Photos of touching down on an asteroid.
On Tuesday, October 20th, NASA made history when the OSIRIS-REx mission successfully completed a “touch-and-go” sample collection maneuver with asteroid 101955 Bennu over 200 million miles away from Earth. And now, we have the timelapse to prove it.
The human eye does not work like a camera, contrary to common belief. Consider the following key factors:
1) Both the cornea and the lens COMBINE to give the focusing effect. Thus it is TWO lenses, not one that allow human vision. In fact the cornea is responsible for two-thirds or more of the focusing effect. The lens compounds that focusing, projecting it from past the pupil onto the curved retina at the back of the eye.
2) The eye corrects for CHROMATIC ABERATION by having a central pit, the FOVEA, where the blue cells are concentrated along the outer rim and the red cells concentrated in the center. Blue light focusses slightly closer to an objective lens and red light slightly further. Thus the red cells are concentrated further back, at the base of the pit, so that the human eye has a natural color correction without the need for complex color corrected lenses.
Continue reading “Metalens Retinal Projection Using The Eye’s Inherent Structure” »
New technology could deliver “clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices”.
The rippling thermal motion of a tiny piece of graphene has been harnessed by a special circuit that delivers low-voltage electrical energy. The system was created by researchers in US and Spain, who say that if it could be duplicated enough times on a chip, it could deliver “clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices”.
Continue reading “Rippling graphene harvests thermal energy” »
Astronomers at the University of Iowa have determined our galaxy is surrounded by a clumpy halo of hot gases that is continually being supplied with material ejected by birthing or dying stars. The halo also may be where matter unaccounted for since the birth of the universe may reside. Photo courtesy of Christien Nielsen/Unsplash.
ETH researchers are making chocolates shimmer in rainbow colors without the addition of colorants. They have found a way to imprint a special structure on the surface of the chocolate to create a targeted color effect.
Traditional methods for coloring chocolate have been around for a long time. But the ETH researchers are able to create the rainbow effect without artificial colorants. The effect is achieved simply through a surface imprint that produces what the scientists refer to as a structural color. The process is similar to a chameleon, whose skin surface modulates and disperses light to display specific colors.
Continue reading “Researchers print rainbow colorants on shimmering chocolate” »
Researchers have designed a material that can act as a superconductor in a room heated to close to 60 degrees Fahrenheit — the warmest temperature yet.
Homeland Security might soon have a new tool to add to its arsenal.
Researchers at Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory have developed a new material that opens doors for a new class of neutron detectors.
With the ability to sense smuggled nuclear materials, highly efficient neutron detectors are critical for national security. Currently, there are two classes of detectors which either use helium gas or flashes of light. These detectors are very large — sometimes the size of a wall.
Graphene out garbage?
A recent breakthrough promises to make graphene out of garbage in a flash.
A major new milestone has just been achieved in the quest for superconductivity. For the first time, physicists have achieved the resistance-free flow of an electrical current at room temperature — a positively balmy 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit).
This has smashed the previous record of −23 degrees Celsius (−9.4 degrees Fahrenheit), and has brought the prospect of functional superconductivity a huge step forward.
With NASA getting ready to land a spacecraft on the asteroid Bennu in just a few short days, the mysterious space rock is already revealing some of its secrets, including the presence of carbon-bearing materials.
Several studies were published on the matter in the journals Science and Science Advances, noting that carbon-bearing, organic material is “widespread” on the surface of the asteroid. This includes the area where NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will take its first sample from, known as Nightingale, on Oct. 20.
“The abundance of carbon-bearing material is a major scientific triumph for the mission. We are now optimistic that we will collect and return a sample with organic material – a central goal of the OSIRIS-REx mission,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson, in a statement.
