A Traffic Cop For Satellites

As more and more spacecraft are put into orbit, the chance of a collision increases.
Click to enlarge this image. ESA

From Discovery News:

Satellite crashes may be rare, but when they happen, the impact can be long-lasting.

Collisions in space don't happen very often, but when they do the impact is long-lasting. A coalition of satellite traffic cops, however, aims to prevent these episodes from occurring at all.

In orbit, chunks and fragments from a crash won't settle down. They'll keep moving -- extremely rapidly -- upping the odds of additional crashes.

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Black Holes Formed Soon After Big Bang

Supermassive black holes are found at the centre of galaxies - including our galaxy, the Milky Way. Credit: NASA

From Cosmos/AFP:

PARIS: The first supermassive black holes formed just a billion years after the Big Bang, showing that big structures build up quickly in the universe, scientists said.

Ordinary black holes are entities of mass whose gravitational pull is so huge that not even light can escape them. But they are dwarfs compared to so-called supermassive black holes, which are many orders of magnitude bigger.

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Recipe For Water: Just Add Starlight

Giant star IRC+10216. (Credit: ESA/PACS/SPIRE/MESS Consortia)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2010) — ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory has discovered that ultraviolet starlight is the key ingredient for making water in space. It is the only explanation for why a dying star is surrounded by a gigantic cloud of hot water vapour.

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Why Older People Repeat Stories

From Live Science:

There may be a reason grandparents repeat the same stories over and over again. According to a new study, older people are more likely than younger people to forget with whom they've shared information.

The study investigated two types of memory: source memory, or your recollection of who told you a piece of information; and destination memory, which is your recollection of which people you've informed. Not only were older people bad at remembering to whom they'd told information, they were very confident in their mistaken memories. [10 Ways to Keep Your Mind Sharp]

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My Comment: I am repeating stories .... and I am 50. Oh .... oh ....

NASA Planning Mission To Visit The Sun

Artist Representation of Solar Probe Plus
(Credit: NASA)

From The CBS:

We know it's hot up there but NASA wants to know a bit more about the Sun and its environs. And so sometime before 2018, the agency intends to send a spacecraft into the solar atmosphere.

This will mark the first time that a spacecraft from earth will actually visit a star.

The decision to chart a mission to the Sun also realizes a dream that astronomers almost realized a half century ago, when the National Academy of Science's "Simpson Committee" in 1958 recommended a probe to investigate. Several studies were subsequently carried out testing the feasibility of the project. But nothing came of them.

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Robotic Storm Tracker Gets A Big Test With Earl

Bearing down: NASA'S Global Hawk flies over the eye of Hurricane Earl. Thus far it has made numerous passes over the eye and will continue to monitor the storm until Thursday evening. Credit: NASA/NOAA

From Technology Review:

The largest-ever storm monitoring mission is now gathering scientific data that was previously impossible to get.

As Hurricane Earl barrels toward the eastern seaboard of the United States, coastal residents don't know if they should evacuate in case the storm makes landfall. They rely on forecasters analyzing computer models, but those predictions differ. A new hurricane-monitoring mission that's now underway hopes to reduce this uncertainty by gathering atmospheric and environmental storm data never before obtained.

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My Comment: They must have spent a fortune on this system, but considering the damage that hurricanes can cause, any leg up on what they are about to do makes it all worth while.

Where Are The Solar Power Projects?

Electric towers and power lines cross the proposed site of a BrightSource Energy solar plant near Primm, Nev. The presence of existing towers make the area a prime site for solar development.

From Watts Up With That?:

From the Ventura County Star:

ROACH DRY LAKE, Nev. — Not a light bulb’s worth of solar electricity has been produced on the millions of acres of public desert set aside for it. Not one project to build glimmering solar farms has even broken ground.

Instead, five years after federal land managers opened up stretches of the Southwest to developers, vast tracts still sit idle.

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My Comment: A blunt and accurate assessment on the politics behind solar power.

Archive Gallery: 138 Years Of Architectural Landmarks

The Pentagon, 1943

From Popular Science:

PopSci's first looks at the Empire State Building, the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more.

We've heard it said that Rome wasn't built in a day. And while Popular Science isn't old enough to have witnessed the Colosseum going up, we have covered in our pages some of the 20th century's most important architectural achievements rise from nothing but a dream and a blueprint.

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Top 5 Ways The Universe Could Wipe Out Humankind

From Popular Mechanics:

The Universe looks like a pretty tranquil place to live, doesn't it? During the day the sun shines steadily, and at night the heavens are reassuring and unchanging.

Dream on. The Universe is filled to the brim with dangerous, nasty things, all jostling for position to be the one to wipe us off the face of the planet. Happily for us, they're all pretty unlikely—how many people do you know who have died by proton disintegration?—but if you wait long enough, one of them is bound to get us.

But which one?

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Highest-Paid Athlete Hailed From Ancient Rome

From Discovery News:

Ultra millionaire sponsorship deals such as those signed by sprinter Usain Bolt, motorcycle racer Valentino Rossi and tennis player Maria Sharapova, are just peanuts compared to the personal fortune amassed by a second century A.D. Roman racer, according to an estimate published in the historical magazine Lapham's Quarterly.

According to Peter Struck, associate professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, an illiterate charioteer named Gaius Appuleius Diocles earned “the staggering sum" of 35,863,120 sesterces (ancient Roman coins) in prize money.

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My Comment: I am just curious to know what happened to all of that money.

Web-Crawling Computers Will Soon Be Calling The Shots In Science

Computers may by programmed to generate hypotheses with little human intervention required. Photograph: Corbis

From The Guardian:

Within a decade, computers will be able to plough through scientific data looking for patterns and connections – then tell scientists what they should do next.

Move over scientists – computers will be asking the questions from now on. They will trawl the millions of scientific papers on the web and suggest new hypotheses for humans to test, according to an article in tomorrow's issue of Science.

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Richest Planetary System Discovered

A close-up of the sky around the star HD 10180. Credit: ESO and Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin

From Cosmos:

PARIS: A distant star orbited by at least five planets has been found, according to European astronomers, in the biggest discovery of so-called exoplanets since the first was logged 15 years ago.

The star is similar to our Sun and its planetary lineup has an intriguing parallel with own Solar System, although no clue has so far been found to suggest it could be a home from home, they said.

The star they studied, HD 10180, is located 127 light years away in the southern constellation of Hydrus, the male water snake, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said.

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Discovery Of Ancient Cave Paintings In Petra Stuns Art Scholars

Detail of a winged child playing the flute, before and after cleaning. Photograph: Courtesy of the Courtauld Institute

From The Guardian:

Exquisite artworks hidden under 2,000 years of soot and grime in a Jordanian cave have been restored by experts from the Courtauld Institute in London.

Spectacular 2,000-year-old Hellenistic-style wall paintings have been revealed at the world heritage site of Petra through the expertise of British conservation specialists. The paintings, in a cave complex, had been obscured by centuries of black soot, smoke and greasy substances, as well as graffiti.

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Commercial Organic Farms Have Better Fruit and Soil, Lower Environmental Impact, Study Finds

A new study found that organic farms produced more flavorful and nutritious berries while leaving the soil healthier and more genetically diverse. (Credit: iStockphoto/Margarita Borodina)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 1, 2010) — Side-by-side comparisons of organic and conventional strawberry farms and their fruit found the organic farms produced more flavorful and nutritious berries while leaving the soil healthier and more genetically diverse.

"Our findings have global implications and advance what we know about the sustainability benefits of organic farming systems," said John Reganold, Washington State University Regents professor of soil science and lead author of a paper published in the peer-reviewed online journal, PLoS ONE. "We also show you can have high quality, healthy produce without resorting to an arsenal of pesticides."

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My Comment: This scientific study only reveals what every farmer knows .... stay away from pesticides and fertilizers and you will produce a better product.

Hurricane Alley Heats Up With Stormy Threesome

As Hurricane Earl nears the East Coast Thursday, two tropical systems linger behind: Tropical Storm Fiona, located north-northeast of San Juan, and Tropical Storm Gaston, located east of the Lesser Antilles. Credit: NOAA.

From Live Science:

Three swirling storms are roaring across the Atlantic with nervous East Coast residents keeping a close eye on the conveyor belt of tropical activity as hurricane season enters its busiest time.

Hurricane Earl is bearing down on the Carolinas and has strengthened into a Category 4 storm, with maximum winds of 145 mph (235 kph), according to the latest update from the National Hurricane Center (NHC). Category 3 storms or higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane strength are classified as major hurricanes. [In Images: Hurricane Hunters Flying into Earl.]

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Throat Cancer Rates Soar In Men

From The Telegraph:

Throat cancer cases have soared by 50 per cent in men in the last 25 years due to obesity and bad diet, researchers have found.

Back in the eighties around 2,600 men were diagnosed with oesophageal cancer every year but now the figure is more than 5,100.

The most dramatic rise was among men in their 50s, as rates increased by 67 per cent over the same period.

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When Drones Go Wild

When Drones Go Rogue In Friendly Skies, How Do We Bring Them Home? -- Popular Science

An advanced fly-by-wire system capable of landing grossly damaged unmanned aircraft—demonstrated on video saving a plane missing 80 percent of one wing—is key to solving one of unmanned flight’s biggest problems.

Word spread last week that a rogue MQ-8B Fire Scout copter drone entered restricted airspace just 40 miles shy of Washington D.C. after losing contact with its operators. The revelation occurred smack in the middle of AVUSI 2010, the world’s largest UAV tradeshow. And it served as a poignant reminder that all the game-changing technology on display here at the Denver Convention Center still has some innovating to do, especially when flight crews lose control of their unmanned craft.

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My Comment: The video is impressive .... watch it.

Shape-Shifting Robot Compensates For Damaged Limb

From New Scientist:

Think that shape-shifting robots, or ones that march on no matter how many limbs they lose, are just for Terminator films? Think again. A team of European roboticists have developed software that allows a modular robot to adapt when one part stops working.

David Johan Christensen at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, working with Alexander Spröwitz and Auke Ijspeert at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, simulated a quadruped robot constructed from a dozen Roombots – identical rounded robots that have been developed in Lausanne and which can combine to form a variety of modular shapes (see picture).

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Astronaut’s Eye View: Time-Lapse Videos of Earth

From Wired Science:

A NASA astronaut on the Space Shuttle Endeavor brought space back down to Earth. Astronaut Don Pettit took over 85 time-lapsed videos of Earth from his stint on the International Space Station to highlight features of the changing planet.

"There is phenomenology that happens on a timescale that you can't see in real time," he said. "It occurred to me that making time-lapse movies on the space station would bring out things that you normally don't observe."

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Death Of The Couch Potato:

More users are watching TV on their laptops than ever before, according to a new study (picture posed by model)

Death Of The Couch Potato: Study Finds More Than A Third Of Viewers Now Watch Their Favourite TV Shows Online -- Daily Mail

An increasing number of viewers are watching their favourite TV shows online rather than on television, a new survey as found.

More than a third of users (34 per cent) now watch their favourite programmes online compared to only 29 per cent who watch them mostly on television.

The figures - from a joint survey by SeeSaw.com and Radio Times - show how the way we consume television is changing rapidly.

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My Comment: Count me as one of those who watches 90% of his shows and movies online.