Cool Science Story Of The Day [Continuing Thread]

[scottmandue]

Originally Posted by Aragorn

BBC - Future - The women with superhuman vision

She sees colors that most people find invisible.

Pfft! My wife hears things I don't even say!

[masraum]

Want to cool down on a hot day? Drink a hot drink (under specific circumstances).

History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places | Smithsonian

[kach22i]

Cool Science, at it's best?

Winter is Coming: Scientist Says Sun Will Nod Off in 15 Years
Posted: 07/13/2015 3:30 pm EDT
Winter is Coming: Scientist Says Sun Will Nod Off in 15 Years*|*Van Winkle's

Professor Vlentina Zharkova of Northumbira University presented the frigid findings at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, Wales. Modern technology has made us able to predict solar cycles with much greater accuracy, and Zharkova’s model predicts that solar activity will drop by more than half between 2030 and 2040.

[Hawkeye's-911T]

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524911.600-13-things-that-do-not-make-sense/#.U_ox_4dOWM8

Hope it's not a repeat.

Cheers
JB

[kach22i]

The first photos of water on Pluto are puzzling scientists in 2 ways
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/first-photos-water-pluto-challenging-180313134.html

In reality, the water ice on Pluto is red, not blue like in the photo or clear like it is here on Earth. And scientists are dumbfounded as to why.

"I'm surprised that this water ice is so red," Silvia Protopapa, a New Horizons team member, said in a NASA press release. "We don't yet understand the relationship between water ice and the reddish tholin colorants on Pluto's surface."

The "tholin colorants" that Protopapa is referring to are a type of molecule that are generally red in color and form when organic compounds — which have nothing to do with life in this case — are blasted with ultraviolet light from the sun. Pluto's atmosphere is rich with tholins, but whether the red-tinted water ice on Pluto's surface contains any of them remains an unanswered question.

Reminded me of this song......................


PETER GABRIEL - Red Rain
PETER GABRIEL LYRICS - Red Rain

"Red Rain"

red rain is coming down
red rain
red rain is pouring down
pouring down all over me

I am standing up at the water's edge in my dream
I cannot make a single sound as you scream
it can't be that cold, the ground is still warm to touch
this place is so quiet, sensing that storm

red rain is coming down
red rain
red rain is pouring down
pouring down all over me

well I've seen them buried in a sheltered place in this town
they tell you that this rain can sting, and look down
there is no blood around see no sign of pain
hay ay ay no pain
seeing no red at all, see no rain

red rain is coming down
red rain
red rain is pouring down
pouring down all over me.............................

song continues in link.

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye's-911T

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524911.600-13-things-that-do-not-make-sense/#.U_ox_4dOWM8

Hope it's not a repeat.

Cheers
JB

6. Viking’s methane
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524911.600-13-things-that-do-not-make-sense/#.U_ox_4dOWM8

Levin stands by his claim, and he is no longer alone. Joe Miller, a cell biologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has re-analysed the data and he thinks that the emissions show evidence of a circadian cycle. That is highly suggestive of life.

Levin is petitioning ESA and NASA to fly a modified version of his mission to look for “chiral” molecules. These come in left or right-handed versions: they are mirror images of each other. While biological processes tend to produce molecules that favour one chirality over the other, non-living processes create left and right-handed versions in equal numbers. If a future mission to Mars were to find that Martian “metabolism” also prefers one chiral form of a molecule to the other, that would be the best indication yet of life on Mars.

All very interesting, but it's all new to me so it's going to take a while to sink in.

“Something on Mars is ingesting nutrients, metabolising them and then belching out radioactive methane”

Something?

Spooky.

Space worms, very hard to get rid of.

[kach22i]

The Original Double Slit Experiment


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuv6hY6zsd0&feature=youtu.be

Light is so common that we rarely think about what it really is. But just over two hundred years ago, a groundbreaking experiment answered the question that had occupied physicists for centuries. Is light made up of waves or particles?

The experiment was conducted by Thomas Young and is known as Young's Double Slit Experiment. This famous experiment is actually a simplification of a series of experiments on light conducted by Young. In a completely darkened room, Young allowed a thin beam of sunlight to pass through an aperture on his window and onto two narrow, closely spaced openings (the double slit). This sunlight then cast a shadow onto the wall behind the apparatus. Young found that the light diffracted as it passed through the slits, and then interfered with itself, created a series of light and dark spots. Since the sunlight consists of all colours of the rainbow, these colours were also visible in the projected spots. Young concluded that light consist of waves and not particles since only waves were known to diffract and interfere in exactly the manner that light did in his experiment.

The way I have always seen this experiment performed is with a laser and a manufactured double slit but since the experiment was conducted in 1801 I have always thought that it should be possible to recreate the experiment using sunlight and household materials. That is basically what I did here. I will show the interference pattern I observed with my homemade double slit on 2Veritasium but I chose to use a manufactured double slit here to ensure that the pattern was impressive for observers at the beach.

Special thanks to Henry, Brady, and Rupert for their cameos, Glen for filming and Josh for helping create the apparatus. Thanks also to the Royal Society for allowing us to view the original manuscript of Young's lecture and the University of Sydney for lending the double slits.

Music by Kevin Mcleod (incompetech.com) Danse Macabre, Scissors

[wdfifteen]

These are king of cool.

[masraum]

Room temperature metal glue that conducts heat and electricity

History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places | Smithsonian

Just a small excerpt of the article

Almost all electronics in our lives—computers, stereos, toasters—contain printed circuit boards upon which different components are soldered. This soldering is often done by hand, an incredibly delicate procedure with little room for error.

But now, this soldering may be a thing of the past. A team of researchers at Boston’s Northeastern University have come up with a way to “glue” metal to metal at room temperature, no heat required.

Hanchen Huang, a professor and chair of Northeastern’s department of mechanical and industrial engineering, and two of his PhD students came up with the process, which they call MesoGlue. The team’s research was published this month in the journal Advanced Materials and Processes.

The process works by taking advantage of metallic nanorods—tiny metal rods just 10 or 20 nanometers wide, coated with iridium on one side and gallium on the other. The rods are arranged in lines on an upper and a lower substrate, like teeth on a zipper. When the teeth are interlaced, the iridium and gallium touch and become liquid. Then, the core of the metallic nanorods turns that liquid into a solid, creating a firm bond. The whole process takes less than a minute.

“It happens at room temperature, pretty much with just your fingertip pressure,” Huang says.

Unlike standard polymer glue, the metal glue stays strong at high temperatures and under high pressure. It’s also an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, and resists air and gas leaks.

[john70t]

Space travel using electricity:
New paper claims that the EM Drive doesn't defy Newton's 3rd law after all - ScienceAlert
"The EM drive operates by the same principle, for example, as a jet engine, where the high speed exhaust gases backwards (opposite reaction) push the airplane forwards," one of the researchers Arto Annila, told ScienceAlert over email.

"Light at microwave lengths is the fuel that's being fed into the cavity ... and the EM drive exhausts backwards paired photons," he says. "When two photons travel together, but having opposite phases, then the pair has no net electromagnetic field, and hence it will not reflect back from the metal walls, but goes through."

And those escaping photons are the equal and opposite reaction that's producing the EM drive's thrust."

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by john70t

Space travel using electricity:
New paper claims that the EM Drive doesn't defy Newton's 3rd law after all - ScienceAlert
"The EM drive operates by the same principle, for example, as a jet engine, where the high speed exhaust gases backwards (opposite reaction) push the airplane forwards," one of the researchers Arto Annila, told ScienceAlert over email.

"Light at microwave lengths is the fuel that's being fed into the cavity ... and the EM drive exhausts backwards paired photons," he says. "When two photons travel together, but having opposite phases, then the pair has no net electromagnetic field, and hence it will not reflect back from the metal walls, but goes through."

And those escaping photons are the equal and opposite reaction that's producing the EM drive's thrust."

One side of the container must be weaker than the other to allow the paired up protons to consistently escape in the desired direction. Else this thing would just hover in equilibrium and not be propulsion at all.

[kach22i]

Close-Up of the First Mechanical Gear Ever Found in Nature
Category: BEST OF «TwistedSifter

The biological form of a mechanical gear was observed in juvenile planthoppers, a common insect found in gardens across Europe

More here:
Close-Up of the First Mechanical Gear Ever Found in Nature «TwistedSifter

[IROC]

A new element may be named after the state of Tennessee as a result of efforts here at work:

Nihonium, Tennessine, Oganesson, Moscovium: Four New Chemical Elements Get Names | Chemistry, Physics | Sci-News.com

Tennessine is in recognition of the contribution of the Tennessee region, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Vanderbilt University, and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, to superheavy element research, including the production and chemical separation of unique actinide target materials for superheavy element synthesis at ORNL’s High Flux Isotope Reactor and Radiochemical Engineering Development Center.

[IROC]

Another cool story out of ORNL:

ORNL breaks Guinness World Record for largest solid 3-D printed item

OAK RIDGE — ORNL's Manufacturing Demonstration Facility set a Guinness World Record today for the largest solid 3-D printed item.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory held a ceremony at the facility, in which Guinness adjudicator Michael Empric confirmed measurements of a 3-D printed tool that the Boeing Co. will use to help form the wing tips of its new 777X airliner. The part, which was produced with the facility's Big Area Additive Manufacturing Machine, was 17.5 feet long, 5.5 feet wide, 1.5 feet thick and weighed 1,650 pounds.

Assisted by ORNL staff member Brittany Cramer, Empric took measurements of the object to see if it surpassed a previous record of 10.6 cubic feet for a 3-D printed item. He stepped to the lectern and after a few suspenseful remarks, announced the results.

"You have reached the measurement of 82.4 cubic feet, which is a new Guinness World Record Title. Congratulations," Empric said.

Thom Mason, ORNL director, noted this was the second Guinness World Record achievement for ORNL, which also secured a Guinness record in 2007 for the unprecedented bursts of neutrons achieved during testing of the Spallation Neutron Source.

"These two world record achievements demonstrate, really, the scope, scale and range of activities at ORNL, from fundamental science to discovering innovations in clean energy and global security," Mason said.

Leo Christodoulou, director of Structures and Materials, Enterprise Operations & Technology, said the drill-and-trim tool ORNL produced for Boeing is a great improvement over existing technology.

"By comparison, this tool, if made the traditional way, would take three months to build. It was built in 30 hours. Just think about that," he said.

Christodoulou said 3-D printing offers great potential for bringing things to the market more quickly, efficiently and with greater energy savings than before. Normally, the drill-and-trim tool would be made of metal at a much greater cost, he said.

Bill Peter, director of the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, touted the speed and efficiency of the equipment there.

"It prints out materials at about three orders of magnitude faster than other systems," he said. "We are at the area of about 1,000 cubic inches per hour, which really shows how we can change 3-D printing."

Developing the drill-and-trim tool was a collaborative effort between ORNL, Boeing and other local companies, said. Techmer PM, of Clinton, produced the plastic beads used in the additive printing process and Knoxville-based Tru-Design developed the coating applied to the part.

Boeing will use the trim-and-drill tool with equipment to hold the composite skin of a 777X wing tip in place as it is drilled and machined.

ORNL's Manufacturing Demonstration Facility is meant to speed adoption of new manufacturing technologies to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, lower production costs and create new products and opportunities for high-paying jobs.

[Rtrorkt]

HD 164595: 'Strong signal' from sun-like star sparks alien speculation - CNN.com

[Heel n Toe]

Depends on personal preference, but I enjoyed this more with the sound off... it's worth sticking with it all the way through.

[Willem Fick]

Apollo navigation computer found.

[john70t]

Scientists invent super thin, flexible fabric that generates electricity from light and movement - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

[masraum]

Cheaper, more efficient, flexible wing.

A new twist on airplane wing design | MIT News

NASA’s New, Super-Efficient Airplane Wing Comes With a Twist | Innovation | Smithsonian

An excerpt from the article

A continuous, flexible wing built by NASA and collaborators at MIT, University of California, Santa Cruz, and several other universities could achieve the same result more efficiently, cutting both fuel consumption and the cost of building the planes.

“One of the main points is that we can get this kind of performance at an extremely low cost,” says Kenneth Cheung, a NASA scientist who is co-lead on the project. “And there’s this promise of scalability out of the fact that we can use relatively small building blocks.”

The wing, described in the journal Soft Robotics, is made up of small carbon fiber parts that intersect to form a flexible, lightweight lattice that’s still stiff in all the right directions.

The drag on a traditional wing induces a sort of eddying current of air around the wing (more than is needed for lift alone) and that air vibrates with what are called flutter modes, the shape and size and frequency of which depend on the speed of the craft. A stiff, heavy wing like the aluminum one on a 747 is strong enough to withstand that vibration and not shear off, even at high speeds. This is a model airplanes have reached based on decades pursuing faster flight, says Cheung.

The upshot is, all around a plane in flight are moving shapes made of air. Cheung calls them the free stream, and his goal is to match the shape of the plane, at any given moment, to the stream. A twist in the wing can make the plane change shape smoothly, a little like a surfer catching a wave.


“The rigid ailerons are just a loose approximation of what is really the condition that you are trying to achieve,” he says. “So the efficiency gains that you get by actually matching the aerodynamic condition can be really significant.”

It’s no new thing to build a wing that can change shape. In fact, the Wright Brothers did it—their aircraft was based on flexible wood and canvas wings. More recently, Airbus has experimented with flexible 3D printed wings, and a company called FlexSys published video this month of a more traditional aileron that flexes instead of slides.

“It’s a pretty major efficiency improvement in an aircraft,” says David Hornick, president and COO of FlexSys. “You’re actually maintaining a true airfoil shape when you’re doing this morphing approach. The airfoil shape is still there, you’re reducing the amount of drag that would be created by putting a hinged control surface on it.”



Read more: NASA’s New, Super-Efficient Airplane Wing Comes With a Twist | Innovation | Smithsonian
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

[masraum]

Very cool. And to think, it was almost garbage.

Tshwane geek tracks down first Apollo computer | Fin24

Most of the article

A Tshwane computer engineer has tracked down one of the great treasures of the computer age – the first space flight guidance computer.

It’s not often that a YouTube video on a technical topic gives one goosebumps. And it’s not often that someone unpacking a computer makes history.

Francois Rautenbach, a computer hardware and software engineer from Tshwane, achieves both with a series of videos he has quietly posted on YouTube.

It shows the “unboxing” of a batch of computer modules that had been found in a pile of scrap metal 40 years ago and kept in storage ever since.

Painstaking gathering of a wide range of evidence, from documents to archived films, had convinced Rautenbach he had tracked down the very first Guidance and Navigation Control computer, used on a test flight of the Saturn 1B rocket and the Apollo Command and Service Modules.

Apollo-Saturn 202, or Flight AS-202, as it was officially called, was the first to use an onboard computer – the same model that would eventually take Apollo 11 to the moon. Rautenbach argues that the computer on AS-202 was also the world’s first microcomputer.

That title has been claimed for several computers made in later years, from the Datapoint 2200 built by CTC in 1970 to the Altair 8800 designed in 1974. The AS-202 flight computer goes back to the middle of the previous decade.

His video succinctly introduces the story: “On 25th August 1966, a very special computer was launched into space onboard Apollo flight AS-202. This was the first computer to use integrated circuits and the first release of the computer that took the astronauts to the moon. Until recently, the software for the Block 1 ACG (Apollo Guidance Computer) was thought to be lost…”

One can be forgiven for being sceptical, then, when he appears on screen for the first time to say, “I’ve got here with me the software for the first microcomputer.”

Then he unwraps the first package and says: “Guys, these modules contain the software for the first microcomputer that was ever built, that was ever used.”

The goosebumps moment comes when he reveals the NASA serial number on a device called a Rope Memory Module, and declares: “These modules are the authentic flight AS-202 software modules. These were found on a rubbish dump, on a scrap metal heap, about 40 years ago … and we are going to extract the software from this module.”

In a series of three videos, he extracts the software, shows how the computer was constructed, and uses a hospital X-Ray machine to inspect its insides.

The third video starts with the kind of phrase that often sets off the hoax-detectors in social media: “Okay, so you guys won’t believe what I’ve been doing today.”

But, in this case, it is almost unbelievable as Rautenbach takes the viewer through a physical inspection of the first Apollo guidance computer.

How did an engineer from Tshwane stumble upon one of the great treasures of the computer age?

He has tended to avoid the limelight, and describes himself as “a hardware/software engineer who loves working on high-velocity projects and leading small teams of motivated individuals”.

In an interview this week, he added: “I am the perpetual hacker always looking for a new challenge or problem to solve. I have experience in designing digital hardware and writing everything from embedded firmware to high level security systems. Much of the work I did over the last five years revolved around building new and creative payment solutions.”

The breadth of his work gave him the expertise to investigate, verify, and extract the magic contained in the AS-202 computer.

A global network of contacts led him to the forgotten hardware, and that is when the quest began in earnest.

“I got interested in the Apollo Guidance Computer after reading a book by Frank O’Brien (The Apollo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation). Most of us grew up with the fallacy that the AGC was less powerful than a basic programmable calculator. I discovered that this was far from the truth and that the AGC was in fact a very powerful and capable computer," he said.

“I started communicating with experts in the field and soon realised that there was a wealth of information available on the AGC and the Apollo space program in general," he added

“One day I received some photos of AGC Rope Memory modules from a friend in Houston marked ‘Flight 202’. After a little googling, I realised that these modules contained the software from Flight AS-202. As I learned more about AS-202, I discovered that this was the first time the AGC was used in an actual flight,” he said.

Rautenbach eventually tracked down the source of the photos: a man who had picked up the entire computer, with memory modules, at an auction, as part of a three-ton lot of scrap metal.

“At one point he opened up to me and said he had other modules. He admitted he had a full Apollo guidance computer, and my theory was that it was used to develop the Apollo 11 guidance computer. He sent me more information, and I thought he had THE computer," Rautenbach said.

“He’s got all this junk in his backyard. He started selling stuff on eBay and one day got a visit from the FBI wanting to know where he got it. He was able to find the original invoice and showed it to them and they went away. But it scared him and he didn’t want to tell anyone else in the USA what he had. Not being from America was an advantage,” he added.

“This was the first microcomputer. I opened it and played with it. I realised this was the first computer that actually flew. I also found Rope Memory modules that said Flight 202, and he didn’t know what that was. I found it was from AS-202, and I said we can extract stuff from this,” he said.

Rautenbach paid a deposit to borrow the units and have them sent to South Africa, so that he could extract and rebuild the software.

He also made contact with Eldon Hall, leader of the team that developed the Apollo guidance computer and author of the 1966 book, Journey to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Guidance Computer.

The correspondence helped him verify the nature of the “scrap”.

The Apollo command module from flight AS-202 was restored and is now on permanent display on the USS Hornet, the legendary aircraft carrier used to recover many Apollo command modules and now a museum.

However, the computer parts were sold as scrap in 1976.

And NASA never preserved a single copy of the software that had been used on its first guidance computer.

Science and History, so freakin' cool. I've got nerd wood!

The 3 videos