Microsoft has finally revealed what has been talked about recently as a mysterious project. It’s the World Wide Telescope, and it’s going to revolutionize the traditional approach to astronomy. The idea is to provide everyone with a way to look at detailed images from space, using a database of images collected from various resources around the world (observatories and telescopes on Earth and in Earth’s orbit).

Image from LiveSide.net

Oh my God, it’s full of stars!

Microsoft presented the new project and some of the functionality and interface which is still now available for download by the general public. When the time comes sometime during Spring 2008, everyone will be able to download the free application from worldwidetelescope.org and enjoy a never before seen gateway to the stars.

[Via: LiveSide]

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Have you seen the movie Gattaca? People can easily check someone’s DNA information by going to a public service terminal and requesting that information. Well, it seems that kind of future is almost upon us. At the Web 2.0 Summit, Craig Venter, a biologist working on projects having to do with gene sequencing, said it won’t be long before DNA sequencing becomes part of a standard medical test. What was a biologist doing at a Web 2.0 conference? Well, he was interviewed by Tim O’Reilly on stage, in the effort to show how close biology and information science are tied together, and have been for some time. Mr. Venter supports genetic transparency and predicts a future in which someone can easily find your DNA information on search engines or “Google a date’s DNA”. People will be able to see whether someone they are thinking about getting involved with has a hereditary disease or other genetically induced health anomaly that may have a negative impact on offspring.

Is this the kind of future we are aiming for as a global society? I am not sure this is the right way to go, although movies are usually pretty good in showing things that will come to pass in the future, so this may actually become reality. On one side, it may be useful to know your potential partner is carrying DNA code that may cause health or other problems for offspring, but on the other hand there are other factors in survival, especially in the human society.

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Lakshminarayan Srinivasan
Image credit: MIT

MIT research has found a way to help brain signals be converted into actions. In other words, a persons wish to move a part of their body (replaced by prosthetics) can be converted into the actual movement through a complex system of signal conversion. Although there has been research done in this field usually by working on a particular part of the brain, this is the first time that a common framework has been introduced.

Lakshminarayan “Ram” Srinivasan (S.M., Ph.D. 2006), lead author of the paper, said “The work represents an important advance in our understanding of how to construct algorithms in neural prosthetic devices for people who cannot move to act or speak.”

Neural prosthetic devices represent an engineer’s approach to paralysis treatment and amputation. Electronics are used to monitor the neural signals which reflect the individual’s intentions for the prosthesis or computer. Algorithms form the link between neural signals that are recorded, while user’s intentions are decoded to drive the prosthetic device in the intended manner.

See in more detail here.

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Fifty years ago, on October 4, 1957, Sputnik 1, the first man made satellite was launched by the Soviet Union. This event marked the beginning of the space exploration era. The satellite was simple in construction - 58 cm in diameter, weighing approx 84 kg, and looked like an overinflated tin basketball with four long spikes pointing outwards (these were antennas). It was launched using the so called R7 booster, which was tested months earlier.

Image credit: NASA

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And we have a first sign-up for the Google Lunar X Prize competition. It’s Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute! Red Whittaker, roboticist at the institute decided to enter the competition that is to be completed by 2012.

Planetary exploration is a dream we pursue and a technology we create…
We have spent decades building and testing robotic technologies for just this purpose.

Whittaker is assembling a Carnegie Mellon team that will work on the project for the competition. Although he advocated privately funded lunar landing for more than a decade, he views the task quite daunting.

It’s inevitable that someone will find a way to win it. Regardless of who takes home the cash, this achievement will enrich us all.

Well, good luck to them!

See in more detail in this press-release.

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Google has announced it is going to fund the X Prize competition which invites competing companies to design and successfully land a robot on the Moon. The $30 million prize dubbed the X Prize will be awarded to the company that not only lands a rover robot on the Moon but also completes several mission objectives, including roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to Earth. Wow! Sounds like a handful. You can see more about this here and here. I decided to be different and show you the video which explains it all in an invigorating fashion reminding me of my teen dream of becoming an astronaut.

In case you are wondering “why the Moon?”, John Marburger (Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President) said the key element of the new vision for space is bringing the Solar System (starting with the Moon) into the economic sphere of the Earth.

Let’s hope our economic adventures on the Moon will produce less problems than they do daily on Earth.

Here are the competition guidelines.

Sounds pretty straight forward! Where do I sign up? Well, I didn’t find such an option, but as soon as I do I am signing up.

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Data storage through spin direction change

The ability of an atom to record data due to its magnetism anisotropy (different value in different directions for the same characteristic in a substance, this time magnetism) is nothing new. IBM has already done significant research on this years back, but the new development is that IBM published two new papers in Science Weekly. These papers explain the possibilities of data storage and stable transistor behavior of molecules (something also not so new, but previous attempts didn’t preserve the functionality for long - unstable behavior).

To sum it up, if you cause the atom to spin in different directions you can store a lot of data on it (a cluster of atoms could hold as much as a 1000 trillion bits of data!), which means that millions of videos on, say YouTube, can be stored on a device the size of an iPod. On the other hand, IBM made a working experiment achieving stability with Naphthalocyanine molecules that react to change states between something we’d call “on” and “off” (0 or 1). This means the molecules would act as transistors and would enable data processing through logic gates (0 = block current, 1 = pass current).

Read in more detail at IBM Press Room.

Actual electron microscope image of Naphthalocyanine molecule in action




Computer simulation of Naphthalocyanine molecule

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There is a new great addition to Google Earth called Sky. The Google Earth team have decided to let us look away from our planet, out into the open universe. The latest version of Google Earth, version 4.2, now includes Sky, so go download it and take a peek.

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The space agency and the Internet Archive said Tuesday that they plan to scan and archive more than 12 million NASA photographs and 100,000 hours of film and video footage for free access online, under an exclusive five-year agreement. As part of the deal, the Internet Archive will host the media album on a new Web site, Nasaimages.org.

NASA and the Internet Archive announced they plan to make available for free access on the web more than 12 million NASA photos and some 100000 hours of film and video recordings. This is to happen under an exclusive 5-year agreement. Part of the deal is also that Internet Archive will host this media album on a web site called Nasaimages.org.

I can’t wait to see this, being an amateur astronomer. Many of these photos and videos NASA already showed to the public, usually after a couple of years, and these were all scattered on the numerous specific NASA sites. This is a welcome development and will give many more people an opportunity to peek into the beauty and the unknown of outer space, but also in the other direction, towards Earth.

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