science Archive

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Will we be mining in space within the next ten years?

By
kduffy
– April 24, 2012Posted in: News

There are some who believe we exist only from a combination of the right things at the right time: how certain minerals that landed here on Earth billions of years ago, i.e.: asteroids, account for the very reason we are alive and breathing today. And a group of investors and scientists—Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, and James Cameron to name a few—will be announcing the first asteroid mining company ever, to potentially bring back some of these very ingredients that are depleting here on Earth.

The minds behind the company are promising they can “add trillions of dollars to the global GDP” with the benefits of capturing these asteroids. But is it realistic? Well, in time. The good news is, a lot of these asteroids are already passing by Earth, making them easy to “snatch.” Back in 2005 at the TED talks, Peter Diamons, a former NASA Mars mission manager emphasized how Earth is a “crumb” and space is a “supermarket filled with resources.”

Of course, we are a long way from seeing any actual results or beneficiaries of the idea of asteroid mining, but this is a very exciting step for some hopeful end results that could end up saving us.

A press conference is scheduled for later today that will feature the team of innovators and their plans for the asteroid mining company.

(via Gizmodo & The Verge)

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For Extremely Precise Recipes – or Science

By
khoward
– April 2, 2012Posted in: Gadgets, News, Tech

There are several schools of thought when it comes to cooking – while some take a very liberal approach of ingredient measurements, others prefer more exacting methods.  Thanks to the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology, measurements can now be even more precise with a new subatomic weight scale that measures masses as tiny as a yoctogram, which is even smaller than a proton.

The scale uses nanotubes, which vibrate at different frequencies based on the mass of the particles they are measuring.  And while not necessarily practical for the average kitchen, the subatomic weight scales have applications in medical and chemical science, particularly for disease markers that can only be identified at the proton scale.

(Via i09; Image via Engadget)

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Scientists’ latest Eagle Nebula photo

By
kduffy
– January 19, 2012Posted in: News

No big deal, just the Eagle Nebula, responsible for creating core elements such as hydrogen, helium, noble gases, and many sugar compounds (yum!) – Whose fusion paints a very colorful picture out there, in the dark abyss of space.

If you weren’t aware of this laminated, cloudlike beauty, its, “distant star-forming nest of gas and dust [exists] about 6,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens.”

The Eagle Nebula was first discovered in 1995 via NASA’s Hubble Telescope, which revealed “pillar-like” structures that are attributable for the pillars of creation. The most recent image, seen in the far-infrared zone, reveals much about the, “evaporating gaseous globules,” or EGGs—where the stars were believed to had been born in.

“In visible wavelengths, the nebula shines mainly due to reflected starlight and hot gas filling the giant cavity, covering the surfaces of the pillars and other dusty structures[.] [...]At near-infrared wavelengths, the dust becomes almost transparent and the pillars practically vanish. In far-infrared, Herschel detects this cold dusts and the pillars reappear, this time glowing in the own light.”

We are completely amazed at these spectacular images; scientists report however, since the Eagle Nebula is 6,500 light-years away from Earth, it will take that long to reach visibility to Earth—and present day telescopes reveal the nebula as it might have looked in a distant past.

(via Gizmodo& Space.com; photo via Tech Republic)

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Scientists discover a human compass present in our brains

By
kduffy
– January 17, 2012Posted in: News, Tech

The brain is a very complex organ—even despite us “knowing” things in a seemingly endless capacity in the confines of such a small space, well, there is still a lot we don’t know about the thing that allows us to go about our everyday lives, about why exactly we judge things and people the way we do.

After an experiment using powerful magnets to disrupt an area of the brain behind the right ear called the temporo-pareietal junction, scientists have discovered a “moral compass” in our brains that “highlights how our sense of right and wrong isn’t just based on upbringing, religion, or philosophy – but by the biology of our brains,”—cracking one of the many codes and quirks that have us all wondering how this thing we call a brain actually thinks.

So how did the experiment go down?

Well, using a non-invasive technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation researchers at MIT disrupted the temporo-pareietal, generating a magnetic field on the skull which causes brain cells to operate abnormally. Based on 12 volunteers’ results, each person was exposed to the magnetic field for 25 minutes, and then was given a series of “moral mazes.”

In the second experiment, the magnetic field was exposed to their head DURING the time they were asked a question from the moral maze, instead of before. And the results were astonishingly synonymous with the magnetic field exposure: “in both experiments the magnetic field made the volunteers less moral.”

The leader of the experiement, Diana Young, said, “You think of morality as being a really high-level behavior. To be able to apply a magnetic field to a specific brain region and change people’s moral judgments is really [extraordinary].”

(via The Daily Mail; photo via The 4th Era)

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Stephen Hawking seeks help to voice his vision of the universe

By
kduffy
– December 29, 2011Posted in: News

“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”

If you know anything about or have read anything by Stephen Hawking, then you know his stance on the Universe, black holes, gravity, and all of the other cosmic mysteries out there. You would also know that for years he has experienced difficulty speaking due to losing his voice during a tracheotomy back in 1985 due to him being struck by motor neuron disease— causing him to lose most of his muscle control. Since then he has been using a computer to generate his speech, something that has made him famous in the science world.

An ad was posted on the front page of Hawking’s website, seeking an applicant to “aid Professor Hawking in those areas which he has difficulty due to his disability,” and duties would include development and maintenance of Professor Hawking’s communication and speech systems, dealing with the media and press, answering inquiries from the public and maintaining the website, and managing national and international travel for Hawking in areas which he has difficulty due to his disability.

Specific requirements include ability to speak to a large audience, computer literacy, electronics knowledge, and the ability to show others how to use complex systems.

The question remains: could you maintain this? If you think so, then click here.

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Leave it to MIT to invent a camera that shoots at the speed of light

By
kduffy
– December 13, 2011Posted in: News

If you thought 10 frames per second was a lot, scientists over at MIT have developed a camera that shoots a trillion frames per second (yes, trillion!)—fast enough to track individual “packets” of light. This super fast camera spawned from an idea Ramesh Raskar, a professor of media arts and sciences at the Media Lab, had to try and “see light travel around corners, tracking the light reflected and then recording its path.

Raskar said the idea wasn’t necessarily seen as the “brightest,” and “when [he] said [he] wanted to build a camera that looks around corners, [his] colleagues said, ‘[p]ick something that is more safe for you tenure, [but] now [he] [has] tenure, so [he] can say this is not so crazy.”

He continued to enlist colleagues from the chemistry department to create a “streak tube,” or a “supersensitive piece of laboratory equipment that scans and captures light. [...] They are fast enough to record the progress of packets of laser light fired repeatedly into a bottle filled with a cloudy fluid.”

Well, by tweaking the equipment used for tracking light around corners, scientists were able to create a camera system that uses a “laser pulse” as a flash, which lasts not even one second, one trillionth of a second to be exact.

Andreas Velten, a postdoctoral researcher and a member of the design team said to “think of it as slow motion[.] It is so much slow motion you can see the light itself move. This is the speed of light: there’s nothing in the universe that moves faster.”

They are even saying the camera could have commercial uses that would be able to tell if the fruit you are buying from the store is ripe. MIT coined the system “femto-photography,” and the flash as “Titanium Sapphire.”

Here is a demo of the camera in action.

(via ubergizmo & the New York Times; photo via News Tech 24)

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NASA releases Meteor Counter app

By
kduffy
– December 8, 2011Posted in: News

Now we can keep track of when meteor showers are occurring along with a “piano key” interface allowing you to keep track of observations such as a meteor’s time, magnitude, latitude, longitude, and optional verbal annotations.

Today NASA in their official statement said “The Meteor Counter app enables astronomers—laypersons and experienced meteor hunters alike—to easily capture meteor observations with the software’s innovative, piano-key interface. As the user taps the keys the app records critical data for each meteor, including time and brightness. Once each observing session ends, that data is automatically uploaded, along with observer information, to NASA researchers for analysis.”

The app’s developer, Dr. Bill Cooke, is the head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environmental Office in Huntsville, Alabama, and he “developed the iPhone app to be fun and informative, but also to encourage going outside to observe the sky. Our hope is the app will be useful for amateur and professional astronomers—we want to include their observations in NASA’s discoveries—and have them share in the excitement of building a knowledge base about meteor showers.”

The app’s aim is to transform “novices into experts,” and educate meteor newbies, along with collaborating user data with NASA research in hopes to gain a better perspective of meteor showers from different points in the world.

Android people will have to wait to catch NASA’s latest, as the app is only available on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, but we’re assuming an app will be available to the Android market relatively soon.

(via Lance Ulanoff via NASA; photo via Blippitt)

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Russia’s plan to initiate a moon colony

By
kduffy
– October 20, 2011Posted in: News

After a moon mission in 2008 by a Japan’s Kaguya, scientists concluded the moon had a “mysterious, yards-deep hole breaching the surface,” Russian scientists concluded that the moon’s cave-like structure allowed for shelter and was therefore capable of housing a colony, offering natural protection against asteroids and other space showers.

“This new discovery that the moon may be a rather porous body could significantly alter our approach to founding lunar bases,” said Sergei Krikalyov, head of Russia’s Star City cosmonaut training center in Moscow.

Furthermore, establishing a colony on the moon, which they expect to by 2030, would give scientists a chance to explore the moon’s layers, and what exactly is underneath the moon’s bony surface.

“If it turns out that the moon has a number of caves that can provide some protection from radiation and meteor showers, it could be an even more interesting destination than previously thought.”

So while the US may have sent the first man to the moon, Russia has something else in mind: life in the relics of the moon’s volcanic past.

(via Business Insider; photo via NASA)

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NASA seeks “normal” humans to travel in space

By
kduffy
– October 4, 2011Posted in: News

Ever dream of going to space? Watching Star Wars on repeat not as exciting as it used to be? Well NASA is now seeking “normal” (wait, what’s normal?) human beings to travel to space.

So while Neil Armstrong thinks the space program is “embarrassing,” and scientists have complained about governmental decisions regarding the funding for space exploration, this is a cool move for NASA. Maybe having “normal” humans experience space will provide a whole other lens and convection of space phenomenon and new discoveries will be made.

NASA announced they are seeking applicants with science or math-related degrees or those with prior work experience, preferable 3 year’s worth. But if you do not have a degree in a specific field, don’t bother applying; NASA does require that applicants hold some sort of diploma from an accredited science or math-related program.

“For scientists, engineers and other professionals who have always dreamed of experiencing spaceflight, this is an exciting time to join the astronaut corps[.] […] This next class will support missions to the station and will arrive via transportation systems now in development. They also will have the opportunity to participate in NASA’s continuing exploration programs that will include missions beyond low Earth orbit,” said Janet Kavandi, the director of flight crew operations at the Johnston Space Center in Houston.

This is exciting news for those who have been either out of the job holding valuable math or science degrees or simply have been dying to see Earth from above. For additional information regarding the application process, call 281-483-5907.

(via Slashgear, photo via NASA)

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Scientists reading your mind and turning thoughts into movies

By
kduffy
– September 23, 2011Posted in: News

When something blows your mind, it’s bound to be pretty cool—when something scans your mind, it’s bound to… digitize your thoughts into almost-identifiable images?

The system was developed by a group of University of California Berkeley scientists describes the system in a process:

“As you move through the world or you watch a movie, a dynamic, ever-changing pattern of activity is evoked in the brain. The goal of movie reconstruction is to use the evoked activity to recreate the movie you observed. To do this, we create encoding models that describe how movies are transformed into brain activity, and then we use those models to decode brain activity and reconstruct the stimulus.”

The movie reconstruction phenomenon is a major step for internal surgeries requiring reconstruction. Jack Gallant, neuroscientist at U.C. Berkeley and co-author of the study published in Current Biology, says the system “open[s] a window into the movies of our minds.”

So how is this possible? Researchers at Berkeley invented a computer model describing how what we see transforms into brain activity. After the gathered information is translated, it is then applied to a “brain voxel.” Volunteers for the study watched a set of movie clips and the activities generated from those clips were generated into images—after spending hours motionless inside of an MRI machine as the amount of blood flow through the visual cortex was measured, along with neural activity.

Combining the images that were mist like the images of what the subjects were watching created a movie of what they were seeing.

Matt Peckham, blogger for TechLand, jokes that “[w]e’re probably a ways away from science fiction movies like Strange Days, where “Superconfucting Quantum Interference Devices” record events direct from a wearer’s cerebral cortex and can translate them to others as if they were experiencing the same events firsthand—but with results like these, where computers can ‘learn’ to accurately relate what was seen with how the brain recorded it, we’re definitely getting closer.” (via TechLand)

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