Science & TechnologyS


Clock

US: White House Briefed On Potential For Mars Life

Craig Covault
Aviation Week
Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:44 UTC
The White House has been alerted by NASA about plans to make an announcement soon on major new Phoenix lander discoveries concerning the "potential for life" on Mars, scientists tell Aviation Week & Space Technology.

Sources say the new data do not indicate the discovery of existing or past life on Mars. Rather the data relate to habitability--the "potential" for Mars to support life--at the Phoenix arctic landing site, sources say.

The data are much more complex than results related NASA's July 31 announcement that Phoenix has confirmed the presence of water ice at the site.
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Telescope

Victor Emerges in Stormy Battle on Jupiter


Live Science
Sun, 03 Aug 2008 00:10 UTC
Jupiter's Great Red Spot has roughed up a younger rival storm and may consume it altogether.

The baby red spot appears to have gotten the worst of its whirlwind encounter with the ravenous super-storm that has dominated Jupiter for at least two centuries. Their tussle was captured in a recent series of images by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Scientists may be watching historical shifts in action as they learn how the giant planet's storms grow and change over decades and centuries.

Great Red Spot
©NASA/ESA/A. Simon-Miller (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)
An image of the baby red spot (left), the Little Red Spot (lower left), and the Great Red Spot (right). The image was taken on May 15, 2008 by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The smaller storm first appeared earlier this year, but had the misfortune to get caught up in the reverse cyclone spin of the Great Red Spot. That left the baby red spot deformed and sapped of color as it spun off to the east of the greater storm. Astronomers predict that the Great Red Spot will eventually pull in and absorb the baby red spot - a possible reason why the super-storm has sustained its power for so long.
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Star

How the First Stars Were Born

Jeremy Hsu
Live Science
Sun, 03 Aug 2008 00:05 UTC
A new supercomputer simulation offers the most detailed view yet of how the first stars evolved after the Big Bang.

The model follows the simpler physics that ruled the early universe to see how cold clumps of gas eventually grew into giant star embryos.

Image
©Yoshida et al/Astrophysical Journal
Projected gas distribution around the protostar. The large-scale gas distribution around the cosmological halo.

"Until you put that physics in the code, you can't evaluate how the first protostars formed," said Lars Hernquist, an astrophysicist at Harvard University whose early-stars model is detailed in this week's issue of the journal Science. His remarks were made Wednesday during a press teleconference.

Mysterious "dark matter" provided the first gravitational impetus for hydrogen and helium gas to start clumping together, Hernquist said. The gas began releasing energy as it condensed, forming molecules from atoms, which further cooled the clump and allowed for even greater condensing.
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Bizarro Earth

Drastic climate chill came exactly 12,679 years ago, happened in less than a year: study

Giles Elgood
Reuters
Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:24 UTC
A drastic cooling of the climate in western Europe happened exactly 12,679 years ago, apparently after a shift to icy winds over the Atlantic, scientists said on Friday, giving a hint of how abruptly the climate can change.

Comment: Almost exactly three 4,200 year periods back from the present.

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Star

The Pole star comes to life again


physorg.com
Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:34 UTC


pole star
©Unknown
Artist's impression of Polaris and the constellations of the Big and Small Dippers.

The Northern Star, whose vibrations were thought to be dying away, appears to have come to life again.

An international team of astronomers has observed that vibrations in the Pole star, which had been fading away to almost nothing over the last hundred years, have recovered and are now increasing. And the astronomers don't know why.
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Telescope

Mars Express Acquires Sharpest Images Of Martian Moon Phobos


Science Daily
Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:51 UTC
Mars Express closed in on the intriguing martian moon Phobos at 6:50 CEST on 23 July, flying past at 2.96 km/s, only 100 km from the centre of the moon. The ESA spacecraft's fly-bys of the moon have returned its most detailed full-disc images ever, also in 3-D, using the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board.

Phobos
©ESA/ DLR/ FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
On 23 July 2008, the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board the ESA's Mars Express took the highest-resolution full-disc image yet of the surface of the moon Phobos.

Phobos is what scientists call a 'small irregular body'. Measuring 27 km × 22 km × 19 km, it is one of the least reflective objects in the Solar System, thought to be a captured asteroid or a remnant of the material that formed the planets.
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Ark

UK: Ancient rock carvings discovered


BBC
Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:33 UTC


Carving
©BBC
One of the significant finds was at Barningham Moor

More than 100 new examples of prehistoric art have been discovered carved into boulders and open bedrock throughout Northumberland and Durham.
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Ark

Ancient Greeks used "computer" to set Olympics date


Reuters
Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:28 UTC


Antikythera
©Antikythera Mechanism Research Project / Tony Freeth
X-ray of fragment of the Antikythera Mechanism (left) and a computer-generated 3D images of back gears.

London - A mechanical brass calculator used by the ancient Greeks to predict solar and lunar eclipses was probably also used to set the dates for the first Olympic games, researchers said on Wednesday.
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Info

Incredible Discoveries Made in Remote Caves

Robert Roy Britt
Live Science
Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:22 UTC
Scientists exploring caves in the bone-dry and mostly barren Atacama Desert in Chile stumbled upon a totally unexpected discovery this week: water.

They also found hundreds of thousands of animal bones in a cave, possibly evidence of some prehistoric human activity.

Cuevita de Catarpe
©J. Wynne et al.
This cave, Cuevita de Catarpe, is one of several in the Atacama Desert in Chile being explored by J. Judson Wynne's team.

The findings are preliminary and have not been analyzed.

The expedition is designed to learn how to spot caves on Mars by studying the thermal signatures of caves and non-cave features in hot, dry places here on Earth. Scientists think Martian caves, some of which may already have been spotted from space, could be good places to look for life.

No hot place on Earth is drier than the Atacama Desert. Many parts of the high-plateau desert have never received rain that anyone can remember. Average rainfall across the region is just 1 millimeter per year. (Parts of Antarctica are considered the driest places on Earth, however.)

So nobody was looking for water.
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Telescope

NASA says Mars craft "touched and tasted" water

Jill Serjeant
Reuters
Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:10 UTC
LOS ANGELES - NASA scientists said on Thursday they had definitive proof that water exists on Mars after further tests on ice found on the planet in June by the Phoenix Mars Lander.

"We have water," said William Boynton, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer instrument on Phoenix.

"We've seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted," he said, referring to the craft's instruments.

NASA on Thursday also extended the mission of the Phoenix Mars Lander by five weeks, saying its work was moving beyond the search for water to exploring whether the red planet was ever capable of sustaining life.

"We are extending the mission through September 30," Michael Meyer, chief scientist for NASA's Mars exploration program, told a televised news conference.
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