Weekend Edition

Counting down the top 20 links we didn't cover during the week...

20 • The Hilarious Difference Between Google And Bing In One Picture - Okay, maybe not hilarious. Which one of those search engines came up with that hyperbole?

19 • How Marc Maron Picks Music For His Show - A neurotic dart board?

18 • How To Use Math To Dominate At Monopoly - Interesting read, horrible layout with a million giant photos.

17 • J. Cole: Gun-Toting Twitter Fan Investigated By Police - Illegal? Potentially. Great photo? Definitely.

16 • The Quotable Darryl Sutter (2013) - Pearls of wisdom and knowledge from the L.A. Kings coach.

15 • Drunk Alaska Man Mauled After Feeding BBQ To Black Bear - In the bear's defense, he wanted fish, not ribs (even though he had some).

14 • Paraplegic Castrated At Pennsylvania Facility / Three Charged With Enslaving Disabled Ohio Mom, Child - These states share a border. And lunatics.

13 • Gruesome Video Appears To Be Aftermath Of Michael Hastings' Car Crash - Here's your chance to watch a wrecked car burn for five minutes. And if this ain't your cup of tea, you'll want to skip #4 for sure.

12 • Researchers Have Found A Way To Cram 1,000 Terabytes Onto A Single DVD - The disc said it was quite uncomfortable.

11 • The Academy Of Motion Pictures Currently Employs An Ex-Porn Director - Naturally...how else could the MPAA continue to screw people.

10 • A Battery So Small, You'll Never Know If It's Included - There's AA and AAA now, but this means AAAAAAAAAAAA is coming.

09 • Amanda Bynes: ‘I Got My Breast Implants Removed’ - 2013's boob of the year had hers normalized, but still has metal spikes in her cheeks and is out of her goddamn mind.

08 • AMA Declares Obesity A Disease - Huge (no pun intended) mistake. Lack of willpower does not have a prescription cure.

07 • Hollywood & Highland Allegation: She Took Picture Of Transients, They Stabbed Her To Death - My suggestion to kill all the homeless is worse than rounding them up for work interment camps, but I still theink both are effective ways to deal with the issue.

06 • Dim Star Becomes 7 Times Hotter In 160 Seconds - Not a reference to the Amanda Bynes story.

05 • Starbucks Raising Prices Despite Lower Bean Cost - The reason is because the, uh...because now it's more expensive to, um...oh, fuck it. They just greedy.

04 • Plane With Wing Walker Crashes At Ohio Show; 2 Die - The announcer is just making it worse before the actual crash.

03 • Standing Man: Turkey's Eerie, Powerful New Protest Movement - Far more successful than Sitting Man and Prone Man.

02 • Snake Expert Killed By Snake While Helping People With Fear Of Snakes - Or, ironic death ironically adds to irony.

01 • British Spy Agency Is Saving Everyone's Email And Calls Too - Nice to see our colonial progenitors are keeping up with their kids.

Know Your Place In The Universe

Star Trails

Outer Stank

Most of us will never venture into space, let alone have the chance to smell it...mostly because you'd freeze to death before you could realize there's no air.  But that doesn't mean there's no smell to it.

Said astronaut Don Pettit:

Each time, when I repressed the airlock, opened the hatch and welcomed two tired workers inside, a peculiar odor tickled my olfactory senses. At first I couldn’t quite place it. It must have come from the air ducts that re-pressed the compartment. Then I noticed that this smell was on their suit, helmet, gloves, and tools. It was more pronounced on fabrics than on metal or plastic surfaces. It is hard to describe this smell; it is definitely not the olfactory equivalent to describing the palette sensations of some new food as “tastes like chicken.” The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation. It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space.

So, what could be causing these smells? Scientists now believe it's polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are formed during star combustion. They are also found on Earth, in everything from car exhaust to bacon...and fortunately they have varying odors (exhaust flavored bacon would suck).  And three years ago, astronomers reported that a dust cloud at the center of the Milky Way includes ethyl formate molecules - one of the compounds behind the flavor of raspberries and the scent of rum. It may be 26,000 light years away, but at least there's something potentially decent to smell out there.

Spacediving

You can't call it skydiving if you're beyond the sky...

BASE jumper Felix Baumgartner plans to jump from beyond 23 miles high this summer in the name of science (and energy drinks).  This past March, Baumgartner made a test jump from 71,581 feet above Earth, from a small capsule attached to balloon the size of a 16-story building. The Austrian was in freefall for three and a half minutes and reached a top speed of 364 mph before engaging his chute and gliding to the ground near Roswell, New Mexico.  He'll test 90,000 feet this summer, and finally from more than 120,000 feet.

Baumgartner and his team say the primary aim is to advance the science of survival at extreme altitude, not just to break records or publicize Red Bull (but don't let the sponsors hear that).  At points during his descent, Baumgartner will experience temperatures as low as -148 degrees Fahrenheit, and  clock in at 690 mph, potentially breaking the sound barrier.  A small, stabilizing drogue chute will protect him from a deadly flat spin, and his special suit will protect him from the sudden decompression of being in a vacuum.

Only two others have successfully made the jump above 70,000 feet, and the current record is 102,800 feet.  We'll be following up once they give it a shot...either way it will turn out very interesting.

Weekend Edition

Counting down the top 20 links we didn't cover during the week...

20 • Nuclear Slapshots Could Propel A Spacecraft To Mars In Just Weeks - Unless Space Jonathan Quick is in the net outside the red planet. 

19 • Michael Sokolski, Creator Of Scantron, Dies At 85 / Ginsu Knife Pitch Co-Creator, Barry Becher, Dies - Insert stale joke regarding their accomplishments here. 

18 • Five Suspected Of Stealing 9.5 Tons Of Garlic - Either it's going to be one big bowl of pasta sauce, or they were about to go jihad on Transylvania.  

17 • Profile Of A Fart Fetish Video Producer / Man Pulls Gun On Neighbor Over Fart - All the news that's fart to print...    

16 • Condo Fire Leads Deputies To 2K Pound Marijuana Discovery - Clearly this was a vacation home given the amount of weed there. 

15 • Winamp’s Woes: How The Greatest MP3 Player Undid Itself - I still love that program...how sad that it's not the industry standard. 

14 • Rogue Dolphin, Alone After Katrina, Menaces Lake Area / Michael Jackson's Tiger Dies Of Lung Cancer / Dolphins May Get Alzheimer's / Baby Chimpanzee Killed By Adult Chimp At Zoo -  Because I was told that I was not including enough access to giant cats with carton a day smoking habits, or angry mammals who'll attack you - and then possibly forget they did.

13 • Nine Actors Who Do the Exact Same Thing On Every Movie Poster - Sometimes you get cast in the same roles...or posters.

12 • The Salvation Army And Goodwill: Inside The Places Your Clothes Go When You Donate Them - Get ready for the underworld of used apparel, where everything is free...for a price! 

11 • This Is The Oldest Vinyl Album In the History Of The World - Electroclash?  Really?  Nah, but petty cool that they were basically able to clone it.

10 • The Kings' Missing Championship Puck: Is It The Work Of The Devils? / Turns Out Patrik Elias Totally Did Have The LA Kings’ Stanley Cup Winning Game Puck / Patrik Elias Had LA Kings Stanley Cup Puck, But Has No Idea What He Did With It - Well, you've got the story in the headlines, but you can read about it too...

09 • The Daily Show Took CNN & Fox News To The Woodshed Last Night / "Mandate Struck Down": Dewey Defeats Truman Moment For CNN, Fox News - I'm glad that I live in a time where Comedy Central is better at reporting the news than "news" networks.

08 • Everything You Need To Know About The TomKat Divorce - They're getting divorced...I think that's everything.

07 • Research Team Unveils Spray-On Battery - If everything can be a battery, what will be left that needs a charge?

06 • Kim Kardashian Sued for Making a Sex Tape With Charlie Sheen And A Unicorn / Kim Kardashian's Sisters Writing a Young Adult Science Fiction Novel - What do you find more unbelievable: that her Ass-Kinder actually know how to write, or that Der Schwein Panzer is making porn with mythical creatures?  

05 • Evading Ticketmaster, Louis C.K. Sells Tour Himself - Awesome, free thinking comedians 1, The Man 0.

04 • Virginia Woman Sues Over Alleged Sexual Abuse During Exorcism - Here's the deal: if you're foolish enough to believe that you're possessed by the Devil and need an exorcism, you deserve to be sexually abused.

03 • Kim Dotcom Raid Was Illegal, New Zealand Judge Rules - Oh, did we illegally search and seize millions in property and possessions?  Uh, sorry?

02 • Making Saltwater Drinkable Is Graphene's Latest Miracle - If it can make fish and loaves of bread, then graphene is a molecular Jesus.

01 • Anti-Semitic Elmo Is Named Adam Sandler And Ran A Rape Website - How does this not become the top headline?

In Space, No One Can Hear You Strip Mine

Kudos to James Cameron, who found another way to make billions more!

Planetary Resources, Inc. is a new Cameron fronted venture,  backed by investors the likes of Google co-founder Larry Page, Ross Perot Jr. (chairman of The Perot Group and son of the former presidential candidate), Eric Schmidt (executive chairman of Google), K. Ram Shriram (Google board of directors founding member), and Charles Simonyi (chairman of Intentional Software Corp.), with the intention to mine near-Earth asteroids for precious metals and water.

Referring to them as "the low-hanging fruit of the solar system", these asteroids would provide ample uthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum  - all rare and in demand on Earth (and mostly controlled by Chinese and foreign interests).  Under the noble idea of advancing humanity's exploration of space, their resource extraction and refining will create the unimaginably rich and powerful corporate backbone for that to occur.  Like an intergalactic gas station, they can provide water and key elements for manufacturing technological products.  For example, a single space rock 1,650 feet wide contains the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined throughout human history.

Before that can happen, it needs to do some in-depth prospecting work. Of the roughly 8,900 known near-Earth asteroids, perhaps 100 or 150 are water-rich and easier to reach than the surface of the moon.  Using a telescope that will be launched into a low-Earth orbit in the next 18 to 24 months, the company will source it's targets.  Currently, all mining activities are planned to be accomplished by swarms of unmanned spacecraft, and the company does not (immediately) plan to extend its operations to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or to the surface of the moon.  but it should be stressed that there was no date or timeline given when they would (or could) begin extracting metals or water from space rocks.

Though a recent study sponsored by Caltech estimated that a 500-ton near-Earth asteroid could be snagged and dragged to the moon's orbit by 2025 at the low low cost of about $2.6 billion, it did not detail the giant space lasso needed, but what ever the method, Planetary Resources has the jump on everyone.

Hey, That's Not A Supply Ship...

A discarded chunk of a Russian rocket missed the International Space Station on Saturday.  And how did you spend your weekend?

The debris was "barely close enough to be a threat", according to NASA, but still close enough to force the six astronauts to seek shelter in escape capsules. The closest the debris came to the station was around 2:30 am, and wasn't noticed until Friday, when it was too late to move the International Space Station out of the way. Looks like somebody wasn't doing their job...

This is the third time in 12 years that astronauts have had to seek shelter from space junk.  Most recently it was a disabled sattelite, and before that, it was Battlefield Earth in 2000.

ISS Stars

None More Black

Now that they're not currently exploring space, NASA engineers directed their efforts locally, and have produced a material that absorbs more than 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light that hits it.

The coating is a thin layer of carbon nanotubes about 10,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair. Grown on silicon, silicon nitride, titanium, and stainless steel, a thin layer of iron is positioned as an underlayer and then heated to near 1,382 degrees Fahrenheit. At the same time, the material is bathed in carbon-containing gas.

Currently, space instrument developers apply black paint to help prevent stray light from ricocheting off surfaces, but paints absorb only 90% of light that strikes it. Additionally, black paints do not remain black when exposed to cryogenic temperatures, and are mixed with conductive metal epoxies to keep them from losing their absorptive and radiative properties. This new super-black material could be used instead with greater efficiency while decreasing the weight of the coating, and instruments would be able to detect more faint wavelengths as the multiple frequencies of light are absorbed.

"It's robust, lightweight, and extremely black. It is better than black paint by a long shot."

ISS Earth

Earth Antimatters

Data from a cosmic ray satellite is giving strength to the theory that the Earth is encircled by a thin band of antimatter.  No, it's not a galactic lap-band.

PAMELA - Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, was launched in 2006 to study the high-energy particles ejected from the Sun (and beyond) that bombard the Earth.  When cosmic rays smash into Earth’s upper atmosphere, some of the resulting particles are short-lived anti-protons. Most are annihilated instantly when in contact with ordinary matter, but those that don’t collide are trapped in the planet's Van Allen radiation belt, forming a layer of antimatter in the Earth’s atmosphere.  One of PAMELA’s goals was to detect and separate these antimatter particles from the mass of protons and the nuclei of helium atoms in the atmosphere...success!

For 850 days starting in July 2006, the satellite moved through the South Atlantic Anomaly, where it detected 28 anti-protons, which is three times more than a random sample of the solar wind.  What has theoretical physicists giddy is the potential to use anti-protons for rocket-propelling applications.  Like, "tens of nanograms to micrograms of anti-protons can be used to catalyze nuclear reactions and propel spacecraft to velocities up to 100 km/sec.” applications.  Okay, for those who don't speak geek, that's an antimatter engine. Y'know, Star Trek type stuff? Oh, now this sounds interesting, eh?

Saturn's Answer To Jupiter

I can't always post about folks not getting what they deserve, but getting exactly what they deserve, so here's a little sidebar about things that are much big than us - namely the 6,200 mile wide storm happening in outer space about 821 million miles away.

The Great White Spot on Saturn is currently being photographed by the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting the planet since 2004. The thunderstorm is nearly as wide as Earth, and began forming in the northern hemisphere in December, which is a decade earlier than expected.  See, even weathermen screw up the forcast on other planets! The Great White Spots usually recur about every 30 (Earth) years, when Saturn's northern hemisphere tilts most toward the sun.

Radio waves emitted by electrical discharges show nearly continuous lightning that can flash 10 times or more per second when the storm is peaking.  That's not good if you're this guy. Researchers are still uncertain where the storm gets it's energy from. Though the spots seem to occur "seasonally", it may be the 155 miles thick layer where the main clouds reside which does not get sunlight that may create an internal heat source as the power for the winds.

Other than the superstorm, I'm sure it's a lovely place to visit...

This Telescope, It Is Very Large

Voyage(r) To The Edge Of The Solar System

The decades old Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached the outer edge of the solar system, and the workhorse has helped scientists observe where solar wind no longer blows outward, but sideways.  C'mon, pretend you care...

Since the spacecraft was launched in 1977, it has snapped images of Earth and other planets in our solar system. Researchers believe Voyager 1 will exit the solar system and reach interstellar space (what is considered the area in between the Sun's influence and the next star system) in about four years. It is now approximately 10.8 billion miles from the Sun, where the velocity of gas emanating outward from the sun has slowed to zero. 

And in honor of solar ejections, here's a video of parts of the sun exploding.

Space Babies, Or Dark Side Of The Poon

Sorry sextonauts, making the first baby in space baby is going to prove difficult because embryonic stem cells don't act the same way in zero gravity. So is it cyborg humans or banging aliens?

Scientist have shown how full-grown adults suffer the longer they stay in microgravity - living in zero-G causes muscles and bones to weaken, and makes the heart beat irregularly. And now, Australian researchers have found microgravity tampers with stem cells. In tests, 64% percent of stem cell proteins were fundamentally different from how they would be in normal gravity. And the changes weren't good. Most of the altered proteins would weaken bones and allow increased oxidative damage to DNA. Damage was also done to proteins involved with the immune system, proper cell division, calcium levels, and much more.

Clearly, gravity is somehow responsible for a vital part of the body's mechanical or circulatory feedback, helping to keep bones and blood vessels healthy. My layman idea? Artificial gravity! Problem solved? Perhaps, and then you can save all the zero-G sex for kinkier times...

Spacefinger

Astronauts with wider hands are more likely to have their fingernails fall off after working or training in space suit gloves, according to a new study. And NASA isn't hiring is manicurists.

Fingernail trauma and other hand injuries (no matter your hand size) are collectively the number one nuisance for spaceworkers. The number two? Not enough sexy crewmembers to make them want to be involved in zero-g procreation studies. The trouble with the gloves, like the entire space suit, is the need to simulate the pressure of Earth's atmosphere in the space environment. The gas-pressurized gloves, by their own nature, make fine motor control a challenge.

A previous study of astronaut injuries sustained during spacewalks found that about 47% reported between 2002 and 2004 were hand related, and more than half of these were due to fingertips and nails making contact with the hard "thimbles" inside the glove fingertips. The sustained pressure on the fingertips caused intense pain and led to the astronauts' nails detaching from their nailbeds. Aside from the loose nails getting snagged inside the glove, moisture inside can lead to secondary bacterial infections in the exposed nailbeds.

In the current glove design, astronauts wear a pressurized inner layer under a thick outer layer that offers protection. On Earth, wearing the gloves would a bit restrictive but not too uncomfortable, but when the glove pressurizes, the flexible fabric surface becomes stiff. The materials tend to be rubberized to make the gloves airtight, but that creates a lot of friction against the skin, and that can cause blisters.

While expensive, one of the solutions would be to make all parts of a glove custom fitted for each astronaut. Another option is robotic amplification inside the glove. There are design trade-offs, but there have been recent experiments with skintight space suits that rely on mechanical counterpressure - that means instead of working in a gas-pressurized bubble, astronauts would effectively get shrink-wrapped in a suit made of flexible material.

The "Debris" Of Space

They've got a whole lab full of scientists and researchers studying how your discharges can be handled when you're off-planet.

The Sky Is Falling All Night Long

The Perseid Meteor Shower against the backdrop of the Milky Way, as seen from Joshua Tree National Park between August 12 and August 15, 2010.

Shields Up!

One of the limitations to travel around the solar system is the threat of radiation, but scientists believe a thumb-sized magnet could produce a force field big enough to shield an entire spaceship.

The Sun is constantly shooting high-energy particles out, a solar wind that yields radiation over 1000 times more powerful than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Fortunately, our magnetosphere (produced by the planet's molten iron core) deflects the solar wind and protects from that radiation. It was thought a (prohibitively) huge magnet would be necessary to produce a similar result for a spaceship, but some Brits have determined much less is necessary to generate a magnetic field.

Because the solar wind is a plasma made up of charged particles, it also carries a magnetic field. When the two fields clash, since the solar wind's field is created by free-moving particles, it yields, altering its orientation to minimise conflict with the mini-magnetosphere's field. Positively charged protons have nearly 2000 times the mass of the negatively charged electrons, so the latter are much more easily deflected. The electrons stay at the surface of the magnetic bubble, while the positive charges penetrate further in. This separation of positive and negative charges generates intense electric fields up to a million times stronger than the magnetic fields that created them. Subsequent solar wind particles hit these electric fields and are strongly deflected. The result is a shielding effect far more powerful than the magnetic field alone might be expected to provide.

New Scientist has the details, and while there is concern that the higher-energy particles in space could blast through such a shield, Rutherford Appleton Lab (who made the discovery) is already in talks with NASA to determine the implications of their find.