Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 244

Our little Curiosity rover is all grown up now. Sitting on the surface of Mars, it has gone to work analyzing soil samples collected from a drift known as Rocknest. The sampling at this location served two purposes. One, it tested the equipment and provided data. Two, the fine sand particles were used to scrub the equipment of any lingering substances that came with the rover from Earth.

"We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"We used almost every part of our science payload examining this drift," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "The synergies of the instruments and richness of the data sets give us great promise for using them at the mission's main science destination on Mount Sharp."

Curiosity is awesome from many different standpoints. It's one hell of a robot, a feat of engineering, and a great way to increase our knowledge about Mars and space in general. Rumors of a massive discovery, according to NASA and Curiosity's Twitter account, have been a bit overblown, but never-the-less, NASA will be presenting its findings so far tomorrow at 12:00 p.m. EST, 9:00 a.m. PT.

The press conference will be held during the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which takes place in San Francisco. NASA has been trying to dial-in expectations and has said that there won't be any unbelievable findings presented tomorrow. "Rumors and speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are incorrect," officials at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote. "The news conference will be an update about first use of the rover's full array of analytical instruments to investigate a drift of sandy soil."

The rumors of a massive discovery started making their rounds two weeks ago when an NPR story used a quote from John Grotzinger, mission chief scientist, that said the SAM tool had found data "for the history books." If an earth-shattering discovery is presented tomorrow, you'll be able to read about it here.

Solar power, up until now, has not really been all that great - sure, it provides a different method of powering things, but it doesn't capture anywhere near enough light to truly replace coal, oil or nuclear power. But, this week a team of MIT researchers hope to put us on the path of truly sustainable solar power.

Current solar power technology is not that efficient, with the latest development in solar systems delivering around 32% efficiency. This was met with titles of a "major breakthrough" in solar power - but in reality, it's still nowhere near as good as it should be. At this rate, solar farms need to be gigantic, taking up valuable space, in order to collect a useful amount of energy. The price per square foot has always been another issue altogether.

The main issue is that solar energy collectors can only absorb a small amount of the energy being blasted onto it from our star, with the rest of the potential energy not being captured. A recent MIT study has proposed an "atomically thing" sheet of semiconducting material that would be stretched by pushing a pin down onto the center. This may not sound like much, but it has endless possibilities for the future of our species.

Ever since Transformers debuted back in the 1980s, toy creators have been trying their best to create their own real Transformer that would be able to change between a robot to a vehicle of some sort with the simple push of a button. It looks like one group has finally been able to produce a fully-functioning Transformer that not only is able to function as a robot and vehicle separately, but it also has a few awesome surprises as well.

Brave Robotics spent months building its Transformer-style toy that can switch between a luxury vehicle to a standing robot complete with projectiles that can be shot out of each arm. The mechanics of the robot changing from a vehicle to a robot and vice versa seems a little sloppy as in the video below, you can see the robot wobbling all over the place.

Not only can the toy be used as either a vehicle or robot, but it also has a Wi-Fi camera that faces the correct way regardless if the toy is in its vehicle or robot form.

Here I am thinking we're getting closer to the end of the Mayan long-count calender, and the world won't end - but now Disney have taught one of their humanoid robotic subordinates how to play catch and juggle with human participants.

Yes, I'm not trolling - Disney have just unveiled this new effort, and designers have given the unit (not named the T100) a cup-shaped, human-like hand which helps with the catching and juggling. The robot uses an ASUS Xtion Pro Live camera which tracks faces and incoming balls - technology similar to Microsoft's Kinect.

The project started off with Kinect, but researchers switched to the ASUS Xtion Pro Live because they didn't need the Kinect's panning motor or microphone.

NPR ran a story this morning after talking with scientists at NASA. It seems as though the Curiosity rover has found something incredible on the surface of Mars while analyzing soil. The SAM instrument, which is a miniature chemistry lab, is capable of figuring out what a sample is made of.

Data from SAM is currently coming back to NASA and it "looks really interesting." Of course, the scientists don't want to jump the gun announcing something that later turns out to be false. They almost had this happen back when the rover detected methane. It turned out the methane had come from air Curiosity had brought from Florida.

John Grotzinger, the principal investigator for the rover mission: "We're getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak, and the data looks really interesting. The science team is busily chewing away on it as it comes down." He adds: "This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good."

Thanksgiving is fast approaching which means many of us will be traveling to make our way back home to celebrate and be thankful for all we have this year and to all fall into a food coma when all is said and done. Overindulging during the holidays will ruin all of your hard work at the gym, which is why a scale is such an important item to have in your weight-loss arsenal. Sure - you can make a trip to your local drug store to pick up any scale that catches your eye, or you can take a gander at Wahoo Fitness' Balance Smartphone Scale as it has way more bells and whistles than any regular scale.

The Balance Smartphone Scale doesn't just weigh you, but it can be used to track your weight and BMI over time and send it to your iOS devices instantly to Wahoo's Wellness application or other fitness apps that support the scale. With support of up to 16 different users, there's no way anyone in your household won't be able to keep track of their fitness. The scale will also store up to 130 weight readings for when you can't sync the data to your iOS device.

The Balance Smartphone Scale will be available for the first week of December with pre-orders currently available at WahooFitness.com for $99.

News outlet CNN were notified by a Denver Metro area man of a UFO he recorded on his digital camera. He stood on the hilltop of Federal Heights, Denver and pointed his camera south toward downtown Denver capturing caught footage of an unidentified flying object. The man caught the UFOs flying at between noon and 1pm. The UFOs are flying too fast to see with the naked eye, and can only be spotted when played back on video.

Steve Cowell, Aviation Expert, former commercial pilot, instructor and FAA accident prevention counsellor. "That is not an aeroplane, that is not a helicopter, those are not birds, uhhh, I can't identify it". Cowell told CNN that he knows of no aircraft that can fly that fast. Cowell did state that there was one other possibility, "perhaps there's some sort of debris, that is being raised up by some of the atmospheric winds".

But in his professional opinion, he tells CNN "it is an unidentified flying object". The Federal Aviation Association (FAA) monitors all air traffic across the entire of the United States, and sent the CNN a statement saying:

NASA and the European Space Agency have just gone where no man has ever gone before, by testing out an "interplanetary Internet" connection. It wasn't quite Mars to Earth, but involved an astronaut on the International Space Station controlling a small robot here on Earth.

NASA is trying to respark the imagination of Americans, and with this latest mission showing off a new communications protocol, it is definitely on the right path. A new communications protocol capable of transmitting data between planets and spaceships - just typing this feels odd, but quite exciting at the same time.

The new protocol is known as Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN), and is capable of allowing for many disconnections and errors that would occur when a signal travels long distances through space. NASA deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation, Badri Younes, said in a statement:

It looks like China is taking off to the stars next year, with a new manned space mission locked in for June 2013. A senior official in charge of the manned space programme has said that the three-person crew would consist of two men and one woman, reports the BBC.

China is the third country to independently send a person into space, second only after Russia and the United States. The new plan follows the flight of the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft, which returned to Earth in late-June. The Shenzhou 9 was part of China's first manual space docking mission, which was a huge milestone in China's ambitious space programme.

The mission also saw another milestone: carrying China's first female astronaut, Liu Yang. Next year's mission could happen as early as June, but there are back-up launch windows slotted in for both July and August, according to Niu Hongguang, deputy commander-in-chief of the manned space programme.

Solar panels are slowing oozing their way across the world, being slapped onto peoples' houses to power their houses. But, some panels don't have enough tech inside to completely power your house from the sunlight captured.

Well, research and development into new methods of capturing sunlight on solar panels is an ongoing thing, with the New Zealand territory of Tokelau being a great example. Tokelau is a group of three islands in the South Pacific which now has enough solar panel installations to completely meet their electrical needs.

Just recently, the islands relied on importing diesel fuel to power electrical generators, but as the New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister, Murry McCully has said, this has huge economic and environmental costs. The project was funded by the New Zealand government to the tune of $7 million, with a collection of solar panels installed on each of the three islands.

When The Matrix came out in 1999, so many people walked out thinking "are we living in a computer program?" and it looks like physicists are thinking outside the square when it comes to our origins.

Nick Bostrom has hypothesized that the existence of our race could end up being nothing more than the algorithmic results of a computer simulation. It may sound a little nuts, but it sounds no less crazy than some theories given to use by not science and religion.

The best bit of this is that researchers have reached the point where they have a way that they can test this thought experiment. A team of scientists out of the University of Bonn in Germany suggest that even the most powerful Universe simulation would be subject to certain limitations of its host Universe.

Felix Baumgartner has become the first skydiver to reach a truly special milestone: skydiving from the edge of our planet toward the ground faster than the speed of sound. Baumgartner reached a top speed of 833.9mph (1342km/h).

Baumgartner, an Austrian skydiver, spent two hours travelling up in a balloon to reach dizzying heights of 128,100 feet, (24 miles or 39km). After which he jumped out of his capsule, and spend four minutes in complete freefall, all in a pressurized spacesuit. This gave Baumgartner a world record for the highest ever freefall.

Once he hit the ground, he took a few steps and dropped to his knees, raising his hands in absolute triumph. Baumgartner said to the media just after his record-breaking skydive:

Well, this is interesting - the European Commission has approved the construction of three new huge research lasers, leaving the door open on a fourth that would, for a tiny instant, be several hundred times more powerful than the entirety of the power generated by the human race.

Yes, that is very, very powerful. The scientists hope to actually create virtual particules from absolutely nothing. The fourth laser when at peak power in Europe's Extreme Light Infrastructure project (ELI) would combine a total of ten beams into a single pulse at 200 petawatts. The entire Earth doesn't even generate that much power at any one moment, and if we're talking scale, it is more total power than the Earth receives from our star, the sun.

This is not the type of laser that stays on continuously, and will only use this mammoth amount of power for just 1.5 x 10^-14 second .This is the same time that "it takes for light to travel from one side of a human hair to the other, if you shave your hair down by 90%", reports Dvice.

Michigan State University scientists have figured out a way to ensure that tech geeks around the world will continue to have gold to use in their electronic connectors. If you didn't know, all of those 1000-2000 pins on a modern CPU are coated in gold, along with the pins in expansion slots on the motherboard.

Professors Kazem Kashefi and Adam Brown utilized the bacteria Cupriavidus Metallidurans to process a naturally occurring toxic gas known as Gold Chloride into 99.9% pure 24-carat gold. You can see the apparatus that was used in the experiment in the above picture. And no, it's not magical.

The bacteria used was discovered to be up to 25 times more resistant to toxic environments than previously thought. This discovery prompted the experiment that resulted in the production of gold. It's a rather simple affair, too. The bacteria is placed into a small bowl into which the toxic Gold Chloride gas is pumped.

Scientists from the NanoRobotics Laboratory at École Polytechnique de Montreal in Canada have discovered a way of directing nanobots (nano-sized robots) inside the human body. If you're unfamiliar with nanobots, the nano-sized robots are so small that they can only be seen under a microscope.

These bots can be guided toward specific parts of the body that were too dangerous to risk surgery over - and is considered a huge breakthrough in cancer treatment. The technology is still in its infancy, with human testing not even a thought for now, but there are a few robotics firms including Quantum International, Intuitive Surgical, iRobot Corporation, and Dover Corporation, who are all committed to pushing this nanobot technology.

Robert Federowicz, CEO of Quantum, has said:

In the infamous words of Dr. Evil, the earth is filled with "liquid hot magma." Now, some scientists are looking to drill down into the inner filling of our Earth to do more studying. This is no easy task as the people who have attempted it before will tell you. The price tag will be at least $1 billion USD, with no guarantee of success.

The group of international scientists plan to drill into the mantle in one of three places. The three options are located in the Pacific ocean, along mid-ocean ridge lines where the crust is the thinnest due to the quick forming of said lines. Here, the crust is believed to be as thin as 6km, whereas other parts of Earth have up to an 80km thick crust.

This isn't the first attempt at drilling into the mantle of the Earth. Russia attempted something similar with the Kola Superdeep Borehole, which managed to drill as deep as 12km, though not in the middle of the ocean. "It will be the equivalent of dangling a steel string the width of a human hair in the deep end of a swimming pool and inserting it into a thimble 1/10 mm wide on the bottom, and then drilling a few meters into the foundations."

One of my greatest fears are injections - I don't fall onto the floor, ball up and cry - but I just hate them. I always expect they're going to bring me a world of hurt, and I can't wait for the day when this relatively primitive technology is replaced, well, my wishes are slowly coming true.

Scientists from the Seoul National University in South Korea are hoping to help people like myself, but replacing the sharp metal of an injection, with laser-powered injections - frickin' lasers! A paper published in the Optical Society's Optics Letters journal states that the new method uses laser pulses to create a precisely controlled stream, which is said to be around the width of a human hair - much more manageable.

The injections would then target the epidermal layer, which is a portion of the skin that has no nerve endings, which would create something researcher Jack Yoh calls a "completely pain-free" experience. The high-pressure steams are capable of delivering whatever the injection is being used for, without damaging skin tissue. Yoh spoke with the Optical Society, where he explains:

Scientists at Harvard University are working on rat cardiomyocytes, but slightly different than most scientists. They're snaking them through wires and transistors that peer into each cell's electrical impulses. In the future, these wires might actually control their behavior, too.

"Cyborg" tissues have been created for neurons, muscle and vessels, and could be used to test drugs, or used as the basis for biological versions of existing implants. If signals can eventually be sent to the cells, cyborg tissues could eventually be used to create tiny robots, or get used in prosthetics. Charles Lieber, who leads the cyborg tissue team, has said:

It looks as though NASA is wanting their Small Spacecraft Technology Program to see Android-powered devices go into space. The space agency wants to see if cheap consumer-based hardware can dependably survive a journey into space.

NASA believes that sending tiny satellites into space will pave the way for a low-cost delivery system, they also hope to improve upon, or evolve new propulsion techniques by working with much smaller devices, like smartphones. The first-gen, smartphone-powered satellites will be baked into a modular, cube-based chassis named 'CubeSat'.

The first PhoneSat will measure just 10x10x10cm, or roughly double the size of a Rubik's Cube. NASA will throw in Samsung's Nexus One smartphone, one external battery, radio equipment, and a watchdog circuit that will be used to reboot the device in case of a problem. NASA have already run stress tests on the Nexus One, which it passed without any modifications required. These tests were run to see if the smartphone could handle the launch and orbit into the dark beyond of space.