Posts belonging to Category Science

Europa Report is a new movie about an international team of astronauts sent a mission to land on and explore the Jovian moon Europa. What makes Europa Report different is that it looks entirely realistic! In fact, the trailer looks like it could have come from an actual mission that might occur this decade — the rocket, the ship, the space suits, the capsule, the zero-g, the space walks… everything… it all looks completely scientifically accurate. Also, blogger/astronomer Phil Plait says as much.

Anyway, check it out!

Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe (a 501(c)3 not-for-profit), with the fund raising help of Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal fame, has finally purchased the property where stands the last surviving laboratory of Nikola Tesla (visionary scientist and the greatest geek who ever lived): the Wardenclyffe facility. Hurrah!

Now they’re going to restore the site and build a museum there. Awesome!

The press release can be found here, here’s the full press conference (its over an hour long).

Check this out. This kid, Taylor Wilson, built a nuclear fusion reactor in his garage when he was 14. No, not a crummy old fission reactor… a fusion reactor. When he was 14, no less. Here’s a clip of his recent TED talk. Wow!

Check out this great 40 minute interview and Q&A with famed astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson.

And if you still haven’t gotten enough of Neil deGrasse Tyson, take a look at these great StarTalk videos.

So this group at Lockheed Martin claims they’ll have 100 MW fusion reactors by 2025. That would be great, but… well, they seem a little sketchy on the details. Still, it is Lockheed Martin.

Best of luck!

Well, this is certainly interesting. The National Intelligence Council, one of those enigmatic-sounding-yet-mostly-harmless-(well-probably) US government agencies,  has recently released a report called Global Trends 2030. This is interesting because it projects 4 plausible scenarios, or “Alternative Worlds”,  for the future state of the world in the year 2030, covering the subjects of politics, populations, science, technology, economics, and global conflicts. The various projected game changers, black swans, and potential breakthroughs all come together to create the 4 hypothetical worlds: some good and some not-so good.

For writers of science fiction (at least science fiction taking place within in the next 20 years or so), this could be most enlightening indeed.

You can get the full PDF of the Global Trends 2030 report here.

The White House has just rejected a modest proposal to secure resources and funding to begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.  White House science and technology adviser Paul Shawcross shot down the idea sighting the $850 quadrillion dollar price tag, plus pointing out that the Death Star has a “fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship.” I suppose that is a pretty good point.

The petition and official White House response can be found here, and while humorous, it also points out many of the past and forthcoming accomplishments the US space program has made, as well as the new private initiatives on the horizon.

You can also read more at this Washington Post article.

The year 2012 marked the first achievement for private space ventures with SpaceX’s docking of their Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station (which they in fact did twice). This year (2013), private companies like SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, XCOR, and Virgin Galactic are gearing up to make even greater strides into the vast, final frontier. And it’s about time!

For more, check out the comprehensive article at Space.com.

This is certainly interesting: NASA Johnson (Space Center) Style, an unofficial NASA parody of that wacky K-Pop song, Gangnam Style (the first YouTube video to get 1 billion hits…)

Check it out!

Hello, and welcome to December 22nd, 2012: the day after the day the world did not end.

Still wondering why the world didn’t end? Well, the short answer is simply that a bunch of crazy people saying the world will end does not simply make the world end. The better answer comes from NASA.

So there you go. The world didn’t end yesterday because the whole Mayan “doomsday” thing was just silly nonsense.