“Given the cold dry conditions of Mars, life could have evolved on Mars with the key internal fluid consisting of a mix of water and hydrogen peroxide, said Schulze-Makuch. That’s because a water-hydrogen peroxide mix stays liquid at very low temperatures, or -68 degrees Fahrenheit, and doesn’t destroy cells when it freezes. It can suck water vapor out of the air.
The Viking experiments of the 1970s wouldn’t have noticed hydrogen peroxide-based life and, in fact, would have killed it by drowning and overheating the microbes, said Schulze-Makuch. One Viking experiment seeking life on Mars poured water on soil. That would have essentially drowned hydrogen peroxide-based life, he said. And different experiment heated the soil to see if something would happen which would have baked Martian microbes.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 27, 2006 in Science
The Corot (COnvection, ROtation and planetary Transits) spacecraft is scheduled for launch today! The spacecraft (seen above, click on the image to view at a larger size) will be capable of detecting small rocky planets of a similar size to our own. There’s a great Mission Overview at BBC News or for more details you can check out the Corot website.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 20, 2006 in Science
This is an interesting video from the 6th Annual Rescue Robot Contest held in Kobe, Japan (the city that had a great earthquake in 1995). There is some amazing technology being created here:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 19, 2006 in Science
Not only might the Martians be amongst us, but they may have also pulled off an ‘invasion of the body snatchers’ routine as well! A new research paper hypothesises proposes that certain strains of radiation-resistant microbes on Earth may have inherited their radiation-resistance from Martian microbes, carried to Earth from Mars or on meteorites – and that the exchange may have been two-way.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 17, 2006 in Science
This is a very cool computer animated video which gives you an idea of the relative size of the planets in our solar system and various stars. The video stars with every tiny Mercury, then rolls to Mars which is the next size up and then goes all the way up to the sun which is dwarfed in size by other stars:
“New photographs from space suggest that water occasionally flows on the frigid surface of Mars, raising the tantalizing possibility that the red planet is hospitable to life, scientists reported Wednesday. The new images, taken by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor before it lost contact with Earth, do not actually show flowing water. Rather, they show changes in craters that provide the strongest evidence yet that water coursed through them as recently as several years ago, and is perhaps doing so even now.
“This is a squirting gun for water on Mars,” said Kenneth Edgett, a scientist at San Diego-based Malin Space Science Systems, which operates a camera on the Global Surveyor. The news excited scientists who hunt for extraterrestrial life. If the finding is confirmed, they say, all the ingredients favorable for life on Mars are in place: liquid water and a stable heat source. In all of its Mars exploration missions, NASA has pursued a “follow the water” strategy to determine if the planet once contained life or could support it now.”
“NASA announced Monday it will establish an international base camp on one of the moon’s poles, permanently staffing it by 2024, four years after astronauts return to the moon. It is a sweeping departure from the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s and represents a new phase of space exploration after space shuttles are retired in 2010.
NASA chose a “lunar outpost” over the short expeditions of the ’60s. Apollo flights were all around the center of the moon, but NASA decided to go to the moon’s poles because they are best for longer-term settlements. And this time NASA is welcoming other nations on its journey.”
Below: This painting was used as a visual at an April 1988 Houston-hosted conference titled “Lunar Bases and Space Strategies of the 21st Century.”
Now you no longer have to trek out to your local Planetarium! Sega has created the “Homestar Planetarium Pro” which looks pretty nifty to this astronomy fanboy. Here’s a video demo:
It looks like the most powerful radiotelescope yet devised is to be built on the Moon, under plans being put together by NASA for its 2018 lunar mission:
“The most powerful radiotelescope yet devised is to be built on the Moon, under plans being put together by NASA for its 2018 lunar mission. Mike Griffin, the head of the US space agency, said the construction of a telescope is being “factored into” the mission. A radiotelescope on the Moon would offer astronomers and physicists an unrivalled opportunity to see farther into the cosmos than ever before and in more detail.”
“A century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece. Historians of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and planetary motions, in the second century B.C.
The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world’s first computer, has now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. A team of researchers was able to decipher many inscriptions and reconstruct the gear functions, revealing, they said, “an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period.”
The researchers said their findings showed that the inscriptions related to lunar-solar motions and the gears were a mechanical representation of the irregularities of the Moon’s orbital course across the sky, as theorized by the astronomer Hipparchos. They established the date of the mechanism at 150-100 B.C.”
Below: Fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism, left, have now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography.
For the geeky fanboy, the original reference story is from here:
“Recent advances in robotics have been applied to automation in industrial manufacturing with the primary purpose of optimizing practical systems in terms of such objective measures as accuracy, speed, and cost. However, the resulting robots are mostly kept away from human beings because people can be injured during their everyday functioning.
Unlike industrial robots, “Mental Commitment Robots” are developed to interact with human beings and to make them feel emotional attachment to the robots. Rather than using objective measures, these robots trigger more subjective evaluations, evoking psychological impressions such as “cuteness” and comfort.”
“HubbleSite is the home of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the renowned orbiting telescope whose discoveries have forever altered our knowledge of the universe.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 15, 2006 in Science
This article isn’t all doom and gloom as the headline might suggest, in fact what’s neat is that it has several suggestions to solve the radiation issue:
“Space elevators are touted as a novel and cheap way to get cargo, and possibly people, into space one day. So far, they have barely left the drawing board, but ultimately robots could climb a cable stretching 100,000 kilometres from Earth’s surface into space.
But there is a hitch: humans might not survive thanks to the whopping dose of ionising radiation they would receive travelling through the core of the Van Allen radiation belts around Earth. These are two concentric rings of charged particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic fields. “They would die on the way through the radiation belts if they were unshielded,” says Anders Jorgensen, author of a new study on the subject and a technical staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, US.”
“Engineers from the University of Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have unveiled a radical design for a “silent aircraft”.
The team says any noise from the concept aircraft, known as the SAX-40, would be “imperceptible” beyond the boundaries of an airport. It would also burn far less fuel than conventional planes. The design is the result of three years’ work and includes both new and existing technologies.”
“Space Yogurt from Himawari Dairy is now available in Japan. Himawari Dairy, a Kochi-area dairy manufacturer, reserved a seat aboard a Soyuz rocket that took off from Baikonur Cosmodrome this spring. The “passengers” were two strains of bacteria: lactic acid bacteria used in ordinary yogurt and a unique strain of Lactobacillus paracasei cultured from pickles preserved in the dregs of sake (called sake lees), which is thought to enhance the body’s immunity to disease.
Cosmic radiation was expected to have an effect on the bacteria. “Lactic acid bacteria is delicate, so we are looking forward to seeing what happens,” says company president Bunjiro Yoshizawa. “It will be nice if space travel improves the yogurt’s flavor and boosts its immunity-enhancing properties”.”
“University of Central Florida physics professor Costas Efthimiou’s work debunks pseudoscientific ideas, such as vampires and zombies, in an attempt to enhance public literacy. Not only does the public believe in such topics, but the percentages are at dangerously high level, Efthimiou told LiveScience. Legend has it that vampires feed on human blood and once bitten a person turns into a vampire and starts feasting on the blood of others.
Efthimiou’s debunking logic: On Jan 1, 1600, the human population was 536,870,911. If the first vampire came into existence that day and bit one person a month, there would have been two vampires by Feb. 1, 1600. A month later there would have been four, and so on. In just two-and-a-half years the original human population would all have become vampires with nobody left to feed on.”
“China may one day offer trips into space for tourists, a senior official said on Thursday, outlining the country’s plans to launch more rockets, explore the moon and even help farmers by using satellite transmissions.
Sun Laiyan, head of the China National Space Administration, also defended the cost of the space program, saying Beijing spent far less than the United States, it benefited ordinary people and was anyway a matter of national pride.”
“Astronomers have discovered a new class of planets that take less than a day to whiz round their parent stars. Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope revealed the existence of the planets, which orbit closer to their stars than any previously known. Dr Kailash Sahu and colleagues report finding the planets in a faint, crowded star field in a region of the Milky Way known as the galactic bulge.
The team has published its findings in the scientific journal Nature. It uncovered the existence of 16 planets in the category of close orbiters, taking between 0.4 and 3.2 days to go around their respective stars. Many of the planets are the size of Jupiter, the largest planet in our Solar System. Two of the 16 have orbits of less than a day, creating a new category of “ultra-short” orbit exoplanets.”
For nearly 40 years Neil Armstrong has been accused of fluffing his lines during his first steps on the Moon. On tapes of the Moon landings, he appears to drop the “a” from the famous quote: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” But new analysis of the tapes has proved Mr Armstrong right after all. Computer programmer Peter Shann Ford used audio analysis software to show that the missing “a” was blotted out by transmission static.
…but reading about this reminds me that it’s been a long time since we’ve been on the moon. As a child I would have expected to see a Mars landing by 2006.
“A group of students from the University of Cambridge who plan on launching a rocket into space for less than £1,000 have taken the first steps towards achieving their ambitious goal. Carl Morland, Henry Hallam and Robert Fryers, all from the Department of Engineering have successfully sent a bundle of equipment to the edge of space using a helium balloon.
The tiny payload, no bigger than a lunchbox, flew to nearly four times the height of Everest before descending by parachute, taking photographs throughout the flight, including dramatic images showing the curvature of the earth.
In the long term, their project – dubbed ‘Project Nova’ – aims to pave the way for the launch of small payloads for commercial research organisations into space. The method would be very cheap, costing a matter of several hundred pounds, instead of the six-figure sums currently required.”
“SpaceShipTwo is a suborbital spaceplane currently under development by The Spaceship Company, a joint venture between Scaled Composites and Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group of the UK, as part of the Tier 1b program. The Virgin Galactic spaceline plans to operate a fleet of five of these craft in passenger-carrying private spaceflight service starting in 2008. The first spacecraft to be completed will be named VSS (Virgin Space Ship) Enterprise in honor of the Starship Enterprise, and have the FAA registration number N400K (refers to the target altitude of 400,000 feet, approx. 76 miles, or 121.92 kilometers).”
