SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY: Comets are Like Deep Fried Ice-Cream

Image via Quartz.

"Comets have always fascinated scientists. Centuries ago it was their glowing tails streaking across skies, and now it is the tantalizing possibility that they may have seeded life on Earth.

To firm up these answers, it helps to understand the structure of these weird celestial bodies. In its most recent dispatch from comet 67P, the Philae lander has found that, unlike solid-rock asteroids, the comet is mostly porous—as much as 85% of it is empty.

Murthy Gudipati, a NASA scientist, who has worked on understanding the structure of comets, has the perfect analogy: “A comet is like deep fried ice cream. The crust is made of crystalline ice, while the interior is colder and more porous. The organic [compounds] are like a final layer of chocolate on top.” Read full article in Quartz. E.T.P. 3'

SCIENCE

Photo: NASA via PolicyMic.

"Civilization was pretty great while it lasted, wasn't it? Too bad it's not going to for much longer. According to a new study sponsored by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, we only have a few decades left before everything we know and hold dear collapses.
The report, written by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center along with a team of natural and social scientists, explains that modern civilization is doomed. And there's not just one particular group to blame, but the entire fundamental structure and nature of our society". Read full article in PolicyMic. E.T.P 6'

Image via Fast Company.

"The question of who has accelerated climate change the most isn't that complicated. It was just a few dozen companies that extracted the majority of our oil, gas, and coal over the last 150 years, allowing the fuel to be burned, and the emissions to cause havoc in the atmosphere.
A recent paper by Richard Heede, from the Climate Accountability Institute, in Colorado, shows that just 90 companies produced two-thirds of the fossil fuels burned in the industrial era. That includes 50 investor-owned companies like Chevron and Exxon, 31 state-owned companies like Mexico's Pemex, and nine government-run entities from the ex-Soviet Union, China and other countries." E.T.P. 6'

SCIENCE

Photo via The Independent.

A team of Japanese engineers really is hoping to turn the moon into a giant solar panel. "It sounds like a tale from a science-fiction novel" says Thair Shaikh in The Independent, but all amazing scientific ideas usually sound like that. Read full article in The Independent. E.T.P. 3'

Photo The Independent.

NASA also have big plans for the moon in 2015 as they are planning to grow plants on its surface. Why? Because 'if they can thrive, we probably can too'. "Scientists, contractors and students will work together to create a small 1kg “self-contained habitat” containing seeds and germination material to send to the moon. To get there Nasa plans to ‘hitchhike’, delivering the payload via the Moon Express lander, a commercial spacecraft enrolled in the Google Lunar X Prize. Read article in The Independent. E.T.P. 5'

Photo via Fast Company.

Have you ever thought how are we going to eat after the Ecopocalypse (nice term by the way). Artists Miriam Simun and Miriam Songster, via Fast Company, introduce us to GhostFood, the no-food food truck that feeds your fears about ecological disaster. "GhostFood reengineers the act of eating by amplifying the olfactory dimensions of each extinct food. The project, says Simun, “imagines how we might continue to taste foods” once their production has been rendered unsustainable by environmental disaster. It does so through a technological appendage, a minimal headgear that extends the senses." Read full article in Fast Company. E.T.P. 5'

SCIENCE

Photo via TIME.

So, good morning, if you're reading this you probably weren't crushed by a satellite this Sunday morning. Congratulations! Although, there is still a satellite descending to Earth. "It’s called GOCE (GO-chay), for Gravity Field and Steady State Ocean Circulation Observer . . . and it’s currently only 105 mi. (169 km) up and descending fast. The satellite, launched in 2009 by the European Space Agency, makes a single orbit of the Earth once every 88 minutes—an important two minutes faster than the standard 90 minutes most spacecraft take. The reason for all this crash-and-burn is that orbits aren’t forever.No, really.  Read full article in TIME.

Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.

"In the popular imagination voice-hearing is often viewed with fear and suspicion, frequently reified as a chaotic, corrupted symptom of illness. But that is changing, with a growing acceptance of voice-hearing as a profoundly human experience that can no longer be reduced to a mere symptom of psychiatric disorder. The work of Intervoice: The International Hearing Voices Network, and the enthusiastic response to Eleanor Longden's 2013 TED talk, which recounts her own journey to recovery from a demoralising psychiatric diagnosis, indicate the growing possibilities for people living with the experience to raise their voices with a sense of power and pride." And this is why Charles Fernyhough and Eleanor Longden write in The Guardian it's time to listen to the voices in our heads. Read full article here. E.T.P. 3'

SCIENCE

Photo via Wired.

Superpowers for sale. Scientist Michael McAlpine, who has a Ph.D. in chemistry at Harvard, hopes to make the process or acquiring a superpower as simple as purchasing aspirin at the pharmacy. So far, he’s invented a “tattoo” for teeth that can detect cavities—not exactly the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters—although his latest project, a 3-D printed bionic ear that enables superhuman hearing, could be. Read full article in Wired.

Photo via NASA.

Democratized space. Until very recently if you wanted to perform a space science experiment, you needed a detailed proposal to make an official request to the International Space Station (ISS), and hope for approval. But, Fast Company points out, as of today thanks to Ardulab, an Arduino-based container for science experiments, that's no longer the case. No matter how silly or unprofessional your homemade experiment is, you can now send it to space within nine months for less than $5,000. Have the money and want to try? Read full article in Fast Company.

Image: National Geographic.

Researchers at the Jefferson Lab in the United States have pinned down the value of the proton's weak charge for the first time ever. The research, due to be published in Physical Review Letters in October, confirms predictions made by the Standard Model, a well-established framework for explaining how particles interact in the Universe. Read full article in Wired.

SCIENCE

Photo: LADEE via NASA.

NASA is turning science fiction into fact. As a new moon orbiter gets set to launch, Pete Worden, director of NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, says forget the 20th – this is the real space century. The orbiter is called: Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is set to launch in Virginia on 6 September, and is a $250-million mission to probe the moon's exosphere and learn how it would be affected by increased human activity. Read Worden's interview in The New Scientist.

The 20 big questions in science. From the nature of the universe (that's if there is only one) to the purpose of dreams, there are lots of things we still don't know – but we might do soon. The Big Questions in Science: The Quest to Solve the Great Unknowns published by Andre Deutsch and fueatured by The Guardian, seeks some answers, "time travellers already walk among us", is one of them. Read full article in The Guardian.

Photo via Cancer-Forums.net

New weapons are emerging in the war on cancer, and as The Economist points out, this are not only good news for patients but also for drug companies that recently faced falling sales as their existent medicines went off-patent. Oncology is attractive for various reasons; one is that cancer drugs can fetch exorbitant prices, particularly in America. Several drug companies are hoping to secure the next blockbuster. Read the article Lucrative Lifesavers in The Economist.

Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times
 
Huzzah! A Beer Tha Prevents Dehydration Now Exists. Australian researchers at Queensland’s Griffith Health Institute added electrolytes to commercial beer, reducing beer drinkers’ risk of dehydration... but also the fortified drink could reduce drunken symptoms, that for some is the whole point of drinking a beer in the first place. Read full article in Fast Company.