Submission + - Titan may have an Ice Volcano (newscientist.com)
godatum writes: Not sure how it works but they say the volcano spits out molten ice from deep beneath the moon's surface. Molten ice?
Submission + - New ice volcanoes on Saturn's moon Titan (w/video) 1
Flash Modin writes: Astronomers have announced the discovery of a potential new ice volcano on Saturn's moon Titan. Named Sotra, the volcano is more than 3,000 feet tall and has a one mile deep pit along-side it. Surrounded by giant sand dunes, it is thought to be the largest in a string of several volcanoes that once spewed molten ice from deep beneath the moon's surface. The team can't be certain if the chain is active, but described the find as the best evidence found so far for a cryovolcano — the scientific term for an ice volcano. Previously, bright spots seen in low-resolution satellite images have been interpreted as volcanic flows and craters. However, once those areas were mapped in 3-D, it became obvious they weren't volcanoes. "Ice at outer solar system temperatures is very rigid," said Randy Kirk, a geophysicist with the USGS. "oeIce at close to its melting point is soft. What would be a glacier on Earth would be a volcano on a body that's made of that same material. It's the difference between the cake and the frosting." NASA has released a video of a simulated aerial flyover of the volcano.
Submission + - The Physics of Terrorism (miller-mccune.com)
__aaqpaq9254 writes: After studying four decades of terrorism, Aaron Clauset thinks he’s found mathematical patterns that can help governments prevent and prepare for major terror attacks. The U.S. government seems to agree. Great article.
Submission + - One billion US parking spaces have huge eco-impact (physicscentral.com) 2
Flash Modin writes: Next time you're searching for a parking space and someone grabs a spot from right in front of you, it might seem like the last space left on Earth, but ponder this: there are at least 500 million empty spaces in the United States at any given time. Environmental engineers at the University of California, Berkeley have conducted the first ever nation-wide count of parking spaces and shown that the nearly one billion parking spaces in the United States have a significant impact on the environment. After completing their parking estimates, the researchers calculated the energy requirements as well as the emissions from creating asphalt and other things associated with constructing and maintaining parking spaces. The group found that parking contributes to greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. In fact, the environmental cost of so many parking spaces raises the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per mile by as much as 10 percent for an average car. And, when calculated over the lifetime of a vehicle, the amount of other gases like sulfur dioxide can rise by as much as 25 percent and the amount of soot as much as 90 percent. Sulfur dioxide and soot are both harmful to humans and are associated with things like acid rain and respiratory illnesses.
Submission + - 3-D holographic telepresence created (w/video) (insidescience.org)
Flash Modin writes: Eventually you'll be able to project a holograph of Princess Leia into your own living room, thanks to a device announced today by the journal Nature. The physicists who created the device claim that their holographic 3-D display can refresh color images every two seconds without the need for glasses and say it's the closest thing to a real time holographic projection ever created. The breakthrough was possible because of a material called a photorefractive polymer film, on which a 3-D image can be recorded and erased, and then replaced with a new image. The holograph still exists inside of a flat frame rather than being projected into thin air, but like a sheet of magical glass it allows you to see all sides of an image as the frame is rotated. This sets it apart from seemingly 3-D projections like those used by CNN in its election night coverage, which still only show one perspective. The group plans to make a much improved version that they expect to have marketable applications in the entertainment industry, telemedicine, manufacturing and the military.
Submission + - Hawking: No 'theory of everything' (physicscentral.com)
Flash Modin writes: In a Scientific American essay based on their new book "A Grand Design", Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow are now claiming physicists may never find a theory of everything. Instead, they propose a "family of interconnected theories" might emerge, with each describing a certain reality under specific conditions. The claim is a reversal for Hawking, who claimed in 1980 that there would be a unified theory by the turn of the century.
Submission + - Physicists confirm Hawking radiation in lab (physicscentral.com)
Flash Modin writes: A team of physicists from the University of Milan have observed Hawking radiation with a clever lab analogy using a so-called white hole, which they created by firing ultrashort infrared laser pulses through fused silica glass. Hawking radiation is theorized to rob black holes of their mass and if confirmed, would have serious implications for the evolution of the universe. They claim the measurements they made in their lab confirm the properties of black holes Stephen Hawking predicted decades ago.
Comment Re:Carl Sagan on interpreting images (Score 2, Informative) 53
It's astronomy, taking pictures and analyzing them is most of what we do.
Comment Re:Press release (Score 2, Informative) 53
Solar system orbits form based on the dynamics of how the cloud of supernovae dust they form from "collapses." The cloud can be set in motion from coming into contact with another cloud or another supernova interacting with it. The rotation (and hence what we might consider up and down) is based on how that interaction occurs. Once it starts rotating it's governed by Newton's second law, aka the figure skater effect (a skater spins faster as they pull their arms in). So, no. There's no reason to assume that they would orient themselves in a so called up/down direction.
Comment Re:Press release (Score 2, Informative) 53
Commodore, We only find "side view," or what astronomers refer to as edge on, systems because of our limited detection techniques. The two methods to regularly find planets so far are photometry and radial velocity. One relies on a faint dip in light when a planet passes in front of its star and the other relies on a planet pulling its star slightly towards it.
There's no reason to think that a universal preference would exist for solar systems facing us edge on. So, by simply taking an infrared photo of the star - similar to what Hubble did with Fomalhaut and NASA did here- we might determine the presence of a planet based on a dust cloud around it.
Submission + - NASA creates an alien's eye view of solar system (physicscentral.com)
Flash Modin writes: Using the Discover supercomputer — which is capable of 67 trillion calculations per second — astronomers at NASA Goddard have created a series of images of what our solar system would look like to an alien astronomer at various points in time. Their simulations track the interactions of 75,000 dust grains in the Kuiper Belt, and show that while the planets would be too dim to detect directly, aliens could deduce the presence of Neptune from its effects on the icy region. Strikingly, the images resemble one taken by Hubble of the star Fomalhaut. NASA has put out a cute video to go with the announcement as well.
Submission + - Fate of stars determined by the vacuum around them (physicscentral.com)
Flash Modin writes: Atreyu was right to fear 'The Nothing.' For decades, physicists attempting to unify quantum mechanics and relativity have been finding that the vacuum of space plays a critical role in the universe. From the Dirac sea model of a vacuum as an ocean of negatively charged particles, to the Casimir effect that dictates there will be a force between two or more objects in a vacuum; the subtle, yet critical properties of the vacuum are now needed to fully describe many bizarre phenomena in the cosmos. Now, another possible example of the vacuum's importance has been added. In an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review Letters, a group of physicists from Brazil show that the vacuum around a relativistic star -a rotating neutron star that requires general relativity to explain its behavior- could determine whether it ejects its mass in a massive explosion, or collapses into a black hole of no escape. The group calls the process "awakening the vacuum" and say it could could provide an important physical test of field theories, because a stable neutron star could confirm or deny what type of field surrounds it. Read the preprint on the physics arXiv.
Submission + - MIT creates an easy to fly iPhone quadcopter (physicscentral.com)
Flash Modin writes: The Humans & Automation Lab (HAL) at MIT has created a quadcopter — or Micro Air Vehicle — that can be flown from an iPhone. The copter can be made to automatically correct for winds or obstacles and can hover at a set altitude to simplify controls; so the user can just plot a point in Google maps and it flies there by itself. Once it reaches the desired point, the copter switches to "nudge controls" so the user can maneuver it to spy on their wife, witness a drug deal or explore the canopy of a rainforest. To prove to the FAA that they should take the technology seriously, the team gave ROTC cadets a three-minute iPhone flying lesson and put the copter in an unfamiliar separate room where they had to pilot it. In the study, nine out of 14 could flawlessly read an eye chart with the copter's camera and identify a specified individual. A similar, but downgraded and commercially available iPhone quadcopter started selling on Amazon last week for $300, but with mixed — and very few — reviews.
Submission + - Two research groups create "electric skin" (physicscentral.com)
Flash Modin writes: Two separate teams, one from UC Berkeley and the other from Stanford, have created distinct types of artificial skin that could find uses in prosthetics or artificial intelligence (Data in First Contact anyone?). The first team coupled organic electronics with an elastic polymer to make electric skin that could sense a butterfly landing on it. The second team put a flexible material over a conductive rubber compound which had transistors implanted in it. The device can sense touch when the rubber is compressed and changes the electrical resistance. Both papers were published yesterday in the journal Nature Materials .
Comment Re:Fun With Cremora (Score 1) 86
Actually hand sanitizer doesn't work, the flame is too hard to see.
