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Aluminium oxynitride or AlON is a ceramic composed of aluminium, oxygen and nitrogen. It is marketed under the name ALON by Surmet Corporation. AlON is optically transparent (≥80%) in the near-ultraviolet, visible and midwave-infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is 4 times harder than fused silica glass, 85% as hard as sapphire, and nearly 15% harder than magnesium aluminate spinel. Since it has a cubic spinel structure, it can be fabricated to transparent windows, plates, domes, rods, tubes and other forms using conventional ceramic powder processing techniques. ALON is the hardest polycrystalline transparent ceramic available commercially. Combination of optical...

What does a midlife crisis look like in the 21st century? Frittering away your life savings on a red sports car is so last century. Instead, today’s man who is grappling with the limitations of his mortality spends $90 million on a rocket to launch a $100,000 electric car, helmed by a robot by the name of “Starman,” into space. “We want a new space race,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk said in a press conference shortly after the launch of his company’s Falcon Heavy rocket — and his Tesla Roadster — into space earlier in February. Like a child, he...

NASA's latest tower for launching rockets has a little bit of a lean, which means it may be able to launch just a single rocket. The cost of this tower boondoggle? Almost $1 billion. The tower in question is the Mobile Launcher designed for NASA’s upcoming Space Launch System, which would become the world’s most powerful rocket once completed in a few years. The tower is supposed to keep the rocket stable and upright on the platform during a launch. The system was built for NASA’s now-defunct Ares I rocket and later repurposed for the SLS. The Mobile Launcher is...

Synopsis: Deep within the massive Schriever Air Force Base near Colorado Springs, CO, The National Space Defense Center is finally gone operational. Their mission? To keep American military and spy satellites safe while in orbit. Vice President Mike Pence was photographed in the ultra-secret center which surveils space around planet Earth 24 hours a day with a staff of 230. The Center's Director, Col. Todd Brost, told a Colorado Springs newspaper, The Gazette: "This is not an Air Force unit. It's not really even a Department of Defense unit." However, he did not say exactly to whom or what the...

Credit: CC0 Public Domain __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ As humans reach out technologically to see if there are other life forms in the universe, one important question needs to be answered: When we make contact, how are we going to handle it? Will we feel threatened and react in horror? Will we embrace it? Will we even understand it? Or, will we shrug it off as another thing we have to deal with in our increasingly fast-paced world? "If we came face to face with life outside of Earth, we would actually be pretty upbeat about it," said Arizona State University Assistant...

It’s what scientists have termed a ‘grand minimum’ — a particularly low point in what is otherwise a steady 11-year cycle. Over this cycle, the Sun’s tumultuous heart races and rests. At its high point, the nuclear fusion at the Sun’s core forces more magnetic loops high into its boiling atmosphere — ejecting more ultraviolet radiation and generating sunspots and flares. When it’s quiet, the Sun’s surface goes calm. It ejects less ultraviolet radiation. Now scientists have scoured the skies and history for evidence of an even greater cycle amid these cycles. It’s what scientists have termed a ‘grand minimum’...

Even Elon Musk thinks his space-cruising midnight-cherry Tesla Roadster looks weird. "It looks so ridiculous and impossible," the SpaceX CEO told reporters after the Falcon Heavy megarocket launched the car into space yesterday (Feb. 6). "You can tell it's real because it looks so fake, honestly." ... Think of it this way: Light can travel through different mediums — including air, water and the vacuum of space — each of which has a different refractive index, he said. That is, these mediums bend light differently, which explains why colored light doesn't look the same in one medium as it does...

The most powerful rocket to leave Earth since the Apollo missions launched from Florida yesterday. The Falcon Heavy jumbo rocket, developed by flamboyant SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, had a sole 'passenger' onboard - a mannequin named 'Starman' - who rode to space inside a Tesla roadster. Incredible real-time footage has emerged from inside the car showing stunning views of our planet sailing past its windscreen, as David Bowie's Life on Mars plays in the background.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - The world's most powerful rocket, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, roared into space through clear blue skies in its debut test flight on Tuesday from a Florida launch site where moon missions once began, in another milestone for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's private rocket service. ..... Then, capitalizing on cost-cutting reusable rocket technology pioneered by SpaceX, the two boosters flew themselves back to Earth for safe simultaneous touchdowns on twin landing pads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, about eight minutes after launch. Each rocket unleashed a double sonic boom as it neared the landing zone.

Roscosmos, is considering offering future space tourists the chance to do their own spacewalk for $100 million price tag.

The most powerful rocket this generation has ever seen, SpaceX’s new Falcon Heavy rocket, is now targeted to launch February 6, 2018 with the launch time of 1:30 p.m. The Falcon Heavy can lift over double the payload, or cargo, as the next closest rocket...

Okay, a composition of various pics and videos, but really well done... Clickee here! This 4K / UHD video is created from a many photos taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The video has been recomposed to cover the same amount of time it would have taken the ISS to pass over this part of the Earth.

The Chinese are building a laser that is 10 trillion times more intense than the sun and could rip apart space. Physicists say that this laser could be operational as early as 2023. Physicist Ruxin Li and colleagues are breaking records with the most powerful pulses of light the world has ever seen. At the heart of their laser, called the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF), is a single cylinder of titanium-doped sapphire about the width of a Frisbee. After kindling the light in the crystal and shunting it through a system of lenses and mirrors, the SULF distills...

The bureaucrats in Washington really have little interest in safety, but instead are more focused in putting their thumbs on the scale in order to specifically harm the commercial space companies -- especially SpaceX's. One report in particular, by NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), was especially hostile to these private efforts, even as it remained completely unconcerned about similar but far worse safety issues that exist with NASA's government-built and competing SLS and Orion programs.

SpaceX is now targeting launch of the GovSat-1 satellite to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida on Wednesday, January 31, at 4:25 p.m. EST, or 21:25 UTC. The satellite will deploy approximately 32 minutes after launch.

A team of physicists has provided some of the clearest evidence yet that our Universe could be just one big projection. In 1997, theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena proposed1 that an audacious model of the Universe in which gravity arises from infinitesimally thin, vibrating strings could be reinterpreted in terms of well-established physics. The mathematically intricate world of strings, which exist in nine dimensions of space plus one of time, would be merely a hologram: the real action would play out in a simpler, flatter cosmos where there is no gravity. Maldacena's idea thrilled physicists because it offered a way to...

ASTRONAUTS on missions to Mars and beyond could soon survive off a “Vegemite-like” substance made from human waste. Scientists have just developed the method which uses microbes to break down solid and liquid waste. What’s left behind is a “microbial goo” that’s high in protein and fat — essential qualities for food sources needed for long space voyages. ... “Imagine if someone were to finetune our system so that you could get 85 per cent of the carbon and nitrogen back from waste into protein without having to use hydroponics or artificial light,” Professor House said. “That would be a...

There is a new wave of coders and hackers looking to upend the entire internet, signaling the start of a brand new space race. No, this isn’t an episode of HBO’s Silicon Valley, this is actually happening. Currently, the internet is built by large centralized services including server owners, data managers, cloud providers, search engines, telecommunication companies, and social media websites. And these entities are beginning to expand their reach. Internet security and net neutrality are quickly becoming hot topics as more people become aware of the dangers of centralization. And for good reason. Google, Amazon, and Facebook are racing...

A size comparison of the planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system, lined up in order of increasing distance from their host star. The planetary surfaces are portrayed with an artist’s impression of their potential surface features, including water, ice, and atmospheres. Amy Barr's paper “Interior Structures and Tidal Heating in the TRAPPIST-1 Planets” shows that planets d and e are the most likely to be habitable due to their moderate surface temperatures, modest amounts of tidal heating, and because their heat fluxes are low enough to avoid entering a runaway greenhouse state. Planet d is likely covered by a global water...

The YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV03W0mnxkI