E.A.K. (Erase All Kittens) is an online platform game that teaches kids (yes that’s you!) to code and create on the web. It does this in a unique way – by encouraging hacking into levels, written in HTML and CSS (the languages of websites) – in order to complete the game.
Now go forth and save some kittens!
Meet Lars Andersen (Denmark) and the results of his research and practice:
A piece of Star Trek type technology appears to be closer to becoming reality, with the EMdrive mechanism now proven independently: Nasa validates ‘impossible’ space drive (wired.co.uk, July 2014)
British scientist Roger Shawyer has been trying to interest people in his EmDrive for some years through his company SPR Ltd. Shawyer claims the EmDrive converts electric power into thrust, without the need for any propellant by bouncing microwaves around in a closed container. He has built a number of demonstration systems, but critics reject his relativity-based theory and insist that, according to the law of conservation of momentum, it cannot work.
The NASA paper (PDF) Anomalous Thrust Production from an RF Test Device Measured on a Low-Thrust Torsion Pendulum avoids conjecturing on how the system works, instead focusing on the test methodology that validates the observations.
So while the “why it works” is not clear yet, scientists are becoming more interested as there really appears to be something going on – a paper (PDF) on the possible workings of it behind it Can the Emdrive Be Explained by Quantised Inertia? (Michael E. McCulloch, University of Plymouth) was published in Progress in Physics, January 2015:
It has been shown that cone-shaped cavities with microwaves resonating within them move slightly towards their narrow ends (the emdrive). There is no accepted explanation for this. Here it is shown that this effect can be predicted by assuming that the inertial mass of the photons in the cavity is caused by Unruh radiation whose wavelengths must fit exactly within the cavity, using a theory already applied with some success to astrophysical anomalies where the cavity is the Hubble volume. For the emdrive this means that more Unruh waves are “allowed” at the wide end, leading to a greater inertial mass for the photons there. The gain of inertia of the photons when they move from the narrow to the wide end, and the conservation of momentum, predicts that the cavity must then move towards the narrow end, as observed. This mode l predicts the available observations quite well, although the observational uncertainties are not well known.
See also Mike McCullogh’s blog post MiHsC vs EmDrive: paper link.
Wikipedia’s entry on the EMdrive contains another overview of the differing thoughts on this topic, and numerous references.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/lost-beagle-2-mars-lander-found-11-years-after-launch/
The UK-made Beagle 2 lander has been found on the surface of Mars more than a decade after it was thought to be lost forever.
The 2003 launch was the result of a collaboration of UK academics, whose nifty lander rode to the Red Planet aboard the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft. By December 19 it had reached its destination and was released from the spacecraft.
“It was due to enter the atmosphere at about 02.51 on the 25th December,” said Mark Sims, professor of astrobiology and space instrumentation at the University of Leicester. But nobody heard from Beagle 2 following its ejection from the Mars Express and it was presumed lost. Sims said he had “given up hope” of ever knowing what happened to the lander.
Now, thanks to images taken by Nasa’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), we have at last found the Beagle 2’s final resting place. Images show that it did indeed make it to the surface of Mars and even landed where it was expected to, at the Isidis Planitia basin. For 11 long years, the Beagle 2’s remaining team members have been scouring images captured by HiRISE for signs of their design. That work—and unbelievable patience—has paid off, because the images tell a story of how exactly the lander got to where it is today.
Interesting recent Kickstarter project: Kano.
Uses Raspberry Pi as a basis, with a tweaked Linux that contains specific apps, on which various user challenges are based.
There are a few recent projects that do similar things, we’ll have to see which catch on (perhaps all!)
Cool yet so simple: just a long copper coil, some small strong (rare earth – generally neodymium) magnets, and an AA or AAA battery to create a very simple engine.
My 9 year old son fell in love with all the aspects of this program - the simple but still…
Cara, Parent