Science & TechnologyS


Rocket

Engineers Diagnosing Voyager 2 Data System -- Update

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© NASA/JPL-Caltech. This artist's rendering depicts NASAs Voyager 2 spacecraft as it studies the outer limits of the heliosphere - a magnetic 'bubble' around the solar system that is created by the solar wind.
Engineers successfully reset a computer onboard Voyager 2 that caused an unexpected data pattern shift, and the spacecraft resumed sending properly formatted science data back to Earth on Sunday, May 23. Mission managers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., had been operating the spacecraft in engineering mode since May 6.

Telescope

Soul Nebula's Heart Caught on Camera

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© NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE TeamNASA's WISE infrared space observatory mission team released this mosaic of the Soul Nebula (a.k.a. the Embryo Nebula, IC 1848, or W5) on April 2, 2010. The Soul Nebula is an open cluster of stars surrounded by a cloud of dust and gas over 150 light-years across and located about 6,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia, near the Heart Nebula.
The wispy tendrils of gas and dust that make up the heart of the distant Soul Nebula stand out in a recent photograph from a NASA space telescope.

At 150 light-years across, the Soul Nebula is vast cloud of dust and gas that surrounds a cluster of stars about 6,500 light-years from Earth in constellation Cassiopeia. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), an infrared space telescope, took the new Soul Nebula photo earlier this year and it was released in April.

Pharoah

Sahara cave may hold clues to dawn of Egypt

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© REUTERS/StringerView of a wall at the "Cave of the Beasts" is seen in Gilf al-Kebir some 550 miles (900 km) southwest of Cairo, near Egypt's south-west border with Libya and Sudan in this undated photograph.
Cairo - Archaeologists are studying prehistoric rock drawings discovered in a remote cave in 2002, including dancing figures and strange headless beasts, as they seek new clues about the rise of Egyptian civilisation.

Amateur explorers stumbled across the cave, which includes 5,000 images painted or engraved into stone, in the vast, empty desert near Egypt's southwest border with Libya and Sudan.

Laptop

Video Smutware Attack Returns to Facebook

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© Facebook
Of course I'm too security-conscious to fall for ooh look bewbs

Facebook users were hit for the second time in only a week by a video-themed malware attack last weekend.

The latest assault involved the posting of a fake video to profiles entitled "distracting beach babes" that appeared under the guise of a post by one of a targeted user's friends on the social networking site. The messages came together with a picture of a movie thumbnail featuring a woman in a bikini.

This thumbnail linked to a bogus Facebook application touting adware disguised as a supposed video codec needed to play non-existent grumble flick material. The bogus application, if successfully installed, posts the same lure to contacts of an infected mark, restarting the exploit cycle.

Newspaper

Nicolaus Copernicus Given a Hero's Burial More Than 450 Years After His Death

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© Wikimedia CommonsNicolaus Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.

His burial in a tomb in the cathedral where he once served as a church canon and doctor indicates how far the church has come in making peace with the scientist whose revolutionary theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun helped usher in the modern scientific age.

Copernicus, who lived from 1473 to 1543, died as a little-known astronomer working in a remote part of northern Poland, far from Europe's centers of learning. He had spent years laboring in his free time developing his theory, which was later condemned as heretical by the church because it removed Earth and humanity from their central position in the universe.

Blackbox

Did Supernovas Shatter Life's Mirror?

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© Robert Mallozz/Marshall Space Flight CenterExplosive twist
Mr. Spock is dying. Fortunately for the crew of the USS Enterprise, the Spock in question is not the real one, but an evil mirror-image version created in a freak transporter malfunction. This Spock's back-to-front body can digest only right-handed amino acids; meanwhile, like all organic matter, the food around him is made of left-handed amino acids. He is starving in the midst of plenty.

This plot line from the 1970 novel Spock Must Die! - the first literary spin-off from the Star Trek TV series - highlights one of life's fundamental mysteries. Why does biology use only one of two mirror-image forms in which most complex molecules can occur? The latest pop at an answer weaves astrophysics, particle physics and biochemistry into a startling proposal: that the stellar explosions known as supernovae are to blame.

"It is an intriguing idea," says Daniel Glavin, an astrobiologist at the NASA Goddard Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. It is certainly a novel turn in this twistiest of tales: the story of how life came to be left-handed.

Telescope

Clear New View of Classic Spiral Messier 83

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© ESOThe classic spiral Messier 83 seen in the infrared with HAWK-I.
ESO is releasing a beautiful image of the nearby galaxy Messier 83 taken by the HAWK-I instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. The picture shows the galaxy in infrared light and demonstrates the impressive power of the camera to create one of the sharpest and most detailed pictures of Messier 83 ever taken from the ground.

The galaxy Messier 83 (eso0825) is located about 15 million light-years away in the constellation of Hydra (the Sea Serpent). It spans over 40 000 light-years, only 40 percent the size of the Milky Way, but in many ways is quite similar to our home galaxy, both in its spiral shape and the presence of a bar of stars across its centre. Messier 83 is famous among astronomers for its many supernovae: vast explosions that end the lives of some stars.

Over the last century, six supernovae have been observed in Messier 83 - a record number that is matched by only one other galaxy. Even without supernovae, Messier 83 is one of the brightest nearby galaxies, visible using just binoculars.

Telescope

Ever Farther Across The Ocean Of Space To A Distant And Unknown Shore

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© Illustrated by Ron MillerCould there be springs or geysers of liquid nitrogen or methane on our distant shore at Pluto? It's not impossible.
New Horizons is speeding through an ocean of space among the giant planets and the nearly 2.5 billion-mile expanse of the middle solar system. Onboard our spacecraft, all systems are "go" and we continue to speed outward at nearly a million miles per day.

Anniversaries are important, and this past January, New Horizons marked its fourth launch anniversary. Also in January, Pluto celebrated the 80th year of its discovery!

And as you may already know, New Horizons has passed its main mileage halfway marker in the voyage to Pluto; that occurred on Feb. 25 - though as the table below shows, there are other halfway milestones we like to use.

Info

Ancient Nautical Maps' Surprising Accuracy is a Mystery

Washington - John Hessler, mathematical wizard and the senior cartographic librarian at the Library of Congress, slipped into the locked underground vaults of the library one morning last week.

Hessler approached a priceless 1559 portolan chart on the table before him, sketched in the hand of Mateo Prunes, the Majorcan mapmaker. The nautical map of the Mediterranean and Black seas is inked onto the skin of a single sheep.

It is a rare representative of one of the world's greatest and most enduring mysteries: Where and how did medieval mapmakers, apparently armed with no more than a compass, an hourglass and sets of sailing directions, develop stunningly accurate maps of southern Europe, the Black Sea and North African coastlines, as if they were looking down from a satellite, when no one had been higher than a treetop?

Info

Discovery of Ancient Burial Chamber Turns Rumour Mill

Nicosia, Cyprus -- Locals say it could be the final resting place of Ajax's niece, contain a golden chariot and will unleash a horrible curse.

But whether a tomb recently uncovered on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus contains the bones and booty of a close relative of a Trojan war hero straight from the pages of Homer, or will just yield better evidence for understanding the rituals and lives of ancient Greeks, is yet to be revealed.

Construction workers in the eastern coastal town of Paralimni, popular with tourists, literally stumbled onto a rare unlooted tomb dating back to the ancient world, when they were digging up the roadside to lay new paving stones in the "Fig Tree Bay" area.

"The ground just gave way," said Andreas Evangelou, said the mayor of the once sleepy fishing village.

Beneath the road's surface, a burial chamber, untouched by looters was awakened from thousands of years of slumber, and will now give experts the opportunity to piece together a more accurate picture of the life and rituals of the ancients.

"It's a usual tomb found in the area of Protaras, which is unlooted. We don't know yet what it is, the only unique thing is that it is unlooted, which may give us a better understanding of their life and rituals during that period," said Maria Hadjicosti, the director of Cyprus's Antiquities Department.

At least four clay coffins (sarcophagi) were found, along with the usual offerings of pottery and glassware, accompanying the dead to the next life. At least one of the clay coffins is adorned with floral motifs.