Month: October 2016

Anyone who has ever cared for a laptop knows the pain of an ailing battery. First, you’re not able to hold a charge for long, and soon you find yourself searching for a replacement. According to Grist.com technology columnist Umbra, there may be a way to avoid that tragic end and prolong the life span of your power source. It involves being just a little more vigilant about when and how you charge your battery.

Your battery life depends on something called depth of discharge, which Umbra defines as “how much of a battery’s power has been used up: 40 percent depth of discharge means it has 60 percent of its life left, and 100 percent means you’ve let the battery run dry.” The larger the average depth of discharge on your battery, the fewer charging cycles you’ll get out of your pack. So, if you’ve made a habit of letting your battery drain to zero before plugging it back in, you’ve likely already done damage to your battery.

Here’s an example. Say you let your battery run dry before recharging it back to 100 percent. That’s one total charging cycle. Doing that habitually means you might get roughly 300 to 500 discharge cycles before it will be time for a replacement.

Here’s how to avoid it: Instead of waiting until your battery is gasping for juice from an outlet, allow it to dip to about 40 percent remaining use before plugging it back in. By not exhausting the power, you put less strain on your battery and might be able to get as many as 4700 discharges out of it.

The other tip? Don’t recharge your battery to the full 100 percent. Once it dips to 40 percent, boost it up to about 80 percent and then pull the plug. A battery that’s engorged with power tends to be more stressed, shortening its life span. To maximize survival potential, it may be best to keep your battery powered between 40 and 80 percent capacity at all times. And if you’re chained to a desk and know you’ll be running AC power on a regular basis, it’s probably best to remove the battery entirely if you can.

If this all sounds like a lot of lithium-ion pampering, it is—but the reward is a battery that’ll be working long after your friends have pitched theirs in designated disposal bins.

[h/t Grist]

Prince’s ashes will spend the rest of eternity in Paisley Park. As People reports, the late singer’s remains are now interred in a custom-designed urn that’s a small-scale replica of Prince’s elaborate private estate and production complex in Chanhassen, Minnesota.

Prince’s sister, Tyka Nelson, and nephew President Nelson teamed up with Foreverence—a Minnesota-based firm that uses 3D printing technology to make custom ceramic funeral urns—in order to design the receptacle. At 14 inches high by 18 inches long, the urn frame is the spitting image of Prince’s beloved home, right down to the glass skylights. It’s also decorated with Prince’s signature Love Symbol. (Naturally, it’s purple and bedazzled with crystals.) As for Prince’s ashes, they are stored inside the building’s front column.

The details don’t end there. Open the urn’s front wall, and inside you’ll find a faithful, dollhouse-sized reproduction of Paisley Park’s atrium, complete with white ornamental doves, working lights, a tiled floor emblazoned with a Love Symbol, and a replica of the late musician’s purple Yamaha piano.

Prince’s urn is now on display at the late singer’s home, which re-opened last week as a museum dedicated to the artist’s legacy. Check out some pictures below.

Here’s Prince’s amazing custom urn — and Lemmy’s and Weiland’s too https://t.co/dNTVgA8Jl3 pic.twitter.com/hg2WphxbLZ

— Stereogum (@stereogum) October 11, 2016

Prince’s urn. pic.twitter.com/W7igW73aYf

— Good Brother Steve (@SteveBennett7) October 10, 2016

[h/t People]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

Tomorrow, October 19, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars lander will touch down, marking the first time the ESA has landed a spacecraft with—we hope—total success on the red planet, setting the stage for a new era of planetary exploration by the Europeans. You can follow the action live on ESA’s Facebook page beginning at 8 a.m. EDT. During the six-minute descent, which should begin at 9:42 a.m. EDT, the lander will return up to 15 images of the rapidly approaching surface, and once on the ground will activate a temporary weather system that will run for approximately two days. If all goes according to plan, the photos captured during the descent will be presented the following day, October 20, during a press briefing.

Named Schiaparelli after the 19th-century Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who drew the first maps of Mars, the lander is a technology proof-of-concept. Launched on March 14, it was built by Thales Alenia Space, a French-Italian aerospace contractor, and is intended to demonstrate that ESA has Mars landing capability—no small achievement. Mars is notoriously inhospitable to landers, having eaten several spacecraft from Roscosmos, NASA, and most recently, ESA; its Beagle-2 lander apparently touched down in 2003 but failed to function thereafter. Data collected during the descent and landing of Schiaparelli will be applied to the next phase of the ExoMars mission, tentatively set for 2020, in which an actual, ESA-built rover will be placed on the Martian surface for an exploration mission.

ExoMars is a joint mission between ESA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. As originally conceived, the mission would have been a collaboration between ESA and NASA. But the U.S. agency withdrew from the project, leaving ESA in the lurch and intensifying already stormy relations between the two agencies following NASA’s withdrawal from the Europa Jupiter System Mission in 2011. (ESA’s part of the Jovian project has been redesigned as a standalone mission called JUICE, for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer.) When NASA walked away, Russia agreed to help ESA, providing a launch vehicle and scientific instruments for this phase of the mission, and agreeing to build the lander and instruments for the next.

On October 16, the lander separated from its mothership, a newly arrived Martian satellite called the Trace Gas Orbiter. While the lander performs its brief mission on the surface, the orbiter will circle Mars in preparation for its science mission, set to begin in 2018. (The delay is due to the aerobraking maneuvers necessary to take it to a tight, circular orbit about 250 miles above the Martian surface.) Once its mission is underway, the orbiter will search the Martian atmosphere for such gases as methane, an indicator of possible active and ongoing life. It will also image the planet’s surface in an attempt to find water ice. When the ExoMars rover arrives in the 2020s, the Trace Gas Orbiter will be its data relay; the rover will send data to the orbiter, and the orbiter will send the data back to Earth.

As for the lander: During its descent, it will measure changes in temperature, density, and pressure. Once on the ground, it will perform an analysis of the electrical properties of the Martian atmosphere and perform meteorological tests—humidity, wind speed and direction, pressure, and temperature, among other things.

In addition to the ExoMars Facebook Live and Livestream feeds, the agency is also running a liveblog of ongoing mission activities and updates. This can help provide context and granular-level information on what is happening and why.