sunlight and insects can ravage the texts, while storing them at temperatures that are too high
when there isn't enough sunlight. Additionally, when conditions in the container are just right, the device will automatically power down,
#Salty Water Flows on Mars Today, Boosting Odds for Life Liquid water flows on Mars today,
boosting the odds that life could exist on the Red planet, a new study suggests. The enigmatic dark streaks on Mars called recurring slope lineae (RSL) that appear seasonally on steep,
relatively warm Martian slopes are caused likely by salty liquid water, researchers said.""Liquid water is a key requirement for life On earth,
"The presence of liquid water on Mars'present-day surface therefore points to environment s that are more habitable than previously thought."
by studying images captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (Hirise) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
100 meter-long streaks (called recurring slope lineae) are flowing downhill on Mars, and are inferred to have been formed by contemporary flowing water.
RSL occur in many different locations on Mars, from equatorial regions up to the planet's middle latitudes.
Ojha and his colleagues scrutinized data gathered about four different RSL locations by another MRO instrument, the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM."
we can deduce the mineralogical makeup of surface materials on Mars, "Ojha said.""What we found was that at times
and places when we see biggest RSL on the surface of Mars, we also found spectral evidence for hydrated salts on the slopes where RSL form."
CRISM observes the Red planet at the driest time of the Martian day, about 3 p m,
No planet is steeped more in myth and misconception than Mars. This quiz will reveal how much you really know about some of the goofiest claims about the red planet."
"Due to that, I do not think we will ever find the RSL still in their liquid form at 3: 00 p m,
a class of chlorine-containing substances that are widespread on Mars. These salts lower the freezing point of water from 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius) to minus 94 F (minus 70 C),
"This property vastly increases the stability of brine salty water on Mars, "he said. Perchlorates can absorb atmospheric water,
if Mars'air is the source of the brine flows. Other possibilities include melting of surface or near-surface ice or discharges of local aquifers."
"It is conceivable that RSL are forming in different parts of Mars through different formation mechanisms,
the Red planet was a relatively warm and wet world that could have supported microbial life, at least in some regions.
Mars is extremely cold and dry today, which is why the discovery of RSL sites has generated so much excitement over the past four years:
The features point to the possibility that simple life-forms could exist on the planet's surface now.
But the new results don't imply that life thrives on Mars today, or even that this is a likely proposition, Ojha stressed.
when he flew too close to the sun. The mythological character fell into the sea and drowned.
000 suns The latest in solar power comes to us from Swiss inventors working for Airlight Energy, Dsolar (a subsidiary of Airlight),
it tracks the sun and cools itself by pumping water through its veins like a plant.
this method entails using reflectors to concentrate the sun, as well as highly efficient photovoltaic cells (known as gallium arsenide photovoltaic cells) to convert that concentrated solar energy into electricity.
According to Gianluca Ambrosetti, Airlight's head of research, the Solar Sunflower's reflectors concentrate the sun"to about 5, 000 suns."
000 suns. To counteract this, the Sunflower makes use of a hot water cooling system invented by the project's IBM collaborators.
#There's water on Mars, NASA confirms There's water on Mars, and it flows there today.
In an eagerly anticipated news event, NASA revealed this morning the evidence of liquid, flowing seasonal water on the Red planet.
Water often signals life, so this new discovery gives hope to the search for life in our solar system.
Data from various probes and rovers like Curiosity and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have provided researchers with evidence concluding that there is flowing water on present-day Mars. Scientists understand that Mars was once Earthlike with large
amounts of water on the surface. Something unknown happened in the planet's history causing it to change.
However today's revelation confirms that Mars has harbored water in the past, and that water exists there today.
Now, scientists can pursue the implications of what flowing water means in relation to the planet's history
and what it could also mean for the potential for life. Michael Meyer of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA explained,
"We found the active process on Mars today that shows that water was a likelihood."
"He continued with a description of the geological features that caused scientists to suspect water prior to the confirmation of its presence.
which shows how scientists were able to study the RSLS on the planet's surface.
However, recently scientists found a way to analyze data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter by extracting data from the pictures on a per pixel level.
This allows scientists to study smaller details on the Red planet's surface and those details provided the new information.
Findings show that hydrated salts are present on the surface of Mars. Hydrated salts would mean that the water on Mars is briny.
Also, water on Mars could aid in the human exploration of the planet. Water on Mars would be a crucial resource for astronauts visiting the planet or for long-term colonists.
Of course scientists will need to study the nature of the water to know the full implications.
Another possibility is the future Mars 2020 rover or other rovers designed for the task.
The discovery of liquid water on Mars leads to more intriguing questions and mysteries. If there has been did life on mars,
These new findings about liquid water on Mars make scientists and space exploration enthusiasts thirsty for more information n
#Transparent Batteries That Charge In The Sun A group of Japanese researchers have managed to improve the design of a transparent lithium-ion battery
when exposed to sunlight without the need for a separate solar cell. The transparent battery was developed first by the researchers,
the Japanese researchers have found a way to make these transparent batteries now recharge themselves in the presence of sunlight,
but also store power as theye recharged by the sun. And as an extension of that idea,
harvesting sunlight to charge the device whenever youe outside t
#Light-Powered Contact lenses In a patent granted this month, Google shows off plans to build contact lenses that are powered by
If this voltage is generated by sunlight in a solar cell, then you could store solar energy by generating hydrogen gas.
Firstly, it produces under sun light illumination a photovoltage of almost 0. 5 volts and very high photocurrent densities of up to 38 ma/cm2;
almost all sun light reaches the photoactive chalcopyrite, leading to the observed high photocurrent density and photovoltage comparable with those of a conventional device-grade thin-film solar cell.
"More than 80%of the incident visible sunlight was converted photoelectrically by this composite system into electric current available for the hydrogen generation,
Since before Newton held a prism to a ray of sunlight and saw a spectrum of colour,
which detonate after penetrating deep in the earth. Because of the system's toughness, Leever says, initial testing suggests that the flexible circuitry would remain viable
#Artificial leaf harnesses sunlight for efficient fuel production Generating and storing renewable energy, such as solar or wind power, is a key barrier to a clean energy economy.
a cost-effective method of producing fuels using only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide, mimicking the natural process of photosynthesis in plants
The photoanode uses sunlight to oxidize water molecules, generating protons and electrons as well as oxygen gas.
converts 10 percent of the energy in sunlight into stored energy in the chemical fuel,
"Our work shows that it is indeed possible to produce fuels from sunlight safely and efficiently in an integrated system with inexpensive components,
HILLS AND POTHOLES Many of these types of flexible electronic devices will rely on thin films of organic materials that catch sunlight
the less efficiently they convert sunlight to electricity; The fix: A new transparent overlay allows light to hit the cells
Their invention shunts away the heat generated by a solar cell under sunlight and cools it in a way that allows it to convert more photons into electricity.
The material is transparent to the visible sunlight that powers solar cells, but captures and emits thermal radiation,
"Solar arrays must face the sun to function, even though that heat is detrimental to efficiency, "Fan said."
"Our thermal overlay allows sunlight to pass through, preserving or even enhancing sunlight absorption, but it also cools the cell by radiating the heat out
and improving the cell efficiency.""A cool way to improve solar efficiency In 2014, the same trio of inventors developed an ultrathin material that radiated infrared heat directly back toward space without warming the atmosphere.
when the sun is beating down. The Stanford team tested their technology on a custom-made solar absorber-a device that mimics the properties of a solar cell without producing electricity-covered with a micron-scale pattern designed to maximize the capability to dump heat
but requires the preservation of the visible spectrum of sunlight for either practical or aesthetic reasons."
resembling little oscillating stars. These starlike excitations are caused by a single magnetic atom put into the layer of superconducting material.
"building constellations of them can be used in quantum electronics. Physicists from France and Russia have discovered that the magnetic atoms in a two-dimensional layered superconductor create electronic disturbances that look like oscillating"nanostars".
"A"constellation"of these disturbances could be used in quantum electronics. The results of the study have been published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Physics.
And the area of excitation was shaped like a sixfold electronic"star"with its rays extending along the axis of the crystal lattice of niobium diselenide.
The observed"stars"are more stable and more suitable to creating new topologically protected states.
If the planet's CO2 levels rise much higher than they are today, it may even be necessary to remove CO2 directly from the atmosphere to make the planet livable.
Long and his colleagues describe how the new materials--diamine-appended MOFS--work in this week's issue of the journal Nature("Cooperative insertion of CO2 in diamine-appended metal-organic frameworks".
#Electrospray thruster makes small satellites more capable Small satellites are becoming increasingly popular tools for Earth-imaging, communications,
In the future, Lozano says Accion system could enable small satellites to perform tasks now possible only for much larger satellites such as exploring the moon.
#Desalination with nanoporous graphene membrane Less than 1 percent of Earth's water is drinkable. Removing salt and other minerals from our biggest available source of water--seawater--may help satisfy a growing global population thirsty for fresh water for drinking, farming, transportation, heating, cooling and industry.
Developed at A*STAR, the model describes the movement of vibrations called phonons, which are responsible for carrying heat in insulating materials.
such as ultra-sensitive photo detectors to image distant stars, or flexible memory elements which could be used in wearable computers s
The sun is an abundant and practically infinite source of energy, so researchers around the world are racing to create novel approaches to"harvest"clean energy from the sun or transfer that energy to other sources.
This week in the journal Applied Physics Letters("Metamaterial electromagnetic energy harvester with near unity efficiency"),researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada report a novel design for electromagnetic energy harvesting based on
the direction of the center of the Earth. An accelerometer measures all the accelerations of the aircraft including gravity,
which is directed always toward the center of the Earth. However, this essential tool has no equivalent in insects,
releasing as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun does over its 10 billion year lifetime.
They are thought to be the result of massive stars collapsing into black holes. Their huge luminosity helps astronomers to map out the location of distant galaxies, something the team exploited.
or more than 70 times the diameter of the Full moon. This implies that the ring is more than 5 billion light years across,
#Astronomers discover'young Jupiter'exoplanet The first planet detected by the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) from an international team of astronomers,
& Astronomy at Stony Brook University, is one outside earths solar system at 100 light years away.
The exoplanet is being called a young Jupiter by the researchers because it shares many characteristics of Jupiter.
A paper outlining the full findings is published in Science. Discovery image of the planet 51 Eridani b with the Gemini Planet Imager taken in the near-infrared light on December 18 2014.
The bright central star has been removed mostly to enable the detection of the exoplanet one million times fainter.
Image: J. Rameau, Udem and C. Marois, NRC Herzberg) The finding could serve as a decoder ring for astronomers to understand how planets formed around our sun
because one of the best ways to learn how our solar system evolved is to look to younger star systems in the earlier phase of development.
Stanimir Metchev, a Physics & Astronomy Professor at Western University in Canada and at Stony Brook University, is a co-investigator on the scientific study,
They are both members of the international Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey (GPIES) team which is dedicated to imaging and characterising exoplanets, planets discovered outside of earths solar system.
The new planet is called 51 Eridani b. The GPI is a new astronomy instrument operated by an international collaboration headed by Bruce Macintosh, a Professor of Physics in the Kavli Institute at Stanford.
The exoplanet is the'faintest'one on record, and also shows the strongest methane signature ever detected on an alien planet,
which should yield additional clues as to how the planet formed. The key to the solar system?
What makes 51 Eridani particularly interesting is that it also harbours dust and ice in the planetary system,"explains Professor Metchev.
These are much like the dust and the ice grains produced by collisions among asteroids and comets in the Solar system."
"Metchev's team conducted a study with data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE TO search for any thermal glow that such dust
and ice can produce.""We found that 51 Eridani is surrounded by warm dust that indicates the presence of an asteroid belt,
"says Patel, who led the WISE study and whose previous work identifying recycled planetary dust, known as debris disks, around close to a hundred other star systems, puts the discovery of the exoplanet in context.
Finding dust around a star is like seeing a large signpost that tells us there might be a planet,
he adds. This is because the dust is created usually when lots of large asteroids collide and destroy each other, usually pushed around by a large planet like 51 Eridani b. Metchev adds,"
"And more data from the European space agency's Herschel Space observatory reveal that 51 Eridani is surrounded also by a more distant and colder cometary belt, much like the Kuiper belt of comets beyond Neptune in the Solar system."
"The two belts the asteroid and the cometary belt around 51 Eridani fall on either side of the newly discovered planet 51 Eridani b."The overall structure bears striking resemblance to our own Solar system,
with Jupiter as the most massive planet orbiting between a belt of asteroids and a belt of comets,"explains Metchev."
"In 51 Eridani, we are therefore seeing what the Solar system resembled at a very young age,
around the time when the Earth was still forming.""A clear line of sight The GPI was designed specifically for discovering
and analyzing faint, young planets orbiting bright stars. NASA's Kepler mission indirectly discovers planets by the loss of starlight
when a planet blocks a star.""To detect planets, Kepler sees their shadow; GPI sees their glow,
"says Macintosh.""What GPI does is referred to as direct imaging.""The astronomers use adaptive optics to sharpen the image of a star,
and then block out the starlight. Any remaining incoming light is analyzed then, the brightest spots indicating a possible planet.
After GPI was installed on the 8-meter Gemini South Telescope in Chile, the team set out to look for planets orbiting young stars.
To date, the astronomers have looked at nearly 100 stars.""51 Eridani is only 20 million years old,
a little more massive than our sun a perfect target,"says James Graham, a professor at UC Berkeley and Project Scientist for GPI.
As far as the cosmic clock is concerned, 20 million years is young for a star,
and this is exactly what made the direct detection of the planet possible, explains Macintosh.""When planets coalesce, material falling into the planet releases energy and heats it up.
Over the next hundred millions years they radiate that energy away, mostly as infrared light,"says Macintosh.
Once the astronomers zeroed in on the star, they blocked its light and spotted 51 Eridani b orbiting a little farther away from its parent star than Saturn does from the sun
. Even though the light from the planet is very faint nearly a million times fainter than its star subsequent observations revealed that it is roughly twice the mass of Jupiter.
Other directly-imaged planets are five times the mass of Jupiter or more. In addition to being the faintest planet ever imaged
it's also the coldest 400 Celsius (C), whereas others are around 700 C and features the strongest atmospheric methane signal on record.
Previous Jupiter-like exoplanets have shown only faint traces of methane, far different from the heavy methane atmospheres of the gas giants in our solar system.
All of these characteristics, the researchers say, point to a planet that is very much what models suggest Jupiter was like in its infancy."
"All of the exoplanets astronomers have imaged before have atmospheres that look like stars very cool stars, but still stars,"says Macintosh,
who led the construction of GPI and now leads the survey.""This is the first one that really looks like a planet."
"Of course, it's not exactly like Jupiter. The planet is so young and still has a temperature of 400 C,
which is hot enough to melt lead.""In the atmospheres of the cold giant planets of our solar system carbon is found as methane,
unlike most exoplanets where carbon has mostly been found in the form of carbon monoxide. Since the atmosphere of 51 Eridani is also methane rich,
it signifies that this planet is well on its way to becoming a cousin of our own familiar Jupiter,
"says Mark Marley, an astrophysicist at NASAS Ames Research center r
#Black phosphorus surges ahead of graphene A Korean team of scientists tune BP's band gap to form a superior conductor,
allowing for the application to be produced mass for electronic and optoelectronics devices("Observation of tunable bandgap and anisotropic Dirac semimetal state in black phosphorus").The research team operating out of Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH),
affiliated with the Institute for Basic Science's (IBS) Center for Artificial Low Dimensional Electronic systems (CALDES), reported a tunable band gap in BP,
effectively modifying the semiconducting material into a unique state of matter with anisotropic dispersion. This research outcome potentially allows for great flexibility in the design
and optimization of electronic and optoelectronic devices like solar panels and telecommunication lasers. black phosphorus To truly understand the significance of the team's findings,
it's instrumental to understand the nature of two-dimensional (2-D) materials, and for that one must go back to 2010
when the world of 2-D materials was dominated by a simple thin sheet of carbon,
a layered form of carbon atoms constructed to resemble honeycomb, called graphene. Graphene was heralded globally as a wonder-material thanks to the work of two British scientists who won the Nobel prize for Physics for their research on it.
Graphene is extremely thin and has remarkable attributes. It is stronger than steel yet many times lighter
"Since before Newton held a prism to a ray of sunlight and saw a spectrum of colour,
Unlike conventional solar cells that directly absorb sunlight and convert it into electricity, an LSC absorbs the light on a plate embedded with highly efficient light-emitters called lumophores that then re-emit the absorbed light at longer wavelengths, a process known as the Stokes shift.
#Highest efficiency hydrogen production under natural sunlight Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Miyazaki University have produced hydrogen under natural sunlight at an energy conversion efficiency of 24.4,
and it is possible to produce hydrogen under sunlight at a high efficiency with an appropriate system design for each installation,
A sailor will use cues such as the stars or landmarks to determine where their ship is on a map,
Jingchuan Sun, an EM expert in Li's lab, was essential to the success of the work.
"Sun said.""Our lab has expertise and a decade of experience using electron microscopy to study DNA replication,
A Layered Manganese Oxide To Capture Sunlight for Water-Splitting Catalysis"),Assistant professor of Chemical engineering Jose L. Mendoza-Cortes details how this new material efficiently captures sunlight and then,
and it could turn rain water into energy with the help of the sun."But, unlike many other energy sources,
and you do need not a large amount to capture enough sunlight to carry out fuel generation
#Ultrasensitive sensors made from boron-doped graphene Ultrasensitive gas sensors based on the infusion of boron atoms into graphene--a tightly bound matrix of carbon atoms--may soon be possible, according to an international team of researchers
which involved an astronaut stranded on Mars growing potatoes while living in an artificial habitat, had a bit more science fact than fiction than people might think,
or when the sun goes down remains a challenge, largely due to cost. Now researchers are developing a new battery that could bring the price of storage to more affordable levels.
which protect the organisms from negative effects of sunlight, such as DNA damage. The research also shows that the exact manner in which the photoreceptors bind to the DNA is novel.
In total the team measured outputs across 21 different wavelengths from ultraviolet (characterises younger stars) to the far infrared (characterises younger stars.
#NASA Mars isolation experiment begins SIX people are about to shut themselves inside a dome in Hawaii for a year,
in the longest US isolation experiment yet aimed at helping NASA prepare for a pioneering journey to Mars. The crew includes a French astrobiologist, a German physicist and four Americans a pilot, an architect, a doctor/journalist and a soil
NASA current technology can send a robotic mission to the Red planet in eight months, and the space agency estimates that a human mission would take between one and three years.
and Simulation (HI-SEAS) before pressing on toward Mars, which NASA hopes to reach sometime in the 2030s.
The first HI-SEAS experiment involved studies about cooking on Mars, and was followed by a four-month and an eight-month cohabitation mission.
This year, for the first time, there was none only dry earth. The state's governor, Jerry brown, made the journey for the annual measurement
He borrowed the algorithm his colleagues used to analyse the Earth vibrations, and incorporated it into his modified MRI SCANNER.
Once theye there, they can do serious science, from climate modelling to exoplanet hunting. But they are stuck also in that orbit for their entire working lives.
So Lozano and his colleagues are designing a miniature propulsion system small enough to fit in your pocket that can steer Cubesats around low-Earth orbit
or even out of the solar system altogether. Instead of chemical fuel, which is heavy and inefficient, they use an ionic liquid,
From the lab to the stars After creating the DWLS, Escuti looked for potential applications.
his team has provided the astronomers with geometric phase holograms that they have used build advanced coronagraphs--telescopes that can see things close to stars--to study exoplanets beyond our solar system."
"They wanted to redistribute the blazing light of the halo around a star, so that the faint light coming from a planet orbiting that star can be observed with better contrast
--and then analyze the planet's light to learn about its composition and other characteristics,
"Escuti says.""They're now able to do that with better performance than ever before. We've been working with them for a few years now,
Down to earth applications In addition to astronomy, the DWLS has found use in creating geometric phase holograms for use in mobile displays, holographic imaging,
#Liquid Water Likely Flows On the Salty Hills of Mars It almost as if our moon turned blood red last night to herald NASA latest Red planet news. At 11:30 EDT,
new data that suggests liquid water exists on Mars even today. This could be the first time in mission history that we have definitive reason to believe there might be microbial life on our closest neighbor.
In 1972, NASA Mariner 9 spacecraft discovered evidence of erosion features on Mars that implicated the presence of water at some point in the planet past.
the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) aboard the European space agency Mars Express spacecraft took a photo of a water ice crater 35 meters in diameter at the Martian north pole.
Finally, in March of this year, NASA and colleagues at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) uncovered evidence of a massive ancient ocean that once covered almost half of Mars northern hemisphere.
But until now, scientists had not yet found any signs of liquid water on the present-day surface of Mars
In 2011, Dr. Mcewen (a planetary geologist at the University of Arizona and principal investigator of images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) spotted dark streaks sloping down some of Mars canyons and mountains.
but measurements indicate very low humidity on Mars only enough for 10 microns, or about 1/2, 500th of an inch, of rain across the planet if all of the wetness were wrung out of the air.
That idea cannot be ruled entirely out if the lower part of the atmosphere turns out more humid than currently thought.
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