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WISE Images Supernova's Rose

Supernova Puppis
© NASA/JPLAbout 3,700 years ago people on Earth would have seen a brand-new bright star in the sky. As it slowly dimmed out of sight, it was eventually forgotten, until modern astronomers found its remains — called Puppis A.

About 3,700 years ago, people on Earth would have seen a brand-new bright star in the sky. It slowly dimmed out of sight and was eventually forgotten, until modern astronomers later found its remains, called Puppis A. In this new image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), Puppis A looks less like the remains of a supernova explosion and more like a red rose.

Puppis A (pronounced PUP-pis) was formed when a massive star ended its life in a supernova, the most brilliant and powerful form of an explosion in the known universe. The expanding shock waves from that explosion are heating up the dust and gas clouds surrounding the supernova, causing them to glow and appear red in this infrared view. While much of the material from that original star was violently thrown out into space, some of it remained in an incredibly dense object called a neutron star. This particular neutron star (too faint to be seen in this image) is moving inexplicably fast: over 3 million miles per hour! Astronomers are perplexed over its absurd speed, and have nicknamed the object the "Cosmic Cannonball."

Some of the green-colored gas and dust in the image is from yet another ancient supernova - the Vela supernova remnant. That explosion happened around 12,000 years ago and was four times closer to us than Puppis A.

Airplane

China Aims to Bypass Heaven in Securing Rain for Crops

flood/China
© Getty Images
Fresh from scoring another record grain harvest this year, China now plans to get the weather to heel as well.

Rainmaking has now become part of the government's five-year-term goals, the state-run China Daily reported Friday. Over the next four years, Beijing wants five regional weather control programs to increase artificial rain by 10 percent, it says.

The plan marks a major expansion of China's "weather modification" efforts, deployed for years in Beijing to sometimes mixed results. Cloud-seeding - accomplished by shooting shells or rockets filled with silver iodide particles into promising puffs of white - was instrumental in clearing the smog out of the skies during the 2008 Olympics and has helped relieve the capital from chronic water shortages. But the effort has occasionally gone horribly, and expensively, awry.

Existing weather modification operations in Beijing and the northeastern province of Jilin currently produce 50 billion cubic meters of artificial precipitation, the China Daily said, citing the China Meteorological Administration (CMA). The number could read 280 billion cubic meters if "more effective weather intervention measures are taken," the paper said.

Telescope

Skywatchers Share Lunar Eclipse Photos, Videos

2011 Lunar Eclipse
© Patrick CullisA big eclipsed Moon over Indian Peaks in Colorado.
It was the final lunar eclipse of the year, and the last total lunar eclipse event for the western portion of the Americas until 2014, so skywatchers took advantage of clear skies, and many have shared their images and videos with Universe Today. Enjoy the views! For many of the images you can click on them and see larger versions on our Flickr group.

Above is a view in Colorado, taken by Patrick Cullis, showing the Indian Peaks with the eclipsing Moon setting overhead, taken during the lunar eclipse in the early morning hours of December 10, 2011. The Indian Peaks are a series of peaks on the continental divide near Boulder, Colorado. "The Moon set behind the continental divide right before totality, but it was still an awesome sight," Cullis said.

Below is a video a to-die-for view of the eclipse over the Pacific Ocean.

Gear

Vision Scientists Demonstrate Innovative Learning Method

Visual Learning
© Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science FoundationResearchers: Adult early visual areas are sufficiently plastic to cause visual perceptual learning.

New research suggests it may be possible to learn high-performance tasks with little or no conscious effort.

New research published today in the journal Science suggests it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort. It's the kind of thing seen in Hollywood's Matrix franchise.

Experiments conducted at Boston University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, recently demonstrated that through a person's visual cortex, researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks.

Think of a person watching a computer screen and having his or her brain patterns modified to match those of a high-performing athlete or modified to recuperate from an accident or disease. Though preliminary, researchers say such possibilities may exist in the future.

"Adult early visual areas are sufficiently plastic to cause visual perceptual learning," said lead author and BU neuroscientist Takeo Watanabe of the part of the brain analyzed in the study.

Neuroscientists have found that pictures gradually build up inside a person's brain, appearing first as lines, edges, shapes, colors and motion in early visual areas. The brain then fills in greater detail to make a red ball appear as a red ball, for example.

Researchers studied the early visual areas for their ability to cause improvements in visual performance and learning.

Satellite

Voyager 1 Updates Solar Electron Flux

sun close-up
© NASA
Seems Voyager 1 has been able to supply us with more accurate data to enable new calculations of the Solar Electron Flux[1].

In the late 1970's Ralph Juergens investigated how (or whether) the Sun could be obtaining its energy via an externally supplied flow of electrical power[2]. Now, in late 2011, we find that, because of data just recovered by the Voyager I space probe, Juergens' estimate of the number of available incoming electrons was far too conservative. Either that, or his initial estimate of the Sun's required cathode drop (voltage) was far too high.

A recent NASA release entitled "NASA's Voyager Hits New Region at Solar System Edge"[3] provides the following important updates to the information Juergens used in making his estimates:

Meteor

Meteor Crater Helps Unlock Planetary History

Image
© The Associated Press/Meteor Crater, Northern ArizonaPicture shows an aerial view of Meteor Crater, near Winslow, Ariz.
The Barringer meteorite crater - known popularly as "Meteor Crater" - near Winslow, Ariz., was formed some 50,000 years ago in the flat-lying sedimentary rocks of the Southern Colorado Plateau in Arizona. Now, scientists are using the crater to study mysteries near and far.

This out-of-the-blue geological feature is considered a prime example of a young, well-preserved and well-documented simple impact crater.

That means it represents one of the most common morphological features on planetary surfaces, both on Earth, and elsewhere in our solar system. Scientists are using this crater to probe not just our own planetary history, but the mechanics of space rock impacts throughout the universe.

Meteor Crater is one of very few impact sites on our planet where the geologic details of crater excavation and ejecta emplacement are preserved. While the outline of most simple craters is circular, the shape of Arizona's Meteor Crater strongly deviates from a circle and resembles a quadrangle.

Magic Wand

Swarms of bees could unlock secrets to human brains

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© Unknown
Scientists at the University of Sheffield believe decision making mechanisms in the human brain could mirror how swarms of bees choose new nest sites.

Striking similarities have been found in decision making systems between humans and insects in the past but now researchers believe that bees could teach us about how our brains work.

Experts say the insects even appear to have solved indecision, an often paralysing thought process in humans, with scouts who seek out any honeybees advertising rival nest sites and butt against them with their heads while producing shrill beeping sounds.

Dr James Marshall, of the University of Sheffield's Department of Computer Science, who led the UK involvement in the project and has also previously worked on similarities between how brains and insect colonies make decisions, said: "Up to now we've been asking if honeybee colonies might work in the same way as brains; now the new mathematical modelling we've done makes me think we should be asking whether our brains might work like honeybee colonies.

Magic Wand

Hundreds of NASA's moon rocks reported missing

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© NASA, via Associated PressThis undated handout photo provided by NASA shows a six-inch lunar sample disk containing three rock pieces and three clumps of lunar dirt.
NASA hauled back loads of rocks and dust from the moon, but apparently hasn't kept good track of those samples on Earth.

The space agency has lost or misplaced more than 500 pieces of the lunar rocks and other space samples, NASA's inspector general reported Thursday, making the case for better inventory controls.

Astronauts on the Apollo moon landings from 1969 to 1972 returned 842 pounds of lunar rock and soil to Earth. The space agency now loans samples, along with meteorite and comet dust, to about 377 researchers worldwide.

The space agency now lists 517 moon rock samples as missing or stolen.

Light Saber

Poland Joins Ranks of Grassroots Anti-Monsanto Activism

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The anti-GMO, anti-Monsanto movement has been making major waves in recent months.

The inexorable growth of this revolution was recently highlighted by the popularity of Anthony Gucciardi's article detailing actions taken by Hungary to destroy 1000 acres of maize and issue a 10-year ban on GM foods. That article has gone mega-viral with over 95,000 shares, and is one of the best indications to date that we the people can take on even the largest corporations if we just take action and make our voices heard.

Monsanto is indeed the worst company of 2011, and people the world over are joining the opposition. Poland is contributing to the coordinated effort against GMO to protect their health freedom and preserve their local farming economy. "The Festival of Nature and Culture" begins today and runs through December 11th as a celebration of Poland's effort to stop GMO and save traditional seeds. It is another angle on generating support for a Poland-wide demand to kill off continued government attempts to sneak through an Act that would permit GM seeds to be commercially grown there.

What is new about this initiative is that many artists are giving their names and talents to this festival. Jazz musicians, painters, actors, designers, rock bands and more are among those pledging their support. The festival comprises more than 80 events to take place all over Poland this coming weekend.

Activists in Poland are joining others around the world in a mission to keep their torch burning through a celebration of unmodified nature and culture. The ICPPC is coordinating this event from its farmhouse base in South Malopolska and J&J will also be engaged in other awareness-raising events in the nation's capital of Krakow over the weekend.

Magic Wand

Mysterious Energy Bursts Recorded High Above U.S. Midwest: Lightning Sprites, Elves Caught on Camera

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© NHK via AGUA sprite appears above a storm cloud in a still from the new video.
Flying above the U.S. Midwest, scientists using high-speed video cameras have caught the first 3-D images of sprites, elves, blue jets, and crawlers - in the form of lightning, that is.

First seen by scientists in 1989, sprites and their menagerie of exotically named kin are bursts of electrical energy that form about 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth, sometimes leaping all the way from the tops of thunderheads to outer space.

Lightning sprites are huge but quick - they appear and are gone in only ten milliseconds, said Hans Stenbaek-Nielsen, a space physicist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

The phenomena are also extremely bright.