I’m going to venture a guess and say no, but others apparently disagree. The Voyager 2 space probe was launched 33 years ago and is now, quite literally, out in the middle of nowhere. Despite its age and distance from Earth, Voyager continues to communicate with our home planet. However, recent communications have been unreadable and this has led to some pretty wild speculation.
Alien expert Hartwig Hausdorf said:”It seems almost as if someone had reprogrammed or hijacked the probe – thus perhaps we do not yet know the whole truth”
Alien expert? I like that title. He’s an expert on something he has zero reference of, something he has never seen, never met, never studied.
Engineers are working to solve the data transmissions from the Voyager 2 spacecraft near the edge of the solar system, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said today.
The spacecraft late last month began sending science data 8.6 billion miles to Earth in a changed format that mission managers could not decode.
Engineers have since instructed Voyager 2 to only transmit data on its own health and status while they work on the problem.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, explored the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and kept on going. Nearly 33 years later, they are the most distant human-made objects.
Voyager 1 is 10.5 billion miles from Earth and in about five years is expected to pass through the heliosphere, a bubble the sun creates around the solar system, and enter interstellar space.
In 1909 an article appeared in Popular Mechanics by Nikola Tesla, inventor of the AC current, that predicted the availability of wireless SMS texting.
Tesla wrote in the magazine that one day it’d be possible to transmit “wireless messages” all over the world and imagined that such a hand-held device would be simple to use and one day everyone in the world would communicate to friends using it, Porges said.
This would usher in a new era of technology, Telsa wrote in the publication.
“Nikola Tesla was able to predict technology which is still in its nascent forms a hundred years later. He talked a lot about his other great passion, which was wireless power.
“It has taken a little longer to get off the ground, but work on fascinating wireless conductive transmission is going on right now in research centres at MIT and Intel and other places,” ‘The Daily Telegraph’ quoted Porges as saying.
Two people named Jennifer and Jeff wanted to make their pregnancy announcement in a special and unique way, so they did the only reasonable thing: enlisted the aid of footage from the original Star Wars.
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has developed a breakthrough in green energy that uses freely available noise pollution to extract hydrogen from water molecules.
A team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison made crystals of zinc oxide that, when immersed in water, absorb vibrations and develop areas of strong negative and positive charge. These charges rip apart nearby water molecules, releasing hydrogen and oxygen gas.
“This is like a free lunch,” says lead researcher Huifang Xu. “You are getting energy from the environment just like solar cells capture energy from the sun.”
In order to celebrate the 50th anniversary of SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), England’s Telegraph newspaper asked readers to submit what they would like to communicate to aliens before the visit Earth. Expecting wonderful, uplifting notes extolling our virtues as humans, the Telegraph was shocked to discover the opposite, with the overwhelming majority asking for aliens to please put us out of our misery.
For what would he learn about mankind? First, that we are vicious, creatures who have already done a great job of wrecking our home. “Please kill us now … have no mercy,” urged a gentleman from Indiana. “We are evil and you must defend yourself.”
“Keep away from this planet,” agreed Pamela from Sicily. “Mankind is only intent on depleting, abusing and destroying [it]. They will do the same to yours should they find it. Mankind is the worst virus in the universe. You have been warned.”
Nick from Calne was equally blunt: “If you manage to work out how to travel to us, don’t bother, as we’ll probably probe you, try to blow you up or worse still, steal your technology and invade… Have a nice day.”
Rob from Georgia, meanwhile, was prepared to throw the rest of mankind to the lions: “Dearest Aliens, If you choose to conquer Earth, please do not kill or enslave those of us who can name all 12 men to have walked on the Moon. We are the ones worth keeping around.”
Seema from Elgin had a compelling reason for ET not to bother with us: “If you’re planning to visit our planet, please know you will need to remove all metal from your person, take your shoes off and submit to a full body scan, carry all liquids/gels/aerosols in clear plastic bottles no bigger than 3.4oz, surrender all cigarette lighters and batteries, pack all jams and jellies (but pies can be carried on)… Oh, yes. Welcome to the Earth!”
The California Institute of Technology has announced the invention of a new type of solar cell, one that is way beyond current technology. Better yet, this new solar cell is comprised of 98% plastic and only requires 1/50th of the semiconductor material used in convention solar cells, meaning this new CalTech invention will be incredibly cheap to produce. Even better…CalTech’s new technology runs at 90% efficiency, which is a remarkable 4X greater than existing solar cells.
“Our technology uses 50-100 times less silicon,” he said, “in the form of a sparse array of wires. And that sparse array of wires has exactly the same light absorption and electricity-collection properties as the conventional silicon wafer cell.”
The tiny silicon wires stick up from the base, or substrate, looking something like a microscopic hair brush. And because the key component of solar cells is an expensive, highly purified form of silicon, there’s a real economic benefit to this design.
“So what that means is, in terms of cost, is you can use 100 times less silicon. And that’s potentially very significant.”
But the silicon is what converts light into electricity, so you might think using so much less silicon would reduce the electrical output, but Atwater says that’s not the case.
“The light comes in and is both directly absorbed by the wires, and some of the light bounces around in between the wires. And that bouncing around or multiple scattering in between the wires results in dramatically enhanced absorption,” Atwater explained. “In fact, the absorption enhancement that we see is in the range of 20 to 50 times the single-pass absorbance.”
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