Steps into Space - Commercialisation, Occupation, Colonization: 09/09/14

Tuesday, 9 September 2014

Water and sunlight the formula for sustainable fuel

An ANU team has successfully replicated one of the crucial steps in photosynthesis, opening the way for biological systems powered by sunlight which could manufacture hydrogen as a fuel. “Water is abundant and so is sunlight. It is an exciting prospect to use them to create hydrogen, and do it cheaply and safely,” said Dr Kastoori Hingorani, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis in the ANU Research School of Biology. Hydrogen offers potential as a zero-carbon replacement for petroleum products, and is already used for launching space craft. However, until this work, the way that plants produce hydrogen by splitting water has been poorly understood. The team created a protein which, when exposed to light, displays the electrical heartbeat that is the key to photosynthesis. The system uses a naturally-occurring protein and does not need batteries or expensive metals, meaning it could be affordable in developing countries, Dr Hingorani said. Co-researcher Professor Ron Pace said the research opened up new possibilities for manufacturing hydrogen as a cheap and clean source of fuel. “This is the first time we have replicated the primary capture of energy from sunlight,” Professor Pace said. “It’s the beginning of a whole suite

The post Water and sunlight the formula for sustainable fuel has been published on Technology Org.

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Phosphorus a promising semiconductor: Physicists find 2-D form pays no heed to defects

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The two-dimensional form of phosphorus may be a useful, flaw-resistant semiconductor for electronics. Theory shows the material's electronic properties are not affected by point defects or grain boundaries.

via Science Daily

Monogram - Stellar Nursery R136, Tarantula Nebula Sticker

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

Monogram - Stellar Nursery R136, Tarantula Nebula Sticker

tagged with: stars, galaxies, astronomy, galaxy, envelope sealers, dorneblmc, stellar nursery, r136, massive stars, large magellanic cloud, star cluster, amazing hubble images, tarantula nebula, monogram initials, 30 doradus nebula

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Hundreds of brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds in appear in this the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood. The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus (or Tarantula) Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.
There is no known star-forming region in our galaxy as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus. Many of the diamond-like icy blue stars are among the most massive stars known. Several of them are over 100 times more massive than our Sun. These hefty stars are destined to pop off, like a string of firecrackers, as supernovas in a few million years. The image, taken in ultraviolet, visible, and red light by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, spans about 100 light-years.
The movement of the LMC around the Milky Way may have triggered the massive cluster's formation in several ways. The gravitational tug of the Milky Way and the companion Small Magellanic Cloud may have compressed gas in the LMC. Also, the pressure resulting from the LMC plowing through the Milky Way's halo may have compressed gas in the satellite. The cluster is a rare, nearby example of the many super star clusters that formed in the distant, early universe, when star birth and galaxy interactions were more frequent.
The LMC is located 170,000 light-years away and is a member of the Local Group of Galaxies, which also includes the Milky Way. The Hubble observations were taken Oct. 20-27, 2009. The blue color is light from the hottest, most massive stars; the green from the glow of oxygen; and the red from fluorescing hydrogen.

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Image credit: Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3

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Hubble Finds Companion Star Hidden for 21 Years in a Supernova's Glare

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For over two decades astronomers have been patiently monitoring the fading glow of a supernova in a nearby galaxy. They've been looking for a suspected companion star that pulled off almost all of the hydrogen from the doomed star that exploded. At last Hubble's ultraviolet-light sensitivity pulled out the blue glow of the star from the cluttered starlight in the disk of the galaxy. This observation confirms the theory that the supernova originated in a double-star system where one star fueled the mass-loss from the aging primary star. The surviving star's brightness and estimated mass provide insight into the conditions that preceded the 1993 explosion.

via HubbleSite NewsCenter -- Latest News Releases

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2014/38/

Galileo quote posters

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Galileo quote posters

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Trinitite: The radioactive rock buried in New Mexico before the Atari games

Science Focus

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Trinitite specimens.

mseery

Four months ago, Ars Technica sent me out to Alamogordo, New Mexico to be present at the unearthing of a landfill that was long-rumored to hold a trove of Atari games, dumped at the site after the video game crash of 1983. As I was preparing for the trip, my coworkers and I chatted about the event in the editors' IRC channel.

”When you’re hanging out in the trash dump be sure to look out for Trinitite,” automotive editor Jonathan Gitlin told me.

”What’s Trinitite?” I asked. He explained that it was a type of radioactive glass that formed during the first test of the first nuclear bomb in 1945. I did a quick Google search and understood (somewhat incorrectly, more on that later) that collecting and selling Trinitite had been made illegal long ago. I made a mental note to keep an eye out for the murky green or red glass when I was in Alamogordo, and I finished booking my motel room.

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Learning from origami to design new materials

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A challenge increasingly important to physicists and materials scientists in recent years has been how to design controllable new materials that exhibit desired physical properties rather than relying on those properties to emerge naturally, says University of Massachusetts Amherst physicist Christian Santangelo. Caption: Physicists and materials scientists are using origami-based folding methods, or tessellation, for ‘tuning’ the fundamental physical properties of thin sheets, which could help develop molecular-scale machines that snap into place and perform mechanical tasks. Credit: Jesse Silverberg, Cornell University Now he and physicist Arthur Evans and polymer scientist Ryan Hayward at UMass Amherst, with others at Cornell and Western New England University, are using origami-based folding methods for “tuning” the fundamental physical properties of any type of thin sheet, which may eventually lead to development of molecular-scale machines that could snap into place and perform mechanical tasks. Results are reported today in an early online edition of Science. At a physics meeting a couple of years ago, Santangelo mentioned the unusual properties of a special type of origami fold called Miura-ori to fellow physicist Jesse Silverberg of Cornell, a long-time origami enthusiast. Miura-ori, named after the astrophysicist who invented the technique, is a series folded parallelograms that change the stiffness of

The post Learning from origami to design new materials has been published on Technology Org.

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The black hole at the birth of the Universe

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The Birth of Universe. Credit: Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics Our universe may have emerged from a black hole in a higher-dimensional universe, propose a trio of Perimeter Institute researchers. The big bang poses a big question: if it was indeed the cataclysm that blasted ouruniverse into existence 13.7 billion years ago, what sparked it? Three Perimeter Institute researchers have a new idea about what might have come before the big bang. It’s a bit perplexing, but it is grounded in sound mathematics, testable, and enticing enough to earn the cover story in Scientific American, called “The Black Hole at the Beginning of Time.” What we perceive as the big bang, they argue, could be the three-dimensional “mirage” of a collapsing star in a universe profoundly different than our own. “Cosmology’s greatest challenge is understanding the big bang itself,” write Perimeter Institute Associate Faculty member Niayesh Afshordi, Affiliate Faculty member and University of Waterloo professor Robert Mann, and PhD student Razieh Pourhasan. Conventional understanding holds that the big bang began with a singularity – an unfathomably hot and dense phenomenon of spacetime where the standard laws of physics break down. Singularities are bizarre, and our understanding of them is limited. Read more at: Phys.org

The post The black hole at the birth of the Universe has been published on Technology Org.

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Monogram - Stellar Nursery R136, Tarantula Nebula Sticker

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

Monogram - Stellar Nursery R136, Tarantula Nebula Sticker

An Aurora Cupcake with a Milky Way Topping

Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

Stellar Spire Wall Graphics

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

Stellar Spire Wall Graphics

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Photograph of Stellar Spire in the Eagle Nebula by NASA and ESA.

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Pink Blue Stars Cross White iPad Air Cases

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!

Pink Blue Stars Cross White iPad Air Cases

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Simple cross shape colored with a NASA Hubble space image of the colorful blue and pink galaxy cluster Abell 2744. You can change the background color.

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Turning waste from rice, parsley and other foods into biodegradable bioplastics

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Your chairs, synthetic rugs and plastic bags could one day be made out of cocoa, rice and vegetable waste rather than petroleum, scientists are now reporting. The novel process they developed and their results, which could help the world deal with its agricultural and plastic waste problems, appear in the ACS journal Macromolecules. Athanassia Athanassiou, Ilker S. Bayer and colleagues at the Italian Institute of Technology point out that plastic’s popularity is constantly growing. In 2012, its production reached 288 million tons worldwide, but its ubiquity comes at a cost. Synthetic plastics persist for hundreds or thousands of years while releasing toxic components with the potential to harm the environment and human health. Also, plastics are made out of petroleum, which is a nonrenewable source. The shift to more environmentally friendly bioplastics has been challenging and expensive. Athanassiou’s team wanted to find a simple, less costly way to make the transition. They turned to an organic acid that also occurs naturally and can process cellulose, which is the main building component of plants and also the most abundant polymer in nature. They mixed the acid with parsley and spinach stems, and husks from rice and cocoa pods. Then, they poured the

The post Turning waste from rice, parsley and other foods into biodegradable bioplastics has been published on Technology Org.

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Sunblock poses potential hazard to sea life

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The sweet and salty aroma of sunscreen and seawater signals a relaxing trip to the shore. But scientists are now reporting that the idyllic beach vacation comes with an environmental hitch. When certain sunblock ingredients wash off skin and into the sea, they can become toxic to some of the ocean’s tiniest inhabitants, which are the main course for many other marine animals. Their study appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology. Antonio Tovar-Sanchez and David Sánchez-Quiles point out that other than staying indoors, slathering on sunscreen is currently the best way to protect skin from the sun’s harmful rays. But when sunbathers splash into the ocean to cool off, some of their lotions and creams get rinsed into the water. The problem is that titanium dioxide and zinc oxide nanoparticles, which are common ingredients in sunblock, can react with ultraviolet light from the sun and form new compounds, such as hydrogen peroxide, that could be toxic. High amounts of hydrogen peroxide can harm phytoplankton, the microscopic algae that feed everything from small fish to shrimp to whales. The scientists wanted to figure out just how serious of an impact beachgoers could be having on life in coastal waters.

The post Sunblock poses potential hazard to sea life has been published on Technology Org.

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NASA's RapidScat: Some assembly required -- in space

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NASA's ISS-RapidScat wind-watching scatterometer, which is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station no earlier than Sept. 19, will be the first science payload to be robotically assembled in space since the space station itself. This image shows the instrument assembly on the left, shrouded in white. On the right is Rapid-Scat's nadir adapter, a very sophisticated bracket that points the scatterometer toward Earth so that it can record the direction and speed of ocean winds. The two pieces are stowed in the unpressurized trunk of a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

via Science Daily

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Evidence of 'diving' tectonic plates on Jupiter's moon Europa

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Scientists have found evidence of plate tectonics on Jupiter's moon Europa. This indicates the first sign of this type of surface-shifting geological activity on a world other than Earth. "Europa may be more Earth-like than we imagined, if it has a global plate tectonic system," said one of the researchers.

via Science Daily

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Planet forming around star about 335 light years from Earth

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Scientists have discovered what they believe is evidence of a planet forming around a star about 335 light years from Earth. Astronomers set out to study the protoplanetary disk around a star known as HD 100546, and as sometimes happens in scientific inquiry, it was by "chance" that they stumbled upon the formation of the planet orbiting this star.

via Science Daily

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Center of Milky Way in Sagittarius Print

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

Center of Milky Way in Sagittarius Print

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ImageID: RR016935 / Roger Ressmeyer / CORBIS / Center of Milky Way in Sagittarius /

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Star Cluster Pismis 24, core of NGC 6357 Sticker

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Star Cluster Pismis 24, core of NGC 6357 Sticker

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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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Trendy Cool Sparkly New Nebula Design Room Stickers

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

Trendy Cool Sparkly New Nebula Design Room Stickers

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Cute and trendy pink blue teal nebula design with bright sparkly stars. All are photo printed.

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The Crab Nebula iPad Air Covers

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The Crab Nebula iPad Air Covers

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Lovely space image of the Crab Nebula thanks to NASA Hubble: A Giant Hubble Mosaic of the Crab Nebula.

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Interactive dark matter could explain Milky Way's missing satellite galaxies

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Scientists believe they have found a way to explain why there are not as many galaxies orbiting the Milky Way as expected.

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