Robots Will Now Explore Mars

It may seem like it's straight out of a science fiction story, but director of NASA's Ames Research Center recently suggested in an interview with H+ magazine that researchers could use nanotechnology to build self-replicating robots on Mars, according to Slashdot.

"If we really want to settle Mars, and we don't want to have to carry millions of tons of equipment with us to duplicate the way we live on Earth, these technologies will be key," Peter Worden said in the interview. He added in the article that the self-replicating robots could survey Mars for underground microbes while protecting the unique Martian biosphere, since it could hint at our own planet's beginnings.

The question, Worden asked, is whether we could take existing microbes--self-replicating robots, in a sense--and engineer them to do other things. On a related note, the report said that the possibility of underground microbes already on Mars has only increased, given the recent discoveries of carbon and water.

Technology Update: Daily Updates on newly launched Gadgets, Gizmos, Mobiles, PC's & Laptops, Hacking, Gaming & Emerging Technological Trends.

Evidence of Ancient Mars Lake Discovered

The case for the presence of water on Mars, at least historically, continues to pile up: a University of Colorado at Boulder research team claims "the first definitive evidence of shorelines on Mars" in a statement released today, according to Space.com. The scientists discovered signs of a "deep, ancient lake" that could have harbored life on the red planet.

"This is the first unambiguous evidence of shorelines on the surface of Mars," Di Achille said. "The identification of the shorelines and accompanying geological evidence allows us to calculate the size and volume of the lake, which appears to have formed about 3.4 billion years ago."

As is always with findings like this, the tech behind it is cool. For the study, the scientists used images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the report said. (Image credit: G. Di Achille, University of Colorado)

Technology Update: Daily Updates on newly launched Gadgets, Gizmos, Mobiles, PC's & Laptops, Hacking, Gaming & Emerging Technological Trends.

Schoolboy survives direct hit by meteorite travelling at 30,000mph

The odds of it happening are astronomical, but not impossible, as one schoolboy found out when he was struck by a passing meteorite.

The rock flew down from space at speeds of 30,000mph, and grazed past 14-year-old Gerrit Blank as he made his way to school.

The meteorite continued on before ending its billion-year intergalactic journey on the pavement, leaving a smoking, foot-wide crater.

Gerrit was left with a scar on his hand, making him one of only a handful of people to have been struck directly by a meteorite.
Gerrit Blank, 14, was on his way to school when he was struck from the heavens by a 30,00mph meteorite

In one hand Gerrit holds the meteorite and on the back of the other the graze it left can be seen

The student, from Essen, Germany, said: 'At first I just saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand.

'Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder.'

* How a solar system 'wobble' could make the Earth crash into Mars... but don't worry, it won't happen for 3 billion years
The rock would originally have been a lot larger, but would have burned up in the atmosphere as it fell to Earth. Most 'shooting stars' burn up completely before they hit the ground.
Gerrit Blank, 14, was on his way to school when he was struck from the heavens by a 30,00mph meteorite. Gerrit was lucky to survive his close encounter

Experts are now examining the pea-sized meteorite to discover its origins. Most meteorites date back to the formation of the solar system 4.55billion years ago.

The odds of being hit by a meteorite are said to be one in a 100million. There is not a confirmed fatality from a direct hit before, although there are many reported cases of animals being killed by an impact.

One woman in Alabama, America, was injured as she lay asleep in bed in 1954. The 4kg meteorite struck her after smashing through her roof.

A monk is said to have been killed by a meteorite in Milan in 1650 and two sailors in Sweden were reportedly killed by one while sailing in 1674.

Techno Uptodate: Daily Updates on newly launched Gadgets, Gizmos, Mobiles, PC's & Laptops, Hacking, Gaming & Emerging Technological Trends.

Found the First Exoplanet in Another Galaxy?

To date, scientists have discovered over 300 exoplanets, which are planets orbiting stars other than our own sun. Recently, a group of astronomers may have detected another one, as Universe Today reports. In and of itself, that's not news--except that this one may be in another galaxy.

It turns out that one specific star in the Andromeda Galaxy--which is over two million light-years away--has some kind of object orbiting it that's about six times the mass of Jupiter. At that size and distance, it could be either a planet or a brown dwarf star, but astronomers are leaning toward the former.

To find the exoplanet, the report said that the astronomers used a technique called pixel-lensing, which is essentially gravitational microlensing: looking for bent light rays when they pass close to a massive object, as per Einstein's general theory of relativity. (Image credit: NASA/Tony Hallas)

Techno Uptodate: Daily Updates on newly launched Gadgets, Gizmos, Mobiles, PC's & Laptops, Hacking, Gaming & Emerging Technological Trends.

Earth and Venus Could Smash Together--In 3.5 Billion Years

According to a study released Wednesday in Nature, a force known as orbital chaos could "cause our Solar System to go haywire," leading Earth to smash into Venus or possibly Mars, the AFP reports. Most likely, the sun and solar system will continue on for another five billion years. At that point, the sun will become a red giant and engulf the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars).

But it turns out that we can't predict the course of celestial mechanics--the motion of our planets--more than a few tens of millions of years into the future, said Jacques Laskar, a researcher at the Observatoire de Paris and lead author of the study, in the report. That led to some fancy computer modeling using Einstein's theory of general relativity, which hadn't been done before.

Laskar's group ran over 2,700 computer simulations. They found that over 200 of them caused the four inner planets and the sun to be in a five-way accident, with Earth "being smashed to pieces" in several dozen of them a few billion years from now. The likely culprit? Mercury, which has a lopsided orbit and the smallest mass--meaning that it could (eventually) be easily destabilized, causing a chain reaction.

Techno Uptodate: Daily Updates on newly launched Gadgets, Gizmos, Mobiles, PC's & Laptops, Hacking, Gaming & Emerging Technological Trends.

Report: Earth's Atmosphere Disappearing Faster than Mars

We're not saying Earth will soon go all Total Recall on us and require humans to walk around in radiation-shielded space suits. But a new Discovery report indicates that researchers were recently "stunned" to find out that our planet is losing its atmosphere faster than both Mars and Venus are--neither of which have significant magnetic fields. That could have major implications for what we thought was true about Earth's atmosphere. And it's likely due to the sun.

"We often tell ourselves that we are very fortunate living on this planet because we have this strong magnetic shield that protects us from all sorts of things that the cosmos throws at us -- cosmic rays, solar flares and the pesky solar wind," said Christopher Russell, a professor of geophysics and space physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in the article. "It certainly does help in some of those areas but ... in the case of the atmosphere, this may not be true."

The theory is that Earth's magnetosphere is actually helping the sun's energized particles strip away a tiny fraction of Earth's atmosphere, according to a separate National Geographic article--meaning that we're losing oxygen and hydrogen faster than neighboring planets.

Even so, scientists say that we still have several billion years left of atmosphere. But the current puzzle is: if Earth, Mars, and Venus all started out in a similar fashion at the beginning of the Solar System's formation, why are their atmospheres behaving so differently?


Technology Uptodate: Your One-stop shop for Technology, Mobiles, Gadgets, Gizmos, Hacking, E-Books and so on.