Science & TechnologyS


Meteor

New comet discovered where comets aren't usually found

Norval Scott
Globe and Mail
Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:45 UTC
Calgary - Astronomer Rob Cardinal didn't expect the time he spent installing new software at the University of Calgary's Baker-Nunn telescope earlier this month to change his life.

But days later, his computer was telling him there had been some unusual movement through the telescope - motion that Mr. Cardinal hadn't detected while gazing through it.

But after some sleepless nights peering through cloud cover and finally spying what he'd missed, Mr. Cardinal is now the confirmed finder of C2008 T2, a never-before-identified comet travelling through the solar system.

Or, as it will also be known, Comet Cardinal.
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Bomb

High Powered New Explosive Developed


Science Daily
Tue, 14 Oct 2008 02:44 UTC
Since the discovery of nitroglycerin in 1846, the nitrate ester group of compounds has been known for its explosive properties. A whole series of other nitrate esters have been subsequently put to use as explosives and fuels.

A research team led by David E. Chavez at Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA) has now developed a novel tetranitrate ester. The compound has a particularly interesting characteristic profile: it is solid at room temperature, is a highly powerful explosive, and can be melt-cast into the desired shape.

Nitrate esters are organic nitric acid compounds that can contain enormous explosive force. However, their liquid physical state makes handling very difficult. By mixing in various other components, Alfred Nobel developed dynamite, a distinctly safer and easier to handle nitroglycerine-based explosive. The only solid nitrate ester used as an explosive before is nitropenta. Because of its high melting point of about 140 °C, nitropenta must be pressed into the desired form.
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Pharoah

Archaeological Dig Uncovers Roman Mystery


Science Daily
Tue, 14 Oct 2008 02:38 UTC
University of British Columbia archaeologists have dug up a mystery worthy of Indiana Jones, one that includes a tomb, skeletons and burial rites with both Christian and pagan elements.

This summer, Prof. Roger Wilson led excavations at Kaukana, an ancient Roman village located near Punta Secca, a small town in the south-eastern province of Ragusa in Sicily.
clay amphora
© Roger WilsonArcheologist Roger Wilson pulls out the clay amphora from its 1,500 year hiding place.

Combing through the sand-buried site, the 15-member team made a series of startling discoveries. Central to the mystery was finding a tomb inside a room in a house dating from the sixth century AD.

Wilson explains that tombs during this period are normally found only in cemeteries outside the built-up area of a town, or around the apse of a church. And since the building was substantial with mortared walls and internal plaster, this would have been likely a tomb for the wealthy.
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Meteor

An Inside Look at Comet Holmes

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:59 UTC
The astronomy world buzzed in the Fall of 2007 when Comet Holmes - a normally humdrum, run-of-the-mill comet - unexpectedly flared and erupted. Its coma of gas and dust expanded away from the comet, extending to a volume larger than the Sun. Professional and amateur astronomers around the world turned their telescopes toward the spectacular event. Everyone wanted to know why the comet had suddenly exploded.
Comet Holmes
© NASA

The Hubble Space Telescope observed the comet, but provided few clues. And now, observations taken of the comet after the explosion by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope deepen the mystery, showing oddly behaving streamers in the shell of dust surrounding the nucleus of the comet. The data also offer a rare look at the material liberated from within the nucleus. "The data we got from Spitzer do not look like anything we typically see when looking at comets," said Bill Reach of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at Caltech.
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Info

Identifying Terrorist Threats from a Distance Via Visual Analysis


Science Daily
Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:52 UTC
A hand moves forward, but is it a friendly gesture or one meant to do harm? In an instant, we respond -- either extending our arm forward to shake hands or raising it higher to protect our face. But what are the subtle cues that allow us to interpret such movement so we can properly respond to others?

In research projects designed to assist the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and to provide deeper insight into how autistic individuals perceive others, Maggie Shiffrar, professor of psychology at Rutgers University in Newark, is examining how our visual system helps us to interpret the intent conveyed in subtle body movements.

While most autism research has focused on the difficulties in face perception, Shiffrar is one of the first researchers to examine autism as it relates to connections between visual analysis, body movement and our ability to interact with others.
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Satellite

Chandrayaan to orbit moon for two years


Indo-Asian News Service
Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:30 UTC
Chandrayaan-1
© Unknown
India's maiden lunar mission, the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft that launches on October 22, will orbit about 100 km from the lunar surface for two years, performing remote sensing of the dark side or hidden portion of the moon to unravel its mysteries, scientists working on the project said.

About 500 space scientists are working round-the-clock to launch India's maiden lunar mission next week.

The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft will be launched on board the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C11 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) at Sriharikota, about 90 km from Chennai and off the Bay of Bengal.
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R2-D2

Canada: New robotic repair system will fix ailing satellites


The Hindu
Sat, 04 Oct 2008 23:21 UTC
Queen's discovery allows servicing of distant satellites beyond the reach of manned space flight

Kingston, Ontario - Researchers at Queen's University are developing a new robotic system to service more than 8,000 satellites now orbiting the Earth, beyond the flight range of ground-based repair operations. Currently, when the high-flying celestial objects malfunction - or simply run out of fuel - they become "space junk" cluttering the cosmos, according to Eurekalert, the news service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"These are mechanical systems, which means that eventually they will fail," notes Electrical and Computer Engineering professor Michael Greenspan, who leads the Queen's project. But because they are many thousands of kilometres away, the satellites are beyond the reach of an expensive, manned spaced flight, while Earth-based telerobotic repair isn't possible in real time.
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Meteor

Deep impact unlikely

Leia Karimul Bashar
Washburn University Review
Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:25 UTC
Boom
© Illustration courtesy of NASA
People seem to take perverse pleasure in imagining how the world might end, and one wildly popular end-game theory is that a giant asteroid will smash into the Earth, exterminating all life.

But what are the chances that a significantly large object will crash into Earth within the next few generations, wiping out all living species?

"An impact that large is very unlikely," said Brian Thomas, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Washburn. "We know of at least five major mass extinctions on Earth, with the last one occurring about 100 million years ago. But it didn't wipe out all life. It only wiped out about half of the species."

Comment: Ah, so reassuring all this talk about asteroids coming once every 100,000 years. But what about comets?

To get an idea of the real danger facing us, check out the series on comets listed on the sidebar to the left. Don't be fooled by ignorant or lying dupes of the pathocracy.

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Satellite

Ancient Peru Pyramid Spotted by Satellite

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:49 UTC
Satellite view of Peru pyramid
© National Research Council, ItalyBuried History
A new remote sensing technology has peeled away mud and earth layers near the Cahuachi desert in Peru to reveal an ancient adobe pyramid, Italian researchers announced on Friday at a satellite imagery conference in Rome. In this satellite image, the white arrows show the buried pyramid and the black arrows other structures which have yet to be investigated.
A new remote sensing technology has peeled away layers of mud and rock near Peru's Cahuachi desert to reveal an ancient adobe pyramid, Italian researchers announced on Friday at a satellite imagery conference in Rome.

Nicola Masini and Rosa Lasaponara of Italy's National Research Council (CNR) discovered the pyramid by analyzing images from the satellite Quickbird, which they used to penetrate the Peruvian soil.

The researchers investigated a test area along the river Nazca. Covered by plants and grass, it was about a mile away from Cahuachi's archaeological site, which contains the remains of what is believed to be the world's biggest mud city.
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Robot

Machines Edge Closer To Imitating Human Communication


Science Daily
Mon, 13 Oct 2008 22:54 UTC
At a major artificial intelligence competition at the University of Reading on 12 October, machines have come close to imitating human communication.

As part of the 18th Loebner Prize, all of the artificial conversational entities (ACEs) competing to pass the Turing Test have managed to fool at least one of their human interrogators that they were in fact communicating with a human rather than a machine. One of the ACEs, the eventual winner of the 2008 Loebner Prize, got even closer to the 30% Turing Test threshold set by 20th-century British mathematician, Alan Turing in 1950, by fooling 25% of human interrogators.
ACE conversing with human interrogator
© University of Reading/Diem PhotographyACE conversing with human interrogator.

Top machines from around the world were entered into the competition and following extensive scrutiny these were whittled down to the five best for the 12 October finale. During the Turing Test at the University of Reading, the ACEs competed in a series of five minute long, unrestricted conversations with human interrogators, attempting to pass themselves off as human. The interrogators did not know whether they were conversing with a human or a machine during the test.
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