A Bright Flash From The Sun At 8: 30 p m. Eastern time yesterday a solar flare peaked on the surface of the sun emitting an intense burst of radiation.
The sun is currently undergoing a solar maximum a peak of activity that occurs about every 11 years making solar flares like this more likely.
#How Technology Will Make Everyone A Great Photographer At the end of May the Chicago Sun-Times laid off all its staff photographers.
#As one might expect the Sun-Times decision has met with criticism. It s been called â##shortsightedâ
#and â##idiotic. â#There s even a Tumblr of head-to-head comparisons between the Sun-Times
And in theory it will give the Sun-Times even more reach by leveraging the cameras already in place at news events.#
The Sun-Times to benefit from that type of machine vision the software will need to process larger image batches from multiple sources.
In time those pieces may come together proving that the Sun-Times decision wasn t foolish it was just a bit before its time.#
#One In Five Sun-Like Stars Have Earthlike Planets Back in February a team at Harvard announced they had found a possible Earthlike planet just 13 lightyears away.
The#study detailed the prevalence of these planets orbiting red dwarf stars and found#that about 15 percent have Earth-size planets within habitable zones.
However if you're stargazing from your backyard with only your eyes to guide you you wouldn't be able to see these cooler smaller stars.#
#Red dwarfs#are one-third the size and one-thousandth as bright as the sun. But in this week's PNAS Online Early Edition a team of researchers from#University of California at#Berkeley released a study that looks at how common Earth-size planets
are around stars that are more like our sun. The study found that for stars that more closely resemble our sun about 22 percent
or about one in five stars have these Earth-size planets within the habitable zone. The habitable zone includes orbits where planets receive the same amount of stellar energy from a star as the Earth receives from the sun. Earth-size planets include those that are between one and two times the size of Earth.
Perhaps the most exciting prospect of the study is the finding that#the closest potential Earthlike planet is only 12 lightyears away.
Using data from Kepler lead author Erik Petigura and his team analyzed 42000 G -and K-type stars visible to the naked eye from Earth.
These stars'surface temperatures range from just a bit hotter than the sun's 5778 Kelvin to as cool as 4100 Kelvin all of which are hotter than the M-class red dwarfs studied previously.
I do think that this work is a new chapter but it's not a new book Petigura tells Popular Science.
Indeed earlier this year Petigura published another paper that investigated the prevalence of planets as small as Earth but only those within the orbit of Mercury much closer to the star than Earth's orbit.
With the study published this week Petigura and his team are pushing that out to periods that are more similar to Earthlike periods
which house planets that have lukewarm temperatures similar to Earth. Out of those 42000 stars the team found 603 planets 10 of which fit the bill for orbit
and size#similar to Earth's. But if left it at that there would be a significant number#of planets unaccounted for.
So using custom-built software called TERRA Petigura corrected for the challenges associated with finding all of the planets orbiting stars in the Kepler field
and reached a total of 8000 Earthlike planets. I have been working a lot of late nights coming home after dark.
And around this of year the constellation Cygnus is high overhead and I've been looking up at these stars quite a bit Petigura says.
I was remembering questions I had when I was a little kid looking up and wondering how many of those stars have planets that are in some way like the Earth.
And learning more about planets with similar positioning and properties to Earth could of course aid in scientists'search for life and even future habitable sites.
I'm not saying we found Earth 2. 0 Petigura says. But it's an important stepping stone to answering that question.
I feel so fortunate to be alive in a time when we're even able to start answering this question e
#Preventing Superbugs By Deactivating Antibiotics With A Flash Of Light Bacterial resistance is becoming one of the most serious problems in the medical world
and it's largely a problem of our own making. We've become so good at making
and distributing antibiotics to kill bacteria that as the antibiotics build up in the environment the bacteria are becoming immune.
or at all and get a job after graduation. â#Doing scientific research in Antarctica is incredibly important and expensive According to a March 2012 article in the NSF-funded Antarctic Sun
while others are attacking more abstract ones like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance of course but also impact.
Viruses are the most abundant entities on the planet and among the most mysterious. Mya Breitbart a microbial ecologist at the University of South Florida has figured out how to quickly decipher what they are and
Her contributions have been pivotal in unmasking the enormous diversity of viruses on the planet says Curtis Suttle a marine virologist at the University of British columbia.
while others are attacking more abstract ones like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance of course but also impact.
while others are attacking more abstract ones like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance of course but also impact.
while others are attacking more abstract ones like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance of course but also impact.
With the data he has collected thus far Schmale has built a model of atmospheric circulation that shows large sections of air sweeping across the face of the planet like waves across an ocean transporting dust and microbes thousands of miles.
while others are attacking more abstract ones like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance of course but also impact.
while others are attacking more abstract ones like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance of course but also impact.
while others are attacking more abstract ones like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance of course but also impact.
zee44. comwhen the shark looks up from the depths of the water seeing the surface with the swimmer having the sun overhead silhouetting the swimmer the happy shark with open its mighty jaws with delight of his soon to be eaten meal of
what he believes is a seal shadowing the sun. Of course biting the diver will be a little a big wad of gume with the camouflage rubber wet suit.
practically anything on the planet certainly sperm cells even skin cells (as this reseach so obviously shows.
No bees on Mars just sayin...It is GMO CROPS watch the documentary on Netflix or go to rt. com Brainless Americans you are the reasons corporations have taken over our government
Lucas K. â##If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth man would only have four years left to live. â#â##Albert Einsteinthere's a long article Colony collapse disorder on wikipedia that is definitely worth reading
and animals then the statement â##.If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth man would only have four years left to live...
#Russia Will Launch Its First Moon Mission Since The 1970s Roscosmos the Russian federal space agency will launch an unmanned mission to the moon in 2015 according to agency head Vladimir Popovkin.
The rocket carrying the robotic probe called Luna-Glob will be the first set off from Russia's new Far east launchpad the Vostochny cosmodrome.
Luna-Glob the first of four planned Russian moon missions will carry scientific equipment to take soil samples
It will be the first Russian trip to the moon since the 1970s. Roscosmos'latest moon exploration project has been postponed several times
since 2010 and will be its first mission after 2011's Phobos-Grunt failure. The probe set to collect samples from the Martian moon Phobos unsuccessfully aimed its course for Mars
and crashed into the Pacific ocean after two months in Earth's orbit. Luna-Glob and its successors are part of a larger plan to revamp development of Russia's space industry.
Plans are also in development to send a manned spacecraft to the moon in 2018. Washington post I like the moon.
I hope we humans and robots settle there. Besides it will give the humans a place to stay after the robots take over the Earth.
When I read the title I thought they were doing a manned mission. It would be good to see people leave the confines of low orbit for the first time in 50 years.
Plus they could use it as practice/tests for going to mars. It's about time the space faring governments of the world start building an infrastructure on the lunar surface that will support long term duration stays ship yards fuel generation and processing navigation stations for terrestrial navigation
and launch facilities on the moon. This is what robots should be doing there about now.
Otherwise we'll never get there in a reasonable amount of time. Can't believe the Russian government will spend billions launching more lunar probes
or even spend billions more on a manned lunar mission in the next 5 years. It has no value to them especially
The Chinese have aspirations for putting a man on the moon and maybe Putin feels the Russians could make a profit selling a lunar space system to the Chinese.
Well think if we improve our ability to send larger and larger payloads to the moon then we could use it for useful things.
Like building giant greenhouses to grow food on to help take some strain off earth's resources.
Like building giant greenhouses to grow food on to help take some strain off earth's resources...
Since the lunar environment has none of the resources needed for agriculture (except for sunlight) just how would this take some of the strain off earth's resources?
Then we would need the massive spacecraft able to transport these agricultural products back to earth.
But don't forget as far as sunlight is concerned. On the moon you have 14 of our days of sunlight and then 14 of our days of dark.
But don't forget as far as sunlight is concerned. On the moon the sunlight is moderated not by an atmosphere.
Agreed d
#This Woman Sees 100 Times More Colors Than The Average Person When Concetta Antico looks at a leaf she sees much more than just green.
Around the edge I ll see orange or red or purple in the shadow; you might see dark green
#Using Lasers To Save Earth's Cultural Monuments History is unwritten by the destruction of great artifacts.
In the Arctic for example there isn't enough sunlight to justify solar power for months at a time
#Satellite data Maps Sea floor's Hidden Depths While many detailed maps exist of Earth s continents
what lies beneath our planet s waters has remained somewhat of a mystery. So far only 10 percent of the seafloor has been mapped at high resolution leaving researchers pretty eager to know what s going on in that other 90 percent.
and NASA s Jason-1 the scientists have created stunning maps of Earth s entire seafloor bringing to light mountains
According to lead researcher David Sandwell both the satellites are tasked with capturing the Earth s gravity field over the oceans.
The satellites orbit the earth and sends out thousands of radar pulses a second Sandwell a#geophysics professor#at Scripps.#
By mapping out all the bumps and indentions in the water the researchers had a pretty good snapshot of the variations in the Earth s crust.
what we have with maps of Mars and Mercury Sandwell says. We know more about these other planets than we know about the sea floor.
We need to try to make high resolution maps everywhere.##The researchers published their findings in the journal Science e
which has been taking high-resolution measurements of Earth's gravity for the past four years with those of the American-German orbiter GRACE which uses gravity data to measure changes in ice mass.
-or no-carbon economic development projects such as expanding their energy generation capacity with renewables like sun and wind instead of fossil fuels.
#Earth's Water Is Older Than The Sun Since water is one of the vital ingredients for life On earth scientists want to know how it got here.
One theory is that the water in our solar system was created in the chemical afterbirth of the Sun
. If that were the case it would suggest that water might only be common around certain stars that form in certain ways.#
#But a new study published today in Science suggests that at least some of Earth s water actually existed before the Sun was born
#If water in the early Solar system was inherited primarily as ice from interstellar space then it is likely that similar ices
or all protoplanetary disks around forming stars study author Conel Alexander explained in a press release.##The researchers concluded that a significant portion of Earth s water came from interstellar space by looking at the relative abundance of hydrogen and deuterium.#
#Deuterium is like hydrogen s heavier#brother. Both atoms have one proton in their nuclei
whether Earth's deuterium came from space or whether it was cooked up in the birth of the Sun.#To find out researchers used mathematical models to#virtually recreate#the young solar system's protoplanetary disk--the cloud around the newborn#Sun. They found that based on the temperature
and radiation conditions that would have existed back then it wasn t possible for the young solar system to create the ratios of hydrogen
and deuterium that scientists observe in Earth s oceans and on comets. Because of that the researchers estimate that anywhere between 7 and 50 percent of Earth s water had to have come from the interstellar medium in
which the solar system was born. And since other solar systems would have formed in the same interstellar medium the findings suggest that the origins of water On earth were not unique
and that the thirst-quenching#life-supporting substance may be common on exoplanets throughout the galaxy x
#Facebook Says Wi-fi Drones Will be sized Jumbo jet If a new Facebook plan is successful the easiest way to access the cloud may be...
#in the clouds. Facebook wants to spread Wi-fi Internet to unconnected parts of the world with drones
and at#a summit in New york earlier this week the company revealed those drones will be the size of jumbo jets.
When the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing future versions of this battery could release energy captured during more productive times into nations'power grids.
It also might make sun-and wind-produced electricity cheaper; by storing extra energy that isn't being used less electricity is wasted in the long run.
while Spacex will receive $2. 6 billion to create an upgraded rendition of its Dragon spacecraft aptly named Dragon Version 2. The original Dragon is currently being used to ferry cargo from Earth to the ISS.
Most importantly though is that the program will end bring an end to NASA's reliance on Russian spacecraft to ferry astronauts from Earth to the ISS.
it now stands as the largest collection of open-source hardware on the planet. Nothing on the site is patented
They beamed radar and lasers into the ground and wheeled scanners over a vast area to study subtle changes in the Earth's magnetic field.#
Titan has a surface gravity a little more than one-seventh that of Earth which means the terminal velocity of the robots#the fastest they will fall in Titan's thick atmosphere#is about 33 mph roughly equivalent to the speed reached after a 30-foot drop On earth.
These robots would find it more difficult to survive a drop onto Mars since the red planet has both a thinner atmosphere
and stronger gravity than Titan meaning they would reach a higher terminal velocity. But maybe a simple parachute could slow them down enough for a safe landing Sunspiral says.
In addition the researchers also developed a way for the robots to learn how to roll on their own with the help of evolutionary algorithms which is valuable for robots operating by themselves on another planet where the rules for movement might differ from those On earth.
In June 2013 Star Citizen became the most crowdfunded project ever at $10 million. Many people who ponied up knew they would have to wait more than a year in some cases to play. 2) Between six and 16 thrusters move the game s ships
That might strain the ship s components. 2011 Developers begin building Star Citizen in secret revealing just enough details to entice investors. 10/10/12 Crowdfunding campaign begins
Late 2014 A first-person shooter module is set to be introduced. 2015 A planet-side social module will be added allowing players to explore cities. 2015 The single-player military campaign Squadron 42
is slated to release as a stand-alone game within the Star Citizen universe. Late 2015 Early public testing of the universe will begin as the game s designers pull together various modules. 2016 Star Citizen will become available as a seamless universe with modding tools and the ability for players
to host custom servers. This article originally appeared in the September 2014 issue of Popular Science e
#Japan's Military Will Patrol Earth's Orbitals Japan's military plans to take defense to the heavens in 2019.
Japan's proposed space force would monitor Earth's orbitals with radar and telescopes, looking for harmful debris that threatens satellites.
Graphite absorbs the sun's rays and heats up. This creates a pressure differential that sucks water from the bottom into the top
This sponge converts 85 percent of the solar energy in sunlight it absorbs into heat, the authors wrote in the study,
or using a system of mirrors to concentrate sunlight, which are both more expensive and inefficient
#Antares orb-3 accident A very unfortunate incident for NASA and the commercial orbital transportation services program took place yesterday.
The Antares rocket that was about to send the Cygnus spacecraft on the ISS exploded a few seconds after its launch from NASA's Wallops flight facilities.
The Antares launcher and the Cygnus spacecraft it was carrying were developed both and operated by Orbital Sciences corporation one of the two private companies
Antares is a two-stage rocket and in its first stage it uses a pair of liquid propellant motors originally designed (and constructed!)
and their will to resume Antares/Cygnus missions after the accident investigation is resolved. The COTS program apart from its obvious mission of ISS resupply also aims to validate the privately developed Dragon and Cygnus spacecraft.
For example Planet labs an earth imaging startup lost 26 small satellites that were on board. Orbital stated that the payload is insured
and helping him train for the All Star Games through a sequence of animated storybooks that play on a screen in his belly.
These kilobots#where a kilo stands for 1024#can form complex 2d shapes including a star a wrench and the letter#k
For more complicated procedures an earth-based physician could control the robot via telepresence. After its training is complete the $2. 5 million Robonaut 2 designed to assist astronauts with their duties both inside
by the time humans are ready to colonize Mars Robonaut doctors will be there to lend a healing hand d
#Urban vegetable garden system with LED lighting Keystone Technology LED vegetable garden system is a cultivation system for indoor plant factories that uses LED lighting instead of sunlight.
and does not have the coarse quality of lettuce grown in sunlight. Because it is softer it is a vegetable that is easy to eat even for elderly people.
and polyphenols than with vegetables grown in sunlight. ith this system there will be differences in production capacity depending on the shape of the plant.
#Chinaâ#moon landing and rover tip of iceberg Yutu (Jade Rabbit#)China rover-like robot was landed soft on the moon earlier this month.
Their mission was part of Beijing quest to open a permanent space station in Earth orbit within the next decade.#
In that time, the process has achieved almost 100 percent efficiency in transporting the energy of sunlight from receptors to reaction centers where it can be harnessed a performance vastly better than even the best solar cells.
Good for business, good for the environment What if your business practices and operation can help save our planet?
We can change the way light waves are being reflected at will and ultimately focus a large area of sunlight onto a solar power tower
#Black hole is 30 times bigger than expected This shouldn't be possible. Researchers say they've detected a supermassive black hole at the center of a newly found galaxy that's far bigger than current theories allow.
The research was done by astronomers at Keele University and the University of Central Lancashire and will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The research team says it confirmed a black hole in the galaxy's center by measuring the speed of the gas swirling around it.
they used the Southern African Large telescope to gather data to help determine the size of the black hole.
Black holes heading for'massive collision,'says astronomer What they found blew away their theories about how galaxies evolve.
The data indicated the black hole is 30 times larger than expected for this size of galaxy, according to a press release from the Royal Astronomical Society."
and so do the black holes in their cores. This one though is really too big for its boots--it simply shouldn't be possible for it to be said so large
Researchers say it could be that the black hole just grew much faster than the galaxy surrounding it,
#Water flows on Mars Potentially life-giving water still flows across the ancient surface of Mars from time to time,
NASA scientists said Monday in revealing a potential breakthrough in both the search for life beyond Earth
NASA researchers using an imager aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter confirmed the watery flows by looking at light waves returned from seasonal dark streaks on the surface,
but also help keep it from boiling off in the thin atmosphere of Mars, the researchers said.
lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program. The researchers'findings are in a new paper being presented this week at the European Planetary science Congress in France.
This is not the first discovery of water on Mars. Researchers have known for many years that Mars has frozen water at its poles, in its thin atmosphere,
Nor is it the first potential clue that Mars could have once --or may still--host life.
The Mars Curiosity rover, for instance, has detected methane on the surface of Mars, as well as other chemical signatures suggesting the possibility of past or present life.
but researcher Mary Beth Wilhelm said the results suggest"more habitable conditions on the near surface of Mars than previously thought."
But Alfred Mcewen, who heads up NASA's Hirise high-resolution camera aboard the Mars orbiter,
said he's fairly confident life will one day be found on Mars."It's very likely,
that there's life somewhere in the crust of Mars, microbes, "he said. Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA, said the discovery announced Monday puts NASA in a perfect position to look for that life."
'Does life exist beyond Earth?'"'"Green said.""But following the water is a critical element of that.
a great opportunity to be in the right locations on Mars to thoroughly investigate that
and crevasses on the moon or Mars. He says the next generation of devices will have specific applications,
Theye one of the weirdest organisms on the planet, and we keep coming up with unexpected uses for them.
Actually, some people think mushrooms aren from this planet at all. Really. Now comes word that researchers at Researchers at the University of California,
whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. But if a producer could store energy from those sources
Other programmable materials could pay off in improved building environments. e want materials that transform themselves, depending on sunlight, moisture, humidity levels,
who is the Truman and Nellie Semans/Alex Brown & Sons Professor of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.
The Synthetic Muscle could be used in robotics in deep space travel such as travel to Mars because of its radiation resistance."
"Based on the good results we had on planet Earth, the next step is to see how it behaves in a space environment,
"From there the next step might be to use it on a mission to Mars."Early Connection with PPPLRASMUSSEN began working with PPPL in 2007 just four years after she started Ras Labs. She received her first patent for a synthetic muscle in 1998.
and was equivalent to a trip from earth to Mars and back. A second test of 45 hours was enough to be equivalent to a trip to Jupiter
and beyondrasmussen and Gentile found that there was no change in the strength, electroacivity, or durability of the material due to the radiation although there was a slight change in color.
When the material returns to Earth in July, it will be tested and compared with identical materials that remained On earth.
The International space station is an international science laboratory in low Earth orbit where astronauts conduct scientific research in biology, human biology, astronomy, meteorology and other fields in a gravity-free environment.
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