Science & TechnologyS


Saturn

Saturn's UFO moons: Bizarrely-shaped Pan and Atlas baffle scientists


The Daily Mail, UK
Fri, 18 Mar 2011 09:51 UTC

Comment: If it's coming from an official space science organization, you can be pretty sure its "science" is bogus. Take the following article, for example, with our commentary embedded within.


They look more like flying-saucers than icy moons, but Pan and Atlas are two of Saturn's strangest satellites.

Scientists have long been puzzled by how the oddly-shaped moons, which are only 20miles across, came to be.


Comment: They are only strange because NASA and the ESA. have no clue how the solar system really works.


Researchers based at the European Space Agency now think they have some answers after studying several years worth of cosmic images.

Image
© unknownUFO? Pan is Saturn's most inner moon, as seen in this illustration. It orbits within the Encke Gap in the planet's A ring
They realised that 14 of Saturn's small moons had a very low density - about half that of water ice - and shapes that suggested they had grown out of the rings themselves.


Comment: Wow. James McCanney predicted "sweeper moons" in the gaps of Saturn's rings over thirty years go, before Pan was even discovered. It took ESA this long to realize this?


However, they would have needed a jump start as it is not gravitationally possible for small particles to fuse together within the rings.


Comment: Again, if they had read McCanney, they wouldn't be so hopelessly confused. Gravity is NOT the only force acting in our solar system. The "shepherd" or "sweeper" moons attract the material of the rings because the moons are discharging Saturn's electrical capacitor. The positively charged ions (including dust and gases) get pulled to the nucleus where they recombine with electrons, depositing a dust cloud around the moon. This explains the disc-like shape of Pan, which has cleared out the "Encke Gap" in Saturn's rings. Just look at this picture.


Therefore, each moon would have started with a massive core that was a leftover from the original collisions that caused the rings.
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Nuke

Plutonium in troubled reactors, spent fuel pools


Associated Press
Fri, 18 Mar 2011 06:13 UTC
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© AP Photo/Tokyo Electric Power Co. via Kyodo NewsUnit 4 at Japan's crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okumamachi, Fukushima Prefecture. March 16, 2011
The fuel rods at all six reactors at the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi complex contain plutonium - better known as fuel for nuclear weapons. While plutonium is more toxic than uranium, other radioactive elements leaking out are likely to be of greater danger to the general public.

Only six percent of the fuel rods at the plant's Unit 3 were a mixture of plutonium-239 and uranium-235 when first put into operation. The fuel in other reactors is only uranium, but even there, plutonium is created during the fission process.

This means the fuel in all of the stricken reactors and spent fuel pools contain plutonium.

Plutonium is indeed nasty stuff, especially damaging to lungs and kidneys. It is also less stable than uranium and can more easily spark a dangerous nuclear chain reaction.
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Question

Could Higgs Particle be a Time-Traveling Assassin?

Ian O'Neill
Discovery News
Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:56 UTC
Time Travel
© CERN/LHC/ATLASA simulation of how a Higgs event might look inside the ATLAS detector.

We've heard the story; a time traveler goes back in time, killing his grandfather. The upshot is that the time traveler ceases to exist. If the time traveler doesn't exist, how could he have traveled back in time to kill his grandfather?

This logical paradox is known as the "Grandfather Paradox," and although it makes for a great science fiction storyline -- or a seriously creepy Futurama "Grandma Paradox" adaptation -- it is a perplexing conundrum that has physicists scratching their heads.

If it is possible to travel back in time, wouldn't that cause a tangle in time? If, in the future, something is sent to a date in the past, shouldn't we already see it? How does the Universe prevent such paradoxes from occurring? If it doesn't, how can we exist at all?

Enter the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator that might (might!) become mankind's first time machine,* thereby helping us find out if we can kill our grandfathers in the past and still exist (or something like that).
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Syringe

Canadian Researchers Develop First Remote-Controlled Microcarrier Drug Delivery System

Tiffany Kaiser
DailyTech
Thu, 17 Mar 2011 22:23 UTC
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© dosomething.orgNew drug delivery technique may improve treatment for those suffering from liver cancer, and could eventually help those with other cancers
Could improve chemoembolization, which is the current liver cancer treatment used

For years, researchers have been working on different drug delivery methods that could target cancerous tissue without placing harm on healthy surrounding tissue, such as the use of gold-coated liposomes and nanoparticles enclosed in electromagnetic field-activating liposomes. Now, a Polytechnique Montréal research team has developed a revolutionary new drug delivery technique that could finally be put to use in a hospital setting.

Professor Sylvain Martel, study leader and Director of the Nanorobotics Laboratory at Polytechnique Montréal, along with Professor Jean-Christophe Leroux and Ph.D. candidate Pierre Pouponneau, have created the first drug delivery system involving remote-controlled microcarriers. Martel is well known for being the first researcher in the world to have controlled and led a magnetic sphere through a living artery.
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Info

Scientists Say Quartz is Key to Understanding Quakes

Laura Zuckerman
Reuters
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 17:14 UTC
Quartz Crystal
© Reuters / Christian HartmannSecurity guards stand in front of a 300 kg quartz piece two days before the opening of an exhibition of crystals discovered in the region of the Saint-Gotthard mount, in Fluelen, near Lucerne, March 29, 2007.

Underground quartz deposits worldwide may be behind earthquakes, mountain building and other continental tectonics, a discovery that may aid in predicting tremblers, according to a study released on Wednesday.

The findings by Utah State University geophysicist Anthony Lowry and a colleague at the University of London, to be published Thursday in the journal Nature, may solve a riddle of the ages about the formation and location of earthquake faults, mountains, valleys and plains.

"Certainly the question of why mountains occur where they do has been around since the dawn of time," Lowry told Reuters.

He and research partner Marta Perez-Gussinye examined temperature and gravity across the Western United States from a movable network of seismic instruments to describe the geological properties of the earth's crust.

The scientists discovered that quartz crystal deposits are found wherever mountains or fault lines occur in states like California, Idaho, Nevada and Utah.

The Utah State geoscientist said the breakthrough came after repeated testing revealed a correlation between quartz deposits and geologic events that was "completely eye-popping."

Using newly developed remote sensing technology known as Earthscope, Lowry and Perez-Gussinye found that quartz indicates a weakness in the earth's crust likely to spawn a geologic event such as an earthquake or a volcano.
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Bandaid

NASA to Shoot Lasers at Space Junk Around Earth to Prevent Collisions with Satellites

Daniel Bates
Dailymail.co.uk
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 14:47 UTC
NASA fears 'Kessler Syndrome', where there is too much space junk for it to be safe to fly out, leaving us trapped on Earth

NASA is considering using lasers to deflect space junk around Earth and stop it colliding with satellites.

Lasers similar to those used for welding in car factories would be fired through telescopes to 'nudge' piles of rubbish left in orbit.

The gentle movement would stop them from taking out communications satellites or hitting the International Space Station.

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© NASACrowded: An artist's impression of space junk in low-Earth orbit. Nasa is considering using lasers to deflect the debris and stop it colliding with satellites.
The process could also avoid what is known as 'Kessler Syndrome', where there is too much space junk flying around Earth for it to be safe to fly out, leaving us trapped on our own planet.
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Robot

Video: Japan's New Goateed Geminoid Robot Is Uncomfortably Realistic


Popsci
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 15:04 UTC
Image
© PopsciGeminoid, Skin On and Skin Off
The latest Geminoid robot is one of the most realistic, and thus creepiest, android we've ever seen. The skin, hair, goatee (!), and facial expressions are real enough to fool you for a few seconds while it sinks in that something very, very weird is going on.

This specific model is called the Geminoid DK, and it comes from the same studio that gave us the robotic actress, Geminoid F. The DK is the first Geminoid model that's based on a non-Japanese person (in this case, Associate Professor Henrik Scharfe of Denmark's Aalborg University) and also the first bearded model (if you consider a goatee a beard, which in my full-bearded opinion is debatable).

Like its Geminoid siblings, the DK is controlled remotely with a motion-capture system in which the Geminoid mimics the movements of the person being captured. Future uses are kind of secondary to the basic goal of making the most human-like robot possible, but it could be a step forward for human-robot interaction--paired with, say, Watson's brain, the Geminoid series could be used in some pretty interesting ways. That being said, here's a terrifying picture of the Geminoid's hair- and pupil-less visage.
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Satellite

Now in even crater detail... Far side of the moon revealed in amazing mosaic of orbiter images


DailyMail.co.uk
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:41 UTC
This stunning image is the most detailed look at the far side of the moon to date.

Image
© NASA Goddard / ASU
It comprises over 15,000 wide angle camera (WAC) photos taken between November 2009 and February 2011 by Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). The mosaic was put together by a team or researchers at Arizona State University.

A Nasa spokesman said: 'This WAC mosaic provides the most complete look at the morphology of the far side to date, and will provide a valuable resource for the scientific community.

'And it's simply a spectacular sight.'

Moon morphology is the study of how the moon and its features were formed, including craters, mountains and other features.
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Sun

Equinox Solar Eclipse


Space Weather
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 10:22 UTC
It must be spring. This is the time of year when the sun, Earth, and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory in geosynchronous orbit can line up for spectacular sun-Earth eclipses. Only around equinoxes does this phenomenon occur. SDO took this picture of the sun partially blocked by our own planet on March 13th:

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© SDO
Every day from now until April 2, 2011, there will be a short break in the data flow as the Earth moves between SDO and the sun. The length of an eclipse can be as long as 72 minutes and they happen at about midnight at the SDO ground station in Las Cruces, NM (0700 UT). Never before has missing data looked so good.
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Syringe

NASA Investigates Cocaine Found at Facility


UK Independent
Tue, 15 Mar 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© UnknownNow we know how NASA keep their scientists in line.
Nasa is investigating after cocaine was found in a facility at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

Nasa spokesman Allard Beutel said today that 4.2 grams of a white powdery substance was found last week at the Nasa facility, though he would not say where.

It tested positive for cocaine.

It's not the first time cocaine has been found at the space centre.

A small amount was discovered in January 2010 in a secure part of a hangar that housed space shuttle Discovery.
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