Technology Used In Astronomy Today (lightning storms)
No commentsBy Ben Needles
Astronomy is a topic in science. For most of astronomy, there are scientific instruments in use. These can be telescopes, which have different technologies, and also that of using computers. In this article, we will take a look at technology used in astronomy today.
Since the dawn of time, man has looked up at the stars in amazement. What were these shimmering lights in the night sky? A torch to light our way? It certainly has been used for farmers, sailors, and many other areas to determine the seasons and other important aspects, however, let us look at the technology used in astronomy.
What was the technology that stone age man and any man or woman today who looks up at the night sky? What is the principle in what is happening when people observe those objects? For certainly the Sun is not as big as my thumb, but actually a size which could eat up Earth and still be hungry!
The point is simple. The stars and other objects in the sky can be millions of light years away. As you look at these objects the light travels to meet your eye. As it meets your eye, it goes through the pupil of your eye. This is the technology of man, and to see more, you will need more light entering.
If your pupil was as large as the Earth, our Moon would appear to be like your hands in front of you. This means that more light we let in, the more we can see, and the bigger it will appear to be.
This is what astronomers and scientists have dedicated themselves to for years. It makes sense. However, the telescopes of today are not using todays technology. Yes, many have some new features, but at the back of it all, they pretty much use 2 different systems.
One of the systems is the famous Galileos refractor. This works with letting light come through a big lens, and finally through other lenses get focused to meet your eye. What happens here is that you get to see objects far away more magnified. In effect you have increased the pupil of your eye!
Another system that is widely used is Isaac Newtons system of telescope. This technology used in astronomy telescopes widely available, is that light enters and bounces off a mirror, and comes back up to find another slanted mirror that sends the light through a lens to meet your eye. Again, increasing your pupil in effect, with technology.
There is much more to the technology used in astronomy today. For example, the Hubble Space Telescope and many other astronomical devices. However, one thing that is becoming more common is to utilize a computer which drives the telescope. This has allowed navigation of the night skies to be much more easier than it used to be.
About the Author (text)
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Brain Stimulation for Athlete Performance
By Robert Webb
Neurotechnology describes the field of technology used to manipulate and measure brain processes. In the future, will athletes increasingly begin to neurotechnology methods to get an edge over their competition? Athletes may be able to use non-invasive brain stimulation to alter their brain functioning for a beneficial effect. Already scientists have used a brain stimulation method called transcranial direct current stimulation tDCS (a non-invasive way to electrically stimulate the brain) to reduce the fatigue associated with exercise.
Transcranial direct current stimulation uses a small amount of electricity to stimulate the brain. It can be used on a person while they are wide awake and conscious. Neuromuscular fatigue is defined as the exercise dependent decrease in a person’s ability of thier muscle fibres to generate some force. Researchers discovered that anodal tDCS (that can activate localized brain areas) was able to decrease the subject’s fatigue related muscle pain. The scientists also found that anodal tDCS was able to improve the endurance time by modulating directly the brain’s excitabiliy. It was able to increase motivation, decrease fatigue related muscle pain and finally improving muscle coupling.
Another neurotechnology method to manipulate the brain is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Transcranial magnetic stimulation uses electromagnetism to stimulate specific areas of the brain. In the past it has been used to improve the working memory deficits that are associated with sleep deprivation. Working memory is a person’s general concentration and ability to store/manipulate information. So this transcranial magnetic stimulation in theory might be able improve an athletes concentration when they are fatigued. Transcranial magnetic stimulation could also be used to enhance a person’s regular concentration as well.
Deep transcranial magnetic stimulation can reach deeper into the brain than conventional TMS. Deep TMS may be able to non-invasively stimulate the reward related regions of the brain. Doing this type of brain manipulation may actually enable researchers to artificially induce a stimulant or euphoric like effect in an athlete by selectively activating specific brain regions. This type of effect would be beneficial for a long term endurance type of sport where a huge boost in mood is necessary for having an optimal performance. Deep TMS may also be used to target a variety of different regions to improve specific performance tasks.
The banned substance list that goes along with the recent olympic games does not actually have any mention about using non-invasive brain stimulation. However both transcranial direct current stimulation or transcranial magnetic stimulation may eventually find increasing use by certain athletes in the future. Right now, it still may be a little too early to actually assess how useful these new types of neurtechnologies would be for athlete’s performance.
As for cheating, using these neurotechnologies would be almost impossible to detect. Their wouldn’t be any drug tests that could detect when a person had undergone this type of treatment. The on and only plausible method of detecting this type of brain manipulation might be from a brain scan. So using neurotechnology could be a very effective way of brain doping while at the same time sidestepping negative penalties from a regulatory body. Using these types of brain stimulation methods for athletes is all speculative of course, and it is currently unclear if any of these types of brain manipulation would actually have enough of an effect on performance to be worthwhile.
Read my neurotechnology blog brain lesions and also
brain stem injury and finally
brain injury concussion for more information about neuroscience and neurotechnology.
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Are UFOs Real Or Fiction
By Aydan Corkern
If you are like most people that watch movies or the television, do you believe in UFOs? If you are like most some of us, we will swear that we have seen something in our skies flying very fast. I’m one of these people. I will swear that I have seen something that I could not identify in our afternoon sky.
At the time, the news people on the radio station that we were listening to tried to tell us that it was a weather balloon that had gotten away from someone that had sent it into the air. But this object that they tried to say was a weather balloon was just sitting there for a short time, and then it just off across the sky and never left a trail like a jet leaves.
There have been several sighting of these things all over the world. They seem to be watching us from afar. We send rockets to the moon and to Mars and all over space. Don’t you think that if there is life out there that they might be thinking the same thing? How do we know that we are the only beings in this galaxy? We don’t know. Have you ever wondered what these space ships would look like?
We have so many movies on this subject and so many different styles of ships. There are huge ships with thousands of beings on it to small ships that will only carry a few of them. Could these things really be true or are they just in someone’s crazy mixed-up mind?
We keep looking for new planets to move to because we have almost run out of room for all of us to live here and be comfortable. If we don’t slow down our pace and stop doing to our world what we keep doing to it every day, this space travel will become a thing of the past. We will have no other choice but to look at other worlds like these aliens are looking at us now.
We will make this world unsuitable for any life force to be able to life here, including us. Our planet will simply die for us. We will no longer be able to live on it, but maybe this is what these aliens are hoping for. If it is bad for us we might let them have it without a fight, or will it be like the movie Independence Day?
Aydan Corkern is a writer of many topics, visit some of her sites, like
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Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 3:20 am and is filed under science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
