Science & TechnologyS


Meteor

Flashback Impact Earth: Could we divert a giant asteroid?

Steve Connor
The Independent
Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:16 UTC
A century ago this week, an asteroid fireball exploded over Siberia with the power of 185 Hiroshima bombs. Steve Connor asks how we can prevent a similar catastrophe in a major world city

A hundred years ago this week a man was sitting in the wooden porch of a trading post in the village of Vanavara in deepest Siberia when a blinding flash of light, followed by a huge blast of sound threw him to the ground.

Several years later, he recounted the terrifying moment to an inquisitive Russian scientist from St Petersburg who was on an expedition to find out what had caused such a massive explosion in one of the remotest regions on Earth.

Image
©Alamy

Comment: For a more realistic idea of the probability of the Earth being struck by comets and other objects, be sure to read the sott Comets and Catastrophe series.

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Info

Israel: Talking plants tell scientists their water is contaminated

Judy Siegel-Itzkovich
The Jerusalem Post
Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:04 UTC


Talking algae
©Unknown

Ramat-Gan - Bar-Ilan University scientists have developed a way to detect and measure contamination in a body of water by "listening" to the sound that microscopic algae plants release into it. The technology, described as "revolutionary," was developed by Prof. Zvy Dubinsky and Dr. Yulia Pinchasov of the Bar-Ilan Goodman life sciences faculty and was recently published in a number of scientific journals, including the prestigious Hydrobiological Journal.
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Magnify

2,600 yr old Italian tomb reveals ancient trade network


Asian News International
Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:04 UTC
The tomb of a woman who died around 2,600 years ago on the eastern Italian coast has helped archaeologists to piece together the vast trade network that once linked this area with the Middle East, North Africa and Greece.

Experts working on the tomb, which was found near the port of Ancona, have said that the site contains over 650 artifacts from the 7th century BC, including numerous items made in other parts of the world.

This tomb is of extraordinary importance, as it contains the only known funerary finds in the area of Conero dating from this time," said the Archaeology Superintendent for the Marche region, Giuliano de Marinis.
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Magnify

New study explores plausibility of bulbs and tubers in the diet of early humans

Jennifer McNulty
UC Santa Cruz
Sat, 26 Jul 2008 23:35 UTC
It was a dirty job, but somebody had to do it.

Anthropologist Nathaniel J. Dominy of the University of California, Santa Cruz, has advanced the investigation of the diet of early human ancestors by painstakingly measuring the mechanical properties of the underground parts of nearly 100 plant species across sub-Saharan Africa.
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Meteor

Flashback The two faces of Mars

Jennifer Cutraro
Science News
Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:13 UTC
By studying data from two spacecraft, NASA's Mars Odyssey and the Mars Global Surveyor, a team of planetary scientists was able to look below the surface of a recent lava flow on the Martian surface. Just like on Earth, volcanoes periodically spew lava over the planet's surface, and on Mars, this lava previously blocked scientists' view of the planet's underlying bedrock.

Below the lava, they found a huge crater the size of Asia, Australia and Europe combined running the length of the boundary between the flat northern hemisphere and the bumpy southern hemisphere. It's an important clue, scientists say.

Image
©M. Marinova et al./Caltech
Mars may be home to the solar system's largest impact crater, hidden below lava. The impact itself, illustrated here, may have given Mars its unusual "two faces" -- af high, cratered crust in the southern hemisphere and smooth, low crust in the north. This illustration was created from Caltech simulations of the impact, one of three recent studies to support the idea that the uneven surface was created by a single impact.
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Telescope

Hit or Miss? Asteroid Apophis heading our way


Russia Today
Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:46 UTC


Apophis
©Unknown

Astronomers are battling to work out the trajectory of an asteroid that will cause havoc if it hits the Earth in 2036. Called Apophis, the giant meteor is hurtling through space at 10km per second. Scientists are warning that an impact would be far more devastating than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of WW2.

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Gear

Forget the meltdown, worry about goo and asteroids

John Kay
The Financial Times
Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:13 UTC
Last week was the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska explosion in Siberia. If you weren't celebrating, you should have been. The incident was probably the nearest we have come to extinction in modern human history - and we survived.

A large object - presumably an asteroid or meteorite - collided with the Earth. If it had landed in Manhattan, it would have destroyed New York. A bit bigger, and it would have been calamitous wherever it landed. A similar event at Yucatan, 65m years ago, wiped out the dinosaurs and most other species. It would have wiped us out too had we been there. We survived Tunguska because the impact was not too large.

Comment: Maybe the current financial crisis is manufactured in order to focus people's attention on "down to Earth" matters and away from the sky, where a greater threat lurks?

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Bulb

Flashback A temple to mystery and imagination

Johnathan Glancey
The Guardian
Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:02 UTC
Many of Cern's scientists are well aware of the connection between their great underground temple and those of religions, ancient and modern. And, just as the quest for God, or the gods, encouraged the very first great works of architecture, so Cern, laid out up to 100 metres below ground like some inverted, latter day Stonehenge, has been constructed on a massive scale.
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Binoculars

Scientists ponder future Moon mission activities

Austin Modine
The Register
Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:07 UTC
A clever fellow once observed that the Moon is a harsh mistress. Humanity's subsequent jaunts up to the place indicated it was a pretty solid hypothesis. The Ritz-Carlton it is not.

Now NASA has the vision of not only returning astronauts back to the orbital dustball in 2020, but establishing a long-term moon base there. Needless to say, there's plenty of arrangements to be made before the moonbuggy pulls into 555 South Pole-Aitken Basin Avenue.

That's why nearly 500 scientists and amateur lunar lovers from gave gathered for an Earth-side conference this week at NASA/Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. The first annual Lunar Science Conference aims to discuss what kind of science should be done for our species' return to the moon.
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Bug

Unknown insects found in 110-million-year-old amber in Spain


Agence France-Presse
Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:49 UTC
The remains of several unknown insect species which became extinct long before dinosaurs stopped roaming the earth have been discovered in pieces of 110-million-year-old amber found in Spain, researchers said Thursday.

Palaeontologist Enrique Penalver said the amber discovered in the El Soplao cave in the northern province of Cantabria was in "exceptional" condition.

Image
©AFP
This undated photo shows an insect enclosed in an amber discovered by scientists of the Universities of Jena and Rostock in 2005. The remains of several unknown insect species which became extinct long before dinosaurs stopped roaming the earth have been discovered in pieces of 110-million-year-old amber found in Spain, researchers said Thursday.
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