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Fly Your Face in Space


NASA
Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:36 UTC
NASA wants to put a picture of you on one of the two remaining space shuttle missions and launch it into orbit. To launch your face into space and become a part of history, just follow these steps:

First...Select the Participate button at the bottom of this page and upload your image/name, which will be flown aboard the space shuttle. Don't have a picture to upload? No problem, just skip the image upload and we will fly your name only on your selected mission!

Next...Print and save the confirmation page with your flight information.

Later...Return to this site after the landing to print your Flight Certificate - a commemorative certificate signed by the Mission Commander. You can also check on mission status, view mission photographs, link to various NASA educational resources and follow the commander and crew on Twitter or Facebook.

Participate
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Has Jupiter Sent Cosmology Down a False Trail?

Eugenie Samuel Reich
New Scientist
Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:18 UTC
It's supposed to be the "gold standard" of evidence supporting the standard model of cosmology - including dark matter, dark energy and the exponential expansion after the big bang known as inflation.

But could it be wrong? Might misleading measurements by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) have been leading us towards the wrong theory of cosmology? One astrophysicist thinks so, and he says the planet Jupiter is to blame - though others insist that there is nothing amiss.

WMAP detects photons of the cosmic microwave background, the "echo" of the big bang, and these measurements are used to map the temperature of the sky. Ripples in the map are used to calculate a spectrum that produces a near-perfect fit to the standard model of cosmology.

Since 2007, Tom Shanks at the University of Durham, UK, who is a critic of the standard model, has been tracking a discrepancy between measurements from WMAP and X-ray measurements of some of the same star clusters made by ground-based telescopes. He initially assumed that the problem was with measurements from the ground and that the WMAP data was "pristine".
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Telescope

Youngest Planet Confirmed; Photos Show It Grew Up Fast

Rachel Kaufman
National Geographic News
Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:00 UTC
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© L. Calçada/ESOBeta Pictoris b, the youngest known planet outside our solar system, in an artist's conception.
They're not the most aww-inspiring baby pictures, but new infrared images prove the youngest known planet outside our solar system does in fact exist - and that planets can grow up fast - a new study says.

Probably only a few million years young, Beta Pictoris b is already fully formed, despite standard models that say such a planet should take ten million years to reach "adulthood," researchers say. The planet breaks the record once held by the planet BD 20 1790b, which clocked in at 35 million years old.

The new planet is also nearer to its parent star than any other known planet outside our solar system - about as close as Saturn is to our sun.

Located about 63.4 light-years from Earth, that star, named simply Beta Pictoris, is similar to our own star. And like Beta Pictoris b, Beta Pictoris is relatively young - about 12 million years old, compared with the sun's 4.5 billion years.
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Einstein

Science Depends on Retesting Theories

Bradley T. Lepper
The Columbus Dispatch
Sun, 06 Jun 2010 02:59 UTC
The unique power of science lies in its extreme openness to new ideas coupled with a rigorous evaluation of the evidence offered in support of those ideas.

In science, even seemingly heretical notions can be proposed - Earth is round, continents move, bread mold is medicine - but theories must be supported by evidence. When they are refuted by the evidence, they must be discarded.

In 2005, Silvia Gonzalez, an archaeologist with the Liverpool John Moores University, reported the discovery of apparent human footprints in volcanic ash in the Valsequillo Basin south of Puebla, Mexico.
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Info

Revealing the ancient Chinese secret of sticky rice mortar

Michael Bernstein
American Chemical Society
Thu, 10 Jun 2010 20:18 UTC
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© iStockConstruction workers in ancient China used sticky rice to make a super-strong mortar for city walls and other structures that even withstood earthquakes. Chemists now have discovered the ingredient in sticky rice that made the mortar so strong.
Scientists have discovered the secret behind an ancient Chinese super-strong mortar made from sticky rice, the delicious "sweet rice" that is a modern mainstay in Asian dishes. They also concluded that the mortar ― a paste used to bind and fill gaps between bricks, stone blocks and other construction materials ― remains the best available material for restoring ancient buildings. Their article appears in the American Chemical Society (ACS) monthly journal, Accounts of Chemical Research.
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Einstein

ESC Chicago Keynote Makes Case for Time Travel

Karen Field
RF Design Line
Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:44 UTC
Ronald Mallett, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Connecticut, gave a mind-bending keynote speech on the physics of time travel to an enthralled audience at the Embedded Systems Conference here Tuesday morning, describing how black holes, blue giant stars, and worm holes (tunnels that connect the mouths of black holes) - some of the strangest things in the Universe - illustrate (at least in theory) the potential for time travel some day.

And that day, Mallett claimed, is not so far in the future as one might think.

"Time travel one of mankind's oldest fantasies. But is it really possible? All of us have wondered what's going to happen in the future, and we've contemplated the question, 'What if I could back and change something in my past?" said Mallet. "I am here to tell you we are on the threshold of making time travel a reality, and it's based on real physics."

Author of "Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality," Mallett explained how the trauma of his father's unexpected death when he was just ten and H.G. Well's book The Time Machine set him on a mission to travel back in time and save his father's life. "Thankfully, I was astute enough not to tell other people about my plan - they were already worried about me," Mallett .

That mission became a lifelong preoccupation, though Mallet says that for many years he used "black holes" as his cover story. "Black holes were considered a crazy idea, but legitimate crazy. That's what helped me survive academia," he said. "It wasn't until I got tenure and was made a full professor that I came out of the time travel closet."
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Sherlock

Who Killed The Iceman?

John Pickrell
Cosmos Magazine
Wed, 09 Jun 2010 07:00 UTC
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© South Tyrol Museum of ArchaeologyÖtzi the iceman was murdered more than 5,000 years ago. HIT PLAY, above, to see an X-ray of Ötzi's chest.
The murder of Ötzi the Iceman is perhaps the most challenging cold case in history. Archaeologists used a splay of forensic methods to piece together a detailed picture of his life - and death.

It sounds like the opening to a television forensics drama. On a sunny September day in 1991, a German couple hiking through the Alps make a gruesome discovery.

Initially, the corpse partially jutting out of the melting ice is thought to be from a recent mountaineering accident. But on closer inspection, a far more stunning revelation emerges. The body is that of a murder victim; a murder that transpired five millennia ago.

Dated to around 5,300 years old, the remarkably well-preserved Neolithic Iceman came to be known as Ötzi, after the Ötztal region of the Austrian-Italian border where he was found.

In the years since his discovery, he has been subject to countless, delicate examinations. Now, three recent studies give us the most definitive account of how the Iceman came to be slain.
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Info

Ancient Shoe Steps up Archaeological Insight


UCLA Today
Wed, 09 Jun 2010 04:18 UTC
Armenian shoe_1
© UCLA TodayA perfectly preserved, 5,500-year-old shoe was discovered in a cave in Armenia by team that included UCLA archaeologists.
An international team that includes eight researchers and students from UCLA's Cotsen Institute of Archaeology has found a perfectly preserved, 5,500-year-old shoe in a cave in Armenia.

Believed to be the oldest leather shoe ever discovered, the find dates back to around 3,500 B.C. and was announced today (June 9) in the online scientific journal PLoS ONE.

"Generally, organic materials are poorly preserved in Middle Eastern archaeological sites because of the high content of salts and fungi in the soil and dramatic fluctuations in the temperatures and humidity in the weather," said Gregory Areshian, a visiting associate professor at the Cotsen who was nearby when the discovery was made. "But the condition of this shoe is amazing."

Made of a single piece of cowhide, the shoe was shaped to fit the wearer's foot and was stuffed with grass. Archaeologists aren't sure whether the grass was used as insulation or - as a possible precursor to the modern shoe tree - to maintain the shape of the shoe. They also don't know whether the shoe - the equivalent of a European size 37 or an American women's size 7 - belonged to a male or female.
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Fish

Huge seas 'once existed on Mars'


British Broadcasting Corporation
Wed, 09 Jun 2010 20:45 UTC
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© unk The Hellas basin is the largest impact structure on Mars
US scientists have found further evidence that huge seas existed long ago on Mars.

A geological mapping project found sedimentary deposits in a region called Hellas Planitia which suggest a large sea once stood there.

The 2,000 km-wide, 8km-deep Hellas basin is a giant impact crater - the largest such structure on Mars.

The researchers say their data support a lake between 4.5 and 3.5 billion years ago.
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Sherlock

Archaeologists Discover Beehives from Ancient Israel

Clara Moskowitz
The Christian Science Monitor
Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:00 UTC
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© Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP PhotoScavenger bees hover around a dead hive at a bee farm east of Merced, Calif.
Archaeologists discover beehives from ancient Israel 3,000 years ago. They appear to be the oldest evidence for beekeeping ever found, scientists reported.

Recently discovered beehives from ancient Israel 3,000 years ago appear to be the oldest evidence for beekeeping ever found, scientists reported.

Archaeologists identified the remains of honeybees - including workers, drones, pupae, and larvae - inside about 30 clay cylinders thought to have been used as beehives at the site of Tel Rehov in the Jordan valley in northern Israel. This is the first such discovery from ancient times.

"Although texts and wall paintings suggest that bees were kept in the Ancient Near East for the production of precious wax and honey, archaeological evidence for beekeeping has never been found," the researchers, led by Guy Bloch of Israel's Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote in a paper in the June 8 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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