Steps into Space - Commercialisation, Occupation, Colonization: 08/28/14

Thursday, 28 August 2014

NIST to Establish Research Center of Excellence for Forensic Science

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced a competition to create a Forensic Science Center of Excellence dedicated to collaborative, interdisciplinary research. The center’s mission will be to establish a firm scientific foundation for the analytic techniques used in two important branches of forensic science, pattern evidence and digital evidence. The seminal 2009 National Research Council report Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States – A Path Forward called for a thorough examination of the techniques used in forensic analysis to better understand their strengths and limitations. It also called for establishing scientifically rigorous standards and practices, including the development of tools and methods to better standardize analytical protocols. Forensic investigations involve the collection of evidence, measurements of the evidence, analysis of those measurements and the determination of conclusions of known validity. One important goal is to develop so-called “probabilistic methods”—techniques that produce a quantifiable assessment of the likelihood that a given method produced a correct result. Forensic DNA analyses, for example, typically report the probability that an apparent match between two separate samples could come about by chance. The new NIST-sponsored center will focus on developing probabilistic methods for dealing with pattern evidence and digital evidence. Pattern

The post NIST to Establish Research Center of Excellence for Forensic Science has been published on Technology Org.

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Astronomers find evidence of water clouds in brown dwarf atmosphere

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(Phys.org) —A team of researchers, led by space scientist Jacqueline Faherty, has found evidence of water clouds in the atmosphere of a brown dwarf situated just 7.3 light years away. In their paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the team describes how they found evidence of the water clouds and where the research is headed next.

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Scientists craft atomically seamless, thinnest-possible semiconductor junctions

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Scientists have developed what they believe is the thinnest-possible semiconductor, a new class of nanoscale materials made in sheets only three atoms thick.

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Crab Nebula Astronomy and Science Poster

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

Crab Nebula Astronomy and Science Poster

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Crab Nebula a supernova explosion remnant - this striking image by the Hubble Space Telescope, is a unique gift idea for the space science, astronmer and astrophysics enthusiast on you Holiday gift list or a special gift for any occasion.

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We could find alien life -- but Congress doesn't have the will

Science Focus

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The Conversation

While alien life can be seen nightly on television and in the movies, it has never been seen in space. Not so much as a microbe, dead or alive, let alone a wrinkle-faced Klingon.

Despite this lack of protoplasmic presence, there are many researchers — sober, sckptical academics — who think that life beyond Earth is rampant. They suggest proof may come within a generation. These scientists support their sunny point of view with a few astronomical facts that were unknown a generation ago.

In particular, and thanks largely to the success of NASA's Kepler space telescope, we can now...

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» see original post http://theweek.com/article/index/266264/we-could-find-alien-life--but-congress-doesnt-have-the-will
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Weak forces hold rubble-pile asteroids together

Science Focus

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There are millions of these lurking in Earth’s back yard.

NASA

Millions of asteroids of all shapes and sizes are littered throughout the inner Solar System. In the past three decades, scientists have spotted as many as 500,000, but plenty more remain unseen. And many of them have a “rubble pile” internal structure, which is rather unusual compared to other bodies in the Solar System.

Rubble-pile asteroids are exactly what they sound like: a grouping of different sized rocks brought together under the influence of gravity. Its constituent pieces could be anything from large boulders tens of meters in size to dust particles smaller than a thousandth of a meter in diameter.

Until now, it was assumed that the main forces that hold all these pieces together were gravity and friction. But a rubble-pile asteroid named (29075) 1950 DA, with a diameter of 1.3km, is an exceptional case, one where some other force must be involved.

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» see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/4U_0UKJpubE/
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Physicist develops stochastic model to describe interbeat variation patterns between musicians

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Two professional musicians A and B synchronizing their beats. Credit: PNAS, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1324142111 Physicist Holger Hennig, currently with OptWare in Munich, Germany, has developed a stochastic model to describe synchronization that occurs in human musical rhythms that involve more than one person. In his paper published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Henning describes how he discovered that when two musicians are playing together, a beat played by one person can depend on up to several minutes of the other person’s prior interbeat intervals—the model he developed can be used, he claims, to produce more natural sounding computer generated music. Most people can tell when the music they are listening to is backed by computer generated sounds, whether percussion, stringed instruments or even other beat setting implements—it just sounds too “perfect” to the human ear. For that reason, scientists have been searching for ways to introduce less perfection, to fool the listener into believing they are listening to music created exclusively by humans (because most people prefer it that way). Read more at: Phys.org

The post Physicist develops stochastic model to describe interbeat variation patterns between musicians has been published on Technology Org.

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» see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/tZufmNw4-iM/
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Initialled Dumbbell Nebula Constellation Vulpecula Stickers

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

Initialled Dumbbell Nebula Constellation Vulpecula Stickers

tagged with: awesome astronomy images, inspirational, dmbblneb, vulpecula constellation, intense ultraviolet radiation, european southern observatory, messier 27 ngc 6853, heavens, monograms, initialled, eso, vista, initials, monogrammed, monogram

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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Rosetta arrival competition winners

As Rosetta made its final approach to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, we asked you to join this extraordinary adventure by sharing pictures of your journeys, participating in a fun photo contest that attracted hundreds of entries and nearly 23 000 votes.

via ESA Space Science

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_arrival_competition_winners

Messier 20 and 21

The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. About 5,000 light-years away, the colorful study in cosmic contrasts shares this well-composed, nearly 1 degree wide field with open star cluster Messier 21 (top right). Trisected by dust lanes the Trifid itself is about 40 light-years across and a mere 300,000 years old. That makes it one of the youngest star forming regions in our sky, with newborn and embryonic stars embedded in its natal dust and gas clouds. Estimates of the distance to open star cluster M21 are similar to M20's, but though they share this gorgeous telescopic skyscape there is no apparent connection between the two. In fact, M21's stars are much older, about 8 million years old.

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Planet, stars and Sun in Galaxy Fantasy Art Room Sticker

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

Planet, stars and Sun in Galaxy Fantasy Art Room Sticker

tagged with: planets, galaxy, universe, solar system, fantasy art, nebula, stars, cosmos, sun, astronomy, sci fi, science fiction

Planet, stars and sun in the galaxy fantasy art design with a graphic design of a gas planet with rings in colors of beige against a solar system of pink, mauve, and light purple, and a sun with a solar flare, and a nebula. Stars dot the cosmic sky. This fantasy art of the universe can be printed on many different products.

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Turbulent Star-Birth Region Selection 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!

Turbulent Star-Birth Region Selection Case For The iPad Mini

tagged with: hubble, nasa, stars, star, galaxy, galaxies, space, astronomy, telescope, beautiful, photos, 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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NMR Using Earth’s Magnetic Field

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Earth’s magnetic field, a familiar directional indicator over long distances, is routinely probed in applications ranging from geology to archaeology. Now it has provided the basis for a technique which might, one day, be used to characterize the chemical composition of fluid mixtures in their native environments. Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) conducted a proof-of-concept NMR experiment in which a mixture of hydrocarbons and water was analyzed using a high-sensitivity magnetometer and a magnetic field comparable to that of the Earth. The work was conducted in the NMR laboratory of Alexander Pines, one of the world’s foremost NMR authorities, as part of a long-standing collaboration with physicist Dmitry Budker at the University of California, Berkeley, along with colleagues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The work will be featured on the cover of Angewandte Chemie and is published in a paper titled “Ultra-Low-Field NMR Relaxation and Diffusion Measurements Using an Optical Magnetometer.” The corresponding author is Paul Ganssle, who was a PhD student in Pines’ lab at the time of the work. “This fundamental research program seeks to answer a broad question: how can we sense the interior chemical and

The post NMR Using Earth’s Magnetic Field has been published on Technology Org.

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Cherry picking molecules based on their Pi electrons

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To eliminate the extreme cooling and high pressures used to separate ethylene and ethane, an international team of scientists, including researchers at DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, designed a sorbent that greatly prefers ethylene. Specialized windshield glass, everyday plastic water bottles, and countless other products are based onethylene, a simple two-carbon molecule, which requires an energy-intense separation process to pluck the desired chemical away from nearly identical ethane. To eliminate the extreme cooling required in the separation, an international team including researchers at DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory designed a material with a porous framework that greatly prefers ethylene. What makes this material particularly potent is that the highly selective sorbent is stable in air and water. In addition, the framework offers a high surface area that speeds the sorting. The material contains silver that binds with the electrons around ethylene’s double-bonded carbon atoms. These electrons are known as π electrons or the π cloud. Every year, billions of tons of ethylene are produced by steam cracking and thermally decomposing ethane. Because ethylene and ethane are roughly the same size and become gases at nearly the same temperature, separating the molecules is extremely difficult on a large scale. This study describes a promising material

The post Cherry picking molecules based on their Pi electrons has been published on Technology Org.

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Carina Nebula Hubble Space Room Graphic

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

Carina Nebula Hubble Space Room Graphic

tagged with: carina nebula, nebula, astronomy, stars, nasa, mystic mountain, outer space, deep space, nature, cool astronomy, star formation, milky way, hh 901, hh 902, esa, universe, hubble telescope, hubble space telescope, hubble photo, cosmos, astronomical, cosmology, space, natural, science, space picture, space image, nebula picture, cool astronomy photo, cool space photo, nebula photo, nebula image

Hubble telescope photograph of the Carina Nebula

This photo of the Carina Nebula was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. It is reminiscent of a sci-fi/fantasy illustration, and shows an enormous mountainous pillar of dust and gas in rich orange tones, against a starlit deep blue background.

Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)

You can personalise the design further if you'd prefer, such as by adding your name or other text, or adjusting the image - just click 'Customize it' to see all the options. IMPORTANT: If you choose a different sized version of the product, it's important to click Customize and check the image in the Design view to ensure it fills the area to the edge of the product, otherwise white edges may be visible.

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Monogram - Eagle Nebula, Pillars of Creation Stickers

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

Monogram - Eagle Nebula, Pillars of Creation Stickers

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

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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ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
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Rubber meets the road with new carbon, battery technologies

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Recycled tires could see new life in lithium-ion batteries that provide power to plug-in electric vehicles and store energy produced by wind and solar, say researchers. By modifying the microstructural characteristics of carbon black, a substance recovered from discarded tires, a team is developing a better anode for lithium-ion batteries.

via Science Daily

Atomically seamless, thinnest-possible semiconductor junctions crafted by scientists

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Two single-layer semiconductor materials can be connected in an atomically seamless fashion known as a heterojunction, researchers say. This result could be the basis for next-generation flexible and transparent computing, better light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, and solar technologies.

via Science Daily

Helix Nebula Wall Decor

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

Helix Nebula Wall Decor

tagged with: galaxies and stars, dek ornament, star nurseries, star clusters, astronomy, nebulae, helixneb, helix nebula, starfields, european southern observatory, eso, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic colour-composite image of the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293). It was created from images obtained using the Wide Field Imager (WFI), an astronomical camera attached to the 2.2-metre Max-Planck Society/ESO telescope at the La Silla observatory in Chile.

The blue-green glow in the centre of the Helix comes from oxygen atoms shining under effects of the intense ultraviolet radiation of the 120 000 degree Celsius central star and the hot gas.

Further out from the star and beyond the ring of knots, the red colour from hydrogen and nitrogen is more prominent. A careful look at the central part of this object reveals not only the knots, but also many remote galaxies seen right through the thinly spread glowing gas.
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Veil Nebula 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!

Veil Nebula Case For The iPad Mini

tagged with: international, astronomy, space, nasa, hubble, telescope, gift, outer space, deep space, star

Supernova discoveries are reported to the International Astronomical Union's Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, which sends out a circular with the name it assigns to it. The name is the year of discovery, immediately followed by a one or two-letter designation. The first 26 supernovae of the year are designated with a capital letter from A to Z. Afterward pairs of lower-case letters are used: aa, ab, and so on.[36] Since 2000, professional and amateur astronomers find several hundreds of supernovae each year (572 in 2007, 261 in 2008, 390 in 2009). For example, the last supernova of 2005 was SN 2005nc, indicating that it was the 367th[nb 1] supernova found in 2005.[37][38] Historical supernovae are known simply by the year they occurred: SN 185, SN 1006, SN 1054, SN 1572 (Tycho's Nova) and SN 1604 (Kepler's Star). Since 1885 the letter notation has been used, even if there was only one supernova discovered that year (e.g. SN 1885A, 1907A, etc.)—this last happened with SN 1947A. "SN", for SuperNova, is a standard prefix. Until 1987, two-letter designations were rarely needed; since 1988, however, they have been needed every year.

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