Gizmorama

January 24, 2011
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Good Morning,

Biological and technological advances can often be looked at
in a parallel manner. As living organisms adapt to nature's
many adversities, they adopt new ways to cope. Same goes for
technology and the demand of the population.

Having said that, it's easy to see why scientists look to
the biological world to bring technology to new heights. As
you will see in the third article, a study of a simple moth's
natural camouflage could hold the key to the future of solar
energy.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Email your comments

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Voyager spacecraft going strong at age 33

BALTIMORE, Ohio - NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft, approaching
the edge of the solar system, are still operating and sending
back data 33 years after their launch, scientists say. And
they are still making news, as researchers announced last
month Voyager 1 had outrun the solar wind, the first man-made
object to reach the threshold of interstellar space, The
Baltimore Sun reported. It's a performance that impresses
even Stamatios "Tom" Krimigis of the Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity's Applied Physics Lab, one of just two remaining princ-
ipal investigators of the mission's original 11 still on the
job 40 years after NASA approved the Voyager missions. "Need-
less to say, none of us expected it was going to be operating
for so long," Krimigis, 72, said. "We were all praying to
get to Neptune [in 1989]. But after that? Who thought we
could be with this 33 years [after launch]?" Five experiments
on each Voyager are still funded and seven of them are still
delivering data. Problems do occur, but they can be fixed by
radioed instructions -- instructions that take 12 hours to
reach the unmanned craft. "I suspect it's going to outlast
me," said Krimigis.


Glowing cosmic cloud may point to quasar

WASHINGTON - A cosmic blob of glowing hydrogen gas discovered
by a Dutch schoolteacher and named in her honor points to a
nearly invisible quenched quasar, astronomers say. Astrono-
mers say Hanny van Arkel discovered the gas blob 3 1/2 years
ago as part of a citizen-science program called Galaxy Zoo
and have dubbed it Hanny's Voorwerp (Hanny's Object), the
Christian Science Monitor reported Wednesday. Voorwerpjes is
an informal name astronomers have given odd blobs of glowing
gas that appear to be floating free of any nearby galaxy in
locations where no gas should glow, at least at visible wave-
lengths, the newspaper said. Cold hydrogen gas needs a source
of radiation to ionize it and make it glow. Young, hot stars
are a typical source of such radiation, but early observa-
tions showed that Hanny's Voorwerp hosted no stars. The only
other source of enough radiation would be a quasar, a super-
massive black hole consuming cosmic dust and gas at a prodi-
gious rate. X-ray observations found a supermassive black
hole at the center of a galaxy close to the glowing cloud,
but one whose radiation was 10,000 times less than the level
needed to light it up. Astronomers say they believe Hanny's
Voorwerp is an afterglow from the now-quiet quasar, whose
supermassive black hole is estimated to have 1 billion times
the sun's mass.


New coating could boost solar cell output

NAGAOKA, Japan - Scientists in Japan say material mimicking
a covering of moth's eyes, among the least reflective
coatings in nature, may increase the efficiency of solar
cells. The eyes of moths, which allow them to see well at
night, are covered with a water-repellent, antireflective
coating that makes the eyes one of the least reflective sur-
faces in the natural world and helps them hide from predators
in the dark. A team of researchers in Japan has created a
film mimicking the moth eye's microstructure as a covering
for solar cells that can cut down on the amount of reflected
light and help capture more power from the sun, a release by
the Optical Society of America said Thursday. "Surface re-
flections are an essential loss for any type of photovoltaic
module, and ultimately low reflections are desired," Noboru
Yamada, a scientist at Nagaoka University of Technology
Japan, says. The team calculated how the anti-reflection
film would improve the yearly performance of solar cells
deployed over large areas in Tokyo or Phoenix. They chose to
model the two cities because Phoenix is a sunbelt city with
high annual amounts of direct sunlight, while Tokyo is well
outside the sunbelt region with a high fraction of diffuse
solar radiation. They estimate the films would improve the
annual efficiency of solar cells by 6 percent in Phoenix and
by 5 percent in Tokyo. "People may think this improvement is
very small, but the efficiency of photovoltaics is just like
fuel consumption rates of road vehicles," says Yamada. "Every
little bit helps."


Vandenberg launches Delta IV Heavy rocket

LOS ANGELES - Thursday's launch of a 23-story Delta IV Heavy
rocket, the tallest ever to blast off from California's Van-
denberg Air Force Base was successful, officials said. The
launch took place on Vandenberg's Space Launch Complex 6,
known on the base as "Slick Six," the Los Angeles Times re-
ported. The launch pad was built in the 1960s and was once
intended to accommodate West Coast space shuttle launches,
the newspaper said. The Delta IV Heavy is built by United
Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp.
and Boeing Co. "It was a picture perfect launch of the lar-
gest rocket to ever (launch) from the west coast of the U.S.
It just doesn't get any better!" a United Launch Alliance
spokesman said in a statement. Analysts say the 235-foot
rocket is thought to be carrying a top-secret spy satellite
for the National Reconnaissance Office, the federal umbrella
agency that operates spy satellites.

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