Gaming, Science, History, Feminism, and all other manners of geekery. Also a lot of dance
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Latest Posts by stubborn-turtle-blog - Page 2
2016: This Year at NASA!
As 2016 comes to a close and prospects of the new year loom before us, we take a moment to look back at what we’ve accomplished and how it will set us ahead in the year to come.
2016 marked record-breaking progress in our exploration activities. We advanced the capabilities needed to travel farther into the solar system while increasing observations of our home and the universe, learning more about how to continuously live and work in space and, or course, inspiring the next generation of leaders to take up our journey to Mars and make their own discoveries.
Here are a few of the top NASA stories of 2016…
International Space Station
One Year Mission…completed!
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth after spending a year in space. Testing the limits of human research, findings from their One Year Mission will help send humans farther into space than ever before.
Commercial Resupply
Commercial partners Orbital ATK and SpaceX delivered tons (yes literally tons) of cargo to the International Space Station. This cargo supported hundreds of science experiments and technology demonstrations crucial to our journey to Mars.
Mars
Expandable Habitats
The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) was one of the technology demonstrations delivered to the space station in April. Expandable habitats greatly decrease the amount of transport volume for future space missions.
Booster Test Firing
In June, a booster for our Space Launch System (SLS) rocket successfully fired up. It will be used on the first un-crewed test flight of SLS with the Orion spacecraft in 2018. Eventually, this rocket and capsule will carry humans into deep space and one day…Mars!
InSight
This year we updated the milestones for our InSight mission with a new target launch window beginning in May 2018. This mission will place a fixed science outpost on Mars to study its deep interior. Findings and research from this project will address one of the most fundamental questions we have about the planetary and solar system science…how in the world did these rocky planets form?
Solar System and Beyond
Juno
On July 4, our Juno spacecraft arrived at Jupiter. This mission is working to improve our understanding of the solar system’s beginnings by revealing the origin and evolution of Jupiter.
OSIRIS-REx
In September, we launched our OSIRIS-REx spacecraft…which is America’s first-ever asteroid sample return mission. This spacecraft will travel to a near-Earth asteroid, called Bennu, where it will collect a sample to bring back to Earth for study.
James Webb Space Telescope
In February, the final primary mirror segment of our James Webb Space Telescope was installed. This will be the world’s most powerful space telescope ever, and is scheduled to launch in 2018. Webb will look back in time, studying the very first galaxies ever formed.
Kepler
In May, our Kepler mission verified the discovery of 1,284 new planets. Kepler is the first NASA mission to find potentially habitably Earth-sized planets.
Earth Right Now
Earth Expeditions
Our efforts to improve life on Earth included an announcement in March of a collection of Earth Science field campaigns to study how our planet is changing. These Earth Expeditions sent scientists to places like the edge of the Greenland ice sheet to the coral reefs of the South Pacific to delve into challenging questions about how our planet is changing…and what impacts humans are having on it.
Small Satellites
In November, we announced plans to launch six next-generation Earth-observing small satellite missions. One uses GPS signals to measure wind in hurricanes and tropical systems in greater detail than ever before.
Aeronautics Research
Our efforts in 2016 to make air travel cleaner, safer and quieter included new technology to improve safety and efficiency of aircraft arrivals, departures and service operations.
X-Plane
In June, we highlighted our first designation of an experimental airplane, or X-plane, in a decade. It will test new electric propulsion technology.
Drone Technolgy
In October, we evaluated a system being developed for the Federal Aviation Administration to safely manage drone air traffic.
Technology
Electric Propulsion
We selected Aerojet Rocketdyne to develop and advanced electric propulsion system to enable deep space travel to an asteroid and Mars.
Spinoffs
Our technology transfer program continued to share the agency’s technology with industry, academia and other government agencies at an unprecedented rate.
Centennial Challenges
Our Centennial Challenges program conducted four competition events in 2016 to spark innovation and enable solutions in important technology focus areas.
Watch the full video recap of ‘This Year @NASA’ here:
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
23 science facts we didn't know at the start of 2016
1. Gravitational waves are real. More than 100 years after Einstein first predicted them, researchers finally detected the elusive ripples in space time this year. We’ve now seen three gravitational wave events in total.
2. Sloths almost die every time they poop, and it looks agonising.
3. It’s possible to live for more than a year without a heart in your body.
4. It’s also possible to live a normal life without 90 percent of your brain.
5. There are strange, metallic sounds coming from the Mariana trench, the deepest point on Earth’s surface. Scientists currently think the noise is a new kind of baleen whale call.
6. A revolutionary new type of nuclear fusion machine being trialled in Germany really works, and could be the key to clean, unlimited energy.
7. There’s an Earth-like planet just 4.2 light-years away in the Alpha Centauri star system - and scientists are already planning a mission to visit it.
8. Earth has a second mini-moon orbiting it, known as a ‘quasi-satellite’. It’s called 2016 HO3.
9. There might be a ninth planet in our Solar System (no, Pluto doesn’t count).
10. The first written record demonstrating the laws of friction has been hiding inside Leonardo da Vinci’s “irrelevant scribbles” for the past 500 years.
11. Zika virus can be spread sexually, and it really does cause microcephaly in babies.
12. Crows have big ears, and they’re kinda terrifying.
13. The largest known prime number is 274,207,281– 1, which is a ridiculous 22 million digits in length. It’s 5 million digits longer than the second largest prime.
14. The North Pole is slowly moving towards London, due to the planet’s shifting water content.
15. Earth lost enough sea ice this year to cover the entire land mass of India.
16. Artificial intelligence can beat humans at Go.
17. Tardigrades are so indestructible because they have an in-built toolkit to protect their DNA from damage. These tiny creatures can survive being frozen for decades, can bounce back from total desiccation, and can even handle the harsh radiation of space.
18. There are two liquid states of water.
19. Pear-shaped atomic nuclei exist, and they make time travel seem pretty damn impossible.
20. Dinosaurs had glorious tail feathers, and they were floppy.
21. One third of the planet can no longer see the Milky Way from where they live.
22. There’s a giant, 1.5-billion-cubic-metre (54-billion-cubic-foot) field of precious helium gas in Tanzania.
23. The ‘impossible’ EM Drive is the propulsion system that just won’t quit. NASA says it really does seem to produce thrust - but they still have no idea how. We’ll save that mystery for 2017.
Vulcanize-Charles Goodyear and the Roman god of Fire
The early nineteenth century saw tremendous advances in chemistry, with scientists leading teams all across the world to improve both science in general and industrial processes in particular. Leading the charge to improve rubber compounds was Charles Goodyear (born on this day, December 29, 1800, died July 1, 1860) who devoted his life and health to improving rubber compounds. Self taugh Goodyear ran a hardware store in Philadelphia and realized early that improved rubber goods would transform manufacturing.
He toyed with the chemistry of rubber manufacturing for two decades before hitting upon heating the rubber as the most important part of the process by accident. He was awarded a patent for vulcanizing rubber in 1844 for his efforts, though he still did not fully understand the process or what exactly was happening. Enduring backruptcy, jail, and personal tragedy, Goodyear died at the age of 59, collapsing at the news of his daughter’s death and never recovering.
The verb vulcanize was coined between 1820-1844 (several disputed dates are offered) to describe the process of changing something by adding heat or fire, from Vulcan, the Roman god of Fire. By 1846, the word was in wide circulation thanks to Goodyear’s patent. The company that bears his name today was actually founded almost 40 years after his death in honor of his contributions to the science of rubber compounds but also to capitalize on his fame and reputation. Etymologically, the name Vulcan (Volcānus or Vulcānus) has unclear origins. Some liguists connect the name with the Cretan god Velchanos, while others dispute this with no clear etymology. Vulcan’s earliest temple in Rome dates to 8th century BCE.
Image of vulcanization of rubber showing polymer bonds and portrait of Goodyear both in the public domain. Image of Vulcan at the Forge by Marco Dente (Italian, c. 1493 - 1527) in the public domain, via the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Women need to be able to nurse, and pump, without shame when they return to their work.
Alarming disparities in health outcomes could be prevented by breastfeeding
A new study published in the Journal of Pediatrics showed that black infants had more than twice the deaths of whites attributable to lack of optimal breastfeeding. Black infants also had more than three times the rate of necrotizing enterocolitis, a devastating disease of preterm infants, attributable to suboptimal rates of feeding with their mother’s own milk.
White women initiate breastfeeding at much higher rates than black women and slightly higher rates than Hispanic women; moreover, white women breastfeed longer and have higher rates of exclusive breastfeeding. Current rates for black, white, and Hispanic women were defined as “suboptimal breastfeeding.” This is the first study to show how these disparities translate into differences in health outcomes.
“If mom can’t go to work, she’s not getting paid. This may spell the difference between making rent that month, or keeping the lights on, or paying for basic needs,” said Dr. Melissa Bartick, assistant professor of medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School, and lead author of the study. “When I first saw our results, I cried.”
Melissa C. Bartick, Briana J. Jegier, Brittany D. Green, Eleanor Bimla Schwarz, Arnold G. Reinhold, Alison M. Stuebe. Disparities in Breastfeeding: Impact on Maternal and Child Health Outcomes and Costs. The Journal of Pediatrics, 2016; DOI: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2016.10.028
It is recommended that women breastfeed each child exclusively for the first six months of life, followed by continued breastfeeding while complementary foods are introduced for at least the first year of life. Credit: © gamelover / Fotolia
debugging is a science. a really boring science, but a science nonetheless.
hypothesis
procedure
results
conclusion
repeating when you don’t get the result you were god damn looking for, why is it still printing that, there are zero print statements in this program what the fuck
Mason gives a startling example of the decline of car-wash robots, to be replaced by, as he puts it “five guys with rags”. Here’s the paragraph that really made me think:
“There are now 20,000 hand car washes in Britain, only a thousand of them regulated. By contrast, in the space of 10 years, the number of rollover car-wash machines has halved –from 9,000 to 4,200.”
The reasons, of course, are political and economic and you may or may not agree with Mason’s diagnosis and prescription (as it happens I do). But de-automation – and the ethical, societal and legal implications – is something that we, as roboticists, need to think about just as much as automation.
Several questions come to mind:
are there other examples of de-automation? is the car-wash robot example atypical, or part of a trend? is de-automation necessarily a sign of something going wrong? (would Mason be so concerned about the guys with rags if the hand car wash industry were a well-regulated industry paying decent wages to its workers, and generating tax revenues back to the economy?)
Our Most “Liked” Instagram Posts of 2016
Our Instagram page has over 1,800 images and is lucky enough to be followed by more than 18 million fans.
What images and videos were your favorite from this past year? Great question, and one we asked ourselves too!
Here’s a look at our most liked Instagram posts* of 2016…Enjoy!
#10
Colorful “last hurrah’ of a star: The Hubble Space Telescope shows off the colorful “last hurrah” of a star like our sun. The star is ending its life by casting off its outer layers of gas, which formed a cocoon around the star’s remaining core. With 513,672 likes, this image is our 10th most liked of 2016.
#9
Vivid glowing auroras in Jupiter’s atmosphere! Astronomers are using the Hubble Space Telescope to study auroras – stunning light shows in a planet’s atmosphere – on the poles of the largest planet in the solar system. This image ranks #9 for 2016 with 515,339 likes.
#8
Astronomers found evidence for what is likely one of the most extreme pulsars, or rotating neutron stars, ever detected. The source exhibits properties of a highly magnetized neutron star, or magnetar, yet its deduced spin period is thousands of times longer than any pulsar ever observed. With 517,995 likes, this picture ranks #8 for 2016.
#7
Fiery South Atlantic Sunset! An astronaut aboard the International Space Station photographed a sunset that looks like a vast sheet of flame. With Earth’s surface already in darkness, the setting sun, the cloud masses, and the sideways viewing angle make a powerful image of the kind that astronauts use to commemorate their flights. This image ranks #7 for 2016 with 520,553 likes.
#6
Go floating! Join us for a fly-through of the International Space Station! This footage was shot using a fisheye lens for extreme focus and depth of field. This video ranks as our sixth most liked Instagram post of 2016 with 541,418 likes.
#5
This #BlackFriday post helped us celebrate our 4th annual #BlackHoleFriday! Each year we pose awesome content about black holes on the Black Friday shopping holiday. A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get out. With 549,910 likes, this image ranks #5 for 2016.
#4
A cluster of young stars – about one to two million years old – located about 20,000 light years from Earth. Data in visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope (green and blue) reveal thick clouds where the stars are forming. This image ranks #4 for 2016 with 573,002 likes.
#3
Supermoon is a spectacular sight! The Nov. 14 supermoon was especially “super” because it was the closest full moon to Earth since 1948. We won’t see another supermoon like this until 2034. Which might have something to do with this image ranking #3 for 2016 with 695,343 likes.
#2
Supermoon seen from space! Aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson posted this image on Dec. 14 captured by European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet. This stunning image ranks #2 for 2016 with 704,530 likes.
#1
It’s a bird, it’s a plane…no, it’s a #supermoon! The moon, or supermoon, is seen rising behind the Soyuz rocket at the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad in Kazakhstan ahead of the November crew launch to the International Space Station. This photo was our #1 image of 2016 with 746,981 likes.
Thanks for joining us as we traveled through the space events of 2016. We’re looking forward to all of the interstellar fun that 2017 will bring. Happy Holidays!
Do you want to get amazing images of Earth from space, see distant galaxies and more on Instagram? Of course you do! Follow us: https://www.instagram.com/nasa/
*Posts and rankings are were taken as of Dec. 21, 2016.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Forms of government in 2016
Scientific Women You Haven’t Heard of (Yet): Louise Pearce
Louise Pearce is best known for her work that lead to a cure for sleeping sickness. Pearce traveled to what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo to test the arsenic based cure, tryparsamide, in cooperation with a hospital in Léopoldville that was coping with an outbreak of sleeping sickness. This trip helped establish parameters for treatment (such as safe and optimum dosages) of sleeping sickness with tryparsamide. Pearce also used rabbit colonies to study syphilis and cancer over generations. Pearce was lesbian and a feminist and lived with Sara Josephine Baker and Ida A.R. Wylie. Pearce’s curriculum vitae is impressive and lists Standford University, Boston University and Johns Hopkins University as her alma maters.
Learn more: (x) (x) (x)
Previous Installments: Lynn Conway, Noella Marcellino, Tu Youyou
About the series: (x)
Purchasing power of Europe’s population by 2-digit postcodes, 2016
#Yes
Making a thread to help you educate all the "name one thing women invented" "women can't do science" "what have they ever contributed?" people
EVERYBODY READ THIS
Considering how much architecture can impact the way we interact with the world, it’s fascinating to look at some of the emerging schools of thought in the field
Surgeon Al-Zahrawi (936–1013 CE) from Cordoba in the Muslim kingdom of al-Andalus, was one of the most famous physicians of the middle ages. He invented many medical instruments, and wrote the first surgical textbook which included illustrations like the one above. It was not just a textbook, however. The Kitab al-Tasrif is a 30-chapter treatise on multiple areas of medicine, including surgery, dentistry, and childbirth.
The only one who needs ivory is an elephant
Now, with current rates of poaching, they will be wiped out from some of their range states.They could even go locally extinct.
![Yikes! [http://imgur.com/0mHJob3]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/64b1e17ce0a209744bc5d5590c95b597/tumblr_ohxss5q1c51s04h2ho1_500.jpg)
Yikes! [http://imgur.com/0mHJob3]
Proportional risk
I've begun to develop a strong fear of the weather. Lightning and wind also terrify me. When someone is afraid of flying, there are statistics which could help them understand how little a risk they are actually taking. With this statistic method in mind, is there anything I could remind myself of when I begin to become frightened, that could help relax me a bit? Thank you :)
Lightning is something that’s serious, but with most things as long as you approach it intelligently, you’ll be fine!
The National Safety Council organized a handy chart of “What are the Odds of Dying From” that has some handy statistics. There’s a lot more things that we are significantly more at risk for statistically than lightning. For instance you have a 1 in 672 chance of dying as a pedestrian in your life while a 1 in 174,426 chance of dying from lightning. Yet we don’t carry the same fear when walking as we do for lightning.
Something to consider here, we’re much more often “exposed” to being pedestrians than we are exposed to lightning, so this makes a bit of sense that the numbers are so skewed, but the point of fear still stands.
Lightning is serious business, but as I said earlier we need to approach lightning intelligently.
If you look at the an analysis of lightning deaths in the US about two thirds of incidents occurred to people engaged in outdoor activities. So basically people that are outside enjoying the day when a storm comes along, and they decide to either watch the storm from an unsafe place, or keep going with the activity. Going further into outdoor “leisure” activities, of that two thirds about 35% of those activities were water related (largely fishing, but hey, why not looks at the study yourself!).
Worth mentioning, the study also pointed out that 79% of victims were male - being okay with risky behaviours doesn’t make you cool and tough, it makes you an idiot. As the study put it:
Possible explanationsfor this finding are that males are unaware of all the dangers associated with lightning, are more likely tobe in vulnerable situations, are unwilling to be inconvenienced by the threat of lightning, are in situationsthat make it difficult to get to a safe place in a timely manner, don’t react quickly to the lightning threat, orany combination of these explanations. In short, because of their behavior, males are at a higher risk ofbeing struck and, consequently, are struck and killed by lightning more often than females.
Here’s a breakdown of activities people are doing when they die from a lightning strike:
Notice these are all things that are outside! The study stated that things that contributed to lightning fatalities were people’s unwillingness to postpone activities, not being aware of approaching storms (you’re either weatherwise, or otherwise!), being in a vulnerable location, an inability or unwillingness to get to a safe place.
So how do we be safe during a thunderstorm? Do as the NOAA says “when thunder roars, go indoors”! If you know there are going to be storms that day stay alert and take a glance at a radar map every now and then (lord knows you probably have a smart phone), and have an idea of where you’ll go when a storm is near. If you’re unable to get indoors avoid hilltops, isolated tall objects like poles or trees, spread out if you’re in a group, and try to avoid wet items and areas - these won’t make you safe, but will slightly decrease your risk. The only completely safe action is getting inside a building or vehicle.
Have a look over this page on lightning safety and these tips for more info.
So bottom line, should you have a healthy respect for lightning? Yes. Should you be terrified of lightning? No. Be smart and follow the safety tips, you’ll be alright.
Thanks for reading, and I hope this helped!
One of the most dangerous pictures ever taken - Elephant’s Foot, Chernobyl. This is a photo of a now dead man next the ‘Elephant’ Foot’ at the Chernobyl power plant.
The image distortions in the photo are created by intense level of radiation almost beyond comprehension. There is no way the person in this photo and the person photographing him could have survived for any more that a few years after being there, even if they quickly ran in, took the photos and ran out again. This photo would be impossible to take today as the rates of radioactive decay are even more extreme now due to a failed military experiment to bomb the reactor core with neuron absorbers. The foot is made up of a small percentage of uranium with the bulk mostly melted sand, concrete and other materials which the molten corium turns into a kind of lava flow. In recent years, it has destroyed a robot which tried to approach it, and the last photos were taken via a mirror mounted to a pole held at the other end of the corridor for a few seconds. It is almost certainly the most dangerous and unstable creation made by humans. These are the effects of exposure: 30 seconds of exposure - dizziness and fatigue a week later 2 minutes of exposure - cells begin to hemorrhage (ruptured blood vessels) 4 minutes - vomiting, diarrhea, and fever 300 seconds - two days to live
A shooting star over Mount Rainier By Tanner Wendell Stewart
js
Jupiter and Io
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The Milky Way over an ancient Bristlecone pine js
Samantha Payne’s startup Open Bionics allows anyone in the world to download and 3D print their own bionic limbs.
Tilly was just 15 months old when she had to have her hand amputated after contracting meningitis septicaemia. Now, with a bionic arm from Open Bionics, Tilly can move all of her fingers and perform more complex movements. EMG sensors on her arm detect muscle movement, telling her bionic arm how quickly or firmly to squeeze its fingers.