Blogs / Discoblog

• Look up! The biggest full moon in 15 years (if you’re in the Northern hemisphere) will rise tonight…like an extra-large pizza.

• There are more than one billion people in the world who speak Chinese. Still, the Max Planck Institute didn’t bother to find one to proofread the calligraphy splashed across the cover of their science journal. The “classical poem” turned out to be a racy brothel ad.

• Is it a boy or a girl? A baby’s sex may be determined by the father’s genes.

• Scientists find that bats’ echolocation can hit 110 decibels—about as loud as an iPod on full volume.

(more…)

For the past three decades, the U.K.’s space policy has been in favor of sending robots into space, but not humans. And certainly not bears—of the living variety, that is. Last Thursday, a group of British school children tweaked that policy a bit when they sent teddy bears into space.

The project was part of the Cambridge University Spaceflight program, which worked with 11- and 12-year-olds from nearby schools to encourage science education. Not to get too technical, this is how the teddy bears made it into space. First, the students had to design space suits for the bears, so they could withstand the extreme temperatures and pressure present in near space.

On the day of the launch, the space team gathered at Churchill College with four space-suited teddy bears. The bears were placed in a foam box filled with instruments and cameras. When the conditions were just right, the “teddy-nauts” were launched into space with a helium balloon.

(more…)

Tomorrow, most of America will gather in front of a table to ingest massive quantities of carb- and fat-driven foodstuffs. But what about the few Americans currently in space? Not to worry: Lest the seven astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour go without their requisite servings of turkey, stuffing, and candied yams, NASA is providing a Thanksgiving meal.

The six Americans on board and one Russian—who, in the spirit of inclusion, is also joining the meal—will float through their feast (literally), eating their feast from individual pouches with Velcro tags, which they can affix to metal trays that can be attached to their laps or the wall. Each tray is equipped with a tethered spoon, fork, knife, and pair of scissors for cutting open the food pouches.

While the flavor ranges in space are somewhat limited, NASA works hard to engineer a varied menu. Of course, the results aren’t always so successful, according to reports:

(more…)

The Endeavor shuttle shot into space last week carrying loads of fancy equipment for the International Space Station. Among the new gadgets to be installed is a water recovery system that promises to recycle 93 percent of astronaut urine, sweat, exhaled water vapor, and other waste water back into drinkable water. The whole shebang cost about $250 million to develop, but that’s still cheaper than having to send periodic shuttles to the station to deliver fresh water.

Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is, what does it taste like?

New York Times reporter John Schwartz took it upon himself to find out. He went to the Kennedy Space center where NASA officials offered him a bottle of water made from a 2005 prototype of the system. (The scientists generously “donated” their own liquids for the test run.) The label on the bottle read, “We use only the finest ingredients! Urine, Perspiration, Food Vapors, Bath Water, Simulated Animal Waste, and a touch of Iodine. No Carbs or Calories Added.”

And Schwart’s verdict?

(more…)

The remains of an elderly man found in a Polish cathedral in 2005 have now been confirmed to be that of Copernicus, the 16th century astronomer famous for displacing Earth from the center of the universe. A team of Polish researchers have matched DNA extracted from a tooth and a femur bone to that of a strand of hair found in one of Copernicus’ old books.

For all his revolutionary ideas, Copernicus was never particularly famous during his lifetime, at least not enough to have a marked grave. (He didn’t publish his heliocentric treatise De revolutionibus until 1543, the year of his death, for fear of persecution.) Scientists knew he was one of the anonymous burials in a cathedral in Frombork, Poland, but they didn’t know which one. So they used radar to scan all the bodies to find one about 60 to 70 years old, the astronomer’s age when he died. The DNA evidence confirms that they got the right body.

(more…)

British artist Nasser Azam had a unique desire: to create a piece of art in zero G (the feeling of weightlessness). Not only did his plan become a reality, but it was a profitable one: On Friday, November 14th, the painting sold for $332,500 at Phillips de Pury’s Contemporary Art Part II auction in New York.

To create his zero-gravity masterpiece, Azam and two other artists flew 23,000 feet into the air aboard an ILYUSHIN 76 MDK parabolic aircraft. Nicknamed the “vomit comet” ride, the parabolic flight made everyone lose their breakfast, except for Azam.

The so-called “Life in Space” project required training at the Russian cosmonaut facility Star City. But what Azam had to consider most was how losing gravity would affect his ability to paint. First, Azam drew disembodied figures inspired by Francis Bacon while he was still on the ground. Then while in space, Azam filled in the pre-drawn figures using acrylic paint. But he had to do any finishing touches with oil pastels. Otherwise, the paint would have floated in the air.

To watch Azam in action, click here.
Or to see the artwork, click here.

Image of Nasser Azam’s Homage to Francis Bacon: Triptych I courtesy of Comlan Getty

• Spiders in space! Seven orb-weaver spiders are making their way to the International Space Station.

• How to make water drops bounce. Watch all the jiggly action in slow motion.

• Doesn’t matter which direction the Raid is coming from: Scientists studying cockroach escape strategies conclude the little buggers choose their paths randomly (unlike flies).

(more…)

For the three crew members living aboard the International Space Station, sustainability isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity. The station is already powered by solar energy, but still relies on water sent periodically from Earth. On Friday, NASA’s space shuttle Endeavor will begin a special mission to deliver a water recovery system to the ISS that will recycle the crew’s urine and exhaled water vapor into drinkable water. Former ISS crew member Donald Pettit said thinking of the system as a fancy coffee machine might make the water go down easier: “It’s going to take yesterday’s coffee and make it into today’s coffee.” Or something like that.

Endeavor’s 15-day mission will give the decade-old ISS a complete truss-to-truss makeover. It will also deliver state-of-the-art exercise equipment, an extra fridge (the current one is reserved for science experiments, so the crew has been drinking lukewarm orange juice), an extra toilet, and sleeping quarters. The expansion will allow the station to house three more long-term crew members from Canada, Europe and Japan, all of whom are scheduled to arrive next spring. Astronauts arriving on the Endeavour will also help the current crew tackle a huge cleaning job, including four space walks to scrub the outside of the station.

(more…)

Given the recent death of best-selling author and sci-fi pioneer Michael Crichton, we thought it was the perfect time to reflect on some of his most innovative and fascinating ideas…that just happened to have come true.

5. Talking Gorillas: Congo (1980) was more than just another notch into the decent-book-cum-awful-movie belt. It also highlighted what was once a novel concept: that apes could use human language to communicate. Cute little Amy, with her sign language glove (which appeared in the movie but not the book), was loosely based on Koko the gorilla, whose actual linguistic abilities continue to be debated.

Since then, there’s been Kanzi, a bonobo who “apparently has learned more than 3,000 spoken English words and can produce (by means of lexigrams) novel English sentences and comprehend English sentences he has never heard before.” Granted, those who doubted before remain unconvinced.

4. Self-Replicating Robots: In Prey (2002), Crichton created a world of self-replicating nanorobots with rudimentary intelligence and predatory instincts, who spend several hundred pages running amok and causing all sorts of mayhem.

Today, researchers have developed robots that can physically self assemble, and even produce copies of themselves. Granted, getting to that next stage—manufacturing more of themselves from raw materials—is substantially harder.

3. Superbugs from Space: Crichton’s debut novel, The Andromeda Strain (1969), terrified readers with the ultimate biohazard: a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism that infects human blood and mutates like wildfire to defy containment.

Lucky for us, the chances of the next pandemic hurling in from space are slim to none. But the book brought the concept of bio-safety levels to far more advanced heights. As for the next great bug, not only have we created antibiotic-resistant superbugs here on Earth, we’ve also discovered that some strains become more virulent when sent into space. (Though fear not: They become far less deadly once they’ve made the journey home.)

(more…)

High-speed passages between the Earth and the sun that open up every eight minutes? No, it’s not a figment of science fiction. Scientists have confirmed that these portals, known as flux transfers events (FTEs), occur surprisingly often.

David Sibeck, a space scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center who presented the new findings at the 2008 Plasma Workshop in Alabama, describes FTEs as “brief, bursty, and very dynamic.” When the sun-facing side of Earth’s magnetosphere overlaps with the sun’s, a magnetic cylinder about as wide as the Earth connects the 150 millions kilometers between Earth and the sun. The portal stays open for about 15 to 20 minutes and multiple portals can form at once. Inside FTEs, high-energy particles to zoom through easily and particles from the sun provide an influx of energy for the Earth’s magnetosphere (also called its magnetic field, which has a stronger attractive force than gravity.)

(more…)