The U.S. space agency launches today a space probe that will keep an eye on the violence and turbulence at the very edge of the solar system.
NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is due to begin its mission at Kwajalein Atoll, the largest coral atoll on the planet, where it will be launched aboard a Pegasus rocket that will be dropped from a jet.
http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_NASA_Spacecraft_To_Study_Boundaries_Of_Solar_System_26943.html
The much anticipated Google Android phone will be released next week. T-Mobile will be the first company to announce a mobile phone with Android OS platform.
Read more on The Registrar http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/17/android_launch_next_week/
Update: 7:00 EDT The world’s largest particle collider has successfully completed its first major test.
The LHC, Large Hadron Collider, in the CERN’s labs in Switzerland will shoot its first beam of protons around a 17-mile, vacuum-sealed loop. The test run will allow scientiest to accelerate two particle beams toward each other at 99.9% of the speed of light.
ComputerWorld reports “Tomorrow’s test run is a critical milestone in getting to that ultimate undertaking. And a worldwide grid of servers and desktops will help the scientific team make sense of the information that they expect will come pouring in. The computer infrastructure is critical to the work being done in the particle collider, which is a tunnel buried 50 meters to 150 meters below the ground.”
News.com AU reports that British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has bet $110 that this experiment will not find an elusive particle. Despite the expected scientific benefits, some fear the experiment could create black holes that will eventually swallow the Earth. One German professor even led a last-ditch legal attempt to stop the experiment, while scientists working on the LHC said they had been sent death threats.
Zephyr, an ultra-lightweight carbon-fiber aircraft that weighs less than 70lbs and is designed to launch by hand. The little aircraft flies on solar power generated by amorphous silicon arrays covering the aircraft’s paper-thin wings. It is powered day and night by rechargeable lithium-sulfur batteries that are recharged during the day using solar power.
Zephyr built by UK defense firm Qinetiq, flew for 54 hours during tests conducted in the US Military Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
Until now, solar power has been a daytime only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is expensive and inefficient. MIT researchers today annouced that they have come up with a simple, inexpensive and highly efficient process for storing solar energy.
Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.
![Freakonomics[Revised and Expanded]](/images/21xRHBWYYML.jpg "Freakonomics[Revised and Expanded]")
