Science & TechnologyS


Telescope

Google Earth to launch new service for stargazers

Kate Holton
Reuters
Wed, 22 Aug 2007 08:13 UTC
Popular mapping service Google Earth will launch a new feature called Sky, a "virtual telescope" that the search engine hopes will turn millions of Internet users into stargazers.

Google, which created Google Earth to give Internet users an astronaut's view that can zoom to street level, said the service would be a playground for learning about space.

"Never before has a roadmap of the entire sky been made so readily available," said Dr. Carol Christian of the Space Telescope Science Institute, who co-led the institute's Sky team.
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Bizarro Earth

Longest lunar eclipse in 7 years expected


UPI
Tue, 21 Aug 2007 04:59 UTC
WASHINGTON -- People across the western United States will have the best opportunity early Aug. 28 to witness the longest lunar eclipse in seven years.
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Magnify

San Andreas Fault Likely Much More Destructive Than Current Models Predict


Science Daily
Tue, 21 Aug 2007 23:54 UTC
High-speed ruptures travelling along straight fault lines could explain why some earthquakes are more destructive than others, according to an Oxford University scientist. In this week's Science, Professor Shamita Das suggests that ruptures in the Earth's surface moving at 6km per second could make future earthquakes along California's San Andreas fault much more destructive than current models predict.

©William Royer
A box canyon on the San Andreas fault: High speed ruptures travelling along the straight section of the fault could see Santa Barbara and Los Angeles worst hit in future earthquakes.
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Magic Wand

Scientists hail 'frozen smoke' as material that will change world


Times Online
Sun, 19 Aug 2007 22:59 UTC
A miracle material for the 21st century could protect your home against bomb blasts, mop up oil spillages and even help man to fly to Mars.

Aerogel, one of the world's lightest solids, can withstand a direct blast of 1kg of dynamite and protect against heat from a blowtorch at more than 1,300C.

©Unknown

Scientists are working to discover new applications for the substance, ranging from the next generation of tennis rackets to super-insulated space suits for a manned mission to Mars.
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Magnify

Egypt discovers what may be oldest human footprint


Reuters
Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:52 UTC
Egyptian archaeologists have found what they said could be the oldest human footprint in history in the country's western desert, the Arab country's antiquities' chief said on Monday.

©Unknown
Zahi Hawass, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, stands near the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, June 17 2007. Egyptian archaeologists have found what they said could be the oldest human footprint in history in the country's western desert, the Arab country's antiquities' chief said on Monday.

Comment: A footprint - in the mud - in the egyptian desert? For years Hawass has been denying the possibilities of water marks on the sides of the sphinx. Will this convince him to review the evidence?

©Red Pill Press
Secret History of The World



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Info

Study: Sun sounds cause the Earth to shake


Science Daily/UPI
Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:22 UTC
PARIS -- European Space Agency scientists have proved sounds generated deep inside the sun cause the Earth to shake and vibrate.
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Magnify

Sea floor off western Canada may explain how people came to the Americas

Randy Boswell
CanWest
Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:04 UTC
In a Canadian archeological project that could revolutionize understanding of when and how humans first reached the New World, federal researchers in B.C. have begun probing an underwater site off the Queen Charlotte Islands for traces of a possible prehistoric camp on the shores of an ancient lake long since submerged by the Pacific Ocean.

The landmark investigation, led by Parks Canada scientist Daryl Fedje, is seeking evidence to support a contentious new theory about the peopling of the Americas that is gradually gaining support in scholarly circles. It holds that ancient Asian seafarers, drawn on by food-rich kelp beds ringing the Pacific coasts of present-day Russia, Alaska and British Columbia, began populating this hemisphere thousands of years before the migration of Siberian big-game hunters -- who are known to have travelled across the dried up Bering Strait and down an ice-free corridor east of the Rockies as the last glaciers began retreating about 13,000 years ago.
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Star

Was the brightest supernova the birth of a quark star?


New Scientist
Tue, 21 Aug 2007 13:14 UTC
The breakdown of matter into its tiniest quark components in a star's core may have triggered the brightest supernova ever seen, a controversial new study says. If correct, this would be the first time anyone has seen the birth of an exotic object called a quark star.

On 18 September 2006, astronomers observed the record-breaking supernova, called 2006gy, and were shocked to find that it was intrinsically about 100 times brighter than typical stellar explosions.
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Bulb

After 4.5 Billion Years, Sunshine Finally Figured Out

Andrea Thompson
Space.com
Tue, 21 Aug 2007 13:06 UTC
A giant underground experiment has given researchers their first glimpse into the heart of the sun and the subatomic particles that shine down on Earth everyday.

Scientists have long theorized how these particles, called neutrinos, are formed in the solar inferno, but direct proof has been hard to come by. Neutrinos can give scientists a priceless glimpse into the inner workings of the sun because they arrive on Earth virtually unchanged from when they left the sun's interior.

Princeton researchers, working at the underground Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, have made the first real-time observations of low-energy solar neutrinos, fundamental particles that are created by the roiling nuclear reactions inside the sun and that stream in vast numbers from the sun's core.
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Magnify

Polar Ice Clouds May Be Climate Change Symptom


Science Daily
Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:30 UTC
As the late summer sun sets in the Arctic, bands of wispy, luminescent clouds shine against the deep blue of the northern sky.

To the casual observer, they may simply be a curiosity, dismissed as the waning light of the midnight sun. But to scientists, these noctilucent ice clouds could be an upper-atmospheric symptom of a changing climate.

©Richard Collins, UAF Geophysical Institute
Noctilucent clouds shine in the dark portion of the sky in this image taken from the Poker Flat Research Range in 2005.
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