Science & TechnologyS


Sun

4 huge solar flares in 48 hours: What's going on with the sun?

Tariq Malik
SPACE.com
Wed, 15 May 2013 15:29 UTC
An overachieving sunspot on the surface of the sun unleashed its fourth major solar flare in two days late Tuesday (May 14), a solar storm that may deal Earth a glancing blow, space weather experts say. The active sunspot AR1748 roared to life Tuesday night releasing an X-class solar flare - the strongest type the sun can experience - that peaked at 9:48 p.m. EDT (0148 May 15 GMT), according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo. The flare came after a relative lull in activity from sunspot AR1748, which fired off three monster X-class solar flares within a 24-hour period between Sunday and Monday.


In a morning update, NOAA space weather officials said they are studying this latest solar flare from AR1748 to see if it coincided with an eruption of super-hot solar plasma known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME. Such explosions can unleash huge waves of charged solar material streaking out into space at millions of miles per hour. "Too early to know if a CME occurred. If one did, it may just glance the Earth's magnetic field, given its off-center location still," SWPC officials said. "Forecasters are pondering that one."
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Info

Ruins of lost city may lurk deep in Honduras rain forest

Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience
Wed, 15 May 2013 07:51 UTC
Lost City?
© UTL Scientific, LLCLidar technology allows researchers to strip away the green forest canopy and reveals features beneath, including this mysterious mound that may be a sign of ancient civilization in the Honduras rainforest.
New images of a possible lost city hidden by Honduran rain forests show what might be the building foundations and mounds of Ciudad Blanca, a never-confirmed legendary metropolis.

Archaeologists and filmmakers Steven Elkins and Bill Benenson announced last year that they had discovered possible ruins in Honduras' Mosquitia region using lidar, or light detection and ranging. Essentially, slow-flying planes send constant laser pulses groundward as they pass over the rain forest, imaging the topography below the thick forest canopy.

What the archaeologists found - and what the new images reveal - are features that could be ancient ruins, including canals, roads, building foundations and terraced agricultural land. The University of Houston archaeologists who led the expedition will reveal their new images and discuss them today (May 15) at the American Geophysical Union Meeting of the Americas in Cancun.
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Magic Wand

New principle may help explain why nature is quantum

Jenny Hogan
Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore
Tue, 14 May 2013 19:17 UTC
Image
© Timothy Yeo / CQT, National University of SingaporeA principle of 'accepting the facts' implies that a quantum bit (typically pictured as a 'Bloch ball') can look like a sphere but not like a polyhedron. Polyhedral bits have been linked to theories of discrete spacetime. By ruling out various alternative theories of nature, the principle may help to explain why the world is quantum.
Like small children, scientists are always asking the question 'why?'. One question they've yet to answer is why nature picked quantum physics, in all its weird glory, as a sensible way to behave. Researchers Corsin Pfister and Stephanie Wehner at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore tackle this perennial question in a paper published 14 May in Nature Communications.

We know that things that follow quantum rules, such as atoms, electrons or the photons that make up light, are full of surprises. They can exist in more than one place at once, for instance, or exist in a shared state where the properties of two particles show what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance", no matter what their physical separation. Because such things have been confirmed in experiments, researchers are confident the theory is right. But it would still be easier to swallow if it could be shown that quantum physics itself sprang from intuitive underlying principles.

One way to approach this problem is to imagine all the theories one could possibly come up with to describe nature, and then work out what principles help to single out quantum physics. A good start is to assume that information follows

Einstein's special relativity and cannot travel faster than light. However, this alone isn't enough to define quantum physics as the only way nature might behave. Corsin and Stephanie think they have come across a new useful principle. "We have found a principle that is very good at ruling out other theories," says Corsin.
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Sun

Hyperactive sun fires off 3 major solar flares in 1 day in biggest storm so far this year

Tariq Malik
SPACE.com
Tue, 14 May 2013 16:35 UTC
X2.8 class solar flare
© NASA/SDOOn May 13, 2013, an X2.8-class flare erupted from the sun -- the strongest flare of 2013 to date. This NASA image shows a close-up of the flare as seen by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in the 131 angstrom wavelength.
The sun, it seems, is in overdrive. Late Monday night, the sun unleashed its third major solar flare in 24 hours - the biggest and most powerful solar storm of the year, so far.

This latest sun storm erupted Monday (May 13) at 9:11 p.m. EDT (0111 GMT) and registered as an X3.2 solar flare, one of the strongest types of flares the sun can release, space weather officials said. It came on the heels of two other recent X-class solar flares on Sunday night and Monday, all of which were sparked by a highly active sunspot on the sun's far left side.

Officials at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo., appeared amazed at the intense activity from the crackling sunspot.
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Sun

Sunspot blasting out massive solar flares will face earth soon

Mike Wall
SPACE.com
Tue, 14 May 2013 16:28 UTC
Sunspot AR1748
© NASA/SDOSunspot AR1748 (far left) fired off the three biggest flares of 2013 over a 24-hour stretch on May 12-13.
The super-active sunspot responsible for unleashing the three most powerful solar flares of 2013 within a 24-hour stretch this week is slowly rotating toward Earth and will likely be facing our planet by the weekend, experts say.

Active Region 1748, as the sunspot is known, unleashed three monster solar flares between Sunday and Monday (May 12 to 13). Every one of the solar storms registered as an X-class flare - the most powerful type - with each successive event stronger than the last, culminating in an X3.2 megablast Monday night.

These solar explosions did not affect Earth, since AR1748 was not facing our planet at the time. But the sunspot is now circling into view, so future flares and any associated eruptions of super-hot solar plasma - called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) - could potentially target our planet, scientists say.
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Info

Dogs and humans evolved together, study suggests

Tia Ghose
LiveScience
Tue, 14 May 2013 12:30 UTC
Gray Wolf
© Kramer, Gary | U.S. Fish and Wildlife ServiceThe gray wolf (Canis lupus lycaon), also known as the timber wolf, is the largest wild member of the dog family. Found in parts of North America, gray wolves are making a comeback in the Great Lakes, northern Rockies and Southwestern United States.
Dogs are more than man's best friend: They may be partners in humans' evolutionary journey, according to a new study.

The study shows that dogs split from gray wolves about 32,000 years ago, and that since then, domestic dogs' brains and digestive organs have evolved in ways very similar to the brains and organs of humans.

The findings suggest a more ancient origin for dog domestication than previously suggested. They also hint that a common environment drove both dog and human evolution for thousands of years.

"As domestication is often associated with large increases in population density and crowded living conditions, these 'unfavorable' environments might be the selective pressure that drove the rewiring of both species," the researchers wrote in their article, published today (May 14) in the journal Nature Communications.
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Sherlock

What we don't know

Willis Eschenbach
Watts Up With That?
Mon, 13 May 2013 14:48 UTC
Back in August 2010, WUWT ran an article wherein it was claimed that variations in the sun changed the rate of radioactive decay. This, of course, flew in the face of years and years of experimental evidence, starting with the Curies, that the rate of radioactive decay is constant, unaffected by pressure or temperature or anything else.

However, this claim that the sun could change radioactive decay rates was shortly challenged by a follow-up article at WUWT and then a second follow-up, both of which threw cold water on the idea.

Image
© scienceblogs.comFigure 1. Mass of the universe, by type
So I was interested to stumble across an announcement issued by Purdue University in August 2012, which strongly confirmed the reality of the phenomenon. Purdue has applied for a patent for the use of this effect as a means to supply advance warning of solar flares.

I found this most interesting, however, not because it affords a chance to have warning of another Carrington Event, although that would be great in itself. Instead, I found it interesting for a curious reason involving the mechanism whereby the sun is able to affect the rate of radioactive decay.

The thing I really like about the mechanism, about the way that the sun is able to influence the rate of radioactive decay, is that we don't have any idea what it is or how it works.
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People 2

New forensic technique for estimating time of death by checking internal clock of the human brain

Steve Conner
The Independent, UK
Tue, 14 May 2013 08:17 UTC
Depressed people live in parallel time zone, scientists find

Image
© Getty CreativeScientists found that with healthy brains they could estimate to within a couple of hours the time of a person's death
People with severe depression have a disrupted "biological clock" that makes it seem as if they are living in a different time zone to the rest of the healthy population living alongside them, a study has found.

It is the first time that depression has been linked unequivocally to the internal circadian clock of the human brain, which regulates the body's day-and-night cycle over a 24 hour period, scientists said.

The researchers found that they could estimate a healthy person's time of death to within a few hours by analysing the activity levels of a set of genes - whether they are switched on 'high' or 'low' - within certain regions of the deceased brain.

However, this correlation broke down when they analysed the autopsied brains of people who had suffered from depression. Their gene activity bore little relationship to the hour of death, which indicated they suffered a severely disrupted sleeping pattern, the scientists found.

The findings suggest that patients with severe depression could be better treated if there was some way of improving the relationship between the daily cycle of gene activity of the brain with the actual time of day or night, they said.

"We think the depressed individuals are more likely to be out-of-sync with the regular wake-sleep timing," said Jun Li of the University of Michigan, the lead author of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Our data also suggests that their daily cycles are not only shifted, but also disrupted. That is, they sleep by the wrong clock, and when they do sleep, the quality [of sleep] could be different from normal sleep," Dr Li said.
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Info

Pediatric skeletal disease seen in Caucasian and Asian populations identified

Kathleen Lees
ScienceWorld Report
Mon, 13 May 2013 09:46 UTC
Scoliosis
© FacebookX-ray of a patient with Idiopathic Scoliosis.
Researchers have been able to identify a common gene found in those with pediatric skeletal disease, which affects 2 percent of school-age children.

According to researchers from the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences in Japan, the gene contributing to idiopathic scoliosis (also called AIS) seen across Asian and Caucasian populations, can greatly affect the growth and development of the spine during childhood.

The cause of scoliosis remains largely unknown, and brace treatment and surgery are the only two treatment options available at this time. However, many clinical and genetic studies have always suggested genetic factors that may contribute to the health issue.
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Bulb

LED lights may damage eyes, researcher says

Marc Lallanilla
LIveScience
Mon, 13 May 2013 11:02 UTC
Eyes
© ShutterstockThe retinas of the eye may be especially sensitive to radiation from LED lights.
Energy-saving LED technology has been in the limelight as the best way to reduce the electricity demands of residential and commercial lighting.

But how safe are LED lights? A vision researcher from Complutense University in Madrid reports that exposure to LED lights can cause irreparable damage to the retinas of the human eye, UPI reports.

The light from LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, comes primarily from the short-wave, high-energy blue and violet end of the visible light spectrum, said Dr. Celia Sánchez-Ramos.

And prolonged, continuous exposure to this light - from computer monitors, mobile phones and television screens or indoor and outdoor lights - may be enough to damage retinas, she said.

"This problem is going to get worse, because humans are living longer and children are using electronic devices from a young age, particularly for schoolwork," Sánchez-Ramos told ThinkSpain.com.
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