June 11, 2012

Good Morning,

A Philadelphia professor has found a way to eliminate blind spots in rear-view mirrors. Check out the details on his design in the second article.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Universe's 'first light' seen by telescope

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA says its Spitzer space telescope has detected the faint glow of the very first objects in the universe with the best precision yet. The faint objects, which might be incredibly massive stars or voracious black holes, are too far away to be seen individually but Spitzer has captured convincing evidence of what appears to be the patterns of their infrared light, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., reported Thursday. The findings suggest the universe's first objects furiously burned huge amounts of cosmic fuel, astrophysicists said. "These objects would have been tremendously bright," Alexander "Sasha" Kashlinsky of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said. "We can't yet directly rule out mysterious sources for this light that could be coming from our nearby universe, but it is now becoming increasingly likely that we are catching a glimpse of an ancient epoch." The universe formed roughly 13.7 billion years ago in the big bang and, in time, cooled. By around 500 million years later, the first stars, galaxies and black holes began to take shape, and astronomers say some of their "first light" might have taken billions of years to reach the Spitzer Space Telescope.


New mirror eliminates driver 'blind spot'

PHILADELPHIA - A subtly curved car mirror can eliminate the dangerous "blind spot" for drivers by increasing the field of view with minimal distortion, its inventor says. The mirror developed by R. Andrew Hicks, a mathematics professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia, has a field of view of about 45 degrees, compared to 15 to 17 degrees of view in a flat driver's side mirror, a university release reported Thursday. Unlike simple curved mirrors that can squash the perceived shape of objects and make straight lines appear curved, the visual distortions of shapes and straight lines are barely detectable in Hicks' mirror, it said. Normal curved mirrors can give a wider field of view but at the cost of visual distortion and making objects appear smaller and farther away. Hicks designed his mirror using a mathematical algorithm that precisely controls the angle of light bouncing off of the curving mirror. "Imagine that the mirror's surface is made of many smaller mirrors turned to different angles, like a disco ball," he said. "The algorithm is a set of calculations to manipulate the direction of each face of the metaphorical disco ball so that each ray of light bouncing off the mirror shows the driver a wide, but not-too-distorted, picture of the scene behind him." The mirror does not look like a disco ball up close, Hicks said, because tens of thousands of calculations produce a mirror that has a smooth, non-uniform curve. U.S. regulations dictate cars coming off of the assembly line must have a flat mirror on the driver's side, and curved mirrors are allowed for cars' passenger-side mirrors only if they include the phrase "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." Hicks' mirror may be manufactured and sold as an aftermarket product that drivers and mechanics can install on cars after purchase.


Solar cells for underwater use developed

WASHINGTON - U.S. researches say they've developed solar cells capable of producing sufficient power underwater to operate electronic sensor systems at depths of 30 feet. Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, said underwater autonomous systems and sensor platforms are severely limited by the lack of power sources, having to rely on on-shore power, batteries or solar power supplied by an above-water platform. Attempts to use photovoltaic solar cells have had limited success due to the lack of penetrating sunlight, as most current solar cells are optimized to use the terrestrial solar spectrum, they said. "Although water absorbs sunlight, the technical challenge is to develop a solar cell that can efficiently convert these underwater photons to electricity," Phillip Jenkins of the NRL Imagers and Detectors Section said. The filtered spectrum of the sun underwater is biased toward the blue/green portion of the spectrum, researchers said, requiring solar cells well matched to the wavelength range. Using high-quality gallium indium phosphide cells, researchers said they've managed outputs of 7 watts per square meter, sufficient to harvest useful solar power at depths commonly found in nearshore zones.


Lasers help scientists probe jungle sites

HOUSTON - U.S. researchers say they've completed the first laser mapping of a remote region of Honduras that may contain the legendary lost city of Ciudad Blanca. The University of Houston and the National Science Foundation National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping project was the first light detection and ranging (LiDAR) survey of Honduras' Mosquitia region, one of the world's least-explored virgin rainforests, a university release reported Tuesday. An initial analysis of the LiDAR survey has identified ruins that could be those of pre-Columbian Ciudad Blanca or other long-hidden sites, the researchers said. Scientists studying the Mosquitia rainforest have long been frustrated by the inability of satellite imagery to see under the extremely thick jungle canopy. In the project, researchers blanketed the area with as many 25 to 50 laser pulses per square meter, a total of more than 4 billion laser shots. A number of areas were mapped and the images collected were reduced and filtered to remove the vegetation and provide "bare earth" digital elevation models in near real-time in the field, they said. Those images were searched by eye to study geomorphological features as well as potential archaeological ruins. In a previous project in Belize in 2009, in an area covered with dense rainforest, the LiDAR data captured building ruins and agricultural terraces not discovered by archaeologists working on the ground for more than 25 years, researchers said.

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