© Unkown
SOTT
SIGNS
OF THE
TIMES
OF THE
TIMES
Welcome to Sott.net
The World for People who Think
Science & TechnologyS
© UnknownNeanderthal Skull
The 60,000-year-old Neanderthal is the first confirmed specimen to be found undersea anywhere in the world, the BBC reported Monday. The fossil was found by Luc Anthonis, a private collector from Belgium, among animal remains and stone artifacts recovered several miles off the coast of the Netherlands in 2001.
© Tony Kent and American Physics SocietyThe saser produces a highly focused beam that is similar to the way a laser pointer produces a red spot when it hits a wall.
A laser produces photons that travel in a tight beam instead of dispersing outwards like a regular beam of light. A saser achieves the same for sound waves, says Tony Kent at the University of Nottingham, UK.
Although it's not the first saser ever constructed, it is the first able to produce beams at terahertz frequencies, much higher even than those used for medical ultrasound imaging. Terahertz sound may be largely a curiosity today, says Kent, but being able to produce it in controllable beams could unleash new ideas and applications.
"Fifty years ago many eminent scientists said that light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation [lasers] was no more than a scientific curiosity," says Kent, but lasers are now used for everything from digital storage and cancer treatment to weaponry.
A tiny bacterium has been coaxed back to life after spending 120,000 years buried three kilometres deep in the Greenland ice sheet.
Researchers who found it say it could resemble microbes that may have evolved in ice on other planets.
Officially named Herminiimonas glaciei, the bug consists of rods just 0.9 micrometres long and 0.4 micrometres in diameter, about 10 to 50 times smaller than the well-known bacterium, Escherichia coli.
"What's unique is that it's so small, and seems to survive on so few nutrients," says Jennifer Loveland-Curtze of Pennsylvania State University, whose team has described the new species.
She speculates that thanks to its tiny dimensions, it can survive in minute veins in the ice, scavenging sparse nutrients that were buried along with the ice. It also has extensive tail-like flagella to help it manoeuvre through the veins to find food.
Researchers who found it say it could resemble microbes that may have evolved in ice on other planets.
Officially named Herminiimonas glaciei, the bug consists of rods just 0.9 micrometres long and 0.4 micrometres in diameter, about 10 to 50 times smaller than the well-known bacterium, Escherichia coli.
"What's unique is that it's so small, and seems to survive on so few nutrients," says Jennifer Loveland-Curtze of Pennsylvania State University, whose team has described the new species.
She speculates that thanks to its tiny dimensions, it can survive in minute veins in the ice, scavenging sparse nutrients that were buried along with the ice. It also has extensive tail-like flagella to help it manoeuvre through the veins to find food.
© Jana Leon / Stone / GettyA carpet cloak could provide a new way of hiding objects.
So called "carpet cloaks" are the first technology to succeed in hiding objects by deflecting light across a range of wavelengths. Two groups described different cloaks last week at the International Quantum Electronics Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.
Invisibility cloaks work by deflecting light waves so the light that reaches the eye shows no trace of the hidden object. Conventional optical materials can't do this, but a dozen years ago John Pendry of Imperial College London showed it was possible to bend light around objects by building materials made of components smaller than the wavelength of the light.
In theory, the principle will work across the electromagnetic spectrum, but early experiments with invisibility cloaks have been done at microwave frequencies, which have wavelengths in the centimetre range, meaning sub-wavelength components are relatively easy to make.
Both new carpet cloaks work in infrared light, which has a wavelength far shorter than microwaves, and provide the first demonstrations of optical cloaking. As they are not limited to a narrow range of wavelengths, in principle the cloaks could hide objects in normal light. Other cloaks, even if scaled down to the optical range, would work only in rooms lit with a single-colour lamp.
At least 45 dismembered skeletons have been discovered in a burial pit by archaeologists digging on the site of a planned £87m relief road in Dorset.
The burial site on Ridgeway Hill near Weymouth is thought to date from late Iron Age to early Roman times.
Skulls, rib cages and leg bones, thought to be from young men, were arranged in separate parts of the pit.
The burial site on Ridgeway Hill near Weymouth is thought to date from late Iron Age to early Roman times.
Skulls, rib cages and leg bones, thought to be from young men, were arranged in separate parts of the pit.
Scientists have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight, which means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs.
The conclusions, by researchers at Oregon State University (OSU), US, add to other evolving evidence that may finally force many paleontologists to reconsider their long-held belief that modern birds are the direct descendants of ancient, meat-eating dinosaurs.
"It's really kind of amazing that after centuries of studying birds and flight, we still didn't understand a basic aspect of bird biology," said John Ruben, an OSU professor of zoology.
"This discovery probably means that birds evolved on a parallel path alongside dinosaurs, starting that process before most dinosaur species even existed," he added.
The conclusions, by researchers at Oregon State University (OSU), US, add to other evolving evidence that may finally force many paleontologists to reconsider their long-held belief that modern birds are the direct descendants of ancient, meat-eating dinosaurs.
"It's really kind of amazing that after centuries of studying birds and flight, we still didn't understand a basic aspect of bird biology," said John Ruben, an OSU professor of zoology.
"This discovery probably means that birds evolved on a parallel path alongside dinosaurs, starting that process before most dinosaur species even existed," he added.
© ESA
The telescope has opened the hatch that has been protecting its sensitive instruments from contamination. The procedure allowed light collected by Herschel's giant 3.5m mirror to flood its supercold instrument chamber, or cryostat, for the first time.
The observatory's quest is to study how stars and galaxies form, and how they evolve through cosmic time.
Hold the bricks: the concept of the tokoloshe may have its roots in the primordial neurology of the human brain, experts have suggested.
The theory has been put forward by KwaZulu-Natal neurologist Dr Anand Moodley in a letter co-authored by Canadian neuropsychologist Neil Fournier in the latest issue of the SA Medical Journal.
The theory has been put forward by KwaZulu-Natal neurologist Dr Anand Moodley in a letter co-authored by Canadian neuropsychologist Neil Fournier in the latest issue of the SA Medical Journal.
© NASAA small black hole is shown moving around a massive black hole, creating an extreme mass ratio inspiral (EMRI) and the resulting gravitational waves that scientists attending the Capra Conference hope to use to map spacetime.
Hosted by IU for the first time in the event's 12-year history, the Capra Conference each year affords scientists an opportunity to compare notes on how much closer they've come to theoretically confirming Einstein's general theory of relativity using predictions about black holes and their interactions with other stellar bodies.
By modeling the effects of gravitational waves produced when smaller black holes, neutron stars or black holes orbit massive black holes, scientists - including Jonathan Thornburg in the College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Astronomy - believe they may one day be able to quantify the stretching and compressing of spacetime as caused by those same gravitational waves predicted in Einstein's general theory of relativity.
