Amazing Space Video. Space Center Winners. Space News. The Imaginarium

Your Thought for the Day

Hello Troops,
It is a busy morning here at The Troubadour's headquarters in beautiful Pleasant Grove, Utah.  Let's get down to business...

An Amazing Video.  A Must Watch

This is the most comprehensive and scientifically accurate, three-dimensional map of the known universe.  Take a short 2 minute, hyper-light, voyage to the star HR 8799.  I'll expect you to swoon with several outbursts of awe and wonder  several times during the journey. 

Mar 11, 2013

This visualization, produced using the Hayden Planetarium's Digital Universe--the most comprehensive and scientifically accurate, three-dimensional map of the known universe-- shows where the star HR 8799 is in relation to our solar system. Recently, a team of researchers led by the American Museum of Natural History used a suite of high-tech instrumentation and software called Project 1640 (www.amnh.org/project1640) to collect the first chemical fingerprints, or spectra, of the four red exoplanets orbiting this star. This visualization also shows other stars that are known to harbor planetary systems (stars with blue circles around them). HR 8799's system, which is 128 light years away from Earth, is one of only a couple of these stars that have been imaged, and the only one for which spectroscopy of all the planets has been obtained. Over the next three years, the team will survey many of these other stars in the same manner in which they studied HR 8799.


Two Members of our Space Center Community Bag the Big Ones!

John Robe is a 2013 Sterling Scholar!  John is a member of the Space Center's Programming Guild.
 
Justin Meiners won the Farnsworth Award.  Justin was a former member of our Space Center Programming Guild.

Congratulations!

John wrote this on his Facebook   page:

 I WON!! Wasatch Front Computer Technology Sterling Scholar. So unbelievable - I'm in complete shock. It was unbelievable that I could be associated with such an amazing group of talented people. I am truly blessed, and I am so grateful to all of the people that made this possible. I love you all! - Also congratulations to Justin Meiners on getting the Farnsworth award!!

I'm going to include one of the Facebook comments from Katie Kirkham Anderson which highlights the positive effect the Space Center has had on science education.

I'm going to focus on the positive and ignore the not. Yay Space Center!!! I really would like to come see the new location sometime. Hopefully its new incarnation will have as much or more success as the old in inspiring girls to go into science!  
Katie Kirkham Anderson

 OK, Time to Get Blown Away by this Amazing Invention

 

  "Using new communication technologies, 'MYO', the wearable gesture controlled arm-band by Thalmic Labs is capable of measuring electrical activity in muscle movement instantly. The device provides a seamless way to interact with computers - giving users an accurate sense of control. With the wave of a hand, 'MYO' transforms interactions by simply utilizing the electrical activity in muscles to wirelessly control video games, phones, and other digital products."

Watch this short video of this amazing gadget in action.

Russia to Build Asteroid Shield

Russia will complete a plan for a program to protect itself against threats from space by the end of this year, Civil Defense and Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov said on Tuesday.  Read More

Time May Not Be a Fourth Dimension New Paper Suggests

There are all sorts of wacky hypotheses concerning the existence of time or the lack thereof (we should know, we've covered a few of the less fringy of those clams before), but this is one that perhaps makes the most sense compared to the rest. A team of researchers have written two papers that claim time is not the fourth dimension of the universe as we are led to believe, but instead, time is merely the numerical order of change.  Read More

 

Ancient Mars Had Fresh Water and Could Have  Supported Life

 An analysis of a rock sample collected by NASA's Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes.

Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon -- some of the key chemical ingredients for life -- in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet last month.  Read More 

The Imaginarium

The Imaginarium's Clever and Imaginative Advertisement Award goes to the following

Imaginative, but a no no.

Kim Jong Piggy's North Korean Commandos in their 

newest camo.

Disney and Star Wars forthcoming release?

All marble.

Amazing!

Read the fine print.

Imagination: A