Science & TechnologyS


Fireball

Noctilucent clouds defy NASA expectations: Record early start to the season despite solar maximum

Dr. Tony Phillips
Science@NASA
Fri, 07 Jun 2013 12:38 UTC
Every summer, something strange and wonderful happens high above the north pole. Ice crystals begin to cling to the smoky remains of meteors, forming electric-blue clouds with tendrils that ripple hypnotically against the sunset sky. Noctilucent clouds - a.k.a. "NLCs"--are a delight for high-latitude sky watchers, and around the Arctic Circle their season of visibility is always eagerly anticipated.

News flash: This year, NLCs are getting an early start. NASA's AIM spacecraft, which is orbiting Earth on a mission to study noctilucent clouds, started seeing them on May 13th.

"The 2013 season is remarkable because it started in the northern hemisphere a week earlier than any other season that AIM has observed," reports Cora Randall of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado. "This is quite possibly earlier than ever before."


Comment: We very much doubt it.

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Comet 2

NASA: Mars is currently being bombarded by more than 200 asteroids and comets per year!


NASA.gov
Wed, 15 May 2013 15:46 UTC
Scientists using images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have estimated that the planet is bombarded by more than 200 small asteroids or bits of comets per year forming craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) across. Researchers have identified 248 new impact sites on parts of the Martian surface in the past decade, using images from the spacecraft to determine when the craters appeared. The 200-per-year planetwide estimate is a calculation based on the number found in a systematic survey of a portion of the planet.

MRO's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera took pictures of the fresh craters at sites where before-and-after images by other cameras bracketed when the impacts occurred. This combination provided a new way to make direct measurements of the impact rate on Mars. This will lead to better age estimates of recent features on Mars, some of which may have been the result of climate change.
Image
© NASA
"It's exciting to find these new craters right after they form," said Ingrid Daubar of the University of Arizona, Tucson, lead author of the paper published online this month by the journal Icarus. "It reminds you Mars is an active planet, and we can study processes that are happening today."

These asteroids or comet fragments typically are no more than 3 to 6 feet (1 to 2 meters) in diameter. Space rocks too small to reach the ground on Earth cause craters on Mars because the Red Planet has a much thinner atmosphere.

Comment: Wow. Assuming the spread is relatively across the inner solar system, how many large space rocks or comets hit Earth last year?

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Cell Phone

How timely! New cell phone app claims to prevent government eavesdropping

Alex Pappas
The Daily Caller
Thu, 06 Jun 2013 22:47 UTC
Image

The developers of a new mobile app may have just caught a break - and found a new group of potential customers - with the revelation that government is secretly snooping on Verizon cell phone users.

Developers in South Africa have developed an app called Seecrypt, which they say protects cell phone users from having their calls and texts tracked.

It was revealed Wednesday that the National Security Agency has forced Verizon to turn over phone records of customers inside the United States in the name of fighting terrorism.

But the developers of Seecrypt say you can get around the NSA with their app.

Users, according to the developers, don't have to worry about the government knowing who they are talking with.

For the app to work, both people wanting to text or call each other must have the application. But when the application is used, the phone company will not know the identity or phone number of the other person on the line. It will only know that the caller used Seecrypt.
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Headphones

NSA secretly collecting and analyzing data from 9 major internet firms

Kevin Johnson, Scott Martin, Jayne O'Donnell and Michael Winter,
USA Today
Thu, 06 Jun 2013 00:00 UTC
Keeping top-secret tabs on your phone calls
The U.S. government is secretly collecting and analyzing the phone records of millions of Americans. One operation, authorized by a secret court order, requires a subsidiary of telecom giant Verizon to give the National Security Agency extensive data on phone calls of customers from April 25 to July 19. One possible process of how the NSA and Verizon are operating:

Image
© Kevin A. Kepple, Jeff Dionise and George Petras, USA Today

Comment: Children's guide to why NSA surveillance is bad

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Comet

Researchers claim that life arrived on Earth via asteroids and comets

Graham Templeton
ExtremeTech
Sun, 09 Jun 2013 17:55 UTC
comet life
© Unknown

Not so long ago, there was quite a bit of skepticism about the panspermia hypothesis - the idea that life on Earth got started by using alien molecules deposited by stellar travelers like comets or asteroids. At the time, this was presented as the somewhat harebrained imagining of overzealous science fiction fans. The more grounded alternative was to assume that all molecules necessary for life sprung exclusively from the conditions on ancient Earth. These days, however, there is significantly more credence given to the idea that life got a kickstart from alien molecules, and the support is beginning to come from all corners of the scientific world.

Now, even supercomputers are getting in on the action. A forthcoming study from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) claims that new supercomputer simulations of comet impacts predict the formation of some of the most crucial organic compounds for life. By making use of new and highly efficient computational models, the researchers were able to look into a comet impact for much longer than ever before - in this case, up to several hundred picoseconds. That might not sound like much, but it's enough to see a wide array of organic molecules come together.

The famous Miller-Urey experiment tried to replicate the conditions of early Earth, and produced many complex organic molecules.
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Attention

Children's guide to why NSA surveillance is bad

Peter Van Buren
Huffington Post
Fri, 07 Jun 2013 17:53 UTC
NSA Eye
© n/a
NSA surveillance is legal.

True, as was slavery in the U.S., the Holocaust under Nazi Germany, Apartheid in South Africa and so forth. Laws mean very little when they are manipulated for evil.

I'm not doing anything wrong, so why should I care? If you're doing nothing wrong, then you've got nothing to hide!

See above. The definition of "wrong" can change very quickly.

I trust Obama on this.

All of your personal data is in the hands of the same people that run the TSA, the IRS and likely the DMV. Do you trust all of them all the time to never make mistakes or act on personal grudges or political biases? Do you believe none of them would ever sell your data for personal profit ever? In fact, the NSA is already sharing your data with, at minimum, British intelligence. That's a foreign government that your American government is informing on you to, FYI.

I really trust Obama on this.

Comment: Edward Snowden, Prism Whistleblower, why should people care about surveillance?


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Fireball 2

Life producing phosphorus carried to Earth by meteorites


Science Daily
Tue, 04 Jun 2013 00:00 UTC
planet
© NASAThis artist's conception shows a young, hypothetical planet around a cool star. A soupy mix of potentially life-forming chemicals can be seen pooling around the base of the jagged rocks.
Scientists may not know for certain whether life exists in outer space, but new research from a team of scientists led by a University of South Florida astrobiologist now shows that one key element that produced life on Earth was carried here on meteorites.

In an article published in the new edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USF Assistant Professor of Geology Matthew Pasek and researchers from the University of Washington and the Edinburg Centre for Carbon Innovation, revealed new findings that explain how the reactive phosphorus that was an essential component for creating the earliest life forms came to Earth.

The scientists found that during the Hadean and Archean eons -- the first of the four principal eons of Earth's earliest history -- the heavy bombardment of meteorites provided reactive phosphorus that when released in water could be incorporated into prebiotic molecules. The scientists documented the phosphorus in early Archean limestone, showing it was abundant some 3.5 billion years ago.

The scientists concluded that the meteorites delivered phosphorus in minerals that are not seen on the surface of Earth, and these minerals corroded in water to release phosphorus in a form seen only on the early Earth.

The discovery answers one of the key questions for scientist trying to unlock the processes that gave rise to early life forms: Why don't we see new life forms today?
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Comet 2

New Comet: C/2013 H1 (La Sagra)

Seiichi Yoshida
Aerith Net
Sun, 09 Jun 2013 17:30 UTC
Discovery Date: April 19, 2013

Magnitude: 17.7 mag

Discoverer: J. Nomen (La Sagra Sky Survey)

C/2013 H1
© Aerith NetMagnitudes Graph
The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2013-K38.
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Comet

New Comet: C/2013 L2 (CATALINA)

Ernesto Guido & Nick Howes
Remanzacco Observatory
Sun, 09 Jun 2013 13:30 UTC
Cbet nr. 3548, issued on 2013, June 09, announces the discovery of an apparently asteroidal object (discovery magnitude ~19.6) by R. A. Kowalski on CCD images obtained with the Catalina Sky Survey 0.68-m Schmidt telescopeon June 02. After posting on the Minor Planet Center's NEOCP webpage, this apparently asteroidal object as been found to show cometary features by by astrometric observers elsewhere. The new comet has been designated C/2013 L2 (CATALINA).

We performed follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 18 R-filtered exposures, 30-sec each, obtained remotely, from the Haleakala-Faulkes Telescope North on 2013, June 04.5, through a 2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD (operated by Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network), shows that this object is a comet: sharp central condensation, surrounded by a faint coma nearly 4" in diameter.

Below you can see our image.
C/2013 L2
© Remanzacco Observatory
M.P.E.C. 2013-L41 assigns the following preliminary parabolic orbital elements to comet C/2013 L2: T 2012 Apr. 29.80; e= 1.0; Peri. = 359.60; q = 4.77; Incl.= 106.44
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Eye 1

CISPA will legalize PRISM surveillance program

Eric Blair
Activist Post
Sat, 08 Jun 2013 08:52 UTC
CISPA
© n/a
Give them an inch and they will take a mile. That is how power-hungry tyrants interpret any law.

The PATRIOT Act and the FISA court led to the blanket wiretapping of every American citizen and a PRISM lens into all Internet activity for the NSA.

Now we are supposed to trust this Peeping Tom government by giving them more authority for "cybersecurity" with the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA)?
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