Science & TechnologyS


Telescope

Sharpest Views of Betelgeuse Reveal How Supergiant Stars Lose Mass


PhysOrg
Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:17 UTC
Betelgeuse
© ESOSupergiant star Betelgeuse has a vast plume of gas almost as large as our Solar System and a gigantic bubble boiling on its surface. These discoveries provide important clues to help explain how these mammoths shed material at such a tremendous rate. The scale in units of the radius of Betelgeuse as well as a comparison with the Solar System is also provided.
Betelgeuse -- the second brightest star in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter) -- is a red supergiant, one of the biggest stars known, and almost 1000 times larger than our Sun. It is also one of the most luminous stars known, emitting more light than 100 000 Suns. Such extreme properties foretell the demise of a short-lived stellar king. With an age of only a few million years, Betelgeuse is already nearing the end of its life and is soon doomed to explode as a supernova. When it does, the supernova should be seen easily from Earth, even in broad daylight.

Red supergiants still hold several unsolved mysteries. One of them is just how these behemoths shed such tremendous quantities of material -- about the mass of the Sun -- in only 10 000 years. Two teams of astronomers have used ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the most advanced technologies to take a closer look at the gigantic star. Their combined work suggests that an answer to the long-open mass-loss question may well be at hand.

The first team used the adaptive optics instrument, NACO, combined with a so-called "lucky imaging" technique, to obtain the sharpest ever image of Betelgeuse, even with Earth's turbulent, image-distorting atmosphere in the way. With lucky imaging, only the very sharpest exposures are chosen and then combined to form an image much sharper than a single, longer exposure would be.
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Sherlock

Scientist Describe First Vertebrate to Live in Trees


PhysOrg
Wed, 29 Jul 2009 10:13 UTC
Skeleton
© Diane ScottOne of the best-preserved and most complete skeletons of the tree-climbing synapsid Suminia getmanovi from the Later Paleozoic (260 million years ago) of Russia.
In the Late Paleozoic (260 million years ago), long before dinosaurs dominated the Earth, ancient precursors to mammals took to the trees to feed on leaves and live high above predators that prowled the land, Jörg Fröbisch, PhD, a Field Museum paleontologist has concluded. Elongated fingers, an opposable "thumb," and a grasping tail of Suminia getmanovi demonstrate that this small plant-eating synapsid is the earliest known tree-climbing vertebrate

Suminia was relatively small, about 20 inches from its nose to the tip of its tail. The tree-climbing lifestyle of this Paleozoic relative of mammals is particularly important because for the first time in vertebrate evolution it gives access to new food resources high off the ground, and also provides protection from ground-dwelling predators. The evidence for this lifestyle is based on several excellent skulls and more than a dozen exceptionally well preserved, complete skeletons from a single large block of red mudstone that was discovered in central Russia's Kirov region.

Having so many individual specimens, some of mature individuals and some of youngsters, was helpful in providing a complete picture of the animal's skeletal anatomy, said Fröbisch. "It's relatively rare to find several animals locked on a single block," he said. "We have examples of virtually every bone in their bodies."
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Robot

Commando Subs Sending Drones, Robo-Torpedos into Combat

David Axe
Wired.com
Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:24 UTC
Robo Sub
© Navy
The U.S. Navy's four Special Forces-optimized submarines are using a wide range of robots in combat in coastal areas, the Navy's top officer for irregular warfare said in a surprisingly candid interview. The Ohio-class guided-missile subs, modified from surplus ballistic-missile boats, have been outfitted with robotic mini-subs and at least two types of unmanned aerial vehicle, according to Rear Adm. Mark W. Kenny. It seems Kenny's comments, to Special Operations Technology reporter Scott Gourley, just barely slipped under a descending veil of secrecy. "These get classified real fast because we're using these vehicles in operations," Kenny admitted.

The guided-missile subs, called "SSGNs" by the Navy, had their nuclear missiles removed starting in 2002. The boats' nuke missile tubes now contain clusters of conventional Tomahawk cruise missiles or serve as "payload tubes" for equipment, including robots. The SSGNs have accommodations for up to 66 SEALs or other commandos.
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Laptop

Game utilizes human intuition to help computers solve complex problems

Nicole Casal Moore, Steve Crang
University of Michigan News Service
Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:41 UTC
Image
© University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Mich. - A new computer game prototype combines work and play to help solve a fundamental problem underlying many computer hardware design tasks.

The online logic puzzle is called FunSAT, and it could help integrated circuit designers select and arrange transistors and their connections on silicon microchips, among other applications.

Designing chip architecture for the best performance and smallest size is an exceedingly difficult task that's outsourced to computers these days. But computers simply flip through possible arrangements in their search. They lack the human capacities for intuition and visual pattern recognition that could yield a better or even optimal design. That's where FunSAT comes in.
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Laptop

New supercomputer to reel in answers to some of earth's problems

Mary Beckman
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:24 UTC
Image
© UnknownChinook is a high performance computer that has been tailored to meet the current and future operational needs of Department of Energy EMSL users and can perform more than 160 trillion calculations per second.
Richland, Wash. - The newest supercomputer in town is almost 15 times faster than its predecessor and ready to take on problems in areas such as climate science, hydrogen storage and molecular chemistry. The $21.4 million Chinook supercomputer was built by HP, tested by a variety of researchers, and has now been commissioned for use by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Department of Energy.

Housed at EMSL, DOE's Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory on the PNNL campus, Chinook can perform more than 160 trillion calculations per second, ranking it in the top 40 fastest computers in the world (see the Top 50). Its predecessor, EMSL's MPP2, could run 11.2 trillion calculations per second.
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Saturn

Is Pluto a planet after all?

Stephen Battersby
New Scientist
Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:35 UTC
Image
© JPL / NASAHow many planets in your solar system?
How many planets are in the solar system? The official answer is eight - unless you happen to live in Illinois. Earlier this year, defiant Illinois state governors declared that Pluto had been unfairly demoted by the International Astronomical Union, the authority that sets the rules on all matters planetary.

Three years ago, the IAU decided to draw up the first scientific definition of the term planet. After days of stormy arguments at its general assembly in Prague, the delegates voted for a definition that excluded Pluto, downgrading it to the new category of dwarf planet.

The decision caused outrage among many members of the public who had grown up with nine planets, and among some astronomers who pointed out that only 4 per cent of the IAU's 10,000 members took part in the vote. The governors of Illinois saw the decision as a snub to Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, who was born in the state.

Next week the IAU's general assembly will convene for the first time since Pluto was axed from the list of planets. Surprisingly, IAU chief Karel van der Hucht does not expect anyone to challenge the ruling made in Prague, but Pluto fans can take heart: resistance remains strong.
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Telescope

Astronomers Discover Rare 'Green Pea' Galaxies


Asian News International
Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:58 UTC
Green Peas
© Carolin Cardamone and Sloan Digital Sky SurveyA "Green Pea" galaxy, at left, isn't like the typical galaxy at right.
A team of astronomers has discovered a group of rare galaxies called the "Green Peas", which could lend unique insights into how galaxies form stars in the early universe.

The galaxies were discovered with the help of citizen scientists working through an online project called Galaxy Zoo.

The Galaxy Zoo users, who volunteer their spare time to help classify galaxies in an online image bank, came across a number of objects that stuck out because of their small size and bright green color.

They dubbed them the "Green Peas".
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Pharoah

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Unwrapping Of A Mummy


Archaeology Magazine
Tue, 28 Jul 2009 09:47 UTC
Edward Bleiberg
© Edward BleibergEdward Bleiberg
On June 23, 2009, a team from the Brooklyn Museum supervised by Edward Bleiberg, curator of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art, and Lisa Burno, Head Objects Conservator, transported four mummies from Brooklyn to North Shore University Hospital for CT scans.

Drs. Jessie Chusid, Amgad Makaryus, and Karen Lisk of North Shore volunteered their time and services to scan four of the oldest patients they had ever encountered. The mummies on board were from various periods dating from the Third Intermediate Period (1064-656 B.C.) to the Roman Period (30 B.C.-A.D. 395).

The trip was smooth and the CT scans went without trouble. The scans produced vast amounts of data to be sorted and analyzed, but even immediate, preliminary readings of the scans revealed some very unusual discoveries.
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Meteor

Comets, Not Asteroids, to Blame for Moon's Scarred Face

Hazel Muir
New Scientist
Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:29 UTC
Moon
© NASAA new study suggests comets gouged out the vast majority of craters on the moon.
Icy comets - not rocky asteroids - launched a dramatic assault on the Earth and moon around 3.85 billion years ago, a new study of ancient rocks in Greenland suggests. The work suggests much of Earth's water could have been brought to the planet by comets.

"We can see craters on the moon's surface with the naked eye, but nobody actually knew what caused them - was it rocks, was it iron, was it ice?" says Uffe Gråe Jørgensen, an astronomer at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark. "It's exciting to find signs that it was actually ice."

Evidence suggests that the Earth and moon had both formed around 4.5 billion years ago. But almost all the craters on the moon date to a later period, the "Late Heavy Bombardment" 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago, when around 100 million billion tonnes of rock or ice crashed onto the lunar surface. The Earth would have been pummelled by debris at the same time, although plate tectonics on our restless planet have since erased the scars.
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Sherlock

Archaeological Digs Uncover Qatar's Past


The Peninsula On-Line
Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:21 UTC
Dig
© UnknownAl Zubarah site
Growing interest in the archaeology of Qatar has resulted in a substantial number of new sites being discovered and significantly more archaeological research in the region.

This was apparent when an exceptional session on the archaeology of Qatar was held at the British Museum, London, as part of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 2009, recently.

The session on July 24 included lectures by representatives from universities and academic institutions on recent research and excavations conducted as part of an initiative by the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA).
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