Ancient Computers , Frozen Poles, Duck Bay and Quantum Games

It's that time of year again , with winter making everyone feel cold and frosty.
Just to reassure us that it could be worse, scientists have succeeded in lowering the temperature of an object to a smidgeon above absolute zero  (smidgeon is not a scientific term and is probably not even in the Oxford dictionary)
 Anyways, the point of my ramble is that I was about to elaborate on this feat of freezing which somehow involves quantum motion , when I realised that the piece failed to give an actual temperature attained.
Or any detail of the actual frozen object.

Scientists attempt the discovery of absolute zero...

Was it a metal pole against which scientists had to stand with their tongues attached ?
The closest temperature I could find was from a previous article, this time making the discovery in an italian laboratory - which included a recorded temperature and a picture of the deep-frozen equipment used.
On my journey through the rabbit-hole of the interweb , I discovered that the average temperature of space holds at a steady -270.45 ° kelvin....thanks to the all - pervasive background microwave radiation (which conjures the image of a scientist opening a microwave door to reveal his instant noodles and the sudden cries of joy from next door as his colleagues finally receive a radio signal from deep space.)

Over two thousand years ago, an intricate device was created on the Greek island of Rhodes .
Discovered in a shipwreck in 1900, its mechanism and purpose has intrigued and mystified many for decades.
The Antikythera mechanism has finally been replicated, albeit virtually.

Moving on from what is technically the oldest computer in the world, you too can help with the advancement of quantum computing by playing an online game that involves complex geometries.
I gave it a go, but hey, I am a simple human - for those who are keen to advance our knowledge in this field, here is a link to Mequanics via gizmodo

Image of Victoria crater by Opportunity rover , 2006

Space has been thin on the ground in this post ; to address this, here are some images from Mars. Above is the view from ' Duck Bay' imaged by the Opportunity rover, as it entered the Victoria crater.
Below is my current favourite image, which again shows the Victoria impact crater on Mars, with superimposed Opportunity rover for some kind of scale .
The images below were taken by the Mars Reconaisance Orbiter - I almost forgot that we have a camera orbiting another world...then I remembered that we have cameras dotted throughout the solar system...

NASA / JPL / MRO

Until next time, thanks for stopping by !

Metallic Psyche , Inflatable Space Hotels, and The Road Ahead

Missions Map by Olaf  Frohn
Note the lower right hand side, with voyager 1 and 2 indicated ' off route'
more to come !

Hello, I hope 2017 finds you refreshed and raring to go - no? Oh well, straight in with a recent announcement by NASA that they are launching two missions.
The missions are titled Psyche and Lucy - one is to fly to a distant metallic asteroid , which is effectively a drifting core from a puported ' protoplanet '.
The mission, 'Lucy', is a little closer to home, exploring asteroids around the gas giant Jupiter , although the principle is similar - to examine materials dating from the early formation of our solar system..
Further examination of space comes with the IXPE mission selected by NASA , in which telescopes in space will gauge distant x-ray fields emanating from black holes .
This mission is set to launch in 2020.

In other news a series of distant frbs are drawing us to look closer - though at 3 billion light years away, close is a loose term...it seems the main attraction is the sheer power required to output a signal over such a distance - could it be ...

image by Shane Graf 

Alongside the ever increasing list of companies with designs on space travel, is Bigelow Aerospace . 

They hope to create interstellar hotels capable of flight - an admirable , progressive concept. Particularly if said hotels utilise solar sails to reach near light speed.
Of course, 80 % of light speed would mean your hotel is travelling at a fair clip , but the distance to the nearest starfield (Alpha Centauri) is so great, that you'd have plenty of time to work out how to drink a cocktail in zero gravity without looking foolish.
On a serious note, back to Bigelow Aerospace - their first working test is the BEAM unit recently added to the ISS.
Personally, I would have issues with a flimsy pod in space, with nothing between myself and the great unknown...
Aside from the unexplored depths of the Mariana trench (but that's for another discussion), 

there is no greater unknown than space, so it's just as well that Hubble is being used to map a path for the ongoing journeys of Voyagers 1 and 2, now that they are in unexplored territory - a SatNav for the galaxy...hopefully not too many wrong turns up ahead... this is amazing stuff - we're using an orbiting telescope to create a road map for a pair of explorer craft which are billions of miles away!

The future is now - okay, the map is presently about the chemical makeup of the road ahead, but Hubble is marking a wide swathe of space between the two explorers.

pic NASA/ ESA / G Bacon (st/scl)