Science & TechnologyS


Attention

Earth Not Ready for Meteors or Comets

Brian Handwerk
National Geographic
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:23 UTC
A hundred years after a mysterious and massive explosion struck Russia, experts are warning that Earth is ill prepared to face a cosmic catastrophe that could do similar damage.

The blast, known as the Tunguska event, leveled some 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of forest with the power of nearly 200 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs.

Image
© Chris Foss
An explosion rips through the Siberian wilderness in an artist's conception. A hundred years after a mysterious blast leveled some 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of forest in Siberia, experts are saying that Earth is unprepared to face a similar blast caused by a meteor strike.

Remarkably few people witnessed the event, and debate has raged for decades about its cause.

One of the leading theories is that a comet or asteroid hit Earth or exploded upon entering the atmosphere above remote western Siberia.

"Had that same object exploded over a metropolitan area, there would have been millions of people killed," U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher (a Republican from California) said yesterday at a briefing at the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California.

"Right now we have no plan in place to detect these objects far enough out to deflect them."

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Display

"Virtual man" may ease drug R&D woes: report

Ben Hirschler
Reuters
Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:48 UTC
Paris - New computing technologies and the evolution of a "virtual man" to predict the effects of new drugs before they enter clinical trials could transform the fortunes of pharmaceutical research, a report said on Friday.
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Life Preserver

1780 warship found intact under lake


ZeeNews.com
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:54 UTC
The 22-gun British warship 'HMS Ontario' that went down with as many as 130 people aboard during a gale in 1780, was discovered astonishingly well-preserved in the cold, deep water of Lake Ontario in the United States.

According to a report in the daily express today, Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville used side-scanning sonar and an unmanned submersible to locate the 80-ft sloop that sank during the American Revolution.

It is the oldest shipwreck and the only fully intact British warship found in the great lakes, Scoville and Kennard said.
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Nuke

Russian expert says nuclear devices can defend against asteroids


RIA Novosti
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:36 UTC
Nuclear explosive devices are the most effective means of protecting Earth from possible collisions with space bodies, including comets and asteroids, a Russian nuclear physicist told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

Scientists around the world have long been seeking means of protecting the Earth from the threat of dangerous Near Earth Objects (NEOs). Scientists say such collisions pose a threat on average once every 200-1,000 years.

Vadim Simonenko, deputy head of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center, believes that nuclear explosive devices are more energy efficient, compact and less heavy than lasers or the so-called "gravitational tractors" in terms of their practical application as "weapons against NEOs."

"We in Russia have a wealth of experience in the controlled use of nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes," Simonenko said. "A nuclear device in skilful hands is like a scalpel in the hands of a surgeon."

The scientist said special nuclear devices must be created for effective use against NEOs. In order to disperse an asteroid with diameter of up to 100 meters, these devices must have a yield of about one megaton of TNT equivalent, and weigh several hundred kilograms.
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Einstein

Physicists Create Millimeter-sized 'Bohr Atom'


Science Daily
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:04 UTC
Nearly a century after Danish physicist Niels Bohr offered his planet-like model of the hydrogen atom, a Rice University-led team of physicists has created giant, millimeter-sized atoms that resemble it more closely than any other experimental realization yet achieved.

localized electron
©Jeff Mestayer / Rice University
Using laser beams and electric fields, Rice physicists coaxed a point-like, "localized" electron to orbit far from the nucleus of a potassium atom.

Bohr offered the first successful theoretical model of the atom in 1913, suggesting that electrons traveled in orbits around the atom's nucleus like planets orbiting a star. Bohr's model led to a deeper understanding of both the chemical and optical properties of atoms and won him a Nobel Prize in 1922. But his notion of electrons traveling in discrete orbits was eventually displaced by quantum mechanics, which revealed that electrons don't have precise positions but are instead distributed in wave-like patterns.

"In a sufficiently large system, the quantum effects at the atomic scale can transition into the classical mechanics found in Bohr's model," said lead researcher Barry Dunning, Rice's Sam and Helen Worden Professor of Physics and Astronomy. "Using highly excited Rydberg atoms and a series of pulsed electric fields, we were able to manipulate the electron motion and create circular, planet-like states."
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Book

Flashback History of Ancient Indian Conquest


Trinicenter.com
Thu, 01 Jul 1999 10:14 UTC
India's caste system is perhaps the world's longest surviving social hierarchy. A defining feature of Hinduism, caste encompasses a complex ordering of social groups on the basis of ritual purity.
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Info

The Tunguska Event and the 2 million acre Metz Wildfire - Can We See a Connection? Historical Novel Suggests There Might Have Been


Press Release Newswire
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:16 UTC
One hundred years ago, a large asteroid or comet exploded over sparsely populated Tunguska in Siberia. Ash soared 40 miles high and spread around the world, causing atmospheric, seismic, and magnetic disturbances worldwide. A drought ensued in northern Michigan that led to a devastating two-million-acre wildfire. The historical novel "Devil in the North Woods" suggests a possible connection between these events.

Lake Linden, MI -- July 1, 2008 -- You may have heard of the June 30, 1908, explosive event that took place over Tunguska in the remote interior of Siberia. But have you heard about the two-million-acre wildfire that incinerated that huge chunk of northeastern Michigan's farm and timber land in October of 1908? A century later, does the evidence indicate a possible connection?
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Magnify

Flashback Indian Caste Origins: Genomic Insights and Future Outlook

Partha P. Majumder
Genome Research
Fri, 01 Jun 2001 10:04 UTC
The main feature of Indian society, seen at its strongest in the rural areas, is caste. A caste is a collection of people who share similar cultural and religious values and practices. Members within a caste generally marry among themselves; intercaste marriages are a cultural taboo. These social regulations governing the institution of marriage have resulted in a substructuring of the Indian gene pool. There are also elaborate social regulations of avoidance of marriages within castes, and thus there is genomic substructuring even within a caste.
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Attention

Flashback Genetic evidence suggests European migrants may have influenced the origins of India's caste system

Bijal P. Trivedi
Genome News Network
Mon, 14 May 2001 09:56 UTC


Old India map
©Unknown
A new study has revealed that Indians belonging to higher castes are genetically closer to Europeans than are individuals from lower castes, whose genetic profiles are closer to those of Asians.

The study compared genetic markers - located on the Y chromosome and the mitochondrial DNA - between 265 Indian men of various castes and 750 African, Asian, European and other Indian men. To broaden the study, 40 markers from chromosomes 1 to 22 were analyzed from more than 600 individuals from different castes and continents. The comparison of the markers among these groups confirmed that genetic similarities to Europeans increased as caste rank increased.
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Snowman

Flashback Ice Ages in Detail


Open Mind
Sat, 10 Feb 2007 04:09 UTC
In a previous post, I discussed the textbook theory of the causes of glacial advance and retreat for the last few million years. I'd like to take a close look at one of the best available records of past climate, the "LR04 stack."

Comment: For additional analysis on shorter period cycles of the last 100,000 years and their causes see The Younger Dryas Impact Event and the Cycles of Cosmic Catastrophes - Climate Scientists Awakening.

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