Science & TechnologyS


Magnet

Stars Spin Huge Magnetic Loop

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Astronomers have detected a giant magnetic loop sweeping out from a pair of binary stars in the Milky Way.

"This is the first time we've seen a feature like this in the magnetic field of any star other than the sun," said William Peterson of the University of Iowa.

The stellar pair, called Algol, includes a star about three times more massive than the sun along with a less-massive companion. The two lie about 93 light-years away from Earth. They have been known since ancient times as "The Demon Star" because they appear as one object that blinks on and off - a phenomenon caused when one star passes in front of the other.

Within the binary, the smaller star orbits the larger at a distance of 5.8 million miles, only about 6 percent of the distance between Earth and the sun.

Question

Mystery Behind Solar System's Giant Ribbon Solved?

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© NASA/IBEX/Heerikhuisen et al.A comparison between the observation of the IBEX "ribbon" (left) and a Heerikhuisen et al. simulation of what the ribbon should look like considering an interstellar magnetic field (right).

Last year, NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) made a discovery so profound that scientists had a hard time describing what they were seeing. A vast ribbon located in the outermost reaches of the solar system had been spotted, a structure that had never been seen before. Now scientists believe the shape might be created by a huge reflection caused by particles bouncing off a galactic magnetic field.

IBEX isn't an ordinary space telescope and this mystery ribbon isn't emitting any light; the ribbon is in fact the source of very energetic neutral particles that are raining down on us after travelling over 100 AU (approximately 9 billion miles).

IBEX is designed to detect fast moving particles called energetic neutral atoms (or ENAs for short) created at the absolute boundary of our solar system known as the "heliopause." This boundary separates the bubble-like heliosphere (which contains the sun, planets and solar wind) and interstellar space (i.e. the space between the stars).

Sherlock

Are Men More Evolved Than Women?

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© NISTJust because the Y chromosome, which determines gender, is evolving at a speedy rate it doesn't necessarily mean men themselves are more evolved.
Men might not be so primitive after all

Women may think of men as primitive, but new research indicates that the Y chromosome -- the thing that makes a man male -- is evolving far faster than the rest of the human genetic code.

A new study comparing the Y chromosomes from humans and chimpanzees, our nearest living relatives, show that they are about 30 percent different. That is far greater than the 2 percent difference between the rest of the human genetic code and that of the chimp's, according to a study appearing online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

These changes occurred in the last 6 million years or so, relatively recently when it comes to evolution.

"The Y chromosome appears to be the most rapidly evolving of the human chromosomes," said study co-author Dr. David Page, director of the prestigious Whitehead Institute in Cambridge and a professor of biology at MIT. "It's an almost ongoing churning of gene reconstruction. It's like a house that's constantly being rebuilt."

Cloud Lightning

Flashback Climate change by Jupiter

The alignment of the planets, and especially that of Jupiter and Saturn, control the climate on Earth.

So explained Rhodes Fairbridge of Columbia University, a giant in science over much of the last century whose accomplishments are perhaps unsurpassed for their breadth, depth, and volume. This one man authored or co-authored 100 scientific books and more than 1,000 scientific papers, he edited the Benchmarks in Geology series (more than 90 volumes in print) and was general editor of the Encyclopaedias of the Earth Sciences. He edited eight major encyclopedias of specialized scientific papers in the atmospheric sciences and astrogeology; geomorphology; geochemistry and the earth sciences; geology, sedimentology, paleontology, oceanography and, not least, climatology.

Info

Protein Needed to Develop Auditory Neurons Identified

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© Wellcome ImagesSound receivers: a hair cell of the inner ear
Loss of spiral ganglion neurons or hair cells in the inner ear is the leading cause of congenital and acquired hearing impairment. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health found that Sox2, a protein that regulates stem cell formation, is involved in spiral ganglion neuron development.

"These findings may provide the first step toward regenerating spiral ganglion neurons, the nerve cells that send sound representations to the brain," said Alain Dabdoub, PhD, co-investigator and assistant professor of surgery with the division of otolaryngology at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. "This has significant implications for advances in cochlear implant technology and biological treatments for hearing loss."

In the cochlea, auditory neurons transmit sound vibrations conveyed by hair cells. These vibrations are then converted to nerve impulses that communicate with the brain. If the neurons are lost or damaged, hearing loss occurs. Existing therapies for hearing loss are based on either increasing hair cell stimulation with hearing aids or introducing an electronic substitute for the hair cells with cochlear implants. In either case, the presence of functional spiral ganglion neurons is required for a successful outcome.

Info

Mysterious Jamestown Tablet an American Rosetta Stone?

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© Preservation VirginiaA conservator digitally isolated inscriptions (right) on the 17th-century Jamestown tablet (left).
With the help of enhanced imagery and an expert in Elizabethan script, archaeologists are beginning to unravel the meaning of mysterious text and images etched into a rare 400-year-old slate tablet discovered this past summer at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America.

Digitally enhanced images of the slate are helping to isolate inscriptions and illuminate fine details on the slate - the first with extensive inscriptions discovered at any early American colonial site, said William Kelso, director of research and interpretation at the 17th-century Historic Jamestowne site (Jamestown map).

Magnify

Archaeologists puzzle over origin of city pillars

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© Unknown
The recent discovery of mysterious stones buried in the construction site of the new City Pillar Hall in Vientiane has given archaeologists new insight into these puzzling objects.

More than 90 stones, which archeologists describe as city pillars, were found in Phiavath village, Sisattanak district, during excavations for the new building.

Experts believe the use of these stone monuments first began in the north of Laos. This latest discovery has inspired them to dig deeper into their history.

Director General of the National Heritage Department of the Ministry of Information, Mr Thongsa Sayavongkhamdy, said they have identified engravings on the stones which they believe will provide valuable information about their origin and purpose.

Telescope

Colliding Auroras Produce an Explosion of Light

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© Toshi Nishimura/UCLAThis three frame animation of THEMIS/ASI images shows auroras colliding on Feb. 29, 2008.
A network of cameras deployed around the Arctic in support of NASA's THEMIS mission has made a startling discovery about the Northern Lights. Sometimes, vast curtains of aurora borealis collide, producing spectacular outbursts of light. Movies of the phenomenon were unveiled on December 17 at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

"Our jaws dropped when we saw the movies for the first time," said space scientist Larry Lyons of the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), a member of the team that made the discovery. "These outbursts are telling us something very fundamental about the nature of auroras."

The collisions occur on such a vast scale that isolated observers on Earth -- with limited fields of view -- had never noticed them before. It took a network of sensitive cameras spread across thousands of miles to get the big picture.

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency created such a network for THEMIS, short for "Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms." THEMIS consists of five identical probes launched in 2006 to solve a long-standing mystery: Why do auroras occasionally erupt in an explosion of light called a substorm?

Twenty all-sky imagers (ASIs) were deployed across the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic to photograph auroras from below while the spacecraft sampled charged particles and electromagnetic fields from above. Together, the on-ground cameras and spacecraft would see the action from both sides and be able to piece together cause and effect -- or so researchers hoped. It seems to have worked.

Magnify

Life on Mars?

biomorph mars meteorite1
© David McKay / NASAThis photomicrograph focuses on a large "biomorph" from a Mars meteorite
fragment known as Nakhla e4150ed. Its chemical spectrum appears to be primarily
iron oxide but with a carbon content slightly greater than the underlying matrix
Do rocks from Mars bear the tiny fossilized signs of life? Scientists who think so say they'll subject meteorites from the Red Planet to a new round of high-tech tests in hopes of adding to their evidence.

For years, only one meteorite has figured in the controversy: ALH84001, a rock that was blasted away from Mars 16 million years ago, floated through space and fell through Earth's atmosphere onto Antarctica about 13,000 years ago. Scientists reported in 1996 that the rock contained microscopic structures that looked like "nano-fossils," but skeptics said the structures could have been created by chemical rather than biological reactions.

In November, the scientists who were behind the earlier research reported fresh findings that they said answered many of the objections from the skeptics - and they said two other space rocks traced to Mars seemed to have "biomorph" structures similar to those found in ALH84001. Pictures of the biomorphs were spread across a couple of Web pages back then, but generated relatively little attention at the time.

Sun

Solar geomagnetic activity at all-time low: only 'zero' could be lower

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Back on December 12th 2009 I posted an article titled:

Solar geomagnetic activity is at an all time low - what does this mean for climate?

We then had a string of sunspots in December that marked what many saw as a rejuvenation of solar cycle 24 after a long period of inactivity. See December sunspots on the rise

It even prompted people like Joe Romm to claim:

The hottest decade ends and since there's no Maunder mininum - sorry deniers! - the hottest decade begins

But what Joe doesn't understand is that sunspots are just one proxy, the simplest and most easily observed, for magnetic activity of the sun. It is the magnetic activity of the sun which is central to Svensmark's theory of galactic cosmic ray modulation, which may affect cloud cover formation on earth, thus affecting global temperatures. As the theory goes, lower magnetic activity of the sun lets more GCR's into our solar system, which produce microscopic cloud seed trails (like in a Wilson cloud chamber) in our atmosphere, resulting in more cloud cover, resulting in a cooler planet. Ric Werme has a nice pictorial here.