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High-energy physicists predict new family of four-quark objects

Talia S. Ogliore
EurekaAlert
Fri, 08 Nov 2013 13:58 UTC
New Particle
© BESIII CollaborationThe peak is evidence for Zc(4020) decaying to π±hC.
An international team of high-energy physicists says the discovery of an electrically charged subatomic particle called Zc(4020) is a sign that they have begun to unveil a whole new family of four-quark objects.

The Beijing Spectrometer (BESIII) collaboration, which includes scientists from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, previously announced the discovery of a mysterious four-quark particle called Zc(3900) in April 2013.

"While quarks have long been known to bind together in groups of twos or threes, these new results seem to be quickly opening the door to a previously elusive type of four-quark matter," said Frederick Harris, a professor of physics and astronomy at UH Mānoa, and a spokesman for the BESIII experiment.

"The unique data sample collected by the BESIII collaboration has continued to yield a stream of clues about the nature of multi-quark objects."

The recent breakthroughs by the BESIII collaboration have come about through a dedicated study of the byproducts of the anomalous Y(4260) particle.

Using the Beijing Electron Positron Collider (BEPCII) in China, scientists tuned the energy at which electrons and positrons annihilate matter to 4260 MeV, which corresponds to the mass of the Y(4260) particle. The BESIII Collaboration used this method to directly produce and collect large samples of the particle's byproducts, or decays.
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Comet

The multi-tailed main-belt Comet P/2013 P5

Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes & Martino Nicolini
Remanzacco Observatory
Fri, 08 Nov 2013 12:32 UTC
Cbet nr. 3639, issued on 2013, August 27, announced the discovery of a new comet (discovery magnitude ~20.9) in CCD exposures obtained on August 15 by the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on Haleakala. The new comet has been designated P/2013 P5 (PANSTARRS). According to the description in the CBET, the object has a nuclear condensation with a stellar appearance and a thin tail that extends for approximately 30" towards position angle approximately 255 degrees.

Orbiting at the inner edge of the main asteroid belt, with semimajor axis, eccentricity and inclination of 2.189 AU, 0.115 and 5.0° , respectively, the Tisserand parameter relative to Jupiter is TJ = 3.66. So this object belongs to the newly recognized class of body in the solar system known as active asteroids or main-belt comet - MBC.

These objects are remarkable for having both the orbital characteristics of asteroids and the physical characteristics of comets: they look like comets because they show comae and tails but they have orbits interior to Jupiter's and Tisserand parameters substantially larger than 3, like asteroids. While some are suspected to contain water ice whose sublimation is responsible for the expulsion of dust, others are impact-produced while, for a majority, the origin is unknown. (see also our previous post about P/2012 T1 (PANSTARRS) & 596 Scheila).
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Info

Indians and Europeans share 'light-skin' mutation

Tia Ghose
LiveScience
Thu, 07 Nov 2013 16:01 UTC
Children in India
© zeber/Shutterstock.Children in India.
Indians share a gene with Europeans that plays a significant role in coding for lighter skin, new research suggests.

The study, published today (Nov. 7) in the journal PLOS Genetics, also revealed that the gene, which is responsible for 27 percent of skin color variation in Indians, was positively selected for in North, but not South Indian populations. When something is "selected for," that means it provides some advantage and so gets passed down to offspring, becoming more prevalent in a population over time.

Many shades

The Indian subcontinent has an enormous variation in skin color.

"We have dark brown [tones], yellow tones and whitish-pinkish tones," said study lead author Chandana Basu Mallick, a biologist at the University of Tartu in Estonia. "We have quite a range and diversity in the biological spectrum of skin color."

But because South Asian gene studies are relatively rare, it wasn't clear which genes contributed to this variation. Past research has found at least 126 genes that code for pigmentation in general, Basu Mallick said.
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Sun

Solar flare causes rare 'magnetic crochet'


Spaceweather.com
Thu, 07 Nov 2013 20:08 UTC
On Nov. 5th at 22:12 UT, the magnetic canopy of sunspot AR1890 erupted, producing a brief but intense X3-class solar flare. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash:
Solar Flare
© Spaceweather.com
Radiation from the flare caused a surge in the ionization of Earth's upper atmosphere--and this led to a rare magnetic crochet. Alexander Avtanski observed the effect using a homemade magnetometer in San Jose, California. A magnetic crochet is a disturbance in Earth's magnetic field caused by electrical currents flowing in air 60 km to 100 km above our heads. Unlike geomagnetic disturbances that arrive with CMEs days after a flare, a magnetic crochet occurs while the flare is in progress. They tend to occur during fast impulsive flares like this one.

More eruptions are in the offing. NOAA forecasters estimate a 45% chance of M-class solar flares and a 10% chance of X-flares on Nov. 7th.
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Cloud Lightning

Electric universe: What is electricity?

Stephen Smith
thunderbolts.info
Thu, 07 Nov 2013 18:16 UTC
lightning
© William Biscorner
The Electric Universe hypothesis proposes that electricity lights the stars and forms the web of galaxy clusters in the Universe. But what is it?

First, "electricity" is a catchall term that describes several different phenomena: piezoelectric, thermoelectric, and even bioelectric activity are all forms of electricity. In a similar vein, "heat" has many faces: radiant heat, contact heat, convective heat, etc. One thing to keep clear, though, is that heat is a form of energy while electricity is not. However, continuing with the analogy, a flood of molten lava is not a flow of heat, nor is an electric current a river of electricity.

Defining what is meant by electricity often depends on who is providing the definition. Physicists and mathematicians define it in one way, while the "man on the street" defines it in another. Electricity is a fundamental quality of matter, so it is used to characterize other things, thus consensus opinion is lacking precision.

Like all bedrock presumptions such as "gravity" or "time", reducing electric terminology into smaller units is impossible because it lies at the bottom of the lexical well. All we can do is draw water from the well, but we can't make more water. So, electricity must be defined in comparison to other observations that appear to have a relationship with one another.
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Info

New bio patch uses DNA to regrow bone

Brett Smith
RedOrbit
Thu, 07 Nov 2013 17:38 UTC
Bio Patch
© Satheesh ElangovanResearchers at the University of Iowa have created a bio patch to regenerate missing or damaged bone. The patch has been shown to nearly fully regrow missing skull, seen in the image above.
University of Iowa researchers have developed a collagen scaffold capable of growing bone from within a living body, which could have massive ramifications for treating musculoskeletal problems.

According to the team's report in the journal Biomaterials, their novel collagen structure is seeded with particles containing the genetic instructions necessary for producing bone. In experiments, the gene-team was successfully able to regrow enough bone to cover skull wounds in test animals.

The research team said their method is different from previous efforts because it delivers bone-growing instructions to cells from within the organism. Other attempts had used applications from the outside, which is expensive, intensive, and more difficult to consistently replicate.

"We delivered the DNA to the cells, so that the cells produce the protein and that's how the protein is generated to enhance bone regeneration," said study author Aliasger Salem, a pharmacy professor at the university. "If you deliver just the protein, you have to keep delivering it with continuous injections to maintain the dose. With our method, you get local, sustained expression over a prolonged period of time without having to give continued doses of protein."

Study author Satheesh Elangovan, a professor in UI's College of Dentistry, said the new method could be a game-changer for patients who need dental implants, but don't have sufficient bone in the necessary area. The scaffold could also be used to fix birth defects involving missing bone around the head or face.
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Comet

Comet ISON heats up, grows new tail

Bob King
Universe Today
Thu, 07 Nov 2013 17:12 UTC
Comet ISON_1
© Damian PeachTwo faint tail streamers are visible between Comet ISON’s green coma and bright star near center. in this photo taken on Nov. 6. They’re possibly the beginning of an ion tail. Click to enlarge.
I'm starting to get the chills about Comet ISON. I can't help it. With practically every telescope turned the comet's way fewer than three short weeks before perihelion, every week brings new images and developments. The latest pictures show a brand new tail feature emerging from the comet's bulbous coma.

For months, amateur and professional astronomers alike have watched ISON's slowly growing dust tail that now stretches nearly half a degree or a full moon's diameter. In the past two days, photos taken by amateur astronomers reveal what appears to be a nascent ion or gas tail. Damian Peach's Nov. 6 image clearly shows two spindly streamers.
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Fireball 5

Surprising recent discoveries of three large Near-Earth Objects

Don Yeomans and Paul Chodas
SpaceDaily.com
Thu, 07 Nov 2013 12:10 UTC
Two surprisingly large Near-Earth Asteroids have been discovered in just the last week or so, as well as a third moderately large asteroid which surprisingly has also gone undetected until now, even though it can pass close enough to the Earth to be classified as "potentially hazardous".

Not since 1983 has any near-Earth asteroid been found as large as the approximately 20-kilometer (12-mile) size of the two new large ones. In fact, there are only three other known near-Earth asteroids that are of comparable size or larger than the two new large ones.
Image
© NASA/JPL-CaltechThe orbits of 2013 UQ4, 2013 US10 and 2013 UP8 are shown in a view looking down on the plane of the solar system. While 2013 US10 and 2013 UP8 orbit the sun in a counter clockwise direction (so called "direct" orbits like all the planets and most asteroids), 2013 UQ4 orbits in a clockwise (retrograde) direction.
It is important to note that none of these three new large near-Earth asteroids can come close enough to the Earth to represent a near-term threat to our planet.

The first of the new large near-Earth asteroid discoveries is named 2013 UQ4, and it is perhaps the most unusual. This approximately 19-kilometer (12-mile) wide object was spotted by the Catalina Sky Survey on Oct. 23 when the asteroid was 435 million kilometers (270 million miles) away from Earth. Not only is this object unusually large, it follows a very unusual highly inclined, retrograde orbit about the Sun, which means it travels around the Sun in the opposite direction of all the planets and the vast majority of asteroids.
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Jupiter

Far-off planets like the Earth dot the galaxy

Dennis Overbye
The New York Times
Mon, 04 Nov 2013 12:14 UTC
Image
© Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, via Associated PressA rendering of Kepler 62f and two outer planets, which may lie in a habitable zone where liquid water could exist on the surface.
The known odds of something - or someone - living far, far away from Earth improved beyond astronomers' boldest dreams on Monday.

Astronomers reported that there could be as many as 40 billion habitable Earth-size planets in the galaxy, based on a new analysis of data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft.

One out of every five sunlike stars in the galaxy has a planet the size of Earth circling it in the Goldilocks zone - not too hot, not too cold - where surface temperatures should be compatible with liquid water, according to a herculean three-year calculation based on data from the Kepler spacecraft by Erik Petigura, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley.

Mr. Petigura's analysis represents a major step toward the main goal of the Kepler mission, which was to measure what fraction of sunlike stars in the galaxy have Earth-size planets. Sometimes called eta-Earth, it is an important factor in the so-called Drake equation used to estimate the number of intelligent civilizations in the universe. Mr. Petigura's paper, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, puts another smiley face on a cosmos that has gotten increasingly friendly and fecund-looking over the last 20 years.
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Info

Lice reveal clues to human evolution

Wynne Parry
LiveScience
Thu, 07 Nov 2013 11:55 UTC
Louse
© CDCThe nit of a head louse.
Gainsville, Florida - Clues to human evolution generally come from fossils left by ancestors and the molecular trail encoded in the human genome as it is tweaked over generations. However, some researchers are looking to another source: the bloodsucking louse.

Lice have been closely associated with humans for millennia; in spite of human attempts to get rid of the parasites, their persistence has made them a potential reservoir of information for those who want to know more about human evolution and history, said David Reed, associate curator of mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History, on Sunday (Nov. 3) here at the ScienceWriters2013 conference.

"When we went through our evolutionary history, we didn't do it by ourselves - we took a whole bunch of passengers with us," Reed said.

Clues from the bloodsucking hitchhikers, for instance, suggest modern humans intermingled with Neanderthals (a theory also supported by other genetic research) and that humans may have first put on clothing before leaving Africa.
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