that a wide variety of microbial life exists in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Vostok, which has been buried in ice for around 15 million years. Samples of the lake's water obtained by drilling were found to contain traces of DNA from over 3,000 tiny organisms
  • 15 July
  • ASA engineers successfully test a rocket engine with a fully 3D-printed injector
  • 19 July
  • NASA scientists publish the results of a new analysis of the atmosphere of Mars, reporting a lack of methane around the landing site of the Curiosity rover
  • Earth is photographed from the outer solar system. NASA's Cassini spacecraft releases images of the Earth and Moon taken from the orbit of Saturn
  • 29 July – Astronomers discover the first exoplanet orbiting a brown dwarf, 6,000 light years from Earth
  • exoplanet
  • 7 January
  • Astronomers
  • report that "at least 17 billion" Earth-sized exoplanets are estimated to reside in the Milky Way Galaxy
  • 20 February
  • NASA reports the discovery of Kepler-37b, the smallest exoplanet yet known, around the size of Earth's Moon
  • 10 June
  • Scientists report that the earlier claims of an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a star close to our Solar System, may not be supported by astronomical evidence
  • 25 June – In an unprecedented discovery, astronomers detect three potentially Earthlike exoplanets orbiting a single star in the Gliese 667
  • 11 July For the first time, astronomers determine the true colour of a distant exoplanet. HD 189733 b, a searing-hot gas giant, is said to be a vivid blue colour, most likely due to clouds of silica in its atmosphere
  • NASA announces that the failing Kepler space observatory may never fully recover. New missions are being considered
  • 15 August
  • Phase I clinical trials of SAV001 – the first and only preventative HIV vaccine – have been successfully completed with no adverse effects in all patients. Antibody production was greatly boosted after vaccination
  • 3 September
  • 12 September NASA announces that Voyager I has officially left the Solar System, having travelled since 1977
  • NASA scientists report the Mars Curiosity rover detected "abundant, easily accessible" water (1.5 to 3 weight percent) in soil samples
  • 26 September
  • In addition, the rover found two principal soil types: a fine-grained mafic type and a locally derived, coarse-grained felsic type
  • mafic
  • as associated with hydration of the amorphous phases of the soi
  • perchlorates, the presence of which may make detection of life-related organic molecules difficult, were found at the Curiosity rover landing site
  • earlier at the more polar site of the Phoenix lander) suggesting a "global distribution of these salts
  • Astronomers have created the first cloud map of an exoplanet, Kepler-7b
  • 30 September
  • 8 October The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"
  • 16 October Russian authorities raise a large fragment, 654 kg (1,440 lb) total weight, of the Chelyabinsk meteor, a Near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013, from the bottom of Chebarkul lake.
  • Researchers have shown that a fundamental reason for sleep is to clean the brain of toxins. This is achieved by brain cells shrinking to create gaps between neurons, allowing fluid to wash through
  • 17 October
  • 22 October – Astronomers have discovered the 1,000th known exoplanet
  • 4 November - Astronomers report, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy
  • 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars
  • 5 November – India launches its first Mars probe, Mangalyaan
  • The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has made the first discovery of very high energy neutrinos on Earth which had originated from beyond our Solar System
  • 21 November
  • 1 December – China launches the Chang'e 3 lunar rover mission, with a planned landing on December 16
  • 3 December – The Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence of water in the atmospheres of five distant exoplanets: HD 209458b, XO-1b, WASP-12b, WASP-17b and WASP-19b
  • 9 December NASA scientists report that the planet Mars had a large freshwater lake (which could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life) based on evidence from the Curiosity rover studying Aeolis Palus near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater
  • 12 December NASA announces, based on studies with the Hubble Space Telescope, that water vapor plumes were detected on Europa, moon of Jupiter
  • 14 December – The unmanned Chinese lunar rover Chang'e 3 lands on the Moon, making China the third country to achieve a soft landing there
  • 18 December
  • nomers have spotted what appears to be the first known "exomoon", located 1,800 light years away
  • 20 December – NASA reports that the Curiosity rover has successfully upgraded, for the third time since landing, its software programs and is now operating with version 11. The new software is expected to provide the rover with better robotic arm and autonomous driving abilities. Due to wheel wear, a need to drive more carefully, over the rough terrain the rover is currently traveling on its way to Mount Sharp, was also reported
Mars Base

New Era of Neutrino Astronomy Begins at the South Pole - 0 views

www.scienceworldreport.com/...stronomy-begins-south-pole.htm

scibyte110 Neutrinos

shared by Mars Base on 23 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Astrophysicists have managed to detect and record the mysterious phenomena known as cosmic neutrinos
  • nearly massless particles that stream to Earth at the speed of light from outside our solar system, striking the surface in a burst of energy that can be as powerful as a baseball pitcher's fastball
  • In this particular study, the researchers observed 28 very high-energy particle events with the use of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • These events constitute the first solid evidence for astrophysical neutrinos from cosmic sources
  • The sources of neutrinos, and the question of what could accelerate these particles, has been a mystery for more than 100 years
  • IceCube is made up of 5,160 digital optical modules suspended along 86 strings embedded in ice beneath the South Pole
  • It detects neutrinos through the tiny flashes of blue light, called Cherenkov light, produced when neutrinos interact in the ice.
  • Computers then collect near-real-time data from the optical sensors and send information about interesting events north via satellite
  • astrophysical neutrinos move in straight lines unimpeded by outside forces, they can act as pointers to the place in the galaxy where they originated
  • This, in turn, can tell astronomers quite a bit out our universe
  • The 28 events recorded so far are too few to point to any particular location
Mars Base

A Sunny Outlook for NASA Kepler's Second Light | NASA - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...-for-nasa-keplers-second-light

scibyte110 scibyte111 Kepler

shared by Mars Base on 26 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • A repurposed Kepler Space telescope may soon start searching the sky again.
  • A new mission concept, dubbed K2, would continue Kepler's search for other worlds, and introduce new opportunities to observe star clusters, young and old stars, active galaxies and supernovae
  • In May, the Kepler spacecraft lost the second of four gyroscope-like reaction wheels, which are used to precisely point the spacecraft, ending new data collection for the original mission
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • required three functioning wheels to maintain the precision pointing necessary to detect the signal of small Earth-sized exoplanets
  • With the failure of a second reaction wheel, the spacecraft can no longer precisely point at the mission's original field of view. The culprit is none other than our own sun
  • pushes the spacecraft around
  • the pressure exerted when the photons of sunlight strike the spacecraft
  • Without a third wheel to help counteract the solar pressure, the spacecraft's ultra-precise pointing capability cannot be controlled in all directions.
  • Kepler mission and Ball Aerospace engineers have developed an innovative way of recovering pointing stability by maneuvering the spacecraft so that the solar pressure is evenly distributed across the surfaces of the spacecraft
  • To achieve this level of stability, the orientation of the spacecraft must be nearly parallel to its orbital path around the sun
  • This technique of using the sun as the 'third wheel' to control pointing is currently being tested on the spacecraft and early results are already coming i
  • During a pointing performance test in late October, a full frame image of the space telescope's full field of view was captured showing part of the constellation Sagittarius
  • Photons of light from a distant star field were collected over a 30-minute period and produced an image quality within five percent of the primary mission image quality
  • Additional testing is underway to demonstrate the ability to maintain this level of pointing control for days and weeks.
  • The K2 mission concept has been presented to NASA Headquarters
  • A decision to proceed to the 2014 Senior Review – a biannual assessment of operating missions – and propose for budget to fly K2 is expected by the end of 2013
  • For four years, the space telescope simultaneously and continuously monitored the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, recording a measurement every 30 minutes.
Mars Base

Health check on the road - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...2011-11-health-road.html

scibyte20 health

shared by Mars Base on 04 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • A research team at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), in collaboration with researchers at the BMW Group
  • develop a sensor system integrated into the steering wheel that can monitor the driver's state of health while driving
  • the device might be used recognize the onset fainting spells or heart attacks.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • monitors vital signs such as heart rate, skin conductance and oxygen saturation in the blood via simple sensors in the steering wheel
  • A driver's skin conductance, for instance, reveals whether he or she is under severe stress, or whether his or her blood pressure exceeds a critical value
  • "When a stress situation is detected by means of skin conductance values, phone calls can be blocked, for instance, or the volume of the radio turned down automatically.
  • With more serious problems the system could turn on the hazard warning lights, reduce the speed or even induce automated emergency braking."
  • Two commercially available sensors are key elements of the integrated vital signs measurement system
  • One of them shines infrared light into the fingers and measures the heart rate and oxygen saturation via reflected light
  • second measures the electric conductance of the skin at contact
Mars Base

Bio-inspired glue keeps hearts securely sealed - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...140108154458.htm

scibyte115 heart

shared by Mars Base on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • When a child is born with a heart defect such as a hole in the heart, the highly invasive therapies are challenging due to an inability to quickly and safely secure devices inside the heart
  • Sutures take too much time to stitch and can cause stress on fragile heart tissue
  • currently available clinical adhesives are either too toxic or tend to lose their sticking power in the presence of blood or under dynamic conditions, such as in a beating heart
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • In the preclinical study, researchers
  • developed a bio-inspired adhesive that could rapidly attach biodegradable patches inside a beating heart
  • in the exact place where congenital holes in the heart occur, such as with ventricular heart defects.
  • many creatures in nature have secretions that are viscous and repel water
  • enabling them to attach under wet and dynamic conditions
  • researchers developed a material with these properties that also is biodegradable, elastic and biocompatible
  • the degradable patches secured with the glue remained attached even at increased heart rates and blood pressure
  • it works in the presence of blood and moving structures
  • Pedro del Nido, MD, Chief of Cardiac Surgery, Boston Children's Hospital, co-senior study author. "It should provide the physician with a completely new, much simpler technology and a new paradigm for tissue reconstruction to improve the quality of life of patients following surgical procedures."
  • the adhesive was strong enough to hold tissue and patches onto the heart equivalent to suturing
  • is biodegradable and biocompatible, so nothing foreign or toxic stays in the bodies of these patients
  • its adhesive abilities are activated with ultraviolent (UV) light, providing an on-demand, anti-bleeding seal within five seconds of UV light application
  • researchers note that their waterproof, light-activated adhesive will be useful in reducing the invasiveness of surgical procedures, as well as operating times, in addition to improving heart surgery outcomes.
Mars Base

Light from huge explosion 12 billion years ago reaches Earth -- ScienceDaily - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...140604105532.htm

scibyte134

shared by Mars Base on 05 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Intense light from the enormous explosion of a star more than 12 billion years ago -- shortly after the Big Bang -- recently reached Earth and was visible in the sky.
  • Known as a gamma-ray burst, the intense light captured in the night sky resulted from one of the biggest and hottest explosions in the universe, occurring shortly after the Big Bang
Mars Base

Search for element 113 concluded at last - 0 views

phys.org/...2012-09-element.html

scibyte65 elements

shared by Mars Base on 27 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • do not occur in nature and must be produced through experiments involving nuclear reactors or particle accelerators
  • via processes of nuclear fusion or neutron absorption
  • Elements 93 to 103 were discovered by the Americans, elements 104 to 106 by the Russians and the Americans, elements 107 to 112 by the Germans, and the two most recently named elements, 114 and 116, by cooperative work of the Russians and Americans.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • On August 12, those experiments bore fruit: zinc ions travelling at 10% the speed of light collided with a thin bismuth layer to produce a very heavy ion followed by a chain of six consecutive alpha decays identified as products of an isotope of the 113th element
Mars Base

Dazzling Meteor Fireball Lights Up UK Night Sky | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/ball-video-united-kingdom.html

scibyte64 meteorite

shared by Mars Base on 25 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • A spectacular meteor wowed stargazers across the United Kingdom Friday (Sept. 21) when it flared up and shattered into piece
  • spotted by observers across Scotland and northern England as well as Ireland
  • Many observers captured views of the meteor on camera
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • video of the Sept. 21 meteor shows what appears to be a fireball created as a small space rock breaks apart in Earth's atmosphere. Pieces of the meteor can easily be seen separating from the main body in his view
  • many witnesses to wonder if it was sparked by a man-made piece of space junk falling out of orbit
  • experts have conclusively tied the event to a naturally occurring space rock burning up in Earth's atmosphere
  • Veteran satellite tracker Marco Langbroe
  • the fireball was definitely a meteor.
  • sighting reports to determine the fireball's trajectory and studied videos posted by witnesses to determine how long it lasted
  • ack-of-the-envelope reconstruction therefore shows that this must have been a meteoric fireball, quite likely of asteroidal origin, and we definitely can exclude a satellite re-entry
  • meteor in space is called a meteoroid. Only when it flares up in the night sky does it become a meteor. Any remains of the object that reach the ground, meanwhile, are called meteorites
  • Earlier this year, a rare daytime fireball surprised U.S. observers in California and Nevada when it unleashed a sonic boom that some mistook for a small earthquake. The meteor was caused by a minivan-size asteroid and created several meteorites that NASA retrieved in a follow-up search
Mars Base

More Insight on How NASA Might Revive the Kepler Space Telescope - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ive-the-kepler-space-telescope

scibyte94 Kepler

shared by Mars Base on 19 May 13 - No Cached
  • there’s still a year and a half’s worth of data in the pipeline that scientists will analyze to identify other candidate planets, and there will continue to be Kepler science discoveries for quite some time
  • There are two possible ways to salvage the spacecraft
  • they could try turning back on the reaction wheel that they shut off a year ago. It was putting metal on metal, and the friction was interfering with its operation
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • could see if the lubricant that is in there, having sat quietly, has redistributed itself, and maybe it will work
  • The other scheme,
  • this has never been tried, involves using thrusters and the solar pressure exerted on the solar panels to try and act as a third reaction wheel and provide additional pointing stability
  • Kepler carries a photometer, not a camera, that looks at the brightness of stars, and so its optics deliberately defocus light from stars to create a nice spread of light on the detector, which is not ideal for spotting asteroids
Mars Base

Never-Before-Seen Alien Planet Imaged Directly in New Photo | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/alien-planet-direct-image.html

scibyte96 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 03 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • A newly discovered gaseous planet has been directly photographed orbiting a star about 300 light-years from Earth
  • this world may be the least massive planet directly observed outside of the solar system,
  • released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO)
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • June 3) depicts the suspected gas giant (called HD 95086 b) circling its young star (named HD 95086) in infrared light
  • HD 95086 b was sighted by ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile. Based on the planet's brightness, scientists estimate that it is only about four or five times more massive than Jupiter
  • Only a few planets have been directly observed so far
  • The blue circle in the photo represents the distance between the sun and Neptune.
  • The planet orbits its star at about twice the distance from the sun to Neptune and about 56 times the distance between Earth and the sun
  • is relatively young star at only 10 million to 17 million years old, making the formation of the exoplanet and the dusty disc surrounding the star potentially intriguing to researchers
  • It either grew by assembling the rocks that form the solid core and then slowly accumulated gas from the environment to form the heavy atmosphere
  • started forming from a gaseous clump that arose from gravitational instabilities in the disc
  • Interactions between the planet and the disc itself or with other planets may have also moved the planet from where it was born
Mars Base

Most Earthlike planets yet seen bring Kepler closer to its holy grail | Atom & Cosmos |... - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...epler_closer_to_its_holy_grail

scibyte91 scibyte92 exoplanet

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  • five-planet system around a star called Kepler-62, some 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Lyra
  • Astronomers found the planets by analyzing nearly three years’ worth of data
  • Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f are far more accommodating. They are 1.6 and 1.4 times the diameter of Earth
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • early evidence supports the optimistic view that at least 62f is rocky
  • biggest uncertainty about both planets is their composition
  • an astronomer at the University of Washington
  • not involved in the research
  • Kepler-62e
  • may be too close to its star – and therefore too hot – to sustain life
  • if 62e is a rocky planet, it’s almost certainly tidally locked with its star, with one half of its surface always illuminated and the other perpetually dark
  • Kepler 62 is about two-thirds the size of the sun and several hundred degrees Celsius cooler
  • Finding planets in the habitable zones of larger stars
  • harder because those planets have relatively long orbits and barely cast a shadow as they pass across the faces of their suns
  • another study
  • led by
  • NASA Ames Research Center
  • identified two planets around a sunlike star called Kepler-69, some 2,700 light-years away
  • One of the planets is 1.7 times the size of Earth and teeters on the inner edge of the habitable zone
  • probably too hot for life
  • almost certainly a super-Venus rather than a super-Earth
  • even a planet 75 percent larger than Earth is potentially habitable
  • Next-generation missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which NASA approved earlier this month for launch in 2017, will take on the task of finding nearer planets that astronomers can study in depth
Mars Base

3 Potentially Habitable Super-Earth Planets Explained (Infographic) | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/abitable-zone-infographic.html

scibyte91 scibyte92 exoplanet

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  • Kepler-62 is a red dwarf, only 20 percent as bright as the sun
  • located 1,200 light-years away from Earth
  • The Kepler-69 system contains one known planet in that star's habitable zone
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • a sun-like star located 2,700 light-years away,
  • As of April 2013, Kepler data has uncovered more than 2,700 potential planets, with about 120 of them having been confirmed to date
  • mission scientists expect that more than 90 percent of the planets detected are real and not illusions in the data
Mars Base

The Solar Cell That Turns 1 Photon into 2 Electrons: Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte91 solarcell

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  • If an incoming photon has too little energy, the cell won’t absorb it
  • Solar cells
  • If a photon has too much, the excess is wasted as heat
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • a silicon solar cell can never generate more than one electron from a single photon
  • severely limit the conversion efficiency of photovoltaic cells, and scientists have spent decades looking for work-arounds
  • the key to greater solar efficiency might be an organic dye called pentacene
  • a photovoltaic cell based on pentacene can generate two electrons from a single photon—more electricity from the same amount of sun.
  • The key is a phenomenon called singlet-exciton fission, in which an arriving photon generates two “excitons” (excited states) that can be made to yield two electrons.
  • Previous researchers had accomplished similar tricks using quantum dots (tiny pieces of matter that behave like atoms) and deep-ultraviolet light
  • Why it works is still not particularly clear, and for now, the pentacene cell works only with an extremely narrow band of visible light
  • it should be possible to create a pentacene coating for silicon solar cells that boosts the total conversion efficiency from today’s 25 percent to a shade over 30 percent—a significant jump
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