Science & TechnologyS


Bizarro Earth

Key to Mysterious Ocean Glow Proposed


OurAmazingPlanet
Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:47 UTC
Milk Sea
© Steven Miller, NRLThe "milk sea" in a composite satellite image, and the region of the ocean where it was spotted.

Scientists may have an explanation behind the rare nighttime events in which the ocean glows bright blue as far as the eye can see in all directions.

A new study details a process in plankton that would potentially account for this widespread bioluminescent phenomenon, which was confirmed by satellites in 2005 (see above image).

Scientists already knew that tiny, unicellular plankton called dinoflagellates create the distinctive blue flashes in some waters. How they flash their blue light was less clear.

A key aspect of the potential mechanism for bioluminescence in dinoflagellates involves voltage-gated proton channels - channels in membranes that can be opened or closed by chemical or electrical events.
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Info

Ancient Meteorite Blast Resembled Volcanic Eruption


OurAmazingPlanet
Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:36 UTC
Impact Ejecta
© Branney and Brown 2011 (Journal of Geology 199, 275-292)Meteorite impact ejecta (left) compared with volcanic deposits (right) showing closely similar structures made of dust particles. The top two photos show accretionary lapilli in density current deposits, whereas bottom two photos show pellets that formed when dust in the atmosphere clumped together and simply fell onto the land surface.

A billion years ago, a meteorite slammed into the Earth along the coast of what is now Scotland. A forensic investigation by a team of volcanologists has pieced together exactly how the debris from the impact devastated the surrounding region.

The new research shows that some aspects of giant meteorite impacts may mimic the behavior of large volcanic eruptions.

Meteorite impacts are more common than most people realize, but what happens when the meteorite hits? Direct observation is understandably difficult, but researchers can pick through impact debris that hasn't eroded away and then forensically reconstruct these catastrophic events.

The volcanologists say that an improved understanding of what happens when large objects hit the Earth will help us understand how such events affect life on the planet.
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Book

Computer program to reveal who wrote the Bible

Ted Thornhill
The Daily Mail
Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:19 UTC
Precisely who wrote the Bible has been debated for centuries - but now scientists have devised a computer program that sheds much more light on the sources of the various religious texts within it.

Israeli computer scientists and Bible scholars have written an algorithm that analyses the writing styles found within various sections.

While it can't pinpoint an individual author, the program has been able to determine when a passage has been written by more than one person and can detect the point at which a new author has taken over.

Image
© Getty ImagesWrite stuff: The computer program searches for how common words are used throughout the scriptures
For instance, many believe that the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, was written by one person - Moses.
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Magic Wand

The Ice Age might still be going on inside China's deepest caves

Alasdair Wilkins
IO9
Sun, 09 Oct 2011 02:33 UTC
Image
© Permacultured on Flickr
Hidden in the dark caves of southwest China, a fragment of Earth's last Ice Age might well survive. Sadly, there aren't any mammoths hiding out in there, but tiny plants might represent a last link to 30,000 years ago.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Science and the UK's Natural History Museum have identified seven species of nettle from the Guangxi and Yunnan provinces that are completely unlike the tropical vegetation that dominates the region. The nettles are only found in the darkest corners of the provinces' caves and gorges, places where barely any sunlight ever shines. In fact, some of the nettles have to survive on only 0.02% of total available sunlight - you don't find that level of darkness anywhere outside the ocean depths.
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Bulb

The Original Human Language Like Yoda Sounded

Natalie Wolchover
Live Science
Thu, 13 Oct 2011 02:19 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Many linguists believe all human languages derived from a single tongue spoken in East Africa around 50,000 years ago. They've found clues scattered throughout the vocabularies and grammars of the world as to how that original "proto-human language" might have sounded. New research suggests that it sounded somewhat like the speech of Yoda, the tiny green Jedi from Star Wars.

There are various word orders used in the languages of the world. Some, like English, use subject-verb-object (SVO) ordering, as in the sentence "I like you." Others, such as Latin, use subject-object-verb (SOV) ordering, as in "I you like." In rare cases, OSV, OVS, VOS and VSO are used. In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Merritt Ruhlen and Murray Gell-Mann, co-directors of the Santa Fe Institute Program on the Evolution of Human Languages, argue that the original language used SOV ordering ("I you like").

"This language would have been spoken by a small East African population who seemingly invented fully modern language and then spread around the world, replacing everyone else," Ruhlen told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.
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Question

Fermi Finds 600 Gamma-Ray Mysteries in the Night Sky

Dauna Coulter
Science@NASA
Tue, 18 Oct 2011 01:02 UTC
NASA's Fermi team recently released the second catalog of gamma-ray sources detected by their satellite's Large Area Telescope (LAT). Of the 1873 sources found, nearly 600 are complete mysteries. No one knows what they are.

"Fermi sees gamma rays coming from directions in the sky where there are no obvious objects likely to produce gamma rays," says David Thompson, Fermi Deputy Project Scientist from Goddard Space Flight Center.

All Sky-Map
© NASAAn all-sky map of gamma-ray emissions made by the Fermi Space Telescope. Hundreds of the sources in the map are complete mysteries.
Gamma rays are by their very nature heralds of great energy and violence. They are a super-energetic form of light produced by sources such as black holes and massive exploding stars. Gamma-rays are so energetic that ordinary lenses and mirrors do not work. As a result, gamma-ray telescopes can't always get a sharp enough focus to determine exactly where the sources are.

For two thirds of the new catalog's sources the Fermi scientists can, with at least reasonable certainty, locate a known gamma ray-producing object*, such as a pulsar or blazar, in the vicinity the gamma-rays are coming from. But the remaining third - the "mystery sources" -- have the researchers stumped, at least for now. And they are the most tantalizing.
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Evil Rays

Best-Ever Topographic Map of Earth Released


Our Amazing Planet
Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:02 UTC
The most complete digital topographic ever made of the Earth was released by NASA today

The map, known as a global digital elevation model, was created from images collected by the Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or ASTER, instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite.

The 3-D effect is achieved by merging two slightly offset two-dimensional images (called stereo-pair images) to create depth.

The first version of the map was released by NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) in June 2009.

Image
© NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team At 14,505 feet (4,421 meters) in elevation, California's Mt. Whitney, located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains on the west side of Owens Valley, is the highest point in the contiguous United States.
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Question

Cyclops Shark & Other Cryptic Creatures Make October Creepy

Stephanie Pappas
Live Science
Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:16 UTC
Fetal Shark
© Pisces Fleet SportfishingA fetal shark cut from the belly of a pregnant shark caught in the Gulf of California. The shark, which would likely not have survived outside the womb, had only one eye.

In this world of Photoshop and online scams, it pays to have a hearty dose of skepticism at reports of something strange - including an albino fetal shark with one eye smack in the middle of its nose like a Cyclops.

But the Cyclops shark, sliced from the belly of a pregnant mama bull shark caught by a commercial fisherman in the Gulf of California earlier this summer, is by all reports the real thing. Shark researchers have examined the preserved creature and found that its single eye is made of functional optical tissue, they said last week. It's unlikely, however, that the malformed creature would have survived outside the womb.

"This is extremely rare," shark expert Felipe Galvan Magana of Mexico's Centro Interdisciplinario de Ciencias del Mar told the Pisces Fleet Sportfishing blog in July. "As far as I know, less than 50 examples of an abnormality like this have been recorded."

Pisces Fleet, a sportfishing company, rocketed the Cyclops shark to viral status online this summer with their photos of the creepy-cute creature. But this isn't the first time that reports of a mythical-seeming creature have spurred media sensations - last week alone, Russian officials announced "proof" of a Yeti, and paleontologists spun a theory about an ancient Kraken-like squid. Few reports of mythical beasts, however, come with proof.
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Video

Swearing On TV Linked to Teen Aggression

Jennifer Welsh
Live Science
Mon, 17 Oct 2011 07:08 UTC
Aggression
© dreamstimeBoys playing video games.
Swearing on television during prime time will most likely get a show fined by the Federal Communication Commission, and new research suggests it might be for good reasons.

By studying Midwestern youths, the study found that the more profanity they are exposed to through television and video games, the more accepting they are of swearing and the more likely they are to use profanity themselves. Those kids who swore more were also more likely to engage in physical aggression.

"Profanity is kind of like a stepping stone," said study researcher Sarah Coyne, of Brigham Young University. "You don't go to a movie, hear a bad word, and then go shoot somebody. But when youth both hear and then try profanity out for themselves it can start a downward slide toward more aggressive behavior."
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Blackbox

US: Low-flying Helicopter to Scan for Buried Faults in South-Central Colorado

Heidi Koontz
US Geological Survey
Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:02 UTC
Citizens and visitors should not be alarmed if they witness a low-flying helicopter, with a large boom extending from its nose, flying back and forth in the northern San Luis Valley or near Salida during October and November.

Starting on or near Friday, Oct. 20, and lasting for four to six weeks, a low-flying helicopter under contract to the U.S. Geological Survey will begin collecting and recording geophysical measurements for scientific research purposes. The helicopter will fly low to the ground in a back and forth pattern to passively measure the magnetic properties of the earth's crust. The survey area will extend over the northern part of Great Sand Dunes National Park, Poncha Pass and vicinity, and the communities of Crestone, Villa Grove, Saguache, and Salida.

This study should help answer a variety of scientific questions about the subsurface of this area, such as: Where are ancient faults buried? Do the faults act as a plumbing system for groundwater or geothermal hot springs? Are lava flows that erupted millions of years ago in the nearby mountains also present underneath the valley fill? These answers could potentially refine existing knowledge about the nature of aquifers, the potential for geothermal energy resources, and the likelihood of seismic hazards.
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