Nov/080
Planets outside of the Solar System photographed for the first time.
That’s right – planets, as in more than one. This image is from Bad Astronomy, and you can click through below to read more, and check out another picture of two planets around another star. An interesting fact about this star: it’s only 25 light years away, and is visible without a telescope. In fact, it’s the 18th brightest star in the sky! Scientists think the planet is about the size of Jupiter, and takes 872 years to orbit it’s star. The ring that you can see is from the planet’s gravitational effect collecting dust.
Check out Bad Astronomy’s post for yet another picture that shows two planets. Although it’s not likely these would be habitable, imagine how cool it would be if we found a planet orbiting a star which is readily visible from Earth.
Oct/080
LHC Internet2 network to be managed by real brain cells
Is this the beginning of Skynet or what?
Researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology plan to use living neural networks composed of thousands of brain cells from laboratory rats to control simulated power grids in the lab.
From those studies, they hope to create a “biologically inspired” computer program to manage and control complex power grids in Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria and elsewhere, and possibly other complex systems, such as traffic-control systems or global financial networks.
The Missouri S&T team will work with researchers at Georgia Tech’s Laboratory for Neuroengineering, where the living neural networks have been developed and are housed and studied. A high-bandwidth Internet2 connection will connect those brain cells over 600 miles to Venayagamoorthy’s Real-Time Power and Intelligent Systems Laboratory. Missouri S&T researchers will transmit signals from that lab in Rolla, Mo., to the brain cells in the Atlanta lab, and will train those brain cells to recognize voltage signals and other information from Missouri S&T’s real-time simulator.
Oct/071
Sitting and Thinking
My wife and I haven’t been feeling well, so I’m sitting at home, basically doing nothing. It’s incredibly boring. I’ve read about Harvard students making electricity from grass, seen pictures of a new Chevy concept car(the Opel Flextreme), watched the first four minutes of Saw IV, read the synopsis of Across the Universe, France’s secret war, learned about science’s latest guess on the function of the appendix, updated my Netflix queue to have even more movies that I won’t see for a long time (including all the seasons of Nip/Tuck), watched the latest Mad Men episode….well, I think you get the point.
Should it be worrying that I am looking forward to both Across the Universe and Saw IV?
Apr/060
The efficiency of a black hole
According to the Science Blog, if our cars had the efficiency of a black hole, we could go a billion miles on 1 gallon of gas! Who says NASA doesn’t inspire us all?!
