Science & TechnologyS


Telescope

Flashback Cash plea for space impact study

Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News
Tue, 08 Oct 2002 14:30 UTC
bollide
© Unknown
Scientists investigating what is believed to be a "significant" fresh meteoroid impact crater in a remote part of Siberia are begging for funds to mount an expedition.

A British meteorite expert has called on the international community to help Russian researchers get to the impact site, which may be of major scientific importance.

Hunters in the region say they have seen a large crater surrounded by burned forest.

Vladimir Polyakov, of the Institute of Solar and Terrestrial Physics in Moscow, said: Specialists have no doubt that it is a meteorite that fell into the taiga on Thursday."
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Magnify

Cooling the hype: Poor, poor Ida, Or: "Overselling an Adapid"

Brian Switek
Laelaps
Tue, 19 May 2009 14:09 UTC
Darwinius
© PLoS OneRadiographs of the exceptionally preserved skeleton of Darwinius, known popularly as "Ida."
So the big day is finally here. "Ida", a 47-million-year-old primate skeleton from Messel, Germany has finally been unveiled on PLoS One and in a flurry of press releases, book announcements, and general media hubub. Under different circumstances I would be happy to see an exceptional fossil receiving such treatment, but I fear that Ida has become a victim of a sensationalistic media that values audience size over scientific substance.

Before I jump into my criticisms of the paper describing Darwinius masillae, Ida's scientific name, I do want to stress how spectacular the fossil really is. The primate fossil record is extremely fragmentary, and if you want to know anything about fossil primates you are going to have to know your teeth. That's usually all that is left of them. Ida, then, is a paleontologist's dream come true. Not only is it a complete specimen but parts of the primate's last meal were preserved inside its stomach and its body outline was marked by bacteria that fed on the decomposing carcass during fossilization. This is the first time a fossil primate has been found exhibiting such extraordinary preservation.

Comment: An interesting comment on the media splash given to this archeological find, especially in view of this article:

Science in Turmoil - Are we Funding Fraud?

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Attention

Evolution Rethink? Seeking a Missing Link, and a Mass Audience

Tim Arango
The Telegraph
Mon, 18 May 2009 12:57 UTC
Darwinius masillae
© Franzen JL, Gingerich PD, Habersetzer J, Hurum JH, von Koenigswald W, et al. 2009 Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology. PLoS ONE 4(5): e5723. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005723 Darwinius masillae / Ida took 47 million years to become an overnight celebrity.
It is science for the Mediacene age.

On Tuesday morning, researchers will unveil a 47-million-year-old fossil they say could revolutionize the understanding of human evolution at a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History.

But the event, which will coincide with the publishing of a peer-reviewed article about the find, is the first stop in a coordinated, branded media event, orchestrated by the scientists and the History Channel, including a film detailing the secretive two-year study of the fossil, a book release, an exclusive arrangement with ABC News and an elaborate Web site.

"Any pop band is doing the same thing," said Jorn H. Hurum, a scientist at the University of Oslo who acquired the fossil and assembled the team of scientists that studied it. "Any athlete is doing the same thing. We have to start thinking the same way in science."

The specimen, designated Darwinius masillae, is of a monkeylike creature that is remarkably intact: even the contents of its stomach are preserved. The fossil was bought two years ago in Germany by the University of Oslo, and a team of scientists began work on their research. Some of the top paleontologists in the world were involved in the project, and it impressed the chief scientist at the Natural History museum enough to allow the press conference.
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Bad Guys

Science in Turmoil - Are We Funding Fraud?

Jeremy Dunning-Davies
Thunderbolts Project
Sat, 26 Sep 2009 23:30 UTC
There can be little doubt in the minds of those who are involved in attempting to disseminate research results among the entire scientific community that major problems exist. It is well documented that adopting certain stances will result in an inability to publish in the majority of the so-called high impact academic journals.

There are also well documented cases of people experiencing grave difficulties in their place of work and even, on some occasions, being driven out. Amazingly, there are even cases of attempts being made - some successful - to deny research students their doctorates because their theses contain material which may cause embarrassment for some person with an inflated sense of his/her own importance. Again, more and more academics, certainly in British universities, are coming under increasing pressure to draw funds into their establishments. Note the emphasis is not on good research, or even just research, but rather on attracting more and more money.
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Calculator

Scientists See Numbers Inside People's Heads

Charles Q. Choi
LiveScience
Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:21 UTC
By carefully analyzing brain activity, scientists can tell what number a person has just seen, research now reveals.

They can similarly tell how many dots a person was presented with.

Past investigations had uncovered brain cells in monkeys that were linked with numbers. Although scientists had found brain regions linked with numerical tasks in humans - the frontal and parietal lobes, to be exact - until now patterns of brain activity linked with specific numbers had proven elusive.

Scientists had 10 volunteers watch either numerals or dots on a screen while a part of their brain known as the intraparietal cortex was scanned - it's a region of the parietal lobe especially linked with numbers. They next rigorously analyzed brain activity to decipher which patterns might be linked with the numbers the volunteers had observed.

When it came to small numbers of dots, the researchers found that brain activity patterns changed gradually in a way that reflected the ordered nature of the numbers. For example, one might be able to conclude that the pattern for six is between that for five and seven.
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Better Earth

Widespread water may cling to moon's surface

Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:22 UTC
Image
© University of Maryland/F. Merlin/McRELProtons carried by the solar wind could be responsible for creating water molecules across the lunar surface
A large portion of the moon's surface may be covered with water. That is the surprising finding of a trio of spacecraft that have turned up evidence of trace amounts of the substance in the lunar soil.

Many scientists suspect water ice might lurk in permanently shadowed craters at the moon's poles, which play host to some of the coldest known regions in the solar system.

But new findings suggest that a small amount of water clings to lunar soil across the moon's surface. The first detection was made by India's Chandrayaan-1 probe. The spacecraft, which failed in August after less than 10 months in orbit, was the first lunar orbiter to carry an instrument capable of measuring how much light is absorbed by water-bearing minerals.

"There's nothing else it could be," says Carle Pieters of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, leader of the Chandrayaan-1 instrument team that made the detection.
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Meteor

Asteroid attack: Putting Earth's defences to the test

David Shiga
New Scientist
Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:46 UTC
It looks inconsequential enough, the faint little spot moving leisurely across the sky. The mountain-top telescope that just detected it is taking it very seriously, though. It is an asteroid, one never seen before. Rapid-survey telescopes discover thousands of asteroids every year, but there's something very particular about this one. The telescope's software decides to wake several human astronomers with a text message they hoped they would never receive. The asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. It is the size of a skyscraper and it's big enough to raze a city to the ground. Oh, and it will be here in three days.


Comment: For a more in-depth study, read Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls

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Telescope

Scientists See Water Ice In Fresh Meteorite Craters On Mars


ScienceDaily
Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:08 UTC
mars crater ice
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of ArizonaEarlier and later HiRISE images of a fresh meteorite crater 12 meters, or 40 feet, across located within Arcadia Planitia on Mars show how water ice excavated at the crater faded with time. The images, each 35 meters, or 115 feet across, were taken in November 2008 and January 2009.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed frozen water hiding just below the surface of mid-latitude Mars. The spacecraft's observations were obtained from orbit after meteorites excavated fresh craters on the Red Planet.

Scientists controlling instruments on the orbiter found bright ice exposed at five Martian sites with new craters that range in depth from approximately half a meter to 2.5 meters (1.5 feet to 8 feet). The craters did not exist in earlier images of the same sites. Some of the craters show a thin layer of bright ice atop darker underlying material. The bright patches darkened in the weeks following initial observations, as the freshly exposed ice vaporized into the thin Martian atmosphere. One of the new craters had a bright patch of material large enough for one of the orbiter's instruments to confirm it is water-ice.
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Life Preserver

India's lunar mission finds evidence of water on the Moon

Jeremy Page
Times Online
Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:33 UTC
moon
Dreams of establishing a manned Moon base could become reality within two decades after India's first lunar mission found evidence of large quantities of water on its surface.

Data from Chandrayaan-1 also suggests that water is still being formed on the Moon. Scientists said the breakthrough - to be announced by Nasa at a press conference today - would change the face of lunar exploration.

The discovery is a significant boost for India in its space race against China. Dr Mylswamy Annadurai, the mission's project director at the Indian Space Research Organisation in Bangalore, said: "It's very satisfying."
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Telescope

NASA Goddard Shoots the Moon to Track LRO

Bill Steigerwald
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:52 UTC
Image
© Tom Zagwodzki/Goddard Space Flight Center Goddard's Laser Ranging Facility directing a laser (green beam) toward the LRO spacecraft in orbit around the moon (white disk). The moon has been deliberately over-exposed to show the laser
On certain nights, an arresting green line pierces the sky above NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. It's a laser directed at the moon, visible when the air is humid. No, we're not repelling an invasion. Instead, we're tracking our own spacecraft.

28 times per second, engineers at NASA Goddard fire a laser that travels about 250,000 miles to hit the minivan-sized Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft moving at nearly 3,600 miles per hour as it orbits the moon.
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