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Submission + - Even Einstein doubted his gravitational waves (astronomy.com)

Submitted by Flash Modin
Flash Modin writes: In 1936, twenty years after Albert Einstein introduced the concept, the great physicist took another look at his math and came to a surprising conclusion. “Together with a young collaborator, I arrived at the interesting result that gravitational waves do not exist, though they had been assumed a certainty to the first approximation,” he wrote in a letter to friend Max Born. Interestingly, his research denouncing gravitational waves was rejected by Physical Review Letters, the journal that just published proof of their existence. The story shows that even when Einstein's wrong, it's because he was already right the first time.

Submission + - Can The Martian give NASA's #JourneyToMars a Hollywood bump? (astronomy.com)

Submitted by Flash Modin
Flash Modin writes: NASA has poured considerable time and resources into Ridley Scott's The Martian — perhaps more than any other movie in history — going so far as to time a Mars human landing site selection workshop to coincide with the film. Jim Green, NASA's head of planetary sciences, was one of the consultants, with other astronomers fact checking every aspect of the set and script. The rockets, modules, and space suits were built — and 3-D printed — with heavy guidance from NASA. The filmmakers even hired Rudi Schmidt, former project manager of the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, to test the experiments done in the movie, including turning water into rocket fuel — which works. And, on the eve of The Martian's premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend, some of those scientists believe that this obsessive adherence to science fact will be enough to make NASA's Journey to Mars real for Americans. The space agency needs a Hail Mary because, in truth, the real program is nowhere near ready for prime time.

Submission + - Britain shuts off 750,000 streetlights with no impact on crime or crashes (astronomy.com)

Submitted by Flash Modin
Flash Modin writes: English cities are hard up for cash as the national government dolls out cuts. And in response, the country's councils — local governing bodies — have slashed costs by turning off an estimated 750,000 streetlights. Fans of the night sky and reduced energy usage are happy, but the move has also sparked a national debate. The Automobile Association claims six people have died as a direct result of dimming the lights. But a new study released Wednesday looked at 14 years of data from 63 local authorities across England and Wales and found that residents' chances of being attacked, robbed, or struck by a car were no worse on the darker streets.

Submission + - Why didn't Voyager visit Pluto? (astronomy.com)

Submitted by Flash Modin
Flash Modin writes: NASA built the twin Voyager spacecraft for a rare planetary alignment that put Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune within reach at once. Originally, Voyager 1 was programmed to see Pluto in 1986, but managers targeted Saturn's planet-like moon Titan instead. That choice made Pluto impossible by vaulting Voyager 1 from the orbital plane. Interestingly, Voyager 2, which couldn't reach Pluto, made the case for New Horizons by revealing Neptune's moon Triton as a kidnapped Pluto. “I’m very glad that they chose not to go to Pluto in 1986,” says New Horizons head Alan Stern. “We’ll do a better job at Pluto with modern instruments than they would have, and they did a much better job at Saturn...”

Submission + - Lowell Observatory pushes to name an asteroid "Travyon" (azdailysun.com)

Submitted by Flash Modin
Flash Modin writes: The observatory where Pluto was discovered is pushing to name an asteroid after a black teenager killed in a controversial confrontation in Florida last year.

William Lowell Putnam III says his family is identified with the cause of African American rights, and thus an asteroid named after Trayvon Martin is perfectly appropriate. Putnam is the sole trustee of the observatory, which was founded by Percival Lowell during his search for canals on Mars.

Astronomers at the observatory discovered the asteroid in 2000, but it has not been formally named.

Putnam has already asked the Minor Planet Center once to designate the asteroid "Trayvon," but they told him the designation was "premature." Now that there's been a verdict, the observatory is reapplying in hopes the naming body will see things different.
Science

Submission + - Breaking into the Supercollider (physicscentral.com)

Submitted by
BuzzSkyline
BuzzSkyline writes: "A group of physicists went AWOL from the American Physical Society conference in Dallas this week to explore the ruins of the nearby Superconducting Super Collider. The SSC was to be the world's largest and most ambitious physics experiment. It would have been bigger than the LHC and run at triple the energy. But the budget ran out of control and the project was scrapped in 1993."

Submission + - The Physics of Terrorism (miller-mccune.com)

Submitted by __aaqpaq9254
__aaqpaq9254 writes: After studying four decades of terrorism, Aaron Clauset thinks he’s found mathematical patterns that can help governments prevent and prepare for major terror attacks. The U.S. government seems to agree. Great article.
Science

Submission + - Hawking: No 'theory of everything' (physicscentral.com)

Submitted by Flash Modin
Flash Modin writes: In a Scientific American essay based on their new book "A Grand Design", Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow are now claiming physicists may never find a theory of everything. Instead, they propose a "family of interconnected theories" might emerge, with each describing a certain reality under specific conditions. The claim is a reversal for Hawking, who claimed in 1980 that there would be a unified theory by the turn of the century.

Comment Re:Press release (Score 2, Informative) 53

by Flash Modin (#33707776) Attached to: NASA Creates an Alien's Eye View of Solar System
Solar system orbits form based on the dynamics of how the cloud of supernovae dust they form from "collapses." The cloud can be set in motion from coming into contact with another cloud or another supernova interacting with it. The rotation (and hence what we might consider up and down) is based on how that interaction occurs. Once it starts rotating it's governed by Newton's second law, aka the figure skater effect (a skater spins faster as they pull their arms in). So, no. There's no reason to assume that they would orient themselves in a so called up/down direction.

Comment Re:Press release (Score 2, Informative) 53

by Flash Modin (#33703524) Attached to: NASA Creates an Alien's Eye View of Solar System
Commodore, We only find "side view," or what astronomers refer to as edge on, systems because of our limited detection techniques. The two methods to regularly find planets so far are photometry and radial velocity. One relies on a faint dip in light when a planet passes in front of its star and the other relies on a planet pulling its star slightly towards it. There's no reason to think that a universal preference would exist for solar systems facing us edge on. So, by simply taking an infrared photo of the star - similar to what Hubble did with Fomalhaut and NASA did here- we might determine the presence of a planet based on a dust cloud around it.
Science

Submission + - NASA creates an alien's eye view of solar system (physicscentral.com)

Submitted by Flash Modin
Flash Modin writes: Using the Discover supercomputer — which is capable of 67 trillion calculations per second — astronomers at NASA Goddard have created a series of images of what our solar system would look like to an alien astronomer at various points in time. Their simulations track the interactions of 75,000 dust grains in the Kuiper Belt, and show that while the planets would be too dim to detect directly, aliens could deduce the presence of Neptune from its effects on the icy region. Strikingly, the images resemble one taken by Hubble of the star Fomalhaut. NASA has put out a cute video to go with the announcement as well.
Science

Submission + - Two research groups create "electric skin" (physicscentral.com)

Submitted by Flash Modin
Flash Modin writes: Two separate teams, one from UC Berkeley and the other from Stanford, have created distinct types of artificial skin that could find uses in prosthetics or artificial intelligence (Data in First Contact anyone?). The first team coupled organic electronics with an elastic polymer to make electric skin that could sense a butterfly landing on it. The second team put a flexible material over a conductive rubber compound which had transistors implanted in it. The device can sense touch when the rubber is compressed and changes the electrical resistance. Both papers were published yesterday in the journal Nature Materials .

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