Mouse sperm
sent into space
After nine months in space, mouse
sperm fathered these healthy mouse
pups, with no problems (yet).AEROSPACE Space agencies
aim to take us to other planets,
but they do not know how that
would affect our reproductive
system. According to recent
scientific research, we need not
fear that radiation will cause
kids to be born with extra limbs.
Japanese scientists have sent
frozen mouse sperm to the
International Space Station,
ISS, orbiting Earth at an altitude
of 400 km. Here, radiation is
more than 100 times worse
than on Earth...
After the trip, the sperm
specimens returned to Earth,
and scientists used them to
fertilize eggs, which they placed
in the wombs of female mice. A
control group was fertilized
with ordinary sperm cells. All
pups were healthy and normal.Sense of
smell keeps
you trim
Scientists have
discovered that the
sense of smell may
control whether we burn
or store the energy that
we consume. No smell?
No fat. Maybe.TERUHIKO WAKAYAMA
MARKUS HAUSCHILD/DLR & MIKKEL JUUL JENSEN14 | SCIENCE ILLUSTRATEDNEWS FLASH!
Artificial sun is 3,000 degrees hot
In the 3-storey solar research facility, the light of the lamps
can be united into one single beam of the same tempera-
ture as 10,000 times the sunlight when it hits Earth.TECHNOLOGY German scientists have
managed to build their own sun, “Synlight”,
at a research facility near Cologne. Hitting a
switch, they can activate no less than 149
huge, 7 kW reflector lamps located in a
three-storey building. The German space
agency DLR is responsible for the project,
named “the world’s largest artificial sun”.
The huge lamps consume as much power
in one day as a family of four people does in
one year, but on the other hand, the facility
could help pave the way for a future withoutthe use of fossil fuels.
Scientists are working on splitting water
into hydrogen and oxygen at extremely high
temperatures under the lamps, aiming to
develop methods for mass-producing the
aircraft super fuel of the future: hydrogen.
Throughout the world, scientists are
experimenting with producing hydrogen
from sunlight and water, but at this point,
nobody has ever succeeded in producing
industrial scale hydrogen in an eco-friendly,
efficient, and inexpensive fashion.A Fake Sun to
Save the Real World
A huge solar simulator generates 10,000 times the heat of the Sun.
Scientists aim to split water into hydrogen and oxygen in new ways.The lamps of the
artificial sun are
mounted on
a 15-m-high
steel frame.In the facility
The lamps produce
bright, white light
from xenon gas.
They are 7 kW each.
A typical ordinary light
bulb is 100 W tops.By the facility
The energy from the
lamps allow different
experiments in three
labs at the same time.
Two of them have been
customized for hydrogen-
making experiments.In the lamps
The bulb sits in an
aluminium reflector
with a 1 m diameter. At
the back of each lamp,
there is a flexible robotic
arm, which allows the
bulbs to be united into
one extremely hot light
beam, when scientists
experiment with
splitting water into
oxygen and hydrogen.SCIENCE UPDATE