SciByte

Electrolysis of water

In 1800, English chemist William Nicholson was the first to produce a chemical reaction by electricity. He had been working with Anthony Carlisle, a London surgeon, experimenting with Allesandro Volta's voltaic pile. The new effect was discovered when wires from the poles of the battery being used came into contact with water and bubbles of gas were released as current flowed through the water. Closer examination of the electrolysis showed oxygen was released at the (positive) anode, and hydrogen appeared at the cathode. Electricity had separated the molecules of water. Further, the effect of the amount of hydrogen and oxygen set free by the current was proportional to the amount of current used

Gulf Stream

Galactic radio waves

In 1933, the discovery of radio waves from the centre of the Milky Way galaxy was by described by Karl Jansky in a paper he read to the International Radio Union in Washington. The galactic radio waves were very low intensity, short wavelength (14.6 m, frequency about 20 MHz) and required sensitive apparatus for their detection. Their intensity varied regularly with the time of day, and with the seasons. They came from an unchanging direction in space, independent of terrestrial sources. He had conducted his research on static hiss at the radio research department of Bell Telephone Labs, Holmdel, N.J. The New York Times carried a front page report the next day

In 2000, a conjunction of the five bright planets - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - formed a rough line across the sky with the Sun and Moon. Unfortunately, nothing was visible from the earth, because the the line of planets was behind the Sun and hidden in its brilliance. Such a conjunction last happened in Feb 1962 and will not happen again until Apr 2438. Throughout former history, a conjuction event was regarded with foreboding. However, now science can be dismissive. Donald Olson, an expert on tides at Southwest Texas State University, working with the assistance of a graduate student, Thomas Lytle, calculated the stress on the Earth caused by the Moon and eight planets has often been routinely greater, most recently on 6 Jan 1990

Conjunction of the planets

First U.S. space flight

Open-heart surgery

In 1953, a heart-lung machine designed by Dr. John Heysham Gibbon was used to successfully complete the first open-heart surgery, on patient Cecelia Bavolek, demonstrating that an artificial device can temporarily mimic the functions of the heart. Improved versions allow surgeons today to perform bypass surgery and heart transplants. He built the first experimental heart-lung machine or pump oxygenator in 1937 that used two roller pumps and able to replace the heart and lung action of a cat for 25 minutes. By the late 1940s, with financial and technical support from IBM President Thomas J. Watson, Gibbon produced an improved device which cascading the blood down a thin sheet of film for oxygenation to prevent damage blood corpuscles

the largest and third-largest bodies in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter

The team operating NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is telling the rover to use several tools this weekend to inspect a sandstone slab being evaluated as a possible drilling target

If this target meets criteria set by engineers and scientists, it could become the mission's third drilled rock, and the first that is not mudstone

The planned inspection, designed to aid a decision on whether to drill

This self-portrait of

Opportunity shows effects of wind events that had cleaned much of the accumulated dust off the rover's solar panels

It combines multiple frames taken

The first example of living human cartilage grown on a laboratory chip has been created by scientists

The researchers ultimately aim to use their innovative 3-D printing approach to create replacement cartilage

Osteoarthritis is marked by a gradual disintegration of cartilage, a flexible tissue that provides padding where bones come together in a joint

Babies begin to learn about the connection between pictures and real objects by the time they are nine-months-old

The research found that babies can learn about a toy from a photograph of it well before their first birthday

"The study should interest any parent or caregiver who has ever read a picture book with an infant,"

discovered dozens of so-called “hypervelocity stars” — single stars that break the stellar speed limit

The Virgo Cluster galaxy, M87, has ejected an entire star cluster, throwing it toward us at more than two million miles per hour.

Astronomers have found runaway stars before, but this is the first time we’ve found a runaway star cluster

Physicists

have discovered that the ancient Egyptians used a clever trick to make it easier to transport heavy pyramid stones by sledge

The Egyptians moistened the sand over which the sledge moved.

First printed book

In 868, the first known dated printed book was the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist scripture. It was made as a 16-ft scroll with six sheets of text printed from wood blocks and one sheet with a woodcut showing the Buddha with disciples and a pair of cats. The sheets measured 12" by 30" and were pasted together. The date is known from a colophon at the end stating it was "printed on 11 May 868, by Wang Chieh, for free general distribution" and that it was dedicated to his parents. The scroll was one of about 1,130 bundles of manuscripts found a thousand years later, walled up in one of the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas in Turkestan. It is now one of the great treasures in the British Library