Space Junk

Humans have been launching objects into orbit since the late 1950s and not everything that goes up does come down.  The area around the Earth is littered with bits and pieces of satellites, rockets and other debris from over half a century of space exploration.  Some of these pieces collide with other satellites increasing the hazard of near Earth travel even more.

Luckily, there are a number of plans to clean up the mess.  Some of them seem to have a decent shot at success, provided funding can be found.  Mental floss has a roundup of these.

Asteroid Mining

I have been debating what science thing to post today.  There are so many good offerings: labor pain simulators for men, using PET scans to detect brain damage in football players before they know anything is wrong.  I think that I will go with space-themed:  asteroid mining.

What is it you ask?  Well it's mining... In space!

Why?  Aren't there mines here on Earth?  Well, yes, but there are three reasons why mining asteroids makes sense:

1. No need to launch materials into space.  It costs a lot of money to get materials out of Earth's gravity. These are already "out there".
2. Many asteroids contain metals that are relatively rare on Earth.
3. Many asteroids contain water which would be an indispensable commodity to space explorers.

Two major groups working on plans at the moment are:

1. Planetary Resources
2. Deep Space Industries

Real Life Mario Kart

RFID tags can make possible a number of things such as tagging animals, managing product inventories, or tracking railroad cars.  Now a group from Austin has used this technology to allow Mario-style go cart racing.  You should really watch the video, but a few things that you will see: banana peels that cause cars to spin out of control, mushrooms that increase your speed, and shells that can be fired at other carts.




Check out some of the other cool things that Waterloo Labs has built.

Ancient Words

Okay, this one is not directly related to any science that I teach, but I have been thinking about it recently.  Cdza (an experimental music group) has come out with a video where they put the lyrics to the "Fresh Prince" theme song through Google Translate and then back to English.  It's pretty amusing.

One thing that caught my eye (ear?) is that some words stayed the same even at the end.  Not many, but "mama" and "home" were still there.  Why is this interesting?  Well, these words were easy enough for a computer to translate that they must be pretty basic in a number of languages.  They are also fairly basic words.  Could it be that these are some of the oldest words in the world?  What other words might be as ancient?

CK-12

Free online textbooks, study guides, online quizzes, SAT prep, etc.  I love this site.

Highly Recommended.

http://www.ck12.org/student/

White House Says "No" to Death Star

So, the White House has a program called We the People.  Basically, if can make a request and if 25,000 people sign it (online) the government will respond.  Last year, some people posted the following:

Those who sign here petition the United States government to secure funding and resources, and begin construction on a Death Star by 2016.

By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense.

 https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/secure-resources-and-funding-and-begin-construction-death-star-2016/wlfKzFkN

The petition got almost 35,000 signatures, so a response was granted.  Rather than reprinting it, you should read the answer.

Rare Earth Metals

Yttrium, neodymium, gadolinium.  Heard of them?  It's not too surprising if you haven't.  They are metals.  Specifically, they're rare earth metals.  As it sounds, there's not a lot of them.  In addition, most of the world's supply is in the hands of one country.

Why should we care?  Modern electronics rely on these metals.  Having a stable supply is more critical now then ever before.  The Department of Energy has set up a new program to help make these into less rare earth metals.  The approach has 3 parts: find new sources, replace current materials with more common ones, and recycle old electronic components.  Sounds like a solid idea.

Source: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-01/new-120-million-department-energy-center-will-tackle-rare-earths-shortage