Science & TechnologyS


Meteor

U.S. urged to prepare for asteroid strike

Yan Liang
China View (Xinhua)
Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:21 UTC
U.S. scientists have urged the U.S. government to take further defensive measures against near-Earth objects, The Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday.

The United States was not doing enough to defend the planet against the dangers posed by near-Earth objects, said a group of scientists who observed the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska asteroid event this week in Los Angeles.

"We are not prepared at this time to prevent the massive death and destruction that would occur if an object from space hit the Earth as it did in Tunguska" in Siberia, said Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher who joined the scientists in the event.

Comment: A big problem is the misrepresentation of the situation; of suppression and inconsistency within scientific knowledge on the subject, as highlighted by SoTT's "Comets and Catastrophe's" series.

A common misconception is that any threat comprises a single massive impact, whereas research from the likes of Victor Clube (whose work is wholly suppressed) indicate that a more realistic threat comes from dispersed but dense clusters of numerous cometary fragments and dust, within the Taurid stream, rather than a single massive 'lump'. This could make the 'deflect the asteroid' solution wholly ineffective.

See 'The Cosmic Winter' by Victor Clube and Bill Napier for more information.

Read More...
Star

Space Probes Find Dent in Solar System

Jeremy Hsu
Fox News
Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:58 UTC


Image
©NASA/JPL
An artist's rendering of Voyager 2 in the outer limits of the heliosphere, the area of space affected by the Sun's solar wind.

Voyager 2's journey toward interstellar space has revealed surprising insights into the energy and magnetic forces at the solar system's outer edge, and confirmed the solar system's squashed shape.

Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 continue to send data to Earth more than 30 years after they first launched. During the 1990s, Voyager 1 became the farthest manmade object in space.

Each spacecraft has now crossed the edge of the solar system, known as the termination shock, where the outbound solar wind collides with inbound energetic particles from interstellar space.
Read More...
Bulb

Nanotech Produces Bizarre "Flat" Atom, Hailed as Quantum Computing Breakthrough

Jason Mick
Daily Tech
Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:45 UTC


Image
©Purdue University image/David Ebert
A visualization of the molecule. The triangular depression on the bottom right represents the arsenic atom. The dots in the center saucer are bonding locations for a single electron. The yellow dots in the upper left center are bonding locations in which the electron is in a quantum state.

Nanoelectronics researchers discover a bizarre shaped molecule in one of their devices can act as first known quantum state-manipulable atom

Imagine a tiny arsenic atom embedded in a tiny strip of silicon atoms. An electric current is applied. Something strange arises on the surface -- an exotic molecule. On one end is the spherical submerged arsenic atom; on the other end is an "artificial" flat atom, seemingly 2D, created as an artifact. The pair form an exotic molecule, which has a shared electron, which can be manipulated to be at either end, or in an intermediate quantum state.

Thus arose one of the most confusing, most promising, and strangest breakthroughs in the newly formed field of quantum computing.
Read More...
Telescope

NASA: Martial soil good enough to grow asparagus


AFP
Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:38 UTC
They haven't found any little green men, but NASA is excited about a different green discovery on the red planet.

Martian dirt was apparently good enough for asparagus to grow in, NASA scientists said yesterday.

Announcing the results of an analysis of soil collected by the Phoenix Mars lander, Prof Samuel Kounaves, the project's lead chemist, said: "There is nothing about the soil that would preclude life. In fact, it seems very friendly. The soil is the type in your back yard. You may be able to grow asparagus very well."
Read More...
Info

Crumbling Pompeii site in "state of emergency"

Silvia Aloisi
Reuters
Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:23 UTC
ROME - The Italian government declared a state of emergency at the Pompeii archaeological site on Friday to try to rescue one of the world's most important cultural treasures from decades of neglect.


Roman city of Pompeii
©REUTERS/Tony Gentile
Tourists protect themselves from the sun as they visit the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, destroyed by the Vesuvius volcanic eruption in 79 AD, August 24, 2007.

A cabinet statement said it would appoint a special commissioner for Pompeii, the ancient Roman city buried by an eruption of the Vesuvius volcano in AD 79 and now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

"To call the situation intolerable doesn't go far enough," said Culture Minister Sandro Bondi, who took office in Silvio Berlusconi's new conservative government in May.

Archaeologists and art historians have long complained about the poor upkeep of Pompeii, dogged by lack of investment, mismanagement, litter and looting. Bogus tour guides, illegal parking attendants and stray dogs also plague visitors.

Some 2.5 million tourists visit Pompeii each year, making it one of Italy's most popular attractions, and many have expressed shock at the site's decay.
Read More...
Telescope

Mining For Molecules In The Milky Way


Science Daily
Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:17 UTC
Scientists are using the giant Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to go prospecting in a rich molecular cloud in our Milky Way Galaxy. They seek to discover new, complex molecules in interstellar space that may be precursors to life.

Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope
©Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF
The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope and some molecules it has discovered.

"Clouds like this one are the raw material for new stars and planets. We know that complex chemistry builds prebiotic molecules in such clouds long before the stars and planets are formed. There is a good chance that some of these interstellar molecules may find their way to the surface of young planets such as the early Earth, and provide a head start for the chemistry of life. For the first time, we now have the capability to make a very thorough and methodical search to find all the chemicals in the clouds," said Anthony Remijan, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).
Read More...
Bulb

Species Have Come and Gone at Different Rates than Previously Believed


NFS
Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:23 UTC
Diversity among the ancestors of such marine creatures as clams, sand dollars and lobsters showed only a modest rise beginning 144 million years ago with no clear trend afterwards, according to an international team of researchers. This contradicts previous work showing dramatic increases beginning 248 million years ago and may shed light on future diversity.

"Some of the time periods in the past are analogies for what is happening today from global warming," says Jocelyn Sessa of Penn State. "Understanding what happened with diversity in the past can help us provide some prediction on how modern organisms will fare. If we know where we have been, we know something about where it will go."

Using contemporary statistical methods and a paleobiology database, the researchers report in the July 4 issue of Science, a new diversity curve that shows that most of the early spread of invertebrates took place well before the Late Cretaceous, and that the net increase through the period since, is proportionately small relative to the 65 million years that elapsed. The research team was led by John Alroy of the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Image
©Steven Holland, University of Georgia
A slab of limestone covered with fossils. This slab of limestone is about 450 million years old and is from an area in Ohio that is famous for its fossils.
Read More...
Bulb

Flashback New discovery proves 'selfish gene' exists.


University of Western Ontario
Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:19 UTC
A new discovery by a scientist from The University of Western Ontario provides conclusive evidence which supports decades-old evolutionary doctrines long accepted as fact.

Since renowned British biologist Richard Dawkins ("The God Delusion") introduced the concept of the 'selfish gene' in 1976, scientists the world over have hailed the theory as a natural extension to the work of Charles Darwin.

In studying genomes, the word 'selfish' does not refer to the human-describing adjective of self-centered behavior but rather to the blind tendency of genes wanting to continue their existence into the next generation. Ironically, this 'selfish' tendency can appear anything but selfish when the gene does move ahead for selfless and even self-sacrificing reasons.
Read More...
Butterfly

Want to fly? Don't copy the birds and the bees


Society for Experimental Biology
Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:47 UTC
Since earliest recorded history, and presumably beyond, humans have always wanted to fly. First attempts involved imitation of winged creatures around them, and unfailingly ended in disaster. No workable flying machines have ever looked particularly similar to nature's fliers, and today there is little comparison between a top of the range military chopper and the humble bumblebee, despite similar flight patterns.

In an era in which engineers are increasingly exploiting designs from nature, understanding this paradox is becoming ever more important. Dr Jim Usherwood, from the Royal Veterinary College, has studied the reasons behind these differences in aerodynamics and concluded that scientists should, in this instance, be more hesitant before imitating nature. He will be presenting his results on Sunday 6th July at the Society for Experimental Biology's Annual Meeting in Marseille.

Image
©Structure and Motion Laboratory, Royal Veterinary College
Karin Jespers studies the flight of a racing pigeon. Reflective tape, similar to that used on safety clothing, allows cameras to calculate where dots are on a pigeon's wings.
Read More...
Telescope

Green blob warrants study time with the Hubble Space Telescope

Adam Jones
Tuscaloo News
Sat, 05 Jul 2008 04:33 UTC


Image
©University of Alabama
Astronomers believe the green object, known as Hanny's Voorwerp, is a cloud of gas, but it's unusual enough that NASA has awarded time on the Hubble Space Telescope to a team of astronomers, including University of Alabama professor Bill Keel, to get a better look at it. Though first seen as blue in a picture, it was later revealed to be green.

Hanny van Arkel just wanted to know what the blue blob was in the picture, but the question she asked so stumped astronomers that NASA awarded them time on the Hubble Space Telescope to answer it.

'What's the blue stuff below,' van Arkel asked in an online forum back in the fall. 'Anyone?'

University of Alabama astronomer Bill Keel is part of an international team of astronomers hoping to provide the answer, and, though they have a good guess, they need a clearer picture of the object nearly 700 million light years away.

They'll get that picture next year.
Read More...