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Theorists Reveal Path to True Muonium


PhysOrg
Sat, 30 May 2009 05:10 UTC
muonium
© Graphic: Terry Anderson/SLAC
In this artist's depiction of how experimentalists could create true muonium, an electron (blue) and a positron (red) collide, producing a virtual photon (green) and then a muonium atom, made of a muon (small yellow) and an anti-muon (small purple). The muonium atom then decays back into a virtual photon and then a positron and an electron. Overlaying this process is a figure indicating the structure of the muonium atom: one muon (large yellow) and one anti-muon (large purple).
True muonium, a long-theorized but never-seen atom, might be observed in future experiments, thanks to recent theoretical work by researchers at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Arizona State University. True muonium was first theorized more than 50 years ago, but until now no one had uncovered an unambiguous method by which it could be created and observed.

"We don't usually work in this area, but one day we were idly talking about how experimentalists could create exotic states of matter," said SLAC theorist Stanley Brodsky, who worked with Arizona State's Richard Lebed on the result. "As our conversation progressed, we realized 'Gee...we just figured out how to make true muonium.'"
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Saturn

Freeze-thaw cycle may explain Saturn moon's odd activity

Ivan Semeniuk
New Scientist
Sat, 30 May 2009 05:02 UTC
Image
© Cassini Imaging Team/SSI/JPL/ESA/NASA
Saturn's moon Enceladus spews out watery geysers today, but it can't have done so continuously throughout its lifetime, as there is no heat source to power the activity for so long. A new mechanism has been proposed to explain how the moon may freeze and thaw repeatedly.
If there is life on Saturn's bizarre, water-spewing moon Enceladus, it's about to spend a lot of time in the freezer.

So concludes Norman Sleep of Stanford University, who says a perpetual cycle of melting and refreezing may offer the best explanation for why Enceladus seems so active today. In Sleep's scenario, Enceladus is now heading back into a long cold phase after a comparatively brief warm spell.

For any potential life on Enceladus, "it's boom and bust", says Sleep. Sleep raised the idea at this week's American Geophysical Union meeting in Toronto, Canada, after researchers learned that Enceladus is pouring out 15 gigawatts of heat - more than double earlier estimates. The new number makes matters worse for scientists trying to explain where all the heat comes from. It far exceeds what can be accounted for by the decay of radioactive elements and tidal stress - strains induced by Saturn's pull on the moon.
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Info

Giant dinosaurs kept heads held high


New Scientist
Fri, 29 May 2009 17:05 UTC
Image
© Axel Mauruszat
Dinosaur icons such as Diplodocus held their long necks high in the air not horizontally as previously thought
Did giant plant-eating dinosaurs such as Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus hold their long necks vertically or horizontally? In the long-running debate, the old-fashioned view that they held their heads up high is edging ahead.

Sauropods - stars of countless exhibitions, documentaries and books - have been depicted since the early 20th century with an upright posture. But doubt was cast on this when it was realised how hard their hearts would have to work to pump blood to their brains. Computer models of the vertebrae also suggested that the animals held their necks low. This led museums and film-makers to start showing sauropods grazing with necks stretched horizontally.
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Blackbox

Decoding antiquity: Eight scripts that still can't be read

Andrew Robinson
New Scientist
Fri, 29 May 2009 02:35 UTC
Image
© Museo di Villa Giulia, Rome
The Etruscan Alphabet - Shown here are two of three gold plaques from Pyrgi, circa 500BC. The plaque on the left is written in Etruscan, while the one on the right is written in Phoenician. They both describe the same event - the dedication by the Etruscan ruler Thefarie Velianas of a cult place
Writing is one of the greatest inventions in human history. Perhaps the greatest, since it made history possible. Without writing, there could be no accumulation of knowledge, no historical record, no science - and of course no books, newspapers or internet.

The first true writing we know of is Sumerian cuneiform - consisting mainly of wedge-shaped impressions on clay tablets - which was used more than 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Soon afterwards writing appeared in Egypt, and much later in Europe, China and Central America. Civilisations have invented hundreds of different writing systems. Some, such as the one you are reading now, have remained in use, but most have fallen into disuse.

These dead scripts tantalise us. We can see that they are writing, but what do they say?
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Saturn

Exoplanet found by measuring star's sideways shift

Maggie McKee
New Scientist
Fri, 29 May 2009 01:08 UTC
Image
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
A planet six times as massive as Jupiter (left) has been found around the red dwarf star VB 10 (right). The star is the lightest known to host a planet
An extrasolar planet has been found by observing subtle changes in a star's position in the sky for the first time. The technique, called astrometry, is best suited to finding planets at great distances from their stars, complementing more common techniques, which tend to turn up planets orbiting their stars at close range.

The planet's star is also the lightest known to host a planet, and researchers hope other such discoveries will shed light on how common planets are around low-mass stars, which far outnumber their higher-mass cousins.
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Info

Vikings visited Canadian Arctic

Randy Boswell
The Ottawa Citizen
Fri, 29 May 2009 00:52 UTC
Image
© P. Sutherland, Canadian Museum of Civilization, Canwest News Service
This May 26 handout photo shows a Nanook archeological site on Baffin Island. Traces of a stone-and-sod wall found at the site, if confirmed, would represent only the second location in the New World where Norse seafarers -- popularly known as Vikings -- built a dwelling.
Artifacts suggest Norse settlement in Nunavut.

One of Canada's top Arctic archeologists says the remnants of a stone-and-sod wall unearthed on southern Baffin Island may be traces of a shelter built more than 700 years ago by Norse seafarers, a stunning find that would be just the second location in the New World with evidence of a Viking-built structure.

The tantalizing signs of a possible medieval Norse presence in Nunavut were found at the previously examined Nanook archeological site, about 200 kilometres southwest of Iqaluit, where people of the now-extinct Dorset culture once occupied a stretch of Hudson Strait shoreline.

A UNESCO World Heritage site at northern Newfoundland's L'Anse aux Meadows -- about 1,500 kilometres southeast of the Nanook dig -- is the only confirmed location of a Viking settlement in North America. There, about 1,000 years ago, it's believed a party of Norse voyagers from Greenland led by Leif Eiriksson built sod-and-wood dwellings before abandoning their colonization attempt under threat from hostile natives they called "Skraelings."
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Laptop

Microsoft revamps search engine, dubbed "Bing"

Bill Rigby
Reuters
Fri, 29 May 2009 00:40 UTC
Seattle - Microsoft Corp is revamping its search engine to counter the dominance of Google Inc in the Web search and related advertising business.

The world's largest software company, which is still in talks with Yahoo Inc over a potential partnership, has long been determined to play a major role in the lucrative Web search market after watching upstart Google take a stranglehold.

Microsoft, which has been testing the search engine internally under the name Kumo for several months, plans to introduce the new service, re-christened "Bing," over the next few days, with a full launch next Wednesday. The service will be available at www.bing.com.
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Info

GM monkey passes jellyfish gene to offspring

Andy Coghlan
New Scientist
Thu, 28 May 2009 15:55 UTC
Image
© E.Sasaki et al. 2009
Marmoset offspring from a genetically modified father have feet that glow green on the soles when observed in UV light
A genetically engineered monkey has for the first time passed an introduced "alien" gene to its offspring.

Since breeding is cheaper and easier than genetic engineering, the researchers hope the breakthrough will herald development of monkeys that are better models of human disease than genetically modified mice.

Erika Sasaki of the Central Institute for Experimental Animals in Kawasaki, Japan, gave marmosets a jellyfish gene that made them glow green under UV light.
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Telescope

Yin-yang planet has phases like the moon


New Scientist
Thu, 28 May 2009 15:45 UTC
Image
© Leiden Observatory/Leiden University
The extrasolar planet Corot-1b has phases like the moon's
A super-hot planet 1500 light years away has been seen waxing and waning like the moon. The discovery hints that hot gas giants come in two varieties.

The phases of Corot 1b were detected by a team at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, who analysed changes in the amount of red light from the system. A small component of the light smoothly dims and brightens as the planet orbits. This is probably alternation between the dark of Corot 1b's relatively cool night side and the glow of its red-hot day side, which permanently faces its star and reaches a temperature of about 2400 kelvin (Nature, DOI: link).
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Evil Rays

Rare Radio Supernova In Nearby Galaxy Is Nearest Supernova In Five Years


ScienceDaily
Thu, 28 May 2009 04:13 UTC
radio supernova M82
© Unknown
The radio supernova was discovered on April 8 in M82, a small irregular galaxy located nearly 12 million light years from Earth in the M81 galaxy group, by the Very Large Array, a New Mexico facility operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory
The chance discovery last month of a rare radio supernova - an exploding star seen only at radio wavelengths and undetected by optical or X-ray telescopes - underscores the promise of new, more sensitive radio surveys to find supernovas hidden by gas and dust.

"This supernova is the nearest supernova in five years, yet is completely obscured in optical, ultraviolet and X-rays due to the dense medium of the galaxy," said Geoffrey Bower, assistant professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and coauthor of a paper describing the discovery in the June issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. "This just popped out; in the future, we want to go from discovery of radio supernovas by accident to specifically looking for them."
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