Science & TechnologyS


Meteor

Odd Comet Possibly from Another Star System

Jeanna Bryner
SPACE.com
Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:11 UTC
The bizarre chemical make-up of a comet suggests the blob of ice is an interloper, possibly flung into our solar system from beyond, astronomers now say, adding that the wacky comet is forcing them to create a new category for such objects.

The comet, called Machholz 1, was discovered in 1986 by Donald Machholz of Loma Prieta, Calif. Since then, the icy denizen has made a few appearances, including one in 2007.
Comet Machholz 1
© SOHO/LASCO (ESA & NASA)This image taken by the ESA-NASA sunwatching spacecraft SOHO reveals Comet Machholz 1 close to the sun on Jan. 8, 2002. SOHO's coronograph hid the bright sun, the size of which is shown by the inner ring.

"A large fraction of comets in our own solar system have escaped into interstellar space, so we expect that many comets formed around other stars would also have escaped," said David Schleicher, a planetary astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Arizona. "Some of these will have crossed paths with the sun, and Machholz 1 could be an interstellar interloper."
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Light Sabers

Boeing ABL Fired Through its Beam Control Guidance System

Shane McGlaun
DailyTech
Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:58 UTC
Boeing has successfully fired the laser about the ABL aircraft through the onboard laser guidance system.

The key to stopping missile attacks is to be able to target and destroy the missiles in the boost phase of their flight before they can reach the target and cause untold damage. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has been testing the Airborne Laser (ABL) system for several years now.

Comment: If the secret military projects are years and decades ahead of what is in the public media we can just imagine what wonderful horror lies in store for the human race.

Here are just a few related links on SOTT regarding the military's directed energy weapons:

Boeing ATL Aircraft High-Energy Laser Ground Tested
Army Moves Ahead With Mobile Laser Cannon
US boasts of laser weapon's 'plausible deniability'
Weapons-Grade Lasers by the End of '08?
Airborne laser weapons heating up
Boeing tests airborne laser gun
Laser plane could destroy tanks from 10 miles
Pentagon wants laser attack warnings for satellites
Police, Military roll out Weapons of Mass Distraction
Pentagon investigated lasers that put voices in your head and mimic Schizophrenia
Boeing Conducts Successful Avenger-Mounted Laser Tests
Record power for military laser
New Weapon, Human Tests
Airborne Laser to test-fire in flight
'Star Wars' becomes reality as US unveils laser-equipped 747
Boeing-Led Team Fires Surrogate Lasers From Airborne Laser Aircraft
Administration Conducting Research Into Laser Weapon
Is The U.S. using new experimental "Tactical High Energy Laser" weapons in Iraq?
New weapon could mean the end of collateral damage
Beam weapons almost ready for battle

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UFO 2

Flashback Boeing ATL Aircraft High-Energy Laser Ground Tested

Shane McGlaun
DailyTech
Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:07 UTC
ATL aircraft and its high-energy laser are said to be capable of supernatural accuracy

Lasers have long been the stuff of science fiction and dreams, but good ideas have a habit of moving from fiction into the realm of reality. Boeing is certainly moving the laser from the realm of fiction into reality as a tactical weapon.
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Telescope

New telescope to search for comet-like objects


Associated Press
Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:15 UTC
Honolulu - A University of Hawaii professor says the Big Island will be home to a new telescope.

Professor Robert Fox of the university's Hilo campus says the device can fit into a garage-size building and will search for comet-like objects beyond Neptune.

Fox says it will not be placed atop Mauna Kea, site of several telescopes. He says other Big Island sites are being considered.
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Telescope

Big bang's afterglow may reveal birthplace of comets

Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:23 UTC
A vast reservoir of comets that is too far away to see might be detectable in maps of radiation left over from the big bang, a new study suggests.

Comets that take longer than 200 years to orbit the Sun come from all directions in the sky. That has long led scientists to believe that they were nudged out of a diffuse halo of icy objects that surrounds the solar system - the Oort Cloud.
Image
© www.jonlomberg.comOort Cloud objects orbit the Sun in a spherical outer shell shown here, as well as in an inner cloud that might be more disc-like. If the inner cloud is squashed enough, it could be detected in radiation left over from the big bang.

The objects probably formed from the same disc of material that gave rise to the planets but were scattered outwards by Jupiter and Saturn a few hundred million years after their birth.

The Oort Cloud is too dim to be seen by telescopes, but astronomers believe it has two components. Based on observations of long-period comets, an outer portion seems to extend from 20,000 to 200,000 astronomical units from the Sun (where 1 AU is the Earth-Sun distance).
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Display

New tools predict web page popularity

David Robson
New Scientist
Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:49 UTC
Website owners can cast aside their crystal balls - now there are reliable ways of predicting which news stories, blogs or video clips will prove popular in the long term, allowing them to allocate extra bandwidth if they need to.

Although the number of hits an online item receives when first published should give some indication of future popularity, such forecasts tend to be inaccurate as daily and weekly fluctuations in overall website traffic will skew the results.

Now Bernardo Huberman and Gabor Szabo from HP Labs in Palo Alto, California, say they can account for such effects. They focus not on the actual number of hits but on the rate at which an item picks up views when first put online - suitably adjusted so that views when traffic to a site is low are given more significance than when it is busy. Using this measure, they found they could predict the subsequent popularity of 90 per cent of the content on the video-sharing site YouTube.com and the news aggregator Digg.com.
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Info

Memories may be stored on your DNA

Devin Powell
New Scientist
Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:33 UTC
Remember your first kiss? Experiments in mice suggest that patterns of chemical "caps" on our DNA may be responsible for preserving such memories.

To remember a particular event, a specific sequence of neurons must fire at just the right time. For this to happen, neurons must be connected in a certain way by chemical junctions called synapses. But how they last over decades, given that proteins in the brain, including those that form synapses, are destroyed and replaced constantly, is a mystery.
Image
© flaivoloka, stock.xchngCould memories be stored by making modifications to your DNA?

Now Courtney Miller and David Sweatt of the University of Alabama in Birmingham say that long-term memories may be preserved by a process called DNA methylation - the addition of chemical caps called methyl groups onto our DNA.
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Battery

Ocean currents can power the world, say scientists

Jasper Copping
Telegraph
Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:27 UTC
ocean currents technology
© APExisting technologies require an average current of five or six knots to operate efficiently, while most of the earth's currents are slower than three knots
A revolutionary device that can harness energy from slow-moving rivers and ocean currents could provide enough power for the entire world, scientists claim.

The technology can generate electricity in water flowing at a rate of less than one knot - about one mile an hour - meaning it could operate on most waterways and sea beds around the globe.

Existing technologies which use water power, relying on the action of waves, tides or faster currents created by dams, are far more limited in where they can be used, and also cause greater obstructions when they are built in rivers or the sea. Turbines and water mills need an average current of five or six knots to operate efficiently, while most of the earth's currents are slower than three knots.
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Pharoah

Dig unearths Stone Age sculptures


BBC News
Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:52 UTC
BBC Venus
© Amirkhanov/Lev/AntiquityThe carving has a feminine form, reminiscent of "Venus" figurines found from Siberia to the Pyrenees

Rare artefacts from the late Stone Age have been uncovered in Russia.
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Einstein

How to sell science to the Big Brother generation

Paul Parsons
New Scientist
Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:28 UTC
Symmetrical patterns
© Shigeru Tanaka/AmanaImages/CorbisSymmetrical patterns like this one are one of Marcus du Sautoy's passions.
He plays the trumpet, loves football and has a well-known fondness for pink hoodies. Next week, University of Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy takes over from Richard Dawkins as Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science. Is he bothered by comparisons with his fearsome predecessor? And what will his message be? Paul Parsons went to find out.

What made you apply for the Simonyi chair?

It encapsulates the two things I'm passionate about: discovering new scientific results and communicating them to other people. If you don't communicate your ideas to other people, the ideas don't come alive.
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