XIAM007

Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Thursday 19 January 2012

Russia is talking with the US and Europe on plans to create a manned research base on the moon -

Russia is talking with the US and Europe on plans to create a manned research base on the moon - 


Russia is talking with the US and Europe on plans to create a manned research base on the moon, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos said Thursday.
Roscosmos is discussing the possibilities for a permanent moon base with officials from NASA and the European Space Agency, the agency's chief, Vladimir Popovkin said.
"We don't want man to just step on the moon," Popovkin told Vesti FM radio station, according to the Ria Novosti news agency. "Today, we know enough about it, we know that there is water in its polar areas ... we are now discussing how to begin [the moon's] exploration with NASA and the European Space Agency."
He said the plan was either to set up a base on the moon or launch a station to orbit around it.
Russia also is planning to send two unmanned mission to the moon by 2020, Popovkin said.
The comments come after a string of high profile space failures by the Russians. On Sunday, the doomed Mars probe Phobos-Grunt plummeted to earth following a malfunction.
It was the latest mishap for Roscosmos and came after Russian president Dmitry Medvedev threatened to punish those responsible for previous space failures, which included the loss of satellites and botched launches.




Read more: http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpps/news/russia-us-moon-base-nasa-dpgonc-20110119-to-_17194074

New storage device is super tiny at 12 atoms -

New storage device is super tiny at 12 atoms - 


Think your SSD is the bomb because it can stash away 128GB of data on something so svelte? The future is far more promising, as researchers at IBM managed to stash and retrieve digital 1s and 0s from an array of a mere 12 atoms, which means the boundaries of the magnetic storage of information have been pushed yet again to what some deem to be an impossible edge. These new findings are definitely worth looking into and studied further, since it might eventually be the de facto storage system of choice, opening up a whole new world of nanomaterials being used in a generation of memory chips and disk drives. Not only does the total size of future storage devices shrink, they will also consume far less power – and that is always a good thing.


At point of publishing, the majority of advanced magnetic storage systems require around one million atoms to store a digital 1 or 0, but this new achievement (Achievement Unlocked!) was made possible thanks to the exploration of magnetic materials properties at a far smaller scale.


Read more - 
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/01/new-storage-device-12-atoms/