Anyone who has seen an optical illusion can recall the quirky moment when you realize that the image being perceived is different from objective reality. Now, a team of scientists from MIT, Harvard and McGill has designed a new illusion involving the sense of touch, which is helping to glean new insights into perception and how different senses - such as touch and sight - work together.
Ambiguous visual images are fascinating because it is often difficult to imagine seeing them any other way - until something flips within the brain and the alternative perception is revealed. This phenomenon, known as perceptual rivalry, is of great interest to neuroscience. Because rivalrous illusions produce changes in perception that are independent of changes in the stimulus itself, they may help to understand how the brain gives rise to conscious experience.
"The most familiar illusions involve vision," explains Christopher Moore, a principal investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and an assistant professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. "But we're interested in discovering general principles of perception, and we wanted to see whether similar illusions can occur in the tactile domain."
Science & Technology
Archaeologists in northwest Russia have discovered a chess piece dating back to the late 14th century, a spokesman for local archaeologists said on Friday.
"The king, around several centimeters tall, is made of solid wood, possibly of juniper," the spokesman said.
The excavations are being carried out at the site of the Palace of Facets, in the Novgorod Kremlin in Veliky Novgorod. The palace is believed to be the oldest in Russia.
"The king, around several centimeters tall, is made of solid wood, possibly of juniper," the spokesman said.
The excavations are being carried out at the site of the Palace of Facets, in the Novgorod Kremlin in Veliky Novgorod. The palace is believed to be the oldest in Russia.
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| ©Unknown |
The enigma began last year when a plain envelope with no return address arrived at the world-famous physics laboratory outside Chicago, addressed simply to "Fermilab."
Inside was a single sheet marked by pen with a bizarre series of hash marks, numbers and alien-looking symbols.
No one at the lab could make sense of the letter. Was it a joke? A threat? A hint at some exotic new theory?
Whatever the meaning, something about the inscription's order and symmetry touched Judy Jackson, the first person to examine the letter. "It was beautiful, kind of like abstract art," said Jackson, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's director of public affairs.
Inside was a single sheet marked by pen with a bizarre series of hash marks, numbers and alien-looking symbols.
No one at the lab could make sense of the letter. Was it a joke? A threat? A hint at some exotic new theory?
Whatever the meaning, something about the inscription's order and symmetry touched Judy Jackson, the first person to examine the letter. "It was beautiful, kind of like abstract art," said Jackson, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's director of public affairs.
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| ©Fermilab |
| This section of the coded message received last year at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia continues to puzzle the online community. |
Disemboweled and decorated with scarlet paint, metal eye plates, and a tattoo, an exquisitely preserved, thousand-year-old mummy has been discovered in Peru. (See photos.)
As anthropologists gingerly removed the layers of ancient textiles swaddling the thirtysomething elite male last month at a Lima lab, offerings both strange and familiar came to light - slingshots, corn, a figurine in identical dress.
Taken together, the artifacts, the mummy, and the excavation site suggest that the mysterious, little-studied Chancay civilization held a surprisingly tight grip on the fertile north-central Pacific coast of Peru during the culture's heyday, between A.D. 1000 and 1500, when it finally fell to the unstoppable Inca Empire, experts say.
As anthropologists gingerly removed the layers of ancient textiles swaddling the thirtysomething elite male last month at a Lima lab, offerings both strange and familiar came to light - slingshots, corn, a figurine in identical dress.
Taken together, the artifacts, the mummy, and the excavation site suggest that the mysterious, little-studied Chancay civilization held a surprisingly tight grip on the fertile north-central Pacific coast of Peru during the culture's heyday, between A.D. 1000 and 1500, when it finally fell to the unstoppable Inca Empire, experts say.
It's the Superman of space rocks. A mysterious meteorite that crashed to Earth last year may have been the toughest of its kind.
The Carancas meteorite struck the town of that name in Peru last September, blowing a hole in the ground 13 metres wide. The fact that locals saw a single object strike suggests a meteorite made of iron, like the one that created a similar crater in 1990 in Sterlitamak, Russia, because stony meteorites normally fragment high above the Earth and spread relatively harmlessly over a wide area. However, the debris found by investigators was stone.
The Carancas meteorite struck the town of that name in Peru last September, blowing a hole in the ground 13 metres wide. The fact that locals saw a single object strike suggests a meteorite made of iron, like the one that created a similar crater in 1990 in Sterlitamak, Russia, because stony meteorites normally fragment high above the Earth and spread relatively harmlessly over a wide area. However, the debris found by investigators was stone.
Using an ultra-fast method of measuring how a transistor switches from the "off" to the "on" state, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently reported that they have uncovered an unusual phenomenon that may impact how manufacturers estimate the lifetime of future nanoscale electronics.
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| ©NASA/JPL/Caltech |
| A schematic diagram of the Sun-Earth magnetospheric connection |
(M)odern scientists have found that the sun has an electrical plasma connection that tapers towards the earth's magnetic poles and causes electromagnetic storms.
Curiously, ancient mythical and cosmological traditions have long anticipated the discovery of the solar wind and its Birkeland currents when they spoke about "ropes" and "strings" tying the earth to the sun. In the mystical tradition of India, the three worlds - earth, air, and sky - are attached to the sun by means of a string "by which the Devas first strode up and down these worlds, using the 'Universal Lights' as their stepping stones".
A spacecraft sent on a mission to inspect comets has filmed the Earth and its moon from 31 million miles away, making an alien's-eye view of our world.
The two brief sequences show the Moon passing in front of the Earth as it orbits.
"Making a video of Earth from so far away helps the search for other life-bearing planets in the Universe by giving insights into how a distant, Earth-like alien world would appear to us," said University of Maryland astronomer Michael A'Hearn, who leads the project using NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft.
The two brief sequences show the Moon passing in front of the Earth as it orbits.
"Making a video of Earth from so far away helps the search for other life-bearing planets in the Universe by giving insights into how a distant, Earth-like alien world would appear to us," said University of Maryland astronomer Michael A'Hearn, who leads the project using NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft.
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| ©Donald J. Lindler, Sigma Space Corporation/GSFC; EPOCh/DIXI Science Teams |
| Series of images showing the Moon transiting Earth, captured by NASA's EPOXI spacecraft. |
LOS ANGELES -- While Microsoft Corp. chases Yahoo Inc., Eric Schmidt, Google Inc.'s CEO and chairman, is seeking a stronger relationship with IBM, something IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano appears very interested in.
Distant quasars shine light on ancient magnetic fields
Light from distant quasars - early galaxies that shine with tremendous brightness - has given researchers a new clue to the origin of vast magnetic fields studding today's galaxies: They were running strong when the universe was only a third of its present age.
Astronomers had observed that radio emissions from quasars tend to be angled, or polarized, in such a way that powerful magnetic fields must have twisted them. The greater their distance from Earth, the more polarized their light. But researchers didn't know whether the magnetic fields were part of the quasar or were present in galaxies encountered by quasar light as it made its journey to our telescopes.
Light from distant quasars - early galaxies that shine with tremendous brightness - has given researchers a new clue to the origin of vast magnetic fields studding today's galaxies: They were running strong when the universe was only a third of its present age.
Astronomers had observed that radio emissions from quasars tend to be angled, or polarized, in such a way that powerful magnetic fields must have twisted them. The greater their distance from Earth, the more polarized their light. But researchers didn't know whether the magnetic fields were part of the quasar or were present in galaxies encountered by quasar light as it made its journey to our telescopes.
