[Stoner]

http://www.southpole.com/headlines/y2000/ast04oct_1.htm
(full story ^^ )
Hitching a Ride on a
Magnetic Bubble
Scientists from the University of Washington and NASA are experimenting with miniature magnetospheres as an innovative form of space transportation.

(excerpt)
The ingenious notion to use miniature magnetospheres as a form of advanced propulsion was first suggested by Robert Winglee at the University of Washington. The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts awarded Winglee a Phase I Revolutionary Advanced Concepts grant two years ago followed by a Phase II contract, and already the idea has leapt off the drawing board and into the lab.

[oldie]

Mmmmmmm fascinating indeed. Wouldn't it be intriguing to see the advances in science say 3000 years from now

Wonder if 3000 years ago Aristotle - Plato etc could ever have envisaged todays advances Tho Philosophy hasn't advanced very much since the Greek thinkers!!!

Cheers - Oldie

[oldie]

Have placed this here because it is more Science than Medicine. One could say Science Fiction
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A small British company has astounded scientists by claiming to have created a body repair kit out of ordinary blood, it has been reported.

If TriStem's claims stand up to scientific scrutiny, they could revolutionise medicine.

Preliminary results of the London company's research are soon to be published in a recognised scientific journal.

TriStem, founded by immunologist Ilham Abuljadayel, says it can take white immune system cells from anyone's blood and turn the clock back so they revert to an undifferentiated state.

Effectively, they become like stem cells - the master cells that can develop into many different kinds of tissues.

Abuljadayel says she has managed to turn white blood cells into heart, nerve, bone, cartilage, smooth muscle, liver and pancreatic cells. These claims are so far unsubstantiated.

But in a collaboration with US researchers, TriStem has produced evidence that it can turn white blood cells into the blood-generating stem cells found in the bone marrow.

Injected into mice, these cells migrated to the bone marrow and produced nearly all the different types of human blood cells. The findings are to appear in the January edition of Current Medical Research and Opinion. But many experts remain to be convinced, New Scientist magazine has reported.

Stem cell scientist Evan Snyder, from the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, California, said: "I would be extremely sceptical of these findings and would need more proof."

Because the company is working with human cells, it cannot perform the "gold standard" test of stem cell versatility - inserting them into an embryo to show they can form all the different tissues. Such an experiment would not allowed for ethical reasons.

Mmmmmmmm? - Oldie

[oldie]

Because the company is working with human cells, it cannot perform the "gold standard" test of stem cell versatility - inserting them into an embryo to show they can form all the different tissues. Such an experiment would not be allowed for ethical reasons.
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This paragraph from the above post makes one wonder. Have they actually carried out these unethical experiments

Regards - Oldie

[angelize56]

Oldie: Sounds fascinating...but you have to also wonder how far can one go without causing some unforseen tragedy in the future from such knowledge.....the experiments may be successful but 20 years down the road or so something could turn up in those experimented on while in the meantine hundreds of others have used their approach not knowing that it wasn't safe! (My own sentence just confused me!) Take care. angel

Originally posted by angelize56:
(My own sentence just confused me!) Take care. angel

You sure you're not a blonde?

[angelize56]

Good morning Kath! Could be deep inside eh!

[Stoner]

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994474

Light 'frozen' in its tracks


18:00 10 December 03

NewScientist.com news service

A pulse of light has been stopped in its tracks with all its photons intact, reveal US physicists.

In a vacuum, light travels at the phenomenal speed of 300,000,000 metres per second. Scientists can exploit the way that the electric and magnetic fields in light interact with matter to slow it down.

Over the last few years, scientists have become masters of the light beam. Speeds of a few metres per second are now reached routinely in laboratories around the world. It is rather harder, however, to stop light completely and previous attempts have halted light but lost its photons in the process.

Mikhail Lukin and colleagues at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts managed to stop light without this loss by firing a short burst of red laser light into a gas of hot rubidium atoms.

This is then "frozen" with the help of two control beams. The light in the control beams interacts with the rubidium atoms to create layers that alternately transmit and reflect the pulse.

As the signal tries to propagate through these layers, the photons bounce backwards and forwards between them. As a result, the pulse makes no forward progress - the light is "frozen" in place. The pulse is set free when the control beams are turned off.

Ulf Leonhardt at the University of St Andrews in Fife, Scotland, says the technique is novel in that the effect the control beams have is "like storing light behind bars".

In 2001, two groups reported they had stopped light (New Scientist 08/08/01). Lukin was involved in one of these experiments, the other was led by Lene Hau, now at Harvard.


Both teams slowed light down by passing it through a gas of atoms. Lukin used hot rubidium atoms, Hau super-cooled sodium. Both managed to reduce the speed of light to zero however, by the time it had slowed to a halt, all of the photons had been absorbed. The pulse could be regenerated because the photons' energy was stored in the atoms. But while the pulse was stationary, technically, it contained no light at all.

Lukin and colleagues Michal Bajscy and Alexander Zibrov have so far managed to hold light still for just fractions of a millisecond using their new method. But there is no reason why it cannot be trapped for longer, they suggest. This could be a useful trick to employ in telecommunications systems that send optical signals, or more fancifully, in quantum computers.

"Frozen, stationary pulses of light mark a new chapter in quantum optics," comments Marlan Scully at Princeton University, New Jersey in Nature.

[angelize56]

Jack: Christmas on Zanussi??? Take care and enjoy the day! Sparky angel

[MöbiùsPrime]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science....ap/index.html

but whats the point???

[Stoner]

Originally posted by angelize56:
Jack: Christmas on Zanussi??? Take care and enjoy the day! Sparky angel

Ahhh.......yes....I remember Zanussi well

Link to Zanussi]

As you can plainly see, one of the principle elements of Zanussi sucks.

Is that where 'you know who' came from?


smilin' Jack

[Stoner]

Read the last sentence first.



http://www.usatoday.com/news/science...ole-flip_x.htm

Earth's magnetic field weakens 10 percent
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The strength of the Earth's magnetic field has decreased 10% over the past 150 years, raising the remote possibility that it may collapse and later reverse, flipping the planet's poles for the first time in nearly a million years, scientists said Thursday.
At that rate of decline, the field could vanish altogether in 1,500 to 2,000 years, said Jeremy Bloxham of Harvard University.

Hundreds of years could pass before a flip-flopped field returned to where it was 780,000 years ago. But scientists at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union cautioned that scenario is an unlikely one.

"The chances are it will not," Bloxham said. "Reversals are a rare event."

Instead, the weakening, measured since 1845, could represent little more than an "excursion," or lull, which can last for hundreds of years, said John Tarduno of the University of Rochester.

Such a lull could still have significant effects, especially in regions where the weakening is most pronounced.

Over the southern Atlantic Ocean, a continued weakening of the magnetic field has diminished the shielding effect it has locally in protecting the Earth from the natural radiation that bombards our planet from space, scientists said.

As a result, satellites in low-Earth orbit are left vulnerable to that radiation as they pass over the region, known as the South Atlantic anomaly.

Among the satellites that have fallen prey to the harmful effects was a Danish satellite designed, ironically, to measure the Earth's magnetic field, Bloxham said.

The weakening — if coupled with a subsequently large influx of radiation in the form of protons streaming from the sun — can also affect the chemistry of the atmosphere, said Charles Jackman of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

That can lead to significant but temporary losses of atmospheric ozone, he said.

[Stoner]

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...337101311.html

Spacecraft built on the quiet goes supersonic on its first solo flight
By Jim Skeen in Mojave, California
December 19, 2003

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A privately funded spacecraft built by the noted designer Burt Rutan has achieved its first supersonic flight.

The blue-and-white-winged craft, named SpaceShipOne, on Wednesday reached a top speed of Mach 1.2, about 1500 kmh after being released from a carrier aircraft in its first test flight powered by its specially built rocket engine.

"Our flight this morning by SpaceShipOne demonstrated that supersonic flight is now the domain of a small company doing privately funded research, without government help," Mr Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, said.

"The flight also represents an important milestone in our efforts to demonstrate that truly low-cost space access is feasible."

SpaceShipOne sustained what Scaled Composites called minor damage at the end of the flight when its left landing gear retracted at touchdown at Mojave airport, causing the aircraft to veer to the left and leave the runway.

There were no injuries and the aircraft's damage can be easily repaired, the company said.

SpaceShipOne is a three-person craft being developed to fly more than 100 kilometres above Earth - 20 kilometres above where space begins. The 7.6-metre-long SpaceShipOne is carried aloft by a twin-engine jet called the White Knight, then let go to ignite its rocket engine.

To reach space, SpaceShipOne is to fly nearly straight up at a speed of about 3860 kmh, more than three times the speed of sound.

The craft is one of the contenders for the X Prize - a $US20 million ($27 million) prize offered by a St. Louis-based foundation to the builder of the first privately developed spaceship to carry three people to 100 kilometres up, then do it again within two weeks.

SpaceShipOne was built in secret and financed without government help at an undisclosed price by Mr Rutan, whose most famous aircraft was the Voyager, which circled the globe in 1986 on one tank of fuel. Mr Rutan unveiled SpaceShipOne in April at Scaled's Mojave plant.

During Wednesday's flight, SpaceShipOne was carried to an altitude of 48,000 feet (14,630 metres) over the California City area by the White Knight, which was piloted by Peter Siebold. At 8:15am, the flight test engineer, Cory Bird, pulled a handle to release SpaceShipOne.

The test pilot, Brian Binnie, steered the aircraft upward and fired its rocket motor. Nine seconds later, SpaceShipOne broke the sound barrier, the company said.

At motor shutdown, 15 seconds after ignition, SpaceShipOne was climbing at a 60-degree angle and flying near Mach 1.2. It reached an altitude of 68,000 feet, the company said.

The flight was the eighth for SpaceShipOne and was the first powered flight. In earlier flights the craft has glided back to Mojave airport. SpaceShipOne began its flight tests in August.

[Stoner]

NASA Releases Rare Pictures From a Fourth Space Observatory
LINK

excerpt:

The Spitzer Space Telescope is able to detect the faint warmth of cool, distant objects by keeping its instruments extremely cold so that they are supersensitive. Instead of orbiting Earth like the other observatories and dealing with heat pollution from the planet, the Spitzer is in a unique solar orbit that has it trailing Earth by 5.4 million miles. Its use of the natural cold of the vacuum of space and 100 pounds of liquid helium coolant allows it to operate at minus 450 degrees Fahrenheit, some 10 degrees above absolute zero, the temperature at which the motion of atoms comes to a virtual halt..............
.....................The first images from the observatory hint at the secrets to be uncovered in the future. For instance, the images of a huge gas cloud called IC 1396, or the Elephant Trunk nebula, 2,500 light-years from Earth, show a hotbed of new star birth that was once hidden from view by dust. And M81, a spiral galaxy 12 million light-years away that is nearly a twin of the Milky Way, also comes alive in infrared light. Other images, of a young star called HH 46, show curved shock waves of gas blasting from it.

Dr. John N. Bahcall of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., said astronomers would no longer be able to characterize a star, a galaxy or other structures in the universe just by looking at visible light images. Preliminary results from the Spitzer observatory, he said, show that a wider look across the spectrum is now required.

"We will be able to see things that human beings have never before seen," Dr. Bahcall said. "This will change the way astronomers do astronomy."

[Stoner]

http://www.wired.com/news/technology...w=wn_tophead_2

Associated Press Page 1 of 1


07:04 AM Dec. 21, 2003 PT

RESTON, Va. -- International sponsors of a project to generate energy by reproducing the sun's power source failed Saturday to agree on whether to build the world's first large-scale nuclear fusion reactor in France or Japan.

Representatives from the European Union, the United States, Russia, South Korea, China and Japan said in a statement after meeting for more than three hours that they need additional time to pick a site.

"We have two excellent sites ... so excellent in fact, that we need further evaluation before making our decisions based on consensus," according to the statement.

The sponsors also announced "a rapid exploration of the advantages of a broader project approach to fusion power."

When asked to elaborate, the deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who moderated the talks, explained that the development of fusion power means more than building the reactor and involves scientific and technical activities.

Taking those factors into consideration, Werner Burkart said, might be "helpful in finding consensus" on siting the reactor.

Further questions about the sites will go to France and Japan by the end of the month; responses are expected by February. The next meeting probably will come in February. The location was not announced.

France and Japan are the finalists in a bidding war for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project, which is expected to cost $12 billion over 35 years. The stakes are high because the project means jobs, government subsidies and prestige.

France's proposed site is in the southeastern town of Cadarache. Japan is promoting Rokkasho village on the main island's northern tip.

The project "remains an absolute priority for Europe. We are utterly convinced that our human, financial and technological advantages should allow us to see through this project," France's minister of research and new technologies, Claudie Haignere, said in a statement issued by her ministry.

The project, first proposed more than a decade ago, is designed to study the potential of fusion power as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels, such as coal and oil. Fossil fuels are expected to run short in about 50 years.

Fusion, which powers the sun and stars, involves colliding tiny atoms at extremely high temperatures and pressure inside a reactor. When the atoms fuse into a plasma, they release energy that can be harnessed to generate electricity.

Fusion power produces no greenhouse gas emissions and only low levels of radioactive waste. The reactor would run on an isotope of hydrogen, an abundant source of fuel that can be extracted from water.

Fusion reactors do not consume uranium or plutonium -- the fuel of conventional, fission reactors -- and do not use an atomic chain reaction. As a result, there is little risk of a radioactive meltdown.