NASA’s Van Allen Probes Reveal Previously Undetected Radiation Belt Around Earth

02.28.13

The Van Allen Probes, two nearly identical spacecraft, launched in August 2012 and with only six months in operation, they may well be rewriting science textbooks. The probes study the Van Allen belts, gigantic radiation belts surrounding Earth, which can swell dramatically in response to incoming energy from the sun, engulfing satellites and spacecraft and creating potential threats to manned space flight.

James Van Allen discovered the radiation belts during the 1958 launch of the first successful U.S. satellite. Subsequent missions have observed parts of the belts, but what causes the dynamic variation in the region has remained something of a mystery.   …more

List of Nikola Tesla Patents

Nikola Tesla was an inventor who obtained around 300 patents[1] worldwide for his inventions. Some of Tesla’s patents are not accounted for, and various sources have discovered some that have lain hidden in patent archives. There are a minimum of 278 patents[1] issued to Tesla in 26 countries that have been accounted for. Many of Tesla’s patents were in the United States, Britain, and Canada, but many other patents were approved in countries around the globe.[2] Many inventions developed by Tesla were not put into patent protection.   …more

A New Solution for Storing Hydrogen Fuel for Alternative Energy

Turning the “hydrogen economy” concept into a reality, even on a small scale, has been a bumpy road, but scientists are developing a novel way to store hydrogen to smooth out the long-awaited transition away from fossil fuels. Their report on a new solid, stable material that can pack in a large amount of hydrogen that can be used as a fuel appears in the ACS journal Chemistry of Materials. …more

Journal reference: Chemistry of Materials

Provided by American Chemical Society

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-05-solution-hydrogen-fuel-alternative-energy.html#jCp

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-05-solution-hydrogen-fuel-alternative-energy.html#jCp

Classroom Acoustics

Since the 1990’s the Acoustical Society of America has taken a leadership role in promoting improved acoustics in classrooms. ASA has published two American National Standards on this subject   …more

Moon shows Earth-like tectonic activity

Subhra Priyadarshini

Published online 25 April 2014 

South polar region of the Moon.
© MiniSAR

 

New satellite data from Indian’s moon mission Chandrayaan-1 has revealed a good amount of historic tectonic activity on the lunar surface, very similar to that on Earth . Scientists studying geological processes on the lunar surface now report faults and grabens in partially and completely shadowed crater interiors of the lunar polar regions.

Saumitra Mukherjee of the School of Environmental Sciences at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University along with colleague Priyadarshini Singh investigated data from the microwave sensor (MiniSAR) of the Chandrayan- 1 satellite using the image analysis software ENVI.

“The geological processes on the moon are marked with various tectonic features suggestive of similar geological activity occurring on the Earth,” Mukherjee told Nature India. He said the tectonic activity could have been generated by cosmic rays and solar wind flux variability coupled with some interior tectonic activity and meteorite impacts.   …more

How to Make a Quantum Random-Number Generator from a Mobile Phone

5/16/14

Do you feel nervous when you make a credit-card transaction using your mobile phone? Your worries could soon be a thing of the past, thanks to a low-cost device that could bring powerful cryptography to portable devices. That’s the aim of Bruno Sanguinetti and colleagues at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, who have created a quantum random-number generator (QRNG) that uses low-cost electronic components including a mobile-phone camera.   …more

 

Is This Mind-Controlled Exoskeleton Science or Spectacle?

By Greg Miller  05/16/14

The exoskeleton for the planned demo. Photo: Carol Delmazo / World Cup Portal

 

If you tune in to the opening ceremony of the World Cup in São Paulo on June 12, you might see something truly spectacular. If things go according to plan, a paralyzed young adult will walk onto the field and kick a soccer ball, assisted by a robotic exoskeleton operated by the person’s brain.   …more

Jupiter’s Famous “Great Red Spot” is Half its Former Size

ScienceAlert Staff 5/16/14

The spot has been rapidly shrinking over the past two years, and is now at its smallest size ever, NASA has reported.

Image: NASA, ESA, and A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Centre)

 

The famous red storm on Jupiter’s surface was once more than 41,000 kilometres wide, but NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has recently measured it at less than half that size.   …more

Confused Bird Compasses

Anthropogenic Low-Frequency Electromagnetic Signals can foul up Migrating Birds’ Compasses, a Study Finds.

By Rina Shaikh-Lesko | May 9, 2014

Electromagnetic “noise” from human development may confuse the internal compasses of migratory birds, according to a study published this week (May 7) in Nature. A team led by Henrik Mouritsen of the University of Oldenburg in Germany stumbled across the finding after running into repeated problems with an experiment looking at orienting behaviors in European robins ran. The robins didn’t orient as expected and it was only when the researchers introduced a Faraday cage—a metal screen with a grounding wire—where the birds were housed that they were able to use their internal compasses again.

Scientists are slowly uncovering the workings of many animals’ ability to sense magnetic fields and navigate by them, or magentoreception. The nature of the electromagnetic radiation affecting Mourtisen’s robins was perplexing, however, because it was at a wavelength much lower than what scientists have predicted as having a biological effect—in the range of AM radio waves.   …more

 

Solar Wind ‘Triggers Lightning on Earth’

by Rebecca Morelle

Science correspondent, BBC News

When charged particles from the Sun bombard our atmosphere lighting strikes increase

Activity on the Sun is sparking lightning strikes here on Earth, a study suggests.

Scientists have found that when gusts of high-speed solar particles enter our atmosphere, the number of lightning bolts increases.

The research is published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.   …more