Known for his love of punk rock‚ heavy metal‚ horror‚ and animals‚ Ace Von Johnson has been a staple of a resurgent hair metal scene since joining Faster Pussycat‚ before a series of events led to his joining L.A. Guns‚ where he’s remained as the band’s second guitarist for the last several years. But before his foray into hair metal‚ Von Johnson was a punk and metal-loving kid born in the ’80s; as such‚ he ended up in several punk bands‚ such as Cheap Sex‚ Madcap‚ The U.S. Bombs‚ Unwritten Law‚ and Murphy’s Law‚ cementing his status as a dyed-in-the-wool The post Ace Von Johnson of L.A. Guns: 13 Albums That Changed My Life appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

NASA’s Stardust mission to Comet Wild 2 has revealed its secrets very slowly. They’re finally coming together‚ however‚ and the results are showing that the outer Solar System in its early days was not the simple place previously thought. How one comet came to have dust from widely separated parts of the early Solar System remains unanswered‚ however.Long before Rosetta’s Philae landed on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko or space agencies brought back samples from asteroids‚ NASA sent a mission to collect pieces of Comet Wild 2. After a 1974 encounter with Jupiter‚ this once-distant comet follows an orbit more typical of asteroids‚ between Mars and Jupiter. The mission is so old it launched last century (1999)‚ returning its sample to Earth in 2006.Back then we lacked the confidence to try and land on a comet‚ let alone take off again with a sample in tow. Instead‚ NASA took advantage of the distinguishing feature of comets: they produce tails as they approach the Sun containing gas that has boiled off their surface‚ and dust that has been carried with it.The Stardust mission put a gel-covered plate shaped like a tennis racket into Comet Wild 2’s tail and brought home whatever stuck. Although preliminary analysis was published not long after the first samples were analyzed‚ a more detailed picture is now emerging."Comet Wild 2 contains things we've never seen in meteorites‚ like unusual carbon-iron assemblages‚ and the precursors to igneous spherules that make up the most common type of meteorite‚" study author Dr Ryan Ogliore of Washington University in St Louis said in a statement. "And all of these objects have been exquisitely preserved within Wild 2. The comet was a witness to the events that shaped the solar system into what we see today."The reason it has taken so long to reveal this is that the samples were around a million tiny grains trapped in the aerogel. Identifying the bits of the comet was so hard that NASA had to call on thousands of volunteers who looked at microscope images of the collection plate to spot where the bits had landed."Nearly every Wild 2 particle is unique and has a different story to tell‚" Ogliore said. "It is a time-consuming process to extract and analyze these grains. But the science payoff is enormous."The sample return from the Stardust Mission‚ having been wrapped for protection‚ arriving at U.S. Air Force Utah Test and Training Range in 2006Image Credit: NASAAlthough the majority of the grains are still unstudied‚ many have been investigated using techniques that were not available when the mission occurred.These reveal that‚ instead of being composed of dust unaltered from the supernova that seeded the early Solar System with heavier elements‚ the comet had a mix of sources. Along with small amounts of this interstellar dust‚ the samples contain traces from many parts of the cloud that became planets and asteroids after the Sun’s formation. This includes material from both sides of the gap Jupiter created in the cloud. “Comet Wild 2 does not exist on a continuum with known asteroids‚” Ogliore writes in the paper.This was a surprise‚ since Wild 2 probably formed beyond the orbit of Neptune‚ in the vast spaces where little was thought to have happened.Once these pieces became part of Comet Wild 2‚ they experienced almost no further processing‚ being quite literally put on ice. Being only around 3 kilometers (2 miles) wide‚ the comet also didn’t have the sort of geological processes that would transform the grains through great pressure or reactive chemistry."The Stardust samples…contain a record of the deep past covering billions of miles‚" Ogliore said. "After 18 years of interrogating this comet‚ we have a much better view of the solar system’s dynamic formative years."How typical Comet Wild 2 is remains unknown. Perhaps many comets were like this‚ but it’s also possible that by sheer chance the first comet we sampled was one of the most interesting.The analysis is published in the journal Geochemistry. 

(Natural News) Dr. John Diamond and Julie Behling discussed how the communists have infiltrated and taken over the American educational system during an episode of “America Unhinged” on Brighteon.TV.…

EXCLUSIVE — Advocacy group Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF) has called on Northwestern University to review several antisemitic incidents involving student groups in the weeks following the Hamas attack…

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Solar power is a booming industry right now as we all strive to run our lives with minimum carbon footprint. Solar is a relatively easy way to get clean electricity but of course we are limited to the hours then Sun is above the horizon. Solar panels in space have been muted before but the costs and technology to transmit power to Earth is prohibitive. An alternative approach has been explored by a team of engineers who have been looking at the possibility of deploying giant reflectors into space. They are a familiar site on houses these days‚ panels of crystalline-silicon that convert light into electricity. Solar panels have to be positioned carefully to maximise incoming sunlight and thus maximise electricity generation. If a way could be found to increase the amount of time a solar panel was in sunlight then of course they would be more useful to us. In 1993‚ a 20metre Russian space mirror known as Znamya-2 was unfurled to demonstrate that sunlight could be reflected down to Earth.  The concept to use reflectors in space to prolong the time that solar panels are illuminated is a far simpler and cheaper solution to some sort of solar power station in space. Arguably one of the key times in the day when power is needed is at night so being able to extend the hours of sunlight seems like a great concept. It’s not a new idea though as Hermann Oberth suggested it back in 1929 when he visualised giant reflectors in space‚ reflecting light down to areas that need it.  A paper recently published explores the reality of the concept and shows how the vision of Oberth may now be achievable. It should be noted that the idea is designed to target sunlight onto solar farms rather than individual homes. The technology is now available and materials suitable to be able to create‚ launch and deploy large solar reflectors into space. Once deployed‚ an orbiting reflector could be angled to direct sunlight onto a solar farm as it passes over‚ extending the ‘day’ and increasing electricity generation. The reflectors which are proposed to be hexagonal with sides 250 metres long would likely be deployed into orbits at an altitude of about 900km. This would illuminate an area approximately 10km across and extend generation time by around 20 minutes either side of dusk and dawn.  Concerns that these would destroy the night are likely to be unfounded due to the planned approach to target solar farms away from inhabited areas.  The reflectors would not be visible ot the naked eye unless you happened to be standing near a solar farm at the time it was beign illuminated and astronomical observations protected by angling the reflectors when not in use.  It is likely to be some years before such a project became reality but it is nice to see engineers and scientists looking at ways to enhance the generatin of clean energy in a way that promotes protection of our planets natural resources but also limits negative impacts on human activity. Source : Reflectors in space could make solar farms on Earth work for longer every day The post Reflectors in Space Could Make Solar Power More Effective appeared first on Universe Today.

Hero of Alexandria is frequently regarded as the finest experimental of antiquity‚ a true Genius of the Ancient World whose mind can only be compared to that of Leonardo da Vinci.