Science & TechnologyS


Meteor

Peru Meteorite could have survived descent if it lacked internal cracks and irregularities


ANI
Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:41 UTC
Scientists have said that a meteorite that crashed in Peru in September last year may have survived the descent towards Earth if, by a one-in-a-million chance, it lacked internal cracks and irregularities.

According to a report in New Scientist, the Carancas meteorite struck the town of that name in Peru last September, blowing a hole in the ground 13 metres wide.
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Bulb

Flashback Mars air once had moisture, new soil analysis says


University of California - Berkeley
Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:58 UTC
A new analysis of Martian soil data led by University of California, Berkeley, geoscientists suggests that there was once enough water in the planet's atmosphere for a light drizzle or dew to hit the ground, leaving tell-tale signs of its interaction with the planet's surface.

The study's conclusion breaks from the more dominant view that the liquid water that once existed during the red planet's infancy came mainly in the form of upwelling groundwater rather than rain.

To come up with their conclusions, the UC Berkeley-led researchers used published measurements of soil from Mars that were taken by various NASA missions: Viking 1, Viking 2, Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity. These five missions provided information on soil from widely distant sites surveyed between 1976 and 2006.

Image
©NASA
Cracks caused by the contraction of sulfate are evident in this image of the surface of Mars' Meridiani Planum site by NASA's Opportunity Rover.
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Telescope

Lunar Dust Detector Instrument Opportunity Added to SALMON


SpaceRef.com
Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:04 UTC


Image
©NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Stand Alone Missions of Opportunity Notice (SALMON), is intended to provide opportunities for science and technology investigations on space flight missions that advance the high priority science, technology, and exploration objectives of NASA's four Mission Directorates. This five-year omnibus Announcement of Opportunity (AO) incorporates Program Element Appendices (PEAs) for general Mission of Opportunity (MO) proposal opportunities as well as focused proposal opportunities for specific flight opportunities.
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Evil Rays

Skyhook tracking merges real GPS, Wi-Fi


electronista
Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:34 UTC


GPS iPhone
©Unknown

Skyhook Wireless on Monday launched a new map positioning system that will potentially solve many of the problems associated with GPS navigation today. While the company has already designed a system that can alternate between real GPS and rough triangulation using cellular towers and Wi-Fi, a new method nicknamed XPS 2.0 can combine multiple services at once to find a position even in poor conditions.
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Eye 1

Google to give advertisers web-tracking data

Jonathan Richards
Times Online
Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:20 UTC
Google will today expand its offering to advertisers by unveiling a service which lets them track which websites their target audiences are visiting.

A new tool called AdPlanner is expected to offer advertisers a range of statistics - including demographic details - about particular websites, which in turn could be used to target advertising more effectively, it was reported.

The service, which is due to be announced this evening, signals Google's intention to ramp up its advertising business, which to date has focused on placing adverts next to search queries conducted on the web.
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Info

Asteroid And Comet Threat Is A Challenge To Mankind


Reuters
Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:25 UTC
ST. PETERSBURG -- The asteroid and comet threat is a real challenge to mankind in the 21st century, and it is described as "space terrorism", Russia's Itar-Tass news agency reported Saturday quoting the Director of the Institute of Applied Astronomy Andrei Fenkelshtein, as saying.

Speaking at the regional Itar-Tass centre, Fenkelshtein said: "This phenomenon is well studied from the scientific point of view even though speculations continue to revolve around the event that occurred one hundred years ago."

In his opinion, what happened in Southern Siberia is "a serious warning to the earthlings.

Filkenshtein, who is also the correspondent member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said the risk of a new event like the Tunguska explosion is assessed as quite plausible now that scientists have detected potential killer Asteroid Apophis just half a million kilometers from Earth, which is an infinitesimally small distance by astronomical standards.
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Meteor

Tanzania holds meteorite with clues on solar system birth

Lucas Lukumbo
Sunday Observer
Sun, 29 Jun 2008 03:56 UTC
A Tanzanian renowned physicist cum astronomer, Dr Noorali Jiwaji has challenged the government to work out modalities for scientific study of a rare type of meteorite which scientists say landed in Tanzania in 1938.

Dr Noorali Jiwaji who is a Lecturer in Physics and Head of Department of ICT in the Faculty of Science Technology and Environmental Studies at the Open University of Tanzania (OUT) has said Tanzania has competent chemists, biochemists and geologists to undertake the research.
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Newspaper

New Nano Technique Significantly Boosts Water Boiling Efficiency

Michael Mullaney
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:44 UTC


Copper nanorods
©Rensselaer/Koratkar
A scanning electron microscope shows copper nanorods deposited on a copper substrate.

Whoever penned the old adage "a watched pot never boils" surely never tried to heat up water in a pot lined with copper nanorods.

A new study from researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute shows that by adding an invisible layer of the nanomaterials to the bottom of a metal vessel, an order of magnitude less energy is required to bring water to boil. This increase in efficiency could have a big impact on cooling computer chips, improving heat transfer systems, and reducing costs for industrial boiling applications.
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Telescope

Water traces on Mercury

Frank D. Roylance
Baltimoresun.com
Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:03 UTC
Instruments aboard a Maryland-built spacecraft that soared past the planet Mercury in January have provided a real surprise: traces of water molecules in the hot little world's extremely thin atmosphere, scientists reported yesterday.
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Einstein

Einstein Was Right, Astrophysicists Say


Science Daily
Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:49 UTC
Researchers at McGill University's Department of Physics -- along with colleagues from several countries -- have confirmed a long-held prediction of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, via observations of a binary-pulsar star system.

Their results will be published July 3 in the journal Science.

Pulsars are small, ultradense stellar objects left behind after massive stars die and explode as supernovae. They typically have a mass greater than that of our Sun, but compressed to the size of a city like Montreal. They spin at staggering speeds, generate huge gravity fields and emit powerful beams of radio waves along their magnetic poles.

Image
©Daniel Cantin, Darwin Dimensions. McGill University
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