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Magnetic Pole Holds Elusive Allure


Sydney Morning Herald
Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:28 UTC
Charlie Barton
© SMHMoving target .... Charlie Barton and his fluxgate magnetometer.
The Hollywood disaster movie 2012 got a lot of things wrong, an expert on the Earth's magnetism tells Steve Meacham.

Dr Charlie Barton - the Australian scientist who 10 years ago became the closest anyone has been to the constantly moving south magnetic pole - has never seen Roland Emmerich's apocalyptic adventure movie 2012, starring John Cusack.

He knows the film was much criticised when it opened last year, particularly by scholars, who objected to it portraying ancient Mayan mathematicians prophesying 2012 as the date of the end of the world as we know it.

But Barton's reasons for not seeing it are different: the science is flawed.

Sure, says the Canberra-based geo-magnetist, sun spots and other solar activity have an immense - and little-understood - effect on the Earth's ability to sustain human life.

And yes, it is true (as the movie shows) that the planet's magnetic poles will eventually reverse as a result of dramatic changes in its molten core, leading to north becoming south and vice versa.
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Rocket

Duff French Missiles for Royal Navy Finally Fixed

Lewis Page
The Register
Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:08 UTC
Rocket firing
© The RegisterEighth time's the charm
New £1bn destroyers get post-1940s weaponry at last

Problems with the primary armament of the Royal Navy's new, £1bn+ Type 45 destroyers have been rectified, according to reports.

The Royal Navy already has two Type 45s, HMS Daring and HMS Dauntless, but test-firings last year of their main armament - the Principal Anti Air Missile System (PAAMS, the British configuration of which is known as "Sea Viper") - were failures, meaning that the weapons could not be accepted into service.

This left the Type 45s - one of which is already on her second captain - almost unarmed, packing only a 4.5-inch bombardment gun and a couple of light 30mm cannon.

The failed test firings were blamed on a problem with the French "Aster" missiles used by Sea Viper. This has meant a design change and delayed deliveries, but pan-European missile firm MBDA, maker of the Aster, now says that the redesigned missiles have been successfully tested.

Comment: Do you ever wonder where your tax money goes ?

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Meteor

Comet-bomb interceptor makes low pass above Atlantic

Lewis Page
The Register
Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:01 UTC
comet
© The RegisterOne way of looking at it

Earthy speed to get probe 'up close and personal'

A NASA space probe famous for bombing a comet five years ago made a final "flyby" past Earth last night, changing its orbit around the Sun with the aid of the planet's gravity. The renamed "EPOXI" craft (formerly "Deep Impact") swooped low just 19,000 miles above the South Atlantic at 11pm UK time last night.

Last night's 12,750 mph flypast will see the dual-missioned spaceprobe accelerate by no less than 3,470 mph in its bid to reach the comet Hartley 2 later this year. EPOXI's name reflects the two new tasks it was given following the Deep Impact comet-bombing run: Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization plus Deep Impact Extended Investigation.

After the successful 2005 strike in which the then Deep Impact smashed a probe into the comet Tempel 1, NASA assessed that the probe still had plenty of manoeuvring fuel left and that, by means of judicious low passes above Earth, it could be steered to a new rendezvous with another comet. The Hartley intercept, however, will not involve an impact probe like the Tempel rendezvous.
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Sherlock

The Plato Code: Secret Symbols Discovered in Plato's Books

Michael Suen
Geek O' System
Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:15 UTC
Plato
© Geek O' SystemPlato
A researcher at the University of Manchester has discovered a pattern of symbols embedded in ancient Greek philosopher Plato's writings which give them a musical structure. According to Dr. Jay Kennedy, a researcher at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine who has been studying Plato's work for five years, this code reveals his "hidden philosophy."

"The result was amazing," he said, "It was like opening a tomb and finding new set of gospels written by Jesus Christ himself."

Another Dan Brown book in the making? Perhaps, but more importantly, what implications do these findings have for our conception of Western history, and the age old conflict between science and religion?

Reportedly, this so-called Plato Code suggests that the philosopher anticipated the Scientific Revolution 2,000 years before Isaac Newton, in that he posited the awe-inspiring force of nature was mathematically dictated. Thus according to Plato, to understand the scientific basis of nature was to move closer to God.

The musical pattern of symbols were derived from ancient Pythagorean disciples, a literary expression of the planets and stars' inaudible music, what Pythagoras had called "harmony of the spheres" a century earlier.
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Pharoah

On the trail of Tutankhamen's penis

Jo Marchant
New Scientist
Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:53 UTC
Image
© Erik Pendzich/Rex Features
When I started investigating a news story about the possible cause of King Tutankhamen's death, I never expected to end up on the trail of his penis.

As I've reported today, a letter published in JAMA this week suggests that contrary to what was said earlier this year, the boy pharaoh did not die of a combination of an inherited bone disorder and a nasty case of malaria, but of a genetic disease called sickle-cell anemia.

This letter is just one of six comments that JAMA has published on the work, carried out by Egypt's chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass and colleagues. Another one suggests that Tut and his relatives may have suffered from a hormonal disorder that is similar to Antley-Bixler syndrome. In this singularly interesting syndrome, a single genetic mutation causes elongated skulls, and over-production of oestrogen. Male sufferers can have distinctive physical features, including breasts and under-developed genitalia.

Irwin Braverman of Yale Medical School and Philip Mackowiak of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland, believe that a variant of this syndrome could explain why artwork from the time depicts Tut and his relatives - in particular his father Akhenatun - as having feminine bodies, with hips and breasts, and particularly long heads.
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Info

Archaeologists Stumble Upon Ancient Necropolises During Stadium Reconstruction


Balkan Travellers
Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:12 UTC
Tumbe Kafe Stadium
© BalkanTravellers.com Tumbe Kafe Stadium
During the reconstruction works of the Tumbe Kafe stadium and recreational zone in Macedonia's south-western town of Bitola, archaeologists have found necropolises, most likely dating to the third century.

"All construction activities have been halted in order to examine the artefacts. The skeletons might belong to Christians, but the possibility of their being pagan is not ruled out either. It is believed that necropolises originate from the third century, because the deceased had been buried underground since," archaeologist Gordana Filipovska-Lazarovska told national media today.
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Telescope

Rocky Mounds and a Plateau on Mars


PhysOrg
Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:25 UTC
Image
© ESA/DLR/FU BerlinThe region around Magellan Crater stretches across 190 x 112 km, and covers an area of about 21 280 sq km, which is roughly the size of Slovenia.
When Mars Express set sail for the crater named after Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, it found a windblown plateau and mysterious rocky mounds nearby.

Stretching across 190 x 112 km, this region of Mars covers an area of about 21 280 sq km, which is roughly the size of Slovenia. It is located to the southwest of the volcanic region Tharsis on the southern highlands of Mars, near the crater Magellan.

Named after the famous Portuguese navigator and explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the impact crater is about 100 km across. Only a small portion of the crater rim is visible in this image, sitting at the lower right, because the Mars Express High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) has zeroed in on some intriguing features nearby.
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Telescope

New Theory for Magnetic Stripes on Mars

Lin Edwards
PhysOrg
Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:40 UTC
Image
© NASAThis global map uses colors to represent the strength and direction of the magnetic field caused by crustal magnetization.
A controversial new theory has been proposed to explain a series of stripes of permanently magnetized minerals containing iron in the Martian crust. The magnetized stripes, which have alternating orientations, have intrigued scientists since their discovery in 1997.

The Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) began orbiting almost 400 km above the surface of Mars in 1997, and its magnetometer began sending signals back to Earth, which revealed the presence of the magnetized stripes. The latest research, led by Ken Sprenke and Daisuke Kobayashi of the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho, theorizes the stripes were created as a result of ancient hotspots beneath the planet's crust.

The theory, published in Icarus, is that sub-surface hotspots caused material to rise to the surface from the interior, and the mineral was then magnetized with the field present at the time. Sprenke noted that on Earth the Hawaiian Islands were probably created by hotspots moving slowly below the hard crust, leaving parallel magnetized tracks. He said there could have been dozens of hotspots in the first few hundred million years of Mars's existence, when the molten iron in the planet's core was probably acting as a dynamo.
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Magnify

Ebola and Marburg Viruses May Be Much Older Than Thought

Lin Edwards
PhysOrg
Mon, 28 Jun 2010 07:45 UTC
Image
© Russell Regnery/CDCNegative stain image of an isolate of Marburg virus, showing filamentous particles as well as the characteristic "Shepherd's Crook". Magnification approximately 100,000 times.
New research on the DNA of wallabies, rodents, a number of mammals and bats has found it is likely the ancestors of the Ebola and lesser-known Marburg viruses were in existence tens of millions of years ago, which is much earlier than previously thought.

The Ebola and Marburg viruses are known as "filoviruses," and result in life-threatening hemorrhaging in humans and other primates. Outbreaks occur in remote locations in Africa, and while rare they cause high fatality rates, and seem to appear out of nowhere. There are no effective treatments, and no vaccines.

It was previously thought that filoviruses were probably about 10,000 years old, with this figure based on the estimated mutation rate. The new research, by evolutionary biologist Derek Taylor and a team from the State University of New York in Buffalo, has used a different method to estimate their age.
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Telescope

"Shocking" Superstorm Seen on Exoplanet

Andrew Fazekas
National Geographic News
Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© L. Calçada/ESOThe exoplanet HD209458b orbits around its host star in an artist's impression.
Global tempest has speeds of up to 6,200 miles an hour.

A never-before-seen global superstorm has been spotted on a planet outside our solar system, a new study says.

Record-breaking supersonic winds are blasting through the atmosphere of the hot gas giant HD209458b, which orbits a distant star.

By studying the "fingerprints" of carbon monoxide gases racing between the planet's day and night sides, astronomers are getting a rare glimpse into the storm.

"We were shocked to find that the resulting pressure and temperatures differences between the hotter light side and cooler dark side triggers such fierce winds," said study leader Ignas Snellen, an astronomer at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands.
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