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bananas's JournalJAXA successfully uses two person command center and artificial intelligence for rocket launch
JAXA successfully uses two person command center and artificial intelligence for commercial rocket launch
September 14, 2013
by Susan Wilson
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully launched a satellite into orbit using only a two men and laptops. This dramatically scaled down mission control center was able to function so well because the solid state rocket has its own internal artificial intelligence.
Phys.org reported on JAXA’s rocket launch earlier today. The three stage solid fuel rocket carried the "SPRINT-A" telescope. The telescope, was released 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) into space. “SPRINT-A is the world’s first space telescope for remote observation of planets including Venus, Mars and Jupiter from its orbit around Earth, according to the agency.”
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Japan hopes that the smaller rocket and minimal ground crew will make JAXA commercially competitive. Satellites are no longer simply used to monitor weather or spy on various countries. Now a days many of us rely on satellites to for directions, TV, and radio. All those spy and weather satellites are aging meaning that replacements need to be deployed.
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There was a time when only NASA and the Russian space agency were the only two organizations launching rockets into space. Now there are numerous countries and private enterprises. As in all commercial ventures, the ones that are able to provide cost effective launches that successfully deploy satellites and astronauts into space will survive.
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Environmental coalition challenges NRC on risk of HLRW pool fires yet again
Environmental coalition challenges NRC on risk of HLRW pool fires yet again
IPS senior scholar Robert AlvarezIt's déjà vu all over again! After announcing a public meeting on August 22nd -- supposedly intended for technical dialogue -- the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) attemped to change the rules, and unabashedly refused to respond to watchdogs' challenges to its biased analysis regarding high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) storage pool fire risks. The strong backlash by representatives of an environmental coalition, inlcuding Beyond Nuclear, has forced NRC to try again. NRC has issued a public notice, as well as slides, for its Sept. 18th public meeting.
The coalition's attorney, Diane Curran, has re-issued talking points first developed for public use in the lead up to the previous meeting. They are more relevant than ever. Curran urges concerned members of the public to register to speak by emailing [email protected]. You can phone into the meeting at (888) 324-8193 [enter passcode 4345562], and can watch the webcast at http://video.nrc.gov or https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/984626536.
On August 1st, Curran, and one of the environmental coalition's expert witnesses, Dr. Gordon Thompson of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies (IRSS), submitted a "devastating critique" regarding NRC's "Draft Consequence Study" on the risks of fire in HLRW storage pools. Curran and Thompson called for the study to be withdraw, due to its lack of basic scientific integrity and credibility.
Now Robert Alvarez (photo, above left), senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), has weighed in on the coalition's behalf. Alvarez previously served as a senior advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy during the Clintion administration. After the 3/11/11 nuclear catastrophe began in Japan, he published a report on the potentially catastrophic risks in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant HLRW storage pools--the largest concentrations of hazardous artificial radioactivity in the entire country.
As U.S. Senator Ed Markey has pointed out in a letter to NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane, a 2003 study written by none other than Macfarlane herself (along with co-authors Alvarez, Thompson, and several others) starkly contradicts NRC's current "Draft Consequence Study" regarding pool fire risks. Astoundingly, and at catastrophic risk, NRC staff is relying on the "Draft Consequence Study" as the basis to recommend that no expedited transfer of irradiated nuclear fuel should be required as a "lesson learned" in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe. Beyond Nuclear and hundreds of environmental groups representing all 50 states have called for pools to be emptied into "Hardened On-Site Storage" (HOSS) for well over a decade, but their calls have fallen on deaf ears at NRC.
September 17, 2013
Russia says 15 hospitalised after nuclear sub fire
Russia says 15 hospitalised after nuclear sub fire
by Staff Writers
Moscow (AFP) Sept 17, 2013
Russian investigators on Tuesday said 15 servicemen had been hospitalised after a fire during repairs on a nuclear-powered submarine in the Far East, with the vessel sustaining significant damage.
The Russian Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes in Russia, said it had opened a criminal probe into suspected abuse of authority over the fire on the Tomsk submarine in the Bolshoi Kamen shipyard in the Russian Far East.
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However a source familiar with the situation told the Interfax news agency in Moscow Tuesday of the near-farcical circumstances as workers on the scene unsuccessfully tried to put out the fire.
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Russia's ageing fleet of nuclear-powered submarines has long been the subject of safety concerns. The rubberised coating on the Delta IV class submarine Yekaterinburg caught fire in a major blaze in December 2011, injuring nine people.
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A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics
A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics
Artist’s rendering of the amplituhedron, a newly discovered mathematical object resembling a multifaceted jewel in higher dimensions. Encoded in its volume are the most basic features of reality that can be calculated — the probabilities of outcomes of particle interactions.
By: Natalie Wolchover
September 17, 2013
Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.
“This is completely new and very much simpler than anything that has been done before,” said Andrew Hodges, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University who has been following the work.
The revelation that particle interactions, the most basic events in nature, may be consequences of geometry significantly advances a decades-long effort to reformulate quantum field theory, the body of laws describing elementary particles and their interactions. Interactions that were previously calculated with mathematical formulas thousands of terms long can now be described by computing the volume of the corresponding jewel-like “amplituhedron,” which yields an equivalent one-term expression.
“The degree of efficiency is mind-boggling,” said Jacob Bourjaily, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University and one of the researchers who developed the new idea. “You can easily do, on paper, computations that were infeasible even with a computer before.”
The new geometric version of quantum field theory could also facilitate the search for a theory of quantum gravity that would seamlessly connect the large- and small-scale pictures of the universe. Attempts thus far to incorporate gravity into the laws of physics at the quantum scale have run up against nonsensical infinities and deep paradoxes. The amplituhedron, or a similar geometric object, could help by removing two deeply rooted principles of physics: locality and unitarity.
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Mark Wahlberg earns high school diploma
Source: USA Today
Working to complete his remaining high school credits was "humbling and challenging," he says.
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Actor and producer Mark Wahlberg, 42, shared in a Huffington Post op-ed Monday that he is officially a high school graduate after working to complete remaining credits over the past year.
Wahlberg, who previously had not advanced past the ninth grade before dropping out as a teen, wrote that he worked on his classes "any chance I could get — on the set, traveling for work and at home," completing his diploma this summer.
Empowering teens is a personal mission for the star, whose Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation has teamed up with organizations such as the Taco Bell Foundation for Teens and its Graduate for Más program, which provides "tools, support and community" for students to stay on track with their education — resources he says he wishes he had had access to.
Wahlberg also uses the op-ed to make a plea for a greater focus on education: "It shouldn't take luck for people to be able to access the education they need to help overcome life's obstacles. Investment in education is a no-brainer in promoting personal and career growth and supporting our economic recovery."
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Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2013/09/17/mark-wahlberg-earns-high-school-diploma/2824899/
A Sneak Peek at Eric Schlosser's Terrifying New Book on Nuclear Weapons
A Sneak Peek at Eric Schlosser's Terrifying New Book on Nuclear Weapons
His six-year investigation of America's mishaps and near-misses will scare the daylights out of you.
—By Michael Mechanic | Sun Sep. 15, 2013
On January 23, 1961, a B-52 packing a pair of Mark 39 hydrogen bombs suffered a refueling snafu and went into an uncontrolled spin over North Carolina. In the cockpit of the rapidly disintegrating bomber (only one crew member bailed out safely) was a lanyard attached to the bomb-release mechanism. Intense G-forces tugged hard at it and unleashed the nukes, which, at four megatons, were 250 times more powerful than the weapon that leveled Hiroshima. One of them "failed safe" and plummeted to the ground unarmed. The other weapon's failsafe mechanisms—the devices designed to prevent an accidental detonation—were subverted one by one, as Eric Schlosser recounts in his new book, Command and Control:
When the lanyard was pulled, the locking pins were removed from one of the bombs. The Mark 39 fell from the plane. The arming wires were yanked out, and the bomb responded as though it had been deliberately released by the crew above a target. The pulse generator activated the low-voltage thermal batteries. The drogue parachute opened, and then the main chute. The barometric switches closed. The timer ran out, activating the high-voltage thermal batteries. The bomb hit the ground, and the piezoelectric crystals inside the nose crushed. They sent a firing signal...
Unable to deny that two of its bombs had fallen from the sky—one in a swampy meadow, the other in a field near Faro, North Carolina—the Air Force insisted that there had never been any danger of a nuclear detonation. This was a lie.
Here's the truth: Just days after JFK was sworn in as president, one of the most terrifying weapons in our arsenal was a hair's breadth from detonating on American soil. It would have pulverized a portion of North Carolina and, given strong northerly winds, could have blanketed East Coast cities (including New York, Baltimore, and Washington, DC) in lethal fallout. The only thing standing between us and an explosion so catastrophic that it would have radically altered the course of history was a simple electronic toggle switch in the cockpit, a part that probably cost a couple of bucks to manufacture and easily could have been undermined by a short circuit—hardly a far-fetched scenario in an electronics-laden airplane that's breaking apart.
The anecdote above is just one of many "holy shit!" revelations readers will discover in the latest book from the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation. Easily the most unsettling work of nonfiction I've ever read, Schlosser's six-year investigation of America's "broken arrows" (nuclear weapons mishaps) is by and large historical—this stuff is top secret, after all—but the book is beyond relevant. It's critical reading in a nation with thousands of nukes still on hair-trigger alert.
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Israel has 80 nuclear warheads, can make 115 to 190 more, report says
Source: Los Angeles Times
Israel has 80 nuclear warheads and the potential to double that number, according to a new report by U.S. experts.
In the Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, recently published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, proliferation experts Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris write that Israel stopped production of nuclear warheads in 2004.
But the country has enough fissile material for an additional 115 to 190 warheads, according to the report, meaning it could as much as double its arsenal.
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Following Sunday's reports, Israeli defense analyst Amir Oren wrote that the ambiguity policy has done "its duty honorably and can now retire." In the current regional conditions, Israel could benefit from giving up the vagueness, he wrote in Haaretz.
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Read more: http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-israel-nuclear-weapons-20130915,0,4117406.story
UPF review cites 'chilled work environment,' other causes for design failure; Y-12's M&O contractor
Source: Knoxville News Sentinel
A second report analyzing the design failure of the Uranium Processing Facility is even more critical than the first, heaping blame on the managing contractor at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant for encouraging a “coercive” management style on the big project that created a “chilled work environment” and stifled much-needed criticism.
I recently obtained a copy of the report put together by Parsons, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s construction management services contractor. Parsons was asked by the NNSA to evaluate multiple issues associated with design problems on the multibillion-dollar project in Oak Ridge. The report was dated Jan. 29, 2013 and stamped “Official Use Only.”
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At least eight causal factors were identified by the Parsons review team. Among them:
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Instead of controlling the scope of what was needed inside the Uranium Processing Facility, the choice was made to control costs by limiting the building size. Studies that indicated the need for a bigger building were ignored. The report said it was wrongly assumed that standard engineering practices for commercial buildings and operating nuclear facilities would be sufficient for design and construction of a first-of-its-kind nuclear processing facility.
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Read more: http://knoxblogs.com/atomiccity/2013/09/15/upf-review-cites-chilled-work-environment-causes-design-failure-y-12s-mo-contractor-criticized/
"the choice was made to control costs by limiting the building size. Studies that indicated the need for a bigger building were ignored."
Lib Dems vote to accept nuclear power
Source: Guardian
The Liberal Democrats have voted to accept nuclear power, in a historic reversal of their long-held opposition to atomic energy.
Party members backed nuclear power as long as it is not subsidised, after several hours of tense debate at the Glasgow autumn conference
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The motion backed by the party was "option B", accepting that in future nuclear power stations could play a limited role in electricity supply, in a safely regulated environment and without allowing any public subsidy. They rejected "option A", ruling out the construction of a new generation of nuclear plant.
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Craig Bennett, policy director at Friends of the Earth, said it "punches a huge hole in the Liberal Democrats fast-sinking green credibility".
"Nuclear power comes with massive costs attached," he said. "Ed Davey is deluded if he thinks new reactors can go ahead without public subsidy – building them will result in the Liberal Democrats, yet again, breaking their promises."
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/sep/15/liberal-democrats-vote-accept-nuclear-power
Live from Pahrump: Art Bell, master of the paranormal, makes radio return Monday (with Michio Kaku)
Michio Kaku will be a guest on Art Bell's new show Monday night.
Live from Pahrump: Art Bell, master of the paranormal, makes radio return Monday
Art Bell, former host of the popular radio program “Coast to Coast AM,” will launch a new radio show titled “Dark Matter” on Mon. Sept. 16, 2013, on Sirius XM. Bell stopped hosting “Coast to Coast” regularly in 2003 and was last on air in 2010. He retired in part because he wanted to spend more time with his wife, Airyn, and daughter Asia, pictured here with Bell in his home studio in Pahrump.
By Tovin Lapan (contact) Tovin Lapan
Friday, Sept. 13, 2013 | 2 a.m.
When he was just starting out in the radio business, Art Bell was willing to go to great — sometimes silly — lengths to promote his program.
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Today, the radio host is known as the creator of “Coast to Coast AM,” the national show dedicated to the paranormal and fringes of science, which in its heyday was one of the most popular programs on radio.
Bell, 68, has not been on air regularly since 2003 and is coming out of retirement for a new show on SiriusXM that launches Monday from his home studio in Pahrump. He was wooed back onto the airwaves, he said, by an opportunity that was too good to let pass.
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To help him ease back into being in front of the microphone, Bell has booked physicist Michio Kaku, a frequent guest on Bell’s previous shows, for the inaugural episode of the new show, titled “Dark Matter.”
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“Dark Matter” will air on Indie, SiriusXM channel 104, from 7 to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday; the episodes are replayed at 10 p.m.
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