No sooner do we post one article about water on Mars when it's time for another. Planetary scientists have uncovered tell tale signs of water on Mars — frozen and liquid — in the earliest period of the Red Planet’s history. They found evidence of running water that sprang from glaciers throughout the Martian middle latitudes as recently as the Amazonian epoch, several hundred million years ago. These glaciofluvial valleys were, in essence, tributaries of water created when enough sunlight reached the glaciers to melt a thin layer on the surface. This led to “limited surface melting” that formed channels that ran for several kilometers and could be more than 150 feet wide. Read the rest of Evidence for Past Water on Mars Keeps Flowing, This Time from Glaciers.

http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2010/06/mars#
http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2010/06/mars#

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_ Hello every one _ Faster - than - light electric currents could explain pulsars. Claiming that something can move faster than light is a good conversation-stopper in physics. People edge away from you in cocktail parties; friends never return phone calls. You just don't mess with Albert Einstein. So when I saw a press conference at the American Astronomical Society meeting this past January on faster-than-light phenomena in the cosmos, my first reaction was to say, "Terribly sorry, but I really have to go now." Astrophysicists have been speaking of FTL motion for years, but it was always just a trick of the light that lent the impression of warp speed, a technicality of wave motion, or an exotic consequence of the expansion of the universe. These researchers were claiming a very different sort of trick. Dubious though I was, I put their press release in my "needs more thought" folder and today finally got around to taking a closer look. And what I've found is utterly fascinating .....

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=faster-than-light-electric-currents-2010-06-18&sc=physics_20100625
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=faster-than-light-electric-currents-2010-06-18&sc=physics_20100625

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The re-purposed Deep Impact spacecraft will make one final flyby of Earth on Sunday June 27, 2010, getting a gravity assist to help propel the spacecraft to wards a meet up with comet Hartley 2 this fall. The spacecraft bus that brought the Deep Impact "impactor" to comet Tempel 1 in July of 2005 has been put back to work double time where two new missions share the same spacecraft. This is the fifth time this spacecraft has flown by Earth, and at the time of closest approach on Sunday, it will be about 30,400 kilometers (18,900 miles) above the South Atlantic. "The speed and orbital track of the spacecraft can be changed by changing aspects of its flyby of Earth, such as how close it comes to the planet," said University of Maryland astronomer Michael A'Hearn, principal investigator for both the new EPOXI mission and its predecessor mission, Deep Impact. Read the rest of Spacecraft to Make Final Flyby of Earth .....

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-06/uom-dis062510.php
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-06/uom-dis062510.php

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NASA Science News for 25 June 2010. On June 13th, while flying on an airplane at 41,000 feet, high school students from Massachusetts witnessed and recorded the dramatic breakup of Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft over Australia. Their newly-processed video is a must-see .....

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/25jun_hayabusa/
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/25jun_hayabusa/

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Emulating the efficient way that bacteria communicate with molecules, computer scientists are developing a mathematical theory of molecular
communication based on a wetware model that includes quorum sensing and factors such as Brownian motion, the velocity of fluid flow, and the
rate of molecular...

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25365/
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25365/

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I recall star trek being the fore runner of this technology. I think its great that Scifi shows are the creative influence for future technologies

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

let me just say great thread. we are really over due for new technology. i can't wait till i can get involved in renewable energy. sadly i have to learn everything as i know nothing. also i just want to say if we make contact and they are offering me and my family are ready to beam up to the ship lol.
we really need to hurry and fix things here or i won't be the only one looking for the first ride off this planet. :)

until then i'll just try to learn how to build 0 emissions and renewable energy. and hope others do the same. really we still use electricity made from coal? everything thing should be wind/solar/water by now. i guess they are gonna wait and see how long we will buy jacked up prices for gas/utilities etc. or make our own... i hope very soon we no long need utilities companies and the like and more are making their own food/water/energy. its time for the green movement just not the one we are mostly seeing now.. its still green moving just with dead pres on the front.

Breaking News ... The SETI Institute ... Frank Drake Passes the Torch ... Carl Sagan Center Welcomes New Director

Last month SETI Institute celebrated two major milestones in the life of Frank Drake, the father of SETI science; his 80th birthday and his contributions as Director of our astrobiology arm, the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe. Frank, who still comes to the Institute offices every day and is as busy as ever, has now returned to serve on our Board of Directors. As you might imagine, Frank left some very big shoes to fill.

But who better to pass the torch to lead the Carl Sagan Center than Carl Sagan’s very first doctoral student and one of the founders of astrobiology itself? SETI Institute is thrilled to welcome Dr. David Morrison as the new Director of our astrobiology Center.

Not only did he found the study of astrobiology, a rapidly growing field that brings together multiple scientific disciplines to study life- past, present, and future- but his career at NASA and elsewhere has been unbelievably productive across numerous scientific areas. Just reading his resume could make anyone exhausted.

He has been an investigator on the Mariner 10, Voyager, CRAF, Galileo, and Kepler space missions. He served as the Director of Space for NASA and remains a NASA Senior Scientist for Astrobiology as well as part-time Director of NASA’s Lunar Science Institute.

NASA has also made it Dr. Morrison’s informal job to help protect our planet from asteroid and comet impacts. No pressure there. Check out the full article for more on the threat from asteroids, to learn about his discoveries on the planets in our solar system, and to find out the true science behind the 2012 myths.

For a fascinating lecture in which he examines the most common myths around 2012 and the real science behind the theories, check out this video link. (Launch DeAnza iTunes, click on Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures, watch movie “Doomsday 2012, April 21, 2010.” You can also find lectures by SETI Institute scientists: Jill Tarter, Seth Shostak, Dana Backman, Mark Showalter, and Margaret Race)

So with his monster resume, how did he come to take on being Director of our Carl Sagan Center as well? How does he manage to do all of this? The answer... passion. Passion for knowledge in abundance.

Dr. Morrison says, “My friends think maybe I was a little crazy to accept a second full-time job (in addition to NASA) without even a pay raise. But what I am doing (at SETI Institute) is very exciting... The Institute has always had outstanding scientists..., and it just keeps getting better over time… It is hard for me to imagine any field of science with greater popular appeal than the study of the origin and evolution of life, and consideration of possible "little green men" on other worlds.

“We have great opportunities (at SETI Institute) to excite kids about science and contribute to the overall scientific literacy of Americans... I always hoped to eventually find a way to work more directly with the Institute... It has a uniquely compelling "story" -- to understand the origin and evolution of life and to search for evidence of life beyond our home planet. What could be more fun than that?”

So it seems the Carl Sagan Center was calling his name. We are so happy that he answered.


http://www.seti.org/Page.aspx?pid=1436
http://www.seti.org/Page.aspx?pid=1436

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Thank you David Morrison for protecting us from asteroid and comet impacts.No pressure there. XD "hey is this on boinc?"
man what a hard job this is. can we even mount any defensive against such huge objects?

all i can say is we have alot of work to do for our planet. i like Michio Kaku's nano tech but lets send them to mine asteroid belt or bring some pieces closer and let robots mine. there could be another element out there if the periodic table has more room. :) Then we may be able to advance our engineering some more.

and here's more new idea's
http://www.electroluxdesignlab.com/2010/06/electrolux-design-lab-2010-semi-finalists/

Nano scale Random Number Circuit to Secure Future Chips. Intel unveils a circuit that can pump out truly random numbers at high speed. It might sound like the last thing you need in a precise piece of hardware, but engineers at Intel are pretty pleased to have found a way to build a circuit capable of random behavior into computer processors. Generating randomness ... an unpredictable stream of numbers ... is much harder than you might think. It's also crucial to creating the secure cryptographic keys needed to keep data safe. Building a random number generating ability into the Central Processing Unit (CPU) at a computer's heart is ideal, says Ram Krishnamurthy, an engineer at Intel's Microprocessor Technology Labs, in Hillsboro, OR. It should speed up any process that requires the generation of an encrypted key, for example securing sensitive data on a hard drive, and make it harder for an attacker to compromise that encryption. Building circuitry capable of producing random numbers into a CPU has proved difficult. "Today random numbers are either generated in software, or in the chip set outside the microprocessor," explains Krishnamurthy, one of the Intel researchers on the project ...

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25670/?nlid=3181
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25670/?nlid=3181

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An exclusive interview with SpaceX's safety officer delves into the post-flight review of the Falcon 9 test launch. Also this week, the final shuttle missions slip out and John Glenn enters debate about the space program's future ...

http://www.universetoday.com/2010/06/28/this-week-in-space-with-miles-obrien-2/
http://www.universetoday.com/2010/06/28/this-week-in-space-with-miles-obrien-2/

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Kansas State University researchers are exploring the use of iron-iron oxide nano particle-induced hyperthermia to overheat or bore holes through cancerous tissue to kill it. An organic coating attracts the cancer cells to the nano particles. An external alternating magnetic field then causes the particles to produce friction heat, which is...

http://www.k-state.edu/media/newsreleases/jun10/cancernano62810.html
http://www.k-state.edu/media/newsreleases/jun10/cancernano62810.html

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An international team unveiled the origin of the giant gas ring in the Leo group of galaxies. With the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the scientists were able to detect an optical signature of the ring corresponding to star forming regions. This observation rules out the primordial nature of the gas, which is of galactic origin. Thanks to numerical simulations made at CEA, a scenario for the formation of this ring has been proposed: a violent collision between two galaxies, slightly more than one billion years ago. The results will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Read the rest of Mysterious Giant Gas Ring Explained .....

http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/en/news/LeoRing/
http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/en/news/LeoRing/

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very nice man. we need more excitement like this :) love it keep it coming

A Star Is Born ... But How? Columbia researchers reveal the simple, key chemical formula enabling the formation of early stars Created in the first three minutes after the Big Bang, hydrogen and helium gave rise to all other elements in the universe. Stars made this possible. Through nuclear fusion, stars generated elements such as carbon, oxygen, magnesium and all the other raw materials necessary for making planets and ultimately life. But how did the first stars come to be? It all hinges on hydrogen atoms coming together to form hydrogen molecules. New research from Columbia University sheds light on this process .....


http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=117262&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=117262&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click

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Communicating With The Universe

July 4, 2010 by Amara D. Angelica

Over the next million years, a descendant of the Internet will maintain contact with inhabited planets throughout our galaxy and begin to spread out into the larger universe, linking up countless new or existing civilizations into the Universenet, a network of ultimate intelligence ...

more ...

http://www.kurzweilai.net/communicating-with-the-universe?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=446afe0ae9-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email
http://www.kurzweilai.net/communicating-with-the-universe?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=446afe0ae9-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email

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Using super-high pressures similar to those found deep in the Earth or on a giant planet, Washington State University researchers have created a compact, never-before-seen material capable of storing vast amounts of energy.

“It is the most condensed form of energy storage outside of nuclear energy,” says Choong-Shik Yoo, a WSU chemistry professor and lead author of results published in the journal Nature Chemistry. “It shows it is possible to store mechanical energy into the chemical energy of a material with such strong chemical bonds. Possible future applications include creating a new class of energetic materials or fuels, an energy storage device, super-oxidizing materials for destroying chemical and biological agents, and high-temperature superconductors.”

The researchers created the material in a diamond anvil cell, a small, two-inch by three-inch-diameter …

http://wsunews.wsu.edu/pages/publications.asp?Action=Detail&PublicationID=20580&TypeID=1
http://wsunews.wsu.edu/pages/publications.asp?Action=Detail&PublicationID=20580&TypeID=1

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A Data Deluge Swamps Science Historians



The next generation of experiments, like the Large Hadron Collider,
above, a powerful particle accelerator beneath the border of Switzerland and France, will be even more data-intensive.

London

In a vault beneath the British Library here, Jeremy Leighton John grapples with a formidable challenge in digital life. Dr. John, the library's first curator of eManuscripts, is working on ways to archive the deluge of computer data swamping scientists so that future generations can authenticate today's discoveries and better understand the people who made them.

His task is only getting harder. Scientists who collaborate via email, Google, YouTube, Flickr and Facebook are leaving fewer paper trails, while the information technologies that do document their accomplishments can be incomprehensible to other researchers and historians trying to read them. Computer-intensive experiments and the software used to analyze their output generate millions of gigabytes of data that are stored or retrieved by electronic systems that quickly become obsolete.

read more here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125139942345664387.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125139942345664387.html

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Cosmologists Search for Gravity Waves to Prove Inflation Theory



During the next decade, cosmologists will attempt to observe the first moments of the Universe, hoping to prove a popular theory. They'll be searching for extremely weak gravity waves to measure primordial light, looking for convincing evidence for the Cosmic Inflation Theory, which proposes that a random, microscopic density fluctuation in the fabric of space and time gave birth to the Universe in a hot big bang approximately 13.7 billion years ago. A new instrument called a polarimeter is being attached to the South Pole Telescope (SPT), which operates at submillimeter wavelengths, between microwaves and the infrared on the electromagnetic spectrum. Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that Cosmic Inflation should produce the weak gravity waves ...

Read the rest of Cosmologists Search for Gravity Waves to Prove Inflation Theory (690 words) here

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Physicists demonstrate 100-fold speed increase in optical quantum memory



As with today's computers, future quantum computers will require more than just quantum information processing; they will also require methods to store and retrieve the quantum information. For this reason, physicists have been studying different types of quantum memories, which are capable of controllably storing and releasing photons. However, these memories still face several challenges in areas including storage time, retrieval efficiency, the ability to store multiple photons, and bandwidth.

An international team of physicists has achieved data rates that exceed 1 GHz, more than 100 times greater than the speed of existing quantum memories. The method also offers long coherence times of several microseconds. A signal containing the information and a write pulse are sent together into a cesium vapor cell. The vapor turns the...

http://www.physorg.com/news189320461.html
http://www.physorg.com/news189320461.html

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