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New evidence points towards water on Moon

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 19 (ANI): Two separate lunar missions have found evidence which indicates that the polar regions of the moon are chock full of water-altered minerals.

According to a report in Nature News, early results from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), launched on June 18, are offering a wide array of watery signals.

The Moon, in fact, has water in all sorts of places: not just locked up in minerals, but scattered throughout the broken-up surface, and, potentially, in blocks or sheets of ice at depth.

“We are on the verge of a renaissance in our thinking about the poles of the Moon, including how water ice gets there,” said Anthony Colaprete, principal investigator for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which on October 9, will slam into a polar crater with the intention of ploughing up a plume of water ice for many telescopic eyes to see.

The initial LRO results confirm what was long suspected as a way for ice to stay trapped on the Moon for billions of years.

A thermal mapping instrument showed that permanently shadowed regions within deep polar craters are as cold as 35o Kelvin (-238o Celsius).

Project scientist Richard Vondrak said that they are the coldest spots in the Solar System – even colder than the surface of Pluto.

Variations in the flux of neutrons suggests variability in water content among craters.

But, the surprise comes from a different instrument on LRO, which counts slow-moving neutrons as a way of measuring hydrogen abundance in the top metre or so of the surface.

This hydrogen is often interpreted as a proxy for water ice, although it could also be molecular hydrogen or hydrogen trapped in other molecules.

The LRO instrument has already found a significant excess of hydrogen at the poles.

But, with added resolution, it is seeing surprising variability within the polar regions. Some of the craters appear enriched in hydrogen. Others are not.

Stranger still, some areas outside the crater walls, which were thought to get too hot for water to linger, show an excess of hydrogen.

Vondrak said this shows that the water could have arrived more recently, or that it can persist if buried as impacts till the lunar soil.

If the LCROSS impact spews up ice, it will eliminate the last vestiges of doubt about water on the Moon.

It could also start a new hunt: to find a record of impact events, such as water-rich comet strikes, that put the ice there in the first place. (ANI)

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Scientists find meteorite that came from innermost asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 18 (ANI): In a very rare finding, scientists have discovered an unusual kind of meteorite in the Western Australian desert and have uncovered that it came from the innermost main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Meteorites are the only surviving physical record of the formation of our Solar System.

However, information about where individual meteorites originated, and how they were moving around the Solar System prior to falling to Earth, is available for only a dozen of around 1100 documented meteorite falls over the past two hundred years.

According to Dr Phil Bland from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, the lead author of the study, “We are incredibly excited about our new finding. Meteorites are the most analysed rocks on Earth, but it’s really rare for us to be able to tell where they came from.”

The new meteorite, which is about the size of cricket ball, is the first to be retrieved since researchers from Imperial College London, Ondrejov Observatory in the Czech Republic, and the Western Australian Museum, set up a trial network of cameras in the Nullarbor Desert in Western Australia in 2006.

The researchers aim to use these cameras to find new meteorites, and work out where in the Solar System they came from, by tracking the fireballs that they form in the sky.

The new meteorite was found on the first day of searching using the new network, by the first search expedition, within 100m of the predicted site of the fall.

The meteorite appears to have been following an unusual orbit, or path around the Sun, prior to falling to Earth in July 2007, according to the researchers’ calculations.

The team believes that it started out as part of an asteroid in the innermost main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

It then gradually evolved into an orbit around the Sun that was very similar to Earth’s.

The new meteorite is also unusual because it is composed of a rare type of basaltic igneous rock.

According to the researchers, its composition, together with the data about where the meteorite comes from, fits with a recent theory about how the building blocks for the terrestrial planets were formed.

This theory suggests that the igneous parent asteroids for meteorites like today’s formed deep in the inner Solar System, before being scattered out into the main asteroid belt.

Asteroids are widely believed to be the building blocks for planets like the Earth, so the new finding provides another clue about the origins of the Solar System. (ANI)

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Findings from India’s Chandrayaan to provide new understanding of lunar surface

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 18 (ANI): India’s Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS) has gathered data for a total of 30 solar flares, giving the most accurate measurements to date of magnesium, aluminum, silicon, calcium, and iron in the lunar surface.

Although contact was lost with Chandrayaan-1 last month, the enhanced performance of the C1XS instrument, which exceeded its design specification, means that the science team will be able to determine the geochemistry of new areas of the lunar surface, adding some vital pieces to the jigsaw of the mineralogy of the lunar surface.

The miniature C1XS instrument investigated the lunar surface using an effect whereby X-ray illumination from the Sun causes rocks to fluoresce, emitting light at a different wavelength.

This re-emitted light contains spectral peaks that are characteristic of elements contained in the rock, revealing its composition.

Solar flares act like a flash bulb, giving added illumination and allowing C1XS to ‘see’ more elements.

During normal conditions, C1XS could detect magnesium, aluminum, and silicon and collected data on the levels of these elements, enabling detailed mapping of areas of the lunar surface during its operational period.

During the 30 solar flares, C1XS detected calcium and iron (and sometimes titanium, sodium, and potassium) in key areas in the southern hemisphere and on the far side of the Moon.

The spectral resolution of 50 km was much better than previous missions.

According to Professor Grande, “The C1XS team will be analyzing the data collected during the Chandrayaan-1 mission over the next few months, and the results will help us further our knowledge of the Moon and planetary formation.”

In addition, the design of the instrument has been proved very successful in that it withstood passage through the Earth’s radiation belts and went on to produce these wonderful high-resolution spectra. We were able to separate clear peaks for each of the target elements, allowing us not only to identify where they are present but give an accurate estimate for how much is there,” he said.

“The technology developed for C1XS opens up some exciting opportunities for future missions,” he added. (ANI)

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Cracks on Mars a result of evaporating lakes in ancient times

September 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 16 (ANI): Networks of giant polygonal troughs etched across crater basins on Mars have been identified as desiccation cracks caused by evaporating lakes, providing further evidence of a warmer, wetter Martian past.

The findings were presented at the European Planetary Science Congress by PhD student M. Ramy El Maarry of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research.

The polygons are formed when long cracks in the surface of the Martian soil intersect.

El Maarry investigated networks of cracks inside 266 impact basins across the surface of Mars and observed polygons reaching up to 250 meters in diameter.

Polygonal troughs have been imaged by several recent missions but, until now, they have been attributed to thermal contractions in the Martian permafrost.

El Maarry created an analytical model to determine the depth and spacing of cracks caused by stresses building up through cooling in the Martian soil.

He found that polygons caused by thermal contraction could have a maximum diameter of only about 65 meters, much smaller than the troughs he was seeing in the craters.

“I got excited when I saw that the crater floor polygons seemed to be too large to be caused by thermal processes. I also saw that they resembled the desiccation cracks that we see on Earth in dried up lakes,” said El Maarry.

“The stresses that build up when liquids evaporate can cause deep cracks and polygons on the scale I was seeing in the craters,” he added.

El Maarry identified the crater floor polygons using images taken by the MOC camera on Mars Global Surveyor and the HiRISE and Context cameras on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The polygons in El Maarry’s survey had an average diameter of between 70 and 140 kilometers, with the width of the actual cracks ranging between 1 and 10 meters.

Evidence suggests that between 4.6 and 3.8 billion years ago, Mars was covered in significant amounts of water.

Rain and river water would have collected inside impact crater basins, creating lakes that may have existed for several thousand years before drying out.

However, according to El Maarry, in the northern hemisphere, some of the crater floor polygons could have been formed much more recently.

“When a meteorite impacts with the Martian surface, the heat can melt ice trapped beneath the Martian crust and create what we call a hydrothermal system. Liquid water can fill the crater to form a lake, covered in a thick layer of ice. Even under current climatic conditions, this may take many thousands of years to disappear, finally resulting in the desiccation patterns,” said El Maarry. (ANI)

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Roads made of solar panels may solve energy crisis

September 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 9 (ANI): The U.S. Department of Transportation is funding a new research project aimed at replacing asphalt with solar panels as the basic material for making roads, in a bid to solve the crisis of electricity.

As part of the scheme, a U.S. firm called Solar Roadways has won a grant of 100,000 dollars from the Government to carry on with its work on a prototype glass solar cell panel that may one day turn motorways into major energy sources.

It is expected that these panels will be capable of generating enough power to support local communities, according to reports.

The panels would also be covered with a mosaic of small lights, which could be illuminated to provide road markings, and warning messages to drivers.

They could also be embedded with heaters to keep the road clear by melting snow and ice.

The company believes that a four-lane, one-mile stretch of road made from the 12 ft by 12 ft panels, each capable of producing 7.6 kilowatt hours of electricity each day, can generate enough power for 500 homes.

Solar Roadways plans to develop its idea to allow the energy produced to be channelled into the national grid, as well as sold to drivers of electric cars on the roadside.

“This feature packed system will become an intelligent highway that will double as a secure, intelligent, decentralised, self-healing power grid which will enable a gradual weaning from fossil fuels,” the Telegraph quoted the company as saying in a statement. (ANI)

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Cairo’s slums get an energy makeover

August 30, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 30 (ANI): Reports indicate that the slums of Cairo, Egypt’s largest city, have got an energy makeover, with solar panels sprouting on apartment rooftops, providing residents with clean power and water and a chance to directly improve their lives.

According to a report in National Geographic News, since 2003, the nonprofit Solar CITIES project has installed 34 solar-powered hot water systems and 5 biogas reactors in Cairo’s poor Coptic Christian and Islamic neighborhoods.

“Our program is unique, in that we’re implementing rural-type solutions in an urban environment,” said project leader Thomas Culhane, an urban planner and 2009 National Geographic emerging explorer.
“It’s the kind of stuff you would do in the Peace Corps in an African village, but we’re doing it right smack dab in the slums of a city,” he added.

Solar CITIES’ hot water systems are constructed from recycled materials and are uniquely tailored to the parts of a city where water and electricity availability are often sporadic.
“The problem with professional solar hot water systems is that they’re made for cities with continuous water,” Culhane said.

By contrast, Solar CITIES’s water heaters use a city’s water when it’s available but draw from a backup storage tank when it’s not.
The setup consists of an insulated rectangular box covered in clear glass or plastic on one side. Inside the box are copper tubes wrapped in sheets of aluminum, which are painted black.
Sunlight striking the darkened aluminum is converted to heat, which is then used to warm water flowing through the pipes.
The glass sheet on top of the box prevents the heat from being carried away by wind.
The water, which can reach temperatures of 176 degrees Fahrenheit (80 degrees Celsius), is then pumped into an insulated plastic barrel for storage.

The water, which remains warm long after sunset, can be connected to an apartment’s plumbing system.
Solar CITIES also installs biogas reactors, which are based on designs Culhane saw while working in India.
The reactors use microbes harvested from animal guts to break down food wastes into flammable gas that can be used for cooking and heating.

If necessary, the reactors can draw hot water from the solar water heaters to maintain the warm temperatures the bacteria need to survive.
By attaching a simple plastic tube to the reactors, gas can be piped down several stories for residents to use.
“In 24 hours, you’ve got 2 hours of cooking gas from yesterday’s cooking garbage,” Culhane said. (ANI)

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Solar eclipse popularises astro-tourism in India

July 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, July 9 (ANI): After space tourism, it is astro-tourism that is catching up people’s fancy, courtesy the ensuing total solar eclipse.

Air charter and tourist operators in India are receiving an overwhelming response for chartered flights to view total solar eclipse of longest duration in 21st century.

All set to take place on July 22, the eclipse holds special interest for scientists and general public as its path of totality passes through thickly populated western, central, eastern and northeastern regions of India.

Cox and Kings, a travel agency claims that both amateur astronomers and others are booking for the Boeing-737 that they have hired for the two-hour journey from Delhi to Gaya in Bihar to watch the rare total solar eclipse.

Each ticket is priced at rupees 79,000 (around 1,618 dollars).

“Well, we have got very strong response. The airline that we are flying has 21 seats facing the sun and 21 more window seats, which are facing away from the sun, facing the earth. We call them the ‘sun side seats’ and the ‘earth side seats’. The sun side seats, which will have direct view of the eclipse, cost about 79,000 rupees. We are actually getting very strong response form the amateur astronomy circles in India, from the corporate world and a wide variety of audience,” said Nikhil Pawar, Scientific Officer, Space Technology and Education Private Limited, Mumbai.

On July 22, the moon will totally eclipse the sun after a decade. The next total solar eclipse will take place again only in 2034.

People on board these chartered flights can watch the eclipse for almost 10 times more than those on ground. And, there are reasons attributed to such a phenomenon.

“Theoretically the totality (of the eclipse) can be only 7 minutes 30 seconds. So that is the maximum you can get, if you are stationed at one place and during that period, by chasing the moon shadow they (people in airplanes) increase the time to 74 minutes that means almost ten times than the theoretically maximum possible,” Piyush Pandey, Director, Nehru Planetarium, Mumbai.

Meanwhile, hotel owners in Patna are preparing to welcome the rush of astro-tourist guests expected to halt here.

“The solar eclipse on the 22nd can be seen from Bihar. The tourists will come on the 21st and 12 rooms have been booked for them in our hotel,” said Vinay Pandey, owner Hotel Republic, Patna.

In India, the eclipse will commence soon after sunrise.

Surat and Vadodra in Gujarat, Indore and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh apart from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and Patna in Bihar are stated to be the ideal locations for good views of the total solar eclipse.

It provides a rare opportunity to view and study this grand spectacle of nature. The partial phase of the eclipse will be visible throughout the country.

Astro-tourism comes as a surprise in a country where people for ages have been considering eclipses especially solar eclipses as bad omen.

The belief that the sun is at the mercy of two evil planets, Rahu and Ketu causing the eclipse, still prevails among a large section of people despite propagation of scientific temper among the masses. (ANI)

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Astronomers discover new class of black holes

July 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, July 2 (ANI): An international team of astronomers has discovered a new class of black hole, more than 500 times the mass of the Sun.

Astronomers made the finding in a distant galaxy approximately 290 million light years from Earth.

Until now, identified black holes have been either super-massive in the centre of galaxies, or about the size of a typical star (between three and 20 Solar masses).

The new discovery is the first solid evidence of a new class of medium-sized black holes.

A black hole is a remnant of a collapsed star with such a powerful gravitational field that it absorbs all the light that passes near it and reflects nothing.

It had been long believed by astrophysicists that there might be a third, intermediate class of black holes, with masses between a hundred and several hundred thousand times that of the Sun.

However, such black holes had not been reliably detected until now.

The team, led by astrophysicists at the Centre d’Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements in France, detected the new black hole with the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope.

“While it is widely accepted that stellar mass black holes are created during the death throes of massive stars, it is still unknown how super-massive black holes are formed,” said the lead author of the research paper, Dr. Sean Farrell, now based at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester, UK.

“One theory is that super-massive black holes may be formed by the merger of a number of intermediate mass black holes. To ratify such a theory, however, you must first prove the existence of intermediate black holes,” he added.

“This is the best detection to date of such long sought after intermediate mass black holes. Such a detection is essential. While it is already known that stellar mass black holes are the remnants of massive stars, the formation mechanisms of supermassive black holes are still unknown,” said Farrell.

“The identification of HLX-1 is therefore an important step towards a better understanding of the formation of the super-massive black holes that exist at the centre of the Milky Way and other galaxies,” he added.

HLX-1 (Hyper-Luminous X-ray source 1), lies towards the edge of the galaxy ESO 243-49.

It is ultra-luminous in X-rays, with a maximum X-ray brightness of approximately 260 million times that of the Sun. (ANI)

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Solar X-rays may create life on Saturn’s moon Titan

June 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, June 26 (ANI): A new laboratory study has suggested that blasting the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan with X-rays can produce DNA building blocks, a finding that adds to evidence that Titan may be ripe for life.

According to a report in New Scientist, researchers led by Sergio Pilling of the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil have produced adenine, one of five base components of DNA and RNA, in Titan-like conditions.

Instead of using UV light, however, they used low-energy, or “soft”, X-rays.

“Soft X-rays can penetrate deeper in Titan’s atmosphere and reach denser regions (than UV),” Pilling told New Scientist, adding that X-rays set off different chemical reactions in Titan’s atmosphere.

They modelled Titan’s current atmosphere using a mixture of nitrogen and methane gas, and added water to it to simulate the conditions when the moon is bombarded with water-bearing comets or asteroids – a situation that occurred much more frequently in the early solar system.

A frozen sheet of salty water ice lay below this ‘atmosphere’ and caused the gas to condense into liquid droplets, like dew settling onto Titan’s icy surface.

Then, the researchers bombarded the setup with X-rays for up to three days, representing the radiation that Titan would get from the sun over a period of about 7 million years.

Afterwards, the still-frozen surface contained some organic compounds, but nothing that could be called the building blocks of life.

But when they heated the samples to room temperature, adenine appeared.

That means Titan’s saucepan of proto-life would need a source of extra heat to activate.

If there was a warm period in Titan’s history, perhaps prompted by volcanic activity or meteoroid impacts, “a primitive life could have had a chance to flourish there,” according to the researchers.

Titan is due to be heated up in the next few billion years, when the sun bloats into a red giant star, expanding to the present orbit of Earth, they added.

According to Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA, if impacts sometimes allow water to exist on the moon’s surface, then things might happen.

“It is interesting to see how far the chemistry can go,” he said. (ANI)

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NASA spacecraft detects ultra fast hydrogen coming from Moon

June 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 19 (ANI): NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft has made the first observations of very fast hydrogen atoms coming from the Moon, following decades of speculation and searching for their existence.

During spacecraft commissioning, the IBEX team turned on the IBEX-Hi instrument, built primarily by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which measures atoms with speeds from about half a million to 2.5 million miles per hour.

Its companion sensor, IBEX-Lo, built by Lockheed Martin, the University of New Hampshire, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and the University of Bern in Switzerland, measures atoms with speeds from about one hundred thousand to 1.5 million mph.

“Just after we got IBEX-Hi turned on, the Moon happened to pass right through its field of view, and there they were,” said Dr. David J. McComas, IBEX principal investigator and assistant vice president of the SwRI Space Science and Engineering Division.

“The instrument lit up with a clear signal of the neutral atoms being detected as they backscattered from the Moon,” he added.

From its vantage point in space, IBEX sees about half of the Moon – one quarter of it is dark and faces the nightside (away from the Sun), while the other quarter faces the dayside (toward the Sun).

Solar wind particles impact only the dayside, where most of them are embedded in the lunar surface, while some scatter off in different directions.

The scattered ones mostly become neutral atoms in this reflection process by picking up electrons from the lunar surface.

The IBEX team estimates that only about 10 percent of the solar wind ions reflect off the sunward side of the Moon as neutral atoms, while the remaining 90 percent are embedded in the lunar surface.

Characteristics of the lunar surface, such as dust, craters and rocks, play a role in determining the percentage of particles that become embedded and the percentage of neutral particles, as well as their direction of travel, that scatter.

According to McComas, the results also shed light on the “recycling” process undertaken by particles throughout the solar system and beyond.

The solar wind and other charged particles impact dust and larger objects as they travel through space, where they backscatter and are reprocessed as neutral atoms.

These atoms can travel long distances before they are stripped of their electrons and become ions and the complicated process begins again.

The combined scattering and neutralization processes now observed at the Moon have implications for interactions with objects across the solar system, such as asteroids, Kuiper Belt objects and other Moons. (ANI)

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Virtual model of sunspots may unlock Sun’s mysteries

June 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 19 (ANI): Scientists have created the first-ever comprehensive computer model of sunspots, a breakthrough that will help scientists unlock mysteries of the sun and its impacts on Earth.

Sunspots are associated with massive ejections of charged plasma that can cause geomagnetic storms and disrupt communications and navigational systems.

They are also linked to variations in solar output that can affect weather on Earth and exert a subtle influence on climate patterns.

“Understanding complexities in the solar magnetic field is key to ‘space weather’ forecasting,” said Richard Behnke of NSF’s (National Science Foundation’s) Division of Atmospheric Sciences.

“If we can model sunspots, we may be able to predict them and be better prepared for the potential serious consequences here on Earth of these violent storms on the sun,” he added.

Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., collaborated with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, building on a computer code that had been created at the University of Chicago.

“If you want to understand all the drivers of Earth’s atmospheric system, you have to understand how sunspots emerge and evolve. Our simulations will advance research into the inner workings of the sun as well as connections between solar output and Earth’s atmosphere,” said lead paper author Matthias Rempel.

Sunspots accompany intense magnetic activity that is associated with solar flares and massive ejections of plasma that can buffet Earth’s atmosphere.

The resulting damage to power grids, satellites and other sensitive technological systems takes an economic toll on a rising number of industries.

The new computer models capture pairs of sunspots with opposite polarity.

In striking detail, they reveal the dark central region, or umbra, with brighter umbral dots, as well as webs of elongated narrow filaments with flows of mass streaming away from the spots in the outer penumbral regions.

They also capture the convective flow and movement of energy that underlie the sunspots, and which are not directly detectable by instruments.

The models suggest that the magnetic fields within sunspots need to be inclined in certain directions in order to create such complex structures.

The researchers conclude that there is a unified physical explanation for the structure of sunspots in umbra and penumbra that’s the consequence of convection in a magnetic field with varying properties.

The simulations can help scientists decipher the mysterious, subsurface forces in the sun that cause sunspots.

Such work may lead to an improved understanding of variations in solar output and their impacts on Earth. (ANI)

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Space rock yields important “ingredient in kitchen” on Earth before life began

May 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, May 27 (ANI): Scientists have found formic acid, a molecule implicated in the origins of life, has been found at record levels on a meteorite that fell into the Tagish Lake in Canada in the year 2000.

According to a report by BBC News, cold temperatures on the lake prevented the volatile chemical from dissipating quickly.

The researchers told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union that the formic acid was extraterrestrial.

Formic acid is one of a group of compounds dubbed “organics”, because they are rich in carbon.

“We are lucky that the meteorite was untouched by humans hands, avoiding contamination by organic compounds that we have on our fingers,” said Dr Christopher Herd, the curator of the University of Alberta’s meteorite collection.

Samples of the meteorite, totalling 850 grams, were collected from Tagish Lake in Canada.

The scientists found levels of formic acid four times higher than had previously been recorded on a meteorite.

“This has for a while been overlooked as we concentrated predominantly on the Murchison meteorite, but now we’ve got another fresh sample and we can start to analyze a different portion of the asteroid belt and therefore a different portion of the Solar System,” said Mark Sephton, a meteorite and geochemistry professor at Imperial College London.

The particular types, or isotopes, of hydrogen that are found in the formic acid show that it most likely formed in the cold regions of space before our Solar System existed.

On Earth, formic acid is commonly found in the stings of insects such as ants, but Professor Sephton said that it is likely to have been an important “ingredient in the kitchen” on Earth before life began.

The acid is known to act as a “reducing agent” – acting as a magnet for oxygen atoms during chemical reactions – and facilitate the conversion of some amino acids into others.

It may also be implicated in the transformation of the more primitive RNA into DNA.

Only one of the four “nucleobases” that make up RNA and DNA is different between the two: uracil is present in RNA while thymine takes its place in DNA.

Professor Sephton’s team found uracil in the Murchison meteorite, but no measurable amount of thymine.

However, formic acid is known to help along the reaction that converts the uracil into thymine.

“The reaction is one of the ways in which you can take some simple molecules and increase the chemical diversity of the pool of pre-biotic molecules,” said Professor Sephton. (ANI)

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‘Soccerbot’ learns how to fall gracefully during matches

May 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, May 21 (ANI): Scientists have made a robot learn how to fall gracefully during soccer matches, reducing damage to themselves and their environment.

According to a report in New Scientist, to find out the optimum ways for a robot to fall, Javier Ruiz-del-Solar of the University of Chile in Santiago and his team used a computer simulation based on a humanoid robot called Nao, the player used by all teams competing in the RoboCup’s Standard Platform League.

Nao has 22 simple joints, each with a single degree of freedom, and is typical of the bipedal soccer robots being built today.

Ruiz-del-Solar and colleagues put their simulated soccerbot through a series of different fall sequences. The simulation computes the stresses on each joint, which can then be plugged into the team’s equations to work out the total damage factor.

They found that one of the main ways to minimise damage is for the robot to fold its legs underneath it. Among other things, that means the robot is much less likely to hit its head on the ground.

Another good strategy is to use a fall sequence consisting of several movements, so the falling body has several points of contact with the ground, spreading the energy of the impact over a large number of joints, rather than taking it all in one disastrous crunch.

One of the main ways to minimize damage is for the robot to fold its legs underneath it.he Santiago team tested their method for real using their UCH H1 robot, which they built to compete in the RoboCup’s Humanoid League.

It is similar to Nao, but has a stronger frame and joints.

Using a high-speed camera, they recorded the speed and acceleration of the robot’s joints as it fell, and used that to calculate the forces and torques on each joint.

The tests confirm that UCH H1 suffers less damage when it bends its legs to keep its centre of mass low as it falls.

Ruiz-del-Solar estimates that a well-equipped soccerbot would need about five different fall sequences stored in its memory, to be triggered when the robot is fouled or needs to dive to save a shot on goal, for example.

The true test of the new work will come at this year’s RoboCup, to be held in Graz, Austria, in June and July, where the Santiago team are planning to try out their robot, programmed with safe fall sequences, on the soccer pitch. (ANI)

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Sun’s new solar cycle will be weakest since 1928

May 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, May 11 (ANI): A panel of international experts has predicted that the Sun’s new solar cycle, which is thought to have begun in December 2008, will be the weakest since 1928.

Solar activity waxes and wanes every 11 years.

Cycles can vary widely in intensity, and there is no foolproof way to predict how the sun will behave in any given cycle.

In 2007, an international panel of 12 experts split evenly over whether the coming cycle of activity, dubbed Cycle 24, would be stronger or weaker than average.

The group did agree the sun would probably hit the lowest point in its activity in March 2008 before ramping up to a new cycle that would reach its maximum in late 2011 or mid-2012.

But, the sun did not bear out those predictions.

Instead, it entered an unexpectedly long lull in activity with few new sunspots. It is thought to have reached its minimum in December 2008, and now seems to be slowly waking up.

According to a report in New Scientist, one such sign is two new active regions captured this week by the ultraviolet camera on one of NASA’s twin STEREO probes.

“There’s a lot of indicators that Cycle 24 is ready to burst out,” said panel chair Doug Biesecker of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.

The panel now expects the sun’s activity will peak about a year late, in May 2013, when it will boast an average of 90 sunspots per day.

That is below average for solar cycles, making the coming peak the weakest since 1928, when an average of 78 sunspots was seen daily.

Sunspots are Earth-sized blotches that coincide with knotty magnetic fields. They are a common measure of solar activity.

The higher the number of sunspots, the higher the probability of a major storm that could wreak havoc on Earth.

A lower number of sunspots could mean space weather will be relatively mild in the coming years. (ANI)

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NASA’s online game lets you peer through the James Webb Space Telescope

May 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 29 (ANI): NASA has developed a flash on-line game about telescopes, featuring its next-generation spacecraft, the James Webb Space Telescope.

The game, called “Scope it Out!” includes an introduction to telescopes and four matching games where you can compare simple telescopes to both Webb and the Hubble Space Telescope.

It was created at NASA Goddard by Maggie Masetti, with Dr. Anita Krishnamurthi providing oversight on the project.

Programmer Kent deVillafranca and artist Susan Lin, both of Science Systems and Applications, Greenbelt, Maryland, did the programming and graphics for this project.

“This is a great way to teach children and adults on how simple and complex space telescopes work,” said Krishnamurthi, the Education and Public Outreach Lead for Webb at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

The level of the game is for middle school students and above.

There are five levels of gaming in the “Scope it Out!” game from Level Zero to Level Four.

Most levels present an image of a young woman looking through a telescope, side-by-side with a space telescope.

Level Zero gives a basic lesson in telescope optics through animated graphics.

Level One is where the matching game starts, by asking the player to find the seven components in the simple telescope that match with those in the Webb telescope.

The game culminates in Level Four where players have to find the components of the Hubble Telescope that match up with the James Webb Space Telescope.

This game requires FLASH 8 or higher, and there are two versions.

One version is for large monitors (1024×768) the other is for smaller (800×600) monitors. Once a monitor size is chosen, the game will pop up in a separate window.

For convenience, there’s also a small toggle button in the lower left corner of the game to allow a player to change the quality of the graphics.

The James Webb Space Telescope is a large, infrared space telescope, scheduled for launch in 2013.

JWST will find the first galaxies that formed in the early Universe, connecting the Big Bang to our own Milky Way Galaxy.

It will peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own Solar System. (ANI)

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Solar energy can improve living conditions of rural poor in India

May 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 28 (ANI): In a new study, scientists have determined that solar energy has the potential to improve the living conditions of poor rural households in India as well as contribute to the country’s future energy security.

The study was done bv Professor Govindasamy Agoramoorthy from Tajen University, who is Tata-Sadguru Visiting Chair, and Dr. Minna Hsu from the National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan.

Their study looked at the benefits of solar lanterns on the livelihoods of village communities in Western India, as well as sustainable use of the environment.

In India, approximately 70 percent of rural areas lack electricity and over 60 percent of rural households use kerosene lamps for lighting.

Kerosene lamps are not only expensive, they are also inefficient, potentially dangerous and a major source of greenhouse gases.

Interestingly, the average number of sunny days in India ranges from 250 to 300 days a year, with a solar energy equivalent greater than the country’s total energy consumption.

Energy efficiency is critical to nations such as India with large and growing populations.

Solar lanterns, which make the most of the country’s natural and abundant sunshine, could be a practical and clean energy alternative to kerosene lamps in village communities.

Sadguru Foundation, a non-profit agency specializing in natural resources management in India, supplied 100 solar lanterns to socially and economically disadvantaged households in 25 villages in the Dahod District of the Gujarat State between January 2004 and December 2007.

Agoramoorthy and Hsu studied the effects of using solar lanterns on energy usage, household savings in terms of kerosene and electricity costs, as well as the family’s quality of life.

The women in the households were interviewed a month before and again a month after the introduction of the solar lanterns.

Overall, expenditure on kerosene and electricity dropped significantly in all households, after the solar lanterns were introduced.

On average, each household made important savings ranging from 150 to 250 US dollars annually.

Whereas both households above and below the poverty level used a similar amount of electricity before the lanterns were introduced, after their introduction, households below the poverty level used significantly less electricity than those above the poverty level.

The researchers also found that the solar lanterns particularly benefited school-aged children and women.

According to the researchers, the use of solar energy will contribute to India’s future energy security, particularly in rural areas where the technology that converts sunlight directly into electricity offers a decentralized alternative to uncertain electricity supplies.

“If implemented efficiently, renewable energy projects could not only improve the quality of life for India’s rural poor, but also enhance sustainable use of the environment,” they added. (ANI)

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Astronomers discover youngest and lowest mass dwarf stars

April 23, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 23 (ANI): Astronomers have found three brown dwarfs with estimated masses of less than 10 times that of Jupiter, making them among the youngest and lowest mass sub-stellar objects detected in the solar neighborhood to date.

The observations were made by a team of astronomers working at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de l’Observatoire de Grenoble (LAOG), France, using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT).

The dwarfs were found in a star forming region named IC 348, which lies almost 1000 light years from the Solar System towards the constellation of Perseus.

This cluster is approximately 3 million years old – extremely young compared to our 4.5 billion year old Sun – which makes it a good location in order to search for the lowest mass brown dwarfs.

The dwarfs are isolated in space, which means that they are not orbiting a star, although they are gravitationally bound to IC 348.

Their atmospheres all show evidence of methane absorption which was used to select and identify these young objects.

“There has been some controversy about identifying young, low mass brown dwarfs in this region. An object of a similar mass was discovered in 2002, but some groups have argued that it is an older, cooler brown dwarf in the foreground coinciding with the line of sight,” said astronomer Andrew Burgess.

“The fact that we have detected three candidate low-mass dwarfs towards IC 348 supports the finding that these really are very young objects,” he added.
The team set out to find a population of these brown dwarfs in order to help theoreticians develop more accurate models for the distribution of mass in a newly-formed population, from high mass stars to brown dwarfs, which is needed to test current star formation theories.

The discovery of the dwarfs in IC 348 has allowed them to set new limits on the lowest mass objects.

According to Burgess, “Finding three candidate low-mass dwarfs towards IC 348 backs up predictions for how many low-mass objects develop in a new population of stars.”

“Brown dwarfs cool with age and current models estimate that their surfaces are approximately 900-1000 degrees Kelvin (about 600-700 degrees Celsius). That’s extremely cool for objects that have just formed, which implies that they have the lowest masses of any of this type of object that we’ve seen to date,” he said. (ANI)

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Asteroids age quickly because of a ‘sun tan’

April 23, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Munich, April 23 (ANI): A new study has revealed that asteroid surfaces age and redden much faster than previously thought – in less than a million years, all thanks to solar winds.

“Asteroids seem to get a ‘sun tan’ very quickly,” said lead author Pierre Vernazza. “But not, as for people, from an overdose of the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation, but from the effects of its powerful wind,” he added.

It has long been known that asteroid surfaces alter in appearance with time.

The observed asteroids are much redder than the interior of meteorites found on Earth, but the actual processes of this “space weathering” and the timescales involved were controversial.

Thanks to observations of different families of asteroids using ESO’s New Technology Telescope at La Silla and the Very Large Telescope at Paranal, as well as telescopes in Spain and Hawaii, Vernazza’s team have now solved the puzzle.

When two asteroids collide, they create a family of fragments with “fresh” surfaces.

The astronomers found that these newly exposed surfaces are quickly altered and change color in less than a million years – a very short time compared to the age of the Solar System.

“The charged, fast moving particles in the solar wind damage the asteroid’s surface at an amazing rate,” said Vernazza.

Unlike human skin, which is damaged and aged by repeated overexposure to sunlight, it is, perhaps rather surprisingly, the first moments of exposure (on the timescale considered) – the first million years – that causes most of the aging in asteroids.

By studying different families of asteroids, the team has also shown that an asteroid’s surface composition is an important factor in how red its surface can become.

After the first million years, the surface “tans” much more slowly. At that stage, the color depends more on composition than on age.

Moreover, the observations reveal that collisions cannot be the main mechanism behind the high proportion of “fresh” surfaces seen among near-Earth asteroids.

Instead, these “fresh-looking” surfaces may be the results of planetary encounters, where the tug of a planet has “shaken” the asteroid, exposing unaltered material.

Thanks to these results, astronomers will now be able to understand better how the surface of an asteroid, which often is the only thing we can observe, reflects its history. (ANI)

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Numeric Power to setup a Rs 25 crore MW solar project in Tamil Nadu

April 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Numeric Power Systems, a provider of uninterrupted power supply (UPS) systems, has decided to set up a 1 MW solar energy farm at Palladam near Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu.

The company would setup its first solar independent power project (IPP), through its newly established subsidiary, Numeric Solar Energy Pvt. Ltd.

According to company officials, the company would buy solar cells from suppliers in Japan and Germany and configure panel modules and assemble them. The cost of the project is estimated at Rs 25 crore, which will be financed through internal accruals.

Apart from latest development, the company is also planning to invest in LED lighting systems projects and make foray into the precision air-conditioning space with a strategic partner.

The company employs 2,200 employees in India and abroad with four subsidiary companies located in Sri Lanka, Singapore, Mauritius and Johannesburg.

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ADDING MULTIMEDIA Abound Solar Opens First Production Facility

April 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Next-Generation Manufacturing Technology Will Reduce the Cost of Producing
High-Efficiency Solar Modules
FORT COLLINS, Colo.–(Business Wire)–
Abound Solar (formerly AVA Solar), a manufacturer of low-cost, thin-film
photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, today announces the opening of its first
full-scale production facility in Longmont, Colo. This facility utilizes a
proprietary manufacturing process that significantly reduces production costs of
solar panels. Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,and Hermann
Scheer, president of EUROSOLAR, are scheduled to deliver remarks at the
facility’s opening ceremony today at 9:00 a.m. MDT.

The fully automated facility will create more than 300 new jobs and, when at
capacity, will produce 200 MW of solar modules annually. Its manufacturing
process employs Abound Solar’s proprietary continuous in-line semiconductor
equipment to convert sheets of glass into solar panels in less than two hours.
As a leading “next generation” solar panel manufacturer, Abound Solar’s
manufacturing process simplifies the production of thin-film solar panels,
rapidly expands production capability and drives down the cost of
solar-generated electricity.

“Today’s facility opening represents a milestone for Abound. We have moved into
commercial production, which allows us to keep pace with demand from our
customers as the market expands,” said Pascal Noronha, CEO of Abound Solar. “We
are now well positioned to deliver high-performing, cost-effective, solar
modules that can accelerate clean energy usage around the world.”

“Congratulations to Abound Solar – a true Colorado success story of how
renewable energy technologies can move from the lab to the marketplace,” said
Gov. Ritter. “As we see local renewable energy companies expand operations and
create jobs, we know that the New Energy Economy is leading Colorado forward,
and will help Colorado to have a quick and strong recovery.”

“Abound Solar proves that we have the capability here in the United States to
cost-effectively meet our energy needs, while protecting our climate,” said
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Abound Solar was founded in 2007 to commercialize a proprietary process for
manufacturing thin-film photovoltaic modules. Built upon 15 years of development
at Colorado State University and with support from the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory, Abound Solar has developed a robust, commercial-scale, continuous
process for producing solar modules at an industry-leading cost that
significantly reduces the cost of generating solar electricity. For additional
information, visit http://www.abound.com.

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available:

http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=5939245

Soho Square PR
Nicole Mezlo, 202-729-4210
nicole.mezlo@sohosquarepr.com

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New evidence points towards water on Moon

Scientists find meteorite that came from innermost asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter

Findings from India’s Chandrayaan to provide new understanding of lunar surface

Cracks on Mars a result of evaporating lakes in ancient times

Roads made of solar panels may solve energy crisis

Cairo’s slums get an energy makeover

Solar eclipse popularises astro-tourism in India

Astronomers discover new class of black holes

Solar X-rays may create life on Saturn’s moon Titan

NASA spacecraft detects ultra fast hydrogen coming from Moon

Virtual model of sunspots may unlock Sun’s mysteries

‘Soccerbot’ learns how to fall gracefully during matches

NASA’s online game lets you peer through the James Webb Space Telescope

Solar energy can improve living conditions of rural poor in India

Astronomers discover youngest and lowest mass dwarf stars

Asteroids age quickly because of a ‘sun tan’

Numeric Power to setup a Rs 25 crore MW solar project in Tamil Nadu

ADDING MULTIMEDIA Abound Solar Opens First Production Facility

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