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BOINC software for volunteer computing

2011-01-16T15:48:00.000-08:00

Volunteer your computer to help change the world.

Google-sponsored satellite

2008-10-11T05:12:00.000-07:00

A Google-sponsored satellite has beamed its first picture back to Earth in a successful test of a camera that will supply images for the Internet giant's free online map and navigation services.

The high-resolution color image from GeoEye-1, which was launched September 6 from a US air force base in California, was of a university campus in Pennsylvania, satellite operator GeoEye Inc. said in a statement.

The Dulles, Virginia-based company provided a link to the image at its website:

http://www.geoeye.com/CorpSite/gallery/Default.aspx

The picture of the Kutztown University campus was taken on Tuesday while the satellite was in a 423-mile-high (681 km) orbit over the East Coast of the United States, GeoEye said.
"We expect the quality of the imagery to be even better as we continue the calibration activity," said Brad Peterson, GeoEye's vice president of operations.

GeoEye-1's main client is the US government's mapping arm, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, but Google is a major sponsor of the 500-million-dollar satellite and has exclusive commercial rights to its images.

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Next Generation Astronomy Missions

2008-02-24T10:59:00.000-08:00

Two astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., Dr. Marc Postman and Dr. Ken Sembach, have been selected among 19 science teams to conduct year-long studies of new concepts for NASA's next generation of major observatories. The studies will help the agency make decisions about how it explores the heavens in the future, following the Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey.

Postman's group will study the feasibility of building the Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAS Telescope), which will have more than 40 times the sensitivity of the Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope would have a primary mirror that could be as large as 16 meters in diameter, and could be carried aboard NASA's planned Ares V heavy-lift launch vehicle. The telescope would be located 1 million miles away at a gravitational balancing point in space called L2, where the James Webb Space Telescope will be perched when it is launched in 2013.

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Biggest black hole in the cosmos discovered

2008-01-13T14:33:00.000-08:00

The most massive known black hole in the universe has been discovered, weighing in with the mass of 18 billion Suns. Observing the orbit of a smaller black hole around this monster has allowed astronomers to test Einstein's theory of general relativity with stronger gravitational fields than ever before.

The black hole is about six times as massive as the previous record holder and in fact weighs as much as a small galaxy. It lurks 3.5 billion light years away, and forms the heart of a quasar called OJ287. A quasar is an extremely bright object in which matter spiralling into a giant black hole emits copious amounts of radiation.
But rather than hosting just a single colossal black hole, the quasar appears to harbour two – a setup that has allowed astronomers to accurately 'weigh' the larger one.

The smaller black hole, which weighs about 100 million Suns, orbits the larger one on an oval-shaped path every 12 years. It comes close enough to punch through the disc of matter surrounding the larger black hole twice each orbit, causing a pair of outbursts that make OJ287 suddenly brighten.

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Drilling Up Into Space

2008-01-01T16:15:00.000-08:00

The Defense Department this October quietly issued a 75-page study conducted for its National Security Space Office concluding that space power - collection of energy by vast arrays of solar panels aboard mammoth satellites - offers a potential energy source for global U.S. military operations.

It could be done with today's technology, experts say. But the prohibitive cost of lifting thousands of tons of equipment into space makes it uneconomical.
That's where Palau, a scattering of islands and 20,000 islanders, comes in.
In September, American entrepreneur Kevin Reed proposed at the 58th International Astronautical Congress in Hyderabad, India, that Palau's uninhabited Helen Island would be an ideal spot for a small demonstration project, a 260-foot-diameter "rectifying antenna," or rectenna, to take in 1 megawatt of power transmitted earthward by a satellite orbiting 300 miles above Earth.

That's enough electricity to power 1,000 homes, but on that empty island the project would "be intended to show its safety for everywhere else," Reed said in a telephone interview from California.

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Europe continues to leave the United States behind

2007-12-01T10:36:00.000-08:00

The UK’s projected wind energy output was boosted this week by the approval of the London Array project in the Thames Estuary. It will generate more electricity than any offshore plant in the world and Britain is now well on its way to having well over half of the world’s offshore wind power plants currently in construction.

Offshore projects, more appealing to those who believe land-based turbines are a blot on the landscape, are avoiding some of the local resistance from planners which have long bedevilled onshore schemes. With developers eyeing three main strategic sites in England – the Greater Wash, the Thames Estuary and north-west England – several projects are expected to come online in the next few years. The offshore projects currently planned, together with those already in operation, could supply a total of 20 gigawatts of clean electricity, amounting to 17 per cent of the UK’s total electricity supply.

As well as the five offshore wind farms currently in operation, another 10 have won approval and eight are at the planning stage. One of the biggest in the offing is the Lynne/Inner Dowsing project in Lincolnshire. It comprises two adjacent wind farms acquired by Centrica in December 2003, which are being built 5km (3 miles) off the Skegness coast. The two 90-megawatt farms are together expected to provide enough power for more than 130,000 homes and to reduce CO2 emissions significantly.

http://environment.independent.co.uk/green_living/article3047623.ece

The moon has impact wrinkles

2007-08-22T15:28:00.000-07:00

Wrinkles on the moon could reveal secrets regarding devastating impacts that also ravaged Earth and other planets in their early days.

These impacts could have scoured life from the young Earth-but they might have also planted the ingredients for life as well, scientists said today at a European conference.

The researchers focused on giant basins on the moon believed to be wounds from the "lunar cataclysm," a time 3.8 billion to 4.2 billion years ago when the moon suffered heavy bombardment from asteroids or comets. There are roughly 50 recognizable lunar basins more than 186 miles (300 kilometers) wide, most of which are thought to date from then.

To learn more about these basins, the researchers peered at pictures taken by a microcamera on SMART-1, a European Space Agency satellite that orbited the moon from 2004 to 2006. They combined data from these images with records from the U.S. Clementine space probe, which looked at visible, ultraviolet and infrared light from the moon during 1994 and measured its gravitational field to determine the makeup and concentration of minerals in the lunar surface.

Read the entire article at
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070822_wrinkles_moon.html