Friday, August 26, 2005

Space Elevators in Our Future?

Blasting a space shuttle away from Earth's gravity and through atmospheric friction at 15,000 miles an hour (24,140 kilometers an hour) is the most dangerous and costly part of every mission.
Why not just take an elevator instead? Thanks to a new development in the manufacture of molecule-size cylinders known as carbon nanotubes, that may one day be a viable option.
In theory, space elevators need a fixed line, or cord, that stretches from an anchor on Earth to a station out in space. The station acts like a counterweight, forever "held" above the planet by the centrifugal force from Earth's rotation.
A tram-like vehicle equipped with electric motors could climb this tether from Earth's surface into space at a safer speed than rocket alternatives..........


National Geographic News

Monday, August 22, 2005

The Star Bar

(KRT) - Slowly, scientists are putting together the emerging bits of knowledge about the spiraling galaxy we call home, the Milky Way.

It is made up of as many as 100 billion stars. It's 100,000 light years across. It has rotated about 50 times during its lifetime. There most certainly is a super massive black hole at its center.

And now two Wisconsin scientists say they have revealing evidence on a long-suspected major feature of the Milky Way.

Writing in Astrophysical Journal Letters, their comprehensive structural analysis offers a wealth of new details on the long central bar of stars that runs across the center of the galaxy.

The bar, which has been suspected since the 1980s and was identified in a 2002 paper by other scientists, turns out to be longer than initially believed, according the work of Robert Benjamin, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and Ed Churchwell, a professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The bar is composed of older, so-called red stars, possibly millions of them...........

The Wichita Eagle

Monday, August 01, 2005

New Planet Discovered

A planet larger than Pluto has been discovered in the outlying regions of the solar system..........

Science Daily