Tuesday 1 July 2014

From thin silicate films to the atomic structure of glass

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Structure of amorphous materials clarified. This project has so far been a big challenge due to the complexity of this material class. Modern preparation methods in combination with scanning tunneling microscopy succeed in decrypting the everyday material glass. Fig. 1: Comparison of the structure of crystalline and amorphous materials. Illustration (a) shows a crystalline silicate sample next to an amorphous one. Both samples are optically transparent. W.H. Zachariasen’s postulate for crystalline (b) and amorphous (c) structures in a two-dimensional representation is depicted here following the example of reference [1]. © Fritz Haber Institute / Heyde Glass ranks as one of the most important materials of our age. You have only to think about smartphones, or drinking glasses, or look out of the window to realise that glass in its various forms is omnipresent. Fibre-optic cables transport our emails and research work out into the world, and buildings without architectural window glass are hardly conceivable nowadays. Glass plays an important role in everyday life without us being aware of its complex structure. The most common types of glass are based on silicon dioxide. Its structure is taken as the prototype for amorphous networks. The term glass is used synonymously for amorphous materials here.

The post From thin silicate films to the atomic structure of glass has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Hubble Survey to Proceed with Full Search for New Horizons Targets



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Planetary scientists have successfully used the Hubble Space Telescope to boldly look out to the far frontier of the solar system to find suitable targets for NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto. After the marathon probe zooms past Pluto in July 2015, it will travel across the Kuiper Belt a vast rim of primitive ice bodies left over from the birth of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago. If NASA approves, the probe could be redirected to fly to a Kuiper Belt object (KBO) and photograph it up close.




via HubbleSite NewsCenter -- Latest News Releases

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2014/35/

NASA Delays Launching of Carbon Observatory

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An equipment malfunction has pushed the liftoff of the spacecraft, which will measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, until at least Wednesday.















via New York Times

A Sky Full of Stars Print

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


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A picture of a star filled sky at night.

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via Zazzle Astronomy market place

Computing paths to asteroids helps find future exploration opportunities

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As left over building blocks of the solar system's formation, asteroids are of significant interest to scientists. Resources, especially water, embedded within asteroids could be of use to astronauts traveling through deep space. Likewise, asteroids could continue to be destinations for robotic and human missions as NASA pioneers deeper into the solar system, to Mars and beyond.

via Science Daily

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Cassini names final mission phase its 'grand finale'

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With input from more than 2,000 members of the public, team members on NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn have chosen a name for the final phase of the mission: the Cassini Grand Fi-nale. Starting in late 2016, the Cassini spacecraft will begin a daring set of orbits that is, in some ways, like a whole new mission. The spacecraft will repeatedly climb high above Saturn's north pole, flying just outside its narrow F ring. Cassini will probe the water-rich plume of the active geysers on the planet's intriguing moon Enceladus, and then will hop the rings and dive between the plan-et and innermost ring 22 times.

via Science Daily

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Rosetta's comet target 'releases' plentiful water

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Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is releasing the Earthly equivalent of two glasses of water into space every second. The observations were made by the Microwave Instrument for Rosetta Orbiter (MIRO), aboard the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft on June 6, 2014. The detection of water vapor has implications not only for cometary science, but also for mission planning, as the Rosetta team prepares the spacecraft to become the first ever to orbit a comet (planned for August), and the first to deploy a lander to its surface (planned for November 11).

via Science Daily

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Wolf-Rayet Star 124: Stellar Wind Machine

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Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

30 Doradus Nebula in Visible Light Wall Decal

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


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"This is a close-up view of a star-birth region within the 30 Doradus nebula that lies inside the satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, 170,000 light-years away. A Hubble Space Telescope view in visible light reveals glowing clouds of hydrogen and dark filamentary structures of dust."

(qtd. from HubbleSite.org NewsCenter release STScI-2014-02)

Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Sabbi (STScI)

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Young sun’s violent history solves meteorite mystery

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Astronomers using ESA’s Herschel space observatory to probe the turbulent beginnings of a Sun-like star have found evidence of mighty stellar winds that could solve a puzzling meteorite mystery in our own back yard.




via ESA Space Science

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Herschel/Young_sun_s_violent_history_solves_meteorite_mystery

Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2012 iPad Case

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


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High Frontier Colonization Poster-Map, April 2014

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: sierra madre, games, high frontier, colonization, science, fiction, astronomy, solar system, phil eklund, poster-map, alpha centauri

Use this Poster-Map as a game board to play any edition of High Frontier. It has many more sites to explore than the standard Colonization map, including new sites on Luna and Mercury, the inner systems of Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune including the Neptune aerostat, the solar Oberth maneuver, Phobos space elevator, the asteroids Fortuna and Icarus plus the Sylvia family, Comet Holmes, the Norse moonlets, the Portia Group, the Kreutz sungrazer, a fourth space venture, and the newly discovered rings of Chariklo. Updated Apr 2014. "I printed the Colonization HF Poster-Map in Large (48.00" x 22.46"), Value Poster Paper (Matte). It is great as long as you have the space for it. Otherwise, I would get the 36” X 24" version. If you combine with another Poster-Map (Bios-Origins or Interstellar) then you could do even better on price since you only need to pay for shipping once. The quality on both maps are top notch so I can strongly recommend them." Russell Harley

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Potentially habitable Earth-like planet discovered; May have similar temperatures to our planet

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A potentially habitable Earth-like planet that is only 16 light years away has been discovered. The "super-Earth" planet, GJ 832 c, takes 16 days to orbit its red-dwarf star, GJ 832, and has a mass at least five times that of Earth. It receives about the same average stellar energy as Earth does and may have similar temperatures to our planet. These characteristics put it among the top three most Earth-like planets.

via Science Daily

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Monogram, Witch Head Nebula deep space image Sticker

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A witch appears to be screaming out into space in this image from NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The infrared portrait shows the Witch Head nebula, named after its resemblance to the profile of a wicked witch. Astronomers say the billowy clouds of the nebula, where baby stars are brewing, are being lit up by massive stars. Dust in the cloud is being hit with starlight, causing it to glow with infrared light, which was picked up by WISE's detectors.
The Witch Head nebula is estimated to be hundreds of light-years away in the Orion constellation, just off the famous hunter's knee.
WISE was recently "awakened" to hunt for asteroids in a program called NEOWISE. The reactivation came after the spacecraft was put into hibernation in 2011, when it completed two full scans of the sky, as planned.
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more items in the Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series

image code: wtchneb

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Smashing new look at nanoribbons: Researchers unzip nanotubes by shooting them at 15,000 mph

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Scientists have discovered they can unzip nanotubes into graphene nanoribbons without chemicals by firing them at a target at 15,000 miles per hour. Materials scientists discovered that nanotubes that hit a target end first turn into mostly ragged clumps of atoms. But nanotubes that happen to broadside the target unzip into handy ribbons that can be used in composite materials for strength and applications that take advantage of their desirable electrical properties.

via Science Daily

Interlayer distance in graphite oxide gradually changes when water is added

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Physicists have solved a mystery that has puzzled scientists for half a century. They show with the help of powerful microscopes that the distance between graphite oxide layers gradually increases when water molecules are added. That is because the surface of graphite oxide is not flat, but varies in thickness with 'hills' and 'valleys' of nanosize.

via Science Daily

Scientists develop force sensor from carbon nanotubes

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Scientists have developed a microscopic force sensor based on carbon nanotubes. The scientists proposed using two nanotubes, one of which is a long cylinder with double walls one atom thick. These tubes are placed so that their open ends are opposite to each other. Voltage is then applied to them, and a current of about 10nA flows through the circuit. Carbon tube walls are good conductors, and along the gap between the ends of the nanotubes the current flows thanks to the tunnel effect, which is a quantum phenomenon where electrons pass through a barrier that is considered insurmountable in classical mechanics.

via Science Daily

Personalized Monkey Head Nebula Star Wall Decor

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


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Star with a pretty space image. The February 2014 picture of the Monkey Head Nebula released in April in "celebration of the 24th anniversary of the launch of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (on April 24, 1990)." The Monkey Head Nebula is also known as NGC 2174 and Sharpless Sh2-252.

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NGC 602 bright stars Cover For The iPad Mini

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


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NGC 602 is a young, bright open cluster of stars located in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. Radiation and shock waves from the stars have pushed away much of the lighter surrounding gas and dust that compose the nebula known as N90, and this in turn has triggered new star formation in the ridges (or "elephant trunks") of the nebula.

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