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POPSSept. 9, 1982: The First Private Rocket Launch More than a generation before the X Prize spurred billionaires to put up 10 times a $10 million purse to pursue scientific and technological achievements that have eluded even governments with limitless resources, this was a shot heard ’round the world. It was fired by people who weren’t out to invent anything — they just wanted to prove that you didn’t need a massive space program to power something into space.
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POPSBeauty and the Brain Future work may elucidate the long-term effects of one's surroundings on brain function and the relationship between aesthetically pleasing spaces and their functionality. What one considers beautiful is, of course, influenced by culture, learning, and experience, and not everything we find beautiful will ultimately be traceable to the structure and function of our brain. The larger question "What is beauty?" still poses a major challenge, but answering it no longer seems so impossible.
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POPSCan we harness energy from outer space? While nuclear fusion has already been tested with the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, those reactions give off the majority of their energy as radioactive neutrons, raising both safety and production concerns. Helium-3, on the other hand, is perfectly safe. It doesn't give off any pollution or radioactive waste and poses no danger to surrounding areas. helium-3 has two protons but only one neutron. When it's heated to very high temperatures and combined with deuterium, the reaction releases incredible amounts of energy. Just 2.2 pounds (one kilogram) of helium-3 combined with 1.5 pounds (0.67 kilograms) of deuterium produces 19 megawatt-years of energy Roughly 25 tons of the stuff could power the United States for an entire year.
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POPSFuture 'Top 10' Hot Careers in 2012 5) Simulation Engineering By 2012, an increase in processing power and rich data will make simulations more realistic, and user-friendly. Simulation engineers will be working on bringing us closer to “Star Trek’s” Holodecks—the ultimate total immersion simulation. Simulations will be in every industry and every engineering field, 6) Boomer Caregiving 7) Genetic Counseling 8) Brain Analysts 9) Space Tourism 10) Roboticists
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POPSBio-Earth: Are Planets Living Super-Organisms? He believes that expanding the study of life sciences to the core of our world and the depths of outer space will help us find distant relatives of our own Earth -- planets that could also sustain life. To explain why contintental plates drift on the surface of the Earth's molten mantle, Maruyama argues that continents actually have life cycles. Old, cold plates on continental fringes sink to “plate graveyards” deep in the Earth’s mantle, and then rise again, creating volcanoes fueled by three-dimensional convection movements deep below the surface.
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POPSExperimental Data Recovered from Columbia Disaster Hard Drive In fact, the data was recovered in only two days, but it took nearly five years to process it in order to reveal the findings of the experiment. Other two hard drives on board Columbia, however, were not that fortunate and the information they were carrying was lost forever.
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POPSScientist reveals clue to wormholes Wormholes would have to be kept open by a so-far unidentified material with bizarre properties. This substance, known as "phantom matter", would have negative energy and negative mass, causing it to exert a repulsive effect. Dr Shatskiy's calculations indicate that as well as "opening the door" phantom matter would deflect light, providing a useful wormhole signature.
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