Science & TechnologyS


2 + 2 = 4

Study: El Nino doubles risk of civil war in tropics


CTV News
Sun, 28 Aug 2011 15:15 UTC
El Nino War Tropics
© AP / Sayyid AzimA Masai farmer is seen with his cattle, in Kitengela, Kenya, an area hit by severe drought, 50 km east of the capital Nairobi, Saturday, Sept. 19, 2009.
A new study makes a direct connection between the frequency of civil war in tropical countries, and extreme weather patterns.

The study suggests the risk of major violence doubles during El Nino, a weather phenomenon which brings hot temperatures and reduced rainfall to tropical regions every five years or so.

A group of researchers from Princeton and Columbia University's Earth Institute looked back over the past half-century, and compared the timing and location of civil wars with the appearance of El Nino Southern Oscillation, or ENSO.

The multi-disciplinary researchers looked at conflicts between 1950 and 2004, where 25 or more people were killed in "battle-related deaths," says the study which was published this week in the journal Nature. That amounted to 234 conflicts in 175 countries.

The group mainly looked at tropical countries that are directly linked -- or "teleconnected" -- to El Nino, and used countries that are weakly affected be El Nino as a comparison.
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Camera

Red Sprites: Lightning Bolts from Space


Space Weather
Sun, 28 Aug 2011 13:27 UTC
High above Earth in the realm of meteors and noctilucent clouds, a strange and beautiful form of lightning dances at the edge of space. Researchers call the bolts "sprites"; they are red, fleeting, and tend to come in bunches. Martin Popek of Nýdek in the Czech republic photographed these specimens on August 27th:

Red Lightning_1
© Martin PopekImage Taken: Aug. 27, 2011
Location: Nýdek,Czech Republic
"Sprites are a true space weather phenomenon," explains lightning scientist Oscar van der Velde of Sant Vicenç de Castellet, Spain. "They develop in mid-air around 80 km altitude, growing in both directions, first down, then up. This happens when a fierce lightning bolt draws lots of charge from a cloud near Earth's surface. Electric fields [shoot] to the top of Earth's atmosphere--and the result is a sprite. The entire process takes about 20 milliseconds."
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Star

Asteroid dust confirms meteorite's ancient origins

Sindhya N Bhanoo
The Times of India
Sat, 27 Aug 2011 10:23 UTC
Last year, a Japanese spacecraft brought asteroid dust back to Earth for the first time, and now researchers analysing the dust report that most meteorites on Earth originate from stony S-type asteroids like the one sampled, confirming what scientists have long theorized, but hadn't been able to prove.

Through actual, physical sampling of the dust particles, less than four thousandths of an inch in length, researchers were able to confirm that the dust is identical to material that makes up meteorites.

This and other findings are published in a set of six papers in the current issue of the journal Science.

The asteroid dust was gathered by Hayabusa, a spacecraft launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in 2003.
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Info

Closest Supernova in 25 Years Is a 'Cosmic Classic,' Astronomers Say


Space.com
Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:23 UTC
Supernova
© Peter Nugent and the Palomar Transient FactoryThe arrow marks PTF 11kly in images taken on the Palomar 48-inch telescope over the nights of, from left to right, Aug. 22, 23 and 24. The supernova wasn't there Aug. 22, was discovered Aug. 23, and brightened considerably by Aug. 24.

Astronomers have spotted the closest supernova in a generation - and in a week or so, stargazers with a good pair of binoculars might be able to see it, too.

The supernova, or exploded star, flared up Tuesday night (Aug. 23) in the Pinwheel Galaxy, just 21 million light-years from Earth. It's the closest star explosion of its type observed since 1986, and astronomers around the world are already scrambling to train their instruments on it.

Researchers said they think they caught the supernova, named PTF 11kly, within hours of its explosion.

"PTF 11kly is getting brighter by the minute. It's already 20 times brighter than it was yesterday," Peter Nugent, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement yesterday (Aug. 25).

"Observing PTF 11kly unfold should be a wild ride," added Nugent, who was the first person to spot the supernova. "It is an instant cosmic classic."
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Binoculars

Underground River "Rio Hamza" Discovered 4km Beneath the Amazon

Alok Jha
The Guardian, UK
Fri, 26 Aug 2011 05:44 UTC
Image
© Frans Lanting/CorbisAn aerial view of the Amazon river.
Scientists estimate the subterranean river may be 6,000km long and hundreds of times wider than the Amazon

Brazilian scientists have found a new river in the Amazon basin - around 4km underneath the Amazon river. The Rio Hamza, named after the head of the team of researchers who found the groundwater flow, appears to be as long as the Amazon river, but hundreds of times wider.

The rivers of the Amazon basin constitute one of the largest drainage systems on the Earth, with a catchment area of more than 7 million square kilometres.

Both the Amazon and Hamza flow from west to east and are around the same length, at 6,000km. But whereas the Amazon ranges from 1km to 100km in width, the Hamza ranges from 200km to 400km.

The underground river starts in the Acre region under the Andes and flows through the Solimões, Amazonas and Marajó basins before opening out directly into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
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Arrow Down

Russian Spacecraft Falls from the Sky. Is the International Space Station in Trouble?

Fred Weir
The Christian Science Monitor
Thu, 25 Aug 2011 19:30 UTC
Image
© Rossiya 24 TV Channel/AP PhotoA Soyuz rocket booster carrying the Progress supply ship is launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Wednesday
The second embarrassing loss of a Russian space vehicle in a week spells trouble for Russia's space program and its ability to maintain the International Space Station.

An unmanned Russian space freighter, which was launched on a resupply mission to the International Space Station, careened out of control and blew up in a "thunderous fireball" over Siberia Wednesday.

The blast triggering a state of emergency over a wide region and calls into doubt Russia's ability to handle its space obligations in the post-space shuttle era.

"The explosion was so strong that for 100 kilometers glass almost flew out of the windows," Alexander Borisov, an official in the remote and mountainous Altai Republic, on the Mongolian border, where most of the debris from the destroyed Progress spaceship rained down, was quoted by RIA-Novosti as saying.

Russian media reported Thursday that none of the wreckage fell on populated areas, and 40 lumberjacks who'd been working in the affected zone were all safe and accounted for.
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Telescope

Astronomers Discover Planet Made of Diamond

Ben Hirschler
Reuters
Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:26 UTC
Image
© ReutersAn exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard in an undated image courtesy of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.
Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.

The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

"The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun," said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

Lying 4,000 light years away, or around an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth, the planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits.

Pulsars are tiny, dead neutron stars that are only around 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) in diameter and spin hundreds of times a second, emitting beams of radiation.
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Info

Possible Type-Ia Supernova in M101 Discovered

Tammy Plotner
Universe Today
Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:25 UTC
Messier 101 Supernova
© Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSFMessier 101
Thankfully it's a mostly Moon-free set of observing nights ahead, because there a possible Type-Ia Supernova in M101! If you're scrambling your brains to remember where it's at - think northern circumpolar and read on...

According to AAVSO Special Notice #250 P. Nugent et al. reported in Astronomical Telegram #3581 that a possible Type-Ia supernova has been discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory shortly after eruption in the galaxy M101 and has been designated "PTF11kly". The object is currently at a magnitude of 17.2, but may well rise by several magnitudes. The object is well placed within M101 for good photometry, and observations of this potential bright SNIa are strongly encouraged.

There are currently no comparison stars available in VSP for this field; please indicate clearly the comparison stars that you use for photometry when reporting observations to AAVSO. Please retain your images and/or photometry for recalibration when comparison star magnitudes are available.
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Info

Amazon Expedition Discovers New Monkey

Wynne Parry
Live Science
Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:01 UTC
Titi Monkey
© Julio DalponteThe researchers discovered what appears to be a new species of Callicebus, or titi, monkey, with unique features on its head and tail.

A possible new species of monkey has been discovered during an expedition in an unexplored part of the Amazon in mid-western Brazil.

A specimen, which scientists know is a type of Callicebus, or titi, monkey has been turned over to experts at the Emílio Goeldi Museum in the Brazilian state of Para, where it will be studied and formally described.

"This primate has features on its head and tail that have never been observed before in other titi monkey species found in the same area," said Julio Dalpone, the biologist who discovered the monkey during the World Wide Fund for Nature-backed expedition.

The expedition found the monkey between the Guariba River and the Roosevelt River in the northwestern part of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.

The 20-day expedition undertaken in December of 2010 explored four protected areas of the Guariba-Roosevelt Extractive Reserve, the Tucumã State Park and the Roosevelt River and Madeirinha River. It was intended to gather information to improve the management of these areas.
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Info

Sex with Neanderthals Made Us Stronger

Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:00 UTC
Neanderthal
© CorbisA replica of an old Neanderthal man at the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann, Germany. New research suggest interbreeding with Neanderthals helped boost our species' immunity.

Mating with Neanderthals and another group of extinct hominids, Denisovans, strengthened the human immune system and left behind evidence in the DNA of people today, according new research.

The findings add to the growing body of evidence that modern humans who left Africa around 65,000 years ago mated with Neanderthals and Denisovans -- two archaic species that lived in Europe and Asia.

The study, which appears in this week's Science, is among the first to show how the interbreeding shaped modern human genes and the attributes they confer to us.

Peter Parham, a professor of cell biology, microbiology and immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and his team focused their analysis on "HLA" genes, which are fast-evolving vital components of the human immune system.

"The modern human populations who left Africa to colonize other continents were likely to have been small groups who started off with limited HLA diversity and suffered further reduction of HLA diversity due to disease," Parham told Discovery News. "Interbreeding with archaic humans introduced additional HLA variants into the modern human population that increased their genetic viability and capacity to resist infection."
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