February 29, 2012

Good Morning,

Researchers in Finland are working with some unique, high-tech lasers to produce better smart phone projection capabilities. Check out all the exciting details in the fourth and final article.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Active removal of space debris urged

HOUSTON - Space junk around the Earth could be managed by removing a few large pieces every year from the debris cloud surrounding the planet, U.S. experts say. Researchers said such cleanup measures combined with more passive solutions like draining fuel from defunct satellites would probably keep the levels of space debris in orbit constant for the next 200 years or so, SPACE.com reported. "Orbital debris is a serious issue, but at the same time, the sky is not falling," J.C. Liou of NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office in Houston said. "I think we can continue to manage the current environment for some time -- maybe 10 years or 20 years -- before we have to consider debris removal to better preserve the environment for future generations," Liou said. About 22,000 pieces as large as a softball and hundreds of thousand of smaller pieces of spent rocket bodies, decommissioned satellites and fragments of ongoing orbital collisions surround the Earth, NASA estimates. All of this space junk is a threat to the operational satellites in orbit and to the International Space Station and other crew-carrying craft, scientists said. "The typical impact velocity in low-Earth orbit is about 10 kilometers per second [22,300 mph], and because of that, even a sub-millimeter debris could be a problem for human spaceflight and for robotic missions," Liou said. "The time has come for us to consider active debris removal," he said. Liou says a modeling study suggests if five large objects were removed out of low-Earth orbit every year starting in 2020, debris levels in 2210 would be roughly the same as they are today.


New evidence of end of Neanderthals seen

UPPSALA, Sweden - European Neanderthals were dying off and already on the verge of extinction even before the arrival of competing modern humans, Swedish researchers say. Scientists said a study of ancient DNA indicates most Neanderthals in Europe died off as early as 50,000 years ago, leaving only a small group that re-colonized central and western Europe and survived for another 10,000 years before modern humans arrived on the scene. "The fact that Neanderthals in Europe were nearly extinct, but then recovered, and that all this took place long before they came into contact with modern humans came as a complete surprise to us," Love Dalen at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm said. "This indicates that the Neanderthals may have been more sensitive to the dramatic climate changes that took place in the last Ice Age than was previously thought," he said. DNA studies of fossils showed the genetic variation among later European Neanderthals was extremely limited during the last 10,000 years before they disappeared, researchers said. "The amount of genetic variation in geologically older Neanderthals as well as in Asian Neanderthals was just as great as in modern humans as a species, whereas the variation among later European Neanderthals was not even as high as that of modern humans in Iceland," researcher Anders Gotherstrom of Uppsala University in Sweden said. The research was published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.


Scientists say big asteroid bears watching

VIENNA - Scientists at a United Nations meeting in Vienna say they're keeping a close eye on a large asteroid that may pose an impact threat to Earth in a few decades. The subject of the asteroid known as 2011 AG5 was on the agenda of the 49th session of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Some researchers at the session said the possibility the 460-foot-diameter asteroid could strike Earth in 2040 is significant enough that now is the time to discuss how to deflect it. Astronomers in Tucson discovered the asteroid in January 2011. "2011 AG5 is the object which currently has the highest chance of impacting the Earth � in 2040. However, we have only observed it for about half an orbit, thus the confidence in these calculations is still not very high," Detlef Koschny of the European Space Agency's Solar System Missions Division in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, told SPACE.com "In our ... discussions, we thus concluded that it not necessarily can be called a 'real' threat. To do that, ideally, we should have at least one, if not two, full orbits observed," Koschny said. The asteroid currently has an impact probability of 1 in 625 for Feb. 5, 2040, said Donald Yeomans, head of the Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Fortunately, this object will be observable from the ground in the 2013-2016 interval," Yeomans said, and in the unlikely scenario that its impact probability does not significantly decrease, "there would be time to mount a deflection mission to alter its course."


Lasers to power smartphone projectors

HELSINKI, Finland - Finnish researchers say they're developing technology to allow smartphones to project high quality images and video onto a viewing surface such as a wall. While phones currently on the market are capable of projecting still images and video, the phones' small size sets limits on screen size and thus the viewing experience, scientists at the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland said. VTT researchers, working with EpiCrystals Oy and Aalto University, are developing a better laser light source for projectors that will be integrated into mobile phones, a VTT release reported. The challenge, researchers said, is to develop a small, energy-efficient and luminous three-color (RGB) light source that can be manufactured at a low cost. "The project has successfully combined multi-technological know-how from VTT and its partners in the project, from manufacturing materials and the accurate focusing of laser chips all the way to production line design," VTT scientist Timo Aalto said. "It is our goal to prove by next summer that large quantities of the new laser light sources can be manufactured quickly and economically. The demand for phones that can double as projectors will drive the technology, researchers said. "Soon, around 2 billion mobile phones per year will be sold in the world, and if even a couple of percent of those contain a projector, we are talking about tens of millions of copies, and the hundred million mark is not far either," Tomi Jouhti of EpiCrystals Oy said.

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