Hubble Telescope Image: Blue planet HD 189733b - Video

A planet discovered in 2005 in the constellation of Vulpecula (the Fox) was determined to be colored blue with the help of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The blue coloured planet is similar to how the Earth's color looks like from space.

The planet, HD 189733b which is a huge gas giant similar to the planet Jupiter, is 63 light years away and is closely orbiting its host star; around 1/30 the distance the Earth orbits the Sun.

Although the planet comes off with a deep cobalt blue color, its atmosphere is vastly different from that of the Earth.

The HD 189733b's atmosphere has a temperature of over 1000 degrees Celsius, and it rains glass, sideways, in howling 7000 kilometre-per-hour winds. HD 189733b is slightly bigger than the planet Jupiter.

This illustration shows HD 189733b, a huge gas giant that orbits very close to its host star HD 189733.

By observing this planet before, during, and after it disappeared behind its host star during orbit, astronomers were able to deduce that HD 189733b is a deep, azure blue — reminiscent of Earth's colour as seen from space.

Nanoparticles found in moon glass bubbles explain weird lunar soil behaviour

A stunning discovery by Queensland University of Technology (QUT) soil scientist Marek Zbik of nano particles inside bubbles of glass in lunar soil could solve the mystery of why the moon's surface topsoil has many unusual properties.

Dr Zbik, from Queensland University of Technology's Science and Engineering Faculty, said scientists had long observed the strange behaviour of lunar soil but had not taken much notice of the nano and submicron particles found in the soil and their source was unknown.

Dr Zbik took the lunar soil samples to Taiwan where he could study the glass bubbles without breaking them using a new technique for studying nano materials call synchrotron-based nano tomography to look at the particles. Nano tomography is a transmission X-ray microscope which enables 3D images of nano particles to be made.

"We were really surprised at what we found," Dr Zbik said.

"Instead of gas or vapour inside the bubbles, which we would expect to find in such bubbles on Earth, the lunar glass bubbles were filled with a highly porous network of alien-looking glassy particles that span the bubbles' interior.

"It appears that the nano particles are formed inside bubbles of molten rocks when meteorites hit the lunar surface. Then they are released when the glass bubbles are pulverised by the consequent bombardment of meteorites on the moon's surface.

"This continuous pulverising of rocks on the lunar surface and constant mixing develop a type of soil which is unknown on Earth."

Dr Zbik said nano particles behaved according to the laws of quantum physics which were completely different from so called 'normal' physics' laws. Because of this, materials containing nano particles behave strangely according to our current understanding.

"Nano particles are so tiny, it is their size and not what they are made of that accounts for their exceptional properties.

"We don't understand a lot about quantum physics yet but it could be that these nano particles, when liberated from their glass bubble, mix with the other soil constituents and give lunar soil its unusual properties.

"Lunar soil is electro-statically charged so it hovers above the surface; it is extremely chemically active; and it has low thermal conductivity eg it can be 160 degrees above the surface but -40 degrees two metres below the surface.

"It is also very sticky and brittle such that its particles wear the surface off metal and glass."
Dr Zbik said the moon had no atmosphere to cushion the impact of meteorites like Earth had.

"When they hit the moon there is a very violent reaction. Huge temperatures are generated which melts the rock. The pressure goes and a vacuum is created. Bubbles occur in the molten glass rock like soft drink bubbles trying to escape the bottle.

"Our work now is to understand how those particles evolve from this process. It may also lead us to completely different way of manufacturing nanomaterials."

Dr Zbik and his research team's study was published in the International Scholarly Research Network Astronomy and Astrophysics.

To find out more and also view a 3D image from inside the lunar bubble using transmission X-Ray microscopy go to http://youtu.be/omRoS2SntMU. You can see what is inside the lunar bubble with 3D glasses.

Related Links: Queensland University of Technology

Google's Project Glass: One day... - YouTube

We believe technology should work for you — to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don't.

A team within our Google[x] group started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment.

Follow along with us at projectglass as we share some of our ideas and stories. We'd love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass?

Google glasses: Streaming info to your eyeballs

When smartphones came out, it seemed like a leap in convenience to be able to carry important information on us at all times, instead of leaving it with our computers.

But soon, it may seem onerous to reach for your phone, turn it on and find the right app to get a piece of information, when you could instead just wear a pair of glasses that directly stream information to your eyeballs.

By year’s end, Google is set to release glasses that do exactly that in real time, so you won’t constantly have to reach into your purse or pocket.

The glasses, which will be Android-based, will cost about as much as a smartphone ($250-$600) and feature a 3G or 4G data connection and GPS and motion sensors and, of course, they’ll sport a screen a few inches away from the eye.

Here are some other key features:

• A unique navigation system that scrolls and clicks with a tilt of the head: Seth Weintraub, a 9 to 5 Google blogger who broke the story says, “We are told it is very quick to learn and once the user is adept at navigation, it becomes second nature and almost indistinguishable to outside users.”
• A low-resolution built-in camera: It will monitor the world in real time and overlay relevant information about the location, nearby buildings and friends who happen to be in the area.
• The ability to send data to the cloud: Then, the wearer can tap into services such as Google Latitude to share his/her location, Google Goggles to search images and figure out what he/she is looking at, Google Maps to find out what else is nearby, and to check in to places.

They’ll look like Oakley Thumps (pictured above), and Google expects that users won’t wear them all the time but only when they want the augmented reality view.

The glasses are being developed at the Google X offices, a secret lab that works on futuristic projects such as robots and space elevators.

"Internally, the Google X team has been actively discussing the privacy implications of the glasses and the company wants to ensure that people know if they are being recorded by someone wearing a pair of glasses with a built-in camera."

For now, Google isn’t yet thinking about developing business models from the glasses, but will wait to see if the glasses take off first.

Meanwhile, Apple is also reportedly working on wearable computing, the inform of a computer that straps around the wrist.

Meanwhile, Google is said to be building a $120 million electronics facility for testing “precision optical technology.”

ESA's Heart of Glass: Trackinside

What’s the best way to keep track of medicines or luxury goods? Just give them a number, of course. But what if the item you want to keep your eye on is made of glass?

Thanks to a new laser technology developed for space, a Belgian start-up company called Trackinside is now able to inscribe numbers in glass without cracking, heating or leaving any external marks on the glass.

“It’s the only technology that can mark glass without damaging it,” said Jean Michel Mestrez, Trackinside Managing Director.

The low-impact laser inscribes serial numbers inside, rather than on the surface, of the glass used in medical syringes, perfume vials or drinks bottles.

Herschel telescope at ESTEC, the Netherlands

The laser technology was initially developed in Belgium at the Centre Spatial de Liège (CSL), working with the LASEA CSL-spinoff group, which was initially devoted to developing cleaning processes using lasers.

CSL is a partner of the Belgian Space Technology Platform, ESA’s national technology transfer broker.

There, it was created for things like etching the surfaces of lenses and mirrors that would then be used in space telescopes and measuring equipment.

The ‘femtosecond laser’ works much like the laser used in eye surgery, where it beams energy through the surface of the eye to make incisions deep below.

Glass Microbiology: Luke Jerram

Click on the picture to see the full slideshow of glass Microbiology.

These transparent glass sculptures were created to contemplate the global impact of each disease and to consider how the artificial colouring of scientific imagery affects our understanding of phenomena.

Jerram is exploring the tension between the artworks' beauty, what they represent and their impact on humanity.

The question of pseudo-colouring in biomedicine and its use for science communicative purposes, is a vast and complex subject. If some images are coloured for scientific purposes, and others altered simply for aesthetic reasons, how can a viewer tell the difference?

How many people believe viruses are brightly coloured? Are there any colour conventions and what kind of ‘presence’ do pseudocoloured images have that ‘naturally’ coloured specimens don’t? See these examples of HIV imagery. How does the choice of different colours affect their reception?

In response to these questions, Jerram has created a series of transparent, three dimensional sculptures. Photographs of these artworks are being distributed to act as alternative representations of each virus.

Ironically in 2007 photographer David Sayer won an award from the Institute of Medical Imaging for the artificially coloured image he took of Jerrams HIV sculpture.

The sculptures were designed in consultation with virologists from the University of Bristol using a combination of different scientific photographs and models. They were made in collaboration with glassblowers Kim George, Brian Jones and Norman Veitch.

Jerram said,
"It's great to be exploring the edges of scientific understanding and visualisation of a virus. Scientists aren't able to answer many of the questions I ask them, such as how the RNA is exactly fitted within the Capsid? At the moment, camera technology can't answer these questions either. I'm also pushing the boundaries of glassblowing. Some of my designs simply can't be created in glass. Some are simply too fragile and gravity would cause them to collapse under their own weight. So there's a very careful balancing act that needs to take place, between exploring current scientific knowledge and the limitations of glassblowing techniques." ...........Read longer interview with Jerram

'Superman' vision penetrates opaque glass

It's not quite X-ray vision, but a way has been found to transmit simple images through opaque objects using ordinary light – physicists projected an image through glass covered in thick paint.

Some things we consider opaque – "not able to be seen through", in the New Oxford Dictionary of English definition – are slightly translucent, meaning some light does in fact make it through. However, it is scattered so much by bouncing around such materials' lattice of atoms that physicists thought it was beyond practical use for seeing what is on the other side of the object.

A 2007 experiment that managed to focus light through eggshells and a human tooth demonstrated that might not be so. Now the first simple images have been transmitted through an opaque object and reconstructed on the far side, by physicist Sylvain Gigan and colleagues at École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in Paris, France.

Read the full article here...