Why Saturday's(June 30, 2012) last minute is 61 seconds long

LONGER DAY. June 30 will be one second longer than the typical day. Rather than changing from 23:59:59 on June 30 to 00:00:00 on July 1, the official time will get an extra second at 23:59:60. Courtesy of NASA
PARIS, France — Horologists around the world on Saturday, June 30, will carry out one of the weirdest operations of their profession: they will hold back time.
The last minute of June 30, 2012 is destined to be 61 seconds long, for timekeepers are to add a "leap second" to compensate for the wibbly-wobbly movements of our world.
The ever-so-brief halting of the second hand will compensate for a creeping divergence from solar time, meaning the period required for Earth to complete a day.
The planet takes just over 86,400 seconds for a 360-degree revolution.
But it wobbles on its axis and is affected by the gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon and the ocean tides, all of which brake the rotation by a tiny sliver of a second.
As a result, Earth gets out of step with International Atomic Time (TAI), which uses the pulsation of atoms to measure time to an accuracy of several billionths of a second.
To avoid solar time and TAI moving too far apart, the widely used indicator of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is adjusted every so often to give us the odd 86,401-second day.
Since 1972
The adjustments began in 1972. Before then, time was measured exclusively by the position of the Sun or stars in relation to Earth, expressed in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or its successor UT1.
This will be the 25th intervention to add a "leap second" to UTC.
"Today, time is constructed, defined, and measured with atomic clocks that are infinitely more stable than astronomical time," Noel Dimarcq, director of the SYRTE time-space reference system at the Paris Observatory told AFP.
"This allows us to ensure that everyone on Earth is on the exact same time."
TAI is kept by several hundred atomic clocks around the world, measuring fluctuations in the atom of the chemical element caesium that allows them to divide a single second into 10 billion smaller bits.
With such precision, "only one (atomic) second is lost every 300 million years," said Dimarcq.
Every time the discrepancy between TAI and UT1 becomes too big, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) jumps into action and announces a "leap second" — usually several months in advance.
The extra second is added to UTC, also known as Zulu time, only ever at midnight, either on a December 31 or a June 30.
Time-catching is as irregular as the Earth's rotation itself. The last three adjustments were in 2008, 2005, and 1998. The year 1972 saw two additions, followed the next 7 years by a second every year.
The vast majority of the world's 7 billion people are likely to be blithely indifferent to Saturday's change, except for a few who may note the curious fact that they will live a second longer.
But among scientists, the issue is not without importance.
Triggering debate
The leap second has long caused debate among member countries of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), with some arguing for it to be abolished in favor of the exclusive use of atomic time.
Every time a second is added, the world's computers need to be manually adjusted, a costly practice that also boosts the risk of error.
High-precision systems such as satellites and some data networks will have to factor in the leap second or risk provoking a calculation catastrophe.
For this reason, rocket launches are never scheduled for leap-second dates. — Agence France-Presse

Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center

The Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center is so large that rain clouds form inside it
VAB, for short, was used from 1968 to 2011 to build and store American space vehicles. By volume it is one of the largest buildings in the world, at 3,664,883 cubic meters. Additionally, it is the largest single story building in the world, and until 1974 was the tallest building in Florida.
Today, it is the tallest building in the US outside of urbanized cities like New York and Cincinnati. The VAB completed its construction in 1966 and was first used to build the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo program.
After that it was used for housing Space Shuttle fuel tanks and other flight hardware, and served as a place where Space Shuttle orbiters were attached to rocket boosters. At 526 feet tall, 716 feet long, and 518 feet wide, it covers 8 acres ofland. At such a size, on very humid days the building has its own weather, with rain clouds forming below the ceiling.
The building has a moisture reduction system to mitigate this problem, though. What’s odd is that the building is made to withstand hurricanes and tropical storms, but weather still appears inside it.

Where two oceans meet...

Where two oceans meet... but do not mix! INCREDIBLE AND SIMPLY MIND-BLOWING!!!

These two bodies of water were merging in the middle of The Gulf of Alaska and there was a foam developing only at their junction. It is a result of the melting glaciers being composed of fresh water and the ocean has a higher percentage of salt causing the two bodies of water to have different densities and therefore makes it more difficult to mix.

Aeronautics

What is Aeronautics?

Aeronautics is the study of the science of flight. Aeronautics is the method of designing an airplane or other flying machine. There are four basic areas that aeronautical engineers must understand in order to be able to design planes. To design a plane, engineers must understand all of these elements.
Design Process 1
Aerodynamics is the study of how air flows around the airplane. By studying the way air flows around the plane the engineers can define the shape of the plane. The wings, the tail, and the main body or fuselage of the plane all affect the way the air will move around the plane.

2. Propulsion is the study of how to design an engine that will provide the thrust that is needed for a plane to take off and fly through the air. The engine provides the power for the airplane. The study of propulsion is what leads the the engineers determine the right kind of engine and the right amount of power that a plane will need

3. Materials and Structures is the study of what materials are to be used on the plane and in the engine and how those materials make the plane strong enough to fly effectively. The choice of materials that are used to make the fuselage wings, tail and engine will affect the strength and stability of the plane. Many airplane materials are now made out of composites, materials that are stronger than most metals and are lightweight.

4. Stability and Control is the study of how to control the speed, direction, altitude and other conditions that affect how a plane flies. The engineers design the controls that are needed in order to fly and instruments are provided for the pilot in the cockpit of the plane. The pilot uses these instruments to control the stability of the plane during flight.

servomechanism

A servomechanism: sometimes shortened to servo , is an automatic device that uses error- sensing negative feedback to correct the performance of a mechanism. The term correctly applies only to systems where the feedback or error- correction signals help control mechanical position, speed or other parameters. For example, an automotive power window control is not a servomechanism, as there is no automatic feedback that controls position—the operator does this by observation. By contrast the car's cruise control uses closed loop feedback, which classifies it as a servomechanism.

Uses:> Position control
>Speed control

Papua New Guinea caused by eating human brains

A deadly disease in Papua New Guinea caused by eating human brains!

The traditional funeral ritual of the Fore people in Papua New Guinea is for family members to consume the bodies of the deceased. Unfortunately, eating human brains is the best way to contract a deadly, untreatable disease called Kuru. Kuru causes tremors, weakness, inability to stand, depression and emotional instability, and eventually the inability to eat.
Perhaps the most disturbing symptom is the spontaneous, uncontrollable laughter. This symptom is common enough that Kuru is also known as the “laughing sickness”. Thankfully, no one has reported having the disease since 2005.

In Papua New Guinea, Kuru comes from a prion (an infectious protein) that attacks the brain. The prion is transmitted by the consumption of an already infected brain. The prion has a long incubation period; it can stay latent for 40 years after the initial infection before the host begins to develop symptoms. Kuru has no cure, and there’s no way to treat it.

MIT Student Builds A Self-Balancing Electric Unicycle

MIT student Stephan Boyer has created a self-balancing electric unicycle, which he's dubbing the "Bullet". Demonstrated in a YouTube video (below), the Bullet unicycle protects the rider from falling over in the forwards or backwards direction. It packs a custom MIG- welded steel body, two 7Ah 12-volt batteries, an ATmega328 chip and a 450-watt electric motor. Boyer claims that the Bullet can reach speeds up to about 15 miles per hour (24 km/h) and go up to five miles on a single charge. If you also wish to make a similar attempt, Boyer has published the kit-list http://www.stephanboyer.com/p/self-balancing-electric-unicycle.html here. The software for the unicycle has also been published.

Youtubelink:
www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&hl=en-GB&client=mv-google&v=fADhfmcQ2KA

LIPSTICK CAN B HARMFUL

Most modern women wear lipstick very frequently, being unaware of the fact that some types of this cosmetics can actually be harmful to their dental health. According to Brazilian specialists at the University of Sao Paulo carried out a series of scientific researches and experiments. They tested 10 most famous and popular brands of lipstick and found out that using most of those can eventually lead to increased risks of dental plaque and other dental problems.

The scientists studied chemical composition of the cosmetics product. It turned out that the majority of lipsticks contain hard paraben wax, a sticky substance which can easily get stuck to our teeth together with food particles and numerous bacteria. This way, an excellent environment for bacterial growth and dental plaque development is created, and it is possible to avoid such negative effects only by brushing teeth very frequently. Therefore, prolonged use of lipstick causes small damages of tooth enamel leading to formation of cavities.

According to Antonio Xavier, one of the leaders of this interesting research, lipsticks contain really small amounts of such paraben wax, but using lipsticks on a daily or regular basis can cause the above mentioned dental problems even within 2-3 months. In order to avoid possible negative effects of using this cosmetic product, Brazilian dental specialists intent to create a special spray which would be able to protect tooth enamel from the wax and pathogenic bacteria. It is estimated that an average woman who regularly uses creams, mascara, lipstick and other cosmetic products, every year receives up to 2 kilos of harmful chemical compounds.

Large Hadron Collider, or LHC

The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC being built by CERN is without question the largest and most complex machine ever constructed by Man. The LHC is the world’s largest refrigerator, requiring 10,080 tons of liquid nitrogen and nearly 60 tons of liquid helium to bring the temperature of the collider’s huge electromagnets down to -271.3°C (1.9 Kelvin).

The latter

 A solar power station in geostationary orbit – is now on the drawing board and has been given a sky- high price tag of 2 trillion yen ($21 billion).The project, conceived by the Japanese government and industry researchers, will see a space-based solar power station built in orbit 22,360 miles (36,000 km) above the earth. The station will generate 1 gigawatt of power from sunlight and beam the energy down to a receiving station where it can be used to power almost 300,000 homes