Washington, DC -- Scientists have published the first results dealing with the impact of a celestial body on the planet Jupiter last July.
The results of the research, conducted by Planetary Sciences Group at the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country with its headquarters at the Faculty of Engineering in Bilbao and led by professor Agustín Sánchez Lavega, have appeared in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
An amateur Australian astronomer came across the presence of a large, black spot close to the polar region of the planet Jupiter, the biggest in the Solar System, on July 19, 2009.
The impact had taken place at a very high latitude close to the planet's South Pole barely 3 or 4 hours before the spot was seen on Jupiter's dark side (at night), and this prevented it from being observed directly.
The trajectory was in the opposite direction of the fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet that crashed into Jupiter exactly 15 years previously, in July 1994.
After the world's large observatories had been alerted, the confirmation came through in a matter of hours that the spot consisted of the remains of ash left behind following the impact of a comet or asteroid.
The world's main observatories, including the Hubble space telescope among others, immediately set about analysing the phenomenon.
Science & Technology
The company most people use to search the internet wants to be the company that delivers your TV programmes - and sells the adverts to run alongside them. That's Google, which has announced the launch of Google TV, hoping to marry the technology of television with the internet.
It wants to turn your TV set - or the set-top box above it - into a computer capable of turning web video into a TV signal so that you can range across the internet.
"We've been waiting a long, long time for this day," Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, told the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, where the company was showing off its latest technology offerings. "It took a lot to make this happen."
It wants to turn your TV set - or the set-top box above it - into a computer capable of turning web video into a TV signal so that you can range across the internet.
"We've been waiting a long, long time for this day," Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, told the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, where the company was showing off its latest technology offerings. "It took a lot to make this happen."
© Nartsis Torbov
The swastika-decorated clay pottery fragment was found by archaeologists during excavations of a ritual pit around the village of Altimir near the town of Vratsa. The find dates back to the beginning of the Stone-Copper Age and shows that this symbol traverses the centuries and cannot be linked solely to Hitler's party, archaeologists explained.
The swastika as a symbol dates to the Neolithic period in Ancient India, according to previous archaeological finds. It can also be seen on Roman and Medieval artefacts. Although it was commonly used all over much of the world without stigma and still occurs widely in religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, the swastika has become stigmatized in the Western world, because of its iconic usage in Nazi Germany.
Jerusalem - Israeli archaeologists say workers have uncovered an ancient pagan altar while clearing ground for construction of a hotly disputed hospital emergency room.
They say the discovery proves an ancient cemetery at the site that has been at the center of protests by ultra-Orthodox Jews does not contain the graves of Jews.
Protesters claim an emergency room extension at Barzilai Hospital in the city of Ashkelon is being built on an ancient Jewish cemetery.
They demonstrated there when officials began removing graves this week, and rioting erupted in ultra-Orthodox areas of Jerusalem.
They say the discovery proves an ancient cemetery at the site that has been at the center of protests by ultra-Orthodox Jews does not contain the graves of Jews.
Protesters claim an emergency room extension at Barzilai Hospital in the city of Ashkelon is being built on an ancient Jewish cemetery.
They demonstrated there when officials began removing graves this week, and rioting erupted in ultra-Orthodox areas of Jerusalem.
© EPFL
Blood flows through the left coronary artery in this supercomputer simulation.
Blood flows through the left coronary artery in this supercomputer simulation.
The computer program accurately models the complex system of blood flow in the hearts of individual people at a precision of ten millionths of a meter. Based on a detailed heart scan, the simulation juggles over a billion different variables in order to represent a fluid containing ten million red blood cells.
Facebook this week hinted at new simple option for Facebook privacy settings―high, medium and low―where users could opt to share everything, nothing or an arbitrary set of data with one click. This would supplement the current privacy options that have sparked criticism for being too complex.
Facebook's Public Policy Director, Tim Sparapani talked with Kojo Nnamdi on his WAMU radio program Tuesday and stated that there will be "simplistic bands of privacy that users can choose from in the next couple weeks."
Facebook's Public Policy Director, Tim Sparapani talked with Kojo Nnamdi on his WAMU radio program Tuesday and stated that there will be "simplistic bands of privacy that users can choose from in the next couple weeks."
Cars could use more magnesium alloys to save on both weight and fuel, but only if engineers can figure out how to make one of the most widely available metallic elements on Earth capable of withstanding industrial manufacturing processes.
Magnesium burns at high temperatures with a brilliant white light, which has made it popular for use in fireworks and school science lab experiments. Now an urgent need for more lightweight, energy-efficient and environmentally friendly materials could turn magnesium into a revolutionary material for everything from cars and mobile electronics, according to an article published in the May 21 issue of the journal Science.
Magnesium burns at high temperatures with a brilliant white light, which has made it popular for use in fireworks and school science lab experiments. Now an urgent need for more lightweight, energy-efficient and environmentally friendly materials could turn magnesium into a revolutionary material for everything from cars and mobile electronics, according to an article published in the May 21 issue of the journal Science.
© Batsaikhan M
This statue of Genghis Khan is a reproduction of a huge statue that sits in front of a government building in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. It is one of many images of Genghis Khan that appear throughout the city.
This statue of Genghis Khan is a reproduction of a huge statue that sits in front of a government building in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. It is one of many images of Genghis Khan that appear throughout the city.
When Don Lessem - the organizer of "Genghis Khan: The Exhibition," which opens Saturday at the Tech Museum - first traveled to Mongolia in the late 1980s, he had the Western view of Genghis. But then, he says, "I saw all these glowing descriptions of him and all the statues to him and thought, 'Why?' Because I had this impression of him as a bloodthirsty villain. Then the Mongolian people set me straight, and I came away thinking, 'This guy is incredible.' "
In fact, says William Fitzhugh of the Smithsonian Institution's Arctic Studies Center, Genghis was an extraordinary ruler whose historical legacy needs to be reassessed in the West.
© AFP
A Leonid meteor storm in 1999.
A Leonid meteor storm in 1999.
Australian National University archaeologist Andrew Glikson said seismic activity led experts to the Mount Ashmore 1B site, and a study of fragments showed a large meteorite hit just before the Earth's temperatures plunged.
"The identification of microstructural and chemical features in drill fragments taken from the Mount Ashmore drill hole revealed evidence of a significant impact," Glikson said, adding it was at least 50 kilometres (31 miles) wide and about 35 million years old.
A meteorite 100 kilometres wide hit Siberia at the same time, along with an 85 km one in Chesapeake Bay, off the US coast of Virginia, followed by a large field of molten rock fragments over northeast America, he said.
You might have heard me speak about the equation that eluded Einstein for the last 30 years of his life: the one-inch equation that will in a sense summarize everything we know about the physical laws governing the universe we live in. I believe that one day, perhaps the destiny of all intelligent life in the universe may hinge on this equation. Finding it is the goal of a lifetime.
It is The Theory of Everything, the equation that might summarize all physical laws into an equation, perhaps no more than an inch long. Scientists and layman alike have been trying to crack this problem for a generation. We think we're very close, in fact, the leading (and only) candidate for it is String Theory.
The main problem, I think, is that String Theory is not in its final form. In the last decade, we have learned that membranes must also be included into the theory as well as strings, and that these membranes can vibrate in 11 dimensions. This means that the complete mathematics behind the theory is not yet known. This means that it might be premature to demand that string theory fit all the properties necessary for the final theory. However, some results can be tested now.
It is The Theory of Everything, the equation that might summarize all physical laws into an equation, perhaps no more than an inch long. Scientists and layman alike have been trying to crack this problem for a generation. We think we're very close, in fact, the leading (and only) candidate for it is String Theory.
The main problem, I think, is that String Theory is not in its final form. In the last decade, we have learned that membranes must also be included into the theory as well as strings, and that these membranes can vibrate in 11 dimensions. This means that the complete mathematics behind the theory is not yet known. This means that it might be premature to demand that string theory fit all the properties necessary for the final theory. However, some results can be tested now.
