Science & TechnologyS


Meteor

Comets Seeded Earth's Early Atmosphere


Technology Review
Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:21 UTC
The ratio of nitrogen isotopes in several comets almost exactly matches the ratio on Earth, implying that our early atmosphere probably came from a cometary bombardment.

Astrobiologists have long puzzled over the origin of Earth's oceans. But they've dwelt a little less long over a related question: where does the nitrogen in our atmosphere come from? Now a new analysis by Damien Hutsemekers and pals at the Universite de Liege, in Belgium, suggests an answer to both questions.

One of the most attractive theories of the origin of our water is that Earth was once bombarded by icy comets that left a watery residue. The trouble is that the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in water on Earth is much lower than it is in the few comets we've been able to measure it in (i.e., Halley, Hyakutake, Hale-Bopp, and C/2002 T7 LINEAR). So if these types of comets, which we know came from the Oort Cloud, did supply Earth's water, it must have mixed with water already on Earth that had a very low deuterium content.
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Telescope

New focus on the moon

Nicole Staab
Arizona State University
Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:32 UTC
Tempe, Ariz. - NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) has taken and received its first images of the Moon, kicking off the year-long mapping mission of Earth's nearest celestial neighbor. The LROC imaging system, under the watchful eyes of Arizona State University professor Mark Robison, the principal investigator, consists of two Narrow Angle Cameras (NACs) to provide high-resolution black-and-white images, a Wide Angle Camera (WAC) to provide images in seven color bands over a 60-kilometer (37.28-mile) swath, and a Sequence and Compressor System (SCS) supporting data acquisition for both cameras.
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Telescope

New Class of Black Holes Discovered

Hadley Leggett
Wired
Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:38 UTC
Image
Only two sizes of black holes have ever been spotted: small and super-massive. Scientists have long speculated that an intermediate version must exist, but they've never been able to find one until now.

Astrophysicists identified what appears to be the first-ever medium-sized black hole, pictured in an artist's rendition above, with a mass at least 500 times that of our Sun. Researchers from the Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements in France detected the middling hole in a galaxy about 290 million light-years from Earth.
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Star

University of Hawaii at Manoa astronomers discover pair of solar systems in the making

Dr. Jonathan Williams
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:36 UTC
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© University of Hawaii and Nathan Smith, University of California at BerkeleyLeft: This is a Submillimeter Array image of 253-1536 taken at a wavelength of 880 microns. The mass of the disk on the left is 70 times the mass of Jupiter, while the one on the right is 20 Jupiter masses. Right: The optical image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the shadow of the large disk, but the smaller disk is obscured in the glare of the brighter star.
Two University of Hawaii at Mānoa astronomers have found a binary star-disk system in which each star is surrounded by the kind of dust disk that is frequently the precursor of a planetary system. Doctoral student Rita Mann and Dr. Jonathan Williams used the Submillimeter Array on Mauna Kea, Hawaii to make the observations.

A binary star system consists of two stars bound together by gravity that orbit a common center of gravity. Most stars form as binaries, and if both stars are hospitable to planet formation, it increases the likelihood that scientists will discover Earth-like planets.
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Info

Unexpectedly long-range effects in advanced magnetic devices

Michael Baum
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:25 UTC
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© Shapiro, NISTNIST MOIF (Magneto-optic imaging film) technique is unique in being able to image magnetic domains in real time while they are forming, growing and disappearing. Bright and dark regions represent stray magnetic fields as domains change. Here a series of MOIF images shows reversal of domains in a ferromagnetic film having a grid of antiferromagnetic strips on top as the external field increases to the right.
A tiny grid pattern has led materials scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Institute of Solid State Physics in Russia to an unexpected finding - the surprisingly strong and long-range effects of certain electromagnetic nanostructures used in data storage. Their recently reported findings* may add new scientific challenges to the design and manufacture of future ultra-high density data storage devices.
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R2-D2

Toyota Research Achieves Brain Control of Wheelchair

Martyn Williams
PCWorld
Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:32 UTC
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Researchers in Japan have developed a brain-machine interface (BMI) system that allows for control of a wheelchair using thought.

The system processes brain thought patterns and can turn them into left, right and forward movements of the wheelchair with a delay as short as one-thousandth of a second. That's a vast improvement over other systems that can take as long as several seconds to analyze and react to the user's thoughts.

It was developed by scientists at the BSI-Toyota Collaboration Center, a research and development center established in 2007 by Japanese government-related research unit RIKEN, Toyota Motor, Toyota Central R&D Labs and Genesis Research Institute.
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Saturn

Uranium Found on the Moon

Clara Moskowitz
Space.com
Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:58 UTC
Uranium exists on the moon, according to new data from a Japanese spacecraft.

The findings are the first conclusive evidence for the presence of the radioactive element in lunar dirt, the researchers said. They announced the discovery recently at the 40th Lunar and Planetary Conference and at the Proceedings of the International Workshop Advances in Cosmic Ray Science.

The revelation suggests that nuclear power plants could be built on the moon, or even that Earth's satellite could serve as a mining source for uranium needed back home.
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Sun

Zero-emission cars to race round world in 80 days

John Pickrell
Cosmos Online
Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:40 UTC
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© Racing Green EnduranceStudents from Imperial College with the SR3 car they are currently turning into an electric vehicle.
London: The world's first major racing challenge for renewable vehicles will see six modified sports cars zip around 40,000 km of the northern hemisphere, through mountains and deserts, and across six continents.

The development of electric vehicles that are up to the challenge may encourage improved technology that could eventually filter down into electric consumer cars, says one of the teams involved in the project.

Vehicles are one of the greatest sources of carbon dioxide pollution. One possible solution to this will be the switch from petrol-driven to electric vehicles, but the widespread adoption of electric cars faces a challenge in that people perceive them to be low-performance vehicles.
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Info

Paleontology and Creationism Meet but Don't Mesh

Kenneth Chang
New York Times
Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:58 UTC
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© Mark Lyons for The New York TimesA DIFFERENT VIEWPOINT Peter Dodson, left, of the University of Pennsylvania, Michael Foote of the University of Chicago and Jon Todd of the Museum of Natural History in London watching a video at the Creation Museum.
Petersburg, Ky. - Tamaki Sato was confused by the dinosaur exhibit. The placards described the various dinosaurs as originating from different geological periods - the stegosaurus from the Upper Jurassic, the heterodontosaurus from the Lower Jurassic, the velociraptor from the Upper Cretaceous - yet in each case, the date of demise was the same: around 2348 B.C.

"I was just curious why," said Dr. Sato, a professor of geology from Tokyo Gakugei University in Japan.

For paleontologists like Dr. Sato, layers of bedrock represent an accumulation over hundreds of millions of years, and the Lower Jurassic is much older than the Upper Cretaceous.
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Magnify

Dino tooth sheds new light on ancient riddle

Dr. Mark Purnell
University of Leicester
Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:46 UTC
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© Vince Williams, University of LeicesterThese are teeth from the lower jaw of a hadrosaur, Edmontosaurus, showing its multiple rows of leaf-shaped teeth. The worn, chewing surface of the teeth is towards the top.
Microscopic analysis of scratches on dinosaur teeth has helped scientists unravel an ancient riddle of what a major group of dinosaurs ate- and exactly how they did it!

Now for the first time, a study led by the University of Leicester, has found evidence that the duck-billed dinosaurs- the Hadrosaurs- in fact had a unique way of eating, unlike any living creature today.

Working with researchers from the Natural History Museum, the study uses a new approach to analyse the feeding mechanisms of dinosaurs and understand their place in the ecosystems of tens of millions of years ago. The results are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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