Magnetized plasma emissions to drive interplanetary spacecraft

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Adriana

A revolutionary new system of magnetized plasma emissions, already designed but not yet built, would boost spacecraft speeds high enough, for example, dramatically reduce travel time of a manned spacecraft to Mars, facilitating similarly its return. It would be possible to travel to Mars and return to Earth in 90 days instead of 2 ½ years and now it would take to get there and back by conventional space propulsion technology.

The system would allow interplanetary space travel will become a quick and routine.

Furthermore, projecting jets of plasma away from this class would be feasible to expel useless satellites and other space junk in orbit now occupied, without any device install them annoying to those objects. Thus, it could sweep most congested orbits, making it much safer and easier driving on them for space vehicles in use. Continue reading →

New evidence of water erosion on Mars

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Adriana

The Mars Express of ESA shows a region of the Red Planet appears to have been carved by flowing water. These images are added to the long list of evidence for the existence of large bodies of water on the surface of Mars at some point in their past.

On 21 June last year, Mars Express said its high-resolution stereo camera (HRSC) to the western part of Acidalia Planitia, a huge basin in the northern lowlands of Mars, near where it meets Tempe Terra, a higher ground and oldest.

Acidalia Planitia is a region so extensive that it can be seen from Earth with an amateur telescope.

The famous astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli named this great dark spot under the name of the mythical Fountain Acidalia in Boeotia, where according to Greek mythology Venus bathed with the three Graces. Continue reading →

Trace the water runs into the Earth’s mantle

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Adriana

The Marianas Trench, the deepest place on Earth, in the western Pacific Ocean near Guam, is the site chosen by a group of scientists to carry out an ambitious tracking project: to track as accurately as possible the water seeping from the seabed to the Earth’s mantle.

The mantle is a layer of rock that extends from the outer planet’s core, about 2,900 kilometers deep, and about 50 kilometers below the surface, just below the crust.

The Marianas Trench is a subduction zone where the Pacific plate, old, cold and dense, it slides under the plate of the Marianas, younger and lighter as the plates converge slowly, the front edge of the Pacific plate plunges deep within the Earth’s mantle. Continue reading →

The dark cloud which is to be born a star

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Adriana

Through radio observations in the infrared has been achieved behind the scenes glimpse of a cloud of gas and dust at a crucial stage prior to the birth of the first of a dozen stars.

The scientists studied a giant cloud about 770 light years from Earth in the constellation Perseus. They used the Herschel Space Observatory, European Space Agency and the GBT radio telescope of the National Science Foundation United States. This allowed them to make detailed observations of a kind of lump or lump that contains about 100 times the mass of the Sun within the cloud.

It is believed that the typical mechanism by which stars form is where one of such clouds of dust and gas gravitationally collapses on itself, first in lumps, and then dense cores, each of which may even begin to pack Moreover, to form a star. The details of how this happen is not yet well understood. One of the difficulties to find out, but also one of the major impediments to any detailed observation of the process is that in most regions where this process is underway already formed nearby stars. These stars affect the subsequent formation of stars in their neighborhood, through their stellar winds during their normal activity, and by shock waves when they explode as supernovae. Continue reading →

Transparent towards the memory chips

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Adriana

If you want a mobile phone and also transparent and wrap your wrist like a wristband, as unique phone could become reality in the near future, as the chemist James Tour, Rice University, Houston, Texas.

Tour equipment developed memory chips transparent and flexible, using the silicon oxide as active component.

The new type of memory could be combined with the transparent electrodes developed in that American university and other components designed in recent years by various laboratories in order to have flashy flexible touch-screen devices, and equipped with batteries and integrated circuits transparent. Continue reading →

Possible explanation for the enigma of the magnetic anomalies of the Moon

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Adriana

Although there is no evidence that the moon has in the past possessed a global magnetic field itself, there are some indications of the existence long ago of a field that was also strong enough to cause the magnetic anomalies observed in previous studies geology. How then to explain this apparent contradiction?

In the nearly five decades since the first lunar studies were carried out as part of NASA’s Apollo program, scientists have proposed a series of increasingly complex theories to explain the huge amounts of highly magnetic material that were found in parts of the lunar crust.

But now a team of researchers has proposed a surprisingly simple explanation for these unusual findings: Magnetic anomalies are geological traces of the collision of a massive asteroid on the Moon. Continue reading →

The twin GRAIL spacecraft begin work in orbit to the Moon

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Adriana

The twin spacecraft of NASA’s GRAIL mission, orbiting the moon, have recently started an official program of work. Over a period of about three months, scientists will get data that will produce a high resolution map of the lunar gravitational field, to know the composition and internal structure of the Moon with a level of unprecedented detail. The data also allow to better understanding how they formed and evolved on Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system.

During this phase of the mission, the spacecraft will transmit radio signals on the rate and extent of changes in the distance between them. The strategy is based on a subtle but measurable force of gravity. The distance between the ships changing a bit as you fly over areas of varying severity, the characteristics of gravity derived from visible geological features such as mountains and craters, as well as accumulations of greater than normal mass hidden below the lunar surface. Continue reading →

The acidity of the oceans increases faster today than in the past 300 million years

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Adriana

There is increasing evidence confirming the alarming rate at which is increasing the acidity of the seas. The results of a new study, by the team of Barbel Honisch, paleoceanographer at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, attached to Columbia University in New York City, support the theory that the acidification of the oceans is faster that of the last 300 million years.

This is the work of marine acidification increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2). The oceans act as a sponge that absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The gas reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid, which can be neutralized by natural processes if the amount of CO2 that go to sea are not too large. However, if too much carbon dioxide enters the ocean very quickly, the chemical consequences of the increase in acidity may include a shortage of certain materials dangerous creatures such as corals, molluscs and other organisms need as components of their bodies. Continue reading →

Humanoid robot for firefighting in difficult environments

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Adriana

Extinguishing a fire is always potentially dangerous, but in closed environments, like a submarine or lowest deck of a ship at sea, the fire is particularly dangerous.

To help further enhance the future ability to fight fires on board large ships, scientists from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have formed an interdisciplinary team to develop a humanoid robot to help extinguish fires that kind. It was decided that the robot had a humanoid form because it was considered best suited to operate within environments designed very carefully to human mobility.

The Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR), is being designed so it can move independently throughout the ship, interact with people and fight the fire, dealing with many of the dangerous work of fire which is normally included in living humans. The robot firefighter must be able to maneuver well in narrow hallways and stairways that are often typical of submarines and other vessels, but this is difficult for robots unassumable or more traditional and simple. Continue reading →

Subsidence craters on Mars could harbor life

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Adriana

The Mars Express ESA has shown several subsidence crater chains on the side of one of the largest volcanoes in the Solar System. Depending on how they are formed, they can be a very tempting place to look for microbial life on the Red Planet.

These images, taken on June 22, 2011, show the formations of Tractus Catena, in the quadrangle of Arcadia. This area is part of the vast region of Tharsis, which is also a group of volcanoes, among them the three Tharsis Montes called. To the north lies the Monte Alba or Alba Patera, one of the largest volcanoes in the Solar System in terms of area and volume.

Tractus Catena pits are based on the southeastern slope of Mount Alba, and consist of long strings of circular depressions that extend along fractures in the crust.

The subsidence crater chains could have a volcanic origin. Sometimes the lava emitted by a volcano begins to solidify on the surface, creating a tube through which molten lava continues to flow. Continue reading →

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