SOTT
SIGNS
OF THE
TIMES
OF THE
TIMES
Welcome to Sott.net
The World for People who Think
Science & TechnologyS
A blue-ribbon panel of scientists is trying to determine the best way to detect and ward off any wandering space rocks that might be on a collision course with Earth.
© Joe Cornish/GETTY10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and 1 again, happy new year!
In 1972, global commerce began to set its clocks by Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), based on the oscillations of the caesium atom. The snag was that other things, such as shipping and aircraft navigation, still relied on UT1 time, which divides one rotation of the Earth into 86,400 seconds. But the Earth's spin is slowing, so the two systems gradually go out of synch. "Over the course of a millennium, the differences would accumulate to about an hour," says Robert Nelson of the Satellite Engineering Research Corporation in Bethesda, Maryland.
To compensate, the ITU, or International Telecommunications Union, adds a leap second to atomic time every few years. However, many argue that we should stop tinkering with time, not least because of the glitches it causes (see "Add second...").
Now a group within the ITU, called Working Party 7A - after deliberating over the leap second for years - has told New Scientist that it recommends abolishing the leap second. Group member Elisa Felicitas Arias, of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris, France, argues that a timescale that doesn't need regular tweaking is essential in an increasingly interconnected world. What's more, she says, ships and aircraft now navigate via GPS rather than the old time system. GPS runs on a version of atomic time.
For a 22-year-old woman known as AW, denim evokes feelings of depression, disgust and worthlessness. Corduroy causes confusion, and silk provides utter contentment. She is one of two people known to experience a newly discovered form of synaesthesia, where textures give rise to strong emotions.
HS, another young woman who experiences tactile-emotion synaesthesia, gets no kick out of denim. Fleece and dry leaves disgust her, while the touch of tennis balls, fresh leaves and sand are heaven.
Other forms of synaesthesia include numbers and letters that evoke colours, shapes that evoke tastes shapes and colours with their very own fragrances.
AW and HS's sensations, unusual though they may seem, are an extreme form of the positive feelings most people associate with a soft blanket or the aversion to sharp knives and jagged rocks, says V. S. Ramachandran, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego.
"We have an affinity for fur because when were evolving in the ice age, we needed coats," he says. "This is the architecture on which [tactile-emotion synaesthesia] is built."
HS, another young woman who experiences tactile-emotion synaesthesia, gets no kick out of denim. Fleece and dry leaves disgust her, while the touch of tennis balls, fresh leaves and sand are heaven.
Other forms of synaesthesia include numbers and letters that evoke colours, shapes that evoke tastes shapes and colours with their very own fragrances.
AW and HS's sensations, unusual though they may seem, are an extreme form of the positive feelings most people associate with a soft blanket or the aversion to sharp knives and jagged rocks, says V. S. Ramachandran, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego.
"We have an affinity for fur because when were evolving in the ice age, we needed coats," he says. "This is the architecture on which [tactile-emotion synaesthesia] is built."
© Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell'Emilia-RomagnaDecorator styles
Evidence of the pottery workshops emerged in Modena, in central-northern Italy, during construction work to build a residential complex near the ancient walls of the city.
"We found a large ancient Roman dumping filled with pottery scraps. There were vases, bottles, bricks, but most of all, hundreds of oil lamps, each bearing their maker's name," Donato Labate, the archaeologist in charge of the dig, told Discovery News.
San Francisco, California - New satellite observations have revealed a previously unknown rhythmic expansion and contraction of Earth's atmosphere on a nine-day cycle.
This "breathing" corresponds to changes in the sun's magnetic fields as it completes rotations once every 27 days, NASA and University of Colorado, Boulder, scientists said Monday at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting.
The sun's coronal holes, seen as dark regions in the image above, direct plasma away from the sun and out into the solar system. When these particles get to the Earth, they heat the upper atmosphere, causing the outer atmosphere to expand and contract.
This "breathing" corresponds to changes in the sun's magnetic fields as it completes rotations once every 27 days, NASA and University of Colorado, Boulder, scientists said Monday at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting.
The dark regions of the image indicate coronal holes.
The sun's coronal holes, seen as dark regions in the image above, direct plasma away from the sun and out into the solar system. When these particles get to the Earth, they heat the upper atmosphere, causing the outer atmosphere to expand and contract.
© nasa
Scientists for the first time have gathered comprehensive evidence suggesting Enceladus may have all the necessary ingredients to harbor life in the ocean beneath its icy crust.
Particles in a large plume of water vapor emanating from the surface suggest the moon has an active ocean that circulates life-sustaining nutrients picked up from the rocky interior below.
Scientists have found new evidence suggesting a giant tsunami that crashed in New York City 2,300 years ago, was caused by an asteroid 330 feet in diameter, which slammed into the Atlantic Ocean nearby.
According to a report in Discovery News, Katherine Cagen of Harvard University and a team of researchers found clues in the form of slit in the Hudson River, which indicates an asteroid impact in the past.
While sifting through samples, the researchers found carbon spherules, which are perfectly round particles that form in the extreme pressures of an impact.
"But the main thing that closes the deal is that we looked in the spherules and found nano-diamonds," said Dallas Abbott of Columbia University, a co-author on the work. "These have only been found in impact ejecta or in meteorites," he added.
According to a report in Discovery News, Katherine Cagen of Harvard University and a team of researchers found clues in the form of slit in the Hudson River, which indicates an asteroid impact in the past.
While sifting through samples, the researchers found carbon spherules, which are perfectly round particles that form in the extreme pressures of an impact.
"But the main thing that closes the deal is that we looked in the spherules and found nano-diamonds," said Dallas Abbott of Columbia University, a co-author on the work. "These have only been found in impact ejecta or in meteorites," he added.
Paleontologists claim they have unearthed a new type of pterosaur and a previously 
unknown sauropod dinosaur in the Sahara Desert.
The probable pterosaur was identified by a large fragment of beak from the giant flying reptile, and the probable sauropod, an herbivore, was represented by a long bone measuring more than a yard long, indicating an animal nearly 65 feet (20 meters) in length. Now extinct, both would have lived almost 100 million years ago.
The fossils were found in southeast Morocco, near the Algerian border, during a month-long expedition.
© n/aA probable sauropod bone unearthed by researchers in the Sahara in Morocco. Shown are University College Dublin graduate student Nizar Ibrahim and David Martill of the University of Portsmouth, in England. Credit: Bob Loveridge, University of Portsmouth
The probable pterosaur was identified by a large fragment of beak from the giant flying reptile, and the probable sauropod, an herbivore, was represented by a long bone measuring more than a yard long, indicating an animal nearly 65 feet (20 meters) in length. Now extinct, both would have lived almost 100 million years ago.
The fossils were found in southeast Morocco, near the Algerian border, during a month-long expedition.
© AFPThis August 2008 image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory show a clear separation between dark and ordinary matter during a clash 5.7 billion light years from Earth.
By studying how gravity competes with the expansion of galaxy clusters, scientists have found "a crucial independent test of dark energy," said the research compiled by scientists using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
"This result could be described as 'arrested development of the universe,'" said lead researcher Alexey Vikhlinin of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in the northeastern state of Massachusetts.
"Whatever is forcing the expansion of the universe to speed up is also forcing its development to slow down."
Dark energy makes up about 70 percent of the universe, said the research to be published in the February 10 issue of Astrophysical Journal.
NASA's five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth's magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist. Solar wind can flow in through the opening to "load up" the magnetosphere for powerful geomagnetic storms. But the breach itself is not the biggest surprise. Researchers are even more amazed at the strange and unexpected way it forms, overturning long-held ideas of space physics.
© Jimmy Raeder/UNHA computer model of solar wind flowing around Earth's magnetic field on June 3, 2007. Background colors represent solar wind density; red is high density, blue is low. Solid black lines trace the outer boundaries of Earth's magnetic field. Note the layer of relatively dense material beneath the tips of the white arrows; that is solar wind entering Earth's magnetic field through the breach.
