Cool science stuff

Well, he went to General Motors Institute and worked as a Pontiac engineer (under John DeLorean) for two years before realizing there was no way to advance his career there. Plus Mom wanted out of Michigan. So a combination of foresight and luck!

 

I think that's call cold winters.

BTW, you know why the shuttle was built? Hint: USAF.

 

Been meaning to post this for awhile.

That purple dot in the black area in the middle is one single strontium atom illuminated by a laser. It's suspended in an electric field between the two electrodes, which are two millimeters apart.

A single atom is visible to the naked eye in this stunning photo | New Scientist

 

Apparently, there is science behind this ancient "portal to hell."

https://nypost.com/2018/02/20/there...ople-suddenly-died-near-roman-portal-to-hell/

Birds and other animals die immediately when they get too close to the ancient temple to the god of the underworld. Turns there's a crack in the earth venting high concentrations of carbon dioxide that kills whatever gets caught in it.

 

Elon Musk's engineers need to work on their pitch framing: SpaceX misses catching Falcon 9 rocket fairing with a giant net on a big ship

 

NASA's twins study shows that spending a year in space has actually altered 7 percent of astronaut Scott Kelly's genes.

Astronaut's DNA changed by time in space

 

That article got things wrong. He is still a twin, genetically the same as his brother. His genes were altered in terms of being activated, not by a change in actual DNA.

NASA Study Finds Astronaut's Genes Changed While In Space

 

NASA receives response from Voyager 1 spacecraft 13 billion miles away after 37 years of inactivity | Technology Startups News | Tech News

The thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft just did what we thought was impossible. After 37 years of inactivity, NASA just received response from spacecraft 13 billion miles away, NASA said in a statement on its website. Voyager 1 is NASA’s farthest and fastest spacecraft. It was launched on September 5, 1977. Having operated for 40 years, 6 months and 14 days as of March 19, 2018, the spacecraft relies on small devices called thrusters to orient itself so it can communicate with Earth. These thrusters fire in tiny pulses, or “puffs,” lasting mere milliseconds, to subtly rotate the spacecraft so that its antenna points at our planet. Now, the Voyager team is able to use a set of four backup thrusters, dormant since 1980.

In a statement on its website, NASA said: “The Voyager team assembled a group of propulsion experts at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, to study the problem. Chris Jones, Robert Shotwell, Carl Guernsey and Todd Barber analyzed options and predicted how the spacecraft would respond in different scenarios. They agreed on an unusual solution: Try giving the job of orientation to a set of thrusters that had been asleep for 37 years.”

 

That is amazing.

May have mentioned before, but when I was with the community college we took a group of students on tour of JPL.
I highly recommend you check it out if you can. I think they have one or two open houses a year.

Had some other opportunities to work with NASA's public affairs people on some things. Top notch.

 

That's an incredible story. What a feat of engineering. It's amazing to think of how much more sophisticated our cell phones are than the Voyager I, yet it's still providing us with information 13 billion miles away.