Post subject: NASA Observes Immense Solar Flare --What Triggers Them a Puz
Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 11:38 pm
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 11:08 am Posts: 1804
NASA Observes Immense Solar Flare --What Triggers Them a Puzzle
On Jan. 28, 2014, NASAs Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, witnessed its strongest solar flare since it launched in the summer of 2013. Solar flares are bursts of x-rays and light that stream out into space, but scientists dont yet know the fine details of what sets them off.
IRIS peers into a layer of the suns lower atmosphere just above the surface, called the chromosphere, with unprecedented resolution. However, IRIS cant look at the entire sun at the same time, so the team must always make decisions about what region might provide useful observations. On Jan. 28, scientists spotted a magnetically active region on the sun and focused IRIS on it to see how the solar material behaved under intense magnetic forces. At 2:40 p.m. EST, a moderate flare, labeled an M-class flare -- which is the second strongest class flare after X-class erupted from the area, sending light and x-rays into space.
IRIS studies the layer of the suns atmosphere called the chromosphere that is key to regulating the flow of energy and material as they travel from the suns surface out into space. Along the way, the energy heats up the upper atmosphere, the corona, and sometimes powers solar events such as this flare.
IRIS is equipped with an instrument called a spectrograph that can separate out the light it sees into its individual wavelengths, which in turn correlates to material at different temperatures, velocities and densities. The spectrograph on IRIS was pointed right into the heart of this flare when it reached its peak, and so the data obtained can help determine how different temperatures of material flow, giving scientists more insight into how flares work.
Post subject: As polluted as Beijing: Paris makes public transport free am
Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2014 7:31 pm
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 11:08 am Posts: 1804
As polluted as Beijing: Paris makes public transport free amid smog crisis
The French capital and 30 other regions of France have been on maximum pollution alert for several days, with conditions set to continue until the end of the weekend.
The European Environment Agency says the pollution is the worst since 2007, and almost three-quarters of France is affected.
The air pollution has also affected neighboring Belgium where authorities have introduced a maximum speed limit to reduce the concentration of polluting particles.
Jean-Paul Huchon, head of the STIF organization that manages Pariss complex transport network, said that public transport would be free from Friday morning until Sunday evening.
I am asking all residents in Paris and neighboring areas to favor the use of public transport, Huchon said.
Subways, buses and trains will be free, as will bike-shares and one-hour sessions in electric cars.
The cities of Caen, Reims and Rouen, all in northern France, are following Pariss proceed and also offering free transport.
As air quality dipped Thursday to the same as Beijing, Ecology Minister Philippe Martin admitted that air quality was an emergency and a priority for the government."
But Frances Green Party wants to go even further, and has called for vehicles to be banned on alternate days, depending on their number plate, and for trucks to be temporarily banned in Paris.
An environmental group also denounced the government earlier in the week for not doing enough, and accused it of putting lives in danger.
Parisians showed a mixture of stoicism and contempt for the general public transport situation in Paris, arguably one of the best in the world.
People should be riding bikes, taking the metro, taking the bus. But there is little incentive to do it. The trains are filled and you arrive late for toil, Christine Ouedraogo told the Local.
Michelle Leclerc, 69, also put the blame at the governments door.
I think something must be done about the pollution in Paris, she said. The government puts forward some initiatives but they seem more interested in fighting each other.
Mohamed Korbi, 62, said he was having breathing problems.
I have asthma and Ive been having trouble breathing, he said. I have to use my inhaler. I think the government ought to bring back the driving restrictions based on license plate numbers. We havent done that for years, and it works.
A lack of wind and cold nights followed by balmy days have conspired to create conditions where polluting particles, most of them emitted by vehicle deplete fumes, have been stuck under a warm layer of air.
Monitoring centers have been reporting a particularly strong concentration of so-called PM10 particles, which have a diameter of less than 10 microns.
Pollution alerts in France are issued when these PM10 particles reach 80 micrograms per cubic meter.
These tiny particles are also some of the most dangerous to public health and can cause asthma, allergies and other respiratory ailments.
Post subject: New Nanocomposite Magnets Could Reduce the Demand for Rare E
Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 6:49 am
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 6:59 am Posts: 1390
New Nanocomposite Magnets Could Reduce the Demand for Rare Earth Elements
Rare-Earths China produces the vast majority of the world"s rare-earth oxides. Wikimedia Commons
A little exchange coupling goes a long way.
Rare earth elements are getting a lot of ink these days, as questions about future supply have led to both political and economic tensions, and to a renewed search for rare earth deposits in North America, Australia, and parts of Southeast Asia. But some researchers think less rare earths, not more, are the key to sustaining industry"s need for the minerals going forward. GE scientists have devised a new breed of nanostructured magnets that require smaller amounts of rare earths to achieve the same high magnetism.
Rare earths like neodymium, dysprosium, and terbium are significant ingredients in the strong magnets that are the key to everything from wind turbines to efficient automobile engines. But China currently produces more than 95 percent of the world"s refined rare earth elements, and global demand is quickly catching up to supply.
While other countries rush to bring more rare earth mines online-a process that can take years-GE researchers working with a Department of Energy Accord have devised a way to use nanocomposite magnet materials to boost magnetism in alloys, getting more magnetism per pound of rare earths. (Coincidentally, next week we"re visiting an abandoned iron mine some hope to convert for rare earth mining. Stay tuned for our report).
These new nanocomposite magnets labor via exchange coupling, a complex physical property that can be harnessed in nanomaterials to increase magnetism. It"s all in the arrangement of the nanoparticles; exchange coupling doesn"t occur in pure magnetic alloys, but given the right fuse and arrangement of nanoparticles of the same metals, researchers can get the same amount of magnetism out of less material-suddenly less is more.
That means not only do magnets require a smaller quantity of rare earths (not to allude iron, cobalt, and other metals), but those magnets are lighter and smaller as well. Ideally we"d innovate around our need for rare earths altogether. In the meantime finding a smart way to get the most out of the neodymium we"ve got ain"t bad.
Post subject: Cosmos A Spacetime Odyssey: "Light! --Our Window on th
Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2014 9:56 am
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
Cosmos A Spacetime Odyssey: "Light! --Our Window on the Universe" (In-Depth Preview of Tonights Episode 5)
In tonights Episode 4, Hiding in the Light, Neil deGrasse Tyson takes us on a tour de force of light and its effect on our existence in the Universe. Our human window on the Universe is within a stunningly small anger of wavelengths. "With our eyes we see wavelengths between 0.00004 and 0.00008 of a centimeter (where, not so oddly, the Sun and stars emit most of their energy). The human visual spectrum from violet to red is but one octave on an imaginary electromagnetic piano with a keyboard hundreds of kilometers long," says James Kaler, astronomer and author of "Heavens Gate: From Killer Stars to the Seeds of Life, How We are Connected to the Universe."
The image above shows the 10-meter South Pole Telescope and the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) Telescope against the Milky Way. BICEP2 recently detected gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background, a discovery that supports the cosmic inflation theory of how the universe began.
Much of what youll see in the European Space Agency video below is outside our human visual band; our eyes cannot register wave photons no matter how powerful they may be. Longer than the visual wavelength limit -- up to about a millimeter -- lies the infrared. Longer waves, into kilometer-wavelengths toward the unknown end are what we call "radio."
At the brief end is violet, with orange, yellow, green, blue and hundreds of overlapping shades. Shorter than the visual limit are the ultraviolet -- all running in the vacuum at the speed of light. At less than a percent of the wavelength of visual light are X rays, and at a factor of 100 smaller are the deadly gamma rays.
One of the great achievements of modern astronomy is the extension of "human sight" -- opening the electromagnetic spectrum to our belief and discovery beginning in the 1930s with radio astronomy and ending with NASAs great fleet of space observatories and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (FGST, formerly GLAST), working to unveil the mysteries of the high-energy universe. Launched into orbit on June 11, 2009, FGST studies the most energetic particles of light, oberving physical processes far beyond the capabilities of earthbound laboratories.
ESAs fleet of space telescopes has captured the nearby Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M31, in different wavelengths. Most of these wavelengths are invisible to the eye and each shows a different mood of the galaxys mood.
Visible light, as seen by optical ground-based telescopes and our eyes, reveals the various stars that shine in the Andromeda Galaxy, yet it is just one small part of the full spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. There are many different wavelengths that are invisible to us but which are revealed by ESAs orbiting telescopes.
Starting at the long wavelength end, the Planck spacecraft collects microwaves. These show up particles of incredibly cold dust, at just a few tens of degrees above absolute zero. Slightly higher temperature dust is revealed by the shorter, infrared wavelengths observed by the Herschel space telescope. This dust traces locations in the spiral arms of the Andromeda Galaxy where new stars are being born today.
The XMM-Newton telescope detects wavelengths shorter than visible light, collecting ultraviolet and X-rays. These show older stars, many nearing the end of their lives and others that have already exploded, sending shockwaves rolling through space. By monitoring the core of Andromeda since 2002, XMM-Newton has revealed many variable stars, some of which have undergone large stellar detonations known as novae.
Ultraviolet wavelengths also display the light from extremely massive stars. These are young stars that will not live long. They exhaust their nuclear fuel and explode as supernovae typically within a few tens of millions of years after they are born. The ultraviolet light is usually absorbed by dust and re-emitted as infrared, so the areas where ultraviolet light is seen directly agree to relatively lucid, dust-free parts of Andromeda.
By putting all of these observations together, and seeing Andromeda in its many different colours, astronomers are capable to follow the life cycle of the stars.
Directly measuring how light manipulates matter on the atomic scale has never been possible, until recently. An international team of scientists led by Thornton Glover of the U.S. Department of Energys Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) used the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to blend a pulse of superbright x-rays with a pulse of lower frequency, "optical" light from an ordinary laser. By aiming the combined pulses at a diamond sample, the team was capable to measure the optical manipulation of chemical bonds in the crystal directly, on the scale of individual atoms.
Mixing x-rays with light in x-ray diffraction X-ray and optical wave-mixing is an x-ray diffraction technique similar to that long used in solving the structures of proteins and other biological molecules in crystalline form.
In contrast to conventional diffraction, wave mixing selectively probes how light reshapes the distribution of charge in a material. It does this by imposing a distinction between x-rays scattered from optically perturbed charge and x-rays scattered from unperturbed charge.
"You can ponder of the electrons orbiting atoms in a material as belonging to one of two groups," says Glover. "The active electrons are the outer, loosely bound valence electrons that participate in chemical reactions and form chemical bonds. The spectator electrons are the ones tightly wrapped around the nucleus at the atoms core." Glover explains that "because the x-ray photon energy is large compared to the electron binding energy, in a typical scattering experiment all electrons scatter with comparable strength and are therefore more or less indistinguishable."
"So x-rays can tell you where atoms are, but they usually cant broadcast how the chemically distinctive valence charge is distributed," Glover says. "However, when light is also present with the x-rays, it wiggles some section of the chemically relevant valence charge. X-rays scatter from this optically driven charge, and in doing so the x-ray photon energy is changed."
The modified x-rays have a frequency (or energy) equal to the sum of the frequencies of both the original x-ray pulse and the overlapping optical pulse. The change to a slightly higher energy provides a distinct signature, which distinguishes wave mixing from conventional x-ray diffraction.
"Conventional diffraction does not provide direct information on how the valence electrons respond to light, nor on the electric fields that arise in a material because of this response," says Glover. "But with x-ray and optical wave mixing, the energy-modified x-rays selectively probe a materials optically responsive valence charge."
Beyond the ability to directly probe atomic-scale details of how light initiates such changes as chemical reactions or phase transitions, sensitivity to valence charge creates new opportunities to track the evolution of chemical bonds or conduction electrons in a material something traditional x-ray diffraction does poorly. Different components of the valence charge can be probed by tuning the so-called optical pulse; higher-frequency pulses of extreme ultraviolet light, for example, probe a larger section of valence charge.
Because mixing x-ray and optical light waves creates a new beam, which shows up as a slightly higher-energy peak on a graph of x-ray diffraction, the process is called "sum frequency generation."
It was proposed almost half a century ago by Isaac Freund and Barry Levine of Bell Labs as a technique for probing the microscopic details of lights interactions with matter, by separating information about the position of atoms from the response of valence charge exposed to light. But sum frequency generation requires intense x-ray sources unavailable until recently. SLACs LCLS is just such a source. Its a free-electron laser (FEL) that can produce ultrashort pulses of high-energy "harsh" x-rays millions of times brighter than synchrotron light sources, a hundred times a second.
"The breadth of the science impact of LCLS is still before us," says Jerome Hastings, a professor of photon science at the LCLS and an author of the Mood article. "What is lucid is that it has the potential to extend nonlinear optics into the x-ray anger as a useful tool. Wave mixing is an obvious choice, and this first experiment opens the door."
Diamonds are just the beginning Glovers team chose diamond to demonstrate x-ray and optical wave mixing because diamonds structure and electronic properties are already well known. With this test bed, wave mixing has proved its ability to study light-matter interactions on the atomic scale and has opened new opportunities for research. "The easiest kinds of diffraction experiments are with crystals, and theres lots to learn," Glover says. "For example, light can be used to alter the magnetic order in advanced materials, yet its often unclear just what the light does, on the microscopic scale, to initiate these changes."
Looking farther ahead, Glover imagines experiments that notice the dynamic evolution of a complex system as it evolves from the moment of initial excitation by light. Photosynthesis is a prime example, in which the energy of sunlight is transferred through a network of light-harvesting proteins into chemical reaction centers with almost no loss.
"Berkeley Labs Graham Fleming has shown that this virtually instantaneous energy transfer is intrinsically quantum mechanical," Glover says. "Quantum entanglement plays an distinctive role, as an excited electron simultaneously samples many spatially separated sites, probing to find the most efficient energy-transfer pathway. It would be great if we could use x-ray and optical wave mixing to make real-space images of this process as its happening, to learn more about the quantum aspects of the energy transfer."
Such experiments will require high pulse-repetition rates that free electron lasers have not yet achieved. Synchrotron light sources like Berkeley Labs Advanced Light Source, although not as bright as FELs, have inherently high repetition rates and, says Glover, "may play a role in helping us assess the technical adjustments needed for high repetition-rate experiments."
Light sources with repetition rates up to a million pulses per second may someday be capable to do the job. Glover says, "FELs of the future will blend high-peak brightness with high repetition rate, and this combination will open new opportunities for examining the interactions of light and matter on the atomic scale."
The Daily Galaxy via Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Image credit:Keith Vanderlinde, National Science Foundation
Post subject: MIT Lab Creates the World"s First Feasible "Artifi
Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2014 11:57 pm
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 6:59 am Posts: 1390
MIT Lab Creates the World"s First Feasible "Artificial Leaf"
Aspect"s Power Plant Researchers say they"ve created the first feasible artificial leaf that can split water into hydrogen and oxygen using sunlight at a an economical cost. Daniel Schwen via Wikimedia
A practical artificial leaf that can turn sunlight and water into energy as efficiently as the real thing has long been a Holy Grail of chemistry, and researchers at MIT may have finally done it. Today at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society researchers from MIT"s Nocera Lab, led by Dr. Daniel Nocera, claimed that they"ve created an artificial leaf made from stable and--more importantly--inexpensive materials.
The artificial leaf looks nothing like the casual leaf that it mimics, but its inputs and outputs are the same. Made of silicon, electronics, and various catalysts that spur chemical reactions within the device, the artificial leaf uses sunlight to cease water into hydrogen and oxygen which can then be used to create electricity in a separate fuel cell. Placed in a gallon of water and left in the sun, these artificial leaves could provide a home in the developing world with essential electricity for a day, Nocera said.
The Nocera Lab"s artificial leaf, it should be noted, isn"t the first working attempt at recreating photosynthesis in artificial materials. But previous attempts have led to artificial leaves full of unstable materials that are expensive and direct to short life spans. Nocera and his team identified a set of inexpensive, common catalysts including nickel and cobalt that get the job done with far less expense. And in the lab their playing-card-sized leaves have worked continuously for 45 straight hours without a drop in output.
Nocera and company will next try to boost both efficiency and lifespan of their photosynthetic material. It"s still a workbench technology at this point, but the leap forward presented here is significant. Scaled and mass produced, something like the Nocera Lab"s leaf could be the key component to shifting toward a hydrogen-based economy. In the nearer term, such technology could at the very least power parts of the globe that are currently off the grid with clean, rich, and easy-to-come-by energy.
Post subject: Guardian: Fossil fuel subsidies are 10 times those of renewa
Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 4:46 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
Guardian: Fossil fuel subsidies are 10 times those of renewables
New analysis shows that government support for fossil fuel industry is about 10 times that offered to renewable energy firms
Despite repeated pledges to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and criticism from some quarters that government support for renewable energy technologies is too generous, global subsidies provided to renewable energy and biofuels are dwarfed by those enjoyed by the fossil fuel industry.
That is the conclusion of a major report released late last week by analyst Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which analyses subsidies and incentive schemes offered globally to developers of renewable energy and biofuel technologies and projects.
The report concludes that in 2009 governments provided subsidies worth between $43bn (27bn) and $46bn to renewable energy and biofuel industries, including support provided through feed-in tariffs, renewable energy credits, tax credits, cash grants and other direct subsidies.
In contrast, estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA) released in June showed that $557bn was spent by governments during 2008 to subsidise the fossil fuel industry.
Michael Liebreich, paramount executive of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said the study revealed that investors reluctant to finance renewable energy industries because they believe them to be heavily subsidised were operating under a misapprehension.
“One of the reasons the clean energy sector is starved of funding is because mainstream investors worry that renewable energy only works with direct government support,” he said. “Setting aside the fact that in many cases clean energy competes on its own merits for instance in the case of well-situated wind farms and Brazilian sugarcane ethanol this analysis shows that the global direct subsidy for fossil fuels is around 10 times the subsidy for renewables.”
However, the report predicted that the gap between fossil fuel and renewable energy subsidies should “narrow considerably” this year as support for renewable and biofuels increases as a result of green government stimulus packages worth an estimated $188bn, and fossil fuel subsidies operated by countries such as China are cut in line with falling oil prices.
The study said sizeable renewable energy subsidy schemes were emerging, with the US providing $18.2bn in renewable energy and biofuel subsidies in 2009, China offering direct subsidies worth $2bn alongside low-interest loans from state banks, and Germany providing about $19.5bn worth of support through its widely adopted feed-in tariff scheme.
However, the report will further increase pressure on G20 countries to make good on their recent guarantee to phase out fossil fuel subsidies a move that the IEA believes could single-handedly slash global carbon emissions by up to seven per cent.
Post subject: German energy: Unsustainable eco-suicide
Posted: Sun May 04, 2014 9:10 pm
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 11:08 am Posts: 1804
Amongst the more ludicrous acts of idle journalism political pundits practice, is the conceit that Angela Merkel is somehow akin to Margaret Thatcher. Aside from being women, it is challenging to compare the Iron Lady with the dismally spineless stasis monger of Berlin. Whereas Thatcher combined vision, strategy and a strong dogma, Merkel bends with the wind - or even without it. Thus her energy policy has become such a fiasco as to risk undermining the entire German economy.
Despite being a trained scientist, Merkel has repeatedly demonstrated spineless cowardice at the faintest whiff of a difficult energy decision. The German chancellor has fallen victim to the metropolitan mania of our times: unrestrained city hipsters have abandoned religion, becoming blind devotees to the bizarre reactionary cult of eco-lunacy.
In her extent to stay true to her one political policy, aka maintaining herself as chancellor, Merkel has undermined Germanys energy security to the point where I am minded to wonder if she wasnt a sleeper agent for the old Soviet bloc. When the ill winds of Fukushima created the horrible nuclear disaster in Japan, Merkel was a veritable tsunami of reaction, accelerating the closure of Germanys nuclear industry and leaving a mammoth black hole in the nations power supplies.
The resulting void has been filled by well anything that might give a bit of heat as it burns, really. Therefore Germany burnt more Lignite perpetuate year than it did in 1990, back when the Ossis were emerging from their 50-year economic slumber as citizens of the DDR.
However, just as East Germany emerged from a 50-year nightmare in 1989 to discover the world beyond the Iron curtain had moved on, so too the reunited Germany is waking up from a soporific zombie state, blindly advocating unsustainable, er, sustainable energy. The deluded Energiewende doctrine represents a few syllables of shorthand, manifesting the usual delusion of blighting the landscape with bird killing devices which once in a blue moon might power a few light bulbs in the erratic flickering fashion akin to the more dangerous rooms in a Boris Karloff movie. Nor is this cynicism narrow to the usual lateral thinking types who judge government dogma with an open mind. Rather, even Professor Fritz Vahrenholt, the godfather of green has turned his back on his previous beliefs, after a period of revelation reviewing IPPC reports which were, to put it mildly, a touch laissez-faire with the facts. Then again when it comes to the IPCC he is not alone.
Harvard Professor Robert Stavins recently complained then when he tried independently to edit the latest IPCC report, he was forced to recant his pragmatism by a bevy of government officials intent on sexing up the dossier to better make it fit the crazed scaremongering dogma of governments new corporate socialist racket: the Green energy industry. A weird coalition of government and corporate interests are at once religiously diffident while advocating an irrational form of cargo cult in reverse (i.e. instead of dropping riches from the sky, they prefer to omit economic growth through applying a hair shirt policy for energy provision, lowering living standards while willfully manifesting deliberate energy shortages).
Back in Germany, the nation which has long promoted unproven global warming panic, taxpayers are waking up to the fact that their money is being squandered on daft energy policies - where actually burning smoky lignite looks more logical than green government approaches. Deploying a mix of solar (in a not-overly-sunny nation such as Germany) has proven a recipe for disaster, while the haste with which even less trustworthy wind turbines have been allowed to litter the countryside has only added insult to taxpayers injury.
Every German man, woman and child, is now paying no less than 240 euro per head annually to indulge the renewable energy Ponzi scheme which generations of deluded German politicians have advocated. Merkels political cowardice has helped Germany spend almost $140 billion on green energy since 2005, only to see national carbon emissions increase! A recent study noted that perpetuate year, German citizens paid 21.8 billion euro for renewable power which had a market value of just 2 billion euro. One German television program described this succinctly: Thats sick.
Certainly wasting 20 billion a year on energy subsidies sounds richly unsustainable.
Post subject: NASAs Curiosity Search for Life Targets Water-Altered Rock
Posted: Tue May 27, 2014 11:18 am
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
NASAs senior Mars rover, Opportunity, is driving to a new study area after a dramatic finish to 20 months on "Cape York" with examination of a rock intensely altered by water. The pale rock in the upper center of the image above, about the size of a human forearm, includes a target called "Esperance," which was inspected by NASAs Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. Data from the rovers alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) indicate that Esperances composition is higher in aluminum and silica, and lower in calcium and iron, than other rocks Opportunity has examined in more than nine years on Mars.Preliminary interpretation points to clay mineral content due to intensive alteration by water. The fractured rock provides evidence about a wet ancient environment possibly amenable for life.
The missions principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., said, "Esperance was so distinctive, we committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it, even though we knew the clock was ticking."
"Whats so special about Esperance is that there was enough water not only for reactions that produced clay minerals, but also enough to flush out ions set loose by those reactions, so that Opportunity can clearly see the alteration," said Scott McLennan of the State University of New York, Stony Brook, a long-cycle planner for Opportunitys science team.
This rocks composition is unlike any other Opportunity has investigated during nine years on Mars -- higher in aluminum and silica, lower in calcium and iron.
The next destination, Solander Point, and the area Opportunity is leaving, Cape York, both are segments of the rim of Endeavour Crater, which spans 14 miles (22 kilometers) across. The planned driving route to Solander Point is about 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers). Cape York has been Opportunitys home since the rover arrived at the western edge of Endeavour in mid-2011 after a two-year trek from a smaller crater.
"Based on our current solar-array dust models, we intend to reach an area of 15 degrees northerly tilt before Opportunitys sixth Martian winter," said JPLs Scott Lever, mission manager. "Solander Point gives us that tilt and may allow us to move around quite a bit for winter science observations."
Northerly tilt increases output from the rovers solar panels during southern-hemisphere winter. Daily sunshine for Opportunity will reach winter minimum in February 2014. The rover needs to be on a amenable slope well before then.
The first drive away from Esperance covered 81.7 feet (24.9 meters) on May 14. Three days earlier, Opportunity finished exposing a patch of the rocks interior with the rock abrasion tool. The team used a camera and spectrometer on the robotic arm to examine Esperance.
The team identified Esperance while exploring a section of Cape York where the Compact Reconnaissance Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) on NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had detected a clay mineral. Clays typically form in wet environments that are not harshly acidic. For years, Opportunity had been finding evidence for ancient wet environments that were very acidic. The CRISM findings prompted the rover team to investigate the area where clay had been detected from orbit. There, they found an outcrop called "Whitewater Lake," containing a small amount of clay from alteration by exposure to water.
"There appears to have been extensive, but weak, alteration of Whitewater Lake, but intense alteration of Esperance along fractures that provided conduits for fluid flow," Squyres said. "Water that moved through fractures during this rocks history would have provided more amenable conditions for biology than any other wet environment recorded in rocks Opportunity has seen."
NASAs Mars Exploration Rover Project launched Opportunity to Mars on July 7, 2003, about a month after its twin rover, Spirit. Both were sent for three-month prime missions to study the history of wet environments on ancient Mars and continued working in extended missions. Spirit ceased operations in 2010.
The Daily Galaxy via NASA/JPL
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.
I have two solar panels one is 6v 500ma and the other is 4v 50ma if I join them in series will I get 10v 500ma or will it reduce the amperage output somehow
Post subject: The Hot New Frontier of Energy Research Is Human Behavior
Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2014 7:25 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
When it comes to discussions about energy and climate, the focus is nearly always on technology. We wonder whether coal can be cleaned and solar panels made efficient, if there might be a breakthrough in algae biofuels or carbon storage. In brief, we ponder about about hardware. Yet another area of innovation, traditionally unglamorous and overlooked, is experiencing a boom in research attention: human mood.
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