Authors: M. H. D. van der Wiel, F. F. S. van der Tak, V. Ossenkopf, M. Spaans, H. Roberts, G. A. Fuller and R. Plume.<br />Astronomy and Astrophysics Vol. 510 , page C1<br />Published online: 22/01/2010<br />
Keywords:
ISM: molecules ; ISM: structure ; ISM: individual: Orion Bar ; stars: formation ; errata, addenda.
Monthly Archives: February 2010
Barefoot | The Intersection
A few thoughtful readers have emailed optical illusions since I posted Tsang Cheung Shing’s incredible coffee kiss last week. This my favorite so far (and I have a hunch the lovely Dr. Isis will approve!). Reader ‘Sue’ explains:
“this Christian Louboutin heel was painted on a woman’s bare foot by John Maurad and Jenai Chin when New York Magazine featured an article entitled, You Walk Wrong.“
Montserrat volcanic dome collapse seen from space! | Bad Astronomy
On the Carribean island of Montserrat is the Soufrière Hills volcano. This is the very same one that erupted in 1997 and did so much damage to the small island (and killed 19 people).
On February 11, just a few days ago, the growing lave dome on the volcano partially collapsed, sending a plume 15,000 meters (more than 8 miles!) into the air. A few hours later, the plume was caught by NASA’s Aqua satellite:
Holy, well, Haleakala! Click to Envesuvianate (and to see the full frame picture).
The plume is obvious, as is its shadow to the northeast. Two smaller, lower plumes can be seen rocketing out over the sea to the north and south, and the wind is carrying ash in beautiful eddies to the east, too.
From this view, high above the Earth, it’s eerily beautiful. I imagine seeing the pyroclastic flows from this event would have been underpants-soilingly terrifying from the ground, however. I’m not seeing much news about this, even though it happened days ago, and I haven’t heard of any deaths resulting from it.
When I see images like this, I have to lean back and revel at the forbidding power and terrible beauty of volcanic eruptions like this one. I’m fascinated by them, and hope one day to see an active volcano (though from a safe distance). It’s a good reminder that as much as we rail and froth, we are hardly the lords and masters of this planet. We live on its thin skin by the graces of geology and the whims of random events, and that can be taken away just as easily.
The good news is, by studying events like these, and learning all we can about the natural world around us, we can understand what makes these dangerous giants tick. I mentioned that when Soufrière Hills blew in 1997, nineteen people died. That’s on an island with a population of over 4000… so why were so few killed? Because volcanologists — scientists — knew the warning signs and were able to get most of the people out of harm’s way.
Science. It’s cool, and it makes our lives better. It sometimes even saves them outright.
Image credit: NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC.
Obama Announces Nuclear Power Comeback
Obama announces new nuclear power plant construction
This may persuade the more right-leaning in Congress to back a new climate and energy bill that is now expected to pass not until after the midterm elections in November. That’s a long ways off so it’s good that business and clean tech industries are not waiting for our government to actually do anything on climate change. It’s not clear if they ever will, but I would call this a good step towards a type of clean energy that is much better than something like the Canadian oil and tar sands. It will also create about 3,800 jobs. (see below)
. . . .President Obama just announced his administration will provide more than $8 billion in loan guarantees to help build a nuclear power plant in Georgia.
The anticipated announcement, made to union electricians and others at a job training facility in Lanham, Maryland, begins to fulfill a pledge the president made in his State of the Union address, his budget and in a meeting with the nation’s governors this month to recharge the nuclear energy industry after a 30-year hiatus.
“We’re going to have to build a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in America,” Obama said. “This is only the beginning. My budget proposes tripling the loan guarantees we provide to help finance safe, clean nuclear facilities.”
The budget would add $36 billion to an existing $18.5 billion in available loan guarantees, for a total of $54.5 billion. Federal regulators are reviewing applications for 22 plants to be built in the next two decades. Source — USA Today
Many environmental groups who have traditionally been against nuclear energy are coming up with all kinds of reasons why this is bad. I can think of only one reason why this is questionable: there is no permanent place to store nuclear waste, although there are plenty of temporary places to store it, like on-site, which is where most of it is. It is safe where it is now, but eventually it will have to be moved. The other concerns, especially that it’s very expensive, may also be a concern but to me they are merely an excuse to be opposed to it. Coal is more frightening and damaging to the environment in every way imaginable than nuclear power, and the new kinds of nuclear power being developed will address and possibly solve the nuclear waste problem. Above is the video from the White House today; and below is more that was said by President Obama in making his announcement.
Earlier today in Maryland, President Obama spoke about the importance of clean energy for the country’s future.
Whether it’s nuclear energy, or solar or wind energy, if we fail to invest in the technologies of tomorrow, then we’re going to be importing those technologies instead of exporting them. We will fall behind. Jobs will be produced overseas, instead of here in the United States of America. [...]
Works by Futurists on Display in Nuoro
Capolavori del ‘900 italiano. Dall’Avanguardia al Ritorno all’ordine
March 5 – June 6, 2010
Museo d’Arte della Provincia di Nuoro
Curated by Gabriella Belli (MART) and Adriana Collu
Catalog (Silvana Editoriale)
Includes works by Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio de Chirico, Arturo Martini, Giorgio Morandi, Medardo Rosso, Gino Severini, Alberto Savinio and Mario Sironi.
Blue Origin proposes orbital vehicle
Illustration of Blue Origin's orbital crew vehicle, designed to be launched on an Atlas 5, as shown on a NASA slide at an FAA conference last week.
One of the most intriguing NewSpace companies is Blue Origin, perhaps because they’re also one of the most secretive. Backed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos—and thus without the funding concerns of many other companies in this field—the company has been working for several years on its “New Shepard” vehicle that takes off and lands vertically. While the company has done a few test flights in 2006-2007 that required experimental permits from the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, it hasn’t done any such flights recently, and speculation continues about what the company is, or isn’t, up to, and how long it might be before they have a vehicle flying.
The company has been closely guarded, revealing few details about its developments: its posting in January 2007 about its first test flight (which took place the previous November) has been its biggest bit of publicity. Those who have gotten a look inside the company, though, have been duly impressed. One of those is Dan Rasky of NASA Ames, who visited the company as part of an effort to develop a technology roadmap for commercial RLVs. “I joke with people that if you want to see what a billionaire’s clubhouse looks like, go visit Blue Origin,” he said at a public workshop last week in Washington.
However, Blue Origin isn’t quite as black as it has been. Late last year they announced that they has selected three investigations that would be the first suborbital research payloads the company plans to fly. At that time the company said that the crewed flight opportunities for New Shepard would be in 2012, with the possibility of flying remote-controller or autonomous payloads as early as 2011.
More recently, the company won a small contract from NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program that has provided a bit more of a peek of what the company is up to. The $3.7-million contract covers the development of two items: work on “pusher” launch escape system and a composite pressure vessel. The escape system would use thrusters below a crew cabin that pushes the cabin away from its launcher in the event of a malfunction, instead of the “tractor” escape systems mounted on top of a crew capsule that pulls it away; the company had been planning something like that for its New Shepard vehicle, whose crew module is designed to separate from the propulsion module and land separately. A composite pressure vessel would, most likely, provide a lighter-weight option for any sort of vehicle that Blue Origin might be developing.
What is interesting is that Blue Origin is actively looking beyond suborbital spaceflight to orbital missions. Proof of that came in a presentation last week by Alan Lindenmoyer, who managers NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Programs, including CCDev. Speaking at the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, he presented slides describing all five CCDev awards, including for Blue Origin. The Blue Origin slide, shown below, revealed that the company was proposing a “bi-conic space vehicle” that could be launched on an Atlas 5 402, a variant of the Atlas 5 with two Centaur engines in its upper stage and no strap-on solid rocket boosters. The slide notes that the composite pressure vessel that would be tested under the CCDev contract would be structural test article of their planned suborbital vehicle “as a subscale demonstrator for the orbital Space Vehicle”.
Blue Origin CCDev award details
Robert Milliman of Blue Origin, who was present at the February 2 NASA press conference in Washington where NASA unveiled the CCDev winners, as well as existing COTS/CRS awardees Orbital Sciences and SpaceX, didn’t provide many details about what the company’s plans were. “The [Blue Origin] team is dedicated to creating technologies for an enduring human presence in space,” he said before briefly describing the technologies funded under their CCDev award.
In very brief comments after the press conference, he said that Blue Origin was still focused on its suborbital program right now, proceeding “step by step”. He didn’t provide any specifics, such as schedule, about the company’s development of New Shepard or any future orbital vehicle, other than to say that flight tests are “coming up”.
It’s not surprising that Blue Origin sees suborbital as a step towards orbital flight, although the concept they proposed for their CCDev contract indicates that, at least in the relatively near term, they’re less likely to scale up New Shepard into an orbital vehicle than use some of that technology for a crewed vehicle that could be launched on an ELV.
A Blue Origin representative is scheduled to speak Thursday at the Next-Generation Suborbital Research Conference in Boulder, Colorado. Maybe we’ll learn a few more details about their vehicle plans. And maybe not.
Assembly in Outer Space
Designing such devices like the James Webb Space Telescope for deployment in space takes a whole lot of innovative engineering to make it fold up to fit into a rocket and then be opened up in space. The mirror alone is 21.3 ft in diameter and the sunshield is as big as a tennis court. Do you believe
SD Card Album Holds The Equivalent Of 256MB Of Photos [Photography]
Moore's Law dictates that memory gets larger and cheaper as the years go by (roughly speaking), but how can this SD card store the equivalent of 256MB of photos and cost $16?
When the 60 photos are printed out and stuck in the album sleeves, naturally. On sale in April, it's available as a pre-order for $9.99. [Spinninghat via Technabob]
Kindle App For BlackBerry Now Available In US [Blackberry Apps]
It was threatened, and thus now available. Hit up the BlackBerry App World to download the free Kindle app now—but only if you live in the US. And are happy paying up to a tenner to read a book on a 2.44" screen. [THINQ]
Developer Documents Leak Showing Windows Phone 7 API Information [Microsoft]
Windows Phone 7 is only three days old, but leaked documents from Microsoft supposedly showing developer requirements have turned up thanks to XDA-Developers, suggesting WP7 will use both Silverlight and XNA—which makes sense, given the Xbox 360 integration.
In the "development tools" document, it states that "Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Express Blend are the primary tools for developing applications for Windows phones."
The "partner application development policy" claims:
"partner applications will have access to an extended set of managed APIs and a limited set of native APIs. The extended managed APIs are meant to support extending the phone experience with functionality that is specific to a phone or network. This set of APIs supports functionality such as camera mode extensibility."
"If the managed APIs in the application platform are not sufficient to support critical partner needs, then partners can request access to native APIs (provided support is available in the operating system). If Microsoft approves the request to enable an application scenario, then the specific native APISs supported will be explicitly documented."
The three documents are included for chewing over, but so far, not too many surprises. This is Microsoft, after all. [XDA-Developers via WMPowerUser via Engadget]
GPS Ski Gloves Place the Display On the Tip Of Your Thumb [GPS]
While these actual, real, strap-'em-to-your-hands-and-navigate-ski-slopes gloves are, you know, real, I much preferred the GPS gloves concept from two years ago. Give me a bionic hand over insulated glove any day of the week.
Still, there's something to be said for GPS gloves you can actually wear, and while Zanier hasn't confirmed the price of their Xplore.XGX ski gloves, they'll be going on sale sometime this year. Sure, you can just download a ski app on your iPhone which can help steer you down the slopes, but unless you've got an ultra-padded compartment for it I wouldn't risk taking one skiing. But then you're probably far less clumsy than I.
It'd be much easier just glancing down at the monochrome display on the thumb of the glove to see basic stats on how fast you're traveling, the distance you've covered, duration and altitude. Plus, that all important question of where the hell am I?
The gloves can also be connected by USB to your computer so you can collate data on your various skiing trips, and as they're made using Gore-Tex your fingers should be toasty warm. Unless the GPS happens to navigate you hand-first into an avalanche. [Ispo via Gadget Crave]
Isoloc sytem
Hi Guys
can some body please explain for me how does the ISOLOC SYSTEM WORKS
A Punishment That Fits the Crime?
My writings on drug legalization seem to generate a lot of interest from college and high school students (surprise). Thus, I get many emails from students posing questions about my research, or requesting an intereview, or asking for a reprint.
One hight school student with whom I corresponded recently just sent me the following:
Sorry I never thanked you for talking to me about marijuana legalization. I got my internet privileges taken away for, funnily enough, smoking marijuana. So anyways, thanks.
I wonder if his parents see the humor!
Can You Believe This Trash?
Back in 2007, I blogged about the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch",a pile of plastic trash floating in the Pacific Ocean. At the time, the liquid-borne landfill was twice the size of Texas. The mass was created and is maintained by four circulating currents: the North Pacific Current, the Califor
HTC Legend, Desire and HD Mini UK Pricing and Availability [Htc]
HTC swept the show with the sexy Legend, well-specced Desire and rugged WinMo HD Mini, and while US availability hasn't been confirmed yet we can let our UK readers in on the good news. All phones will hit eXpansys on the 12th of April, with the HD Mini at £349.99, the Legend at £399.99 and Desire at £449.99.
Alternatively, T-Mobile and Orange will be flogging the Desire, with carriers for the Legend and HD Mini not yet confirmed. [eXpansys]
UPDATE: Commenter Hearthatvoiceagain tells me O2 and Vodafone will also have the Desire.
speedbreaker
which is suitable 4 speed breaker 4m following?
1.roller 2.rack &pinion 3.gear
Windows Phone 7 Could Allow For PlayStation Integration [Microsoft]
What do you do if you really want a Windows Phone 7 handset but prefer PlayStation to Xbox 360? Microsoft may end up catering for you too, with a senior product manager on the mobile division musing on the possibility.
Michael Chang told TechRadar that Microsoft's doesn't intend to be a closed door to other companies.
"If you look at our history in mobiles, we have never blocked anything off this platform because we compete in the same space, at least not in the phone space."
Typically, he couldn't actually pinpoint "a specific scenario" where they've allowed competing products onto their phones, but mentioned they allow Exchange "on other devices." At a hefty license cost, I'm sure.
But going back to allowing users of WP7 to integrate their PlayStation Network stats and games, it's something they're considering.
"We think it's pretty clear - I was slightly worried that when we showed off Xbox Live on the Windows Phone 7 platform people might think it was Microsoft trying to own the [mobile] world.
"But the simplest way to put it is that there's a very obvious reason we called it the Games hub and the Music + Video hub: Zune and Xbox are key parts, but not the only parts, of the overall Windows Phone experience."
But will they let me play Donkey Kong Country? [TechRadar]
rply plz
how to produce electrity from speed breaker
Screw Type Compressor
Our plant air compressor is screw compressor type what standard covers it. Does API 672 or API 619. Thanks
MSEB/Electrical inspector Rules
I want to install 750 KVA Distribution Transformer in Maharashtra state.I want to know that,is there HT panel required for isolation for this transformer?
From what rating of transformer HT panel is required for isolation?
What is the name of books for MSEB/Electrical inspector Rules? wher