Comet Wild 2 dust 'ballistics' probed in 3D
 

Scientists in the US are making [URL="http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35268807"]detailed 3D maps of the cavities carved by comet dust[/URL] in blocks of foam carried by Nasa's Stardust spacecraft.

[QUOTE]Stardust visited Comet Wild 2 in 2004, catching samples from its dusty tail in specially made slabs of "aerogel".

By studying the tracks with microscopes and synchrotron X-rays, researchers aim to reconstruct exactly what kind of particles first hit the gel.

They are also identifying extra, tiny grains to be extracted and tested.

"We want to tell people where the interesting grains are," said Amanda White, a student working on the project at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
[/QUOTE]

Analysis confirms [URL="http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/01/analysis-confirms-coordinated-hack-attack-caused-ukrainian-power-outage/"]coordinated hack attack[/URL] caused Ukrainian power outage

The people who carried out [URL="http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/01/first-known-hacker-caused-power-outage-signals-troubling-escalation/"]last month's first known hacker-caused power outage[/URL] used highly destructive malware to gain a foothold into multiple regional distribution power companies in Ukraine and delay restoration efforts once electricity had been shut off, a newly published analysis confirms.

[URL]http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-pandemics-idUSKCN0UR20C20160113[/URL]

[QUOTE]Investing less than \$0.72 a year for each person would make the world far more resilient to potentially devastating pandemics, according to a global health expert group convened in the wake of the Ebola crisis.[/QUOTE]

[url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/01/14/this-suspected-supernova-is-570-billion-times-brighter-than-our-sun/]This suspected supernova is 570 billion times as bright as our sun[/url] - The Washington Post

[Aside: Oh gawd, not with the whoring-for-eyeballs 'This' headline trope again. 'This article title vying to be most clickbaity ever!']

Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Real Ninth Planet:

[URL]http://www.gps.caltech.edu/content/caltech-researchers-find-evidence-real-ninth-planet[/URL]

[QUOTE=Nick;423235]Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Real Ninth Planet:

[URL]http://www.gps.caltech.edu/content/caltech-researchers-find-evidence-real-ninth-planet[/URL][/QUOTE]

That's incredible. It's an extraordinary claim, but they seem to be well on their way to extraordinary evidence.

Number 9, number 9, number 9.........
 

[URL="http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/scientist-who-killed-pluto-now-concludes-there-is-a-ninth-major-planet/"]Ars Technica on the research[/URL] suggesting another distant planet.
[QUOTE]The demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet didn't come about because of any discovery about Pluto itself. Rather, it was triggered by the discovery that Pluto was one of what's likely to be a large number of bodies that orbit well beyond Neptune. These Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), some of which are larger than Pluto, tend to have unusual orbits, passing outside of the plane of the Solar System, with their ellipses stretched out on one side, while passing closer to the Sun on the other.

But in recent years, scientists have been noting some odd patterns in the orbits of KBOs. For many of them, their closest approach to the Sun comes as they cross the orbital plane of the inner planets. Now, the researcher who helped identify some of the first KBOs has published a paper in which he identifies a possible cause of these patterns: a distant, Neptune-sized body that would restore our Solar System's planetary total to nine.
[/QUOTE]

Spotted on the interwebs: "Ed Wood was right in his famous movie Plan 9 from Outer Space ... he just missed the 'et'!"

[url]http://phys.org/news/2016-01-self-heating-lithium-ion-battery-winter-woes.html[/url]

I love reading articles like this because of the thought process my brain goes through with the information.

The problem:Cold batteries charge slowly.

The solution: Don't allow them to be cold when the time comes to use them.

An obvious solution when it's suggested or implemented, but I'm sure a lot of people are feeling rather "herpderpish" after reading it.

Another good one is the first propeller driven wind car. People in the sailing industry were claiming it was bull crap until a proof of concept car(concept works on water and land) was built and tested on some sand flats. Last I heard, they were considering putting propellers on cruise ships for the sake of reduced mileage.

[url]http://www.wired.com/2010/06/downwind-faster-than-the-wind/[/url]

[QUOTE=kladner;423288]Number 9, number 9, number 9.........[/QUOTE]Take this brother, may it serve you well.

Salty, ocean-based capacitors may deliver energy boost
 

Using a capacitor to [URL="http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/salty-ocean-based-capacitors-may-deliver-energy-boost"]extract energy from the mixing of fresh and salt water.[/URL][INDENT]Every year, the Dutch physics community [URL="http://http://www.fom.nl/live/agenda/physicsatFOM/information.pag"]gets together[/URL] to celebrate the year in physics. These are some highlights from the meeting. Since it is a meeting, it is not possible to link to published work (a talk could cover multiple papers or just parts of papers). Where possible, we've linked to the research group that presented the work.
[/INDENT][QUOTE]I remember, maybe 12 years ago, attending a talk by an environmental activist who discussed clean and sustainable energy and the difficulties in obtaining it. She was not your average activist—she had, as I recall, qualifications in chemical engineering.

One thing she mentioned in passing (and I may not have remembered this accurately) was that when fresh water flows into salt water, the process of salination releases a relatively large amount of energy, but that no one knew how to harvest it effectively.

That may eventually change if the work of Mathijs Janssen, from [URL="http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/%7Eroij0101/"]Utrecht University[/URL], pays off.

A capacitor says to a bartender: hey, stop charging me! [:grin:][/QUOTE]