“When programmers at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory set out to develop the flight software for the Apollo 11 space program in the mid-1960s, the necessary technology did not exist. They had to invent it.”
“As the long-running Cassini mission enters its last year at Saturn, NASA is moving forward with an early-stage technology study to send a drone to its moon Titan.”
Is search of the sound of silence.
To a physicist, perfect quiet is the ultimate noise. Silence your cellphone, still your thoughts, and muffle every kind of vibration, and you would still be left with quantum noise. It represents an indeterminacy deep within nature, bursts of static and inexplicable motions that cannot be gotten rid of, or made sense of. It seems devoid of meaning.
Considering how pervasive this noise is, you might presume that physicists would have a good explanation for it. But it remains one of the great unsolved problems in science. Quantum theory is silent not just on where the noise comes from, but on how exactly it enters the world. The theory’s defining equation, the Schrödinger equation, is completely deterministic. There is no noise in it at all. To explain why we observe quantum particles to be noisy, we need some additional principle.
Continue reading “The Noise at the Bottom of the Universe” »
Military bosses claim the engine for the craft has already been tested, and a prototype could take to the air in six years.
It would be able to travel anywhere in the world in two hours and drop a devastating nuclear warhead before returning to base, it is claimed.
Continue reading “Russian hypersonic bomber can launch nuclear attacks from space” »
Enhancing astronomers’ ability to peer ever more deeply into the cosmos may hinge on developing larger space-based telescopes. A new concept in space telescope design makes use of a modular structure and an assembly robot to build an extremely large telescope in space, performing tasks in which astronaut fatigue would be a problem.
The robotically assembled modular space telescope (RAMST) design is described by Nicolas Lee and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in an article published this week by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, in the Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS).
Ground-based telescopes are limited by atmospheric effects and by their fixed location on the Earth.
Reaction Engines Ltd. announces today the signing of a €10m Development Contract with the European Space Agency, finalizing the UK Government’s £60m commitment.
Reaction Engines Ltd., today announces the signing of a €10m European Space Agency (ESA) contract which will enable the development of a ground based demonstrator of SABRE, a new class of aerospace engine which is highly scalable with multiple potential applications in hypersonic travel and space access.
“In his new role as the chair of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which oversees everything from threats posed by space weather to asteroids, Kendall’s already tackling the huge problem of space debris.”
“How scientists recover fragments of the ancient solar system at the bottom of the planet”
Although this article doesn’t mention this; I am more concern about the clean up and protection of space from environmental damage from space junk like malfunction equipment left in space and the future of mining in space by China and others. I believe NASA and others need to perform some serious work in presenting cause & effect findings to the public so that everyone is aware what we could expect from the result of mining, etc.
However the Democrats weigh in on D.C. statehood and closing Guantanamo.
