This is a repository for all cool scientific discussion and fascination. Scientific facts, theories, and overall cool scientific stuff that you'd like to share with others. Stuff that makes you smile and wonder at the amazing shit going on around us, that most people don't notice.
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It's called sonoluminescence. No one knows exactly why this occurs, but there are a lot of different hypotheses. One of the most common explanations is that when the bubble collapses, the air inside gets pressurized. Increasing the pressure on a gas increases the temperature of the gas. During sonoluminescence, the temperature inside the tiny bubbles becomes so great that the gas begins to glow.
Another hypothesis is that the collapsing bubble lends energy to prolong the life of the otherwise quickly annihilating photons that are spontaneously generated in a vacuum. Sonoluminescence could also be the product of the way photons can pop into and out of existence; the sudden collapse of the bubble making the photons noticeable to those in the macro world."
Near the center of Pasadena, California, a team of scientists, engineers, and project specialists is busily planning and designing what eventually will become the most advanced and powerful optical telescope on Earth. When completed later this decade, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will enable astronomers to study objects in our own solar system and stars throughout our Milky Way and its neighboring galaxies, and forming galaxies at the very edge of the observable Universe, near the beginning of time.
The 30-meter aperture permits the telescope to focus more sharply than smaller telescopes by using the power of diffraction of light. The large aperture also collects more light than smaller scopes, allowing images of fainter objects. TMT will therefore reach further and see more clearly than previous telescopes by a factor of 10 to 100 depending on the observation.
In addition to providing nine times the collecting area of the current largest optical/infrared telescopes (the 10-meter Keck Telescopes), TMT will be used with adaptive optics systems to allow diffraction-limited performance, i.e., the best that the optics of the system can theoretically provide. This will provide unparalleled high-sensitivity spatial resolution more than 12 times sharper than what is achieved by the Hubble Space Telescope. For many applications, diffraction-limited observations give gains in sensitivity that scale like the diameter of the mirror to the fourth power, so this increase in size has major implications. [Reply]
When the Navy SEAL swam to the Apollo 11 capsule to open the hatch, he fell back into the water with a shocked look on his face, when the astronauts asked him if they really looked that bad, he said "its not how you look, its how you smell".
I guess that thing just gets putrid inside.
And pooping in space is apparently such a huge pain that some guys took a medication that kept them from going at all. [Reply]
Never-before-seen GIANT virus found that's so unusual it may have come from Mars
-The Pandoravirus is one micrometre big - ten times the size of other viruses
-It is found underwater but is not considered a threat to humans
-The virus has been spotted off the coast of Chile and in an Australian pond -Only six per cent of its genes resemble those seen before on Earth
Scientists have found a new virus thought to be the biggest ever seen on Earth.
The virus, dubbed Pandoravirus, is one micrometre big - up to ten times the size of other viruses - and only six per cent of its genes resemble anything seen on Earth before.
This has led French researchers to believe the virus may have come from an ancient time or even another planet, such as Mars. However, the researchers, who published their findings in the journal Science, believe that the virus opens up a range of questions about the history of life on Earth.
Dr Jean-Michel Claverie of Aix-Marseille University in France, who found the virus, told NPR: ‘We believe that these new Pandoraviruses have emerged from a new ancestral cellular type that no longer exists.’
Many traditional viruses range in size from around 10 nanometres (nm) to around 500nm.
The Pandoravirus is around one micrometre big and there are 1,000nm in a micrometre. This means the Pandoravirus is big enough to be seen under the most basic microscopes.
Dr Claverie explained that because the virus is very big and lacks the regular shape normally associated with viruses, he initially thought it was a small bacterium. His team went on a hunt for giant viruses after a survey identified signs of them in seawater.
They took sediment samples from the coast off Chile and from a pond in Australia. They took the samples to their laboratory and put them in a solution packed with antibiotics in an attempt to kill any bacteria present.
The Megavirus, pictured, was previously thought to have been the biggest virus on Earth at 440nm - half the size of the new Pandoravirus
These bacteria-free samples were then exposed to amoebas knowing that if they died, there must be something else in the samples killing them.
This proved to be successful and large amounts of Pandoravirus were spawned.
When the team studied them they found that their genetic code was twice the size of the Megavirus, which was previously the biggest virus ever found at around 440nm.
However, they were in for more of a shock as only six per cent of its genes resembled genes seen before in other organisms on Earth.
Dr Claverie told NPR: ‘We believe that those new Pandoraviruses have emerged from a new ancestral cellular type that no longer exists.’
He went on to explain that it is possible that they have come from another planet, such as Mars.
The researchers do not yet know why this cellular form became a virus but they speculate that it could have evolved as a survival strategy.
Alternatively, its unusual genome could have developed as a result of it picking up genetic material from its hosts. The researchers say that they now expect to find more giant viruses.
Originally Posted by Fish:
The TMT. It's dynomite.
Near the center of Pasadena, California, a team of scientists, engineers, and project specialists is busily planning and designing what eventually will become the most advanced and powerful optical telescope on Earth. When completed later this decade, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will enable astronomers to study objects in our own solar system and stars throughout our Milky Way and its neighboring galaxies, and forming galaxies at the very edge of the observable Universe, near the beginning of time.
The 30-meter aperture permits the telescope to focus more sharply than smaller telescopes by using the power of diffraction of light. The large aperture also collects more light than smaller scopes, allowing images of fainter objects. TMT will therefore reach further and see more clearly than previous telescopes by a factor of 10 to 100 depending on the observation.
In addition to providing nine times the collecting area of the current largest optical/infrared telescopes (the 10-meter Keck Telescopes), TMT will be used with adaptive optics systems to allow diffraction-limited performance, i.e., the best that the optics of the system can theoretically provide. This will provide unparalleled high-sensitivity spatial resolution more than 12 times sharper than what is achieved by the Hubble Space Telescope. For many applications, diffraction-limited observations give gains in sensitivity that scale like the diameter of the mirror to the fourth power, so this increase in size has major implications.
OK. I'm a dumbass, sure, but wouldn't the ambient light from Pasedina screw with the telescope? I thought that's why they ended up in the middle of nowhere. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Buehler445:
OK. I'm a dumbass, sure, but wouldn't the ambient light from Pasedina screw with the telescope? I thought that's why they ended up in the middle of nowhere.
It's being built there but it won't be deployed there I'm sure it will end up on a mountaintop somewhere in Chile [Reply]
SAN DIEGO — Space fans have been waiting a long time for a sequel to Carl Sagan’s groundbreaking documentary series Cosmos — 33 years, to be exact. Next year they’ll finally get that long-awaited follow-up, and it’ll be hosted by everyone’s favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, which will air on Fox in 2014, is meant to take the groundwork of Sagan’s brilliant 1980 series and expand it for modern audiences. It will also, according to Tyson, build on that show’s ability to be more than just a televised science book.
“[Cosmos] spent time learning—exploring—how to make science matter to you, as a human being, as a citizen, as a species with the capacity to reflect on its own existence. And those kind of messages are timeless,” Tyson told reporters following a screening of the documentary at Comic-Con International in San Diego. “They’re layered onto whatever is the science of the day, but it’s the science of the day that gives us knowledge about how to think about our place in the universe.”
Sagan’s widow Ann Druyan, who co-wrote and produced the first series along with Sagan and Steven Soter, is producing Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. She noted that while the original was about how science discovered Earth’s coordinates in space and time, the new Cosmos looks to the future.
“This series is still about that same thing, but we’re telling a completely different set of stories, establishing the coordinates, but then jumping off from there,” Druyan told reporters.
The show’s crew includes a who’s who of science fiction veterans, including director Brannon Braga, who won a Hugo award for his work as a writer and producer on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and director of photography Bill Pope, who was also the cinematographer on the Matrix trilogy. The particular expertise of Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, who was instrumental in not only getting the show off the ground but winning it its prime-time spot on the Fox network, will be visible in the new Cosmos as well. In the new series, the live-action historical reenactments of the original series will be largely replaced with animation in what Braga described as “a sophisticated graphic novel-type style.”
Since it’s been more than three decades since the first Cosmos, there are now far more visual effects that can be utilized to enhance the impact and the scope of the series.
“As humans, we like hearing stories,” Tyson said. “We have what I think is the greatest story ever told: the story of the universe, and our place within it, and how we came to discover our place within it. And finally, we have the methods and tools to bring that to the screen.”
Some of the new effects will update concepts and images introduced in the original show, like the cosmic calendar. “With Brannon’s talent we could take the cosmic calendar, which actually had cardboard dinosaurs on it in the original, and turn it into something that was, I think, even grander and more representative of that great football field of time,” said Druyan.
Above all, the goal of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is meant to recapture the accessibility and broad appeal of the first series. However, the creators aren’t looking to preach to the space-loving converted. Instead, they’ll use the show’s network placement and prime-time slot to reach the people who might not have found the series otherwise. “We’re doing exactly what Carl Sagan would have done, which is to go to the broadest possible audience and try to touch each and every person,” Druyan said.
Creating a show with that level of accessibility is the best hope for a return to a science-literate—and more science-passionate—society.
“That’s what Cosmos is about. It’s about a hopeful vision of the future,” Druyan said, “It’s about the future we could still have—it’s not too late—that is within our grasp if we could just awaken from this stupor that we’re in.” [Reply]
Explanation: In a cross-Solar System interplanetary first, our Earth was photographed during the same day from both Mercury and Saturn. Pictured on the left, Earth is the pale blue dot just below the rings of Saturn, as captured by the robotic Cassini spacecraft now the gas giant. Pictured on the right, the Earth-Moon system is seen against a dark background, as captured by the robotic MESSENGER spacecraft now orbiting Mercury. In the MESSENGER image, the Earth (left) and Moon (right) shine brightly with reflected sunlight. MESSENGER took the overexposed image last Friday as part of a search for small natural satellites of the innermost planet, moons that would be expected to be quite dim. During this same day, humans across planet Earth snapped many of their own pictures of Saturn.
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam." -Carl Sagan [Reply]
Originally Posted by Rausch:
Never-before-seen GIANT virus found that's so unusual it may have come from Mars
-The Pandoravirus is one micrometre big - ten times the size of other viruses
-It is found underwater but is not considered a threat to humans
-The virus has been spotted off the coast of Chile and in an Australian pond -Only six per cent of its genes resemble those seen before on Earth
Scientists have found a new virus thought to be the biggest ever seen on Earth.
The virus, dubbed Pandoravirus, is one micrometre big - up to ten times the size of other viruses - and only six per cent of its genes resemble anything seen on Earth before.
This has led French researchers to believe the virus may have come from an ancient time or even another planet, such as Mars. However, the researchers, who published their findings in the journal Science, believe that the virus opens up a range of questions about the history of life on Earth.
Dr Jean-Michel Claverie of Aix-Marseille University in France, who found the virus, told NPR: ‘We believe that these new Pandoraviruses have emerged from a new ancestral cellular type that no longer exists.’
Many traditional viruses range in size from around 10 nanometres (nm) to around 500nm.
The Pandoravirus is around one micrometre big and there are 1,000nm in a micrometre. This means the Pandoravirus is big enough to be seen under the most basic microscopes.
Dr Claverie explained that because the virus is very big and lacks the regular shape normally associated with viruses, he initially thought it was a small bacterium. His team went on a hunt for giant viruses after a survey identified signs of them in seawater.
They took sediment samples from the coast off Chile and from a pond in Australia. They took the samples to their laboratory and put them in a solution packed with antibiotics in an attempt to kill any bacteria present.
The Megavirus, pictured, was previously thought to have been the biggest virus on Earth at 440nm - half the size of the new Pandoravirus
These bacteria-free samples were then exposed to amoebas knowing that if they died, there must be something else in the samples killing them.
This proved to be successful and large amounts of Pandoravirus were spawned.
When the team studied them they found that their genetic code was twice the size of the Megavirus, which was previously the biggest virus ever found at around 440nm.
However, they were in for more of a shock as only six per cent of its genes resembled genes seen before in other organisms on Earth.
Dr Claverie told NPR: ‘We believe that those new Pandoraviruses have emerged from a new ancestral cellular type that no longer exists.’
He went on to explain that it is possible that they have come from another planet, such as Mars.
The researchers do not yet know why this cellular form became a virus but they speculate that it could have evolved as a survival strategy.
Alternatively, its unusual genome could have developed as a result of it picking up genetic material from its hosts. The researchers say that they now expect to find more giant viruses.
