Station Live: NanoRacks Makes Space for CubeSats
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OPALS is manifested to launch on the third ISS resupply mission by a SpaceX Falcon 9 Dragon in February 2014.
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This artist's concept shows how the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) laser will beam data to Earth from the International Space Station. Credit: NASA. |
"OPALS represents a tangible stepping stone for laser communications, and the International Space Station is a great platform for an experiment like this," said Michael Kokorowski, OPALS project manager at JPL. "Future operational laser communication systems will have the ability to transmit more data from spacecraft down to the ground than they currently do, mitigating a significant bottleneck for scientific investigations and commercial ventures." SEE: NASA's OPALS to Beam Data From Space Via Laser
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OPALS will be mounted externally on the International Space Station (ISS) in a nadir position on an ExPrESS Logistics Carrier (ELC). Image is credited to NASA/JPL-Caltech. |
The fastest commercial communication links on Earth use optical (or laser) fiber to transmit information. Using laser in space without this fiber is another method. Fast laser communications between Earth and spacecraft like the International Space Station or the Mars rover Curiosity could enhance their connection to the public. OPALS is also used to educate and train NASA personnel. See: Optical PAyload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) - 01.09.14
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OPALS Concept of Operations |
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Rabindranath with Einstein in 1930 |
On July 14, 1930, Albert Einstein welcomed into his home on the outskirts of Berlin the Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. The two proceeded to have one of the most stimulating, intellectually riveting conversations in history, exploring the age-old friction between science and religion. Science and the Indian Tradition: When Einstein Met Tagore recounts the historic encounter, amidst a broader discussion of the intellectual renaissance that swept India in the early twentieth century, germinating a curious osmosis of Indian traditions and secular Western scientific doctrine.
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Here at Last |
NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, spacecraft has completed the check-out phase of its mission and has begun science operations around the moon. All the science instruments on-board have been examined by the LADEE team and have been cleared to begin collecting and analyzing the dust in the exosphere, or very thin atmosphere, that surrounds the moon.
NASA's Ames Research Center designed, developed, built, and tested the spacecraft and manages mission operations.
For more information about the LADEE mission, please visit http://www.nasa.gov/ladee
For more information about NASA Ames, please visit http://www.nasa.gov/ames
Take note of communications technique.Communications Demonstration.This is NASA's first high-data-rate laser communications system used on a deep space mission. It will enable communications similar to the capabilities found in high-speed fiber optic networks.
Free-space optical communication (FSO) is an optical communication technology that uses light propagating in free space to wirelessly transmit data for telecommunications or computer networking. "Free space" means air, outer space, vacuum, or something similar. This contrasts with using solids such as optical fiber cable or an optical transmission line. The technology is useful where the physical connections are impractical due to high costs or other considerations.
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Pythagoras in School of Athens |
A monochord is an ancient musical and scientific laboratory instrument. It is also the class-name for any musical stringed instrument having only one string (such as the Vietnamese Đàn bầu). The word "monochord" comes from the Greek and means literally "one string." In a true monochord, a single string is stretched over a sound box. The string is fixed at both ends while one or many movable bridges are manipulated to demonstrate mathematical relationships between sounds.
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[Slide 3-3: Closeup of Tablet, Bouleau. Janson, H. W. History of Art. (Fifth Edition.NY: Abrams, 1995). p.497
Raphael’s School of Athens shows Pythagoras is explaining the musical ratios to a pupil. Notice the tablet. It shows the words diatessaron, diapente, diapason. The roman numerals for 6, 8, 9, and 12, showing the ratio of the intervals, same as in the music book frontispiece.The word for the tone, ΕΠΟΓΛΟΩΝΕΠΟΓΛΟΩΝΕΠΟΓΛΟΩΝΕΠΟΓΛΟΩΝ, at the top. Under the tablet is a triangular number 10 called the sacred tetractys] |
The monochord can be used to illustrate the mathematical properties of musical pitch. For example, when a monochord's string is open it vibrates at a particular frequency and produces a pitch. When the length of the string is halved, and plucked, it produces a pitch an octave higher and the string vibrates at twice the frequency of the original (2:1)Play (help·info). Half of this length will produce a pitch two octaves higher than the original—four times the initial frequency (4:1)—and so on. Standard diatonic Pythagorean tuning (Ptolemy’s Diatonic Ditonic) is easily derived starting from superparticular ratios, (n+1)/n, constructed from the first four counting numbers, the tetractys, measured out on a monochord.[citation needed]
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The Divine Monochord, from Fludd’s Utriusque Cosmi Maioris Scilicet et Minoris Metaphysica (1617) |
The name "monochord" is sometimes incorrectly applied to an instrument with one open string and a second string with a movable bridge; however, such a two-string instrument is properly called a bichord. With two strings you can easily demonstrate how various musical intervals sound. Both open strings are tuned to the same pitch, and then the movable bridge is put in a mathematical position to demonstrate, for instance, the major third (at 4/5th of the string length)Play (help·info) or the minor third (at 5/6th of the string length)
Play (help·info).
Pierre Curie (1894): “Asymmetry is what creates a phenomenon.”
Pauli understood that physics necessarily gives an incomplete view of nature, and he was looking for an extended scientific framework. However, the fact that the often colloquial and speculative style of his letters is in striking contrast to his careful and refined publications should advise us to act with caution. His accounts are extremely stimulating, but they should be considered as first groping attempts rather than definitive proposals. See: Pauli’s ideas on mind and matter in the context of contemporary science
Many prediction-making abilities are low-level and innate. We might say that trees \predict" the arrival of winter and decide to shed their leaves, for example. But in discussing the sense of beauty we are dealing with something that is uniquely human, or nearly See: Whence the Beauty of Mathematics?