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Water Ice in Moon's Shackleton Crater Identified | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/ter-ice-shackleton-crater.html LunarWater
shared by Mars Base on 21 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • sits almost directly on the moon's south
  • more than 12 miles wide (19 kilometers) and 2 miles deep (3 km) — about as deep as Earth's oceans.
  • in nearly perpetual darkness
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Japanese spacecraft Kaguya saw no discernible signs of
  • NASA's LCROSS probe analyzed Cabeus Crater near the moon's south pole and found it measured as much as 5 percent water by mass
  • crater's floor is more reflective than that of other nearby craters, suggesting it had ice.
  • The amount of ice in Shackleton Crater "can also be much less, conceivably as little as zero
  • Bizarrely, while the crater's floor was relatively bright, Zuber and her colleagues observed that its walls were even more reflective.
  • researchers think the reflectance of the crater's walls is due not to ice, but to quakes
  • may have caused Shackleton's walls to slough off older, darker soil, revealing newer, brighter soil underneath
  • reflectance could be indicative of something else in addition to or other than water ice
  • might be reflective because it could have had relatively little exposure to solar and cosmic radiation that would have darkened it.
  • measurements only look at a micron-thick portion of Shackleton Crater's uppermost layer
  • bigger question is how much water might be buried at depth
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ScienceShot: Get Ready for Gigapixels - ScienceNOW - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...ceshot-get-ready-for-giga.html scibyte52 camera
shared by Mars Base on 21 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Researchers have developed a prototype "supercamera" that stitches together images from 98 individual cameras
  • to create a 960-million-pixel image with enough resolution to spot a 3.8-centimeter-wide object 1 kilometer away
  • Applied to a 120°-wide, near-fisheye view of the Seattle skyline
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • the 93-kilogram camera (inset, upper left) captured enough detail to read the fine print on signs as much as two blocks away
  • camera's optics occupy only 3% of the volume of its 75-centimeter-by-75-centimeter-by-50- centimeter frame
  • needed both to contain the camera's circuit boards and to keep them from overheating
  • other camera systems can generate gigapixel-and-larger images, those composite views are stitched together from individual images taken sequentially with one camera as it is panned across the scene
  • new system takes all 98 images simultaneously, providing a "stop action" view of a scene
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Researchers estimate ice content of crater at Moon's south pole - 0 views

phys.org/...content-crater-moon-south.html LunarWater
shared by Mars Base on 21 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has returned data that indicate ice may make up as much as 22 percent of the surface material in a crater located on the moon's south pole
  • using laser light from LRO's laser altimeter examined the floor of Shackleton crater
  • the crater's floor is brighter than those of other nearby craters, which is consistent with the presence of small amounts of
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • spacecraft mapped Shackleton crater
  • using a laser to illuminate the crater's interior and measure its albedo or natural reflectance
  • laser light measures to a depth comparable to its wavelength, or about a micron
  • represents a millionth of a meter, or less than one ten-thousandth of an inch
  • used the instrument to map the relief of the crater's terrain based on the time it took for laser light to bounce back from the moon's surface. The longer it took, the lower the terrain's elevation.
  • addition to the possible evidence of ice, the group's map of Shackleton revealed a remarkably preserved crater that has remained relatively unscathed since its formation more than three billion years ago
  • Like several craters at the moon's south pole, the small tilt of the lunar spin axis means Shackleton crater's interior is permanently dark and therefore extremely cold
  • The crater's interior is extremely rugged
  • "It would not be easy to crawl around in there
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Engineers build 50 gigapixel camera - 0 views

phys.org/...2012-06-gigapixel-camera.html scibyte52 camera
shared by Mars Base on 21 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • resolution is five times better than 20/20 human vision over a 120 degree horizontal field.
  • capture up to 50 gigapixels of data, which is 50,000 megapixels
  • most consumer cameras
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  • ranging from 8 to 40 megapixels
  • researchers believe that within five years
  • gigapixel cameras should be available to the general public
  • Traditionally, one way of making better optics has been to add more glass elements, which increases complexity
  • camera was developed by
  • Duke's Pratt School of Engineering
  • University of Arizona
  • University of California
  • Distant Focus Corp
  • The camera is so large now because of the electronic control boards and the need to add components to keep it from overheating
  • prototype camera itself is two-and-half feet square and 20 inches dee
  • only about three percent of the camera is made of the optical elements
  • arrange for some overlap
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Carrots, not sticks, motivate workers - 0 views

phys.org/...2012-06-carrots-workers.html scibyte52 Motivation
shared by Mars Base on 21 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • new study co-authored by a Michigan State University business scholar says it's the carrot – and not the stick – that drives productivity.
  • challenges previous research that says the threat of penalty is more effective for getting increased effort
  • findings show what carrots work better than sticks – in other words, workers respond better to bonuses than penalties
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  • conducted a scientific experiment in which participants played the role of supervisor and employee
  • Some employees were subjected to a bonus program implemented by the supervisor
  • others worked under a penalty system.
  • Employees subjected to the bonus exhibited more effort and this was driven by greater trust in the supervisor
  • the study is the first to identify this trust factor.
  • those subjected to penalties tend to distrust the supervisor and, because of that, work less hard
  • employees who receive bonuses for their efforts will work even harder, increasing productivity and potentially bolstering profits
  • Examples of penalties in the business world include pay reduction, demotion and sanction or other disciplinary action, such as a salesperson with lower performance getting less territory to work.
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Mars Snowflakes Are as Tiny as Red Blood Cells | Mars Weather | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/mars-snowflakes-tiny-snow.html scibyte52 mars
shared by Mars Base on 21 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Snowflakes on Mars are smaller than their Earth counterparts, having roughly the same diameter as a human red blood cell, a new study reports.
  • analyzed observations made by two Mars-orbiting spacecraft to calculate the size of snowflakes
  • composed of carbon dioxide rather than water
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • team looked at temperature and pressure profiles taken by MRO to determine where and when conditions would allow carbon dioxide snow particles to form
  • analyzed measurements from MGS' laser altimeter, which gauged the topography of Mars by timing how long laser pulses took to bounce back from the planet's surface
  • Occasionally, the laser beam returned faster than anticipated, after ricocheting off cloud particles in the Martian atmosphere.
  • analyzing how much light these clouds reflected, the researchers were able to calculate the density of carbon dioxide in each one.
  • figured out the total mass of snow particles hovering above Mars' poles by examining earlier measurements of tiny, seasonal shifts in the planet's gravitational field.
  • put all of this information together to calculate the number and size of individual snow particles in the polar clouds at various times
  • found that particle size differed from pole to pole, with flakes in the north measuring between 8 to 22 microns and those in the south just 4 to 13 microns.
  • about comparable to the width of a human red blood cell, the researches said.
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Google sets out to save dying languages - 0 views

phys.org/...06-google-dying-languages.html scibyte52 language google
shared by Mars Base on 21 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • In an alliance with scholars and linguists, the Internet powerhouse on Wednesday introduced an Endangered Languages Project website where people can find, share, and store information about dialects in danger of disappearing.
  • diverse group of collaborators have already begun to contribute content ranging from 18th-century manuscripts to modern teaching tools like video and audio language samples and knowledge-sharing articles
  • endangeredlanguages.com is designed to let users upload video, audio, or text files and encourages them to memorialize recordings of rare dialects.
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  • Only half of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken today are expected to survive past the end of this century
  • Technology can strengthen these efforts, by helping people create high-quality recordings of their elders (often the last speakers of a language),
  • Google's philanthropic arm seeded the project, leadership of which will be ceded in coming months to the First People's Cultural Council and the Institute for Language Information and Technology at Eastern Michigan University.
  • Endangered Languages Catalog (ELCat), sponsored by the University of Hawaii, will also be contributing to the project.
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Muscle reconstruction reveals how dinosaurs stood - 0 views

phys.org/...n-reveals-dinosaurs-stood.html scibyte52 dinosaur
shared by Mars Base on 21 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Much is known about the dinosaurs that walked on 4 legs like Stegosaurus and Triceratops, but their stance has been a topic of debate
  • reconstructed the muscles on dinosaur limb bones and combined this with what is already known about their skeletons to get a truer picture of how they stood.
  • team looked at the horned dinosaurs (ceratopsids), the armoured dinosaurs (stegosaurs), and the duck-billed dinosaurs (hadrosaurs), 3 groups of ornithischian dinosaurs.
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  • studied more than 200 dinosaur fossil bone specimens, looking at how muscles and soft tissue attach to forelimbs, hind limbs, hip bones and vertebrae
  • results suggest the front limbs of the ceratopsids and the stegosaurs had elbows that were bent and held slightly out from the sides of the body
  • hadrosaurs held their forelimbs quite close together.
  • 'If a muscle is present in birds, and it is also present in crocodiles, then we can be quite sure it was also present in the dinosaurs,' says Maidment. 'By looking at all of the limb muscles in crocodiles and birds through dissection, we can build up a picture of the limb muscles in the dinosaurs.'
  • scientists use data from the dinosaurs' closest living relatives, birds and crocodiles.
  • Although their skeletons were very similar, the team found that the muscles were different
  • more diverse methods of locomotion than previously thought.
  • the shape of the bones alone does not tell the full story
  • We've already begun doing this and are producing 3D computational models of the limbs to look at how the muscles worked as the animals moved
  • Mars Base on 21 Jun 12
     
    The results suggest the front limbs of the ceratopsids and the stegosaurs had elbows that were bent and held slightly out from the sides of the body (as though it was half-way through a press up). In comparison the hadrosaurs held their forelimbs quite close together. Until now, scientists have just used the fossil skeletons to reconstruct what a dinosaur looked like. However, the team says the skeleton alone isn't a good predictor of how the animal stood, and it is crucial to look at the soft tissue as well. This also has implications for scientists who study behaviour an
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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.
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Odd Alien Planets So Close Together They See 'Planetrise' | Kepler Mission | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/s-close-orbits-planetrise.html scibyte52 exoplanets
shared by Mars Base on 22 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Astronomers have discovered two alien planets around the same star whose orbits come so close together that each rises in the night sky of its sister world
  • ,200 light-years from Earth
  • differ greatly in size and composition but come within just 1.2 million miles (1.9 million kilometers) of each other, closer than any other pair of planets known,
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  • Kepler-36b, appears to be a rocky "super-Earth" 4.5 times as massive as our planet
  • Kepler-36c, is a gaseous, Neptune-size world about eight times as massive as Earth
  • planets meet up every 97 days in a conjunction that would make each dramatically visible in the other's sky.
  • At their closest approach, the two planets are separated by five times the distance between the Earth and the moon
  • as different in density as Earth and Saturn
  • Kepler-36b and c are actually more like 20 times closer together than any two planets in our neck of the woods
  • Kepler-36c, which is about 3.7 times wider than Earth, likely has a rocky core surrounded by a substantial atmosphere filled with lots of hydrogen and helium
  • Kepler-36b, on the other hand, is a super-Earth just 1.5 times wider than our planet. Iron likely constitutes about 30 percent of its mass, water around 15 percent and atmospheric hydrogen and helium less than 1 percent
  • Kepler-36c orbits once every 16 days, at an average distance of 12 million miles (19 million km). Kepler-36b orbits each 14 days and sits about 11 million miles (18 million km) from the star.
  • Kepler-36b probably formed relatively close to the star
  • Kepler-36c likely took shape farther out
  • large-scale migrations that can bring initially far-flung planets much closer together
  • Kepler-36b probably sporting lava flows on its surface
  • orbit roughly three times closer to their host star, known as Kepler-36a, than the hellishly hot planet Mercury does to our sun
  • Kepler-36a is likely a bit hotter than our star
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What a View! Exoplanet Odd Couple Orbit in Close Proximity - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ouple-orbit-in-close-proximity scibyte52 exoplanets
shared by Mars Base on 22 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • The bigger planet is pushing the smaller planet around more, so the smaller planet was harder to find
  • the star is a several billion years older than our Sun, and at this time is known to have just two planets
2More

A Gamma-Ray Burst as Music - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...a-gamma-ray-burst-as-music scibyte52 MusicalScience
shared by Mars Base on 22 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • members of the team that work with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) have translated gamma-ray measurements into musical notes
  • musical notes we assigned the photons to be “played” by different instruments (harp, cello, or piano) based on the probabilities that they came from the burst
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Race is on to lure new SpaceX launchpad - 0 views

phys.org/...-06-lure-spacex-launchpad.html scibyte52 SpaceX
shared by Mars Base on 22 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • A record-breaking mission to the International Space Station has triggered another space race back on Earth, with Florida competing against Texas and Puerto Rico for the chance to land a new launchpad for Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, and its ambitious line of Falcon rockets.
  • none of the rivals has made public the incentives each is offering, the numbers are certain to be in the millions of dollars.
  • The stakes are high: hundreds of good-paying jobs at SpaceX and supporting companies that would pop up around its operation, as well as the prestige - at a time when NASA is no longer flying its own rockets - of serving as home to the commercial space industry's most successful startup.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Musk met last week with Texas Gov. Rick Perry to discuss locating a launchpad at the southernmost tip of the Lone Star State.
  • SpaceX has not disclosed what incentives it has been offered or the timing of its decision
  • Musk recently indicated that Texas might have the inside track
  • Florida officials acknowledge the competition is keen. They're hoping to leverage the fact that SpaceX already has one launchpad at Cape Canaveral
  • SpaceX officials said the one Florida pad isn't enough to handle both its government work and flights for commercial customers
  • d a deal with Intelsat, a major satellite operator, for a future launch aboard a massive new rocket that is still under developmen
  • manifest already shows more than a half-dozen commercial flights through 2014 in which SpaceX will carry satellites to orbit.
  • Florida officials also note they have a track record of helping the company. Space Florida, the state's aerospace booster, has invested more than $8.5 million so far to help establish the company at Cape Canaveral.
  • Florida faces one obstacle that has no immediate solution. The Air Force and NASA already use Cape Canaveral for launches - of government satellites and space probes - and SpaceX at times could be forced to wait its turn until the range is clear.
  • autonomous as possible, having
  • Puerto Rican officials are making geography a core argument in their pitch.
  • Puerto Rico is closer to the equator than Cape Canaveral or Brownsville, which means SpaceX rockets would use less fuel (and thus cost less to launch to orbit) because rockets get more of a "boost" from Earth's rotation near the equator.
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Physicists On Alert For Higgs Announcement - Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...n_alert_for_Higgs_announcement scibyte53 HiggsBoson
shared by Mars Base on 22 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Rumors of an impending Very Important Higgs Announcement
  • The two teams searching for the elusive particle at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, are keeping quiet.
  • people work day and night including weekends to reach a scientifically validated result
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • is morphing almost constantly
  • A Higgs produced from the energy of the colliding protons remains intact for so short a time that it can’t be observed direct
  • Instead, scientists infer its presence from the rubble produced when it falls apart
  • The Higgs boson *does* give particles mass
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Scientists Discover That Mars is Full of Water | Surprising Science | Smithsonian Magazine - 0 views

www.smithsonianmag.com/...hat-mars-is-full-of-water.html mars water
shared by Chris Fisher on 26 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Now, according to an article published yesterday in the journal Geology, there is evidence that Mars is home to vast reservoirs of water in its interior as well.
  • The amount of water in the meteorites suggested that the Martian mantle contains somewhere between 70 and 300 parts per million of water—an amount strikingly similar to Earth’s own mantle. Because both the samples contained roughly the same water content despite their different geological histories on Mars, the researchers believe that the planet incorporated this water long ago, during the early stages of its formation. The paper also provides us with an answer for how underground water may have made its way to the Martian surface: volcanic activity.
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Space Shuttle Trainer Lifts Off for Seattle on NASA Aircraft | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/asa-super-guppy-takes-off.html scibyte53 shuttle
shared by Mars Base on 27 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • wide-bodied turboprop aircraft previously used to deliver the room-size modules of the International Space Station to their Florida launch site.
  • Full Fuselage Trainer (FFT), a life-size space shuttle mockup that was used by every person who flew on the shuttle while training at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston
  • the FFT is being delivered in segmentsto The Museum of Flight in Seattle for its public display.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • 28-foot (8.5 meters) long compartment — comprising the shuttle's iconic nose with its dual level flight- and mid-decks
  • Shuttlefest
2More

Scientists find new primitive mineral in meteorite - 0 views

phys.org/...imitive-mineral-meteorite.html scibyte53
shared by Mars Base on 27 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • named after Pan Gu, the giant from ancient Chinese mythology who established the world by separating yin from yang to create the earth and the sky
  • nanomineralogy investigation of primitive meteorites—which Ma has been leading since 2007—nine new minerals, including panguite, have been found in the Allende meteorite
6More

New Mineral Found in Meteorite is From Solar System's Beginnings - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...-from-solar-systems-beginnings scibyte53 meteorite
shared by Mars Base on 27 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Scientists have discovered a new mineral embedded in a meteorite that fell to Earth over 40 years ago, and it could be among the oldest minerals, formed in the early days of our solar system
  • Panguite is an especially exciting discovery since it is not only a new mineral, but also a material previously unknown to science
  • meteorite arrived at Earth in 1969 as an exploding fireball in the skies over Mexico, scattering thousands of pieces of meteorites across the state of Chihuahua
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • largest carbonaceous chondrite
  • ever found on our planet and is considered by many the best-studied meteorite in history
  • the new mineral is likely among the first solid objects formed in our solar system and could date back to over 4 billion years ago, before the formation of Earth and the other planets.
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