Science & TechnologyS


Saturn

Closest Earth-like planet may be half as far as previously thought

David Ferguson
Raw Story
Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:05 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock
The closest rocky, Earth-like world could be as close as 6.5 to 7 light years away, according to new research. New Scientist magazine reported Tuesday that Penn State University astronomer Ravi Kopparapu's estimates put these types of potentially life-sustaining worlds half as distant from Earth as previously believed.

In February, Courtney Dressing and David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts announced their findings that the nearest Earth-like planet is probably orbiting a small red dwarf star at a distance of 13 or so light years from Earth. "Earth-like" means a small, rocky planet, rather than a gas giant like Saturn or Jupiter.

Using data gathered by NASA's Kepler telescope, Dressing and Charbonneau analyzed fluctuations in the light reaching Earth from nearby red stars. Planets passing between the stars and Earth cause the light from that star to waver.

Small planets create smaller disturbances in the light and are therefore harder to find, but the scientists were able to count 95 dim, red dwarf stars nearby which host possible planets, including three Earth-sized worlds located within the "habitable zone," meaning at enough distance from their respective suns to allow for the existence of liquid water.
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Telescope

Ancient Mars could have supported primitive life, NASA says

Mike Wall
Fox News
Tue, 12 Mar 2013 09:03 UTC
Image
© NASA/JPL-CALTECH/CORNELL/MSSSThis set of images shows the results from the rock abrasion tool from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity (left) and the drill from NASA's Curiosity rover (right). Note how the rock grindings from Opportunity are brownish red, indicating the presence of hematite, a strongly oxidized iron-bearing mineral.
It's official: Primitive life could have lived on ancient Mars, NASA says.

A sample of Mars drilled from a rock by NASA's Curiosity rover and then studied by onboard instruments "shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes," NASA officials announced Tuesday in a statement and press conference.

The discovery comes just seven months after the Curiosity rover landed on Mars to spend at least two years determining if the planet could have ever supported primitive life.

"A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "From what we know now, the answer is yes."
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Fireball 4

Cardiff University astrobiologists find ancient fossils in Sri Lankan fireball fragments


Technology Review
Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:09 UTC
Algae-like structures inside a Sri Lankan meteorite are clear evidence of panspermia, the idea that life exists throughout the universe, say astrobiologists.
Meteor fossil1

On 29 December 2012, a fireball lit up the early evening skies over the Sri Lankan province of Polonnaruwa. Hot, sparkling fragments of the fireball rained down across the countryside and witnesses reported the strong odour of tar or asphalt.

Over the next few days, the local police gathered numerous examples of these stones and sent them to the Sri Lankan Medical Research Institute of the Ministry of Health in Colombo. After noticing curious features inside these stones, officials forwarded the samples to a team of astrobiologists at Cardiff University in the UK for further analysis.

The results of these tests, which the Cardiff team reveal today, are extraordinary. They say the stones contain fossilised biological structures fused into the rock matrix and that their tests clearly rule out the possibility of terrestrial contamination.
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Info

Extremely rare triple quasar found


EarthSky Org
Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:53 UTC
For only the second time in history, a team of scientists have discovered an extremely rare triple quasar system.

For only the second time in history, a team of scientists including Michele Fumagalli from the Carnegie Institution for Science in the United States have discovered an extremely rare triple quasar system. Their work is published in the Oxford University Press journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Quasars are extremely bright and powerful sources of energy that sit in the centre of a galaxy, surrounding a black hole. In systems with multiple quasars, the bodies are held together by gravity and are believed to be the product of galaxies colliding.

It is very difficult to observe triplet quasar systems, because of observational limits that prevent researchers from differentiating multiple nearby bodies from one another at astronomical distances. Moreover, such phenomena are presumed to be very rare.
Quasar
© Emanuele Paolo FarinaAn infrared image of the triple quasar system QQQ J1519+0627, made using the 3.5-m aperture telescope of the Calar Alto Observatory. The three quasars are labelled A, B and C.
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Heart

Predicting death in heart disease patients

Lee Rannals
RedOrbit
Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:08 UTC
Heart Disease
© Nonnakrit / Shutterstock
Researchers studying more than 3,500 patients with heart disease say the length of DNA strands can help predict life expectancy.

Scientists at the Intermountain Heart Institute at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City presented a new study March 9 at the American College of Cardiology's Annual Scientific Session in San Francisco, claiming they were able to predict survival rates among patients with heart disease.

The team said they used the length of strands of DNA found on the ends of chromosomes known as telomeres to determine whether someone had a greater chance of living a longer life or not.

Previous studies showed that telomere length can be used as a measurement of age, but these findings suggested that telomere length may also predict the life expectancy of patients with heart disease. The researchers from Intermountain Heart Institute at Intermountain Medical Center decided to test this out.

As people get older, their telomeres get shorter, until the cell is no longer able to divide. A shortened telomere is associated with age-related diseases like heart disease or cancer, as well as exposures to oxidative damage from stress, smoking, air pollution, or conditions like accelerated biologic aging.
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Comet

Comet C/2013 A1 and its close approach to Mars

Ernesto Guido & Nick Howes
Remanzacco Observatory
Sun, 10 Mar 2013 15:15 UTC
The discovery of comet C/2013 A1 (SIDING SPRING) was announced on Cbet nr. 3368 & M.P.E.C. 2013-A14, issued on 2013, January 05. The comet was discovered on CCD images obtained by notable Australian observer R. H. McNaught with the 0.5-m Uppsala Schmidt telescope a few days earlier on Jan. 03 (with a discovery magnitude 18.6). Precovery images of the comet *(images taken but not known/recorded of the comet) by the Catalina Sky Survey from 8 December 2012 and Pan-STARRS from 4 October 2012 were subsequently found and then used in an attempt to determine the orbit.

It has been noted that C/2013 A1 will have a very close approach with planet Mars on October 19, 2014. With an observation arc thus far of 148 days, JPL/NASA give a nominal closest approach of ~0.0003578 A.U. which is around 53,500 km on 2014 Oct. 19 at approximately 19:28UT +/- 1:03. The comet will pass Mars at a relative velocity of 56 km/s. Early estimates for the diameter of the nucleus have varied from 5 up to 50 km.

Due to the uncertainty within the orbital calculations, there is also a very small possibility that the comet may impact Mars (~ from 0.1% to 0.01% according to how you handle the observations thus far. See here for more info about this).

By comparison below you can find a table of the the closest known approaches to the Earth by comets published on Minor Planet Center website. This list is intended to be complete for comets discovered after 1700 that approached the earth to within 0.1020 AU. It also includes a number of well-documented earlier approaches by periodic comets. C/1491 B1 allegedly came to within 0.0094 AU on 1491 Feb. 20.0 TT, but the orbit of this comet is very uncertain.
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Attention

Facebook preferences predict personality traits

John Bohannon
ScienceNow
Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:00 UTC
Curly Fries
© Brand X Pictures/ThinkstockDiet of the clever? People with high IQs tend to "like" curly fries on Facebook, for reasons unknown.
Every day, millions of people click on Facebook "Like" buttons, boldly declaring their preferences for a variety of things, such as books, movies, and cat videos. But those "likes" may reveal more than they intend, such as sexual orientation, drug use, and religious affiliation, according to a study that analyzed the online behavior of thousands of volunteers.

Your preferences define you. Researchers have known for decades that people's personal attributes - gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, and personality type - correlate with their choice of products, concepts, and activities. Just consider the different populations at an opera and a NASCAR race. This is why companies are so eager to gather personal information about their consumers: Advertising is far more effective when it is targeted to groups of people who are more likely to be interested in a product.

The only aspect that has changed is the increasing proportion of personal information that is available as digital data on the Internet. And Facebook has become a major hub for such data through its like button. A team led by Michal Kosinski, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom as well as at Microsoft Research, wondered just how much people's likes reveal about them.
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Rose

Sound garden: Can plants actually talk and hear?

Becky Oskin
OurAmazingPlanet
Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:58 UTC
Acoustic Sensors
© Dan Johnson, Duke UniversityAcoustic sensors measuring hydraulic emissions from plant leaves in a Duke University laboratory.
The forest really does hum with life.

Though often too low or too high for human ears to detect, insects and animals signal each other with vibrations. Even trees and plants fizz with the sound of tiny air bubbles bursting in their plumbing.

And there is evidence that insects and plants "hear" each other's sounds. Bees buzz at just the right frequency to release pollen from tomatoes and other flowering plants. And bark beetles may pick up the air bubble pops inside a plant, a hint that trees are experiencing drought stress.

Sound is so fundamental to life that some scientists now think there's a kernel of truth to folklore that holds humans can commune with plants. And plants may use sound to communicate with one another.

If even bacteria can signal one another with vibrations, why not plants, said Monica Gagliano, a plant physiologist at the University of Western Australia in Crawley.

"Sound is overwhelming, it's everywhere. Surely life would have used it to its advantage in all forms," she told OurAmazingPlanet.

Gagliano and her colleagues recently showed corn seedling's roots lean toward a 220-Hertz purr, and the roots emit clicks of a similar tune. Chili seedlings quicken their growth when a nasty sweet fennel plant is nearby, sealed off from the chilies in a box that only transmits sound, not scent, another study from the group revealed. The fennel releases chemicals that slow other plants' growth, so the researchers think the chili plants grow faster in anticipation of the chemicals - but only because they hear the plant, not because they smell it. Both the fennel and chilies were also in a sound-isolated box.
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Arrow Down

Electronic sensors printed directly on the skin

Mike Orcutt
MIT Technology Review
Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:15 UTC
Electronic Tattoo
© MIT Technology ReviewElectronic tattoo: The image shows a colorized micrograph of an ultrathin mesh electronic system mounted on a skin replica.
Taking advantage of recent advances in flexible electronics, researchers have devised a way to "print" devices directly onto the skin so people can wear them for an extended period while performing normal daily activities. Such systems could be used to track health and monitor healing near the skin's surface, as in the case of surgical wounds.

So-called "epidermal electronics" were demonstrated previously in research from the lab of John Rogers, a materials scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the devices consist of ultrathin electrodes, electronics, sensors, and wireless power and communication systems.

In theory, they could attach to the skin and record and transmit electrophysiological measurements for medical purposes. These early versions of the technology, which were designed to be applied to a thin, soft elastomer backing, were "fine for an office environment," says Rogers, "but if you wanted to go swimming or take a shower they weren't able to hold up."

Now, Rogers and his coworkers have figured out how to print the electronics right on the skin, making the device more durable and rugged.
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Map

First evidence of Viking-like "sunstone" found

Megan Gannon
Live Science
Mon, 11 Mar 2013 08:35 UTC
Ancient lore has suggested that the Vikings used special crystals to find their way under less-than-sunny skies. Though none of these so-called "sunstones" have ever been found at Viking archaeological sites, a crystal uncovered in a British shipwreck could help prove they did indeed exist.

The crystal was found amongst the wreckage of the Alderney, an Elizabethan warship that sank near the Channel Islands in 1592. The stone was discovered less than 3 feet (1 meter) from a pair of navigation dividers, suggesting it may have been kept with the ship's other navigational tools, according to the research team headed by scientists at the University of Rennes in France.

A chemical analysis confirmed that the stone was Icelandic Spar, or calcite crystal, believed to be the Vikings' mineral of choice for their fabled sunstones, mentioned in the 13th-century Viking saga of Saint Olaf.
Image
© Alderney MuseumResearchers say this crystal found at the Alderney shipwreck near the Channel Islands could prove fabled Viking sunstones really did exist.
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