Comments for clhs sciblog

Comment on Could a Planet of the Apes Actually Happen? by bracetj

bracetj — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:51:15 +0000

This article caught my attention because the topic of apes having human intelligence is rather sci-fi but actually quite believable. With that said, biology proves to us that this cannot actually happen. Very interesting topic though, ethical concerns definitely play a huge role in this type of experimentation.

Comment on New Homes on Mars by bracetj

bracetj — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:43:08 +0000

Although it would be awesome if we could deal with the effects of no gravity, we would first have to learn how to deal with the effects of no oxygen. Also mars and the moon have very different temperatures and living conditions. Very good article though. It is interesting how we can first do a study on flies and move to animals more related to humans.

Comment on Earthly Machine Recreates Star’s Sizzling-Hot Surface by capelomd

capelomd — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:25:33 +0000

The Z machine, which they use for the experiment was originally used to study nuclear weapons. Using 26 million amps through wires are used to heat the atoms and to make their mini star to study. This will help us to better understand stars that are in the galaxy.
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Comment on The Next Big Small Thing by capelomd

capelomd — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:16:16 +0000

the size can also be controlled at low temperatures from 80 to 120 degrees Celsius. This makes it easier to makes it easy to control them since it does not take extreme temperatures to change the size.
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Comment on Got to have a little back bone. by moraed

moraed — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:24:19 +0000

That’s really interesting! Now we can do more research on these animals and probably study their body structure. This definitely can lead to some gear biological advances in the study of not only humans, but it may as well lead to greater things to come.

Comment on Matching Chromosomes by moraed

moraed — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:14:59 +0000

This article is very interesting for me because I honestly had no idea that frogs had different songs. That is pretty interesting how it all is decided by the number of chromosomes it has. I also liked the reference to Eric Clapton.

Comment on Two Earth-Size Planets Are Discovered by harrispg

harrispg — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:35:09 +0000

The theroy of finding another planet that could sustain human life would have been absolutely laughable 100 years ago. But how the times have change and how the science has expanded to newer and greater hieghts, it seems as though that could be a very good possibility maybe in the next 15 years or so.

Even though this would be pretty amazing, it would be impossible to get to this planet in my life time. The sun in which the two new recently discovered planets revolve around is nearly 950 light year a way. This means it would take millions of years to get to this star, so i dont think that planet earth has to worry about us leaving her for another any time soon.
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Comment on Pen Physics by harrispg

harrispg — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:02:35 +0000

Most things in the article are very true especailly the part in which it says that most people dont pay much attention to the phenomenon that is the Pen.

Another reason why the pen is an amazing creation is because of a little thing called capillary action. Capillary action allows liquids to flow against gravity. There are two steps to Capillary action. 1) is the attraction between the two items, because of the molecules in each, and 2) is the surface tension in the pen which allows little droplets of the fluid to come out. Also paper has a little thing called Viscosity. “It is a fluid’s resistance to flowing”. Like how water flows down a glass cup so effortlessly. so papers viscosity is very important to the process of the pen and the paper.

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Comment on What to wear on Mars? by brownng

brownng — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 07:17:32 +0000

The main issue astronauts face when planning what to wear to new planets such as mars, is being exposed to micrometeor sandstorms, radiation, and the “hyper-cold climate.” A spacesuit design has already been created by a class at the University of Alberta, one in which three undergraduates from the school were assigned, to speculate and make changes of improvement. They first started by reviewing the design of NASA’s spacesuits created for trips to the moon. However, suits for trips to riskier destinations require much more detail and intricacy. One factor to take into consideration, is the lack of a magnetosphere on Mars. A magnetosphere protects its planet from too much exposure to some of the concerns previously mentioned: radiation and micrometeors. They also wanted a suit that was easy to maneuver for the astronaut. Making the material out of led would seem like a good idea, but it would weigh so much, anyone wearing it wouldn’t be able to move. The new polymeric material that Kronebca mentioned, is called Demron, which was created by the Radiation Shield Technologies (RST). While creating this design -which was done using computer-aided design software- they ignored the cost of producing such a spacesuit.

I think designing a spacesuit for mars may be a “cool” idea and it may sound intriguing, but why do it? Why should we start a design for something that won’t be used for decades? A trip to Mars is far beyond our reach for anytime in the near future, so why start on the suits needed for the trip so soon? By the time we actually start planning for a mission, the suits will be out-of-date and need more improvement.

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Comment on New Homes on Mars by kronebca

kronebca — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:17:52 +0000

I found this article really interesting! In this article and others its seems as though scientists are working really hard to get ready to go to Mars. This article states how in the future it may be possible to stay on Mars for long periods of time. I do not believe we will ever get to that point. I thought it was very interesting how strong the magnet was! This magnet was just a small fly. Think about how strong the magnet would have to be for a human!

These tests that the scientists do with the flies are really important because with the data from these NASA knows what to put their money and time into.