Science & TechnologyS


Meteor

Asteroid Enters Atmosphere, Just As Predicted


KTVU.com
Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:33 UTC
Nasa scientists at Ames Research Center in Mountain View say scientists did something Monday night that they've never been able to do before. They were able to predict where and when an asteroid would enter the earth's atmosphere.

The asteroid was about the size of a car and entered the atmosphere over the African country of Sudan going about eight miles a second. So far there are no reports of damage. It is believed that the space rock burned up before reaching the ground, although small pieces could have made it to the ground.

Scientists said space rocks of that size usually enter the earth's atmosphere about once or twice a year.

Comment: A 12 hour warning is not exactly reassuring, is it? Research collected on this site has shown that the killer space debris, when they come, will likely be comet fragments rather than asteroids. Comet fragments have the bad habit of travelling in large clusters and have been shown to hit the Earth much more frequently than admitted by mainstream science.

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Telescope

Is It A Planet? Exotic Object Orbiting Star Stirs Exoplanet Classification Rethink


Science Daily
Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:34 UTC
The European spacecraft COROT has discovered a massive planet-sized object orbiting its parent star closely, unlike anything ever spotted before. It is so exotic, that scientists are unsure as to whether this oddity is actually a planet or a failed star.
the Sun, COROT-exo-3b and Jupiter
© OAMPRelative sizes of the Sun, COROT-exo-3b and Jupiter, an artist's impression.

The object, named COROT-exo-3b, is about the size of Jupiter, but packs more than 20 times the mass. It takes only 4 days and 6 hours to orbit its parent star, which is slightly larger than the Sun.

COROT-exo-3b was found as the satellite observed the drop in the brightness of the star each time the object (COROT-exo-3b) passed in front. "We were taken by surprise when we found this massive object orbiting so close to its parent star", said Dr Magali Deleuil from the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM), leader of the team that made the discovery. She added, "COROT-exo-3b is really unique - we're still debating its nature."
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Powertool

Mysterious Neolithic people made optical art


ANI
Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:31 UTC
An exhibition in the Vatican, which is displaying hundreds of artifacts, has suggested that the mysterious Neolithic people made optical art.

According to a report in Discovery News, the exhibition, which is being held at the Palazzo della Cancelleria in the Vatican, introduces a mysterious Neolithic people who are now believed to have forged Europe's first civilization.
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Meteor

Space rock found on collision course with Earth

Maggie McKee
New Scientist
Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:56 UTC
For the first time, astronomers have found an object on a certain collision course with Earth. Fortunately, it is so small it is not expected to cause any damage, burning up in the atmosphere somewhere above northern Sudan in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. It may, however, produce a brilliant 'shooting star'.

The space rock, dubbed 2008 TC3, was first spotted on Monday in a survey by the Mt Lemmon Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. Its brightness suggests it is no more than about 5 metres across - so small it will likely be destroyed in the atmosphere, says Andrea Milani Comparetti of the University of Pisa in Italy.

Rocks of such size are thought to hit the atmosphere every few months, says Steve Chesley, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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Meteor

Best of the Web: Incoming Asteroid - Will Hit Earth October 7


SpaceWeather.com
Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:13 UTC
A small, newly-discovered asteroid named 2008 TC3 is approaching Earth and chances are good that it will hit. Steve Chesley of JPL estimates that atmospheric entry will occur on Oct 7th at 0246 UTC over northern Sudan [ref]. Measuring only a few meters across, the space rock poses NO THREAT to people or structures on the ground, but it should create a spectacular fireball, releasing about a kiloton of TNT in energy as it disintegrates and explodes in the atmosphere. Odds are between 99.8 and 100 percent that the object will encounter Earth, according to calculations provided by Andrea Milani of the University of Pisa. [ephemeris] [3D orbit]
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HAL9000

'Intelligent' computers put to the test

David Smith
The Guardian
Sun, 05 Oct 2008 21:10 UTC
Hal9000
© RGAHal, the supercomputer in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Can machines think? That was the question posed by the great mathematician Alan Turing. Half a century later six computers are about to converse with human interrogators in an experiment that will attempt to prove that the answer is yes.

In the Turing test a machine seeks to fool judges into believing that it could be human. The test is performed by conducting a text-based conversation on any subject. If the computer's responses are indistinguishable from those of a human, it has passed the Turing test and can be said to be "thinking".
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Info

Earliest Animal Footprints Ever Found Show Animals Walking 30 Million Years Earlier Than Previously Thought


Science Daily
Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:13 UTC
The fossilized trail of an aquatic creature suggests that animals walked using legs at least 30 million years earlier than had been thought. The tracks -- two parallel rows of small dots, each about 2 millimeters in diameter -- date back some 570 million years, to the Ediacaran period.
Trackway of one of the earliest animals
© Kevin Fitzsimons, Ohio State UniversityTrackway of one of the earliest animals, a multi-legged creature that walked over the bed of an ancient sea once covering Nevada. The animal left behind a pair of parallel impressions - small, round dots in the silt that later became rock.

The Ediacaran preceded the Cambrian period, the time when most major groups of animals first evolved.

Scientists once thought that it was primarily microbes and simple multicellular animals that existed prior to the Cambrian, but that notion is changing, explained Loren Babcock, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University.

"We keep talking about the possibility of more complex animals in the Ediacaran -- soft corals, some arthropods, and flatworms -- but the evidence has not been totally convincing," he said. "But if you find evidence, like we did, of an animal with legs -- an animal walking around -- then that makes the possibility much more likely."
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Saturn

Saturn's Radio Broadcasters Mapped In 3D For First Time


Science Daily
Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:46 UTC
Observations from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have been used to build, for the first time, a 3D picture of the sources of intense radio emissions in Saturn's magnetic field, known as the Saturn Kilometric Radiation (SKR).
Saturn
© EuroplanetProjection of radio sources onto plane perpendicular to line between Cassini and the centre of Saturn.

The SKR radio emissions are generated by high-energy electrons spiralling around magnetic field lines threaded through Saturn's auroras. Previous Cassini observations have shown that the SKR is closely correlated with the intensity of Saturn's UV aurora and the pressure of the solar wind.

The measurements were made using Cassini's Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) experiment. The results will be presented by Dr Baptist Cecconi, of LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, at the European Planetary Science Congress on the 23rd of September.
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Star

Sun Is Not A Perfect Sphere, NASA Spacecraft Finds


Science Daily
Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:41 UTC
Scientists using NASA's RHESSI spacecraft have measured the roundness of the sun with unprecedented precision. They find that it is not a perfect sphere. During years of high solar activity the sun develops a thin "cantaloupe skin" that significantly increases its apparent oblateness: the sun's equatorial radius becomes slightly larger than its polar radius.
© Gary Palmer"Cantaloupe ridges" on the sun. The glowing white magnetic network is what gives the sun its extra oblateness during times of high solar activity. Amateur astronomer Gary Palmer took the picture in July 2005 using a violet calcium-K filter.

Their results appear the Oct. 2nd edition of Science Express.

"The sun is the biggest and therefore smoothest object in the solar system, perfect at the 0.001% level because of its extremely strong gravity," says study co-author Hugh Hudson of UC Berkeley. "Measuring its exact shape is no easy task."

The team accomplished the task by analyzing data from the Reuven Ramaty High-Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager, RHESSI for short, an x-ray/gamma-ray space telescope launched in 2002 on a mission to study solar flares. Although RHESSI was never intended to measure the roundness of the sun, it has turned out ideal for the purpose. RHESSI observes the solar disk through a narrow slit and spins at 15 rpm. The spacecraft's rapid rotation and high data sampling rate (necessary to catch fast solar flares) make it possible for investigators to trace the shape of the sun with systematic errors much less than any previous study. Their technique is particularly sensitive to small differences in polar vs. equatorial radius or "oblateness."
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Sun

Sun Warms and Cools the Earth

Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski
Center for Political Research
Sat, 20 Sep 2008 12:53 UTC
In an op-ed in a Polish weekly I commented recently on a remarkable decrease of global temperature in 2008, and over the past decade. Not surprisingly the op-ed evoked a strong reaction from Polish co-workers of IPCC, denying the existence of cooling. Surprising, however, was that the criticism dwelled upon a "global climatic conspiracy", and "colossal international plot". I did not use these words nor even hinted at such an idea. The idea was probably apparent from the data and facts I presented, showing weaknesses of the man-made global warming hypothesis. Without irrational political or ideological factors, it is really difficult to understand why so many people believe in human causation of the Modern Warm Period, which was never plausibly proved by scientific evidence. Some of these factors I will discuss here.
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