Space Science

This is a cropped, reduced version of panorama from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity with 1.3 billion pixels in the full-resolution version. See full panorama below. It shows Curiosity at the “Rocknest” site where the rover scooped up samples of windblown dust and sand. Curiosity used three cameras to take the component images on several different days between Oct. 5 and Nov. 16, 2012. Viewers can explore this image with pan and zoom controls at http://mars.nasa.gov/bp1/. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS NASA’s newly produced and absolutely spectacular panorama from the Curiosity mega rover offers armchair explorers back on Earth a mammoth 1.3 billion pixels worth of Mars in all its colorful glory. And everyone can move back and forth around the interactive panorama and zoom in – with special embedded tools- to your hearts delight in exquisite detail at the ‘Rocknest’ site where the rover spent her first extended science stay in late 2012. This extra special Rocknest panorama is the first NASA- produced view comprising more than a billion pixels from the surface of the Red Planet.(...)Read the rest of Spectacular Billion Pixel Panorama from NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover (412 words) © Ken Kremer for Universe Today, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Curiosity, Curiosity Rover, Gale crater, Mars, Mars Rovers, Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), Mount Sharp, MSL, NASA, Search for Life Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

“Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can’t construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history.” -John Polkinghorne Out there in space, whether we look with our eyes or with a telescope — a far more powerful version of our eyes — we find that the Universe is full of stars, galaxies, clusters, and luminous objects everywhere we look. Image credit: Rogelio Bernal Andreo of http://www.deepskycolors.com/. But if we look in different wavelengths of light than what our eyes can see, we’re going to see the Universe in a whole new light, literally. X-rays show us where black holes, neutron stars, and ultra-hot gas is, ultraviolet light shows us the hottest, youngest stars in the Universe, near infrared shows us cooler stars and is transparent to all but the hottest neutral atoms that normally block visible light, while far infrared shows us warm and cool gas and dust, including the locations of future stars. Image credit: European Space Agency, European Southern Observatory, NASA. But if you look in the microwave part of the spectrum, you see something that is, perhaps, a little unexpected. You see, if you look in, say, the infrared, what you’ll see is completely dominated by the local group: our galaxy, the stars in it, and the nearest galaxies to us. Image credit: Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) / IPAC / Caltech & UMass. If you’re clever enough to subtract out those local sources from your sky map, what you’ll find is a slew of point sources that show off the structure of the Universe: galaxies, clusters and filaments lying beyond our own galactic neighborhood. When you look at a picture like the one below, we are looking at a map of the large-scale structure of the cosmos. Image credit: 2MASS, IPAC / Caltech and UMass. But what if we look in microwave wavelengths? Instead of seeing this rich structure that shows us point sources, galaxies, black holes, gas, dust, or something like this, what we instead see — once we subtract our galaxy out — is this. Image credit: NASA / COBE DMR science team. Believe it or not, that’s the picture of our Universe in microwave wavelengths. The microwave sky shows us the same 2.725 Kelvin temperature radiation in all directions in the sky, a leftover relic from the hot Big Bang when our Universe was just 0.0027% of its present age! For perspective, if the Universe were scaled to be exactly one year long, so that right now is 11:59 PM on December 31st, this is a picture of what the Universe looked like at 12:14 AM on January 1st! Image credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration. And this is a picture of the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, or the temperature differences in different regions of the sky. Just a few hundred microKelvin separate the hottest regions from the coldest here, with the coldest (bluest) regions actually showing us the regions of space from 13.82 billion years ago that have slightly more matter (and hence a deeper gravitational well for the photons to climb out of, making them appear colder) than average, while the reddest (hottest) regions are the least dense regions. That’s what we see when we look at the Universe in microwave wavelengths: the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). But that was all background: here are 5 facts about the CMB that you might not know, even if you’re a professional astrophysicist! Image credit: COBE / FIRAS, retrieved from Fermilab. 1.) The Cosmic Microwave Background actually extends far into the infrared and radio spectrum! That number that corresponds to the temperature of the CMB — 2.725 K — is the photon energy (converted into a temperature via Boltzmann’s constant) of the peak of this radiation. But the photons in the Universe come from a thermal bath, where matter, radiation and everything else from the young

Bill Nye the Science Guy and Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, join MSNBC Disrupt's Karen Finney to discuss the importance of investing in science and research.By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News Follow @b0yle When "Bill Nye the Science Guy" went on the air in 1993, one of the smartest smartphones around was an $899 brick-sized contraption called the Simon Personal Communicator. Today, Simon is ancient history — but Bill Nye's smarts are still circulating, on video, on the Web, and now on the latest generation of smartphones and tablets.The Bill Nye the Science Guy app — introduced this month by Disney for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad — celebrates the 20th anniversary of Nye's premiere by offering clips from some of his shows, a gaggle of games with space and science themes, a virtual Martian sundial, six experiments to do at home, and even instructions for tying his signature bow tie. It's been a long, strange trip for the former Boeing engineer, who first struck a chord on TV with a mad-scientist gig on Seattle radio and TV stations. That led to the children's show that bore his name, followed by a science show for grownups called "The Eyes of Nye," followed by his service as the nonprofit Planetary Society's chief executive officer. Today, he has the kind of science celebrity status that Mr. Wizard, a.k.a. Don Herbert, had for an earlier generation.Nye, 57, says he's honored by the comparisons to Mr. Wizard."Don Herbert, Mr. Wizard, sent mankind to the moon," Nye told NBC News. "Many of the young engineers who went to work at NASA in the 1960s were inspired by Mr. Wizard in the 1950s. I studied Mr. Wizard episodes. ... If I'm really carrying the torch of Don Herbert, that's a pretty worthy life right there."DisneyBill Nye's 20th-anniversary app provides clickable links to games, experiments, video clips and gewgaws.Nye isn't shy about getting involved in the controversies that surround science and society — which is something Mr. Wizard hardly ever did. Whether it's defending the scientific community from congressional critics, debating climate deniers or dressing down Darwin's detractors, you can rely on Nye to be on the front lines. "I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine," Nye said last year in a widely watched BigThink video. "But don't make your kids do it, because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future."In an interview scheduled to promote the release of his app, Nye reflected on topics ranging from the future of the space effort to those crazy bow ties:On the show's longevity:"It's just amazing to me that 20 years later, people are still using the show in classrooms. The show still has value. I went to see Carl Sagan [the late astronomer who was one of Nye's professors at Cornell], and he said, 'Focus on pure science. Don't mess with technology. Kids resonate pure science.' It was good advice."On the keys to better education in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM):"What I believe right now, based on a very compelling study done at Michigan State University by Jon Miller, is that algebra is the turning point. The single biggest indicator for whether or not a person will pursue a career in math, science or engineering is not science education per se. It's actually algebra. So I believe that algebra is not expensive to teach. We just have to adjust our curriculum a little bit, so that people are using symbols to represent numbers earlier in their school career."On experiments he hasn't done that he still wants to do:"I like blowing things up, but that's not my main thing. Anytime you get something falling a long way or shooting up a long way, that's pretty good. Who doesn't want to build his own rocket? One thing that does interest me, I gotta say, there's Virgin Galactic and there's a company c

BOSTON (AP) — A man found dead in an industrial park about a mile from New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez's house was a semi-pro football player with connections to Hernandez, his family said Wednesday.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured imagery of super-heated plasma and 3 prominences in a magnetic field dance with the Sun on June 16-17, 2013.

A new wildfire in the foothills southwest of Denver forced the evacuation of dozens of homes Wednesday as hot and windy conditions in much of Colorado and elsewhere in the West made it easy for fires to start and spread.

SAO PAULO (AP) — With massive protests by middle-class Brazilians demanding wholesale government reforms, people all over this continent-sized country have reached a verdict on the streets and online: "The giant has awakened."

WASHINGTON (AP) — After secretive talks, key senators express optimism they are closing in on a bipartisan agreement to toughen the border security requirements in immigration legislation that also offers a path to citizenship to millions living in the country illegally.

SAO PAULO (AP) — Leaders in Brazil's two biggest cities said Wednesday that they reversed an increase in bus and subway fares that ignited anti-government protests that have spread across the nation in the past week.

I received an email from Shuichi Ohno, President of the Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA) telling me about a new racing event they are holding - SPIDER.  Shuichi had this to say about it: “Today, I would like to introduce to you our new category SE climber activities. It is called SPIDER from it’s characteristic, right weigh, speedy, smart(will be). Until this spring, we have been holding some kind of SE climber activities. But now, we categorize them in 3 series: - LASER : Lego bricks Activities with Space Elevator Race (weight - SPEC(SPEC in Japan, JSPEC for the world)  : Space Elevator Challenge (weight > 1.5kg) Sub category ; SPEC class (1km) - SPIDER : Light weight , inexpensive climber activities (500g Sub category ; Spider (Radio controlled) and Auto Spider (automated) Distinction of SPIDER : - Cheap : It is possible to build up with RC car kit parts and total amount in Japan is under $160 except RC  controller or micro board computer. ( Type 540 motor and Ni-mH battery, no expensive Li-Po battery) - Easy to build ( but not too much easy) : Builder must work with drill and jig saw and file. EST to finish by high school techie student is 30 hours. - Safety awareness : Builder must study and think about dropping provision and safety mechanism with break.  Those are very different point from other robot building activities. - Automation : I t is very easy to change RC receiver to micro computer like Aruduino. On June 8th, we held a mini-race with collage and university students. 8 climber came and 4 climber succeeded to climb in almost 10km/h ascend speed. I would like to ask you to introduce this kind of activities on you blog. It is not so difficult to build a smart climber with RC kit / parts of recent-day. Important thing : Energy of recent battery and power of motors may cut the belt very easily if tire/roller run idle much. Please consider to use the heat-stable material tether/belt. In Japan we strongly suggest to use aramid fiber belt. Before you climb, please do the run idle and tether cutting experiment. Thank you.” He also posted a video on YouTube relating to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBSWRo4Gkt0 . Thank you Ohno-San and congratulations to JSEA.  Let’s hope that this competition gets copied around the world…