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Spacecraft to Fly Into The Sun

Flying into the sun's corona is suicidal to be sure, but scientists want to find out how the sun's atmosphere is heated.

Why the sun's atmosphere is nearly 200 times hotter than its visible surface is a long-standing mystery. A new spacecraft, called Solar Probe Plus, aims to find some answers.

Flying directly into the sun's corona is a suicidal mission to be sure, but scientists and engineers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Baltimore, which is developing Solar Probe Plus for NASA, plan to keep the spacecraft alive as long as possible.

It's not going to be easy. For starters, the probe will need to withstand temperatures up to about 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Plus, its heat shield can't ablate, or boil away like the shields on capsules returning through Earth's atmosphere are designed to do. That would pollute the particles and measurements Solar Probe Plus is being dispatched to gather.

"The whole point of the mission is to do particle detection and in situ measurements. If you're measuring part of your shield that's not going to work," Andy Dantzler, Solar Probe Plus project manager at Johns Hopkins University, told Discovery News.

The spacecraft also needs to be extremely lightweight so that it can fly.

"You need a lot of speed to go against the direction of the Earth," said Dantzler.

Eight weeks after launch, Solar Probe Plus will arrive at the sun to begin the first of 24 orbits using flybys of Venus to gradually shrink its distance to the sun. Eventually, it will come as close as about 4 million miles, which is inside the orbit of Mercury and about eight times closer than any previous spacecraft.

NASA is in the process of reviewing proposals for instruments to be included on the probe, but the overall mission goals are to figure out the sun's heating mechanism and determine how it whips up the solar wind -- the continuous blast of charged particles that permeate the solar system and define its boundaries.

"We want to know what it is that accelerates the plasma," Dantzler said. "We know it has to do with magnetic fields, but we don't really know how that comes about."

Various incarnations of Solar Probe Plus have been at the top of solar physicists' wish lists for more than 50 years, but until recently the technical problems exceeded the available budget to solve them.

"Solar Probe will be an extraordinary and historic mission, exploring what is arguably the last region of the solar system to be visited by a spacecraft," a NASA science oversight team headed by David McComas with the Southwest Research Institute in Texas, wrote in a report recommending the mission.

In addition to answering some basic science questions, information gathered by Solar Probe Plus could have some practical impacts by helping to improve space weather forecasts. Solar storms and magnetic disturbances from the sun can disrupt satellites and radio transmission, as well as take out power grids on Earth.

"Right now, predicting space weather is kind of like trying to predict hurricanes without knowing the acceleration effects of the oceans. Without that, you really can't understand them at all," Dantzler said.

Solar Probe Plus, which will cost more than $1 billion, initially was to launch in 2015, but has been bumped to 2018 to spread out the cost. NASA is expected to select the probe's science instruments this month.

Source : Discovery News

Edward Nino Hernandez - Shortest Man

Edward Nino Hernandez born in Colombia is recognized by the Guinness World Records as the worlds shortest living man. At 24 years of age Hernandez is 70cm (27.46-inch) tall and weighed 10kg (22lbs). He lives in Bogotá. It was officialy named as the worlds shortest living man in earth on September 4, 2010.

He loves to dance reggaeton, dreams of owning a fast car and wants to see the world.

Top on his list of people he would like to meet are Jackie Chan, Sylvester Stallone and former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

He is slightly taller than a piece of carry-on luggage and weighs just 22lbs (10kgs).

And he has just been officially certified as the world's shortest living man by Guinness World Records, measuring 27ins.

Nino, who works part time as a dancer, said:'I feel happy because I'm unique.'

He also reveals he has a girlfriend - an 18-year-old who is just under 5ft.

Although he has cataracts in both of his eyes that blur his vision and, require urgent surgery that the family can't afford, the budding actor has won a part in a new film, playing a drug thief.

He may like being in the spotlight, but Nino said there are some drawbacks to being the world's smallest man.

'It bothers me that people are always touching me and picking me up,' he said.

Nino's mother, Noemi Hernandez, said of her oldest of five children: 'He hasn't grown since he was two years old.'

She added that doctors never could explain why Nino is so small.

'They never gave us a diagnosis,' Mrs Hernandez, 43, said from her home in Bosa, a poor district of southern Bogota.

She said Nino weighed just 3.3lb (1.5kg) when he was born and was just 15 inches long.

Doctors were at first intrigued as to why he was so small and studied him until he was three years old, but then 'lost interest'.

She and her husband, a security guard, lost a daughter who was born similarly small in 1992.

Their youngest child, Miguel Angel, 11, stands 37ins tall. The other three boys are of normal height and appearance.

Nino is mentally sharp and laughs easily though it's sometimes hard to understand his high-pitched speech and his stubby fingers make writing difficult.

He had to repeat several years of school before dropping out aged about 13.

His mother said he loves to travel - though he hasn't been outside Colombia - and likes to play dominoes and checkers.

'He only gets depressed when he's shut in at home,' she added.

However, it is unclear whether Nino's fame will last long.

Khagendra Thapa Magar of Nepal is expected to take over after he turns 18 in October. He measures about 22ins and is currently recognized by Guinness as the shortest living teen.

The previous smallest man in the world was He Pingping of China, who was 1.5 inches taller and died in March.









Source : Yahoo News

Neptune Memorial Reef

The Neptune Memorial Reef underwater cemetery also known as the Atlantis Memorial Reef or the Atlantis Reef is a underwater mausoleum for cremated remains and the world's largest man-made reef (covering over 600,000 square feet (56,000 m²) of ocean floor). The place was chosen at 3.25 miles (either 6.0 km or 5.2 km) off the coast of Key Biscayne, Florida. It is a type of burial at sea and the first phase is estimated to be able to accommodate 850 remains, with an eventual goal of more than 125,000 remains.

The man-made reef located three miles off coast of Florida's Key Largo, opened in 2007 after a number of difficulties including permits.

The reef stretches across 16 acres of ocean floor designed as both a home for sea life and "a destination for divers". Cremated remains are mixed into different structures and columns.

World's oldest beer recovered from shipwreck

Divers have recovered what's thought to be the world's oldest beer from a 200-year-old shipwreck in the Baltic Sea.

The find was made as researchers recovered drinkable Champagne from a Russian cargo ship which crashed in the 1780s.

The divers say they were surprised to find a handful of beer bottles during the salvage operation near the Aland Islands.

When one of the bottle just so happened to break, the divers tried some of the dark liquid and say they liked the taste.

However, experts doubt the old beer would still be drinkable… and that the divers might have been suffering from 'the bends' which could have impacted their taste-buds.

Top 10 highest-paid authors

world's top ten ranking highest-paid authors based on their earnings from books, film rights, television, gaming deals and other income from June 1, 2009, through June 1, 2010.

James Patterson tops the list with 70 million U.S. dollars, while the "Twilight Saga" author Stephenie Meyer follows at the second place with 40 million dollars in earning.

10. J.K. Rowling: $10 million

9.Nicholas Sparks: $14 million

8.John Grisham: $15 million

7.Janet Evanovich:$16 million

6. Dean Koontz: $18 million

5. Ken Follet: $20 million

4.Danielle Steel: $32 million

3. Stephen King: $34 million

2. Stephenie Meyer: $40 million

1. James Petterson: $70 million

Source : Forbes

Dog Smoking

Puppy taught to smoke by 'bad pet owner' A pet owner in China has been accused of animal cruelty after he taught his new puppy to smoke cigarettes - with the result that the dog now smoke a pack a day.

23-year-old chef Zeng Ziguang said that he thought it would be funny to teach Little Black, his new puppy, to smoke when he bought him six months ago.

He said: 'At the beginning he hated the smell a lot. Then I trained him to get used to it by puffing the smoke onto his face frequently.'

Zeng, of Wuchang in Hubei Province, central China, used treats of food to train Little Black to put the cigarette in his mouth. Within a month, he says, the puppy was smoking.

'Now it can smoke a pack a day,' Zeng boasted.

But other residents of Wuchang haven't seen the supposedly 'funny' side of giving a puppy a deadly addiction, accusing Zeng - fairly reasonably, it has to be said - of being a 'bad pet owner'.

Mars Planet

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Zooming in on Mars: New high-resolution pictures, photos, pics & images reveal Red Planet's stunning terrain

It has long been a planet of wonder, leaving early astronomers to speculate about advanced alien civilisations facts.

Now modern-day star-gazers can enjoy stunning new close-up images of Mars' diverse surface after they were released information by NASA today.

The photographs were taken with a telephoto lens which can focus on objects the size of a beach ball from more than 180 miles away.

They zoom in on a range of terrains – from volcanic cones and cratered planes to wind-swept dunes to crusts of ice.

It forms part of the project using the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera which has been circulating the Red Planet for more than four years.

There are 236 dramatic new images, taken between July 8 and July 31, which show Mars almost from pole to pole.

They also capture evidence of ongoing geological processes on the planet today, such as fresh craters that may have formed between January and June.

Mars has long proved a source of wonder for stargazers until Mariner 4 made the first flyby by a spacecraft in 1965.

Until that point, it was speculated that water was present in liquid form on the planet which can be seen from Earth with the naked eye.

Since then, unmanned missions have taken geological samples which suggest the surface was once covered with water.

In 2005, radar data revealed the presence of large quantities of water ice at the poles, and at mid-latitudes and in 2008 water in ice form was sample in shallow soil.

Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, and has an average distance from Earth of 78m km but can come as close as 55.7m km.

It also boasts the highest mountain in the solar system, as well as the largest canyon.

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