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Mars Base

Bright Comet May Be Visible to Naked Eye in March | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/-pan-starrs-visible-march.html

scibyte83 PANSTARRS

shared by Mars Base on 08 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • A comet that shines as brightly as the stars of the Big Dipper could be heading our way in March
  • the Comet Pan-STARRS is expected to whiz by about 100 million miles from Earth, skimming the orbit of Mercury, early next month.
  • could fail to put on a dazzling show if it falls apart under the intense heat and gravitational pull of its plunge toward the sun
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • if it survives, Comet Pan-STARRS might send an amazing stream of gas and dust into the night sky
  • Pan-STARRS should be very active, producing a lot of dust and therefore a nice dust tail
  • it could still be difficult to see
  • From our point of view on Earth, the comet will be very close to the sun
  • it is only observable in twilight when the sky is not fully dark
  • comes from the Oort Cloud,
  • discovered in June 2011 by the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System, or Pan-STARRS telescope, in Hawaii
  • nearest approach to Earth on March 5, when it will come be about 100 million miles (160 million kilometers) away
  • the best time to look for it might be at sunset March 12 and 13, when the comet will appear not far from the crescent moon
  • The comet's tail will probably require binoculars or a small telescope
Mars Base

Mussel Glue Could Help Repair Birth Defects - ScienceNOW - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...glue-could-help-repair-bi.html

scibyte83 BirthDefects

shared by Mars Base on 19 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • researcher said he has used the mollusk’s tricks to develop medical applications
  • include a biocompatible glue that could one day seal fetal membranes, allowing prenatal surgeons to repair birth defects without triggering dangerous premature labor
  • mussels secrete liquid proteins that harden into a solid, water-resistant glue
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • Not even Super Glue will stick in a fish aquarium because a layer of water forms that keeps the two surfaces from bonding
  • mussels somehow elbow the water aside and bind themselves to rocks anyway
  • Over 30 years, Waite’s team has uncovered the basis of this remarkable ability
  • parts of the proteins that face out toward the hard surface. It enables liquid holdfast proteins to solidify rapidly and stick flawlessly to wet and salty surfaces
  • If I were to list the desired properties for medical adhesives, they would look exactly the same
  • colleagues have created a synthetic, thread-like polymer called polyethylene glycol that mimics the mussel protein
  • To see if the compound worked in live animals, a veterinary surgeon collaborating with Messersmith's team made a 2.5-centimeter incision in the carotid artery of a dog and placed four stitches along the length of that incision to hold it in place
  • With the stitches alone, the incision bled when the surgeon pressed it.
  • just 20 seconds after the mussel-based glue was applied, the artery was sealed and didn’t bleed.
  • recently
  • team began testing its glue on fetal membranes
  • For the past few decades, surgeons have begun surgically repairing birth defects like spina bifida while a fetus is still in utero
  • the process is risky because the surgery risks rupturing the fetal membrane prematurely, sending the mother into premature labor.
  • There are no good adhesives on the market for surgeons to repair such fetal-membrane tears
  • in recent, unpublished experiments in rabbits, Messersmith and colleagues found that after a veterinary surgeon poked a 3.5-mm hole in the animal’s fetal membrane, the new, mussel-inspired glue readily sealed up the puncture
  • without the glue, only 40% of the fetal rabbits survived the surgery, but with the glue, 60% did.
  • In another recent result
  • researchers chemically altered the polyethylene glycol polymer so that the glue would shrink when it hardened
  • This could counter tissue swelling during surgery,
  • fetal surgeons working with Messersmith are testing whether the glue can help reseal the tissue surrounding the spinal cord to repair a serious birth defect known spinal bifida in rabbits
Mars Base

Naming Pluto's Moons: Will it Come Down to Trekkies Versus the IAU? - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...own-to-trekkies-versus-the-iau

scibyte83 pluto

shared by Mars Base on 19 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • the SETI Institute has invited the public to vote on the names of Pluto’s 4th and 5th moons
Mars Base

Confirmed: Dogs Sneak Food When People Aren't Looking - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...ogs-animals-science-mind-smart

scibyte83 dog

shared by Mars Base on 19 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The research shows that domestic dogs, when told not to snatch a piece of food, are more likely to disobey the command in a dark room than in a lit room
  • The one thing we can say is that dogs really have specialized skills in reading human communication
  • This is special in dogs
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • recruited 84 dogs, all of which were more than a year old, motivated by food, and comfortable with both strangers and dark rooms
  • The team then set up experiments in which a person commanded a dog not to take a piece of food on the floor
  • repeated the commands in a room with different lighting scenarios ranging from fully lit to fully dark
  • They found that the dogs were four times as likely to steal the food—and steal it more quickly—when the room was dark
  • the dog's behavior depended on whether the food was in the light or not, suggesting that the dog made its decision based on whether the human could see them approaching the food
  • were thinking what affected the dog was whether they saw the human, but seeing the human or not didn't affect the behavior
  • The study of dog cognition suddenly began about 15 years ago
  • Many of the new dog studies are variations on research done with chimpanzees, bonobos, and even young children
  • Selectively bred as companions for thousands of years, dogs are especially attuned to human emotions
  • are better at reading human cues than even our closest mammalian relatives
  • research reveals more and more insight into the minds
  • We still don't know just how smart they are
  • researchers are interested in whether the dog has a theory of mind
  • theory of mind is "an understanding that others have different perspective, knowledge, feelings than we do
  • Now, a new study suggests dogs might understand people even better than we thought
Mars Base

Scientists sense breakthroughs in dark-matter mystery - 0 views

phys.org/...oughs-dark-matter-mystery.html

scibyte82 scibyte83 DarkMatter

shared by Mars Base on 19 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Dark matter throws down the gauntlet to the so-called Standard Model of physics.
  • Elegant and useful for identifying the stable of particles and forces that regulate our daily life, the Standard Model only tells part of the cosmic story
  • it does not explain gravity, although we know how to measure gravity and exploit it for our needs
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • the Standard Model has been found to account for only around four or five percent of the stuff in the Universe
  • dark matter, making up 23 percent, and dark energy, an enigmatic force that appears to drive the expansion of the Universe, which accounts for around 72 or 73 percent.
  • The dark matter theory was born 80 years ago when Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky discovered that there was not enough mass in observable stars or galaxies to allow the force of gravity to hold them together
  • why dark matter has six times the energy that is in ordinary matter
  • could be 10 trillions times bigger
  • first results will be published in two to three weeks
  • High-powered instruments track cosmic particles
  • To track these phantom particles, physicists rely on several methods and tools
  • One is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) aboard the International Space Station (ISS), which captures gamma rays coming from collisions of dark matter particles.
  • only suggesting that these highly anticipated results would give humans a better idea about the nature of dark matter
  • Another tool used by the scientists is the South Pole Neutrino Observatory, which tracks subatomic particles known as neutrinos, which, according to physicists, are created when dark matter passes through the Sun and interacts with protons
  • Another
  • is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, the biggest particle smasher in the world
Mars Base

Retinal implants with wireless microchip restore functional vision in retinitis pigment... - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...less-microchip-functional.html

scibyte83 BionicEye

shared by Mars Base on 20 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • research found that, during the course of a three to nine month observation period, functional vision was restored in the majority of nine German patients implanted with a subretinal microchip as part of the first module of the Company's second human clinical trial
  • visual acuity for two of the nine patients surpassed the visual resolution of patients from the Company's first human clinical trial
  • Patients were implanted with Retina Implant AG's subretinal wireless 3x3 mm2, 1500 pixel Alpha IMS microchip and are able to adjust the level of stimulation received to view objects at varied distances
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  • Of the nine patients observed in the study, three patients were able to read letters spontaneously
  • During observation in and outside the laboratory patients also reported the ability to recognize faces, distinguish objects such as telephones and read signs on doors
  • Results from the first trial
  • concluding that the implantation of Retina Implant's microchip was successful in restoring useful vision in patients previously blind due to retinitis pigmentosa
  • second clinical trial with a wireless device that allows patients to use the implant outdoors and at home
  • has since expanded into the multicentre phase
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 20 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The discovery of "significant amounts" of water in moon rock samples collected by NASA's Apollo astronauts is challenging a longstanding theory about how the moon formed
  • Since the Apollo era, scientists have thought the moon came to be after a Mars-size object smashed into Earth early in the planet's history, generating a ring of debris that slowly coalesced over millions of years
  • That process, scientists have said, should have flung away the water-forming element hydrogen into space
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  • a new study suggests the accepted scenario is not possible given the amount of water found in moon rocks collected from the lunar surface in the early 1970s
  • By "water," the researchers don't mean liquid water, but hydroxyl, a chemical that includes the hydrogen and oxygen ingredients of water.
  • Those water-forming elements would have been on the moon all along
  • the impact scenario is the best formation scenario for the moon, but we need to reconcile the theory of hydrogen
  • Past studies have suggested water-forming elements came to the moon from outside sources long after the moon's crust cooled
  • The solar wind — a stream of particles emanating from the sun — as well as meteorites and comets were pegged as possible sources ofwater depositson the moon in recent studies
  • that explanation does not account for the amount of water found in the Apollo samples
  • Because they found hydroxyl deep inside each sampled rock, the scientists say they have eliminated the solar wind moon water explanation
  • those particles can penetrate the surface only slightly
  • An impact from an asteroid or comet could push the hydrogen in further, but it would not be as pristine as the samples the researchers observed, because it would have melted from the heat of the asteroid collision
  • Researchers probed samples from the late Apollo missions, including the famous "Genesis Rock" that was named for its advanced age of 4.5 billion years, about the same time the moon is thought to have formed
  • Using an infrared spectrometer, the researchers found water embedded in the Genesis Rock
  • implies that the various landing sites of Apollo 15, 16 and 17 each had water present
  • Hui's research flies in the face of past analyses of Apollo rocks that found they were very dry, except for a small bit of water attributed to the rock containers leaking when they were returned to Earth
  • Past instruments that analyzed these samples, however, were not very sensitive
  • older spectrometers had a sensitivity of around 50 parts per million (ppm), while his instruments were able to detect water at concentrations of about 6 ppm in anorthosites and 2.7 ppm in troctolites, which are both igneous rocks found in the moon's crust.
Mars Base

Has Dark Matter Finally Been Found? Big News Soon | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/ter-found-nasa-experiment.html

scibyte82 scibyte83 DarkMatter

shared by Mars Base on 19 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle collector mounted on the outside of the International Space Station
  • first paper of results
  • in about two weeks
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • e said the results bear on the mystery of dark matter,
  • "It will not be a minor paper,"
  • important enough that the scientists rewrote the paper 30 times before they were satisfied with it
  • it represents a "small step" in figuring out what dark matter is, and perhaps not the final answer
  • Some physics theories suggest that dark matter is made of WIMPS (weakly interacting massive particles), a class of particles that are their own antimatter partner particles
  • When matter and antimatter partners meet, they annihilate each other, so if two WIMPs collided, they would be destroyed, releasing a pair of daughter particles — an electron and its antimatter counterpart, the positron, in the process
  • Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer has the potential to detect the positrons and electrons produced by dark matter annihilations in the Milky Way
  • was installed on the International Space Station in May 2011, and so far, it has detected 25 billion particle events, including about 8 billion electrons and positrons
  • This first science paper will report how many of each were found, and what their energies are
  • If the experiment detected an abundance of positrons peaking at a certain energy, that could indicate a detection of dark matter,
  • while electrons are abundant in the universe around us, there are fewer known processes that could give rise to positrons
  • The smoking gun signature is a rise and then a dramatic fall" in the number of positrons with respect to energy
  • he positrons produced by dark matter annihilation would have a very specific energy, depending on the mass of the WIMPs making up dark matter
  • Another telling sign will be the question of whether positrons appear to be coming from one direction in space, or from all around
  • f they're from dark matter, scientists expect them to be spread evenly through space, but if they're created by some normal astrophysical process, such as a star explosion, then they would originate in a single direction
  • There is a lot of stuff that can mimic dark matter,"
  • Regardless of whether AMS has found dark matter yet, the scientists said they expected the question of dark matter's origin to become clearer soon
Mars Base

Historic Mars Rock Drilling Sample Set for Analysis by Curiosity Robot in Search of Org... - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ty-robot-in-search-of-organics

scibyte83 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 25 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • examining ancient rocks that have not been exposed to the Martian surface environment, and weathering, and preserve the environment in which they formed
  • This is a key point because subsequent oxidation reactions can destroy organic molecules and thereby potential signs of habitability and life.
  • The tailings are gray. All things being equal it’s better to have a gray color than red because oxidation is something that can destroy organic compounds
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  • data so far indicate the drilled rock is either siltstone or mudstone with a basaltic bulk composition
  • The CheMin and SAM testing will be revealing
  • The high powered drill was the last of Curiosity 10 instruments still to be checked out and put into full operation and completes the robots commissioning phase
  • So far she has snapped over 45,000 images, traveled nearly 0.5 miles, conducted 25 analysis with the APXS spectrometer and fired over 12,000 laser shots with the ChemCam instrument
Mars Base

Pioneering Moon, Mars Scientist David McKay Dies at 76 | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/-mckay-obituary-moon-mars.html

scibyte83

shared by Mars Base on 26 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • McKay, who served as chief scientist for astrobiology at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston,died peacefully in his sleep on Feb. 20
  • As a graduate student, McKay was in the audience
  • when President John F. Kennedy gave his legendary "We choose to go to the moon" speech
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  • McKay joined NASA in June of 1965
  • participating extensively in astronaut training leading up to 1969's historic Apollo 11 mission
  • McKay was lead author of a 1996 paper in the journal Science that suggested ALH84001 may contain evidence of past life on Mars.
  • The claim still spurs controversy, but it also sparked a shift in perspectives that is alive and well within NASA today
  • McKay developed innovative new technology for both life detection and the use of lunar regolith as feedstock, radiation protection, fuel, nutrient source for microbial bioreactors and long-term lunar habitation.
Mars Base

Astronomers Calculate Orbit and Origins of Russian Fireball - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...nd-origins-of-russian-fireball

scibyte83 RussianMeteor

shared by Mars Base on 26 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Just a week after a huge fireball streaked across the skies of the Chelyabinsk region of Russia, astronomers published a paper that reconstructs the orbit and determines the origins of the space rock
  • University of Antioquia in
  • Colombia used a resource not always available in meteorite falls: the numerous dashboard and security cameras that captured the huge fireball
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Using the trajectories shown in videos posted on YouTube, the researchers were able to calculate the trajectory of the meteorite as it fell to Earth and use it to reconstruct the orbit in space of the meteoroid before its violent encounter with our planet.
  • The results are preliminary
  • and they are already working on getting more precise results
  • But through their calculations, Zuluaga and Ferrin determined the rock originated from the Apollo class of asteroids
  • due to variations in time and date stamps on several of the videos
  • some which differed by several minutes
  • they decided to choose two videos from different locations that seemed to be the most reliable
  • used this data and Google Earth to reconstruct the path of the rock as it entered the atmosphere and showed that it matched an image of the trajectory taken by the geostationary Meteosat-9 weather satellite.
  • From triangulation, they were able to determine height, speed and position of the meteorite as it fell to Earth
Mars Base

Smallest Exoplanet Yet Discovered by 'Listening' to a Sun-like Star - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...y-listening-to-a-sun-like-star

scibyte83 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 21 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Scientists have discovered a new planet orbiting a Sun-like star, and the exoplanet is the smallest yet found in data from the Kepler mission
  • Kepler-37b, is smaller than Mercury, but slightly larger than Earth’s Moon
  • discovery came from a collaboration between Kepler scientists and a consortium of international researchers who employ asteroseismology
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • measuring oscillations in the star’s brightness caused by continuous star-quakes, and turning those tiny variations in the star’s light into sounds
  • The bigger the star, the lower the frequency, or ‘pitch’ of its song
  • The measurements made by the astroseismologists allowed the Kepler research team to more accurately measure the tiny Kepler-37b
  • revealing two other planets in the same planetary system: one slightly smaller than Earth and one twice as large
  • Kepler-37b is very likely a rocky planet with no atmosphere or water, similar to Mercury
  • “The detection of such a small planet shows for the first time that stellar systems host planets much smaller as well as much larger than anything we see in our own Solar System.”
  • host star, Kepler-37, is about 210 light-years from Earth
  • All three planets orbit the star at less than the distance Mercury is to the Sun
  • Kepler-37b orbits every 13 days at less than one-third Mercury’s distance from the Sun
  • estimated surface temperature of this smoldering planet, at more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit (700 degrees Kelvin
  • hot enough to melt the zinc in a penny
  • Kepler-37c and Kepler-37d, orbit every 21 days and 40 days, respectively
  • The size of the star must be known in order to measure the planet’s size accurately
  • scientists examined sound waves generated by the boiling motion beneath the surface of the star
  • The technique for stellar seismology is analogous to how geologists use seismic waves generated by earthquakes to probe the interior structure of Earth
  • sound waves travel into the star and bring information back up to the surface
  • waves cause oscillations that Kepler observes as a rapid flickering of the star’s brightness
  • barely discernible, high-frequency oscillations in the brightness of small stars are the most difficult to measure
  • why most objects previously subjected to asteroseismic analysis are larger than the Sun
  • Kepler-37 has a radius just three-quarters of the Sun
  • the radius of the star is known to 3 percent accuracy, which translates to exceptional accuracy in the planet’s size.
  • this discovery took a long time to verify, as the signature of this very small exoplanet was hard to confirm
  • Kepler is sending astronomers photometry data that’s “probably the best we’ll see in our lifetimes
  • uncovered a planet smaller than any in our solar system orbiting one of the few stars that is both bright and quiet, where signal detection was possible
Mars Base

Dennis Tito Wants to Send Human Mission to Mars in 2018 - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...-human-mission-to-mars-in-2018

scibyte83 mars

shared by Mars Base on 21 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Dennis Tito — the first-ever space tourist — is planning send a human mission to Mars in January 2018 on a round-trip journey lasting 501 days
  • Reportedly, Tito has created a new nonprofit company called the Inspiration Mars Foundation to facilitate the mission
  • Tito, along with several other notable people from the space community will provide more information in a press conference set for Wednesday, February 27th
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • paper Tito plans to present at the IEEE Aerospace Conference in March, which discusses
  • a crewed free-return Mars mission that would fly by Mars
  • no going into orbit or landing
  • Such a 501-day mission would launch in January 2018, “using a modified SpaceX Dragon spacecraft launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket,”
  • existing environmental control and life support system (ECLSS) technologies would allow such a spacecraft to support two people for the mission,
  • Crew comfort is limited to survival needs only.
  • sponge baths are acceptable, with no need for showers
  • the paper outlines how NASA would also have a role in this mission in terms of supporting key life support and thermal protection systems, even though this is a private-sector effort
  • No estimates of what such a mission would cost are included in the paper, but it does say it would be financed privately
  • The paper adds that if they miss this favorable 2018 opportunity, the next chance to take advantage of this lower energy trajectory would be in 2031.
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