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Message 33312 - Posted: 9 Jun 2010, 0:48:04 UTC

Space Weather News for June 8, 2010

NEW COMET McNAUGHT: A fresh comet is swinging through the inner solar system, and it is brightening rapidly as it approaches Earth for a 100 million mile close encounter in mid-June. Comet McNaught (C/2009 R1) has a vivid green head and a long wispy tail that look great through small telescopes. By the end of the month it could be visible to the naked eye perhaps as bright as the stars of the Big Dipper. Because this is the comet's first visit to the inner solar system, predictions of future brightness are necessarily uncertain; amateur astronomers should be alert for the unexpected.

for sky maps, photos and more information Visit ...

http://spaceweather.com
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Message 33332 - Posted: 11 Jun 2010, 0:43:37 UTC

Space based solar power? How about a Moon-based solar collector that would beam energy back to Earth. This is just one idea proposed by a 200-year-old Japanese construction company, Shimizu that prides itself in forward-thinking technology and structure development. For this "Luna Ring," an array of solar cells would extend like a belt along the entire 11,000 km lunar equator, and laser power transmission facilities would beam a high-energy-density laser towards receiving stations on Earth .....

http://www.universetoday.com/2010/06/09/japanese-firm-designing-futuristic-space-mega-projects/
http://www.universetoday.com/2010/06/09/japanese-firm-designing-futuristic-space-mega-projects/
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Message 33338 - Posted: 11 Jun 2010, 20:08:33 UTC

A simple way to create nano circuitry on graphene developed. A method of drawing nano scale circuits onto atom-thick sheets of graphene has been developed by researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) The simple, quick one-step process for creating nano wires, based...

http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?nid=58002
http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?nid=58002


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Message 33342 - Posted: 13 Jun 2010, 0:13:49 UTC

Space Weather News for June 12, 2010 A new sunspot has popped up and it is crackling with solar flares. Today, AR1081 has unleashed a series of M- and C-class eruptions plus at least one strong shortwave radio burst detected by amateur radio astronomers on the Pacific side of Earth. High resolution movies of the flares and an audio recording of the solar radio burst ....

Read more here ...

http://spaceweather.com
http://spaceweather.com
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Message 33343 - Posted: 13 Jun 2010, 0:28:44 UTC

Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands opened LOFAR today, a new and innovative effort to force a breakthrough in sensitivity for astronomical observations at radio-frequencies below 250 MHz.

The LOw Frequency ARray is a multi-purpose sensor array. Its main application is astronomy at low frequencies (10-250 MHz) but also has geophysical and agricultural applications. Its heart is currently being assembled in the Northeast of the Netherlands and spreads over the whole country and over whole Europe.

http://www.lofar.org/queen-opens-lofar

7,000 antennas are spread over 44 fields in the North of the Netherlands and from Sweden to France and from the UK to the East of Germany. Glass fibres connect the antennas with a supercomputer at the University of Groningen's Computer Centre. In this way, a giant telescope is formed with a diameter of one hundred to one thousand kilometres.
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Message 33355 - Posted: 14 Jun 2010, 11:45:46 UTC

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...

read more here ...

http://www.physorg.com/news189320461.html
http://www.physorg.com/news189320461.html
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Message 33356 - Posted: 14 Jun 2010, 11:46:36 UTC

Japan's little spacecraft that could returned to Earth, putting on quite a show over the Australian outback, making a fiery reentry. Hayabusa returned around 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) in the Woomera Prohibited Area of South Australia. In the video you'll see a little speck of light ahead of the falling debris: that’s the sample return canister with, hopefully, some precious goods aboard – samples from asteroid Itokawa. The canister separated about three hours before reaching Earth, and returned to Earth via parachute. The canister has been recovered, and will be taken to Japan where scientists will open it to find out if there is anything inside. The return was monitored scientists from around the world, including a NASA crew on aboard a DC-8 airplane who took the video footage. Read the rest of Hayabusa Returns .....

read more here ...

http://www.universetoday.com/2010/06/13/hayabusa-returns/
http://www.universetoday.com/2010/06/13/hayabusa-returns/
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Message 33386 - Posted: 16 Jun 2010, 1:01:54 UTC

The CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and Transits) spacecraft has been busy, and using this exoplanet-finding-machine astronomers recently found six new extrasolar planets, which contain an odd assortment of new worlds. They include shrunken-Saturns to bloated hot Jupiters, as well a rare brown dwarf with 60 times the mass of Jupiter. "Each of these planets is interesting in its own right, but what is really fascinating is how diverse they are," said co-investigator Dr Suzanne Aigrain from Oxford University’s Department of Physics. "Planets are intrinsically complex objects, and we have much to learn about them yet."

http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2010/100614.html
http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2010/100614.html
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Message 33405 - Posted: 16 Jun 2010, 16:30:43 UTC
Last modified: 16 Jun 2010, 16:32:00 UTC

National Science Foundation, 16 June 2010, Florida State University is planning to build one of the world's most powerful mass spectrometers. The ultrahigh-field mass spectrometer, newly funded by the National Science Foundation, will allow researchers to study in ever greater detail proteins and other molecules--the nuts and bolts of biology, the environment and renewable energy--and push the boundaries of such analyses.

NSF's Division of Chemistry has dedicated $17.5 million ($15 million of this is out of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding) to the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at FSU. The facility will build a high-field mass spectrometer over the next four to five years.

"This grant will give us the opportunity to see the chemical and molecular world in unprecedented detail--sort of like HDTV compared to ordinary TV," said Alan Marshall, director of NHMFL's Ion Cyclotron Resonance Program.

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=117137&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=117137&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click
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Message 33426 - Posted: 17 Jun 2010, 16:22:39 UTC

There's a new eye on the skies on the lookout for 'killer' asteroids and comets. The first Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System) telescope, PS1, is fully operational, ready to map large portions of the sky nightly, making it an efficient sleuth for not just potential incoming space rocks, but also supernovae and other variable objects.
"Pan-STARRS is an all-purpose machine," said Harvard astronomer Edo Berger. "Having a dedicated telescope repeatedly surveying large areas opens up a lot of new opportunities."

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2010/pr201008.html
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2010/pr201008.html
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Message 33468 - Posted: 20 Jun 2010, 23:28:42 UTC

NASA Science News for 18 June 2010. Halfway to Pluto, NASA's New Horizons probe has woken up in 'exotic territory.' Mission controllers are taking the opportunity to give the spacecraft a thorough system's check in preparation for its Pluto flyby in 2015.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/18jun_newhorizons/
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/18jun_newhorizons/
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Message 33494 - Posted: 22 Jun 2010, 18:00:47 UTC

Maybe ET's Calling, But We Have The Wrong Phone



To date, SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) has focused on ETs who 'phone home' using the radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and even a very small region within that.

But what if ET's phone doesn't use radio waves? Sure the xkcd comic, is funny, but maybe it points to a deep flaw in our attempts to contact, or hear from, an ETI?

When Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison suggested the possibility of interstellar communication via electromagnetic waves in a 1959 paper in Nature, only radio was feasible, as we then had the ability to detect only artificial radio signals, if produced by ETIs with 1959 human technology. Since then we've developed the ability to detect a laser signal, brighter than the Sun (if only for a nanosecond) if it came from a source several light-years away … but lasers weren't invented then.

What might ET's equivalent of ants' pheromones be?
(...)
Read the rest of Maybe ET's Calling, But We Have the Wrong Phone (814 words)

http://www.universetoday.com/2010/06/21/maybe-ets-calling-but-we-have-the-wrong-phone/
http://www.universetoday.com/2010/06/21/maybe-ets-calling-but-we-have-the-wrong-phone/
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Message 33502 - Posted: 23 Jun 2010, 2:52:02 UTC

Researchers at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea have developed a new method to produce graphene sheets with a diagonal dimension of 76 centimeters ... an order of magnitude larger than previously managed. It could result in cheap, transparent electrodes that can be used in flexible displays or photovoltaic ...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19068-touchscreen-made-from-biggest-graphene-sheet.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19068-touchscreen-made-from-biggest-graphene-sheet.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
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Message 33509 - Posted: 24 Jun 2010, 18:00:50 UTC

Blinded eyes restored to sight by stem cells. Stem cells have restored sight to 82 people with eyes blinded by chemical or heat burns, restoring vision to a level up to 0.9 on a visual acuity scale (1 represents perfect vision), reports Graziella Pellegrini at University of Modena in Italy ...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627662.900-blinded-eyes-restored-to-sight-by-stem-cells.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627662.900-blinded-eyes-restored-to-sight-by-stem-cells.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
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Message 33521 - Posted: 25 Jun 2010, 13:46:38 UTC

Was Venus Once a Waterworld? Ever read Isaac Asimov's 1950's novel "Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus"? Maybe Asimov wasn't so wrong about Venus after all. Analyzing data from ESA’s Venus Express, planetary scientists are looking at the possibility that the planet may have once harbored oceans, and potentially could have been habitable when it was young. Read the rest of Was Venus Once a Waterworld?

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMQ9OLZLAG_index_0.html
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMQ9OLZLAG_index_0.html
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Message 33522 - Posted: 25 Jun 2010, 15:52:29 UTC

No sooner do we post one article about water on Mars when it's time for another. Planetary scientists have uncovered telltale 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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Message 33535 - Posted: 26 Jun 2010, 14:00:36 UTC

_ 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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Message 33547 - Posted: 27 Jun 2010, 13:17:21 UTC

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 towards a meetup 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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Message 33564 - Posted: 28 Jun 2010, 13:53:56 UTC

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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Message 33588 - Posted: 29 Jun 2010, 7:12:38 UTC

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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