Fine Structure

Solar System of the Knitting Needle

2012-02-10T02:27:21Z

These water droplets orbit the knitting needle in spaaaaace! But not because of gravity, because the knitting needle is teflon-coated and you can create an electric charge on the outside of it by rubbing some cloth over it, not unlike ballon static electricity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qHrBhgwq__Q

A Different Thorium Reactor

2012-02-10T01:24:11Z

Thorium has been discussed as a possible replacement for uranium as the fissile material in next generation nuclear reactors. I've mentioned a more traditional reactor fueled by U-233 (refined from thorium) before but that still runs on a critical, self-sustaining nuclear reaction to generate power (it is, however, actively maintained so that in the event of a disaster criticality would automatically cease).

There is a different reactor style going through tests in the UK and it never even achieves criticality, the reaction is sustained by an accelerator which generates neutrons by accelerating protons at a block of lead. This starts the transition from thorium to U-233 which then hits more U-233 and the reaction continues for as long as there is a source of neutrons. Interesting that there are so many trials for thorium-based reactors these days!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/feb/09/accelerator-nuclear-reactor

Enhance and Zoom!

2012-02-08T05:05:22Z

Images of a galaxy reconstructed from a Hubble image where the galaxy image can only be seen distorted through a gravitational lens. I wonder if the lens is strictly distorting to a similar size or if the images are actually a significant percentage larger or smaller than they would be without the gravitational lens.

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=21661

Supersonic Flow Simulation

2012-02-07T03:46:16Z

Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics is one of my favorite new science blogs. Today's visualization is a simulation for supersonic flow around a cylinder but FYFD isn't just about pretty videos - the editor is clearly well read in fluid dynamics and gives lots of details about what is going on.

The visualization was made using FEniCS, which is a tool for "automated, efficient solution of differential equations".

http://fuckyeahfluiddynamics.tumblr.com/post/17162353884/this-numerical-simulation-shows-unsteady

This is a Galaxy

2012-01-27T05:50:33Z

Turn this short 1080p video on full screen and watch as you're taken through a digital galaxy from the BBC's Stargazing Live.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=77ZoF7Y1pNk

Arcade of Natural History

2012-01-27T02:31:45Z

This event is already sold out but the idea sounds fantastic: the planetarium at New York's Museum of Natural History is having an evening event with cocktails and a custom 200 player game in the planetarium.

There are quite a few public science exhibits getting on the cocktail hour train; the Bay Area hosts weekly events at both the Exploratorium and the Academy of Science. Hopefully the planetarium arcade game is a hit as well!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57365906-1/planetarium-converted-to-200-player-space-game/

Three Generations of Rovers

2012-01-23T01:01:46Z

This picture of the Earth-based test duplicates for Sojourner, Spirit/Opportunity and Curiosity with two engineers really shows you the impressive difference in scale for each successive Mars rover. Will we continue to have increases in rover size or are we reaching the weight limitations of our Mars launch equipment?

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/images/pia15280.html

The Technium: Undetectable Technology

2012-01-20T00:10:33Z

A slightly different take on the Fermi Paradox from Karl Schroeder (retold by Kevin Kelly): we assume that all these advanced civilizations would bleed the same amount and type of electromagnetic radiation that we currently do. But being sufficiently advanced and having finite resources, who's to say their efficiency hasn't advanced to the point of infinitesimal loss due to inefficiency? This would push the civilization back to the point of being not as obviously identifiable as we are at many light years distance.

Considering the age of our civilization and our current rate of change, it doesn't seem all that unlikely that we could be out of phase with a particular communication method or power source available to a civilization with a ten, a hundred or a thousand millennia head start on us. Good food for thought.

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2012/01/undetectable_te.php

Glow Sticks From Scratch

2012-01-18T02:36:36Z

From BoingBoing, a fascinating video on the chemical components that are used to make a glow stick. It's better than your average mixing chemicals video (of which there are a surprising number on youtube) because the video's chemist explains a key point in understanding the reasons that the reaction works. Two different reactions are taking place; one which generates energy (but no light by itself) and the other which turns that energy into the visible fluorescent light you see from a glow stick.

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/17/the-science-of-glow-sticks.html

Origins of Mass: Mostly Energy

2012-01-17T01:04:44Z

When one gets deep into a discussion of "what is stuff made of?" with a non-scientist most people^[1] can roughly describe the inside of an atom as protons, neutrons and electrons. A few can describe the inner workings of nucleons in terms of quarks but beyond that there is very little popular explanation for how things work on the quark level.

Fermilab's daily publication has a great explanation that goes a little deeper into the making of nucleons in the context of where the mass of an atom comes from (hint: it's mostly not the Higgs).

¹ people in this case are those who would be interested in explaining the inside of stuff to other people.

http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive_2012/today12-01-13_NutshellMassReadMore.html

Beautiful Gemini Mission Photos

2012-01-11T02:14:14Z

Wired Science has a selection of high quality Gemini photographs from the ten missions in '65 and '66 curated from a larger collection just brought online through Arizona State University.

Most of the images in the archive are downright boring due to the experimental nature of the flights themselves - everything was being captured for later analysis. The more interesting photos are of the Gemini capsules nearing each other during VI-A and VII in a rendezvous maneuver which brought both manned capsules within a few feet of one another. If you appreciate photos of the Shuttle approaching the ISS and the like, you'll appreciate these.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/gemini-space-photos/?pid=2866&viewall=true

Stratolaunch has Plane Rockets

2011-12-14T05:45:59Z

According to Stratolaunch, carrying rockets underneath planes and launching them from x-thousand feet saves on rocket launch costs and improves safety. It's another interesting idea that involves Paul Allen and Burt Rutan - Rutan apparently committing to make the plane side of things (it does look very similar to White Knight, the launcher for Rutan's Space Ship One) while the rockets will come from Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon line.

Very little technical detail included but the project is apparently breaking ground at a Mojave manufacturing facility this year. Good luck to them!

http://www.stratolaunch.com/

Newton's Notes

2011-12-13T03:27:19Z

The Cambridge University Library has scanned a number of notebooks and other writing material belonging to Isaac Newton and presents it in digital format for anyone online. I've never read any Newton biographies but it would be very interesting to have these notebooks on hand as you make your way through Gleick's Isaac Newton or similar.

http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/newton

Hydrogen and Oxygen from Water and Sunlight

2011-12-06T02:06:09Z

A fascinating new technology for transforming water into its components (the ever-useful H2 and 02) with only sunlight. The tech is a special alloy (two, actually) that could generate fuel for hydrogen fuel cells during the day.

It's a fun lab tech that will require a lot of refinement to become useful to everyone. I usually don't mention stuff like this because there are just too many lab experiments that seem really positive but don't scale. I mention it because it uses an alloy that doesn't seem particularly special or expensive (it doesn't contain platinum, for example). Searching the practically unlimited amount of alloys for special properties feels like a big space with not a lot of players; I think it's going to get very busy very soon though.

http://cen.acs.org/articles/89/i48/Electrofuels-Bump-Solar-Efficiency.html

Mars Lander Weight Limits

2011-11-22T00:49:51Z

I missed the launch of Curiosity while I was on vacation last-last week but there wasn't too much new stuff to post on Curiosity technology as the team has done an excellent job publicizing the tech that is being currently carried to Mars in the last two or three years.

One exception I found was this article on Wired explaining the weight limit on what we can deliver to Mars that we've essentially already hit. No, the limit is not our launch vehicles as you might expect, it's our use of the martian atmosphere as a method for slowing the package from a couple times the speed of sound down to something that can land on the surface without being crumpled into a little ball of (expensive) twisted metal. The article sums up some alternatives being discussed.

And because I missed it last week, congrats to the Curiosity team for a great launch!

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/landing-on-mars/