SOTT
SIGNS
OF THE
TIMES
OF THE
TIMES
Welcome to Sott.net
The World for People who Think
Science & TechnologyS
The fault that has shut down the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be hugely disappointing for scientists and engineers following the successful "start-up" of the experiment.
|
| ©ESA |
Better to burn out than fade away? For a celestial chunk of important space junk, the next few weeks will offer several faint glimpses of what will soon be a fireball.
An unmanned spacecraft that ferried cargo to the International Space Station will make a few more visible passes overhead before crash landing into the Earth's atmosphere on or around Sept. 29.
The Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle launched March 9, 2008, and arrived at the International Space Station on April 3, where it remained docked while tons of cargo were off-loaded -- and tons of waste materials from the space station were loaded back onto the ATV.
|
| ©Duane Froese, University of Alberta |
| Undergound ice can last a long time |
A 740,000-year-old wedge of ice discovered in central Yukon Territory, Canada, is the oldest known ice in North America. It suggests that permafrost has survived climates warmer than today's, according to a new study.
"Previously, it was thought that the permafrost had completely disappeared from the interior about 120,000 years ago," says Duane Froese, an earth scientist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who is the author of the study published today in Science. "This deep permafrost appears to have been stable for more than 700,000 years, including several periods that were warmer and wetter."
|
| ©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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
|
| ©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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
|
| ©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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
