Space Science

The two were arrested on suspicion of endangerment of an aircraft.

The film stars Playtex bra maker's role in NASA's Apollo moon landing spacesuits.

[Image of the Day] The Engine Burns Blue

The Expedition 35 commander demonstrates how astronauts shave on the International Space Station.

Tau Zero’s founding architect (and the former head of NASA’s Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project) weighs in on the kind of technology we see in the new Star Trek movie and ponders what it would take to make at least some of it real. by Marc Millis Another Star Trek film just hit the screen – with the venerable Starship Enterprise and its iconic warp drives and in-flight gravitation. How close are we toward realizing such a fantastic “Starship Enterprise”? How do such visions compare to other starflight pursuits? And finally, what is being done about it? STARFLIGHT CHALLENGES AND OPTIONS To send a spacecraft to our nearest neighboring star system (Alpha Centauri is over 4 lys distant) within a human lifespan would require a speed of roughly 1,000 times faster than the Voyager spacecraft. The two Voyager spacecraft were launched by NASA about 3 decades ago, and are just now passing through the edge of our solar system, at a distance of roughly 1/500th of a light year. To increase speed by a factor of 1,000 requires at least 1,000,000 times more energy, and then at least twice more if you want to stop at the destination. And think about the researchers left behind on Earth, the people who build the equipment and the experiments aboard the starship. Considering that a human lifespan is about 100 years (rough orders of magnitude), they’ll be able to track a mission only out 80 light years or so even if it’s moving close to lightspeed. While that might be enough to reach a habitable planet (whose closest distance estimates span roughly 25-ly – 200-ly), the provisional estimates to reach the nearest civilizations (if there are any) are between 500-ly – 6000-ly. [Click for more destination info]. To reach these more profound destinations within the lifetime of the starship builders back home requires either faster-than-light (FTL) flight, or a much longer human lifespan. Image: Star Trek’s Enterprise, an icon of breakthrough propulsion. Credit: The Light Works (www.thelightworks.com). Absent FTL flight, most starflight researchers explore probe missions based on foreseeable technology. Armed with estimates of what might be ultimately feasible within existing physics, they determine what further technological advancements would be needed to enable meaningful missions. Early projections suggest that probe missions with flight times of only decades might be possible. To develop that technology and to prepare the supporting systems to collect the energy to launch such missions, however, might take several decades or centuries. Those estimates vary wildly depending on which conclusion is being advocated. When considering human interstellar flight, the prominent concept is to build self-sustaining world ships that can support many generations of humans on their slow journey to eventually reach habitable planets to colonize, or to just coast through space as isolated pockets of humanity. Not much work has progressed toward this theme, since we still do not know the minimum number of colonists required and the minimum life support to keep them going… including what societal structure can sustain peace and satisfying lives in such isolation for so long. And finally, for those that want to reach “new worlds, new life, and new civilizations” within short attention spans, further physics advances are required. This includes FTL flight and other breakthroughs typical of the Star Trek visions. This motivation includes the desire to usher in a whole new era of profound technological prowess – new technologies enabled by further advances – targeted advances – in physics. Some have characterized this last approach like the crazy uncle who indulges in wild dreams and playful tinkering. At this stage it is too early to objectively determine which of these pursuits is ‘best,’ in large part because there is no definition of ‘best.’ The motivations, pros and cons are so varied, and the hard fa

KABUL (Reuters) - Several large explosions rocked a busy area in the center of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Friday with Reuters witnesses describing shooting in the area. There were at least four blasts interspersed by heavy shooting, a Reuters witness said. The first blast was a suicide car bomb and occurred at about 4 p.m. (1130 GMT) near an intersection in the district of Borj-e Sharahah, said Hashmatullah Stanikzai, a spokesman for the Kabul police chief. A Reuters witness described seeing two wounded policemen, though there was no official word on casualties. ...

                A new study by archaeologists at the University of York says our upright gait may have its origins in the rugged landscape of East and South Africa which was shaped during the Pliocene epoch by volcanoes and shifting tectonic plates. The York research challenges traditional hypotheses which suggest our early forebears were forced out of the trees and onto two feet when climate change reduced tree cover. Humans are unique among living primates in that walking bipedally — on two feet — is humans' chief mode of locomotion. This upright posture freed their hands up for using tools, one of the key factors behind humans' domination of the planet.Among the earliest known relatives of humanity definitely known to walk upright was Australopithecus afarensis, the species including the famed 3.2-million-year-old "Lucy" (image below). Australopithecines are the leading candidates for direct ancestors of the human lineage, living about 2.9 million to 3.8 million years ago in East Africa.                 Hominins, our early forebears, would have been attracted to the terrain of rocky outcrops and gorges because it offered shelter and opportunities to trap prey. But it also required more upright scrambling and climbing gaits, prompting the emergence of bipedalism.The study, 'Complex Topography and Human Evolution: the Missing Link', was developed in conjunction with researchers from the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris. "Our research shows that bipedalism may have developed as a response to the terrain, rather than a response to climatically-driven vegetation changes," said Dr Isabelle Winder, from the Department of Archaeology at York and one of the paper's authors. "The broken, disrupted terrain offered benefits for hominins in terms of security and food, but it also proved a motivation to improve their locomotor skills by climbing, balancing, scrambling and moving swiftly over broken ground - types of movement encouraging a more upright gait." The research suggests that the hands and arms of upright hominins were then left free to develop increased manual dexterity and tool use, supporting a further key stage in the evolutionary story. The development of running adaptations to the skeleton and foot may have resulted from later excursions onto the surrounding flat plains in search of prey and new home ranges. "The varied terrain may also have contributed to improved cognitive skills such as navigation and communication abilities, accounting for the continued evolution of our brains and social functions such as co-operation and team work," said Winder. "Our hypothesis offers a new, viable alternative to traditional vegetation or climate change hypotheses. It explains all the key processes in hominin evolution and offers a more convincing scenario than traditional hypotheses." The Daily Galaxy via University of York Related articles "The Google Brain" --Are Humans Entering a New Epoch of Evolution? Saturn's Enceladus "Emerging as the Most Habitable Spot Beyond Earth in Solar System" Rare Fossil Discovery Reveals New Insight Into Human Evolution Our Closest Ape-Like Ancestor Is Reshuffling Thinking About Human Evolution

                The temperature in the permafrost on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian high Arctic is nearly as cold as that of the surface of Mars. So the recent discovery by a McGill University led team of scientists of a bacterium that is able to thrive at –15ºC, the coldest temperature ever reported for bacterial growth, is exciting. The bacterium offers clues about some of the necessary preconditions for microbial life on both the Saturn moon Enceladus and Mars, where similar briny subzero conditions are thought to exist. The team of researchers, led by Prof. Lyle Whyte and postdoctoral fellow Nadia Mykytczuk, both from the Dept. of Natural Resource Sciences at McGill University, discovered Planococcus halocryophilus OR1 after screening about 200 separate High Arctic microbes looking for the microorganism best adapted to the harsh conditions of the Arctic permafrost. ”We believe that this bacterium lives in very thin veins of very salty water found within the frozen permafrost on Ellesmere Island,” explains Whyte. “The salt in the permafrost brine veins keeps the water from freezing at the ambient permafrost temperature (~-16ºC), creating a habitable but very harsh environment. It’s not the easiest place to survive but this organism is capable of remaining active (i.e. breathing) to at least -25ºC in permafrost.”In order to understand what it takes to be able to do so, Mykytczuk, Whyte and their colleagues studied the genomic sequence and other molecular traits of P. halocryophilus OR1. The researchers found that the bacterium adapts to the extremely cold, salty conditions in which it is found thanks to significant modifications in its cell structure and function and increased amounts of cold-adapted proteins. These include changes to the membranes that envelop the bacterium and protect it from the hostile environment in which it lives. The genome sequence also revealed that this permafrost microbe is unusual in other ways. It appears to maintain high levels of compounds inside the bacterial cell that act as a sort of molecular antifreeze, keeping the microbe from freezing solid, while at the same time protecting the cell from the very salty exterior environment. The researchers believe however, that such microbes may potentially play a harmful role in extremely cold environments such as the High Arctic by increasing carbon dioxide emissions from the melting permafrost, one of the results of global warming. Whyte is delighted with the discovery and says with a laugh, “I’m kind of proud of this bug. It comes from the Canadian High Arctic and is our cold temperature champion, but what we can learn from this microbe may tell us a lot about how similar microbial life may exist elsewhere in the solar system.” The small, icy moon Enceladus shown below is a major source of ionized material filling the huge magnetic bubble around Saturn. About 200 lb (about 90kg) of water vapour per second – about as much as an active comet – spray out from long cracks in the south polar region known as ‘tiger stripes’. The ejected matter forms the Enceladus plume – a complex structure of icy grains and neutral gas that is mainly water vapour. The plume gets converted into charged particles interacting with the plasma that fills Saturn’s magnetosphere.                Enceladus is emerging as the most habitable spot beyond Earth in the Solar System for life as we know it. "It has liquid water, organic carbon, nitrogen [in the form of ammonia], and an energy source," says Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. Besides Earth, he says, "there is no other environment in the Solar System where we can make all those claims." In addition, geyser-like jets spew ice crystals and gases into space, allowing a spacecraft to sample the subsurface by flying overhead. The current Cassini mission has done that sev

As Luca Parmitano's launch approaches, ESA Euronews looks at life aboard the International Space Station

Terry McAuliffe, a Democratic operative embroiled in a tight race to become Virginia's next governor, knows a thing or two about conservatives like his Republican opponent, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. That's in part because his older brother, Joseph McAuliffe, spent two decades as a Republican activist who worked for the evangelical leader Pat Robertson's [...]