The Daily Galaxy: Great Discoveries Channel

Buried Antarctica "Alps" Point to Hyper-Speed Global Warming

2009-11-20T01:30:00-08:00

An international team of experts have mapped a huge, incredibly old location, mentioned in the notes of a Russian explorer from half a century ago, buried under hundreds of meters of ice. In an amazing break with tradition this process did not result in the unleashing of ancient horrors, a self-destruct sequence, alien invasion or anyone shooting at Indiana Jones. They've examined the entire Gamburtsev mountain range, 700 meters tall and buried under a kilometer of Antarctica.

The team used an array of tools including seismic wave reflection, radar, and precise gravitational measurements to map the frozen features - there are a lot more differences between ice and rock than "one works in drinks", and they used them all. If "Sub-Antarctic Mountain Range" isn't good enough for you, the valleys between the peaks come complete with rivers and lakes - yes, lakes. Under the ice. At the South Pole.

The mountains are a massive mystery - they seem to be half a billion years old, but on a tectonic scale you can't just say "that's a long time ago so who cares." There are no other indications of such titanic tectonics in the area at the time, and the range has none of the signs of volcanic formation. Which is a pity, as volcanoes erupting into thousands of tons of solid ice is probably the only way this incredible landscape could sound any more awesome.

The researchers predicted a flat plateau, but instead found a range similar in height and shape to the Alps - with massive peaks as high as Mount Blanc and deep valleys.

Water, turned to liquid due to the pressure of East Antarctic Ice Sheet above, could be seen in rivers and lakes nestled in valleys. One lake, Vostok, a possible living biological lab of ancient lifeforms, was an incredible 300 kilometers.

Scientists hope the findings will aid predictions about the effects of climate change on ice sheets and challenge long-held views that the ice sheet formed over millions of years.The new research suggests they formed in a fraction of the time and the area could have been ice free at some points in history.

This means any rapid fluctuation in global temperature could have a much faster effect on the formation of ice sheets than previously thought

Posted by Luke McKinney

Titanic Thirty-Meter Telescope 12 x's Hubble To Probe Dark Matter & First Stars

2009-11-20T01:00:00-08:00

We're building a billion dollar telescope and it isn't just aimed at the stars: it's looking for the first ones. The new Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) proves that sometimes bigger really is better and will be elements in the optics allows them all to act as one (which is good because it's impossible to build a real one that big.) The realtime control also allows astronomers to correct for the effects of the atmosphere - so even though it's on the ground, the TMT will have twelve times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The key really is collecting more light. No matter what CSI may have told you, there's no way to magically make more information appear in a blurry picture - that's why the picture is blurry. Astronomers have engineered an awesome array of tools to extract every scrap of data from images, but you just can't beat starting with a better picture. The TMT will be able to see further and clearer than anything to date, examining the intriguingly blurred shapes hovering the very edge of current technology.

As well as seeing the very first stars (the further away you look, the longer ago it happened due to the limited speed of light), the titanic telescope will provide far finer data on the structure of the universe - allowing theorists to narrow down their dark matter theories. It's an awesome example of what humanity can do, and lets hope any aliens notice this instead of the reality TV - how an international collaboration got together to look outside ourselves like never before.

Luke McKinney

Titanic Thirty Meter Telescope

Will Dark Energy Fuel Spaceships of the Future? -A Galaxy Classic

2009-11-20T00:28:00-08:00

The internet was amazed by images of the world's first warpship recently, and if you're wondering how science got past the fiction so quickly, remember how Leonardo is credited with inventing the helicopter? Despite not knowing any of the relevant aerodynamics, physics, engineering, or having any of the required skills other than "able to draw a pretty picture"? It's the same deal.

Dr Richard Obousy recently gifted the Discovery channel with designs for the first "warpship", and in return they gave him more publicity than you can shake a physics consulting firm at. Did you know Dr Obousy has a consulting firm? You do now! Despite containing about as many actual scientific systems as the average Buck Rogers prop, the image circulated the internet because

a) It looks really cool
b) Complete with circular-spinny bits just like in the new Star Trek movie
c) Real Science Credibility (TM) added by throwing around words like "Dark Energy"!

The idea that dark energy (still unobserved) had a key role in inflating the universe is real science, and the idea of using harnessed dark matter to squeeze and stretch space before and behind the ship (thereby sidestepping the universe's speed limit - because the ship itself isn't moving faster than light) is brilliant fun, but there are an awful lot of steps between "Coming up with a scientific idea" and "designing a cool-looking hull." ALL the steps, actually.

The idea is fun, and Dr Obousy is a real scientist of not inconsiderable repute, but the "design" is a public relations scam of the highest order - and we mean that in a complimentary way, because it worked fantastically. But when even the designer confesses in interviews that he has no idea what would go inside the ship, and mentions how it would have to eat Jupiter to run, it's not exactly NASA-grade. "A pretty picture and some relevant but not actually applied words" is more science fair grade.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

'Hobbits' a New Human Species?

2009-11-20T00:24:00-08:00

Professor Mike Morwood created an international storm with his discovery of Homo floresiensis -- dubbed the Hobbit because of its small size and big feet -- on Flores, an Indonesian island, in 2003. The archaeologist said the Hobbits, who were only about one metre tall and weighed just 30kg, existed on the remote island until about 12,000 years ago.

Homo floresiensis is a genuine ancient human species and not a descendant of healthy humans dwarfed by disease found researchers from Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York. Using statistical analysis on skeletal remains of a well-preserved female specimen, the researchers determined the "hobbit" to be a distinct species and not a genetically flawed version of modern humans.

In 2003 Australian and Indonesian scientists discovered small-bodied, small-brained, hominin (human-like) fossils on the remote island of Flores in the Indonesian archipelago. This discovery of a new human species called Homo floresiensis has spawned much debate with some researchers claiming that the small creatures are really modern humans whose tiny head and brain are the result of a medical condition called microcephaly.

Researchers William Jungers, Ph.D., and Karen Baab, Ph.D. studied the skeletal remains of a female (LB1), nicknamed "Little Lady of Flores" or "Flo" to confirm the evolutionary path of the hobbit species. The specimen was remarkably complete and included skull, jaw, arms, legs, hands, and feet that provided researchers with integrated information from an individual fossil.

The cranial capacity of LB1 was just over 400 cm, making it more similar to the brains of a chimpanzee or bipedal "ape-men" of East and South Africa. The skull and jawbone features are much more primitive looking than any normal modern human. Statistical analysis of skull shapes show modern humans cluster together in one group, microcephalic humans in another and the hobbit along with ancient hominins in a third.

Due to the relative completeness of fossil remains for LB1, the scientists were able to reconstruct a reliable body design that was unlike any modern human. The thigh bone and shin bone of LB1 are much shorter than modern humans including Central African pygmies, South African KhoeSan (formerly known as 'bushmen") and "negrito" pygmies from the Andaman Islands and the Philippines. Some researchers speculate this could represent an evolutionary reversal correlated with "island dwarfing." "It is difficult to believe an evolutionary change would lead to less economical movement," said Dr. Jungers. "It makes little sense that this species re-evolved shorter thighs and legs because long hind limbs improve bipedal walking. We suspect that these are primitive retentions instead."

"Attempts to dismiss the hobbits as pathological people have failed repeatedly because the medical diagnoses of dwarfing syndromes and microcephaly bear no resemblance to the unique anatomy of Homo floresiensis," noted Dr. Baab.

Details of the study appear in the December issue of Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society, published by Wiley-Blackwell.

Casey Kazan

Source: Wiley-Blackwell

Will NexGen AI Have Unintended Consequences? -A Galaxy Insight

2009-11-20T00:18:00-08:00

What could a criminal do with a speech synthesis system that could masquerade as a human being? What happens if artificial intelligence technology is used to mine personal information from smartphones?

AI is becoming the stuff of future scifi greats: A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Predator drones, which, though still controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine that can kill autonomously.

Real AI effects are closer than you might think, with entirely automated systems producing new scientific results and even holding patents on minor inventions. The key factor in singularity scenarios is the positive-feedback loop of self-improvement: once something is even slightly smarter than humanity, it can start to improve itself or design new intelligences faster than we can leading to an intelligence explosion designed by something that isn't us.

Artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence after 2020, predicted Vernor Vinge, a world-renowned pioneer in AI, who has warned about the risks and opportunities that an electronic super-intelligence would offer to mankind.

Exactly 10 years ago, in May 1997, Deep Blue won the chess tournament against Gary Kasparov. "Was that the first glimpse of a new kind of intelligence?" Vinge was asked in an interview with Computerworld.

"I think there was clever programming in Deep Blue," Vinge stated in the interview, "but the predictable success came mainly from the ongoing trends in computer hardware improvement. The result was a better-than-human performance in a single, limited problem area. In the future, I think that improvements in both software and hardware will bring success in other intellectual domains."

"It seems plausible that with technology we can, in the fairly near future," Vinge continued, create (or become) creatures who surpass humans in every intellectual and creative dimension. Events beyond such an event -- such a singularity -- are as unimaginable to us as opera is to a flatworm."

Vinge is a retired San Diego State University professor of mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author who is well-known for his 1993 manifesto, "The Coming Technological Singularity, in which he argues that exponential growth in technology means a point will be reached where the consequences are unknown.

Alarmed by the rapid advances in artificial intelligence, also commonly called "AI", a group of computer scientists met to debate whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society's workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.

Scientists, reported CIO Today, pointed to a number of technologies as diverse as experimental medical systems that interact with patients to simulate empathy, and computer worms and viruses that defy extermination that have reached the "cockroach" stage of machine intelligence.

While the computer scientists agreed that we are a long way from one of film's great all-time evil villains, the Hal 9000, the computer that took over the Discovery spaceship in "2001: A Space Odyssey," they said there was legitimate concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs, as well as force humans to learn to live with machines that increasingly copy human behaviors.

Eric Horvitz of Microsoft said he believed computer scientists must considered seriously the possibility of superintelligent machines and artificial intelligence systems run amok.

"Something new has taken place in the past five to eight years," Dr. Horvitz said. "Technologists are replacing religion, and their ideas are resonating in some ways with the same idea of the Rapture."

This sentiment is best illustrated by the creation of Singularity University,a joint Google/NASA venture that has begun offering courses to prepare a "cadre" to help society cope with future ramifications.

An advanced academic institution sponsored by leading lights including NASA and Google (so it couldn't sound smarter if Brainiac 5 traveled back in time to attend the opening ceremony). The "Singularity" is the idea of a future point where super-human intellects are created, turbo-boosting the already exponential rate of technological improvement and triggering a fundamental change in human society - after the Agricultural Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution, we would have the Intelligence Revolution.

The Singularity University proposes to train people to deal with the accelerating evolution of technology, both in terms of understanding the directions and harnessing the potential of new interactions between branches of science like artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and nanotechnology.

Inventor and author Raymond Kurzweil is one of the forces behind SU, which we presume will have the most awesomely equipped pranks of all time ("Check it out, we replaced the Professor's chair with an adaptive holographic robot!"), and it isn't the only institutions he's helped found. There's also the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence whose sole function is based on the exponential AI increases predicted. The idea is that the first AI created will have an enormous advantage over all that follow, upgrading itself at a rate they can never catch up on simply because it started first, so the Institute wants to work to create a benevolent AI to guard us against all that might follow.

Make no mistake: the AI race is on, and Raymond wants us to win.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

http://www.cio-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=13000CNXS03G&page=3

The Daily Flash -Eco, Space, Tech (11/20)

2009-11-20T00:14:00-08:00

Beyond genomics, biologists and engineers decode the next frontier

A team of Princeton biologists and engineers has dramatically improved the speed and accuracy of measuring an enigmatic set of proteins that influences almost every aspect of how cells and tissues function. The new method offers a long-sought tool for studying stem cells, cancer and other problems of fundamental importance to biology and medicine. The research allows scientists an unprecedented look at a special class of proteins called histones, which are at the core of every chromosome and control the way instructions in DNA are carried out.

Plants Have a Social Life, Too

After decades of seeing plants as passive recipients of fate, scientists have found them capable of behaviors once thought unique to animals. Some plants even appear to be social, favoring family while pushing strangers from the neighborhood. Research into plant sociality is still young, with many questions unanswered. But it may change how people conceive of the floral world, and provide new ways of raising productivity on Earth’s maxed-out farmland.

GM: Don't Worry, the Volt Will Arrive on Time

The Chevy Volt is an electric car plagued by nagging problems, with rumors as late as June that the vehicle might not even make it into production. But even as GM reports losses of $1.2 billion, the company wants us all to know that the Volt is on track for its November 2010 release dates--and most of the car's kinks have already been worked out. Among the Volt engineers' biggest challenges: cutting down on road noise in electric mode, lengthening battery life, and making sure the Volt's battery could still run in extremely hot and cold climates.

Bomb-Proof Wallpaper Could Save You in a Natural Disaster

A hurricane is barreling towards your house, but instead of hiding in the basement, you can stay safely and comfortably in your living room, all thanks to your X-Flex Blast Protection System wallpaper. It’s not a fantasy; the wallpaper, invented by Berry Plastics in a partnership with the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, actually exists — and a single sheet is strong enough to stop a wrecking ball.

Gadget Deals of the Day

If Gizmodo's gift guides didn't give you enough ideas for the upcoming holiday season, check out today's Deals. You can get 10% off a Zune HD stocking stuffer or even bigger savings on a TV that everyone can enjoy.

Is an Imminent "Little Ice Age" Possible? -Scientists Says "Yes"

2009-11-19T01:38:00-08:00

Evidence has mounted that global warming began in the last century and that humans are, at least in part, responsible. The concern is that the warming of our climate will greatly affect its habitability for many species, including humans. Both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences concur that this is the case. But some argue that this thinking is too limited. They say that too many scientists are either ignoring, or don’t understand, the well-established fact that Earth’s climate has changed rapidly in the past and could change rapidly in the future—in either direction.

Evidence for abrupt climate change is readily found in ice cores taken from Greenland and Antarctica. One of the best known examples of such an event is the Younger Dryas cooling of about 12,000 years ago, named after the arctic wildflower found in northern European sediments. This event began and ended rather abruptly, and for its entire 1000 year duration the North Atlantic region was about 5°C colder. Could something like this happen again? It sure could, and because the changes can happen all within one decade—we might not even see it coming.

The Younger Dryas occurred at a time when orbital forcing should have continued to drive climate to the present warm state. The unexplained phenomenon has been the topic of much intense scientific debate, as well as other millennial scale events.

Now an 11-year low in Sunspot activity has raised fears among a small number of scientists that rather than getting warmer, the Earth could possibly be about to return to another cooling period. The idea is especially intriguing considering that most of the world is in preparation for global warming. Could we be preparing for the wrong scenario?

A sunspot is a region on the Sun that is cooler than the rest and therefore appears darker. One theory is that a strong solar magnetic field, which causes plenty of sunspot activity, protects the earth from cosmic rays, but that when the field is weak - during low sunspot activity - the rays can penetrate into the lower atmosphere and cloud cover increases, which in turn leads to a cooler surface.

Geophysicist Phil Chapman, the first Australian to become an astronaut with NASA, notes that pictures from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory show that there are currently no spots on the sun. He believes this is the reason why the world cooled rapidly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7C.

"This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930," Dr Chapman wrote in The Australian. "If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over."

However, scientists from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research published a report in 2006 that claims the Sun likely has a negligible effect on climate change. Another study, recently published study in the Institute of Physics' Environmental Research Letters, by researchers from Lancaster and Durham Universities found that there was no strong correlation between cosmic rays and the production of low cloud cover. If that is correct, it would mean the lack of sunspots is not necessarily an indicator of higher cloud cover and subsequent future cooling.

While it’s true that some world regions have experienced record colds recently, other areas do seem to be warming up. In Australia, The Bureau of Meteorology says that temperatures there have been warmer than the 1960-90 average since the late 1970s. Even though there have been some cooler years mixed in, overall they are now 0.3C higher than the long-term average. Other countries are experiencing similar upward trends. On the other hand, since widespread temperature records have only been kept for a relatively short period of the Earth’s history, it’s hard to know exactly what these increases mean from a long-term perspective.

Cooling, or “Little Ice Age” proponents like Chapman, say that it could still swing either way. He proposes preventive measures to slow any potential cooling, such as bulldozing Siberian and Canadian snow to make it dirty and less reflective. "My guess is that the odds are now at least 50:50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades."

Canadian scientist Kenneth Tapping of the National Research Council has noted that solar activity has entered into an unusually inactive phase, but what they means—if anything—is still anyone’s guess. Another scientist, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences agrees with Chapman. Sorokhtin believes that, in spite of the results of certain recent studies, lack of sunspots does indicate a coming cooling period. In fact, he calls manmade climate change "a drop in the bucket" compared to the cold brought on by inactive solar phases.

But while Sorokhtin is advising people to "stock up on fur coats", the vast majority of prominent scientists believe the bulk of evidence points towards an overall warming trend, and that anomalies and exceptions to the rule do not make a significant dent in this consensus.

The Daily Galaxy asked climate expert Thomas Reichler, what he has to say about it. According to him, anyone claiming that the Earth isn’t getting warmer, or that it’s perhaps even getting colder, simply isn’t looking at the actual data.

“There is absolutely no doubt that the world is in a warming phase,” Reichler told the Daily Galaxy, “and that conclusion is supported by 99% of all serious scientists, so I’m certainly not alone in that certainty.”

Reichler is probably right, but it wouldn’t be the first time if the fringe opinion turned out to be onto something. But from a broader perspective, does it really matter who’s “right” as far as preparations go? Whether the climate gets cooler or warmer, or does nothing at all, people will still need massive amounts of energy. Even if we were to take the reverse approach and intentionally increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in order to stave off cooling, it would likely have little effect other than to further pollute the environment with standard energy consumption’s many toxic byproducts.

Are humans the major factor in the current warming trend? Maybe, maybe not. But what can’t be disputed is that humans are polluting the planet. Current and future weather conditions do not change the fact that using oil and coal for energy isn’t a good long-term idea. The need for cleaner energy, cleaner air and cleaner water has never been greater. The widespread call for better handling of resources, and habitat protection doesn’t change with the thermometer.

Our commitment to stop polluting our water systems with pesticides and other dangerous chemicals should be as great as ever, with or without climate change considerations. Dismal air quality now poses significant health risks, especially in urban areas. Those who equate their global warming skepticism with an “anything goes” attitude regarding the environment are seriously jeopardizing the health of our planet and their own health along with it. If we prepare for global warming in ways that help protect the environment—we’ll still be a lot better off—even on the off chance that we end up with a mini Ice Age instead.

Posted by Rebecca Sato.

Unmasking Jupiter's Europa: The Search for an Alien Biosphere (VIDEO)

2009-11-19T01:22:00-08:00

"There's nothing saying there is life there now. But we do know there are the physical conditions to support it."

Richard Greenberg, University of Arizona. world's leading expert on Europa.

Based on what we know about the Jovian moon, parts of Europa's seafloor should greatly resemble the environments around Earth's deep-ocean hydrothermal vents. Experts in marine biology attending the recent annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Science said they would shocked if no life existed in Europa's oceans.

Richard Greenberg, Principal Investigator in NASA’s Planetary Geology and Geophysics program, has calculated that the ocean may receive about 100 times more oxygen than previous models indicated — enough to support respiration by three million tons of fish.

Oxygen, generated by charged particles striking water molecules on the moon’s surface, would take 1 to 2 billion years to begin seeping into the ocean, calculated Richard Greenberg of the University of Arizona in Tucson. That delay would have been critical for supporting life because it would have allowed time for primitive organisms to develop the ability to use oxygen.

The most fascinating part of Europa's evolution, says Greenberg, is Europa’s youthful, nearly crater-free appearance, which indicates that the crust is continually resurfaced. Today’s crust is only 50 million years old, even though the moon formed soon after the solar system’s birth 4.56 billion years ago.

Over a period of about 50 million years, a layer of ice 300 meters thick slowly rose from below, gradually covering the moon’s surface and erasing old craters. As a result of this facelift, Europa’s oxygenated layer grew increasingly thick, until after about 1 to 2 billion years the entire ice layer was oxygen-rich. At that point, Greenberg suggests, ice melting at the bottom of the frozen layer began delivering oxygen into the proposed buried ocean at a faster rate than previously estimated, resulting in about 100 times more oxygen in the ocean.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/48322/title/Europas_proposed_ocean_could_be_rich_in_oxygen

http://www.oceanleadership.org/2009/could-jupiter-moon-harbor-fish-size-life/

Do Cosmic Rays Affect Growth of Life on Earth?

2009-11-19T01:12:00-08:00

A new study shows that cosmic radiation could be accelerating the growth of our Earth forests, though - as with most cosmic radiation effects - we don't know how it's happening or what the effects are. But in accordance with standard "Science From Fantastical Space Radiation" practice, the results were only discovered by accident.

A team from the University of Edinburgh scanned samples from felled Scottish spruce trees to examine the rings. Which, when you think about it, is just like scanning a document but without all the intermediary steps. By examining the width of the yearly rings that form you can examine the growth of the tree over time, and while they were expecting climate factors to dominate cosmic ones turned up instead.

There was a clear correlation between cosmic radiation levels and growth, and while it wasn't the usual "Grow to twice the size and change color" effect we normally associate with radiation-fueled growth it still outperformed links with little things like "temperature" or "rain." Which was a bit of a surprise.

If you're asking "How could cosmic radiation change tree growth?", you and the researchers have a lot in common. There are a few theories about how high energy protons slamming into the upper atmosphere, exploding into showers of exotic particles as they collide with air, could do this. None of which people can agree on. The idea that increased particle showers in the upper atmosphere can seed clouds and regular water showers further down has studies both for and against, while the idea that the unleashed particles are somehow spurring growth directly has only scifi for support so far. Well, scifi and the fact it actually seems to be happening.

In any case, we can count ourself lucky the cosmic radiation didn't have more Fantastic effects on the foliage: invisible trees would be a major hazard, rubber trees don't grow in Scotland, and the environmental effects of forests turning to stone or catching fire are undesirable.

Luke McKinney

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8311000/8311373.stm

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/122652654/HTMLSTART

NASA Answers "2012" Fears (VIDEO)

2009-11-19T00:52:00-08:00

2012 a disaster flick about the end of the world is currently assaulting movie goers across the country. The plot of the film, which grossed more than $65 million on its opening weekend, revolves around the ancient Mayan "prophecy" that we will all be obliterated on December 21, 2012, the date on which the Mayan calendar ends - a prophecy that was also referenced in the series finale of The X-Files as the launch date for the ultimate alien invasion.

Meanwhile, NASA has found itself answering so many common questions that their Ask an Astrobiologist video offers calming, professional reassurance that there is no planet Nibiru, nor will it collide with Earth.

The Daily Flash -Eco, Space, Tech (11/19)

2009-11-19T00:50:00-08:00

The Google Phone Is Coming to Change the Game

Google is for sure building its own-branded smartphone that it will sell directly through the usual retail channels. It was to have hit the stores before the holidays, but setbacks have pushed the launch into early 2010. The hardware will, of course, be made by someone else (a "major phone manufacturer") and it will most definitely be Google branded unlike, say, the T-Mobile G1.

Music: Too Expensive to Be Free, Too Free to Be Expensive

The digital music doubters could be right with the contention that advertising revenue can’t cover the costs of licensing music. Meanwhile, illegitimate free music sources continue to proliferate, rendering paid music subscriptions irrelevant for most music fans.

Mapping Job Loss Live! In Gloomy Color!

What it hasn't been shown is the ripple affect of what happens when the guy in the cubicle or on the assembly line next to you disappears. What makes the full, interactive version of this map unique--besides the fact that it appears to be the work of an over-achieving grad student at American University--is that it provides a shifting time line to show exactly how contagious poverty can be.

Throwing Out Food and Paper Will Be Illegal

Quebec has taken a long hard look at itself, and decided it doesn’t like what it sees. Its policies simply aren’t working. Overall waste generated has nearly doubled in the past 10 years, with waste going to landfill rising by over 10% in the same period. However, rather than just trying to fiddle with green taxes, the government has gone straight for the jugular and announced plans to make it illegal to dump rubbish and food waste.

Interstellar Highway Patrol: Stars Racing One-Million MPH Through Milky Way's Halo May Be From Other Galaxies

2009-11-19T00:46:00-08:00

Interstellar Highway Patrol take note: MIT astronomers announced that stars of a recently discovered type, tagged ultracool subdwarfs, take some pretty wild rides reaching speeds of one million mph as they orbit around the Milky Way, following paths very different from those of typical stars. One of them may actually be a visitor that originated in another galaxy.

The results of new MIT research clarifies the origins of these peculiar, faint stars, and may provide new details on the types of stars the Milky Way has acquired from other galaxies.

Ultracool subdwarfs were first recognized as a unique class of stars in 2003, and are distinguished by their low temperatures and low concentrations of elements other than hydrogen and helium ("subdwarf"). They sit at the bottom end of the size range for stars, and some are so small that they are closer to the planet-like objects called brown dwarfs. Only a few dozen ultracool subdwarfs are known today, as they are both very faint - up to 10,000 times fainter than the Sun - and extremely rare.

Adam Burgasser, associate professor of physics at MIT and lead author of the study, was intrigued by the fast motions of ultracool subdwarfs, which zip past the Sun at astonishing speeds. "Most nearby stars travel more or less in tandem with the Sun tracing circular orbits around the center of the Milky Way once every 250 million years," he explains. The ultracool subdwarfs, on the other hand, appear to pass us by at very high speeds, up to 500 km/s, or over a million miles per hour.

Burgasser's team of astronomers assembled measurements of the positions, distances and motions of roughly two dozen of these rare stars. Robyn Sanderson, co-author and MIT graduate student, then used these measurements to calculate the orbits of the subdwarfs using a numerical code developed to study galaxy collisions. Despite doing similar calculations for other types of low-mass stars, "these orbits were like nothing I'd ever seen before," says Sanderson.

Sanderson's calculations showed an unexpected diversity in the ultracool subdwarf orbits. Some plunge deep into the center of the Milky Way on eccentric, comet-like tracks; others make slow, swooping loops far beyond the Sun's orbit. Unlike the majority of nearby stars, most of the ultracool subdwarfs spend a great deal of time thousands of light-years above or below the disk of the Milky Way.

"Someone living on a planet around one of these subdwarfs would have an incredible nighttime view of a beautiful spiral galaxy - our Milky Way - spread across the sky," Burgasser speculates.

Sanderson's orbit calculations confirm that all of the ultracool subdwarfs are part of the Milky Way's halo, a widely dispersed population of stars that likely formed in the Milky Way's distant past. However, one of the subdwarfs, a star named 2MASS 1227-0447 in the constellation Virgo, has an orbit indicating that it might have a very different lineage, possibly extragalactic.

"Our calculations show that this subdwarf travels up to 200,000 light years away from the center of the Galaxy, almost 10 times farther than the Sun," says Bochanski, a postdoctoral researcher in Burgasser's group at MIT. This is farther than many of the Milky Way's nearest galactic neighbors, suggesting that this particular subdwarf may have originated somewhere else.

"Based on the size of its one billion-year orbit and direction of motion, we speculate that 2MASS 1227-0447 might have come from another, smaller galaxy that at some point got too close to the Milky Way and was ripped apart by gravitational forces," explains Bochanksi.

Astronomers have previously identified streams of stars in the Milky Way originating from neighboring galaxies, but all have been distant, massive, red giant stars. The ultracool subdwarf identified by Burgasser and his team is the first nearby, low-mass star to be found on such a trajectory. "If we can identify what stream this star is associated with, or which dwarf galaxy it came from, we could learn more about the types of stars that have built up the Milky Way's halo over the past 10 billion years," says Burgasser.

Casey Kazan, edited and adapted from material provided by the MIT News Office.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/wild-rides-0609.html

Can Hitchiking Microbes Survive Millions of Years of Space Travel? Experts Say "Yes"

2009-11-19T00:04:00-08:00

In a unique experiment on a galactic scale, millions of bacterial spores were purposely exposed to space, to see how solar radiation affects them and the results supported the idea that not only could life have arrived on Earth on meteorites, but that considerable material has flowed between planets.

Closer to home, scientists have analyzed aerial dust samples collected by Charles Darwin and confirmed that microbes can travel across continents without the need for planes or trains - rather bacteria and fungi hitch-hike by attaching to dust particles. Their results clearly show that diverse microbes, including ascomycetes, and eubacteria can live for centuries and survive intercontinental travel.

In a paper published in Environmental Microbiology, Dr. Anna Gorbushina (Carl-von-Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, Germany), Professor William Broughton (University of Geneva, Switzerland) and their colleagues analyzed dust samples collected by Charles Darwin and others almost 200 years ago.

Recent space-centric studies have shown that some rock-inhabiting organisms, known as "endoliths," might be able to survive a trip through space and a plunge through a planet's atmosphere to the surface. However, nobody knew whether these organisms could survive the initial trip into space.

Recently, an international team of researchers, led by Gerda Horneck of the Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Cologne, Germany, selected a number of hardy microbes from Earth and tested their ability to hitchhike aboard rocks similar to Martian meteorites.

The organisms used in the study included bacterial endospores, endolithic cyanobacteria and lichens. This selection provided a wider range of organisms than in other studies performed to date, including not just simple bacteria but also more complex eukaryotic organisms.

The researchers looked at previous studies of Martian meteorites that provided information about the kinds of forces needed to eject rocks from a large planet. Using this data, the researchers developed a series of tests designed to simulate these pressures on the selected organisms.

By smashing the life-containing rocks between metal plates, the researchers were able to determine which organisms are capable of surviving different pressures caused by asteroid impacts and ejection into space. Ultimately, they discovered that a wide range of organisms would be capable of surviving impacts on or Earth.

"Our results enlarge the number of potential organisms that might be able to reseed a planetary surface after early very large impact events, and suggest that such a re-seeding scenario on a planetary surface is possible with diverse organisms," the researchers report.

In earlier experiments, Horneck and her colleagues used the Russian Foton satellite to expose 50 million unprotected spores of the bacterium Bacillus Subtilis outside the satellite. UV radiation from the Sun killed nearly all of the spores, and did so even when the spores were confined under quartz.

To test if meteorites might protect bacteria on their journey through space, Horneck and her colleagues mixed samples of 50 million spores with particles of clay, red sandstone, Martian meteorite, or simulated Martian soil and made small lumps a centimeter in diameter. Between 10,000 and 100,000 spores of the original 50 million survived and when mixed with red sandstone, nearly all survived, suggesting that even meteorites a centimeter in diameter can carry life from one planet to another, if they completed the journey within a few years. In a rock a meter across, bacteria could probably survive for millions of years.

In a separate experiment, another team ran computer models of giant impacts like Chicxulub. In the simulations, millions of large boulders were ejected from the earth. About 30 boulders from each Earth impact even reached Titan, and they entered Titan’s atmosphere slower than most meteors hit Earth’s atmosphere. Big rocks from Earth have no doubt reached Enceladus, as well.

“That kind of entry should be no problem,” agreed Allan Treiman of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, quoted in New Scientist. Bacteria were found in wreckage of the shuttle Columbia when it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere in 2003. And Earthly lichen survived when exposed to the harsh environment of space.

The research is detailed in the Spring 2008 issue of the journal Astrobiology.

Posted by Jason McManus.

You Create the Caption

2009-11-19T00:00:00-08:00

Casey Kazan Daily Galaxy Editorial Staff

Image of the Day: The Mysterious "X" Galaxy

2009-11-19T00:00:00-08:00

The disc and bulge of NGC 4710, surrounded by luminous eerie-looking dust lanes, are found in the constellation Coma Berenices, a region rich in galaxies, containing the northern part of the Virgo cluster. When staring directly at the center of the galaxy above, you can see a faint, ethereal "X"-shaped structure, which astronomers call a "boxy" or "peanut-shaped" bulge. The odd shape is due to the vertical motions of the stars in the galaxy's bar and is only evident when the galaxy is seen edge-on.

Astronomers are studying these systems to determine how many globular clusters they host. Globular clusters are thought to represent an indication of the processes that can build bulges. Two quite different processes are believed to be at play regarding the formation of bulges in spiral galaxies: either they formed rather rapidly in the early Universe, before the spiral disc and arms formed; or they built up from material accumulating from the disc during a slow and long evolution. In this case of NGC 4710, researchers have spotted very few globular clusters associated with the bulge, indicating that its assembly mainly involved relatively slow processes.

Source: NASA/ESO/HUBBLE

Alien Oxygen Atmosphere Discovered (on Stars!)

2009-11-18T01:12:00-08:00

Our planetary surveys are nowhere near Star Trek's strike rate - they keep finding worlds stuffed with green-skinned females, humanoid societies, and thinly veiled metaphors for the situations they left behind a few hundred light (and regular) years ago. We find rocks which could freeze, explode and crush organic life just by looking at it. Now we've found a couple of Earth-sized oxygen atmosphered bodies, which would be all the way M-Class except for one thing: they're stars.

Specifically, they're "white dwarfs": old stars who've burned all their hydrogen fuel, gone through the red giant stages where they fuse their way up to heavier elements, but lack the mass to supernova and collapse into neutron stars or black holes. This is actually what'll happen to most stars, a relatively calm and cold fate, but there's no explosion so you don't hear about it much.

The stars were identified by scientists sifting through data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), an eight year examination of the universe with a two point five meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory. Working at the University of Warwick and Kiel University, they identified stars with oxygen atmospheres at the very edge of the supernova-explosion mass limit. More massive stars can fuse heavier elements, and these stars had just enough mass to fuse all their carbon, exposing their oxygen-neon core, but not quite enough to collapse that core into explosion.

The stars are instead sustained by electron degeneracy pressure, where every atom just about elbows all the other atoms away, and will remain so until it's eventually eaten by a black hole. Because you have to remember that everything eventually will be.

Luke McKinney

2 Earth-sized bodies with oxygen rich atmospheres http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/2_earth-sized_bodies/

"Vampire Star" May Unlock Clues to Secret of Dark Energy

2009-11-18T00:52:00-08:00

ESO’s Very Large Telescope has captured the first time-lapse movie of a rare shell ejected by a “vampire star." The gas-sucking star is part of a double star system known as V445 in the constellation of Puppis ("the Stern") that is devouring part of a companion star looks to be a ticking time bomb. It appears that this double star system is a prime candidate to be one of the long-sought progenitors of the exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovae, critical for studies of dark energy. In November 2000, this system underwent a nova outburst, becoming 250 times brighter than before and ejecting a large quantity of matter into space.

“One of the major problems in modern astrophysics is the fact that we still do not know exactly what kinds of stellar system explode as a Type Ia supernova,” says Patrick Woudt, from the University of Cape Town and lead author of the paper reporting the results. “As these supernovae play a crucial role in showing that the Universe’s expansion is currently accelerating, pushed by a mysterious dark energy, it is rather embarrassing.”

The astronomers studied the object known as V445 in the constellation of Puppis (“the Stern”) -the first, and so far only, nova showing no evidence at all for hydrogen. It provides the first evidence for an outburst on the surface of a white dwarf dominated by helium. “This is critical, as we know that Type Ia supernovae lack hydrogen,” says co-author Danny Steeghs, from the University of Warwick, UK, “and the companion star in V445 Pup fits this nicely by also lacking hydrogen, instead dumping mainly helium gas onto the white dwarf.”

The shell — unlike any previously observed for a nova — is itself moving at about 24 million kilometres per hour. A thick disc of dust, which must have been produced during the last outburst, obscures the two central stars.

“The incredible detail that we can see on such small scales — about hundred milliarcseconds, which is the apparent size of a one euro coin seen from about forty kilometres — is only possible thanks to the adaptive optics technology available on large ground-based telescopes such as ESO’s VLT,” says Steeghs.

A supernova is one way that a star can end its life, exploding in a display of grandiose fireworks. One family of supernovae, called Type Ia supernovae, are of particular interest in cosmology as they can be used as “standard candles” to measure distances in the Universe and so can be used to calibrate the accelerating expansion that is driven by dark energy.

One defining characteristic of Type Ia supernovae is the lack of hydrogen in their spectrum. Yet hydrogen is the most common chemical element in the Universe. Such supernovae most likely arise in systems composed of two stars, one of them being the end product of the life of sun-like stars, or white dwarfs. When such white dwarfs, acting as stellar vampires that suck matter from their companion, become heavier than a given limit, they become unstable and explode .

Combining the NACO images with data obtained with several other telescopes the astronomers could determine the distance of the system — about 25 000 light-years from the Sun — and its intrinsic brightness — over 10 000 times brighter than the Sun. This implies that the vampire white dwarf in this system has a high mass that is near its fatal limit and is still simultaneously being fed by its companion at a high rate.

“Whether V445 Puppis will eventually explode as a supernova, or if the current nova outburst has pre-empted that pathway by ejecting too much matter back into space is still unclear,” says Woudt. “But we have here a pretty good suspect for a future Type Ia supernova!”

Casey Kazan

http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2009/pr-43-09.html

Ghosts of Billions of Black Holes Litter the Cosmos: Are They Signs of Other Universes?

2009-11-18T00:52:00-08:00

Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd don't need to suit up for this one. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has found a cosmic "ghost," and scientists think it is evidence of a huge eruption produced by a supermassive black hole equal in power to a billion supernovas. The source, HDF 130, is over 10 billion light years away and existed at a time 3 billion years after the Big Bang, when galaxies and black holes were forming at a high rate. The explosion of each super-massive black hole may, according to recent theories, collapse to form a number of new universes.

Claude Barrabes of Paris and Valerie Frolov, a Russian physicist working in Canada propose that a large number of universes may be created inside each black hole proportional to its mass.

The X-ray ghost created the eruption of the supermassive black hole, so-called because a diffuse X-ray source has remained after other radiation from the outburst has died away, is in the Chandra Deep Field-North, one of the deepest X-ray images ever taken.

"We'd seen this fuzzy object a few years ago, but didn't realize until now that we were seeing a ghost", said Andy Fabian of the Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. "It's not out there to haunt us, rather it's telling us something - in this case what was happening in this galaxy billions of year ago."

Fabian and colleagues think the X-ray glow from HDF 130 is evidence for a powerful outburst from its central black hole in the form of jets of energetic particles traveling at almost the speed of light. When the eruption was ongoing, it produced prodigious amounts of radio and X-radiation, but after several million years, the radio signal faded from view as the electrons radiated away their energy.

However, less energetic electrons can still produce X-rays by interacting with the pervasive sea of photons remaining from the Big Bang - the cosmic background radiation. Collisions between these electrons and the background photons can impart enough energy to the photons to boost them into the X-ray energy band. This process produces an extended X-ray source that lasts for another 30 million years or so.

"This ghost tells us about the black hole's eruption long after it has died," said co-author Scott Chapman, also of Cambridge University. "This means we don't have to catch the black holes in the act to witness the big impact they have."

This is the first X-ray ghost ever seen after the demise of radio-bright jets. Astronomers have observed extensive X-ray emission with a similar origin, but only from galaxies with radio emission on large scales, signifying continued eruptions. In HDF 130, only a point source is detected in radio images, coinciding with the massive elliptical galaxy seen in its optical image. This radio source indicates the presence of a growing supermassive black hole.

"This result hints that the X-ray sky should be littered with such ghosts," said co-author Caitlin Casey, also of Cambridge, "especially if black hole eruptions are as common as we think they are in the early Universe."

"Even after the ghost disappears, most of the energy from the black hole's eruption remains", said Fabian. "Because they're so powerful, these eruptions can have profound effects lasting for billions of years."

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Source: http://www.chandra.harvard.edu/press/09_releases/press_052809.html

Image of the Day: A Galaxy's Supermassive Engine

2009-11-18T00:18:00-08:00

Astronomers believe that supermassive black holes are standard objects in galaxies with bulges such as the spectacular Seyfert galaxy NGC 4258 shown here. Black holes with masses of a million to a few billion times the mass of the Sun are believed to be the engines that power nuclear activity in galaxies. Some nuclei fire jets of energetic particles millions of light years into space. Almost all astronomers believe that this enormous outpouring of energy comes from the death throes of stars and gas that are falling into the central black hole. A giant black hole in a galactic nucleus exerts a powerful gravitational force on nearby gas and stars, causing them to move at high speeds.

Seyfert galaxies are characterized by extremely bright nuclei, and spectra which have very bright emission lines of hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, and oxygen. These emission lines exhibit strong Doppler broadening, which implies velocities from 500 to 4000 km/s, and are believed to originate near an accretion disk surrounding the central black hole.

Global Warming is Accelerating Growth of Ancient High-altitude Trees

2009-11-18T00:16:00-08:00

Ancient pines close to treeline have wider annual growth rings for the period from 1951 to 2000 than for the previous 3,700 years, reports a University of Arizona-led research team. Regional temperatures have increased, particularly at high elevations, during the same 50-year time period. Increasing temperatures at high altitudes are fueling the post-1950 growth spurt has been observed in Rocky Mountain bristlecone pines, including ones in Arizona's San Francisco Peaks.

Bristlecone pines live for thousands of years on dry, windswept, high-elevation mountain slopes in the western U.S. The scientists collected and analyzed tree rings from Great Basin bristlecone pines located in three mountain ranges in eastern California and Nevada that are separated by hundreds of miles.

The team analyzed the average and median width of tree rings for 50-year blocks of time, starting with the latter half of the 20th century, the years 1951 to 2000, and going backward in time to 2650 B.C. The analysis spans more than 4,600 years.

"We're showing this increased growth rate at treeline in a number of locations," said Matthew W. Salzer, a research associate at UA's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. "It's unique in several millennia, and it's related specifically to treeline."

Only trees growing within about 500 feet (150 meters) of treeline showed the surge in growth. In general, those trees were at or above about 11,000 feet (3,300 meters) in elevation.

"You can come downslope less than 200 vertical meters and sample the same species of tree, and it won't show the same wide band of growth," Salzer said.

Growth at the pines' upper elevational range is limited by cold temperatures. At the lower elevations, growth of the trees is limited by moisture more than temperature, Salzer said.

Co-author Malcolm K. Hughes said, "Something very unusual is happening at high elevations, and this is one more piece of evidence for that." One other example, he said, was the accelerated melting of small glaciers at high altitudes.

"There is increasingly rapid warming in western North America," said Hughes, a UA Regents' Professor of dendrochronology. "The higher you go, the faster it's warming. We think our finding may be part of that whole phenomenon."

Individual Great Basin bristlecone pines, Pinus longaeva, are the longest-living organisms known. The trees live at an elevation range of approximately 8,200 to 11,400 feet (about 2,500 to 3,500 meters). The oldest living bristlecone, almost 5,000 years old, is in California's White Mountains.

The trees' longevity coupled with the excellent preservation of trunks from even older dead trees has allowed some scientists to reconstruct regional climate 8,000 years into the past using tree-ring records from bristlecone pines.

The recent rapid growth of three species of pines at elevations close to treeline had been noticed more than 25 years ago by previous researchers from UA's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. The sudden growth surge was puzzling in trees hundreds to thousands of years old, well past their adolescence.

Casey Kazan.

Source: University of Arizona.

Top-Secret Global Warming Spy Pics -A Galaxy Insight

2009-11-18T00:14:00-08:00

The Medea Program has released secret spy pictures of a melting Arctic, but don't worry: we're not under alien attack just yet. "The Medea Program" might look like something you'd see written on a thick paperback (possibly above an image of knives and spy satellites) but in reality it's a program to share declassified intelligence agency information with scientists. Who might actually do something with it.

The point is that the intelligence services have always had bigger budgets and better technology than science, because (thanks to fantastic flaws in human psychological design) peeking over the fence at our neighbours is far more important than studying the planet, or the universe. In this case the spy satellite pictures of melting Arctic ice have fifteen times better resolution than the scientific satellites, allowing them to see features as small as one meter. And by "features" we mean "small puddles of melting Arctic ice." One meter puddles might not sound like a big thing, until you realise they cover 30% of the Arctic - and the puddles absorb sunlight instead of reflecting it.

Scientists were particularly impressed at the speed with which these images were released, mere hours after a request by the National Academy of Sciences - but this is only a minor good against a very large bad. The fact is that mountains of incredible data are left lying locked in secret files, for want of a few thousand to filter and release them - while scientists spend hundreds of millions more attempting to get the same information with inferior equipment.

Unfortunately, until humanity evolves past shooting at itself we're going to have to appreciate projects like Medea as positive steps. At some point we may start doing amazing things like "actually using our full abilities", instead of wasting the majority of it against other sub-groups doing exactly the same thing, but for now we can be satisfied with absolute photographic proof of global warming. Taken by high level and utterly impartial - as in "they don't care about either side" impartial - intelligence agencies.

Luke McKinney

Unclassified Spy Images of Arctic Ice

The Daily Flash -Eco, Space, Tech (11/18)

2009-11-18T00:04:00-08:00

Android’s Rapid Growth Has Some Developers Worried

A year after its release, Google’s open source Android operating system has become a sensation. After a slow start, it is now available on at least 12 phones, with more devices waiting in the wings. Good news for Android fans, right? Not really, say some developers. A slew of problems have made managing Android apps a “nightmare,” they say, including three versions of the OS (Android 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0), custom firmware on many phones, and hardware differences between different models.

For users, it means apps in the store could be buggy, might not work well depending on their handsets, and could deliver a frustrating experience.

Are Dystopian Movies More Popular When the Economy Sucks?

With the launch of disaster/apocalypse movie 2012 last weekend, a new question has popped up on the Net: Are dystopian movies more popular when the world is already gloomy from an economic depression? You'd think perhaps yes, wouldn't you?

Mark Cuban's Plan to Crush Google's Super Powers

Musing on his blog, the early (read: easy) Internet billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks has thrown out a crazy idea for Microsoft. Instead of spending billions promoting Bing, what if they paid the top 1000 sites a million bucks to de-list from Google?

Swarm of Cheap Open Source Robots Set to Take Over the World

How can we fear the robot revolution when it's our own DIY handywork and GPL? Each of these swarm robots costs less than €100 to build and has a mind powered by open source software

Leonid Meteor Shower Peaks Early Tuesday Morning

One of the best annual meteor showers will peak in the pre-dawn hours Tuesday, and for some skywatchers the show could be quite impressive. The best seats are in Asia, but North American observers should be treated to an above average performance of the Leonid meteor shower, weather permitting. The trick for all observers is to head outside in the wee hours of the morning – between 1 a.m. and dawn – regardless where you live.

After Microsoft, Bringing a High-Tech Eye to Professional Kitchens

Nathan Myhrvold, a former chief technology officer at Microsoft, and his company, Intellectual Ventures, pursues an eclectic array of speculative and potentially world-changing ideas — inventing a new battery, taming hurricanes, defeating disease. And here, along with the laser designed to shoot mosquitoes out of the air (a high-speed camera counts the rate of wing-flapping to ensure that innocent insects are not vaporized), is the best-equipped restaurant kitchen anywhere that never serves any customers.

Project MOON EXPLOSION Blows More Than Water Out Of Lunar Craters

2009-11-17T05:46:57-08:00

NASA's most awesome mission since pointing at the sky and saying "I bet we can put people there" has come to fruition, with absolute proof that there's water ice on the Moon - and lots of it.

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) is the most explosive euphemism since Tom Clancy discovered the thesaurus. It 'sensed' the contents of the lunar crater Cabeus by dropping an entire Centaur rocket booster into it, and when you 'drop' something in orbit it's very much like 'fired at' by the time it hits the ground. The booster slammed into the shadowed regolith like a two ton bullet, blowing a twenty meter hole in the moon and ejecting dust tens of kilometers into space - where the LCROSS satellite, chasing the Centaur, could get a good look at it for four minutes before its own suicide strike into the same crater.

Both impacts were observed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), the one part of the mission not designed to explode part of a astronomical body that day. Spectrographic analysis unequivocally confirmed the presence of water, and that it made up a whole percent of the ejected material, so when we do build bases in the moon there'll be plenty of this all-important liquid for the taking. Even more interestingly, there were organic compounds as well as an unexpected amount of mercury, so in true science tradition we've spawned two more questions in answering one.

The permanently shadowed craters of the lunar poles seem to act as frozen traps for material moving through the solar system, collecting meteors where nothing will disturb them - until some awesome apes from another world blow them to bits. And then those apes get to work out what happened, and why, and what we're going to do when we get there!

Luke McKinney

Lunar impact tosses up water and stranger stuff

LCROSS NASA site

Jupiter: Earth's Protector or Eventual Destroyer?

2009-11-17T01:00:00-08:00

Jupiter's been in the news a lot this past summer, as anywhere there's a Pacific-Ocean-sized explosion tends to be. The recent impact (and detonation) of an asteroid against the gas giant's hide has triggered the usual flurry of discussion with the planet cast as everything from cosmic protector to vengeful heavenly killer (both believable aspects of Jupiter, the god the Romans ripped off from the Greeks, but less so for the actual solar system object). Both miss the real answer: it's just there, and sometimes things just happen.

The cosmic protector idea is popular and plays to our egos by emphasising the importance of our solar system setup. The idea is that Jupiter's gravity acts as a giant interplanetary vacuum cleaner shield, sucking in rogue comets and asteroids before they penetrate to the inner planets. After all, it got hit twice in the last fifteen years! It's a cool idea, and can only be countered by, er, applying even the most basic facts. Jupiter's orbital radius is three quarters of a trillion meters - that means the orbit covers almost five trillion meters, while the planet is only seventy million miles across. Even accounting for its gravitational attraction (which is actually a false argument, as we'll see in the next section) it can never "shield" anything even remotely near a single percent of that path. It's like claiming a moth buzzing around your head will shield you from thrown darts. The NASA image above shows three clusters of impacts, as well as temperature differences in Jupiter's cloud belts.

The vengeful god idea is based on a flaw in the above - just because an asteroid is caught in Jupiter's gravity, it won't necessarily crash into the surface. If it's further out it'll just get slung around into a new path - Jupiter and Saturn create a kind of "planetary pinball" machine, randomly rearranging the vectors of anything coming in and out anywhere near them. Some say that Jupiter slings extinction-level rocks at us the odd time, only missing by the barest of margins.

The first flaw with this is the same as for the protector - Jupiter is absolutely gigantic by planetary scales, but - like any planet - still tiny by inter-planetary scales. If it aims anything it was by accident and - here's the important bit - it's just as likely to redirect something away from us as towards us. Claiming that Jupiter is out to get us is like blaming the weather.

The simple fact is that humans want things to have functions. We'd prefer benevolent forces, but deep down we'll still take cruel and vengeful gods over random chance. It's the origin of spiritism, the polytheism of our earliest societies, and can only be beaten into submission by years of science and advancement. It often takes generations to even hammer down the multitude of imagined forces into one central deity, never mind getting rid of them altogether. Which is why it's possible to look through an infrared image taken by satellites we launched with our own skill, and still try to assign motives to what we see.

Luke McKinney

Jupiter's Role

"The Earth Strain" -Could Future Space Missions Infect the Milky Way?

2009-11-17T00:54:00-08:00

A Mars mission to be launched in October on a Russian robot spacecraft will include specimens of thale cress; tiny water creature tardigrade - or water bear - which can also survive extraordinary extremes of temperature and pressure; samples of brewer's yeast; and permafrost from the Siberian Arctic. Together with several other microscopic organisms, these representatives of Earth life will be carried in a package that will be flown to Mars and are scheduled to be returned to Earth in 2012.

The experiment - Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment, or Life - is designed to show if living organisms can survive unprotected in space for long periods and thus support the theory of panspermia, which argues that simple organisms can survive for years as they float through space and that life on Earth could have been wafted here from another world.

The Phobos-Grunt mission will last for 34 months and will carry its samples of life forms in a three-inch-diameter titanium case, including the bacterium deinococcus radiodurans, whose ability to survive intense radiation has earned it the nickname "Conan the Bacterium".

The Russian aerospace company NPO Lavochkin, which is building and launching Phobos-Grunt, has insisted that the Life capsule will not break open in the event of Phobos-Grunt missing its target and plunging into Mars. (Right, and they have a bridge in Brooklyn they'd like to sell us too).

When the Apollo 11 astronauts splashed down in the Pacific they were immediately whisked off into quarantine, spending three weeks in a rather unglamorous steel shell for fear that they'd contracted lethal space-plagues. The Mars mission lends living credibility a recent paper by Professor Cockell of the Open University points out that the flow of life is more likely to be FROM the vast dirty ball teeming with billions of organisms TO the utterly dead space rocks. Who could have guessed?

The idea is that hardy hitchhikers on our interplanetary probes could face alien ecosystems with "The Earth Strain", and they won't even have a rugged team of determined scientists to find a cure. Never mind that anything capable of surviving extended exposure to cosmic rays would have to be King Hardcore of the microorganic kingdom.

One problem with this viewpoint is that it talks about the spread of Terran life as 'contamination', which is like describing painting as 'contaminating' a pristine canvas. In case you haven't noticed we haven't actually found any life anywhere yet, and if we can bring some to a habitable location then it's not just a good idea - it's our duty.

In a vast, cold universe we aren't just "Keepers of the Sacred Flame" of life, we are the bloody flame, and like Prometheus before us we must share this infinitely precious resource (hopefully without the subsequent eagle/liver unpleasantness). There are life-capable habitats out there that just haven't lucked into the right chemical sequence to get the party started. Bacteria from Earth could be the only trigger needed, the difference between waiting for lightning to strike and using a match.

If we do find alien life then by all means avoid contaminating them with the War-of-the-Worlds-ending common cold, but that's no problem. If there's one thing we've learned from our history of space flight it's that destroying our craft before they get somewhere is easy. It's preventing the damn things from exploding that's the trick.

One objection will be the "What's so great about life anyway?" crowd, demanding to know what right we have to spread it. Luckily these nihilistic losers are usually too overcome with ennui to achieve anything of note and can be safely ignored (I assure you, they are in their own lives). Another will be the cries that we should not play God, that the seeding of life is His right alone. To which the only reasonable response is "If we can do it with a tank of fuel and a jar of goo and He doesn't stop us, then we're fairly sure He doesn't mind."

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Sources:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/12/mars-mission-conan-bacterium-russian

Eradicating Emigrants From Earth?

Richard Dawkins on Evolution & Origins of Life (VIDEO)

2009-11-17T00:40:00-08:00

"The universe could so easily have remained lifeless and simple -just physics and chemistry, just the scattered dust of the cosmic explosion that gave birth to time and space. The fact that it did not -the fact that life evolved out of literally nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved literally out of nothing -is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice. And even that is not the end of the matter. Not only did evolution happen: it eventually led to beings capable of comprehending the process by which they comprehend it."

Richard Dawkins -famed Oxford evolutionary biologist reflecting on the sheer wonder of the emergence of life on Earth and the evolutionary process in his classic The Ancestor's Tale.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Related Galaxy posts on Richard Dawkins and the Origins of Life:

Loren Eiseley on Evolution: Transcending the Cosmos -A Galaxy Insight
Human Evolution: Do New Findings Remap Our Ancestral Tree?
Darwin's God -The Legacy of HMS 'Beagle
'Richard Dawkins, Darwin & the Big Questions

Is the Observable Universe a Massive Computer Simulation? - A Galaxy Classic

2009-11-17T00:18:00-08:00

Philosophy is a vital study for the human race - from the ancient Greeks to the modern day, some of the finest thinkers have examined the human condition and produced valuable insights and conclusions on what it means "to be." Unfortunately much of the other work in the field is dubious, including a recent paper which argues that we're all living in a vast computer simulation. Yes, it WAS written after the first Matrix film but before the sequels. Funny that.

Unfortunately this isn't a fanfic: it's a refereed paper published in the Philosophical Quarterly, which must have been hurting for content. It was written by, Nick Bostrom, the Director of the "Future of Humanity Institute" at Oxford University, the sort of person we'd generally assume to be above such things. But we suppose that even those pondering the fate of the species need publicity and funding too - probably more than most people, in fact.

Reading the paper (link at the bottom of this article) is a fun game of "Spot the logical flaws" for all the family, with bonus points for every "Warning sign of BS paper" picked out.

The most egregious flaw is the use of a form of the fantastically annoying Bayesian argument: the idea that if we suppose there far more B-type of people than A, then we're more likely to be born as a B than A. It's been which has been used to argue everything from the imminent end of the species to this simulation silliness despite:

a) assuming that we're all somehow stacked up waiting to exist like capsule toys in a spiritual vending machine.
b) Statistics Error No 1: confusing probability with actual fact, and arguing that nothing but the most common option should exist. For example, by the Bayesian argument you and everyone you know is Asian.
c) It's been an equally (in)valid at every stage in human history since we first dropped out of the trees, and was wrong then too.

Other warning signs:

- The "I'm right whatever happens" opener of this paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true:....(1) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (2) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation."

For those of you unwilling to dig through philosophical page-filler, this states "Either a) future people won't run simulations or b) they will".

- The "even if you disagree with this, the methods used are interesting" statement in the introduction. If you can't even open the paper without admitting it's probably garbage that's a bad sign, and if your methods were that good you wouldn't need to point it out.

- The use of hideously underdeveloped math to make your wordswordswords look more scientific, combined with the "make this number very large" style of extrapolation. Which works in some situations, which this isn't any of.

The main weakness of the paper is the usual "You can't prove if it isn't" argument, the same one that's been used for religion since forever. But in cases like this it's not the skeptic's job to logically disprove an argument that has never been logically proved. If we state "The Earth, below a depth of ten miles, is composed entirely of pink candyfloss", you don't have to hire a drilling rig and a rogue team of lovable geologists to venture into the planets core to disprove us.

Likewise, if we say "We are living on Earth" and somebody else says "We (are part of a vast future simulation that goes to enormous trouble to make it seem like we are) living on Earth", you don't exactly need Occam's Razor to cut away the unsupported dross from that statement. Occam's blunt butter knife is more than sufficient.

Posted by Luke McKinney from a remote arm of the Milky Way.

Source:

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation

Son of HAL! Crunching One Quintillion Calculations Per Second

2009-11-17T00:11:00-08:00

The U.S. Department of Energy has already begun holding workshops on building a system that's 1,000 times more powerful as the Jaguar, capable of a peak performance of 2.3 petaflops. — an exascale system, said Buddy Bland, project director at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility that includes Jaguar. An exaflop is a million trillion calculations per second, (one quintillion) or 1,000 times faster than a petaflop.

Exascale systems, according to Computerworld, "will be needed for high-resolution climate models, bio energy products and smart grid development as well as fusion energy design now under way in France: the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. They're expected to arrive in 2018 — in line with Moore's Law — which helps to explain the roughly 10-year development period. But the problems involved in reaching exaflop scale go well beyond Moore's Law."

Casey Kazan.

Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9140928/Supercomputers_with_100_million_cores_coming_b

Image of the Day: "The Gemini Twins"

2009-11-17T00:08:00-08:00

Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are passing dangerously close to each other, but each is likely to survive as the galaxies advance over the next tens of millions of years, their component stars are not likely to collide, although new stars will form in the bunching of gas caused by gravitational tides. Close inspection of the above image taken by the 8-meter Gemini-South Telescope in Chile shows a bridge of material momentarily connecting the two giants. Known collectively as Arp 271, the interacting pair spans about 130,000 light years and lies about 90 million light-years away toward the constellation of Virgo. The Milky Way Galaxy will undergo a similar collision with the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in about five billion years.

Dr MEGAVolt (VIDEO)

2009-11-17T00:06:00-08:00

Don't miss this awesome Dr MegaVolt spectacle at Burning Man: two coils firing simultaneously fill a 40-foot-long volume of space with electrical arcs! Austin Richards, creator of the Dr. MegaVolt character, has been building Tesla coils since 1981. Austin holds a Ph.D. in particle physics from UC Berkeley and a Physics BA from Amherst College, and has worked professionally on high-voltage systems since 1987.