Science & TechnologyS


Meteor

Edmond Halley's cometary Christmas gift

Chris Anderson
Times News
Thu, 25 Dec 2008 21:35 UTC
In addition to celebrating Christmas today, science history buffs might note that today is also the 250th anniversary of a notable return of Halley's Comet in the skies over Germany.

Edmond Halley was a contemporary of Isaac Newton. In addition to his own manifold contributions to science, he convinced Newton to write his seminal book, "Mathematical Principles of Science," and even paid for its publishing.

In Halley's time comets were thought to be one-time phenomena. In 1705, after searching historical records and calculating orbits, Halley published his hypothesis that four comets seen in the previous 250 years were actually the same comet, on an orbit that brought it back to the inner solar system every 76 years. He predicted the comet's return in 1758, but died 16 years too early to see if he had been right.
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Meteor

Watch for Quadrantids meteor shower around Jan 3rd

Joe Rao
Space.com
Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:10 UTC
For meteor observers, the presence of an almost-full Moon cast a bright pall on this month's performance of the Geminid Meteor Shower, normally one of the best meteor displays of the year. But for a wild card, another very good meteor shower may be right around corner. And for this one, the Moon will not play a factor at all.

So, get out your 2009 calendar and put a big circle around Saturday morning, Jan. 3.
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Meteor

Steven Jeffrey Ostro, renowned asteroid radar astronomer, dies at 62


Somerset Reporter
Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:08 UTC
Steven Jeffrey Ostro, a senior research NASA scientist who pioneered the field of asteroid radar astronomy, died on December 15 at age 62, following a two and a half year battle with cancer.

Dr. Ostro was a New Jersey native who earned bachelor's degrees in liberal arts and ceramic science from Rutgers University; a master's degree in engineering physics from Cornell University; and a doctorate in planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Beginning in 1979 - after a personal invitation from Carl Sagan - Dr. Ostro served as an assistant professor at Cornell University. In 1984, he began creating his life's legacy through his work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
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Chalkboard

Mapping Celestial Terrains, in All Their 3-D Glory

Guy Gugliotta
The New York Times
Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:57 UTC
3D stars
© Robert W. GaskellA model of the asteroid Eros constructed from images from the NEAR spacecraft and, at far left, the beginnings of a topographic map of Mercury. The Eros model is made from 12,000 overlay “maplets” of the asteroid. Computer software processes the digital images in groups of 1,000.
Altadena, California - When space engineers made a map of a planet or a distant moon back in the old days, they made an 8-by-10 picture of part of the surface, identified a couple of landmarks - a crater and an outcrop, say - and measured the distance between them with a straightedge and a crayon.

"Then you punched the number into the computer and figured out the latitude and longitude," recalled Robert W. Gaskell, a planet-mapping expert. The result was two-dimensional, with only hints of surface texture or complexity.

No more. With modern computers, digital photography and laser range-finding, scientists today do a much better job of pinpointing the locations of their spacecraft, picking landing sites and otherwise describing the solar system's extraterrestrial landscapes.
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Sun

Young Active Star Resembles The Sun When It Was Young


Science Daily
Wed, 24 Dec 2008 03:41 UTC
Image
© CNES 2006, by D. Ducros; courtesy of INAF-Italian National Institute for AstrophysicsArtist's illustration of CoRoT satellite.
The CoRoT satellite*, has recently observed a star analogous to the young Sun at an age of approximately 500 million years, named CoRoTExo-2a. This star is accompanied by a giant planet orbiting around it in only 1.7 days, that was discovered by the CoRoT Extrasolar Planet Team.

An investigation on the intrinsic variations of the star has been carried out by another international team, led by astronomers of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) at Catania Astrophysical Observatory with the support of the Italian Space Agency (ASI).

With its very high photometric accuracy and the long duration of continuous observations, CoRoT has been able for the first time to measure the variations of the intensity of the star and follow it for more than 150 days. These unique data show flux variations of about 6 percent, at least 20 times greater than those of the present Sun, with a periodic modulation of 4.5 days. They are produced by spots, analogous to sunspots, but having a correspondingly larger area, that evolve continuously as the star rotates.
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Light Saber

New Type Of Laser Discovered


Science Daily
Wed, 24 Dec 2008 03:38 UTC
Image
© Frank WojciechowskiQuantum cascade lasers are small and efficient sources of mid-infrared laser beams, which are leading to new devices for medical diagnostics and environmental sensing.
A Princeton-led team of researchers has discovered an entirely new mechanism for making common electronic materials emit laser beams. The finding could lead to lasers that operate more efficiently and at higher temperatures than existing devices, and find applications in environmental monitoring and medical diagnostics.

"This discovery provides a new insight into the physics of lasers," said Claire Gmachl, who led the study. Gmachl, an electrical engineer, is the director of the Mid-Infrared Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE) center. The phenomenon was discovered in a type of device called quantum cascade laser, in which an electric current flowing through a specially designed material produces a laser beam. Gmachl's group discovered that a quantum cascade laser they had built generated a second beam with very unusual properties, including the need for less electrical power than the conventional beam. "If we can turn off the conventional beam, we will end up with a better laser, which makes more efficient use of electrical power," said Gmachl.
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Meteor

Scotland: 500 million-year-old rocks on Highland beach


News.Scotsman.com
Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:53 UTC
Scottish scientists have uncovered clues about a catastrophic event that radically altered the Earth's surface almost 500 million years ago.

Microscopic particles found in rocks on a Highland beach contain tiny remnants of meteorites. Experts at the University of Aberdeen believe the finds within rocks along the shore near Durness, Sutherland, are evidence of a massive collision in the asteroid belt 470 million years ago between Mars and Jupiter which resulted in thousands of meteorites landing on Earth.
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Eye 1

Blind Man Sees With Subconscious Eye

Joe Palca
National Public Radio
Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:44 UTC
Scientists are reporting the remarkable case of a blind man who can see.

The case involves a middle-aged male physician living in Switzerland, who is known only by the initials "TN." A few years ago, TN had two strokes, one on either side of his brain. The strokes severely damaged the part of the brain primarily responsible for vision, known as the occipital cortex.

Extensive testing of TN confirmed that even though his eyes were just fine, he was completely blind. He couldn't see objects held in front of him and used a cane to get around. Ask him if he could see, and TN would reply, "No, I'm blind."

But neuroscientist Beatrice de Gelder wanted to study TN further. She is affiliated with Tilburg University in the Netherlands as well as Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. First, she and her colleagues repeated tests on TN to satisfy themselves that he was indeed blind.
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Info

Scientists 'Suspicious' Of FBI

David Kestenbaum
National Public Radio
Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:05 UTC
Top scientists are "suspicious" of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and reluctant to discuss their work with agents, according to a new survey by the FBI and two professional scientific associations.

The survey results showed that only 35 percent of scientists would share research results with the FBI. By comparison, 87 percent of the scientists said they would discuss their work with the public.

"They would rather talk with a total stranger from the general public than an FBI agent about their research," says Michael Stebbins, the director of biology policy at the Federation of American Scientists. Stebbins helped plan the survey. "That is just shocking to me," he says. "To see that so many of them didn't trust the FBI on a fundamental level really showed that there is an uphill battle that the FBI has to face."

The FBI conducted the survey - the first of its kind - as part of a larger effort to understand what it needs to do to gain the trust and cooperation of the scientific community. Federal investigators say they need the technical expertise of the country's top scientists to tackle urgent issues from cybercrime to chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
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Info

Top 10 objects that have flown in space

Paul Marks
New Scientist
Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:37 UTC
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© Mike Levers/All Rights Reserved Beagle 2The Beagle 2 mission to Mars carried a colourful dot painting by Britart exponent Damien Hirst to calibrate the craft's cameras and spectrometer.
They might have the right stuff, but astronauts are only human. And superstition, sentimentality and the need to commemorate key events affect them just like anybody else. But unlike the rest of us, these folks have the ability to make cosmic gestures with the stuff of everyday life.

What kind of stuff? Some is fairly ordinary before it leaves the grip of Earth's gravity - think stamps and coins - and some is already extraordinary. Some wreckage from the world's worst terrorist incident is now sitting on Mars, for example. And when two bicycle mechanics lofted the world's first manned, powered aeroplane off a windy beach in 1903 they could not have conceived that one day parts of their flying machine would soar through the void, land safely on the Moon - and then fly 385,000 kilometres back to Earth. (You might even say the astronauts who did that had the Wright stuff. Sorry.)
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