Science & TechnologyS


Meteor

Get Set for a Possible Glimpse of an Asteroid


NASA JPL
Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:06 UTC
Vesta
© NASA/ESA/U of Md./STSci/Cornell/SWRI/UCLAAsteroid Vesta as seen by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
The most prominent asteroid in the sky is currently yours for the perusing with binoculars -- and perhaps even the naked eye.

Tomorrow night, Wednesday, Feb. 17, Vesta, the second most massive object in the asteroid belt, reaches what astronomers like to call "opposition." An asteroid (or planet or comet) is said to be "in opposition" when it is opposite to the sun as seen from Earth. In other words, if you were to stand outside with the sun directly above you at high noon, Vesta would be directly below your feet some 211,980,000 kilometers (131,700,000 miles) away. With Vesta at opposition, the asteroid is at its closest point to Earth in its orbit.

Wednesday night, the asteroid is expected to shine at magnitude 6.1. That brightness should make it visible to interested parties brandishing telescopes or binoculars, and even those blessed with excellent vision and little or no light pollution or clouds in their vicinity. Vesta will be visible in the eastern sky in the constellation Leo.
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Pharoah

King Tut likely had club foot, killed by malaria


Agence France-Presse
Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:24 UTC
King Tut's Mask
© AFPA replica of the death mask of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun is on display in 2009 at an exhibition in southern Germany. Tutankhamun had a club foot, walked with a cane and was killed by malaria, a study that harnessed modern genetic testing and computer technology to lift a veil on the secrets of ancient Egypt showed Tuesday.
Washington - The celebrated pharaoh Tutankhamun had a club foot, walked with a cane and was killed by malaria, a study that harnessed modern genetic testing and computer technology to lift a veil on the secrets of ancient Egypt showed Tuesday.

Researchers from Egypt, Italy and Germany used DNA testing to draw "the most plausible" family tree to date for Tutankhamun and computerized tomography (CT) scans to determine that the pharaoh and his forebears were unlikely to have had the feminine physiques they are depicted with in 3,000-year-old artifacts.

They analyzed DNA taken from 11 mummies, including the boy king himself, and scanned all but one of the mummies to determine if they were related, look for evidence of genetic disorders and infectious diseases, and determine what killed Tutankhamun at the age of 19.

Tutankhamum -- who is often referred to as King Tut -- died just nine years into his reign, which lasted from 1333-1324 BC.
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Sun

Cheap Solar Cell Could Be Incorporated Into Clothing

Charles Choi
TechNewsDaily
Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:10 UTC
A new solar cell can produce the same amount of energy as the best conventional solar panels while using less expensive material.

The novel flexible device could help make solar cells far more practical for products ranging from sunroofs to clothing, scientists say.

"It could be extremely rugged - you could roll it up, even perforate it, shoot holes in it with a gun, and it'd still operate, whereas normal crystalline silicon would just shatter like glass," said researcher Harry Atwater, an applied physicist at the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena, Calif.
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Sherlock

3,000-Year-Old Shipwreck Shows European Trade was Thriving in Bronze Age


The Telegraph
Mon, 15 Feb 2010 07:30 UTC
Image
© UnknownArchaeologists believe the copper, and possibly the tin, was being imported into Britain
The discovery of one of the world's oldest shipwrecks shows that European trade was thriving even in the Bronze Age, according to experts.

The vessel, carrying copper and tin ingots used to make weapons and jewelery, sank off the coast near Salcombe in Devon and is thought to date from 900BC.

But it was only last year that the South West Maritime Archaeological Group, a team of amateur archaeologists, brought its cargo to the surface.

The discovery was not announced until this month's International Shipwreck Conference, in Plymouth, Devon.

It is thought that the goods - 259 copper ingots and 27 of tin - were destined for Britain but collected from several different sources in Europe.
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Telescope

Did 'Dark Stars' Spawn Supermassive Black Holes?

Ian O'Neill
Discovery News
Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:15 UTC
Image
© NASA/Ian O'NeillA massive dark star voraciously eating matter and dark matter until it is well over 100,000 times the mass of the sun.
Approximately 200 million years after the Big Bang, the universe was a very different place.

For starters, there was no starlight as there were no stars. This period was known descriptively as the "Dark Ages." As there were no stars, only clouds of the most basic elements persisted, fogging up the cosmos.

Although it's believed the first stars (known as "Population III stars") were sparked when hydrogen and helium gases cooled enough to clump together, collapsing under gravity and initiating nuclear fusion in the star cores (thus generating heavier elements), there's another possibility.

Around the time of early star formation it is thought there was an abundance of dark matter. Although it's not entirely clear what dark matter actually is, we know from various observations that it's out there in vast quantities. Dark matter makes up the majority of the mass of our universe and during these early days, dark matter may have fueled the earliest stars.
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Magnify

Meteorite Crammed with 'Millions' of Organic Compounds

Ian O'Neill
Discovery News
Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:52 UTC
Image
© Institute for Ecological ChemistryA sample of the Murchison meteorite, plus a test tube containing powdered meteorite material (DoE)
A meteorite that hit the town of Murchison, Australia, hasn't quit giving up its secrets.

The Murchison meteorite is one of the most studied space rocks because many pieces were recovered after it was seen breaking up as it fell through the atmosphere in 1969. Approximately 100 kg of the carbonaceous chondrite was recovered.

Carbonaceous chondrites are extremely important to scientists as they were formed from material that existed in the solar system's planet-forming disk of gas and dust. They are, quite literally, time capsules holding onto a 4 billion year old record of the birth of our solar system.

In this case, the Murchison meteorite has given us another clue as to the abundance of organic chemicals that existed before the Earth had formed. In fact, this particular meteorite may have originated from material older than our sun.
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Sherlock

King Tut's "Family Secrets" to be Unveiled from DNA


Gulf Times
Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:52 UTC
Image
© Cairo UniversityThe face of Pharaoh Tutankhamun displayed in a climate-controlled case at his tomb in the Valley of the Kings, close to Luxor
Egypt is to unveil results of DNA tests carried out on the mummy of the enigmatic boy-king Tutankhamun in a bid to unravel the mystery concerning his lineage.

Antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass will hold a much-anticipated news conference tomorrow at the Cairo Museum, home of the fabulous treasure of Tutankhamun who died more than 3,000 years ago, to announce results of the study.

The announcement is expected to reveal "secrets of the family and the affiliation of Tutankhamun, based on the results of the scientific examination of the Tutankhamun mummy following DNA analysis," Hawass said last month.

The pharaoh known around the world as King Tut has been surrounded by mystery, ever since his solid gold and turquoise sarcophagus was found in a tomb unearthed by a British archaeologist in the Valley of the Kings in 1922.
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Magnify

Scientists Discover TB Disease Mechanism and Molecule to Block It


ScienceDaily
Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
Indiana University School of Medicine researchers have identified a mechanism used by the tuberculosis bacterium to evade the body's immune system and have identified a compound that blocks the bacterium's ability to survive in the host, which could lead to new drugs to treat tuberculosis.

Zhong-Yin Zhang, Ph.D., Robert A. Harris Professor and chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and his colleagues revealed the biochemical processes that TB bacteria employ to subvert macrophages -- key infection-fighting cells -- in this week's online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They also described a compound they have synthesized -- I-A09 -- that blocked the TB bacterium's activity in laboratory tests.

About one-third of the world's population is infected with TB, a contagious disease that causes nearly 2 million deaths annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although medicines to treat TB are available, they must be taken for at least six months to fully eliminate all TB bacteria from the body. People who do not follow the lengthy treatment regimen can become sick and infectious with a more virulent form of the disease that is resistant to standard medicines.
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Telescope

The Rhythm of Our Star


ScienceDaily
Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:00 UTC
Image
© Instituto de Astrofisica de CanariasAn image taken at dusk with TON (Taiwan oscillations of networks). The profile of the house is real.
When we look at the Sun we cannot penetrate beyond its outer surface, the photosphere, which emits the photons that make up the radiation we can see. So how can we find out what is inside it?

Imagine a metal box. If it is a long way from us we cannot tell whether it is full or empty. Yet if we can tap it, the sound that we hear will tell us about its contents: it will be deeper if the box is full, and hollow-sounding if not. The human brain can tell one substance from another, and gain information about what it is, from the sound it makes.

Seismology works in a similar way: the way that waves travel through the interior of an object tells us about its structure. The "signature" of sound waves as they travel through a particular type of material is unique, and it changes as the material changes. This makes it easy to tell whether a sound is travelling through air or water, for example. The science of Seismology is not earthbound -- it has travelled to the stars. The methods it uses to gather information about stars are basically the same as they are on Earth. The first sound to be heard was the "song" of the Sun, because it is near to us and therefore easy to observe. That is how Helioseismology was born.
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Magnify

Dig Finds Medieval Monk was Living It Up in Kilkenny 'Pad'

Michael Parsons
Irish Times
Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© Dylan VaughanArchaeologist Coilin O'Drisceoil holds up a monk's belt buckle discovered in a 14th-century primitive garderobe toilet during excavations at Rothe House in Kilkenny.
Archaeologists in Kilkenny have discovered new evidence of the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by a medieval Irish monk.

This was unearthed recently during ongoing excavations that prove at least some senior clergy feasted on roast swan, T-bone steaks and imported fine French wines. This, despite their public image as men who professed poverty and who were supposed to be devoted to "the simple life".

A 14th-century toilet, known as a "garderobe", was also excavated.
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