Science & TechnologyS


Chalkboard

Mapping Celestial Terrains, in All Their 3-D Glory

Guy Gugliotta
The New York Times
Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:57 UTC
3D stars
© Robert W. GaskellA model of the asteroid Eros constructed from images from the NEAR spacecraft and, at far left, the beginnings of a topographic map of Mercury. The Eros model is made from 12,000 overlay “maplets” of the asteroid. Computer software processes the digital images in groups of 1,000.
Altadena, California - When space engineers made a map of a planet or a distant moon back in the old days, they made an 8-by-10 picture of part of the surface, identified a couple of landmarks - a crater and an outcrop, say - and measured the distance between them with a straightedge and a crayon.

"Then you punched the number into the computer and figured out the latitude and longitude," recalled Robert W. Gaskell, a planet-mapping expert. The result was two-dimensional, with only hints of surface texture or complexity.

No more. With modern computers, digital photography and laser range-finding, scientists today do a much better job of pinpointing the locations of their spacecraft, picking landing sites and otherwise describing the solar system's extraterrestrial landscapes.
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Sun

Young Active Star Resembles The Sun When It Was Young


Science Daily
Wed, 24 Dec 2008 03:41 UTC
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© CNES 2006, by D. Ducros; courtesy of INAF-Italian National Institute for AstrophysicsArtist's illustration of CoRoT satellite.
The CoRoT satellite*, has recently observed a star analogous to the young Sun at an age of approximately 500 million years, named CoRoTExo-2a. This star is accompanied by a giant planet orbiting around it in only 1.7 days, that was discovered by the CoRoT Extrasolar Planet Team.

An investigation on the intrinsic variations of the star has been carried out by another international team, led by astronomers of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) at Catania Astrophysical Observatory with the support of the Italian Space Agency (ASI).

With its very high photometric accuracy and the long duration of continuous observations, CoRoT has been able for the first time to measure the variations of the intensity of the star and follow it for more than 150 days. These unique data show flux variations of about 6 percent, at least 20 times greater than those of the present Sun, with a periodic modulation of 4.5 days. They are produced by spots, analogous to sunspots, but having a correspondingly larger area, that evolve continuously as the star rotates.
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Light Saber

New Type Of Laser Discovered


Science Daily
Wed, 24 Dec 2008 03:38 UTC
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© Frank WojciechowskiQuantum cascade lasers are small and efficient sources of mid-infrared laser beams, which are leading to new devices for medical diagnostics and environmental sensing.
A Princeton-led team of researchers has discovered an entirely new mechanism for making common electronic materials emit laser beams. The finding could lead to lasers that operate more efficiently and at higher temperatures than existing devices, and find applications in environmental monitoring and medical diagnostics.

"This discovery provides a new insight into the physics of lasers," said Claire Gmachl, who led the study. Gmachl, an electrical engineer, is the director of the Mid-Infrared Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE) center. The phenomenon was discovered in a type of device called quantum cascade laser, in which an electric current flowing through a specially designed material produces a laser beam. Gmachl's group discovered that a quantum cascade laser they had built generated a second beam with very unusual properties, including the need for less electrical power than the conventional beam. "If we can turn off the conventional beam, we will end up with a better laser, which makes more efficient use of electrical power," said Gmachl.
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Meteor

Scotland: 500 million-year-old rocks on Highland beach


News.Scotsman.com
Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:53 UTC
Scottish scientists have uncovered clues about a catastrophic event that radically altered the Earth's surface almost 500 million years ago.

Microscopic particles found in rocks on a Highland beach contain tiny remnants of meteorites. Experts at the University of Aberdeen believe the finds within rocks along the shore near Durness, Sutherland, are evidence of a massive collision in the asteroid belt 470 million years ago between Mars and Jupiter which resulted in thousands of meteorites landing on Earth.
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Eye 1

Blind Man Sees With Subconscious Eye

Joe Palca
National Public Radio
Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:44 UTC
Scientists are reporting the remarkable case of a blind man who can see.

The case involves a middle-aged male physician living in Switzerland, who is known only by the initials "TN." A few years ago, TN had two strokes, one on either side of his brain. The strokes severely damaged the part of the brain primarily responsible for vision, known as the occipital cortex.

Extensive testing of TN confirmed that even though his eyes were just fine, he was completely blind. He couldn't see objects held in front of him and used a cane to get around. Ask him if he could see, and TN would reply, "No, I'm blind."

But neuroscientist Beatrice de Gelder wanted to study TN further. She is affiliated with Tilburg University in the Netherlands as well as Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. First, she and her colleagues repeated tests on TN to satisfy themselves that he was indeed blind.
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Info

Scientists 'Suspicious' Of FBI

David Kestenbaum
National Public Radio
Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:05 UTC
Top scientists are "suspicious" of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and reluctant to discuss their work with agents, according to a new survey by the FBI and two professional scientific associations.

The survey results showed that only 35 percent of scientists would share research results with the FBI. By comparison, 87 percent of the scientists said they would discuss their work with the public.

"They would rather talk with a total stranger from the general public than an FBI agent about their research," says Michael Stebbins, the director of biology policy at the Federation of American Scientists. Stebbins helped plan the survey. "That is just shocking to me," he says. "To see that so many of them didn't trust the FBI on a fundamental level really showed that there is an uphill battle that the FBI has to face."

The FBI conducted the survey - the first of its kind - as part of a larger effort to understand what it needs to do to gain the trust and cooperation of the scientific community. Federal investigators say they need the technical expertise of the country's top scientists to tackle urgent issues from cybercrime to chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
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Info

Top 10 objects that have flown in space

Paul Marks
New Scientist
Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:37 UTC
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© Mike Levers/All Rights Reserved Beagle 2The Beagle 2 mission to Mars carried a colourful dot painting by Britart exponent Damien Hirst to calibrate the craft's cameras and spectrometer.
They might have the right stuff, but astronauts are only human. And superstition, sentimentality and the need to commemorate key events affect them just like anybody else. But unlike the rest of us, these folks have the ability to make cosmic gestures with the stuff of everyday life.

What kind of stuff? Some is fairly ordinary before it leaves the grip of Earth's gravity - think stamps and coins - and some is already extraordinary. Some wreckage from the world's worst terrorist incident is now sitting on Mars, for example. And when two bicycle mechanics lofted the world's first manned, powered aeroplane off a windy beach in 1903 they could not have conceived that one day parts of their flying machine would soar through the void, land safely on the Moon - and then fly 385,000 kilometres back to Earth. (You might even say the astronauts who did that had the Wright stuff. Sorry.)
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Evil Rays

US investigation into gravity weapons 'nonsense'

David Robson
New Scientist
Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:24 UTC
circling pairs of superdense neutron stars
© Mark Galick/SPLEven the gravity waves produced by circling pairs of superdense neutron stars can only be detected indirectly.
If you think the idea of gravitational waves propelling interplanetary spacecraft sounds like science fiction, you're in good company - any astrophysicist will rubbish the idea out of hand.

However, that didn't stop the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from commissioning a report to investigate whether the elusive waves could pose a threat to US security.

The JASON Defense Advisory Group were also asked to judge whether high-frequency gravitational waves could image the centre of the Earth, or be used for telecommunications.

Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time caused by the movement of an extremely large mass, such as a very dense star.

Yet even those from huge stellar events have been too weak to trip the most sensitive detectors. The best evidence is indirect, coming from observations of how superdense, binary neutron stars lose energy.
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Meteor

10,000 meteorites touched down in Canadian north last month: scientist


CTV.ca
Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:17 UTC
The sheer number of meteorite fragments that touched down on Nov. 20 in Saskatchewan -- first lighting up the sky in a dramatic light show witnessed by people across the prairies -- may have set a new Canadian record.
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Better Earth

Earth's Original Ancestor


Science Daily
Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:22 UTC
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© P. Rona; OAR/National Undersea Research Program (NURP); NOAABlack smoker at a mid-ocean ridge hydrothermal vent. Researchers generally believe that LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) was a heat-loving or hyperthermophilic organism, similar to those found today that live deep under the ocean in hot vents along continental ridges. New evidence, however, suggests that LUCA was actually sensitive to warmer temperatures and lived in a climate below 50 degrees.
An evolutionary geneticist from the Université de Montréal, together with researchers from the French cities of Lyon and Montpellier, have published a ground-breaking study that characterizes the common ancestor of all life on earth, LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor).

Their findings, presented in a recent issue of Nature, show that the 3.8-billion-year-old organism was not the creature usually imagined.

The study changes ideas of early life on Earth. "It is generally believed that LUCA was a heat-loving or hyperthermophilic organism. A bit like one of those weird organisms living in the hot vents along the continental ridges deep in the oceans today (above 90 degrees Celsius)," says Nicolas Lartillot, the study's co-author and a bio-informatics professor at the Université de Montréal. "However, our data suggests that LUCA was actually sensitive to warmer temperatures and lived in a climate below 50 degrees."
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