China launches spacecraft in longest-ever manned mission

The Shenzhou 11 astronauts are Jing Haipeng, who is flying his third mission, and 37-year-old Chen Dong. The Shenzhou 11 mission took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northern China. China launched a pair of astronauts into space Monday on a mission to dock with an experimental space station and remain aboard for 30 days in preparation for the start of operations by a full-bore facility six years from now. The Shenzhou 11 mission took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northern China at 7:30 a.m. (2330 GMT) aboard a Long March-2F carrier rocket. It will dock with the Tiangong 2 space station precursor facility within two days, conduct experiments in medicine and various space-related technologies, and test systems and processes in preparation for the launching of the station's core module in 2018. Space program commander-in-chief Gen. Zhang Youxia declared the launch a success at 7:46 a.m. (2346 GMT). Defense Minister Fan Changlong then read a congratulatory message from President Xi Jinping calling for China's astronauts to explore space "more deeply and more broadly." Premier Li Keqiang and propaganda chief Liu Yunshan visited the Beijing control center to congratulate staff. It is the sixth time China has launched astronauts into space...

Read More........→October 17, 2016

Quantum Computing With Time Travel

Credit: Adapted from npj Quantum Information, doi:10.1038/npjqi.2015.7 (2015) Why send a message back in time, but lock it so that no one can ever read the contents? Because it may be the key to solving currently intractable problems. That's the claim of an international collaboration who have just published a paper in npj Quantum Information. It turns out that an unopened message can be exceedingly useful. This is true if the experimenter entangles the message with some other system in the laboratory before sending it. Entanglement, a strange effect only possible in the realm of quantum physics, creates correlations between the time-travelling message and the laboratory system. These correlations can fuel a quantum computation. If the universe allows 'open timelike curves', particles travelling back in time along them could help to perform currently intractable computations. Even though such curves don't allow for interaction with anything in the past, researchers writing in npj Quantum Information show there is a gain in computational power as long as the time-travelling particle is entangled with one kept in the present. Around ten years ago researcher Dave Bacon, now at Google, showed that a time-travelling quantum computer could quickly solve a group of problems, known as NP-complete, which mathematicians have lumped...

Read More........→December 11, 2015

Isro's PSLV-C28 successfully places 5 British satellites in orbit

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) on Friday successfully launched five British commercial satellites aboard its PSLV-C28 launch vehicle from its space port in Sriharikota, marking its heaviest commercial mission ever. ISRO's workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C28, in its 13th flight, placed the five satellites, including three identical DMC3 optical earth observation satellites, in sun synchronous orbit about 20 minutes after lift-off at 9.58 PM from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota. The three DMC3 satellites, each weighing 447 kg, were launched into a 647 km sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) using the high-end version of PSLV (PSLV-XL). ''It's been a wonderful mission… an extremely successful mission,'' a beaming ISRO chairman Kiran Kumar said from the Mission Control Centre. The three identical DMC3 optical earth observation satellites were built by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) of the United Kingdom. The PSLV-C28 also carried two auxiliary satellites from the UK, viz, CBNT-1, a technology demonstrator earth observation micro satellite built by SSTL, and De-OrbitSail, a technology demonstrator nano satellite built by Surrey Space Centre. PSLV-C28 will be the ninth flight of the launch vehicle in 'XL' configuration. With the overall lift-off mass of 1,440 kg of the five satellites,...

Read More........→July 19, 2015

Solar-powered plane breaks solo flight record

The solar-powered aircraft, Solar Impulse, flying from Japan to Hawaii, on the most perilous leg of a round-the-globe bid, has beaten the record for the longest solo flight, organisers said yesterday. They admitted though that veteran Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg was exhausted after over four days of continuous flying, which made the final 24 hours of flight particularly challenging. The plane was set to land this morning local time at Kalaeloa Airport on the main Hawaiian island of Oahu, some 20 miles (30 kilometers) west of Honolulu. By 7:30pm GMT (1am IST, Friday) on Thursday, Solar Impulse 2 had traveled 86 per cent of the way to the tropical US state, after flying 7,075 kilometers. However, it was in the process of crossing a cold front that required careful navigation on the part of Borschberg, which would significantly increase stress levels for the 62-year-old. Borschberg had so far flown over 97 hours easily beating the previous longest solo endurance flight undertaken in 2006. The Japan to Hawaii trip was expected to take 120 hours. The Swiss aviator was napping for only 20 minutes at a time so as to maintain control of the pioneering plane and has on the plane a parachute and life raft, in case he needed to ditch in the Pacific. The experimental solar-powered aircraft left Japan around 6pm GMT (11:30pm IST) on Sunday...

Read More........→July 05, 2015

Nobel Prize for Physics 2014

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2014 to (1) Isamu Akasaki: Meijo University, Nagoya, Japan and Nagoya University, Japan (2) Hiroshi Amano  Nagoya:  University, Japan (3) Shuji Nakamura: University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA. “for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources. --> The invention of an energy source that lights up our computer and/ormobile phone screens and holds promise to brighten up the quality of life of over 1.5 billion people around the world, has been awarded the Nobel prize for physics 2014.--> The laureates were rewarded for having invented a new energy-efficient and environment-friendly light source — the blue light-emitting diode (LED). --> According to the committee, the laureates' inventions revolutionized the field of illumination technology. --> As about one fourth of world electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes, the LEDs contribute to saving earth's resources. Materials consumption is also diminished as LEDs last up to 100,000 hours, compared to 1,000 for incandescent bulbs and 10,000 hours for fluorescent lights. --> When Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura produced bright blue light beams from...

Read More........→October 08, 2014