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Metal foams found to excel in shielding X-rays, gamma rays, neutron radiation

Lightweight composite metal foams like this one have been found effective at blocking X-rays, gamma rays and neutron radiation, and are capable of absorbing the energy of high impact collisions — holding promise for use in nuclear safety, space exploration, and medical technology applications (credit: Afsaneh Rabiei, North Carolina State University)

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How to plan the ultimate long-term project, from the team who got us to Pluto — By Daniel Terdiman | Fast Company

One thing you don’t expect when planning a nine-year mission to the most distant planet in our solar system is the eventuality that Pluto might not be a planet once you got there.

Yet that’s exactly what went down in 2006. That January, NASA launched its unmanned New Horizons probe, a baby grand piano-sized, 1,054-pound spacecraft, on the first-ever route to Pluto. Then, in August 2006, the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto to the diminutive status of “dwarf planet.”

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Lifting the Veil on Pluto’s Atmosphere

Sophia Nasr is a science writer for Simulation Curriculum’s free Pluto Safari app. You might guess that a small and distant world almost 40 times farther from the sun than the Earth is from the sun would not have an atmosphere, but in the case of Pluto, you’d be wrong. In fact, Pluto is a complex world, particularly when it comes to weather patterns.

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