Steps into Space - Commercialisation, Occupation, Colonization: 04/06/14

Sunday, 6 April 2014

Scientists discover material that can be solar cell by day, light panel by night

New material could lead to new touch and display screens doubling up as solar panels In future, when your mobile or tablet runs out of battery, you could just recharge it by putting it out in the sun. Nanyang Technological University (NTU) scientists have developed a next-generation solar cell material which can also emit light, in addition to converting light to electricity. This solar cell is developed from Perovskite, a promising material that could hold the key to creating high-efficiency, inexpensive solar cells. The new cells not only glow when electricity passes through them, but they can also be customised to emit different colours. Picture this: A shopping mall facade could be storing solar energy in the day and transforms into a light display for advertisements that glows at night. This discovery, published in top academic journal Nature Materials, was discovered almost by chance when NTU physicist Sum Tze Chien, asked his postdoctoral researcher Xing Guichuan to shine a laser on the new hybrid Perovskite solar cell material they are developing. Assistant Professor Sum said to the team’s surprise, the new Perovskite solar cell glowed brightly when a laser beam was shone on it. This is a significant

The post Scientists discover material that can be solar cell by day, light panel by night has been published on Technology Org.

#materials
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Brilliant short but which genre?

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Brilliant short but which genre?
Another great film from the UK. Sci-fi? Well, yes. Darkening mystery? Yes. Weird? Totally.

#forwidersharing #outerspace

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Creation of the Universe Print

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Creation of the Universe Print

tagged with: big bang, space, astronomy, creation, universe, wmap, nasa, galaxy, atheist, theory

Creation of the Universe

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Rare earth recycling: Is it worth it?

Science Focus

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Problems with rare earth metal supply has led to the reopening of this mine in California.

Molycorp

Rare earth metals are absolutely critical to modern life. Fiber optic communications require erbium. Neodymium is a critical component in modern permanent magnets. Without a steady supply of rare earth metals, we would find ourselves in some difficulty, and things may get even more critical in the future—quantum memory may lie in the hands of praseodymium.

Despite this need for rare earth metals, pretty much the entire supply comes from one country: China. In 2010, politicians finally noticed this, as China started restricting its export. In response, a team of researchers from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have been investigating our ability to recycle rare earth metals.

China's open-pit mines

In an apparent response to environmental pressure, China began to restrict the exportation of rare earth metals in 2010. At the time, China controlled 95 percent of the market. Manufacturers were rocked by the price fluctuations, eventually complaining to the World Trade Organization in an effort to stabilize supply. Even if you're suspicious of China's true motives, mining rare earths is a dirty job, involving some pretty vicious acids, bases, solvents—and the whole process raises the risk of miners breathing in a serious amount of radioactive dust. So whatever China's underlying motive was, cleaning up the mining industry is a good thing.

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First hints of gravitational waves in the Big Bang’s afterglow

Science Focus

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Graduate student Justus Brevik testing the BICEP2 used to find evidence of cosmic inflation nearly 14 billion years ago. EPA/Steffen Richter/Harvard University Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in the US have announced overnight what they believe is the indirect detection of gravitational waves in the afterglow of the Big Bang. The discovery by the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarisation (BICEP) collaboration, indeed even the rumours of such a discovery, sparked a huge discussion among the scientific community. Why? As the last untested prediction of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, finding gravitational waves is a big deal. The BICEP discovery provides further indirect evidence for the existence of gravitational waves (the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor for finding a double pulsar that strongly supported these “ripples” in spacetime). Secondly, and most importantly, it advances our knowledge of the universe enormously. Before this announcement, thanks to Big Bang nucleosynthesis(when light elements such as hydrogen and helium were created), we could measure the universe back to about a minute after the Big Bang. The finding today has allowed us to study the universe when it was a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second old, when so-called “inflation” took place. Inflation was

The post First hints of gravitational waves in the Big Bang’s afterglow has been published on Technology Org.

#physics
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Space station crew delayed in orbit

Science Focus

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A rocket carrying US and Russian astronauts to the International Space Station has to delay docking for almost two days because of a technical hitch.
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Butterfly Nebula in Scorpius Constellation Rectangular Sticker

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

Butterfly Nebula in Scorpius Constellation Rectangular Sticker

tagged with: peel off, galaxies and stars, stellar winds, btbgneb, butterfly nebula, bug nebula, scorpius constellation, ngc 6302, sculptured gas clouds

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series NGC 6302, more popularly called the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula, lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius.
The central dying star cannot be seen because it's hidden within a doughnut-shaped ring of dust, which appears as a dark band pinching the nebula in the centre. The thick dust belt constricts the star's outflow, creating the classic "bipolar" or hourglass shape displayed by some planetary nebulae.
The nebula's reddish outer edges are largely due to light emitted by nitrogen, which marks the coolest gas visible in the picture. The white-coloured regions are areas where light is emitted by sulphur. These are regions where fast-moving gas overtakes and collides with slow-moving gas that left the star at an earlier time, producing shock waves in the gas (the bright white edges on the sides facing the central star).

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image code: btbgneb

image credit: NGC 6302 was imaged on 27 July 2009 with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in ultraviolet and visible light. Filters that isolate emissions from oxygen, helium, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur were used to create this composite image.

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Fresh Tiger Stripes on Saturn's Enceladus

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Star Cluster NGC 346 Wall Graphic

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Star Cluster NGC 346 Wall Graphic

tagged with: le0060, nasa, etoiles, les etoiles, astronomy, nebula, science, hubble, galaxy, space, star cluster, scientific, outer space, deep space, sky, star, smc, open, nebulae, emission, galaxies, irregular, dwarf, hst, hubble telescope, magellanic, small magellanic cloud, hubble space telescope, black, purple, pink, white, blue, beautiful, pretty, breathtaking, stunning, haunting, celestial

"This image of star cluster NGC 346 and its surrounding star-formation region was taken in July 2004 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Located 210,000 light-years away in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, the cluster is one of the most dynamic and intricately detailed star-forming regions in space. A dramatic structure of arched, ragged filaments with a distinct ridge encircles the cluster."

(qtd. from Hubblesite.org NewsCenter release STScI-2005-35)

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

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Light Echo from Star V838 iPad Mini Cases

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Light Echo from Star V838 iPad Mini Cases

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"[This is] the most recent NASA Hubble Space Telescope view of an unusual phenomenon in space called a light echo. Light from a star that erupted nearly five years ago continues propagating outward through a cloud of dust surrounding the star. The light reflects or "echoes" off the dust and then travels to Earth."

(qtd. from HubbleSite.org NewsCenter release STScI-2006-50)

Credit: NASA, ESA, and H. Bond (STScI)

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Researchers grow carbon nanofibers using ambient air, without toxic ammonia

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Researchers from North Carolina State University have demonstrated that vertically aligned carbon nanofibers (VACNFs) can be manufactured using ambient air, making the manufacturing process safer and less expensive. VACNFs hold promise for use in gene-delivery tools, sensors, batteries and other technologies. Conventional techniques for creating VACNFs rely on the use of ammonia gas, which is toxic. And while ammonia gas is not expensive, it’s not free. “This discovery makes VACNF manufacture safer and cheaper, because you don’t need to account for the risks and costs associated with ammonia gas,” says Dr. Anatoli Melechko, an adjunct associate professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and senior author of a paper on the work. “This also raises the possibility of growing VACNFs on a much larger scale.” In the most common method for VACNF manufacture, a substrate coated with nickel nanoparticles is placed in a vacuum chamber and heated to 700 degrees Celsius. The chamber is then filled with ammonia gas and either acetylene or acetone gas, which contain carbon. When a voltage is applied to the substrate and a corresponding anode in the chamber, the gas is ionized. This creates plasma that directs the nanofiber growth. The nickel

The post Researchers grow carbon nanofibers using ambient air, without toxic ammonia has been published on Technology Org.

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This really brings it home

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This really brings it home
It's all very well to see static images from the various space and ground telescopes but sometimes it takes an artist's animated impression to really fire the imagination. Like here. Wow!

#outerspace #forwidersharing

Corina Marinescu originally shared:

A 3D animation of the most distant quasar
A quasar is believed to be a supermassive black hole surrounded by an accretion disk. An accretion disk is a flat, disk-like structure of gas that rapidly spirals around a larger object, like a black hole, a new star, a white dwarf, etc. A quasar gradually attracts this gas and sometimes other stars or even small galaxies with their superstrong gravity. These objects get sucked into the black hole. When a galaxy, star or gas is absorbed into a quasar in such a way, the result is a massive collision of matter that causes a gigantic explosive output of radiation energy and light. This great burst of energy results in a flare, which is a distinct characteristic of quasars.

Reference:
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/001106a.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasar

Gif: Artist's rendering of ULAS J1120+0641, a very distant quasar powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun.
Video source for the gif:
http://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1122c/
Video credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

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"You Are Here" Milky Way Galaxy Poster

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"You Are Here" Milky Way Galaxy Poster

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Poster shows gorgeous rendering of Milky Way Galaxy using latest telescope data (public domain image by NASA/Caltech), plus a "You Are Here" arrow pointing to the Earth's local neighborhood.

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Emission Nebula NGC 2467 in Constellation Puppis Square Stickers

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

Emission Nebula NGC 2467 in Constellation Puppis Square Stickers

tagged with: envelope sealers, galaxies and stars, sculptured gas clouds, enebicp, constellation puppis, ngc 2467, the stern, hot young stars, star incubator

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A colourful star-forming region is featured in this stunning image of NGC 2467 located in the southern constellation of Puppis (The Stern). Looking like a roiling cauldron of some exotic cosmic brew, huge clouds of gas and dust are sprinkled with bright blue, hot young stars. Strangely shaped dust clouds, resembling spilled liquids, are silhouetted against a colourful background of glowing gas. Like the familiar Orion Nebula, NGC 2467 is a huge cloud of gas, mostly hydrogen, that serves as an incubator for new stars. Some of these youthful stars have emerged from the dense clouds where they were born and now shine brightly, hot and blue in this picture, but many others remain hidden.

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Image credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

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Keyhole Nebula Wall Decals

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Keyhole Nebula Wall Decals

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"When 19th century astronomer Sir John Herschel spied a swirling cloud of gas with a hole punched through it, he dubbed it the Keyhole Nebula. Now the Hubble telescope has taken a peek at this region, and the resulting image reveals previously unseen details of the Keyhole's mysterious, complex structure. The Keyhole is part of a larger region called the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), about 8,000 light-years from Earth."

(qtd. from Hubblesite.org NewsCenter release STScI-2000-06)

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

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Galaxy Cluster Abell S0740 iPad Case

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Galaxy Cluster Abell S0740 iPad Case

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"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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