ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• Curiosity rover plays first song transmitted from another planet
• NASA's Kepler discovers multiple planets orbiting a pair of stars
• NASA sees Hurricane Isaac affecting the Northern Gulf Coast
• Magnetic vortex reveals key to spintronic speed limit
• Bright Arctic clouds formed by exhaust from final space shuttle launch
• Space-warping white dwarfs produce gravitational waves
• New imaging technique homes in on electrocatalysis of nanoparticles
• Low cost, high efficiency solar technology developed
• Capturing movements of actors and athletes in real time with conventional video cameras

Curiosity rover plays first song transmitted from another planet Posted: 28 Aug 2012 04:06 PM PDT For the first time in history, a recorded song has been beamed back to Earth from another planet. Students, special guests and news media gathered at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., today to hear "Reach for the Stars" by musician will.i.am after it was transmitted from the surface of Mars by the Curiosity rover.

NASA's Kepler discovers multiple planets orbiting a pair of stars Posted: 28 Aug 2012 04:01 PM PDT Coming less than a year after the announcement of the first circumbinary planet, Kepler-16b, NASA's Kepler mission has discovered multiple transiting planets orbiting two suns for the first time. This system, known as a circumbinary planetary system, is 4,900 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

NASA sees Hurricane Isaac affecting the Northern Gulf Coast Posted: 28 Aug 2012 02:17 PM PDT NASA and NOAA satellites continue to provide detailed information on Hurricane Isaac as the storm bears down on the US Gulf coast. NASA's TRMM and Terra satellites captured imagery, and NOAA's GOES-13 satellite provided animations of Isaac's march toward the coast Aug. 28.

Magnetic vortex reveals key to spintronic speed limit Posted: 28 Aug 2012 01:30 PM PDT Spintronics use electron spin to write and read information. To mobilize this emerging technology, scientists must understand exactly how to manipulate spin as a carrier of computer code. Now, scientists have precisely measured a key parameter of electron interactions called non-adiabatic spin torque that is essential to the development of spintronic devices. This unprecedented precision guides the reading and writing of digital information and sets the spintronic speed limit.

Bright Arctic clouds formed by exhaust from final space shuttle launch Posted: 28 Aug 2012 10:51 AM PDT Scientists are tracking the rapid transport of the exhaust plume from the final launch of the space shuttle in July 2011. The team has found that the plume moved quickly to the Arctic, forming unusually bright polar mesospheric clouds there a day after launch.

Space-warping white dwarfs produce gravitational waves Posted: 28 Aug 2012 10:49 AM PDT Gravitational waves, much like the recently discovered Higgs boson, are notoriously difficult to observe. Scientists first detected these ripples in the fabric of space-time indirectly, using radio signals from a pulsar-neutron star binary system. The find, which required exquisitely accurate timing of the radio signals, garnered its discoverers a Nobel Prize. Now a team of astronomers has detected the same effect at optical wavelengths, in light from a pair of eclipsing white dwarf stars.

New imaging technique homes in on electrocatalysis of nanoparticles Posted: 28 Aug 2012 07:47 AM PDT A researcher has found a clever way to measure catalytical reactions of single nanoparticles and multiple particles printed in arrays, which will help characterize and improve existing nanoparticle catalysts, and advance the search for new ones.

Low cost, high efficiency solar technology developed Posted: 28 Aug 2012 07:22 AM PDT Researchers have developed a new solar technology that could make solar energy more affordable, and thus speed-up its market adoption.

Capturing movements of actors and athletes in real time with conventional video cameras Posted: 28 Aug 2012 06:31 AM PDT Within milliseconds, and just with the help of mathematics, computing power and conventional  video cameras, computer scientists can automatically capture the movements of several people. The new approach helps not only animation specialists in Hollywood movies but also medical scientists and athletes.

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