Ultra-small and lightweight satellites, called CubeSats, have demonstrated their agility over the years to carry out space research in low-Earth orbit, typically using commercial off-the-shelf electronics.
A move is on to consider using these miniaturized spacecraft to further moon exploration -- a new class of CubeSat dubbed LunarCubes. When CubeSats emerged onto the scene, and ideas began to materialize about their uses in Earth orbit, the prevailing thought was "that's impossible, you'll never do it," said Russell Cox, director of research for Flexure Engineering in Greenbelt, Md. |  |
Interstellar Starship Meeting Warps Into Houston This Week
Scientists, visionaries, entertainers and the public will gather in Houston this week for the 100-Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss space travel to another star.
Interstellar travel is significantly more difficult than spaceflight within our solar system, because the distances involved are vast. For example, at its farthest, Mars is about 20 light-minutes away from Earth, and even Pluto is only about 4 light-hours distant. But the nearest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri, is more than 4 light-years from Earth, meaning a vehicle traveling at light-speed would take 4 years to arrive. |  |
Biohybrid solar cells—Spinach power gets a big boost
An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Vanderbilt University have developed a way to combine the photosynthetic protein that converts light into electrochemical energy in spinach with silicon, the material used in solar cells, in a fashion that produces substantially more electrical current than has been reported by previous "biohybrid" solar cells.
The research was reported online on Sep. 4 in the journal Advanced Materials and Vanderbilt has applied for a patent on the combination. |  |
A NASA-backed experiment harvests algae for oil, releases fresh water
Before we run out of fossil oil, we will thoroughly tap the sea floor, find and frack wells wherever they may be, and excavate and extract the most recalcitrant of oil shales. In so doing, we will fuel our lifestyle for a few more decades at the cost of releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide, adding to global warming, melting ice caps, raising sea levels, acidifying oceans—and setting course for a future for which there are few optimistic scenarios.
In the face of all this, scientists are racing to find alternatives. Biofuels are my passion, but they have had rather a bad press, from complaints about displacing food production to the inefficiency of soybeans and the carbon footprint of ethanol. Microalgae have a low profile but they deserve a much higher one, since the fossil oil we mine mostly comes from microalgae that lived in shallow seas millions of years ago—and they may be key to developing sustainable alternative fuels. |  |
Record haul of uranium harvested from seawater
Lingering doubts over the future of US energy security are breathing new life into a technology that has lain dormant for more than a decade.
Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have more than doubled the amount of uranium that can be extracted from seawater using Japanese technology developed in the late 1990s. The world's oceans contain around 4.5 billion tons of uranium, enough fuel to power every nuclear plant on the planet for 6,500 years. The results were presented on 21 August at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvannia. |  |
Bioengineered Bacteria Pump Out Fuel for Cars
A humble soil bacteria has become a genetically engineered factory capable of making fuel for cars. But the project still has to get out of the lab and scale up to industrial-size production.
The MIT project aims to make transportation fuels 10 times more efficiently than existing biofuels derived from living organisms. Researchers swapped out the genes of the R. eutropha bacterium so that it can create isobutanol — an alcohol that can replace or blend with gasoline used by vehicles. |  |
Senegal floods uncover ancient artefacts in Dakar
Pieces of jewellery, pottery and iron tools dating back thousands of years have been discovered in Senegal's capital, Dakar, following recent floods, researchers say.
The discovery was made at a construction site, local academic Alioune Deme told the BBC. A colleague, Moustapha Sall, stumbled across the items after the rains washed away sand, he said. The objects could date back between 2,000 and 7,000 BC, Mr Deme said. |  |
The man who discovered a ‘lost’ wonder of the world
Among Cambridge University Library’s 200 miles of shelving and eight million books are three soft leather folders and a scrap book volume sitting alongside countless other items in the manuscripts and archives of its Near Eastern collection.
Unremarkable to the casual observer, the contents of the folders include personal letters, sketches, bills of sale, letters of introduction and other papers.
Contained within, however, are first-hand documents relating to the travels leading up to the rediscovery of one of the lost wonders of the world – Petra, in Jordan – which took place on August 22nd, 200 years ago.
Unremarkable to the casual observer, the contents of the folders include personal letters, sketches, bills of sale, letters of introduction and other papers.
Contained within, however, are first-hand documents relating to the travels leading up to the rediscovery of one of the lost wonders of the world – Petra, in Jordan – which took place on August 22nd, 200 years ago.
Launch of UNESCO–IAU Astronomical Heritage Web Portal
A new UNESCO–IAU online Portal to the Heritage of Astronomy has been launched at the IAU’s 28th General Assembly in Beijing, China.
The site is a dynamic, publicly accessible database, discussion forum and document repository on astronomical heritage sites throughout the world, even if they are not on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.
Buildings and monuments relating to astronomy throughout the ages stand as a tribute to the diverse and often complex ways in which people have rationalised the cosmos and framed their actions in accordance with their understanding of it. This includes, but is by no means restricted to, the development of modern science.
The site is a dynamic, publicly accessible database, discussion forum and document repository on astronomical heritage sites throughout the world, even if they are not on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.
Buildings and monuments relating to astronomy throughout the ages stand as a tribute to the diverse and often complex ways in which people have rationalised the cosmos and framed their actions in accordance with their understanding of it. This includes, but is by no means restricted to, the development of modern science.
South Korea rejects creationist interference in school textbooks
There's been a victory for sense and science in South Korea, as the government there has rejected calls to drop references to the evolution of birds from the national school curriculum.
As previously reported on Wired.co.uk, pressure group Society for Textbook Revise had managed to persuade textbook publishers to drop sections from their books that discussed the evolution of horses and the Jurassic-era early avian-like dinosaur Archaeopteryx. Now, however, a special panel convened by the South Korean government has recommended that the publishers ignore the creationists' arguments -- which should mean that textbooks reintroduce the old segments before the start of the next school year.. |  |
Scientists predict life on many more planets
Scientists have designed new models for testing whether a planet could support life by searching for evidence of underground water, it was reported.
Instead of looking for surface water, the new tools identify whether there may be water kept liquid by core heat, according to the BBC. The development could mean more planets are found to be capable of sustaining life forms. |  |
Teenager floats £30 camera into space to capture curvature of Earth
They look like they could be the latest images taken from a multi-million pound NASA satellite but these stunning snaps were actually taken from a £30 camera bought off eBay by a teenager.
Adam Cudworth, 19, managed to capture these incredible views of the earth from space using little more than a balloon and his second-hand camera. And while NASA spends hundreds of millions of pounds each year on high tech satellites Adam, whose scientific background consists of only a Physics A-Level, achieved his incredible feat - on a £200 budget. |  |
Breathtaking African rainforest fruit is the 'most colourful known to science'
A dazzling African rainforest fruit has been hailed as the most colourful biological species known to science.
The small, spherical, metallic blue ‘beads’ grow at the head of the 1ft 6in high Pollia condensata plant that ranges from Ethiopia to Angola and Mozambique where they are used as decoration. Its cells all reflect different colours giving it a ‘pointillist appearance’ - the technique used by impressionist painters to use a series of dots to represent a solid whole. State-of-the-art microscopes showed its iridescent skin - meaning it changes colour according the angle at which it is observed - has no blue pigment. Its intense colour comes from the interaction of light with tiny fibres of cellulose strands stacked as layers of helixes within the cellular walls of the fruit’s skin. |  |
The expendables? World's 100 most endangered species listed
Few people would notice the willow blister, a spore-shooting fungus that grows parasitically on twigs in a small corner of Wales. Fewer still are likely to realise that this is one of the rarest fungi in the world, a distinction that gives the blister a place on an unenviable list: the world's 100 most threatened species.
Equally unlikely to be noticed is the spoon-billed sandpiper, a small, dull-coloured bird that breeds in Russia and migrates to south-east Asia, targeted by hunters on the way. |  |
Caribbean coral reefs face collapse
Caribbean coral reefs – which make up one of the world's most colourful, vivid and productive ecosystems – are on the verge of collapse, with less than 10% of the reef area showing live coral cover.
With so little growth left, the reefs are in danger of utter devastation unless urgent action is taken, conservationists warned. They said the drastic loss was the result of severe environmental problems, including over-exploitation, pollution from agricultural run-off and other sources, and climate change. |  |
The rush to exploit an increasingly ice-free Arctic
It’s that time of year again, when we check in to see where the annual Arctic sea ice minimum will end up. And this year is a doozie. We haven’t quite bottomed out at the end of the melt season, yet, but already 2012 has set new records for smallest Arctic sea ice extent and volume, smashing through the numbers from 2007. Records are often attention-grabbing and "exciting," in a way, but while Usain Bolt’s incredible shrinking 100-meter dash time may be uplifting, shrinking sea ice is not.
Every time a new sea ice extent record is broken, the same question comes up: how long until it’s gone? That is, how long will it be before the Arctic Ocean is functionally ice-free in the summer, legitimately opening the once-fabled Northwest Passage? |  |
Nikola Tesla: The patron saint of geeks?
Fans have rallied to buy the lab of inventor and electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla to turn it into a museum. But why do so few people appreciate the importance of Tesla's work?
Lots of people don't know who Nikola Tesla was. He's less famous than Einstein. He's less famous than Leonardo. He's arguably less famous than Stephen Hawking. Most gallingly for his fans, he's considerably less famous than his arch-rival Thomas Edison. But his work helped deliver the power for the device on which you are reading this. His invention of the induction motor that would work with alternating current (AC) was a milestone in modern electrical systems. |  |
New Mars Theory Questions Red Planet's Watery Past
In the past decade, astronomers have observed clay materials on Mars that seem to indicate large bodies of water once filled the Martian surface. But new research suggests that magma could form some of these slick deposits rapidly, and ancient Mars may not have been as wet as we thought.
A region of French Polynesia has similar deposits of these strange clays, which scientists found were formed by cooling magma rather than water. |  |
Unearthed scarab proves Egyptians were in Tel Aviv
A rare scarab amulet newly unearthed in Tel Aviv reveals the ancient Egyptian presence in this modern Israeli city.
Archaeologists excavating the ancient city of Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv, have long uncovered evidence of Egyptian influence. Now, researchers have learned that a gateway belonging to an Egyptian fortification in Jaffa was destroyed and rebuilt at least four times. They have also found the scarab, which bears the cartouche of the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III, who ruled from 1390 to 1353 B.C. Scarabs were common charms in ancient Egypt, representing the journey of the sun across the sky and the cycle of life. |  |
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