In 1967, the United States joined the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union in signing the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. The agreement, more casually known as the “Outer Space Treaty,” remains the closest thing the world…
There is enough energy available in winds to meet all of the world’s demand. Atmospheric turbines that convert steadier and faster high-altitude winds into energy could generate even more power than ground- and ocean-based units. New research from Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira examines the limits of the amount of power that could be harvested from winds,…
A Japanese deep sea drilling vessel, Chikyu, recently set a new world record, by drilling down over 2,111 meters below the seafloor to collect rock samples. The ship is off Shimokita Peninsula of Japan in the northwest Pacific Ocean, as part of the Deep Coalbed Biosphere expedition, which aims to collect high-quality samples from the…
An international team of researchers has published their paper demonstrating quantum teleportation between two Canary Islands. While quantum teleportation doesn’t lead to instantaneous communication, what it does lead to is incredibly secure communications. That’s because no matter what instructions the sender sends over normal communications channels, those instructions are completely useless without the receiver’s entangled…
The Voyager 1 spacecraft’s 35th anniversary is proving to be unexpectedly exciting, as scientists gathered to examine new hints that the spacecraft is on the verge of leaving our solar system. Voyager 1 is now more than 11 billion miles away from Earth. It blasted off in September 1977, on a mission to Jupiter and…
For a researcher who builds robots, Maurizio Porfiri credits his success to an unexpected source — literature. Paul Auster’s novels in particular, with their scenes of Brooklyn, which is home to the researcher’s own Polytechnic Institute of New York University. As a teen growing up in Italy, Porfiri read Auster as well as Robert Musil,…
The most significant breakthrough in the laser pulse field in four years provides scientists with a new tool to watch quantum mechanics in action — a world hidden from view until now. The work was also accomplished without using specialized equipment, such as a mile-long particle accelerator or Superdome-sized synchrotron. University of Central Florida professor…
When environmental engineer John Feighery got a job testing well water in Bangladesh for the National Institutes of Health, he felt the work, which involved using heavy equipment, charting notes and locations by hand and transporting samples in incubators to a distant laboratory could be simpler and less expensive. That’s how he came up with…
With the successful landing and deployment of the Mars Curiosity Rover, humanity has been treated to a sneak peek at the Red Planet for the first time. The possibility of establishing space colonies has been a scientists’ dream for decades, but working out a way to keep humans alive on the outside Earth’s protective shell…
Getting a six-wheeled car-size rover safely onto the surface of the red planet? Daunting, sure. But NASA did it with Curiosity. Sending humans on a mission to Mars? That requires overcoming even more outlandish obstacles. Here’s a look at five of the top challenges to safely getting astronauts to Mars, as well as potential solutions.