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Dark matter 'bridge to nowhere' found in cosmic void

Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:54 UTC


String of galaxies
©A Zitrin
A line of 14 galaxies seems to be strung along a filament of dark matter. This image, reconstructed from observations from the 40-inch Wise Observatory telescope in Israel, shows the relative positions of the galaxies, which lie about 2 million light years away. Blue regions are where the most stars are forming.

More than a dozen galaxies seem to be lined up along a bridge of dark matter inside a region of nearly empty space. This 'bridge to nowhere' could shed light on how small galaxies formed in the early universe.

Galaxies in the universe are arranged in a lacy structure that contains many holes, or voids, that are largely bereft of galaxies. But the voids are not completely empty; astronomers expect they are criss-crossed by filaments of dark matter.

Now, astronomers have found a total of 14 galaxies that appear to be part of a dark matter bridge at least 1.5 million light years long.
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Sherlock

Malaysian archaeologists find complete Neolithic skeletons: report


Agence France-Presse
Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:34 UTC
Archaeologists have found two groups of complete Neolithic human remains in peninsular Malaysia and on Borneo island that may better explain prehistoric human life, reports said Friday.

Archaeologists say the remains are more than 3,000 years old and were found within two months of each other, in prehistoric burial grounds surrounded by ceremonial beads, pottery, shells and animal bones, the Sun daily reported.
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Info

Emergence Of Agriculture In Prehistory Took Much Longer, Genetic Evidence Suggests


Science Daily
Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:33 UTC
Researchers led by Dr Robin Allaby of the University of Warwick's plant research arm Warwick HRI have found evidence that genetics supports the idea that the emergence of agriculture in prehistory took much longer than originally thought.

Image
©iStockphoto/Tomas Bercic
A new mathematical model shows how plant agriculture actually began much earlier than first thought. It also shows that useful gene types could have actually taken thousands of years to become stable.

Until recently researchers say the story of the origin of agriculture was one of a relatively sudden appearance of plant cultivation in the Near East around 10,000 years ago spreading quickly into Europe and dovetailing conveniently with ideas about how quickly language and population genes spread from the Near East to Europe. Initially, genetics appeared to support this idea but now cracks are beginning to appear in the evidence underpinning that model.
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Stop

Hadron Collider halted for months


BBC
Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:30 UTC
The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be out of action for at least two months, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) says.

Part of the giant physics experiment was turned off for the weekend while engineers probed a magnet failure.

But a Cern spokesman said damage to the £3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator was worse than anticipated.
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Sherlock

Interstellar Space Molecules That Help Form Basic Life Structures Identified


Science Daily
Sat, 20 Sep 2008 12:32 UTC
A team of scientists led by researchers from the Instituto Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has succeeded in identifying naphthalene, one of the most complex molecules yet discovered in the interstellar medium. The detection of this molecule suggests that a large number of the key components in prebiotic terrestrial chemistry could have been present in the interstellar matter from which the Solar System was formed.

Image
©Miguel Briganti (IAC), Digital Sky Survey, David Barrado. Gabriel Pérez, Multimedia Service/IAC
Using various telescopes in La Palma (including the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo) and Texas, IAC researchers have detected the presence of naphthalene in the interstellar medium in the direction of the star Cernis 52 in the constellation Perseus. This molecule consists of two hexagonal rings of carbon atoms surrounded by hydrogen atoms.

IAC researchers Susana Iglesias Groth, Arturo Manchado and Aníbal García, in collaboration with Jonay González (Paris Observatory) and David Lambert (University of Texas) have just published these results in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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Roses

Plants Make Own Painkillers

Andrea Thompson
Live Science
Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:58 UTC
When you have a headache, you take a couple aspirin, but when plants get stressed out, they just make their own.

Scientists had known that plants in laboratories produce a chemical called methyl salicylate - a form of the painkiller aspirin - when stressed out, but they had never detected it in plants out in nature.
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Telescope

Stardust evidence points to planet collision

Maggie Fox
Associated Press
Fri, 19 Sep 2008 22:47 UTC
WASHINGTON - Masses of dust floating around a distant binary star system suggest that two Earth-like planets obliterated each other in a violent collision, U.S. researchers reported on Friday.

"It's as if Earth and Venus collided with each other," Benjamin Zuckerman, an astronomer at the University of California Los Angeles, who worked on the study, said in a statement.
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Monkey Wrench

Transformer breaks on world's largest atom smasher

Alexander G. Higgins
Associated Press
Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:35 UTC
A 30-ton transformer that cools the world's largest particle collider malfunctioned, forcing physicists to stop using the atom smasher just a day after launching it to great fanfare, the European Organization for Nuclear Research said Thursday.
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Star

NASA to hold press conference on the state of the sun


Watts Up With That? Blog
Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:51 UTC
The sun's current state could result in changing conditions in the solar system.

Image
©NASA

As you may recall, I posted an entry about the Ulysses mission back on June 16th and the findings of a lowered magnetic field in the sun, from the JPL press release then:
Ulysses ends its career after revealing that the magnetic field emanating from the sun's poles is much weaker than previously observed. This could mean the upcoming solar maximum period will be less intense than in recent history.
We live in interesting times.
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Telescope

Comet Dust Reveals Unexpected Mixing of Solar System


Newswise
Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:06 UTC
Chemical clues from a comet's halo are challenging common views about the history and evolution of the solar system and showing it may be more mixed-up than previously thought.

comet dust samples
© Noriko Kita
A team of researchers including Takayuki Ushikubo, Noriko Kita, and John Valley of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has identified unexpected chemical and isotope signatures that challenge existing views about the formation and history of the solar system.
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