Science & TechnologyS


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Large Hadron Collider to restart at half its designed energy

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© CERNA technician inspects the site of a faulty electrical connection that damaged the LHC in September 2008
The world's most powerful particle smasher will restart in November at just half the energy the machine was designed to reach. But even at this level, the Large Hadron Collider has the potential to uncover exotic new physics, such as signs of hidden extra dimensions, physicists say.

The LHC is a new particle accelerator at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, designed to answer fundamental questions, such as what gives elementary particles their mass, by colliding particles at higher energies than ever achieved in a laboratory before.

But the first attempt to turn on the LHC failed in September 2008 when a joint connecting a pair of superconducting wires overheated, causing an explosive release of helium used as a coolant. Scientists have been making repairs and checking the strength of other electrical connections since then to pave the way for a second start attempt.

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Roman Emperor Vespasian's Villa Found

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© Pierluigi FeliciangeliSummer Home
An archaeologist works on the site of Roman Emperor Vespasian's summer villa. Titus Flavius Vespasianus, the emperor who ordered the construction of the Colosseum, ascended to the throne at the ripe old age of 60 and remained emperor until his death at age 69
The summer villa of Roman Emperor Vespasian has been found in the Sabine hill country northeast of Rome, Italian archaeologists announced today.

Titus Flavius Vespasianus is known for rebuilding the Roman Empire following the tumultuous reign of Emporer Nero. Vespasian changed the face of Rome by launching a major public works program, which included the construction of the Colosseum, the structure that arguably defines the glory of ancient Rome.

Dating back to the first century A.D., the massive villa, adorned with mosaic floors, baths and marbled halls, has emerged following four years of digs near the town of Cittareale, in the province of Rieti.

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World's oldest map: Spanish cave has landscape from 14,000 years ago

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© EPAArchaeologists have discovered what they believe is man's earliest map, dating from almost 14,000 years ago
A stone tablet found in a cave in Abauntz in the Navarra region of northern Spain is believed to contain the earliest known representation of a landscape.

Engravings on the stone, which measures less than seven inches by five inches, and is less than an inch thick, appear to depict mountains, meandering rivers and areas of good foraging and hunting.

A team from the University of Zaragoza spent 15 years deciphering the etched lines and squiggles after unearthing the artefact during excavation of the cave in 1993.

Satellite

Kepler spacecraft sees its first exoplanets

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© NASAKepler's computer has mysteriously entered a standby, or "safe", mode twice since launch - possibly because it was hit by charged particles from space called cosmic rays
The planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has found its first extrasolar planets: three alien worlds that had been previously discovered with ground-based telescopes. The finds confirm that Kepler's instruments are sensitive enough to detect Earth-like planets around sun-like stars - but they might also be unexpectedly sensitive to charged particles in space that can zap circuitry.

Kepler launched on 6 March with a simple charge: Stare at a swatch of sky for three and a half years, and look for Earths. The telescope will hunt transiting exoplanets, planets that pass in front of their stars and dim their brightness at regular intervals.

It's focused on a 100-square-degree patch of the Milky Way between the constellations Cygnus and Lyra that contains about 4.5 million stars, 100,000 of which are prime candidates for planets.

In the first 10 days of its calibration period, Kepler collected data on 52,496 stars, three of which were known to have transiting planets. "We expected to be able to see those instantly from the first data that we took," says project manager Jim Fanson at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Any planet that you can detect from the ground will be very obviously visible to Kepler."

One of these planets, HAT-P-7b, provided some good news: Kepler is indeed sensitive enough to detect alien Earths.

Popcorn

Lab created out-of-body experiences help bring avatars to life

The dream of many of paralysed people, computer-game designers - and pornographers - is one step closer to reality with the demonstration of a technique that allows people to physically identify with a virtual body.


Telescope

Astronomers Discover Stars in Early Galaxies had a Need for Speed

Galaxy
© NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)Astronomers found that the stars in extremely compact galaxies in the early universe are moving at incredibly high speeds.
A team of astronomers has measured the motions of stars in a very distant galaxy for the first time and discovered they are whizzing around at astonishingly high speeds - about one million miles per hour, or twice the speed at which the Sun circles our own Milky Way galaxy. The finding offers new insights into how these early galaxies may have evolved into the more familiar ones we see in the nearby universe.

The team spent an unprecedented 29 hours observing the galaxy with one of the largest telescopes on Earth - the Gemini South Telescope in Chile - to collect enough light to determine how fast its stars are moving.

Because stars' velocities are directly related to the mass they are orbiting, the ultra-fast speeds would ordinarily suggest the galaxy is very large. But additional observations from the Hubble Space Telescope showed that the galaxy is in fact much smaller than expected, with a diameter of about 5000 light years.

Meteor

Comet Swarm Delivered Earth's Oceans?

Comet
© Nicolle Rager-Fuller, NSFA comet slams into what is now Chesapeake Bay in an artist's conception.
A barrage of comets may have delivered Earth's oceans around 3.85 billion years ago, a new study suggests.

Scientists have long suspected that Earth and its near neighbors were walloped by tens of thousands of impactors during an ancient event known as the Late Heavy Bombardment.

This pummeling disfigured the moon, leaving behind massive craters that are still visible, preserved for millennia in the moon's airless environment. But it's been unclear whether the impactors were icy comets or rocky asteroids.

Now, based on levels of a certain metal in ancient Earth rocks, a team led by Uffe Jorgensen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark says comets were the culprits.

Whether Earth had oceans before any comets arrived has been intensely debated, Jorgensen noted.

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Archaeologists Confirm Location of Important Paeonic-Era Site in Macedonia

Following two years of systematic excavations, archeologists were able to finally and definitely confirm the location of the site of Bilazora, which served as an important centre during Paeonic Macedonian times.

"We have expected for long to unearth and definitely confirm the location of Bilazora, one of the largest towns at the Paeonic Macedonian times," archaeologist Stefan Danev, the head of the project, said at the presentation of the results of two-year exploration, recently quoted by the Dnevnik newspaper.

Sun

Bringing solar power to the masses

On a 104-degree Friday in July when sunlight bathed The University of Arizona campus, doctoral student Dio Placencia sat before a noisy vacuum chamber in the Chemical Sciences Building trying to advance the renewable energy revolution.

As a member of UA professor Neal R. Armstrong's research group, Placencia conducts research aimed at creating a thin, flexible organic solar cell that could power a tent or keep a car charged between trips to work and back home again.

He's passionate about renewable energy and says it's a waste that so little solar has been incorporated into society. "I have a little flat panel that I walk around with," Placencia said. "I usually put that on my backpack, and I charge my cell phone when I'm walking to school."

Bizarro Earth

Research ship drills deep into ocean quake zone

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© Jamstec/CDEXDrilling into the crust may provide insight into earthquakes and tsunamis.
It sounds like the beginning of a Godzilla movie. Off the coast of Japan, scientists are using a powerful drilling method for the first time in an underwater earthquake zone.

As long as no sleeping monster is rudely awakened by their methods (and no geological nightmares), the team hopes to learn about the frictional properties of the rock in the area in order to better understand how earthquakes and tsunamis form.

The CHIKYU research vessel, operated by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, has drilled to a depth of nearly 1.6 kilometres beneath the seafloor while floating on 2 kilometres of ocean. To achieve greater depths than with normal methods, the team uses a technique known as riser-drilling. This relies on recirculating viscous "drilling mud" to maintain pressure balance in the borehole.

According to Bill Ellsworth, of the United States Geological Survey, petroleum drilling on land and from stable ocean oil-platforms regularly reaches depths of between 5 and 8 kilometres. The deepest land-based hole, drilled for scientific research on the Kola Peninsula in Russia, reaches more than 12 kilometres, but drilling from a ship is a different matter.