Science & TechnologyS


Galaxy

Astronomers discover new disk of stars at heart of Milky Way

Beatrice Gitau
The Christian Science Monitor
Thu, 29 Oct 2015 09:32 UTC

Astronomers have found a disk of young stars across the center of the Milky Way, a feature previously unknown to scientists.

A team of astronomers have discovered a new component of the Milky Way galaxy - a disk of much younger stars hidden among old stars.

They found the young stars hidden behind thick dust clouds in the galaxy's central bulge, using data gathered by the European Southern Observatory's VISTA telescope between 2010 and 2014.

"The central bulge of the Milky Way is thought to consist of vast numbers of old stars. But the VISTA data has revealed something new - and very young by astronomical standards!" said Istvan Dékány of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, lead author of the new study, in a news release.
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Comet 2

Oxygen found on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Marlowe Hood
Yahoo! News
Wed, 28 Oct 2015 00:00 UTC
Rosetta oxyzen
© AFP PhotoIn a "big surprise," scientists have found lots of oxygen on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, captured by the European space probe Rosetta an hour before its closest approach to the sun on August 13, 2015
Stunned scientists announced Wednesday the unexpected discovery of large quantities of oxygen on a comet which streaked past the Sun in August with a European spacecraft in tow.

The find came as a "big surprise" and challenges mainstream theories on the formation of our Solar System, said scientist Andre Bieler of the University of Michigan.

Measurements made by the Rosetta probe suggested that oxygen molecules in the 67P comet's gassy halo must have existed "before or at" its formation, he told journalists.

This may have implications for mankind's understanding of the chemistry involved in the formation of the Solar System some 4.6 billion years ago.

"We believe this oxygen is primordial, which means it is older than our Solar System," said Bieler.
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Info

The good viruses that keep ecosystems diverse and balanced

Peter Pollard
The Conversation
Sat, 31 Oct 2015 00:00 UTC
virus
The word "virus" strikes terror into the hearts of most people. It conjures up images of influenza, HIV, Yellow Fever, or Ebola. Of course we worry about these viruses—they bring us disease and sometimes an excruciatingly painful death.

But the 21 viral types that wreak havoc with the human body represent an insignificant fraction of the 100 million viral types on earth. Most viruses are actually vital to our very existence. No-one seems to stick up for the good guys that keep ecosystems diverse and balanced (although I did recently in a TEDx talk in Noosa).

Comment: See also: New study suggests viruses are living entities sharing long evolutionary history with cells

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Footprints

Are fingerprints really concrete evidence in criminal trials?

Kelly W. Patterson
Cop Block
Sat, 31 Oct 2015 17:54 UTC
Hand and finger prints public domain
Cutting edge technology or antiquated guess work?
It's a pretty accepted idea that fingerprint evidence is an airtight method of proving that an accused person was at the scene of a crime. However, contrary to what we are told constantly in movies, books, and actual courtrooms; fingerprints are not the judicial bedrock they have been portrayed as. The issue isn't so much that fingerprints themselves are unreliable, but rather that finding a perfect set of fingerprints to compare to a suspect at a crime scene is very rare. As pointed out in the LA Times, there has been doubt about the reliability of fingerprint identification since shortly after it was first used to convict people and that uncertainty has been revived in recent years:

Comment: Fingerprint data is often portrayed as conclusive, rock-solid evidence (even moving into the realm of proof) in film and TV portrayals of criminal trials, but in reality there are far more variables and a much larger gray area than the idea of a simple black and white fingerprint match that proves that the accused is the actual criminal. See also:

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Ice Cube

Research suggests mineral surface lightning reactions may provide a way for sustaining life under ice sheets

Jon Telling
The Conversation
Fri, 30 Oct 2015 12:46 UTC
ice sheet, glacier
© Eddy HillBetween a rock and a hard place.
The ice sheets and glaciers that extend over roughly 11% of the Earth's land mass are home to a surprisingly abundant source of life. Sections of liquid water beneath and inside the ice provide a habitat for a genetically diverse variety of microbes. And studying these organisms gives us some clue what life may have looked like if there were indeed periods of the planet's history when the land was entirely covered in ice for millions of years.

How exactly life managed to survive during these proposed "Snowball Earth" events is still something of a mystery. With the soil trapped under ice for so long, the typical nutrients that microbes eat would have become depleted. But research by my colleagues and I at Bristol University has revealed a mechanism that could have allowed these creatures to free energy from the water itself in the form of hydrogen.
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Bacon

The taste bud map you learned in school is wrong -- tastes are perceived all over the tongue

Steven D. Munger
Waking Times
Fri, 30 Oct 2015 17:08 UTC
Taste receptors for salty, sweet, bitter and sour are found all over the tongue.
tongue taste map
Everybody has seen the tongue map - that little diagram of the tongue with different sections neatly cordoned off for different taste receptors. Sweet in the front, salty and sour on the sides and bitter at the back.

It's possibly the most recognizable symbol in the study of taste, but it's wrong. In fact, it was debunked by chemosensory scientists (the folks who study how organs, like the tongue, respond to chemical stimuli) long ago.

The ability to taste sweet, salty, sour and bitter isn't sectioned off to different parts of the tongue. The receptors that pick up these tastes are actually distributed all over. We've known this for a long time.

And yet you probably saw the map in school when you learned about taste. So where did it come from?
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Galaxy

Cosmic fist-bumps: Astronomers believe they've found proof of parallel universes


RT
Sat, 31 Oct 2015 16:57 UTC
astronaut
© NASA / Reuters
Scientists believe they have found proof of parallel universes, a phenomenon that they have long been theorizing about. Astronomers have detected peculiar bright spots that lead them to think another universe is bumping into our own.

The finding comes from analyses of data of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) - essentially the Big Bang echo left behind - collected by the European Space Agency's Planck Space Telescope.

The scientist behind the research, Ranga-Ram Chary of Pasadena-based California Institute of Technology, has noticed that some light spots in the CMB were glowing 4,500 times brighter than expected.

This made Chary think that it could be a sign of a neighboring universe "leaking" into ours, the New Scientist reported.

Given that modern cosmological theories are speaking of a "multiverse" following the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago, such a collision scenario is quite possible.

Comment: For more on the Multiverse see:

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Hearts

Dogs (and cats) can love

Paul Zak
The Atlantic
Tue, 22 Apr 2014 12:15 UTC
Neurochemical research has shown that the hormone released when people are in love is released in animals in the same intimate circumstances.

Image
© tramod/flickr
I'm not a dog person. I prefer cats. Cats make you work to have a relationship with them, and I like that. But I have adopted several dogs, caving in to pressure from my kids. The first was Teddy, a rottweiler-chow mix whose bushy hair was cut into a lion mane. Kids loved him, and he grew on me, too. Teddy was probably ten years when we adopted him. Five years later he had multiple organs failing and it was time to put him to sleep.

When I arrived at the vet, he said I could drop him off. I was aghast. No. I needed to stay with Teddy. As the vet prepped the syringe to put him to sleep, I started sobbing. The vet gave me a couple minutes to collect myself and say goodbye. I held Teddy's paw until he died. Honestly, I didn't think I was that attached.

Comment: Cats don't actually ignore us
Your dog really does love you: Scans reveal affection comes from same part of brain as humans

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Headphones

Force field of sound creates world's first sonic tractor beam


Sputnik
Thu, 29 Oct 2015 16:51 UTC
Image
© YouTube/NPG Press
Just in time for the latest Star Wars saga, a team of physicists have created a working tractor beam. Composed of "acoustic holograms," their device creates a force field out of sounds, one capable of manipulating and moving small objects.

How do you solve a problem like gravity? According to researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Sussex, with 64 miniature loudspeakers.
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Eye 2

A new species is evolving — an ultra-successful mix of wolves, coyotes and dogs

Travis Gettys
RawStory
Sat, 31 Oct 2015 03:26 UTC
Image
Eastern coyote, also known as a coywolf
A new species combining wolves, coyotes and dogs is evolving before scientists' eyes in the eastern United States.

Wolves faced with a diminishing number of potential mates are lowering their standards and mating with other, similar species, reported The Economist.

The interbreeding began up to 200 years ago, as European settlers pushed into southern Ontario and cleared the animal's habitat for farming and killed a large number of the wolves that lived there.
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