Category Science & Technology

 

Hominids are any of a family (Hominidae) of erect bipedal primate mammals, including extinct ancestral forms. To put it simply, any member of a group that consists of humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, or an early form of any one of these is known as a hominid. So while Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin remain the buzz words when we are talking about astronauts (as they were the first to land on the moon), and Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin was the first human ever in space, none of them can claim to be the first hominid in space.

That record goes to Ham, a chimpanzee. While other animals, including dogs, monkeys, mice, rabbit and fruit flies, had been sent to space from late in the 1940s, Ham became the first hominid when he achieved the feat on January 31, 1961.

Chimps turn astrochimps

Born in 1957 in the French Cameroons (now part of Cameroon) in West Africa, Ham was captured by trappers and the male chimpanzee was then sent to the Miami Rare Bird Farm in Florida, the U.S. He was sold to the U.S. Air Force in 1959, who then transferred him to Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

Ham (after Holloman Aerospace Medical Center), who was merely “Number 65” at that time, was one among 40 chimpanzees chosen for the space programme that was to serve as the springboard for human spaceflight. The fact that both chimps and humans are hominids and that humans share more DNA with chimpanzees than any other animal meant that they were much more closely related, and hence chosen for the task.

The 40 chimpanzees chosen were put through the paces as they received their astrochimp training. They were taught to pull levers in response to light and sound and were awarded (with banana pellets) or punished (with mild electric shocks on their feet) based on their responses. Just like their human Mercury 7 counterparts who were training for years, these chimps too were subjected to g-forces and microgravity.

As the training progressed, the number of chimpanzees was first brought down to 18 and then to six – four females and two males. With their training complete, the Air Force sent the six finalists to Cape Canaveral in Florida on January 2, 1961.

The chosen one

The six were split into two groups of three in order to ensure that germs do not spread to everyone in case one of them became ill. The training sessions continued, and all six of them remained in contention until the day before the scheduled launch on January 31. Ham, who was said to be particularly feisty and in good humour, got the nod along with another female chimp, who served as backup.

Those traits probably served him well as Ham went to space aboard the Mercury spacecraft, boosted by a Mercury-Redstone 2 rocket. The flight didn’t go exactly as planned as the Mercury capsule unintentionally carried him to an altitude of 157 miles (252 km) and a speed of 5,857 mph (9,425 kmph) as opposed to the original targets of 115 miles (185 km) and 4,400 mph (7,081 kmph).

Ham experienced weightlessness for 6.6 minutes during his 16.5-minute flight. Even though there was a partial loss of air pressure as well, there was no damage done as he remained encased in his pressurised capsule. The lever-pulling exercise was also a success, as Ham performed only mildly slower than how he had during training. This success was significant as it showed that human beings too could perform physical tasks while out in space.

Instant popularity

Ham’s capsule splashed down in the ocean a little over 16 minutes after it was launched. Ham was calm and in good spirits when retrieved by the recovery ship and was only agitated later on when he had to pose for the photographers and TV crews after returning to the hangar.

Fatigue and dehydration apart, Ham was fine according to the medical examination that followed. He instantly gained celebrity status as he featured in numerous documentaries, articles, magazine covers, television shows and cartoons.

After living at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, DC until 1980, he was moved to the North Carolina Zoological Park in Asheboro. Following his death in 1983 aged 25, his skeleton was sent for further investigation, while his other remains were buried at the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico. A plaque at the grave site in New Mexico reads “Ham proved that mankind could live and work in space.”

 

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A box, room, or device (a darkened enclosure) that has a small hole (an aperture, maybe with a lens) through which light from external objects enters to produce an image on an opposite surface is called a camera obscura. Also referred to as pinhole camera at times, the basic optical principles of these have been known for a long time. While the earliest written observations can be dated back to over 2,000 years, the oldest known published drawing of a camera obscura is found in a 1545 book De Radio Astronomica et Geometrica.

The author of this book was a physician by the name Gemma Frisius. Apart from being a practising physician, he was also a mathematician, cartographer, philosopher, astronomer and instrument maker.

Teaches medicine and mathematics

Born Jemma Reinierzoon in Dokkum, Friesland, a town in modern Netherlands, in 1508, he lost his parents at a young age. While Gemma is a Latinised onomatopoeic version of his birth name, Frisius is the toponym for Friesland. Despite the fact that he was born into a poor family and was also orphaned early in his life, he not only earned a medical degree while studying at Leuven (a city in Belgium), but also stayed on to study mathematics and astronomy.

After he had obtained his MD degree in 1536, he practised medicine in the city for the rest of his life. He also remained in the faculty at Leuven’s University and as one of the leading theoretical mathematicians of the time, also taught mathematics.

Triangulation for surveying

Even before he got his MD degree, he had probably made one of his finest contributions. In 1533, Frisius described for the first time using triangulation for map-making. Even though the technique of triangulation (formation of or division into triangles) had been known since antiquity, it was Frisius who proposed to employ it for the purpose of surveying lands.

In this technique, one chooses a base line of known distance and from its endpoints the angles of sight to remote points are measured. Using basic trigonometry, the distance to this point from either endpoint can now be calculated. The two distances measured are then used as base lengths and the process is repeated until the entire area to be surveyed is broken down into a network of triangles. This method proposed by Frisius is still widely used for surveying.

Gemma’s rings

As a cartographer, Frisius built and improved a number of instruments. He had set up his workshop to produce globes and mathematical instruments while he was still a student and went on to create terrestrial and celestial globes that became famous.

He even designed astronomical instruments and one of them, astronomical rings, is also called as Gemma’s rings. Frisius is also credited with a method of determining differences of longitude by transporting an accurate clock or time-pieces.

As an astronomer, Frisius observed natural phenomena with gusto. It was during an annular solar eclipse, which took place on January 24, 1544, that Frisius utilised a camera obscura to study it.

He then described his method of using camera obscura to study the solar eclipse along with an illustration in his 1545 book De Radio Astronomica et Geometrica. This diagram is the first known picture of a camera obscura.

Frisius died in 1555, aged 46, at Leuven. By then, he had left his influence in a number of fields, some of which lasts even now, over 400 years later.

 

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When returning from their famed moon mission in 1969, the astronauts of Apollo 11 returned with samples, including rocks, from our natural satellite. For decades after that, the only new material from space that geologists looked at came from meteorites reaching us. It was only in 2006 that a spacecraft sent material, including cometary and interstellar dust, back to Earth.

The Stardust mission was the first one to send back cometary samples and extraterrestrial material that came from outside the orbit of our moon. Launched in 1999, the Stardust spacecraft consisted of two solar arrays along with a sample return capsule that weighed 46 kg. It carried dedicated scientific and engineering instruments, which included the Cometary and Interstellar Dust Analyzer (CIDA), Dust Flux Monitor Instrument (DFMI), aerogel collector grid and navigation camera.

Substance called aerogel

Of these, the aerogel dust collector was of particular interest. The substance called aerogel was responsible for collecting the comet and interstellar dust. A silicon-based solid with a porous, sponge-like structure, it largely comprised empty space. Such a configuration enabled it to capture particles with minimum changes due to heat or chemical alteration, something impossible with conventional collection materials.

Before heading to the comet whose samples the spacecraft was scheduled to collect, it first visited an asteroid, 5535 Annefrank (named after Anne Frank, the Dutch-German diarist whose writings were published as The Diary of a Young Girl), in 2003. Flying within 3,300 km of the asteroid and clicking images of it, the flyby was seen as a preliminary run of what lay ahead for Stardust.

Wild encounter

By December 2003, Stardust was near its destination, comet 81P/ Wild, commonly known as Wild 2 (named after Swiss astronomer Paul Wild and pronounced “vilt 2”). It extended its tennis-racquet shaped collector, and after collecting all the material that was possible, sealed it in a vault in the re-entry capsule. It clicked a number of photographs as well and made its closest approach to the comet on January 2, 2004, flying within 250 km.

Two years later, in January 2006, Stardust released its conical capsule into the Earth’s atmosphere. The descent was stabilised by releasing a drogue parachute when 32 km out and the main parachute of the capsule opened up at a height of three km. After it touched down in the Utah desert helicopters arrived at the scene, picked up the capsule and transferred it to NASA’S Johnson Space Center in Houston within a couple of days. The search for signs of tiny little particles comic and interstellar dust – in the aerogel soon began.

What’s next?

Stardust, which was placed in hibernation after this phase of the mission was marked completed on January 16, 2006, got a new lease of life with an extended mission. Funding allowed for New Exploration of Tempel 1 (NEXT). after NASA’S Deep Impact had successfully observed the comet Tempel 1 in 2005 and also crash landed a probe on it.

The Stardust-NEXT mission was to continue mapping the comet and study how the impact crater changed. It reached its second comet target, Tempel 1, on February 14, 2011. While it became the first spacecraft to visit two comets in the process, Tempel 1 became the first come to be visited by two spacecraft.

The images and samples returned by Stardust helped us better understand comets, allowed researchers to discover a new class of organics more primitive than those found in meteorites and also helped identify irregular particles known as calcium-aluminium rich inclusions (CAIs) that are among the oldest solar system particles. A handful of interstellar particles too have been discovered and the search for more is still ongoing. Stardust’s extended mission ended on March 25, 2011 after which the spacecraft continues to orbit the sun. According to NASA’s predictions, it will never get closer than 2.7 million km to Earth’s orbit.

Ready to search for interstellar dust?

The sample returned by the Stardust spacecraft not only contained particles of various sizes collected from the comet Wild 2 but also rare and tiny interstellar dust particles.

While there are thousands of particles from the comet, the number of particles of interstellar dust are expected to be only in the 10s.

While this makes them incredibly rare and precious, it also makes the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack look easy.

As the search for interstellar dust would probably take researchers and scientists several years if they alone are involved in it they have started a Citizen Science Project Standust@home to crowdsource the search.

Through this project, they are seeking the support of talented volunteers from across the globe. If you are interested, you can also participate. You would. however, have to go through a web-based training session and pass a test before qualifying to register and participate.

If a volunteer discovers an interstellar dust particle, they appear as a co-author on scientific papers announcing the discovery, and also get the privilege of giving the particle its common name. Even if not that lucky, there is a ranking system based on the amount and quality of searching done with the top-ranked volunteers invited to visit the lab in Berkeley, the U.S.

 

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How do you feel when you are in on a secret that your friends do not know yet? How do you feel when your parents ask you to keep a secret before the planned big reveal to the extended family? Keeping answers to those questions in mind, imagine how it would be if you are keeping a secret for your country. And add to it the fact that you are among the select few who know the complete truth…

Clarke’s idea

The idea of space satellites for communication was first proposed in 1945 by popular English science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. Even though technology wasn’t as advanced, he believed that a group of Earth-orbiting satellites could securely send information to even remote locations. With transatlantic cables and radio signals incapable of achieving that, the need was definitely there. But it wasn’t until the end of the 1950s that his ideas became reality.

The Signal Communication by Orbiting Relay Equipment (SCORE) project was a top-secret mission that went on to become the world’s first successful demonstration of a long-range satellite radio-relay system. It started off as a routine suborbital mission test for the outsiders, before going on to reveal its secrets.

Strict orders for secrecy

Shrouded in secrecy, only 88 people were informed of its existence, with strict orders not to reveal anything to the media, colleagues, or even their own families. The idea was to inform the world if the mission was successful or to keep it a secret forever if it failed.

Apart from the burden of secrecy, there were other challenges too that had to be surmounted. The communication system had to be developed, the payload had to be within a certain weight and ground stations had to be established. On top of these, the SCORE communication package was to be built into the Atlas launch vehicle’s side pods, and not as a discrete spacecraft as was the norm back then. And all of this had to be done within a few months.

By the time SCORE project’s Atlas B was launched on December 18, 1958, the Soviets had already launched three successful Sputnik satellites into orbit. With the pressure on them, the Americans were not only trying to look further from their past failures, but also boost their national image once again.

Safety hazard? Not really!

The observing engineers noticed that the Atlas veered off its course considerably, prompting a safety hazard. This led to a signal to the Range Safety Officer to destroy it, who, however, ignored the message and let the rocket surge forward.

This was because the Range Safety Officer was among the 35 people in the entire world with knowledge of what Project SCORE’s motives were. Among the original 88, 53 were misled to believe the mission was cancelled and that this was simply another missile test. Far from being a routine test, however, it was to send an Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) into low Earth orbit and also launch the world’s first communication satellite.

Only as the rocket veered off its presumed course towards low Earth orbit was its primary objective revealed. While an Atlas ICBM achieved orbit for the first time in history, the second objective proved a little more elusive.

The communications system was designed such that it would not only transmit pre-recorded messages that could be heard by anyone in Earth, but also send and receive messages from the SCORE ground stations. The pre-recorded messages included one from the U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower.

During the first few orbits, the ground station signalled the communication package to broadcast President Eisenhower’s message. But it wasn’t until the 13th orbit, on December 19, that it finally responded as the ground station commanded the back-up system.

Eisenhower’s message

“This is the President of the United States speaking,” the recording said. “Through the marvels of scientific advance, my voice is coming to you from a satellite circling in outer space. My message is a simple one. Through this unique means, I convey to you and to all mankind America’s wish for peace on Earth and goodwill toward men everywhere.”

Despite being developed and launched at almost break-neck speed, Project SCORE ticked off a lot of boxes for the Americans. It was the world’s first communication satellite, even though its batteries died 12 days after launch and it burned up as it reentered the Earth’s atmosphere on January 21, 1959. It was the first successful trial of an Atlas launch vehicle, which would go on to be used for Project Mercury (taking the first Americans to space). It was the heaviest object until then to be launched into orbit and also the first time a missile-guidance system was used to put a satellite into orbit.

As for Eisenhower’s message, it was added to the National Recording Registry (a list of sound recordings that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States”) by the Library of Congress over 50 years after it was delivered. With that, SCORE’s message has been saved for generations to come.

 

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Discarded cucumber peels may soon find their way back to your kitchen in the form of eco-friendly food packaging developed by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur.

Cucumber peels have greater cellulose content (18.22%) than other peel waste. The research showed that cellulose nano crystals derived from cucumber peels possess modifiable properties due to the presence of abundant hydroxyl groups, which resulted in better biodegradability and biocompatibility.

In India, cucumber finds wide use in salads, pickles, and also in the beverage industry, leading to a large volume of peel bio-waste. This non toxic, biodegradable and biocompatible product has no adverse effects on health and environment and hence could have a huge market potential by rendering management of organic waste with high cellulose content profitable.

 

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Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, which is fast becoming the next big destination in planetary research, may actually glow in the dark.

The findings are a result of Earth bound experiments at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, which recreated Europa and Jupiter’s interactions. The researchers found that Europa possibly glows blue-white and blue-green through its ice and water interior, even at night.

Indian-origin NASA scientist Murthy Gudipati, and his team, were working on experiments to understand how Jupiter’s incessant radiation affects Europa. Jupiter emits the strongest radiation after the sun and is surrounded by the biggest planetary magnetic field in the solar system, which accelerates charged particles to high energies. This enormous magnetosphere spans over 1 million km in radius, engulfing Europa and many other moons.

Moons are normally visible at night because of sunlight that reflects off their surfaces or atmospheres. Europa, however, seems to be illuminated through the night, even with no sun, because of charged particles from Jupiter and its interior. “If Europa weren’t under this radiation, it would look the way our moon looks to us dark on the shadowed side,” Gudipati said. “But because it’s bombarded by the radiation from Jupiter, it glows in the dark.”

Europa’s night-side glow could provide information on its surface composition and whether it has conditions suitable for life. It is covered with a solid crust made of water ice and is thought to hold an ocean of liquid water underneath. Water is one of the strongest indicators of potential habitability.

 

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The total amount of Covid-19 infecting humans around the world would fit into a teaspoon, claims Australian mathematician Matt Parker. The microscopic size of coronavirus means its total volume is a minuscule 8 ml, he added.

Parker started his calculation with an estimate of the number of cells in each coronavirus patient. The mathematician based this on the viral load measured from swabs. He calculated the number of people infected with coronavirus on the assumption that each person was infected for two weeks and at least 300,000 new cases are recorded daily.

The size of coronavirus is so small that you cannot see the virus with naked eyes. The size of a human cell is about 100 micrometers, which is equal to the width of a hair found on our heads. The size of human cells is 10 million times the size of the Covid-19 virus.

Covid-19 has infected over 55 million people across the world and has caused the death of 1.34 million people.

 

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