Most of Oort Cloud 'of extra-solar origin', say boffins

Halley's comet and other famous objects in our solar system may in fact have formed in orbit around alien suns far off across the vast gulfs of interstellar space, according to new research.

Comets, Halley's in particular, are old friends of the human race and their regular appearances in the inner solar system are thought to have been noted in humanity's earliest records. But in astronomical terms human intelligence is a very new thing - indeed, so is life on Earth.

According to top international boffins, long long before our home planet had even formed, the Sun and the various stars in our local neighbourhood were much closer together. The accretion discs of dust and space gumble from which all the planets and comets and everything originally formed were almost touching, and matter was routinely passed around among the young and excitable stars.

IT use: Turns itself off then on again very quickly

US government boffins say they have invented a fiendishly cunning new kind of laser running on quantum dots which, rather than producing pulses of light, actually emits pulses of intense darkness.

Unsurprisingly but mildly sinisterly, the new invention has been dubbed the "dark pulse laser". It works using extremely clever quantum dots which unlike regular boring quantum dots are made out of "nanostructured semiconductor materials" grown in special US government labs.

"Quantum dots are known for unusual behaviour," according to a statement issued by the labs in question.

The Standard Model of particle physics is the best answer man has yet come up with to the question: "What is the universe made of?"

Under the Standard Model, which has been pieced together by physicists over the last 70 years, the universe is believed to be made up of matter (four per cent atoms and 20 per cent "dark matter" that we cannot observe or explain) and energy (76 per cent "dark energy").

The elusive "God particle" - or Higgs boson - being sought in the Large Hadron Collider may exist in multiple forms, according to a new study.

Finding the Higgs boson is the primary aim of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment in Geneva, but new results from a rival study taking place in the US suggest there may be five versions of the elusive subatomic particle, which has never been detected despite five decades of research.

Leon Lederman, the Nobel laureate, dubbed the theoretical boson "the God particle" because its discovery could unify understanding of the content of the universe and help humans "know the mind of God".

A painting of two extinct birds found in northern Australia is believed to be one of the oldest pieces of rock art ever discovered. Scientists believe the image found on a remote plateau in the Northern Territory could be up to 40,000 years old.

The painting shows two giant birds that resemble a genyornis, an ancient flightless creature that is believed to have become extinct in Australia more than 40,000 years ago.

If it was painted at a time when this mega fauna was still alive, as some experts believe, then it would be among the oldest pieces of rock art ever found.

Depicted in red ochre, the painting was discovered under a sandstone ledge in Arnhem Land east of Darwin, where ancient indigenous artistic traditions began. It was found by Aborigines two years ago, but due to its remote location has only now been surveyed by scientists.

ESA's comet-chaser Rosetta is heading for a blind date with asteroid Lutetia. Rosetta does not yet know what Lutetia looks like but beautiful or otherwise the two will meet on 10 July.

Like many first dates, Rosetta will meet Lutetia on a Saturday night, flying to within 3200 km of the space rock. Rosetta started taking navigational sightings of Lutetia at the end of May so that ground controllers can determine any course corrections required to achieve their intended flyby distance.

The close pass will allow around 2 hours of good imaging. The spacecraft will instantly begin beaming the data back to Earth and the first pictures will be released later that evening.

Washington - The Naval Research Laboratory's (NRL's) Space Science Division is performing an intensive study of the Earth's upper atmosphere using a flotilla of NRL-built spaceflight experiments aboard four concurrent spaceflight missions, involving five satellites and the International Space Station. These coordinated observations utilize both in situ and remote sensors to measure the composition, temperature, and density of the thermosphere and the electron density of the ionosphere, with the objective of understanding the influence of the lower thermosphere upon ionospheric structure and morphology.

The joint Taiwan-US COSMIC/FORMOSAT3 mission, a constellation of six micro-satellites, was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in April 2006. The NRL Space Science Division designed and built the Tiny Ionospheric Photometer (TIP) compact far-ultraviolet (FUV) sensors, which are being used onboard COSMIC to study the Earth's nighttime ionosphere. The TIP photometers are among the highest sensitivity FUV airglow sensors ever flown. COSMIC is breaking new ground in the study of the Earth's ionosphere, especially in the areas of troposphere-ionosphere coupling and improved global specification of the ionosphere. Currently, TIP sensors aboard two COSMIC spacecraft are gathering ionospheric data for this study.

The Remote Atmospheric and Ionospheric Detection System (RAIDS) includes eight spectrographs, spectrometers, and photometers to comprehensively measure thermospheric and ionospheric airglow in the extreme-ultraviolet to near-infrared passband (55 to 874 nm). The extant hardware, built jointly by NRL and The Aerospace Corporation, was adapted for operation on the Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility (JEM-EF) aboard the International Space Station (ISS). RAIDS was launched through the DoD Space Test Program on September 10, 2009, aboard the maiden flight of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency H-II Transfer Vehicle and reached the ISS on September 17, 2009 where it was attached to the JEM-EF. RAIDS has been performing science operations since October 23, 2009, collecting temperature data around the globe in the 100 to 200 km altitude range, an altitude region with a paucity of previous temperature measurements.

August, 15 1977: a pulse of radio waves at 1,420MHz radiates down from space to be received by the Big Ear radio telescope in Ohio for 72 seconds. Then: nothing. Sporadic searches of the area since have failed to find this interstellar radio chorus. It's origins remain a mystery.

We are of course talking about the fabled 'Wow!' signal, the SETI detection that never was. Critics argued that because it switched off after a short time, never to heard from again, it could not be a real alien signal. There was no message contained within it, no structure, no signature of intelligent design.

Now there is a new explanation that raises the credibility of the 'Wow' signal's extraterrestrial hypothesis, an idea we'll call 'Benford Beacons'. Developed by the Benford family of scientists - James, Dominic and the science fiction author Gregory - it is a powerful argument against the expectation of a continuous, omnidirectional transmitter built by altruistic aliens that has held SETI in its sway for much of the last fifty years. The basic point of the Benford Beacons is that ET will not be omnipotent, but will face a cost for any actions they decide to take. "A beacon is limited by its power budget," writes Louis K Scheffer of Caltech in the SETI 2020 review. Therefore, ET civilisations will want to optimise their costs, limit waste, and make their signalling apparatus more efficient. They won't be blasting out signals in all directions continuously, but will 'ping' world after world, over and over again, with short bursts to try and grab our attention. It would be more akin to Twitter than 'Encyclopaedia Galactica'.

Washington, D.C. - Scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, with colleagues, have discovered a much higher water content in the Moon's interior than previous studies. Their research suggests that the water was preserved from the hot magma that was present when the Moon began to form some 4.5 billion years ago, and that it is likely widespread in the Moon's interior. The research is published in the on-line early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of June 14.

Mexico City - Recent interdisciplinary investigations regarding 31 marine fossils found at Palenque Archaeological Zone, in Chiapas, reveal that Maya people conceived their beliefs parting from this kind of vestiges, so their idea of the underworld was associated to water.

For Palenque inhabitants, marine fossils were the convincing proof of the land being covered by the sea long time ago, and parting from this fact they created their idea of the origin of the world, declared archaeologist Martha Cuevas, responsible, with geologist Jesus Alvarado, of research conducted by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).