Science & TechnologyS


Better Earth

Measuring Earth's Gravity Field: GOCE's 'Heart' Starts Beating


Science Daily
Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:04 UTC
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© ESA - AOES MedialabGOCE will provide the dataset required to accurately determine global and regional models of Earth's gravity field and geoid. It will advance research in ocean circulation, physics of Earth's interior, geodesy and surveying, and sea-level change.
GOCE's highly sensitive gradiometer instrument has been switched on and is producing data. Forming the heart of GOCE, the gradiometer is specifically designed to measure Earth's gravity field with unprecedented accuracy.

"We are very pleased with what we have seen from the gradiometer from the moment it was switched on. All accelerometer sensor heads are working in very good health and provide meaningful data," GOCE Project Manager Danilo Muzi said.

The gradiometer consists of three pairs of identical ultra-sensitive accelerometers, each mounted to point in orthogonal directions to allow the simultaneous measurement of the spatial variations of the gravity field.
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Blackbox

Existential vertigo over human origins

Amanda Gefter
New Scientist
Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:35 UTC
It's funny how pondering our origins - the origin of the universe, of life, of mind - leads us to question everything we thought we knew about ourselves in the here and now.

Here in Phoenix, Arizona, the Origins Symposium - the inaugural event of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University, headed up by physicist Lawrence Krauss - has just wrapped up after four days of lectures and debates from the world's leading scientists.

Brian Greene spoke about string theory, AC Grayling anticipated the future of humanity, Steven Pinker explored behavioural genetics, Steven Weinberg pondered the multiverse, Craig Venter discussed the possibilities of synthetic life, and Stephen Hawking - who, unfortunately hospitalised, made a "virtual and genetic appearance" via a video screen - and his daughter Lucy argued for the colonisation of space.

Infinite universes?

The conference covered a lot of ground, but it left with me a singular and profound existential vertigo: throughout the four days, I felt as if I could see myself - a small, strange Earth-bound creature - through the lens of a camera zooming in and out through space and time.

Zoom out: 13.7 billion years ago the universe found its origin in the big bang. Was this a lone creation event, or one of an infinite number of bangs, each birthing its own universe? What's that in the distance? Another copy of myself? An infinite number of me?
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Satellite

Hubble Snaps Image of Triple Galaxy, as Ordered by the People

Betsy Mason
Wired
Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:13 UTC
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© NASA, ESA and M. Livio and the Hubble Heritage Team (StSci/AURA)
The Hubble Space Telescope took a closer look at this triple galaxy group on April 1 and 2 after 140,000 people around the world voted on six potential targets. The areas have previously only been photographed by ground-based telescopes.

The Arp 274 galaxy group won the competition with more than 67,000 votes. Hubble's image suggests the galaxies may not be close enough together to interact as they appear to be in the image taken by the Palomar Observatory near San Diego.
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Meteor

Tiny rock excites astrochemists


BBC News
Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:31 UTC
A "unique" micrometeorite found in Antarctica is challenging ideas about how planets can form.

Detailed analysis has shown that the sample, known as MM40, has a chemical composition unlike any other fragment of fallen space rock.

This, say experts, raises questions about where it originated in the Solar System and how it was created.

It also means that astrochemists must expand their list of the combinations of materials in planetary crusts.
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Cowboy Hat

GM and Segway plan electric two-wheeler

Elizabeth Judge
Times Online
Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:32 UTC
segway, gm
(Ho/Reuters)
The Project P.U.M.A. prototype is shown during a test drive in Brooklyn, New York April 4, 2009.

GM, the stricken car giant best known for its gas-guzzling Hummers, is to tie-up with Segway, the electric scooter producer, in an attempt to prove its commitment to reinventing itself.

Days after President Obama warned the Detroit-based company that an aggressive restructuring was the only way to safeguard its future, GM announced it is working with Segway to develop a two-wheeled, two-seat electric vehicle intended to be a green and inexpensive alternative to traditional cars.

Green technology is regarded as the great hope for the car industry, which is in the grip of a global crisis that has seen factories mothballed and production plummet.
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Saturn

Cool Stars Have Different Mix of Life-Forming Chemicals


Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:52 UTC
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© NASA/JPL-Caltech This artist's conception shows a young, hypothetical planet around a cool star.
Life on Earth is thought to have arisen from a hot soup of chemicals. Does this same soup exist on planets around other stars? A new study from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope hints that planets around stars cooler than our sun might possess a different mix of potentially life-forming, or "prebiotic," chemicals.

Astronomers used Spitzer to look for a prebiotic chemical, called hydrogen cyanide, in the planet-forming material swirling around different types of stars. Hydrogen cyanide is a component of adenine, which is a basic element of DNA. DNA can be found in every living organism on Earth.
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Magnify

Mysteries of prehistoric Balochistan unravelled


Daily Times
Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:42 UTC
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© Daily News
Karachi 'Ancient Balochistan - Unfolding the Past', a lecture by the Director of the joint German-Pakistani Archaeological Mission to Kalat, Dr Ute Franke, was held on Monday at the Goethe-Institute, Karachi.

Dr Franke, a German archaeologist, has been following the prehistoric sites in Balochistan since 1981. In 1925, the first excavations took place at the site, bringing to light the ceramic techniques from the third millennium BC, while unravelling a kaleidoscope of culture from that area that has long been buried.
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Satellite

Gravity satellite feels the force

Jonathan Amos
BBC News
Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:07 UTC
Europe's innovative Goce satellite has switched on the super-sensitive instrument that will make ultra-fine measurements of Earth's gravity.

The sophisticated gradiometer will feel the subtle variations in Earth's tug as it sweeps around the globe.
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Family

Finch head colour affects mating outcome

Dani Cooper
ABC Science
Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:11 UTC
Female finches from Northern Australia are controlling the sex of their offspring, according to the head colour of their male counterpart.

The finding, published today in the journal Science, is one of the first to clearly show that birds are capable of biasing the sex of their offspring to overcome genetic weaknesses.

Lead author Dr Sarah Pryke, of the Department of Brain Behaviour and Evolution at Macquarie University in Sydney, admits the mechanism by which the birds do this is not yet known.
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Telescope

Astronomers obtain sharpest image of Orion's binary star


People's Daily
Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:21 UTC
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© MPIfR/ESO/NASAZooming in the center of the Orion star-forming region with the four bright Trapezium stars (Theta 1 Ori A-D). The dominant star is Theta 1 Ori C, which was imaged with unprecedented resolution with the VLT interferometer (lower right).
Astronomers have captured the sharpest image of a young binary star in the heart of Orion, in which one can clearly distinguish the two stars of the system.

The new image of the double star, Theta 1 Orionis C, was taken with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), astronomers from the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, reported in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics on Thursday.

Theta 1 Orionis C represents the brightest and most massive star in Orion Trapezium Cluster, the nearest high-mass stars-forming region to Earth, and scientists describe it as a unique laboratory for studying the formation process of massive stars in detail.
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