Course Catalog. Why We Must Flee the Planet: The Geometry of Earth is All Wrong. Stephen Hawking is best known for thinking about time, space, and those teratoid trash mashers known as black holes.
But in a recent talk in Hong Kong, the famous physicist digressed from his usual subject matter to tell the audience that they'd better get off the island, and he didn't mean Kowloon. Instead, the Cambridge don was urging the crowd to get off the whole, gosh-darn planet. Hawking was hawking space colonization. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers," Hawking disclosed. Well, if you're a space buff, your reaction to this pronouncement is probably half-closed eyelids and a big "duh. " But news or not, Hawking's observation is correct, primarily and fundamentally because our planetary home is the wrong shape.
The Ruins of Detroit – - PlogPlog Photo Blog. Posted Feb 07, 2011 Share This Gallery inShare850 Up and down Detroit’s streets, buildings stand abandoned and in ruin.
French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre set out to document the decline of an American city. Ground Breaking Material Technology. Imagine being able to use concrete on slopes, in water, and in other hard to reach places - with no molds, no mixing, and minimal equipment.
Concrete Cloth is flexible and will bend and curve, enabling it to follow the natural contours of the land, including ditches and slopes. Unlike regular concrete, Concrete Cloth can be installed in the rain, and other wet conditions, virtually eliminating rescheduling due to weather conditions. Researchers create ultra-thin, ultra-tough balloon. Jonathan Alden Scientists have developed the world's thinnest balloon that is impermeable to even the smallest gas molecules.
Above is a multi-layer graphene membrane that could be used in various applications, including filters and sensors. Using a lump of graphite, a piece of Scotch tape and a silicon wafer, Cornell researchers have created a balloonlike membrane that is just one atom thick -- but strong enough to contain gases under several atmospheres of pressure without popping. And unlike your average party balloon -- or even a thick, sturdy glass container -- the membrane is ultra-strong, leak-proof and impermeable to even nimble helium atoms. The work was conducted at the National Science Foundation-supported Cornell Center for Materials Research and published in a recent issue of the journal Nano Letters. Refresh Earth Wallpapers - All Sizes by $erickthedesigner on deviantART. Aerographite Is the World's Lightest Material, Is a Total Airhead and Kind of Weird.
The last time we looked at ultra-lightweight materials, we were thoroughly impressed by a spongy, metallic micro-lattice that held a density of 0.9 milligrams per cubic centimeter (mg/cc). Now, a team of German scientists from the Technical University of Hamburg and University of Kiel has developed a new carbon-nanotube-based material called Aerographite that’s four times lighter at 0.2mg/cc. As you might have surmised from Aerographite’s name, it’s a material made of mostly air--99.99 percent, to be exact--along with carbon nanotubes. The scientists created the material by growing an interlinking chain of carbon nanotubes onto a zinc oxide template.
Squishiness of Saturn's moon suggests salty ocean below surface - Technology & Science. Scientists have reported the strongest sign yet that Saturn's giant moon may have a salty ocean beneath its chilly surface.
If confirmed, it would catapult Titan into an elite class of solar system moons harboring water, an essential ingredient for life. Titan boasts methane-filled seas at the poles and a possible lake near the equator. And it's long been speculated that Titan contains a hidden liquid layer, based on mathematical modeling and electric field measurements made by the Huygens spacecraft that landed on the surface in 2005. Mark Roth: Suspended animation is within our grasp.
Cosmic smashup predicted, but Earth will survive. WASHINGTON (AP) — Don't worry about when the world as we know it might end.
NASA has calculated that our entire Milky Way galaxy will crash into a neighboring galaxy with a direct head-on hit — in 4 billion years. Astronomers in a NASA news conference Thursday said that years of observations from the Hubble Space Telescope provide grisly details of a long-anticipated galactic smashup. Astronomers had seen the Andromeda galaxy coming at us, but thought there was a chance that its sideways motion would make it miss or graze the Milky Way. Science. DNA Transforms into Dark Matter Detector.
Underground experiments costing millions of dollars have still failed to find definite proof of the dark matter that supposedly makes up 90 percent of our Milky Way galaxy.
But a much cheaper detector made of DNA could finally come up with the "smoking gun" for dark matter's existence. The smoking gun would come from finding both daily and annual changes in the detection of suspected dark matter particles called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) — pattern changes that would fit leading theories about dark matter. Scientists have figured out how thousands of DNA strands can show the direction of incoming WIMPs for the first time, so that they can detect the proposed pattern changes. Dark matter is part of the gravitational glue that theoretically holds the Milky Way galaxy and universe together, because visible matter alone can't explain the gravitational hold that prevents galaxies from flying apart. The smoking gun View gallery.
Giant Dark Matter Bridge Between Galaxy Clusters Discovered. This story was updated at 9:32 a.m.
EDT on July 5. A giant string of invisible dark matter has been discovered across the universe between a pair of galaxy clusters. The filament forms a bridge between two huge clusters called Abell 222 and Abell 223, which lie 2.7 billion light-years away. The universe is thought to be filled with such strings of dark matter, a mysterious substance that cannot be seen, only sensed through its gravitational pull. Misbehaving Particles Poke Holes in Reigning Physics Theory. The reigning theory of particle physics may be flawed, according to new evidence that a subatomic particle decays in a certain way more often than it should, scientists announced.
This theory, called the Standard Model, is the best handbook scientists have to describe the tiny bits of matter that make up the universe. But many physicists suspect the Standard Model has some holes in it, and findings like this may point to where those holes are hiding. Inside the BaBar experiment at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif., researchers observe collisions between electrons and their antimatter partners, positrons (scientists think all matter particles have antimatter counterparts with equal mass but opposite charge). Icy Antarctica Once Ringed With Carpet of Lush Flora. The few plants that live in Antarctica today are hardy hangers-on, growing just a few weeks out of the year and surviving poor soil, lack of rain and very little sunlight.
But long ago, some parts of Antarctica were almost lush. New research finds that between about 15 million and 20 million years ago, plant life thrived on the coasts of the southernmost continent. Ancient pollen samples suggest that the landscape was a bit like today's Chilean Andes: grassy tundra dotted with small trees. This vegetated period peaked during the middle Miocene, when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were around 400 to 600 parts per million. (Today, driven by fossil fuel use, atmospheric carbon dioxide has climbed to 393 parts per million.) As a result, global temperatures warmed. Antarctica followed suit. 1969 Fireball Meteorite Reveals New Ancient Mineral. A fireball that tears across the sky is not just a one-time skywatching event — it can reap scientific dividends long afterward. In fact, one that lit up Mexico's skies in 1969 scattered thousands of meteorite bits across the northern Mexico state of Chihuahua. And now, decades later, that meteorite, named Allende, has divulged a new mineral called panguite.
Panguite is believed to be among the oldest minerals in the solar system, which is about 4.5 billion years old. Moondust: Nanoparticles in Lunar Soil May Solve Mystery. The moon has never had all that much. It doesn't have atmosphere, it doesn't have water and it sure doesn't have life. What it does have, though, is dirt — lots and lots of dirt — and it's some of the coolest stuff you ever saw. Now it's even cooler, thanks to the discovery this week of a wholly unexpected ingredient stirred into the lunar mix. Even before astronauts landed on the moon, they knew the soil would be something special. With no atmosphere to intercept incoming meteorites and micrometeorites, the lunar regolith — or surface covering — would have been subjected to a 4.5 billion year bombardment that would have produced a layer of dust far finer than confectioner's sugar.
When the astronauts brought their samples home, geologists in Houston discovered even more. Global Warming Fight Could Turn Skies Brighter, Whiter. If scientists were to follow through with a sun-blocking idea for cooling the planet, they may also brighten up your day — literally. New research found that blocking just 2 percent of the sun 's light from hitting our planet, a type of solar geoengineering to combat man-made global warming , would make the skies three to five times brighter and whiter. Another study, also out this week, suggests that in addition to sky-brightening, such sunlight-reducing geoengineering would disrupt global and regional rainfall patterns.
Giant Tropical Lake Found on Saturn Moon Titan. An oasis of liquid methane has unexpectedly been discovered amid the tropical dunes of Saturn's moon Titan, researchers say. This lake in the otherwise dry tropics of Titan hints that subterranean channels of liquid methane might feed it from below, scientists added. Titan has clouds, rain and lakes, like Earth, but these are composed of methane rather than water. However, methane lakes were seen only at Titan's poles until now — its tropics around the equator were apparently home to dune fields instead.
Now near-infrared pictures of Titan from the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn collected since 2004 suggest a vast methane lake exists on the surface in the moon's tropics, one about 925 square miles (2,400 square kilometers) large and at least three feet (1 meter) deep. Interstellar Gas Molecule Mystery Revealed. Near-Space Tourism Balloon Runs Test Launch.
NASA Simulates Asteroid Mission for Potential 2025 Flight. HOUSTON — NASA’s plans to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 moved 10 days closer to being a reality this week, even though the target of that mission has yet to be found in space. Dark Matter Exposed? Gamma-Ray Find Excites Scientists. Energetic light seen radiating from the center of the Milky Way may be the best evidence yet of dark matter, the invisible stuff thought to be hiding throughout the universe. Future of Technology - Latest Tech News, Gadgets & Advances. Franken-Physics: Atoms Split in Two & Put Back Together. Squid Lose Arms to Escape Predators. APNewsBreak: Evidence of 'God particle' found. GENEVA (AP) — Physicists say they have all but proven that the "God particle" exists. They have a footprint and a shadow, and the only thing left is to see for themselves the elusive subatomic particle believed to give all matter in the universe size and shape.
NASA's Juno Mission to Probe Jupiter's Biggest Secrets. ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A NASA probe that is traveling through space on its way to Jupiter is expected to help astronomers unlock mysteries about the largest planet in our solar system when it arrives there in 2016. Death Ray-theon: Anti-Aircraft Laser Unveiled. Topological Matter in Optical Lattices. Holograms That You Can Touch and Feel. Youtube Documentaries. Daniela Rus's Robotic Sand. 8 Ways Magnetic Levitation Could Shape the Future - How Maglev Technology Works. Inner_strength. Seeing the future? First-ever video taken with Google's Project Glass techno-goggles shows a Googler on a trampoline.
The Real Reason CO2 Emissions in US Plummeted. Fullerene Growth Explained. Secrets of the first practical artificial leaf. 7 Man-Made Substances that Laugh in the Face of Physics. Researchers create rewritable digital storage in DNA. Researchers develop soft memory with the consistency of Jell-O. Developing Glass Thin Enough to be Flexible. Spawn of the Supernovae, World Robot Domination, And G-Spot Science.
NUMB3RS Episode 508: Charlie Don't Surf. Was humanity born in the mother of all plagues? - health - 04 June 2012. Why Humans Prevailed. Can Steam Trains Get Clean Energy on Track? Vertical Farms Sprout into Reality. Avoid these words to prevent Homeland Security from spying on your social networks. Older Adults Welcome Robots Help with Chores. Vaccines Could Be Emailed and Printed at Home. Grandmas May Get Credit for Humans' Long Lives. Fossil Record Shows Species Need to Spread Out to Survive. The free encyclopedia. Robots Assemble for Military's $2 Million Challenge.
Hypersonic Plane Could Change Flight. The 13 Most Important Numbers in the Universe - James D. Stein's Cosmic Numbers. Flying and Rolling Robots Work Together. Underwater Robots Track Sharks Off US in a First. Rogue Dumping of Iron into Ocean Stirs Controversy. Talking whale? Captive beluga had learned to mimic human voices. Oceans in 2100 May 'Sound' Like Dinosaur-Era Seas. Berkeley Laser Fires Pulses Hundreds of Times More Powerful Than All the World's Electric Plants Combined. Microwave Missile Test Targets Electronics, Not People. A Swedish Stonehenge? Ancient Tomb Unearthed. Scientists find missing evolutionary link using tiny fungus crystal. Military Zeppelin Could Land Cargo without a Runway. Robotic Suit Aids Astronauts and Paraplegic Patients. ‘Man in Moon’ created by asteroid impact the size of Austria. Violent Origin of Saturn's Oddball Moons Explained.
Earth Climate Change Models Work for Mars. Tiny Satellites Launch from Space Station. Huge Saturn Storm Keeps Surprising Scientists. Extreme Global Warming May Have Caused Largest Extinction Ever. Elusive Giant Dark Matter Filament Seen in 3D (Video) Saturn's Moon Titan Has Soft and Crusty Surface, Probe Landing Reveals. Google Lunar X Prize Robot Built to Find Lunar Water.
Private Space Taxis on Track to Launch Astronauts. Newfound Meteor Shower May Spawn Meteor Storm in 2014. Planetfall: Wonders of the Solar System (Photos) Monster Galaxy's Core Is Biggest Ever Seen. Galaxy Evolution Discovery Surprises Scientists. Super-Dense Neutron Star Is Fastest Ever Seen. Blue Zones: Where People "Forget to Die" SLOOH SpaceCamera - Live Event. Science Fiction or Fact: Will Teleporters Ever Beam Us Up? Yepun’s Laser and the Magellanic Clouds. The Discovery of Complex Organic Matter in the Universe. The Nasa 'space drink' hat can rub out sun spots: Fruit juice developed to protect astronauts reduces wrinkles and reverses the telltale signs of ageing in four months. Station Study Simulates Earth's Magma. Private Deep Space Asteroid Telescope Mission to be Unveiled June 28. European Scientists Make a Case for a Return to the Moon. Software Converts Your Speech into Chinese.
Getting married? How about a gift for Obama, campaign suggests. E. coli could convert sugar to biodiesel at 'an extraordinary rate,' say Stanford researchers.