Space, Science and Exploration (News and Events) - Page 6

Justin · 11-02-2012, 02:09 PM

....I really should have read Jibb's post before I clicked Ramplate's spoiler tag. A warning might have been nice.

Ramplate · 11-03-2012, 03:47 PM

Man With Bionic Leg To Climb Willis Tower

A man with a bionic leg is hoping to make medical history this weekend by climbing up all 103 stories of the Willis Tower in Chicago.

Zac Vawter, who lost his leg in 2009 during a motorcycle accident, will climb the Willis Tower this weekend with a bionic leg designed by the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Vawter said:

“The first time that we went up and down stairs was a little clunky and not particularly smooth. Now I’m comfortable taking a hand off of the railing.”

Lead researcher Levi Hargrove told the Chicago Tribune that the bionic leg responds to “electrical impulses from the muscles in Vawter’s upper leg.”

Hargrove said:

“He just thinks about moving his ankle. He thinks about doing those movements, and the signals travel down the nerves and are redirected onto hamstring muscle. The body doesn’t know that the ankle is not contracting. It is very intuitive for him.”

Hargrove and Vawter will give the bionic leg it’s first major public test this Sunday when Vawter attempts to walk up the stairs of the Willis Tower.
Read more at (VIDEO) http://www.inquisitr.com/386538/man-...Xrps9myyic4.99

Ramplate · 11-08-2012, 08:14 AM

'Super-Earth' Alien Planet May Be Habitable for Life

Astronomers have detected an alien planet that may be capable of supporting life as we know it — and it's just a stone's throw from Earth in the cosmic scheme of things.

The newfound exoplanet, a so-called "super-Earth" called HD 40307g, is located inside its host star's habitable zone, a just-right range of distances where liquid water may exist on a world's surface. And the planet lies a mere 42 light-years away from Earth, meaning that future telescopes might be able to image it directly, researchers said.

"The longer orbit of the new planet means that its climate and atmosphere may be just right to support life," study co-author Hugh Jones, of the University of Hertfordshire in England, said in a statement. "Just as Goldilocks liked her porridge to be neither too hot nor too cold but just right, this planet or indeed any moons that it has lie in an orbit comparable to Earth, increasing the probability of it being habitable."

HD 40307g is one of three newly discovered worlds around the parent star, which was already known to host three planets. The finds thus boost the star's total planetary population to six. [Video: Super Earth May Have Liquid Water]

Finding new signals in the data

The star HD 40307 is slightly smaller and less luminous than our own sun. Astronomers had previously detected three super-Earths — planets a bit more massive than our own — around the star, all of them in orbits too close-in to support liquid water.

In the new study, the research team re-analyzed observations of the HD 40307 system made by an instrument called the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS.

HARPS is part of the European Southern Observatory's 11.8-foot (3.6 meters) telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The instrument allows astronomers to pick up the tiny gravitational wobbles an orbiting planet induces in its parent star.

The researchers' new analysis techniques enabled them to spot three more super-Earths around the star, including HD 40307g, which is thought to be at least seven times as massive as our home planet.

HD 40307g may or may not be a rocky planet like Earth, said study lead author Mikko Tuomi, also of the University of Hertfordshire.

"If I had to guess, I would say 50-50," Tuomi told SPACE.com via email. "But the truth at the moment is that we simply do not know whether the planet is a large Earth or a small, warm Neptune without a solid surface."

A jam-packed extrasolar system

HD 40307g is the outermost of the system's six planets, orbiting at an average distance of 56 million miles (90 million kilometers) from the star. (For comparison, Earth zips around the sun from about 93 million miles, or 150 million km, away.)

The other two newfound exoplanets are probably too hot to support life as we know it, researchers said. But HD 40307g — which officially remains a "planet candidate" pending confirmation by follow-up studies — sits comfortably in the middle of the star's habitable zone.

Further, HD 40307g's orbit is distant enough that the planet likely isn't tidally locked to the star like the moon is to Earth, researchers said. Rather, HD 40307g probably rotates freely just like our planet does, showing each side of itself to the star in due course.

The lack of tidal locking "increases its chances of actually having Earth-like conditions," Tuomi said.

The new study has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

A candidate for direct observation

Super-Earths have been spotted in other stars' habitable zones before. For example, a team using NASA's prolific Kepler Space Telescope announced the discovery of the potentially habitable world Kepler-22b in December 2011.

Kepler-22b lies 600 light-years away, which is not terribly far considering that our Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light-years wide. But HD 40307g is just 42 light-years from us — close enough that future instruments may be able to image it directly, scientists say.

"Discoveries like this are really exciting, and such systems will be natural targets for the next generation of large telescopes, both on the ground and in space," David Pinfield of the University of Hertfordshire, who was not involved in the new study, said in a statement.

**JBond** · 11-08-2012, 02:04 PM

This could be the one.

sshuttari · 11-08-2012, 03:22 PM

That's what they always say...

Deexan · 11-08-2012, 03:44 PM

"Super-Earth." I wish they'd consider Regular Earth's feelings when they throw around such terminology.

Brock Landers · 11-08-2012, 05:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deexan

"Super-Earth." I wish they'd consider Regular Earth's feelings when they throw around such terminology.

I too refuse to call it "Super-Earth" until someone checks it for HGH. That "super" planet is obviously juicing.

jasunni · 11-09-2012, 06:54 PM

Forrest Ackerman said that on the day that we landed on the moon, he yelled "Vindication!" because of all the people who said he was crazy for believing in space travel.

Brock Landers · 11-10-2012, 12:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jasunni

Forrest Ackerman said that on the day that we landed on the moon, he yelled "Vindication!" because of all the people who said he was crazy for believing in space travel.

And people thought of space travel before Ackerman, so they probably yelled "vindication!" from beyond the grave, too. The name Jules Verne comes to mind.

**JBond** · 11-10-2012, 01:20 AM

Brock, are you berating someone's first post?

What have I told you about that?

Brock Landers · 11-10-2012, 01:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JBond

Brock, are you berating someone's first post?

What have I told you about that?

I wouldn't call it berating so much as name-dropping. I can't go a day without name-dropping Jules Verne. It ends up driving everyone I've ever loved away. One time I name-dropped Jules Verne one too many times and ended up in jail. Do you know many times you have to repeat "Jules Verne" before you end up in the back of a cop car? It's quite a bit less than you'd think. What a night.

**JBond** · 11-10-2012, 01:26 AM

Well yeah, I was going to mention the name-dropping but I decided to go a different way. I tried to think of an earlier name drop to name-drop trump you, but Verne's really the best choice. Either him or Jesus.

Brock Landers · 11-10-2012, 01:31 AM

Jesus was the dreamer, yeah, but you could never get him to sign-off on blasting a chimp out of the atmosphere. Now Jules Verne, there was an innovator who had the back-bone to put such an operation in to practice: twenty-three chimps died during the writing of From The Earth to The Moon. Writers are crazy.

**JBond** · 11-10-2012, 03:01 AM

I hear Galileo would throw chimps into the sky trying to break Earth's gravity and put them into orbit. Then they hung him.

Brock Landers · 11-10-2012, 03:16 AM

Who hung him? The chimps or the people when they decided that watching Galileo throw chimps out of a window had gone from being "some pretty fascinating stuff" (that's a real quote from the late 16th century, too) to being "incredibly sadistic and cold-hearted"? No matter how many people pointed out to him the ever-growing volume of evidence that contradicted his ideas, he truly believed deep down that "if I throw a chimp really, really hard this time, I might be able to pierce whatever the hell that big blue thing is. DO YOU HEAR ME, BLUE MOCKER? WHY MUST YOU TEMP ME TO KILL AGAIN?"

The chimps never pierced Galileo's accursed enemy --a thing we commonly refer to as "the sky" -- and, yes, that is a real Galileo quote. Look it up. It's called a book.

**JBond** · 11-10-2012, 03:43 AM

Sadistic, yes, but he would only kill one chimp at a time. Not like that cold-hearted bastard Isaac Newton who would drop two at the same time to their deaths. (And after 17 years of research, finally proving nothing.)

Brock Landers · 11-10-2012, 04:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JBond

Sadistic, yes, but he would only kill one chimp at a time. Not like that cold-hearted bastard Isaac Newton who would drop two at the same time to their deaths. (And after 17 years of research, finally proving nothing.)

A chimp killed Newton's father, he had good reason to "amplify the carnage" for his work in mathematics. Newton was actually two people, a ying and a yang if you will, a stunning duality that manifested in to two separate and distinct geniuses: a preternatural intellect for mathematics and a stunning prowess in good old-fashioned chimp-killin'.

Ramplate · 11-10-2012, 12:53 PM

You know how John James Audubon rendered so many detailed bird drawings?
Taxidermy

Deexan · 11-11-2012, 11:32 AM

Quote:

Inside The Largest Simulation Of The Universe Ever Created

Imagine being asked to solve a complex algebra problem that is roughly 95 percent variables and only five percent known values. This is a rough analogy perhaps, but it paints a fairly accurate picture of the task faced by modern cosmologists. The prevailing line of thinking says that the universe is mostly composed of dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious entities that have never been directly observed or measured even though the cosmological math insist that they are real. We can see their perceived effects, but we can’t see them directly--and thus we can’t seen the real structure of our own universe.

And so we make models. Sometime next month, the world’s third-fastest supercomputer --known as Mira--will complete tests of its new upgraded software and begin running the largest cosmological simulations ever performed at Argonne National Laboratory. These simulations are massive, taking in huge amounts of data from the latest generation of high-fidelity sky surveys and crunching it into models of the universe that are larger, higher-resolution, and more statistically accurate than any that have come before. When it’s done, scientists should have some amazing high-quality visualizations of the so-called “cosmic web” that connects the universe as we understand it. And they’ll have the best statistical models of the cosmos that cosmologists have ever seen.

More...

Justin · 11-11-2012, 11:34 AM

Cool.

Ramplate · 11-12-2012, 10:32 AM

Total Solar Eclipse on Tuesday 11/13/12

Apparently its viewing area is small but you can see it here
http://www.space.com/18407-total-sol...observing.html

sshuttari · 11-12-2012, 01:26 PM

Supersymmetry theory dealt a blow - Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider have detected one of the rarest particle decays seen in Nature.

Ramplate · 11-12-2012, 01:35 PM

I think that article just broke my mind.

**JBond** · 11-12-2012, 01:59 PM

I guess that leaves only chronotons.

Brock Landers · 11-12-2012, 02:13 PM

Someone call the Globe-Trotters.

11-03-2012, 03:47 PM	#127
Ramplate Muwahahaha!...Hamster. Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 25,668	Man With Bionic Leg To Climb Willis Tower A man with a bionic leg is hoping to make medical history this weekend by climbing up all 103 stories of the Willis Tower in Chicago. Zac Vawter, who lost his leg in 2009 during a motorcycle accident, will climb the Willis Tower this weekend with a bionic leg designed by the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Vawter said: “The first time that we went up and down stairs was a little clunky and not particularly smooth. Now I’m comfortable taking a hand off of the railing.” Lead researcher Levi Hargrove told the Chicago Tribune that the bionic leg responds to “electrical impulses from the muscles in Vawter’s upper leg.” Hargrove said: “He just thinks about moving his ankle. He thinks about doing those movements, and the signals travel down the nerves and are redirected onto hamstring muscle. The body doesn’t know that the ankle is not contracting. It is very intuitive for him.” Hargrove and Vawter will give the bionic leg it’s first major public test this Sunday when Vawter attempts to walk up the stairs of the Willis Tower. Read more at (VIDEO) http://www.inquisitr.com/386538/man-...Xrps9myyic4.99 __________________ "When I said 'nuke the Chinese' I meant put the take out in the microwave!" "We're not spies, mate. I don't even speak Russian." "What?" "I don't...Am I speaking Russian? How come I'm speaking Russian?"

11-08-2012, 08:14 AM	#128
Ramplate Muwahahaha!...Hamster. Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 25,668	'Super-Earth' Alien Planet May Be Habitable for Life Astronomers have detected an alien planet that may be capable of supporting life as we know it — and it's just a stone's throw from Earth in the cosmic scheme of things. The newfound exoplanet, a so-called "super-Earth" called HD 40307g, is located inside its host star's habitable zone, a just-right range of distances where liquid water may exist on a world's surface. And the planet lies a mere 42 light-years away from Earth, meaning that future telescopes might be able to image it directly, researchers said. "The longer orbit of the new planet means that its climate and atmosphere may be just right to support life," study co-author Hugh Jones, of the University of Hertfordshire in England, said in a statement. "Just as Goldilocks liked her porridge to be neither too hot nor too cold but just right, this planet or indeed any moons that it has lie in an orbit comparable to Earth, increasing the probability of it being habitable." HD 40307g is one of three newly discovered worlds around the parent star, which was already known to host three planets. The finds thus boost the star's total planetary population to six. [Video: Super Earth May Have Liquid Water] Finding new signals in the data The star HD 40307 is slightly smaller and less luminous than our own sun. Astronomers had previously detected three super-Earths — planets a bit more massive than our own — around the star, all of them in orbits too close-in to support liquid water. In the new study, the research team re-analyzed observations of the HD 40307 system made by an instrument called the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS. HARPS is part of the European Southern Observatory's 11.8-foot (3.6 meters) telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The instrument allows astronomers to pick up the tiny gravitational wobbles an orbiting planet induces in its parent star. The researchers' new analysis techniques enabled them to spot three more super-Earths around the star, including HD 40307g, which is thought to be at least seven times as massive as our home planet. HD 40307g may or may not be a rocky planet like Earth, said study lead author Mikko Tuomi, also of the University of Hertfordshire. "If I had to guess, I would say 50-50," Tuomi told SPACE.com via email. "But the truth at the moment is that we simply do not know whether the planet is a large Earth or a small, warm Neptune without a solid surface." A jam-packed extrasolar system HD 40307g is the outermost of the system's six planets, orbiting at an average distance of 56 million miles (90 million kilometers) from the star. (For comparison, Earth zips around the sun from about 93 million miles, or 150 million km, away.) The other two newfound exoplanets are probably too hot to support life as we know it, researchers said. But HD 40307g — which officially remains a "planet candidate" pending confirmation by follow-up studies — sits comfortably in the middle of the star's habitable zone. Further, HD 40307g's orbit is distant enough that the planet likely isn't tidally locked to the star like the moon is to Earth, researchers said. Rather, HD 40307g probably rotates freely just like our planet does, showing each side of itself to the star in due course. The lack of tidal locking "increases its chances of actually having Earth-like conditions," Tuomi said. The new study has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. A candidate for direct observation Super-Earths have been spotted in other stars' habitable zones before. For example, a team using NASA's prolific Kepler Space Telescope announced the discovery of the potentially habitable world Kepler-22b in December 2011. Kepler-22b lies 600 light-years away, which is not terribly far considering that our Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light-years wide. But HD 40307g is just 42 light-years from us — close enough that future instruments may be able to image it directly, scientists say. "Discoveries like this are really exciting, and such systems will be natural targets for the next generation of large telescopes, both on the ground and in space," David Pinfield of the University of Hertfordshire, who was not involved in the new study, said in a statement. __________________ "When I said 'nuke the Chinese' I meant put the take out in the microwave!" "We're not spies, mate. I don't even speak Russian." "What?" "I don't...Am I speaking Russian? How come I'm speaking Russian?"

11-08-2012, 02:04 PM	#129
JBond Feed me Join Date: May 2000 Location: SR388 Posts: 67,510	This could be the one. __________________ The due date for Round 135 of the CS Film Club is Monday, May 20th, 2013. 59 out of 64 Hugo Award winners completed. "Die Hard 5 makes Die Hard 4 look like Die Hard 1" - Doomsday

11-08-2012, 03:44 PM	#131
Deexan Integral Join Date: Aug 2003 Posts: 10,335	"Super-Earth." I wish they'd consider Regular Earth's feelings when they throw around such terminology. __________________ What's the law but a leash? SoundCloud Twitter

11-10-2012, 01:20 AM	#135
JBond Feed me Join Date: May 2000 Location: SR388 Posts: 67,510	Brock, are you berating someone's first post? What have I told you about that? __________________ The due date for Round 135 of the CS Film Club is Monday, May 20th, 2013. 59 out of 64 Hugo Award winners completed. "Die Hard 5 makes Die Hard 4 look like Die Hard 1" - Doomsday

11-02-2012, 02:09 PM	#126
Justin Executive Producer Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 11,896	....I really should have read Jibb's post before I clicked Ramplate's spoiler tag. A warning might have been nice.

11-09-2012, 06:54 PM	#133
jasunni New User - Level 0 Join Date: Nov 2012 Posts: 1	Forrest Ackerman said that on the day that we landed on the moon, he yelled "Vindication!" because of all the people who said he was crazy for believing in space travel.

11-10-2012, 01:26 AM	#137
JBond Feed me Join Date: May 2000 Location: SR388 Posts: 67,510	Well yeah, I was going to mention the name-dropping but I decided to go a different way. I tried to think of an earlier name drop to name-drop trump you, but Verne's really the best choice. Either him or Jesus. __________________ The due date for Round 135 of the CS Film Club is Monday, May 20th, 2013. 59 out of 64 Hugo Award winners completed. "Die Hard 5 makes Die Hard 4 look like Die Hard 1" - Doomsday

11-10-2012, 01:31 AM	#138
Brock Landers Ninja + Poet Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Oregon Posts: 27,017	Jesus was the dreamer, yeah, but you could never get him to sign-off on blasting a chimp out of the atmosphere. Now Jules Verne, there was an innovator who had the back-bone to put such an operation in to practice: twenty-three chimps died during the writing of From The Earth to The Moon. Writers are crazy. __________________ YOU'VE GOT THE TOUCH. YOU'VE GOT THE POWER. This will explain everything.

11-10-2012, 03:01 AM	#139
JBond Feed me Join Date: May 2000 Location: SR388 Posts: 67,510	I hear Galileo would throw chimps into the sky trying to break Earth's gravity and put them into orbit. Then they hung him. __________________ The due date for Round 135 of the CS Film Club is Monday, May 20th, 2013. 59 out of 64 Hugo Award winners completed. "Die Hard 5 makes Die Hard 4 look like Die Hard 1" - Doomsday

11-10-2012, 03:16 AM	#140
Brock Landers Ninja + Poet Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Oregon Posts: 27,017	Who hung him? The chimps or the people when they decided that watching Galileo throw chimps out of a window had gone from being "some pretty fascinating stuff" (that's a real quote from the late 16th century, too) to being "incredibly sadistic and cold-hearted"? No matter how many people pointed out to him the ever-growing volume of evidence that contradicted his ideas, he truly believed deep down that "if I throw a chimp really, really hard this time, I might be able to pierce whatever the hell that big blue thing is. DO YOU HEAR ME, BLUE MOCKER? WHY MUST YOU TEMP ME TO KILL AGAIN?" The chimps never pierced Galileo's accursed enemy --a thing we commonly refer to as "the sky" -- and, yes, that is a real Galileo quote. Look it up. It's called a book. __________________ YOU'VE GOT THE TOUCH. YOU'VE GOT THE POWER. This will explain everything.

11-10-2012, 03:43 AM	#141
JBond Feed me Join Date: May 2000 Location: SR388 Posts: 67,510	Sadistic, yes, but he would only kill one chimp at a time. Not like that cold-hearted bastard Isaac Newton who would drop two at the same time to their deaths. (And after 17 years of research, finally proving nothing.) __________________ The due date for Round 135 of the CS Film Club is Monday, May 20th, 2013. 59 out of 64 Hugo Award winners completed. "Die Hard 5 makes Die Hard 4 look like Die Hard 1" - Doomsday

11-10-2012, 12:53 PM	#143
Ramplate Muwahahaha!...Hamster. Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 25,668	You know how John James Audubon rendered so many detailed bird drawings? Taxidermy __________________ "When I said 'nuke the Chinese' I meant put the take out in the microwave!" "We're not spies, mate. I don't even speak Russian." "What?" "I don't...Am I speaking Russian? How come I'm speaking Russian?"

11-11-2012, 11:34 AM	#145
Justin Executive Producer Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 11,896	Cool.

11-12-2012, 10:32 AM	#146
Ramplate Muwahahaha!...Hamster. Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 25,668	Total Solar Eclipse on Tuesday 11/13/12 Apparently its viewing area is small but you can see it here http://www.space.com/18407-total-sol...observing.html __________________ "When I said 'nuke the Chinese' I meant put the take out in the microwave!" "We're not spies, mate. I don't even speak Russian." "What?" "I don't...Am I speaking Russian? How come I'm speaking Russian?"

11-12-2012, 01:35 PM	#148
Ramplate Muwahahaha!...Hamster. Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 25,668	I think that article just broke my mind. __________________ "When I said 'nuke the Chinese' I meant put the take out in the microwave!" "We're not spies, mate. I don't even speak Russian." "What?" "I don't...Am I speaking Russian? How come I'm speaking Russian?"

11-12-2012, 01:59 PM	#149
JBond Feed me Join Date: May 2000 Location: SR388 Posts: 67,510	I guess that leaves only chronotons. __________________ The due date for Round 135 of the CS Film Club is Monday, May 20th, 2013. 59 out of 64 Hugo Award winners completed. "Die Hard 5 makes Die Hard 4 look like Die Hard 1" - Doomsday

11-12-2012, 02:13 PM	#150
Brock Landers Ninja + Poet Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Oregon Posts: 27,017	Someone call the Globe-Trotters. __________________ YOU'VE GOT THE TOUCH. YOU'VE GOT THE POWER. This will explain everything.