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Bulgarian Astronomers Discover New Binary Star - Report


Novinite
Mon, 31 Jan 2011 14:57 UTC
Rozhen Observatory
© Novinite.comFile photo of the National Astronomy Observatory on Rozhen, the Rhodope mountans.
A new object in the Andromeda galaxy has been discovered by Bulgarian scientists working at the National Astronomy Observatory.

The discovery was announced on Monday by the Observatory, which is located in the Rhodope mountains. The newly discovered object is in the central part of the Galaxy and may turn out to be a variable star similar to the Mira star.

Mira is a binary star in the constellation Cetus, consisting of the red giant Mira A along with Mira B. Mira A is also an oscillating variable star and was probably the first non-supernova variable star discovered.

A star is classified as variable if its apparent magnitude as seen from Earth changes over time, whether the changes are due to variations in the star's actual luminosity, or to variations in the amount of the star's light that is blocked from reaching Earth.

The object, discovered by the Bulgarian astronomers using a Schmidt telescope, needs additional observations in order to be classified properly.
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Question

What Could Possibly Go Wrong: Deep-Drilling a Supervolcano

Karla Starr
Popsci
Mon, 31 Jan 2011 10:07 UTC
Supervolcano
© Jamie SneddonFire Bomb There are few good ways to deal with living atop a supervolcano, but critics worry that drilling deep into one to study its composition could, in the worst case, cause an earthquake or eruption.

When Mt. Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, the people around it had little warning, and more than 10,000 of them died as a result. Bad as that was, an eruption of neighbouring Campi Flegrei could be worse.

As a supervolcano, it's in the same category as Indonesia's Mt. Tambora, whose eruption in 1815 killed 92,000 people and caused the "year without a summer." Campi Flegrei's eight-mile-wide caldera is so low and unassuming that much of metro Naples was built on top, and yet a full eruption would be one of the largest in human history, the kind of geological event capable of plunging the world into a minor ice age. This time, scientists are determined to give the three million residents of greater Naples abundant warning.

That's part of the motivation behind the Campi Flegrei Deep Drilling Project. Co-sponsored by the European Union, a coalition of scientists from 18 countries plans to drill deep into the volcano and implant sensors that will measure changes in temperature, the movement of magma, and seismic activity. The first phase of the project involves drilling a 1,640-foot borehole to study the composition of the rock; phase two, drilling the narrow 2.4-mile master hole. Data collected from sensors that the scientists place at the bottom of those holes will make it possible to map the volcano's underground geometry with unprecedented precision. It could also give local authorities early warning if an eruption becomes imminent.

Either that, or the drilling itself could cause a disaster.
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Bulb

The New Light Bulbs Lose a Little Shine

Rebecca Smith
Wall Street Journal
Mon, 31 Jan 2011 06:28 UTC
Image
© Getty ImagesLos Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa handed out free compact fluorescent light bulbs in 2009.
Compact Fluorescent Lamps Burn Out Faster Than Expected, Limiting Energy Savings in California's Efficiency Program

California's utilities are spending $548 million over seven years to subsidize consumer purchases of compact fluorescent lamps. But the benefits are turning out to be less than expected.

One reason is that bulbs have gotten so cheap that Californians buy more than they need and sock them away for future use. Another reason is that the bulbs are burning out faster than expected.

California's experience is notable because energy experts have placed high hopes on compact fluorescent lamps. Often spiral-shaped, they screw into existing light sockets and offer energy savings of about 75% over traditional incandescent light bulbs.

Many nations are relying on them to help cut emissions from power plants and stretch electricity supplies further. The United Nations says 8% of global greenhouse-gas emissions are linked to lighting, and that adoption of compact fluorescent lights could cut pollution.
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Bulb

Man Invents Machine to Convert Plastic Into Oil


YouTube
Mon, 31 Jan 2011 00:00 UTC
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Satellite

Iran to Showcase New Rockets, Satellites


Breitbart
Sun, 30 Jan 2011 05:34 UTC
Image
© Agence France-PresseAn Iranian flag fluttering in front of a rocket designed to carry a satellite in 2008. Iran said it will showcase what it called a new range of rockets and satellites during annual celebrations marking the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
Iran said on Sunday it will showcase what it called a new range of rockets and satellites during annual celebrations marking the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic revolution.

Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi said Safir 1-B and Kavoshgar 4 rockets and Rasad and Fajr satellites would be unveiled during the 10-day celebrations that start on Tuesday, according to state television website.

Iran will mark on February 11 the 32nd anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution which toppled the US-backed shah. Every year Tehran uses the occasion to tout its scientific and technological achievments.

The Safir (Ambassador) 1-B rocket can carry a satellite weighing 50 kilogrammes (110 pounds) into an elliptical orbit of 300 to 450 kilometres (185 to 280 miles), the website said.

Iran sent into space in February 2009 the Safir 2 rocket carrying its first home-built satellite, called Omid (Hope).

The state television report said the other Kavoshgar (Explorer) 4 rocket has a range of 120 kilometres.
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Evil Rays

Did a gamma-ray burst devastate life on Earth?


New Scientist
Wed, 24 Sep 2003 16:00 UTC
Image
© Unknown
A devastating burst of gamma-rays may have caused one of Earth's worst mass extinctions, 443 million years ago. A team of astrophysicists and palaeontologists says the pattern of trilobite extinctions at that time resembles the expected effects of a nearby gamma-ray burst (GRB). Although other experts have greeted the idea with some scepticism, most agree that it deserves further investigation.

GRBs are the most powerful explosions known. As giant stars collapse into black holes at the end of their lives, they fire incredibly intense pulses of gamma rays from their poles that can be detected even from across the universe for 10 seconds or so. All the bursts astronomers have recorded so far have come from distant galaxies and been harmless on the ground, but if one occurred within our galaxy and was aimed straight at us, the effects could be devastating, according to astrophysicist Adrian Melott of the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

The Earth's atmosphere would soak up most of the gamma rays, Melott says, but their energy would rip apart nitrogen and oxygen molecules, creating a witch's brew of nitrogen oxides, especially the toxic brown gas nitrogen dioxide that colours photochemical smog.
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Family

Hugs Follow a 3-Second Rule

Rebecca Kessler
Science
Fri, 28 Jan 2011 10:33 UTC
Image
© Wolfgang Rattay/ReutersHug it out. Olympic athletes, like everyone else, tend to hug for about 3 seconds.
Ever wondered how long a hug lasts? The quick answer is about 3 seconds, according to a new study of the post-competition embraces of Olympic athletes. But the long answer is more profound. A hug lasts about as much time as many other human actions and neurological processes, which supports a hypothesis that we go through life perceiving the present in a series of 3-second windows.

Crosscultural studies dating back to 1911 have shown that people tend to operate in 3-second bursts. Goodbye waves, musical phrases, and infants' bouts of babbling and gesturing all last about 3 seconds. Many basic physiological events, such as relaxed breathing and certain nervous system functions do, too. And several other species of mammals and birds follow the general rule in their body-movement patterns. A 1994 study of giraffes, okapis, roe deer, raccoons, pandas, and kangaroos living in zoos, for example, found that although the duration of the animals' every move, from chewing to defecating, varied considerably, the average was, you guessed it, 3 seconds.
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Cow Skull

450 Million-year-old mass extinction closely linked to climate change


ANI
Fri, 28 Jan 2011 10:15 UTC
Image
© unknown
Geobiologists at California Institute of Technology have found how the mass extinction that occurred 450 million years ago is linked to a cooling climate.

The mass extinction coincided with a glacial period, during which global temperatures cooled and the planet saw a marked increase in glaciers.

So the team studied the timing and magnitude of the glaciation and how it affected ocean temperatures near the equator.

"Our observations imply a climate system distinct from anything we know about over the last 100 million years," said Woodward Fischer.

However, "one of the biggest sources of uncertainty in studying the paleoclimate record is that it's very hard to differentiate between changes in temperature and changes in the size of continental ice sheets," said Seth Finnegan.
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Binoculars

Dopamine Makes You Addicted To Seeking Information

Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D.
Blog "What Makes Them Click"
Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00 UTC
Image
© nida.nih.gov
On her Blog, What Makes Them Click, Dr. Weinschenk, published author and researcher, posts a list of 100 interesting articles on human perception and brain function. Number 8 explores the real purpose of dopamine in the human system. "You may have heard that dopamine controls the "pleasure" systems of the brain: that dopamine makes you feel enjoyment, pleasure, and therefore motivates you to seek out certain behaviors, such as food, sex, and drugs.

It's all about seeking - The latest research, though is changing this view. Instead of dopamine causing us to experience pleasure, the latest research shows that dopamine causes seeking behavior. Dopamine causes us to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases our general level of arousal and our goal-directed behavior."
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Info

Artificial Hydrogen Tests Quantum Theory

Philip Ball
Nature News
Fri, 28 Jan 2011 14:53 UTC
Hydrogen
© Nature NewsResearchers created ultra-light and ultra-heavy forms of hydrogen to probe the laws of quantum chemistry.

Scientists have created ultra-light and ultra-heavy forms of the element hydrogen, and have investigated their chemical properties.

Donald Fleming, a chemist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and his colleagues generated two artificial analogues of hydrogen: one with a mass a little over one-tenth that of ordinary hydrogen, and one four times heavier than hydrogen. These pseudo-hydrogens both contain short-lived subatomic particles called muons - super-heavy versions of the electron.

The researchers tested the behaviour of these new atoms in a chemical reaction called a hydrogen exchange, in which a lone hydrogen atom plucks another from a two-atom hydrogen molecule - just about the simplest chemical reaction conceivable. In a paper in Science,1 they report that both the weedy and the bloated hydrogen atoms behave just as quantum theory predicts they should - which is itself surprising.

The experiment is a "tour de force", says Paul Percival, a muonium chemist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada.

"I would never attempt such a difficult task myself," he says, "and when I first saw the proposal I was very doubtful that anything of value could be gained from the Herculean effort. Don Fleming proved me wrong. I doubt if anyone else could have achieved these results."
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