Welcome to Sott.net
Sat, 23 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Science & Technology
Map

Telescope

Comets Throw Light On Solar System's Beginnings


Science Daily
Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:24 UTC
A new picture of the composition of comets is emerging with the help of 21st century technology available at Diamond, the UK's national synchrotron light source, in Oxfordshire.

Image
©NASA/JPL
Comet Wild 2.

Scientists already know that comets played a significant role in ensuring that conditions were right for life on Earth. Most of the icy, small planetary bodies that otherwise became comets went into forming the gas giant planets in the outer Solar System but some were ejected from the vicinity of the largest planets. Of these, a fraction ended up in the inner Solar System bringing water and biogenic elements of interest to Earth. Without this cometary transport, life on Earth may never have had a chance to start.

Now, scientists from the Space Research Centre at the University of Leicester have, for the first time, brought samples of the Comet Wild-2 to Diamond. In doing so, using Diamond's microfocus spectroscopy capabilities - bright and powerful X-rays with a beam size equivalent to one 25th of a human hair - they have discovered that the old model of comets as dusty iceballs is not the whole picture.
      Read More...
Telescope

Valley Networks On Mars Formed During Long Period Of Episodic Flooding


Science Daily
Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:21 UTC
A new study suggests that ancient features on the surface of Mars called valley networks were carved by recurrent floods during a long period when the martian climate may have been much like that of some arid or semiarid regions on Earth. An alternative theory that the valleys were carved by catastrophic flooding over a relatively short time is not supported by the new results.

Image
©University of California - Santa Cruz
Ancient river-like features called valley networks carve the surface of Mars, as seen in the image above of the Parana Valles, which cuts across a region roughly the size of California.

Often cited as evidence that Mars once had a warm environment with liquid water on the surface, valley networks are distinctive features of the martian landscape. In the new study, researchers used sophisticated computer models to simulate the processes that formed these features.

"Our results argue for liquid water being stable at the surface of Mars for prolonged periods in the past," said Charles Barnhart, a graduate student in Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
      Read More...
Magic Hat

Large Hadron Collider ready to roll


IndyStar.com
Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:34 UTC
At some point Wednesday (late Tuesday here in the U.S.), the switch will be thrown for the initial testing of the Large Hadron Collider on the border of Switzerland and France. The 17-mile underground loop will eventually smash stuff together with seven times the force available at the Fermilab collider in Illinois in an attempt to see what the universe was like a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. The holy grail for particle researchers will be the Higgs boson, the lone particle in the Standard Theory yet to be detected.

Large Hadron Collider
©Unknown

Comment: Read also: Physicists Rule Out the Production of Dangerous Black Holes at the LHC

      Read More...
Star

Comets Disguised as Asteroids

Jeremy Hsu
Space.com
Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:25 UTC
An asteroid cruising through the solar system six years ago seemed just another silent ship sailing in the eternal darkness, until it flared up with the startling brightness of a comet's halo.
      Read More...
Telescope

Ring arcs show moonlets horde particles


Discover Magazine
Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:11 UTC
How's that for a title? Well, how's this for a picture?

cassini_anthe-ringarc
©Cassini

This image, taken by Cassini, shows an arc of particles orbiting Saturn. The bright spot is the tiny moon Anthe (pronounced ANN-thee), and it appears to be embedded in the arc. What's going on here?
      Read More...
Target

Are the bays related to the extinction of the mammoth?

Dianne Tennant
The Virginian-Pilot
Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:48 UTC
The colorful elevation images of County Line Road were excitingly replete with Carolina bays - big ones, small ones, overlapping ones. The road even helpfully cut right through a few bays.

"It's a dramatic bay area," George Howard said. "In fact, I'd say it's one of the most dramatic."

Malcolm LeCompte, being more familiar with the area, cautioned, "That one that looks so prominent, it's just a flat field."

"Bay hunting is an exercise in the subtle," Howard agreed.

Howard, a Carolina bay enthusiast from Raleigh, and LeCompte, a remote imaging specialist from Elizabeth City State University, needed a bay. And they needed a bay they could dig in to look for minerals from outer space.
      Read More...
Phoenix

The 'God machine' countdown

Ian Sample
The Guardian (UK)
Sat, 06 Sep 2008 11:55 UTC
Beneath the rural tranquillity of the Geneva countryside, where ramshackle sheds dot the wide-open fields, scientists are getting ready for a trip into the unknown. Here, under 100 metres of rock and sandstone, lies the biggest, most complex machine humans have ever built, and on Wednesday they will finally get to turn it on.

For Cern, the European nuclear research organisation, it will mark the end of a lengthy wait and the beginning of a new era of physics. Over the next 20 years or so, the $9bn (£5bn) machine will direct its formidable power towards some of the most enduring mysteries of the universe.
      Read More...
Telescope

Encounter Of A Different Kind: Rosetta Observes Asteroid At Close Quarters


Science Daily
Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:43 UTC
ESA's comet chaser, Rosetta, has flown by a small body in the main asteroid belt, asteroid Steins, collecting a wealth of information about this rare type of minor Solar System body.

Asteroid Steins
©ESA (c) 2008 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPM/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
Asteroid Steins seen from a distance of 800 km, taken by the OSIRIS imaging system from two different perspectives. The effective diameter of the asteroid is 5 km, approximately as predicted. At the top of the asteroid (as shown in this image), a large crater, approximately 1.5-km in size, can be seen. Scientists were amazed that the asteroid survived the impact that was responsible for the crater.

At 20:58 CEST (18:58 UT) last night, ESA's Rosetta probe approached asteroid 2867 Steins, coming to within a distance of only 800 km from it. Steins is Rosetta's first nominal scientific target in its 11½ year mission to ultimately explore the nucleus of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The success of this 'close' encounter was confirmed at 22:14 CEST, when ESA's ground control team at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, received initial telemetry from the spacecraft. During the flyby operations, Rosetta was out of reach as regards communication links because its antenna had to be turned away from Earth. At a distance of about 2.41 AU (360 million kilometres) from our planet, the radio signal from the probe took 20 minutes to reach the ground.
      Read More...
Sherlock

Melting Swiss glacier yields Neolithic trove, climate secrets


Agence France-Press
Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:03 UTC


Image
©AFP
A quiver dated from Neolithic and found at the 2,756 metre-high Schnidejoch alpine pass

Some 5,000 years ago, on a day with weather much like today's, a prehistoric person tread high up in what is now the Swiss Alps, wearing goat leather pants, leather shoes and armed with a bow and arrows.

The unremarkable journey through the Schnidejoch pass, a lofty trail 2,756 metres (9,000 feet) above sea level, has been a boon to scientists. But it would never have emerged if climate change were not melting the nearby glacier.

So far, 300 objects dating as far back as the Neolithic or New Stone Age -- about 4,000 BC in Europe -- to the later Bronze and Iron Ages and the Medieval era have been found in the site's former icefields.
      Read More...
Telescope

New Comet KV42 Explains Old Mystery

Clara Moskowitz
Space.com
Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:00 UTC


Image
©space.com

Halley's comet, which lights up Earth's sky every 75 years with its glowing tail, is a bit of a scientific mystery.

So far theories have been at a loss to explain how it acquired its extremely unusual backwards orbit, but the recent discovery of another odd comet orbiting farther out in the solar system may shed light on Halley's origins.

The newly-discovered comet 2008 KV42 circles the sun at a tilt of 104 degrees compared to the main plane in which most of the planets and asteroids travel. The newfound oddball also orbits in reverse compared to almost everything else. Scientists think it might represent an intermediate point between comets like Halley's and their progenitors in the far and totally uncharted reaches of the solar system.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts