Trivia

37% of all women prefer shoe shopping to sex. Duh.

A vast majority of married men sleep on the right hand side of the bed (facing from the headboard), regardless of race, creed or age. Divorced men often switch to the left side.

The saying “it’s so cold out there it could freeze the balls off a brass monkey” came from when they had old cannons like ones used in the Civil War. The cannonballs were stacked in a pyramid formation, called a brass monkey. When it got extremely cold outside they would crack and break off… Thus the saying.

Armadillos have four babies at a time and they are always the same sex.

You can tell a turtle’s sex by its sound. Males grunt, females hiss.

Activity on Enceladus Could Be ‘Curtain Eruptions’

A newly published study reveals that most of the eruptions from Saturn’s moon Enceladus might be diffuse curtains rather than discrete jets.

Many features that appear to be individual jets of material erupting along the length of prominent fractures in Enceladus’ south polar region might be phantoms created by an optical illusion, according to a new study published on Thursday, May 7, in the journal Nature.

“We think most of the observed activity represents curtain eruptions from the ‘tiger stripe’ fractures, rather than intermittent geysers along them,” said Joseph Spitale, lead author of the study and a participating scientist on the Cassini mission at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. “Some prominent jets likely are what they appear to be, but most of the activity seen in the images can be explained without discrete jets.”

In analyzing Cassini’s images of the eruptions on Enceladus, Spitale and colleagues took particular note of the faint background glow present in most images. The brightest eruption features, which appear to be discrete jets, look to them to be superimposed intermittently upon this background structure.

Recent research suggests much of the eruption activity on the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus could be in the form of broad, curtain-like eruptions, rather than discrete jets.

The researchers modeled eruptions on Enceladus as uniform curtains along the tiger stripe fractures. They found that phantom brightness enhancements appear in places where the viewer is looking through a “fold” in the curtain. The folds exist because the fractures in Enceladus’ surface are more wavy than perfectly straight. The researchers think this optical illusion is responsible for most of what appear to be individual jets.

“The viewing direction plays an important role in where the phantom jets appear,” said Spitale. “If you rotated your perspective around Enceladus’ south pole, such jets would seem to appear and disappear.”

Phantom jets in simulated images produced by the scientists line up nicely with some of the features in real Cassini images that appear to be discrete columns of spray. The correspondence between simulation and spacecraft data suggests that much of the discrete-jet structure is an illusion, according to the researchers.

Curtain eruptions occur on Earth where molten rock, or magma, gushes out of a deep fracture. These eruptions, which often create spectacular curtains of fire, are seen in places such as Hawaii, Iceland and the Galapagos Islands.

“Our understanding of Enceladus continues to evolve, and we’ve come to expect surprises along the way,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, who was not involved in the study. “This little ice world is becoming more exciting, not less, as we tease out new details about its subsurface ocean and astonishing geophysical activity.”

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Publication: Joseph N. Spitale, et al., “Curtain eruptions from Enceladus’ south-polar terrain,” Nature 521, 57–60 (07 May 2015); doi:10.1038/nature14368

Source: Preston Dyches, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/PSI

ALMA Discovers a Globular Cluster about to be Born

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, astronomers have discovered what may be the first known example of a globular cluster about to be born.

Globular clusters – dazzling agglomerations of up to a million ancient stars – are among the oldest objects in the universe. Though plentiful in and around many galaxies, newborn examples are vanishingly rare and the conditions necessary to create new ones have never been detected, until now.

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered what may be the first known example of a globular cluster about to be born: an incredibly massive, extremely dense, yet star-free cloud of molecular gas.

“We may be witnessing one of the most ancient and extreme modes of star formation in the universe,” said Kelsey Johnson, an astronomer at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and lead author on a paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. “This remarkable object looks like it was plucked straight out of the very early universe. To discover something that has all the characteristics of a globular cluster, yet has not begun making stars, is like finding a dinosaur egg that’s about to hatch.”

This object, which the astronomers playfully refer to as the “Firecracker,” is located approximately 50 million light-years away from Earth nestled inside a famous pair of interacting galaxies (NGC 4038 and NGC 4039), which are collectively known as the Antennae galaxies. The tidal forces generated by their ongoing merger are triggering star formation on a colossal scale, much of it occurring inside dense clusters.

Animation of ALMA data depicting dense cores of molecular gas in the Antennae galaxies. The yellow object at the center may be the first prenatal example of a globular cluster ever identified. Credit: K. Johnson, U.Va.; ALMA (NRAO/ESO/NAOJ)

What makes the Firecracker unique, however, is its extraordinary mass, comparatively small size, and apparent lack of stars.

All other globular cluster analogues astronomers have observed to date are already brimming with stars. The heat and radiation from these stars have therefore altered the surrounding environment considerably, erasing any evidence of its colder, quieter beginnings.

With ALMA, the astronomers were able to find and study in detail a pristine example of such an object before stars forever change its unique characteristics. This afforded astronomers a first-ever glimpse of the conditions that may have led to the formation of many, if not all globular clusters.

“Until now, clouds with this potential have only been seen as teenagers, after star formation had begun,” said Johnson. “That meant that the nursery had already been disturbed. To understand how a globular cluster forms, you need to see its true beginnings.”

Most globular clusters formed during a veritable “baby boom” around 12 billion years ago, at a time when galaxies first assembled. Each contains as many as a million densely packed “second generation” stars — stars with conspicuously low concentrations of heavy metals, indicating they formed very early in the history of the universe. Our own Milky Way is known to have at least 150 such clusters, though it may have many more.

Throughout the universe, star clusters of various sizes are still forming to this day. It’s possible, though increasingly rare, that the largest and densest of these will go on to become globular clusters.

“The survival rate for a massive young star cluster to remain intact is very low – around one percent,” said Johnson. “Various external and internal forces pull these objects apart, either forming open clusters like the Pleiades or completely disintegrating to become part of a galaxy’s halo.”

The astronomers believe, however, that the object they observed with ALMA, which contains 50 million times the mass of the Sun in molecular gas, is sufficiently dense that it has a good chance of being one of the lucky ones.

Globular clusters evolve out of their embryonic, star-free stage very rapidly — in as little as one million years. This means the object discovered by ALMA is undergoing a very special phase of its life, offering astronomers a unique opportunity to study a major component of the early universe.

The ALMA data also indicate that the Firecracker cloud is under extreme pressure – approximately 10,000 times greater than typical interstellar pressures. This supports previous theories that high pressures are required to form globular clusters.

In exploring the Antennae, Johnson and her colleagues observed the faint emission from carbon monoxide molecules, which allowed them to image and characterize individual clouds of dust and gas. The lack of any appreciable thermal emission – the telltale signal given off by gas heated by nearby stars – confirms that this newly discovered object is still in its pristine, unaltered state.

Further studies with ALMA may reveal additional examples of proto super star clusters in the Antennae galaxies and other interacting galaxies, shedding light on the origins of these ancient objects and the role they play in galactic evolution.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

Publication: “The Physical Conditions in a Pre Super Star Cluster Molecular Cloud in the Antennae Galaxies,” K. E. Johnson et al., 2015, to appear in the Astrophysical Journal

Source: National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Image: NASA/ESA Hubble, B. Whitmore (STScI); K. Johnson, U.Va.; ALMA (NRAO/ESO/NAOJ); B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Tough Jobs: Experimental Aircraft Test Pilot

Our Q&A with veteran test pilot Mark “Forger” Stucky on what it takes to fly for Virgin Galactic, the US Air Force and even United Airlines

As a boy, Mark “Forger” Stucky dreamt of being an astronaut. As the lead test pilot for Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, he’s about as close to that dream as he can be to without actually leaving Earth’s atmosphere. The career pilot graduated from the US Navy Fighter Weapons School (you know it as Top Gun) and spent three decades flying more than 170 different models of aircraft for the US Marine Corp, the US Navy, the US Air Force, United Airlines, and other outfits. He says SpaceShipTwo is the greatest aircraft he’s ever flown — technologically exciting and viscerally thrilling, but also challenging. The danger of the job was never clearer than last year, when one of the prototypes crashed during testing in the Mojave Desert, killing another test pilot. Stucky was not on-board at the time.

What’s your job title?

I’m the lead test pilot for the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo program. I’ve been with Virgin Galactic since early February 2015, but I’ve been on the program as the test pilot for Scaled Composites, the company that built SpaceShipTwo, for the previous six years. Prior to Scaled I was 30 years in the military and government.

How did you decide to be a test pilot?

One of my earliest memories was John Glenn’s flight. I was enthralled by the concept of flying in space. I knew that to do that, you had to be a test pilot. I wanted to do that from a young age, even though I never thought it would be possible. Nowadays, the majority of test pilots come through the military program. You become a military pilot. You put in for test pilot school. Every six months they have a selection for a few guys and hopefully you’re one of them. You need the aptitude, but you also need the right degrees or a scientific career to be successful in the test pilot curriculum and then in the job itself. You can do it through the civilian side as well.

“NOWADAYS, THE MAJORITY OF TEST PILOTS COME THROUGH THE MILITARY PROGRAM.”

There’s a fully accredited civilian test pilot school here at Mojave, California (where Virgin Galactic is based). You can pay your money and go for a year-long program. But that’s something that an individual can’t do on their own unless they are a multi-millionaire. It mostly happens if you’re an engineer and a pilot who starts flying a lot for his company, and they decide to make you a test pilot. They will foot the bill. A lot of foreign governments do it, too. China sends a lot of pilots over to that school because they’ll never get into the United States military schools.

How many hours of flying do you need?

I don’t know what it is for the civilian test pilot school but for a typical military, when I went through, they wanted 1,000 pilot-in-command hours of a high-performance jet aircraft. I think they have since lowered that to 750 to be reflective of the fact that it’s harder to get time these days, because of budget cuts and because the simulators are better. There’s less actual flying required now.

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You mentioned having the aptitude for being a test pilot. What makes someone good?

I think the main thing is the interest in learning and not just flying from point A to point B. You’re trying to understand what makes an airplane fly, what makes it better, and all the theory that goes into it. It’s a different kind of flying — really high-risk. I’d say there is a good percentage of pilots that would have no interest in being a test pilot because of the perceived danger.

Have you gotten in any tight situations?

Sure. It comes with the territory.

Anything that stands out particularly?

I had an inadvertent spin in SpaceShipTwo in a glide flight a couple years ago.

When an incident like that happens, do you want to go right back up or are you mentally spooked? How do you respond mentally?

If you didn’t screw up – and in my case I hadn’t screwed up; I was doing exactly what we had planned and simulated – then you have to stand down and take a hard look at the data. You have to ask why it didn’t work. Where did our simulation, our wind tunnel model, break down? What do we need to do to fix it? Sometimes it can take a few days for a procedural change because you’re now smarter about something. Other times it can take several months to do a redesign of something, to change an aerodynamic surface or put an aerodynamic Band-Aid on it.

How much input do you have in the procedural adjustment process? Are you working in concert with the engineers and talking them through what happened in the cockpit?

It’s very important as a test pilot that you say what you are feeling. You can’t say, “Well, I think it’s due to this,” or “I would do this to fix that.” You really don’t know. You should just say what you’re experiencing and let the data speak for itself. It’s important to work with the engineers so that the fix is something that makes sense operationally. It might make great sense to make a simple fix, but it might not work within the requirements of the mission. You need to make sure that you’re thinking not just for the flight test side, but also for operational pilots. You have to make sure that the end user, the normal non-test pilot, will find the solution normal and easy to use.

“IT’S VERY IMPORTANT AS A TEST PILOT THAT YOU SAY WHAT YOU ARE FEELING.”

Did you like flying commercial?

I didn’t go commercial until things were drying up at NASA. I had a lot of friends tell me that I would hate commercial flying; I actually enjoyed it. You had to find your own challenges in other ways. You had to pick the best route to be as efficient as possible, to minimize turbulence for the passengers, to be on time, to be smart, to do a good job on the approach. You’re trying to be as professional as possible. Punctual out. Punctual back on the ground. And don’t spill the coffee in the back.

What’s the most fun aircraft that you’ve ever flown?

SpaceShipTwo.

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SR-71 Blackbird

What do you like about flying SpaceShip Two?

I’ve flown the SR-71 Blackbird surveillance plane and prior to SpaceShipTwo, I would have said that. But SpaceShipTwo gives you a mix of everything. It’s an unbelievable feeling while it’s boosting. It’s fun to glide. It’s just fun to fly. It really has your attention. Some planes that are a physical challenge make you feel good when you do well in them but there are also airplanes where you feel like you are cheating death. Ultimately, those are not fun. In SpaceShipTwo, I don’t have that feeling. At least not yet.

“LIKE A CATAPULT SHOT OFF AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER WHEN IT’S IN ROCKET-BOOST.”

With SpaceShipTwo, it’s like a catapult shot off an aircraft carrier when it’s in rocket-boost, but that feeling lasts for a minute instead of a second and a half. The whole time you’re actively flying it — pointing it where you need to go. It’s 3Gs, eyeballs-in so to speak, like a catapult shot, but then you’re doing a 4G pull-up into the vertical. It’s a mix of spaceship, fighter plane, and business jet all in one.

Why a Five-Day Solar Flight Over the Ocean Is So Challenging and Dangerous

Five days, 4,000 miles, no fuel

Next week, pilot André Borschberg will take off in the solar-powered plane Solar Impulse 2. After he does, he’ll be in the air for five days, traversing the Pacific Ocean on his way from Nanjing, China, to Honolulu, Hawaii alone. It only gets crazier from there.

This hop from China to Hawaii is just one leg in a much longer 12-jump trip that’s taking the solar-powered plane and its two pilots around the globe. Shortly after Solar Impulse 2 touches down in Hawaii, its other pilot, Bertrand Piccard, will be taking it back up and across the rest of the Pacific on a four-day flight to Phoenix, Arizona.

Each leg has been a challenge, but these oversea flights are especially grueling. The pair have been preparing for them for years.

THE STAKES ARE HIGH; THERE’S NO BACKUP POWER SHOULD BANKED SUNLIGHT-ENERGY RUN OUT TOO EARLY

Five days is a long time—a commercial jet could make the same trek in some 12 hours—and it takes so long because the Solar Impulse 2 is slow. Its cruising speed is around 25 to 30 knots (roughly 30 miles per hour), Piccard tells The Verge. That is positively pokey, an order of magnitude slower than your average jet.

The tortoise speed is because its 17.4-horsepower motors and four propellers are powered only by the light of the sun hitting the panels on its 208-foot wings, which offers precious little energy compared to jet fuel. So little, in fact, that to make it through the nights, the Solar Impulse 2 has to climb up to roughly 28,000 feet in the morning, coasting down to as just a few thousand at night in order to save precious power.

Credit: Solar Impulse

That up-and-down path comes with a host of complications all its own. For one, at the upper the peaks of the oscillating path, the atmosphere is perilously thin. And because the Impulse 2 doesn’t have a pressurized cabin (left out for weight considerations), it’s all oxygen masks and shivers up there. Plus, pilots enjoy the perk of never sleeping more than 20 minutes at a time. The Impulse 2 is an amazing but fickle machine, and she needs a pilot’s attention at least three times every hour just to keep things on track. After all, the stakes are high; there’s no backup power should banked sunlight energy run out too early. Borschberg will have a parachute and a dry suit, but as Wiredpoints out, there’s still the danger of electrocution, and the unpleasantness of two or three days on a life raft to contend with.

To prepare for their four- and five-day trips, Piccard and Borshberg have both spent long stints in a a cramped simulator. That’s on top of the handful of 10-15 hour flights they’ve logged on the journey’s first half-dozen legs. But spending days seated with barely enough room to stretch is one thing when you’re in a hangar somewhere, and another when you’re above the ocean.

Credit: Solar Impulse

Pilot Bertrand Piccard on the way to Nanjing

For now, takeoff for the next leg is scheduled for sometime around or after May 11, 4:00 PM ET. It’s subject to change however, due to the very very specific weather required: The Impulse 2 needs sunlight for the first three days at least. With no options for an emergency landing, two out of three is bad. In addition, the Impulse 2, slow and light as it is, does not take kindly to wind. At times, headwinds have lead the plane to wind up flying backwards. So planning a flight of this length is ridiculously hard.

But if all goes as planned, two of the most grueling legs in the journey will soon be over, and the Impulse 2 will be that much closer to accomplishing its wildly ambitious goal of fuel-free circumnavigation. More solar power to ’em.

Source: Solar Impulse, Wired, The Verge

NIAC Program Working on Ideas for an Ecosystem on Mars

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program is funding cutting-edge work that is testing the viability of using ecosystem-building pioneer organisms to churn out oxygen by using Martian regolith.

Taming the brutal environment of Mars for future human explorers to survive and thrive there may demand a touch of “ecopoiesis” – the creation of an ecosystem able to support life.

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program is funding cutting-edge work by Eugene Boland, chief scientist at Techshot Inc. of Greenville, Indiana. The scientist has been busy working in the firm’s “Mars room,” which houses a test chamber capable of simulating the Red Planet’s atmospheric pressure, day-night temperature changes and the solar radiation that cascades upon the planet’s surface.

Inside the Mars room, Boland and his team are testing the viability of using ecosystem-building pioneer organisms to churn out oxygen by using Martian regolith. Some organisms within the test bed experiment planted on the Red Planet also could remove nitrogen from the Martian soil.

“This is a possible way to support a human mission to Mars, producing oxygen without having to send heavy gas canisters,” Boland saaid. “Let’s send microbes and let them do the heavy-lifting for us.”

Ultimately, biodomes on Mars that enclose ecopoiesis-provided oxygen through bacterial or algae-driven conversion systems might dot the Red Planet, housing expeditionary teams, Boland suggests.

But first things first.

Selected organisms

Boland and his colleagues envision their test bed gear carried aboard a future Mars rover. At carefully selected sites, the small container-like devices would be augured into the ground, planted just a few inches in depth. Then the selected Earth organisms — extremophiles like certain cyanobacteria – would interact with the Mars soil that has been captured within the container.

Yet another possible ingredient extracted from the Martian soil is liquid water, in the form of subterranean ice.

Boland says that NASA’s Curiosity rover now wheeling about on Mars has shown the pressure and temperature on the planet “flirts at the idea” that liquid water may be possible on that distant world.

Biological solution

In a form of “huff and puff” science, the sensor-laden container would detect the presence or absence of a metabolic product — like oxygen — reporting the find back to Earth via a Mars-orbiting relay satellite.

Boland adds that great care would be taken to craft the container to seal tightly, thereby preventing the Earthly organisms from being exposed to the Martian atmosphere.

The NIAC-funded work is dedicated to opening the door to a biological solution to shipping cylinders of breathable air to Mars at great expense, Boland says. It is another alternative to a known problem of oxygen consumption for the human explorers NASA plans to send to Mars, he adds.

“I’m a biologist and an engineer. So I want to put those two things together to make a useful tool,” Boland concludes.

Source: NASA

Image: NASA

Two new Triumph Tiger 800s revealed

Triumph have added two new Tiger 800s to expand the range to six with the firm claiming the latest two – named XRT and XCA – are more travel focussed.

Triumph XRT Tiger

Triumph XCA Tiger

The two bikes have been pitched as range-toppers and add a raft of new equipment including a larger capacity 650W alternator to power standard fit heated rider and pillions seats, LED foglights and provide power for ancilliaries such at satnavs or heated clothing.

The XRT has a 19in front and 17in rear cast alloy wheels, the XCA gets longer travel WP suspension to tackle off road riding and has a larger 21in front wheel.

The two new bikes are also available in two new colours; Intense Orange for the XRT and Matt Khaki Green on the XCA. Both bikes also get fitted pannier rails for the optional Triumph Expedition aluminium pannier system.

Other than the mechanical parts already listed, under the skin both bikes remain unchanged with the 94bhp three-cylinder engine, chassis and running gear all the same.

Triumph Tiger XRT spec highlights

Both models add:

Uprated 650W alternator

Heated rider and pillion seats

Heated grips

Fog lamps (LED for XCA)

3^rd additional auxiliary 12v power socket

Aluminium pannier rails

GPS mounting kit

Tyre pressure monitoring system

CNC machined brake reservoir

Aluminium radiator guard

(XCA gets CNC machined foot rests)

Saturday Night Special

The phrase Saturday night special (SNS) is a colloquial term used in the United States and Canada for any inexpensive handgun. Saturday night specials have been defined as compact, inexpensive, small-caliber handguns with perceived low quality; however, there is no official definition of “Saturday night special” under federal law, though some states define “Saturday night specials” or “junk guns” by means of composition or materials strength. Low cost and high availability make these weapons attractive to many buyers despite their shortcomings. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, they were commonly referred to as suicide specials.

The term “Saturday night special” came into wider use with the passing of the Gun Control Act of 1968. The term (and the gun control act itself) have been described as racist in origin because the act banned the importation and manufacture of many inexpensive firearms, most notably a large number of revolvers made byRöhm Gesellschaft, which were typically purchased and owned by low-income African Americans. With importation banned, a number of companies in the United States began production of inexpensive handguns, including Raven Arms, Jennings Firearms, Phoenix Arms, Lorcin Engineering Company, Davis Industries,Arcadia Machine & Tool, and Sundance Industries, which collectively came to be known as the “Ring of Fire companies”

Raven Arms MP-25, an example of a .25 caliber semi-automatic type of gun commonly considered a Saturday night special.

Röhm RG-66, an example of an inexpensive “Saturday night special” banned from import by the 1968 Act

Colt Army Model 1860 revolver

Colt Model 1861 Navyreproduction 19th Century laws restricting handguns to the Army and Navy pistol were the first “Saturday night special” bans.

Röhm RG-14, the “saturday night special” used by John Hinkley in the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan

Natural Rhododendron tunnels in Reenagross Park

Natural Rhododendron tunnels in Reenagross Park, Kenmare, Ireland

Adventdalen Valley

Adventdalen Valley,Svalbard, Norway.