My Science School

Neil Armstrong’s name will forever be enshrined in the annals of human spaceflight as the first person to land on the moon and walk on the lunar surface as space commander of the Apollo 11 mission of 1969. The Apollo 11 mission, however, wasn’t the first time Armstrong went to space. Armstrong was also part of the Gemini VIII mission that was equally eventful.

Bridging two programmes

The Gemini programme was conceived as a bridge between the Mercury and Apollo programmes. This meant that it was primarily to test equipment and various mission procedures while in Earth orbit and provide invaluable training experience for both astronauts and ground crews ahead of the Apollo missions. In that way, the Gemini VIII mission ticked a lot of boxes as it not only enabled another key spaceflight technology milestone for the U.S., but also tested the astronauts on-board and the ground crew involved with an in-flight problem, often quoted as the first emergency in space.

Gemini VIII’s crew consisted of American astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott. A member of the second group of NASA astronauts, Armstrong was a formal Naval aviator. Scott, who was the first member of the third group of astronauts to fly in space, was a U.S. Air Force pilot.

Complex countdown

With multiple counts running simultaneously involving both the Atlas Agena and Gemini Titan rockets and spacecraft on March 16, 1966, the countdown for the Gemini VIII mission was one of the most complex conducted till then. The countdown was successful as the Agena lifted off at 10 a.m. EST and the Gemini took off 101 minutes later.

As Gemini VIII’s primary mission was to perform rendezvous and four docking tests with the Agena target vehicle and to execute extravehicular activity (EVA), its orbital chase of Agena was on. Less than four hours into the mission, Armstrong and Scott had a solid radar lock with the Agena as they trailed it by 288 km. This was good news as it meant that the radar instruments onboard were working as expected.

“A real smoothie”

When they were 122 km away, they had a visual of the Agena. With Scott calling out radar range and closing rates, Armstrong judged the braking action by eye with the target in sight. Rendezvous was soon possible as Gemini achieved station-keeping with Agena at 150 feet.

Following a 35-minute fly around during which the astronauts took close-up looks of the Agena and deemed it safe to link up, they waited for the go-ahead from Mission Control. When they were cleared for docking, Armstrong achieved it and radioed back saying “It was a real smoothie.”

Not so smooth, after all

Shortly after docking, however, the Gemini capsule and target vehicle began tumbling. Armstrong used the Gemini’s orbital attitude and manoeuvring system (OAMS) to control the tumbling, but the rolling began immediately and Gemini VIII went out of range of ground communications.

While it was later confirmed on investigation that an OAMS thruster was firing erratically, probably due to short circuit in the wiring, the crew blamed the Agena as the scene was unfolding and hence went ahead and undocked. This, however, led to Gemini’s rate of spin accelerating quickly as the added mass of Agena was no longer there.

When Gemini VIII came in range of a tracking ship stationed southwest of Japan, Scott communicated that they were having serious problems. The astronauts’ vision became blurred by now as the spin rate approached one revolution per second. The tumbling had to be stopped.

Quick thinking

With some quick thinking, Armstrong turned off the entire OAMS and then used the re-entry control system (RCS) to regain control of the spacecraft and stop the spin. As Mission Control were aware that Armstrong had utilised 75% of the re-entry manoeuvring propellant to stop the spin, they too had to make some fast decisions. Mission rules dictated that the crew must be brought home once RCS was activated and the decision made stuck to those rules.

Ten hours and 41 minutes after liftoff, Gemini VIII’s splashdown occurred within 3.2 km of the predicted impact point. Once spotted in the water, three U.S. Air Force pararescuers jumped into the sea from an aircraft. They attached a floatation collar to the capsule and assisted Armstrong and Scott while waiting for pickup.

While the emergency meant that some of the mission objectives were forced to be abandoned, the primary target of docking with an uncrewed spacecraft had been achieved. The quick thinking and action of the crew and ground control ensured nothing untoward happened, meaning that there was more to be learnt and gained eventually.

Both Armstrong and Scott became heroes following this episode. Scott flew two more missions after Gemini VIII – Apollo 9 (first Earth orbital qualification test for Apollo spacecraft) and Apollo 15 (first extended scientific exploration of the moon). Armstrong, as you know, became the first person on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission.

 

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An important world record in the field of nuclear science is held by Britain, where the world’s first atomic power station was built in 1956 at Calder Hall.

Since then, the generation of electric power by atomic or nuclear reactors has become increasingly important in Europe, where over 10 percent of total generating capacity is now nuclear. This is a higher proportion than in any other continent.

The leading European nuclear country in terms of nuclear power stations is France, which generates about a third of its electricity from nuclear fuels. Then come Germany, Britain, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and The Netherlands.

British nuclear power stations use a variety of different kinds of reactors, including an experimental fast breeder reactor at Dounreay. This is a kind of reactor that produces more fuel than it consumes and it could in theory generate immense amounts of power in the future.

However the technological problems involved have proved extremely difficult to solve and it is now doubtful whether the fast breeder will ever fulfil its early promise. Although nuclear power stations have to date worked well and safely throughout Europe, there is a mounting problem of radioactive waste disposal.                                                                                                                                                                                                          

 

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The electronic computer is used in many fields of activity and is extremely valuable in doing complicated work accurately and quickly. It has removed much of the drudgery from such routine tasks as telephone se wonderful machines work? We can see in the simple example of checking the stocks held by a warehouse.

In large scale industries it costs a great deal of money to keep a large number of goods in store. Nevertheless a company must always know how many goods it has at a given time in case it runs out of any item. So there must always be a reserve level below which stocks must not go. When that level is reached the company orders more goods to be delivered.

One way of keeping a check is to use a punched-card system. Each article which is delivered to the warehouse has its own card punched with required information which may relate to style, colour, price, size or other relevant details, and this is fed into computer.

When the article is sold and leaves the warehouse the computer is fed with this information too. At any time the computer can show exactly how many of those articles are in stock and if the stocks have to be replenished. The computer does this job with great speed and accuracy and can give an account of exactly how many articles of many different types are in stock.

The initial effect of computers is as an efficient means of performing complicated or routine tasks. In the long term, however, they will make new and different activities possible for instance, education and many occupations will be greatly affected as methods of storing and retrieving vast quantities of information are further developed.

 

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Silicon carbide occurs in nature as mossanite, an extremely rare mineral. Synthetic substitutes of this compound, which is made up of silicon and Carbon have been mass produced since 1893 and used as an abrasive (a substance for moving away surfaces). American inventor and entrepreneur Edward Goodrich Acheson is the reason why silicon carbide is also known as carborundum, even though the reasoning behind this naming is now known to be flavoured.

Born in 1856, Acheson was raised in the coal fields of Pennsylvania, the US Fascinated by mathematics and engineering as a child, Acheson was forced to shoulder the burden of his family as a teenager following the death of his father. Even though he left school at the age of 16 and did odd jobs to support his family, he spent his evenings performing experiments especially those with electrical equipment.

Wins over Edison

After being turned down by American chemist Edward Weston, who made electroplating dynamos, Acheson secured a position with American inventor Thomas Edison. It is believed that Acheson tried to sell a battery of his own making to Edison in 1880 and ended up working for him.

Acheson started at Edison's research lab in Menlo Park by working on the development of electrical lighting. Edison was quick to spot the talent of Acheson and made him his assistant chief engineer. Acheson was sent to Europe to take care of the installation of electrical systems in a number of places, including the Paris Exhibition of 1881, Hotel de Ville in Antwerp, and the La Scala opera house in Milan.

In search of an abrasive

Following his return to New York in 1884, Addison parted ways with Edison, and soon set out on his new adventure as an independent inventor He began with experiments to produce artificial diamonds using an electric furnace. In search of a strong and durable abrasive that could be used for industrial purposes Acheson tried heating carbon to a point where it would result in diamond.

As this process failed, Acheson tried to heat a mature of day and carbon and electrically fuse it. The resulting shiny, hexagonal crystals of silicon carbide were hard enough to scratch glass Mistaking the crystals for a compound of carbon and alumina from the clay Acheson devised the trademark carborundum. He arrived at this name from corundum, which is the mineral that is composed of fused alumina.

Acheson applied for a patent for his process of producing carborundum, and received it on February 28, 1893. AS the hardest substance made until then by humans and second in hardness only to diamond carborusdum soon rose to prominence Industries realised the abrasive utility of the substance and it soon became impossible to manufacture precision-ground interchangeable metal parts without it.

The flaw in the naming

Even though carborundum was later known to be silicon carbide the name Acheson used has stuck to the substance owing to the immense popularity it enjoyed. Acheson established a company and a manufacturing unit for carborundum, but had to set up a larger plant in Niagara Falls in 1895 when demand kept increasing. Carborundum also put Acheson onto the discovery of artificial graphite. While studying the effects of high temperature on carborundum, Acheson realised that the silicon vaporised at about 4,500 degrees Celsius, leaving graphitic carbon as the product. Acheson patented and commercialised the process of producing graphite as well and in fact, collected over 50 patents through the course of his lifetime.

By the time Acheson died in 1931, he had found expression both to his inventive genius and business spirit. Even though he wasn't a great manager himself, a numb of Acheson's original.com original companies still live on, often as subsidiaries in other companies. As for his carbonandum, the U.S. Patent Office named it among the patents most responsible for the industrial age.

 

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Deepfake generally refers to images on videos in which the face and/or voice of a person, usually a public figure has been manipulated using artificial intelligence software to generate visual and audio content with a high potential to deceive. Deepfakes are a source of concern because they are created to be intentionally misleading, such as by making it look like a politician said something they didn't, or making it appear like a celebrity was in a video they weren't in.

Everyone from academic and industrial researchers to amateur enthusiasts, visual effects studios and porn producers. Governments might be dabbling in the technology, too, as part of their online strategies to discredit and disrupt extremist groups, or make contact with targeted individuals, for example.

It is hard to make a good deepfake on a standard computer. Most are created on high-end desktops with powerful graphics cards or better still with computing power in the cloud. This reduces the processing time from days and weeks to hours. But it takes expertise, too, not least to touch up completed videos to reduce flicker and other visual defects. That said, plenty of tools are now available to help people make deepfakes. Several companies will make them for you and do all the processing in the cloud. There’s even a mobile phone app, Zao, that lets users add their faces to a list of TV and movie characters on which the system has trained.

 

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The WOWcube, a new twist on the beloved Rubik's Cube, is the brainchild of 13-year-old DIY YouTuber, Savva Osipov. "What if we place characters and gameplay on Rubik's Cube surface and control the game by twisting, tilting and shaking," he thought. Together with his father, inventor Ilya, they came up with the WOWcube. The device comes with tiny, high-res microdisplays built into each of the cube's 24 square-shaped segments, and eight processors and an accelerometer on the inside. As with a Rubik's Cube, users can twist, flip, turn, and rotate elements along multiples axes, constantly changing how the screens align with one another, all accompanied by satisfying clicks. Its accompanying iOS/Android app allows users to load a number of games, including word games, puzzles, mazes and arcade-style games, into the device via Bluetooth. It runs on an open-source API (application programming interface) that enables youngsters with computer skills and developers to design their own games for the WOWcube. Place the device onto its charging base and the cube's individual screens become functional widgets, displaying the date, time, weather, social media, notifications, news and more. The STEM-learning certified device measures 2.8 inches on each side and weighs 335 gms. Its integrated 4,320 mAh lithium-ion battery runs for upto eight hours on a single charge.

 

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Around 90 million years ago when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, Antarctica housed swampy rainforests. Scans of a sediment layer collected from the Antarctic seabed near the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers revealed forest soil, dense network of well-preserved fossil roots revealing individual cell structures, and countless traces of pollen and spores from plants, including the first remnants of flowering plants ever found at these high Antarctic latitudes.

Analysis of this soil content showed that even during months of darkness, swampy temperate rainforests were able to grow close to the South Pole, revealing an even warmer climate than expected. Average temperatures in is region were around 12 degree C; average summer temperatures may have been and 19 degree C and water temperatures in the rivers and swamps around 20°C, with moderately abundant rainfall (41inches).

According to climate models run by scientists, these conditions could have existed if there was dense vegetation across Antarctica with little or no ice sheet present and higher carbon dioxide levels than previously thought.

The findings illustrate the powerful effect that carbon dioxide has on the Earth and the importance of polar ice sheets in cooling the planet.

 

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A bright green light-emitting mushroom has been discovered at Mawlynnong in East Khasi Hills district and at Krang Shuri in West Jaintia Hills district of Meghalaya. The tiny mushrooms were found sovering dead bamboo in the forest Local residents use the glowing hamboo sticks as natural torches to navigate the forest at night.

The mushroom is a new species from the genus Roridomyces -- and the first fungus in this genus to be discovered from India. It is named phyllostachydis, after the genus of the bamboo tree on which it was found. It is now one among the 97 known species of bioluminescent fungi in the world.

Roridomyces phyllostachydis' uniqueness lies in the fact that it is the only member in its genus to emit light from its stipe (stalk). The pileus (cap) is not bioluminescent, the reason for which is still a mystery.

Bioluminescence attracts insects, which helps in dispersing spores or it may also be a mechanism for protection against frugivorous (fruit eating) animals.

Light emits when the compound luciferans is catalysed by the enzyme luciferase in the presence of oxygen.... several unstable, intermediate products are released as excess energy that makes them visible as light," a researcher said.

These findings could pave the way for the development of glowing plants for use in organic architecture and street lighting.

 

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A chemical element is generally found to be useful if it exhibits at least one of the following two characteristics:

(1) It should be available abundantly or at least in sufficient quantities and

(2) It should exhibit properties that are extremely desirable.

Chlorine, which is one among approximately 100 natural chemical elements, satisfies both these conditions. Highly reactive, chlorine is naturally found throughout the Earth, bound with other elements. It is no wonder therefore that chlorine is considered one of the building blocks of our planet.

Scheele’s discovery

Even though some chlorine compounds were known (in other names and not as compounds of chlorine) through centuries, chlorine itself was first discovered, so as to say, only in 1774. German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele is credited with the discovery. He discovered it when he dropped a few drops of hydrochloric acid with the mineral pyrolusite (manganese dioxide in its natural form). The greenish-yellow dense gas that resulted was chlorine, and Scheele noted that it had a choking smell, dissolved in water to give an acidic solution, bleached litmus paper, and decolourised leaves and flowers.

Even though Scheele had produced chlorine and had also noted many of its properties, he hadn’t identified it as a chemical element. The prevailing theory then identified what we now know as chlorine as a compound of oxygen. Famed French chemist Antoine Lavoisier believed that all acids must contain oxygen and that oxygen was the principle of acidity. Chlorine, therefore, was identified back then as oxymuriatic acid.

Davy does it

It took decades before these perceptions were corrected and the changes were widely accepted. The person who set these things right was English chemist Humphry Davy.

Davy began investigating this substance in the first decade of the 19th Century. He was able to show that oxygen wasn’t present in hydrochloric acid and also established the correct relation between chlorine and this acid. Proving this not only negated Lavoisier’s theory that all acids contained oxygen, but also showed that the name oxymuriatic acid cannot be applied to the substance in question.

In a paper titled On a Combination of oxymuriatic Gas and Oxygene Gas, Davy presented what he called “extraordinary and novel results". He read this paper to the Royal Society on February 21, 1811. Davy went on to call the substance in question “chloros”, from the Greek word for greenish yellow, and updated it to chlorine later on.

Now used everywhere

Davy’s research on the substance allowed him to show that it was not only a simple substance, but was, in fact, a chemical element. He designed experiments to demonstrate that chlorine did not contain oxygen, explained chlorine’s bleaching action, and discovered two oxides of chlorine. His views on chlorine, however, were disputed for a number of years and it was almost another decade later that the larger scientific community accepted that chlorine truly was an element.

From not being considered an element, chlorine has come a long way as it is now elemental in our daily lives. Be it the salt in our foods or many of the life-saving drugs, chlorine forms an indispensable part of it. And these would be just the tip of the iceberg. We are all exposed to chlorine in more ways than one, and sometimes even in places where we least expect it to be.

 

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