Thursday 17 July 2014

Scientists ignite aluminum water mix

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Los Alamos National Laboratory chemist Bryce Tappan ignites a small quantity of aluminum nanoparticle water mixture. In open air, the compound burns like a Fourth of July sparkler. “Knowing much more about the mechanisms at work in metal combustion gives you a chance to refine the models that govern these reactions,” Tappan added. Combustion mechanism of aluminum nanoparticles and water published in prestigious German chemistry journal Don’t worry, that beer can you’re holding is not going to spontaneously burst into flames, but under the right circumstances aluminum does catch fire, and the exact mechanism that governs how, has long been a mystery. Now, new research by Los Alamos National Laboratory explosives scientist Bryce Tappan, published as the cover story in the prestigious German journal of chemistryAngewandte Chemie, for the first time confirms that chemical kinetics — the speed of a chemical reaction — is a primary function in determining nanoaluminum combustion burn rates. “It’s been long understood that nanoscale aluminum particles, 110 nanometers and smaller, are highly reactive. Aluminum particles at this scale have been used in novel explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnic formulations,” said Tappan. “The understanding of the combustion mechanism impacts how we look at the design of ever

The post Scientists ignite aluminum water mix has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Earth-like soils on Mars? Ancient fossilized soils potentially found deep inside impact crater suggest microbial life

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Soil deep in a crater dating to some 3.7 billion years ago contains evidence that Mars was once much warmer and wetter, says a geologist based on images and data captured by the rover Curiosity.

via Science Daily

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Sharpest map of Mars surface properties

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A heat-sensing camera has provided data to create the most detailed global map yet made of Martian surface properties. Surface properties tell geologists about the physical nature of a planet or moon's surface. Is a particular area coated with dust, and if so, how thick is it likely to be? Where are the outcrops of bedrock? How loose are the sediments that fill this crater or that valley? A map of surface properties lets scientists begin to answer questions such as these.

via Science Daily

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NOAA's GOES-R satellite Magnetometer ready for spacecraft integration

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The Magnetometer instrument that will fly on NOAA's GOES-R satellite when it is launched in early 2016 has completed the development and testing phase and is ready to be integrated with the spacecraft.

via Science Daily

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Spiral galaxy print

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


tagged with: astronomy, space, nasa, galaxy, photography, art, best, popular, top, gift, unique, the best, the most popular, custom, customizable, pretty, prettiest, quality

Spiral galaxies consist of a flat, rotating disk containing stars, gas and dust, and a central concentration of stars known as the bulge. These are surrounded by a much fainter halo of stars, many of which reside in globular clusters

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Human memory-saving devices get $37.5m research boost from DARPA

Science Focus

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Two teams creating devices that stimulate the brain to restore memory function have been granted $37.5 million by DARPA to develop the technology.

Both will initially work with people with epilepsy who have been given implants to locate where their seizures originate. The researchers will reuse the data gathered during this process to monitor other brain activity, such as the patterns that occur when the brain stores and retrieves memories.

One team will then attempt to map these patterns by recording the brain activity of epilepsy sufferers with mild memory problems while they play a computer game about remembering things. The pattern differences between the best and worst scores among these patients will be used to develop an algorithm for a personalized stimulation pattern to keep the brain performing at an optimal level.

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 » see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/6_BHfdZTc5g/
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Fresh evidence suggests particle discovered in 2012 is the Higgs boson

Science Focus

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Fresh evidence that a new particle discovered in 2012 is the Higgs boson has been unveiled today by an international collaboration led by researchers at MIT. The findings, published in the journal Nature Physics, confirm that the bosons decay to fermions — a group of particles that includes all leptons and quarks — as predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. “This is an enormous breakthrough,” says Markus Klute, an assistant professor of physics at MIT and leader of the international effort. “Now we know that particles like electrons get their mass by coupling to the Higgs field, which is really exciting.” In July 2012 researchers from the ATLAS and Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiments at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, revealed that they had observed a new particle in the mass region of 125 to 126 gigaelectronvolts (GeV). Preliminary studies revealed that the new particle’s properties were consistent with those predicted for the Higgs boson by the Standard Model, but much more work was needed to confirm this. In particular, researchers wanted to clarify whether there was a single Higgs or many different Higgs particles, as predicted by various extensions of the Standard Model, Klute says. “What

The post Fresh evidence suggests particle discovered in 2012 is the Higgs boson has been published on Technology Org.

 
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 » see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/dx-mwtl0RJ0/
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VIDEO: Europa and the hunt for alien life

Science Focus

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The search for life on other planets has long inspired science fiction novelists and Nasa missions but could one of Jupiter's moons, Europa, provide proof? 
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 » see original post http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28322095#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Trifid Nebula, Messier 16 Sticker

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


tagged with: breathtaking astronomy images, star forming nebulae, trfdnbl, galaxies, nebulae, star factory, trifid nebula, european southern observatory, clusters of stars, factories for stars, star nurseries, eso, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic picture from our universe featuring the massive star factory known as the Trifid Nebula.

It was captured in all its glory with the Wide-Field Imager camera attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in northern Chile.
So named for the dark dust bands that trisect its glowing heart, the Trifid Nebula is a rare combination of three nebulae types that reveal the fury of freshly formed stars and point to more star birth in the future. The field of view of the image is approximately 13 x 17 arcminutes.
It's an awe-inspiring, breathtaking image that reveals some of the wonder that is our universe.

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image code: trfdnbl

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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3D Homunculus Nebula

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3D Homunculus NebulaIf you're looking for something to print with that new 3D printer, try out a copy of the Homunculus Nebula. The dusty, bipolar cosmic cloud is around 1 light-year across but is slightly scaled down for printing to about 1/4 light-nanosecond or 80 millimeters. The full scale Homunculus surrounds Eta Carinae, famously unstable massive stars in a binary system embedded in the extensive Carina Nebula about 7,500 light-years distant. Between 1838 and 1845, Eta Carinae underwent the Great Eruption becoming the second brightest star in planet Earth's night sky and ejecting the Homunculus Nebula. The new 3D model of the still expanding Homunculus was created by exploring the nebula with the European Southern Observatory's VLT/X-Shooter. That instrument is capable of mapping the velocity of molecular hydrogen gas through the nebula's dust at a fine resolution. It reveals trenches, divots and protrusions, even in the dust obscured regions that face away from Earth. Eta Carinae itself still undergoes violent outbursts, a candidate to explode in a spectacular supernova in the next few million years.

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Open Star Cluster NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula Wall Stickers

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


tagged with: star cluster, ngc 3324, carina nebula, carina, nebula, stars, space, outer space, astronomy, cosmology

NGC 3324 is a star cluster at the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), home of the Keyhole Nebula and star Eta Carinae. This photograph was produced by European Southern Observatory (ESO). Their website states: "All ESO still and motion pictures are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported, unless the credit byline indicates otherwise." Source http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1207a/ Author ESO

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Galaxy Cluster Abell S0740 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!


tagged with: le0021, nasa, etoiles, les etoiles, astronomy, science, galaxy, hubble, space, scientific, outer space, deep space, sky, galaxies, hst, hubble telescope, galaxy cluster, abell, s0740, hubble space telescope, black, white, yellow, beautiful, pretty, inspiring, celestial

"This image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows the diverse collection of galaxies in the cluster Abell S0740 that is over 450 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Centaurus."

(qtd. from HubbleSite.org NewsCenter release STScI-2007-08)

Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

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Understanding graphene's electrical properties on an atomic level

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(Phys.org) —Graphene, a material that consists of a lattice of carbon atoms, one atom thick, is widely touted as being the most electrically conductive material ever studied. However, not all graphene is the same. With so few atoms comprising the entirety of the material, the arrangement of each one has an impact on its overall function.



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Nano-supercapacitors for electric cars

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Innovative nano-material based supercapacitors are set to bring mass market appeal a good step closer to the lukewarm public interest in Germany. This movement is currently being motivated by the advancements in the state-of-the-art of this device. Electric cars are very much welcomed in Norway and they are a common sight on the roads of the Scandinavian country – so much so that electric cars topped the list of new vehicle registrations for the second time. This poses a stark contrast to the situation in Germany, where electric vehicles claim only a small portion of the market. Of the 43 million cars on the roads in Germany, only a mere 8000 are electric powered. The main factors discouraging motorists in Germany from switching to electric vehicles are the high investments cost, their short driving ranges and the lack of charging stations. Another major obstacle en route to the mass acceptance of electric cars is the charging time involved. The minutes involved in refueling conventional cars are so many folds shorter that it makes the situation almost incomparable. However, the charging durations could be dramatically shortened with the inclusion of supercapacitors. These alternative energy storage devices are fast charging and can

The post Nano-supercapacitors for electric cars has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Eagle Nebula Print

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


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This eerie, dark structure in IC 4703 (the Eagle nebula) is a column of cool molecular hydrogen gas and dust that is an incubator for new stars. The stars are embedded inside finger-like protrusions clearly seen extending from the top of the column. Each "fingertip" is somewhat larger than our own solar system. The pillar is slowly eroding away by the ultraviolet light from nearby hot stars, a process called "photoevaporation". As it does, small globules of especially dense gas buried within the cloud are uncovered. These globules have been dubbed "EGGs" ; an acronym for "Evaporating Gaseous Globules". The shadows of the EGGs protect gas behind them, resulting in the finger-like structures at the top of the cloud.

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Stellar Nurseries RCW120 Sticker

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


tagged with: envelope sealers, nebulae, gstlnrsr, rcw120, breathtaking astronomy images, star nurseries, ionised gas clouds, star forming regions, clusters of stars, starfields, european southern observatory, galaxies, eso, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series

A fantastic set of stickers, with a monogram for you to change, featuring a colour composite image of RCW120.

It reveals how an expanding bubble of ionised gas about ten light-years across is causing the surrounding material to collapse into dense clumps where new stars are then formed.

The 870-micron submillimetre-wavelength data were taken with the LABOCA camera on the 12-m Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope. Here, the submillimetre emission is shown as the blue clouds surrounding the reddish glow of the ionised gas (shown with data from the SuperCosmos H-alpha survey). The image also contains data from the Second Generation Digitized Sky Survey (I-band shown in blue, R-band shown in red).

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Image code: gstlnrsr

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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Nebulosity 360 Wall Art Wall Sticker

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


tagged with: nebula, space, astronomy, galaxy, cosmos

Make your room a space mans room

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