NASA picks a winter rest stop for Mars rover Opportunity

NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity has found a good place to wait out the harsh Martian winter — and to get some more science done as well.

Opportunity is hunkering down at a spot called Greeley Haven, a rocky outcrop along the rim of the Red Planet’s huge Endeavour crater. The site allows the rover to angle its solar panels toward the sun, and it also presents a variety of interesting features for Opportunity to investigate, researchers said.

“Greeley Haven provides the proper tilt, as well as a rich variety of potential targets for imaging and compositional and mineralogic studies,” Jim Bell of Arizona State University, lead scientist for Opportunity’s panoramic camera, said in a statement.

Greeley Haven, Bell added, “looks to be a safe and special place that could yield exciting new discoveries about the watery past of Mars.”

Long-lived rover
The golf-cart-size Opportunity landed on Mars on Jan. 25, 2004, three weeks after its twin, Spirit. The two rovers were originally supposed to spend 90 days looking for signs of past water activity on Mars.

Both solar-powered robots found plenty of such evidence at their disparate landing sites, and they just kept chugging along, continuing to gather data years a……………. continues on msnbc.com

Scientists at the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, have announced the creation of a nanoscale wire that conducts electricity.

The team announced the finding on Thursday, saying they have created a wire just four atoms high, with the ability to conduct electricity similar to that seen in copper wires. The wires are 20 times smaller than the smallest wires now available and measure just four atoms wide by one phosphorus atom tall.

The finding could lead to advances in the field of quantum computing, where such devices would rely on nanoscale technology. The wires would allow for the creation of powerful computers that could sift through massive amounts of data faster than current digital computers which use binary code.

“Driven by the semiconductor industry, computer chip components continuously shrink in size allowing ever smaller and more powerful computers,” said researcher Michelle Simmons, who headed the study.

Scientists were able to create the atom-sized wires in silicon using a technique called scanning tunneling microscopy, whereby they place chains of phosphorus atoms within a silicon crystal. Using atomic-scale wires covered in a silicon crystal with a layer of hydrogen atoms, the team carved out several-nanometer-wide channels in the hydrogen using the tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope.

At the level of four atoms, scie……………. continues on The State Column