Watch an Asteroid Fly by Earth Live on Sunday

Watch live this weekend as an asteroid the size of a city block flies past the Earth.

On Sunday, July 22, we will have a live feed from the Slooh Space Camera. The show will start at 4:30 p.m. Pacific (7:30 Eastern) with images from the Slooh telescope in the Canary Islands. For all the latecomers, another telescope in Arizona will start tracking the asteroid at around 8 p.m. Pacific (11 Eastern) as well. Slooh will have discussion with Astronomy magazine columnist Bob Berman, astronomer Matt Francisco from Prescott Observatory, and their own Patrick Paolucci.

The asteroid, known as 2002 AM31 was discovered 10 years ago by Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR). It is a fairly large near-Earth asteroid — about 3,000 feet wide — and will come within about 3.2 million miles of Earth, or roughly 14 times the Earth-moon distance. This comes on the heels of another large asteroid, 2012 LZ1, which flew by at a similar distance on June 14. Because of its size and distance, 2002 AM31 is classified as “potentially hazardous,” though it has zero chance of hitting Earth.

Continue Reading “Watch an Asteroid Fly by Earth Live on Sunday” »

Tags: , ,
Back to top

Mesmerizing Videos of Northern and Southern Lights Seen From Space

All Videos: Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center.

Tags: , , ,
Back to top

An Electric Car That Actually Goes Far?

By Robert Service, ScienceNOW

Researchers have long had high hopes for lithium-air batteries, a device that has the potential to store 10 times more energy than the best lithium-ion batteries on the market today. But so far, lithium-air batteries have been unstable, falling apart after a few charges. Now researchers report that they’ve made the first stable lithium-air batteries. If the batteries can leap other hurdles needed to make them practical, they may one day give electric cars a driving range similar to today’s gas guzzlers.

For lithium-air batteries to operate, several different components all need to work together. As they discharge, lithium atoms at a lithium metal electrode called the anode are stripped of electrons, turning them into mobile lithium ions. These ions then float through a conductive solution, or electrolyte, to a second electrode, called the cathode, where they combine with electrons in the cathode as well as oxygen atoms from the air to generate lithium oxide. When the batteries are plugged into an electrical outlet, the added voltage drives the reaction in reverse, recharging the battery. For the cycle to work, however, the electrodes and electrolytes must be stable.

But that hasn’t been the case in early versions of these cells. The carbon used to make the cathodes and the different electrolytes researchers have tried so far undergo unwanted side reactions, falling apart and quickly causing the battery to fail after just a few charge and discharge cycles.

Continue Reading “An Electric Car That Actually Goes Far?” »

Tags: , , ,
Back to top

Unlock Your Inner Rain Man by Electrically Zapping Your Brain

Electrically stimulating the brain could make you smarter. Image: Allan Snyder

Imagine a creativity cap. A device that would free you, if only momentarily, from your mindsets, from your prejudices, from the mental blocks to creativity.

These words are emblazoned on the website Creativitycap.com, and they represent the vision of neuroscientist Allan Snyder. Snyder believes we all possess untapped powers of cognition, normally seen only in rare individuals called savants, and accessing them might take just a few jolts of electricity to the brain.

It sounds like a Michael Crichton plot, but Snyder, of the University of Sydney, Australia, says he wouldn’t be surprised to see a prototype of the creativity cap within a couple of years. His research suggests that brain stimulation improves people’s ability to solve difficult problems. But Snyder’s interpretation of his findings remains controversial, and the science of using brain stimulation to boost thinking is still in its early stages.

Continue Reading “Unlock Your Inner Rain Man by Electrically Zapping Your Brain” »

Tags: , , ,
Back to top

Sun’s Temperature Painted in Amazing Colorful Display

A new technique depicts the 12-hour history of cooling and heating at a particular spot on the sun. In addition to being scientifically useful, the images produced are visually striking, reminiscent of a van Gogh painting.

Created by solar physicist Nicholeen Viall from NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center, these new maps provide clues about the underlying processes going on beneath the sun’s surface.

The sun is a nuclear ball of gas, with hydrogen fusing into helium deep within its belly. As this energy travels outward, it counteracts the gravitational force of the sun’s mass, which is constantly pulling everything inward. Though this process is straightforward, the details of it can be complex and scientists still don’t know how every aspect of it works.

The sun’s surface, in particular, is a constant roiling shell where enormous magnetic field lines spew outward for thousands of miles into space. The new images, created using data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, provide a comprehensive look at the sun’s surface churning.

SDO watches the sun in 10 different wavelengths, each one more or less corresponding to a different temperature. Gas that gives off light at 171 Angstroms, for instance, is heated to a million degrees. When combined with data from wavelengths indicating other temperatures, the resulting reds, oranges, and greens show the dynamics of solar heating and cooling.

In addition to looking beautiful, the new images have revealed some of the sun’s characteristics. Sharp color shifts imply that the sun is changing temperature over very small timescales, rather than the steady heating that might be expected. This suggests that “nanoburts” of energy are heating the sun’s outer layers.

                    

Image: NASA/SDO AIA/Viall

Video: NASAexplorer/Youtube

Tags: , ,
Back to top
« OLDER POSTS