Science & TechnologyS


Satellite

DIY satellites: The tiny space satellite that you can build and launch yourself

Kit Buchan
Guardian
Sun, 07 Dec 2014 00:00 UTC
Tom Walkinshaw
© Murdo Macleod/the Observer Tom Walkinshaw with a PocketQube frame.
Most of the thousand or so operational satellites in orbit are multi-million-dollar machines that provide major industries with scientific research, global positioning or military espionage. Twenty-five-year-old Tom Walkinshaw, however, hopes to prove that satellites are not the preserve of leviathan space agencies, and that, for a comparatively small sum ($20,000), the workaday enthusiast can build and launch a fully functioning satellite of their own. One year old next January, his company PocketQube Shop provides the basic materials for doing this, most importantly the PocketQube structure itself - a tiny, 5cm³ casing made from aerospace-grade aluminium - which houses each satellite's components.

"We want to remove as many barriers as we can for people who want to build satellites," says Walkinshaw, and the PocketQube structure is the key to this endeavour. Invented in America, it is smaller than its predecessor the Cubesat, a 10cm³ design which was formerly the best hope for those seeking a budget satellite. Walkinshaw's was the first company to recognise the PocketQube's potential and begin manufacturing it, and it also supplies a number of other components, with a view to becoming a centralised hub catering to all satellite-builders' needs. "We're going to produce a PocketQube kit with a structure, radio and on-board computer," pledges Walkinshaw, "and we just won a £63,000 from Scottish Enterprise to develop a combined powerboard and battery."

Comment: Currently there are 4 PocketQubes in orbit.
PocketQubes ran a successful Kickstarter campaign late last year, but it was only seeking £3,000 ($5,000) - this is a DIY endeavor. Now that the PocketQubes Shop is open online, you can go and pick up the satellite enclosure that fits your needs and install your hardware. As for getting it into orbit, the PocketQubes folks can give you a little direction.

There are rockets going up all the time with various commercial payloads, and there's sometimes a little extra space for sale. The company will help PocketQube builders get in contact with aerospace firms selling launch capabilities so their micro-satellites can get into orbit on the cheap. The price estimates provided for a PocketQube are based on industry averages, so it will probably vary based on who's flying the rocket.

The company hopes that more organizations will be able to get into space with these low-cost modules. Four PocketQubes have been launched into orbit so far. Most unpowered PocketQubes will fall out of orbit eventually, but one of the early projects has built-in plasma thrusters.


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Bulb

New technique invented to spray solar cells on flexible surfaces


Phys.org
Fri, 05 Dec 2014 00:00 UTC
spray on solar cells
© Uniersity of Toronto
Pretty soon, powering your tablet could be as simple as wrapping it in cling wrap.

That's Illan Kramer's hope. Kramer and colleagues have just invented a new way to spray solar cells onto flexible surfaces using miniscule light-sensitive materials known as colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) - a major step toward making spray-on solar cells easy and cheap to manufacture.

"My dream is that one day you'll have two technicians with Ghostbusters backpacks come to your house and spray your roof," says Kramer, a post-doctoral fellow with The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto and IBM Canada's Research and Development Centre.

Solar-sensitive CQDs printed onto a flexible film could be used to coat all kinds of weirdly shaped surfaces, from patio furniture to an airplane's wing. A surface the size of your car's roof wrapped with CQD-coated film would produce enough energy to power three 100-Watt light bulbs - or 24 compact fluorescents.

Comment: The technology of solar power has been expanding to make it more affordable, practical, and useful in more widespread applications - much to the chagrin of older energy companies who must now compete with solar.

Engineer reimagines solar energy with stick-on panels

'Starry Night' solar powered bike path unveiled in the The Netherlands

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Rocket

Cosmic rays: Growing peril for astronauts?


SpaceWeather.com
Sat, 06 Dec 2014 00:52 UTC
Image
© NASA/Bill Ingalls
NASA's successful test flight of Orion on Dec. 5th heralds a renewed capability to send astronauts into deep space. A paper just published in the journal Space Weather, however, points out a growing peril to future deep space explorers: cosmic rays.

The title of the article, penned by Nathan Schwadron of the University of New Hampshire and colleagues from seven other institutions, asks the provocative question, "Does the worsening galactic cosmic ray environment preclude manned deep space exploration?" Using data from a cosmic ray telescope on board NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, they conclude that while increasing fluxes of cosmic rays "are not a show stopper for long duration missions (e.g., to the Moon, an asteroid, or Mars), galactic cosmic radiation remains a significant and worsening factor that limits mission durations." This figure from their paper shows the number of days a 30 year old astronaut can spend in interplanetary space before they reach their career limit in radiation exposure:

According to the plot, in the year 2014, a 30 year old male flying in a spaceship with 10 g/cm2 of aluminum shielding could spend approximately 700 days in deep space before they reach their radiation dose limit. The same astronaut in the early 1990s could have spent 1000 days in space.

Comment: There are many things we don't know about our universe. Unprecedented changes in our own solar system is something we really need to pay attention to and try to understand.

A fascinating book called Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection is a good way to become familiar with some of these topics.

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Evil Rays

Electric eels can remotely control the bodily movements of their prey

Janet Fang
iflscience.com
Sat, 06 Dec 2014 22:25 UTC
Image
© Kenneth CataniaElectric eel (Electrophorus electricus)
Electric eels are badass. Not only can they produce an incapacitating 600-volt zap -- five times that of a U.S. wall socket -- they can also remotely control their prey through water. The predatory eels create a variety of electric discharges that range from lower-voltage ones sent out as environmental sensors to high-voltage strikes that allow them to hijack the nerves of their prey -- immobilizing the muscles and preventing escape. They can even send out short pulses that force the prey to give up their location. The findings were published in Science this week.

To understand the mechanism of the eel's shocking strike, Vanderbilt University's Kenneth Catania conducted a series of experiments in large aquariums equipped with various detectors. When placed in tanks with delectable fish and worms, the scale-less Amazonian Electrophorus electricus releases pulses of electricity that appear to stun the prey and freeze them in place. Using a high-speed video system, he observed that an eel begins an attack with a high-frequency volley of high-voltage pulses up to 15 milliseconds before striking. In just three milliseconds, the fish are completely paralyzed. They regain mobility after a short period, and they could swim away if the eel doesn't get to them first.
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Beaker

Study shows environmental contamination from BigPharma drugs significantly impacts plant growth


Phys.org
Fri, 05 Dec 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
© University of Exeter Lettuce roots are affected by Ibuprofen
The drugs we release into the environment are likely to have a significant impact on plant growth, a new study has revealed.

By assessing the impacts of a range of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, researchers at the University of Exeter Medical School and Plymouth University have shown that the growth of edible crops can be affected by these chemicals - even at the very low concentrations found in the environment.

Published in the Journal of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, the research focused its analysis on lettuce and radish plants and tested the effects of several commonly prescribed drugs, including diclofenac and ibuprofen. These drugs are among the most common and widely used group of pharmaceuticals, with more than 30 million prescribed across the world every day.

Comment: With the global rise in pharmaceutical consumption, recent studies have revealed pharmaceutical residues in a wide range of ecosystems and organisms. In 2002, federal scientists discovered that pharmaceutical drugs are being dumped into the sewer systems and potentially finding their ways back into the drinking water. Ultimately they find their way into the soils, thereby contaminating the food supply. We are unwittingly changing the natural evolution of our ecosystem, with perhaps devastating consequences

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Beaker

New Physics theory of life formation?

Natalie Wolchover
Quanta Magazine
Wed, 22 Jan 2014 14:32 UTC
Jeremy England, a 31-year-old physicist at MIT, thinks he has found the underlying physics driving the origin and evolution of life.
© Katherine Taylor for Quanta Magazine

Comment: The following is a "new" scientific theory that's only marginally less stupid than all preceding theories of the same kind. Maybe that's proof of evolution, maybe not.


Why does life exist?


Comment: SPOILER ALERT!!! Don't want to read all the way down? Here's the quick answer: To dissipate energy, or heat. Yup. That's it. All this for just that. It's kind of like saying people drink water to urinate.


Popular hypotheses credit a primordial soup, a bolt of lightning and a colossal stroke of luck. But if a provocative new theory is correct, luck may have little to do with it. Instead, according to the physicist proposing the idea, the origin and subsequent evolution of life follow from the fundamental laws of nature and "should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill."

From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. Jeremy England, a 31-year-old assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life.
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Sun

Engineer reimagines solar energy with stick-on panels

Susan Daugherty
National Geographic
Wed, 03 Dec 2014 19:32 UTC
The catalyst for Xiaolin Zheng's groundbreaking work in solar energy began with an offhand comment her father made years ago at her parents' apartment, a 13-story complex in the northeast China city of Anshan.

"In China, the rooftops of many buildings are packed with solar energy devices," says Zheng. "One day my father mentioned how great it would be if a building's entire surface could be used for solar power, not just the roof, but also walls and windows."

An invention from Zheng's research team at Stanford University might someday make that possible. They have created a type of solar cell that is thin, flexible, and adhesive - a solar sticker, in effect, that could help power everything from buildings to airplanes.

"By making solar cells extremely thin and flexible, they can be used in all kinds of new ways," says Zheng, an associate professor at Stanford and recipient of the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. "I hope our discovery will dramatically expand the affordable, practical, widespread application of solar power."

In 2010, a decade after her father's initial comment, Zheng read a research paper that triggered the idea again. It described an experiment in which the nanomaterial graphene was grown on a layer of nickel atop a silicon wafer. When submerged in water, the nickel separated from the surface, along with the graphene.

"It sounded unbelievable, like a magic trick," she recalls, "But they had achieved very reliable results." What if, she wondered, the same principle could be used to yield a thinner, more flexible solar cell that could peel off, attach to adhesive, and stick to virtually any surface?

Comment: This is certainly wonderful news. This technology has so many practical applications that it truly could transform our world.

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Mars

Martian life is more probable than previously thought: Traces of possible Martian biological activity inside a meteorite

Emmanuel Barraud
EPFL News
Tue, 02 Dec 2014 00:00 UTC
Did Mars ever have life? Does it still? A meteorite from Mars has reignited the old debate. An international team that includes scientists from EPFL has published a paper in the scientific journal Meteoritics and Planetary Sciences, showing that martian life is more probable than previously thought.

Image
"So far, there is no other theory that we find more compelling," says Philippe Gillet, director of EPFL's Earth and Planetary Sciences Laboratory. He and his colleagues from China, Japan and Germany performed a detailed analysis of organic carbon traces from a Martian meteorite, and have concluded that they have a very probable biological origin. The scientists argue that carbon could have been deposited into the fissures of the rock when it was still on Mars by the infiltration of fluid that was rich in organic matter.

Ejected from Mars after an asteroid crashed on its surface, the meteorite, named Tissint, fell on the Moroccan desert on July 18, 2011, in view of several eyewitnesses. Upon examination, the alien rock was found to have small fissures that were filled with carbon-containing matter. Several research teams have already shown that this component is organic in nature. But they are still debating where the carbon came from.

Maybe biological, but not from our planet

Chemical, microscopic and isotope analysis of the carbon material led the researchers to several possible explanations of its origin. They established characteristics that unequivocally excluded a terrestrial origin, and showed that the carbon content were deposited in the Tissint's fissures before it left Mars.

Comment: So there could have been "little green men" on Mars after all? How interesting. But what is more interesting is that after decades of adamant denial and ridicule, suddenly mainstream science is allowed to release information about a real possibility of extraterrestrial life on other planets? Even if this life is only some kind of "organic matter"? We don't want to take the conspiratorial route, we just wonder if this could be a preparation for much more "revealing" news? Or, perhaps, the psychopaths in power decided that concealing the real nature of all the recent Earth changes is much more important than life on Mars. In any case, if you are open minded enough, take a look at the following forum section and search for Mars for more clues.

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Sheeple

Mice with half-human brains four times smarter than their peers

Scott Kaufman
Raw Story
Mon, 01 Dec 2014 00:00 UTC
White lab mice
© ShutterstockWhite lab mice
According to a paper published in the latest Journal of Neuroscience, scientists have successfully injected human glial cells - which support the communication between neurons - into mouse brains, creating hybrid mice four times smarter than their peers.

Steve Goldman and his team extracted glial cells from donated fetuses and injected them into mice. Within a year, the mouse glial cells had been significantly displaced by the human.

Glial cells - in this case, astrocytes - strengthen the synapses. The average human astrocyte is 10 to 20 times larger and has 100 times as many tendrils as a mouse astrocyte.

"We could see the human cells taking over the whole space," Goldman told New Scientist. "It seemed like the mouse counterparts were fleeing to the margins." The human cells only stopped when they reached the physical limit of the mouse's cranial capacity.

Comment: Isn't it ironic that they (the PTB) contaminate the drinking water with fluoride that destroys brain cells, feed us with GMO food that modify our DNA, vaccinate us with mercury that destroys our immune system, bombard us with mind-numbing TV programs that corrupt our brain and coerce us to dumb obedience and create mice that are smarter than their peers? Is this progress?



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Fireball 4

Two Near Earth Asteroids to whiz pass Earth this week

David Dickinson
Universe Today
Mon, 01 Dec 2014 19:04 UTC
NEA's
© The Virtual Telescope ProjectThe live webcast starts tonite!
It's a dangerous universe out there, for a budding young space-faring species.

Killer comets, planet sterilizing gamma ray bursts, and death rocks from above are all potential hazards that an adolescent civilization has to watch out for.

This week offers two close shaves, as newly discovered Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) 2014 WC201 and 2014 WX202 pass by the Earth-Moon system.

The passage of 2014 WC201 is coming right up tonight, as the 27-metre space rock passes about 570,000 kilometres from the Earth. That's 1.4 times farther than the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
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