Science & TechnologyS


Rocket

'Indian rockets to soon use atmospheric oxygen as fuel'

indian rocket
© The HinduA Rohini sounding on its way to space
In an attempt to make its rockets lighter and carry heavier satellites, the Indian space agency is planning to flight test by the end of this year its own air-breathing engine that will use atmospheric oxygen as fuel.

Air-breathing engines use atmospheric oxygen and burn it with the stored on-board fuel to generate the onward thrust.

Conventional rockets carry both oxygen and chemical fuel on board.

"We will be doing a series of ground tests of the air breathing engine soon. We are planning an actual launch of a sounding rocket - ATV D02 - powered by such an engine by the end of this year," an official of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told IANS on condition of anonymity.

Pharoah

High Weirdness on the Giza Plateau

Giza
© Daniel Mayer/Wikimedia CommonsThe Sphinx and Giza
What Do Red Bull, Dr Zahi Hawass and Edgar Cayce Have in Common, and What's Going on Beneath the Sphinx?

The 21st Century is being kind to Egyptology.

At the end of May, it was announced that yet another tomb had been found, that of Ptahmes, mayor of Memphis, army chief, overseer of the treasury and royal scribe under Seti I and Ramses II, in the 13th century B.C.

Important new finds like this are being generated at a frenetic pace, as exemplified by the research being done in the Valley of the Kings, whose necropolis has resulted in much recent data regarding the intriguing Amarna period pharaohs, including Akhenaten, Smenkhare, Tutankhamen and Ay.

Indeed, discoveries are happening at the most frenetic pace since 1997 when more than 60 people, mostly Japanese and Swiss tourists, along with Egyptian police and guides, were killed by an attack on the archaelogical hotbed of Luxor. The attack, perpretrated by extremists from the outlawed Islamist Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya, a group with links to Ayman al Zawahiri and Al Qaeda, not only made ensuring the safety of tourists in the country more problematic, but it made archaeology much more challenging and risky as well.

Vader

America's Space Fighter: New Threat to Humanity

X-37B
© AP PhotoBoeing's X-37B
In the film, Star Wars, fighter spacecraft do battle in space. This may soon come to pass. An American Air Force space fighter listed as top secret is currently being tested. The pilotless X-37B fighter took its maiden test flight into space from Florida. The challenge is that the X-37B is not simply a reusable space fighter; it is America's secret weapon. And it can attack any target on the globe within two hours. This is more dangerous than a nuclear warhead!

Not long ago, the U.S. developed the X-37B, the world's first space fighter to be successfully launched into space. The Atlas 5 rocket carried out this launch mission. In a war, the X-37B would have the ability to carry out military operations against satellites of enemy countries and their aircraft. This would include controlling, seizing or destroying enemy aircraft, as well as carrying out military reconnaissance against enemies and so forth. With its mission accomplished, the intention is for it to glide back to land automatically. The X-37B is not suited for an astronaut. It carries out many types of missions automatically in air and space.

The U.S. air force refused to reveal what missions were carried out during the maiden flight of the X-37B. At present, after the X-37B launches, it enters into earth's orbit, but it is undetermined for how long. After returning from space, the X-37B will enter auto-pilot mode to return to earth by finally landing at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California or, as a backup, the nearby Edwards Air Force Base.

Though only a small aircraft, the X-37B space plane is a U.S. military secret at the highest level, although the U.S. military has repeatedly stressed that the main purpose for manufacturing the X-37B is scientific research. Yet once exposed, the X-37B project could raise violent responses. Some military experts call it "the first prototype space fighter." This project has a clear military purpose and may further exacerbate the militarization of space.

Info

Lost Ark or African Treasure? Relic Stirs Passions

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© unk.A wooden object which is claimed to be a replica of the Ark of the Covenant has gone on display in Zimbabwe museum.
Harare, Zimbabwe - Tudor Parfitt has spent years chasing a theory that a lost tribe of Jews wound up in Southern Africa. But his latest leap has landed him in a minefield.

The subject at hand is this British scholar's contention that the remains of a 700-year-old bowl-shaped relic which he tracked down in a Zimbabwe museum storeroom in 2007 could be a replica of the Ark of the Covenant that carried the Ten Commandments.

According to African legend, white lions of God and a two-headed snake guarded the "drum that thunders" in a cave in southwestern Zimbabwe's sacred Dumbwe mountains. Parfitt's theory has sparked fierce reactions from some Zimbabwean scholars, who suspect a plot to superimpose foreign origins on what is purely a product of African culture.

Having long disappeared from public view since its discovery in the 1940s, the artifact is now on display at the Harare Museum of Human Sciences. It is about 45 inches by 24 inches in diameter and 27 inches tall with a pattern of shallow engraving on the outside that could have held gold threads. Scorch marks on the base inside were possibly left by primitive gun powder.

Parfitt, a professor of Modern Jewish Studies at the University of London's prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies, says he first heard of the vessel during his two-decade search for Jewish tribes lost in Africa.

At the center of that research is a southern African ethnic group variously called Lemba, Remba or waLemba. Parfitt says 52 percent of them carry a Y chromosome known as the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH) - unique to ancient priestly Jewish communities and raising the possibility they are descended from Aaron, Moses' brother. Other groups in Zimbabwe have no CMH.

Info

Amazing Shot of ISS and Jupiter in Daytime

The amazing pictures of the space station taken by ground-based amateur astronomers keeps on coming. On May 29th, Anthony Ayiomamitis used a 16 cm (6″) telescope to capture a phenomenal image of the International Space Station passing Jupiter... in broad daylight!

ISS and Jupiter
© DiscoverJupiter and ISS
Wow! Note the color of the sky; it was about 9:00 a.m. local time when he took this shot, with the Sun well above the horizon. This is actually two images added together; the first shows the ISS to the lower right, and in the second shot it had moved to the upper left. Jupiter shows its disk near the center of the frame, it being easily bright enough to be seen using a telescope in daylight.

What an incredible picture! But it gets cooler...


Pharoah

Ancient mayor's 'lost tomb' found south of Cairo

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© AP Photo/Supreme Council of AntiquitiesThis undated photo released by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities on Sunday, May 30, 2010, shows the tomb of Ptahmes, the mayor of the ancient Egyptian capital Memphis, in Saqqara, south of Cairo, Egypt.
Archaeologists have discovered the 3,300-year-old tomb of the ancient Egyptian capital's mayor, whose resting place had been lost under the desert sand since 19th century treasure hunters first carted off some of its decorative wall panels, officials announced Sunday.

Ptahmes, the mayor of Memphis, also served as army chief, overseer of the treasury and royal scribe under Seti I and his son and successor, Ramses II, in the 13th century B.C.

The discovery of his tomb earlier this year in a New Kingdom necropolis at Saqqara, south of Cairo, solves a riddle dating back to 1885, when foreign expeditions made off with pieces of the tomb, whose location was soon after forgotten.

"Since then it was covered by sand and no one knew about it," said Ola el-Aguizy, the Cairo University archaeology professor who led the excavation. "It is important because this tomb was the lost tomb."

Some of the artifacts ended up in museums in the Netherlands, the United States and Italy as well as the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, providing the only clues about the missing tomb.

Sun

Bright Points on the Quiet Sun

Bright Points on the Quiet Sun
© J. Sanchez Almeida (IAC), et al.Bright Points on the Quiet Sun
Up close, the solar surface is a striking patch work of granules in this very high resolution picture of the quiet Sun. Caused by convection, the granules are hot, rising columns of plasma edged by dark lanes of cooler, descending plasma. But the high-resolution view reveals that the dark lanes are dotted with many small, contrasting bright points. Constantly present on the solar surface, the bright points do not seem to be related to sunspots that come and go with the magnetic solar cycle. Nonetheless, the bright points are regions of concentrated magnetic fields and are bright because the magnetic pressure opens a window to hotter deeper layers below the photosphere.

Info

Scanning for Asteroids and Comets by WISE


This movie shows asteroids observed so far by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. As WISE scans the sky from its polar orbit, more and more asteroids and comets are caught in its infrared vision. The mission has surveyed about three-fourths of the sky; however, data for only about 50 percent of the sky has been processed for asteroids and comets at this time.

The white dots show asteroids observed by WISE - most of these are in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter, and some, the Trojans, orbit in front of, or behind, Jupiter. The red dots represent newfound near-Earth objects, which are asteroids and comets with orbits that come relatively close to Earth's path around the sun. The green dots are previously known near-Earth objects observed by WISE. The yellow squares show all comets seen by WISE so far.

As of May 24, 2010, WISE has seen more than 60,000 asteroids. It has observed more than 70 comets, 12 of which are new, and about 200 near-Earth objects, more than 50 of which are new.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ULCA/JHU

Info

The Earth's Secrets, Hidden in the Skies

One of the greatest advances in space technology has been the military's Global Positioning System satellites, which provide remarkably accurate navigation information for everything from smart phones and cars to pet collars.

But the navigational data is only one part of the program's mission. The Nuclear Detonation Detection System, an array of sensors also on board the satellites, watches the world for nuclear explosions. In the process, it collects mounds of environmental data which, in the hands of climate scientists, could add greatly to our understanding of global warming.

Unlike the G.P.S. information, however, much of the detection system data is hidden behind bureaucratic walls by national security agencies, which treat it as classified, even though it isn't, and even though there's no compelling national security reason to do so.

The history of the G.P.S. system shows the impact satellite data can have on commercial and scientific progress. Since it was first made publicly available in the 1980s, G.P.S. has revolutionized industries from telecommunications to agriculture. Estimates place its economic value in the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars each year. And that's not counting its impact on everyday activities like hiking, boating and golf.

Telescope

Ancient view of the night sky

Celestial scenes like this one of the Milky Way are getting rarer by the day. Light pollution overwhelms views of our galaxy for two-thirds of the population of the US and the majority of Europeans. But some "optically clean" oases where we can look at the stars unhindered do remain, called "Dark Sky Parks". This site in Canyonlands National Park in Utah is near one of them.

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© Bret Webster
The sky here appears much as it would have done 4000 years ago, when artists in the so-called Archaic civilisation are thought to have painted the ghost-like figures on the canyon walls. No other cultural artefacts have been found, suggesting the site, known as the Great Gallery, was not used for everyday living but for special religious ceremonies.