SCIENCE 1701

images courtesy of Copenhagen Suborbitals

This is an amazing project. The idea is to launch an astronaut into a sub-orbital flight, standing up!
But this is not a big budget NASA project. It is a non-profit making endeavor, using sponsors and volunteers.

The really hot news is that the booster gets its test-flight in the next few weeks(Aug/Sept 2010). It will be launched from a barge and have a splash-down in the Baltic Sea.

Straight from comic book science fiction, this idea is so incredible(and so cheap), it must leave the ‘big boys’ gasping.

link to the Copenhagen Suborbitals website : http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/index.php

image courtesy of the Wildlife Conservation Society http://www.wcs.org/

It is a true saying that ‘the good die young’.
You probably won’t have heard about Ymke Warren on any of the celeb-driven media in whatever country you come from. Sometimes I think between ‘politicians on the take’ and the latest film ‘blockbuster’, real news doesn’t get much of a look-in these days.
Alas this time the real news is sad news. Ymke was murdered on June 29 aged only 40. Like Dian Fossey before her(died 1985), she also dedicated her working life to the conservation of gorillas in Africa.

Read the full story of her interesting, but short life here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/science-obituaries/7925027/Ymke-Warren.html

Technorati Tags: africa, apes, conservation, gorillas, warren, wildlife, ymke

image(approx 1958) courtesy of Nasa Langley Research Center

I remember seeing this satellite low in the sky passing close to the full moon, just after sunset. It was a brilliant light, much brighter than Venus. I guess most kids thought it was a UFO. Being just a kid myself at the time, I did…lol
It is hard to believe that it has been 50 years since the first communications satellite. It is a little known fact that President Eisenhower made the first voice call via satellite.
The Echo 1A balloon satellite was launched on the 12th of August, 1960.

more from Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Echo

image courtesy of Jesus College, Cambridge University http://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk

John Flamsteed was born in Denby, Derbyshire, England, 19 Aug 1646 and died 31 Dec 1719 (aged 73).
He established the Greenwich Observatory and was appointed the first Astronomer Royal (1675-1719) by Charles II. His star catalogue, the first of its kind, contained almost 3,000 stars. He is particularly important for his work on orbits of the sun and moon, tidal tables and comets. Apparently he was not an easy charactor to get along with, being noted for his quarrelsome nature. He knew Newton and Halley, but was often criticised by them for not sharing his astronomical observations.

interesting links :

http://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/college/history/flamsteed.html
http://www.nahste.ac.uk/isaar/GB_0237_NAHSTE_P0265.html
http://www.derbyshireuk.net/flamstead.html

Technorati Tags: astronomer royal, flamsteed, greenwich, moon, observatory, star catalogue, sun, tides

The genome of a bacterium(haemophilus influenzae) has been built by Craig Venter and colleagues from the ‘bottom up’ in chemical terms. The first ‘artificial life-form’ has been created. This is a seminal moment as news writers like to say. As with the first Moon landing or the first nuclear test, I feel that nothing will ever be quite the same again.

Technorati Tags: artificial life, bacterium, craig venter, genetics, genome

image courtesy of NASA http://www.nasa.gov/

Inside crater Arabia Terra, dark wind-blown sand fills depressions around outcrops of light layered sedimentary rock. There are dunes of lighter material and dark, but the lighter is easier to see. The layered shelving is approximately 3-4 metres wide and I believe has an appearance very similar to ancient shore-lines on Earth. Could the layers be the tide-marks of a dieing sea? The image, taken by Mars Global Survey(now retired) in october 2003, shows an area approximately 3 km across.

See the original high definition image at Astronomy Picture of the Day http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100815.html

Technorati Tags: arabia terra, astronomy, dunes, global surveyor, mars, picture of the day, rock, sand, sedimentary

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed clouds of “buckyballs” in the great gulfs between stars. Buckyballs, also called Fullerine, are spherical, hollow carbon molecules that were first observed 25 years ago. They get their name in honor of the architect Buckminster Fuller, who constructed geodesic domes. Fullerine also comes in two other flavours – Fuller tubes(sometimes called nanotubes) and Fuller ellipsoids.
Further info on Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullerene
The full article from JPL : http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/news/1159-ssc2010-06-NASA-Telescope-Finds-Elusive-Buckyballs-in-Space-for-First-Time
other useful links :
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/local/projects/unwin/Fullerenes.html

Technorati Tags: buckminster, buckyballs, fuller, fullerine, graphene, NASA, Spitzer

image courtesy of the Australian Antarctic Division www.aad.gov.au/
Octopus venom has been collected in Antarctica. The hope is that analysis will significantly advance our knowledge and understanding and lead to some fruitful drug development outcomes.
Read the full article : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100726094907.htm

Technorati Tags: antarctic, development, drug, drugs, health, medicine, octopus, venom

Arguably the three most important numbers in mathematics are  - pi(3.14…), phi(1.618…) and e(2.718…). Each of these numbers has an independent importance in the scheme of things, from describing the exotic properties of energy, to the very fabric of matter, and everything else in between!

What they all have in common, apart from their celebrity, is the fact that each is irrational. That is they go on forever after the decimal point. None is exact and their value can only be approximated to. This is unlike normal rational numbers like 3.1, 1.2398, 23.675 etc. These numbers have a definite ending. What is more, any rational number can be described by a fraction of two numbers. For example take the number 0.875. This is 7 divided by 8. Here is another one: 5.295 is 1059 divided by 200. For all this, irrational numbers are not rare. Our little trio of constants is in the company of the square root of 2, 3, 99 and many cube and quadratic roots ad infinitum.

If these intrepid little numbers were animals they would be as different to each other as a mouse, an insect and a T-rex. So let us take a closer look at each of these lovable, enigmatic critters; their history, their tricks and their powers.

Read the whole amazing  article at: http://ezinearticles.com/?Discovering-Mathematical-Constants—Get-to-Know-These-Enigmatic-Critters-and-Make-Them-Your-Friends&id=2780815

Technorati Tags: e, irrational, math, mathematics, maths, number, numbers, phi, pi, theory

You may remember the invisibility cloak used by the Predator in Arnie’s film of that name and its follow ups. Well, watch out. Predator clothing has arrived. Admittedly, the cloth is not available in a store near you. I guess only the military could afford it right now, but watch this space.

All the running is being done by a Japanese company called Tachilab, based in Tokyo, Japan. For a sneak preview of other weird stuff they are into, check out their ‘projects’ link on the front page. The listing certainly raised my eyebrowes! WOW

View more videos from Tachilab on You-Tube : http://www.youtube.com/user/tachilab#p/u

Visit the company’s site at : http://tachilab.org/

Technorati Tags: alien, aliens, cloak, cloth, clothing, invisibility, new materials, optical, predator