Space weather viewer, Ships and spacecrafts names, What does 32-bit computer mean?

[Nostromics Newsletter]

Nostromics Newsletter

Nostromics science gifts product news, educational resources & science tidbits

Nostromics Newsletter, 3 March 2011 - You are welcome to share this mail

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Space Weather Media Viewer

Space weather is the changing conditions of the radiation, plasma, matter and magnetic fields environment in interplanetary space. NASA's Space Weather Media Viewer is an online application for visualizing near real-time space weather data from a variety of scientific spacecrafts and sources.

Sections in the application's left navigation bar display different data and media, such as images and educational animations. Click a section name (e.g. IMAGES, ILLUSTRATIONS, etc.) to expand it and access its functionality. The most interesting is the IMAGES section with up to date photos of the Sun and its activity taken by space and ground-based observatories. By clicking the "Showing:" button just below the IMAGES section title you can view data on solar wind and auroras. The "Details" button at the bottom right provides additional information on the selected data set.

Exploration ships and spacecrafts names

Most NASA spacecrafts are named after famous exploration ships of the past. Space Shuttle Endeavour, for examples, takes the name of HMS Endeavour, the British ship used by Captain James Cook for his first exploration voyage from 1768 to 1771. Another Shuttle orbiter, Discovery, is named after Cook's HMS Discovery, the ship of his third and last 1776-1779 major voyage.

The Nostromics Shuttle And Caravels Large Mug celebrates these great sea and space ships. It features a photo (credit: NASA) of replicas of Columbus' ships Santa Maria, Pinta and Nina sailing near Shuttle Endeavour on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. It was taken in June 1992, 500 years after the first voyage of Columbus, before Endeavour's maiden flight into space.

The same design is available on the Shuttle And Caravels Coffee Mug, beer stein and other mugs in the Exploration section of Nostromics Store. See also our apparel and mugs with Columbus' signature. More science gifts and products at Nostromics Store.

What does 32-bit computer mean?

You may have heard of 32-bit and 64-bit computers, one of which you are most likely using right now. What does it mean?

The Central Processing Unit (CPU), or just processor, is an integrated circuit that performs most of the processing of a computer like arithmetic operations, comparisons and data transfers. A CPU, however, only manipulates very simple data such as integer numbers, which are the building blocks of more complex, higher level data like the text, images, and sounds you create with software applications.

A CPU includes a small set of registers, i.e. memory cells that store integer numbers in binary format. They are accessed and manipulated by the CPU for performing the above mentioned operations. A 32-bit CPU has registers that store numbers with 32 binary digits or bits.

-- Paolo Amoroso & Mauro Arpino (Nostromics), science educators - Milan, Italy

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Copyright (C) 2011 by Paolo Amoroso and Mauro Arpino