Sabine
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Asteroid Dust, A Wok-Antenna, and Energy from Water
🕑 Added 2023-10-05 21:11:48 +0000 UTCNASA To Live-Stream Opening of Asteroid Sample
Image: NASA
NASA’s first-ever asteroid sample has arrived on Earth. It comes from the asteroid Bennu and was successfully dropped off by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in an Earth flyby on September 24. NASA has recovered and shipped it to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Researchers want to analyse the sample for chemical, mineral, and other physical information. The space capsule is also figuratively a “time capsule,” offering scientists a view back about 4.5 billion years to when the asteroid, Sun, and planets were forming.
The removal of the sample from the capsule will be broadcast live on October 11 at 11 AM Eastern time. Stay up to date at NASA here and here. Watch a recent NASA video about the sample recovery process here.
Make Your Knowledge Stick
We are now offering quizzes with our videos that let you check how much you remember on a brand-new app called QuizWithIt. We hope to make this app available for other creators in the near future.
Do You Live Near the Sea? You Could Capture Energy from Saltwater Using This New Device
Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a nanofluid device that extracts electrical energy from saltwater-freshwater boundaries. It works because saltwater contains charged particles (ions) of sodium and chloride. Where saltwater and freshwater meet, the ions diffuse, creating a small current. Professor Jean-Pierre Leburton, the project head, thinks the idea has much promise. “Our design exceeded our expectations and surprised us in many ways,” he said. Read the press release here and the full paper here.
Astronomers Build Radio Antenna From Kitchen Wok
If you think pans are for frying, think again. A group of astronomers has found a way to construct a radio telescope from a wok and electronics equipment purchased online for about $150. In a recent arXiv preprint, they reported how they used this equipment for basic radio astronomy which woked, excuse me, worked even in noisy urban environments.
The team is now updating the equipment for more experiments. I hope the upgrade will involve muffin tins and fondue forks because I have a few too many of those. If you want to take a whack at repurposing your dishware, you can find the paper here.
Comments
Michiel Peeraer
Astronomers Build Radio Antenna From Kitchen Wok : don't use a teflon coated wok if you want to "Make Your Knowledge Stick" Seriously I don't want to be using something looking as spy tools in certain part of China or the US(, before it becomes fashionable). But if you're hungry for knowledge/science, you may want to put of wrecking your mothers wok and keep an eye on this : https://www.crowdsupply.com/krakenrf/discovery-dish "Discovery Dish A simplified system for weather satellite reception and hydrogen line radio astronomy" Mahlzeit!
Could be used locally perhaps, as Sabine wrote where rivers flow to seas and sunshine is rare.
About the way of generating electricity from the interaction of salt water and fresh one inside an interesting device, based on the quantum mechanical properties of this device-controlled interaction between these two types of water, maybe a celebration is premature? According to the Press release: "The researchers are in the process of patenting their findings, and they are studying how arrays of these devices could scale for practical power generation." "Scale", indeed, is the word. Then they add: “We believe that the power density of a device array could meet or exceed that of solar cells,” Leburton said. “And that’s not to mention the potential applications in other fields like biomedical sensing and nanofluidics.”" OK then, for replacing solar cells: all is needed is to put arrays of these things on top of one's roof, if they are better than solar cells, as long as one lives on the sea floor and keeps a large provision of fresh water in the basement. For use in powering planetary space probes and artificial satellites, not so much.
