Mayur's Posterous

How to be a 20-Something « Thought Catalog

Be really attractive. Your acne is gone, your face has matured without having wrinkles and everything on your body is lifted naturally. Eat bagels seven days a week, binge-drink and do drugs: you’ll still look like a babe. When you turn thirty, it’ll become a different story but that’s, like, not for a really long time.

Reestablish a relationship with your parents. You don’t live with them anymore (hopefully) so start to appreciate them as human beings with thoughts, flaws and feelings rather than soulless life ruiners who won’t let you borrow their car.

Go from eating delicious food at your parents’ house to eating Ragu tomato sauce over Barilla noodles. Develop an eating disorder to save money.

Move into an apartment on the corner of Overpriced and Dangerous. Sleep on a bare mattress with an Ikea comforter. Your mother talks to you about buying a top sheet and a duvet cover but feel like you’re not mature enough to own something called “duvet.”

Read the New York Times piece, “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” Feel exposed and humiliated. Share it on your Facebook with the caption: “Um….” Your friends will comment “Too real” and that will be the end of that.

Work at a coffee shop but feel hopeful about your career in advertising, writing, whatever. Remember that you’re young and that the world is your oyster. Everything is possible, you still have so much to see and hear. You went to a good school and did good things. Figure if you’re not going to be successful, who the hell is?

Date people who you know you'll never be able to love. See someone for three months for no other reason than because it’s winter and you want to keep warm by holding another body. Date a Republican just so you can say you dated a Republican.

Eventually all these nobodies will make you crave a somebody. Have a real relationship with someone. Go on vacations together, exchange house keys, cry in their arms after a demoralizing day at work. Think about marrying them and maybe even get engaged. Regardless of the outcome, feel proud of yourself for being able to love someone in a healthy way.

Start your twenties with a lot of friends and leave with a few good ones. What happened? People faded away into their careers and relationships. Fights were had and never resolved. Shit happens.

Think of yourself at twenty and hanging out with people who didn’t mean a thing to you. Think about writing papers, about being promiscuous, about trying new things. Think of yourself now and your face looking different and your body feeling different and how everything is just different.

Form the habits that will stick with you forever. Drink your coffee with two sugars and skim milk every morning. Buy a magazine every Friday. Enjoy spending money on candles, smoke pot on Saturdays, watch the television before bed.

Move into a bigger apartment on the corner of Mature and Gentrification and finally buy a duvet cover. Limit your drug-use. If you find yourself unable to do so, start to wonder if you have a problem.

Have your parents come to your place for Christmas. Set the table, make the ham, wear a sophisticated outfit, This will all mean so much at the time.

Think about having children when you stop acting like a child. This may not ever happen.

Maybe this is assuming too much. Maybe this is generalizing. Maybe society uses age as an unrealistic marker for growth. Maybe. Still feel the anxiety on your 30th birthday and think to yourself, “Oh shit, I’m no longer a 20-something.” 

via thoughtcatalog.comTC mark

 

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Astronomers snap black hole murder in graphic detail (video)

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We tend to imagine a black hole sucking everything around it straight into oblivion. The truth, however, is even more gruesome. Astronomers have just captured an ultra hi-res image of our neighbouring galaxy, Centaurus A, and it helps to reveal what actually happens. Matter is yanked helplessly towards a black hole at the galaxy's core, but it refuses to die quietly. For some unknown reason, it erupts as it falls, spewing out vast plumes of particles -- like blood from celestial murder. These death throes emit radio waves, allowing us to witness them using radio telescopes even though we are 12 million light-years away. If only we were closer; if only we could intervene. Alas, all we can do is watch the video after the break and hit the source links for a fuller explanation -- though, admittedly, none of those sound like awful options. 

 

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Habitable exoplanet confirmed? Warm and wet, scientists say | DVICE

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French scientists have confirmed with computer models that Gliese 581d, a planet orbiting a red dwarf star about 20 light years from here, has a stable atmosphere, comfortable temperatures, and a surface covered in liquid water. It's the first planet orbiting another star that could definitely support life, and it's basically next door.

While Gliese 581d is too small and far away to observe directly, we can infer some things about it from the gravitational effects that it has on its parent star and fellow planets. We know that Gliese 581d is about twice the size of Earth (and six times the mass), we know that it's rocky (not a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn). This means that it's large enough and dense enough to be able to hold on to a substantial atmosphere. We can also estimate about how much energy Gliese 581d receives from its red dwarf star, and based on all of this information, French scientists have been able to model a range of potential climates showing that "GJ581d will have a stable atmosphere and surface liquid water for a wide range of plausible cases."

"Will have" is a pretty strong language when you're talking about a planet some 117,569,996 million miles away, but based on the models, it sounds like it's a sure thing. That's not to say it would necessarily be a pleasant place to live, though. Gliese 581d probably depends on a significant greenhouse effect to keep itself warm since it gets relatively little energy from its star. The atmosphere is mostly CO2, and while you'd get clouds and warm rain and oceans and stuff, the surface itself would be "in a perpetual murky red twilight." The planet also may be tidally locked (meaning that one side perpetually faces its sun), and at double Earth's gravity, it's not exactly a vacation spot.

Despite all this, it would be an ideal place to find some extraterrestrial plant life, and where there are plants there might be animals, specifically animals which have adapted to high gravity, low light, low oxygen environment. So think small and low to the ground with big eyes. And of course, there's lots of potential for animal life in warm oceans, too.

While 20 light years is extremely close on the galactic scale, using current technology it would still take us humans about 300,000 years to reach the Gliese system. A better bet, at least for now, might be to just send an interstellar probe, which might be able to reach Gliese 581d in just a century or two.

Paper (PDF), via Cosmos

(The original headline as assigned by me read: "Habitable exoplanet CONFIRMED! Warm and wet, scientists say." It has been changed to better reflect the tone of the post. -Ed)


 

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God of War 4 online rumour strengthened by OPM

The UK Official PlayStation Magazine has lent credence to speculation that God of War 4 is in development and set to feature a multiplayer mode.

Backing up a similar report in respected unofficial PlayStation mag PSM3, the rumour section in this month's OPM - on sale now - writes: "Kratos is on his way back, with his next adventure set to feature multiplayer."

PSM 3 reported last month that it had heard from another source that God of War 4 "is coming, and will hit in September 2012".

"Our source works closely with the God of War universe, and let slip he'd be working on a related project at the same time," it said.

It's not the first time God of War 4's been rumoured to feature online multiplayer of course, and in February a CV even appeared online referencing a "God of War 4 cinematic test".

While last year's God of War 3 concluded a trilogy, Santa Monica Studio has said it's "not the end" for the hugely popular PlayStation franchise.

via CVG

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NASA Announces Results of Epic Space-Time Experiment - NASA Science

May 4, 2011: Einstein was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity.

Researchers confirmed these points at a press conference today at NASA headquarters where they announced the long-awaited results of Gravity Probe B (GP-B).

"The space-time around Earth appears to be distorted just as general relativity predicts," says Stanford University physicist Francis Everitt, principal investigator of the Gravity Probe B mission.

GP-B (twist, 550px)

 

An artist's concept of GP-B measuring the curved spacetime around Earth. [more]

"This is an epic result," adds Clifford Will of Washington University in St. Louis. An expert in Einstein's theories, Will chairs an independent panel of the National Research Council set up by NASA in 1998 to monitor and review the results of Gravity Probe B. "One day," he predicts, "this will be written up in textbooks as one of the classic experiments in the history of physics."

Time and space, according to Einstein's theories of relativity, are woven together, forming a four-dimensional fabric called "space-time." The mass of Earth dimples this fabric, much like a heavy person sitting in the middle of a trampoline. Gravity, says Einstein, is simply the motion of objects following the curvaceous lines of the dimple.

If Earth were stationary, that would be the end of the story. But Earth is not stationary. Our planet spins, and the spin should twist the dimple, slightly, pulling it around into a 4-dimensional swirl. This is what GP-B went to space in 2004 to check.

The idea behind the experiment is simple:

Put a spinning gyroscope into orbit around the Earth, with the spin axis pointed toward some distant star as a fixed reference point. Free from external forces, the gyroscope's axis should continue pointing at the star--forever. But if space is twisted, the direction of the gyroscope's axis should drift over time. By noting this change in direction relative to the star, the twists of space-time could be measured.

In practice, the experiment is tremendously difficult.

GP-B (gyro, 200px)

 

One of the super-spherical gyroscopes of Gravity Probe B. [more]

The four gyroscopes in GP-B are the most perfect spheres ever made by humans. These ping pong-sized balls of fused quartz and silicon are 1.5 inches across and never vary from a perfect sphere by more than 40 atomic layers. If the gyroscopes weren't so spherical, their spin axes would wobble even without the effects of relativity.

According to calculations, the twisted space-time around Earth should cause the axes of the gyros to drift merely 0.041 arcseconds over a year. An arcsecond is 1/3600th of a degree. To measure this angle reasonably well, GP-B needed a fantastic precision of 0.0005 arcseconds. It's like measuring the thickness of a sheet of paper held edge-on 100 miles away.

"GP-B researchers had to invent whole new technologies to make this possible," notes Will.

They developed a "drag free" satellite that could brush against the outer layers of Earth's atmosphere without disturbing the gyros. They figured out how to keep Earth's magnetic field from penetrating the spacecraft. And they created a device to measure the spin of a gyro--without touching the gyro. More information about these technologies may be found in the Science@NASA story "A Pocket of Near-Perfection."

Pulling off the experiment was an exceptional challenge. But after a year of data-taking and nearly five years of analysis, the GP-B scientists appear to have done it.

"We measured a geodetic precession of 6.600 plus or minus 0.017 arcseconds and a frame dragging effect of 0.039 plus or minus 0.007 arcseconds," says Everitt.

For readers who are not experts in relativity: Geodetic precession is the amount of wobble caused by the static mass of the Earth (the dimple in spacetime) and the frame dragging effect is the amount of wobble caused by the spin of the Earth (the twist in spacetime). Both values are in precise accord with Einstein's predictions.

"In the opinion of the committee that I chair, this effort was truly heroic. We were just blown away," says Will.

GP-B (black hole, 200px)

 

An artist's concept of twisted spacetime around a black hole. Credit: Joe Bergeron of Sky & Telescope magazine.

The results of Gravity Probe B give physicists renewed confidence that the strange predictions of Einstein's theory are indeed correct, and that these predictions may be applied elsewhere. The type of spacetime vortex that exists around Earth is duplicated and magnified elsewhere in the cosmos--around massive neutron stars, black holes, and active galactic nuclei.

"If you tried to spin a gyroscope in the severely twisted space-time around a black hole," says Will, "it wouldn't just gently precess by a fraction of a degree. It would wobble crazily and possibly even flip over."

In binary black hole systems--that is, where one black hole orbits another black hole--the black holes themselves are spinning and thus behave like gyroscopes. Imagine a system of orbiting, spinning, wobbling, flipping black holes! That's the sort of thing general relativity predicts and which GP-B tells us can really be true.

The scientific legacy of GP-B isn't limited to general relativity. The project also touched the lives of hundreds of young scientists:

"Because it was based at a university many students were able to work on the project," says Everitt. "More than 86 PhD theses at Stanford plus 14 more at other Universities were granted to students working on GP-B. Several hundred undergraduates and 55 high-school students also participated, including astronaut Sally Ride and eventual Nobel Laureate Eric Cornell."

NASA funding for Gravity Probe B began in the fall of 1963. That means Everitt and some colleagues have been planning, promoting, building, operating, and analyzing data from the experiment for more than 47 years—truly, an epic effort.

What's next?

Everitt recalls some advice given to him by his thesis advisor and Nobel Laureate Patrick M.S. Blackett: "If you can't think of what physics to do next, invent some new technology, and it will lead to new physics."

"Well," says Everitt, "we invented 13 new technologies for Gravity Probe B. Who knows where they will take us?"

This epic might just be getting started, after all….


Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

via NASA

 

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Milking Fake Tweets » SCAMSUTRA

“If corporate media becomes impartial and stops serving its political masters, it will command respect of the people, instead of demanding it.”

(Disclaimer:- This disclaimer is for NDTV who unleash lawyers for stamping out free speech. I am neither an admirer of NDTV, nor of Ms. Dutt. My image gallery is proof of that. This article does not explicitly imply or state that NDTV uses fake tweets to distort public debate. I have stated my opinion.)

This show was supposed to be a discussion about the situation of Mr. Shanti Bhushan and Mr. Prashant Bhushan who are being accused without proof. A television channel is expected to be neutral, but this show appeared to be part of a media trial of Bhushans.

So I did a little experiment with this episode available online at ndtv.com website.

Show – The Buck Stops Here on NDTV anchored by Ms. Barkha Dutt. Episode title – “Bhushans: Smear Campaign or Fair Game?”

Date – 20th April, 2011

Methodology – I switched off the sound and made a note of visuals presented during the show.

(Note: I switched on sound briefly only once to listen to Agnivesh’s famous comment at 40th minute, as pointed out by folks on Twitter. This comment has been preserved at Mutiny along with a contest. Thanks to Jayant Gajria for the tip.)

My Observations

 

Visuals in the show had 2 categories of graphics: 

 

  1. Captions
  2. Twitter Buzz

Both these are labeled in the screenshot.

 

 

Visual Category 1 – CAPTIONS

Please note the subtle but aggressive build-up in captions rotated throughout the show:

  • Anti-Corruption Drive
  • Hit by Controversies
  • Lokpal Panel Co-chair in CD row
  • Bhushan & Sons
  • Bhushans embroiled in CD Row
  • CD: Chat between Bhushan, Mulayam
  • CD: Phone Chat about fixing a judge
  • Conflict of Interest?
  • Smear Campaign?
  • After CD, Land Row
  • Bhushans in Land Row
  • The ‘Plot’ Thickens
  • Serious Improprities?
  • Should Bhushans Quit?

My conclusion – There is a clear negative spin in captions to defame the Bhushans in a show where they are not present to defend their position. This is also known as a Media Trial

Visual Category 2 – TWITTER BUZZ

Out of all the tweets presented in this visual, I found these most interesting.

Irrespective of the fact whether the Bhushans are corrupt or not they should quit. We can’t give them preferential treatment.….@Forever_Tarun (Tarun Arora)

How can a few unelected, ‘self-declared honest pple’ hijack d democratic process&claim 2 represent 120 crore ppl? #annahazare….@neutralviews (neutral)

caesars wife has to be above suspicion. But having said that there wud b no1 left in civil society since v r all suspect 2sum extent….@iamrana (Rana)

A glance at twitter time-line of these worthies revealed that they belong to the Barkha Dutt Fan Club. Their tweets conveniently supported the agenda she was pushing in this episode.

It reminds me of those suspicious “viewer telephone calls” and “audience questions” which anchors often use in their shows.

The following tweet is more interesting:

 

those in eye of storm should quit. the movement is too important to be disturbed by such issues.
….@abhijain03 (Abhishek Jain)

 

 

Now Mr. Abhishek Jain is interesting because his account @abhijain03 has only 2 tweets so far!

The first tweet was on 19th March and second just happened to be on the day of Barkha’s show.

 

The non-communicative Mr. Jain has 16 followers out of which 10 are females. Actually, only 9, because 1 girl “Anshu Daga” likes him so much that she follows him through 2 identical accounts!

 

The status of these 9 mysterious followers (on 21 April) -

Name Twitter Account Date of First Tweet Total Tweets
Anshu Daga anshudaga5 17 March 20
Anshu Daga anshudaga6 23 March 21
Malina Maloo MalinaMaloo5 21 March 20
Hansika Goenka HansikaGoenka6 21 March 20
Jayanti Dugar JayantiDugar7 20 March 19
Deveshi Baid DeveshiBaid5 20 March 20
Hemaksh Jhajharia HemakshiJ97 16 March 20
Aashritha Bangad aashrithab141 15 March 20
Ishta Dalmia IshtaDalmia4 8 March 21
Jigyasa Gadia JigyasaGadia3 23 Feb 10

 

List of Coincidences

  • All accounts set up in the last one month (except JigyasaGadia3)
  • None of the accounts has a bio
  • In each account, tweets are made in batches of 10 on 2 days only. This gives us 2 x 10 = 20 tweets
  • They do not appear to be bot accounts because tweets are not uniform and there is no spam
  • All are accounts have female names (mostly Marwari names)
  • All have photographs of attractive females with similar numerical filenames
  • None of these accounts has tweeted to ANYONE
  • These 9 females (2 are same) follow Abhishek Jain even though he has tweeted only twice (it was once, before 10th). So they must be his friends… right? But then, he is not following ANY OF THEM.

This means they are not friends. In that case, who are they?

Observations

  • All accounts have collected 120-220 genuine followers by following 500-800 people
  • These accounts are not bots
  • Someone is creating a number of such accounts
  • Someone maintains these accounts by posting 10 tweets, once every 2 weeks
  • Accounts like anshudaga3, anshudaga5, anshudaga6 and anshudaga7 are created at different times and kept active simultaneously
  • 10 out of 16 such accounts are followers of a similar account which was quoted in a TV show with a tweet that conveniently supported the show’s agenda

Note: The following section has been updated. Confusion was caused by the address @ShaliniSharma displayed on TV.

 

Do put the ministers on the Lokpal Bill committee under same scrutiny. Can’t wait for that
….@ShaliniSharma_ (Shalini Sharma)

 

Alert folks on Twitter (including Hari, David and Vikas in comments section below) pointed out that NDTV had made a typing error and credited @ShaliniSharma (blank account) instead of @ShaliniSharma_

Ms. Shalini Sharma has made an excellent point. The screenshot of her tweet is presented below:

Real Shalini Sharma Tweet

 

I thank everyone for this correction and sincerely hope that NDTV is more careful in the future.

Now that the issue of the second suspicious tweet has been resolved peacefully, this post stands corrected.

My opinion that NDTV shows are not impartial still holds because their anchors (English and Hindi) continue being predictable by following the same strategy:

  • Dominate and browbeat guests who disagree, or belong to NDA. The way Nidhi Razdan ill-treated Rajiv Pratap Rudy of BJP in a March 2011 show, is a perfectly good example.
  • Politely allow excessive time to guests who are saying “the right thing”. Usually, Congressmen and Communists get sufficient time to blow their trumpet.
  • Selectively edit sound bytes from the person they target. This ALWAYS happens when NDTV is forced to show Narendra Modi (as in the case of Anna Hazare praising him recently)

To this list I can now add:

  • Shameless, blatant manipulation of social media such as Twitter to support their viewpoint by padding their shows with favourable tweets
  • Misleading viewers into thinking that selective social media extracts telecast on NDTV are a truthful representation of public opinion

All of this is my personal opinion, and it is possible I may be wrong.

Therefore, I request readers to verify facts from links provided and draw their own conclusions.

(All screenshots on this page were taken on April 21 and 22, 2011)

(Comments moderation will be done in case of spam)

 

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BBC News - Skywatchers set for meteor show

 

Skywatchers set for meteor show

Infographic

Skywatchers are hoping for an impressive show over the next two days, when the Lyrid meteor shower reaches its peak.

Between 10 and 20 meteors per hour can be visible under ideal conditions; but experts say the shower is fickle.

Light from the Moon, which is in a so-called gibbous phase, could interfere with observations this year.

But stargazers are advised to watch in the hours before dawn to get their best views of the "shooting stars".

The radiant, or source, of the shower is located near Vega, a bright star which is hard to miss.

Binoculars or telescopes are not required, experts say the naked eye is best for watching the meteors.

The shower is caused when the Earth passes through a trail of debris left by comet Thatcher (C/1861 G1).

 

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Children 'should read 50 books a year', says Gove

Children 'should read 50 books a year', says Gove

Children should be reading around 50 books a year, said Michael Gove.
Children should be reading around 50 books a year, said Michael Gove. Photo: Gary Lee/Photoshot

The Education Secretary said pupils should complete the equivalent of almost a novel a week because the academic demands placed on English schoolchildren have been “too low for too long”.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he said the vast majority of teenagers read just one or two books as part of their GCSEs, normally including John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

Mr Gove said all schools should “raise the bar” by requiring pupils to read large numbers of whole books at the end of primary school and throughout secondary education.

It follows the publication of a report in December showing that reading standards among British teenagers had slumped from 17th to 25th in a major international league table.

His latest comments came after a tour of high-performing “charter schools” – state-funded institutions that are run free of Government interference – in the United States.

One primary in a hugely deprived area of Harlem, New York, set pupils a “50 book challenge” over the course of a year and children also competed to read all seven Harry Potter books in the quickest possible time.

The Infinity School is currently ranked higher than any other in the city, even though more than 80 per cent of its mainly African American and Hispanic pupils are from poor families eligible for free and reduced lunches. It is among almost 100 schools run by the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), a charity established by two teachers in the mid-90s.

Speaking in the US, Mr Gove said: “KIPP have far higher expectations of their students than we have had. We, the Coalition Government, have attempted to raise the bar but, I think, haven’t been ambitious enough.

“Recently, I asked to see what students were reading at GCSE and I discovered that something like 80 or 90 per cent were just reading one or two novels and overwhelmingly it was the case that it included Of Mice and Men.

“Here, kids at the end of primary school are being expected to read 50 books a year. I think we should, as a nation, be saying that our children should be reading 50 books a year, not just one or two for GCSE.”

A recently launched review of the National Curriculum is expected to specify the key authors children should study at each key stage of their education.

As an interim measure, Mr Gove said he wanted to ask leading children’s authors to set out the 50 books each child should learn. The results will then be posted on the Department for Education website, with schools urged to issue the 50 book challenge to pupils.

Mr Gove suggested that authors to be studied by pupils of all ages should include JK Rowling, CS Lewis, Philip Pullman, Kenneth Grahame, Rosemary Sutcliff, Alan Garner and Ursula Le Guin.

He added: “One of the biggest problems in the English state education system is that only a minority can follow an academic education and that only a minority can go to university. Quite wrong.

“Our expectations have been too low for too long.

“The aspiration for someone to read 50 books a year isn’t from a school in the poshest part of Manhattan where they are all going to have bound copies of CS Lewis, this is a school where 83 per cent of the kids are on the equivalent of free school meals, but they still expect them to read 50 books a year.”

 

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BBC News - Voyager: Still dancing 17 billion km from Earth

 
Voyager One, Nasa  

Voyager is approaching the edge of the bubble of charged particles the Sun has thrown out into space

The extraordinary Voyager 1 spacecraft is demonstrating its nimbleness more than 30 years after leaving Earth.

At the astonishing distance of 17.4 billion km, the Nasa probe is the most far-flung object made by humans.

But it seems age and remoteness are no barriers to this veteran explorer.

Voyager is executing a series of roll manoeuvres to get one of its instruments into the optimum position to measure particles sweeping away from the Sun.

Controllers at the US space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, report a perfect response from the probe.

"I liken Voyager like an old car," said project manager Suzanne Dodds. "It's got simple electronics, not a lot of fancy gadgets - but because of that it can operate for longer; it's not as finicky."

Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 on a tour of the outer planets. Since completing that mission, it has been making the push for deep space.

The probe is heading in the general direction of the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy and will, in the next few years, leave the space dominated by the influence of our Sun and enter the province between the stars - interstellar space.

Scientists know that to be the case because of the way the solar wind is behaving at Voyager's current location.

This stream of charged particles forms a bubble around our Solar System known as the heliosphere. The wind travels at "supersonic" speed until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock.

At this point, the wind then slows dramatically and heats up in a region termed the heliosheath. Voyager has determined the velocity of the wind at its location has now slowed to zero. Very simply put, Voyager has reached the domain where the solar wind is starting to turn back on itself as it pushes up against the particles of interstellar space.

The new manoeuvres are designed to enable Voyager 1's Low Energy Charged Particle (LECP) instrument to investigate precisely what is going on around it.

"It counts the particles and measures their direction," explained Suzanne Dodds. "This will give us a much better picture of what's happening with the solar wind close to the heliopause (the "official" edge of the Solar System). It could be that as we do these measures we see its direction change. All we have out there is models and every time we get data the models don't quite fit what Voyager sees, and then we have to update the models."

On Monday this week Voyager rolled 70 degrees anticlockwise as seen from Earth from its normal orientation. It held the position by spinning gyroscopes for two hours, 33 minutes. The veteran last performed such a manoeuvre in 1990 when it took pictures of the planets it was leaving behind.

Once complete, Voyager rolled back and locked on to its guide star, Alpha Centauri.

Voyager 1 will do more roll-and-holds this week, and if the spacecraft continues to function well it will execute a series of weekly rolls to gather particle data every three months.

The Voyager 2 spacecraft which was also launched in 1977 is not quite as far from Earth. It is a mere 14 billion kilometres away. At these great distances, communication with the probes is a lengthy business. The one-way travel time for a radio message to get to Voyager 1 is now 16 hours.

"People love Voyager I think because the mission has lasted so long. We're still talking to it and it's just so far out in space; people have a real attachment to it. It did its grand tour past the planets and it just goes on, on this voyage of discovery."

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

 

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ISRO finds cave in moon, can be used as base station for astronauts

moon-hole.jpg

New Delhi: Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization have discovered a giant underground chamber on the moon, which they feel could be used as a base by astronauts on future manned missions to moon.

An analysis by an instrument on Chandrayaan-1 revealed a 1.7-km long and 120-metre wide cave near the moon's equator that is in the Oceanus Procellarum area of the moon that could be a suitable 'base station' for future human missions.

Scientists of the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad said in a research paper published in the latest issue of Current Science that the cave provides "a safe environment from hazardous radiations, micro-meteoritic impacts, extreme temperatures and dust storms."

Scientists said identifying sites for permanent base for human settlements on the moon is important for further exploration.

"Lava tubes provide a natural environmental control with a nearly constant temperature of minus 20 degrees Celsius, unlike that of the lunar surface showing extreme variation, maximum of 130 degrees Celsius to a minimum of minus 180 degrees Celsius in its diurnal (day-night) cycle," they said.

According to them, the lava tubes offer a dust-free environment and adapting them for human use requires minimal construction.her exploration.

 

via Silicon India

 

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