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Moon's Shadow Makes Waves in Earth's Atmosphere


Space.com
Mon, 03 Oct 2011 09:37 UTC
Midnight Eclipse
© Bernt OlsenPhotographer and skywatcher Bernt Olsen snapped this view of the partial solar eclipse of June 1-2, 2011 just during the "midnight sun" in Tromso, Norway. The partial solar eclipse was dubbed a "midnight" eclipse as its viewing path crossed the International Date Line across far northern latitudes.

Like a gigantic boat plying the heavens, the moon's shadow creates waves in Earth's atmosphere that travel at more than 200 mph, a new study reveals.

This effect was predicted back in the early 1970s, but researchers were only finally able to observe it during the total solar eclipse of July 22, 2009. The researchers discovered that acoustic waves, also known as sound waves, in Earth's upper atmosphere pile up along the leading and trailing edges of the moon's shadow as it moves across Earth, like the waves produced when a ship plows through water.

"We not only find the feature of the predicted bow wave but also the stern wave on the equator side of the eclipse path, as well as the stern wake right behind the moon's shadow boat," researchers write in the study, which was published Sept. 14 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The researchers, led by J. Y. Liu of National Central University in Taiwan, used a network of ground-based GPS receivers to track the 2009 eclipse as it passed over Japan and Taiwan. They noticed that acoustic waves were being generated along the edges of the moon's shadow, in a part of Earth's upper atmosphere known as the ionosphere.
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Calculator

HTC flaw gives hackers easy access to your info

Athima Chansanchai
MSNBC
Mon, 03 Oct 2011 09:50 UTC
Researchers have found serious security problems with some HTC Android smartphones, which could allegedly give hackers your identity, location and who you've been talking with and texting.

They've posted their findings on Android Police about certain HTC phones (including the Evo 3D, Evo 4G and Thunderbolt) and a vulnerability built into them by a suite of logging tools that collects information about the user - an excessive amount that should be secured and isn't.

Android Police founder Artem Russakovskii, Android developer Justin Case and Trevor Eckhart (who found the security hole) put out the alarm over the weekend, which owners of the phone should take heed of ASAP. If you've downloaded any app that requires connection to the Internet (and we're guessing most of yours, as ours, does), that app can now acquire the following off your phone, with[out] your permission:
  • the list of user accounts, including email addresses and sync status for each
  • last known network and GPS locations and a limited previous history of locations
  • phone numbers from the phone log
  • SMS data, including phone numbers and encoded text (not sure yet if it's possible to decode it, but very likely)
  • system logs (both kernel/dmesg and app/logcat), which includes everything your running apps do and is likely to include email addresses, phone numbers, and other private info
That's a whole lot of information that could be accessible to unscrupulous sorts, those that could easily take advantage of such a windfall. All with a single Internet permission. According to Android Police, HTC has practically opened the door for information robbers and given them the run of the house. Your house.
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Satellite

China's First Space Station Module Reaches Orbit

Shane McGlaun
Daily Tech
Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:02 UTC
Image
© MSNBCRendering of Chinese Tiangong-1
Two years from now other modules will launch

China is looking to make itself into a technology, military, and space power over the coming years. China wanted to be part of the ISS, but NASA would not allow the country to participate. Rather than sulk in the corner, the Chinese have set about building an ISS rival and the first section of that rival space station has now been launched into orbit.

The first section of the Chinese space station, called Tiangong-1, was launched into orbit successfully. The Tiangong-1 module lifted off aboard a Long March 2FT1 rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. MSNBC reports that the module is about the size of a boxcar and is in orbit 217 miles above the Earth.

The Chinese say that the module will be used to survey Chinese farmland using special cameras and will conduct an experiment that involves growing crystals in space.
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Telescope

SpaceX to Develop Reusable Launch System for Cheap Spaceflight, Mars Settlement

Tiffany Kaiser
Daily Tech
Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:22 UTC
Image
© universetoday.com
California-based space transport company SpaceX is looking to build a fully reusable orbital launch system that could make spaceflight more affordable, and eventually send people to Mars for permanent settlement.

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, has mapped out a way for the Falcon 9 rocket to deliver a Dragon spacecraft to orbit, then return to the launch site by touching down vertically under rocket power on landing gear. At the same time, the Dragon would make a supplies delivery to the International Space Station and return from orbit to make its own landing.

Achieving a reusable space transport has been difficult because of the engineering challenges associated with such a feat, but many have tried because a totally reusable rocket would cut the cost of spaceflight. Traditional rockets can only be used once, and a Falcon 9, for example, can cost about $50 million to $60 million.

Over the past year, Musk and his team at SpaceX managed to solve the complexities that have stumped many before and even made an animation of how the plan could work, which is a 90 percent accurate depiction. They now hope to make the reusable rocket system a reality.
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Radar

No crystal ball necessary: Scientists can accurately predict leadership emergence


VU University Amsterdam
Mon, 03 Oct 2011 06:43 UTC
Image
© UnknownJohn McCain
Dutch scientists at VU University Amsterdam are able to quite accurately predict the emergence of leaders in domains such as politics and the military. They developed a model of leadership emergence based on the interaction between our biological properties and social environment.

The model suggests that being selected as a leader is for a large part dependent on a match between physical attributes (such as the face), the message the leader conveys, and the perceived situation requirements in which the leader has to make decisions. For instance, this model has shown that in times where the perception of threat is great, potential leaders with a masculine face emphasizing this threat in their message are most likely to be elected as leader. On the other hand, potential leaders with a feminine face may be better off profiling themselves as a peacemaker, and attempt to make the majority of followers perceive the need for cooperation in the social network - rather than conflict - as the most important and beneficial need.
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Bizarro Earth

Earth's First Arctic Ozone Hole Recorded

Wynne Parry
Live Science
Sun, 02 Oct 2011 12:01 UTC
Stratospheric clouds
© Ross J. Salawitch, University of MarylandStratospheric clouds above the Arctic.

The high atmosphere over the Arctic lost an unprecedented amount of its protective ozone earlier this year, so much that conditions echoed the infamous ozone hole that forms annually over the opposite side of the planet, the Antarctic, scientists say.

"For the first time, sufficient loss occurred to reasonably be described as an Arctic ozone hole," write researchers in an article released Oct. 2 by the journal Nature.

Some degree of ozone loss above the Arctic, and the formation of the Antarctic ozone hole, are annual events during the poles' respective winters. They are driven by a combination of cold temperatures and lingering ozone-depleting pollutants.

The reactions that convert less reactive chemicals into ozone-destroying ones take place within what is known as the polar vortex, an atmospheric circulation pattern created by the rotation of the Earth and cold temperatures. This past winter and spring saw an unusually strong polar vortex and an unusually long cold period.

This year's record vortex persisted over the Arctic from December to the end of March, and the cold temperatures extended down to a remarkably low altitude, the researchers write.
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Info

Life's Extremes: Early Birds Versus Night Owls

Adam Hadhazy
Live Science
Sun, 02 Oct 2011 07:23 UTC
Life Style
© Karl Tate, LiveScience Infographic ArtistDo you like your morning coffee at 6 a.m. or more like Noon?

It's 6:30 a.m. For "early birds" or "larks," that's prime time. For "night owls," however, such an hour is ungodly.

Most of us are neither pure lark nor owl. But we all know people who can spring out of bed at the crack of dawn or stay alert well into the wee hours. In recent years, science has increasingly shown why these extremes exist.

Right from birth, our personal biological clocks are already wound. Genetics establishes a person's "chronotype," which is pegged to when his or her body feels up and at 'em.

"People span the range of those who are very early risers to very late setters, and this is genetically determined," said Frederick Brown, a professor of psychology at Penn State.

To a certain extent, behavior and environment - say, routinely pumping iron in a well-lit gym toward midnight - can shift our built-in predispositions. But for those of us squarely in one chronotype camp or the other, in the end, the body is the boss.

"If you're a morning-type person, you can't become an evening type, and vice versa," said Brown.
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Question

Are Aliens Part of God's Plan, Too? Finding E.T. Could Change Religion Forever

Clara Moskowitz
Space.com
Sun, 02 Oct 2011 07:51 UTC
Aliens
© DreamstimeAliens with UFO.


Orlando, Florida - The discovery of intelligent aliens would be mind-blowing in many respects, but it could present a special dilemma for the world's religions, theologians pondering interstellar travel concepts said Saturday (Oct. 1).

Christians, in particular, might take the news hardest, because the Christian belief system does not easily allow for other intelligent beings in the universe, Christian thinkers said at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to discuss issues surrounding traveling to other stars.

In other words, "Did Jesus die for Klingons too?" as philosophy professor Christian Weidemannof Germany's Ruhr-University Bochum titled his talk at a panel on the philosophical and religious considerations of visiting other worlds.

"According to Christianity, an historic event some 2,000 years ago was supposed to save the whole of creation," Weidemann said. "You can grasp the conflict."

Here's how the debate goes: If the whole of creation includes 125 billion galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in each, as astronomers think, then what if some of these stars have planets with advanced civilizations, too? Why would Jesus Christ have come to Earth, of all the inhabited planets in the universe, to save Earthlings and abandon the rest of God's creatures?
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Telescope

'Darkest' world enlightens astronomers about mysterious light-gobbling planet


PhysOrg
Sun, 02 Oct 2011 06:04 UTC
Light-gobbling planet
© David A. Aguilar, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for AstrophysicsAstronomers from Princeton University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics found that the distant exoplanet TrES-2b -- shownhere in an artist's conception -- likely absorbs 99.9 percent of the light that strikes it, making it the most light-thirsty object in the known universe. The findings may help astronomers better understand a mysterious characteristic of similar planets found outside our solar system.

A giant Jupiter-like gas planet has been revealed to be the most light-thirsty object in the known universe -- a finding that may help astronomers better understand a mysterious characteristic of similar planets found outside our solar system.

Recent analysis on a planet dubbed TrES-2b has found that it probably absorbs 99.9 percent of the light that strikes it, more than any other known cosmic entity, according to a report by Princeton University's David Spiegel, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences, and lead author David Kipping, a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Recently published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the paper not only identifies the planet as the "darkest" world yet observed, but also sets a new standard in determining just how much light "hot Jupiter" planets -- scorching balls of hydrogen and helium already known for being non-reflective -- can keep to themselves.

TrES-2b, which was discovered in 2006, is one of roughly 150 hot Jupiter planets known to exist outside our solar system. Astronomers are working to better understand the sometimes mysterious properties of these "dark" planets, from their mass to their orbital patterns to their atmospheric makeup.
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Info

'Dumb' Neanderthals Likely Had a Smart Diet

Charles Q. Choi
LiveScience
Sat, 01 Oct 2011 13:03 UTC
Neanderthal Family
© NASA/JPL-CaltechA Neanderthal Family.


Instead of Neanderthals being dim-witted hunters who only dined on big game, new findings suggest they had more balanced diets, with broad menus that may have included birds, fish and plants.

Neanderthals are currently our closest known extinct relatives, near enough to modern humans to interbreed, with Neanderthal DNA making up 1 percent to 4 percent of modern Eurasian genomes. A host of recent findings suggest they were not only close genetically, but may have shared many other traits with us, such as creating art.

Still, the term "Neanderthal" has long been synonymous with "stupid."

"Since they went extinct, conventional wisdom says they were dumber than us," said researcher Bruce Hardy, a paleoanthropologist at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.
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