A Tesla Coil Gun Made From a Giant Coil That Uses Re-purposed MRI Capacitors With A Water-cooled Backpack.

What’s Up for February?

What’s Up for February? Look to the night sky for a brighter Venus, Comet 45P, asteroid Vesta and more. 

Tonight, you can see Venus along with a crescent moon, Mars and Uranus just after sunset. No binoculars needed! 

While there are no meteor showers this month, behold the zodiacal light!

This phenomenon is caused when sunlight reflects off dust particles in the plane of our solar system. Use Venus and Mars as a cone-shaped guide on the western horizon in late February and March.

Comet 45P will be visible using binoculars and telescope and will make its closest approach to Earth on February 11.

Finally, bright asteroid Vesta can be found in the constellation Pisces.

Follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

You are welcome 😀😀

End of fillings in sight as scientists find Alzheimer's drug makes teeth grow back

Fillings could be consigned to history after scientists discovered that a drug already trialled in Alzheimer's patients can encourage tooth regrowth and repair cavities.

Researchers at King’s College London found that the drug Tideglusib stimulates the stem cells contained in the pulp of teeth so that they generate new dentine – the mineralised material under the enamel.

Teeth already have the capability of regenerating dentine if the pulp inside the tooth becomes exposed through a trauma or infection, but can only naturally make a very thin layer, and not enough to fill the deep cavities caused by tooth decay.

But Tideglusib switches off an enzyme called GSK-3 which prevents dentine from carrying on forming.

Scientists showed it is possible to soak a small biodegradable sponge with the drug and insert it into a cavity, where it triggers the growth of dentine and repairs the damage within six weeks.

The tiny sponges are made out of collagen so they melt away over time, leaving only the repaired tooth.

It's been a while, right?? Well, it's been an interesting year. We're in the process of uploading all the episodes to vimeo. The first trailer is up. Go check it out again! Episodes are up weekly starting February 5. If you really want to help us out, please donate to http://ift.tt/2lqvuCQ #drunkscience #vimeo #webseries #science http://ift.tt/2FNIWrk

Happy International Women’s Day!

Today we celebrate International Women’s Day, a day in which we honor and recognize the contributions of women…both on Earth and in space.

Since the beginning, women have been essential to the progression and success of America’s space program.

Throughout history, women have had to overcome struggles in the workplace. The victories for gender rights were not achieved easily or quickly, and our work is not done.

Today, we strive to make sure that our legacy of inclusion and excellence lives on.

We have a long-standing cultural commitment to excellence that is largely driven by data, including data about our people. And our data shows progress is driven by questioning our assumptions and cultural prejudices – by embracing and nurturing all talent we have available, regardless of gender, race or other protected status, to build a workforce as diverse as our mission. This is how we, as a nation, will take the next giant leap in exploration.

As a world leader in science, aeronautics, space exploration and technology, we have a diverse mission that demands talent from every corner of America, and every walk of life.

So, join us today, and every day, as we continue our legacy of inclusion and excellence.

Happy International Women’s Day!

Learn more about the inspiring woman at NASA here: https://women.nasa.gov/

Seer of Seers Sage of Sages Prognosticator of Prognosticators Weather Prophet Extraordinary

So reads the official title of Punxsutawney Phil, the world’s most famous weather-predicting groundhog/woodchuck/marmot/whistle pig (yes, they are, in fact, all the same animal… surprises abound in the world of meteorological mammals). 

Phil hails from the town of Punxsutawney, PA, where every year on February 2, a group of grown men sporting top hats and waxed mustaches pull him out of a box and ask him when winter will end. I can never keep straight whether seeing the shadow means spring will come early or if we’ll have a long winter, but this doesn’t really matter, since rodents are not good weather prediction tools.

Despite being about as reliable as a coin flip, Phil is joined in this annual tradition by more than a dozen North American groundhogs like Shubenecadie Sam, General Beauregard Lee, and Wisconson’s humbly-named Jimmy the Groundhog, seen here:

Surprise! Groundhogs can bite! And I would too, if you forcibly removed me from my warm, comfy house, held me aloft in the frigid air in front of thousands of gaping onlookers and flashing lights and asked me about a subject in which I have no expertise.

Rodents might not be real educated in the fields of meteorology and astronomy, but humans are! We’ve got Earth’s orbital mechanics and their corresponding effect on annual temperature cycles down to a literal science. We smart. Just look…

I dug into the science of seasons this week, and I discovered that our system of defining “winter” and “summer” and “spring” and “autumn”, at least the way that most of us non-meteorologists think of them, doesn’t really make sense when you compare it to the weather. 

You might already know that we define “winter” or “summer” based on Earth’s position in relation to the sun, namely the solstices. This makes the seasons easy to keep track of, but for most of us these dates are unreliable, illogical, and remarkably disconnected from the actual weather. The little boxes on your calendar that say “First Day of Winter”, “First Day of Spring” and so on don’t line up very well with how cold or hot it is outside.

Unfortunately, that’s what happens when you try to apply a single calendar to an entire planet… could there be a better way?

You can learn the rest of the story by watching this week’s It’s Okay To Be Smart up at the top of this post. Enjoy!

The Strangest Eclipse Fact Of All: The Moon’s Shadow Isn’t A Circle

“These imperfections along the edge of the lunar limb don’t just reflect peaks and valleys on the Moon’s surface, but result in sharp edges and corners appearing on the Moon’s shadow as well. Thanks to incredibly accurate mapping of elevation of the entire lunar surface by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we know exactly what the profile of the Moon looks like. Combine that information with the Earth-Moon-Sun orbit, and we can derive what irregularities will be present during the August 21st, 2017 (or any) solar eclipse, when the Moon’s shadow passes across Earth’s surface.”

The Moon is spherical, and so its shadow should be a circle by simple geometry, right? Only, if we view it when it strikes Earth, it’s not even close to a circle. It’s stretched into an ellipse, and further complicated by irregular, sharp edges and corners. Why would it appear that way? As it turns out, three factors combine to get us there. The first is the fact that Earth is a sphere, not a disk, so any shadow falling on it gets stretched. The second is that the Moon’s sharp peaks, valleys and craters mean that its shadow gets irregularly distorted in a way that changes as its orbit continues. And the third is that Earth isn’t smooth, but exhibits significant changes in elevation and terrain.

Add them all up, and you’ve got the incredibly bizarre and ever-changing shape of the Moon’s shadow. Come see what the eclipse of August 21, 2017 will hold!

VLT image of the cometary globule CG4

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Researchers Invent Sponge That Could Transform Oil Spill Cleanup

It can soak up 90 times its weight in oil.

Researchers have designed a new material that could completely revolutionize the way oil spills are cleaned up.

When the Deepwater Horizon spill happened in 2010, the cleanup presented an unexpected challenge. Millions of gallons of oil didn’t collect on the surface, where it could be skimmed off or burned, but instead was drifting through the ocean below the waves.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Lab have invented a material that could prevent a similar situation in future spills.

The foam, called Oleo Sponge, can soak up 90 times its own weight in oil before it needs to be wrung out to be reused — and the oil can be recovered.

Continue Reading.

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