Collaborate Disseminate
This week Earth will be visited by a spacecraft that has traveled 1.4 billion km to get here. But no, it’s not aliens – it’s BepiColombo, a European-Japanese mission that’s just slingshotting around our planet for a gravitational speed boost on its rou… Continue reading Earth to be buzzed this week by spacecraft heading to Mercury
Despite being the closest planet to the Sun, Mercury is home to a surprising amount of ice. Now, researchers at Georgia Tech have put forward an explanation for how at least some of it got there – and it turns out, the heat plays an important role.Cont… Continue reading Mercury may paradoxically use intense heat to make huge amounts of ice
Of all known metals, mercury is probably one of the most famous, if only for its lustrous, liquid form at room temperature. Over the centuries, it has been commonly used in a wide variety of applications, including industrial chemical processes, in cosmetics, for telescope mirrors, thermometers, fluorescent lamps, dental fillings, …read more
Continue reading The Story Of The Quickening: Mercurial Metal
[Cole Price] describes himself as a photographer and a space nerd. We’ll give that to him since his web site clearly shows a love of cameras and a love of the NASA programs from the 1960s. [Cole] has painstakingly made replicas of cameras used in the space program including a …read more
Earth’s poles are famously icy places, but they’re far from alone in that regard. The poles of other planets and moons are often the best places to look for ice, and now a new analysis of NASA data has found evidence of much more water ice on… Continue reading More water ice could be hiding at the dark poles of Mercury and the Moon
Star Trek — as much as we love it — was guilty sometimes of a bit of hyperbole and more than its share of inconsistency. In some episodes, ion drives were advanced technology and in others they were obsolete. Make up your mind!
The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo probe is on its way to Mercury riding on four ion thrusters developed by a company called QinetiQ. But unlike the ion drive featured in the infamous “Spock’s Brain” episode, BepiColombo will take over seven years to get to Mercury. That’s because these ion drives are real.
The craft is actually two spacecraft in …read more
Star Trek — as much as we love it — was guilty sometimes of a bit of hyperbole and more than its share of inconsistency. In some episodes, ion drives were advanced technology and in others they were obsolete. Make up your mind!
The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo probe is on its way to Mercury riding on four ion thrusters developed by a company called QinetiQ. But unlike the ion drive featured in the infamous “Spock’s Brain” episode, BepiColombo will take over seven years to get to Mercury. That’s because these ion drives are real.
The craft is actually two spacecraft in …read more
In his continuing bid to have his YouTube channel demonetized, [Cody] has decided to share how he makes chlorine gas in his lab. Because nothing could go wrong with something that uses five pounds of liquid mercury and electricity to make chlorine, hydrogen, and lye.
We’ll be the first to admit that we don’t fully understand how the Chlorine Machine works. The electrochemistry end of it is pretty straightforward – it uses electrolysis to liberate the chlorine from a brine solution. One side of the electrochemical cell generates chlorine, and one side gives off hydrogen as a byproduct. We even …read more
A New York school district is hoping to use technology to make its children safer. But not everyone is happy about it. Continue reading School facial recognition system sparks privacy concerns
If you haven’t heard of it, the Mooshimeter is a two channel multimeter that uses your smartphone as a display over Bluetooth 4.0. The ability to simultaneously monitor voltage and current is rather unique, and the fact that you aren’t physically tethered to the thing makes it ideal for use in hard to reach or even dangerous locations. The promotional material for the Mooshimeter shows users doing things like leaving the device inside the engine compartment of a car while they drive around and take readings about the vehicle’s electrical system.
All that sounds well and good, but at the …read more
Continue reading Putting the Mooshimeter to Sleep with a Bit of Mercury