“All About That Space” NASA volunteer outreach video

“All About That Space” is a volunteer outreach video project created by the Pathways Interns of NASA's Johnson Space Center. It was created as a parody (to raise interest and excitement for Orion's first flight) of Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass”.

The lyrics and scenes in the video have been re-imagined in order to inform the public about the amazing work going on at NASA and the Johnson Space Center.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft is built to take humans farther than they’ve ever gone before. Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities.

Mysterious dance of dwarfs may force a cosmic rethink

This is an artist's impression of the coherent orbit of dwarf galaxies about a large galaxy. 

Credit: Geraint Lewis

The discovery that many small galaxies throughout the universe do not 'swarm' around larger ones like bees do but 'dance' in orderly disc-shaped orbits is a challenge to our understanding of how the universe formed and evolved.

The finding, by an international team of astronomers, including Professor Geraint Lewis from the University of Sydney's School of Physics, is announced today in Nature.

"Early in 2013 we announced our startling discovery that half of the dwarf galaxies surrounding the Andromeda Galaxy are orbiting it in an immense plane" said Professor Lewis.

"This plane is more than a million light years in diameter, but is very thin, with a width of only 300 000 light years."

The universe contains billions of galaxies. Some, such as the Milky Way, are immense, containing hundreds of billions of stars. Most galaxies, however, are dwarfs, much smaller and with only a few billion stars.

For decades astronomers have used computer models to predict how these dwarf galaxies should orbit large galaxies. They had always found that they should be scattered randomly.

"Our Andromeda discovery did not agree with expectations, and we felt compelled to explore if it was true of other galaxies throughout the universe," said Professor Lewis.

Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), a remarkable resource of colour images and 3-D maps covering more than a third of the sky, the researchers dissected the properties of thousands of nearby galaxies.

"We were surprised to find that a large proportion of pairs of satellite galaxies have oppositely directed velocities if they are situated on opposite sides of their giant galaxy hosts", said lead author Neil Ibata of the Lycée International in Strasbourg, France.

"Everywhere we looked we saw this strangely coherent coordinated motion of dwarf galaxies. From this we can extrapolate that these circular planes of dancing dwarfs are universal, seen in about 50 percent of galaxies," said Professor Geraint Lewis.

"This is a big problem that contradicts our standard cosmological models. It challenges our understanding of how the universe works including the nature of dark matter."

The researchers believe the answer may be hidden in some currently unknown physical process that governs how gas flows in the universe, although, as yet, there is no obvious mechanism that can guide dwarf galaxies into narrow planes.

Some experts, however, have made more radical suggestions, including bending and twisting the laws of gravity and motion.

"Throwing out seemingly established laws of physics is unpalatable," said Professor Lewis, "but if our observations of nature are pointing us in this direction, we have to keep an open mind. That's what science is all about."

More information: "Velocity anti-correlation of diametrically opposed galaxy satellites in the low-redshift Universe." Neil G. Ibata, et al. Nature (2014) DOI: 10.1038/nature13481. 

Humanoid Droids dance, dogs nuzzle, speak at Madrid robot museum

Humanoid robots dance at "The Robot Museum" in Madrid on November 28, 2013.

A white robotic beagle sits wagging its tail and nuzzling anyone who pets it, while six pint-sized robots, flashing blue, pump their fists as they dance to the pop hit "Gangnam Style".

They are the stars of a new museum launched in Madrid this month, showcasing what its owners say is one of the world's top collections of robot dogs and other pet automatons.

"As far as we know this is the biggest collection of robots in Europe, and in particular of Aibo robotic dogs," sold by Sony from 1999 to 2006, said the Robot Museum's manager Daniel Bayon, 39.

"They are a very important part of the museum. They are the most advanced robot dogs that have ever existed," he told reporters.

This pack of Aibos is the biggest in the world outside their native Japan, he added.

The museum houses some 140 exhibits dating from the 1980s to the present.

Among them is Nao, a walking, talking miniature humanoid developed by the French robotics company Aldebaran as an educational aid.

"I am a very special robot. I can simulate real-life behaviour," it said, in a high-pitched mechanical voice, during a recent demonstration.

"If you'll excuse me, I'll make myself a bit more comfortable," it added, sitting down on its bottom.

A child pets a robotic dog at "The Robot Museum" in Madrid on November 28, 2013.

Nearby stood a model of R2-D2, the classic bleeping droid first seen on movie screens in "Star Wars" in 1977.

Since opening nearly two weeks ago, tickets for guided visits to the small museum underneath the Juegetronica games store in central Madrid have sold out several times, Bayon said.

The owner of the collection, local technology enthusiast Pablo Medrano, said most of the models on display are no longer for sale in shops.

A picture taken on November 28, 2013 shows "NAO" a programmable humanoid robot developed by French robotics company Aldebaran Robotics at "The Robot Museum" in Madrid.

The museum is "perhaps the only dedicated robot museum in Europe outside of universities and training centres where we can see this technology of the future," Medrano, 39, told reporters.

"I want robots to be able to help us, just as household appliances and computers are helping us, which years ago was unthinkable. I hope that in a few years robots will meet our daily needs, particularly those of old people."