Science & TechnologyS


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Communicating person to person through the power of thought alone

Glenn Harris
University of Southampton
Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:49 UTC
Image
© University of SouthamptonDr. Chris James demonstrating brain to brain communication using BCI to transmit thoughts, translated as a series of binary digits, over the internet to another person whose computer receives the digits.
New research from the University of Southampton has demonstrated that it is possible for communication from person to person through the power of thought alone.

Brain-Computer Interfacing (BCI) can be used for capturing brain signals and translating them into commands that allow humans to control (just by thinking) devices such as computers, robots, rehabilitation technology and virtual reality environments.
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Telescope

Watch LCROSS hit the moon Friday, October 9th

Dr. Tony Phillips, NASA
Moon Daily / NASA Ames
Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:30 UTC
Image
© NASA/AmesA computer visualization of LCROSS hitting the Moon on Oct. 9th.
Just imagine. A spaceship plunges out of the night sky, hits the ground and explodes. A plume of debris billows back into the heavens, leading your eye to a second ship in hot pursuit. Four minutes later, that one hits the ground, too. It's raining spaceships!

Put on your hard hat and get ready for action, because on Friday, Oct. 9th, what you just imagined is really going to happen--and you can have a front row seat.

The impact site is crater Cabeus near the Moon's south pole. NASA is guiding the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite ("LCROSS" for short) and its Centaur booster rocket into the crater's floor for a spectacular double-impact designed to "unearth" signs of lunar water.

There are two ways to watch the show.
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Bomb

NASA to bomb the moon for water


Press TV
Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:42 UTC
LCROSS spacecraft
An Artistic rendering of the LCROSS spacecraft and Centaur separation for bombing the moon
NASA is preparing to launch the LCROSS mission to bomb the moon's South Pole, as part of the agency's search for water in space.

The LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite) mission will send a Centaur rocket at twice the speed of a bullet to make a hole in the moon's surface.

Scientists say the blast will be powerful enough to eject a huge plume of debris from the moon that will be seen from earth through telescopes 10-to-12 inches and larger.
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Cloud Lightning

Phantom storms: How our weather leaks into space

Jon Cartright
New Scientist
Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:28 UTC
Whether it's showering spacecraft with lethal radiation, filling the sky with ghostly light, or causing electrical surges that black-out entire cities, space weather is a force to be reckoned with.

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Cow

My little zebra: The secrets of domestication

Henry Nicholls
New Scientist
Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:18 UTC
In 2003, while geneticist Svante Pääbo was visiting Novosibirsk, Russia's third-largest city, he decided to look in on a famous experiment run by the Institute of Cytology and Genetics, which is based in the city. Fifty years ago, the then head of the IC&G, geneticist Dmitry Belyaev, had begun breeding silver foxes to see how easily they could be tamed. What Pääbo didn't know, though, is that Belyaev had also set up another experiment in the 1970s involving rats. This time, one line of rats was selected for tameness and another selected for aggression.

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Telescope

Mammoth black holes push universe to its doom

Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:47 UTC
Image
© NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al/NSF/VLA/Univ.Hertfor dshire/M.Hardcastle/ESO/VLT/ISAAC/M.Rejk uba et al.A composite Chandra image of Centaurus A showing the effects of an active supermassive black hole
The mammoth black holes at the centre of most galaxies may be pushing the universe closer to its final fade-out. And it is all down to the raging disorder within those dark powerhouses.

Disorder is measured by a quantity called entropy, something which has been on the rise ever since the big bang. Chas Egan and Charles Lineweaver of the Australian National University in Canberra used the latest astrophysical data to calculate the total entropy of everything in the universe, from gas to gravitons.

It turns out that supermassive black holes are by far the biggest contributors to the universe's entropy. Entropy reflects the number of possible arrangements of matter and energy in an object. The number of different configurations of matter a black hole could contain is staggering because its internal state is completely mysterious.

Egan and Lineweaver found that everything within the observable universe contains about 10104 units of entropy (joules per Kelvin), a factor of 10 to 1000 times higher than previous estimates that did not include some of the biggest known black holes, submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.
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Sherlock

Italian scientist reproduces Shroud of Turin

Philip Pullella
Reuters
Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:02 UTC
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© ReutersThe Turin Shroud is shown in this August 1978 file photo in negative version. An Italian scientist says …
Rome - An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake.

The shroud, measuring 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches bears the image, eerily reversed like a photographic negative, of a crucified man some believers say is Christ.

"We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as the Shroud," Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the para-normal this weekend in northern Italy, said on Monday.
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Telescope

Inspecting an asteroid that hit Earth

Ron Cowen
Science News
Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:36 UTC
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© P. Scheirich, P. JenniskensScientists have recreated what the asteroid 2008 TC3 looked like just before it slammed face-first into Earth on October 7, 2008. An artist’s illustration shows, in 12-second intervals, only the flattened part of the asteroid that faced Earth as it fell. The horizontal line at top shows actual observations of the asteroid.
Planetary scientists have reported a slew of new findings about the first asteroid ever spotted before pieces of it fell to Earth. The space rock contained a number of amino acids, had a flattened shape and appears to have been blasted off the surface of a larger body, researchers reported October 5 at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences.

The asteroid, 2008 TC3, first came into the limelight in 2008 when researchers spotted the body just 19 hours before it broke apart in Earth's atmosphere and crashed into northern Sudan. Planetary scientists tracked the intact asteroid as it fell to the ground as meteorites (SN: 4/25/09, p. 13).
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Brick Wall

Anti-Wi-Fi paint keeps your wireless signal to yourself

Christopher Null
Yahoo Tech Guide
Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:47 UTC
Don't like the idea of your neighbors rudely snooping on the wireless signal you slaved to pay for from the lazy comfort of their living room? It's not just about slowing down your connection; while they're downloading Mad Men via bittorrent, you could be on the hook for their actions.

Wireless security and encryption systems are fraught with problems and insecurity, and other methods to restrict your signal to a small area are cumbersome at best.

Enter a new solution: Anti-Wi-Fi paint..

The idea is simple: Use a special paint on walls where you don't want wireless to pass through (say the exterior of your house). The secret is mixing aluminum-iron oxide particles in with the paint. The metal particles resonate at the same frequency as Wi-Fi and other radio waves, so signals can't pass through the thin layer of pigment. Outsiders would simply be unable to access your wireless network, just as you, inside the house, won't be able to interlope on anything beamed on the outside.
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Display

UK: Smart meters in homes could be hacked

Alastair Jamieson
The Daily Telegraph
Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:50 UTC
Plans to install gas and electricity smart meters in every home by 2020 pose a "national cyber security risk" because the devices could be hacked into, one of the government's own data security consultants has warned.

Experts say the compulsory monitors, designed to reduce energy consumption, could be programmed to cripple the national grid or to steal valuable household data, breaching the privacy of millions.

The government wants every home in Britain to have the devices, which give users information on how to save energy and send real-time data direct to utility companies, eliminating the need for customers to stay at home for meter readings or to receive estimated bills.

They also pave the way for a national 'smart grid', backed by David Cameron's Conservatives, which would use the data to manage national demand more efficiently and advise households when it is cheapest to switch on appliances.

However, smart meters can be infected with a 'worm', similar to the viruses that attack personal computers, which can spread from one smart meter to the whole grid.
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