Science & TechnologyS


Blackbox

Mercury's Mysterious Bright Spot Photographed Up Close

Andrea Thompson
SPACE.com
Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:04 UTC
Image
© NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of WashingtonA mysterious bright area on the surface of Mercury is seen near the top center of this image. The MESSENGER probe also imaged this spot in its second flyby of the planet last year. Color images from MESSENGER's Wide Angle Camera reveal that the irregular depression and bright halo have distinctive color.
During its most recent flyby of Mercury, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft caught another glimpse of the innermost planet's mysterious bright spot.

The MESSENGER probe skimmed just 142 miles (228 km) above Mercury at its closest approach as it whipped around the planet during the flyby, the last of three designed to guide the spacecraft into orbit around the planet in 2011.

The $446 million probe snapped several new images of Mercury during the flyby, despite a minor data hiccup that delayed the downlink of some of the images.

One of the new images shows a bright spot on the planet's surface, a feature that scientists cannot yet explain.

The new view was the third of the spot, which was first seen in telescopic images of Mercury obtained from Earth by astronomer Ronald Dantowitz. The second view was obtained by the MESSENGER Narrow Angle Camera during the spacecraft's second Mercury flyby Oct. 6, 2008. At that time, the bright feature was just on the planet's limb (edge) as seen from MESSENGER.
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Telescope

Stripped down: Hubble highlights 2 galaxies that are losing it

Colleen Sharkey
ESA/Hubble Information Centre
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:45 UTC
Image
© NASA & ESAThis composite shows the two ram pressure stripping galaxies NGC 4522 and NGC 4402. Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys allows astronomers to study an interesting and important phenomenon called ram pressure stripping that is so powerful, it is capable of mangling galaxies and even halting their star formation.
Ram pressure is the drag force that results when something moves through a fluid - much like the wind you feel in your face when bicycling, even on a still day - and occurs in this context as galaxies orbiting about the centre of the cluster move through the intra-cluster medium, which then sweeps out gas from within the galaxies.

The spiral galaxy NGC 4522 is located some 60 million light-years away from Earth and it is a spectacular example of a spiral galaxy currently being stripped of its gas content. The galaxy is part of the Virgo galaxy cluster and its rapid motion within the cluster results in strong winds across the galaxy as the gas within is left behind. Scientists estimate that the galaxy is moving at more than 10 million kilometres per hour. A number of newly formed star clusters that developed in the stripped gas can be seen in the Hubble image.
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Info

MU Researchers Use Computational Models to Study Fear

Kelsey Jackson
News Bureau University of Missouri
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:38 UTC
The brain is a complex system made of billions of neurons and thousands of connections that relate to every human feeling, including one of the strongest emotions, fear. Most neurological fear studies have been rooted in fear-conditioning experiments. Now, University of Missouri researchers have started using computational models of the brain, making it easier to study the brain's connections. Guoshi Li, an electrical and computer engineering doctoral student, has discovered new evidence on how the brain reacts to fear, including important findings that could help victims of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
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Eye 1

Scientists Decry "Flawed" and "Horrifying" Nationality Tests

John Travis
Science Insider
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:37 UTC
Scientists are greeting with surprise and dismay a project to use DNA and isotope analysis of tissue from asylum seekers to evaluate their nationality and help decide who can enter the United Kingdom. "Horrifying," "naïve," and "flawed" are among the adjectives geneticists and isotope specialists have used to describe the "Human Provenance pilot project," launched quietly in mid-September by the U.K. Border Agency. Their consensus: The project is not scientifically valid--or even sensible.

"My first reaction is this is wildly premature, even ignoring the moral and ethical aspects," says Alec Jeffreys of the University of Leicester, who pioneered human DNA fingerprinting.
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Network

Neutering the 'Net

Holman W. Jenkins
Wall Street Journal
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:49 UTC
Net Neutrality
© Getty
The real agenda of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other status-quo web powers behind the Obama administration's Net Neutrality campaign

Like Chekhov's gun, "net neutrality" gets dragged down from the mantel for every act of the broadband rollout. It's getting dragged down now for the rollout of wireless broadband.

Yet everything you need to know was contained in the first act, when AOL began bleating about "open access" when broadband first threatened its dial-up empire. AOL's business model depended on free riding on the infrastructure paid for by phone users. AOL users were dialing up and keeping a line open for days or even weeks at a time - yet faced no cost for the disproportionate capacity they used up.

This is the basic pricing model the biggest Web companies (especially Google) seek to preserve on the Internet. Their business models are built on a Web that makes their services appear "free" to users.
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Telescope

Flashback Generations Of Stars Pose For Stunning Family Portrait In Constellation Cassiopeia


Science Daily
Mon, 25 Aug 2008 02:39 UTC
A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope tells a tale of life and death amidst a rich family history. The striking infrared picture shows a colorful cosmic cloud, called W5, studded with multiple generations of blazing stars.

Image
©NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA
Generations of stars can be seen in this new infrared portrait from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

It also provides dramatic new evidence that massive stars -- through their brute winds and radiation -- can trigger the birth of stellar newborns.

"Triggered star formation continues to be very hard to prove," said Xavier Koenig of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "But our preliminary analysis shows that the phenomenon can explain the multiple generations of stars seen in the W5 region." Koenig is lead author of a paper about the findings in the December 1, 2008, issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
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Info

Space radiation hits record high

David Shiga
New Scientist
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:02 UTC
Image
© Richard Mewaldt/CaltechThe solar system is protected from galactic cosmic rays by the heliosphere, a giant magnetic bubble around the sun
Like a wounded Starship Enterprise, our solar system's natural shields are faltering, letting in a flood of cosmic rays. The sun's recent listlessness is resulting in record-high radiation levels that pose a hazard to both human and robotic space missions.

Galactic cosmic rays are speeding charged particles that include protons and heavier atomic nuclei. They come from outside the solar system, though their exact sources are still being debated.

Earth dwellers are protected from cosmic rays by the planet's magnetic field and atmosphere. But outside Earth's protective influence, cosmic rays can play havoc with spacecraft electronics - they may be responsible for some recent computer glitches on NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which temporarily halted its planet-hunting observations. They can also damage astronaut DNA, which can lead to cancer.

Now, the influx of galactic cosmic rays into our solar system has reached a record high. Measurements by NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft indicate that cosmic rays are 19 per cent more abundant than any previous level seen since space flight began a half century ago.
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Magnify

Can Evolution Run in Reverse? A Study Says It's a One-Way Street

Carl Zimmer
New York Times
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:54 UTC
Evolutionary biologists have long wondered if history can run backward. Is it possible for the proteins in our bodies to return to the old shapes and jobs they had millions of years ago?

Examining the evolution of one protein, a team of scientists declares the answer is no, saying new mutations make it practically impossible for evolution to reverse direction. "They burn the bridge that evolution just crossed," said Joseph W. Thornton, a biology professor at the University of Oregon and co-author of a paper on the team's findings in the current issue of Nature.

The Belgian biologist Louis Dollo was the first scientist to ponder reverse evolution. "An organism never returns to its former state," he declared in 1905, a statement later dubbed Dollo's law.
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Info

Roman Statues Found in Blue Grotto Cave

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:57 UTC
Image
© Vasco Fronzoni Magical Blue Waters
The turquoise waters of the Blue Grotto on the island of Capri in southern Italy is celebrated for the almost phosphorescent blue tones of the water and the mysterious silvery light flowing through fissures in the rocks
A number of ancient Roman statues might lie beneath the turquoise waters of the Blue Grotto on the island of Capri in southern Italy, according to an underwater survey of the sea cave.

Dating to the 1st century A.D., the cave was used as a swimming pool by the Emperor Tiberius (42 B.C. - 37 A.D.), and the statues are probably depictions of sea gods.

"A preliminary underwater investigation has revealed several statue bases which might possibly hint to sculptures lying nearby," Rosalba Giugni, president of the environmentalist association, Marevivo, told Discovery News.
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Telescope

World's Most Sensitive Astronomical Camera Developed at the Universite de Montreal

Olivier Hernandez
University of Montreal
Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:00 UTC
Montreal - A team of Université de Montréal researchers, led by physics PhD student Olivier Daigle, has developed the world's most sensitive astronomical camera. Marketed by Photon etc., a young Quebec firm, the camera will be used by the Mont-Mégantic Observatory and NASA, which purchased the first unit.

The camera is made up of a CCD controller for counting photons; a digital imagery device that amplifies photons observed by astronomical cameras or by other instruments used in situations of very low luminosity. The controller produces 25 gigabytes of data per second.
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