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Materiales para Marte

Sun, 20 May 2012 11:53:32 -0430

Avanzados materiales textiles podrían ser la clave para hacer las misiones humanas a Marte una realidad. Los exploradores humanos en Marte podrían jugar un rol importante en la búsqueda de signos de vida pasada o presente en el Planeta Rojo.

Muchos científicos esperan que algún día los humanos se unan con los robots en la exploración a Marte, resolviendo así, preguntas que rodean acerca de la potencial vida en el Planeta Rojo. Crédito: ESA.

¿Qué haría falta para hacer realidad una misión tripulada a Marte? Un equipo de estudiantes de Ingeniería aeroespacial y textil de la Universidad de Carolina del Norte cree que parte de la solución pudiera estar en avanzados materiales textiles. Los estudiantes unieron fuerzas para hacer frente a los desafíos contra los que la industria aeroespacial ha venido luchando por décadas.

Seguir leyendo.

shedsumlight: Phytoplankton are the foundation of the oceanic...

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:26:09 -0430

shedsumlight:

Phytoplankton are the foundation of the oceanic food chain.

Phytoplankton are photosynthesizing microscopic organisms that inhabit the upper sunlit layer of almost all oceans and bodies of fresh water. They are agents for “primary production,” the creation of organic compounds from carbon dioxide dissolved in the water, a process that sustains the aquatic food web.

Phytoplankton account for half of all photosynthetic activity on Earth. Thus phytoplankton are responsible for much of the oxygen present in the Earth’s atmosphere – half of the total amount produced by all plant life.

jimb0slyf3: Apollo 17 Mission (1972)

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:24:24 -0430

jimb0slyf3:

Apollo 17 Mission (1972)

sagansense: In this historical photo from the U.S. space...

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:22:51 -0430

sagansense:

In this historical photo from the U.S. space agency, Cosmonaut Aleksey A. Leonov (left) and astronaut Thomas P. Stafford take part in Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) joint crew training at the Cosmonaut Training Center (Star City) near Moscow. They are inside a Soviet Soyuz orbital module trainer on April 25, 1975.

The two men were the commanders of their respective ASTP prime crews. ASTP was a cooperative space mission between the United States and the USSR. The goals of ASTP were to test the ability of American and Soviet spacecraft to rendezvous and dock in space and to open the doors to possible international rescue missions and future collaboration on manned spaceflights.

The Soyuz and Apollo crafts launched from Baikonur and the Kennedy Space Center respectively, on July 15, 1975. The two spacecraft successfully completed the rendezvous and docking on July 17th. While the Soyuz craft returned to Earth on July 21st, the Apollo craft stayed in space another 3 days, landing on July 24th in the Pacific Ocean. ASTP was a success, as not only did crews accomplish the rendezvous and docking, but they also performed in-flight intervehicular crew transfers and various scientific experiments.

ASTP proved to be significant step toward improving international cooperation in space during the Cold War.

theatlantic: In Focus: Star City and the Baikonur...

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:22:45 -0430

theatlantic:

In Focus: Star City and the Baikonur Cosmodrome

Earlier today, a Soyuz-FG rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying an International Space Station crew into orbit. Baikonur, Russia’s primary space launch facility since the 1950s, is the largest in the world, and supports multiple launches of both manned and unmanned rockets every year. With the U.S. manned space program currently on hold, Baikonur is now the sole launching point for trips to the ISS.

Top: The Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz TMA-21 space ship carrying a new crew to the ISS, lifts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, on April 5, 2011. Circular star tracks and the trail of the rocket are the result of the long time exposure.

Center: A Russian Soyuz TMA-21 space capsule descends about 150 km south-east of the Kazakh town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on September 16, 2011.

Bottom: A composite of a series of images photographed from the ISS, released on March 16, 2012. A total of 18 images photographed by the astronaut-monitored stationary camera were combined to create this composite.

See more. [Images: AP, NASA]

cold-autumn-rain: STS-49 INTELSAT VI-R WETF exercise with...

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:22:39 -0430

cold-autumn-rain:

STS-49 INTELSAT VI-R WETF exercise with astronauts Musgrave, Clifford, Voss by NASA on The Commons on Flickr.

sciencecenter: Historical accounts from the largest...

Fri, 11 May 2012 13:12:57 -0430

sciencecenter:

Historical accounts from the largest electromagnetic storm ever recorded

It was September 1, 1859, and boy were people confused. The global telegraph system failed, telegraph paper spontaneously lit on fire, and the sky was filled with brilliant colors and patterns. The New York Times described it thusly: “alternating great pillars, rolling cumuli shooting streamers, curdled and wisped and fleecy waves—rapidly changing its hue from red to orange, orange to yellow, and yellow to white, and back in the same order to brilliant red.”

In the months shortly after the incident, newspapers and scientific journals found other possible causes. Scientific American postulated falling debris from active volcanoes, the San Francisco Heraldtheorized about “nebulous matter” from “planetary spaces,” and Harper’s Weekly settled on reflections from distant icebergs.

Ars Technica has collected historical documents recording the contemporary responses, including the above painting by Frederic Edwin Church, possibly a portrayal of the aurora. Click through to check it out.

Otra gran frase! undefined

Wed, 02 May 2012 00:46:44 -0430

Otra gran frase!

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Photo

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 19:24:00 -0430

The Cycle of Stars — The End

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:57:00 -0430

The Cycle of Stars — The End

How to Picture a Blackhole This month, researchers are...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:16:45 -0430

How to Picture a Blackhole

This month, researchers are inaugurating the Event Horizon Telescope, a project that will try to take the first detailed pictures of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.

This observation would be a remarkable achievement, underscoring the progress that has been made in black-hole research in just the last few decades. As recently as the 1970s, astronomers still argued over whether black holes were theoretical constructs or real physical objects. They now have ample evidence that black holes are not only real, but abundant in the cosmos.

Here on Earth, advanced computer simulations have given astronomers a wealth of information, leading theoretical physicist Kip Thorne of Caltech to suggest that black-hole research is entering a new golden age.

“There is now a program of observations that I expect will bring us some big surprises and hopefully validate the predictions from these simulations,” he said.

Yet it’s still strange to imagine what the area around a black hole looks like. After all, a black hole is an object from which nothing, including light, can escape.

In the following gallery, Wired looks at some of the predictions that researchers have made about viewing a black hole.

Caenorhabditis elegans

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 12:21:31 -0430

Caenorhabditis elegans

scipsy: Basking Shark (Cetorhinus maximus) (via Australian...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:14:03 -0430

scipsy:

Basking Shark (Cetorhinus maximus) (via Australian Geographic)

scipsy: In this photoset you can see the stunning new image of...

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 16:00:05 -0430

scipsy:

In this photoset you can see the stunning new image of the Eagle Nebula (a composite of the Herschel in far-infrared and XMM-Newton’s X-ray images), the same region in x-ray only, and a gif zooming in the center of the nebula showing the “Pillar of Creation”. (via ESO)

Photo

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 12:29:29 -0430

laviencheddar: TGIF: Fotografiando a la Estación Espacial...

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 08:00:06 -0430

laviencheddar:

TGIF: Fotografiando a la Estación Espacial Internacional y la Luna desde un parking

cwnl: Multicellular Life Evolves in Laboratory I think It’s...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:01:05 -0430

cwnl:

Multicellular Life Evolves in Laboratory

I think It’s time people started embracing evolution as a fact. An evolutionary transition that took several billion years to occur in nature has happened in a laboratory, and it needed just 60 days.

Under artificial pressure to become larger, single-celled yeast became multicellular creatures. That crucial step is responsible for life’s progression beyond algae and bacteria, and while the latest work doesn’t duplicate prehistoric transitions, it could help reveal the principles guiding them.

“This is actually simple. It doesn’t need mystical complexity or a lot of the things that people have hypothesized — special genes, a huge genome, very unnatural conditions,” said evolutionary biologist Michael Travisano of the University of Minnesota, co-author of a study Jan. 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

nationalpost: Big Bang camera goes darkOn Saturday, 1.5-million...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:00:05 -0430

nationalpost:

Big Bang camera goes dark

On Saturday, 1.5-million kilometres from Earth, a tank of liquid helium coolant went dry. Thus ended the working life of the Planck Surveyor, a European satellite that took the most expensive single picture in history

biocanvas: A 630-times view of a cell infected with poxvirus, a...

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:01:05 -0430

biocanvas:

A 630-times view of a cell infected with poxvirus, a virus from the same family as smallpox and monkeypox.

Image by Daniel Kalman, et al., Emory Univeristy.

discoverynews: Astronomers Aim To Take First Picture of Black...

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:00:05 -0430

discoverynews:

Astronomers Aim To Take First Picture of Black Hole

Taking a picture of a black hole, an object so gravitationally bound that not even photons of light can escape, sounds like an oxymoron, but astronomers this week will attempt to do just that.

What they’re hoping to glimpse is something called the “event horizon” — the swirl of matter and energy that are visible around the rim of the black hole just before it falls into the abyss.

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