Science & TechnologyS


Eye 1

The Mystery of the Phantom Pyramid That Never Existed

Jesus Diaz
Gizmodo
Fri, 08 Jul 2011 23:00 UTC
Image
© J.C Casado
There's nothing triangular about the Mount Teide volcano. From its base, it's the third largest volcano in the world but is pretty flat on top. So why does its shadow look like a perfect ghost pyramid rising over the horizon?

The answer is very simple: Perspective. This amazing photo was taken by Juan Carlos Casado from the top of the Teide. From his point of view, the perspective accentuates the shape of the volcano's shadow as it's projected by the Sun onto the sea, converting it into a triangle:
A key reason for the strange dark shape is that the observer is looking down the long corridor of a sunset (or sunrise) shadow that extends to the horizon. Even if the huge volcano was a perfect cube and the resulting shadow was a long rectangular box, that box would appear to taper off at its top as its shadow extended far into the distance, just as parallel train tracks do.
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Satellite

NASA Releases Spectacular Images of Mysterious 'Hole Punch' Clouds


International Business Times
Fri, 08 Jul 2011 01:00 UTC
Image
© Source: NASA/handout. For decades, the mystery behind “hole punch” clouds have puzzled scientists and on-lookers as they continue to witness giant, open spaces in otherwise continuous cloud cover.
For decades, the mystery behind "hole punch" clouds have puzzled scientists and on-lookers as they continue to witness giant, open spaces in otherwise continuous cloud cover.

However, a new research paper published recently in the journal Science has revealed that the main culprit behind this unusual phenomenon is airplane.

"It appears to be a rather widespread effect for aircraft to inadvertently cause some measureable amount of rain or snow as they fly through certain clouds," stated lead author Andrew Heymsfield of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Co. "This is not necessarily enough precipitation to affect global climate, but it is likely to be noticeable around major airports in the midlatitudes."

Many reports in the past have even connected this phenomenon with UFOs and rocket launches. But, no one has been able to shed substantial light on the "mechanism of formation the physics of the development, duration."

Besides describing the physics of how planes form the holes in specific cloud types, the Science paper also looks at this "inadvertent" cloud seeding. The authors suggest that the effect is not large enough to have an impact on global climate, but that "regionally near major airports in midlatitudes during cool weather months it may lead to enhanced precipitation at the ground."

The research was partly funded by NASA grants and NASA Langley Research Center cloud specialist Patrick Minnis was one of the co-authors on the paper.

Check out the amazing 'Hole Punch' clouds visuals released by NASA below:
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Sun

NASA'S SDO Captures Comet Streaking Across the Sun

Phil Plait
Discover
Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:00 UTC
It's not known how many comets orbit the Sun in our solar system, but the number may be in the trillions. They spend a long, long time in the deep reaches of the outer solar system, only occasionally plunging toward us. If they pass near a planet their orbit can be changed, and some wind up on paths that take them so close to the Sun they burn up. These are called sungrazers.

That is what NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory saw on the evening of July 5/6, 2011. This has been seen many times before, but this is the first time one has been seen streaking directly across the Sun's face!
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Meteor

Getting a Handle on Cosmic Dust Caused by Supernovas

Sindya N. Bhanoo
The New York Times
Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© Pasquale PanuzzoAn infrared image of supernova 1987A, taken by the Herschel Space Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope.
Although it is known that a supernova, the violent explosion of a star, is one source of cosmic dust, the origin of the large amounts of dust needed to form planets and stars like the Sun has long been unclear.

Now, with the aid of the European Space Association's powerful Herschel Space Observatory, astronomers have been able to detect massive amounts of cosmic dust emitted from a supernova almost 25 years ago.

"We are looking at the sky at wavelengths that have never been observed before," said Mikako Matsuura, an astronomer at University College London and the study's lead author.

She and her colleagues report their findings in the journal Science.
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Green Light

Road legal at last: The flying car finally gets its driving licence after years of delays

Fiona Roberts
Daily Mail
Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:07 UTC
It's been cleared to take to the skies for more than a year - but that's not much use when you're supposed to be able to drive it, too.

But now the flying car has at least been declared officially road legal.

It means the Terrafugia Transition could be in U.S. garages as early as next autumn, after two years of delays.

flying car
Ready to go: The Terrafugia Transition has finally been declared road legal, and it could be in U.S. garages as early as next year. It was first developed in 2009, but has faced years of hold-up

It may not be the world's first flying car, but its makers say it is the first to have wings that fold up automatically at the push of a button.
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Telescope

U.S. Lawmakers Vote to Kill Hubble Telescope Successor


Raw Story
Thu, 07 Jul 2011 21:43 UTC
Hubble telescope
© n/a
In a fresh blow to NASA's post-shuttle aspirations, key US lawmakers voted Thursday to kill off funding for the successor to the vastly successful space-gazing Hubble telescope.

The US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science approved by voice vote a yearly spending bill that includes no money for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The move -- spurred on by belt-tightening in cash-strapped Washington -- still requires the full committee's approval, the full House's approval, the Senate's approval, and ultimately President Barack Obama's signature.

But the relatively mild dissents in the committee, which said in a terse statement this week that the project "is billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management," suggests the JWST faces an uphill fight to survive.
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Bizarro Earth

New Force Driving Earth's Tectonic Plates Discovered


PhysOrg.com
Wed, 06 Jul 2011 20:02 UTC
A view of the bends of the fracture zones
© Scripps Institution of Oceanography,UC San DiegoA view of the bends of the fracture zones on the Southwest Indian Ridge caused by the slowdown of Africa in response to the Reunion plume head. The image shows the gravity field.
Bringing fresh insight into long-standing debates about how powerful geological forces shape the planet, from earthquake ruptures to mountain formations, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have identified a new mechanism driving Earth's massive tectonic plates.

Scientists who study tectonic motions have known for decades that the ongoing "pull" and "push" movements of the plates are responsible for sculpting continental features around the planet. Volcanoes, for example, are generally located at areas where plates are moving apart or coming together. Scripps scientists Steve Cande and Dave Stegman have now discovered a new force that drives plate tectonics: Plumes of hot magma pushing up from Earth's deep interior. Their research is published in the July 7 issue of the journal Nature.

Using analytical methods to track plate motions through Earth's history, Cande and Stegman's research provides evidence that such mantle plume "hot spots," which can last for tens of millions of years and are active today at locations such as Hawaii, Iceland and the Galapagos, may work as an additional tectonic driver, along with push-pull forces.
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Blackbox

The Birth of Religion

Charles C. Mann
National Geographic
Fri, 08 Jul 2011 17:06 UTC
Image
© Vincent J. MusiPillars at the temple of Göbekli Tepe. We used to think agriculture gave rise to cities and later to writing, art, and religion. Now the world’s oldest temple suggests the urge to worship sparked civilization.
Every now and then the dawn of civilization is reenacted on a remote hilltop in southern Turkey.

The reenactors are busloads of tourists - usually Turkish, sometimes European. The buses (white, air-conditioned, equipped with televisions) blunder over the winding, indifferently paved road to the ridge and dock like dreadnoughts before a stone portal. Visitors flood out, fumbling with water bottles and MP3 players. Guides call out instructions and explanations. Paying no attention, the visitors straggle up the hill. When they reach the top, their mouths flop open with amazement, making a line of perfect cartoon O's.

Before them are dozens of massive stone pillars arranged into a set of rings, one mashed up against the next. Known as Göbekli Tepe (pronounced Guh-behk-LEE TEH-peh), the site is vaguely reminiscent of Stonehenge, except that Göbekli Tepe was built much earlier and is made not from roughly hewn blocks but from cleanly carved limestone pillars splashed with bas-reliefs of animals - a cavalcade of gazelles, snakes, foxes, scorpions, and ferocious wild boars. The assemblage was built some 11,600 years ago, seven millennia before the Great Pyramid of Giza. It contains the oldest known temple. Indeed, Göbekli Tepe is the oldest known example of monumental architecture - the first structure human beings put together that was bigger and more complicated than a hut. When these pillars were erected, so far as we know, nothing of comparable scale existed in the world.
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Telescope

Prominent Astrobiology Research Centre Sacked: An Interview with Chandra Wickramasinghe

Eugenie Samuel Reich
Nature News
Thu, 17 Mar 2011 14:30 UTC
Wickramasinghe
© K.G. DaviesChandra Wickramasinghe is a strong advocate for the theory that life originated beyond Earth.
Closed astrobiology centre to be reborn as private company.

The Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology in the United Kingdom is being closed by Cardiff University for what the university calls "budgetary and strategic reasons". Chandra Wickramasinghe, director of the centre, has said that he plans to turn it into a limited company. Nature asks him about his work, and how he intends to go it alone.

How did the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology come about?

The programme of research began in the 1970s in collaboration with the late Fred Hoyle. Until 1974 it was thought by the vast majority of astronomers that interstellar dust was all made of inorganic ice particles, similar to those in the cumulus clouds of Earth's atmosphere. We challenged these ideas and developed a theory of organic grains. By 1995, we were arguing that an origin of life on Earth is much less likely than life having an origin on a cosmic scale, that life is certain to have been brought to Earth from outside, most likely on comets. This idea of panspermia flew in the face of conventional wisdom, the model of the primordial soup.

Ours was one of the first astrobiology centres and today there are several universities around the US that have astrobiology departments.

What was your professional background when you got involved in this?

I was a professor of mathematics, and I was doing this research as a sort of hobby.

Comment: Isn't it strange how they would want to shut down such a cheap research program that has brought so much vital knowledge about the composition of comets, interstellar dust and diseases from space?

For more background see:

Catastrophist Theories of Life Gaining Ground: It Came From Outer Space

Mystery of India's "Red Rain" of 2001 Points to Extraterrestrial Origin

'Comets Responsible for Originating Life on Earth'

'Microbes from Venus could be reaching earth every 540 days'

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Info

Pinocchio's Real Roots Mapped

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Fri, 08 Jul 2011 09:30 UTC
Pinocchio
© Rossella Lorenzi / Gianni GrecoPinocchio, as the puppet appeared (without the long nose) in the serialized version of the story published in 1881.

The tale of the wooden puppet Pinocchio created by a carpenter in Florence may arguably be the most widely-known children's tale.

Now new research reveals that the story, written by Carlo Collodi 130 years ago on July 7, 1881, has deep roots in reality.

According to Alessandro Vegni, a computer expert, who has been comparing the tale with historic maps, the story of Pinocchio is set in the Tuscan village of San Miniato Basso, which lies midway between Pisa and Florence. The village's original name was actually "Pinocchio," according to the research.

The tale of Geppetto and his pine wood puppet, serialized in an Italian juvenile magazine under the title La Storia di un Burattino (The Story of a Marionette) in 1881, was turned into a book two years later called, The Adventures of Pinocchio.

Believed to be the second-most translated book after the Bible, the novel has inspired hundreds of new editions, stage plays, merchandising and movies, such as Walt Disney's iconic animated version.

But new details about the story's Florentine town setting reveal fascinating new details about the iconic work.

"The present name [of the village of San Miniato Basso] was given in 1924." Vegni said. "We know from historical records that the village was originally called 'Pinocchio,' probably after the stream that runs nearby."
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