Science & TechnologyS


Meteor

Lulin: Comet Making One-Time Only Visit Next Week

Seth Borenstein
The Huffington Post
Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:27 UTC
Comet Lulin
© Jack Newton

An odd, greenish backward-flying comet is zipping by Earth this month, as it takes its only trip toward the sun from the farthest edges of the solar system. The comet is called Lulin, and there's a chance it can be seen with the naked eye - far from city lights, astronomers say. But you'll most likely need a telescope, or at least binoculars, to spot it.

The best opportunity is just before dawn one-third of the way up the southern sky. It should be near Saturn and two bright stars, Spica and Regula.
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Control Panel

Tom Hanks to switch on repaired Large Hadron Collider in June

Alastair Jamieson
The Telegraph
Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:13 UTC
Large Hadron Collider
© PALarge Hadron Collider
Tom Hanks, the actor and star of Forrest Gump, will turn on the Large Hadron Collider, designed to recreate the 'Big Bang', when it is finally repaired.

The giant underground machine, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, suffered a catastrophic malfunction soon after being switched on amid a fanfare of publicity last September.

A faulty electrical connection led to a leak of super-cold helium causing damage estimated at £20 million to the device, operated by Cern, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva.
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Satellite

First liquid water may have been spotted on Mars

David Shiga
New Scientist
Thu, 19 Feb 2009 05:25 UTC
Image
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Max Planck InstituteClumps on one of Phoenix's legs were observed to grow over time (see next image for side-by-side pictures).

NASA's Phoenix lander may have captured the first images of liquid water on Mars - droplets that apparently splashed onto the spacecraft's leg during landing, according to some members of the Phoenix team.

The controversial observation could be explained by the mission's previous discovery of perchlorate salts in the soil, since the salts can keep water liquid at sub-zero temperatures. Researchers say this antifreeze effect makes it possible for liquid water to be widespread just below the surface of Mars, but point out that even if it is there, it may be too salty to support life as we know it.

A few days after Phoenix landed on 25 May 2008, it sent back an image showing mysterious splotches of material attached to one of its legs. Strangely, the splotches grew in size over the next few weeks, and Phoenix scientists have been debating the origin of the objects ever since.
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Info

Natural antifreeze may keep Mars running with water

David Shiga
New Scientist
Thu, 19 Feb 2009 05:17 UTC
Image
© UnknownA history of Martian water

There's nothing like a little antifreeze to thaw out a frozen planet. Thanks to chemicals called perchlorates, liquid water may play a bigger role on Mars than expected, which is good news for the search for life.

Last year, NASA's Phoenix lander team announced the unexpected discovery on Mars of perchlorates - compounds containing an atom of chlorine bound to four oxygen atoms. Relatively sparse on Earth, they turn out to be abundant on Mars, forming 1 per cent of the soil tasted by Phoenix.

The initial excitement focused on whether Martian microorganisms could use perchlorates as food, as some Earth microbes do. That remains possible, but now it's emerging that perchlorates could have far-reaching consequences on Mars for another reason: their ability to keep water liquid far below 0 °C.
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Telescope

'Primordial' gas ring gives birth to baby galaxies

Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
Wed, 18 Feb 2009 05:10 UTC
Image
© NASA/JPLThe Leo Ring (illustrated in blue) is a vast loop of gas that orbits two galaxies about 35 million light years from Earth.

In a cosmic case of delayed development, dwarf galaxies have been found growing in a ring of gas that seems to be left over from the early universe. Strangely, the new galaxies appear to lack dark matter, suggesting a fraction of the universe's first galaxies might have been born from gas alone.

The new dwarf galaxies are forming in a giant stream of hydrogen and helium gas called the Leo Ring. The ring surrounds two older galaxies some 35 million light years away from Earth.

The Leo Ring was discovered more than 25 years ago, but until now, no one had seen evidence that it was forming stars. That's because light scattered off dust particles in our solar system obscured the stars from view by optical telescopes.
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Telescope

Europa trumps Titan in bid for outer planet mission

Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
Thu, 19 Feb 2009 05:02 UTC
Image
© NASA/JPLNASA and ESA plan to send two orbiters to study Jupiter in 2020. The probes will eventually settle into orbit around the moons Ganymede (bottom left) and Europa (top right).

NASA has decided to pursue a plan to send two probes to study Jupiter and its four largest moons in the next big mission to the outer planets, the agency announced today. The mission beat out a competing plan to send an orbiter, balloon and lander to Saturn's moon Titan.

The multi-billion dollar mission, a joint endeavour of NASA and the European Space Agency, would launch two probes in 2020. The pair would reach Jupiter in 2026 and spend at least three years studying the system.

The prime target of NASA's orbiter is Jupiter's moon Europa, which is thought to have an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy shell.
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Sherlock

Alarm Bells For Iran's "Salt Men"


Mehr News Agency
Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:20 UTC
Salt Men
© UnknownThe First Salt Man at the National Museum of Iran, Tehran.
The ancient Iranian "salt men" are in critical condition. All six of the salt men, known as Iranian mummies, were discovered at the Chehrabad Salt Mine in the Hamzehlu region near Zanjan over the past 12 years, the Persian service of CHN reported on Wednesday.

Studies on the Fourth Salt Man, kept at Zanjan's Zolfaqari Museum, indicate that the body is 2000 years old and he was 15 or 16 years old at the time of death. Three other salt men are also kept at the museum.

The plexiglass cases designed for these mummies are not hermetically sealed. Changes in air temperature and pressure have created cracks in the cases, allowing bacteria and insects to enter and damage the mummies.

It is still not clear when the other salt men lived, but archaeologists estimate that the First Salt Man lived about 1700 years ago and died sometime between the ages of 35 and 40. He is currently on display in a glass case at the National Museum of Iran in Tehran.
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Einstein

Belgium Opens Scientific Base in Antarctica


Agence France-Presse
Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:30 UTC
Belgium opened a new scientific research centre in Antarctica Sunday -- 40 years after its last polar base there.

Around 100 people attended the opening ceremony of "Princess Elisabeth", the brain child of Belgian explorer Alain Hubert, including government ministers, scientists and business partners.

Private investors contributed almost 22 million euros (28 million dollars) to build the centre, 200 kilometres (125 miles) from the King Baudouin base abandoned in 1967.

The new base, named after the first in line to the Belgian throne, can accommodate up to about 20 people at a time.
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Magnify

Scientists Model Words as Entangled Quantum States in our Minds


PhysOrg
Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:00 UTC
When you hear the word "planet," do you automatically think of the word's literal definition, or of other words, such as "Earth," "space," "Mars," etc.? Especially when used in sentences, words tend to conjure up similar words automatically. Further, human beings' ability to draw associations and inferences between words may explain why we're generally able to communicate complex ideas with each other quite clearly using a limited number of words.

Research has shown that words are stored in our memories not as isolated entities but as part of a network of related words. This explains why seeing or hearing a word activates words related to it through prior experiences. In trying to understand these connections, scientists visualize a map of links among words called the mental lexicon that shows how words in a vocabulary are interconnected through other words.

However, it's not clear just how this word association network works. For instance, does word association spread like a wave through a fixed network, weakening with conceptual distance, as suggested by the "Spreading Activation" model? Or does a word activate every other associated word simultaneously, as suggested in a model called "Spooky Activation at a Distance"?
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Telescope

Do Gravity Holes Harbour Planetary Assassins?

Stuart Clark
New Scientist
Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:00 UTC
Stereo
© NASANASA's STEREO spacecraft will search for objects trapped at the Lagrangian points.
They are the places gravity forgot. Vast regions of space, millions of kilometres across, in which celestial forces conspire to cancel out gravity and so trap anything that falls into them. They sit in the Earth's orbit, one marching ahead of our planet, the other trailing along behind. Astronomers call them Lagrangian points, or L4 and L5 for short. The best way to think of them, though, is as celestial flypaper.

In the 4.5 billion years since the formation of the solar system, everything from dust clouds to asteroids and hidden planets may have accumulated there. Some have even speculated that alien spacecraft are watching us from the Lagrangian points, looking for signs of intelligence.

Putting little green men to one side for the moment, even the presence of plain old space rocks would be enough to keep most people happy. "I think you certainly might find a whole population of objects at L4 and L5," says astrophysicist Richard Gott of Princeton University.
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