Steps into Space - Commercialisation, Occupation, Colonization: 04/15/14

Tuesday, 15 April 2014

The science of champagne fizz: How many bubbles are in your bubbly?

The importance of fizz, more technically known as effervescence, in sparkling wines and champagnes is not to be underestimated—it contributes to the complete sensory experience of a glass, or flute, of fine bubbly. A scientist has now closely examined the factors that affect these bubbles, and he has come up with an estimate of just how many are in each glass. The report appears in ACS’ The Journal of Physical Chemistry B. Gérard Liger-Belair notes that effervescence plays an important role in the look, taste, aroma and mouth feel of champagne and other sparkling wines. Wine journalists and bloggers often cite 15 million as the average number of bubbles fizzing in a single glass of champagne, based on some simple mathematics. Sounds impressive, but Liger-Belair suspected that the formula leading to this estimate oversimplified the matter. It didn’t take into account the fact that some of the dissolved carbon dioxide escapes from a glass without forming bubbles. Also, the size of the bubbles changes over time, and this could affect the final number. Liger-Belair wanted to set the record straight. Taking into consideration temperature, bubble dynamics and the tilt of a flute, Liger-Belair came up with a new way to calculate the

The post The science of champagne fizz: How many bubbles are in your bubbly? has been published on Technology Org.

#materials
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The Orion Nebula Print

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

The Orion Nebula Print

tagged with: orion, nebula, pretty, awesome, cosmic, cosmos, universe, lovely, amazing, astronomy

A massive image of The Orion Nebula in infrared, thanks to NASA/Hubble Space Telescope Program. The image file is 6000x6000.

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IPCC report says climate change is bad news for crops

Science Focus

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M. DeFreese/CIMMYT

When it comes to projections of future global warming, most people are more interested in concrete impacts than abstract figures like average global temperature. That sort of information is contained in the second section of the latest IPCC report, which was just recently released. Among the things potentially impacted by climate change, the agricultural sector is of obvious relevance to those of us who eat food. (That includes you, Soylent fans.)

Given that population growth and economic progress in developing countries is expected to raise the demand for food by about 14 percent each decade, will climate change make it harder for farmers to feed the world?

It’s a complicated question with a number of relevant factors to consider. Temperature is the most obvious one. Many crops have problems with temperatures much above 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), meaning regions that are already hot may not have much wiggle room. Warming also changes the timing of the spring thaw (but not the seasonal changes in daylight) and expands the growing season in some places. Then there’s precipitation, both in terms of rainfall and the high-elevation snow that can feed rivers in the summer. Together with temperature, changes in precipitation can alter soil moisture, either directly or by affecting sources of irrigation water. Those changes can also mean shifts in the range or prevalence of pests and diseases that plague crops.

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original post: http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/BiEQw3IO5aQ/
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Explaining Interactions between Light, Heat, and Charge Carriers in Silicon Photonic Microresonators

Science Focus

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In an article appearing in the March 28th issue of Physical Review Letters, researchers from Northwestern University working with researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST) have presented a new analysis that accurately describes the behavior of silicon photon microresonators in the nonlinear regime, where the amount of light exiting the system is not directly proportional to the amount of light entering it.* Their work includes simple equations to provide physical intuition and scaling rules that can be used to design new chip-scale photonic devices, including optically-driven oscillators and switches with potential applications as optical components in computing and communication systems. The researchers studied a 10 µm diameter, 260 nm thick silicon microdisk resonator fabricated in the CNST NanoFab and optically probed with a continuous infrared laser. When the laser light entering the device is at low intensity, the fraction of that light exiting the device remains constant over time. However, as predicted by the researchers’ theory, when the incoming laser intensity is increased past a certain threshold, the exiting light begins to oscillate. Its intensity varies periodically in time. Its frequencies spread across several hundred megahertz and consist of narrow spectral lines which are called a “frequency comb spectrum” because of their

The post Explaining Interactions between Light, Heat, and Charge Carriers in Silicon Photonic Microresonators has been published on Technology Org.

#physics
original post: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/8LTQ0nGateU/
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Orion Nebula and Trapezium Stars Sticker

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Orion Nebula and Trapezium Stars Sticker

tagged with: envelope sealers, ornebcsfr, awesome astronomy images, orion nebula, emission nebula, trapezium stars, emission nebulae, hot young stars, star nursery, new born stars, dust clouds

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous picture from the deep universe featuring the bubbling, seething mass of gas and dust that is the Orion Nebula, 1500 light years away and the closest star-forming region to us. The nebula is a star nursery in which there are birthing, new-born, young and adult stars. Look carefully in the brightest central region and you'll see the Trapezium, four of the most massive stars in Orion.

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image code: ornebcsfr

Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team

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Name, Tarantula Nebula, Intriguing Outer Space Gift Wrap

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Name, Tarantula Nebula, Intriguing Outer Space Gift Wrap

tagged with: dust clouds, new born stars, super star clusters, star cluster formation, agmcssc, antennae galaxies, merging galaxies, ngc4038 ngc4039, astronomy images, best hubble

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A stunning outer space picture featuring two merging galaxies, known as the Antennae Galaxies - NGC4038 and NGC4039. As these galaxies hurtle through each other, billions of new stars are forced to precipitate out of the gas and dust clouds by the bunching and heating that's caused by the massive gravitic interactions. These tend to occur in clusters, the brightest and most condensed of them being known as super star clusters.
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image code: agmcssc

Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration. Acknowledgement: B. Whitmore (Space Telescope Science Institute) and James Long (ESA/Hubble).

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Dragon cargo craft launch scrubbed; Station crew preps for spacewalk

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Monday's launch attempt of the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft, loaded with nearly 5,000 pounds of supplies for the International Space Station's Expedition 39 crew, was scrubbed due to a helium leak on the Falcon 9 first stage. The next launch opportunity would be Friday, April 18 at 3:25 p.m. EDT if the issue can be resolved.

via Science Daily

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Mammatus Clouds over Nebraska

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Nebulosity 360 Wall Art Wall Sticker

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Nebulosity 360 Wall Art Wall Sticker

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Make your room a space mans room

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Pushy neighbors force stellar twins to diverge

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(Phys.org) —Much like an environment influences people, so too do cosmic communities affect even giant dazzling stars: Peering deep into the Milky Way galaxy's center from a high-flying observatory, Cornell astronomers have discovered identical, rare stars whose diverging dusty and gaseous garb are strictly influenced by an intrusive cluster of neighbors.

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Strain can alter materials’ properties

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In the ongoing search for new materials for fuel cells, batteries, photovoltaics, separation membranes, and electronic devices, one newer approach involves applying and managing stresses within known materials to give them dramatically different properties. This development has been very exciting, says MIT associate professor of nuclear science and engineering Bilge Yildiz, one of the pioneers of this approach: “Traditionally, we make materials by changing compositions and structures, but we are now recognizing that strain is an additional parameter that we can change, instead of looking for new compositions.” Yildiz, who authored a recent Materials Research Society Bulletin paper describing work in this field, explains that “even though we are dealing with small amounts of strain” — displacing atoms within a structure by only a few percent — “the effects can be exponential,” in some cases improving key reaction rates by tenfold or more. While it may seem surprising that small displacements of atoms within a crystal lattice could have such large effects, Yildiz explains that in a normal, unstrained crystal structure, “atoms are at equilibrium positions. If you apply a strain, they are moved slightly from those equilibrium positions,” but their atomic bonds are not broken. However, the forces trying to pull

The post Strain can alter materials’ properties has been published on Technology Org.

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NASA Cassini images may reveal birth of a Saturn moon

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NASA's Cassini spacecraft has documented the formation of a small icy object within the rings of Saturn that may be a new moon, and may also provide clues to the formation of the planet's known moons.

via Science Daily

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SpaceX’s Dragon headed to space station to create astronaut farmers

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"Enter the Dragon" takes on a whole new meaning this month as SpaceX's Dragon capsule heads to the International Space Station for its third commercial resupply mission on April 14. During the SpaceX-3 mission, the Dragon capsule not only will deliver cargo to the orbiting laboratory, but it also will return science samples and hardware to Earth.

via Science Daily

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International Space Station to beam video via laser back to Earth

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A team of about 20 working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., through the lab's Phaeton early-career-hire program, led the development of the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) investigation, which is preparing for an April 14 launch to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX-3 mission. The goal? NASA's first optical communication experiment on the orbital laboratory.

via Science Daily

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Protein crystal experiment set to fly to International Space Station

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A biology professor’s experiment that is set to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) could shed new light on the roles enzymes play in biological processes. The experiment, Protein Crystals for Neutron Crystallography (PC4NC), studies an enzyme inorganic pyrophosphatase (IPPase).

via Science Daily

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The Planet Uranus Print

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The Planet Uranus Print

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The Planet Uranus Print. Uranus showing rings. Image courtesy: NASA.

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Large Magellanic Cloud Superbubble in Nebula N44 Sticker

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

Large Magellanic Cloud Superbubble in Nebula N44 Sticker

tagged with: envelope sealers, awesome astronomy images, interstellar hydrogen clouds, sbsblmc, star cluster ngc 1929, supernovas, new born stars, n44 nebula, dust clouds, star nursery, hot young stars

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series An awesome photograph from deep space featuring a super bubble in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a small satellite of our Milky Way galaxy around 160000 light years from us.
The massive stars of this nebula produce intense radiation, expelling matter at high speeds, and race through their main stage finally to explode as supernovas. The stellar winds of charged hydrogen and other particles and the supernova shock waves carve out huge cavities called superbubbles in the surrounding gas. Blue shows hot regions created by these winds and shocks, while red shows where the dust and cooler gas are found. Yellow regions show where ultraviolet radiation from hot, young stars is causing gas in the nebula to glow.

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image code: sbsblmc

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Mich./S.Oey, IR: NASA/JPL, Optical: ESO/WFI/2.2-m

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Name, Star Superbubble in Large Magellanic Cloud Gift Wrapping Paper

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Name, Star Superbubble in Large Magellanic Cloud Gift Wrapping Paper

tagged with: dust clouds, new born stars, star nursery, interstellar hydrogen clouds, n44 nebula, star cluster ngc 1929, supernovas, hrbstslr sbsblmc, astronomy images, outer space, hot young stars

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series An awesome photograph from deep space featuring a super bubble in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a small satellite of our Milky Way galaxy around 160000 light years from us.
The massive stars of this nebula produce intense radiation, expelling matter at high speeds, and race through their main stage finally to explode as supernovas. The stellar winds of charged hydrogen and other particles and the supernova shock waves carve out huge cavities called superbubbles in the surrounding gas. Blue shows hot regions created by these winds and shocks, while red shows where the dust and cooler gas are found. Yellow regions show where ultraviolet radiation from hot, young stars is causing gas in the nebula to glow.
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image code: sbsblmc

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Mich./S.Oey, IR: NASA/JPL, Optical: ESO/WFI/2.2-m

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Solar Flair Wall Skins

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Solar Flair Wall Skins

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Stunning Solar Flair iPad Air with sun flares, earth and nebulas. Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

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Crab Nebula 3 iPad Mini Cover

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Crab Nebula 3 iPad Mini Cover

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beautiful image captured by the hubble telescope

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