NASA is using distant galaxies to look even further into space, government and corporate scientists meet to talk space travel, driving a robot car can save your life, DARPA puts up money to make Skynet a reality and a new species of monkey found in the rain forest purrs like a cat, and more, this week in science.

NASA’s Great Observatories Begin Deepest Ever Probe of the Universe

NASA is taking three of its telescopes and teaming them up to look deeper into the universe then ever before. The Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes will take advantage of gravitational lensing, that is taking advantage of the gravity of distant galaxies to bend the light of even more distant objects around them, creating a sort of cosmic zoom lens, in an ambitious program called The Frontier Fields. Researchers will spend the next three years investigating six different galaxy clusters and hope to get a glimpse of galaxies formed only a few hundred million years after the big bang.

Interstellar travel: Starship troupers

A small but dedicated group of scientists, engineers and other interested parties gathered at the Royal Astronomical Society in London to discuss the future of interstellar travel. Not too long ago the only people really looking into these possibilities were government researchers, and now a new boom of private corporations are lending their expertise, and money, to the research field. It is still a long way off, if possible at all, but it is encouraging that more people are wondering how we could make the trip to other stars.

Data Shows Google’s Robot Cars Are Smoother, Safer Drivers Than You or I

In what, I think, is a bit of a forgone conclusion, new research has found that Google’s robotic cars outperform human drivers and are overall safer. Google has been testing its autonomous cars since 2010 and the only accidents or mishaps that have occurred were the fault of other motorists or happened when the supervising driver had taken control of the vehicle. Another study found that robotic cars could cut vehicle related injuries by as much as 90 percent and save the U.S. economy $450 billion a year. Though to reach those numbers, adoption of robotic cars would need to be upwards of 90 percent, approaching full 100 percent adoption. A more realistic 10 percent adoption rate could reduce crashes and injuries by nearly half and save a smaller, but still significant $25 billion annually.

DARPA Announces $2 Million Prize In Self-Patching Software Competition

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has put up a $2 million prize for a “Cyber Grand Challenge.” The goal of the challenge is to build a “fully automated cyber defense system.” What that would entail is a program that would adapt and update itself in response to cyber security threats against it. And while this wouldn’t be a true artificial intelligence, the ability for the software to patch itself could result in closing vulnerabilities in a matter of seconds, instead of the days it currently takes.

Monkey That Purrs Like a Cat Is Among New Species Discovered in Amazon Rainforest

Over the past four years, scientists and researchers have discovered a total of 441 new species of plants and animals, including a species of titi monkeys that purr like a cat as babies. Other discoveries include a vegetarian piranha, a large number of new orchids and a flame-patterned lizard. In all, 258 plants, 84 fish, 58 amphibians, 22 reptiles, 18 birds and one mammal were discovered, according to a report compiled by the World Wildlife Fund.

Astronomers find a freakishly compact solar system with seven planets

A solar system 2,500 light years away has a total of seven planets all rotating its dwarf star inside a distance of 1AU, or the distance between the Earth and our sun. Five of the planets are rocky bodies, with two being of super-earth classification. The remaining two planets are both gas giants. The most recently discovered planet, the 5th in line from the star, has an orbital period of 125 days and is 2.8 times the size of Earth.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

During Saturday’s World Series game Fox aired a 30 second promo for Neil deGrasse Tyson’s new show Cosmos, airing in 2014. The full 3 minute 30 second trailer from this years Comic-Con is embedded to the left.

Ever think about the theory of relativity and the effect of time dilation? No? TED-ED recently released a video explaining how it works and how, because of it, travelling into the future isn’t too far-fetched.

NASA’s Sunjammer spacecraft is all set to deploy in 2015. What makes this spacecraft unique is its propulsion. The Sunjammer is powered by solar sails, 13,000 square feet of them, that propel the craft by repelling the sun’s photons. It will be the largest solar sail to date.

This happened a few weeks ago, but is too interesting to let slide. A team in Russia has pulled up what it believes is a piece of the Chelyabinsk meteor that tore through Russian skies earlier this year.

Two bits of news coming from Mars. The Curiosity rover has confirmed the origins of a few meteorites on Earth as having originated on the red planet. Panspermia anyone? And Wired Magazine has compiled a list of the strangest findings from the red planet, from tree-ring like crater impacts, to frozen carbon dioxide.

And lastly, if you ever wanted to explore the galaxy from your web browser, this Chrome experiment lets you scroll all the way from Earth on out and learn a bit about nearby stars.

The Week in Science takes a look new discoveries, new technologies and new breakthroughs from every discipline. There are many each week that I can’t include and more still that I didn’t even see. Did you read about something cool that is science related? Send me a link at daniel.aitken@langnews.com and maybe it will make it on next weeks list.