Steps into Space - Commercialisation, Occupation, Colonization: 04/26/14

Saturday, 26 April 2014

Researchers model world’s first carbon-based ‘spaser’

Your T-shirt’s ringing: Telecommunications in the spaser age A new version of “spaser” technology being investigated could mean that mobile phones become so small, efficient, and flexible they could be printed on clothing. A team of researchers from Monash University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering (ECSE) has modelled the world’s first spaser (surface plasmon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) to be made completely of carbon. A spaser is effectively a nanoscale laser or nanolaser. It emits a beam of light through the vibration of free electrons, rather than the space-consuming electromagnetic wave emission process of a traditional laser. PhD student and lead researcher Chanaka Rupasinghe said the modelled spaser design using carbon would offer many advantages. “Other spasers designed to date are made of gold or silver nanoparticles and semiconductor quantum dots while our device would be comprised of a graphene resonator and a carbon nanotube gain element,” Chanaka said. “The use of carbon means our spaser would be more robust and flexible, would operate at high temperatures, and be eco-friendly. “Because of these properties, there is the possibility that in the future an extremely thin mobile phone could be printed on clothing.” Read more at: Phys.org

The post Researchers model world’s first carbon-based ‘spaser’ has been published on Technology Org.

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What are the chances...?

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What are the chances...?
..actually, rather high, when we get the right tools to search with.

But that doesn't detract from this fantastic discovery. Another step on the way to becoming familiar and at ease with our galactic surroundings.

#outerspace #astronomy

Virgin Galactic originally shared:

Awesome news: Scientists from NASA just announced the first verified discovery of an Earth-sized planet inside the "habitable zone" of another star.

A habitable zone is defined as the range of distances from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet. You can read more about the discovery here: http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/nasas-kepler-discovers-first-earth-size-planet-in-the-habitable-zone-of-another-star/#.U1AZ1lVdXzh

So, who wants to go to Kepler-186f? <_raises hands_>

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original post: https://plus.google.com/116000959328274308893/posts/1bdpityFdba
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Turbulent Star-Birth Region Selection Print

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

Turbulent Star-Birth Region Selection Print

tagged with: hubble, nasa, stars, star, galaxy, galaxies, space, astronomy, telescope, beautiful, postcard, postcards, photos, photograph, gift, gifts, nebula, nature, landscapes

In commemoration of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left). The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of galaxies. The three-dimensional-looking image reveals dramatic ridges and valleys of dust, serpent-head "pillars of creation," and gaseous filaments glowing fiercely under torrential ultraviolet radiation. The region is on the edge of a dark molecular cloud that is an incubator for the birth of new stars. The high-energy radiation blazing out from clusters of hot young stars already born in NGC 2074 is sculpting the wall of the nebula by slowly eroding it away. Another young cluster may be hidden beneath a circle of brilliant blue gas at center, bottom. In this approximately 100-light-year-wide fantasy-like landscape, dark towers of dust rise above a glowing wall of gases on the surface of the molecular cloud. The seahorse-shaped pillar at lower, right is approximately 20 light-years long, roughly four times the distance between our Sun and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. The region is in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite of our Milky Way galaxy. It is a fascinating laboratory for observing star-formation regions and their evolution. Dwarf galaxies like the LMC are considered to be the primitive building blocks of larger galaxies. This representative color image was taken on August 10, 2008, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Red shows emission from sulfur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen. Source: NASA

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How some bugs are like bad Elvis impersonators

Science Focus

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If you're an Elvis impersonator, your impression better be pretty spot-on if you want to avoid getting heckled by the audience. But if you're any one of a number of animals that mimic other species to survive, a poor impression can mean death. Thankfully, a new study suggests that nature can be pretty forgiving of an imperfect imitation.

Some animals defend themselves from predators through what biologists call Batesian mimicry: they take on the appearance of another prey species that's poisonous, dangerous in some other way, or just plain unpalatable. Predators avoid the model species for good...

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original post: http://theweek.com/article/index/260088/how-some-bugs-are-like-bad-elvis-impersonators
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VIDEO: Nasa releases solar flare footage

Science Focus

original post »
Nasa has released dramatic footage of a solar flare, captured by its Solar Dynamics Observatory.
#science
original post: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26901112#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Massive asteroid may have kickstarted the movement of continents

Science Focus

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The Conversation

Earth was still a violent place shortly after life began, with regular impactors arriving from space. For the first time, scientists have modeled the effects of one such violent event — the strike of a giant asteroid. The effects were so catastrophic that, along with the large earthquakes and tsunamis it created, this asteroid may have also set continents into motion.

The asteroid to blame for this event would have been at least 37km in diameter, which is roughly four times the size of the asteroid that is alleged to have caused the death of dinosaurs. It would have hit the surface of...

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original post: http://theweek.com/article/index/260010/massive-asteroid-may-have-kickstarted-the-movement-of-continents
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Name, Wreath Nebula, intriguing outer space image Wrapping Paper

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Name, Wreath Nebula, intriguing outer space image Wrapping Paper

tagged with: wnmwbpt, interstellar gas clouds, awesome astronomy images, dust clouds, milky way, wreath nebula, outer space pictures, galaxy stars, star nurseries, nebula astronomy, star forming activity, young hot stars, new born stars, metallic elements

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous outer space picture featuring the Wreath Nebula, located in our Milky way near the boundary between the constellations of Perseus and Taurus.
Tiny particles of dust, glowing warmly in the energy being radiated by the new-born star are similar to those in the composition of our Earthly smog. The red cloud is cooler than its environs and likely comprises more metallic elements as well.
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Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

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Eagle Nebula, Pillars of Creation Oval Sticker

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Eagle Nebula, Pillars of Creation Oval Sticker

tagged with: breathtaking astronomy images, eglneb, young stars clusters, star forming nebulae, messier 16 ngc 6611, pillars of creation, inspirational, eagle nebula, heavens, stars, eso, european southern observatory, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A breathtaking outer space picture showing a spectacular three-colour composite mosaic image of the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16, or NGC 6611). It's based on images obtained with the Wide-Field Imager camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory.

At the centre, the so-called “Pillars of Creation” can be seen and this wide-field image shows not only the central pillars, but also several others in the same star-forming region, as well as a huge number of stars in front of, in, or behind the Eagle Nebula.

The cluster of bright stars to the upper right is NGC 6611, home to the massive and hot stars that illuminate the pillars. The “Spire” - another large pillar - is in the middle left of the image.

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image code: eglneb

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

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Southern Annular Eclipse

It's eclipse season, and on April 29 around 06:00 UT the shadow of the new Moon will reach out and touch planet Earth, though only just. Still, if you're standing on the continent of Antarctica within a few hundred kilometers of 79 degrees 38.7 minutes South latitude and 131 degrees 15.6 minutes East longitude you could see an annular solar eclipse with the Sun just above the horizon. Because the Moon will be approaching apogee, the most distant point in the elliptical lunar orbit, its apparent size will be too small to completely cover the solar disk. A rare, off-center eclipse, the annular phase will last at most 49 seconds. At its maximum it could look something like this "ring of fire" image from last May's annular solar eclipse, captured by a webcast team operating near Coen, Australia. Otherwise, a partial eclipse with the Moon covering at least some part of the Sun will be seen across a much broader region in the southern hemipshere, including Australia in the afternoon.

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Enlarged Region of The Omega Nebula Room Graphic

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

Enlarged Region of The Omega Nebula Room Graphic

tagged with: stars, galaxies, astronomy, universe, outer space, eroton, galaxy, star, wall decal, galaxies stars, gas clouds, star forming activity, green hydrogen, blue oxygen, omega nebula m17, ultraviolet radiation, young massive stars, red sulpher

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Like the fury of a raging sea, this bubbly ocean of glowing hydrogen, oxygen, and sulphur gas lies in the extremely massive and luminous molecular nebula Messier 17.
This Hubble photograph captures a small region within Messier 17 (M17), a hotbed of star formation. M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5500 light-years away in the Sagittarius constellation.
Ultraviolet radiation is carving and heating the surfaces of cold hydrogen gas clouds and the warmed surfaces glow orange and red. The intense heat and pressure causes some material to stream away from the surface, creating the glowing veil of even hotter green-coloured gas that masks background structures. The colours in the image represent various gases. Red represents sulphur; green, hydrogen; and blue, oxygen.

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image code: eroton

Image credit: NASA, the ACS Science Team

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Team finds electricity can be generated by dragging saltwater over graphene

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Illustration of the experimental set-up. A liquid droplet is sandwiched between graphene and a SiO2/Si wafer, and drawn by the wafer at speciﬁc velocities. Inset: a droplet of 0.6 M NaCl solution on a graphene surface with advancing and receding contact angles of 91.98 and 60.28, respectively. Credit: Nature Nanotechnology (2014) doi:10.1038/nnano.2014.56 A team of researchers at China’s Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, studying graphene properties, has discovered that the act of dragging saltwater over a piece of graphene can generate electricity. In their paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, the team describes how in seeking to turn the idea of submerging carbon nanotubes in a flowing liquid to generate a voltage on its head, they came upon the idea of simply dragging water droplets across graphene instead. Because of graphene’s unique electrical properties, researchers have been hard at work trying to determine if it can be used to generate electricity at a lower cost (and in cleaner fashion) than conventional methods. To date, scientists have been using a technique whereby ionic fluids are pushed through different types of nanostructures—it works, but a pressure gradient must be used, which causes the approach to be inefficient. Others have looked at putting carbon nanotubes in

The post Team finds electricity can be generated by dragging saltwater over graphene has been published on Technology Org.

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A great summary of a supernova

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A great summary of a supernova
Aimed at kids but I loved it ;)
#outerspace #astronomy

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory originally shared:

Space Scoop: Sweeping Supernovas
This space photograph shows a 2200-year-old supernova remnant that is sweeping up a remarkable amount of material - enough to make 45 Suns!

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2014/g352/kids.html

http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/podcasts/sd.html

original post: https://plus.google.com/116000959328274308893/posts/FAeE6APSefb
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The Carina Nebula Hubble Print

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

The Carina Nebula Hubble Print

tagged with: astronomy, space, hubble, nasa, print, prints, posters, cool, beautiful, photographs, pictures, gifts, photography

The Carina Nebula Hubble Print. In celebration of the 17th anniversary of the launch and deployment of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers is releasing one of the largest panoramic images ever taken with Hubble's cameras. It is a 50-light-year-wide view of the central region of the Carina Nebula where a maelstrom of star birth — and death — is taking place. This image is a mosaic of the Carina Nebula assembled from 48 frames taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Hubble images were taken in the light of neutral hydrogen during March and July 2005. Color information was added with data taken in December 2001 and March 2003 at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Red corresponds to sulfur, green to hydrogen, and blue to oxygen emission. Courtesy: NASA.

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Dumbbell Nebula in Taurus Oval Stickers

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

Dumbbell Nebula in Taurus Oval Stickers

tagged with: awesome astronomy images, inspirational, dmbblneb, vulpecula constellation, intense ultraviolet radiation, messier 27 ngc 6853, heavens, stars, dumbbell nebula, the fox constellation, european southern observatory, eso, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A great photo from deep space featuring the Dumbbell Nebula - also known as Messier 27 or NGC 6853. It's a typical planetary nebula and is located in the constellation Vulpecula (The Fox).

The distance is rather uncertain, but is believed to be around 1,200 light-years. It was first described by the French astronomer and comet hunter Charles Messier who found it in 1764 and included it as no. 27 in his famous list of extended sky objects.

Despite its class, the Dumbbell Nebula has nothing to do with planets. It consists of very rarefied gas that has been ejected from the hot central star (well visible on this photo), now in one of the last evolutionary stages. The gas atoms in the nebula are excited (heated) by the intense ultraviolet radiation from this star and emit strongly at specific wavelengths.

This image is the beautiful by-product of a technical test of some FORS1 narrow-band optical interference filters. They only allow light in a small wavelength range to pass and are used to isolate emissions from particular atoms and ions.

In this three-colour composite, a short exposure was first made through a wide-band filter registering blue light from the nebula. It was then combined with exposures through two interference filters in the light of double-ionized oxygen atoms and atomic hydrogen. They were colour-coded as “blue”, “green” and “red”, respectively, and then combined to produce this picture that shows the structure of the nebula in “approximately true” colours.

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

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Name, Cats Eye Nebula, Eye of God outer space Gift Wrap Paper

Get your out-of-this-world gift wrap here! Perfect for Christmas gifts for anyone who is fascinated by what the universe holds in store for us!

Name, Cats Eye Nebula, Eye of God outer space Gift Wrap Paper

tagged with: nebulae, hubble chandra images, cats eye nebula, dying star, red giant evolution, outer space, galaxy stars, tcenebnch, deep space astronomy, eye of god, stellar evolution, nasa

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous design featuring a composite image of the Cat's Eye nebula from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope.
This famous nebula represents a phase of stellar evolution after a star like our Sun runs out of fuel. In this phase, a star becomes an expanding red giant and sheds some of its outer layers, eventually leaving behind a hot core that collapses to form a dense white dwarf star. A fast wind emanating from the hot core rams into the ejected atmosphere, pushes it outward, and creates the graceful filamentary structures.
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image code: tcenebnch

Image credit: NASA/Chandra www.nasa.gov

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Star Cluster Pismis 24, core of NGC 6357 Room Decals

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

Star Cluster Pismis 24, core of NGC 6357 Room Decals

tagged with: stars, galaxies, astronomy, wall decal, star cluster, pismis 24, sculpting ultaviolet ionisation, super massive stars, sclustpsms, nebula ngc 6357

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series The star cluster Pismis 24 lies in the core of the large emission nebula NGC 6357 that extends one degree on the sky in the direction of the Scorpius constellation. Part of the nebula is ionised by the youngest (bluest) heavy stars in Pismis 24. The intense ultraviolet radiation from the blazing stars heats the gas surrounding the cluster and creates a bubble in NGC 6357. The presence of these surrounding gas clouds makes probing into the region even harder. One of the top candidates for the title of "Milky Way stellar heavyweight champion" was, until now, Pismis 24-1, a bright young star that lies in the core of the small open star cluster Pismis 24 (the bright stars in the Hubble image) about 8,000 light-years away from Earth. Pismis 24-1 was thought to have an incredibly large mass of 200 to 300 solar masses. New NASA/ESA Hubble measurements of the star, have, however, resolved Pismis 24-1 into two separate stars, and, in doing so, have "halved" its mass to around 100 solar masses.

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Image credit: NASA/ESA Hubble

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Nebulae Photo by Hubble Telescope Case 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!

Nebulae Photo by Hubble Telescope Case For The iPad Mini

tagged with: nebulae, nebula, images of nebulae, photos of nebulae, space, deep space, hubble, hubble telescope, hubble telescope photos, images from hubble telescope, photos from hubble telescope, hubble nebulae, nasa photos, space photos, astronomy photos, astronomy, images of space, photos of space, pictures of space

Photo of nebulae taken by the Hubble Telescope. A stunning colorful photo of deep space.

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