NASA has unveiled a revolutionary new method of space travel that could one day allow humans to travel at speeds faster than light. The new drive, called "EMDrive", could carry passengers and their equipment to the moon in just 4-hours, and a trip to Alpha Centauri, which would normally take tens of thousands of years now, could be reached in a mere 100-years. The revolutionary new system is based on electromagnetic drive, which converts electrical energy into thrust without the need for rocket fuel. Continue reading for a video news report and more information.
Photographers looking to add a unique item to their collection should consider this gigantic NASA 2540mm f/8 mirror tele lens. Officially known as the Jonel 100, it's claimed to be "one of the biggest lenses ever." According to the seller, NASA utilized this lens to observe Saturn V, and a similar model was used to track as well as capture images of the Space Shuttle Challenger on the day it exploded during launch. Continue reading for more pictures, information and the auction page.
Are we alone in the universe? NASA says the answer to that burning question is "almost certainly no." While we could meet our alien neighbors within the next two decades, they may not be of the space-faring or even intelligent type. Ellen Stofan, NASA chief scientist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, says: "I believe we are going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth in the next decade and definitive evidence in the next 10 to 20 years. We know where to look, we know how to look, and in most cases we have the technology." Continue reading for a video and more information.
NASA researchers discovered that the Jupiter-orbiting moon Ganymede - the largest moon in our solar system - has an ocean beneath its icy surface, raising the prospects for life. It's 60 miles (100 km) thick, which is 10 times deeper than Earth's oceans. All this water is buried under a 95-mile (150-km) crust of mostly ice. Continue reading for another pictures and more information.
Aerogel is basically a synthetic porous ultralight material made from a gel, in which the liquid component has been replaced with a gas. Despite its name, aerogels are solid, rigid, and dry materials that do not resemble a gel in their physical properties. The material is 98.2% air, thanks to the lack of solid material, allowing it to be almost weightless. Continue reading for a video demonstrating what it sounds like when dropped.
Most sunsets are boring, this one on Mars is not, or at least until humans start living on the Red Planet, and only then would it become a common sight. According to NASA, "The sun descends to the Martian horizon and sets in this 30-second movie simulation using images from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity." Let's just hope they release a sunrise video next. Continue reading for the clip.
What would a submarine to explore the liquid methane seas of Saturn's Moon Titan look like? NASA has unveiled an innovative 2200-pound submarine design that would explore both the shoreline and the depths of this strange world that has methane rain, rivers and seas. It would be powered by a 1 kW radiothermal Stirling generator, which would not only provide power to propel the craft, but also keep the electronics from freezing. Continue reading for a video and more information.
Neil Armstrong, he first man to walk on the moon, kept a bag of Apollo 11 mementos stashed away in his Ohio house for more than 40 years between the mission and his death. Inside the bag, there was a 16mm movie camera and 10mm lens that first shot Apollo 11's descent to the moon's surface through a window on the lunar module. Other items included tools, helmet straps and cables taken aboard the Lunar Module Eagle for the landing. These were all supposed to have remained on the lunar surface to keep the weight down. Continue reading for the full 3-hour Apollo 11 NASA footage.
When you see the images, paintings might come to mind, but they're actually tilt-shifted (selective focus to simulate miniature scenes) photos of real galaxies in space, created by Italian artist St. Tesla. Tesla says: "Macrocosm and microcosm is an ancient Greek Neo-Platonic schema of seeing the same patterns reproduced in all levels of the cosmos, from the largest scale (macrocosm or universe-level) all the way down to the smallest scale (microcosm or sub-sub-atomic or even metaphysical-level). In the system the midpoint is Man, who summarizes thecosmos. I was doing some researches and I found experiment with miniatures of space with tilt shift so I decided to try my own. The result has been nebulae, galaxies and supernovae transformed into microorganism." Click here to view the first image in this week's funny demotivational poster gallery. Continue reading for a viral video of an Amish buggy doing donuts.
NASA has just released a video titled "A View From the Other Side", showing the moon's far side as it passes through its phases and libration. The views were created with imaging data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and complements NASA's annual Moon Phase and Libration visualization that shows the Moon as seen from Earth after theyreceived a number of comments requesting a view from the dark side. Continue reading to watch.