Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Seismic Cloaks developed to minimize damage to buildings due to Earth Quake

We all know how much damage can be caused due to an earth quake for the buildings.  Every one of us might be thinking of methods to reduce the damage caused due to earth quake and protect the houses and buildings.   There is a good news now...
 
Scientists have tested a prototype of a seismic invisibility cloaks experimentally in France.  So buildings vulnerable to earth quakes can be shielded from damage by surrounding them with these seismic invisibility cloaks.  The concept is to create protective barriers which divert earth quake energy away from sensitive facilities like nuclear power plants.


Computational Physicist Mr. Sebastien Guenneau and his colleagues at the Institut Fresnel have invented a method which involves modifying the ground around a building to divert the seismic waves thereby cloaking the structure from an earth quake. 


For more details please read the article on Seismic Cloaks to minimize damage due to Earth quake from the www.physicsworld.com website.

 

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Sings of Water found on Water by Curiosity Rover

It is now clear that there are signs of water on Mars.  Almost every rover, lander or orbiter sent to MARS in recent times give some indications of the evidence of water on the Red Planet.  This gives rise to whether there was a life on Mars in earlier times.  The Curiosity rover of NASA landed on Gale Crater which is a place which used to hold a lake of water as per the latest findings of the Scientists of NASA and announced on 11th Dec., 2013.  

For more details please read the article about Signs of water found on Mars by Curiosity Rover.

China lands Jade Rabbit Rover on Moon

China has successfully landed a craft carrying a robotic rover on Lunar surface.   This is the first soft landing in the past 37 years.

The Jade Rover was landed on the surface of Moon on 14th December, 2013.  The touchdown took place on a flat plain called Sinus Iridum.   For more details,  please read the article on China's Jade Rabbit rover lands on Moon.

Friday, August 30, 2013

Send your own Spacecraft to Moon for just Rs. 20000 ( 199 Pounds)

Did you ever dream about exploring the solar system with your own spacecraft?   Yes it is now finally possible to explore the space using your own spacecraft.

If you are a space enthusiast, you have a unique chance to explore the solar system with your own space craft and that too at a very small cost - Just 199 pounds or Rs.20,000.

A British company is planning to launch thousands of mini spacecrafts on to the Moon.  Each of these spacecrafts can be bought for just 199 pounds and personalized by the sponsor.  A group of scientists, engineers and designers who worked on this concept at some of the world's leading Universities have come together to start this personal interplanetary space age and they have given an opportunity to you to join hands with them to become a space explorer.  So once you join this project, you can personalize your own spacecraft by adding a picture and customizing the message it transmits using just their web browser.  More technical explorers can even customize the software and hardware. The team has developed a website called www.PocketSpacecraft.com.  

The probes to be launched by Pocket Spacecraft, are of the size of a CD and as thin as a paper.  They will be released in June, 2015 over the Earth and over the Moon in June, 2016.

You can watch online at your spacecraft is being built in the lab and loaded into an Interplanetary CubeSat Mothership.    Once they are launched by a commercial rocket, some of the probes will be released into space to flutter to the ground in order to demonstrate landing on a planet with atmosphere (Earth).  The MotherShip will set off to Moon where, when it arrives many months later, the remaining probes will be released, photographed and then land on the Moon to complete the Mission.  

The owners of the probes can monitor the progress through out their own Pocket Mission Control App to track the progress of their Spacecraft as it is designed,built and travels through the space.  The data as it arrives from individual's spacecraft's instruments is relayed from space by a global ground station network direct to the owner's smartphone.  The users also can hold their phone up to the sky and use the augmented reality feature to point out exactly where their spacecraft is.

"As these spacecrafts are very light weight, they are extremely cheaper"  - says Mr. Michael Johnson who is the founder of Pocket Spacecraft.  The Bristol based company hopes to use similar probes elsewhere in the solar system.  If you are able to drop 1000 of these probes on Mars, you can do a planet-wide seismic survey. 

Read more about their current mission for details and join them on an expedition to the moon!

Are you interested  in exploring the space....    If you are interested to take part in the Pocket Spacecraft Mission to the Moon,  please fill up your details and submit.

You can see some details of the Pocket Spacecraft in the image shown below.

 

Friday, June 7, 2013

Eesha Khara - an Indian girl invents a device to charge mobile phones within 20 seconds

Eesha Khare, an 18 years old Indian girl student at Lynbrook High School in California made an excellent discovery which provides a solution to all recharging troubles for the portable devices like mobile phones in future. 
 
The device is known as Super Capacitor would enable mobile devices to recharge the battery in less than 20 seconds.  Eesha Khara was awarded Young Scientist award by Intel Foundation for developing the super capacitor device.



The Super Capacitor device is capable of holding a large amount of current or power in very small space.  The device can retain the charge for a longer time and the same can be charged within a very short duration of time.  The device has about 10,000 recharge cycles which is 10 times more than what is offered by most battery packs today.  The inventor claims that the device is flexible and is very small in size so it can be used in flexible displays and smaller devices.  The actual implementation for mobile devices and portable electronics is not yet been tested but inventor hopes for same in future.

Monday, May 27, 2013

50 new Earth like planets discovered

The Astronomers of Europe discovered 50 new planets.   All of them are behind the planets of our solar system.  Six of the planets resemble Earth very much.  The largest of these 50 planets is HD 85512 and it is 3 times by weight of earth.  It is 36 light years far away from Earth and is located in the Vela constellation.

Scientists believe that at  least 16 of these 50 planets have water, and assume that there is life on them.   Some of these planets have same weight as earth while some of them are 10 times heavier than our planet. 

Thursday, December 20, 2012

World is not ending on 21st December, 2012 - Dooms Day

Most of the people all around the world are thinking that the world will end on Friday, 21st December, 2012.  Dec., 21, 2012 is the day when the 5,125 years old Mayan Calendar ends and some people have interpreted it as Dooms day.  For example the people in China have been buying tickets for a boat which will start sailing if the disaster strikes.  In Russia, many people are stocking the regular consumable supplies to ensure that they are prepared for the emergency.  And in Mexico, around 2,00,000 people are expected to flock to Chicken Itza, an ancient Mayan city as they are waiting for the world to end.

There is a wide spread and un necessary fear about the Dooms day on December, 21, 2012. Most of the people of the world are fearing about the end of the world on this day.  Opinion polls in America also indicate one in ten persons have a fear whether they will be able to celebrate Christmas this year.    A number of astronomical alignments and formulae were proposed pertaining to this date but none has been accepted by the scientific community.

So 21st December, 2012 will not be the end of the World as all people are thinking but it will be another winter solstice.  I have gone through NASA website where all the doubts regarding end of the world on 21st December, 2012 were answered by NASA scientists...  Here is a list of answers provided by NASA scientists for the questions related to 21st December, 2012 - Dooms day.  I am just copying the questions and answers which were published in the NASA website...  This is for the benefit of the people who are fearing about the end of world on 21st December, 2012.

Question (Q): Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012.
Answer (A):The world will not end in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.


Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?
A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012 and linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.


Q: Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?
A: Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then -- just as your calendar begins again on January 1 -- another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.


Q: Is NASA predicting a "total blackout" of Earth on Dec. 23 to Dec. 25?
A: Absolutely not. Neither NASA nor any other scientific organization is predicting such a blackout. The false reports on this issue claim that some sort of "alignment of the Universe" will cause a blackout. There is no such alignment (see next question). Some versions of this rumor cite an emergency preparedness message from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. This is simply a message encouraging people to be prepared for emergencies, recorded as part of a wider government preparedness campaign. It never mentions a blackout.


Q: Could planets align in a way that impacts Earth?
A: There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. One major alignment occurred in 1962, for example, and two others happened during 1982 and 2000. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.

Q: Is there a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction?
A: Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.

Q: What is the polar shift theory? Is it true that the Earth's crust does a 180-degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours? A: A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-switch to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. Scientists believe a magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia.

Q: Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012?
A: The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA Near-Earth Object Program Office website, so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.

Q: How do NASA scientists feel about claims of the world ending in 2012? A: For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science? Where is the evidence? There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the Internet, we cannot change that simple fact. There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012.

Q: Is there a danger from giant solar storms predicted for 2012? A: Solar activity has a regular cycle, with peaks approximately every 11 years. Near these activity peaks, solar flares can cause some interruption of satellite communications, although engineers are learning how to build electronics that are protected against most solar storms. But there is no special risk associated with 2012. The next solar maximum will occur in the 2012-2014 time frame and is predicted to be an average solar cycle, no different than previous cycles throughout history.

The above questions and answers were copied from NASA Website..