Science & TechnologyS


Meteor

Flashback U.S. Must Be Ready to Meet Asteroid Threat, White House Science Adviser Says

Jeremy Hsu
Space.com
Thu, 21 Oct 2010 11:59 UTC
asteroid impact
© Don Davis

National emergency plans for natural disasters can also work in the unlikely scenario of an asteroid strike on the U.S., according to a letter to Congress by the White House's top science adviser, SPACE.com has learned.

The 10-page letter by John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, adds that the U.S. has a responsibility to the world as the country most capable of detecting space rocks that threaten Earth. The Oct. 15 letter obtained by SPACE.com is addressed to the leaders of the House Committee on Science and Technology.

Holdren states that NASA must continue leading efforts to close the gap in detecting and perhaps deflecting near-Earth objects (NEO). The U.S. space agency already has the duty of alerting the rest of the government about any threatening space objects.
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Satellite

NASA Loses Contact With NanoSail-D Solar Sail

Tracie McDaniel
DailyTech
Mon, 13 Dec 2010 13:51 UTC
Image
© space.com
NASA's solar sail is missing in action and now the space agency is questioning whether or not it was ever released.

The NanoSail-D, an 8.5-pound satellite carrying the solar sail, was supposed to be ejected from the Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology Satelliter (FASTSAT) on Monday, December 6. The FASTSAT launched November 19 from the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska on a Minotaur 4 rocket.

NASA had anticipated that three days after being deployed from the FASTSAT, the satellite would trigger a timer prompting an automatic command to unleash a folded-up 100 square foot polymer sail from the experimental spacecraft. However, the Nano-Sail-D now appears to be lost.

On Friday, NASA posted an update indicating, "it is not clear" that the sail was ever deployed.
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Meteor

Russian scientists have discovered a first comet over the last 20-year period


Russia-IC
Mon, 13 Dec 2010 14:55 UTC
comet
© Unknown
Russian scientists have discovered a first comet over the last 20-year period.

The new comet, now marked as C/2010 X1 (Elenin), was discovered by an astronomer Leonid Elenin from the Institute of Applied Mathematics on December 10, 2010. The discovery was made by means of a Russian automated observatory ISON-NM, located in New Mexico, USA.
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Beaker

Cells reprogrammed to treat diabetes


Science News
Sun, 12 Dec 2010 13:28 UTC
Testes may be a source of insulin production

Philadelphia - Sperm-forming stem cells in the testes can be converted to insulin-producing cells that could replace diseased ones in the pancreas, researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., reported December 12 at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology. The new technique is edging closer to producing the amount of insulin needed to cure diabetes in humans.

Ian Gallicano, a developmental biologist at Georgetown, and his colleagues isolated sperm-producing stem cells from the testes of organ donors. These cells could easily revert to an embryonic state, capable of making nearly any cell in the body. The Georgetown researchers treated the cells with chemicals to coax them into mimicking beta-islet cells from the pancreas, the same kind of cells that are compromised in diabetes.

Reprogrammed sperm-producing cells cured diabetes in mice for about a week before their insulin levels dropped again. "If you're a mouse and you have diabetes, you're in good shape these days," Gallicano says.
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Sun

Significant Solar Storms to Hit Earth Today


UK Space Agency
Mon, 13 Dec 2010 13:17 UTC
stero observing sun
© NASAArtist's impression of STEREO observing the Sun

For the first time scientists have used data analysed by the public to make a real-time prediction of a solar storm that should hit Earth today (Monday 13 December), thanks to the Solar Stormwatch web project.

The initiative, launched in February by the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (ROG), in partnership with the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the Zooniverse citizen science project, makes it possible for anyone with an internet connection to get involved in the latest solar research by helping to spot and track storms as they erupt from the surface of the Sun. These collective measurements enable scientists to forecast the arrival of storms far enough in advance to issue effective pre-emptive warnings for the first time.

The Sun is much more dynamic than it appears to the naked eye. Intense magnetic fields churn and pummel the Sun's atmosphere and they store enormous amounts of energy that, when released, can hurl billions of tons of material out into space in eruptions called Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) - or solar storms.
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Info

Archaeologists: Pre-Hellenistic Temple Discovered in Southern Syria

Ahmed Rashid
Global Arab Network
Mon, 13 Dec 2010 12:29 UTC
Ancient Temple
© Global Arab Network

Syria (Sweida) - Stone stairs and the foundations of a temple built on the ruins of an older temple from the pre-Hellenistic period were unearthed at the site of Tal Ahmar in Sweida province, Global Arab Network reports according to archaeological sources.

Yaser al-Shaar, Member of the national archaeological mission working at the site, told SANA that the excavations also revealed floors from the Islamic period in the northern cave in Tal Ahmar, as well as remains of a stone cemetery engraved in rock.

Al-Shaar said that another excavation season is needed for the site to reveal other possible remnants and historical references given that the site was damaged during successive time periods.

The mission's current work season continue that of 2007 during which a big basalt altar dating back to the pre-Roman period with an eagle on top of it and a natural cave containing three small and medium-sized altars engraved in volcanic rock were discovered.
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Meteor

Geminid Meteor Shower Tonight


Space Weather
Mon, 13 Dec 2010 11:43 UTC
The Geminid meteor shower is underway. According to the International Meteor Organization, dark-sky observers are now counting as many as 40 Geminids per hour. Forecasters expect this rate to double or more when the shower peaks during the early hours of Dec. 14th. The best time to look is during the dark hours before sunrise on Tuesday: sky map.

Image
© Antonio Finazzi
Here is a selection of early Geminids photographed on Monday, Dec. 13th: #1, #2, #3, #4.

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Sun

Triple Eruptions


Space Weather
Mon, 13 Dec 2010 11:39 UTC
Solar activity surged on Sunday, Dec. 12th, when the sun erupted three times in quick succession, hurling a trio of bright coronal mass ejections (CMEs) into space. Coronagraphs onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory recorded the action:

Image
© SOHO
A preliminary analysis suggests that none of the CMEs will be geoeffective. The expanding clouds should miss our planet.

Are these CMEs related? According to images from NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft and the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the clouds emerged from three distinct blast sites separated by great distances. In each case, a magnetic filament erupted--one near the sun's southeastern limb (CME#1), one near the north pole (CME#2), and one on the far side of the sun (CME#3). Because all three eruptions occurred within a matter of hours, the coronagraph images suggest a single 3-lobed cloud; in fact, they are distinct CMEs.

Click here to play a 9 MB gif movie
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Info

Astronomers Find First Evidence Of Other Universes


Technology Review, MIT
Mon, 13 Dec 2010 11:16 UTC
Our cosmos was "bruised" in collisions with other universes. Now astronomers have found the first evidence of these impacts in the cosmic microwave background

Multi Verse
© Technology Review

There's something exciting afoot in world of cosmology. Last month, Roger Penrose at the University of Oxford and Vahe Gurzadyan at Yerevan State University in Armenia announced that they had found patterns of concentric circles in the cosmic microwave background, the echo of the Big Bang.

This, they say, is exactly what you'd expect if the universe were eternally cyclical. By that, they mean that each cycle ends with a big bang that starts the next cycle. In this model, the universe is a kind of cosmic Russian Doll, with all previous universes contained within the current one.

That's an extraordinary discovery: evidence of something that occurred before the (conventional) Big Bang.

Today, another group says they've found something else in the echo of the Big Bang. These guys start with a different model of the universe called eternal inflation. In this way of thinking, the universe we see is merely a bubble in a much larger cosmos. This cosmos is filled with other bubbles, all of which are other universes where the laws of physics may be dramatically different to ours.
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Magnet

Navy Test Fires Electromagnetic Cannon


PhysOrg
Fri, 10 Dec 2010 00:00 UTC
US Navy Emblem
© US NavyThe US Navy announced a successful test Friday of an electromagnetic cannon capable of firing a projectile 110 nautical miles (200 kilometers) at five times the speed of sound.
The US Navy announced a successful test Friday of an electromagnetic cannon capable of firing a projectile 110 nautical miles (200 kilometers) at five times the speed of sound.

"This demonstration moves us one day closer to getting this advanced capability to sea," said Rear Admiral Nevin Carr, chief of naval research.

Tested at the Navy's Dahlgren Surface Warfare Center in Virginia, the futuristic weapon uses powerful jolts of electric current to propel a non-explosive slug along rails before launching it at supersonic velocities.

The latest test involved a 33-megajoule shot, the most powerful ever attempted and three times that of the previous test in January 2008.
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