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"Fresh" Crater Found in Egypt; Changes Impact Risk?

Andrew Fazekas
National Geographic News
Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:19 UTC
Kamil Crater
© Museo Nazionale dell'Antartide Università di SienaGeophysicists work in the newfound Kamil crater in an undated picture.
A small impact crater discovered in the Egyptian desert could change estimates for impact hazards to our planet, according to a new study.

One of the best preserved craters yet found on Earth, the Kamil crater was initially discovered in February during a survey of satellite images on Google Earth. Researchers think the crater formed within the past couple thousand years.

The Italian-Egyptian team that found the crater in pictures recently visited and studied the 147-foot-wide (45-meter-wide), 52-foot-deep (16-meter-deep) hole. The team also collected thousands of pieces of the space rock that littered the surrounding desert.

Based on their calculations, the team thinks that a 4.2-foot-wide (1.3-meter-wide) solid iron meteor weighing 2,267 to 4,535 pounds (5,000 to 10,000 kilograms) smashed into the desert - nearly intact - at speeds exceeding 2.1 miles (3.5 kilometers) a second.

There are no hard numbers for how many meteors this size might currently be on a collision course with Earth, but scientists think the potential threats could be in the tens of thousands.
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Question

Sister monument to Stonehenge may have been found

Raphael G. Satter
The Associated Press
Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:21 UTC
Stonehenge
© Dave Caulkin, APThis is a Sept. 15, 2004. file photo of tourists looking at The Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain in England. Scientists scouring the area around Stonehenge said Thursday July 22, 2010 they have uncovered the foundations of a second circular structure only a few hundred meters (yards) from the world famous monument.
Scientists scouring the area around Stonehenge said Thursday they have uncovered a circular structure only a few hundred meters (yards) from the world famous monument.

There's some debate about what exactly has been found. The survey team which uncovered the structure said it could be the foundation for a circle of freestanding pieces of timber, a wooden version of Stonehenge.

But Tim Darvill, a professor of archaeology at Bournemouth University in southern England, expressed skepticism, saying he believed it was more likely a barrow, or prehistoric tomb.

Darvill did say that the circle was one of an expanding number of discoveries being made around Stonehenge which "really shows how much there is still to learn and how extensive the site really was."

"In its day Stonehenge was at the center of the largest ceremonial center in Europe," he said.

The stonehenge that is visible today is thought to have been completed about 3,500 years ago, although the first earthwork henge on the site was probably built more than 5,000 yeas ago.
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Telescope

Telescope Finds Elusive Buckyballs in Space for First Time


PhysOrg
Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:50 UTC
Image
© NASA/JPL-CaltechNASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has at last found buckyballs in space, as illustrated by this artist's conception.
Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered carbon molecules, known as "buckyballs," in space for the first time. Buckyballs are soccer-ball-shaped molecules that were first observed in a laboratory 25 years ago.

They are named for their resemblance to architect Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, which have interlocking circles on the surface of a partial sphere. Buckyballs were thought to float around in space, but had escaped detection until now.

"We found what are now the largest molecules known to exist in space," said astronomer Jan Cami of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. "We are particularly excited because they have unique properties that make them important players for all sorts of physical and chemical processes going on in space." Cami has authored a paper about the discovery that will appear online Thursday in the journal Science.

Buckyballs are made of 60 carbon atoms arranged in three-dimensional, spherical structures. Their alternating patterns of hexagons and pentagons match a typical black-and-white soccer ball. The research team also found the more elongated relative of buckyballs, known as C70, for the first time in space. These molecules consist of 70 carbon atoms and are shaped more like an oval rugby ball. Both types of molecules belong to a class known officially as buckminsterfullerenes, or fullerenes.
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Sun

Astronomers Find A 300 Solar Mass Star


Space Daily / SPX
Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:37 UTC
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© ESO/M. KornmesserUsing a combination of instruments on ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, some weighing at birth more than 300 times the mass of the Sun, or twice as much as the currently accepted limit of 150 solar masses. This artist's impression shows the relative sizes of young stars, from the smallest "red dwarfs", weighing in at about 0.1 solar masses, through low mass "yellow dwarfs" such as the Sun, to massive "blue dwarf" stars weighing eight times more than the Sun, as well as the 300 solar mass star named R136a1.
Using a combination of instruments on ESO's Very Large Telescope, a UK-led international team of astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, one which at birth had more than 300 times the mass of the Sun, twice as much as the currently accepted limit.

The existence of these monsters - millions of times more luminous than the Sun, losing mass through very powerful winds - may provide an answer to the question "how massive can stars be?" The new results appear in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

A team of astronomers led by Paul Crowther, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sheffield, used ESO's Very Large Telescope, as well as archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, to study two young clusters of stars, NGC 3603 and RMC 136a in detail. NGC 3603 is a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula's extended clouds of gas and dust, located 22,000 light-years away from the Sun (eso1005).

RMC 136a (more often nicknamed R136) is another cluster of young, massive and hot stars, which is located inside the Tarantula Nebula, in one of our neighboring galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud, 165,000 light-years away (eso0613).
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Grey Alien

Aliens Have Been Trying to Contact Us by Cosmic Twitter, Scientists Claim

Laura Roberts
The Telegraph
Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:30 UTC
Image
© Universal Pictures/The TelegraphET could be contacting us by cosmic Twitter
Aliens may have been trying to contact us by communicating in a manner similar to Twitter, scientists have claimed.

ET is more likely to be sending out short, directed messages than continuous signals beamed in all directions, experts said.

''This approach is more like Twitter and less like War and Peace,'' said Californian physicist Dr James Benford, president of Microwave Sciences Inc.

He and twin brother Gregory, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Irvine, looked at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) from the aliens' point of view.

They concluded that Seti scientists may have been taking the wrong approach for the past five decades.
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Magnify

Venezuela: Hugo Chavez Exhumes Remains of 19th Century Hero Simon Bolivar


The Telegraph
Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:00 UTC
Image
© Getty ImagesSimon Bolivar, the 19th Century political leader
Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, has exhumed the remains of South American independence hero Simon Bolivar to determine the cause of his death nearly 200 years ago.

Mr Chavez suspects that Bolivar was murdered and did not die from tuberculosis, as most historians believe.

Announcing the exhumation of his hero on Twitter, Mr Chavez said he "wept with emotion".

"What impressive moments we have lived tonight. We have seen the bones of the Great Bolivar!" he wrote.

"That glorious skeleton must be Bolivar, because his flame can be felt. Bolivar lives!" he added.
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Magnify

New Zealand Museum Thaws 100-Year-Old Whisky


The Telegraph
Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:00 UTC
Image
© Geoff RobinsonThe crates of Mackinlay's whisky found in an Antarctic hut
A crate of Scotch whisky that has been frozen in Antarctic ice for more than a century is being slowly thawed by New Zealand museum officials.

The crate of whisky was recovered earlier this year - along with four other crates containing whisky and brandy - beneath the floor of a hut built by British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton during his 1908 Antarctic expedition.

Four of the crates were left in the ice, but one labelled Mackinlay's whisky was brought to the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch on New Zealand's South Island, where officials said it was being thawed in a controlled environment.

Nigel Watson, executive director of the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust, said the whisky might still be liquid.

"When the guys were lifting it, they reported the sound of sloshing and there was a smell of whisky in the freezer, so it is all boding pretty well," he said.
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War Whore

Raptor over Blighty: Watch the stealth fighter in infrared

Lewis Page
The Register
Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:56 UTC
Farnborough

This week the Reg flying car, killer robot and general military crazytech desk has been attending the Farnborough Airshow. One of the show's highlights this year is the reappearance of the US F-22 Raptor ultrafighter, previously seen publicly in the UK for just one brief Monday display at Farnborough '08.
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Camera

Early stages of crater birth captured on camera

Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:29 UTC
Image
© B. Hermalyn/P. Schultz/Brown UniversityHard landing
They move too fast for human eyes to see, but a camera has tracked individual sand particles spraying from an impact site in the first moments of crater formation.

Such movies could help us piece together the objects that created the craters which pock the surfaces of the moon and other celestial bodies. They could also help to predict the effects of impacts - to determine the risk flying debris poses to astronauts, for example.

Fast ejection

The resulting craters form in 100 milliseconds or less. By using high-speed video cameras that can capture up to 15,000 frames per second, the team could track individual sand particles as they were ejected from the impact.

Most of the material thrown up by the impact took to the air during the impact's "main stage", landing within a few crater radii of where the projectile hit. But the high-speed video also revealed particles kicked up in a relatively unstudied early stage.

During this phase of crater formation material is flung fastest and farthest, for example creating the long rays of the moon's Tycho crater and, potentially, launching a number of meteoroids into space from the surface of the moon and Mars.
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Rocket

Just what we need: Navy laser roasts incoming drones in mid-air

Paul Marks
New Scientist
Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:21 UTC
A video released at the biennial aerospace convention in Farnborough, UK, today, shows a laser mounted on a warship's gun turret obliterating a remotely piloted drone.

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