Targets included nearly 8000 professors in 22 countries.
Category: futurism – Page 1,259
The bigger the earthquake, the longer it takes to issue an alert
Earthquake early warning systems can give people crucial seconds to move to safety—but only if they send the message in time. Now, scientists working on such systems have discovered that the bigger the tremor, the longer it takes to issue an alert—giving people little time to prepare for the big one, but lots of time to brace for a ho-hum event.
All earthquakes start with P waves, which are fast moving and cause little damage. S waves come next, moving more slowly but causing more destruction. Early warning systems measure ground movement during the fast P waves to predict how much shaking the S waves will cause, and then send out an alert.
The researchers imagined a new system in which people could set their own threshold for alerts, based not on the actual magnitude of the quake, but on how violent the tremors would be at their location. They then calculated which magnitudes of earthquake would cause which levels of shaking at different distances from the epicenter. Someone 10 kilometers away, for example, would experience more severe shaking from a lower magnitude earthquake than a person 100 kilometers away would. Once that was done, the researchers estimated how long it would take to send out an alert.
ESA proves new technologies to power future launchers
A full-scale demonstrator of the thrust chamber for an upper-stage rocket engine incorporating the newest propulsion technologies is being prepared for its first hot firing.
The Expander-cycle Technology Integrated Demonstrator, or ETID, has arrived at the DLR German Aerospace Center test facility in Lampoldshausen for tests. It will help to prove new technologies, materials and manufacturing techniques that offer higher performance at lower cost for Europe’s future launchers.
ETID is a precursor of the next generation of 10-tonne rocket engines. Some of the technologies could also be used on upgrades to the existing Vinci, which powers the upper stage of Ariane 6.
Photos: The violent beauty of Herbig-Haro objects, the eruptions of newly-formed stars
Today’s (March 21) Google Doodle honors the Mexican astronomer Guillermo Haro, who would have been 105 today.
His signature discovery was the Herbig-Haro object, a celestial phenomenon named after Haro and the American astronomer George Herbig, who was researching the same occurrences at around the same time.
Herbig-Haro objects are jets of gas and other matter erupting from newly formed stars which collide with the gas and dust around them at the speed of several hundreds of kilometers a second.
