By 2018 computers 'will have 5 senses

Some day soon, you'll be able to order a wedding dress on your tablet and feel the fabric and the veil just by touching the screen. When you feel an object, your brain registers the series of vibrations on your skin as being smooth, rough, sharp, etc. Computer sensors are becoming sophisticated enough to do that too.Within the next five years, vibrators within smartphones will be precise enough that they could be designed to mimic the vibrations experienced when your fingers touch a particular surface. Even though you'll  just be touching glass, it will feel like you're touching whatever object is displayed on the screen. Source: The Coming Crisis

Read More........→December 18, 2012

New member of the exclusive space club

The successful launch of North Korea's Unha-3 rocket on Decembfer 12, 2012 became the top news in the world of cosmonautics. Even the previous day's story of the United States launching, for the third time, its X-37B unmanned experimental OTV-3 (“Orbital Test Vehicle”) was eclipsed by Unha-3. The flight's duration, aims and objectives though have yet to be disclosed. News of the successful North Korean rocket launch provoked heated reactions at all levels, from space fans to high-ranking state officials. If we lay aside the political and economic considerations, launching a satellite is, in any case, an outstanding achievement for any country. However, it should be mentioned that, according to North Korean media, the Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3, put into orbit on December 12, is actually the country's third such satellite: another two were launched in August, 2008 and in April, 2009. But back then, they went unnoticed in orbit; so there was nothing to talk about. But this time the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has confirmed the latest satellite launch. The height of its orbit is about 500-580 km with an orbital cycle of around 95 minutes. It is noteworthy that this is the second attempt to put the Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 into orbit. The first, in April, ended in failure when the carrier rocket exploded over the Yellow Sea. It is interesting that many representatives of the leading mass media from various countries were invited to the launch, but were not allowed to see the start. This time too there was more intrigue, the day before the start, rumours emerged that the rocket, with the satellite aboard, had been removed from the launch pad because of technical problems. The next thing anyone heard were reports of a successful launch. The Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3’s precise purpose has not been disclosed, but, according to North Korean representatives, it is an Earth observation satellite. Even though the satellite is now functioning at a basic level, it will be a few weeks before it is fully operational. However, some experts from the United States are expressing concern that North Korean specialists may have lost control of the satellite, though in the absence of real information, it is impossible to know for certain if this is really so. In general, in the last day or so, the world community's reaction has switched from harsh censure of North Korea's violation of the UN Security Council’s resolutions, to the more reasonable, though no less negative, argument that the launch does not suggest North Korea possesses a large enough arsenal to pose a threat to other countries. Some believe that the rocket's launch is more likely to be an attempt at blackmail aimed at encouraging humanitarian assistance than a real threat. There is also another aspect, which we could call psychological; half a century ago, it was not a great power that was destined to launch the world's first satellite, but the Soviet Union. The Country that was widely considered to be hopelessly out of date in technical and economic terms. Something similar is happening now on the Korean Peninsula, although, of course, on a significantly smaller scale. While South Korea's KSLV rocket is constantly being postponed (the revised launch date, initially scheduled at the end of October, has still not been announced), North Korea has successfully fulfilled its own plan. Of course, one launch does not necessarily mean the existence of a complete space program yet, but the DPRK Foreign Ministry has already announced its intention to continue with its space agenda to launch more satellites for peaceful purposes. However, the details are not made public. Meanwhile, the American X-37B unmanned spacecraft remains in orbit after almost two days, and its goals are almost as mysterious as the North Korean satellite’s. The spacecraft, which has already been in orbit from April to December 2010 for the first OTV mission, is now in space; again. Thus demonstrating the feasibility of a reusable spacecraft, which was one of the objectives of the entire program. It was launched using the Atlas V501 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force base. The duration of the X-37B flight is not specified, but its predecessor remained in orbit for 15 months, six months longer than originally planned. Source: Voice of Russia

Read More........→December 17, 2012

US scientists turn brain waves into actual words

Mind Reading Device

What will you do if someone will know what you are thinking? The day is closer as scientists are now able to read the minds. A new study conducted in theUniversity of Californiahas enabled scientists to find a way to decipher actual words from human brain waves. A team of neuroscientists worked with a group of epilepsy patients who were under the treatment for difficult curable seizures. They implanted the required electrodes deep in patients' brains to locate the source of seizures and help doctors remove the malfunctioning tissue. “During normal process about a week the patients are just sitting around in their hospital rooms and some of them were generous enough to participate in our experiment,” said study leader Brian Pasley of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. While the patients' brain waves were being recorded, researchers chased the waves through a program to translate the brain's electronic signals into actual sounds. “Researchers are still a long way from actually reading people's minds, but it may be possible one day,” said Pasley. Although the new research may sound like scary science fiction, it can have enormous positive uses for patients who have lost their speaking ability. “If we are somehow able to encode someone's thoughts instantaneously that might have great benefits for the thousands of severely disabled people who are unable to communicate right now,” Pasley noted. Source: Ananta-Tec

Read More........→December 09, 2012

84 Million Stars and Counting

VISTA gigapixel mosaic of the central parts of the Milky Way

Using a whopping nine-gigapixel image from the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, an international team of astronomers has created a catalogue of more than 84 million stars in the central parts of the Milky Way. This gigantic dataset contains more than ten times more stars than previous studies and is a major step forward for the understanding of our home galaxy. The image gives viewers an incredible, zoomable view of the central part of our galaxy. It is so large that, if printed with the resolution of a typical book, it would be 9 metres long and 7 metres tall.

Wide-field view of the Milky Way, showing the extent of a new VISTA gigapixel image

“By observing in detail the myriads of stars surrounding the centre of the Milky Way we can learn a lot more about the formation and evolution of not only our galaxy, but also spiral galaxies in general,” explains Roberto Saito (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Universidad de Valparaíso and The Milky Way Millennium Nucleus, Chile), lead author of the study.

Optical/infrared comparison of the central parts of the Milky Way

Most spiral galaxies, including our home galaxy the Milky Way, have a large concentration of ancient stars surrounding the centre that astronomers call the bulge. Understanding the formation and evolution of the Milky Way’s bulge is vital for understanding the galaxy as a whole. However, obtaining detailed observations of this region is not an easy task. “Observations of the bulge of the Milky Way are very hard because it is obscured by dust,” says Dante Minniti (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile), co-author of the study. “To peer into the heart of the galaxy, we need to observe in infrared light, which is

Colour–magnitude diagram of the Galactic bulge

less affected by dust.”the The large mirror, wide field of view and very sensitive infrared detectors of ESO’s 4.1-metre Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) make it by far the best tool for this job. The team of astronomers is using data from the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea programme (VVV) [1], one of six public surveys carried out with VISTA. The data have been used to create a monumental 108 200 by 81 500 pixel colour image containing nearly nine billion pixels. This is one of the biggest astronomical images ever produced. The team has now used these data to compile the largest catalogue of the central concentration of stars in the Milky Way ever created [2].

Annotated map of VISTA’s view of the centre of the Milky Way

To help analyse this huge catalogue the brightness of each star is plotted against its colour for about 84 million stars to create a colour–magnitude diagram. This plot contains more than ten times more stars than any previous study and it is the first time that this has been done for the entire bulge. Colour–magnitude diagrams are very valuable tools that are often used by astronomers to study the different physical properties of stars such as their temperatures, masses and ages [3]. “Each star occupies a particular spot in this diagram at any moment during its lifetime. Where it falls depends on how bright it is and how hot it is. Since the new data gives us a snapshot of all the stars in one go, we can now make a census of all the stars in this part of the Milky Way,” explains Dante Minniti. Video above: Infrared/visible light comparison of VISTA’s gigapixel view of the centre of the Milky Way. The new colour–magnitude diagram of the bulge contains a treasure trove of information about the structure and content of the Milky Way. One interesting result revealed in the new data is the large number of faint red dwarf stars. These are prime candidates around which to search for small exoplanets using the transit method [4]. “One of the other great things about the VVV survey is that it’s one of the ESO VISTA public surveys. This means that we’re making all the data publicly available through the ESO data archive, so we expect many other exciting results to come out of this great resource," concludes Roberto Saito. Notes: [1] The VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) survey is an ESO public survey dedicated to scanning the southern plane and bulge of the Milky Way through five near-infrared filters. It started in 2010 and was granted a total of 1929 hours of observing time over a five-year period. Via Lactea is the Latin name for the Milky Way. [2] The image used in this work covers about 315 square degrees of the sky (a bit less than 1% of the entire sky) and observations were carried out using three different infrared filters. The catalogue lists the positions of the stars along with their measured brightnesses through the different filters. It contains about 173 million objects, of which about 84 million have been confirmed as stars. The other objects were either too faint or blended with their neighbours or affected by other artefacts, so that accurate measurements were not possible. Others were extended objects such as distant galaxies. The image used here required a huge amount of data processing, which was performed by Ignacio Toledo at the ALMA OSF. It corresponds to a pixel scale of 0.6 arcseconds per pixel, down-sampled from the original pixel scale of 0.34 arcseconds per pixel. [3] A colour–magnitude diagram is a graph that plots the apparent brightnesses of a set of objects against their colours. The colour is measured by comparing how bright objects look through different filters. It is similar to a Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram but the latter plots luminosity (or absolute magnitude) rather than just apparent brightness and a knowledge of the distances of the stars plotted is also needed. [4] The transit method for finding planets searches for the small drop in brightness of a star that occurs when a planet passes in front of it and blocks some of its light. The small size of the red dwarf stars, typically with spectral types K and M, gives a greater relative drop in brightness when low-mass planets pass in front of them, making it easier to search for planets around them. More information: This research was presented in a paper “Milky Way Demographics with the VVV Survey I. The 84 Million Star Colour–Magnitude Diagram of the Galactic Bulge“ by R. K. Saito et al., which was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A, 544, A147). The team is composed of R. K. Saito (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile; Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile; The Milky Way Millennium Nucleus, Chile), D. Minniti (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; Vatican Observatory), B. Dias (Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil), M. Hempel (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), M. Rejkuba (ESO, Garching, Germany), J. Alonso-García (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), B. Barbuy (Universidade de São Paulo), M. Catelan (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), J. P. Emerson (Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom), O. A. Gonzalez (ESO, Garching, Germany), P. W. Lucas (University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, United Kingdom) and M. Zoccali (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile). The year 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning a 40-metre-class European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”. Links: Research paper (A&A, 544, A147): http://www.aanda.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201219448, Photos of the VISTA telescope: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/search/?adv=&subject_name=Visible%20and%20Infrared%20Survey%20Telescope%20for%20Astronomy, Images taken with the VISTA telescope: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/search/?adv=&facility=30, Image, Text, Credits: ESO/VVV Consortium/Acknowledgement: Ignacio Toledo, Martin Kornmesser/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)/Videos: ESO/VVV Consortium/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)/Music: Delmo -- Acoustic (disasterpeace.com)/Acknowledgement: Ignacio Toledo, Martin Kornmesser., Greetings, Orbiter.ch, Source: Orbiter.ch Space News

Read More........→October 26, 2012

3D Printing Could Land on the Moon

3d moon printing photo

Bisarbeat: Using 3D printers to make consumer goods—like shoes, housewares, and gadgets—is slowly transitioning from science-fiction to reality. Now, Behrokh Khoshnevis of the University of California, is planning to take it further—by using printers to manufacturing building components. It’s an idea, he says, that is long overdue. And, the innovative approach to building design and construction has far-reaching implications: Khoshnevis believes the technology could be used to build shelters on the Moon. Source: Bisarbeat

Read More........→October 16, 2012