Archive
Russian Space Chief: ‘We’re Talking About Establishing Permanent Bases’ On the Moon
By Clay Dillow Posted 05.23.2012 at 1:07 pm
Would You Ride This Pencil-Shaped Capsule To Space?
By Rebecca Boyle Posted 05.23.2012
Kepler Spots a Doomed Planet Slowly Evaporating into Space
By Clay Dillow Posted 05.21.2012 at 12:51 pm @ http://www.popsci.com/
“Map of Life” Shows the Location of All Organisms, Large and Small
By Rebecca Boyle 05.15.2012 at 4:45 pm http://www.popsci.com/
The Outer Limits: Nasa Probe Sees the ‘Edge’ of Our Solar System for First Time – and it’s Completely Different From What We Thought
Sunday, 13 May 2012
‘Nasa’s probes have seen the ‘edge’ of our solar system for the first time – and it’s completely different from what scientists thought.
Our solar system is flying through space more slowly than we thought – and Nasa’s IBEX – Interstellar Boundary Explorer – has found it doesn’t have a ‘bow shock’, an area of gas or plasma that shields our solar system as it hurtles though space
‘The sonic boom made by a jet breaking the sound barrier is an earthly example of a bow shock,’ says Dr. David McComas, principal investigator of the IBEX mission.’
In Metallic Glasses, Researchers Find a Few New Atomic Structures
“The fundamental nature of a glass structure is that the organization of the atoms is disordered-jumbled up like differently sized marbles in a jar, rather than eggs in an egg carton,” says Paul Voyles, the principal investigator on the research. (Credit: © marionbirdy / Fotolia)
Published May 11 in the journal Physical Review Letters, the findings fill a gap in researchers’ understanding of this atomic structure. This understanding ultimately could help manufacturers fine-tune such properties of metallic glasses as ductility, the ability to change shape under force without breaking, and formability, the ability to form a glass without crystalizing.
Glasses include all solid materials that have a non-crystalline atomic structure: They lack a regular geometric arrangement of atoms over long distances. “The fundamental nature of a glass structure is that the organization of the atoms is disordered-jumbled up like differently sized marbles in a jar, rather than eggs in an egg carton,” says Paul Voyles, a UW-Madison associate professor of materials science and engineering and principal investigator on the research.
Researchers widely believe that atoms in metallic glasses are arranged only as pentagons in an order known as five-fold rotational symmetry. However, in studies of a zirconium-copper-aluminum metallic glass, Voyles’ team found there are clusters of squares and hexagons-in addition to clusters of pentagons, some of which form chains-all located within the space of just a few nanometers. “One or two nanometers is a group of about 50 atoms-and it’s how those 50 atoms are arranged with respect to one another that’s the new and interesting part,” he says.
Chinese Physicists Teleport Photons Over 100 Kilometers
Teleportation is the extraordinary ability to transfer objects from one location to another without travelling through the intervening space.
The idea is not that the physical object is teleported but the information that describes it. This can then be applied to a similar object in a new location which effectively takes on the new identity.
And it is by no means science fiction. Physicists have been teleporting photons since 1997 and the technique is now standard in optics laboratories all over the world.
The phenomenon that makes this possible is known as quantum entanglement, the deep and mysterious link that occurs when two quantum objects share the same existence and yet are separated in space.
Teleportation turns out to be extremely useful. Because teleported information does not travel through the intervening space, it cannot be secretly accessed by an eavesdropper.
For that reason, teleportation is the enabling technology behind quantum cryptography, a way of sending information with close-to-perfect secrecy.
Unfortunately, entangled photons are fragile objects. They cannot travel further than a kilometre or so down optical fibres because the photons end up interacting with the glass breaking the entanglement. That severely limits quantum cryptography’s usefulness.
However, physicists have had more success teleporting photons through the atmosphere. In 2010, a Chinese team announced that it had teleported single photons over a distance of 16 kilometres. Handy but not exactly Earth-shattering.
Now the same team says it has smashed this record. Juan Yin at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai, and a bunch of mates say they have teleported entangled photons over a distance of 97 kilometres across a lake in China.
Read more: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27843/
Little black spot on the sun visible with the naked eye
Now one of the largest Sunspots in years, Region 1476 is currently in a great position for Earth directed Coronal Mass Ejections. The only problem has been producing a solar flare that would also in turn, generate a large plasma cloud. This could change in the days ahead. There will continue to be a chance for a major X-Class event.
the suns a bubbler today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature…&v=OSWcm6We8LU
DISCUSS FURTHER : http://forum.davidicke.com/showthread.php?t=209649
Scientists bend gamma rays, could neuter radioactive waste
posted May 10th 2012 5:54AM
Bending most light is easy; bending it in gamma ray form, however, has often been deemed impossible given how hard it is for electrons to react to the extreme frequencies. University of Munich scientist Dietrich Habs and his Institut Laue-Langevin teammate Michael Jentschel have proven that assumption wrong: an experiment in blasting a silicon prism has shown that gamma rays will refract just slightly through the right material. If a lens is made out of a large-atom substance like gold to bend the rays further, the researchers envision focused beams of energy that could either detect radioactive material or even make it inert by wiping off neutrons and protons. In theory, it could turn a nuclear power plant’s waste harmless. A practical use of the technology is still some distance off — but that it’s even within sight at all just feels like a breakthrough.
Gigantic “sea blob” caught on camera
Some say it`s a whale stomach, others that it`s a weird creature…
Believe nothing 