Milky Way map provides answers

Musk elaborates on plan to colonize Mars

SYDNEY, Oct 24, (AFP): A new super-detailed hydrogen map of the Milky Way could help explain the mystery of how galaxies form, Australian and German scientists behind the project has said.

The decade-long HI4PI project, which used the world’s largest steerable radio telescopes, provides an indepth view of all the hydrogen gas in and around the galaxy that contains our solar system.

“We’ve basically put together a very complex map of hydrogen gases associated with our own Milky Way,” Australian team leader Naomi McClure-Griffiths, a professor from the Australian National University, told AFP.

“Hydrogen is the most basic element, it’s what everything is made from, and what we have achieved will help us understand better how galaxies form.”

The study used telescopes in Parkes, Australia and Effelsberg, Germany to map neutral hydrogen, the most abundant element in space and the main component of stars and galaxies.

It revealed for the first time the fine details of structures between stars in the Milky Way.

“Very small gas clouds appear to have helped form stars in the Milky Way over billions of years,” McClure-Griffiths said, adding that her research group was now using the

Researchers are working with paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to improve their memory and learning under stress. Holly Taylor, of Tufts, is looking data map to answer bigger questions about the Milky Way and neighbouring galaxies.

“How does the Milky Way get the new gas it requires to continue forming stars? And where are all of the small dwarf galaxies that must surround our Milky Way? The next steps will be exciting,” she said.

University of Bonn astronomer Juergen Kerp said the project required more than a million individual observations and about 10 billion individual data points, significantly improving on previous work on the issue.

Although neutral hydrogen is fairly easy to detect with modern radio telescopes, mapping the whole sky was a significant achievement, he added.

“Radio ‘noise’ caused by mobile phones and broadcast stations pollute the faint emissions coming from stars and galaxies in the universe,” said Kerp.

“So sophisticated computer algorithms have to be developed to clean each individual data point of this unwanted human interference.

“Next to the thousands of observing hours an even larger amount of time has been spent creating the final scientific data product released today.”

Staveley-Smith said the new map would help with future work to be undertaken by the Square Kilometre

at developing wearable devices that help people learn how they’re oriented in the world, so they’ll navigate better when they take the device off. Taylor, also a codirector Array (SKA) super radio telescope, which is expected to be partially operational from 2020.

Australia and South Africa were picked in 2012 to jointly host the SKA project, billed as being 50 times more powerful than present radio telescopes.

It will be used to explore exploding stars, black holes, dark energy and traces of the universe’s origins some 14 billion years ago.

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SpaceX CEO has given more details about his plan to colonize

Musk answered questions on Reddit on Sunday. The session was a follow up to Musk’s comments at a space conference in

last month during which he unveiled his plan to send up to 1 million people to Mars within the next 40 to 100 years.

Musk envisions 1,000 passenger ships flying en masse to the red planet “Battlestar Galactica” style.

He elaborated on that plan Sunday, saying an unmanned ship will be sent to Mars with equipment to build a plant to create refueling propellant for return trips to

He says the first manned crew would have the job of constructing the plant.

Musk said last month SpaceX is already working on equipment for the project.

of the center, said some people are over-reliant on GPS devices, which can fail or send them into a lake. (AP)

Robots to leapfrog rivals:

The Canbot can say its name, respond to voice commands, and “dance” as it plays Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” Other robots China is displaying at the World Robot Conference can play badminton, sand cell phone cases and sort computer chips.

China is showcasing its burgeoning robot industry at the five-day exhibition in Beijing, part of a national effort to promote use of more advanced technologies in Chinese factories and create high-end products that redefine the meaning of “Made in China.”

Apart from the cool factor, China’s sweeping plans to upgrade its factories and production lines depend on building and better using advanced robots. Automation is crucial for industries facing rising labor costs and slowing growth in the work force thanks to the “onechild” policy era and aging of the population. China will have to make big strides to leap ahead of Germany, Japan and other nations whose robots are generations ahead.

Infinities International Group, based in eastern China’s Shandong, advertises its Canbot U-Partner as a service robot that could be programmed to run in shopping malls, restaurants and banks. But it’s modeled on the “Pepper” robot made by Japan’s SoftBank.(AP)