Starry Messenger

Japan megaquake, as I feel- Tokyo geophysicist's earthquake diary

2011-03-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

When the earthquake struck at about 3:00 pm on Friday March 11 (Japan Standard Time), I was in my office on the 7th floor of the School of Science Building of the University of Tokyo, typing away on my notebook PC. Moderate-sized quakes are not uncommon in Tokyo, so I kept on typing for a while, ignoring the shaking.
However, as a seismologist, I immediately recognised that the amplitude of the seismic waves was large, but that the shaking was relatively long-period, with an almost complete absence of the sharp jolts that characterize nearby quakes. (This is because the earth gradually absorbs seismic waves as they travel, and shorter period waves are absorbed over a smaller distance range.) Because I could quickly identify this as a large, relatively distant quake, I didn't worry too much. Even so, as the shaking continued, I ducked under my desk for a while to guard against papers and books falling on my head from the cabinets behind me (in the event almost nothing fell out).

When the shaking stopped after a couple of minutes I got back to work, and when my students looked in to see if I was OK I told them, perhaps a bit too sharply, to get back to work. After a few minutes the safety office decided we should evacuate the building, and I complied (although I – correctly as it turned out -- didn't think this was necessary). Everyone climbed down the stairs, and after a half hour or so milling around we went back in and got back to work. We had to use the stairs, since the elevators were turned off as a safety measure.
Since the trains were stopped as a safety precaution, I walked home (55 min) rather than taking the subway (30 min, 7 of which on the train, the rest walking to and from the stations), which wasn't a problem as the weather was fair. When I got home I found no damage, but the gas had been automatically cut off by a quake detector. Pushing a button on the gas meter restored service.
The phone network was overwhelmed, but eventually (8 hrs after the quake) I got through to my wife and her mother and sister, who were on vacation at a hot spring resort in Northern Japan, and confirmed their safety. I was a bit luckier than most Tokyoites-many were stranded overnight at their workplaces, but even for them there was no danger, only a bit of bother. And now, 32 hrs after the quake as I write this, things in Tokyo are steadily getting back to normal.
Unfortunately, however, the situation is drastically worse in the hardest-hit areas. The TV news has been 100 per cent focused on the quake and the resulting damage. Truly horrific scenes of whole towns that have been almost completely destroyed by the quake and tsunami are replayed regularly. And many survivors, having lost all of their possessions, are taking refuge in temporary facilities under spartan conditions, without electric power or heat in many cases, although they do all seem to have food, water, and blankets.
A nuclear power plant in Fukushima has suffered severe damage and radioactivity has leaked out, with an evacuation of local residents within 20km of the plant having been ordered. The fully severity of the damage to the power plant is not yet clear from news reports.
In summary, many of the earthquake countermeasures taken by Japan have been successful, at least in part, but no conceivable economically realistic countermeasures could have precluded substantial damage from a magnitude 9.1 quake and the resulting tsunami. The immediate focus must now shift to rescue and rebuilding measures. Further down the road, lessons from the quake and its aftermath must be reflected in public policy. Not the least of these is that when we're thinking about future earthquakes we should, as noted by Hiroo Kanamori of Caltech, "expect the unexpected."

By- Robert Geller, University of Tokyo, Japan

Simulated Mars Mission Arrives in Simulated Orbit

2011-02-09T23:48:00.000-08:00

Six men from Europe, Russia and China on a 520-day mock mission to Mars, have now reached the point in their mission where they have arrived ‘in orbit’ of Mars. Mars500, the first full-duration simulation, is like a real Mars mission, where the crew has been in isolation, living and working like astronauts, eating special food and exercising the same way as crews aboard the International Space Station, and even experiencing lag time in communications. Now after 244 days of virtual interplanetary flight, the crew is getting ready to ‘land’ on Mars on February 12 where they will make three EVAs onto simulated Martian terrain.
Mars500, a pioneering international study of the complex psychological and technical issues that must be tackled for long spaceflights, has been running for more than eight months in hermetically sealed modules imitating a Mars spacecraft at the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) in Moscow. Mars500 is not a just a flight of fancy or fantasy, but scientists from Russia and the European Space agency say it is a “pioneering international study of the complex psychological and technical issues that must be tackled for long spaceflights.”
The simulation has been running for more than eight months in hermetically sealed modules imitating a Mars spacecraft at the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) in Moscow.“Mars500 is a visionary experiment,” said Simonetta Di Pippo, ESA Director for Human Spaceflight. “Europe is getting ready to make a step further in space exploration: our technology and our science grow stronger every day. Mars 500 today is only an enriching simulation, but we are working to make it real.”
The crew has now opened a hatch between the mothership and the mockup of a lander that, according to script, was launched separately to Mars.In the coming days, the cargo inside the ‘lander’ will be transferred into the habitat and the lander will be prepared for ‘undocking’ and ‘landing’.
The crew will then divide: Russian Alexandr Smoleevskiy, Italian Diego Urbina and Chinese Wang Yue will enter the lander, while the rest of the crew, Romain Charles from France and Sukhrob Kamolov and Alexey Sitev from Russia ‘remain in orbit’.The hatch between the interplanetary spacecraft and lander will be closed on 8 February. The lander will undock and ‘touch down’ on Mars on 12 February.

Going out

The first sortie onto the simulated martian surface, housed in a large hall alongside the Mars500 modules, will happen on 14 February: Alexandr Smoleevskiy and Diego Urbina will don the modified Russian Orlan spacesuits and exit the lander’s airlock. The next sortie – by Smoleevskiy and Wang Yue – will take place on 18 February, and the last one – by Smoleevskiy and Urbina – is scheduled for 22 February.
On 23 February, the lander will be launched to ‘orbit’ and dock with the mothership on following day. The lander crew will stay in quarantine for three days before the hatch is opened on 27 February and the astronauts are reunited.

Return Journey

On 28 February the lander will be loaded with rubbish and unwanted items and the vehicle will be ‘abandoned’. This will happen 1 March, just before the spacecraft spirals away from Mars by virtually firing its engines. After that, the crew is faced with another monotonous ‘interplanetary cruise’ before arriving home in early November 2011.

Great rendezvous in Space on 14 Feb

2011-02-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

"This is the first of many images to come of comet Tempel 1," said Joe Veverka, principal investigator of NASA's Stardust-NExT mission from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "Encountering something as small and fast as a comet in the vastness of space is always a challenge, but we are very pleased with how things are setting up for our Valentine's Day flyby."
NASA's comet mission spacecraft Stardust-NExT is fine-tuning its approach to an icy comet and has already snapped photos of it ahead of a planned Valentine's Day visit.The space agency's Stardust-Next mission is just one week away from zooming by the comet Tempel-1 Feb. 14 to see what's new since the comet was last visited by a spacecraft in July 2005. Comet Tempel 1 is a ball of ice and rock that orbits the sun every 5½ years.Scientists say the spacecraft is on track for next week's encounter after firing its thrusters last week to refine its path.
Stardust spacecraft marked its 12th anniversary in space on Monday, Feb. 7, with a rocket burn to further refine its path toward a Feb. 14 date with a comet. The half-minute trajectory correction maneuver, which adjusts the spacecraft's flight path, began at about 1 p.m. PST (4 p.m. EST) on Monday, Feb. 7. The 30-second-long firing of the spacecraft's rockets consumed about 69 grams (2.4 ounces) of fuel and changed the spacecraft's speed by 0.56 meters per second (1.3 mph).
NASA's plan for the Stardust-NExT mission is to fly the spacecraft to a point in space about 200 kilometers (124 miles) from comet Tempel 1 at the time of its closest approach. During the encounter, the spacecraft will take images of the surface of comet Tempel 1 to observe what changes have occurred since a NASA spacecraft last visited. (NASA's Deep Impact flew by Tempel 1 in July 2005).
Along with the high-resolution images of the comet's surface, Stardust-NExT will also measure the composition, size distribution and flux of dust emitted into the coma, and provide important new information about how comets evolve. Stardust was launched on Feb. 7, 1999. This current Stardust-NExT target is a bonus mission for the comet chaser, which flew past comet Wild 2 in 2004 and returned particles from its coma to Earth.
While its sample return capsule parachuted to Earth in January 2006, mission controllers were placing the still-viable spacecraft on a path that would allow NASA the opportunity to re-use the already-proven flight system if a target of opportunity presented itself. In January 2007, NASA re-christened the mission "Stardust-NExT" (New Exploration of Tempel), and the Stardust team began a four-and-a-half year journey for the spacecraft to comet Tempel 1. The spacecraft has traveled more than 35 billion miles since launch.

The Second Earth !

2011-02-03T04:49:00.000-08:00

The search for a second Earth has long enthralled readers of science fiction. What rich and varied life could it contain? What would such a discovery mean for humanity's own place in the Universe? How many similar planets are out there? The question is more than a philosophical puzzle, and it comes with a hard scientific edge that should be considered sooner rather than later. As the search for planets beyond the Solar System widens and public interest in the quest grows, at which point should astronomers declare the hunt for another Earth a success?

Hundreds of candidate planets have been identified, and some have been profiled, if not as a second Earth, then as signs that the search is heading in the right direction. Last month, NASA announced the discovery of the smallest extrasolar planet yet: Kepler-10b, which has 1.4 times the diameter and 4.6 times the mass of Earth, and was discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft. Although the planet orbits too close to its star to support life, the news was heralded by some media outlets as a landmark in the search for a new Earth, particularly because Kepler-10b is the first exoplanet with a dense and rocky core.
Attention on Kepler's mission will intensify again this week, as NASA publicly releases a batch of its data. The satellite focuses on a single point in the sky, where it can keep track of some 150,000 stars. Kepler observes the decrease in the brightness of these stars as planets pass in front of, or 'transit', them, and the findings are used to target telescopes on the ground.
It takes three to four such confirmed transits before astronomers are confident that they have found a planet, which makes it too soon to be sure whether Kepler has found a world truly similar to Earth. (By definition, Earth-like planets orbiting a star similar to the Sun pass in front of their stars about once a year, and Kepler has only been in place for about 18 months). All exoplanets confirmed to date orbit much closer to their stars than does Earth; they are too close for conditions to allow the existence of liquid water, which is what defines a star's 'habitable zone'.
As more data are analysed, they will probably produce a string of reports of ever-smaller planets, until we get an Earth-sized example. Many of these small planets are likely to orbit M-dwarfs, by far the most numerous type of star in the Universe. The habitable zone around these stars is very narrow, but Kepler may find a rocky planet there. Would that be the first Earth-like planet? Probably not if, as seems likely, it were to be tidally locked, so that one side faced permanently towards the star.
What about planets that orbit larger stars? Does a first Earth-like planet have to orbit in the habitable zone of a G2-type star, similar to the Sun? If so, must the planet be Earth-sized? And is the focus on a habitable zone defined in terms of liquid water appropriate? As the Universe reveals its secrets, we discover it to be a more diverse and stranger place than we had anticipated. Would it be so odd to conceive of life on a dry or frozen world? Must the first Earth-like planet be capable of supporting life, or human life in particular?
The answers to these questions are important because the public-relations rewards of planet-hunting — and planet-finding — are great. The temptation to hype each discovery is equally large, but so is the scope for confusion and public scorn, especially given the rabid response on some blogs to NASA announcements. Set the bar for 'Earth-like' planets too low, and a string of repeated discoveries could be overwhelming. Set the bar too high, and a planet that meets the strict criteria may not emerge at all. If that were to happen, the Kepler mission would risk being viewed as a failure — which it most certainly is not.
Amid the excitement of exploring a new frontier, astronomers should pause to consider the public reaction to their work. Then they should decide how a standard should be set. Perhaps a reasonable starting point would be to define an Earth-like planet as one of similar size to Earth, orbiting in the habitable zone of any star, and not tidally locked. More important than the details of the definition is that the relevant criteria are established before the claims start to pile up. To announce the discovery of the first Earth-like planet would be a stunning success. To announce it more than once could look like carelessness.

Hunting for Earth-like Alien Planets- Q & A with Astronomer Geoff Marcy

2011-02-03T04:47:00.000-08:00

Since astronomers discovered the first planet beyond our own solar system back in 1992, they've been on somewhat of a roll — the tally now tops 500.And the finds are about to ramp up dramatically. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission will make much of its data public. A press conference will follow tomorrow, during which researchers are expected to announce intriguing new information about many more possible alien planets.Humanity thus appears poised to enter a productive new era in the study of alien worlds. One man leading the charge is Geoff Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Kepler co-investigator.
Marcy has had a hand in finding more alien planets than anyone else. He helped spot 70 of the first 100. He also found the first multi-planet system around a sun-like star, and he discovered the first planet that transits — or passes in front of — its star from our perspective on Earth.SPACE.com caught up with Marcy last month in Seattle, at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society, to chat about the accelerating pace of planet discovery, what we still don't know about alien worlds and whether there might be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
SPACE.com: What has led to the recent explosion in alien planet discoveries? Is it primarily better instrumentation, or better techniques?
Marcy: Well, let me give you a different vantage point. There is a bunch of astronomers who've been working really hard, and they're really innovative, pushing on the frontier technically, pushing on the frontier in terms of the science. And basically burning the midnight oil, essentially literally. I'm giving you the human component of all of this, because sometimes you don't get to see it.
What sometimes gets lost in the shuffle when a nice result shows up on all of the Web pages and the newspapers around the world — what you don't realize is to get that result meant that five or 10 people were burning that midnight oil, trimming the errors down to the point that the Earth-size planets are detectable.
It's easy to dismiss the discoveries as, "Oh, it's new computers, or it's new optics." These things happen because amazing people dream and then put their dreams into perspiration-dripping action.
SPACE.com: So if we were to have this conversation in 20 years, where do you think the total exoplanet count would stand?
Marcy: Honestly, Kepler's so good that it's hard to beat it. It gets the numbers. Kepler's going to find thousands. There's going to be another follow-up to Kepler, either from Europe or the U.S. or both. They'll find thousands. I bet by 2020, there'll be 10,000 planets, and by 2030 there might be another 20,000 or 30,000 more planets.
SPACE.com: Will this discovery arc we're on now continue to go up exponentially, or will it plateau?
Marcy: It'll plateau, because you can't do much better than Kepler. But let's be fair here. It's not the number of planets we care about; it's the quality. We want the Earth-size. We want planets in the habitable zone, and ultimately planets that are sending little radio signals to us for some reason or another.
SPACE.com: You've said that, with exoplanets, theory has really struck out. What are some of the things that we thought we knew, but it turns out were totally wrong about?
Marcy: Well, the first thing — I go back to 1996. No one wants to talk about this, because it's so embarrassing. The reason that as a community we struggled to find the first hot Jupiters isn't because we didn't have the technology. It's because the theorists led us astray. I'm speaking slightly jokingly, but not really.
There were theorists who said, "Look at our solar system. Of course the small, rocky planets are close in. The host star burned off the gases, so you're left with rocky planets. And look at the giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn — they had to form farther out, because it's colder, and the gases can gravitationally stick to the planets. Therefore, all planetary systems will have the following architecture: There will be an inner planet. The second planet out will be named Venus. The third planet out will have great lattes." I mean, it was just silly.
SPACE.com: And that's based on a sample size of one.
Marcy: It would be like trying to characterize human psychology by going to one distant Indonesian island and interviewing one person, and thinking that that gave you the full range of human psychology. And in 1996, there were papers where they said, Jupiter-sized planets, Saturn-sized planets, will all orbit far from their host star. Well, that of course tells you what to look for. If you write a proposal to try to find anything else, you're flying in the face of wisdom. And we know now, of course, how near-sighted that was, how parochial that was.
SPACE.com: So do you think we are starting to get a handle on exoplanets now?
Marcy: I think so. We're always a little too confident, so I would hate to say, "Go home, we're all done." We do have these planets we're finding with Doppler work, and now with Kepler, that are five times the size of Earth, three times the size of Earth, 1.4 times the size of the Earth. And I don't think we really know how they formed.
Even the one we announced [the rocky, nearly Earth-size Kepler-10b], there are two main ways it might've formed. It might've formed like the Earth, or it might have formed like Uranus but it got so close to the host star that the gases and the water got evaporated away and left a bare, rocky core remnant.
SPACE.com: What are some of the biggest mysteries that are left?
Marcy: There's one huge one that nobody really wants to talk about. It's the age-old question: Are Earth-like planets common? We know they're out there for sure. I mean, there's too many stars. But there's two parts to the question. What do you mean by "Earth-like?" And then, how common are they?
Basically, we know what we want for Earth-like, so we shouldn't beat around the bush: We would love to know whether there are planets suitable for life as we know it.
And those Earth-like properties are a little bit mysterious, but we have some ideas. You want water in liquid form, you want stable temperatures over the course of millions, preferably billions, of years so that Darwinian evolution can get a good toehold.
You probably want a moon to stabilize the spin axis. You probably want a Jupiter to sweep up the debris. You probably want a stable ocean for a long enough time that it can serve as the solvent for biochemistry.
So that's probably what we mean by "Earth-like." But how common they are, we just don't know.
SPACE.com: Your research suggests that smaller planets may be pretty common — that nearly one in four nearby sun-like stars could host a roughly Earth-size planet.
Marcy: Yeah. But here's the sleeper idea that no one wants to talk about: Because Earth-size planets are so much smaller than the Jupiters, Saturns, Uranuses and Neptunes, and we now know that planets often get thrust into eccentric and misaligned orbits, the Earths are like the Volkswagens on a highway full of 18-wheelers.
The vulnerable planets are the small ones. And so to the extent that planetary systems undergo a billiards era — the Earth would be like putting a small marble on a pool table of 15 billiard balls. As you break, the little planets are going to be the ones slingshot right out of the solar system pool table.
SPACE.com: It's one thing to say they can form. But to say that they'll actually stick around long enough — that's a totally different question.
Marcy: Yeah. And I think they'll form. It's hard to imagine they wouldn't. If you make Jupiters, why wouldn't you make Earth-size planets? But the Earths — and maybe the Volkswagen is giving it too much credit. It's an 18-wheeler and a tricycle. Earth is a tricycle on Highway 5 running up and down the Pacific Coast.
And you don't even have to hit the tricycle. You just have to come close enough that gravity slingshots the poor tricycle right out of the system. So it's possible that Earth-like planets form, they get thrown out into the cold darkness of the galaxy and they have no chance of starting — never mind sustaining — life, because it's too cold out there. And that's possible. We might be rare.
And by the way: Where are the SETI [search for extraterrestrial intelligence] signals? There is a non-detection that's like the elephant in the room. Forty years of Frank Drake and Carl Sagan looking for SETI signals, and we have precisely zero to show for it. So there's an indication — not definitive — that maybe the Earth is more precious than we had thought.
SPACE.com: Our solar system is so young, compared to the universe. And the universe is so big. So there's been lots of time and opportunity for advanced civilizations to get started, and to try to contact us. Some people think that the fact that we seemingly haven't been contacted means that we may well be alone in the universe.
Marcy: Well, you have to fold it in. The absence of an intelligent radio or television wave from any advanced civilization represents one indication, not a proof, that maybe habitable planets that sustain Darwinian evolution for a billion years —maybe they're rare. Maybe.
SPACE.com: What do you reckon? Do you have a gut feeling about this?
Marcy: I do. If I had to bet — and this is now beyond science — I would say that intelligent, technological critters are rare in the Milky Way galaxy. The evidence mounts. We Homo sapiens didn't arise until some quirk of environment on the East African savannah — so quirky that the hominid paleontologists still can't tell us why the australopithecines somehow evolved big brains and had dexterity that could play piano concertos, and things that make no real honest sense in terms of Darwinian evolution.
Why the high chaparral on the East African savannah would've led to a Tchaikovsky piano concerto, never mind the ability to build rocket ships — there's no evolutionary driver that the australopithecines suffered from that leads to rocket ships. And so that — and the fact that we had to wait four billion years without humans. Four billion years?
SPACE.com: Yes, it took four billion years to get there.
Marcy: Since the Cambrian explosion, we had hundreds of millions of years of multi-cellular, advanced life in which, guess what happened with brain size? Nothing.
You know the greatest species ever to roam the Earth? The dinosaurs — every kid knows this. And why? Well, because for 100 million years, the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. There were big ones, there were small ones. Every generation of baby dinosaurs had to outcompete all of the other dinosaurs. And you would think after 100 million years, each generation of baby dinosaur that was a little smarter would have out-survived the others and thereby slowly but surely increased dinosaur cranial size.
The reality from the paleontological record? Dinosaurs had the brains of chickens, and never got bigger. It shows that braininess is not a primary driver in evolution. We humans came across braininess because of something weird that happened on the East African savannah. And we can't imagine whether that's a common or rare thing.
SPACE.com: People assume evolution is directed, and it's always leading toward higher complexity and greater intelligence, but it's not.
Marcy: It's not. Dinosaurs show this in spades.
SPACE.com: You've said that we're about to enter a golden age of direct exoplanet imaging. Is that what the future holds — getting good, direct looks at alien planets to try to gauge their potential to support life?
Marcy: It is. There's two great things that we should be doing. One is that we should, as a species — and this means ESA [the European Space Agency], Japan, China, India, the United States, Canada — work together internationally to fund a space-borne telescope, probably interferometric, that can take pictures of Earth-size and Earth-like planets. We know how to do it.
Yes, it'll be expensive, but we do expensive things in science, and this is a great quest for humanity: Are there Earth-like and, indeed, habitable planets out there? But the other thing to do — we should say it right away. We should have a full-fledged, Apollo-like SETI search. Why haven't we coherently gathered our resources and done SETI right?
SPACE.com: Finding alien intelligent life would be such a huge deal. It would change the way we think about ourselves and our place in the universe.
Marcy: Exactly. So why aren't we putting together our resources, nationally and internationally, and constructing a major radio telescope facility — and maybe, if there's money left over, an infrared facility — and sampling the universe for signals?
We know what to look for. That would be the rat-a-tat-tat of a radio signal. We don't know exactly what the code would be, but we'd be looking for pulses in the radio, in the infrared maybe, in the X-ray or UV. We'd have to think broadly. But this is a great quest for humanity.
It's the Armstrong, it's the Columbus of our time, essentially reaching out with radio waves and hunting for alien intelligent life. It would be a marvelous, inspirational effort. And right now we don't have enough going on, in my opinion.
Because it would mean — all 7 billion people on planet Earth would get up in the morning wondering, "Did they find the signal last night?"
SPACE.com: It makes you wonder why nations haven't joined together to do something like this. Economically, it would be a drop in the bucket.
Marcy: It's a drop in the bucket. Frankly, $1 billion would be good. It sounds like $1 billion is a lot of money. But not really. NASA's budget is $19 billion. Nineteen billion dollars every single year. So how about a billion of that for a SETI search? How about one year — 5 percent — to do SETI in a historic, Apollo-like way? I mean, Wow!
It puts Armstrong and the invention of fire sort of on a par. So it's worth one-nineteenth of one year's NASA budget. I think it's a great idea, and we know how to do it.
Yeah, it's a luxury. We need to feed the people on the planet Earth, we need to provide health care, we need to provide better education, we need to make sure that human beings are living. But we're doing that. And a billion is really a teeny fraction of many countries' annual budget.

Courtesy - space.com

Good News from Keplar

2011-02-03T04:38:00.000-08:00

Sitting for an interview in his office at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CFA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the normally voluble astronomer Dimitar Sasselov looks nervous. Asked for his favourite among the many potential planets discovered by NASA's Kepler planet-finding mission, for which he is a co-investigator, he hesitates, then sidesteps the question entirely. "Personally, I'm already beyond that point. It's not one. It's not a single planet. It's a whole family."
NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Five of the potential planets are near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of smaller, cooler stars than our sun. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets. Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system.
Most of the Kepler scientists continue to be cautious. By watching the light from some 150,000 stars for the dimming that could signal a planet crossing in front of them, Kepler is extraordinarily efficient at finding possible planets. But Kepler has yet to find another Earth — a small, rocky planet with an orbit of a few hundred days and well inside the habitable zone in which water can exist and life can arise. That is for a fundamental reason; the blips that Kepler detects show only the radius, and not the mass, of an observed planet, which means that the density and composition generally remain unknown.
"In one generation we have gone from extraterrestrial planets being a mainstay of science fiction, to the present, where Kepler has helped turn science fiction into today's reality," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "These discoveries underscore the importance of NASA's science missions, which consistently increase understanding of our place in the cosmos."
The discoveries are part of several hundred new planet candidates identified in new Kepler mission science data, released on Tuesday, Feb. 1. The findings increase the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler to-date to 1,235. Of these, 68 are approximately Earth-size; 288 are super-Earth-size; 662 are Neptune-size; 165 are the size of Jupiter and 19 are larger than Jupiter.
Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are near Earth-sized. The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range from super-Earth size - up to twice the size of Earth - to larger than Jupiter.
The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12 to Sept. 17, 2009, of more than 156,000 stars in Kepler's field of view, which covers approximately one four-hundredth of the sky.
"The fact that we've found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy," said William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the mission's science principal investigator.
"We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone, some of which could have moons with liquid water." Among the stars with planetary candidates, 170 show evidence of multiple planetary candidates. Kepler-11, located approximately 2,000 light years from Earth, is the most tightly packed planetary system yet discovered.
All six of its confirmed planets have orbits smaller than Venus, and five of the six have orbits smaller than Mercury's. The only other star with more than one confirmed transiting planet is Kepler-9, which has three. The Kepler-11 findings will be published in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Nature.
"Kepler-11 is a remarkable system whose architecture and dynamics provide clues about its formation," said Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist and Kepler science team member at Ames.
"These six planets are mixtures of rock and gases, possibly including water. The rocky material accounts for most of the planets' mass, while the gas takes up most of their volume. By measuring the sizes and masses of the five inner planets, we determined they are among the lowest-mass confirmed planets beyond our solar system."
All of the planets orbiting Kepler-11 are larger than Earth, with the largest ones being comparable in size to Uranus and Neptune. The innermost planet, Kepler-11b, is 10 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun.
Moving outward, the other planets are Kepler-11c, Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e, Kepler-11f, and the outermost planet, Kepler-11g, which is half as far from its star as Earth is from the sun.
The planets Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e and Kepler-11f have a significant amount of light gas, which indicates that they formed within a few million years of the system's formation.
"The historic milestones Kepler makes with each new discovery will determine the course of every exoplanet mission to follow," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Kepler, a space telescope, looks for planet signatures by measuring tiny decreases in the brightness of stars caused by planets crossing in front of them. This is known as a transit. Since transits of planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars occur about once a year and require three transits for verification, it is expected to take three years to locate and verify Earth-size planets orbiting sun-like stars.
The Kepler science team uses ground-based telescopes and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to review observations on planetary candidates and other objects of interest the spacecraft finds. The star field that Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra can only be seen from ground-based observatories in spring through early fall. The data from these other observations help determine which candidates can be validated as planets.

NASA's Hubble Finds Most Distant Galaxy Candidate Ever Seen in Universe

2011-01-28T04:53:00.000-08:00

Astronomers have pushed NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to its limits by finding what is likely to be the most distant object ever seen in the universe. The object's light traveled 13.2 billion years to reach Hubble, roughly 150 million years longer than the previous record holder. The age of the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years.
The tiny, dim object is a compact galaxy of blue stars that existed 480 million years after the big bang. More than 100 such mini-galaxies would be needed to make up our Milky Way. The new research offers surprising evidence that the rate of star birth in the early universe grew dramatically, increasing by about a factor of 10 from 480 million years to 650 million years after the big bang.
"NASA continues to reach for new heights, and this latest Hubble discovery will deepen our understanding of the universe and benefit generations to come,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who was the pilot of the space shuttle mission that carried Hubble to orbit. “We could only dream when we launched Hubble more than 20 years ago that it would have the ability to make these types of groundbreaking discoveries and rewrite textbooks.”

Astronomers don't know exactly when the first stars appeared in the universe, but every step farther from Earth takes them deeper into the early formative years when stars and galaxies began to emerge in the aftermath of the big bang.
"These observations provide us with our best insights yet into the earlier primeval objects that have yet to be found," said Rychard Bouwens of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Bouwens and Illingworth report the discovery in the Jan. 27 issue of the British science journal Nature.
This observation was made with the Wide Field Camera 3 starting just a few months after it was installed in the observatory in May 2009, during the last NASA space shuttle servicing mission to Hubble. After more than a year of detailed observations and analysis, the object was positively identified in the camera's Hubble Ultra Deep Field-Infrared data taken in the late summers of 2009 and 2010.
The object appears as a faint dot of starlight in the Hubble exposures. It is too young and too small to have the familiar spiral shape that is characteristic of galaxies in the local universe. Although its individual stars can't be resolved by Hubble, the evidence suggests this is a compact galaxy of hot stars formed more than 100-to-200 million years earlier from gas trapped in a pocket of dark matter.
"We're peering into an era where big changes are afoot," said Garth Illingworth of the University of California at Santa Cruz. "The rapid rate at which the star birth is changing tells us if we go a little further back in time we're going to see even more dramatic changes, closer to when the first galaxies were just starting to form."
The proto-galaxy is only visible at the farthest infrared wavelengths observable by Hubble. Observations of earlier times, when the first stars and galaxies were forming, will require Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
The hypothesized hierarchical growth of galaxies -- from stellar clumps to majestic spirals and ellipticals -- didn't become evident until the Hubble deep field exposures. The first 500 million years of the universe's existence, from a z of 1000 to 10, is the missing chapter in the hierarchical growth of galaxies. It's not clear how the universe assembled structure out of a darkening, cooling fireball of the big bang. As with a developing embryo, astronomers know there must have been an early period of rapid changes that would set the initial conditions to make the universe of galaxies what it is today.
"After 20 years of opening our eyes to the universe around us, Hubble continues to awe and surprise astronomers," said Jon Morse, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "It now offers a tantalizing look at the very edge of the known universe -- a frontier NASA strives to explore."
Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington.

Sex On Mars : Pregnancy, Fetal Development and Sex in Outer Space

2011-01-18T07:04:00.000-08:00

1. SEX IN SPACE

Performance of the sex act during a journey to Mars, may require potentially complex sexual gymnastics. On the other hand, any difficulties associated with sexual intercourse in space may turn out to be an easily solved problem of docking and entry as human are notorious for inventing ways of having sex despite all manner of logistical impediments (Joseph 2000a). However, what impact will sexual activity have on team dynamics and morale? And what if an astronaut became pregnant during the journey? Would the fetus be viable? How would this impact the crew?
NASA has no policy regarding sex in space and its repercussions (Office of Audits, 2010), other than to request, in 2008, that astronauts voluntarily abide by an "Astronaut Code of Professional Responsibility" and maintain "a constant commitment to honourable behaviour." As summed up by the NASA Astronaut Health Care System Review Committee (NASA 2007), "the absence of a code of conduct and its enforcement, and the lack of management action to limit inappropriate activity increases the likelihood of aberrant behaviour occurring and decreases the likelihood of such behaviour being reported."
According to NASA's review committee (NASA 2007), and a panel of experts assembled by the National Academy of Science (Longnecker and Molins 2006), this is a serious oversight: if male and female astronauts share a cramped space ship for years, surrounded by stars blazing in the blackness of night, thoughts are bound to turn to sex and romance. Thus, "ignoring the potential consequences of human sexuality is not appropriate when considering extended-duration missions" (Longnecker and Molins 2006), and this includes a human mission to Mars.

2. BIOLOGICAL DESTINY: SEX AND PREGNANCY

Biologically, females serve one purpose: to get pregnant (Joseph 2000a, 2001a,b, 2002). However, the human female is also the only female regardless of species, who is sexually receptive at all times and who has evolved secondary sexual characteristics, e.g. the enlarged breasts and derriere, which signal to males and females alike, her sexual availability (Joseph 2000a,b). Almost all non-human primate species that exhibit genital and breast swelling live in multi-male groups and they only develop these secondary sexual characteristic when sexually receptive (Clutton-Brock and Harvey, 1976; Fedigan, 1992; Wallis, 1992). These swellings serve to attract males and to arouse male sexual interest when the female is in estrus (Carpenter, 1942; Chevalier-Skolnikoff, 1974; Fedigan, 1992; Ford & Beach, 1951; Zuckerman, 1932) and the same can be said of the female human derriere and breasts which have evolved and increased in size over the course of human evolution so as to signal continual sexual availability (Joseph 1985, 2000a,b). Moreover, the human female has evolved the cognitive and intellectual capacity to employ cosmetics, perfumes, colorful clothing, push up bras, high heels, and so on, which draw attention to her breasts and derriere, and which emphasize and exaggerate her sexual availability by mimicking the signs of estrus common in other social primates (Joseph 2000a,b). And just as female primates and other female mammals seek sex with high status males whom they most prefer (Allen & Lemmon, 1981; Carpenter, 1942; Chevalier-Skolnikoff, 1974; Fedigan, 1992; Ford & Beach, 1951; Zuckerman, 1932), the same can be said of the human female (Joseph 2000a,b).

3. ASTRONAUTS HAVE SEX: THE CASE OF LISA NOWAK AND WILLIAM OEFELIEN

The frequency of sex between male and female astronauts is unknown, due in part to NASA's unofficial "mind your own business" policy (Mullane 2007) and its failure to mandate an enforceable code of responsibility which "decreases the likelihood of such behaviour being reported" (NASA 2007; Office of Audits, 2010). Inadvertently, NASA encourages sexual behavior by not restricting it, or training for it; and this could be disastrous for a human mission to Mars.
Michael Collins, whose second spaceflight was as commander and pilot for Apollo 11, is one of only 24 humans to have flown to the Moon. In his book Mission to Mars (Collins, 1990), he points out that the crew of a future mission to Mars will likely be multinational and consist of both males and females from different professional backgrounds. He believed that the presence of women on a long duration mission to Mars, would create tremendous sexual tensions and a "singles bar atmosphere...a charged mixture of sexually unattached competitors, would be a disaster."
Consider the well publicized case of female astronaut Navy Captain Lisa Nowak, and Shuttle pilot Cmdr. William Oefelein who flew together on the space shuttle and engaged in an adulterous relationship which allegedly almost led to the kidnapping and murder of Nowak's rival, Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman.
Nowak, a married mother of three, was a highly regarded professional who had logged more than 1,500 hours in different aircraft, had received a BS in aerospace engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1985; an MS degree in aeronautical engineering and a degree of aeronautical and astronautical engineer from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, and who was qualified as Mission Commander and an Electronic Warfare lead in her flight squadron (NASA 2006).
She subsequently underwent astronaut training, was qualified as a mission specialist, worked at Mission Control as prime communicator with on-orbit crews, subsequently flew on the Space Shuttle and performed complicated manuevers on a 13-day mission on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2006 (NASA 2006). The Shuttle pilot was Cmdr. William Oefelein (the father of two children and a former "Top Gun" Navy pilot) with whom she was having an adulterous sexual affair.
According to Orlando Police Department investigators (2007a,b), unknown to Nowak, Oefelein was also having sex with Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman who he had met while training for the Shuttle Mission which would carry him and Nowak to the ISS. Subsequently, when Nowak logged onto Oefelein's computer at his home one evening, and discovered emails to and from Oefelein and Shipman which made explicit their sexual activities, Nowak allegedly decided to kidnap and kill her rival. Nowak drove 900-miles from Houston to Orlando, dressed in a trench coat and a wig to disguise her identity, and then attacked Shipman in the parking lot of the Orlando International Airport (Doukopil 2007; Hauser 2007, Kluger, 2007). Detectives found 30 unused diapers in her car, and a rope and a knife which she'd packed for her confrontation with Shipman.
The exact nature of Oefelein's feelings toward Nowak when he turned his attentions to Shipman is unknown. According to Orlando Police Department investigators (2007b), Nowak thought the affair was ongoing. According to Shipman, Oefelein once called Shipman by Nowak's first name when they were in bed (Orlando Police Department investigators 2007b). What we know for a fact is that Nowak and Shipman were willingly having sex with Oefelein while Nowak and Oefelein worked together as astronauts and these affairs were ongoing before and after Oefelein and Nowak flew on a 13 day mission together. We should ask: what would have happened if commander Oefelein, captain Nowak, and captain Shipman, were flying together on a 9 month mission to Mars where they would be together for over 2 years?
One answer comes from studies of female primates. Primate females will compete for access to preferred males, and will fight and threaten one another for the privilege of having sex with these males (Fedigan, 1992). However, primate males also try to monopolize females, and high status males tend to attack and drive off low status males (Goodall, 1971, 1986; Nishida, 1990; Sade, 1967). Male primates will also rape high status estrus female primates who resist.

4. ROMANCE AND SIMULATED MISSIONS TO MARS

If a crew of 3 males and 3 females were sent on a journey to Mars, it can be predicted that males would experience sexual interest in the female astronauts, and female astronauts may or may not always reciprocate depending on their hormonal status, and the status and attractiveness of the males vying for their attention. Male astronauts may not always take "no" for an answer.
Consider for example, the case of 32-year-old Dr. Judith Lapierre, a Ph.D. health sciences specialist, sponsored by the Canadian Space Agency, who participated in a 110-day isolation experiment designed to simulate a long duration space mission (Oberg 2000; Warren, 2000). According to Dr. Lapierre, two of her Russian international crew mates became embroiled in a 10 minute violent blood splattering fight, immediately after which she was physically accosted and manhandled by the team commander, a Russian, who began forcibly kissing her and sticking his tongue in her mouth (Oberg, 2000; Warren, 2000).
Dr. Lapierre forcefully protested immediately before, during, and after the assault, and was so frightened of additional sexual attacks that locks were placed on the doors to the passageway linking her test module with the Russian module. She and her crew mates also hid all the knives as they feared more violent outbursts and physical assaults. The experiment, called Sphinx-99, was designed to observe group dynamics under both routine and emergency conditions.
In the case of Dr. Lapierre, it was the commander in charge of the mission who assaulted her and she appealed to outside supervisory personnel for help. On a human mission to Mars, there will be no doors which can lock out sexual predators, and no one from Mission Control who can come to a female astronaut's rescue.
If women accompany men on a human Mission to Mars, are they at risk for rape? Or is the greater risk, falling in love and then pregnancy?
Dr. Judith Lapierre, was the only woman in a crew of eight and who were confined to a replica of the Mir space station. In another simulation, which included more females, romantic relations developed between willing partners. According to Pletser (2010), during the EuroGeoMars project designed to simulate a mission to Mars, in the Utah desert, two crew members engaged in a romantic relationship which involved open displays of affection and physical intimacy such as holding hands, spending exclusive time together in the evenings and while performing chores and various duties. Although privacy prevailed behind closed doors, these romantic activities were not welcome by other team members, and it was felt this behavior was detrimental to the unity of the group and team social activities.
According to an analysis of NASA's (2005) "Bioastronautics Roadmap: a risk reduction strategy for human exploration of space" (Longnecker and Molins 2006), not only are male and female astronauts on extended missions or a mission to Mars likely to have sex, but failing to plan for and ignoring the likelihood of sexual activity could have profound and even life threatening consequences: "Areas of concern for the 30-month Mars mission include the potential psychological and physiological consequences of sexual activity, consequences that could endanger life, crew cohesion, performance, and mission success."
What are some possible consequences? Rape, murder, the monopolization of female astronauts by one or two high ranking males?

5. SEX IN THE ANTARCTIC

The polar environment has been viewed by numerous scientists, and NASA, as an excellent analog for long-duration space missions. The findings are unequivocal: men and women have sex and form temporary romantic and sexual relationships (Leon 2005; Palinkas 2002; Rosnet et al., 2004; Stuster 1996): "One cannot send unmarried men and women" to the Arctic "and not expect them to form bonds" (Leon 2005); bonds which often lead to pregnancies (Ayton 2006; Bowden 1999).
For example, on Australian stations in the Antarctic seven pregnancies were recorded between 1989 and 2006 (Ayton 2006), although "no one wants to become pregnant down there, no one wishes a baby to be born down there" (Bowden 1999). The general belief is that pregnancy in the Antarctic poses increased risk to the mother, to her unborn child, to the team, and to the success of the expedition program (Ayton 2006). Nevertheless, women team members, regardless of nationality, become pregnant.
The Antarctic has long been viewed as an excellent analog for long-duration space missions and the same preference for high ranking males has been observed (Stuster 1996). Female crew members seek sexual intimacies with senior, high status personnel to the exclusion of the other men.
In fact, just having women as members of the team in the Antarctic can cause significant sexual tension and stress for both men and women (Palinkas 2002; Rosnet et al., 2004; Stuster 1996). Some men harass females for sex, women will behave seductively, sexual frustrations increase, and romantic rivalries develop (Rosnet et al., 2004; Palinkas 2002; Stuster 1996). Moreover, women in these settings are perceived by men and women alike as having tremendous sexual power over men, and thus have greater control over men, as it is the female's choice as to which of the men will receive their sexual favors (Palinkas 2002). Although this "choosiness" can certainly enhance the morale of the male she chooses, group cohesion can be negatively impacted (Suster 1996).
alinkas (2002) provides an illustrative case, involving "John" who had left a wife and two children back home, was profoundly depressed, and then became embroiled in a sexual relationship with a female crew member, which resulted in an elevation of his mood and increased productivity. Although, temporary sexual relationships between male and female crew members are common in the Antarctic (Palinkas 2000; Stuster 1996), "John's" sexual relationship met with group disapproval.
When a woman chooses to have a sexual relationship during her sojourn in the Antarctic, it is often with senior (rather than junior) personnel, including the station leader who is usually seen as having the most status by the women, as well as an unfair advantage by the other men, thereby creating considerable tension and conflict (Stuster 1996).
On the other hand, most studies report that including women as team members has a very positive effect on morale (Rosnet et al., 2004; Leon 2005), especially if they are married and accompanied by their spouse (Leon 2005; Leon et al., 2003). For example, in a study of three married couples from different countries icelocked on a boat in the High Arctic for a 9 month period, partners provided each other with significant emotional support. Married partners were also instrumental in alleviating interpersonal and group tensions, and contributed to the effective functioning of the team (Leon et al., 2003).
Women also tend to provide emotional support to other team members and try to help solve interpersonal problems, behaviors which are not common in all-male groups (Leon 2005; Leon et al., 2003; Palinkas 2002; Rosnet et al., 2004). Women also serve as "peacemakers" reducing non-sexual competition, tensions, and arguments among the men, and the men often turn to women to share their emotional and personal concerns--though these same men have little interest in listening to these women share their feelings.

6. SEX AND OUTER SPACE

Like other female mammals, the human female is most likely to actively seek sex when she is ovulating and most likely to get pregnant (e.g., Gold & Burt, 1978; Matteo & Rissman, 1984; Udry & Morris, 1968, 1970; Wolfe, 1991). Hence, women become pregnant in the hostile conditions of the Antarctic; and there is no reason to suspect they may not become pregnant on Mars.
According to the Bioastronautics Roadmap (Longnecker and Molins 2006), "the risk of pregnancy might be mitigated by crew selection" and the use of contraceptive medications. Unfortunately, the many "questions about the efficacy, safety, and side effects of contraceptive medications may require that studies to answer these questions be completed prior to crew selection or that other measures be used to mitigate the risk of pregnancy."
But would these pregnancies lead to the first babies born in space, or on Mars?
Reproductive medical issues that pertain to astronauts have generally received scant clinical scientific attention, and there is little information on 1) the effect of long duration spaceflight and gravity on normal menstrual functioning including menstrual efflux and retrograde (intra-abdominal) menstruation, 2), the impact of microgravity on normal hypothalamic and pituitary functioning which in turn impacts and influences gender-specific hormone production and ovarian function, and 3) the effect of space radiation on fertility, reproductive success, and the future childbearing capacity of both men and women.
Of concern is the effect of microgravity (in space) and reduced gravity (once on Mars), on testosterone and estrogen secretions, the menstrual cycle, ovulation, and sperm production and viability. For example, if ovulation ceases the female astronaut may be continuously exposed to high levels of estrogen. By contrast, if the hypothalamus is impacted testosterone and estrogen levels may significantly decrease or increase, all of which would effect sexual and reproductive success. One concern is that "the exercise necessary for long-term cardiovascular and musculoskeletal fitness may be so strenuous enough that it may cause hypothalamic-induced hypogonadism with reduced serum estrogen levels" (Harm et al., 2001).

6. MOTHERS AND BABIES IN SPACE

There is now considerable evidence that biologically meaningful interactions between mothers and offspring are changed in the weightlessness of space (Crawford-Young 2006; Ronca 2003). Studies of young rat litters launched at 9 days of postnatal age or earlier, have been characterized by compromised maternal–offspring interactions and behavioral abnormalities (Ronca 2003). Although alterations in gravity would have a profound impact on the maternal-infant relationship, the stress of space flight would also be a factor. Prolonged and chronic stress would effect the mother, fetus, infant and child and disturbances in the mother-infant relationship would have severe effects on the brain and mind of the child (Joseph 1982, 1998, 1999a,b, 2000a,c). In addition, prenatal stress is a direct cause of fetal mortality, abnormal brain functioning, abnormal nursing behavior, and increased postnatal mortality.
However, a major concern must be the effects of pregnancy on the crew of a craft journeying to Mars. It can be surmised that all aspects of the mission would be put in jeopardy. Crew mates would unlikely to be supportive as their ability to perform their duties or to live comfortably would be impacted. Stress levels would rise, as would irritability, resulting in considerable hostility and anger directed toward the mother and father unless, perhaps, she had sex with multiple astronauts and the identity of the father was unknown.

7. SEX ON MARS: THE FIRST MARTIANS

Humans have sex and pregnancies result. If a baby is born on Mars, what predictions can be made?
From the moment of conception on Mars, the developing embryo-fetus-neonate-child, and its genome, will be subjected to a Martian environment markedly different from Earth, the most obvious distinctions being gravity, sunlight, radiation, temperature, and the biosphere. It is now well established that environmental influences early in life profoundly effects intelligence, learning, memory, vision, language, social-emotional functioning and the development, size, functioning, and interconnections of neurons and the brain (Casagrande & Joseph, 1978, 1980; Joseph 1979, 1982, 1998a,b, 2003; 1999a,b; Joseph, & Casagrande, 1978,1980; Joseph & Gallagher 1980); a function of the environment acting on gene activation vs suppression.
It has also been demonstrated "that populations contain a surprising amount of unexpressed genetic variation that is capable of affecting certain typically invariant traits" (Rutherford & Lindquist, 1998). There are thousands of "silent" genes within the human genome and the genome of other species, which code for or express functions which are as yet unknown (IHGSC 2001). However, fluctuations in temperature, oxygen levels, and diet can activate these "silent genes" (e.g., de Jong & Scharloo, 1976; Dykhuizen & Hart, 1980; Gibson & Hogness, 1996; Polaczyk et al., 1998; Rutherford 2003; Wade et al., 1997) which may express novel traits (Joseph 2009; Rutherford, 2003).
Environmental influences on gene expression are mediated through regulatory proteins such as Hsp90 (Feder and Hofmann 1999; Rutherford 2003; Sangster et al., 2004). Hsp90, for example, is a highly conserved multifunctional protein which targets multiple signal transducers and act as "molecular switches" which control gene expression in eukaryotes ranging from yeast to humans (Feder and Hofmann 1999; Rutherford 2003; Sangster et al., 2004). Hsp90 does not act alone but is part of a networks that includes other proteins such as Hsp70, and p23 (Pratt and Toft 2003). These proteins "normally suppress the expression of genetic variation affecting many developmental pathways" (Rutherford & Lindquist, 1998). These proteins prevent DNA expression by acting as a buffer between silent genes and the environment. However, changes in the environment can directly impact regulatory genes and change the configuration of these proteins thereby removing their buffering influences, such that silent genes are then activated which triggers the expression of silent characteristics (Joseph 2009). As demonstrated by Rutherford and Lindquist (1998, p. 341) Hsp90 acts as an "explicit molecular mechanism that assists the process of evolutionary change in response to the environment" and it accomplishes this through the "conditional release of stores of hidden morphological variation.... perhaps allowing for the rapid morphological radiations that are found in the fossil record."
As a variety of genes will be effected by the environment of Mars, then the genome and the development of a fetus conceived on Mars will be differentially effected as compared to the genome and the development of a fetus on Earth.
It must also be recognized that the testes, ovaries, and genome of the parents will have been subjected to markedly adverse environmental conditions as they traversed space to reach Mars (cf Crawford-Young 2006; Ma et al., 2008; Ronca 2003; Straume et al., 2010), and again once on Mars. It is also highly likely subsequent genetic alterations will be passed on to offspring born on Mars (cf NRC 1990, 2006b; Straume et al., 2010). As the environment acts on gene selection in parents and offspring, and as alterations in the environment and the genome effect evolutionary innovation and extinction (Joseph 1993, 2000b; 2009), then not just development but the evolution of humans on Mars will also be differentially effected as compared to humans of Earth.
Hence, if a child is conceived and born on Mars, we can predict at least three possible outcomes:
1) The child may suffer from mild to gross genetic, physical, and intellectual abnormalities (cf Serova et al., 1982, 1984; Ma et al., 2008; Otake et al., 1996; Reyners et al., 1992; Ronca 2003; Wong and DeSantis 1997).
2) The child will be completely healthy (cf Santy et al. 1982; Tao, et al., 2002).
3) Due to environmental influences on gene activation and differential and adaptive gene selection, although the child is completely healthy and normal it will be so different from children born on Earth, that it may appear abnormal simply because it is adapted, to varying degrees, to the Martian environment. The child will not be defective. Nor will it represent a new "race". Rather, it may represent a new species of humanity: The first Martian.
Naturally, all prospective parents will have to be counseled, before embarking to Mars, on these possible eventualities.

8. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Women have been an integral part of United States space crews since 1983, and world wide over 50 women have been selected as astronauts thereby providing considerable data on menstruation control and hygiene, contraception, and urination. As summed up by Jennings and Baker (2000) "there are no operational gynecological or reproductive constraints for women that would preclude their successful participation in the exploration of our nearby solar system." Perhaps the age of the female astronaut is the only major limiting factor (women of child bearing age only), if the goal is the colonization of Mars.
Women and men are sexual beings. The likelihood is male and female astronauts, traveling in the same space craft, will have sex during the long duration space-flight to Mars and after they arrive on Mars, even if substantial rules and steps are taken to prevent it. Therefore, training and preparations must be taken to anticipate all possible consequences and to regulate, guide, and modulate sexual activity; not for the purpose of preventing sex, but to prevent catastrophe.
Consider, for example, the possibility that the commander of the space craft may monopolize the female astronauts who prefer to mate with him because of his higher status relative to those he commands. Estrus female chimps may copulate up to 50 times in a day but only with a few of the available males who generally tend to be of high status (Goodall, 1986; Tutin, 1975). In one colony of free ranging rhesus monkeys, consisting of 150 adult females and 52 males, most of the estrus females actively sought out and mated with the same three dominant males (Carpenter, 1942). In some colonies, only about 20% of the males were responsible for 80% of the matings (Freedman, 1979). In one study of 25 male and 25 female captive baboons, five of the males possessed all the females (Zuckerman, 1932). In the military, one case came to light where a major general was having sexual relations with the wives of four of his subordinates (Burns, 1999). In studies of humans in long duration Antarctic analogue (Mars-like) conditions, females also prefer high ranking senior personnel, including station chiefs, often to the exclusion of those with a junior status (Stuster 1996).
Female primates will also attack and fight among themselves for the opportunity to have sex with a high ranking male (Fedigan, 1992). In 2007, captain Lisa Nowak allegedly planned to kidnapped and murder captain Colleen Shipman, her rival for the affections of space shuttle commander Oefelein.
Naturally, if a few males monopolize the available females, the other male astronauts will respond negatively and this may lead to violence. This can be avoided by a rule which relieves the monopolizer of command in cases of sexual monopolization, thereby stripping any male of the high status which made female astronauts prefer him to the other male astronauts.
Astronaut Michael Collins (1990), advocates sending only married couples on these voyages to better be able to survive the hardships of space. "An element of stability, of old-shoe comfort, would be introduced by having one's husband or wife to fall back on." Studies of married couples in the Antarctic support this view. Married couples are a source of stability and married females have a very positive effect on morale not just on their spouse but on the emotional stability of the group (Rosnetet al., 2004; Leon 2005; Leon et al., 2003). Married partners have been reported to have a calming effect and help to reduce interpersonal and group tensions thereby contributing to the effective functioning of the team (Leon et al., 2003).
However, the reality is: divorces are common and relationships often come to an end, and if either or both the male and female astronaut decided to change partners during the course of a voyage to Mars there may be conflict. The changing of partners could be a frequent occurrence during the mission to Mars and once on the Mars surface. Naturally feelings of jealousy, betrayal, and emotional upset would be expected. Therefore, if married couples are to be selected for a mission to Mars, the focus should be on those with very strong emotional bonds.
If the long term goal is the colonization of Mars, then it must be recognized that many older female astronauts are no longer capable of becoming pregnant or having children (Jennings and Baker 2008). This may be due to age or factors associated with exposure to the conditions of space travel. Therefore it is important to send younger versus older female astronauts; i.e. women who are in their early child-bearing years.
Although male and female astronauts could be trained to "share and share alike" so that sexual favors are provided equally to one and all, perhaps a better solution might be to send two space craft, one with an all male crew and another with an all female crew. Not only does this solve the problems which may arise from male-female sexual couplings in space, but it would prevent any possibility of pregnancy.
Naturally, humans are going to have sex and women are going to get pregnant. Pregnancies during a mission to Mars must be avoided. Pregnancies may lead to the death or abnormal development of the fetus. Pregnancy coupled with muscle atrophy, bone mineral loss, radiation, and cardiovascular activity may put the mother's life and the entire mission to Mars at risk.
Therefore, if issues of human sexuality are not addressed, and if necessary precautions are not taken, sex in space could lead to pregnancies, conflict, violence, and catastrophe. By contrast, once safely on the Red Planet, sex on Mars and the subsequent birth of the first Martian, would truly make humans a two planet species, and would be the first step to human colonization of the cosmos.

COURTESY -
Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D.
Emeritus, Brain Research Laboratory, Northern California

2011- New Challenges and Hope

2010-12-31T08:42:00.000-08:00

The discovery of the first Earth twin, the rise of robot avatars and major leaps forward for commercial space flight are just some of the developments that will define 2011 - or will they?
Last year, we used this slot to preview the stories we were most looking forward to in 2010. Some happened: the first cells with synthetic genomes were created and there is now a rough draft of the Neanderthal genome. Others... not so much. Even the first of NASA's shuttles to be scheduled for retirement failed to make its final flight.

This year we decided to take prediction science a step further, by enlisting the powers of Samuel Arbesman, who works on computational approaches to the study of science at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He is pioneering ways to employ scientometrics - a field that attempts to measure scientific progress - to make predictions about when new discoveries will occur. In September, he famously used the properties of known alien worlds to predict that the first life-friendly exoplanet had a 50 per cent chance of being found before May 2011; such a planet showed up a few weeks later.
We asked Arbesman to apply similar methods to a list of breakthroughs we thought might happen in 2011. He whittled this down to four that lent themselves to his methods, and attempted to calculate the probability of each one occurring in the next 12 months.
In the articles below you can gauge these predictions for yourself, along with four more stories that we reckon have a good chance of defining 2011.

Earth's doppelganger

Like meeting an estranged twin you didn't know you had, Earthlings will thrill at finding their planetary double. To predict the timing of this momentous occasion, we turned to a measure of "Earth-like-ness" devised earlier this year by one of us (Arbesman), along with Greg Laughlin of the University of California, Santa Cruz. This "habitability index" is based on estimates of a planet's average temperature and size. "Hot Jupiters", searingly hot worlds that orbit their hosts in just days, score close to zero, while one with similar properties to Earth would get a value of 1.
In September, plotting the index of each planet against the date of its discovery and extrapolating the resulting curves predicted that an Earth-like planet would be found by May 2011. Two weeks later, such a planet - Gliese 581 g - was spotted although the detection is awaiting further confirmation.Exoplanet-hunting may get a boost in February, when NASA's Kepler telescope is set to release a flood of data. Even if Earth's twin doesn't emerge then, there are plenty of other exoplanet searches that could spot it too. Samuel Arbesman and Rachel Courtland

The internet Boom

The internet will be weaving its way around the world for decades, but will there be fewer new users in 2011 than there were in 2010? The internet is already considered so important in Finland, Spain and Estonia that access is a legal right. And the list of online possibilities keeps on growing. In 2010, the launch of Apple's iPad and other touchscreen computers made surfing more fun and intuitive, while several smartphone operating systems, especially Google's Android, took off, extending the mobile net's reach.

The Electric car

Gentlemen - and women - plug in your engines. This will be the year of the electric car. No, seriously. After seemingly endless testing, technical hiccups and plain reluctance on the part of manufacturers to move electric vehicles from the concept phase to the showroom, it's finally happening. A fleet of new cars powered by the plug instead of the pump will take to the road in 2011.
Leading the charge is the Chevy Volt. With a 16-kilowatt-hour battery and a 110-kilowatt (149-horsepower) electric motor, it can go 60 kilometres on a single charge, plenty for commuting and weekend grocery runs. Critics point out that a 1.4-litre gasoline engine kicks in when the battery runs down, making the Volt a mere hybrid rather than a fully fledged electric car.

A new Hope Stem Cell

Human embryonic stem cells have inspired hope and loathing in almost equal measure. Next year hESCs could prove their worth, thanks to trials of two very different treatments.HESCs are unique in their ability to form all 200 tissues of the human body. In principle, cells derived from them could regenerate almost any tissue or organ. But because they come from embryos that are later destroyed, their use is controversial. To pacify the opposition the stem cells need to live up to expectation.
Within weeks, surgeons will inject retinal cells derived from hESCs into the eye of an individual with Stargardt's macular dystrophy, in the hope of delaying or preventing blindness, says Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Worcester, Massachusetts, which is developing the treatment. Eleven more patients are due to be injected in 2011. Any improvements in vision should be obvious and could take as little as six weeks to emerge.
The eye, however, is something of a special case. Insulated from the immune system, cells there are less likely to be rejected than in other parts of the body. To find out whether hESCs have broader therapeutic potential, we need to look to another, more ambitious trial.In October, a paralysed person received a spinal injection of hESC-derived oligodendrocyte progenitor cells. Ten more patients are due to receive cells in 2011. The stem cells should repair damaged nerves and prompt the growth of new ones, says Geron of Menlo Park, California, which is developing this treatment.
Unlike the ACT trial, the benefits may take longer to show themselves. If the spinal cells do no more than show they are safe, this will be an important milestone. Also in the pipeline are therapies to restore sight in people with age-related macular degeneration and blood cells for use in transfusions.

Private Space Taxies

PRIVATE companies have been promising for years that they can slash the cost of space travel, breaking the government monopoly on space flight and opening up the final frontier to the rest of us. At long last these efforts may be bearing fruit.On 8 December, the California-based firm SpaceX launched its Dragon capsule into orbit and safely parachuted it into the ocean - the first time a private company has achieved the feat.
Under a contract signed with NASA in 2008, the Dragon capsule will carry cargo to the International Space Station. SpaceX founder Elon Musk hopes it will eventually be permitted to carry astronauts as well.
NASA, facing the retirement of the shuttle fleet in 2011, is actively encouraging the development of private space taxis. In 2010 alone it distributed $50 million to private space firms, including SpaceX, and Congress is considering spending hundreds of millions more in 2011.
So what do we have to look forward to in 2011? SpaceX plans two more demonstration flights, the first of which will likely blast off mid-year and is expected to fly within a few kilometres of the ISS. The second would actually dock with the station, marking another first for a non-governmental spacecraft.
Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by airline mogul Richard Branson, is also set to take some giant leaps forward in 2011

Astronomy Events and Space Launches in 2011

2 January – Conjunction between Jupiter and Uranus at 13:41 UTC, with Jupiter 34 minutes of arc to the south; the third conjunction of a triple Conjunction.
4 January – Partial Solar Eclipse visible over most of Europe, the Arabian peninsula, North Africa, and Western Asia.
3 February - Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-133 Launch, Lunch Time-1:37 am EDT
18 March – NASA's MESSENGER Spaceraft is scheduled to arrive in orbit around Mercury.
18 March – NASA's Pluto probe New Horions will cross the orbit of Uranus, after a five-year journey. This will be faster than Voyager-2, which took eight years.
01 April – Space shuttle Endeavour mission STS-134 Launch. Launch Time 3:15 am EDT . The Space Shuttle will undertake its final mission before retirement.
Pakistan will launch its first space satellite.
May - Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and Mars all visible within a roughly 6° area of sky.
1 June – Partial solar eclipse in the Arctic.
15 June – Total Lunar Eclipse, mainly visible in Africa, India, and the Middle East.
July - The Dawn Spaceraft is scheduled to arrive at the dwarf planet Vesta during July. The exact date remains uncertain.
1 July – Partial Solar Eclipse off the coast of Antarctica.
10 July – Neptune completes its first full orbit since its discovery in 1846
15 July – The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the second Dragon spacecraft, called Dragon C2. The mission will demonstrate proximity operations during an approach within 6 miles of the International Space Station.
05 August – First Mission to Jupiter NASA's Juno spacecraft will launch at 12:10 pm to 1:40 pm EDT. Juno will investigate the giant planet's formation, evolution and structure from an elliptical orbit. Mission Juno will reach Jupiter in 2016
15 August – The comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova will pass within 0.0601AU about 8,995,100 km of Earth
08 September – NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission will launch at 8:35 am - 9:14 am EDT. GRAIL includes two spacecraft in lunar orbit to study the moon's interior and thermal evolution.
08 October – The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the third Dragon spacecraft, called Dragon C3 to resupply missions to the International Space Station.
25 November – Partial Solar Eclipse in Antarctica.
25 November – NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission will launch at 10:21 am from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Mars Science Laboratory mission is the Curiosity rover, which will assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life and to determine the planet's habitability.
07 December – Dragon C4 will be the fourth rocket launched by SpaceX. This mission will be the first operational cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station
10 December – Total Lunar Eclipse, visible mainly in Asia, Australia and Alaska.
25 December - Russia's flagship planetary mission, Phobos-Grunt will launch. Phobos-Grunt Mission's key goal is landing on the surface of the Martian moon Phobos and returning its soil samples back to Earth.
- Predicted Solar Maximum also predicted by other research groups for 2012
- China’s permanent space station, will be launched anytime this year. The craft, an orbiting laboratory known in Mandarin as Tiangong-1, would initially serve as a docking station for other spacecraft.

A water world 40 Light Year away !

2010-12-06T03:52:00.000-08:00

The extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, GJ 1214b was discovered last year orbiting a dim, red star about 40 light-years from Earth. The planet is about 2.7 times larger than Earth and about 6.5 times more massive.
Based on the planet's density, astronomers estimate that GJ 1214b would be about three-quarters water with a solid core and an atmosphere—not unlike Earth. But it seems the similarities stop there. The planet is so close to its star that any water would be turned to vapor, and the atmosphere should be so thick that the pressure would be immense.
Now new measurements show that GJ 1214b's atmosphere is made of either dense, ultrahot steam or a noxious, cloudy haze of hydrogen. "Either way, it would be unpleasant if you were there," said Greg Laughlin, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the study.

Starlight Carries Chemical Imprints
Astronomers were able to "sample" the planet's atmosphere by watching the world pass in front of its host star, as seen from Earth.Using the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope in Chile, the team captured the light filtered around the edges of the planet when the world was blocking the star."That light has imprinted on it the signature of chemicals in the atmosphere," said study leader Jacob Bean of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Similar measurements have revealed gases such as hydrogen and sodium in the atmospheres of so-called hot Jupiters, exoplanets that are more massive than our gas giants but that orbit very close to their host stars.This is the first time, however, that astronomers have been able to analyze the atmosphere of an Earth-size planet.

Planet Has "Noxious Soup" or Steamy Blanket?
The data show that GJ 1214b's atmosphere isn't, as previously theorized, a puffy, cloud-free layer of mainly hydrogen gas. Instead the atmosphere appears to block a significant amount of light, the team reports in this week's issue of the journal Nature. For such an atmosphere to be made mostly of hydrogen, it must be topped by a thick layer of clouds like the atmosphere of Venus.
If that's the scenario, "it would make the atmospheres around the worst oil refineries look absolutely pristine," UC Santa Cruz's Laughlin said. Light that does filter through the haze would trigger chemical reactions in the hydrogen gas, creating a "noxious soup of stuff" near the planet's surface.
However, based on the new data, it's also possible that GJ 1214b's atmosphere is a dense blanket of hot water vapor, aka steam. In that case, "it would be the most unique exoplanet we've found so far," study leader Bean said. "We have nothing like that in our solar system."

10 Questions with Pr. Hawking

2010-11-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

If God doesn't exist, why did the concept of his existence become almost universal?

I don't claim that God doesn't exist. God is the name people give to the reason we are here. But I think that reason is the laws of physics rather than someone with whom one can have a personal relationship.An impersonal God.
Does the universe end? If so, what is beyond it?

Observations indicate that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. It will expand forever, getting emptier and darker. Although the universe doesn't have an end, it had a beginning in the Big Bang. One might ask what is before that, but the answer is that there is nowhere before the Big Bang, just as there is nowhere south of the South Pole.

Do you think our civilization will survive long enough to make the leap to deeper space?

I think we have a good chance of surviving long enough to colonize the solar system. However, there is nowhere else in the solar system as suitable as the Earth, so it is not clear if we would survive if the Earth was made unfit for habitation. To ensure our long-term survival, we need to reach the stars. That will take much longer. Let's hope we can last until then.

If you could talk to Albert Einstein, what would you say?

I would ask him why he didn't believe in black holes. The field equations of his theory of relativity imply that a large star or cloud of gas would collapse in on itself and form a black hole. Einstein was aware of this but somehow managed to convince himself that something like an explosion would always occur to throw off mass and prevent the formation of a black hole. What if there was no explosion?

Which scientific discovery or advance would you like to see in your lifetime?

I would like nuclear fusion to become a practical power source. It would provide an inexhaustible supply of energy, without pollution or global warming.

What do you believe happens to our consciousness after death?

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one's memories.

Given your reputation as a brilliant physicist, what ordinary interests do you have that might surprise people?

I enjoy all forms of music--pop, classical and opera. I also share an interest in Formula One racing with my son Tim.

Do you feel that your physical limitations have helped or hindered your study?

Although I was unfortunate enough to get motor neuron disease, I have been very fortunate in almost everything else. I was lucky to be working in theoretical physics, one of the few areas in which disability was not a serious handicap, and to hit the jackpot with my popular books.

Does it feel like a huge responsibility to have people expecting you to have all the answers to life's mysteries?

I certainly don't have the answers to all life's problems. While physics and mathematics may tell us how the universe began, they are not much use in predicting human behavior because there are far too many equations to solve. I'm no better than anyone else at understanding what makes people tick, particularly women.

Do you think there will ever come a time when mankind understands all there is to understand about physics?

I hope not. I would be out of a job.

Discovery of First Alien planet of outside our Milky Way

2010-11-20T07:30:00.000-08:00

Astronomers have confirmed the first discovery of an alien planet in our Milky Way that came from another galaxy.The Jupiter-like planet orbits a star that was born in another galaxy and later captured by our own Milky Way sometime between 6 billion and 9 billion years ago, researchers said. A side effect of the galactic cannibalism brought a faraway planet within astronomers' reach for the first time ever.
"This is very exciting," said study co-author Rainer Klement of the Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany. "We have no ability to directly observe stars in foreign galaxies for planets and confirm them." Stars currently residing in other galaxies are simply too far away, Klement added.
The find may also force astronomers to rethink their ideas about planet formation and survival, researchers said, since it's the first planet ever discovered to be circling a star that is both very old and extremely metal-poor. Metal-poor stars are lacking in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.
The newfound planet, called HIP 13044b, survived through its star's red-giant phase, which our own sun will enter in about 5 billion years. So studying it could offer clues about the fate of our solar system as well, researchers said. HIP 13044b sits extremely close to its parent star, which has now contracted again. The planet completes an orbit every 16.2 days, and it comes within about 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) of its parent star at closest approach — just 5.5 percent of the distance between Earth and the sun.
Searching for telltale tugs
The newly discovered alien planet is at least 25 percent more massive than Jupiter, researchers said. It orbits the star HIP 13044 about 2,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Fornax. HIP 13044 is about as massive as the sun, and it is nearing the end of its life. The star has already gone through its red giant phase — when sun-like stars bloat enormously after exhausting the hydrogen fuel in their cores.
The star is also composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. It is less than 1 percent as metal-rich as our sun, making it the most metal-poor star known to host a planet, researchers said.
The research team scrutinized HIP 13044's movement using a telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile. After six months of observing, they detected tiny movements that betrayed the gravitational tug of an orbiting planet. "For me, it was a big surprise," said study lead author Johny Setiawan, also of MPIA. "I was not expecting it in the beginning." Setiawan, Klement and their colleagues report their results online in the Nov. 18 issue of Science.

An extragalactic origin

Last year, another research team announced it may have detected a planet in the Andromeda galaxy. However, that faraway find will be nearly impossible to confirm. The astronomers performing that previous study used a method called gravitational microlensing, which only works when a planet-hosting star happens to line up with another star. Such events happen very rarely.
HIP 13044, on the other hand, belongs to the Helmi stream of stars that were once part of a nearby dwarf galaxy. Astronomers believe our own Milky Way gobbled up the Helmi stream between 6 billion to 9 billion years ago.While it's technically possible that the planet was born in the Milky Way and then stripped from its parent star by the interloping HIP 13044, the odds of that happening are minuscule, researchers said.
So HIP 13044 almost certainly has an extragalactic origin.
"We can be pretty sure about that," Klement told. "Stellar encounters in the Milky Way essentially don't occur. The chance that the star captured the planet from another star by an encounter is very, very unlikely."

Rethinking theories of planet formation

Most of the nearly 500 alien planets discovered so far orbit metal-rich stars, researchers said. And a metal-rich star is fundamental to the dominant theory explaining how giant planets form — the core-accretion model. This model posits that dust and gas particles circling a young star cling together and gradually become larger, forming rocks, boulders and eventually the stony cores of giant, gassy planets like HIP 13044b.
Because its parent star is so metal-poor, HIP 13044b may have formed in a different way, researchers said. The planet may have arisen via the gravitational attraction between gas molecules, through a process termed the disk-instability model. So it may not have a rocky core at all.
"You are able to form pure gas planets by this method," Klement said. The fact that such a metal-poor star can host planets should inspire astronomers to look at other stars like it, Klement added. Astronomers haven't examined many up to this point, so they don't have a good handle on how frequently planets might pop up around low-metal stars.
The discovery also hints that planets may have studded the cosmos from the universe's early days — back when pretty much all stars were metal-poor. "You can think of the very first stars in the universe, or the second or third generation of stars," Klement said. "Could they already have been able to form planets? That's a very fascinating question."

Vision of our solar system's fate?

Our own sun is on the same stellar-evolution track as HIP 13044; scientists predict it will blot into a red giant in 5 billion years or so. So astronomers may be able to learn something about the fate of our solar system by studying HIP 10344b and its parent star, researchers said.
That fate would not be pretty for Earth. HIP 13044b likely once orbited much farther away from its star but spiraled closer and closer during the red giant phase due to friction with the swollen star's envelope, researchers said. Any more interior planets would have been destroyed during this process.
When our own sun enters its red giant phase, Earth will likely get cooked.
"The inner planets, including Earth, maybe will not survive," Setiawan told . "But Jupiter, Saturn and the outer planets might move to closer-in orbits, exactly like we detected."
HIP 13044b is a survivor, but it won't live forever. Its parent star is due to expand again in the next phase of its stellar evolution, researchers said, and this time the planet will almost certainly be engulfed.

Milky Way may have inflated two huge bubbles of gamma rays

2010-11-20T07:22:00.000-08:00

An ancient eruption of a supermassive black hole in the Milky Way may have inflated two huge bubbles of gamma rays which were just now discovered and are considered a new type of astronomical object.
"It shows, once again, that the universe is full of surprises," said Jon Morse, director of astrophysics at NASA headquarters. Combined, the bubbles, which are aligned at the center of the Milky Way, span a vast distance of about 50,000 light-years. The structures are very distinct, with defined edges, and have as much energy in them as 100,000 supernova.
They were found with NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope, which surveys the sky every three hours for the highest-energy light.Among the 1,500 sources of gamma rays Fermi has mapped so far, nothing resembles the bubble-shaped structures, which stretch across more than half of the visible sky, from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus.
"You have to ask where could energy like that come from," said astronomer Doug Finkbeiner, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.Hints of the bubbles appeared years earlier in X-ray surveys and in maps of the cosmic microwave background radiation stemming from the Big Bang explosion.
"We had a hypothesis before Fermi launched that there should be some gamma ray emission in this part of the sky. We were thinking something a bit more modest, maybe something within 10 or 20 or 30 degrees of the center, not these giant structures reaching all the way up to 50 degrees," Finkbeiner said.
Scientists have two possible explanations for the Fermi bubbles. Theory one: a burst of star-formation at the center of the galaxy generated short-lived massive stars with energetic winds that blasted high-energy particles out into space.
Finkbeiner points out that it would take some time to accumulate as much energy as what's inside the bubbles, however. He favors an alternative theory: an outburst from the supermassive black hole lurking in the center of the galaxy. In other galaxies, astronomers have seen evidence for jets of particles triggered by matter that is being pulled into a black hole, objects that have so much gravitational pull that not even light can escape their grasp.
There's no evidence that the Milky Way's central black hole, which is about 400 million times more massive than our sun, has jets, but astronomers suspect it might have in the past."We know it didn't get to be that big by sitting there quietly all the time. It certainly has had big accretion events in the past, where material falls on it and then some of that material comes back out as high-energy particles blasted out in the form of a jet," Finkbeiner said.
"We've never really seen very good evidence of it. This might be the first evidence for a major outburst of the black hole at the center of the galaxy. When it's going full-blast … it would not actually take an enormous amount of time -- maybe 10,000 or 100,000 years -- for it to produce enough energy to create these structures," Finkbeiner said.
"This result is very exciting," added Fermi scientist Simona Murgia, with the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif. "These features could reveal unexpected and very important physical processes in our galaxy that until now we knew nothing about despite the fact that these features could possibly be almost as large as the Milky Way and might have been around for millions of years."

LHC creates mini big bangs

2010-11-09T06:40:00.000-08:00

The world's largest particle smasher - the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, near Geneva in Switzerland - has seen the highest temperatures ever produced by a science experiment, thanks to a flurry of "mini big bangs".
On 7 November, the LHC started smashing lead ions head-on, instead of the usual proton-proton collisions. This produced what are referred to as mini big bangs: dense fireballs that have temperatures of about 10 trillion °C.
At such temperatures and energies, the nuclei of atoms melt into a mix of their constituent quarks and gluons. The fireball is known as a quark-gluon plasma. The formation of the plasma is a key prediction of the extremely successful theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), which tells us that as we go back to earlier and earlier times in the universe's history, the strength of strong interactions falls almost to zero. The discovery of this so-called "asymptotic freedom" is what resulted in a Nobel Prize for David Politzer, Frank Wilczek and David Gross in 2004.
The quark-gluon plasma has been studied in great detail at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Upton, New York, which smashes gold ions head-on. In February 2010, RHIC researchers reported the creation of plasma that had temperatures of 4 trillion °C.
Now, thanks to a 287 TeV beam, the LHC's lead ions are colliding with energies about 13.5 times greater than what has been achieved at RHIC.The resultant plasma fireballs will allow physicists at CERN using the 10,000-tonne ALICE (A Large Heavy Ion Experiment) detector to study the universe as it was about a millionth of a second after the big bang.
One can only wonder about what surprises are in store. At RHIC, the biggest surprise was that the quark-gluon plasma, instead of being a gas, acts like a perfect liquid.

World Action Plan to Combat Asteroid Threat

2010-11-09T06:36:00.000-08:00

Space agencies around the world are working to be ready to coordinate their response to any potentially harmful asteroid headed for Earth.To help focus a world-class planetary defense against threatening near-Earth objects, the space experts are seeking to establish a high-level Mission Planning and Operations Group, or MPOG for short.
Veteran astronauts and space planners gathered here at the European Space Agency's European Space Operations Center Oct. 27-29 to shape the asteroid threat response plan and establish an Information Analysis and Warning Network.
The MPOG workshop was organized by the European Space Agency, the Association of Space Explorers and Secure World Foundation (for whom this columnist is a research associate).
"It was the first face-to-face meeting of representatives from space agencies wrestling with the tough geopolitical and technical issues which they will face when we're confronted with an actual impact threat," said former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, a workshop leader and longtime activist on ways to protect the Earth from future asteroid impacts.

Sticky issues with space rocks

While the technical issues – early warning and deflection – are challenging, they essentially pale in comparison with the very sticky issues that will confront the community of nations when they have to make a collective decision to act on an actual threat, Schweickart told SPACE.com. [5 Reasons to Care About Asteroids]
"This really has to be a collective decision," Schweickart said, "since, in the deflection process, there will be a trail of nations across which the impact point moves as we shift it off the Earth."
The space agencies in the MPOG workshop grappled with the questions of what would have to be performed and how they would do it, Schweickart said, "either as the 'designated hitter,' as it were ... or collectively in some way. These are difficult geopolitical challenges, and the workshop provided the first face-to-face setting for many of the space agencies to grapple with it together."
The workshop touched upon a number of strategies to deflect an incoming object, but there was also discussion of using a "physics package," space slang for a nuclear bomb if need be. There remains a good deal of discussion over which deflection strategy best serves the planet and humankind – if time is on our side.
Asteroid workshop findings.
Participants agreed that the "sooner the better" would be the best approach to identifying a menacing NEO. Early identification would enable a much more coordinated approach between nations to fend off any head-on collision between our sweet world and a large space rock.
"Understanding how to react if we were really faced with an imminent asteroid impact threat is very important. This workshop was an important part of defining the decision process," said Detlef Koschny, Near-Earth Object segment manager of ESA in the Netherlands and a coordinator of the MPOG workshop.

In a post-workshop handout, the attendees concluded that -

A Mission Planning and Operations Group should be established.

The MPOG should identify to space agencies the technical issues involved in planetary defense, to take advantage of synergies between human exploration, science, and study of the NEO hazard.

The MPOG should propose research themes in NEO deflection for use by space agencies, addressing those areas most critical for effective deflection strategies.

There is great value in finding hazardous NEOs early, to reduce the costs of deflection missions. Early detection would require upgraded NEO search and tracking capabilities.

What next?

The results of the workshop will be folded into the ongoing work of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in its sessions next spring and summer. This will all come together as a set of recommendations or procedures that will be put before the U.N. General Assembly in about a year.
"By coordinating future MPOG meetings with the asteroid decision-making efforts in the U.N., the spacefaring nations can prepare for joint action against a future asteroid impact," said former astronaut Tom Jones, chairman of the Association of Space Explorers' Committee on Near-Earth Objects.
"This meeting advanced the technical solutions we'll need to respond to an impact threat," Jones added.
"The U.N. process addresses international decision-making ... when to mount a deflection campaign. Both efforts will need to progress far beyond these early discussions to create a true asteroid response capability," Jones told SPACE.com.

ESA's multi-pronged approach

Moving out on the planetary defense issue is the European Space Agency. For its part, the ESA has kick-started a multi-pronged and phased Space Situational Awareness Preparatory Program, said Nicolas Bobrinsky, who is head of the effort.
The initiative would give Europe the capability to watch for objects and natural phenomena that could harm satellites in orbit or facilities on the ground. Bobrinsky noted that an asteroid impact would release devastating kinetic energy causing a myriad of woes, from blast waves and tsunamis to atmospheric disturbances and electromagnetic effects.
The NEO component of the ESA plan includes discovery, identification and orbit-prediction functions, as well as a future civil warning capability. Full operational services are to be implemented in 2012-19.
Meanwhile, Schweickart said the truism in the forefront of the NEO-versus-Earth dialogue today is, "Find them early, find them early, and find them early."
"Upgrading our telescopic capability to find the far more numerous smaller but still very dangerous asteroids is the most important investment we can make," Schweickart concluded.

Superstitious Beliefs, now becoming more common

2010-11-01T06:40:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again. Ghosts, goblins and other spooky characters come out from the shadows and into our everyday lives.For most people, the thrill lasts for a few weeks each October. But for true believers, the paranormal is an everyday fact, not just a holiday joke.

To understand what drives some people to truly believe, two sociologists visited psychic fairs, spent nights in haunted houses, trekked with Bigfoot hunters, sat in on support groups for people who had been abducted by aliens, and conducted two nationwide surveys.

Contrary to common stereotypes, the research revealed no single profile of a person who accepts the paranormal. Believers ranged from free-spirited types with low incomes and little education to high-powered businessmen. Some were drifters; others were brain surgeons.
Why people believed also varied, the researchers report in a new book, called "Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture." For some, the paranormal served as just another way of explaining the world. For others, extraordinary phenomena offered opportunities to chase mysteries, experience thrills and even achieve celebrity status, if they could actually find proof. "It's almost like an adult way to get that kidlike need for adventure and exploration," said co-author Christopher Bader, of Baylor University in Waco, Texas. "Other people are sitting at home and renting videos, but you're sitting in a haunted house that is infested with demons."
"These guys who are hunting Bigfoot are out chasing a monster," he added. "I could see the real appeal in going out for weekend and never knowing what you might find." There is no hard data on how common it is to believe in the paranormal, which Bader and co-author Carson Mencken define as beliefs or experiences that are not fully accepted by science or religion.
But trends in television programming offer a sense that there is a widespread interest in mystical phenomena that is becoming more common. In the 1970s and 80s, Bader said, there were maybe one or two paranormal-themed shows in the TV line-up. Today, there are dozens, including programs about ghost hunters, psychic kids, haunted homes and even possessed pets.
Plenty of scientists have put energy into debunking paranormal claims. Bader and Mencken wanted to look instead at what drives people to believe.They started with two nationwide surveys that interviewed a total of more than 3,000 Americans about their beliefs, experiences and interests.
When the scientists broke down the results, they found that people who are moderately religious are most likely to believe in the paranormal. This could be because they are open enough to believe in the unknown, but not so rigid in their religious beliefs to reject mysterious experiences altogether.
The numbers also showed that different types of paranormal entities appeal to different demographics. Women, for instance, are most likely to believe they live in haunted houses. College graduates are most likely to have out-of-body experiences. Unmarried white men are most likely to believe in UFOs.Bigfoot hunters were perhaps the most surprising group, Bader said. They defied all stereotypes of paranormal pursuers who wear flowing clothes and commune with spirits.

Instead, they were very serious, extremely conventional and often highly professional. In fact, their beliefs contradicted their lifestyles so much that many of them were plagued by anxiety, which drove them even further to stick to their beliefs. "Their friends and family consider them kooky," Bader said. "Everyone is saying they're nuts. So, they have a real aggressive style and seriousness of purpose. They want to prove everyone wrong."

For one hunter, the search began one day when he was out in the woods and, he swears, he saw Bigfoot cross his path. "Imagine the stress that would put on your life," Bader said. "You consider yourself a normal, smart guy, and you think you just saw a giant monkey walk in front of you. Now, you have to fit that into your life."

"These are not people trying to explain a crazy world," he added. "They are trying to prove to themselves that they aren't crazy." Regardless of the person or the phenomenon, paranormal experiences are purely quirks of the human brain, said Michael Shermer, executive director of the Skeptics Society, an educational organization, and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine. Whether it's hearing creaks in an old house or watching dots move randomly on a computer screen, he said, people tend to look for patterns and meanings in everything. "The default condition in brain is that all patterns are real," Shermer said. "It's just what we do."

Rubbish Astrology?

2010-11-01T06:30:00.000-07:00

Like many astronomers, I found myself (yet again) in an uncomfortable position last weekend. A stranger, upon learning I was an astronomer, said, "Oh, I'm a Gemini, what are you?" How many more times can I smile sweetly back, with a laugh, and say: "I'm not an astrologer, that's not what I do, I'm an astronomer."? According to the latest statistics there are more people now than ever before who read their star signs in the daily news. We live in a time that is more scientifically aware than any other period in history and yet people still believe the stars and planets can determine their fate.
Interestingly, astronomy and astrology share the same origins; in fact it's accurate to say that astrology came first. Ancient civilizations tried to find sense in the happenings in the sky and attribute them to their lives. We soon learned that perhaps there was no mystical force determining our future and the two subjects split into astronomy (the branch of physics that studies celestial bodies and the Universe as a whole) and astrology (a pseudoscience claiming divination by the positions of the planets, sun and moon).
Today though, astrology has turned into nothing more than a fairground act and astronomy has turned into a science having to point out the difference! And this is where I come in. I thought it was interesting, as an (ahem) impartial writer that I highlight a couple of stumbling blocks supporting my belief that astrology really is a load of rubbish.
The zodiac is the band around the sky where the sun, moon and planets move through. The signs of the zodiac are the constellations of stars within this band. Both astronomers and astrologers agree on this bit.
But according to astrologers there are 12 signs of the zodiac. Wrong! There are 13 signs of the zodiac; Ophiuchus is the 'new' one yet for some curious reason I have never come across an Ophiuchian!
Taking the concept of the signs of the zodiac, I was born in July which means that when I was born the sun was in Cancer. Wrong again. Originally yes, the sun would have been in Cancer when the star/sun charts were produced about 2000 years ago. But in reality, the wobble of the Earth on its axis -- which we call "precession" -- has led to them being all out of sync.
In fact, when I was born, way back in July 1973, the Sun was in Gemini. you're all reading the wrong star signs! All those astrology columns you've read that seemed spot-on were a fluke. Surprising eh? The last point I want to throw out to the cyber world is the discovery of planets. Until 1781 there were only five planets known to affect us in the minds of astrologers: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
In 1781, astronomer Sir William Herschel spotted an object moving in the sky and originally thought it was a comet but later realized its planetary nature. The object was the gas giant Uranus. In 1846, another discovery was confirmed, the eighth planet in the solar system. This was an ingenious piece of work combining mathematics and observation. Astronomers noticed some peculiarities in the way Uranus moved through the sky and, after painstaking observation, concluded it must have been the gravitational tug from another object causing its curious motion. The position of the new planet was calculated from the movements of Uranus and subsequently identified telescopically. Neptune had been found.
The interesting thing here is that until the scientific discovery of the two new planets, astrologers had not once mentioned them. Following their discovery they found their way into astrological predictions. If they had a real impact on our lives, surely astrologers should have discovered them or at least known they were out there before astronomers?
Finally, don't even get me started on the nature of the magic/fairy dust that allows a planet to affect us here on Earth. Science has shown us through measurement, observation and experimentation that there are four forces in the Universe: electromagnetism, strong interaction, weak interaction and gravitation. For reasons too detailed to go into in this article, none of them can impact humanity purely from the positions of the stars in the sky or how aligned the planets are.
If there is some mystical force (other than the fundamental four above) affecting our lives from the planets, then clearly distance is no object for this force as it doesn't matter if a planet or star is near or far. How does it work, then, that we have found hundreds of exoplanets orbiting other stars? Or that there are over 200 billion stars in the Milky Way? Surely that 'force' would also be affecting us. Thankfully it doesn't, otherwise we would all be running round as complete loonies with all these 'influences' flying at us from all directions.

As you can tell, I'm not fond of astrology. It's all about telling people what they want to hear and us fragile human’s wanting something to believe in. After all, I've never once heard someone read out their predictions telling them that today is going to be a rubbish day; may as well just stay in bed.

Doubts about Existence of Gliese-581g

2010-10-14T03:40:00.000-07:00

Ever since the announcement of the discovery of exoplanet Gliese 581g, there has been a buzz in the news, on websites, Twitter – pretty much everywhere, about the first potentially habitable extrasolar planet. But the past couple of days there has been a different sort of buzz about this distant world. Two stories have surfaced and they both can’t be true. The first one is fairly off the deep end: an astrophysicist from Australia claims that while doing a SETI search two years ago, he picked up a “suspicious signal” from the vicinity of the Gliese 581 system, and a couple of websites have connected some dots between that signal and a potentially habitable Gliese 581g.
The second one is more sobering. At an International Astronomical Union meeting this week, other astronomers have raised doubts whether Gliese 581g actually exists. Unless you’ve been under a rock the past two weeks, you likely know that this newest and most promising of potential habitable extra solar planets was described by the scientists who discovered it as a rocky world about 3 times the mass of Earth, and it orbits within the red dwarf star’s habitable zone, the place that is just right for water to remain as a liquid on a planetary surface. And it is fairly close to us, too, at about 20 light years away, located in the constellation Libra.
Also announced was the discovery of planet ‘f’, a 7- Earth mass planet with a 433-day orbit around Gliese 581. Astronomer Steven Vogt announced the discoveries by his team, which used the HIRES instrument on the Keck I telescope in Hawaii. They also used 119 measurements from the HARPS instrument on the La Silla telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
On Monday, Steinn Siggurdson broke the news on his Dynamics of Cats blog that an astronomer who works on HARPS data at the Geneva Observatory, said at the IAU meeting this week that his team could not confirm the existence of Gliese 581 g. In an article on the Astrobiology Magazine website today (Tuesday) the astronomer, Francesco Pepe, said that not only can they not confirm the existence of planet ‘g’, but also the ‘f’ planet.
In 2009, the Geneva team announced the discovery of planet ‘e’ in the Gliese 581 solar system. At approximately 1.9 Earth masses, this ‘e’ planet is the lowest mass extrasolar planet found at that time, and has a 3.15-day orbital period around the star.Pepe said they have studied this planet-rich system frequently, gathering a total of 180 data points in 6.5 years (with about 60 of those data points since 2009) and they can only see evidence of the 4 previously announced planets b, c, d, and e.
There is a signal which could possibly be f, but the signal amplitude of this potential fifth planet is very low and basically at the level of the measurement noise, said Pepe..

Global warming theory in chaos after report finds increased solar activity may COOL the Earth

2010-10-07T08:56:00.000-07:00

A puzzling discovery has raised a question mark over the Sun's impact on climate change and could provide ammunition for sceptics, it was revealed today. Until now it has been assumed that less activity from the Sun equates to less warming of the Earth. But the new research, which focuses on a three-year snapshot of time between 2004 and 2007, suggests the opposite may be true.
As solar activity waned at the end of one of the Sun's 11-year cycles, the new data show the amount of energy reaching the Earth at visible wavelengths rose rather than fell. Scientists believe it may also be possible that during the next up-turn of the cycle, when sun activity increases, there might be a cooling effect at the Earth's surface.
A further twist arises from the fact that over the past century, overall solar activity has been increasing. If the new findings apply to long as well as short time periods, this could translate into a small degree of cooling rather than the slight warming effect shown in existing climate models. It would effectively turn received wisdom on its head. Sceptics are likely to say the results further undermine the reliability of climate change science, especially with regard to solar effects.
Professor Joanna Haigh, from Imperial College London, who led the study, said: 'These results are challenging what we thought we knew about the Sun's effect on our climate. However, they only show us a snapshot of the Sun's activity and its behaviour over the three years of our study could be an anomaly.
'We cannot jump to any conclusions based on what we have found during this comparatively short period and we need to carry out further studies to explore the sun's activity and the patterns that we have uncovered on longer timescales.
'However, if further studies find the same pattern over a longer period of time, this could suggest that we may have overestimated the sun's role in warming the planet, rather than underestimating it.' Speaking at a news briefing in London, she denied that it would fuel scepticism about climate change research. 'I think it doesn't give comfort to the climate sceptics at all,' she said. 'It may suggest that we don't know that much about the Sun. It casts no aspersions at all upon the climate models.'
The research, published in the journal Nature, is based on data from a satellite called SORCE (Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment) that has been measuring the Sun's energy output at X-ray, ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared wavelengths.
Prof Haigh's team found that, above an altitude of 28 miles, concentrations of ozone in the atmosphere increased as total solar output decreased. The ozone rise accompanied a steep fall in levels of ultraviolet radiation. Closer to the ground, an increase in visible radiation caused heating of the lower atmosphere.
'At face value, the data seem incredibly important,' Michael Lockwood, a space physicist at the University of Reading, told.
'If solar activity is out of phase with solar radiative forcing, it could change our understanding of how processes in the troposphere and stratosphere act to modulate Earth's climate.' 'The findings could prove very significant when it comes to understanding, and quantifying, natural climate fluctuations,' he added.
'But no matter how you look at it, the Sun's influence on current climate change is at best a small natural add-on to man-made greenhouse warming.' 'All the evidence is that the vast majority of warming is anthropogenic. It might be that the solar part isn't quite working the way we thought it would, but it is certainly not a seismic rupture of the science.'

50 Years of Exobiology and Astrobiology

2010-10-07T05:04:00.000-07:00

In 1959, NASA funded its first exobiology investigation, a life-detection experiment for Viking mission to Mars. In 1960, the agency established an exobiology program, whose early managers adopted an approach to advancing this field of study by funding forward-thinking, boundary-bending, multidisciplinary research projects that other funding sources tended to judge as too risky.

NASA’s Viking mission included three exobiology experiments designed to look for evidence of life on Mars. By the 1980s, NASA expanded its exobiology program to encompass studies of evolutionary biology. In the 1990s, NASA again expanded the breadth and depth of this program, broadening the boundaries of “exobiology” to establish “astrobiology” as a program encompassing studies of chemical evolution in interstellar space, the formation and evolution of planets, and the natural history of Earth in addition to exobiology and evolutionary biology.

Today NASA’s Astrobiology Program addresses three fundamental questions: How does life begin and evolve? Is there life beyond Earth and, if so, how can we detect it? What is the future of life on Earth and in the universe? In striving to answer these questions and improve understanding of biological, planetary and cosmic phenomena and relationships among them, experts in a range of relevant disciplines are participating in astrobiology research and helping to advance the enterprise of space exploration.

British university scientists win Nobel prize for physics for discovery of 'graphene' - an atom-thick carbon layer 200 times stronger than steel

2010-10-05T08:40:00.000-07:00

Graphene could lead to new super-fast electronics

Bonds between carbon atoms are the strongest in nature

Novoselov is youngest Nobel laureate since 1973

Two British-based scientists have shared the Nobel Prize for physics for their discovery of a new material that is only an atom thick and which could change the future of electronics. Russian-born Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both from Manchester University, today won the prize for their 'groundbreaking experiments' with graphene - a microscopic flake of carbon.
The award comes after yesterday's long-awaited Nobel prize for medicine for British scientist Professor Richard Edwards - the inventor of IVF. Since its discovery in 2004 by the pair, graphene has rapidly become one of the hottest topics in materials science and solid-state physics.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that their experiments with graphene could lead to the development of new materials and 'the manufacture of innovative electronics'. Geim, 51, is a Dutch national while Novoselov, 36, holds British and Russian citizenship. Both are natives of Russia and started their careers in physics there. Geim said he was shocked by the announcement but planned to go back to work as usual today. 'My plan for today is to go to work and finish up a paper that I didn't finish this week,' he said. 'I just try to muddle on as before.'
Professor Konstantin Novoselov said: 'I was really shocked when I heard the news and my first thought was to go to the lab and tell the team.' The pair extracted the super-thin material from a piece of graphite such as that found in ordinary pencils using sticky tape. 'Playfulness is one of their hallmarks, one always learns something in the process and, who knows, you may even hit the jackpot,' the committee said in its release.
One millimetre of graphite actually consists of 3 million layers of graphene stacked on top of each other, although they are weakly held together. Graphene was discovered at Manchester University in 2004. It is a single atomic layer of carbon atoms bound in a hexagonal network.
The bonds between the carbon atoms are the strongest in nature and the free electrons are highly mobile. It not only promises to revolutionise semiconductor, sensor, and display technology, but could also lead to breakthroughs in fundamental quantum physics research. It is often depicted as an atomic-scale chicken wire made of carbon atoms and their bonds. Scientists believe it could one day be used to make transparent conducting materials, biomedical sensors and even extremely light, yet strong, aircraft of the future.
Similar to another important nanomaterial - carbon nanotubes - graphene is incredibly strong - around 200 times stronger than structural steel. Geim last year received the prestigious Korber European Science Award for his discovery of two-dimensional crystals made of carbon atoms, particularly graphene, the university said on its website. It said the discovery 'has the potential to revolutionise the world of microelectronics'.
Dr Mark Miodownik, Head of the Materials Research Group, King's College London, said: 'The award of this Nobel Prize will bring a smile to the face of every scientist because it shows you can still get a Nobel Prize by mucking about in a lab. 'Professors Geim and Novoselov happened across graphene, a new material that has the potential to revolutionise electronics, by discovering they could pluck atomic layers of carbon from the lead of a pencil using nothing more sophisticated than sticky tape.
'It turns out that anyone who has ever held a pencil could have discovered this amazing new material, but it was Professors Geim and Novoselov who took the time to look carefully. Bravo!
'Another reason to recognise that British science is a special culture, admired throughout the world for its originality and genius, and needs to be nurtured not cut by the government if they want to foster future technology and wealth in the UK.' University of Manchester President and Vice-Chancellor Nancy Rothwell said: 'This is fantastic news. We are delighted that Andre and Konstantin’s work on graphene has been recognised at the very highest level by the 2010 Nobel Prize Committee.
'This is a wonderful example of a fundamental discovery based on scientific curiosity with major practical, social and economic benefits for society.' Professor David Delpy, Chief Executive of the EPSRC, said: 'This work represents an enormously important scientific development. An exciting new material that has a huge range of applications and will no doubt bring significant benefits to the UK economy.'
The 2010 Nobel Prize announcements started yesterday with the medicine award going to British researcher Robert Edwards for work that led to the first test tube baby.

Q-A About Habitable Planet Gliese 581g

2010-10-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

A newfound Earth-sized planet discovered in the habitable zone of a nearby star looks very promising for the possibility of extraterrestrial life, but many unknowns remain. The planet, Gliese 581g, is one of two new worlds discovered orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581, which now has a family of planets that totals six. [Tour the six Gliese 581 Planets] . Here is Starry Messenger's look at what scientists know so far about the intriguing world, as well as a few questions that don't quite have answers yet. Consider it a new entry into Earth's own hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy -

How do I say the planet's name?

Gliese 581g may look like it should rhyme with "Grease," but it is actually pronounced as two-syllables as (Glee-zuh). The name comes from the German astronomer Wilhelm Gliese, who catalogued the planet's parent star Gleise 581 as part of a star survey first published in 1957.

Where is Gliese 581g?

The planet Gliese 581g orbits the red dwarf star Gliese 581, which sits 20 light-years from Earth in the constellation Libra. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km).

How far is it from the parent star?

Early estimates suggest Gliese 581g is 0.15 astronomical units from its star. One astronomical unit is the average distance between the Earth and sun, which is approximately 93 million miles (150 million km). That distance means the planet is close enough to its star so that it can complete an orbit in a little less than 37 days. One of its sibling planets was closer to the hot edge of the habitable zone around the star Gliese 581, and one was farther out the colder edge of the habitable zone. Gliese 581g is located just right between the two.

What is a habitable zone?

Think of a star's habitable zone as the swath of space surrounding a star where conditions for life as we know it are possible. Closer in, a planet roasts. Farther out, it freezes. Planets within that habitable zone, also known as the Goldilocks zone, have a range of surface temperatures that allow for readily available liquid water and other conditions that may support the rise of life. This cosmic sweet spot can vary, because it depends upon the type of star and the point in time for any given star's lifespan.
For instance, our sun's current habitable zone is farther out than that of the star Gliese 581, a red dwarf about 50 times dimmer than our sun. The cooler red dwarf allows the Gliese 581 planets to orbit much closer and still remain in the habitable zone.
A planet within the habitable zone does not have a guaranteed chance of originating life, because biology also depends upon the planet's size and a host of conditions, including chemical makeup. But what little researchers know about Gliese 581g makes it a highly promising candidate.

How big is Gliese 581g in relation to Earth?

The planet is lumped into the "nearly Earth-sized" category. It is between three and four times the mass of our Earth — bigger, but small enough to be rocky rather than gaseous. Its radius is anywhere between 1.3 and two times the size of Earth.

How much would I weigh on Gliese 581g?

An Earth-sized planet with three times the mass of our planet would pull down on your body with three times the force of Earth's standard gravity. That means if you weighed 120 pounds on Earth, you would weigh about 120 x 3 pounds on an Earth-sized planet with three times the mass, or 360 pounds.
But Gliese 581g also has a somewhat larger radius, so that also factors into the equation. A 120 pound person would weigh about 213 pounds on Gliese 581g at the lower end of the size and mass estimates. This all remains theoretical until astronomers can pin down the actual size and mass.

What's it like on the surface?

There is no solid evidence at the moment that suggests what surface conditions might be like, or even if liquid water and an atmosphere are actually present.What researchers know is that the planet exists at the right distance from its star to have liquid water. It's also at the right distance to have an atmosphere which can protect that water, if exists on the surface.
But one of the planet's discoverers, astronomer Steven Vogt of the University of California, Santa Cruz, pointed out that "it's pretty hard to imagine that water wouldn't be there." He likened it to the examples of the Earth, its moon, Mars, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. He also noted that the Orion Nebula is making enough water every 24 seconds to fill all the oceans of the Earth. Researchers also know that the planet is tidally locked to its star. That means one side experiences eternal daylight, and the other side experiences unending darkness. Such a locked configuration helps to stabilize the planet's surface climate, Vogt said.
3-D global circulation models have shown that the temperature differences on the day and night sides of the planet would not be enough for water to either freeze or boil off. They also suggest that the atmospheric circulation and wind patterns would be relatively benign.

Does it have moons?

There's one called Pandora...just kidding! There's no info on any moons around Gliese 581g, or around any other planets in its solar system yet. But astronomers have long assumed that alien planets could have moons, and that some of the moons might harbor life.

How long would it take to get there?

This question depends upon how fast you travel. Given our current lack of Star Trek's warp drives, any interstellar expedition would have to travel far slower than the speed of light.A spaceship traveling at a one-tenth of the speed of light would reach Gliese 581g within about 220 years, Vogt said. That would allow the spaceship to begin getting close-up pictures and a sense of the planet's atmosphere.That time scale is not promising for existing human lifespans, but robotic explorers could more easily take up the challenge. However, the fastest spaceships built so far don't come anywhere near even that one-tenth light-speed mark.

What kind of life would we expect to find?

Any discussion about alien life on Gliese 581g is purely speculative at this point, according to co-discoverer Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in Washington, D.C. Butler took a more cautionary approach as opposed to Vogt, who said his gut feeling told him "the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent." Still, even Butler noted that anywhere you find water on Earth, you find life. He suggested that a similar condition should hold for almost anywhere in the universe, including Gliese 581g if it does hold water.

Why doesn't the planet have a real name?

The planet is called Gliese 581g because its star, Gliese 581, is designated "a," and the four previously discovered planets in the system are called b, c, d and e. But Vogt said that he has unofficially begun calling the planet "Zarmina's World," in honor of his wife.

What would aliens living on Gliese 581 see if they looked toward our sun?

You remember that we don't have evidence of alien life on the planet yet, right? But assuming they exist, aliens could spot our own sun as star in their sky without requiring any telescopes or binoculars. If the alien astronomers had our current level of technology, they would be also able to easily detect Neptune, and possibly Jupiter and Saturn.

...Hey Tom, It's America !

2010-10-05T07:48:00.000-07:00

Susan Reverby describes her finding that several hundred Guatemalans were exposed to syphilis by the US Public Health Service.
Susan Reverby is a historian and professor of women's and gender studies at Wellesley College near Boston in Massachusetts. She is an authority on the notorious Tuskegee experiments, during which treatment was withheld from more than 600 African American men with syphilis. Her recent discovery that the US Public Health Service exposed several hundred Guatemalans to the disease in an undocumented research project in 1946–48 led last week to an official apology from the United States to the Guatemalan government and the promise of a full investigation.

Why did the US government do this research?

By 1946 it was known that syphilis could be cured with penicillin. The primary aim of the study was to look at whether penicillin could also be used as a prophylaxis to get rid of the disease before it established itself in the body. They were looking for something that would be more successful than the 'pro-kits' soldiers had been given during the Second World War, which required them to apply a mercury-based ointment. As you can imagine, there was not a lot of compliance with that approach. They were also interested in whether or not someone could be re-infected with syphilis once cured by penicillin.
The arrangements were set up through Juan Funes, a Guatemalan doctor who had previously trained with the US Public Health Service (PHS) and was then the chief of the venereal disease control division of the Guatemalan Sanidad Publica. Funes and [PHS researcher] John Cutler, who later participated in the Tuskegee experiments, essentially did the study together.

How was the study conducted?

Prostitution was legal in Guatemala, as was bringing in a prostitute for sexual servicing of prisoners in the central penitentiary. They plied some of the prisoners with alcohol and sent in prostitutes whom they knew were infected with syphilis. When not enough infection appeared and they couldn't get enough cases, they made an inoculum. In later tests, they abraded people's bodies — their forearms, cheeks or penises — and applied the inoculum to a piece of cotton or gauze that was held to the abrasion for an hour and a half to two hours. But they had trouble transferring the infection this way, and eventually interest waned. By 1948, the studies were called off. [The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) subsequently found that 427 of 696 subjects were judged to be infected; 369 of those subsequently received "adequate treatment" with penicillin.]

Were these experiments approved?

You can't just walk into the Guatemalan central penitentiary and start doing something like this without someone in charge saying yes. Likewise for the National Mental Health Hospital, where later studies were done. At the mental hospital, Cutler and Funes were able to arrange access by giving the institution things like a projector, and metal plates and utensils. They also provided the anti-epileptic drug Dilantin [phenytoin], because a lot of people in the hospital were actually epileptics and had no medicine to help them control their seizures. That was the trade-off with the asylum keepers.

Was any of this work ever published?

No. In the early 1950s, Cutler was part of a syphilis inoculation project in Sing Sing Prison in New York. That study is published and they make it clear that they asked the permission of the prisoners. They don't reference the Guatemala work. I think they knew it was on an ethical edge. And there were internal questions in the PHS about what they were doing.
But at the time, syphilis was an enormously debilitating disease that health officials were very worried about. They thought they were at war with the disease and they were trying to find things that would help. In a war there are soldiers. I think they saw their subjects as soldiers in that war.

How did you come across all this?

Two years ago, while I was doing research at the University of Pittsburgh, I learned that Cutler, who had taught there, had left papers behind. I asked to see the papers in case there were any documents about Tuskegee I had not already seen. What I found was the Guatemalan material. I was shocked. I could see the papers were talking about inoculations. I've been working on Tuskegee for two decades now and I've spent a lot of time explaining to people that no one was given syphilis in Tuskegee. So you can imagine what it was like to be sitting there reading this. It was just unbelievable.

What happened next?

After completing my book Examining Tuskegee I went back to the University of Pittsburgh in June 2009 and re-did my research on the Guatemalan study to make sure I had it right. I wrote about it in an article that will be published [in the Journal of Policy History] this January. I gave a copy of it to David Sencer, who was the CDC director when Tuskegee broke in 1972 and who I've been in contact with since I interviewed him for the book. He felt this was important and asked if he could take it to people at the CDC. They, in turn, were shocked enough to send a syphilis expert back to Pittsburgh to look at the data. He confirmed what I had found and then it went up the chain of command.

What can today's researchers learn from this?

Most US drug trials are now conducted internationally. We have controls in the United States, but what's being done elsewhere in the world? If the Guatemalan study had been done by a private drug company, I never would have known about it. The lesson for today is the importance of institutional review boards, and of making sure that informed consent is really understood and applied in international trials.

Courtesy – Nature

"king" on the subject of God

2010-09-28T08:09:00.000-07:00

The Great debate is going on, It's a reaction that I received by email. I'm sharing it with you aa an openion. The writer's mail is given at the end of the article.

How is Prof.Hawkin's - a "king" on the subject of God and the creation of the Universe -

I'm eliminating this article, because of the objection of the writer. Though he send this article as his reaction...sorry for the inconvenience.
This blog is dedicated to Science and new Knowledge, and I welcome to everybody to share his thoughts and views. Keep visiting Starry Messenger for new and thought provoking information of the Scientific World.

‘The Evolution of Religion and God’

2010-09-27T06:13:00.000-07:00

If you asked me that how did religion emerge from evolved human traits and behaviors? Then my answer would be,Well, for example, take the intuition that you see in some kinds of religious context that there’s something that is a source of evil, or a source of contamination. Something that has this metaphysical property that should lead you to keep your distance. Well, that could make sense as a product of natural selection in the context of things that could give you a disease. So for example, it may be that the kind of revulsion that people have at kind of rotting flesh, or something – Okay, that’s bad stuff, get away from it. That could have a clear-cut foundation in natural selection. But that kind of aversion, the idea of something giving off some kind of vibes that should lead you to steer clear of it, can then become more of a religious conception in other contexts. Or an emphasis on ritual purity in that sense, this basic distinction between the pure and the kind of non-pure, and the idea that there’s these things you do to make sure you’re on the right side. That’s just one example of something whose ultimate roots could be in natural selection and yet there’s a kind of a – some cultural evolution has to happen before it assumes the forms that we’re most familiar with.
Its quite interesting to know, how has the religion itself evolved since our hunter-gatherer days? To judge by observed hunter/gatherer societies, and there were a lot of them that have been observed before they had a whole lot of contact with more technologically advanced societies. To judge by them, there was a time before the invention of agriculture when apparently every society on the planet was essentially polytheistic. There was a belief that there were a lot of gods and spirits and they were responsible for the good things and the bad things. And in fact, it appears that the original function of religion was to figure out, why do good things happen to us? Why do bad things happen to us? How can we manipulate the forces responsible for those good things and bad things, which were assumed to be kind of human-like beings, psychologically, you know, these gods that were deposited. How can we manipulate those to increase the number of good things that will happen and reduce the number of bad things? How can we reduce the amount of disease, the number of horrible storms, and increase the number of wars we win, or the number of – the amount of food that grows around us or something.
So, originally religion did not seem to have been concerned with morality the way we think of religion being now. And one reason is because in a hunter/gather society, morality is not such a complicated issue. When you’ve got a small group of people living around each other day-to-day, people just kind of keep each other honest. There’s not – as far as like theft, which is one thing that came to be a big issue, in a hunter/gather village, the two things about theft are, there’s no where to hide what you steal, and there’s not much to steal anyway. Right? So, it’s kind of not an issue.
Now, as time wore on and societies grew more complex, you had larger and larger societies, and people interacting with one another who weren’t on such kind of close terms, didn’t know each other so well. The more and more you did have what we consider kind of moral/ethical issues like theft. And then you do see religion begin to assume the role of the enforcer of these kinds of moral sanctions. So, when you get to kind of chiefdoms, which are when you have – at the point where you have agriculture, but writing hasn’t yet been invented, you have these kind of modestly complex societies known as chiefdoms, and in a lot of those you see these ideas that people who steal fruit from a tree that’s on somebody else’s property they will be punished by the gods and stuff like that.
The pages of history has filled with the differences and struggles in the name of religion. Religious beliefs have evolved over time. It’s that there are some kinds of beliefs that are more characteristic of large civilizations that existed only after the invention of writing. I wouldn’t say that that fact makes them better. The fact that they are more evolved in that sense is not a value judgment. On the other hand, it’s true that as time has worn on, especially in situation where people have had productive contact with different kinds of people. People with different ethnicities, different nations, that has tended to kind of broaden their moral horizon. This is something Peter Singers has documented in his book, The Expanding Circle. So, they tended to start thinking, well maybe it isn’t just people of our group that are human beings and deserve to be treated decently. Maybe people who speak a different language, people of a different ethnicity.
I think that constitutes moral progress. And sometimes that has been associated with religion. In other words, it doesn’t have to be, you can have a sheerly secular philosophical version of that belief, but given how pervasive religion has been in the belief system of most societies, that kind of moral progress has shown up in the evolution of religion. And I think you can call it moral progress. It’s not confined to religion and I think it’s a product of a kind of concrete forces – it kind of happens in recognition of enlightened self-interest. But I think it’s good. It’s one of the hopeful things about the direction of history that a belief that a lot of us take for granted now, the idea that people everywhere are human beings and deserve to be treated decently did have to be kind of invented, and was invented. And I think history was on the side of the eventual discovery of that moral truth.

Robert Wright

Author, “The Evolution of God”