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Frog

Fossil of 43-foot super snake Titanoboa found in Colombia

Thomas H. Maugh II
Los Angeles Times
Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:56 UTC
At 2,500 pounds and as long as a school bus, Titanoboa could eat crocodiles. It lived after dinosaurs died out, and changes scientists' ideas about 'how big a snake can be.'

Snakes
© Jason Bourque/U of Florida
Partial skeletons of the giant, boa-constrictor-like snake named "Titanoboa" found in Colombia hint that there may be no cap on temperatures in the tropics as global warming kicks in.
Researchers excavating a coal mine in South America have found the fossilized remains of the mother of all snakes, a nightmarish tropical behemoth as long as a school bus and as heavy as a Volkswagen Beetle.

Modern boas and anacondas, which average less than 20 feet in length and reach a maximum of 30 feet, have been known to swallow Chihuahuas, cats and other small pets, but this prehistoric monster ate giant turtles and primitive crocodiles.

"This is amazing. It challenges everything we know about how big a snake can be," said herpetologist Jack Conrad of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was not involved in the research.
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Meteor

Powerful New Technique to Measure Asteroids' Sizes and Shapes


PhysOrg
Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:31 UTC
Barbara
© ESO/L. Calçada
Artist’s impression of the asteroid (234) Barbara. Thanks to a unique method that uses ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer, astronomers have been able to measure sizes of small asteroids in the main belt for the first time.
A team of French and Italian astronomers have devised a new method for measuring the size and shape of asteroids that are too small or too far away for traditional techniques, increasing the number of asteroids that can be measured by a factor of several hundred. This method takes advantage of the unique capabilities of ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI).

"Knowledge of the sizes and shapes of asteroids is crucial to understanding how, in the early days of our Solar System, dust and pebbles collected together to form larger bodies and how collisions and re-accumulation have since modified them," says Marco Delbo from the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, France, who led the study.

Direct imaging with adaptive optics on the largest ground-based telescopes such as the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, and space telescopes, or radar measurements are the currently favoured methods of asteroid measurement. However, direct imaging, even with adaptive optics, is generally limited to the one hundred largest asteroids of the main belt, while radar measurements are mostly constrained to observations of near-Earth asteroids that experience close encounters with our planet.
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Telescope

How will the solar system end?

Stephen Battersby
New Scientist
Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:15 UTC
Image
© Raghvendra Sahai and John Trauger (JPL) / WFPC2 science team / NASA
MyCn18 is a young planetary nebula, located about 8,000 light-years away. Planetary nebulae are shells of gas and dust, which stars eject when they run out of fuel. This Hubble image reveals the true shape of MyCn18 to be an hourglass with an intricate pattern of "etchings" in its walls.

We live in uninteresting times. Since the ructions that created the planets in the solar system's first 100 million years and apart from an early migration of the giant planets and the odd colliding comet not swept safely aside by Jupiter - nothing much has really been happening. The planets circle like clockwork, the sun burns steadily, and even delicate life has survived on at least one world.

It cannot last. Something unpleasant is bound to shatter this comfortable calm.

Our sun will die, of course, about six billion years from now. But things could get ugly long before that. The steady gyrations of the solar system today may conceal the seeds of chaos. Even the tiniest of irregularities can build up over time, gradually altering the paths of the planets. Between now and final sundown, it has been calculated, there is a roughly 2 per cent chance of catastrophe. Mars might drift too close to Jupiter and be thrown out of the solar system. If we're very unlucky, hot-headed Mercury could run wild and smash into Earth.
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Telescope

Planet quest gets small

Alan Boyle
MSNBC
Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:29 UTC
hatnet, alien earth, extrasolar planet, planet, red dwarf
© David A. Aguilar / CfA
This artwork shows the "super-Neptune" planet.
Normally blue in color, its
red hue is caused by the
illumination from the
nearby dwarf star.
A network of small telescopes has bagged its smallest prize yet - and that's great news for astronomers.

HATNet's discovery of an extrasolar world only slightly bigger than Neptune helps prepare the way for an even more capable planet-hunter that could find alien Earths.
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HAL9000

IBM develop 'most realistic' computerised voice

na
Telegraph
Sun, 01 Feb 2009 01:40 UTC
Scientists at IBM have developed a computerised voice that is almost indistinguishable from a human.

The voice is made even more convincing because it has been programmed to include verbal tics such as "ums", "ers" and sighs.

Computer experts at IBM have invented the technology to be used on telephone helplines, satellite navigation systems and even on cameras or iPods.

It is so sophisticated that the devices will be able to pause for effect or cough to attract the users' attention, spelling an end to the irritating monotone voices that have become a part of everyday modern life.
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Telescope

Massive asteroid collision may have sent the moon into a spin

Ian Sample
The Guardian
Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:55 UTC
Moon closeup
© AP

Around 4 billion years ago, was this the far side of the moon?
A study of lunar craters suggests the side of the moon that now faces Earth was once facing in the opposite direction

The man in the moon may once have faced out to space, until a chance collision with a giant asteroid billions of years ago, scientists have found.

A study of the heavily cratered surface has revealed evidence of a huge impact early in the moon's history that may have been powerful enough to set it spinning, making its far side periodically point towards Earth.
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Magnify

Teleporter Sends Ions on Long-Distance Journey

Stephen Battersby
New Scientist
Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:25 UTC
We may never zap Jeff Goldblum across a room, but this feat of quantum teleportation is impressive nevertheless.

A team in the US has built a teleporter capable of sending the state of ytterbium ions from one side of the lab to the other; something that until now had only been possible with photons. The team say the technique could dramatically increase the distance over which quantum information can be sent.

Before this, teleportation came in two forms, both with severe limitations. Physicists could teleport quantum states between photons. But photons cannot be stored and so cannot form the basis for any quantum information device that needs a memory. In other experiments, the state of an ion has been teleported to another ion held within the same trapping device, a few micrometres away.
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Sherlock

Pagan Cult Mosaic Found Under Cathedral

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:00 UTC
Mosaic
© Unknown
Ivy Crown.
A Roman mosaic floor filled with scenes depicting pagan rites and oriental gods has emerged from the ground of a Catholic church in Italy, archaeologists announced.

The mosaic pavement, which measures 13 square meters (140 square feet) and dates to the fourth century A.D., was unearthed at a depth of about 4 meters (13 feet) below the the ground's surface during archaeological investigations in the crypt of the Cathedral of Reggio Emilia, in central-northern Italy.

"The size and design of the mosaic pavement suggest that it formed the floor of a huge room. We believe this was the residence of a wealthy Roman," Renata Curina, the archaeologist in charge of the dig, told Discovery News.
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Saturn

Did Asteroids Spark Mars' Magnetic Field?

Michael Reilly
Discovery News
Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:13 UTC
Mars
© Discovery News
Before they brought destruction, a series of huge asteroids orbiting Mars four billion years ago may have sparked its magnetic field, giving the planet its greatest chance for harboring life.

Mars has no magnetic field today. Cosmic radiation ravages its atmosphere and surface, a big reason why it is thought to be inhospitable to life. But between 4.5 and 4.0 billion years ago, its core of liquid iron and rock churned with intense heat, creating a dynamo that raised a protective magnetic force field around the planet.

Then the magnetic field abruptly disappeared, and no one knows why.
      Read More...
Saturn

Alien World is Slimmest and Fastest Known

Govert Schilling
New Scientist
Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:03 UTC
Exo-7
© COROT/Tautenburg Observatory/Klaudia Einhorn
The small planet Exo-7b (lower centre) was discovered by the way it dimmed its host star's light when it passed between the star and Earth.
Astronomers have found an extrasolar planet with the smallest diameter yet measured - it is no more than twice as wide as Earth. The rocky body is also the fastest known, whipping around its star in less than a day.

The planet, known as Exo-7b, lies about 390 light years away and orbits a star slightly smaller and cooler than the Sun. It was found by the French satellite COROT, which looks for the dimming caused when planets pass in front of, or transit, their parent stars.

The method revealed the world's tiny size, but could not pin down its mass precisely. To do that, researchers must search for the subtle wobbles the orbiting planet induces in its host star, a difficult task since the star's own roiling activity can mask the subtle gravitational tugs of a lightweight planet.
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