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Did a 'sleeper' field awake to expand the universe?

Anil Ananthaswamy
New Scientist
Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:26 UTC
Image
© NASA/CXC/JPL-Caltech/Calar Alto O. Krause et al
Supernovae point to expansion
It's the ultimate sleeper agent. An energy field lurking inactive since the big bang might now be causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.

In the late 1990s, observations of supernovae revealed that the universe has started expanding faster and faster over the past few billion years. Einstein's equations of general relativity provide a mechanism for this phenomenon, in the form of the cosmological constant, also known as the inherent "dark energy" of space-time. If this constant has a small positive value, then it causes space-time to expand at an ever-increasing rate. However, theoretical calculations of the constant and the observed value are out of whack by about 120 orders of magnitude.

To overcome this daunting discrepancy, physicists have resorted to other explanations for the recent cosmic acceleration. One explanation is the idea that space-time is suffused with a field called quintessence. This field is scalar, meaning that at any given point in space-time it has a value, but no direction. Einstein's equations show that in the presence of a scalar field that changes very slowly, space-time will expand at an ever-increasing rate.
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Question

Jupiter Impact: Mystery of the Missing Debris

Matt
Space Fellowship
Sat, 12 Jun 2010 08:44 UTC
On June 3rd, 2010, something hit Jupiter. A comet or asteroid descended from the black of space, struck the planet's cloudtops, and disintegrated, producing a flash of light so bright it was visible in backyard telescopes on Earth. Soon, observers around the world were training their optics on the impact site, waiting to monitor the cindery cloud of debris which always seems to accompany a strike of this kind.

Jupiter_impact_1
© Anthony Wesley of Broken Hill, Australia.
A color composite image of the June 3rd Jupiter impact flash.
They're still waiting.

"It's as if Jupiter just swallowed the thing whole," says Anthony Wesley of Australia, one of two amateur astronomers who recorded the initial flash. The other, Christopher Go of the Philippines, says "it was thrilling to see the impact, but the absence of any visible debris has got us scratching our heads."
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Network

Apple's Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed

Ryan Tate
Gawker
Thu, 10 Jun 2010 03:35 UTC
iPad iLeaks
© gawker.com
Apple has suffered another embarrassment. A security breach has exposed iPad owners including dozens of CEOs, military officials, and top politicians. They - and every other buyer of the cellular-enabled tablet - could be vulnerable to spam marketing and malicious hacking.

The breach, which comes just weeks after an Apple employee lost an iPhone prototype in a bar, exposed the most exclusive email list on the planet, a collection of early-adopter iPad 3G subscribers that includes thousands of A-listers in finance, politics and media, from New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson to Diane Sawyer of ABC News to film mogul Harvey Weinstein to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It even appears that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's information was compromised.
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Info

Fly Your Face in Space


NASA
Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:36 UTC
NASA wants to put a picture of you on one of the two remaining space shuttle missions and launch it into orbit. To launch your face into space and become a part of history, just follow these steps:

First...Select the Participate button at the bottom of this page and upload your image/name, which will be flown aboard the space shuttle. Don't have a picture to upload? No problem, just skip the image upload and we will fly your name only on your selected mission!

Next...Print and save the confirmation page with your flight information.

Later...Return to this site after the landing to print your Flight Certificate - a commemorative certificate signed by the Mission Commander. You can also check on mission status, view mission photographs, link to various NASA educational resources and follow the commander and crew on Twitter or Facebook.

Participate
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Info

Has Jupiter Sent Cosmology Down a False Trail?

Eugenie Samuel Reich
New Scientist
Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:18 UTC
It's supposed to be the "gold standard" of evidence supporting the standard model of cosmology - including dark matter, dark energy and the exponential expansion after the big bang known as inflation.

But could it be wrong? Might misleading measurements by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) have been leading us towards the wrong theory of cosmology? One astrophysicist thinks so, and he says the planet Jupiter is to blame - though others insist that there is nothing amiss.

WMAP detects photons of the cosmic microwave background, the "echo" of the big bang, and these measurements are used to map the temperature of the sky. Ripples in the map are used to calculate a spectrum that produces a near-perfect fit to the standard model of cosmology.

Since 2007, Tom Shanks at the University of Durham, UK, who is a critic of the standard model, has been tracking a discrepancy between measurements from WMAP and X-ray measurements of some of the same star clusters made by ground-based telescopes. He initially assumed that the problem was with measurements from the ground and that the WMAP data was "pristine".
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Telescope

Youngest Planet Confirmed; Photos Show It Grew Up Fast

Rachel Kaufman
National Geographic News
Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:00 UTC
Image
© L. Calçada/ESO
Beta Pictoris b, the youngest known planet outside our solar system, in an artist's conception.
They're not the most aww-inspiring baby pictures, but new infrared images prove the youngest known planet outside our solar system does in fact exist - and that planets can grow up fast - a new study says.

Probably only a few million years young, Beta Pictoris b is already fully formed, despite standard models that say such a planet should take ten million years to reach "adulthood," researchers say. The planet breaks the record once held by the planet BD 20 1790b, which clocked in at 35 million years old.

The new planet is also nearer to its parent star than any other known planet outside our solar system - about as close as Saturn is to our sun.

Located about 63.4 light-years from Earth, that star, named simply Beta Pictoris, is similar to our own star. And like Beta Pictoris b, Beta Pictoris is relatively young - about 12 million years old, compared with the sun's 4.5 billion years.
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Einstein

Science Depends on Retesting Theories

Bradley T. Lepper
The Columbus Dispatch
Sun, 06 Jun 2010 02:59 UTC
The unique power of science lies in its extreme openness to new ideas coupled with a rigorous evaluation of the evidence offered in support of those ideas.

In science, even seemingly heretical notions can be proposed - Earth is round, continents move, bread mold is medicine - but theories must be supported by evidence. When they are refuted by the evidence, they must be discarded.

In 2005, Silvia Gonzalez, an archaeologist with the Liverpool John Moores University, reported the discovery of apparent human footprints in volcanic ash in the Valsequillo Basin south of Puebla, Mexico.
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Info

Revealing the ancient Chinese secret of sticky rice mortar

Michael Bernstein
American Chemical Society
Thu, 10 Jun 2010 20:18 UTC
Image
© iStock
Construction workers in ancient China used sticky rice to make a super-strong mortar for city walls and other structures that even withstood earthquakes. Chemists now have discovered the ingredient in sticky rice that made the mortar so strong.
Scientists have discovered the secret behind an ancient Chinese super-strong mortar made from sticky rice, the delicious "sweet rice" that is a modern mainstay in Asian dishes. They also concluded that the mortar ― a paste used to bind and fill gaps between bricks, stone blocks and other construction materials ― remains the best available material for restoring ancient buildings. Their article appears in the American Chemical Society (ACS) monthly journal, Accounts of Chemical Research.
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Einstein

ESC Chicago Keynote Makes Case for Time Travel

Karen Field
RF Design Line
Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:44 UTC
Ronald Mallett, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Connecticut, gave a mind-bending keynote speech on the physics of time travel to an enthralled audience at the Embedded Systems Conference here Tuesday morning, describing how black holes, blue giant stars, and worm holes (tunnels that connect the mouths of black holes) - some of the strangest things in the Universe - illustrate (at least in theory) the potential for time travel some day.

And that day, Mallett claimed, is not so far in the future as one might think.

"Time travel one of mankind's oldest fantasies. But is it really possible? All of us have wondered what's going to happen in the future, and we've contemplated the question, 'What if I could back and change something in my past?" said Mallet. "I am here to tell you we are on the threshold of making time travel a reality, and it's based on real physics."

Author of "Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality," Mallett explained how the trauma of his father's unexpected death when he was just ten and H.G. Well's book The Time Machine set him on a mission to travel back in time and save his father's life. "Thankfully, I was astute enough not to tell other people about my plan - they were already worried about me," Mallett .

That mission became a lifelong preoccupation, though Mallet says that for many years he used "black holes" as his cover story. "Black holes were considered a crazy idea, but legitimate crazy. That's what helped me survive academia," he said. "It wasn't until I got tenure and was made a full professor that I came out of the time travel closet."
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Sherlock

Who Killed The Iceman?

John Pickrell
Cosmos Magazine
Wed, 09 Jun 2010 07:00 UTC
Image
© South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology
Ötzi the iceman was murdered more than 5,000 years ago. HIT PLAY, above, to see an X-ray of Ötzi's chest.
The murder of Ötzi the Iceman is perhaps the most challenging cold case in history. Archaeologists used a splay of forensic methods to piece together a detailed picture of his life - and death.

It sounds like the opening to a television forensics drama. On a sunny September day in 1991, a German couple hiking through the Alps make a gruesome discovery.

Initially, the corpse partially jutting out of the melting ice is thought to be from a recent mountaineering accident. But on closer inspection, a far more stunning revelation emerges. The body is that of a murder victim; a murder that transpired five millennia ago.

Dated to around 5,300 years old, the remarkably well-preserved Neolithic Iceman came to be known as Ötzi, after the Ötztal region of the Austrian-Italian border where he was found.

In the years since his discovery, he has been subject to countless, delicate examinations. Now, three recent studies give us the most definitive account of how the Iceman came to be slain.
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