Science & TechnologyS


Rocket

Stephen Hawking calls for Moon and Mars colonies

David Shiga
New Scientist
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:41 UTC
Stephen Hawking called for a massive investment in establishing colonies on the Moon and Mars in a lecture in honour of NASA's 50th anniversary. He argued that the world should devote about 10 times as much as NASA's current budget - or 0.25% of the world's financial resources - to space.

The renowned University of Cambridge physicist has previously spoken in favour of colonising space as an insurance policy against the possibility of humanity being wiped out by catastrophes like nuclear war and climate change. He argues that humanity should eventually expand to other solar systems.
Read More...
Info

Why fertile women hate a pretty face

Ewen Callaway
New Scientist
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:37 UTC
Everyone loves a pretty face - except those women who might see it as a threat. With eyes on the competition, women of childbearing age rate other attractive women consistently lower than women who have entered menopause, according to a new study. "It's almost as if they're putting down other attractive women," says Benedict Jones, a psychologist at Aberdeen University, UK, who led the study of 97 middle-aged women.
Image
© Benedict JonesExamples of the manipulated faces used in the experiment. The images on the left are masculinised, the ones on the right are feminised

Numerous studies have looked at how fertility affects women's preferences for men's faces, bodies, voices, and even sweaty shirts. Yet few researchers have flipped the coin to examine how fertility changes competition for mates within sexes, says Jones.
Read More...
Info

DNA strands become fibre optic cables

Colin Barras
New Scientist
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:01 UTC
Thanks to a new technique, DNA strands can be easily converted into tiny fibre optic cables that guide light along their length. Optical fibres made this way could be important in optical computers, which use light rather than electricity to perform calculations, or in artificial photosynthesis systems that may replace today's solar panels.
DNA
© Wikimedia Commons)Strands of DNA can be easily made into nanoscale fibre optic cables

Both kinds of device need small-scale light-carrying "wires" that pipe photons to where they are needed. Now Bo Albinsson and his colleagues at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, have worked out how to make them. The wires build themselves from a mixture of DNA and molecules called chromophores that can absorb and pass on light.
Read More...
Info

Mineral Kingdom Has Co-evolved With Life, Scientists Find


Science Daily
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:39 UTC
Evolution isn't just for living organisms. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have found that the mineral kingdom co-evolved with life, and that up to two thirds of the more than 4,000 known types of minerals on Earth can be directly or indirectly linked to biological activity.

The finding, published in American Mineralogist, could aid scientists in the search for life on other planets.
Elrathii kingii trilobite
© iStockphoto/Russell ShivelyElrathii kingii trilobite from the middle Cambrian period, approximately 550 million years BCE. Found in a sandy shale formation south of Salt Lake City, Utah.

Robert Hazen and Dominic Papineau of the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, with six colleagues, reviewed the physical, chemical, and biological processes that gradually transformed about a dozen different primordial minerals in ancient interstellar dust grains to the thousands of mineral species on the present-day Earth. (Unlike biological species, each mineral species is defined by its characteristic chemical makeup and crystal structure.)
Read More...
Sherlock

Iron-based Materials May Unlock Superconductivity's Secrets


Science Daily
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:29 UTC
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are decoding the mysterious mechanisms behind the high-temperature superconductors that industry hopes will find wide use in next-generation systems for storing, distributing and using electricity.
high-temperature superconductors
© NISTNIST researchers have found that new iron-based high-temperature superconductors subtly change their molecular shape as temperatures decrease. This graphic shows a superconductor transitioning from tetragonal (at top) to orthorhombic at about 220 Kelvin (-53 Celsius). Such physical changes appear to be a precursor to superconductivity, in which electric current can flow without resistance.

In two new papers on a recently discovered class of high-temperature superconductors, they report that the already complicated relationship between magnetism and superconductivity may be more involved than previously thought, or that a whole new mechanism may drive some types of superconductors.

At temperatures approaching absolute zero, many materials become superconductors, capable of carrying vast amounts of electrical current with no resistance. In such low-temperature superconductors, magnetism is a villain whose appearance shatters the fragile superconductive state. But in 1986, scientists discovered "high temperature" (HTc) superconductors capable of operating much warmer than the previous limit of 30 degrees above absolute zero.
Read More...
Sherlock

Dinosaur Whodunit: Solving A 77-million-year-old Mystery


Science Daily
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:25 UTC
It has all the hallmarks of a Cretaceous melodrama. A dinosaur sits on her nest of a dozen eggs on a sandy river beach. Water levels rise, and the mother is faced with a dilemma: Stay or abandon her unhatched offspring to the flood and scramble to safety?

Seventy-seven million years later, scientific detective work conducted by University of Calgary and Royal Tyrrell Museum researchers used this unique fossil nest and eggs to learn more about how nest building, brooding and eggs evolved. But there is a big unresolved question: Who was the egg-layer?
dinosaur nest
© Julius T. CsotonyiReconstruction of the dinosaur nest and the two possible theropod egg layers.

"Working out who the culprit was in this egg abandonment tragedy is a difficult problem to crack," says Darla Zelenitsky, U of C paleontologist and the lead author of a paper published today in the journal Palaeontology. "After further investigation, we discovered that this find is rarer than we first thought. It is a one of a kind fossil. In fact, it is the first nest of its kind in the world."
Read More...
Info

Purified urine to be astronauts' drinking water

Irene Klotz
Science Daily
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:14 UTC
Cape Canaverl, Florida - As NASA prepares to double the number of astronauts living aboard the International Space Station, nothing may do more for crew bonding than a machine being launched aboard the space shuttle Endeavour on Friday.
Crew members of the space shuttle Endeavour
© REUTERS/Scott Audette Crew members of the space shuttle Endeavour on Mission STS-126 arrive to prepare for launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida November 11, 2008. From left are Donald Pettit, Pilot Eric Boe, Mission Commander Chris Ferguson, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Robert Kimbrough, Steve Bowen and Sandra Magnus. The mission to the International Space Station is scheduled for November 14.

It's a water-recycling device that will process the crew's urine for communal consumption.

"We did blind taste tests of the water," said NASA's Bob Bagdigian, the system's lead engineer. "Nobody had any strong objections. Other than a faint taste of iodine, it is just as refreshing as any other kind of water."

"I've got some in my fridge," he added. "It tastes fine to me."
Read More...
Magic Wand

NASA Surprised by Unexpected Meteor Outburst


Space.com
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:25 UTC
When NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke arrived at the Marshall Space Flight Center and checked his email Sept. 9, 2008, he was very surprised to learn that he'd slept through a dramatic event.

A flurry of shooting stars had lit up the pre-dawn skies, including more than two dozen fireballs brighter than Venus. Cooke's all-sky Sentinel camera recorded the whole thing and had left him an email summarizing the outburst.

"Our Sentinel system consists of a computer-controlled camera, fisheye lens and digital video recorder," Cooke explained. "It was developed by researchers at the University of Western Ontario for studies of meteors over Canada, and now we've adapted it for our purposes. Every night, Sentinel patrols the sky, looking for the unexpected, and it never gets sleepy."
Read More...
Telescope

First fuzzy photos of planets outside solar system


Associated Press
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:05 UTC
WASHINGTON - Earth seems to have its first fuzzy photos of alien planets outside our solar system, images captured by two teams of astronomers. The pictures show four likely planets that appear as specks of white, nearly indecipherable except to the most eagle-eyed experts. All are trillions of miles away - three of them orbiting the same star, and the fourth circling a different star.
alien planets
© AP Photo/NASAIn this image released by NASA, a dust ring, seen in red, surround the star Fomalhaut, that resides at the center of the image, and not visible to the human eye in this image. The Hubble Telescope discovered the fuzzy image of the planet, known as Fomalhaut b, which is no more that a white speck in the lower right portion of the dust ring that surrounds the star.
Read More...
Sherlock

Ancient Celtic coin cache found in Netherlands


Associated Press
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:36 UTC
Amsterdam - A hobbyist with a metal detector struck both gold and silver when he uncovered an important cache of ancient Celtic coins in a cornfield in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht.
ancient Celtic and Germanic coins
© AP Photo/ VU/Gemeente Maastricht, HO A hobbyist with a metal detector has found a cache of ancient Celtic and Germanic coins in a cornfield in the southern city of Maastricht. The city says the trove of 39 gold and 70 silver coins are dated to the middle of the first century B.C. The hobbyist, Paul Curfs, 47, found several coins this spring and called attention to the find, which eventually led to an archaeological investigation by Amsterdam's Free University.

"It's exciting, like a little boy's dream," Paul Curfs, 47, said Thursday after the spectacular find was made public.

Archaeologists say the trove of 39 gold and 70 silver coins was minted in the middle of the first century B.C. as the future Roman ruler Julius Caesar led a campaign against Celtic tribes in the area.

Curfs said he was walking with his detector this spring and was about to go home when he suddenly got a strong signal on his earphones and uncovered the first coin.

"It was golden and had a little horse on it - I had no idea what I had found," he said.

After posting a photo of the coin on a Web forum, he was told it was a rare find. The following day he went back and found another coin.
Read More...