Mar10

NASA supports Extreme Universe Space Observatory — phys.org

on March 10, 2013 at 9:58 pm

The University of Chicago expands is long history of cosmic-ray research with its participation in the Extreme Universe Space Observatory, which is scheduled for deployment aboard the Japanese Experiment Module of the International Space Station in 2017. Credit: JEM-EUSO

NASA supports Extreme Universe Space Observatory

March 8, 2013

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has awarded $4.4 million to a collaboration of scientists at five U.S. universities and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center to help build a telescope for deployment on the International Space Station in 2017.

The U.S. collaboration is part of a 13-nation effort to build the 2.5-meter ultraviolet telescope, called the Extreme Universe Space Observatory. The telescope will search for the mysterious source of the most energetic particles in the universe from the ISS’s Japanese Experiment Module.

The source of these energetic particles, called ultra high-energy cosmic rays, has remained one of the great mysteries of science since physicist John Linsley discovered them more than 50 years ago. These cosmic rays consist of protons and other subatomic scraps of matter that fly through the universe at almost light speed.

“The science goal is to discover the sources of ultra high-energy cosmic rays by observing their traces in the atmosphere looking 248 miles from the ISS down to the surface,” said Angela Olinto, professor in astronomy & astrophysics at the University of Chicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. Olinto leads the U.S. collaboration, which includes scientists at the Colorado School of Mines, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Vanderbilt University, University of California at Berkeley, University of California Los Angeles, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the Marshall Space Flight Center.

The NASA grant will support a subset of the U.S. institutions in building lasers, flashers and monitoring equipment that will be used to calibrate the telescope’s optics from 20 locations around the globe as the ISS passes overhead.

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└ Tags: astronomy, astrophysics, cosmic rays, Extreme Universe Space Observatory, ISS, Japanese Experiment Module, NASA, space, ultraviolet telescope

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Mar10

New Worldwide Network Lets Robots Ask Each Other Questions When They Get Confused | Popular Science

on March 10, 2013 at 9:45 pm

Posted In: Our Favorite Links

Making the Sausage Rosie the robot waits for the sausages to be
cooked before taking them out of the water and serving them. TUM

New Worldwide Network Lets Robots Ask Each Other Questions When They Get Confused

Rapyuta, the cloud for robots, is now online.

By Shaunacy Ferro
Posted 03.08.2013 at 5:00 pm

Robbie the robot is intimidated by breakfast. What the heck is a quiche? Why are all the cereal boxes different sizes? It takes him ages to do his only task, setting the table, because he has to adapt to so many new and varied situations that humans can analyze in a split second.

A new web-based informational database could make make complex tasks more easy for robots like poor Robbie to accomplish.

Since late 2009, a group of European researchers from five different labs have been working on RoboEarth, “a World Wide Web for robots.” It stores data remotely so that robots can process information uploaded by other robots. It’s not just touchy-feely robot love: storing data within a robot-accessible cloud could speed up complicated computation processes.

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└ Tags: Rapyuta, RoboEarth, RoboEarth Cloud Engine, robot network, robots, World Wide Web for robots

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Mar10

Developing Technologies to Save the Earth From Asteroids — Astrobiology Magazine

on March 10, 2013 at 9:33 pm

Posted In: Our Favorite Links

An intercept satellite races toward an asteroid. Studies by Iowa State University’s Bong Wie indicate such a vehicle could blast apart asteroids that threaten Earth. Larger image. Credit: Image courtesy of Iowa State’s Asteroid Deflection Research Center

Developing Technologies to Save the Earth From Asteroids

Source: Iowa State press release

Meteorites, Comets and Asteroids
Posted: 03/09/13
Summary: On April 17, scientists will venture to Washington D.C. to present research as part of NASA’s Technology Day on the Hill. One project focuses on protecting the Earth from asteroids using a ‘one-two’ nuclear punch.

Bong Wie has heard the snickers.

You want to protect the Earth from asteroids? Where were you when the dinosaurs needed you? You want to be like Bruce Willis in that asteroid movie?

Wie has a serious reply: After five years of science and engineering work, Wie and his small team have a publication list of 40-plus technical papers, $600,000 of NASA research support and a proposal for a $500 million test launch of an asteroid intercept system. Plus, Wie has just been invited to show off his research as part of NASA’s Technology Day on the Hill in Washington, D.C., on April 17.

“It’s not a laughing matter,” said Wie, the director of the Asteroid Deflection Research Center at Iowa State University and the Vance D. Coffman Faculty Chair and professor of aerospace engineering.

Recent events have certainly highlighted the threat of asteroid strikes. There was the 15-meter (49-foot) meteor that exploded an estimated 12 miles over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15, damaging buildings and injuring more than 1,000 people. That same day, the 45-meter (148-foot) asteroid 2012 DA14 passed within 17,200 miles of Earth.

“DA14 was a serious near miss,” Wie said. “If that impact had happened, it would have been the equivalent of 160 Hiroshima nuclear bombs.

“Even though I say that so many times, people just laugh.”

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└ Tags: asteroid deflection, asteroids, Goddard Space Flight Center, Iowa State University, NASA, NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, near-Earth asteroids, NIAC, space

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Mar10

Black Holes Won’t Incinerate You, After All – Starts With A Bang

on March 10, 2013 at 8:37 pm

Posted In: Our Favorite Links

mage credit: anrophysics 2008-09, via Bangkok Patana School http://www.patana.ac.th/.

Black Holes Won’t Incinerate You, After All

Posted by Ethan Siegel on March 8, 2013

“You wait for a gem in an endless sea of blah.” -Lawrence Grossman

On the one hand, we have General Relativity, our theory of space, time, and gravity.

It describes the Universe on both large and small scales perfectly, from the hot Big Bang to our cold accelerating expansion, from vast superclusters of galaxies down to the interiors of black holes.

But General Relativity doesn’t tell us everything. It doesn’t tell us, for example, about protons, neutrons or electrons. It doesn’t tell us the properties or interactions of matter and energy in the Universe. It only tells you about gravitation: how spacetime affects the matter and energy in it and how the matter and energy respond, gravitationally, to the spacetime they exist in.

But that does include, when an excessive amount of mass/energy gets concentrated in one region of spacetime, black holes.

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└ Tags: astrophysics, black hole, black hole firewalls, black holes, field theory, firewall, firewalls, general theory of relativity, Hawking radiation, mechanics, no-go, paradox, physics, problem, quantum, relativity, space, spacetime

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Mar10

The Many Moons of Pluto | astrobites

on March 10, 2013 at 8:23 pm

Posted In: Our Favorite Links

Pluto with its five moons. Image taken with WFC3, the new wide field camera on the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Many Moons of Pluto

BY BEN MONTET . MARCH 8, 2013
FILED UNDER COMPUTATIONAL METHODS, MOONS, PLANETARY SCIENCE, PLUTO, SOLAR SYSTEM
TITLE: The Formation of Pluto’s Low Mass Satellites
AUTHORS: Scott Kenyon and Benjamin Bromley
FIRST AUTHOR’S INSTITUTION: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA

Oh, Pluto. You’re one of our most intriguing and mysterious planets dwarf planets. You were found by accident, because you happened to be in the right place at the right time. None of the inner planets or Ceres have more than two moons, but you have five! The largest, Charon, is about half your diameter but only ten percent of your mass. The other four moons, Nix, Hydra, P4, and P5 (the last two will be getting new names soon) are much smaller, perhaps as small as tens of kilometers across. These small moons, all found in the past decade by the Hubble Space Telescope, are intriguingly near a 1:3:4:5:6 resonance, meaning the innermost moon (Charon) orbits 3 times for every orbit of P5, 4 times for every orbit of Nix, and so on. The orbits of small bodies (which would form these moons) are often destabilized near resonances. We observe this in the inner solar system by detecting gaps in the asteroid belt caused by resonances with Jupiter. The existence of this near-resonant configuration tells us these moons likely formed somewhere other than their present locations, and then migrated into resonance. Pluto and its moons will receive very close study over the next few years as the New Horizons probe approaches the planet in 2015. This mission will provide fantastic information about the properties of Pluto’s companions, as well as the existence (or nonexistence) of other companions, which will inform theories of moon formation. The authors of this paper, studying possible formation scenarios of these planets, create numerical simulations to study how these moons might have formed and what New Horizons might uncover.

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