Tag: NASA

Life Out There

Another Saturday and lots of rest and mental relaxation……

For a year or more I have been writing about stories of ET (may never get on Ancient Aliens)………..there seems to be stories pointing to the possibility of left here started out there…..

A new study from NASA postulates that if life ever existed on Mars, it was probably underground.

Ever since clay minerals were discovered on Mars in 2005, scientists have thought warm and wet conditions that could have supported life may have existed, according to NASA. That’s because clay is formed when water and rock interact with each other.

According to NASA, the study, which is published in the current issue of the journal Nature, backs up a hypothesis that warm water was present only on the planet’s surface for geologically short periods of time.

“If surface habitats were short-term, that doesn’t mean we should be glum about prospects for life on Mars, but it says something about what type of environment we might want to look in,” Bethany Ehlmann, the lead author of the paper and a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. “The most stable Mars habitats over long durations appear to have been in the subsurface. On Earth, underground geothermal environments have active ecosystems.”

But we can’t rule anything out. Space.com notes that just because the water on the surface was only present for a short time doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been habitable.

There seems to be more and more about Mars…..is it a matter of time until Mars Attacks?  Think Marvin the Martian!

A Celestial Gas Station?

Saturday…..my start of a beautiful two days of mental nothingness…..AHHHHHH!

There has been lots of sciencey stuff in the past year……advancements in robotics and AI……faster than light travel in Europe, CERN to be exact…..and I am always looking for news and articles about space, the final frontier and our mission out there to the far reaches of the universe…..

As it is now, when we launch a rocket to the space station or such….we have to be aware of the fuel capacity and the levels or we may never get home or we could become a flaming star in the night sky…..while skooching around the net I fond an interesting article on the fuel controversy……

NASA boffins are looking into making a science-fiction staple – the idea of transmitting power to spacecraft using lasers or microwaves – into reality.

Sending enough energy to replace commonly-used present day space propulsion via laser beam would be quite a feat. One of the most powerful lasers in the world that’s capable of keeping a beam going for any length of time – Boeing’s Airborne Laser Test Bed – can put out only a few megawatts of juice, but (according to El Reg’s back-of-a-pint-coaster calculations) it takes about 190 gigawatts to power the first stage of a Saturn V rocket and 4.1GW to make a single Delta IV core rocket go.

The agency said in its statement:

This project will attempt to develop a low-cost, modular power beaming capability and explore multiple technologies to function as receiving elements of the beamed power.

This combination of technologies could be applied to space propulsion, performance and endurance of un-piloted aerial vehicles or ground-to-ground power beaming applications. Development of such capabilities fulfills NASA’s strategic goal of developing high-payoff technology and enabling missions otherwise unachievable with today’s technology.

This could be a major break through could eliminate the need for all that solid fuel or the concern on the level in the tank…..this could make space travel a whole lot easier and the search for our Klingnon brothers more realistic……

Is There Synthetic Life?

My last day of enjoyment for the sake of enjoyment….tomorrow I return to the world of ginned up issues, misinformation and bad acting….or as it is called in the media…..POLITICS!

Recently I posted on a computer that could make rational decisions on its own and I compared it with I, Robot……..but what about the idea of synthetic life?

I found this on the Live Science website…….

Synthetic organisms engineered to use carbon dioxide as a raw material could help humans settle Mars one day, a prominent biologist says.

Man-made, CO2-munching lifeforms are already in the works, geneticist Craig Venter told a crowd here during an event called TEDxNASA@SiliconValley Wednesday night (Aug. 17). Venter and his team, who made headlines last year by creating the world’s first synthetic organism, are trying to design cells that can use atmospheric carbon dioxide to make food, fuel, plastics and other products.

This ability would obviously have huge implications here on Earth, but it could also help make Mars — whose thin atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide — a more livable place, Venter said.

There is more on the artificial stuff made more human……

Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new technology that may help robots feel, give the sense of touch back to those with prosthetic limbs, and ultimately help robots do the dishes without breaking them (and while they’re at it, maybe make a sandwich without turning it into land of the flatlanders).

The material is built using semiconductor nanowires that can operate using low voltages, and it’s more flexible than previous inorganic synthetic skins. This “e-skin” is also stronger than its competing organic materials. Organic materials are also poor semiconductors, and require a higher voltage to operate. The Berkeley group’s synthetic skin can either be transferred to another material like a plastic or glass by either directly transferring it over from a flat substrate which is then “rubbed” onto a polymer film made of polyamide. It can also be “rolled” onto the surface using a device that works much like a lint roller in reverse; the fibers are deposited to a sticky surface rather than picked up.

The e-skin can detect pressure in the range from 0 to 15 kilopascals, or similar to the pressure needed to perform normal daily tasks. In other words, when your cyber-being goes to clean the wine glasses from last night’s party, it won’t break them, and when your robot goes to make you a sandwich, it won’t flatten it to the size of your silicon microprocessor.

I do not know about you….but all this stuff is beginning to sound a bit like…..I, Robot!

If successful….it starts off small and morphs from there.  So is this the beginning of the end……(a tease)……a super smart micro chip…..a computer that thinks for itself….and now able to invent synthetic life……How soon will it be before we have a “Bladerunner” scenario?

Thoughts?

Captain, There Is An Anti-Matter Imbalance!

Another weekend and another couple of days of thinking about something other than the pissed up world of politics.  It is refreshing not to think about the morons we elect…..

Remember in almost every episode and movie in the Star Trek series…..Scotty would always report that there was some sort of engine problem like an anti-matter imbalance that would destroy the warp coils or something just as destructive?

Well, that is out of the way………I do not know just how much we spend as a nation or a planet trying to create and then capture an anti-matter molecule…..in Cern Switzerland or some place in the Midwest we have these huge colliders that are used to create anti-matter….okay, but just what is anti-matter?

Let Wikipedia help……

In particle physics, antimatter is the extension of the concept of the antiparticle to matter, where antimatter is composed of antiparticles in the same way that normal matter is composed of particles. For example, a positron (the antiparticle of the electron or e+
) and an antiproton (p) can form an antihydrogen atom in the same way that an electron and a proton form a normal matter hydrogen atom. Furthermore, mixing matter and antimatter can lead to the annihilation of both in the same way that mixing antiparticles and particles does, thus giving rise to high-energy photons (gamma rays) or other particle–antiparticle pairs. The result of antimatter meeting matter is an explosion

In other words anti-matter is very difficult to create and capture….if only there were another way to get the anti-matter we need to study …..here’s an idea……

The find, described in Astrophysical Journal Letters, confirms theoretical work that predicted the Earth’s magnetic field could trap antimatter.

The team says a small number of antiprotons lie between the Van Allen belts of trapped “normal” matter.

The researchers say there may be enough to implement a scheme using antimatter to fuel future spacecraft.

The antiprotons were spotted by the Pamela satellite (an acronym for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) – launched in 2006 to study the nature of high-energy particles from the Sun and from beyond our Solar System – so-called cosmic rays.

The new analysis, described in an online preprint, shows that when Pamela passes through a region called the South Atlantic Anomaly, it sees thousands of times more antiprotons than are expected to come from normal particle decays, or from elsewhere in the cosmos.The team says that this is evidence that bands of antiprotons, analogous to the Van Allen belts, hold the antiprotons in place – at least until they encounter the normal matter of the atmosphere, when they “annihilate” in a flash of light.

Although normal matter particles outweigh the antiprotons by thousands to one, the band is “the most abundant source of antiprotons near the Earth”, said Alessandro Bruno of the University of Bari, a co-author of the work.

If possible….look at the cash that this discovery could save the world……

I know I am a political nerd, but stuff like this just fascinates the crap out of me….and as you can imagine….that could get a bit messy……

Enjoy your weekend!

Did You Watch Dune?

Sunday and my last day of relaxation, mental relaxation, before I go back to where I belong…..bitching!

The movie by Delaurentiss, not the one made for the SciFi channel, that one was pretty bad……the book by Herbert that started the whole Dine phenom……if you saw it then you will probably remember after the House Atredis took over control of Arakis and the Duke and his son went on an inspection tour of the spice mining operation…..they met with the imperial ecologist and were shown ho to properly wear the stillsuit……the special suit worn while in the desert….it took sweat, pee and feces and processed it into drinking water and the walking provided the energy to fuel the process…..remember?

So far fetched, huh?

Maybe not so…….

Soldiers already use similar technology to filter out parasites, bacteria, viruses and other contaminants from dirty fluids, including urine, but NASA’s adapted baggie system has yet to prove itself in space.

“This could be a first step toward recapturing the humidity from our sweat, from our breath, even from our urine, and recycling it and making it drinkable,” said NASA project scientist and experiment leader Howard Levine, who made a reference to water-recycling “stillsuits” used on a desert world in the science fiction series Dune.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station already drink water from a pee-recycling machine delivered several years ago, but it saps power from the orbital laboratory’s limited supply. The space-ready water conversion kit, however, won’t need an external power source because it relies on a passive property of fluids called forward osmosis.

NASA’s recycler will use a sugary solution injected into a semi-permeable inner bag, which is nested inside an outer bag. Dirty fluid that’s pumped into the outer bag will slowly pass through the inner bag and into the sugary solution, leaving behind its contaminants. On Earth, the double-sack system makes about a liter of sports drink-like fluid in four to six hours.

(as reported on Wired Science website)

Looks like life is imitating art……….All we need now are the Fremen and a couple of big ass worms!

Who Is Colonizing Mars?

Two days of thinking about stuff other than the insanity that is our political system…..it is so hot here that if I could pull it off I would go about in a speed-do….(now there is a picture you should not try to imagine)…..but speaking of strange things…….

Remember when ‘War of the Worlds’ creating a panic because people though we were being invaded by Martians?  Of course you don’t!  That was in the early days of radio….the Bronze Age we call the 30’s.  Okay let us leap into to the not so distant past….remember when we were told about the face on Mars?  And of course that started a whole thing about who, what and why it was put there.  Or maybe you can remember some of those pics from a rover (I believe) that showed what appeared to be parts of some android (the robot not the phone)…….and the same questions popped up….who, what and why?

Well all that hoopla is about to start all over again…..why?  It seems that some Calif. amateur astromomer has found something interesting while he was Googling Mars……got you attention yet?

Watch the vid and let me know what you think it is……

http://n.pr/lpj1aK

Are we looking at a replay of “Mars Attacks”?

A New Life!

We are always on the look out for a new form of life to which we can extend our dominion over…….and so the scientist search and search and look and look….and all their hard work has found a……you guessed it!….A new life  form!

Leave it to the Rocket Scientists at NASA……..

In a press conference held at NASA’s Washington D.C. headquarters, scientists announced that they had discovered a new form of bacteria, known as GFAJ-1, in California’s Mono Lake that has DNA completely foreign to anything ever before found on Earth. It substitutes arsenic at the DNA level for phosphorus.

That would distinguish it from every other form of life known to man, all of which, no matter how diverse, is comprised of the same six elements, phosphorus, sulfur, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. But the bacteria found in Mono Lake–which is known for its unusual chemistry, including very high levels of salinity, alkalinity, and arsenic–is made partly of arsenic, and has no phosphorus in its DNA.

NASA feels that this discovery is important because it will help scientists with many areas of future research, such as the “study of Earth’s evolution, organic chemistry, biogeochemical cycles, disease mitigation, and Earth system research. These findings also will open up new frontiers in microbiology and other areas of research.” 

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20024450-52.html#ixzz16zQOlMBr

A new life form?  How long will it take man to screw up this find?  On a more positive side….there is the possibility of new members for the Tea Party…..or some preacher to give this some sort of religious overtones?  (and you thought I could not make this into some political statement….HA!  Ye of little faith!)

Methane On Mars

Large quantities of methane gas have been detected on Mars, Nasa scientists have announced in Science journal.

The gas could be produced either by geological activity or by life.

Methane was detected in the Martian atmosphere five years ago; scientists have found it is more abundant over particular parts of the planet.

It should last for only a short time in the atmosphere until it is destroyed by sunlight, and so its continued presence means it is being replenished.

This suggests the methane is made by an ongoing process.

But the ultimate origin of the methane could either be an ancient or a modern one, say the researchers.

“The fact that we have found three discrete regions where Mars is releasing methane at this time means we have a window into processes occurring under the surface of the planet,” said co-author Michael Mumma, a senior planetary scientist at Nasa’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland, US.

“The production (of methane) is likely due to only one of two possibilities. The first is geochemistry, the second is biology. That raises much interest on which one is the dominant production mechanism.”

If the methane is produced by geological activity, it could either originate from active Martian volcanoes or from a process called serpentinisation.

The latter process occurs at low temperatures and occurs when rocks rich in the minerals olivine and pyroxene react chemically with water, releasing methane.

Some scientists consider it possible that microbes could have survived for aeons below the Martian permafrost layer, where water changes from ice into liquid.

In deep canyons, or the walls of yawning craters, ice might plug fissures or pores connecting these sub-permafrost regions to the atmosphere.

Nasa’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, due to launch to the Red Planet in 2011, will carry instruments that have the potential to distinguish between carbon in gases produced by biological activity and those with a geochemical origin.

Militarization Of Space?

President-Elect Barack Obama may seek to save money and advance America’s space presence by promoting closer cooperation between the US military space programme and NASA, according to reports.

Bloomberg News, in an exclusive report, claims that “Obama’s transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and NASA… according to people who’ve discussed the idea with the Obama team”. However the news service also quotes Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro as saying that “The NASA review team is just asking questions; no decisions have been made”.

The problems America faces in space for the coming decade come in two main areas. Firstly, US manned spaceflight is planned to cease with the retirement of the space shuttle fleet next year – though NASA has been required by law to keep open the option of a shuttle extension until President Obama arrives in office.

Under the space agency’s current plans, no US astronaut could travel to space in an American ship until the new generation of Ares/Orion rockets and modules are ready, which can’t realistically happen any sooner than 2015. Barring a substantial, credit-crunch-flouting budget increase, NASA says that any extension of the shuttle fleet would push back Ares/Orion pretty much year for year – hence the agency is bitterly opposed to any such extension.

The problem with a gap in US manned spaceflight capability is primarily one of image and diplomatic leverage – for at least the first few years after Shuttle retirement, NASA could only get its astronauts to and from the substantially US-funded and operated International Space Station (ISS) aboard Russian Soyuz rockets. While a lack of personnel on the station might not have any very significant real-world impact on America, it would be a huge blow to US prestige. Even a delicately implied threat of such a withdrawal of cooperation by Russia could be hugely troublesome.

Meanwhile, the US military and intelligence community has been seriously rattled by China’s successful 2007 satellite-buster test. America’s spooks and armed forces are heavily reliant on satellites for global communications, navigation and surveillance. In particular, much of America’s ability to spot ballistic missile launches around the globe comes from spy satellites.

A Cold-War era moratorium on active space combat has held fairly well until now from the US point of view: the only major push which could really be viewed as a budding orbital strike force is America’s own missile-defence programme. America insists, of course, that it is nothing of the sort – it is merely an unfortunate side-effect that interceptors able to knock down intercontinental ballistic missiles are by their nature also able to hit satellites in low orbit.

Nonetheless, there are many in the Pentagon and the spy services who see China’s test as the opening of a new era of struggle for space dominance: and who don’t regard China as the only threat, either. With India now able to send a probe to the Moon, and even Iran claiming that it will be able to put payloads into orbit shortly, there will soon be a lot of new players on the orbital game board.

Looking For A Martian Brother

Scientists have discovered that Martian soil is rich in nutrients.

NASA researchers want to determine whether the planet could support, or ever has supported, life. The nutrients are among a few positive indicators they have gleaned since the Phoenix Mars Lander began collecting and testing soil samples last month. Early findings, including ice crystals and nutrients, point toward water — the chemical basis for life.

NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander began its first wet chemistry experiment on Martian soil this week. NASA said the experiment went “flawlessly” and produced data that, for Phoenix scientists, “was like winning the lottery.” On Friday, some work remained before the first wet-chemical analysis was complete. This is the first such experiment done on any planet other than Earth would be complete, according to Phoenix co-investigator Sam Kounaves of Tufts University, who serves as the science lead for the wet chemistry research.

Kounaves said the soil appears similar to that found in Antarctica’s dry upper valleys and the salts it contains are another indication of the presence of water.

The soil about one-inch into the surface layer is alkaline, with a pH between eight and nine, and it appears to contain magnesium, sodium, potassium, and chloride, according to Kouvanes.