Ongoing important Science news thread

[troutman]

Hunting the Elements

A two-hour special from the producers of "Making Stuff" Aired 4/4/12 on PBS

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics...-elements.html

Where do nature’s building blocks, called the elements, come from? They’re the hidden ingredients of everything in our world, from the carbon in our bodies to the metals in our smartphones. To unlock their secrets, David Pogue, the lively host of NOVA’s popular "Making Stuff" series and technology correspondent of The New York Times, spins viewers through the world of weird, extreme chemistry: the strongest acids, the deadliest poisons, the universe’s most abundant elements, and the rarest of the rare—substances cooked up in atom smashers that flicker into existence for only fractions of a second.

[Byrns]

Originally Posted by photon

http://gizmodo.com/5914565/the-drago...oming-back-now

Dragon capsule to splash down in about half an hour.

Watch live
http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv

[Thor]

Spent 2 great few days with PZ Meyers, have a lot of pics probably just going to post in my inspired by Iceland thread in a day or two.

[photon]

Secret space program gives NASA 2 Hubble sized telescopes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...UDV_story.html

Designed for surveillance, the telescopes from the National Reconnaissance Office were no longer needed for spy missions and can now be used to study the heavens.

They have 2.4-meter (7.9 feet) mirrors, just like the Hubble. They also have an additional feature that the civilian space telescopes lack: A maneuverable secondary mirror that makes it possible to obtain more focused images. These telescopes will have 100 times the field of view of the Hubble, according to David Spergel, a Princeton astrophysicist and co-chair of the National Academies advisory panel on astronomy and astrophysics.

Gonna be a while before they're able to go up though.

NASA officials stressed that they do not have a program to launch even one telescope at the moment, and that at the very earliest, under reasonable budgets, it would be 2020 before one of the two gifted telescopes could be in order. Asked whether anyone at NASA was popping champagne, the agency’s head of science, John Grunsfeld, answered, “We never pop champagne here; our budgets are too tight.”

But this is definitely a game-changer for NASA’s space science program. The unexpected gift offers NASA an opportunity to resurrect a plan to launch a new telescope to study the mysterious “dark energy” that is causing the universe’s expansion to accelerate.

Still, very weird story.

[Knut]

Cool ^

I read the story thinking 2020 is a long way away... but really it is less than a decade away.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by Hesla

Cool ^

I read the story thinking 2020 is a long way away... but really it is less than a decade away.

the timing should work out very nicely for Hubble's planned retirement. kinda crazy when you think though that there's an entirely separate US government program for space that has higher funding than NASA and is in total secrecy

[Caged Great]

The thing that pisses me off is the lack of investment in NASA. The Shuttles were still perfectly usable (they had about 40 more uses each in their safe lifetime, and were only actually used about 35-40 times in reality for about 75-80 in total) and now they are stuck hoping Space X can take over for them. Simply ridiculous that this has come to pass.

[photon]

True, though really the shuttles were just space trucks mucking around in LEO, let that kind of stuff go to a SpaceX type of company and NASA can do something more interesting and advanced.

[troutman]

http://www.planetary.org/get-involve...anetfest-2012/

Planetfest 2012 Curiosity Knows No Bounds
SAVE THE DATE!

Planetfest 2012: Curiosity Knows No Bounds

August 4-5, 2012 Pasadena, California

Make plans to party with The Planetary Society and space enthusiasts around the world this summer as we celebrate the landing of Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory, on the Red Planet!

Will TELUS Spark being dong something around this?

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by Caged Great

The thing that pisses me off is the lack of investment in NASA. The Shuttles were still perfectly usable (they had about 40 more uses each in their safe lifetime, and were only actually used about 35-40 times in reality for about 75-80 in total) and now they are stuck hoping Space X can take over for them. Simply ridiculous that this has come to pass.

I don't know man, I think the shuttle gets a little over rated some times.
And, I would say that by the time it was retired, it was pretty much obsolete.

The thing was crazy expesive to operate, and cargo/people can be sent to orbig for much cheaper using other methods (like the rockets Space-X, and other private companies are using, and Russian rockets).

One of the advantages of the Shuttle was that it had enough room to be a space lab, but with the ISS operating, that isn't really necessary any more, so with the shuttle you're using a vehicle that is way over complciated for the simple task of making grocery runs.

Also, let's not forget that the safe lifetime of a shuttle isn't exactly great.
2 catastrophic failures in 135 missions isn't exactly a stellar safety record is it?

There is no doubt retiring the shuttle left a void in our space capabilities, but I don't think it's as huge as some people are making it out to be. And if a private company can do some of the things NASA was doing for cheaper, then how is that a bad thing?

[stang]

How does a private company make money flying into space?

[photon]

They're paid to launch stuff, so NASA or the government or whoever would pay them for the stuff they delivered to the ISS. Or a company would pay them to put a satellite up.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science...act/55269870/1

[troutman]

Originally Posted by troutman

http://www.planetary.org/get-involve...anetfest-2012/

Planetfest 2012 Curiosity Knows No Bounds
SAVE THE DATE!

Planetfest 2012: Curiosity Knows No Bounds

August 4-5, 2012 Pasadena, California

Make plans to party with The Planetary Society and space enthusiasts around the world this summer as we celebrate the landing of Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory, on the Red Planet!

Will TELUS Spark being dong something around this?

Thank you for your email.

As this event ties to the landing of the Curiosity Mars rover which will be broadcast live but at 11 pm to midnight or later (for the first live pictures) we are unable to staff at this late hour. Additionally it is on Sunday, Aug 5, the Sunday of Heritage day long weekend which will be a busy weekend for us with family activities planned.

We have our regular Astronomy nights on the first Thursday of each month, the one in August being August 2nd.



http://www.sparkscience.ca/events/as...ars-of-summer/

[troutman]

Voyager reaches edge of solar system
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/.../19882361.html

The Voyager 1 space probe has reached the edge of the solar system, extending its record for being the most distant man-made object in space.

According to a statement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the spacecraft is sending back data to Earth showing a sharp increase in charged particles that originate from beyond the solar system.

“Voyager scientists looking at this rapid rise draw closer to an inevitable but historic conclusion - that humanity’s first emissary to interstellar space is on the edge of our solar system,” NASA said in the statement.

Voyager 1, along with its sister spacecraft Voyager 2, was launched in 1977 and is now about 18 billion kilometres from the Sun. It is moving at a speed of about 17 km per second and it currently takes 16 hours and 38 minutes for data to reach NASA’s network on Earth. Voyager 2 is about 15 billion kilometres from the Sun.

[Thor]

This milestone is so exciting.

[pylon]

What I think is going to be neat, is some day, maybe a couple hundred years from now, when we have a true propulsion system that could even get to even 1/10th the speed of light, they will be able to fly out to Voyager and retrieve it in less than a day.

It would make an awesome museum artifact.

[trublmaker]

Originally Posted by pylon

What I think is going to be neat, is some day, maybe a couple hundred years from now, when we have a true propulsion system that could even get to even 1/10th the speed of light, they will be able to fly out to Voyager and retrieve it in less than a day.

It would make an awesome museum artifact.

Einstein says we could never approach any percentage of light speed.

[Caged Great]

Originally Posted by trublmaker

Einstein says we could never approach any percentage of light speed.

We could not exceed. Even now you can approach a percentage of light speed, just a very small one.

[Hemi-Cuda]

the breakthrough in space travel won't be getting anywhere near light speed, it will be bending space to make the distance shorter. a true warp drive

[trublmaker]

Originally Posted by Caged Great

We could not exceed. Even now you can approach a percentage of light speed, just a very small one.

Upon further review you are right, in theory they could make an engine to get to 8-10%c but that technology is a very long way away.