Science & TechnologyS


Comet 2

New Comet: P/2013 R3 (Catalina-PanSTARRS)

Discovery Date: September 15, 2013

Magnitude: 18.0 mag, 20.5 mag

Discoverer: R. E. Hill (Catalina Sky Survey), Pan-STARRS 1 telescope (Haleakala)
Comet P/2013 R3
© Aerith NetMagnitudes Graph
The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2013-S53.

Evil Rays

New electronic beam weapon could end police car chases

Norwegian scientists working on a defensive system to stop car suicide bombers may inadvertently have stumbled on the ultimate Big Brother solution to police pursuits everywhere.

Thousands of people die each year as a result of crashes during police car chases. The solution appears to lie in electro-magnetic pulse technology. During World War 2 and its aftermath, one of the things defence scientists quickly discovered is that nuclear explosions created massive electromagnetic pulses capable of stopping anything running on electricity in its tracks. A pulse could overload car ignitions or even aircraft in flight.

The Norwegians have been working on a scaled-down version of EMP technology to create a focused beam weapon capable of bringing cars to a stop, as this clip from NATO TV illustrates:


Info

Scientists discover potential cause of motor neurone disease


Australian scientists have helped discover what could be one of the only known causes of motor neurone disease.

The researchers were involved in discovering how a toxin in blue-green algae can contaminate food and cause problems in the central nervous system.

The cause of more than 90 per cent of motor neurone disease cases remains unknown.

Researchers are hoping the link found between motor neurone disease and blue-green algae could help treat the condition.

Megaphone

Sonar blamed for mass stranding of melon-headed whales

Dead whale
© Antsohihy resident 2008A local vet inspects one of the whales that stranded in northwest Madagascar in 2008.
Four years ago, about 100 melon-headed whales mysteriously entered a shallow lagoon system in northwest Madagascar and became stranded. Now scientists say the creatures' demise was likely brought on by sonar used to map the ocean floor for ExxonMobil.

Previous research has suggested that sonar can be harmful to marine mammals. The underwater noise can mask the calls of dolphins and whales and scare them away from their feeding grounds. Naval exercises using sonar have been linked to a 2008 stranding of at least 60 dolphins along the coast of Cornwall, England.

But researchers say the new findings from Madagascar mark the first time a marine mammal mass stranding has been closely tied to high-frequency sonar mapping.

From May to June 2008, about 100 melon-headed whales (Peponocephala electra) swam into Madagascar's shallow, tidal Loza Lagoon system, a highly unusually environment for the toothed whales, which usually stick to the open ocean.

Info

Genetic study reveals Aetas may have come from India 20,000 years ago

Aeta Tribe
© Aetainfo WikispacesAeta tribe.
A genetic link between Indians and two Aeta populations were unveiled in a study whose proponents include Frederick Delfin, university research associate at the DNA Analysis Laboratory in the University of the Philippines, Diliman.

According to Delfin, it is commonly accepted that the Asia-Pacific - including the Philippines - was peopled by human migration that passed through the coast of South Asia.

But the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) Indian-Philippine genetic link that Delfin and his team found "can be a signal of shared ancestry that actually originated from India".

Two mtDNA sets, M52'58 and M52a, that both originate from Indian populations were found in the Aetas of Zambales and the Agtas of Iriga in the Philippines.

These shared common haplogroups show a link between the populations of India and the Philippines that is about 5,000 to 20,000 years old.

This suggests that these migratory groups from India arrived before the Austronesian people landed in Philippine shores and populated the prehistoric Philippine archipelago.

Info

Terceira Island, Azores - Subaquatic pyramidal shaped structure found

Terceira Island
© Portuguese American JournalTerceira Island
An underwater pyramidal structure was identified at a depth of 40 meters off the coast of Terceira Island. The perfectly squared structure was sighted by a private yacht owner, Diocleciano Silva, during a recreational trip.

Estimated to be approximately 60 meters high, the enigmatic structure was recorded through GPS digital technology. "The pyramid is perfectly shaped and apparently oriented by the cardinal points," Silva told Diário Insular, the local newspaper.

Most recently, archeologists from the Portuguese Association of Archeological Research (APIA) have identified archeological evidence on Pico island that supports their belief that human occupation of the Azores predates the arrival of the Portuguese by many thousands of years.

Info

With Earth spinning more slowly, time isn't flying as fast as before

Earth
© EnidNews.com
Don't forget to set your clocks ahead two thousandths of a second before you go to sleep tonight. Same thing goes for bedtime tomorrow. And every day after that, because that is how much slower the Earth turns on its axis each day now than it did a century ago.

All of those sub-eyeblink slowdowns each century have been adding up, too. For Jurassic-era stegosauruses 200 million years ago, the day was perhaps 23 hours long and each year had about 385 days.

Two hundred million years from now, the daily dramas for whatever we evolve into will unfold during 25-hour days and 335-day years.

"We naively think there always has been 24 hours per day," says Thomas O'Brian, chief of the Time and Frequency Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). "But that is not the case."

For all but the past 60 to 70 years, those extra milliseconds adding to each day did not matter one whit. The boss still can't tell if you arrive at work two milliseconds after 9 a.m. And twice a year, those accumulating micromoments essentially vanish when most of us adjust our clocks with the start or end of daylight saving time.

Except for one thing: Those micromoments don't actually vanish, and in an era of intense technology, they now matter a whole lot.

Info

Atomic weight changed for 19 elements

Periodic Table
© Karl TateThe classic Periodic Table organizes the chemical elements according to the number of protons that each has in its atomic nucleus.
Nineteen elements on the periodic table - including gold, cadmium, arsenic and aluminum - are getting their atomic weights adjusted.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) announced that they've approved new weights for the elements thanks to more precise measurements and better calculations of the abundance of certain isotopes.

The standard atomic weight is the average mass of an element in atomic mass units. One atomic mass unit, or amu, is equal to 1/12 the mass of a single carbon-12 atom. (To put that in perspective, a single carbon atom is roughly equal to 5.857 × 10-26 ounces.)

To calculate standard atomic weight for an element, scientists average the atomic weights of all its stable isotopes. All atoms of a single element have the same number of protons in their nuclei, but the number of neutrons in the nuclei varies with different isotopes, leading to differences in weight. For example, carbon-12 has six protons and six neutrons. Its slightly heavier cousin, carbon-13, has six protons and seven neutrons. Isotopes also vary in their abundance on Earth, so the more plentiful an isotope, the more it will influence the average.

Comet 2

Comet ISON now in range for amateur astronomers

As the comet approaches its date with the Sun (Nov. 28th, 2013), it brightness is growing in magnitude. This has opened the door to backyard astronomers with smaller telescopes to glimpse the possible 'Comet of the Century'.


Credit: NASA

Comet 2

Comet ISON has apparent fling with Asteroid Eros

Slooh.com's Canary Islands Observatory captured asteroid 433 Eros seeming to fly with Comet ISON on September 24th, 2013. This 2nd largest near-Earth asteroid - which has been visited by the NEAR probe - is traveling faster, along a different orbit.


Credit: Slooh.com