Kurt - SIN - Dogs Understand Fairness

The National Academy of Sciences did a study that showed dogs know how to be fair as reported in an NPR piece by Nell Green Fieldboyce on December 9, 2008. They looked at how dogs react when a buddy is rewarded for the same trick in an unequal way. The dogs were normally happy to repeatedly give the paw whether they got a reward or not. But that changed if they saw that another dog was being rewarded with a piece of food while they received nothing. It tells people dogs have emotions.

TJ - January S.I.N. - Sky Show This Month: "Two-Tailed" Comet Nearing Earth.

Victoria Jaggard reported at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/01/090126-comet-lulin.html, that Comet Lulin is sailing through the inner solar system right now and it is getting closer to Earth, its nearest approach will be in late February. Comet Lulin is arriving from far away on a nearly elliptical orbit. Lulin could be on its first pass by the sun. As the object is exposed to the sun's heat the ice on it will vaporize, possibly causing the comet to brighten rapidly or even fall apart. also, the comet's orbit is in nearly the same plane as Earth's but is traveling in the opposite direction. This causes Lulin to appear to move unusually fast and display a rare tail; an optical effect that creates a secondary "tail" pointing toward the sun.


I care because I like space and people should care because this could be dangerous to our planet.

Joshua, January SIN, Blocking Sounds with Holes

In the article Blocking Sound with Holes, written by Charles Q. Choi, published in the December 2008 issue of Scientific American, it was reported that drilling holes in a wall can decrease the amount of ultrasonic sound that gets through.

Francisco Meseguer of the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain and his team placed a series of 20 centimeter thick aluminum plates in water and discovered that plates with perforation could reduce the volume of incoming ultrasound waves by up to 10 decibels compared to ordinary plates. The sound waves generate acoustic waves on the surface of the plate that hinder the waves passing through the plate.

This discovery could potentially help to soundproof machines while still letting cool air through. Currently, the team is working on audible sound. Who knew that drilling holes in a wall could actually decrease the amount of sound that gets through? This will undoubtedly have an effect on soundproofing. This development could also be applied to more than buildings. This could also influence architecture, especially industrial architecture, in which lots of heavy machinery is running inside of one building.

January SIN Stephen "Hold on to your Stars Ladies and Gentlemen"

In the article “Hold on to your Stars Ladies and Gentlemen” at http://www.blogger.com/www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39836/title/FOR_KIDS_Hold_on_to_your_stars,_ladies_and_gentlemen, written by Stephen Ornes on Jan 14, 2009; scientists found that our galaxy is different than they originally thought. We live on earth. The earth goes around the sun. Scientists thought that our galaxy was half the size of Andromeda. They actually found out that our galaxy the Milky Way is about 50 percent bigger than Andromeda. They found out that the galaxy was spinning 100,000 miles per hour faster than they thought. Scientists are finding out that the bigger the galaxy the faster the galaxy spins. They are saying that the Andromeda galaxy and the Milky Way galaxy will eventually crash into each other but that won't happen for a long time. This helps us connect to real life by knowing that our galaxies will collide but not for a long time. I wonder if our galaxies will crash and into each other and become supernova.

Alex, The Ion Thruster, S.I.N, January

Three different types of electric plasma rockets, the ion thruster, the Hall Thruster, and the magnetoplasmadynamic (MPDT) were discussed, and the relative merit for each was compared in the article called New Dawn for Electric Rockets. Edgar Y. Choueiri wrote this article, published on the 58th page of the February 2009 issue of Scientific American. In the article, it is put forth that rockets designed with electric plasma engines (EPE’s) can attain a higher speed than conventionally powered rockets; they are more efficient at doing so. Furthermore, it is implicated that this makes them better for deep space and long-range missions.
A conventional (chemical) rocket burns nearly the entirety of available fuel in initial launch; final velocity is achieved closely after leaving the launch site where the magnitude of thrust is large. EPE rockets, on the other hand, have less thrust during launch, but it can maintain this thrust for a much longer time, which allows acceleration to last longer. Because of its high potential speed, the vehicle may be used in more operations. The electric power supply may even be recharged, although solar power generation is extremely inefficient anywhere beyond the approximate range of mars. Micro-thermonuclear power supplies could be constructed to generate additional energy.
The drive in current operation on many satellites is the ion thruster (whose precursor was patented as long ago as 1916); it is therefore the most relevant technology. The Ion Thruster is the simplest of the EPE devices, and its basic functioning is as follows. A neutral gas (usually Xenon) enters a chamber and is bombarded with electrons; this creates positive ions and causes the element to lose electrons. The electrons are introduced into a magnetically charged environment, and a neutralization device collects the ions. This charged environment accelerates them into an electrically charged net that further accelerates the particles out of the rocket. This type of EPE has exhaust speeds of ~20-50 kilometers per second (km/s), thrust (in a vacuum) of about 20-250 micronewtons (μN), and is approximately 60-80% efficient. Of the three types of EPE mentioned it is the most efficient, but provides the least thrust and has the slowest exhaust speeds.
The future of human societies depend on space travel, therefore any important advancement in this field allows future generations a place in the universe.

Alex, Possible Existance of Dark Matter, S.I.N, December

A balloon that is designed to detect energetic particles in the upper atmosphere of Antarctica has discovered that cosmic radiation is present in greater quantities than expected, says John Matson at sciam.com in a report of a new study published in Nature on November 19, 2008. The balloon caries what is termed an ATIC (for Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter), a device that is sensitive to the electrons in cosmic radiation. Because of the energy range particular to this type of cosmic radiation, and the quantity found, it is probable that the radiation stems from a nearby source.
The radiation found was in the 300-800 giga-electron-volt range. This type of energy can be emitted from a verity of sources, including pulsars, microquasars, and something called Kaluza-Klein particles. Based upon the quantities of radiation observed by the ATIC device it was supposed that the Kaluza-Klein particle was the culprit, although this cannot be determined for certain.
The Kaluza-Klein particle has been implicated as being a possible candidate for what is known as dark matter. The standard method of evaluating dark matter uses the gravitational effects it has on galaxies, instead the researchers tried to observe actual particle discharge, in the form of electrons and photons. What has been accomplished in this study is a new method of investigating dark matter, one that may change the course of this type of particle physics. This new method may lead us further on the path to discovering how the universe works.

Orion K. Mileage Increase, January SIN

Electronic Mileage Increase

Vehicle mileage could possibly be increased by up to 20 percent by an electric field, reports Charles Q. Choi, on the 42nd page of the December issue of Scientific American. A well documented effect of an electric field on liquids is to reduce viscosity. A reduction in fuel viscosity makes it so smaller droplets can be injected, allowing for more efficient, complete, combustion. The researchers, from Temple University, utilized this effect by modifying the fuel delivery system of a diesel engine, affixing an “electrically charged tube” to the fuel line just prior to the injectors. This setup was road tested, and the researchers found that the device used less than 0.1 watt, and increased fuel economy by 6 miles per gallon (MPG), from 32 MPG to 38 MPG.

This device has obvious benefits, such as increase profit margins for large businesses and greater fuel economy in personal vehicles, and can be diversified to most all types of internal combustion engines. However it does have detractions, such as greater dependency on oil, since there will be less incentive to invent new technology that does not use oil. I think that this will have short-term benefits, which outweigh the possible long-run detractor trouble.

Orion K. SIN, Quantum Computing, December

Using extremely low temperatures and extremely powerful magnetic fields, a multinational team of university researchers was able to read the quantum state of silicon atoms in a wafer. The team of researchers was also able to increase drastically the time span in which these atoms were stable. John Matson reported on this on November 19, 2008, at sciam.com, in an article titled Quantum Computing Advances a Qubit Closer to Reality.

The conventional processor uses bits, which can be either 0 or 1; the hypothetical quantum processor uses qubits, or quantum bits, which take the form of 0, 1, or both 0 and 1 simultaneously. This would greatly increase computing power.

In temperatures below -270 degrees Celsius (-450 degrees Fahrenheit, 3 Kevin), the researchers implanted a phosphorus atom into a silicon wafer, this adds a “free” electron (because phosphorus has charge 1-) that can be controlled and monitored. The researchers then used “millimeter-wave radiation” to change the spin while they examined the electrical current flowing through the wafer. This method is inaccurate, because it examines the qubits of “a few thousand” electrons, whereas to have a valid processor would have to examine only one electron at a time. This range, the researchers say, will be narrowed, now that the hurdle of reading the state has been passed.

A problem with using phosphorus occurs because the spin could only be maintained in the wafer for about two millionths of a second in previous experiments. A magnetic field 25 times stronger than any used in prior research, along with the cold temperatures, increased this time span 50 fold, making it slightly more feasible for use.

Though scientists are still quite far from reaching a usable quantum computer, this is another advancement toward the “holy grail” of computing.