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Feel free to start a new thread if its that good. I'll bet it will get more attention and more posts if you do.
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Another week, another great Cosmos episode. Its a worthy successor.
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I found this interesting.
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Found this program on our local TV channel while looking to record COSMOS. It's Neal deGrasse Tyson taking questions from the audience. The guy on the left is the Cosmologist my son is taking astrology classes from. Found the clip on you tube. Neal is very funny. Skip to 15:30 where Neal starts talking.
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NDT is the best.
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It's from 2009. 4.5 years ain't so long ago. Is there an age limit here on you tube videos?:harumph: |
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http://www.astronomy.com/news/2014/0...net-discovered
The solar system has a new most distant member, bringing its outer frontier into focus. New work from Scott Sheppard from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., and Chadwick Trujillo from the Gemini Observatory in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, reports the discovery of a distant dwarf planet, called 2012 VP113, which was found beyond the known edge of the solar system. This is likely one of thousands of distant objects that are thought to form the so-called inner Oort Cloud. What’s more, their work indicates the potential presence of an enormous planet, perhaps up to 10 times the size of Earth, not yet seen, but possibly influencing the orbit of 2012 VP113 as well as other inner Oort Cloud objects. The known solar system can be divided into three parts: the rocky planets like Earth, which are close to the Sun; the gas giant planets, which are further out; and the frozen objects of the Kuiper Belt, which lie just beyond Neptune’s orbit. Beyond this, there appears to be an edge to the solar system where only one object, Sedna, was previously known to exist for its entire orbit. But the newly found 2012 VP113 has an orbit that stays even beyond Sedna, making it the furthest known in the solar system. More at the link |
Awesome had not seen that.
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http://www.eso.org/public/announcements/ann14022/
ESOcast 64: First Ring System Around an Asteroid This episode of the ESOcast presents the recent discovery that the remote asteroid Chariklo is surrounded by two dense and narrow rings. Telescopes at seven locations in South America, including the 1.54-metre Danish and TRAPPIST telescopes at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile were used to make this surprise discovery in the outer Solar System. This unique finding has sparked much interest and debate since it is the smallest object by far to have rings and only the fifth body in the Solar System — after the much larger planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — to have this feature. Astronomers think that this sort of ring is likely to be formed from debris left over after a collision. The story of this unique and unexpected discovery is told in ESOcast 64: First Ring System Around an Asteroid. |
That's some cool shit right there.
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Was tempted to post Vsauce earlier it was pretty cool.
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Star Birth Sparked at the Galaxy's Edge
Gas from another galaxy is hitting our own, triggering the birth of bright new stars and adding fresh luster to the Milky Way. For the first time astronomers have detected stars in an enormous stream of gas shed by the Magellanic Clouds, the two brightest galaxies that orbit our own. Sought for decades, the newfound stars are young, which means they formed recently, while the Magellanic gas collided with gas in the Milky Way. The newborn stars offer insight into processes that occurred in the ancient universe, when small, gas-rich galaxies smashed together to give rise to giants like the Milky Way. "This is the one and only galaxy interaction we can model in very much detail," says Dana Casetti-Dinescu, an astronomer at Southern Connecticut State University, who notes that other collisions of gas clouds between galaxies are farther away and thus harder to observe. "For more distant systems that interact, we don't have the wealth of information." Some two dozen galaxies revolve around our own but only the Magellanic Clouds shine so brightly that stargazers can see the pair with the naked eye. What really sets these two apart is their vigor: Unlike all other Milky Way satellites, the Magellanic Clouds abound with gas, the raw material galaxies use to create new stars. The Magellanic Clouds are certainly nearby: The Large Magellanic Cloud is just 160,000 light-years from Earth, whereas the Small Magellanic Cloud is 200,000 light-years distant and 75,000 light-years away from its partner. As the two galaxies orbit the Milky Way, they probably orbit each another, too. A closer look at the Magellanic Clouds reveals more details. In the early 1970s radio astronomers discovered a long stream of gas that trails behind the two galaxies in their orbit around us. This gas, named the Magellanic Stream, consists mostly of neutral hydrogen atoms, which broadcast radio waves that are 21 centimeters long. A shorter gaseous component leads the Magellanic Clouds and is therefore called the Leading Arm. From the tip of the Leading aArm to the far end of the Magellanic Stream, this gaseous strand is at least 200 degrees long and stretches across more than half a million light-years of space. Just as the moon lifts the terrestrial seas, the Large Magellanic Cloud's gravitational pull has torn most of this gas out of the Small Magelleanic Cloud, whose grasp on its contents is less secure. Stars should also have spilled out of the Magellanic Clouds. Although both stars and gas exist between the Magellanic Clouds, no one has ever found any stars in either the Magellanic Stream or the Leading Arm. Until now. Casetti-Dinescu and her colleagues used the 6.5-meter Walter Baade telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile to uncover six luminous blue stars in the Leading Arm. "They are formed in situ," she says. "They have to be, because they're too young—they don't have enough time to travel from the Clouds to their current location in their lifetime." Five of the six stars are about 60,000 light-years from the Milky Way's center, near the periphery of our galaxy's disk of stars. Like most spiral galaxies, the Milky Way maintains a vast reservoir of hydrogen gas that encircles its stellar disk. So the newborn stars could have originated in our galaxy. But the stars share the velocity of gas in the Leading Arm, suggesting they arose as its gas crashed into the Milky Way's outer gas disk, compressing the Arm gas until it spawned stars. The astronomers report their discovery in the April 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. "This is the first credible evidence of stars associated with the Leading Arm," says David Nidever of the University of Michigan, who is conducting his own search. He's especially intrigued by a sixth and more distant star the astronomers have spotted. Located 130,000 light-years from the galactic center—about twice as far as the other stars—it shines well beyond the edge of the Milky Way's stellar disk, in the vast outer halo beyond. The star has a spectral type of O6, corresponding to a surface temperature of 44,000 kelvins. Such a hot star burns brightly but briefly; it formed a mere one million to two million years ago. "It seems like that star really has to have been born in the halo," Nidever says. The Milky Way's outer halo, although mostly starless, possesses hot diffuse gas that greets infalling gas in the Leading Arm. "This material is plunging through the hot halo of the Milky Way," Casetti-Dinescu says. Magellanic gas hit the hot halo gas, she thinks, getting squeezed and forging the short-lived star. Although the stars owe their births to gas from the Magellanic Clouds, they now revolve around a new master: the Milky Way Galaxy, which has enhanced its already significant grandeur by grabbing gas from its two most flamboyant satellites and sculpting it into new stars, a process our galaxy must have exploited numerous times in ancient epochs as it grew into a giant. |
NASA's collection of data across the electromagnetic spectrum....
The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of all possible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. The electromagnetic spectrum extends from below the low frequencies used for modern radio communication to gamma radiation at the short-wavelength (high-frequency) end, thereby covering wavelengths from thousands of kilometers down to a fraction of the size of an atom. The limit for long wavelengths is the size of the universe itself, while it is thought that the short wavelength limit is in the vicinity of the Planck length, although in principle the spectrum is infinite and continuous. http://i58.tinypic.com/2i8fxbl.jpg Light waves across the electromagnetic spectrum behave in similar ways. When a light wave encounters an object, they are either transmitted, reflected, absorbed, refracted, polarized, diffracted, or scattered depending on the composition of the object and the wavelength of the light. Specialized instruments onboard NASA spacecraft and airplanes collect data on how electromagnetic waves behave when they interact with matter. These data can reveal the physical and chemical composition of matter. Seen here is a sample of telescopes (operating as of February 2013) operating at wavelengths across the electromagnetic spectrum. Several of these observatories observe more than one band of the EM spectrum, and those are placed within the band of their primary instrument(s). The represented observatories are: HESS, Fermi and Swift for gamma-ray, NuSTAR and Chandra for X-ray, GALEX for ultraviolet, Kepler, Hubble, Keck (I and II), SALT, and Gemini (South) for visible, Spitzer, Herschel, and Sofia for infrared, Planck and CARMA for microwave, Spektr-R, Greenbank, and VLA for radio. |
What happens to your brain on caffeine?
<script height="450px" width="800px" src="http://player.ooyala.com/iframe.js#pbid=6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e&ec=84cnc1bTpad1l3FP8AUWblR_VuwCqWsN"></script> |
Victory for humanity!
http://i2.wp.com/cleantechnica.com/f...30963ed6c7.jpg Laboratory Grown Vaginas Successfully Transplanted Into Patients Tissue engineered hearts and lungs may be still at the laboratory stage, but replacement vaginas made from the patient's own cells have been around for a while. A paper in the Lancet confirms they continue to work years after surgery. The four patients in the study had Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, which affects women who are genetically and hormonally normal but have an absent or greatly shortened vagina. MRKH may also produce a missing or defective cervix and uterus. Sex is usually painful for women with the condition and more than half a million are affected worldwide. While we are some way from being able to enable women most with MRKH to conceive, the Wake Forest School of Medicine created sheets from biodegradable scaffolds and epithelial and muscle cells of four girls aged 13-18 with MRKH. These were then “hand-sewn into a vagina-like shape” in the authors' words and implanted. Each vagina was shaped by the Federico Gomez Children's Hospital, Mexico, to best match the body of the woman it was for. Follow-ups over the next 6-8 years using physical examination, tissue biopsies and MRIs indicated that blood vessels had connected to the implant and within months new cells formed spontaneously while the scaffold was slowly absorbed. A tri-layered structure remained in place after the scaffolding was gone and no abnormalities were observed. The women responded to a questionnaire with responses in the normal range in regard to arousal, lubrication, orgasm and painless intercourse. Most significantly, the patients reported high satisfaction with the replacement vaginas. Other existing treatments for MRKH are much more traumatic and have a high rate of failure and complication. Team leader Anthony Atala has used a similar technique to build replacement bladders for nine children in need, and has implanted urethras in boys, although there is yet to be the long-term confirmation of success in that case. <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/IHF-lIu5D_U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> "This pilot study is the first to demonstrate that vaginal organs can be constructed in the lab and used successfully in humans," Atala said. "This may represent a new option for patients who require vaginal reconstructive surgeries. In addition, this study is one more example of how regenerative medicine strategies can be applied to a variety of tissues and organs." “I truly feel fortunate, because I’ll have a normal life,” a patient who wished to remain anonymous said in a video provided by the Federico Gomez Hospital . “It’s important to let other girls that have the same problem know that it does not end knowing that you have the disease, because there is a treatment.” Besides MRKH the process could be suitable for women whose vaginas have been damaged in trauma or by cancer. The announcement has generated excitement in the trans community. |
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Pond life.
It seems like an alien world.... <iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/56012237" width="500" height="281" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> Full screen and HD on very much advised For a little background on the creatures you're seeing here: Water fleas are not actually related to fleas. Rather they are crustaceans. Common in freshwater environments they grow to 6mm long. They could be called water cyclops since they see through just one compound eye. They engage in cyclical parhenogenesis, reproducing mostly asexually, with the occasional bout of sexual reproduction to shuffle the genetic pack and produce eggs that survive harsh temperatures. Bryozoa are filter feeding animals. While most species are marine, some such as these thrive in freshwater. Almost all live in colonies made up of animals with specialist roles that could not survive on their own. Freshwater species are hermaphrodites. The short life of Mayflies is the stuff of legend and poetry; their adult lifespan can be anything from a few days down to a matter of minutes, depending on which of the more than 2000 species they come from. However, that ignores the months or years spent as nymphs beforehand. Most mayflies feed on algae or diatoms, but carnivorous species exist. Mosquitoes are well known both as a pest and as a transmitter of malaria and dengue fever, but we see them here in the lesser known larval stage. Not all the 3500 mosquito species feed on the blood of mammals or birds. Even where bloodsucking occurs, it is only the pregnant females that partake, requiring the protein to allow their eggs to grow. Water mites are aquatic relative of spiders, although they only have six legs in the larval stage, they gain an extra two when metamorphosing to the nymph stage. Ostracods are crustaceans that recently provided a 450 million year old example of parental care. Uniquely for this film, ciliates are not animals at all but single-celled protazoans, although the larger ones can be longer than some of the smaller animal species Stoupin has captured. Hydra are radially symmetric predators, thus looking more like plants than animals until they try to eat you, at least if you are an invertebrate with the bad luck to be smaller than them. The have attracted interest in recent years for their ability to regenerate, and the fact that they don't appear to die of old age, or indeed age at all. They normally reproduce by budding off the body wall, but like water mites can turn to sexual reproduction when the going is tough. Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and...life-timelapse |
Who wants to hallucinate?
WARNING: Please use your discretion when viewing. If you suffer from photosensitive epilepsy, please do not view this video. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/tVgOLWVYytM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Who needs drugs when you have science? If you follow the video’s instructions, when you look away you will continue to see wavy lines in your wall or on the floor. This happens due to an optical illusion that is the result of repeated psychological stimulation. When the video ends and you look away, your brain still expects to see the waves, and therefore it creates them for you. Saying the letters out loud doesn’t really play a role, it just ensures that you are focusing on the center of the screen, where you can best receive the stimulus. For best results, view the video full screen on an HD display. The resultant hallucination is temporary and should wear off within a couple of minutes. Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/brain/vide...hallucinations |
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DON'T HELP ME. I want to find him all by myself. |
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NASA to Ruskies.... **** you guys.....
http://www.michaelbransonsmith.net/b...wolverines.gif Not really sure what to think about this. On one hand it may bring more funding and support since we'll again be competing with the Russians instead of relying on them for space missions. On the other, our program could regress simply because we have less to work with. Holy hell we need more scientists in Washington.... NASA Cuts Ties with Russia NASA says it will be suspending some contact with Russia. The exception, of course, are flights to the International Space Station. Since the space shuttle program retired in 2011, U.S. astronauts get rides into orbit aboard Russian Soyuz rockets, for $70 million a seat. The agency told its officials yesterday morning that it's suspending all contact with Russian government representatives -- citing Russia’s “ongoing violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” In the internal NASA HQ memo obtained by The Verge, the suspension includes: travel to Russia, tele- and videoconferences, emails, and visits by Russian representatives to NASA facilities. Work with the ISS will continue, as well as meetings held outside of Russia with other countries that include Russia’s participation. This comes from Michael O'Brien, associate administrator for International and Interagency Relations. Last night, NASA issued a statement, confirming that the agency is suspending the majority of its ongoing engagements with the Russian Federation, but will continue to work with Roscosmos on ISS operations. It also adds how Congress failed to increase the agency's funding. Here’s an excerpt: NASA is laser focused on a plan to return human spaceflight launches to American soil, and end our reliance on Russia to get into space. This has been a top priority of the Obama Administration's for the past five years, and had our plan been fully funded, we would have returned American human spaceflight launches -- and the jobs they support -- back to the United States next year. With the reduced level of funding approved by Congress, we're now looking at launching from U.S. soil in 2017. The choice here is between fully funding the plan to bring space launches back to America or continuing to send millions of dollars to the Russians. It's that simple. The Obama Administration chooses to invest in America -- and we are hopeful that Congress will do the same. NASA’s current budget is just under $18 billion, and it's likely underfunded as it is. Still, the move has been called “a manipulative money grab” that leverages the crisis in Ukraine. As recently as a few weeks ago, officials expressed optimism about the Russian-American partnership, with NASA administrator Charles Bolden saying: “Right now, everything is normal in our relationship with the Russians.” "NASA's goals aren't political," a NASA scientist told The Verge on condition of anonymity. "This is one of the first major actions I have heard of from the U.S. government and it is to stop science and technology collaboration… You're telling me there is nothing better?" There are currently two America astronauts aboard the ISS. And it’s unclear how much non-ISS contact U.S. has with Russia: There is a Venus mission, as well as work on potentially hazardous near-Earth space bodies. Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa...TEPxYH7eJFu.99 |
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SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket taking off, landing
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0UjWqQPWmsY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Even as its Falcon 9 rocket blasted its Dragon cargo capsule towards the International Space Station last Friday, aerospace company SpaceX was preparing another feat. According to Voice of America, on Monday April 21, SpaceX launched a variant of the Falcon 9 design from its facility in Texas. The rocket in question is a prototype of the Falcon 9 Reusable (F9R). The F9R successfully blasted off and rose to an altitude of 250 meters. The rocket briefly hovered at that altitude before safely descending back to the launch pad. The entire maneuver was captured on video by a drone aircraft. SpaceX intends the F9R design eventually to become the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket; such reusability would substantially reduce the cost of space launches, which currently rely upon disposal rockets. Future assessments will see the F9R launched from SpaceX’s New Mexico test facility. During those evaluations, the rocket will be launched with the landing legs tucked away and to greater heights to more closely approximate conditions during an actual launch and landing. In the meantime, SpaceX Dragon capsules will continue to ferry cargo, and eventually astronauts, to the space station. Friday’s launch was the third of 12 planned Dragon cargo runs to the station as part of SpaceX’s $1.6 billion contract with NASA. |
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Un****ingbelievable!...LMAO That one who sucks the penis Obama is the one who axed the space shuttle before we had anything to take it's place (after being shown a plan to keep the shuttle flying for another few years), and now he's being hailed as having a laser focus to end America's reliance on the Russians to get American astronauts into space?!?!?! LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO |
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Hail Science! |
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Ever accidentally swallowed a mouthful of seawater?
Ever wonder what was in it? Here's a 25X magnification of a drop of seawater... Yum! http://i58.tinypic.com/33lhxc0.jpg Explanation of what you're looking at: http://i60.tinypic.com/2hmedf9.jpg http://dive-shield.us/infonewspages/...fseawater.html |
Arecibo Observatory Detects Mysterious, Energetic Radio Burst
by Nadia Drake http://i57.tinypic.com/dywz8w.jpg A brief, blazing burst of radio waves detected by the Arecibo Observatory could herald a turning of the tide for a peculiar class of cosmic signals. Until recently, the signals had only ever been detected by a telescope in Australia, a pattern that fueled doubts about their origin. Fewer than a dozen of these bursts, lasting for only a few thousandths of a second, have ever been reported. Called “fast radio bursts,” the signals are cosmic enigmas that appear to come from the very, very distant universe. But since the first burst discovery in 2007, scientists have not only wondered what kind of cosmic object could produce such a tremendously bright, short-lived radio pulse – but have disagreed about whether the bursts are even celestial. “There are more theories than there are bursts,” says West Virginia University astronomer Duncan Lorimer, an author on the paper describing the burst, posted to the arXiv on April 10. On November 2, 2012, a blast of radio waves collided with the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, where the world’s largest single-dish radio telescope lives. Rain or shine, day or night, the 305-meter dish collects radio waves from the cosmos, which are then processed into data for scientists to study. The data gathered at 6:35 am UT revealed a massive, 3-millisecond spike. Unlike the radio blasts emitted by some pulsars, the burst did not recur. It briefly blazed and then disappeared. Called FRB 121102, the burst was very similar to six earlier events that constitute the entire reported population of ultrafast radio bursts – a population that until November 2012 had only been seen by one telescope, in Australia. But transience is only part of what makes these signals so weird. Their chief peculiarity lies in just how dang far away they seem to be. Normally, radio waves travel at the speed of light. This means that all the different wavelengths and frequencies of radio waves emitted by the same object – say, a pulsar – should arrive on Earth in one big batch. But if something is sufficiently far away, that changes. Longer, lower frequency waves traveling through the cosmos have a trickier time getting to Earth. Clouds of ionized interstellar particles – electrons, primarily – form roadblocks that slow and redirect these longer waves, causing them to follow a more sinuous path. As a result, the longer waves arrive just a bit later than their shorter kin – sometimes, the difference is only a fraction of a second. That delay in arrival times is called “dispersion,” and it lets astronomers estimate how far away the waves are coming from. The longer the delay, the more intergalactic junk that got in the way. And since scientists think they know how much junk there is, they can use the dispersion measurement to approximate a distance, or at least identify whether an object lives inside or outside the Milky Way. If astronomers are interpreting the bursts’ dispersion measures correctly, then the bursts came from billions and billions of light-years away – in other words, they’re nowhere near our cosmic neighborhood. And nobody knows what they are. “The sources of the bursts are undoubtedly exotic by normal standards,” Cornell University astronomer Jim Cordes wrote in Science. The ultrafast pulses take their name from Lorimer, who spotted and described the first burst in 2007. That mysterious signal, estimated to have traveled roughly 3 billion light-years before colliding with Earth, stunned astronomers. Many of them questioned whether it was an artifact produced by the telescope that detected it, the Parkes Observatory’s 64-meter telescope in Australia. In the years after the discovery, skepticism grew. A new class of terrestrial radio bursts detected by the Parkes telescope in 2010 cast more doubt on the original Lorimer burst. Those Earth-based signals, called perytons, opened the door to the possibility that even if real, the original burst was actually coming from much closer to home. Another Parkes-detected burst, reported in 2012, didn’t do much to alleviate doubts. But that summer, a third Lorimer burst was described at the International Astronomical Union’s general assembly in Beijing, China; as it turned out, this burst would be one member of a quartet that astronomers would announce the next year in Science. By the end of July, 2013, the total reported stood at six. “The discovery of fast radio bursts at the Parkes Observatory, if confirmed at other observatories, would be a monumental discovery, comparable to that of cosmological gamma-ray bursts and even pulsars,” Shrinivas Kulkarni, an astronomer at Caltech, told Scientific American at the time. Strength in numbers was helping the bursts achieve legitimacy, but there was no escaping that they’d all been detected by the same telescope. And until another observatory saw something similar, skeptics could easily question whether the signals were a product of the telescope and its location, rather than the cosmos. “In fairness, it’s not a bad question to ask at all,” Lorimer says. “Whenever you make a new discovery, it’s very important to have it confirmed by different groups, using different equipment.” Now, the Arecibo detection of FRB 121102 strongly suggests the signals are not a Parkes artifact, and furthermore, that they’re not terrestrial in origin. “I’m certainly very excited to see such a convincing result from another team using a different observatory,” says astronomer Michael Keith of the University of Manchester, who was not involved in the current study. So the questions astronomers are asking are: How far have the bursts traveled? And what, exactly, are they? “My hunch has always been that they’re extragalactic,” Lorimer says. “But that’s really nothing more than a hypothesis at this point.” Overall, the dispersion measures do seem to suggest an extragalactic origin. There are many more electrons between Earth and the bursts than can be explained by the Milky Way’s interstellar electrons; but it’s still possible that intervening nebulas could be clouding the measurement, Kulkarni says. He suggests the signals could be coming from spinning neutron stars known as radio rotating transients, or RRATs, that live in our galaxy and also emit a single pulse. Because the signals are so brief and bright, they must be coming from a rather dense source, says astronomer Scott Ransom of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “That means a compact object – i.e., a neutron star or a black hole – is likely somehow to blame,” he says. Just what that compact object is has yet to be explained. One theory suggests that giant flares erupting from highly magnetic neutron stars, known as magnetars, cause the bursts. Others suggest the bursts result from colliding neutron stars or black holes, evaporating primordial black holes, large magnetic stars, or are the death spasms produced when massive, slowly spinning neutron stars collapse into black holes. That last object, proposed in 2013, is known as a blitzar. More observations should help teams pinpoint the bursts’ origin. Already, more detections from Parkes are coming down the pipeline, and Ransom says he’s looking through the Green Bank Telescope’s data for similar signals. But what astronomers are really hoping for is a way to find the bursts in real-time – then, they might be able to identify an optical source, like a host galaxy. In addition to supporting an extragalactic origin, that would also allow scientists to use the bursts to probe the characteristics of the intervening intergalactic medium and its ions. “We really need to get their precise positions,” Ransom says. “That will let us see where they originate – hopefully in or near other galaxies where we can get their distances.” |
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I guess the live cam onboard the ISS is sort of working now, at least enough to embed this with some confidence that there will actually be something to see. I was checking on this thing all weekend and it was down most of the time:mad:
<iframe width="480" height="302" src="http://www.ustream.tv/embed/17074538?v=3&wmode=direct" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border: 0px none transparent;"> </iframe> <br /><a href="http://www.ustream.tv/" style="padding: 2px 0px 4px; width: 400px; background: #ffffff; display: block; color: #000000; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10px; text-decoration: underline; text-align: center;" target="_blank">Live streaming video by Ustream</a> Where the hell is the ISS right now, you ask? http://iss.astroviewer.net/ |
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That's pretty awesome. |
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my brother sent me this. I thought it was cool.
I've read that there would be no sound in space...... so, wtf? <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/2cpXpgjUT2k" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> I've been sitting here working and listening for a while. at first I thought it was repetitive, but.....it isn't. |
The largest known volcano in the solar system. Roughly the size of your mom's ass.
http://i57.tinypic.com/312h0z6.jpg Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in the solar system. The massive Martian mountain towers high above the surrounding plains of the red planet, and may be biding its time until the next eruption. Characteristics Found in the Tharsis Montes region near the Martian equator, Olympus Mons is one of a dozen large volcanoes, many of which are ten to a hundred times taller than their terrestrial counterparts. The tallest of them all towers 16 miles (25 kilometers) above the surrounding plains and stretches across 374 miles (624 km) — roughly the size of the state of Arizona. In comparison, Hawaii's Mauna Loa, the tallest volcano on Earth, rises 6.3 miles (10 km) above the sea floor (but its peak is only 2.6 miles above sea level). The volume contained by Olympus Mons is about a hundred times that of Mauna Loa, and the Hawaiian island chain that houses the Earthly volcano could fit inside its Martian counterpart. Olympus Mons rises three times higher than Earth's highest mountain, Mount Everest, whose peak is 5.5 miles above sea level. Olympus Mons is a shield volcano. Rather than violently spewing molten material, shield volcanoes are created by lava slowly flowing down their sides. As a result, the mountain has a low, squat appearance, with an average slope of only 5 percent. Six collapsed craters, known as calderas, stack on top of one another to create a depression at the summit that is 53 miles wide (85 km). As magma chambers beneath the calderas emptied of lava, most likely during an eruption, the chambers collapsed, no longer able to support the weight of the ground above. A cliff, or escarpment, surrounds the outer edge of the volcano, reaching as high as 6 miles (10 km) above the surrounding area. (The cliff alone is about as tall as Mauna Loa.) A wide depression surrounds the base of the volcano as its immense weight presses into the crust. Olympus Mons is still a relatively young volcano. Although it has taken billions of years to form, some regions of the mountain may be only a few million years old, relatively young in the lifetime of the solar system. As such, Olympus Mons may still be an active volcano with the potential to erupt. The tallest volcano in the solar system may also house rock glaciers — rocky debris frozen in ice. Snow and ice deposits above the base of the shield could result in such glaciers. Water-ice insulated by surface dust may exist near the top of the volcano. The tops of these glaciers may host ridges, furrows, and lobes, and be covered by rocks and boulders, and could be as young as four million years old. Forming a giant Why would such a huge volcano form on Mars but not on Earth? Scientists think that the lower surface gravity of the red planet, combined with higher eruption rates, allowed for the lava on Mars to pile up higher. The presence and absence of tectonic plates could also play an important role in the different kinds of volcanoes. The hot spots of lava under the crust remain in the same location on both planets. On Earth, however, the movement of the crust prevents the steady buildup of lava. The Hawaiian Islands, for instance, formed as a plate drifted over a hot spot. Each eruption created a small island in a different spot. But Mars has very limited plate movement. Both the hot spot and the crust remain unmoving. When lava flows to the surface, it continues to pile up in a single spot. Instead of a chain of volcanic islands, large volcanoes such as Olympus Mons form. In fact, three other large volcanoes near Olympus Mons are similarly gigantic; if only one of the four volcanoes in the region existed, it would be the tallest feature in the solar system. The volcanoes in Tharsis Montes are so large that they tower above the seasonal Martian dust storms. Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who studied the Martian surface intensively in the late 19th century, observed the enormous features from Earth using an 8-inch (22 centimeter) telescope. When NASA's Mariner 9 arrived at the red planet in 1971, it was able to pick out the tops of the volcanoes above the storms. http://www.space.com/20133-olympus-m...n-of-mars.html |
There's a woman at my place of employment who's mons-veneris is as large as Olympus Mons.
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Very cool computer simulation...
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Thanks, Obama...
Russia Threatens to Ban US Access to ISS In Retaliation To Sanctions After Russia refused to stand down in its invasion of Ukraine in February of this year, the United States imposed sanctions in disapproval and eliminated a great deal of collaboration between NASA and Roscosmos. The one glaring exemption was missions related to the International Space Station. While the ISS is jointly controlled by the US, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada, astronauts depend on Soyuz rockets launched from Russia for access. Less than a month later, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin voiced disapproval of this decision, saying they would go toe-to-toe with US threats and could potentially cut off access to the ISS. He also quipped that the US should deliver its astronauts to the ISS via trampoline. At the time of that announcement, the United States had two astronauts onboard, leaving some to speculate about their fate. Rick Mastracchio returned to Earth just yesterday, but Steven Swanson is still onboard. Gregory Wiseman is currently scheduled to launch to the ISS on May 28 for Expedition 40 and that plan does not appear to have changed. In the latest development, Rogozin announced yesterday that Russia will no longer supply the rocket engines currently used to launch military satellites. There were threats of disabling 11 US GPS base stations. He also alluded to Russia’s withdrawal from the ISS in 2020, saying it will bar NASA’s entry to the ISS. What’s really at stake here? Russian rocket engines are used by the United Launch Alliance for their rockets that are used to bring military and defense satellites into space. However, the ULA has stated that they already have enough engines stockpiled to perform the next two years’ worth of launches. Additionally, privately-owned SpaceX already has operational rockets that can be commissioned for use, should the need arise. All of the components for the Falcon 9 rockets are designed and manufactured in the United States. While SpaceX is currently fulfilling a contract with NASA, they are seeking to gain a contract with the Department of Defense as well. The 11 GPS base stations that Russia is threatening to turn off are used to monitor tectonic plate activity. Without them, it will eliminate many data points necessary for understanding the motions of the plates which need to be accounted for with extreme accuracy. This would be a huge headache to the scientists who use the information to understand earthquakes and volcanos. None of them contribute America’s GPS network and it will not affect military or civilian GPS use at all; just the scientists. Rogozin stated that if the US does not allow their GLONASS base stations to be installed on US soil by the end of summer, the GPS units are getting turned off. If Russia won’t allow American astronauts to travel to and from the ISS using their spacecraft after 2020, that’s actually not a huge problem despite the fact that NASA cancelled the shuttle program in 2011. SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft could launch from the US as soon as 2017 with the capability of carrying seven astronauts as once. Orbital Sciences, another privately-owned company, is also working toward delivering humans to a low Earth orbit. However, Orbital Sciences uses a modified Russian NK-33 engine in its Antares rockets. However, there is one aspect of Rogozin’s statement that deserves considerable pause, and that is his claim that Russia could withdraw from the ISS in 2020, when the US was hoping to utilize the ISS until 2024. The space station is divided into segments: The Russian section that is solely controlled in Moscow is used for docking when bringing crew or cargo onboard, and it is also capable of operating independently. The same cannot be said for US compartments, which is fairly problematic. While the US does have the Interim Control Module that could be used in place of the Russian module, there are some logistical concerns of launching and installing the unit. It is unknown if Russia would actually go so far to completely alienate not just Americans, but the 11 other countries governing the ISS as well. The bottom line is that this back-and-forth disagreement over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has nothing to do with scientists, yet those are the people who will suffer the most over all of these sanctions. Since 2001, the International Space Station has been a place where over 200 people from 15 countries have come together in the pursuit of exploration and knowledge, despite any socioeconomic or political differences. Though the US will be able to overcome any roadblocks put into place by Russia, the whole situation is still fairly sad. That said, 2020 is a long way away, and a great number of things could happen before then. We can only hope that common sense will prevail so we can all return to peaceful and productive scientific collaboration. |
Science Is Finally Making Glass That Birds Won't Fly Into
http://i60.tinypic.com/2q1gzlj.jpg Birds flying into window panes might be the stuff of cartoon comic fodder, but the reality is bleak: Hundreds of millions of birds die from flying into transparent glass every year. Thankfully, science is finally putting a stop to it. A recent New York Times article gives us a glimpse into the fascinating research being done to save these birds lives. One example of which is the shady, underground tunnel below the Bronx Zoo that's being used as a live testing ground/labyrinth for the tech that will save our flying friends. The Times explains: At the far end were the adjacent glass panels, illuminated by a daylight simulator. One panel was familiar transparent glass, which contributes to the demise of hundreds of millions of birds who fly into it each year in the United States. The other was bird-friendly glass, featuring white vertical stripes that are supposed to serve as a kind of avian stop sign. "I'm hoping it flies," [William] Haffey, [an ecology student at Fordham University], said. (The previous test subject, a white-throated sparrow, had simply hopped around inside the tunnel, looking confused.) But the yellow-rumped warbler, affectionately called a "butter butt" by birders, flew straight through the tunnel and decisively avoided the bird-safe glass, the desired result. You can't really blame the birds for not being keen to fly; somewhere between 355 million and 988 million birds die every year from crashing into buildings—deaths that could very well be avoided. One type of new glass called Ornilux has proved particularly effective. Each pane is covered in a patterned, ultraviolet reflective coating that, while almost invisible to humans, shows up loud and clear to any passing birds. Of course, any windows that need lines or visual cues to make themselves bird-friendly aren't exactly beloved by designers and architects. According to The New York Times: Part of the tests, therefore, involve spreading lines or visual cues out farther to see when they no longer deter birds. Mr. Haffey said that vertical lines are believed to work best at four inches apart, while horizontal lines need to be spaced every two inches. "We're going to see how far we can stretch the limits," Mr. Haffey said. "The fewer lines you have on the glass, the happier the architects are going to be." But if it means saving that many birds, we can stand the occasional eyesore. |
I've seen that 'one billion birds die flying into windows per year' stat before... freakin' insane. So, if half of those were prevented over a 5 year period and half of those survived over those 5 years, there would be 1.25 billion more birds on the planet.
Out of all those birds, there's one that can't figure out that it can't fly through my living room window, and the ****er hasn't killed itself yet. |
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This is a case where science is not cool.
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic....its-own-grave/ Parasite Forces Host To Dig Its Own Grave by Ed Yong If a bumblebee is attacked by a thick-headed fly, it’s doomed. The fly will lay an egg inside it and the larva will eat it alive. And if that wasn’t an ignoble enough fate, the larva also forces the bee to burrow into the ground. The soil is warm and safe, and makes for a better nursery for the developing fly. And the bee? The bee is as good as dead. For its last act, it might as well dig its own grave. There are around 800 species of thick-headed flies or conopids, and they’re all parasites. They use the hard tips of their abdomens like can-openers to prise apart the body segments of bees and wasps, so they can lay an egg inside. They even do this while flying. A conopid can chase down a bee, grab it in mid-air, open it up, and implant it with an egg, without ever touching the ground. The fly maggot takes just under two weeks to kill its host, first by draining nutrients from its bodily fluids and then by actually eating it. Shortly, after, it forms a pupa and transforms into an adult. In 1994, Christine Muller discovered that the vast majority of infested bumblebees bury themselves. As soon as she put them on soil, they started to dig. This behaviour didn’t matter to the bees, but it was critical for the flies. Conopids have yearly life cycles. The adults emerge in the spring after spending the winter as pupae, hibernating inside their dead hosts. If the host dies in the open, the developing fly faces months of cold, dehydration, fungi, and even other parasites. If the host dies underground, the fly is sheltered and more likely to survive. These kinds of manipulations are common in the world of parasites, many of which commandeer the brains and bodies of their hosts to ensure their own survival. There are wasps that turn caterpillars into head-banging zombie bodyguards, and fungi that make ants climb to the ideal locations for spores to grow. In this case, a fly turns a bee into a shovel. But not all bees make equally good shovels. In the summer of 2012, Rosemary Malfi at the University of Virginia collected three closely related species of bumblebees from a local field. She found that a quarter of them were parasitised by a single conopid species—a black, wasp-like insect called Physocephala tibialis. The parasite forced all three species of bumblebee to dig, but with varying degrees of success. Around 70 percent of the two-spotted or common eastern bumblebees dug their own graves when infected, but only 18 percent of the brown-belted bumblebees did so. This isn’t a case of resistance in the classical sense. Host insects often have defences that stop parasitic flies and wasps from implanting them with eggs. If that fails, their immune system can sometimes destroy the developing larva. Some species can even self-medicate (with booze, no less) to cure themselves. These countermeasures can force parasites to be very specific, to only target hosts whose defences they can overcome. It’s possible that the brown-belted bees in Malfi’s study use one or more of these countermeasures, but they could also protect themselves by resisting manipulation. If they don’t dig their own graves, they’d make poor winter homes for a conopid maggot, and a poor choice of target for a conopid adult. Perhaps they defend themselves from parasites not by being inhospitable hosts, but by being incompetent ones. PS: Carolyn Beans has written a good post on one of Malfi’s earlier studies on conopid flies. Check it out. Reference: Malfi, Davis & Roulston. 2014. Parasitoid fly induces manipulative grave-digging behaviour differentially across its bumblebee hosts. Animal Behaviour. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.04.005 |
****ing parasites....
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3D Printed Body Parts Go Mainstream
http://www.textually.org/3DPrinting/...ce_630x420.jpg 3D printing technology has been around for two decades, but the price has come down in recent years and more people have been able to make use of it. Consequently, we've started to be able to really tap into its vast potential. 3D printed products are being spewed out left, right and center; from the building blocks of houses to replica shark skin. It almost seems as though the capabilities are endless, and the technology is not anticipated to slow down any time soon. One really exciting application of 3D printing is the generation of body parts. The level of detail that this technology can produce often supersedes that of traditional methods, offering patients a superior fit or design, and they can often be produced at an impressively low cost. Researchers have turned to 3D printing to produce a wide variety of body parts. Around two weeks ago we heard the story of a teenager who received a 3D printed bright pink robotic prosthetic arm to replace the arm that she lost in a boating accident many years ago. The arm, which was produced by a trio of biomedical engineering students at Washington University in St. Louis, only cost $200 in total; a fraction of the normal cost of prosthetics which are usually a minimum of $6,000. The recipient, Sydney Kendall, could use shoulder movements to manipulate the arm to perform tasks such as throwing a ball and moving a computer mouse. Earlier on this year a story emerged of a teenage boy from South Sudan, Daniel Omar, who lost his hands when a bomb exploded when he was 14. Two years on, he received a 3D printed prosthetic arm from an American startup called Not Impossible Labs which cost only $100 to produce. Once again movements by the user could trigger the fingers to move. One of the most incredible reports yet is that of a young woman from the Netherlands who underwent an operation in March this year to replace almost all of her skull with a 3D printed implant. The procedure was carried out by a team of neurosurgeons at the University Medical Centre Utrecht. The woman suffered a chronic bone disorder and the thickness of her skull had increased from 1.5cm to 5cm, and consequently she had started to lose her vision. If her skull had not been replaced doctors predicted that serious brain damage may have ensued. To add to the growing list of 3D printed body part recipients is a British woman named Meryl Richards who was injured in a traffic accident almost 40 years ago. In a report just last week it was revealed that she received a 3D printed hip replacement at Southampton General Hospital after six hip operations had failed to fix the problem. A CT scan was used as the basis for the design of the joint, which was made from powdered titanium. Stem cells were also taken prior to surgery from her hip which were then cultured in order to produce a bigger batch. These cells were then put back in the patient in order to encourage new bone formation around the implant. This surgery was not cheap, however, and cost in total around $20,000; around 10 times more than usual replacement joints. Perhaps even more impressively, earlier this year a man was given a 3D printed pelvis to replace the half he lost due to a rare type of bone cancer called chondrosarcoma. The pelvis was also produced using powdered titanium, and he was given a standard hip replacement alongside the new pelvis. What other awesome body parts can be produced by 3D printers? A UK-based company called Fripp Design has been collaborating with various universities in the UK in order to produce 3D printed facial prosthetics and 3D printed eyes. The products that they can churn out are cheap and can be created in batches so can be replaced at low cost. The level of detail on the prosthetic eyes is also incredible as they come in a variety of sizes with precise color matches. Princeton University scientists have also been experimenting with the capabilities of this technology and last year revealed their 3D printed “bionic ear” that is capable of detecting a range of radio frequencies far greater than humans. Rather than being designed to replace human ears this was more of a proof of principle experiment aimed at bridging electronics with materials. The team printed layers of a matrix composed of hydrogel and calf cells with silver nanoparticles that formed a coiled antenna. The bovine cells then later turned into cartilage. The team hope that they can develop the technology so that the ear can detect acoustic sounds, and suggest that maybe one day it could be used to restore or enhance human hearing. Cornell University researchers have also been working on 3D printed ears using a similar process of injecting cartilage cells encapsulated in a hydrogel into a collagen mold. The cells then go on to develop cartilage which replaces the mold over a few months. These ears are being designed with the goal of being used in reconstructive surgery, for example in children born with ear deformities or people who have lost their ears from accidents. So there you have it- some pretty incredible examples of what 3D printing has achieved so far. Imagine what the future will hold. |
Parasites creep me the **** out, man. Some people don't like Spiders, some people don't like snakes....it's parasites for me.
ewwahhaa /shudder |
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Gentlemen! Behold!
The Chicken Matrix! http://i61.tinypic.com/2cs8apv.jpg These Virtual Reality Headsets Make Farmed Chickens Believe They Roam Free http://i62.tinypic.com/zlpxzp.jpg “Who wants a virtual reality headset?” “Cluck cluck.” “… I’ll take that as a resounding yes.” In recent years, people have started to take animal welfare very seriously and slowly we are starting to see a change in the way that animals are treated. But what first springs to mind as a feasible idea to improve the lives of animals destined for human consumption? Bigger roaming areas? Free range? The Matrix? Wait… What? An assistant professor in design at Iowa State University, Austin Stewart, has released ideas for a project named “Second Livestock” which involves tricking chickens into thinking that they are free range, while they are actually contained within small enclosures. This would be achieved by strapping virtual reality headsets onto farmed chickens (stop laughing). These “Cockulus Rift” headsets would therefore make the chickens believe that they are in a nicer, less stressful environment (really, try to stop laughing). http://i57.tinypic.com/vctky8.jpg Is this a big joke? Well, kind of, but not necessarily a futile one. Stewart created this project in order to spur people into talking about animal welfare, and also as a kind of experiment to look at our relationship with technology, and of course to see how many people would actually believe that researchers intend on doing this. That being said, he told Techcrunch that he would be willing to work with anyone who is willing to offer their services to make it happen. “In my presentations I try to present the project with an earnestness that makes the audience question whether or not it’s real,” Stewart told journalist Liz Dwyer. “Most people are on the ‘this is fake’ side of the fence until I announce that they will be able to try out the technology behind Second Livestock in a few minutes. It is pretty great to watch the faces of the audience at this moment.” So- any takers? |
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The Horsehair Worm. Pretty Gross Parasite, Super Cool Story. http://i57.tinypic.com/1zokt5k.jpg While collecting aquatic insects last week in this pleasant stream in Malibu, CA (left) I came across this little wriggler, commonly called the Horsehair worm but more fancily called Nematomorpha (right). I placed the worm next to a pen so you can get a better perspective, it comes in at over 13″ long. That’s one heck of a parasitic worm. Luckily for me, it is no parasite of humans, it prefers the much smaller prey. Here’s a video of me moving it around a bit: <iframe width="480" height="390" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/jcqXObwCuFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> These worms have an amazing story. They are endoparasites of arthropods, which means that they grow up feeding off the insides of things like crabs, crickets, cockroaches, and beetles. One particularly cool species is a grasshopper parasite. Once the worm has grown to its massive adult size, it infects the brain of the grasshopper, takes over some of its natural instincts, and ‘instructs’ the grasshopper to jump into water, an otherwise very unnatural behavior. Once in the water, the grasshopper drowns, the worm escapes, and it goes on to live happily as a free-living adult in the stream/pond/puddle that the grasshopper jumped in to. There it meets other horsehair worms, mates, lays a goopy mass of eggs, and the story goes on. Here’s where people can get scared though: sometimes, these worms end up in your toilet. This can cause an immediate alarm in people, thinking they might have some parasitic worm living in their intestine. Luckily, there is an easy way to distinguish our harmless horsehair worms from the potentially nasty human parasite. Horsehair worms have a distinctly clefted/forked rear end, as seen in the picture below, while human parasites have a hooked/blunt end. http://i57.tinypic.com/x4kdy.jpg So, if that worm in your toilet has a forked end you’re likely in luck, it probably contributed to one less cockroach running around your house by parasitizing it. However, if there is no forked end, I’d recommend the not-so-fun task of putting it in a jar and visiting your doctor. These worms got their name from people in the olden days believing that they formed from horse hairs coming to life when they fell into a stream. As cool as that would be, I think their actual natural history story is even better. |
Heads up: On Friday night/Saturday morning from 1am to 3am CDT there will be a meteor shower. No one knows how good it'll be, because it'll be the first time Earth has ever crossed that debris trail. It could be anything ranging from terrific to total bust. Some think it could be a couple hundred shooting stars per hour.
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Solar fences and guard rails and billboarads along our highways would make more sense. Repairing the solar panel highways from traffic abuse would be insane. They could use the sides of our roadways more efficiently and even sell lighted programable advertisements and make even more money. Roadways themselves wear out too quickley.
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Bacon chemistry...
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Sure there may be some hypothetical fringe benefits with solar roads that this video really tries to hype, and they should get kudos for trying to be bold and visionary, but the expense and maintenance is insane. If we want solar panels, we haven't run out of room to put up the cheaper, more efficient kinds, we still have a lot of roofs that can get panels and we're installing more of them every year. Once we get to a point where most roofs that are ever going to be on the grid have panels, and once we get to the point where we don't have any more deserts and sunny desolate areas that are economical for solar farms, if at that point we STILL somehow need more solar power, then solar roads might begin to be something to look at. The creators should continue on with their hobby though. 700 years from now when we may possibly need them, at that point it would be nice if someone was working on refining the solar road design for all those hundreds of years. |
I think the basic premise behind the idea is that the land where roadways lie is being 'wasted'
That being said, I think there are plenty of 'wasted' opportunities to put up solar panels that don't involve as much money to implement and maintain. |
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Another huge consideration with solar roads that I haven't heard talked about is the cost of implementation required by the construction entities. Current construction companies have incredible amounts of money already committed to the machinery and processes they currently use for traditional road construction. They'd need completely new machinery, technology, and processes for solar. You can't really compare just the materials costs without including the costs of reverting to a completely different/untested application method.
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Not to mention the ability to quickly and easily change out bad panels by the square foot rather than relaxing entire roads... |
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