It’s Not (completely) Your Fault. -ScienceAlert

The simple discovery that a piece of wire mesh can stop a flame in its tracks saved the lives of thousands of miners.

This demonstration shows how a simple lamp made of gauze could contain the open candle flames that miners used before 1815. With the safety lamp, any potential explosions would stay contained and never escalate to dangerous levels (although mining remained an extremely dangerous occupation).

Watch the whole demo and hear the full story here.

One thing we’re always doing as a species is expanding our knowledge of the heavens. We send out probes, robots, satellites, spacecraft, all to map out and add to our ever-expanding picture of what the Universe looks like.

But what if that picture suddenly became smaller? That is exactly what happened when new data from the Planck satellite tightened our previous notions of the observable universe, shrinking its area by 0.7%.

If you’ve never realized, we don’t actually see all of the stars in the Universe. If we did, night time sky would be a whole lot brighter. Instead, we see everything within a particular radius, the particle horizon. Any particle of light emitted outside that particle horizon is too far to have reached us.

So if we want to know just how large the observable universe is, we just have to figure out the distance between us and that particle horizon, right?

As it turns out, not quite.

The universe, specifically spacetime, is continuously expanding, with points in the universe moving further apart. This not only changes the distance between objects but also how fast light is moving in the universe. 

The movement of spacetime has an effect on which photons reach us and can be observed.

So how do you calculate the radius? Back in 2003, scientists came up with an equation that took an event called “the recombination” as a reference point in the universe’s history. They combined that with the rate of the expansion of the universe and several other factors, in the end coming up with a number.

Back in 2003, that number was a radius of 45.66 billion light-years. Now, new data revealed a far more accurate number: 45.34 billion light-years.

“A difference of 320 million light-years might be peanuts on the cosmic scale, but it does make our knowable universe a little bit cozier,” Nick Tomasello from the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia writes over at Medium.

The study has been accepted for publication in an upcoming edition of Advances in Astrophysics.

These are the robots taking our jobs

Contour Crafting’s 3D-Printing Tech Can Build Homes On-Site in Under 24 Hours

Robotic construction system Contour Crafting (CC) has debuted their newest 3D-printing technology that can print entire homes on-site in less than 24 hours. CC’s technology doesn’t just build the architectural structure, it also prints the electrical, plumbing, and air conditioning features mid-construction, with no manual assembly required.

Read more at http://www.futurism.com/toIbI

Kryptos is an encrypted sculpture by the American artist, Jim Sanborn, that is located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia. Since its dedication on November 3, 1990, there has been much speculation about the meaning of the encrypted messages it bears. Of the four messages, three have been solved, with the fourth remaining one of the most famous unsolved codes in the world. The sculpture continues to provide a diversion for cryptanalysts, both amateur and professional, who are attempting to decipher the final section. The sculptor has given clues on several occasions.

The solved messages can be read here: [x]

(Fact Source) For more facts, follow Ultrafacts

What’s Up for March 2016?

In March, Jupiter, it’s moons and moon shadows will all be visible in the sky. Find out when and where to look up:

Jupiter dominates the evening sky this month, rising at sunset and setting at dawn. On March 8, Jupiter reaches what is called “opposition”. Imagine that Jupiter and the sun are at opposite ends of a straight line, with the Earth in between. This brings Jupiter its closest to Earth, so it shines brighter and appears larger in telescopes.

On the nights of March 14 – 15, March 21 – 22 and March 29, two of Jupiter’s moons will cross the planet’s disk. 

When the planet is at opposition and the sun shines on Jupiter’s moons, we can see the moon’s shadow crossing the planet. There are actually 11 of these double shadow transits in March!

The next six months will be awesome times for you to image Jupiter when it’s highest in the sky; near midnight now, and a little earlier each night through the late summer.

Even through the smallest telescopes or binoculars, you should be able to see the two prominent belts on each side of Jupiter’s equator made up of the four Galilean moons: Io, Europa Ganymede and Calisto. If you have a good enough view, you may even see Jupiter’s Red Spot!

Our Juno spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter on July 4th of this year and will go into orbit around the giant planet. Right now, the Juno mission science team is actively seeking amateur and professional images of the planet. These images are uploaded to a Juno website, and the public is invited to discuss points of interest in Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Locations will later be voted on and the favorites will be targets for JunoCam, the spacecraft’s imaging camera. Once JunoCam has taken the images, they’ll be posted online. Imaging participants can then process these raw mission images and re-upload them for others to view.  

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Tesla’s cheapest Model X is priced at $80,000

Before US astronaut Scott Kelly returned from his year-long mission aboard the International Space Station, he shared photos of his very last sunrise in space.

I think you need to see the full photos, in all their glory:

Source

NASA is about to light the biggest human-made space fire ever

If a fire breaks out inside the cabin of a small spacecraft, there’s nowhere to run. But in order to figure out how large fires really behave in space, NASA is planning to light one on purpose. How they’re planning to conduct the test.

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