Category Uncategorized

MIT researchers describe an autonomous system for a fleet of drones to collaboratively search under dense forest canopies using only onboard computation and wireless communication — no GPS required.
Images: Melanie Gonick

Autonomous System allows drones to cooperatively explore terrain under thick forest canopies where GPS signals are unreliable. The drones use only onboard computation and wireless communication – no GPS required.

Each autonomous quadrotor drone is equipped with laser-range finders for position estimation, localization, and path planning. As the drone flies around, it creates an individual 3D map of the terrain. Algorithms help it recognize unexplored and already-searched spots, so it knows when it’s fully mapped an area...

The Sun’s magnetic field, which is embedded in the solar wind, permeates the entire solar system. The current sheet — where the magnetic field changes polarity —spirals out from near the solar equator like a wavy skirt around a ballet dancer’s waist.
Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Combined observations of Comet McNaught – one of the brightest comets visible from Earth in the past 50 years – have revealed new insights on the nature of comets and their relationship with the Sun. Engineers and scientists gathered around a screen in an operations room at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., eager to lay their eyes on the first data from NASA’s STEREO spacecraft...

Snapshots of the 120 million particle simulation of two merging dwarf galaxies, which each contain a blackhole, between 6 and 7.5 billion years. Credit: UZH

Black holes colliding, gravitational waves riding through space-time – and a huge instrument that allows scientists to investigate the fabric of the universe. This could soon become reality when the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) takes up operations. Researchers have now found that LISA could also shed light on the elusive dark matter particle.

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will enable astrophysicists to observe gravitational waves emitted by black holes as they collide with or capture other black holes. LISA will consist of three spacecraft orbiting the sun in a constant triangle formation...

Ames Laboratory has developed a method to measure magnetic properties of superconducting and magnetic materials that exhibit unusual quantum behavior at very low temperatures in high magnetic fields, by placing a tunnel diode resonator, an instrument that makes precise radio-frequency measurements of magnetic properties, in a dilution refrigerator, a cryogenic device that is able to cool samples down to milli-Kelvin temperature range.
Credit: Ames Laboratory, US Department of Energy

Scientists have developed a method to measure magnetic properties of superconducting and magnetic materials that exhibit unusual quantum behavior at very low temperatures in high magnetic fields...