Justin Cyrus, former Colorado School of Mines Student, was on the Enabled Opportunities on the Moon breakout session panel at this year’s Space Com conference in Houston, where I conducted the following interview. His father worked for Lockheed Martin, and so did his brother. Influenced by that, he has always wanted to work in the…
Since the dawn of man, humans have long pondered not only if life existed on other planets, but also what that life would look like. For most people, this question conjures up images of green men with advanced technology. For most biologists who ask, “what do organisms that evolved on distant planets look…
On Feb. 8, Dr. Tom Duerig, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the biomedical device industry, gave a seminar entitled “The History and Future of Shape Memory Alloys.” Shape memory alloys (SMA) are materials that return to their original shape when heated. During the seminar, Dr. Duerig took a straight rod, cooled it in…
While mining on earth is the focus of most Mines students, easily extracting resources in space may soon be a reality. NASA has awarded grants to two Mines researchers, Assistant Research Professor Christopher Dreyer and Director of the Center for Space Resources Angel Abbud-Madrid, to further investigate optical mining techniques. “The optical mining concept is…
Since 2006, Mines has been the home of the Colorado Fuel Cell Center (CFCC), which is located in the General Research Laboratory building. According to their website, the “CFCC seeks to advance fuel-cell research, development, and commercialization.” “Fuel cells take the chemical energy within a fuel and convert it directly into electricity. A lot of…
Heart attacks, even when not fatal, cause irreparable damage. After a heart attack, the healthy tissue dies and is replaced with scar tissue, which greatly reduces the heart’s ability to pump blood effectively. Recently, there have been a variety of research experiments completed around the world to combat the detrimental effects of heart attacks. Scientists…
United States Research at Rutgers revealed that a drug, RGFP966, administered to rats appeared to cause their memories to sharpen. The drug used in this study is in a class known as HDAC inhibitors; these are being used in cancer therapies to prevent normal cells from turning into cancerous ones. This drug could potentially be…
Ottawa, Canada New evidence suggests that psychedeilc treatments may be most effective when treating patients with PTSD. By inducing regulated “trips”, patients have exemplified a reduction in stress associated with PTSD, as well as other mental illnesses. Great Britain Huge stone monoliths resembling Stonehenge were discovered this week. They are being called “Superhenge” and are…
Observations involved with ESO’s VLT (Very Large Telescope) in Chile have revealed a shocking alignment in one of the largest structures discovered in the universe. European research teams have found that the rotation axes of quasars, galaxies with active supermassive black holes at their centers, align themselves with neighboring quasars. Damien Hutsenmekers from the University…
Melbourne, Australia- It is a known fact that there is no way the temperature can go below absolute zero, or negative 273 Kelvin. This is the point where all motion in matter stops and is thought to be unreachable. However, recent experiments using ultracold atoms have measured temperatures that are negative in the absolute temperature scale. Tapio Simula, Monash Research Fellow in Physics at Monash University, states, “The journey there, however, is quite the opposite to what you might expect. Simply removing heat from the equation to make things colder and colder is not the answer. Instead, you need to heat things hotter than infinitely hot!”. Research at Monash University is showing that under very special circumstances, a system may become more ordered when more energy is added beyond a value which corresponds to an infinite temperature.