Circle denotes area of object. Click on any image to enlarge.
*
The Mars Rovers have captured photos of some strange things on Mars but is this really what it looks like? A rodent on Mars? Others are calling it a rat (must be the long tail), and my significant other said it looks like a rabbit (with a long tail). Well it looks sort of 'squirrel-y' to me.
The object does appear to be a critter of some sort, with a blunt nose, beady eyes and again, a long tail.
What do you think?
Perhaps this is the NASA announcement that never was.
Space.com- A newly discovered asteroid the size of a football field will cruise
through Earth's neighborhood this weekend, just days after another space
rock made an even closer approach to our planet.
The 330-foot-wide (100 meters) asteroid 2013 ET
will miss Earth by 600,000 miles (960,000 kilometers) when it zips by
on Saturday (March 9). The space rock flyby will come just days after
the 33-foot (10 m) asteroid 2013 EC approached within 230,000 miles
(370,000 km) of us early Monday (March 4).
When asteroid 2013 ET passes Earth, it will be at a range equivalent to
2.5 times the distance between the planet and the moon, making it too
faint and far away for most stargazers to spot in the night sky. But the
Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, run by astrophysicist Gianluca
Masi, will webcast a live telescope view of the space rock's flyby on
Friday (March 8), beginning at 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT). You can access the
free broadcast here: http://www.astrowebtv.org.
* No, the Russians did not shoot down a UFO, despite some claims. Unfortunately for residents of Chelyabinsk, Russia, it was nothing more than a huge rock from space; a meteor/bolide which it happened to fall to earth only hours before asteroid 2012 DA14 made it's 17,200 mile pass (closer than many satellites)!
At the time of this posting, approximately 1200 people have been injured, in and around Chelyabinsk, mostly by flying glass. Many people may have been injured after having been knocked off their feet by the blast from the fireball.
According to the trajectory of the Chelyabinsk bolide, it had nothing to do with asteroid 1012 DA14... and it wasn't a UFO. -SW
* * *
Press Release: NASA Experts Discuss Russia Meteor in Media Teleconference Today
WASHINGTON
-- NASA experts will hold a teleconference for news media at 4 p.m. EST
today to discuss a meteor that streaked through the skies over Russia's
Urals region this morning.
Scientists have determined the
Russia meteor is not related to asteroid 2012 DA14 that will safely pass
Earth today at a distance of more than 17,000 miles. Early assessments
of the Russia meteor indicate it was about one-third the size of 2012
DA14 and traveling in a different direction.
Panelists for the teleconference are: -- Bill Cooke, lead for the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
-- Paul Chodas, research scientist in the Near Earth Object Program
Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
News media interested in participating should dial 888-843-7186 and use the passcode METEOR.
The teleconference will be carried live online at:
A meteor streaked across the sky and exploded over Russia's Ural Mountains with the power of an atomic bomb Friday, its sonic blasts shattering countless windows and injuring about 1,100 people.
The spectacle deeply frightened many Russians, with some elderly women declaring that the world was coming to an end. Many of the injured were cut by flying glass as they flocked to windows, curious about what had produced such a blinding flash of light.
The meteor -- estimated to be about 10 tons and 49 feet wide -- entered the Earth's atmosphere at a hypersonic speed of at least 33,000 mph and shattered into pieces about 18-32 miles above the ground, the Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement. But even small asteroids pack a tremendous punch, explained Andrew Cheng of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
"It doesn’t take a very large object. A 10-meter size object already packs the same energy as a nuclear bomb," Cheng, who led a 2000-2001 mission for NASA to orbit and land on an asteroid, told FoxNews.com.
Amateur video showed an object speeding across the sky about 9:20 a.m. local time, just after sunrise, leaving a thick white contrail and an intense flash.
"There was panic. People had no idea what was happening," said Sergey Hametov, a resident of Chelyabinsk, a city of 1 million about 930 miles east of Moscow.
"We saw a big burst of light, then went outside to see what it was and we heard a really loud, thundering sound," he told The Associated Press by telephone.
The meteor hit less than a day before Asteroid 2012 DA14 is to make the closest recorded pass of an asteroid to the Earth for a rock of its size -- about 17,150 miles. But the European Space Agency said its experts had determined there was no connection -- just cosmic coincidence.
The meteor released several kilotons of energy above the region, the Russian science academy said. According to NASA, it was about 15 meters or 49 feet wide before it hit the atmosphere, about one-third the size of the passing asteroid.
Some meteorite fragments fell in a reservoir outside the town of Chebarkul. The crash left a 26-foot-wide crater in the ice.
The shock wave blew in more than 1 million square feet of glass, according to city officials, who said 3,000 buildings in the city were damaged. At one zinc factory, part of the roof collapsed.
The Interior Ministry said about 1,100 people sought medical care after the shock wave and 48 of them were hospitalized. Most of the injuries were caused by flying glass, officials said.
There was no immediate word on any deaths or anyone struck by space fragments.
NASA statement on Russia meteor: "According to NASA scientists, the trajectory of the Russia meteor was significantly different than the trajectory of the asteroid 2012 DA14, making it a completely unrelated object. Information is still being collected about the Russia meteor and analysis is preliminary at this point. In videos of the meteor, it is seen to pass from left to right in front of the rising sun, which means it was traveling from north to south. Asteroid DA14's trajectory is in the opposite direction, from south to north."
Update: February 15, 2013 7pm PST
New information provided by a worldwide network of sensors has allowed scientists to refine their estimates for the size of the object that entered that atmosphere and disintegrated in the skies over Chelyabinsk, Russia, at 7:20:26 p.m. PST, or 10:20:26 p.m. EST on Feb. 14 (3:20:26 UTC on Feb. 15).
The estimated size of the object, prior to entering Earth's atmosphere, has been revised upward from 49 feet (15 meters) to 55 feet (17 meters), and its estimated mass has increased from 7,000 to 10,000 tons. Also, the estimate for energy released during the event has increased by 30 kilotons to nearly 500 kilotons of energy released. These new estimates were generated using new data that had been collected by five additional infrasound stations located around the world – the first recording of the event being in Alaska, over 6,500 kilometers away from Chelyabinsk. The infrasound data indicates that the event, from atmospheric entry to the meteor's airborne disintegration took 32.5 seconds. The calculations using the infrasound data were performed by Peter Brown at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average," said Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "When you have a fireball of this size we would expect a large number of meteorites to reach the surface and in this case there were probably some large ones."
The trajectory of the Russia meteor was significantly different than the trajectory of the asteroid 2012 DA14, which hours later made its flyby of Earth, making it a completely unrelated object. The Russia meteor is the largest reported since 1908, when a meteor hit Tunguska, Siberia. _________________________________________________________
Preliminary information indicates that a meteor in Chelyabinsk, Russia, is not related to asteroid 2012 DA14, which is flying by Earth safely today.
The Russia meteor is the largest reported since 1908, when a meteor hit Tunguska, Siberia. The meteor entered the atmosphere at about 40,000 mph (18 kilometers per second). The impact time was 7:20:26 p.m. PST, or 10:20:26 p.m. EST on Feb. 14 (3:20:26 UTC on Feb. 15), and the energy released by the impact was in the hundreds of kilotons.
Based on the duration of the event, it was a very shallow entry. It was larger than the meteor over Indonesia on Oct. 8, 2009. Measurements are still coming in, and a more precise measure of the energy may be available later. The size of the object before hitting the atmosphere was about 49 feet (15 meters) and had a mass of about 7,000 tons.
The meteor, which was about one-third the diameter of asteroid 2012 DA14, was brighter than the sun. Its trail was visible for about 30 seconds, so it was a grazing impact through the atmosphere.
It is important to note that this estimate is preliminary, and may be revised as more data is obtained.
NASA's Martian Rover Curiosity's photo of strange metal object.
Metal object enlarged and enhanced.
*
The Martian rover Curiosity has discovered a shiny piece of dark metal, found protruding from a rocky area on the red planet's surface. The photo certainly peaked 'my curiosity', so I decided to enlarge and enhance the object in the image provided by NASA.
If you will notice in the full image, there appears to be tire marks, one of which shows up very well. At first glance, I had figured out what that shiny piece of metal is! Any biker can tell by the clues in the photo, that it's a part that fell off of a Harley Davidson motorcycle! A foot-peg.
Seriously, what has NASA spent billions, perhaps trillions of dollars on Mars missions, if they don't plan to investigate something like a piece of metal found in a rock-strewn Martian landscape? "Oh yeah, a piece of metal. Whoopee. Probably just a chunk of meteor, or metal ore that happens to look like a door handle. Rocks are so much more interesting." Not!
Just where is the curiosity in the Curiosity science team? Hold on, it's coming to me... "ignore the obvious." It's an unusual piece of flotsam in a sea of dirt and rock, nothing more. Gotcha! Carry on. -Sunny Williams *
Slashgear.com- The Curiosity rover on Mars has been keeping itself quite busy lately, most recently boring into Mars’ red surface in order to find signs of life. However, in its downtime, the rover likes to take a lot of photos, including self-portraits, but this time around, Curiosity came across a strange chunk of metal sticking out of the ground? What could it be?
The photo was snapped on January 30 using one of the rover’s MastCam cameras to get shots of the landscape, and it ended up getting this odd piece of metal in the frame. NASA’s scientists aren’t 100% sure what it is, but they think it may be a chunk from a meteorite, or possibly a chunk of ore that became exposed by some sort of erosion.
It’s said that the object is only a half-centimeter tall, so it’s extremely tiny compared to how big it looks in the image. NASA hasn’t said whether or not it will check out the piece of metal, or if they’ll just ignore it and continue on with their planned experiments. After all, they do have more holes to drill.
However, while some think it’s simply a tiny piece of metal, Elisabetta Bonora of Alive Universe Images, mentions that the hunk of metal takes up about 35 pixels in the image. Taking into account the camera’s resolution and the distance between the rover and the object, the size of the chunk of metal may actually be larger than just 0.5 cm — it’s possible that it’s up to a foot tall. At this point, we’ll never know, unless NASA decides to investigate, but it’s very possible they just might let it be and continue on as scheduled.
A beam of light shines down upon you and next thing you know, your 100 miles up, on an alien ship. It could happen! Scientists have created a tractor beam, right out of Star Trek.
Scientists Create Small-Scale Star Trek Tractor Beam
The UFO hovers above. The crowd rushes to escape as the ship’s doors open, emitting a bright green laser that pulls everything in its path up and into the spacecraft.
Once
a thing of pure science fiction, physicists have now created a
small-scale real-life tractor beam that can move tiny objects towards a
source without physically touching them.
New York University
physicists David Ruffner and David Grier set out to experiment with
tractor beams after a Chinese research team concluded that using a
single laser called a Bessel beam, it should be possible to move
particles in a tractor beam manner.
The fireball that streaked through the skies on April 22 and exploded with the equivalent of four kilotons of TNT and fell around Sutter’s Mill, birthplace of the California Gold Rush. Scientists and meteor hunters alike quickly hunted down a few of the fallen fragments just before rain hit, allowing them an unprecedented look at the most pristine sample of a rare type of carbon-rich asteroid yet found.
Now a study published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science shows that all that hustle paid off. The Sutter's Mill meteor shows chemical evidence of a complex formation history -- evidence that would have been wiped out by the rain, said lead author Peter Jenniskens, a meteor astronomer at the NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute in Mountain View.
Meteorites are chunks of the asteroids that fall to Earth, and they give planetary scientists a look back into the solar system’s history. Scientists think these far-out bits of rocky debris may have originally brought organic molecules, the building blocks for life, to Earth.
The Sutter’s Mill meteorite, which came in at a blazing 28.6 kilometers per second -- nearly 64,000 miles per hour -- weighed roughly 44 tons just before burning up and exploding in the Earth’s atmosphere. Tracked using Doppler weather radar imaging, it rained in countless pieces over an area roughly 7 kilometers by 4 kilometers, Jenniskens said.
“It was like a hailstorm of stones over gold country,” Jenniskens said.
NASA scientists say Voyager 1 could enter interstellar space anywhere from months to a couple of years from now
NASA's Voyager 1 is traveling through the last leg of its journey before entering interstellar space.
Voyager 1, which was launched into space in 1977 to eventually explore interstellar space and become the most distant human-made object, has reached a region that NASA scientists are calling a magnetic highway. This highway consists of charged particles where the sun's magnetic field lines are connected to interstellar magnetic field lines.
This area is still considered part of our heliosphere, which is a bubble of charged particles around the sun, because the direction of the magnetic field lines has not changed. The direction of these lines will change when Voyager 1 enters interstellar space, and scientists believe the magnetic highway is the last stretch before finally making it to interstellar space.
"Although Voyager 1 still is inside the sun's environment, we now can taste what it's like on the outside because the particles are zipping in and out on this magnetic highway," said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "We believe this is the last leg of our journey to interstellar space. Our best guess is it's likely just a few months to a couple years away. The new region isn't what we expected, but we've come to expect the unexpected from Voyager."
What will our little 'messenger of peace' find out there, in the vastness of space between star systems? For good or ill, Voyager treks on in search of other worlds, other solar systems.
What might it find?
I am reminded of "Star Trek - The Movie", where a massive ship approaches Earth, seeking it's creator. If it doesn't find "the creator", "V'ger" will destroy planet Earth.
The crew of the Enterprise finally deduce that V'ger is actually "Voyager 6". While in deep interstellar space, Voyager 6 is found by a superior race of (probably) cybernetic aliens, who repair the tiny craft, place it at the core of a massive ship, pat it's little metal bottom and send it home to daddy. The mission: Join with the creator, or destroy.
Oh my!
Lucky for us, there never was a Voyager 6. NASA only sent two Voyagers into space.
The thought still remains. Let's just hope we never have to live out that scenario with V-1, or V-2. The real Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock might not be so clever, as in the movies. -Sunny Williams/LITS
There is a coverup going on in Louisiana and it appears to be on the scale of the Roswell conspiracy.
Monday, October 15 at 11:30 p.m., an explosion rattled the small town of Minden, in Webster Parish, Louisiana.
Before the explosion, witnesses report seeing lights and flashes in the sky, including low flying fighter jets.
One witness saw a strange craft and reported it to MUFON. That report is included below.
Local Webster Parish Sheriff Gary Sexton said, "Definitely had something happen." He added, " that all the explosion manufacturing facilities and natural gas facilities in Webster Parish are ruled out as a cause."
The local meteorologist goes on to refute the meteor theory, saying, "Checking with the National Weather Service, if it were a meteor, and yes we are in a meteor shower period, the Orionids, but I don't think there would be a piece of that, that would make it to the earth without vaporizing. But if it did, radar did not pick up a streak, which it normally would."
He goes on to say, "But, we had an eye witness report who left her home in Dixie Inn, to drive to find whatever it was that hit and she reported ashes falling onto her car but they were heavy enough that they sounded like small hail. The weather service did confirm right after that explosion, their radar picked up what would be called a low cloud, or a debris field." He also states that the radar picked the debris up, through four revolutions.
With the dawn of a new day, Tuesday morning, October 16th, the coverup had begun. The story now is that a bunker exploded at local military munitions plant (Camp Minden), despite the previous statements made by the Sheriff, ruling out the possibility of a munitions explosion.
An anonymous photographer captured aerial footage of the aftermath, which clearly shows 2 impact points, debris and an idle train that was also impacted and blown over. Despite what the claims are, the train was not moving at the time. The video is evidence of that as well.
*
Witness in Castor, Louisiana reports UFO Observed flying towards the area of impact, shortly before the explosion occurred. Here is that report submitted to MUFON.
Drawing submitted by witness.
* Case Number 43300
Log Number US-10162012-0013
Date Submitted 10/16/2012 10:00 UTC
Date of the Event 10/15/2012 12:00 UTC
Source MUFON Disposition Unresolved
Summary object flew over house. had blueish aura all around it. could only see outline of craft.
Sighting Location
City Castor
Region Louisiana
Country United States
Latitude 32.254489
Longitude -93.164592
The latitude and longitude presented here is an approximation to protect the reporters identity
Sighting Specifics
Viewing Distance 101-500 Feet
Sighting Duration Undisclosed
Object Features Dome
Object Flight Path Straight-line path
Object Shape Disc, Unknown
Weather Factors Unknown
Sighting Details
was outside cleaning out pickup truck, walked toward porch, bright blue light caught my eye, stopped and watched as craft flew from over house toward NW. ran inside, got my wife, but it was gone. hours later, heard loud boom, shook house, news channel reports the same in 40 or so mile raius of my house. NWS reports debris cloud, and debris plume of mile high around dixie inn louisiana. drew as detailed a picture as i could. did not scare me, no terrifyinf feeling, glow was almost warm in nature.
A team of alien-hunting astroboffins has been awarded a grant to
search the sky for immense engineering feats that would reveal the
existence of astral civilizations far, far more advanced than us puny
humans.
Lead by assistant professor Jason Wright of Penn State's Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, the team will use NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) to search the sky for the infrared fingerprints of possible Dyson Spheres, energy-capturing mega-structures named after all-around smart guy Freeman Dyson, who postulated their existence in a 1960 paper.
According to Dyson, any advanced civilization would inevitably use up
all of the resources on their planet, and would be forced to look
elsewhere for energy. The most obvious place, he surmised, would be the
star around which their planet orbits.
To capture that energy, they would construct the aforementioned
Spheres – mind-bogglingly immense structures that would surround the
star and collect its energy. These structures could be actual spheres,
but more likely would take the form of rings, swarms, or banded
spherical collections of energy harvesters.
No matter what form they might take, they'd undoubtedly give off
infrared radiation that could be detected by such sensitive sensors such
as those aboard WISE – and that's where Wright and his team come in. The Atlantic reports that Wright has been awarded funding from the John Templeton Foundation to conduct his search, in response to his proposal, "Constraining the Abundance of Kardashev Type II and III Civilizations From Large Area Infrared Surveys".
We'll get back to Kardashev's civilization types in a moment.
Best time to view the meteor shower will be between 3:00 a.m. and sunrise, or at least 2 hours before dawn.
The Orionid meteor shower begins tonight and will peak Saturday, Oct. 21, 2012. Tonight the Earth will begin to pass through a stream of dusty debris from Halley's Comet, treating sky watchers to one of the most dazzling meteor showers of the year. Though not the strongest, the Orionids are truly one of the most beautiful annual meteor showers. But be prepared as the Orionid meteoroids are some of the fastest, clocking in at 148,000 mph as they hit the earth's atmosphere. These meteors are called Orionids because they appear to come from a small spot in the sky, near the shoulder of Orion (the constellation), and these meteoroids fan out across the entire sky. Weather permitting, it should be a fantastic show.
View from the International Space Station of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft as the station's robotic arm moves Dragon into place for attachment to the station. May 25, 2012. Photo: NASA; Courtesy SpaceX.com.
Press Release-
SPACEX, NASA TARGET OCT. 7 LAUNCH FOR FIRST CONTRACTED U.S. CARGO RESUPPLY MISSION TO SPACE STATION
HOUSTON -- NASA managers, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) officials and international partner representatives Thursday announced Sunday, Oct. 7, as the target launch date for the first contracted cargo resupply flight to the International Space Station under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract.
International Space Station Program managers confirmed the status and readiness of the Falcon 9 rocket and its Dragon cargo spacecraft for the SpaceX CRS-1 mission, as well as the space station's readiness to receive Dragon.
Launch is scheduled for 8:34 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. A back up launch opportunity is available on Oct. 8.
Media accreditation to view the launch now is open. International media without U.S. citizenship must apply for credentials to cover the prelaunch and launch activities by Wednesday, Sept 26. For U.S. media, the deadline to apply is Wednesday, Oct. 3.
Questions about accreditation may be directed to the Public Affairs Office at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 321-867-2468. All media accreditation requests must be submitted online at: https://media.ksc.nasa.gov
The launch of the Dragon spacecraft will be the first of 12 contracted flights by SpaceX to resupply the space station and marks the second trip by a Dragon to the station, following a successful demonstration mission in May. SpaceX services under the CRS contract will restore an American capability to deliver and return significant amounts of cargo, including science experiments, to the orbiting laboratory -- a feat not achievable since the retirement of the space shuttle.
The Dragon will be filled with about 1,000 pounds of supplies. This includes critical materials to support the 166 investigations planned for the station's Expedition 33 crew, including 63 new investigations. The Dragon will return about 734 pounds of scientific materials, including results from human research, biotechnology, materials and educational experiments, as well as about 504 pounds of space station hardware.
Materials being launched on Dragon will support experiments in plant cell biology, human biotechnology and various materials technology demonstrations, among others. One experiment, called Micro 6, will examine the effects of microgravity on the opportunistic yeast Candida albicans, which is present on all humans. Another experiment, called Resist Tubule, will evaluate how microgravity affects the growth of cell walls in a plant called Arabidopsis. About 50 percent of the energy expended by terrestrial-bound plants is dedicated to structural support to overcome gravity. Understanding how the genes that control this energy expenditure operate in microgravity could have implications for future genetically modified plants and food supply. Both Micro 6 and Resist Tubule will return with the Dragon at the end of its mission.
Expedition 33 Commander Sunita Williams of NASA and Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will use a robot arm to grapple the Dragon following its rendezvous with the station on Wednesday, Oct. 10. They will attach the Dragon to the Earth-facing port of the station's Harmony module for a few weeks while crew members unload cargo and load experiment samples for return to Earth.
Dragon is scheduled to return in late October for a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern California.
While NASA works with U.S. industry partners to develop commercial spaceflight capabilities, the agency also is developing the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS), a crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration. Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS and Orion will expand human presence beyond low Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration across the solar system.
For information about the International Space Station, research in low Earth orbit, NASA's commercial space programs and the future of American spaceflight, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration
For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv
SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches the world's most advanced rockets and spacecraft. With a diverse manifest of more than 40 launches to resupply the space station and deliver commercial and government satellites to orbit, SpaceX is the world's fastest growing launch services provider. In 2012, SpaceX made history when its Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle to successfully attach to the International Space Station -- a feat previously achieved by only four governments. With the retirement of the Space Shuttle, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft are carrying cargo, and one day will carry astronauts, to and from the space station for NASA. Founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, SpaceX is a private company owned by management and employees, with minority investments from Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Valor Equity Partners. The company has more than 1,800 employees in California, Texas, Florida and Washington, DC. For more information, visit SpaceX.com.
NASA's Shuttle Endeavour has arrived safely at the Los Angeles International Airport and will soon be displayed at it's new home, at the California Science Center's Samuel Oschin display pavilion. There have been thousands of photo opts on it's final trek, however, this is one photo of Endeavour that you might not have seen.
On May 23, 2011, Expedition 27 Commander Dmitry Kondratyev and Flight Engineers Cady Coleman and Paolo Nespoli un-docked from the International Space Station, heading home aboard the Russian Soyuz TMA-20. That was the perfect time to take video and photos of a sight we've never had a real chance to see, a shuttle (Endeavour) docked to the orbital complex.
Ben Hansen, former FBI agent and team leader for the SyFy Channel's Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files will be the guest on Beyond the Edge Radio, this Sunday, September 9, 2012, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern (7:00 Central, 5:00 Pacific).
At well over 6 feet tall, Nikola Tesla was a giant among men but he was so much more, he was the greatest inventor that ever lived.
When you flip a light swtich, use your computer, your phone, or listen to the radio, thank Tesla, not Thomas Edison!
Born 10 July 1856 in Smiljan, Austrian Empire (modern-day Croatia), Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, physicist, mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, and futurist. What he is best known for, is his contributions to the modern alternating current (AC) electrical supply system we used today. Tesla also demonstrated "wireless" energy transfer to power electronic devices, had patents in wireless communication and radio, including many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism.
Tesla was a futurist, a scientist, a man with a dream. He envisioned free, unlimited energy to light the world. Well, if you know about Tesla, you know how that turned out. U.S. Patent 645,576
Tesla's Wardenclyffe laboratory, Shoreham, New York.
Now here it is 2012 and an innovative young man by the the name of Matthew Inman of the Oatmeal.com, steps up and begins a campaign to raise money, in order to buy the site of Tesla's Wardenclyffe laboratory, located in Shoreham, New York.
In just one week the $850,000 goal was greatly exceeded but the campaign isn't over, not by a long shot.
Tesla died on January 7, 1943, destitute and alone. All his great achievements were overshadowed and basically all but forgotten. A museum is the least we can do, to give back to a man we owe so much to.
"The U.S. Army's Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) flew for the first time from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., on Aug. 7. The air vehicle was airborne for more than 90 minutes during its initial flight. LEMV is built by Northrop Grumman with major subcontractor Hybrid Air Vehicle."
The football field-sized blimp uses ten percent of the fuel, compared to traditional aircraft and can hover in the air for three weeks at a time, operated either manually, or remoterly like a drone.
Not a speed demon but...
Northrup Grummansays the Spy Blimp is 100 feet longer than the Goodyear Blimp and is able to accommodate up to seven tons of supply and cargo, at a top speed of 30 mph. Even with a full load, the Spy Blimp can travel up to 2,400 miles.
I see you!
Military plans are to use the LEMV as a reconnaissance vehicle, jam packed with electronic surveillance equipment and set to enter live trials in Afghanistan, in 2013.
So when you look up in the sky and see the Spy Blimp, it could be looking back at you!
This animated flight through the universe was made by Miguel Aragon of Johns Hopkins University with Mark Subbarao of the Adler Planetarium and Alex Szalay of Johns Hopkins. There are close to 400,000 galaxies in the animation, with images of the actual galaxies in these positions (or in some cases their near cousins in type) derived from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7. Vast as this slice of the universe seems, its most distant reach is to redshift 0.1, corresponding to roughly 1.3 billion light years from Earth. SDSS Data Release 9 from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), led by Berkeley Lab scientists, includes spectroscopic data for well over half a million galaxies at redshifts up to 0.8 -- roughly 7 billion light years distant -- and over a hundred thousand quasars to redshift 3.0 and beyond.
For many years, Titan's thick, methane- and nitrogen-rich atmosphere kept astronomers from seeing what lies beneath. Saturn's largest moon appeared through telescopes as a hazy orange orb, in contrast to other heavily cratered moons in the solar system.
In 2004, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft — a probe that flies by Titan as it orbits Saturn — penetrated Titan's haze, providing scientists with their first detailed images of the surface. Radar images revealed an icy terrain carved out over millions of years by rivers of liquid methane, similar to how rivers of water have etched into Earth's rocky continents.
While images of Titan have revealed its present landscape, very little is known about its geologic past. Now researchers at MIT and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville have analyzed images of Titan's river networks and determined that in some regions, rivers have created surprisingly little erosion. The researchers say there are two possible explanations: either erosion on Titan is extremely slow, or some other recent phenomena may have wiped out older riverbeds and landforms.
