Voyager 1 is finally about to leave the solar system!

Our lovely and comfortable home here on Earth is a long ways away from the end of our solar system. Don’t forget, there’s a lot of space in space.  Here on Earth concepts of boundaries involve rivers, lakes, mountains, human imposed borders, and so on.  However, this is not how the limits of our solar system are established.  There is no one thing at one point that defines the end, but there is definitely an end and it’s really far from here.

About 13 billion miles from home and well past all the other planets is an area known as the heliopause.  This is the part of space where the solar winds, over a significant distance, slow down and are eventually stopped by the interstellar medium.  Meaning this is as far as the impact of our sun can reach.  This area is also the extent of our solar system, where the sun’s influence is gradually overcome by the stellar wind of particles from other stars.

The heliopause is so far away that we are only now getting real time data from the outskirts of our solar system courtesy of the Voyager 1 spacecraft.   Traveling at a speed of nearly one million miles a day (912,000 miles per day to be exact) for the last thirty-five years, the Voyager 1 is finally approaching the heliopause.  This cosmic explorer will become the first human made object to leave our solar system and remarkably, it still works!

The Voyager spacecrafts were launched in 1977 to gather more data on our solar system and then to continue to travel beyond the heliopause into the vastness of space.  So, when will Voyager 1 reach another stellar system?  Well, not for a while.  In 40,000 years our then-power depleted spacecraft will be about 1.4 light years (8.23 TRILLION miles) away from its closest star.  The spacecraft have been loaded with plenty of analog data should they end up finding their way into the hands (or whatever appendages) of other beings way out there. 

So, even at that amazing speed it will take a long time (huge understatement) for it to reach another stellar system.  After all it took nearly thirty-five years just to approach the edge of our own cosmic neighborhood.  Don’t forget, there’s a lot of space in space.

New Music and Your Brain!

Why do we like the music we like?

Think about all the music you've ever listened to.  Everything from Beethoven's 5th to "Call Me Maybe" are processed through the brain, but what about them allows the brain to say yay or nay?  

So, why do we like the tunes we like?  Well, there's no complete answer just yet, but scientists are exploring more and more about our brain and discovering some pretty neat stuff.  

First we must understand that music is indeed comprised of a lot of sound vibrations.  So, before we answer the question about why we like music we must understand that what we are really answering is why certain series of sounds feel better than others.  To answer this question we must dive deep into the human mind.  The brain is comprised of lots of compartments and relays.  One of those compartments is called the auditory cortex, this is the part that stores all the sounds you've heard in your whole life.  Remember those screeching tires, ice cream truck song, hammers hitting nails, the soundtrack to Lord of The Rings…and so on.  All of those sounds are cataloged by the auditory cortex including all the songs and patterns of sound that you've heard in your entire life.  Each person's auditory cortex is totally unique. 

In a recent experiment conducted by the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, the brain was studied to see how the auditory cortex communicates with the accumbens nucleus.   This is the part of the brain that shows signs of reward and pleasure.  In this study they noticed that the accumbens lights up when it hears new music after the song has been filtered through the auditory cortex.  Wait a minute…isn't the auditory cortex different for different people?  Yes, it sure is.  That's why different people like different music.  One possibility is that all the sounds you've ever heard in your life will dictate and determine the desire to hear similar sounds in the shape of new music.  

Your stored and cataloged audio experiences could have a lot to do with how you process your opinions on the new sounds you are hearing.  Pattern recognition and predictions of where the songs go are powerful processes that the brain computes as you hear the new songs coming into your ear for the first time!

The big question now, after more research how will this impact our lives?  Well,  this could be considered the ultimate targeted marketing plan or the ultimate musical survey.  We'll find out as time passes! 

Yet another insight into your complex and unique brain! 

Wecycle Project!

Tired of opening bottles the old fashioned way?

Say goodbye to busted teeth and those awkward stares from strangers by making your own recycled bike chain bottle opener!!

For this project you'll need an old bike chain, a bike chain cutter, a bike chain link set, and your favorite tasty bottled beverage!


Step 1: Get an old bike chain (be sure to clean it very well by using the right cleaners and let it soak for a few hours!!)

Step 2: Grab a chain cutting tool (if you don't have one go to your friendly neighborhood bike shop, they should have a few laying around!)

Step 3: Cut 12-16 links off your bike chain

Step 4: Admire your handiwork...very well done, good job you!

Step 5: Get your bike chain links

Step 6: Connect the two ends of the bike chain with your link

Step 7: Place on the bottle and pop-that-top!

Step 8: Enjoy your tasty bottled beverage!

What came first the chicken or the egg?

Science is the process by which we can ask and answer questions about our natural world.  Everything from your most routine activities all the way to the quest for our universe’s origins are fair game for the field of science!  So, let's put science to the test and answer an age-old question: What came first the chicken or the egg?

So without the egg there would be no chicken, right?  However, at the same time without the chicken would there be an egg?  Well, actually, yes there would be.   This is the story about the long and detailed process of evolution. Eggs are used by any species that sexually reproduces.  So to trace back the history of eggs we must look back at some of the earliest species that sexually reproduced.

First of all, some of the earliest eggs date all the way back to early sponges, literally hundreds of millions of years ago.   After millions upon millions of years of natural selection on mutations and variations an early avian species was produced, we’ll call this a “proto-bird”.  This early bird laid eggs that would, again after generation upon generation of natural selection, turn into a wide variety of bird species.

One of those bird species was what we could call a “proto-chicken”, meaning it was some variation of what we know as a chicken, but not exactly what we have available on Earth today.  Well, that “proto-chicken” laid eggs and eventually the species started to morph and change slowly due to natural selection and voila, an egg was laid that would hatch and give birth to what we now know as a chicken.  The egg allowed for the chicken to be born.

Now, why that chicken crossed the road is a whole different story all together...

A skyscraper made out of wood?!?

There are currently over seven billion humans on this planet.  As this population grows we'll need more and more homes for all these people.  With limited resources and a constant watch over our impact on the environment, a big question gets brought up frequently for future of residential construction…can we make housing more eco-friendly? 

As access to resources and the growing population enter a new era in the housing conversation, so will the creative minds in the engineering and architecture industries.  Sometimes these new issues require some old fashioned thinking.  That's exactly what Canadian architect Michael Green had in mind when he set out to design and build a 30 story skyscraper made out of wood.  Wait a minute, doesn't wood catch on fire?  Won't this be a big safety issue?  Well, wood does catch on fire, but throughout history various cultures have used wood as a means of shelter and clearly most of these individuals were able to survive.  With that said, Michael Green and his crew have built in several fire prevention techniques into the blue prints ranging from sprinkler systems to fire traps.  The remarkable part about the building is not its safety features, its something totally different. 

Generally making a large building like this would involve concrete construction.  The current process by which we put up buildings actually releases thousands of pounds of green house gases into the atmosphere.  This is where the wooden skyscraper stands apart!  The wood used for this construction spends its entire life soaking in green house gases where as the process of making concrete construction adds to our global climate issues.  This building is eco-friendly by simply using materials that don't add to the greenhouse gas emissions! 

For those worried about rotting wood and other natural issues that would make this building's longevity a concern, no worries, there are many wooden structures around the world that are thousands of years old.  In fact there is a pagoda in China that stands over 500 feet tall and has been up for over eight centuries now!  

Will these eco-friendly designs catch on?  Architects like Michael Green are knocking on wood and hoping they will! 

Cloaked Nano-particles

Everyone’s familiar with the old fable about the wolf in sheep’s clothing.   In this story a wolf dresses up like a sheep and sneaks past the farmer to go straight to his fluffy targets.  Well, a similar story is currently unfolding in the medical field and it could have a huge impact on cancer patients.  

Scientists are working on taking a nanoparticle and wrapping it in the outer membrane of a white blood cell in order to let it sneak past the watchful eye of the immune system.  As of now the immune system is able to detect foreign objects like nanoparticles and remove or destroy them within minutes.  Dressing the nanoparticle up to look like a white blood cell allows the immune system to let it pass into the bloodstream without much commotion.  These camouflaged medical deliveries could last in the body for up to hours at a time. Remarkably, these nanoparticles would go directly to the source of the malignant cells.  In other words, these nanoparticles can deliver specific types of drugs to specific cells.  In this instance the idea is that chemotherapy could be delivered straight to cancer cells only.

This would be a huge step forward in the medical field.  Currently the most commonly accepted form of cancer treatments involve a broad range treatment, meaning we have yet to isolate the treatment to only cancer cells.  These masked nanoparticles, in theory, would be able to go straight to the malignant cells and let the rest of the body system carry on as business per usual.

Research on this is continuing and hopefully more news will develop in the near future.

Pi

Science and math fans around the world have been celebrating Pi day for a while now. Pi is the 3.14 number that helps us understand circles, so what better day to celebrate than March 14? So, the question is what makes Pi so special?

From the wheels on your car to the orbit of distant stars in the cosmos are all put to paper using our old friend, Pi. These practical applications help determine the size, shape, volume, area, and circumference of circles. Imagine the Spalding basketball factory without Pi, we’d have some weirdly shaped basketballs…or whatever they’d be called. Pi’s use in our day to day lives surrounds these circular concepts, but wait, there’s so much more.

One of the amazing things about Pi is that it is an irrational number. Meaning, it goes on forever. The digits that comprise Pi take up more digits than some of the largest numbers we have, like the massive googolplex for example. In fact, in 2011 Pi was calculated out to over 10 trillion numbers! Mathematician Shigeru Kondo took 371 days to calculate Pi to 10,000,000,000,050 decimal places. Big stuff!

Here’s the kicker, when calculating all those trillions of digits for Pi, it was noticed that there are no repeating patterns in there. A truly random set of numbers strung together in an endless chain. What does one do with these large, endless, non-repeating numeric patterns? Those big computational issues come in handy for testing today’s supercomputers and their programming speeds.

So, from putting satellites in geosynchronous orbit, to testing super computers, to helping make that perfect pumpkin pie, Pi is an extremely well rounded number.

For more information check out the official Pi-Day page, but for a rock song about the number check out the video below.