For nearly a century debate has raged over whether he was the man who ignored the plight of hundreds who died in the sinking of the Titanic.
A series of inquiries spanning several decades have failed to condemn or clear Captain Stanley Lord over allegations he turned a blind eye to the "unsinkable" ship's frantic attempts to summon help.
Now a controversial new book has posthumously pointed the finger directly at the mariner - claiming he was a "sociopath" whose callous indifference condemned 1,517 to a watery grave.
Science & Technology
On July 2 the detectors of Planck's High Frequency Instrument reached their amazingly low operational temperature of -273°C, making them the coldest known objects in space. The spacecraft has also just entered its final orbit around the second Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system, L2. Planck is equipped with a passive cooling system that brings its temperature down to about -230°C by radiating heat into space. Three active coolers take over from there, and bring the temperature down further to an amazing low of -273.05°C, only 0.1°C above absolute zero - the coldest temperature theoretically possible in our Universe.
© Photo by P.A. Hunt, Geological Survey of Canada, Natural Resources Canada.
Photo 2:Photomicrograph in crossed polars of a portion of a polished thin section of the Tagish Lake Meteorite. The bright areas A-E are preserved high temperature silicate (olivine, pyroxene) 'chondrules' in a dark matrix of clay, serpentine, magnetite, sulphide, carbonate and phosphate etc. Object 'D' is approximately 0.3mm across.
Photo 2:Photomicrograph in crossed polars of a portion of a polished thin section of the Tagish Lake Meteorite. The bright areas A-E are preserved high temperature silicate (olivine, pyroxene) 'chondrules' in a dark matrix of clay, serpentine, magnetite, sulphide, carbonate and phosphate etc. Object 'D' is approximately 0.3mm across.
Parts of the Tagish Lake meteorite were found on a frozen lake near the Yukon border in January, 2000, after it fell to Earth in a spectacular blue-green fireball that was seen for hundreds of kilometres.
Researchers recovered parts of the still-frozen meteorite after an extensive search. Since then, scientists have repeatedly tried to unlock the clues that the rare 4.5 billion-year-old carbon and water rich meteorite has long been suspected to contain.
Students facing exams this month, take heart: your companions can smell your fear, and they empathise.
That's the implication of a study by Bettina Pause at the University of Dusseldorf, Germany, and colleagues. They put absorbent pads under the armpits of 49 university students an hour before they took their final oral exam and again as the same students exercised. Another set of students then sniffed the sweat samples while having their brains scanned.
None perceived a difference between the two types of sweat, but the pre-exam sweat had a different effect on brain activity, lighting up areas that process social and emotional signals, as well as several areas thought to be involved in empathy (PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005987).
That's the implication of a study by Bettina Pause at the University of Dusseldorf, Germany, and colleagues. They put absorbent pads under the armpits of 49 university students an hour before they took their final oral exam and again as the same students exercised. Another set of students then sniffed the sweat samples while having their brains scanned.
None perceived a difference between the two types of sweat, but the pre-exam sweat had a different effect on brain activity, lighting up areas that process social and emotional signals, as well as several areas thought to be involved in empathy (PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005987).
Life beneath the sea is about to go live on the Internet, with the launch of the world's largest and most advanced underwater observatory off the coast of British Columbia. The $100-million Neptune Canada project will give the world an unprecedented look at life beneath the ocean's surface.
Led by the University of Victoria, the project launched Friday in a ceremony at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt, near Victoria, will provide 25 years of long-term monitoring of ocean events as they occur.
Three ships and at least one underwater robot-operated vehicle will be used to lower five 13-tonne module-like structures down to the sea floor off the west coast of Vancouver Island, near Port Alberni, where they'll be connected to 800 kilometres of fibre-optic cable winding its way over the sea floor.
Led by the University of Victoria, the project launched Friday in a ceremony at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt, near Victoria, will provide 25 years of long-term monitoring of ocean events as they occur.
Three ships and at least one underwater robot-operated vehicle will be used to lower five 13-tonne module-like structures down to the sea floor off the west coast of Vancouver Island, near Port Alberni, where they'll be connected to 800 kilometres of fibre-optic cable winding its way over the sea floor.
Forget human ingenuity - the best source of ideas for cutting-edge technology might be in the natural world.
Humans like to think we're pretty good at design and technology - but we often forget that Mother Nature had a head start of 3.6 billion years. Now the burgeoning science of biomimicry, which reverse-engineers clever ideas from the natural world, is exploiting the way geckoes climb walls or hummingbirds hover.
Humans like to think we're pretty good at design and technology - but we often forget that Mother Nature had a head start of 3.6 billion years. Now the burgeoning science of biomimicry, which reverse-engineers clever ideas from the natural world, is exploiting the way geckoes climb walls or hummingbirds hover.
© AP Photo/Daniel Maurer
Professor Nicholas Conard of the University in Tuebingen shows a flute during a press conference in Tuebingen, southern Germany, on Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Professor Nicholas Conard of the University in Tuebingen shows a flute during a press conference in Tuebingen, southern Germany, on Wednesday, June 24, 2009
A team led by University of Tuebingen archaeologist Nicholas Conard assembled the flute from 12 pieces of griffon vulture bone scattered in a small plot of the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany.
Together, the pieces comprise a 8.6-inch (22-centimeter) instrument with five holes and a notched end. Conard said the flute was 35,000 years old.
Summer is now upon us and this will be a good month to enjoy the sky in spite of the short nights. The bright planets are evenly split this month, with the gas giants Saturn and Jupiter visible in the evening sky and our neighboring terrestrial planets, Venus and Mars, visible in the morning sky.
There will be two more very exciting celestial events taking place this month, but only one of them will be visible for us in New England. The annual Delta Aquarid Meteor Shower will peak during the morning hours of July 28. This shower actually begins around the middle of July and blends right into the famous Perseid Meteor Shower, which starts at the end of July and peaks on August 12.
Caused by Comet Machholz, you can expect around 15 to 20 Delta Aquarids per hour that morning. The moon will be first quarter and will set around midnight. Meteor showers are usually better after midnight, anyway, since that is when the earth is spinning directly into the meteors, like snowflakes on the front windshield of your car during a snowstorm. The whole earth can be seen as a little spaceship continually orbiting the sun at 18.6 miles per second, or 67,000 miles per hour.
There will be two more very exciting celestial events taking place this month, but only one of them will be visible for us in New England. The annual Delta Aquarid Meteor Shower will peak during the morning hours of July 28. This shower actually begins around the middle of July and blends right into the famous Perseid Meteor Shower, which starts at the end of July and peaks on August 12.
Caused by Comet Machholz, you can expect around 15 to 20 Delta Aquarids per hour that morning. The moon will be first quarter and will set around midnight. Meteor showers are usually better after midnight, anyway, since that is when the earth is spinning directly into the meteors, like snowflakes on the front windshield of your car during a snowstorm. The whole earth can be seen as a little spaceship continually orbiting the sun at 18.6 miles per second, or 67,000 miles per hour.
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.
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.
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.
