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| STORIES ABOUT: gas |
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| Golden Rules to Avoid Bloating |  | Bloating is one of those embarrassing conditions that affect the vast majority of people and yet very few of us are willing to openly talk about it – for obvious reasons. The corollary of this "hush-hush" attitude, the fact that we rarely talk about bloating and usually just grit our teeth and do our best to hide it, is that for most of us, bloating is just another one of those things.
We have to live with it, there& ... [read more >>] | | 09 June 2008, 09:12GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Milky Way Could Lose Two Arms |  | Since the days of radio observations, astronomers believed that the Milky Way galaxy, in which our solar system is located, has four spiral arms wrapped around the central galactic nucleus. But radio observations are only able to detect concentrations of gas in the galaxy and what previously appeared to be two spiral arms can’t seem to show up at all in a recent investigation carried out in the infrared spectrum with NASA's Spitzer Sp ... [read more >>] | | 04 June 2008, 02:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| How Hydraulic Hybrids Work |  | Fossil fuel reserves, petrol in special, are becoming increasingly scarce around the world with rapid economical development of poor countries, which greatly influences petrol prices in areas all over the world. Not only that, but burning fossil fuel increases the pollution of the planet, thus accelerating the climate change and the global warming effects that are now on the verge of taking over the Earth.
There are a lot of alternative ... [read more >>] | | 29 May 2008, 08:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| How Whales Conquered the Oceanic Abyss |  | Toothed whales represent the diving champions of all air-breathing animals. Sperm whales dive at depths of over 1,200 m (3,600 ft) for more than an hour, while Cuvier’s beaked whale (a type of toothed whale) holds the record for diving amongst any sea mammal - 1,900 m (6,330 ft), that translate into 190 atmospheres, for one hour and 25 minutes. The bottlenose whales (Hyperoodon) can dive for periods of 2 hours, at depths at 495 m (1,650 ft ... [read more >>] | | 09 May 2008, 04:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| See "The Door to Hell" |  | It looks like a crater with a volcanic lava lake, but it is not. It is said that the hell is located underground. In this case, "The Door to Hell" is this site in Uzbekistan, located close to the small town of Darvaz.
This phenomenon started during the Soviet times, 35 years ago. Geologists and miners were drilling inside a mine. At a point, the gas buildup impeded any further activity. Employing the normal mindset ... [read more >>] | | 08 April 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Algae to Become Hydrogen Source |  | It is pretty clear that, in this rhythm, very few of us will have any money to buy petrol. That's why the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory is trying to develop new means through which chemically manipulated algae generate renewable fuels, such as hydrogen gas for example.
"We believe there is a fundamental advantage in looking at the production of hydrogen by photosynthesis as a renewable ... [read more >>] | | 02 April 2008, 06:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| The Secret of Arrested Human Animation Is in Rotten Eggs and Farts |  | You might have seen the trick in SF movies: hibernating space navigators go to their target locations, located at distances of light years, while asleep, in an arrested animation, just like bacteria and tardigrades do. But an arrested metabolism could save lives not only in space, but on Earth too. ... [read more >>] | | 28 March 2008, 18:21GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Quantum Gases Express Stability in Pancake Shapes |  | Interstellar clouds of dust and gas pulled together by gravitational forces often experience instabilities, that can result in spectacular explosions such as that of a supernova. Furthermore, if the individual atoms that compose the respective cloud of gas behave like tiny magnets, the same outcome could be experienced, as the magnetic forces of attraction between each other pressure towards a rapid compression of matter, thus the cloud of ... [read more >>] | | 29 February 2008, 10:24GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| The Killer Lake: It Can Explode! |  | On the night of August 21st, 1986, 80 million cubic meters of carbon dioxide (1.6 million tonnes of CO2) burst from the water of the volcanic Lake Nyos, killing by asphyxiation 1,700 persons and 3,600 livestock. The 50 m (166 ft) tall jet was made of gas (90%) and water. The gas had accumulated in the depths of the lake, coming from the magma below, dissolved in the water due to the high pressure exerted at 100-200 m (330-660 ft) ... [read more >>] | | 23 February 2008, 05:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Laser Detects Diseases in Your Breath! |  | You don't even have to say something. Just a laser beam, and the doc tells you what you have and ever have had. A new study, made at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado at Boulder, and published in the journal Optics Express, shows how molecules from the breath, markers for diseases like asthma or cancer, can be "read" using lasers.
"Known as optical frequency ... [read more >>] | | 22 February 2008, 06:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| New Machine Tells You the Taste of Your Coffee! |  | Machines perform with no mistake. A human nose may not work well when influenced by other scents, or when it has adapted to a specific scent. And here comes this SF technique: a Swiss coffee tasting machine that turns human tasters obsolete.
New "electronic tasters" like the new coffee-tasting machine could work as quality control devices for monitoring food processing. The new machine was developed by a team led by ... [read more >>] | | 12 February 2008, 03:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| The Robot Invasion Begins! |  | So be it then! We should at least look at the bright side of the whole deal. No more stepping out of the car, no more getting dirty or smelling of petrol after a quick refuel. The automatic refueling unit was developed by an inventor from Netherlands who is also a gas station owner, and is the first of its kind in the world working in a gas-pumping station. Ouch! That will really drive some unemployed people mad.
Nico van Staveren said ... [read more >>] | | 07 February 2008, 09:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Ethanol Replaced with Butanol |  | But why? Well, there are three big reasons for that. The ethanol is a highly corrosive substance, it has lower energetic value than butanol and, unlike the latter, ethanol also produces a great deal of carbon dioxide gas when burning. Both butanol and ethanol are being routinely used as gas additives, in order to boost the octanic number of gas fuel.
Researchers from Washington University, argue there is no use of ethanol as ... [read more >>] | | 28 January 2008, 06:35GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| How Do Rockets and Missiles Work? |  | Missiles were first launched 8 centuries ago by the Chinese, during their battles with the Mongols. The first Chinese missiles were propelled by gunpowder. When arrows and spears were stuck to it, the missile made a dreadful weapon. The Mongols were so impressed, that they made their own missiles employed against the Arabs. Arabs too assumed them and, from the Arabs, they passed into Europe.
In 1429, the French troops led by Joanne of ... [read more >>] | | 17 January 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| The Formation of an Earth-like Planet Detected! |  | How did the Earth form? Astronomers have detected a "cooking" process for an Earth-like planet. The huge ring of hot dust surrounding a sun-size star 424 light-years away could be shaped into an Earth-like planet in a time period of maximum 100 million years.
The team investigating the infrared light coming from the star HD 113766 found a belt of dust and probably rock, the key raw materials necessary to create a pla ... [read more >>] | | 05 October 2007, 05:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| How Do Farts Form? |  | This issue 'stinks', but in the end it's something common to all: geniuses and dumb people, emperors and slaves.
When ingesting food and liquids, air enters your stomach. And if not by belching, then which is the other way to expel too much gas? (now I know why the Japanese do not belch much after eating).
But gases are also produced by our gastrointestinal flora and these are the cause of the stench odor. From blood ... [read more >>] | | 07 September 2007, 18:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| What's a Mud Volcano? |  | A mud volcano has nothing to do with the proper volcanoes. Mud volcanoes appear mostly when gas pockets or gas deposits associated with oil manage to seep to the surface, transporting water mixed with solid material (mud, made mainly of clay and sand). Of course, these volcanoes are not hot at all, on the contrary, they can have temperatures that almost reach the freezing point. Their relief stands for 2-3 years, compared to tens of thousa ... [read more >>] | | 15 August 2007, 13:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Laughing Gas Makes You Sick |  | Surprisingly enough, there’s no reason for laughing at all. The laughing gas or nitrous oxide, employed as an anesthetic for over 200 years in childbirth and emergency medicine can enhance pneumonia, fever and wound infections, as found by an Australian survey. The chemical's name comes from the euphoric sensation felt when inhaling it.
Even if this gas is regarded as relatively safe by doctors, a spokesman for the Royal College o ... [read more >>] | | 10 August 2007, 04:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Black Holes, the Galaxy-Devouring Cosmic Piranhas |  | Black holes are space objects which have an immense gravitational field that cuts off a region of space from the rest of the universe, trapping all matter and radiation that enters that region. They are objects with a gravitational field so powerful that a region of space becomes cut off from the rest of the universe. Not even radiation (including light) that has entered the region can ever escape.
A new study made by astrono ... [read more >>] | | 25 July 2007, 04:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Could This Star Have a Mysterious Invisible Partner? |  | Neutron stars are one of the few ways a star ends its life. They are formed from the remains of a massive star after it had already exploded into a supernova that condenses into an extremely dense core. They usually have masses 1.35 to about 2.1 times greater than that of our Sun, while being 30,000 to 70,000 times smaller than the Sun.
Observations of such a neutron star, called RCW103, seemed to contradict all astronomers ... [read more >>] | | 23 July 2007, 08:23GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Jupiter's Moon Io: the Most Volcanically Active Place in the Known Universe |  | Io is one of the 63 confirmed satellites of the gas giant Jupiter and the fourth largest moon in the Solar System. Although it is just 100 km larger in radius than Earth’s Moon, astronomers found it to be the most active place for volcanic activity ever detected in the Universe.
With over 400 active volcanic sites on its surface, Io spews impressive amounts of volcanic gases, thus producing the largest visible gas cloud in the solar sy ... [read more >>] | | 23 July 2007, 05:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Scientists Believe We Could Soon Create Instant Oil and Natural Gas |  | Scientists believe there's a chance to solve the problem of future oil and natural gas shortages, by creating new reserves in a short time that could be regarded as just a flash compared to how much is believed to take for oil to form underground.
Although there is no effective way of doing that just yet, Jennifer McIntosh, a geochemist from the University of Arizona in Tucson, thinks that by understanding some unusual p ... [read more >>] | | 20 July 2007, 11:17GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Giant Extrasolar Planets Found to Form Only Close to Their Stars |  | Giant planets made of gas are the easiest to find outside our solar system, and more than 230 of them, many times larger than our champion, Jupiter, have been found in recent years.
While extrasolar planets in general are hard to spot because light bouncing off these planets is easily lost in the sea of brightness generated by the star around which it orbits, actually seeing smaller ones is far more difficult, because it' ... [read more >>] | | 13 July 2007, 11:12GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Origin of Galaxies Could Be Found Within the Next Decade |  | The golden age of discovery astronomy is entering now could lead to major breakthroughs and answers to fundamental cosmology questions, like the origin of the galaxies, probably the most important of all. New telescopes and instruments, soon to be deployed could observe distant events early in the life of the universe within the next decade or even sooner.
One of these new instruments is the Herschel Space Observatory (HSO), ... [read more >>] | | 05 July 2007, 05:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| What's Inside a Pulsing Giant Star? |  | Astronomers succeeded in dissecting a pulsating red giant star, S Orionis, to examine the layers of dust and gas. This star has a pulse period of 410 days, during which it changes in volume, from one equal to the orbit of Mars to one equal to the orbit of Jupiter.
S Orionis is a red giant star in the constellation Orion. It is a Mira variable, a class of pulsating variable stars characterized by very red colors, pulsation pe ... [read more >>] | | 04 July 2007, 05:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| "UFOs" on the Moon May Be Belches of Radon Gas |  | Some strange and bright flashes of light appearing on the surface of the Moon have been puzzling astronomers for centuries. The first reports of bright spots and distortions on the surface that appeared with no apparent cause and disappeared again were made in 1540.
In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a huge interest for these strange phenomena and even Apollo astronauts claimed to see a few. Now, a scientist is proposing a th ... [read more >>] | | 27 June 2007, 04:17GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| NASA Successfully Tested the First Nanotechnology-Based Sensor in Orbit |  | The history of aviation, though short (only a bit more than a century) has known the greatest advances in terms of design technology, building materials and performances of civilian and military aircraft. The first planes were made of wood, cardboard and cloth, now they are built using the latest development in artificial fibers, polymers and nanotechnology.
Space is the most recent field where nanotechnology has found succes ... [read more >>] | | 19 June 2007, 12:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Dust Sculptures of the Rosette Nebula |  | A new image of the Rosette Nebula shows some remarkable cosmic dust sculptures, full of colors, testimony of the beauty of the universe in its inner working. Rosette Nebula, a nebulosity closely associated with the open cluster NGC 2244.
Actually, the open cluster lies within the nebula, and it was discovered by John Flamsteed in 1690. Located at a distance of some 4,500 light years from Earth (although estimates of the dist ... [read more >>] | | 06 June 2007, 09:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Could We Dump Greenhouse Gases into Space? |  | Many people are beginning to realize that global warming is not going to go away by itself, as engines that burn gasoline emit pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, that cause global warming.
Moreover, fossil fuels that took millions of years to form are rapidly depleting and can't regenerate overnight. For example, U.S. vehicles consume 383 million gallons of gasoline a day, or about 140 billion gallons annually, around t ... [read more >>] | | 05 June 2007, 10:14GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Milky Way's Core Shoots Stars Our Way |  | A strange thing happens at the very core of our galaxy. It seems that a spinning bar of material may be throwing nearby stars outwards as it rotates and most of them are heading towards our solar system. Fortunately, none of these stars has any chance of actually reaching us.
A team of researchers led by Thomas Bensby of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, US, have analyzed this phenomenon and hope it will shed some lig ... [read more >>] | | 31 May 2007, 09:28GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Extremely Violent Disruption Seen in Galaxy Cluster |  | A team of astronomers discovered amazing evidence of a brutal disruption in a huge galaxy cluster, a bright arc of ferociously hot gas that extends more than two million light years and must have been produced by one of the most energetic events ever detected.
Led by Ralph Kraft of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusets, the astronomers took a picture of the giant cluster using NASA’s Chandra X ... [read more >>] | | 31 May 2007, 05:03GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Strange Planet Puzzles Astronomers |  | A newly discovered exoplanet puzzles astronomers. Named XO-1b, the planet is the most massive found orbiting extremely close to its star, but it doesn't have a circular orbit, like most astronomers would have expected, but an elliptical one, which is very unusual, considering the short distance to its sun.
Discovered by a team of amateur and professional astronomers, the planet is a Goliath of gas giants, weighing 13 times more th ... [read more >>] | | 31 May 2007, 02:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Hot Gas and Sound Waves Escape Sun's Surface through Magnetic Portals |  | A mystery about the interior of the Sun lasting for centuries has been solved by scientists at National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA. They now proved that sound waves escape the interior of the sun and form fountains of hot gas that shape and provide fuel for a region of the sun's atmosphere.
This thin region, called chromosphere, appears as a ruby red "ring of fire" around the moon during a total solar eclipse and ... [read more >>] | | 30 May 2007, 15:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Massive Stars Found More Likely to Have Planets |  | A new study performed by astronomers involved in the search for extrasolar planets revealed that there are more chances of a star having Jupiter-like gas giants orbiting around them when the star itself is more massive than our Sun.
It seems that the 10 observations of stars which are more massive than our own support this theory about the formation of planets. Until now, the majority of the 236 known extrasolar planets have ... [read more >>] | | 29 May 2007, 09:30GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Where Did The Sun Come From? |  | A new research is trying to find our Sun's family tree throughout the complex history of the galaxy, by studying its chemical composition. Open clusters could also provide clues concerning the Sun's genealogy.
The team, led by Gayandhi De Silva, at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) used the instrument's Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) to look at three open star cluster ... [read more >>] | | 22 May 2007, 16:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Scientists Captured the Coldest Atoms in the Universe |  | Scientists have created a device that can map magnetic fields more accurately than ever, using an ultra-cold gas confined to a laser beam. It's based on ultra-cold Bose Einstein condensates (BECs) and can precisely measure low-frequency fields, like brain waves at an incredibly high resolution and sensitivity.
Dan Stamper-Kurn, UC Berkeley associate professor of physics and faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laborator ... [read more >>] | | 21 May 2007, 06:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Scientists Have Transferred Spin Polarization from a Gas to a Solid |  | Recently, scientists were able to polarize noble gases, (rare gases like Helium, Neon, Argon and Xenon) and to take MRI machine pictures of lungs that had inhaled these gases. A new technique can polarize other elements too, with even greater benefits to medical science. Spin polarization is the degree by which the spin, the intrinsic angular momentum of elementary particles, is aligned to a given direction.
For now, Magnet ... [read more >>] | | 17 May 2007, 10:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Milky Way Street Sweeper |  | The nature of the interstellar medium has received the attention of astronomers and scientists over the centuries. It is not at all a void; on the contrary, there are many particles floating in space.
The interstellar medium (or ISM) is the name astronomers give to the gas and dust that pervade interstellar space. While the ISM refers to the matter that exists between the stars within a galaxy, the energy, in the form of electromagnet ... [read more >>] | | 20 April 2007, 04:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
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