We did it! After 14 years of planning and 2.5 billions dollars in spending, the one ton curiosity rover has safely landed on Mars. Go humans! This piece of machinery will now begin its two year mission, which is finding life on Mars. The curiosity rover will scour the area breaking rocks and analyzing the air in hopes of finding traces of life elements such as carbon and methane. Scientists are trying to discover whether Mars is or was ever able to sustain life for organisms. The curiosity rover is well equipped and fully loaded for this task with an analyzing laser, a robotic arm, color camera, and much more.

What amazes me the most is how the rover was able to land on Mars even with all the complications it had to go through. First, curiosity blasted off our planet then it safely traveled 52 million miles with out getting hit or ripped to pieces. Lastly, came the 7 minutes of terror which included breaking the mar-shun atmosphere traveling 13 thousand miles per hour with a temperature of 16 hundred degrees Fahrenheit. It also has to survive the deployment of a big parachute that got hit with 9 g's of force and the release of the super hot shield. In addition, humans had nothing to do with the landing sequence it was all computer controlled through 500,000 lines of code. Check out my Vialogue to see in more detail of how the landing worked. Is anyone else excited by this as I am? I would love to hear your feedback on this in the comments below.

A team of medical wizards at Boston’s Children Hospital has developed a new piece of particles that allow one to live without breathing. They designed micro particles that go into your bloodstream and fills one’s blood with oxygen even if you cannot breathe any more. Scientists say that this breakthrough can save millions of lives because it keeps people alive for fifteen to thirty minutes even in the face of respiratory failure. These micro particles are composed of oxygen gas inside pocket of layered lipids which function like a cell membrane. Scientists took this solution of micro particles and inject it first into the veins of animals that were experiencing critical lung failure. The solution immediately restored oxygen to the animals and gave them minutes of life. Dr. John Kheir, who led the research team, talks about the previous problems they had about developing this solution. Previous solutions consisted of gas embolism, which is when gas bubbles form and prevents circulation.

Computers are what I believe to be the most phenomenal piece of technology there is in the world. However, if someone was to ask me how long computers has been around, I would have never expected the answer to be 2000 years old!

Scientists have discovered a 2000 year old computer. In addition, they believe that it was the first computing device ever. This object was found off a Greek island called Antikythera and was used by the ancient Greeks. Michael Wright studied the Antikythera mechanism and even build his own model. What can this 2000 year old computer do one may ask? The data is entered into the device by using the levers, which moves the gears inside and then the device can tell a person both the position of the moon and the sun at the same time. It can also give a person the phases of the moon. Evidently, the Greeks used a lunar calendar instead of a solar calendar and one cannot fit the number of lunar months into a year. This is based on the metonic cycle where 235 full moons can almost fit perfectly in a span of 19 years.

Antikythera mechanism was invented between 150-100 BCE and was incredibly advanced for its time period. As a computer engineering major, this antique caught my interest and makes me wonder if there are any other foreign technologies out there that we do not know of. It's interesting to discover this piece of computer history, watch this Vialogue below to learn more.