The End of a Magnificent Satellite: The ESA GOCE Spacecraft

Good evening readers. As I write this, the European Space Agency's Gravity and Ocean Mapping GOCE spacecraft is making its death plunge back through Earth's atmosphere. Where it lands however is still a mystery to us all. An article with details is available by clicking here.

The GOCE is powered by a Xenon ion engine, but ran out of fuel back in mid-October, and has since started to descend slowly but surely back to Earth. The satellite was used to map out Earth's gravity field and oceans, and has performed beyond expectations. The satellite is expected to come crashing back into Earth sometime between now and tomorrow morning. Until then, we wait in anticipation on where it lands. Who knows, maybe you'll have a souvenir courtesy of the ESA via special delivery by tomorrow morning :)

Commercialization of Space Travel: It's Robust, It's Ambitious, and It's Innovative.

Good day readers! Today I'm going to do a bit of analysis (this will be lengthy, so please bear with me) and look into the big buzz of commercialization of space travel. We currently have three companies in the ever-growing and developing market: SpaceX, Oribital Sciences and Virgin Galactic. We'll look at each in detail and their accomplishments.

SpaceX:

SpaceX was founded by founder of PayPal Elon Musk back in 2002, having a vision of changing space tech to eventually having people live on other planets in a cost-effective and feasible manner. In 2008, SpaceX had their first successful launch and orbit of the Falcon 1 which would lay the groundwork for their current vehicle, the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. In the same year, NASA awards SpaceX with a $1.6B contract, garnering worldwide attention. In 2009, the first successful delivery of a satellite into Earth orbit is done. In 2010, the Falcon 9 has its first successful launch, pushing the mission objective of SpaceX to launch the Dragon Capsule, the first private spacecraft to be developed and launched. In 2012, the Dragon Capsule visits the International Space Station (ISS), furthering SpaceX to higher acclaim and attention from many people and countries. Following the end of 2012 to now in 2013, SpaceX is developing a new craft; the Grasshopper, which has so far shown to be very promising in all of its tests.

SpaceX has continued to meet all expectations and even exceed them, developing cost-effective methods of space travel, and is coming near the point where they will develop a rapidly reusable rocket by combining data points from both the Falcon 9 v1.1 and the Grasshopper tests. It's been a truly exciting past five years for SpaceX, and many are expecting great follow-through from them going forward.

Orbital Sciences:

Orbital Sciences is a relatively new face in the realm of private space travel but not so much to space travel as a whole. Founded in 1982, Orbital Sciences found its home in the manufacturing and launching of satellites and missile defense systems. The company has four main groups. The Space System Group (SSG) handles the main bulk of the satellite launches; commercial, civil and military. The Launch System Group (LGS) handles the sending of small payloads into orbit. The Technical Services Division (TSD) handles all the behind-the-scenes work to make sure that all operations run smoothly. The Advanced Program Group (APG) is the group that is involved with the development of the Cygnus Spacecraft, which brings Orbital Sciences into the light of commercial private space travel. In September of 2013, the Cygnus Capsule successfully docked with the ISS, a grand accomplishment for Orbital Sciences.

Albeit Orbital Sciences being new to the market, they were what has now made this area competitive, as before them there was only SpaceX. Many great things are also expected of Orbital Sciences.

Virgin Galactic:

Founded by the well-known jack-of-all-trades Richard Branson in 2004, Virgin Galactic plans to mainly provide suborbital spaceflights to "space tourists", as well as sub-orb launches for space science missions and small satellites. The first full successful test flight was conducted on April of 2013. Since the announcement of Virgin Galactic's plan for public space tours, over 500 persons have signed up and paid for a ticket to space. Public flights will begin December 25th, 2013 according to Richard Branson during a morning show in May of 2013.

Although not really in the same competition as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, Virgin Galactic is just a testament to the slowly but surely growing popularity of space travel to the public, and the continued innovation and resiliency of Richard Branson.

Analysis of the human brain. Mind reading and control on its way?

Good day readers! Today's post is in regards to a study done by Stanford University's School of Medicine, funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Stanford NeuroVentures Program and the Gwen and Gordon Bell Family. The original article can be found by opening the link here.

The study was conducted on three patients all under evaluation for possible surgical treatment of "their recurring, drug-resistant epileptic seizures" where during the procedure, a part of the skull is removed and electrodes are positioned into various locations on the brain's surface.

The study conducted measured human brain activity and came up with some very interesting data. What the study showed specifically was the firing of nerve cells during real-life scenarios in various aspects, such as eating, talking with friends and taking a survey that involved mathematical calculations. The interesting point of data however was a specific group of nerve cells that became active when the patient not only performed mathematical calculations, but also spoke in quantitative terms, such as "more than" "greater than" and the like. This sort of data shows promise to understanding the human brain more intricately.

Back with New Content - A Crucial Step for Fusion

Good day readers! I'm back from a long time of inactivity due to various factors. Now that I'm back though, let's get rolling again with a good piece of content.

Our post today is about some very exciting science that has been worked on (the theory that is) for almost a hundred years now, and has been practically worked on for only a few years at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). We're talking about fusion power. The article can be found here.

Researchers at the NIF a few days ago hit a crucial step towards harnessing fusion power. In late September, the amount of energy output exceeded the energy input. At the NIF, 192 of the world's most powerful lasers are fired simultaneously into a small pellet of hydrogen fuel. Now, let's go a bit into the topic of energy and fusion to see how important this is.

The Law of Conservation of Energy states that the total energy of an isolated system cannot change, but rather it is conserved over time. Now, if you think of fusion, it would seem that it circumvents this law. You're getting more energy out then what you put in. So how is that happening exactly? Well, the law also states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but can change form.

This is where fusion's magic takes place. At the heart of our own sun, 4 hydrogen atoms are fused together to form a Helium-4 atom and the resulting release of energy is more that what it took to make those hydrogen atoms to fuse together. In short, this is essentially what happened a few days ago at the NIF.

Now, the final step that remains is the plateau called "ignition". This is the final step in which a fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining, at which point the lasers of the fusion plant can be shut down and the reaction will continue so long as it has fuel available. We'll see as time goes on how the NIF progresses and hope to see this breakthrough occur in the near future.

A vaccine for AIDS?

Well, something again has caught my eye, and this time it's in the medical field. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/brazil/10224574/Brazilian-scientists-to-test-AIDS-vaccine-on-monkeys.html

Yeah, you read that link right. They're planning to test an AIDS vaccine on monkeys coming this year. Now, let's take look at this a bit more.

Given the very scientific uninteresting name HIVBr18, this vaccine was developed by a team from the Medicine Faculty of the University of Sao Paulo, the Sao Paulo state Research Foundation (or FAPESP for short). The team has said that although the vaccine will not eliminate the virus in it's current state of development, it will keep the virus at a low enough level count to where the victim's immune system will not be compromised, nor will the virus become transferable. In short, the virus becomes almost inert. This research was initiated in 2001 by the gentlemen Edecio Cunha Neto, Jorge Kalil and Simone Fonseca. They hope to acquire a fair amount of funding to initiate the first clinical trials after these tests on the monkeys.

New Picture of the Andromeda Galaxy

Sorry for not posting in the last few days. Life got a bit busy, but for now while I sort out a few things and find something to cover, here's a short post for everyone to appreciate. May I present to you a brand new stunning photograph of the Andromeda Galaxy shown at the end of this post. http://io9.com/an-enchanting-new-photo-of-the-andromeda-galaxy-974863346

The photo was taken by the Hyper-Suprime Cam (a.k.a the HSC). The HSC has been developed to attempt to examine the expanding universe and the long-posed mystery of dark energy. This is the first image taken by the HSC to test its functionality. A bit more about the HSC can be found by clicking here.

Carbon Dioxide as an Energy Source?

Just the other day, I stumbled across this nice little article that caught my eye in a big way. http://scienceblog.com/64775/harvesting-electricity-from-the-greenhouse-gas-carbon-dioxide/#E7V2UYdfvXcmA0TT.99

Original publication: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ez4000059

What we have here is a proposed way of making carbon dioxide useful. All that gas exhumed from the factories, coal processing plants and residential areas that is all harmful to our environment is now being considered a possible source of energy. Who would've ever thought? Well, let's take a look into this, shall we?

Bert Hamelers, Ph.D. looks to be the project lead for this research. According to Dr. Hamelers and his colleagues, dozens of tons of CO2 is wasted from electric-generating infrastructure and heating in both residential and business locations. What they describe is a technology that would take this CO2 gas and react it with liquids and with further processing to generate electrical current. In Dr. Hamelers abstract of his paper on this research, he describes the simplified process proposed to harvest this energy current resultant, using "pairs of porous electrodes, one selective for anions and the other selective for cations." (Hamelers). The result was a positive gain of energy when the solution was passed through these porous electrodes.

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Now, there are many implications to this sort of technology. For one instance (and being the most obvious one), processing plants with this technology are placed at every electric-generating facility and tap right into their exhaust lines, process the CO2 out, process it into a solution to generate electricity, and then send that electricity into the main grid for additional power. Another use would be to maybe have a miniaturized version of this technology equipped to cars, where it again taps into the exhaust line and gives the car additional electricity, possibly creating a better, more efficient hybrid.

Not only would we be utilizing one of the biggest by-products of humanity, but we would also be cutting down our environmental impact tremendously. The key here is what is with most new technologies of this magnitude; scalability. Right now, this seems to be working in the lab, which is the first step. Now, they must work towards scaling this up to a larger size, and then an even large size from that. If this becomes viable, then this will shake up the entire energy sector of the world, and might even become a disruptive technology that could see some serious opposition from the big industry. I for one hope to see this become a reality.

Warp Drive Technology

I'd like to start of the 1st official science related post (actually 2nd post) with the relatively recent talks about warp travel, more specifically the Alcubierre Drive. http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive

First, I'd like to say that this does seem very unlikely, going from chemical booster rockets to warp travel. Now that that's in our sights, let's take a look at this with some background info.

So, you got a bunch of astrophysicists and whatnot sitting around a table in a room, and one of them pipes up and says "Hey, let's get us moving out of our boring solar system in the next hundred years!" Applause is had, cheers all around and so the 100 Year Starship Project is born...Ok, that's not how it actually happened, but that just about sums it up.

The 100 Year Starship Project (100YSS) was started back in 2011 in a joint venture by DARPA and NASA to work towards achieving interstellar travel. During the 2011 100YSS Symposium, a fellow by the name of Harold White announced that him and his team were in the beginning of developing a faster-than-light (FTL) warp drive. His foundation comes from the work of another fellow by the name of Miguel Alcubierre. In "The Warp Drive: Hyper-Fast Travel Within General Relativity," Alcubierre suggests a device that, in compliance with Albert Einstein's law of General Relativity, can move a spacecraft faster than light by warping space both in front and behind it.

The Alcubierre Drive model developed by White originally, by the math, required about 1.9x10^27 kilograms of energy in order to function, which is about equal to the mass of Jupiter, or roughly 317 Earths. Now, that's a scary amount of energy, right? Well, White got a little creative right before the 100YSS Symposium. After essentially playing with the geometry of the drive itself by changing the negative vacuum energy ring from circular to an oval-like shape, the amount of energy needed to have the drive function dropped immensely! From the mass of Jupiter to about 1,600 pounds. That's the weight of a Smart Car! If you don't think that's a drastic change, then I don't know what to tell you. This has suddenly made the warp drive seem possible.

Currently, tests are being done in a micro lab by White and his crack-team of physicists. Now we must wait to see if these micro tests are successful. If they are, they will be the "Chicago-Pile Moment" of this grand discovery. We'll see how this is doing and where it is in progress in the coming months.

New Blog!

Hello everyone! I'm making this blog to keep track of the scientific announcements and discoveries that interest me, and to see where they are as time moves forward. Usually we hear about these scientific stories, or as my father dubbed them, the big splashes and then nothing more. That is the main reason why I am creating this blog. To keep up with these announcements, stories and discoveries. See where they lead, and what they may open doors to. Welcome to Science and Our Daily Lives.