Science & TechnologyS


Saturn

Flashback Rhythm in Saturns Rings


NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Thu, 31 Jan 2008 04:47 UTC
Saturn's Ring Rhythm
© NASA/JPL/Space Science InstituteSaturn's Ring Rhythm
Radio signals sent by NASA's Cassini spacecraft to Earth through Saturn's rings revealed the presence of highly unusual regular formations of densely grouped ring particles. The harmonic ring structure caused the radio signal frequency to separate into three distinct components. The observed frequencies determine the regular spacing to be as small as 100 meters (320 feet), the finest-scale ring structure observed so far.

The regularly spaced yellow grid depicts the harmonic structure in Saturn's inner Ring A, and the image on the bottom right shows an actual observed frequency pattern (spectrogram). Color represents the observed signal strength. The structure acts like an enormously extended natural diffraction grating that separates the signal frequency into the three distinct components shown. The frequencies determine the regular spacing of the diffraction grating, 160 meters (500 feet) in this case. The image of Saturn was taken with Cassini's cameras and is shown here to illustrate the occultation. For additional information on the radio observations see PIA10233.
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Saturn

Flashback Saturn's rings have own atmosphere


ESA
Wed, 17 Aug 2005 04:34 UTC
During its close fly-bys of the ring system, instruments on Cassini have been able to determine that the environment around the rings is like an atmosphere, composed principally of molecular oxygen. This atmosphere is very similar to that of Jupiter's moons Europa and Ganymede.

The finding was made by two instruments on Cassini, both of which have European involvement: the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) has co-investigators from USA and Germany, and the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) instrument has co-investigators from US, Finland, Hungary, France, Norway and UK.

Saturn's rings consist largely of water ice mixed with smaller amounts of dust and rocky matter. They are extraordinarily thin: though they are 250 000 kilometres or more in diameter they are no more than 1.5 kilometres thick.
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Robot

Killer robots and a revolution in warfare

Bernd Debusmann
Reuters
Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:42 UTC
Washington--They have no fear, they never tire, they are not upset when the soldier next to them gets blown to pieces. Their morale doesn't suffer by having to do, again and again, the jobs known in the military as the Three Ds - dull, dirty and dangerous.

They are military robots and their rapidly increasing numbers and growing sophistication may herald the end of thousands of years of human monopoly on fighting war. "Science fiction is moving to the battlefield. The future is upon us," as Brookings scholar Peter Singer put it to a conference of experts at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania this month.

Singer just published Wired For War - the Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, a book that traces the rise of the machines and predicts that in future wars they will not only play greater roles in executing missions but also in planning them.

Numbers reflect the explosive growth of robotic systems. The U.S. forces that stormed into Iraq in 2003 had no robots on the ground. There were none in Afghanistan either. Now those two wars are fought with the help of an estimated 12,000 ground-based robots and 7,000 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the technical term for drone, or robotic aircraft.
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Info

Neandertals Babies Didn't Do the Twist

Ann Gibbons
Sciencenow Daily News
Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:59 UTC
Image
© Timothy Weaver and Jean-Jacques Hublin Twist and shout. This virtual reconstruction of a Neandertal pelvis suggests that Neandertal babies didn't rotate during birth.
Giving birth is more difficult--and dangerous--for modern humans than for any other primate. Not only do human mothers have to push out babies with unusually big heads, but infants also have to rotate to fit their heads through the narrow birth canal. Now, a new virtual reconstruction of the pelvis of a Neandertal woman suggests that Neandertal mothers also had a tough time giving birth to their big-headed infants--but the babies, at least, didn't have to rotate to get out.
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Better Earth

Giant Space Blob Is Biggest Known Baby Galaxy?

Rebecca Carroll
National Geographic
Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:49 UTC
space glob
A giant space blob discovered in the far reaches of the universe has scientists puzzling over what exactly the bizarre object might be, according to a new study.

At 12.9 billion light-years away, the blob - dubbed Himiko after a legendary Japanese queen - is the fourth most distant object ever discovered, said lead study author Masami Ouchi, a Carnegie Institution fellow.

Because of the time it takes light from so far away to reach Earth, astronomers are seeing the blob as it was when the universe was just 800 million years old, about 6 percent of its current age.

But "the most significant feature of this object is the size," said Ouchi, who describes the find in the May 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
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Display

Hackers hijack 1.9 million computers worldwide

Sarah Knapton
The Telegraph
Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:04 UTC
A gang of hackers which has hijacked 1.9 million computers around the world is being hunted by the Metropolitan Police and the FBI.

The Ukrainian network has taken control of hundreds of large corporations and 77 government departments.

It is at least four times larger than previous hi-jackings of usually around 200,000 to 500,000 computers.

In the UK alone, more than 500 companies were caught in the network of infected machines, including both large and small businesses, the Financial Times reported.
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Network

UN World Digital Library now online


Press TV
Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:40 UTC
World Digital Library
© FazeliPeople attend the initiation of the World Digital Library in Paris
The UN has launched the World Digital Library aimed at promoting peace and global cultural understanding via digital Internet technology.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) launched the website which offers information in seven languages -- Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian -- on Tuesday.

Some 32 libraries and research institutions from 19 countries helped to create the site, which includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, prints and photographs.
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Telescope

Astronomers Discover Youngest And Lowest Mass Dwarfs


Space Daily
Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:41 UTC
Image
© UnknownHidden and mysterious. Great swaths of dust disguise this direction in our galaxy. This great molecular cloud harbours the formation of new solar systems. However, facination with the field lies not with what is seen, but instead by the intimated hints of activity. Subtle glows of pink and blue do little to cast warmth on a field that shows the structure of the cold interstellar medium. To the left the cluster and surrounding bluish reflection nebula of IC348 punctuate the darkness. To the right the strange and ornate concentration of NGC 1333 looks as a miniature peacock amid dark and foreboding clouds.
Astronomers have found three brown dwarfs with estimated masses of less than 10 times that of Jupiter, making them among the youngest and lowest mass sub-stellar objects detected in the solar neighborhood to date.

The observations were made by a team of astronomers working at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de l'Observatoire de Grenoble (LAOG), France, using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). Andrew Burgess will be presenting the discovery at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, on Wednesday 22nd April.

The dwarfs were found in a star forming region named IC 348, which lies almost 1000 light years from the Solar System towards the constellation of Perseus. This cluster is approximately 3 million years old - extremely young compared to our 4.5 billion year old Sun - which makes it a good location in order to search for the lowest mass brown dwarfs.
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Telescope

Hubble Survey Reveals The Formation Of The First Massive Galaxies


Space Daily
Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:31 UTC
Image
© C Conselice, A Bluck, GOODS NICMOS TeamNICMOS image of merging galaxies.
First results from the GOODS NICMOS survey, the largest Hubble Space Telescope program ever led from outside of the United States, reveal how the most massive galaxies in the early Universe assembled to form the most massive objects in the Universe today. Dr. Chris Conselice from the University of Nottingham will present the results at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science at the University of Hertfordshire on Wednesday 22nd April.

The observations are part of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS), a campaign that is using NASA's Spitzer, Hubble and Chandra space telescopes together with ESA's XMM Newton X-ray observatory to study the most distant Universe.
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Telescope

Chandra Shows Shocking Impact Of Galaxy Jet


Space Daily
Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:28 UTC
Image
© UnknownThe image shows in red the X-ray emission produced by high-energy particles accelerated at the shock front where Centaurus A's expanding radio lobe (shown in blue) collides with the surrounding galaxy. In the top-left corner X-ray emission from close to the central black hole, and from the X-ray jet extending in the opposite direction can also be seen. Centaurus A (NGC 5128) is the nearest active galaxy to Earth. It is located about 14 million light-years away in the constellation Centaurus. Its structure suggests that it is an example of an elliptical galaxy that has been disrupted by a collision with a smaller spiral galaxy.
A survey by the Chandra X-ray observatory has revealed in detail, for the first time, the effects of a shock wave blasted through a galaxy by powerful jets of plasma emanating from a supermassive black hole at the galactic core.

The observations of Centaurus A, the nearest galaxy that contains these jets, have enabled astronomers to revise dramatically their picture of how jets affect the galaxies in which they live. The results will be presented on Wednesday 22nd April at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science in Hatfield by Dr. Judith Croston of the University of Hertfordshire.

A team led by Dr. Croston and Dr. Ralph Kraft, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the USA, used very deep X-ray observations from Chandra to get a new view of the jets in Centaurus A. The jets inflate large bubbles filled with energetic particles, driving a shock wave through the stars and gas of the surrounding galaxy.
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