Science & TechnologyS


Pharoah

Discovery of a monumental tomb related to 1st transition period


Egypt State Information Service
Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:30 UTC
Group of tombs were discovered in Ahnasia city the ancient capital of Egypt in Bani Sweif during the digging works of the Spanish delegation of the National Museum in Madrid.

General Manager of Antiques in Bani Sweif said that the tomb related to the 1st transition period, adding that the tomb identifies the period where Ahnasia city was the capital of Egypt. He noted that Ahnasia city was established during the 9th and 10th dynasties.
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Display

Consumers left to sweep up after Blu-ray, HD DVD war

Monica Haynes
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:23 UTC
You've been had. You've been hoodwinked. You didn't land on the next-generation DVD format; it landed on you. And boy, did it leave a mark!

That could pretty much sum up the feeling of many early technology adopters seduced by the sirens of the HD DVD player only to learn they were on the losing end of a war they probably didn't know they were a part of.
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Evil Rays

New discovery at Jupiter could help protect Earth-orbit satellites


British Antarctic Survey
Sun, 09 Mar 2008 17:56 UTC
Radio waves accelerate electrons within Jupiter's magnetic field in the same way as they do on Earth.

Radio waves accelerate electrons within Jupiter's magnetic field in the same way as they do on Earth, according to new research published in Nature Physics this week. The discovery overturns a theory that has held sway for more than a generation and has important implications for protecting Earth-orbiting satellites.

Using data collected at Jupiter by the Galileo spacecraft, Dr Richard Horne of British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Iowa found that a special type of very low frequency radio wave is strong enough to accelerate electrons up to very high energies inside Jupiter's magnetic field.
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Star

A Cloudy Comet and a Wispy Nebula

Alan MacRobert
Sky and Telescope
Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:17 UTC
I love celestial coincidences. There are just so many of them.

Why do some of the closest bright stars to the solar system lie in front of the bright stars of the winter Milky Way? This foreground and background have nothing to do with each other, but they combine to make our winter evening sky especially starry-bright.

Why, from Earth's viewpoint, do planets shine just about as bright as the brightest stars?

Why are the apparent sizes of the Moon and Sun so nearly alike? They're just right to give us the most spectacular-looking (if rather rare) total solar eclipses.

Image
©S&T: Dennis di Cicco & Sean Walker
On the evening of March 5th, big dim Comet Holmes was passing big dim NGC 1499, the California Nebula in Perseus. For this image Dennis di Cicco took 30-minute exposures through blue and green filters and a 50-minute exposure through a red filter, using a 5-inch Tele Vue NP127is refractor and an Apogee U16M CCD camera. Click image for larger view. (Look carefully at the large view and you'll see the faint nucleus of the comet as a tiny red-green-blue streak; it moved between the three exposures.) The field is roughly 3° tall, with north up.
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Rocket

European cargo spacecraft blasts off for space station


RIA Novosti
Sun, 09 Mar 2008 17:15 UTC
A European carrier rocket took off from French Guiana early on Sunday on a mission to bring supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), a spokesman for Russia's mission control said.

The Ariane-5 rocket lifted off at 04:03 GMT from the Kourou space center to bring a 20-ton unmanned cargo module into orbit.
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Bulb

Study reveals sticking point in traffic jams

John Yeld
IOL
Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:58 UTC
While accidents, "rubber-necking" and construction work can and do also cause long delays on the road, Japanese researchers have confirmed that dreaded traffic jams often result from the most obvious cause too many cars!

Their research, published in the New Journal of Physics this week, was based on model patterns normally used to understand the movement of many-particle systems.
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Magnify

Biologists Surprised To Find Parochial Bacterial Viruses


sciencedaily.com
Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:28 UTC
Biologists examining ecosystems similar to those that existed on Earth more than 3 billion years ago have made a surprising discovery: Viruses that infect bacteria are sometimes parochial and unrelated to their relatives in other parts of the globe.

pozas in Mexico
©Tommy LaVergne/Rice University
The spring-fed pools, or "pozas," in Mexico's remote Cuatro Ciénegas valley are home to at least 70 species found nowhere else on Earth.
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Telescope

Newborn Stars: Seeing Dark Filaments Inside A Molecular Cloud


sciencedaily.com
Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:01 UTC
Astronomers have measured the distribution of mass inside a dark filament in a molecular cloud with an amazing level of detail and to great depth. The measurement is based on a new method that looks at the scattered near-infrared light or 'cloudshine' and was made with ESO's New Technology Telescope. Associated with the forthcoming VISTA telescope, this new technique will allow astronomers to better understand the cradles of newborn stars.

Corona Australis molecular cloud
©ESO
Part of a filament in the Corona Australis molecular cloud. The image is a composite of J-, H-, and K-band near-infrared observations that were made with the SOFI instrument on ESO's NTT telescope in August 2006. The observations were made to test, how easily the scattered light can be observed and how good it is as a tracer of cloud structure. The J-, H-, and K-band intensities are coded with blue, green, and red colours. The gradual saturation of the near-infrared bands is visible as a change of colour. In diffuse regions the shorter wavelength J-band is strong and the colour is bluish. When the J-band saturates the colour changes first to green and finally, in the centre of the filament, the red colour corresponding to the K-band becomes the strongest. In the most saturated regions the surface brightness data can only be used to derive a lower limit for the total amount of dust on the line of sight.
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Telescope

Astronomers Capture Rare Video Of Meteor Falling To Earth; Hunt For Meteorite


sciencedaily.com
Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:39 UTC
Astronomers from The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, have captured rare video of a meteor falling to Earth.

The Physics and Astronomy Department at Western has a network of all-sky cameras in Southern Ontario that scan the sky monitoring for meteors. Associate Professor Peter Brown, who specializes in the study of meteors and meteorites, says that Wednesday evening (March 5) at 10:59 p.m. EST these cameras captured video of a large fireball and the department has also received a number of calls and emails from people who actually saw the light.

meteor
©Unknown
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Star

Tunguska meteorite: a warning from outer space

Alexander Bagrov
RIA Novosti
Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:34 UTC
Almost a century ago, on June 17 (30), 1908, a massive explosion occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, in what is now Russia's Krasnoyarsk Territory, Central Siberia.

The residents of the Vanavara trading post, 65 kilometers (40 miles) south of the blast site, later claimed that the ground trembled violently when attacked by a huge ball of fire, followed by a terrible storm that destroyed everything in its wake.

meteorite
©Unknown
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