SciByte

The latest research findings from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN show that the CMS and ATLAS experiments are now reporting that the significance of their observation of the Higgs-like particle is standing close to the 7 sigma level, well beyond the 5 required for a discovery, and that the new particle's properties appear to be consistent with those of a Standard Model Higgs boson.

During the primary mission, they flew about 35 miles above the lunar surface. After getting bonus data-collecting time, they lowered their altitude to 14 miles (22 kilometers) above the surface

Ebb strikes first, followed 24 seconds later by Flow

f Sally Ride, who played a key role in Grail's education and outreach efforts

Ride had led Grail's MoonKAM project, which allowed schoolkids around the world to select lunar sites for Ebb and Flow to photograph

vision system enables the UAV to search and find the target for the emplacement autonomously and then perform the action

Our goal

was to show we could quickly develop and integrate the right technology to make this work

this technology

successfully demonstrated

A newly developed stereo vision system that tracks the emplacement target and motion of the robotic arm.

The vision system, coupled with global positioning system, controls the arm and V-Bat during emplacement.

Control logic to maneuver the vehicle and direct the robotic arm to accurately engage the emplacement target.

Vehicle stability with the arm extended 6 feet with a 1-pound payload.

Autonomous search and detection of the emplacement target and autonomously emplaced a 1-pound payload

the team found that simply adding artificial muscle and bones generally tended to create weight problems

upper body alone came to 45 kg

with the idea of mimicking human bone and muscle at the individual body part level, i.e. a backbone, calf, or knee joint

Each part was custom designed to fall within the weight parameters of actual human limbs and other parts of the body.

a robot sized to approximate the average 12 year old Japanese boy

bones made of aluminum

connected together

the way human bones are connected

artificial ligaments

and a collection of muscles that mimic very closely those in the human body

Kenshiro has 160 muscles that are constructed using a single actuator motor for individual muscle groups

appears to be a collection of parts cobbled together to form a single whole

The robot can walk, but just barely

can do deep knee bends, but the rest of the body seems out of sync

it is almost impossible to visualize collapsed stars making it even more difficult to predict the location of a gamma-ray burst

A burst 1,000 light years from the earth (further away than most of our stars) would create an explosion as bright as our sun and bring a hasty destruction to earth

atmosphere and the ozone would provide protection at first it would soon be cooked away by the radiation. UV rays would kill the photosynthetic plankton in the ocean, which provide most of the earth's oxygen

At least one burst can be seen each day when watching our sky with gamma-ray vision; it can't be too long before there is one closer to home

earth's atmosphere and magnetic field protect us from the consequences of these potentially lethal flares

The sun emits solar flares, also known as coronal mass ejections, towards earth frequently

These flares are large magnetic outbursts which contain high-speed subatomic particles

evidence has been found that sun-like stars far from our solar system can briefly increase in brightness by 20 times

hypothesized that these increases are caused by super-flares, which are millions of times more powerful than the common solar flare

If our sun were to emit one of these super-flares it would literally fry the earth

if our sun's activity were to decrease by a mere 1% (which has been known to happen to many sun-like stars) we would be flung back into another ice age

Solar Activity (Super-Flares and Decreased Activity)

Particle Accelerators

When electric fields are used to accelerate protons they could collide at speed fast enough to create black holes or bits of altered matter

These small black holes would slowly engulf our planet

pieces of altered matter, called strangeletes, would destroy any ordinary matter they came in contact with, eventually annihilating the entire planet

most scientists assure that none of the particle accelerators being used at the present are strong enough to bring about these events