The Official Science Thread

I've decided to make a dedicated thread that I'll bump instead of making a new thread every time I find something worth posting. Here's today's offering:

Pretty epic timelapse from southern Australia

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Some details on an HD streaming camera to be installed on the ISS. We'll be able to access a site and get near-realtime HD video of the earth with resolution that rivals google earth
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-...rth-space.html

The high resolution camera will offer a video image with a resolution that is comparable to much of Google Earth. This will give users the unique opportunity to see man-made objects and groups of people and to search for videos of particular locations. It will be possible to zoom in and out, virtually steer the camera from side to side, rewind and fast forward as they investigate areas of interest on Earth. The web platform also gives users the capability to constantly track the location of the ISS anticipating the exact time when it will pass over a particular geographic location.

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New type of propulsion: Fusion Thruster
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-...ter-space.html

John J. Chapman, a physicist working for NASA has presented an idea for a new type of fusion thruster for possible use by space traveling vehicles at the IEEE Symposium going on in Chicago this week. In the presentation, as explained on IEEE Spectrum, Chapman suggests that boron be used as an "aneutronic" fuel source, stating that doing so makes the energetic particles easier to deal with than traditional materials.

I'll throw in your other older video that i really liked.

is that what it looks like with the naked eye?

If you're in the right spot with no light pollution it'll be close. You can easily make out the milky way with the naked eye in the right conditions

Originally Posted by DylloS

is that what it looks like with the naked eye?

This is what it looks like at my house.

^ How long was that exposure?

30" @ f2.8 iso 3200.

All the solar LED lights my dad puts up everywhere really screw up the exposures, i could probably get by with shorter exposures were it not for that.

(HOUSTON) -- Craig Lewis, a 55-year-old Texas man who was about 12 hours away from death, became the first human to receive what doctors are calling the "beatless heart."

The device -- two ventricular assist devices intricately tied together, replacing his entire heart -- was developed by Drs. Billy Cohn and O.A. "Bud" Frazier at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston.

They say this new machine, which whirls instead of pulses, is more reliable and could replace existing artificial hearts, which wear out and can cause clotting and strokes.

"Every animal created has a pulsatile heart, and to mimic that was the natural way to proceed," said Cohn. "But to make something that actually can beat 100,000 times a day, 35 million times a year, a man-made device has to perform with that kind of endurance."

"A car can, but you change the oil and the spark plugs and do the maintenance and they go and go," he said. "These pulsating hearts work only a year or two, then fall apart."

Older devices would have also been too large to place in women's smaller bodies. The new beatless heart is "self-contained, smaller and a more durable device," said Cohn.

Lewis, in the advanced stages of cardiac amyloidosis, which causes the organs to fail as the body accumulates abnormal proteins, had been in a coma-like state. He died last March from underlying disease, five weeks after receiving the beatless heart.

But doctors said that the heart worked perfectly. Lewis was able to sit up and talk to his family before his kidneys and liver eroded. The family ultimately chose to turn off the heart device to allow him to die "humanely," said Cohn.

The first "beatless" heart experiments were done on a calf named Abigail, and later on 38 calves, whose hearts were removed and replaced with two centrifugal pumps.

In March, when doctors felt confident the artificial heart would also work in humans, they were approached by Craig Lewis' wife, Linda.

Hospital officials said she was "too emotional" to talk to ABC News, but in another interview earlier this week, she said that her husband would have appreciated the doctors' invention, fashioned from Dacron, fiberglass and silicone.

Until now, those with full heart failure have had only had two options: a first-generation artificial heart that had limitations, or a heart transplant. But the wait for a new heart can be long, if one becomes available at all. More than 100,000 Americans are on a list for about 2,200 hearts a year.

The new machine relies on two simple whirling rotors, spinning blood throughout the body in a continuous flow, addressing previous problems with clotting, thrombosis and bleeding.

"I think it's fascinating," said Dr. Jay Pal, assistant professor of cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.

Left ventricular assist devices, like the one that keeps former Vice President Dick Cheney alive, only help those with failure of the left side of the heart. This device can help those with right-side failure or failure on both sides.

Lewis had not been a candidate for an assist pump because his left ventricle was too badly damaged by disease, and his right ventricle had also failed.

"It certainly provides more options for people who are living with advanced heart failure, and results like these show a lot of promise and move the field forward," said Pal.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio***65279;

in..... space saved for later

subscribing

I'm in

also

^ Mmmmmm i'll take maxwell's equations girl.

Originally Posted by Penguin Koolaid

.

Also Scott i didn't see your edited version of the first post with the fusion thruster, son of a bitch! that's what i wanted to do...

Originally Posted by mashalah20

also

ew

Originally Posted by k2pilot

Also Scott i didn't see your edited version of the first post with the fusion thruster, son of a bitch! that's what i wanted to do...

Yeah I was going to PM you with that article when I first read it but it slipped my mind

Originally Posted by shockin330i

ew

Brains, Looks, Sanity...you can only pick 2.