The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel: Sci, Space, Tech

"The Google Brain" --Are Humans Entering a New Epoch of Evolution?

2013-05-21T08:05:37-07:00

In June of 2012, The New York Times reported that inside Google's high-tech R&D "X" laboratory the search giant has been creating a simulation of the human brain. And rather than teaching it programs, Google's staff have been exposing it to information from the Net so that it learns organically, a little like the way we humans do. It's built by hooking together 16,000 processor cores with over one billion interconnections, in a model of the around 86 billion neurons in a typical adult human brain.

In the past decade, we’ve examined our Solar System’s orbit through the Milky Way to ask whether there may be clues to periodic mass extinctions on our planet. We've launched missions seeking out habitable "Alien Earths" and the existence of dark energy and have migrated from wondering if there's life on Mars to searching out and studying myriads of exo planets in the Milky Way and infinite galaxies beyond.

Our incredible advances have also underscored own, very human limitations — our eyes, notes astronomer James Kaler see wavelengths between 0.00004 and 0.00008 of a centimeter. Kaler calls our visual spectrum “…but one octave on an imaginary electromagnetic piano with a keyboard hundreds of kilometers long.”

In The Star Thrower evolutionary biologist, Loren Eiseley, writes that "We are rag dolls made out of many ages and skins, changelings, who have slept in wood nests or hissed in the uncouth guise of waddling amphibians. We have played such roles for infinitely longer ages than we have been men."

Physicist Stephen Hawking believes that we have entered a new phase of evolution. "At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information."

But what distinguishes us from our cave man ancestors is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years, and particularly, Hawking points out, over the last three hundred.

"I think it is legitimate to take a broader view, and include externally transmitted information, as well as DNA, in the evolution of the human race," Hawking said.

In the last ten thousand years the human species has been in what Hawking calls, "an external transmission phase," where the internal record of information, handed down to succeeding generations in DNA, has not changed significantly. "But the external record, in books, and other long lasting forms of storage," Hawking says, "has grown enormously. Some people would use the term, evolution, only for the internally transmitted genetic material, and would object to it being applied to information handed down externally. But I think that is too narrow a view. We are more than just our genes."

The time scale for evolution, in the external transmission period, has collapsed to about 50 years, or less.

Meanwhile, Hawking observes, our human brains "with which we process this information have evolved only on the Darwinian time scale, of hundreds of thousands of years. This is beginning to cause problems. In the 18th century, there was said to be a man who had read every book written. But nowadays, if you read one book a day, it would take you about 15,000 years to read through the books in a national Library. By which time, many more books would have been written."

But we are now entering a new phase, of what Hawking calls "self designed evolution," in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA. "At first," he continues "these changes will be confined to the repair of genetic defects, like cystic fibrosis, and muscular dystrophy. These are controlled by single genes, and so are fairly easy to identify, and correct. Other qualities, such as intelligence, are probably controlled by a large number of genes. It will be much more difficult to find them, and work out the relations between them. Nevertheless, I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression."

If the human race manages to redesign itself, to reduce or eliminate the risk of self-destruction, we will probably reach out to the stars and colonize other planets. But this will be done, Hawking believes, with intelligent machines based on mechanical and electronic components, rather than macromolecules, which could eventually replace DNA based life, just as DNA may have replaced an earlier form of life.

The Daily Galaxy via http://www.centauri-dreams.org/

Image credit: http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/gallery/

Astronomers Probe 1st Large-scale Structures Produced by Dark Matter

2013-05-21T06:57:09-07:00

Numerical simulation of the density of matter when the universe was one billion years old. Galaxies formation follows the gravitational wells produced by dark matter, where hydrogen gas coalesces, and the first stars ignite. CIBER studies the total sky brightness, to probe the component from first stars and galaxies using spectral signatures, and searches for the distinctive spatial pattern seen in the image below, produced by large-scale structures from dark matter.

“The first massive stars to form in the universe produced copious ultraviolet light that ionized gas from neutral hydrogen. CIBER observes in the near infrared, as the expansion of the universe stretched the original short ultraviolet wavelengths to long near-infrared wavelengths today," said Jamie Bock, CIBER principal investigator from the California Institute of Technology. CIBER investigates two telltale signatures of first star formation -- the total brightness of the sky after subtracting all foregrounds, and a distinctive pattern of spatial variations.

“The objectives of the experiment are of fundamental importance for astrophysics, to probe the process of first galaxy formation, but the measurement is also extremely difficult technically,” he noted. The image below shows early dark matter filaments.

This will be the fourth flight for CIBER on a NASA sounding rocket. The previous launches were in 2009, 2010, and 2012 from the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. After each flight the experiment or payload was recovered for post-calibrations and re-flight.

For this flight CIBER will fly on a larger and more powerful rocket than before. This will loft CIBER to a higher altitude than those previously obtained, thus providing longer observation time for the instruments. The experiment, which will safely splash down in the Atlantic Ocean more than 400 miles off the Virginia coast, will not be recovered.

CIBER previously flew on two-stage Black Brant IX sounding rockets. Bock said, “The collection of data from the three flights allows us to compare data and rigorously test sources of potential systematic error from both the instrument and astrophysical foregrounds. We have been through the end-to-end process in analyzing our data, so we understand the benefits of going with a non-recovered Black Brant XII. We also know the performance of the instrument very well from these flights and that makes us confident going forward with this more capable but final flight.”

The 70-foot tall four-stage Black Brant XII rocket will carry CIBER to an altitude of about 350 miles. According to Bock, “This flight is pioneering a new direction in the astrophysics program in that we are flying our instrument on a non-recovered Black Brant XII. The XII gives us a significantly higher trajectory, providing about 560 seconds of flight time above 250 km (155 miles) altitude, compared with 250 seconds on standard Black Brant IX flights out of White Sands.”

“Our experience in the near-infrared waveband is that we see appreciable emission from the atmosphere up to 250 km. The higher trajectory allows us to do some new things that are not possible on a Black Brant IX. For example, we expect to have enough independent images of the sky to directly determine the in-flight gain of the infrared cameras, which will allow us to measure background fluctuations in single exposures. This gives us a much more direct way to compare with satellite data than the statistical combinations we have had to use to date. The higher trajectory of course comes with a price in that the payload is not recovered,” he said.

CIBER is a cooperative instrument designed and built by the California Institute of Technology, University of California Irvine, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). The same team is also developing an improved follow-on experiment, with more capable optics and detector arrays, that will be completed next year.

Backup launch days for this project are June 5 – 10.

The image at the top of the page shows galaxy BX442, was observed using the Hubble Space Telescope as it existed 3 billion years after the Big Bang. Think about that: It means the light from that part of the universe took 10.7 billion years to get here. "As you go back in time to the early universe, galaxies look really strange, clumpy and irregular, not symmetric," says Alice Shapley, a UCLA associate professor of physics and astronomy. "The vast majority of old galaxies look like train wrecks."

The Daily Galaxy via http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sounding-rockets/

Image credit: Courtesy of Jamie Bock/Cal Tech

"Quantum Weirdness" --New Insights

2013-05-21T04:20:00-07:00

Entanglement, by general consensus of physicists, is the weirdest part of quantum science. To say that two particles, A and B, are entangled means that they are actually two parts of an inseparable quantum thing. An important consequence of this inherent kinship is that measuring a property of A (say, the particle's polarization) is necessarily to know the corresponding property of B, even if you're not there with a detector to observe B and even if (as explained below) the existence of that property had no prior fixed value until the moment particle A was detected.

To create such entanglement it is generally necessary to generate particles two at a time and to generate them so that they are born with this connected property. The most basic step in measuring such a system is to measure and detect both particles and to do so efficiently. So it had better be the case that if one detector registers a particle, the other detector should collect and register the other particle.

Because we know that if we see one particle, the other must exist, we say that the detection of one particle "heralds" the existence of the other, just as medieval heralds, with their banners and bugles, signified the arrival of a king. Although in this case, because with these particles born in twos, one photon is no more regal than the other, so we can equally well say that one photon heralds the other and vice versa. But as in the case of a king, in real life even though the herald announces the king he may be waylaid and never appear.

An experiment conducted at the Joint Quantum Institute establishes a new record for heralding efficiency for a pair of entangled photons (particles of light). The JQI work is published in the May 15 issue of the journal Optics Letters (see below). What happens is this: about 84% of the time the researchers observe photon A they also observe photon B just where it should be, and vice versa.

The JQI detection scheme will be useful for a number of reasons: it should help experiments to tighten remaining loopholes over the fundamental sway of quantum reality; it shows that sources of single heralded photons can achieve a certain level of reliability; and that might be a critical ingredient in producing a source of random numbers in a way that guarantees that any nefarious attempts to "load the dice" are impossible.

The JQI experiment demonstrates a photon source which could allow one to get to the heart of counter-intuitive nature of quantum reality by looking at indeterminacy. In common experience a coin facing up has a definite value: it is a head or a tail. Even if you don't look at the coin you trust that it must be a head or tail. In quantum experience the situation is more unsettling: material properties of things do not exist until they are measured. Until you "look" (measure the particular property) at the coin, as it were, it has no fixed face up.

What this indeterminacy means is that until it is observed an object has no definite value for that property. So the property in question, whether it is position, velocity, charge, polarization, or some other attribute, cannot even be said to exist. Instead the object is said to be in a superposition of states and its physical attributes can potentially take on a variety of values.

When describing the existence of this particle, we can do no more than specify a set of probabilities that the object's properties have certain values. At the moment measurement occurs the object undergoes a "collapse of probability." The probability estimates in play just before measurement become superfluous. The property being measured -- the polarization of a photon, say -- has assumed a definite value, horizontal or vertical in this case.

Describing reality in terms of indeterminacy and probability bothered Albert Einstein. Surely, he said, a particle's property exists before it is measured and a theory more complete than quantum mechanics would include the existence of those properties before they were measured. Those properties before measurement must be contained in some variables hidden from the standard quantum mechanical representation. The search for those "hidden variables" pertaining to the existence of things occupied a lot of Einstein's time in the latter part of his life, and has been a topic of concern with physicists ever since.

In the 1960s John Bell proposed a number of experiments designed to test the validity of things like entanglement and indeterminacy. So far all such tests have supported the validity of quantum indeterminacy and have discouraged the idea of any hidden variables. But for some skeptics, loopholes remain, and they argue that the reality of entanglement has not yet been adequately demonstrated. One reason for this is the difficulty in measuring properties of two or more (supposedly entangled) objects with sufficient efficiency. The relatively poor measurement efficiency, resulting in the failure to detect one or the other of the pair of entangled photons, allowed skeptics to assert that the measured sample of pairs did not constitute a good enough representation of the overall set of objects to be able to say something definitive about entanglement.

The experiment effort in Alan Migdall's JQI lab specifically targets the efficiency of the heralding process. To start, the researchers send a beam of ultraviolet photons into a special crystal where, at a rate of about one per billion, a UV photon is turned into a pair of entangled photons. This process is called spontaneous parametric down-conversion (PDC). The laws of physics dictate that the momentum and energy of the incoming photon (from the pump beam) should be split between the daughter photons (one is called the "signal" and the other the "idler"). In this picture omega is the frequency of the respective photon and is proportional to its energy.

The daughters might, for instance, be a green photon plus a near-infrared photon, or two red photons, or any other combination of colors so long as the sum of the energies of the photons adds up the energy of the pump photon.

Each of the two photons makes its way through a lens and into a fiber so narrow that only a single mode can propagate. That is, if we think of the light not as a particle (photon) but as a bundle of electric and magnetic fields, the lateral profile of the ray will have a simple Gaussian shape. This kind of fiber, aligned to exacting standards, ensures that photons of a very specific energy and direction will be channeled into a photodetector where its presence and time of arrival can be determined.
Photon or Vacuum?

"In effect the observation of photon A brings photon B into existence," says Alan Migdall, "at least if these are true entangled photons." This entanglement between the existence of a photon and no photon (or vacuum) is not what is usually considered to be entanglement but it is nonetheless.

The aim of this JQI experiment is not itself to test the Bell criteria for entanglement (as it turns out the polarizations of photons A and B are known be forehand), but rather to optimize the process of heralding -- the ability to say that if A is here then B is there. For some theories a heralding efficiency must at least 82% if entanglement loopholes are to be closed.

The JQI physicists have now exceeded this yardstick. They typically observe about 50,000 signal photons (photon A) per second in their detector. And when this happens about 84% of the time a photon is seen in detector B. And simultaneously, when the roles of the two detectors are reversed a comparable percentage is registered. This is the highest symmetric heralding efficiency for a single-mode fiber yet seen in any experiment.

Migdall says that because of the random nature of observing a photon with an appropriately prepared polarization state, the measurement of a heralded photon can be turned into a number that is truly random and guaranteed to be free of tampering. Such random numbers can, in turn, be used in various schemes to encrypt messages that can never be cracked.

The Joint Quantum Institute is operated jointly by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD and the University of Maryland in College Park.

The Daily Galaxy Courtesy of the Joint Quantum Institute. http://www.nist.gov/index.html

Image Credits: NIST and (top of page) courtesy of http://reactioncrate.wordpress.com/

Complex Biochemistry Possible at Origins of Life on Earth

2013-05-20T03:00:00-07:00

A new study shows that RNA is capable of catalyzing electron transfer under conditions similar to those of the early Earth. Because electron transfer, the moving of an electron from one chemical species to another, is involved in many biological processes – including photosynthesis, respiration and the reduction of RNA to DNA – the study’s findings suggest that complex biochemical transformations may have been possible when life began. The study was sponsored by the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which established the Center for Ribosomal Origins and Evolution (Ribo Evo) at Georgia Tech.

Free oxygen gas was almost nonexistent in the Earth’s atmosphere more than 3 billion years ago. When free oxygen began entering the environment as a product of photosynthesis, it turned the earth’s iron to rust, forming massive banded iron formations that are still mined today. The free oxygen produced by advanced organisms caused iron to be toxic, even though it was – and still is – a requirement for life. Loren Williams, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology believes the environmental transition caused a slow shift from the use of iron to magnesium for RNA binding, folding and catalysis.

There is considerable evidence that the evolution of life passed through an early stage when RNA played a more central role, before DNA and coded proteins appeared. During that time, more than 3 billion years ago, the environment lacked oxygen but had an abundance of soluble iron.

“Our study shows that when RNA teams up with iron in an oxygen-free environment, RNA displays the powerful ability to catalyze single electron transfer, a process involved in the most sophisticated biochemistry, yet previously uncharacterized for RNA,” said Loren Williams, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The results of the study were published online on May 19, 2013, in the journal Nature Chemistry. The study was sponsored by the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which established the Center for Ribosomal Origins and Evolution (Ribo Evo) at Georgia Tech.

Williams and Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry postdoctoral fellow Chiaolong Hsiao used a standard peroxidase assay to detect electron transfer in solutions of RNA and either the iron ion, Fe2+, or magnesium ion, Mg2+. For 10 different types of RNA, the researchers observed catalysis of single electron transfer in the presence of iron and absence of oxygen. They found that two of the most abundant and ancient types of RNA, the 23S ribosomal RNA and transfer RNA, catalyzed electron transfer more efficiently than other types of RNA. However, none of the RNA and magnesium solutions catalyzed single electron transfer in the oxygen-free environment.

“Our findings suggest that the catalytic competence of RNA may have been greater in early Earth conditions than in present conditions, and our experiments may have revived a latent function of RNA,” added Williams, who is also director of the Ribo Evo Center.

This new study expands on research published in May 2012 in the journal PLoS ONE. In the previous work, Williams led a team that used experiments and numerical calculations to show that iron, in the absence of oxygen, could substitute for magnesium in RNA binding, folding and catalysis. The researchers found that RNA’s shape and folding structure remained the same and its functional activity increased when magnesium was replaced by iron in an oxygen-free environment.

In future studies, the researchers plan to investigate whether other unique functions may have been conferred on RNA through interaction with a variety of metals available on the early Earth.

This work was supported by NASA (Award No. NNA09DA78A). The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the official views of NASA.

CITATION: Chiaolong Hsiao, et al., “RNA with iron(II) as a cofactor catalyses electron transfer,” (Nature Chemistry, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nchem.1649

The Daily Galaxy via Georgia Tech

Giant Elliptical Galaxy Harbors Largest Known Black Hole in Universe

2013-05-20T01:00:00-07:00

The black hole at the center of the super giant elliptical galaxy M87 in cluster Virgo fifty million light-years away is the most massive black hole for which a precise mass has been measured -6.6 billion solar masses. Orbiting the galaxy is an abnormally large population of about 12,000 globular clusters, compared to 150-200 globular clusters orbiting the Milky Way. The team theorized that the M87 black hole grew to its massive size by merging with several other black holes. M87 is the largest, most massive galaxy in the nearby universe, and is thought to have been formed by the merging of 100 or so smaller galaxies. The M87 black hole’s large size and relative proximity, astronomers think that it could be the first black hole that they could actually “see.”

In 2011, using the Frederick C. Gillett Gemini Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, a team of astronomers calculated the black hole’s mass, which is vastly larger than the black hole in the center of the Milky Way, which is about 4 million solar masses. The black hole’s event horizon, 20 billion km across “could swallow our solar system whole.”

In order to calculate the black hole’s mass, the astronomers measured how fast surrounding stars orbit the black hole. They found that, on average, the stars orbit at speeds of nearly 500 km/s (for comparison, the sun orbits the black hole at the center of the Milky Way at about 220 km/s). From these observations, the astronomers could come up with what they say is the most accurate estimate for the mass of a supermassive black hole.

Future calculations may attempt to calculate the size of another black hole with a roughly estimated mass of 18 billion solar masses, which is located in a galaxy about 3.5 billion light-years away.

In the image at the top of the page, a central jet is surrounded by nearby bright arcs and dark cavities in the multimillion degree Celsius atmosphere of M87. Much further out, at a distance of about fifty thousand light years from the galaxy's center, faint rings can be seen and two spectacular plumes extend beyond the rings. These features, shown in X-rays, together with VLA radio observations, are dramatic evidence that repetitive outbursts from the central supermassive black hole have been affecting the entire galaxy for a hundred million years or more.

The Daily Galaxy via Chandra X-Ray Observatory

Saving Kepler! --The Mission That Changed Our View of the Probability of Life in the Universe

2013-05-20T00:31:00-07:00

The NASA mission that has changed our view of the probability of life in the Universe is in jeopardy. The Kepler has shown that planets are common throughout the Milky Way and the billions of galaxies in the cosmos. NASA officials announced Wednesday, May 15, that the Kepler space telescope – the agency's primary instrument for detecting planets beyond our solar system – had suffered a critical failure and could soon be shut down permanently.Stanford professor and former NASA official explains how NASA might revive the Kepler space telescopeS, Scott Hubbard, a consulting professor of aeronautics and astronautics, helped guide the Kepler mission when he served as director of NASA Ames Research Center. He explains how NASA might bring the planet-hunting spacecraft back online.

The Kepler spacecraft's photo-detector array registers more than 100,000 stars at a time, Hubbard said, and in order to detect exoplanets (planets orbiting stars outside our solar system), the telescope must remain extremely steady so that the stars do not wander across the optics. A series of four gyroscope-like reaction wheels whir within the telescope to hold its gaze. At least three must be functioning to keep Kepler stable. One failed about a year ago and was shut off, and NASA scientists announced Wednesday, May 15, that a second wheel was no longer operating and that Kepler had paused operations.

In a conversation with Stanford News Service, Hubbard explained the possible ways that NASA could bring the spacecraft back online, and what planet hunters will do next if that's not possible.

It will be very sad if it can't go on any longer, but the taxpayers did get their money's worth. Kepler has, so far, detected more than 2,700 candidate exoplanets orbiting distant stars, including many Earth-size planets that are within their star's habitable zone, where water could exist in liquid form.

Kepler has done what the program managers said it would do, and that is to give us an inventory of extrasolar planets. It completed its primary observation phase, and had entered its extended science phase. We're already in the gravy train period – there's still a year and a half's worth of data in the pipeline that scientists will analyze to identify other candidate planets, and there will continue to be Kepler science discoveries for quite some time.

There are two possible ways to salvage the spacecraft. One is that they could try turning back on the reaction wheel that they shut off a year ago. It was putting metal on metal, and the friction was interfering with its operation, so you could see if the lubricant that is in there, having sat quietly, has redistributed itself, and maybe it will work.

The other scheme, and this has never been tried, involves using thrusters and the solar pressure exerted on the solar panels to try and act as a third reaction wheel and provide additional pointing stability. Hubbard's impression is that it would require sending a lot more operational commands to the spacecraft.

It's important to make clear, though, that in the original queue of missions aimed at finding life elsewhere, a mission like Kepler was a survey mission to establish the statistical frequency of whether these planets are rare or common. It lived the length of its prime mission, and was extremely successful during that time at achieving this goal. It has paved the way for additional missions, such as TESS – Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite – and TPF – Terrestrial Planet Finder – which will continue the search for Earth-like exoplanets in the near future.

The Daily Galaxy via Stanford University

Image credit: nexsci.caltech.edu

Image of the Day: Star Being Ripped Apart by a Supermassive Black Hole

2013-05-19T00:45:00-07:00

Results from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Magellan telescopes suggest that a dense stellar remnant was ripped apart by a black hole a thousand times as massive as the Sun in NGC 1399, an elliptical galaxy about 65 million light years from Earth. In the image above, X-rays from Chandra Space Observatory are shown in blue and are overlaid on an optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The Chandra observations show that this object is a so-called ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX). ULXs emit more X-rays than stars, but less than quasars. Their exact nature has remained a mystery, but one suggestion is that some ULXs are black holes with masses between about a hundred and a thousands times that of the Sun.

If confirmed, this discovery would be a cosmic double play: it would be strong evidence for an intermediate mass black hole, which has been a hotly debated topic, and would mark the first time such a black hole has been caught tearing a star apart.

The intensity of the X-ray emission places the source in the "ultraluminous X-ray source" or ULX category, meaning that it is more luminous than any known stellar X-ray source, but less luminous than the bright X-ray sources (active galactic nuclei) associated with supermassive black holes in the nuclei of galaxies. The nature of ULXs is a mystery, but one suggestion is that some ULXs are black holes with masses between about a hundred and several thousand times that of the Sun, a range intermediate between stellar-mass black holes and supermassive black holes located in the nuclei of galaxies.

This ULX is in a globular cluster, a very old and crowded conglomeration of stars. Astronomers have suspected that globular clusters could contain intermediate-mass black holes, but conclusive evidence for this has been elusive.

"Astronomers have made cases for stars being torn apart by supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies before, but this is the first good evidence for such an event in a globular cluster," said Jimmy Irwin of the University of Alabama.

Irwin and his colleagues obtained optical spectra of the object using the Magellan I and II telescopes in Las Campanas, Chile. These data reveal emission from gas rich in oxygen and nitrogen but no hydrogen, a rare set of signals from globular clusters. The physical conditions deduced from the spectra suggest that the gas is orbiting a black hole of at least 1,000 solar masses.

The abundant amount of oxygen and absence of hydrogen indicate that the destroyed star was a white dwarf, the end phase of a solar-type star that has burned its hydrogen leaving a high concentration of oxygen. The nitrogen seen in the optical spectrum remains an enigma.

Theoretical work suggests that the tidal disruption-induced X-ray emission could stay bright for more than a century, but it should fade with time. So far, the team has observed there has been a 35 percent in X-ray emission from 2000 to 2009.

The Daily Galaxy via JPL/NASA

NASAs 'Curiosity' Search for Life Targets Water-Altered Rock

2013-05-18T06:00:04-07:00

NASA's senior Mars rover, Opportunity, is driving to a new study area after a dramatic finish to 20 months on "Cape York" with examination of a rock intensely altered by water. The pale rock in the upper center of the image above, about the size of a human forearm, includes a target called "Esperance," which was inspected by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. Data from the rover's alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) indicate that Esperance's composition is higher in aluminum and silica, and lower in calcium and iron, than other rocks Opportunity has examined in more than nine years on Mars. Preliminary interpretation points to clay mineral content due to intensive alteration by water. The fractured rock provides evidence about a wet ancient environment possibly favorable for life.

The mission's principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., said, "Esperance was so important, we committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it, even though we knew the clock was ticking."

"What's so special about Esperance is that there was enough water not only for reactions that produced clay minerals, but also enough to flush out ions set loose by those reactions, so that Opportunity can clearly see the alteration," said Scott McLennan of the State University of New York, Stony Brook, a long-term planner for Opportunity's science team.

This rock's composition is unlike any other Opportunity has investigated during nine years on Mars -- higher in aluminum and silica, lower in calcium and iron.

The next destination, Solander Point, and the area Opportunity is leaving, Cape York, both are segments of the rim of Endeavour Crater, which spans 14 miles (22 kilometers) across. The planned driving route to Solander Point is about 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers). Cape York has been Opportunity's home since the rover arrived at the western edge of Endeavour in mid-2011 after a two-year trek from a smaller crater.

"Based on our current solar-array dust models, we intend to reach an area of 15 degrees northerly tilt before Opportunity's sixth Martian winter," said JPL's Scott Lever, mission manager. "Solander Point gives us that tilt and may allow us to move around quite a bit for winter science observations."

Northerly tilt increases output from the rover's solar panels during southern-hemisphere winter. Daily sunshine for Opportunity will reach winter minimum in February 2014. The rover needs to be on a favorable slope well before then.

The first drive away from Esperance covered 81.7 feet (24.9 meters) on May 14. Three days earlier, Opportunity finished exposing a patch of the rock's interior with the rock abrasion tool. The team used a camera and spectrometer on the robotic arm to examine Esperance.

The team identified Esperance while exploring a portion of Cape York where the Compact Reconnaissance Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had detected a clay mineral. Clays typically form in wet environments that are not harshly acidic. For years, Opportunity had been finding evidence for ancient wet environments that were very acidic. The CRISM findings prompted the rover team to investigate the area where clay had been detected from orbit. There, they found an outcrop called "Whitewater Lake," containing a small amount of clay from alteration by exposure to water.

"There appears to have been extensive, but weak, alteration of Whitewater Lake, but intense alteration of Esperance along fractures that provided conduits for fluid flow," Squyres said. "Water that moved through fractures during this rock's history would have provided more favorable conditions for biology than any other wet environment recorded in rocks Opportunity has seen."

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project launched Opportunity to Mars on July 7, 2003, about a month after its twin rover, Spirit. Both were sent for three-month prime missions to study the history of wet environments on ancient Mars and continued working in extended missions. Spirit ceased operations in 2010.

The Daily Galaxy via NASA/JPL

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.

The Higgs Boson and a 'New Physics' --"Could Make the Speed of Light Possible"

2013-05-18T02:00:00-07:00

Scientists hailed CERN's confirmation of the Higgs Boson in July of 2012, speculating that it could one day make light speed travel possible by "un-massing" objects or allow huge items to be launched into space by "switching off" the Higgs. CERN scientist Albert de Roeck likened it to the discovery of electricity, when he said humanity could never have imagined its future applications.

CERN physicists hope that the "new physics" will provide a more straightforward explanation for the characteristics of the Higgs boson than that derived from the current Standard Model. This new physics is sorely needed to find solutions to a series of yet unresolved problems, as presently only the visible universe is explained, which constitutes just four percent of total matter.

"The Standard Model has no explanation for the so-called dark matter, so it does not describe the entire universe – there is a lot that remains to be understood," says Dr. Volker Büscher of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU).

The discovery of the long-sought Higgs boson, an elusive particle thought to help explain why matter has mass, was hailed as a huge moment for science by physicists. In July of 2012, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, announced the discovery of a new particle that could be the long sought-after Higgs boson. The particle has a mass of about 126 gigaelectron volts (GeV), roughly that of 126 protons.

The new evidence came from an enormously large volume of data that has been more than doubled since December 2011. According to CERN, the LHC collected more data in the months between April and June 2012 than in the whole of 2011. In addition, the efficiency has been improved to such an extent that it is now much easier to filter out Higgs-like events from the several hundred million particle collisions that occur every second.

The existence of the Higgs boson was predicted in 1964 and it is named after the British physicist Peter Higgs. It is the last piece of the puzzle that has been missing from the Standard Model of physics and its function is to give other elementary particles their mass. According to the theory, the so-called Higgs field extends throughout the entire universe. The mass of individual elementary particles is determined by the extent to which they interact with the Higgs bosons.

"The discovery of the Higgs boson represents a milestone in the exploration of the fundamental interactions of elementary particles," said Professor Dr. Matthias Neubert, Professor for Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics and spokesman for the Cluster of Excellence PRISMA at JGU.

On the one hand, the Higgs particle is the last component missing from the Standard Model of particle physics. On the other hand, physicists are struggling to understand the detected mass of the Higgs boson. Using theory as it currently stands, the mass of the Higgs boson can only be explained as the result of a random fine-tuning of the physical constants of the universe at a level of accuracy of one in one quadrillion.

The Higgs helps explains how the world could be the way that it is in the first millionth of a second in the Big Bang.

Physicist Ray Volkas said "almost everybody" was hoping that, rather than fitting the so-called Standard Model of physics -- a theory explaining how particles fit together in the Universe -- the Higgs boson would prove to be "something a bit different".

"If that was the case that would point to all sorts of new physics, physics that might have something to do with dark matter," he said, referring to the hypothetical invisible matter thought to make up much of the universe.

It could be that the Higgs particle acts as a bridge between ordinary matter, which makes up atoms, and dark matter, which we know is a very important component of the universe.

"That would have really fantastic implications for understanding all of the matter in the universe, not just ordinary atoms," he added. De Roeck said scrutinising the new particle and determining whether it supported something other than the Standard Model would be the next step for CERN scientists.

Definitive proof that it fit the Standard Model could take until 2015 when the LHC had more power and could harvest more data.

Instead, De Roeck was hoping it would be a "gateway or a portal to new physics, to new theories which are actually running nature" such as supersymmetry, which hypothesises that there are five different Higgs particles governing mass.

For the image at the top of the page, two teams of astronomers used data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes to map the distribution of dark matter in a galaxy cluster known as Abell 383, which is located about 2.3 billion light years from Earth. Not only were the researchers able to find where the dark matter lies in the two dimensions across the sky, they were also able to determine how the dark matter is distributed along the line of sight. Several lines of evidence indicate that there is about six times as much dark matter as "normal", or baryonic, matter in the Universe. Understanding the nature of this mysterious matter is one of the outstanding problems in astrophysics.

Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally-bound structures in the universe, and play an important role in research on dark matter and cosmology, the study of the structure and evolution of the universe. The use of clusters as dark matter and cosmological probes hinges on scientists' ability to use objects such as Abell 383 to accurately determine the three-dimensional structures and masses of clusters.

The Daily Galaxy via Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), CERN, and 2012 AFP

Missing Lithium in Milky Way Dwarf Galaxy Challenges Big Bang Theory

2013-05-17T08:20:56-07:00

Stars in the Milky Way have about four times less lithium on the surface than expected by Big Bang predictions. Some scientists suggest that stellar activity might destroy lithium, or the element might sink from the surface through lighter hydrogen, but the remarkably consistent ratio from star to star is a challenge to those explanations. Observations of gas in the Small Magellanic Cloud (above), a dwarf galaxy of the Miloky Way, revealed the amount of lithium that predictions say would have been produced at the Big Bang, but leave no room for subsequent production of the element.

One explanation could be a novel kind of physics operating at the Big Bang that left less lithium than the Standard Model predicts. J. Christopher Howk, Nicolas Lehner and Grant Mathews of the Center for Astrophysics at the University of Notre Dame published a paper last fall in the journal Nature titled "Observation of interstellar lithium in the low-metallicity Small Magellanic Cloud."

The astrophysicists explored a discrepancy between the amount of lithium predicted by the standard models of elemental production during the Big Bang and the amount of lithium observed in the gas of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy near to our own.

"The paper involves measuring the amount of lithium in the interstellar gas of a nearby galaxy, but it may have implications for fundamental physics, in that it could imply the presence of dark matter particles in the early universe that decay or annihilate one another," Howk says. "This may be a probe of physics in the early universe that gives us a handle on new physics we don't have another way to get a handle on right now."

Using observations from European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, the team measured the amount of lithium in the interstellar gas of the Small Magellanic Cloud, which has far fewer star-produced heavy elements than the Milky Way.

In addition to the production of elements by fusion in the core of stars, scientists believe conditions immediately after the Big Bang led to the formation of some elements, including a small amount of lithium. The team will conduct three nights of observations on the VLT in November. They will look for the lithium isotope 7Li in the Large Magellanic Cloud and 6Li in both the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud. The standard model predicts that no 6Li was created at the Big Bang.

The Daily Galaxy via Nature

Image of the Day: Mars --Impact Central!

2013-05-17T03:00:00-07:00

Taking before and after pictures of Martian terrain, researchers of the UA-led HiRISE imaging experiment have identified almost 250 fresh impact craters on the Red Planet, providing a more accurate yardstick of surface processes on Mars. Scientists using images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, have estimated that the planet is bombarded by more than 200 small asteroids or bits of comets per year forming craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) across.

Researchers have identified 248 new impact sites on parts of the Martian surface in the past decade, using images from the spacecraft to determine when the craters appeared. The 200-per-year planetwide estimate is a calculation based on the number found in a systematic survey of a portion of the planet.

The University of Arizona's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, took pictures of the fresh craters at sites where before and after images had been taken. This combination provided a new way to make direct measurements of the impact rate on Mars and will lead to better age estimates of recent features on Mars, some of which may have been the result of climate change.

"It's exciting to find these new craters right after they form," said Ingrid Daubar of the UA, lead author of the paper published online this month by the journal Icarus. "It reminds you Mars is an active planet, and we can study processes that are happening today."

These asteroids or comet fragments typically are no more than 3 to 6 feet (1 to 2 meters) in diameter. Space rocks too small to reach the ground on Earth cause craters on Mars because the Red Planet has a much thinner atmosphere.

HiRISE targeted places where dark spots had appeared during the time between images taken by the spacecraft's Context Camera, or CTX, or cameras on other orbiters. The new estimate of cratering rate is based on a portion of the 248 new craters detected. If comes from a systematic check of a dusty fraction of the planet with CTX since late 2006.

The impacts disturb the dust, creating noticeable blast zones. In this part of the research, 44 fresh impact sites were identified.

The meteor over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February was about 10 times bigger than the objects that dug the fresh Martian craters.

Estimates of the rate at which new craters appear serve as scientists' best yardstick for estimating the ages of exposed landscape surfaces on Mars and other worlds.

Daubar and co-authors calculated a rate for how frequently new craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) in diameter are excavated. The rate is equivalent to an average of one each year on each area of the Martian surface roughly the size of the U.S. state of Texas. Earlier estimates pegged the cratering rate at three to 10 times more craters per year. They were based on studies of craters on the moon and the ages of lunar rocks collected during NASA's Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

"Mars now has the best-known current rate of cratering in the solar system," said UA's HiRISE Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen, a co-author on the paper.

MRO has been examining Mars with six instruments since 2006. Daubar is an imaging targeting specialist who has been on the HiRISE uplink operation s team from the very beginning. She is also a graduate student in the UA's department of planetary science and plans on graduating with her doctorate in spring 2014.

"There are five of us who help plan the images that HiRISE will take over a two-week cycle," she explained. "We work with science team members across the world to understand their science goals, help select the image targets and compile the commands for the spacecraft and the camera."

"The longevity of this mission is providing wonderful opportunities for investigating changes on Mars," said MRO Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The 'Daily Galaxy' Followers Soar Above 265,000!

2013-05-17T00:10:00-07:00

Join the 269,000 Daily Galaxy fans around the world who follow us via their Twitter page. Our followers include many of the planet's leading astronomers and scientists, astronauts, space observatories, news organizations, universities and governmental space organizations such as NASA, JPL, ESO, SETI, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and Royal Astronomy Society members. Follow us daily at twitter.com/dailygalaxy

Image Credit: With thanks to Vikram K. Mulligan. Used with permission

"First Evidence for Extraterrestrial Sources of High-Energy Neutrinos" --Reports Antarctica Observatory

2013-05-16T05:24:43-07:00

Although cosmic rays were discovered 100 years ago, their origin remains one of the most enduring mysteries in physics. Until now. A massive telescope at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in the Antarctic ice reports the detection of 28 extremely high-energy neutrinos that might have their origin in cosmic sources. Two of these reached energies greater than 1 petaelectronvolt (PeV), an energy level thousands of times higher than the highest energy neutrino yet produced in a manmade accelerator.

“We’re looking for the first time at high energy neutrinos that are not coming from the atmosphere,” says Francis Halzen, principal investigator of IceCube and the Hilldale and Gregory Breit Distinguished Professor of Physics at University of Wisconsin–Madison. “This is what we were looking for,” he adds.

Because they rarely interact with matter and are unimpeded by gravity, neutrinos can carry information about the workings of the highest-energy and most distant phenomena in the universe. Though billions of neutrinos pass through the Earth every second, the vast majority originate either in the sun or in the Earth’s atmosphere. Far rarer are high-energy neutrinos that may hail from the most powerful cosmic events — such as gamma ray bursts, black holes, or star formation — where they would be created in association with high-energy cosmic rays that can reach energies up to thousands of PeVs.

Postdoctoral fellow Nathan Whitehorn described 28 high-energy neutrino events captured by the detector between May 2010 and May 2012. These events, including two that exceeded the unprecedented energy level of 1 PeV, were one of the main goals for building a detector such as IceCube.

“Their properties are strongly inconsistent with what you would expect of atmospheric sources and are almost exactly what you would expect from an astrophysical source,” Whitehorn says. It is premature to speculate where these neutrinos originated, he adds, but the IceCube collaboration is continuing to refine and expand the analysis.

IceCube is comprised of more than 5,000 digital optical modules suspended in a cubic kilometer of ice at the South Pole. The National Science Foundation-supported observatory detects neutrinos through the tiny flashes of blue light produced when a neutrino interacts with a water molecule in the ice.

The first hints of high-energy neutrinos came with the unexpected discovery in April 2012 of two detector events above 1 PeV. An analysis of those events was reported last month in a paper submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters. An intensified search, led by Whitehorn and fellow WIPAC scientists Claudio Kopper and Naoko Kurahashi Neilson, turned up 26 additional events exceeding 30 teraelectronvolts (TeV; one-thousandth of a PeV), which will be described in a forthcoming publication.

The Daily Galaxy via http://www.news.wisc.edu/21790

Asteroid QE2 Will Sail Past Earth in Two Weeks

2013-05-16T03:00:00-07:00

On May 31, 2013, asteroid 1998 QE2, which is believed to be about 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) or nine Queen Elizabeth 2 ship-lengths in size, will sail serenely past Earth, getting no closer than about 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon. And while QE2 is not of much interest to those astronomers and scientists on the lookout for hazardous asteroids, it is of interest to those who dabble in radar astronomy and have a 230-foot (70-meter) -- or larger -- radar telescope at their disposal.

"Asteroid 1998 QE2 will be an outstanding radar imaging target at Goldstone and Arecibo and we expect to obtain a series of high-resolution images that could reveal a wealth of surface features," said radar astronomer Lance Benner, the principal investigator for the Goldstone radar observations from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"Whenever an asteroid approaches this closely, it provides an important scientific opportunity to study it in detail to understand its size, shape, rotation, surface features, and what they can tell us about its origin. We will also use new radar measurements of the asteroid's distance and velocity to improve our calculation of its orbit and compute its motion farther into the future than we could otherwise."

The closest approach of the asteroid occurs on May 31 at 1:59 p.m. Pacific (4:59 p.m. Eastern / 20:59 UTC). This is the closest approach the asteroid will make to Earth for at least the next two centuries. Asteroid 1998 QE2 was discovered on Aug. 19, 1998, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program near Socorro, New Mexico.

The asteroid is not named after that 12-decked, transatlantic-crossing flagship for the Cunard Line. Instead, the name is assigned by the NASA-supported Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., which gives each newly discovered asteroid a provisional designation starting with the year of first detection, along with an alphanumeric code indicating the half-month it was discovered, and the sequence within that half-month.

Radar images from the Goldstone antenna could resolve features on the asteroid as small as 12 feet (3.75 meters) across, even from 4 million miles away.

"It is tremendously exciting to see detailed images of this asteroid for the first time," said Benner. "With radar we can transform an object from a point of light into a small world with its own unique set of characteristics. In a real sense, radar imaging of near-Earth asteroids is a fundamental form of exploring a whole class of solar system objects."

Asteroids, which are always exposed to the sun, can be shaped like almost anything under it. Those previously imaged by radar and spacecraft have looked like dog bones, bowling pins, spheroids, diamonds, muffins, and potatoes. To find out what 1998 QE2 looks like, stay tuned. Between May 30 and June 9, radar astronomers using NASA's 230-foot-wide (70 meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, are planning an extensive campaign of observations. The two telescopes have complementary imaging capabilities that will enable astronomers to learn as much as possible about the asteroid during its brief visit near Earth.

NASA places a high priority on tracking asteroids and protecting our home planet from them. In fact, the U.S. has the most robust and productive survey and detection program for discovering near-Earth objects. To date, U.S. assets have discovered over 98 percent of the known NEOs.

In 2012, the NEO budget was increased from $6 million to $20 million. Literally dozens of people are involved with some aspect of near-Earth object (NEO) research across NASA and its centers. Moreover, there are many more people involved in researching and understanding the nature of asteroids and comets, including those that come close to the Earth, plus those who are trying to find and track them in the first place.

The Daily Galaxy via http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch

Image credit: With thanks to http://spaceref.com/asteroids/asteroid-1998-qe2-to-sail-past-earth-9-times-larger-than-cruise-ship.html

"Extreme Physics" Detected in Binary Neutron-Star System

2013-05-16T02:00:00-07:00

South Africa's new radio telescope reveals giant outbursts from binary star system. Using the seven-dish KAT-7 telescope and the 26 m radio telescope at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) in South Africa, astronomers have observed a neutron star system known as Circinus X-1 as it fires energetic matter from its core into the surrounding system in extensive, compact `jets' that flare brightly, details of which are visible only in radio waves.

Circinus X-1 is an X-ray binary (or two-star system) where one of the companion stars is a high-density, compact neutron star (a neutron star is an extremely dense and compact remnant of an exploded star and only 20km in diameter.) The two stars orbit each other every 16.5 days in an elliptical orbit. When the two stars are at their closest the gravity of the dense neutron star pulls material from the companion star. A powerful jet of material then blasts out from the system.

"This project will test the extremes of physics, density, temperature, pressure, velocity, gravitational and magnetic fields, and are beyond anything achievable in any laboratory on Earth. It provides a unique glimpse of the laws of physics operating in extraordinary regimes," said Rob Fender, head of the Astronomy Research Group at the University of Southampton,

During the time astronomers observed Circinus X-1 (13 December 2011 to 16 January 2012) the system flared twice at levels among the highest observed in recent years. KAT-7 was able to catch both of these flares and follow them as they progressed. This is the first time that the system has been observed in such detail during the full flare cycle.

"One way of explaining what is happening is that the compact neutron star gobbles up parts of its companion star and then fires much of this matter back out again," explains Dr Richard Armstrong, an SKA SA Fellow at the University of Cape Town and lead author of the paper. "The dramatic radio flares happen when the matter Circinus X-1 has violently ejected slows down as it smashes into the surrounding medium."

"Circinus X-1 continues to reveal new aspects of its behaviour, and is arguably the best laboratory for relativistic jet astrophysics in the southern hemisphere," says Fender.

"These types of observations are crucial for understanding the processes of both accretion of matter onto extremely dense systems, such as neutron stars and black holes of both about the sun's mass, and also the so-called supermassive variety we now know to be at the centre of most galaxies," added Armstrong.

KAT-7 is the world's first radio telescope array consisting of composite antenna structures. It is the test array for MeerKAT, a much larger radio array, which is itself in turn a precursor for the dish-based component of the SKA.

The MNRAS study was carried out as part of the development for the ThunderKAT project on MeerKAT, which will find many more of these types of systems in the galaxy and search for new types of radio systems that change rapidly with time.

Reference: 'A return to strong radio flaring by Circinus X-1 observed with the Karoo Array Telescope test array KAT-7 (Armstrong et al, 2013)' published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Daily Galaxy via Royal Astronomical Society and http://www.southampton.ac.uk/

Search for Habitable Planets in Jeopardy --"Kepler Mission in Potential Terminal Malfunction"

2013-05-15T18:22:32-07:00

The Kepler Space Mission, one of the most successful programs in NASA history that's surveying 1/400 of our Milky Way Galaxy for habitable planets, may be coming to a premature end. NASA officials announced via a press conference this afternoon that the Kepler spacecraft, which has found more than 2700 planetary candidates outside the solar system, has lost the ability to point in a specified direction due to the malfunctioning of one of its reaction wheels. The spacecraft has been put into safe mode while engineers attempt to figure out how to resolve the malfunction.

During the Kepler team's semi-weekly contact on Tuesday, May 14, 2013, they found the Kepler spacecraft once again in safe mode. As was the case earlier this month, this was a Thruster-Controlled Safe Mode. The root cause is not yet known, however the proximate cause appears to be an attitude error. The spacecraft was oriented with the solar panels facing the sun, slowly spinning about the sun-line. The communication link comes and goes as the spacecraft spins.

"We are not down and out," says Charles Sobeck, deputy project manager for Kepler at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "The spacecraft is safe and stable. We'll proceed with our investigation."

The Kepler team attempted to return to reaction wheel control as the spacecraft rotated into communication, and commanded a stop rotation. Initially, it appeared that all three wheels responded and that rotation had been successfully stopped, but reaction wheel 4 remained at full torque while the spin rate dropped to zero --a clear indication that there has been an internal failure within the reaction wheel, likely a structural failure of the wheel bearing. The spacecraft was then transitioned back to Thruster-Controlled Safe Mode.

An Anomaly Review Board concurred that the data appear to unambiguously indicate a wheel 4 failure, and that the team’s priority is to complete preparations to enter Point Rest State. Point Rest State is a loosely-pointed, thruster-controlled state that minimizes fuels usage while providing a continuous X-band communication downlink. The software to execute that state was loaded to the spacecraft last week, and last night the team completed the upload of the parameters the software will use.

The spacecraft is stable and safe, if still burning fuel. The Kepler fuel budget is sufficient that NASA can take due caution while they finish planning. In its current mode, fuel will last for several months. A "Point Rest State" would extend that period to years.

The Kepler Mission team has requested and received additional NASA Deep Space Network communication coverage, and this morning the Anomaly Review Board approved the transition to Point Rest State later today. Because this is a new operating mode of the spacecraft, the team will closely monitor the spacecraft, but no other immediate actions are planned. They will take the next several days and weeks to assess options and develop new command products. These options are likely to include steps to attempt to recover wheel functionality and to investigate the utility of a hybrid mode, using both wheels and thrusters.

With the failure of a second reaction wheel, it's unlikely that the spacecraft will be able to return to the high pointing accuracy that enables its high-precision photometry. However, no decision has been made to end data collection.

Kepler had successfully completed its primary three-and-a-half year mission and entered an extended mission phase in November 2012.
Even if data collection were to end, the mission has substantial quantities of data on the ground yet to be fully analyzed, and the string of scientific discoveries is expected to continue for years to come.

NASA Creates 1st Global Map of Titan --Saturn's Potential Life-Bearing Moon

2013-05-15T11:41:40-07:00

Scientists have created the first global topographic map of Saturn’s moon Titan, giving researchers a valuable tool for learning more about one of the most Earth-like and interesting worlds in the solar system. The image above provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows a flattened projection of the Huygens probe's view from 6 miles above Titan. Researchers have found that Titan's distinctive sand dunes are caused by winds blowing in reverse of the prevailing weather.

Titan is Saturn’s largest moon – at 1,600 miles (2,574 kilometers) across it’s bigger than planet Mercury – and is the second-largest moon in the solar system. Scientists care about Titan because it’s the only moon in the solar system known to have clouds, surface liquids and a mysterious, thick atmosphere. The cold atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, like Earth’s, but the organic compound methane on Titan acts the way water vapor does on Earth, forming clouds and falling as rain and carving the surface with rivers. Organic chemicals, derived from methane, are present in Titan’s atmosphere, lakes and rivers and may offer clues about the origins of life.

“Titan has so much interesting activity – like flowing liquids and moving sand dunes – but to understand these processes it’s useful to know how the terrain slopes,” said Ralph Lorenz, a member of the Cassini radar team based at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., who led the map-design team. “It’s especially helpful to those studying hydrology and modeling Titan’s climate and weather, who need to know whether there is high ground or low ground driving their models.”

Titan’s thick haze scatters light in ways that make it very hard for remote cameras to “see” landscape shapes and shadows, the usual approach to measuring topography on planetary bodies. Virtually all the data we have on Titan comes from NASA’s Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft, which has flown past the moon nearly 100 times over the past decade. On many of those flybys, Cassini has used a radar imager, which can peer through the haze, and the radar data can be used to estimate the surface height.

"With this new topographic map, one of the most fascinating and dynamic worlds in our solar system now pops out in 3-D," said Steve Wall, the deputy team lead of Cassini's radar team, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "On Earth, rivers, volcanoes and even weather are closely related to heights of surfaces – we're now eager to see what we can learn from them on Titan."

There are challenges, however. “Cassini isn’t orbiting Titan,” Lorenz said. “We have only imaged about half of Titan’s surface, and multiple ‘looks’ or special observations are needed to estimate the surface heights. If you divided Titan into 1-degree by 1-degree [latitude and longitude] squares, only 11 percent of those squares have topography data in them.”

Lorenz’s team used a mathematical process called splining – effectively using smooth, curved surfaces to “join” the areas between grids of existing data. “You can take a spot where there is no data, look how close it is to the nearest data, and use various approaches of averaging and estimating to calculate your best guess,” he said. “If you pick a point, and all the nearby points are high altitude, you’d need a special reason for thinking that point would be lower. We’re mathematically papering over the gaps in our coverage.”

The estimations fit with current knowledge of the moon – that its polar regions are “lower” than areas around the equator, for example – but connecting those points allows scientists to add new layers to their studies of Titan’s surface, especially those modeling how and where Titan’s rivers flow, and the seasonal distribution of its methane rainfall. “The movement of sands and the flow of liquids are influenced by slopes, and mountains can trigger cloud formation and therefore rainfall. This global product now gives modelers a convenient description of this key factor in Titan’s dynamic climate system,” Lorenz said.

The most recent data used to compile the map is from 2012; Lorenz says it could be worth revising when the Cassini mission ends in 2017, when more data will have accumulated, filling some of the gaps in present coverage. “We felt we couldn’t wait and should release an interim product,” he says. “The community has been hoping to get this for a while. I think it will stimulate a lot of interesting work.”

The map is published as part of a paper in the journal Icarus.

The Daily Galaxy via NASA/JPL

Orion Molecular Cloud --"A Source of the Complex Building Blocks of Life"

2013-05-15T07:45:18-07:00

The spectacular new image above shows just a part of a bigger complex called the Orion Molecular Cloud, in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter). A rich melting pot of bright nebulae, hot young stars and cold dust clouds, this region is hundreds of light-years across and located about 1350 light-years from us. The orange glow represents faint light coming from grains of cold interstellar dust, at wavelengths too long for human eyes to see. It was observed by the ESO-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) in Chile.

Clouds of gas and interstellar dust are the raw materials from which stars are made. But these tiny dust grains block our view of what lies within and behind the clouds — at least at visible wavelengths — making it difficult to observe the processes of star formation.

At submillimetre wavelengths, rather than blocking light, the dust grains shine due to their temperatures of a few tens of degrees above absolute zero . The APEX telescope with its submillimetre-wavelength camera LABOCA, located at an altitude of 5000 metres above sea level on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes, is the ideal tool for this kind of observation.

Hotter objects give off most of their radiation at shorter wavelengths and cooler ones at longer wavelengths. As an example very hot stars (surface temperatures around 20 000 degrees Kelvin) look blue and cooler ones (surface temperatures of around 3000 degrees Kelvin) look red. And a cloud of dust with a temperature of only ten degrees Kelvin has its peak of emission at a much longer wavelength — around 0.3 millimetres — in the part of the spectrum where APEX is very sensitive.

The large bright cloud in the upper right of the image is the well-known Orion Nebula, also called Messier 42. It is readily visible to the naked eye as the slightly fuzzy middle “star” in the sword of Orion. The Orion Nebula is the brightest part of a huge stellar nursery where new stars are being born, and is the closest site of massive star formation to Earth.

The dust clouds form beautiful filaments, sheets, and bubbles as a result of processes including gravitational collapse and the effects of stellar winds. These winds are streams of gas ejected from the atmospheres of stars, which are powerful enough to shape the surrounding clouds into the convoluted forms seen here.

Astronomers have used these and other data from APEX along with images from ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory, to search the region of Orion for protostars — an early stage of star formation. They have so far been able to identify 15 objects that appeared much brighter at longer wavelengths than at shorter wavelengths. These newly discovered rare objects are probably among the youngest protostars ever found, bringing astronomers closer to witnessing the moment when a star begins to form.

Orion is typical of dust clouds throughout the Universe that have recently been discovered to incubate the comlpex organic building blocks of life. While these dense interstellar clouds seem dark and obscured in visible-light observations, APEX’s LABOCA camera can detect the heat glow of the dust and reveal the hiding places where new stars are being formed. But one of these dark clouds is not what it seems.

In space, dense clouds of cosmic gas and dust are the birthplaces of new stars. In visible light, this dust is dark and obscuring, hiding the stars behind it. So much so that, when astronomer William Herschel observed one such cloud in the constellation of Scorpius in 1774, he thought it was a region empty of stars and is said to have exclaimed, "Truly there is a hole in the sky here!"

In order to better understand star formation, astronomers need telescopes that can observe at longer wavelengths, such as the submillimetre range, in which the dark dust grains shine rather than absorb light. APEX, on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes, is the largest single-dish submillimetre-wavelength telescope operating in the southern hemisphere, and is ideal for astronomers studying the birth of stars in this way.

The Orion Molecular Cloud Complex is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth, and contains a treasury of bright nebulae, dark clouds and young stars. The new image shows just part of this vast complex in visible light, with the APEX observations overlaid in brilliant orange tones that seem to set the dark clouds on fire. Often, the glowing knots from APEX correspond to darker patches in visible light — the tell-tale sign of a dense cloud of dust that absorbs visible light, but glows at submillimetre wavelengths, and possibly a site of star formation.

Recent discoveries in vast interstellar dust clouds permeating the universe and in nebula have revealed hints of organic matter that could be created naturally by stars, according to researchers in a 2011 study at the University of Hong Kong. The discovery team observed stars at different evolutionary phases and found that they are able to produce complex organic compounds and eject them into space, filling the voids between stars.

The compounds are so complex that their chemical structures resemble the makeup of coal and petroleum, the study's lead author, Sun Kwok of the University of Hong Kong, said. Kwok and his colleague Yong Zhang, also of the University of Hong Kong, studied a set of well-known but mysterious infrared emissions found in stars, interstellar space and galaxies. These phenomena, which are collectively called Unidentified Infrared Emission (UIE) features, have been known for 30 years, but the exact source of the emissions has not been identified, and remains a broad assumption.

Such chemical complexity was thought to arise only from living organisms, but the results of the new study show that these organic compounds can be created in space even when no life forms are present. In fact, such complex organics could be produced naturally by stars, and at an extremely rapid pace.

The Daily Galaxy via ESO and University of Hong Kong

"More Complex than a Galaxy" --New Insights into the Human Brain

2013-05-15T04:00:00-07:00

"Consider the human brain," says the physicist Sir Roger Penrose. "If you look at the entire physical cosmos, our brains are a tiny, tiny part of it. But they're the most perfectly organized part. Compared to the complexity of a brain, a galaxy is just an inert lump."

In a new study, scientists argue that many of our high-level abilities are carried out by more extensive brain networks linking many different areas of the brain. They suggest it may be the structure of these extended networks more than the size of any isolated brain region that is critical for cognitive functioning. The frontal lobes in humans vs. other species are not — as previously thought — disproportionately enlarged relative to other areas of the brain, according to a study by Durham and Reading universities.

It concludes that the size of our frontal lobes — an area in the brain of mammals located at the front of each cerebral hemisphere — cannot solely account for humans’ superior cognitive abilities.

The study also suggest that supposedly more “primitive” areas, such as the cerebellum, were equally important in the expansion of the human brain. These areas may therefore play unexpectedly important roles in human cognition and its disorders, such as autism and dyslexia, say the researchers.

The Durham and Reading researchers, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, analyzed data sets from previous animal and human studies using phylogenetic (“evolutionary family tree”) methods, and found consistent results across all their data. They used a new method to look at the speed with which evolutionary change occurred, concluding that the frontal lobes did not evolve especially fast along the human lineage after it split from the chimpanzee lineage.

Human brains share a consistent genetic blueprint and possess enormous biochemical complexity. The same basic functional elements are used throughout the cortex and understanding how one area works in detail will uncover fundamentals that apply to the other areas as well, according to an earlier study completed by scientists at the Allen Institute for Brain Science.

Human brains share a consistent genetic blueprint, and possess enormous biochemical complexity, they said, based on the first deep and large-scale analysis of the vast data set publicly available in the Allen Human Brain Atlas. Among other findings, these data show that 84% of all genes are expressed somewhere in the human brain and in patterns that are substantially similar from one brain to the next.

Robert A. Barton and Chris Venditti, Human frontal lobes are not relatively large, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1215723110

The Daily Galaxy via The Leverhulme Trust, EPFL, and Allen Institute for Brain Science

Image Credit: www.ucl.ac.uk

Cosmic Dust --"A Clue to Origin of Earth's Oxygen and Water?"

2013-05-14T08:06:40-07:00

"We don't understand yet how some of the most important molecules here on Earth are made in space. But our discovery of hydrogen peroxide with APEX seems to be showing us that cosmic dust is the missing ingredient in the process," says Berengere Parise, head of the Emmy Noether research group on star formation and astrochemistry at the Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany.

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) a key molecule for both astronomers and chemists was discovered close to the star Rho Ophiuchi, about 400 light-years away in 2011 with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope (APEX), situated on the 5000-metre-high Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes. The region contains very cold (around -250 degrees Celsius), dense clouds of cosmic gas and dust, in which new stars are being born. Its formation is closely linked to two other familiar molecules, oxygen and water, which are critical for life. Because much of the water on our planet is thought to have originally formed in space, scientists are eager to understand how it is created.

Hydrogen peroxide is thought to form in space on the surfaces of cosmic dust grains — very fine particles similar to sand and soot — when hydrogen (H) is added to oxygen molecules (O2). A further reaction of the hydrogen peroxide with more hydrogen is one way to produce water (H2O). This new detection of hydrogen peroxide will therefore help astronomers better understand the formation of water in the Universe.

The clouds are mostly made of hydrogen, but contain traces of other chemicals, and are prime targets for astronomers hunting for molecules in space. Space telescopes such as APEX, which make observations of light at millimetre- and submillimetre-wavelengths, are ideal for detecting the signals from these molecules.

Now, the team has found the characteristic signature of light emitted by hydrogen peroxide, coming from part of the Rho Ophiuchi clouds.

"We were really excited to discover the signatures of hydrogen peroxide with APEX. We knew from laboratory experiments which wavelengths to look for, but the amount of hydrogen peroxide in the cloud is just one molecule for every ten billion hydrogen molecules, so the detection required very careful observations," says Per Bergman, astronomer at Onsala Space Observatory in Sweden. Bergman is lead author of the study, which was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

To work out just how the origins of these important molecules are intertwined will need more observations of Rho Ophiuchi and other star-forming clouds with future telescopes such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) — and help from chemists in laboratories on Earth.

This month, SOFIA, the "Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy," completed its first series of science flights, using the German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies (GREAT). They include first detections of new interstellar molecules and important spectral lines in space, and address different stages of the star formation process.

As a joint project between NASA and the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, DLR), SOFIA operates a 2.7-m telescope in a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft and is the world's largest ever airborne infrared observatory.

SOFIA flies at altitudes as high as 13700 meters to provide access to astronomical signals at far-infrared wavelengths that would otherwise be blocked due to absorption by water vapour in the atmosphere. The SOFIA observatory and the GREAT instrument open the far-infrared skies for high-resolution spectroscopy, and GREAT pushes its technology to higher frequencies and sensitivities than ever reached before.

The colors of the Rho Ophiuchi (oh'-fee-yu-kee) clouds (image above) highlight the many processes that occur there. Blue light from the star Rho Ophiuchi and nearby stars reflects more efficiently off this portion of the nebula than red light. The red and yellow regions shine primarily because of emission from the nebula's atomic and molecular gas. Light from nearby blue stars - more energetic than the bright star Antares - knocks electrons away from the gas, which then shines when the electrons recombine with the gas. The dark regions are caused by dust grains - born in young stellar atmospheres - which effectively block light emitted behind them.

The Rho Ophiuchi star clouds, well in front of the globular cluster M4 visible above on far lower left, are even more colorful than humans can see - the clouds emits light in every wavelength band from the radio to the gamma-ray.

The optical color image above of the rho Ophiuchi star formation region, about 400 light-years from Earth, with dark dusty filamentary gas clouds. The position of the optically obscured low-mass protostar IRAS16293-2422 towards which interstellar deuterated hydroxyl OD has been detected is marked with a red circle.

The absorption line spectrum, observed with GREAT onboard SOFIA, displays the molecule’s fingerprint at a frequency of 1.3915 Terahertz (or 0.215 mm wavelength). The inset shows the OD molecule (red: oxygene, gray: deuterium), an isotopic substitute of hydroxyl (OH) with the hydrogen atom replaced by heavier deuterium. This deuterated molecule is an important marker in the formation of interstellar water and may serve as a chemical clock in the early star formation process.The bright yellowish star in the bottom left is Antares, one of the brightest stars in the sky. Below and to Antares’ right is the globular cluster Messier 4.

The Daily Galaxy via eurekalert.org

Image credit: With thanks to GalaxyPhoto.com

Image of the Day --Arches Star Cluster Near Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole

2013-05-14T07:41:46-07:00

The Chandra X-Ray Obersvatory image below shows an envelope of 60-million-degree gas around a young cluster of stars, known as the Arches cluster, the most compact cluster of stars known in our galaxy which boasts 150 or so massive, young stars contained within a diameter of one light-year. Many of these stars are 20 times as massive as the Sun and live short, furious lives that last only a few million years. During this period, gas evaporates from these stars in the form of intense stellar winds. The envelope of hot gas observed by Chandra (below) is thought to be due to collisions of the winds from numerous stars.

Seen toward the constellation Sagittarius, the Arches cluster is about 25,000 light-years from planet Earth and lies within a scant 100 light-years of the supermassive black hole that lurks in our Milky Way Galaxy's center.

This combination of images in radio, infrared, and x-ray light illustrates this star cluster's bizarre galactic neighborhood. Shown in red, radio emission traces the filamentary arching structures near the galactic center around the Arches cluster location. Within the zoomed inset box, infrared image data shows some of the cluster's individual stars as bright point-like sources. The diffuse emission in blue surrounding the cluster stars is a false-color x-ray image of an enveloping cloud of 60 million degree gas -- the first time such an energetic star cluster halo has been detected.

Astronomers consider the tightly packed cluster, an analog of the furious star forming regions in galaxies millions of light-years away.The Chandra data, shown as the diffuse blue emission in the inset box, overlays a Hubble Space Telescope infrared image of the same region, in which some of the individual stars in the cluster can be seen as point-like sources. Radio observations were obtained using the Very Large Array (VLA) of radio telescopes.

Studies of the Arches cluster, located about 26,000 light years from Earth, can be used to learn more about the environments of "starburst" galaxies millions of light years away where this phenomenon may be occurring on a much larger scale.

The Daily Galaxy via http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2001/arches/ and APOD

Image credits: ESO/P. Espinoza

Kepler Mission Out of "Safe Mode"

2013-05-13T13:44:38-07:00

During a scheduled semi-weekly contact on Friday, May 3rd, 2013, engineers discovered that the Kepler spacecraft was in a self-protective state called a safe mode. The spacecraft was returned to science data collection just before midnight on Monday, May 6th, 2013. The spacecraft entered thruster-controlled safe mode at about 7:30pm PDT on Wednesday, May 1st, 2013.

Kepler launched March 6, 2009, from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The spacecraft is orbiting the sun carrying a photometer, or light meter, to measure changes in the brightness of thousands of stars. Its primary job is to detect tiny variations in the brightness of the stars within its view to indicate planets passing in front of the star. Kepler is sending astronomers photometry data that's probably the best we'll see in our lifetimes.

The recovery operation began at about 5:00pm PDT on Friday, May 3rd, 2013, after engineers had verified that the spacecraft was otherwise operating normally. The spacecraft responded well to commands and transitioned from thruster control to reaction wheel control as planned.

Following the safe mode recovery, the team performed a routine monthly data downlink from the on-board solid-state recorder on May 5th, 2013, and returned to science data collection. The monthly download was originally scheduled for May 8th-9th, 2013.

The root cause of the safe mode is not yet known but the engineering team is analyzing the data set downloaded during the monthly contact. The reaction wheels do not appear to be the cause of the safe mode. Early indications suggest anomalous star tracker performance. The loss of science data is estimated to be about five days.

NASA Ames Research Center

"Einstein's Planet" --New Method Using Theory of Relativity Detects Its First Alien Planet

2013-05-13T07:13:36-07:00

An exciting new method of detecting alien planets looks for three small effects that occur simultaneously as a planet orbits its star. Einstein’s “beaming” effect causes the star to brighten as it moves toward us, tugged by the planet, and dim as it moves away. The brightening results from photons “piling up” in energy, as well as light getting focused in the direction of the star’s motion due to relativistic effects.

Detecting alien worlds presents a significant challenge since they are small, faint, and close to their stars. The two most prolific techniques for finding exoplanets are radial velocity (looking for wobbling stars) and transits (looking for dimming stars). A team at Tel Aviv University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has just discovered an exoplanet using the new method that relies on Einstein’s special theory of relativity.

“Einstein’s planet,” formally known as Kepler-76b, is a “hot Jupiter” that orbits its star every 1.5 days. Its diameter is about 25 percent larger than Jupiter and it weighs twice as much. It orbits a type F star located about 2,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

The planet is tidally locked to its star, always showing the same face to it, just as the Moon is tidally locked to Earth. As a result, Kepler-76b broils at a temperature of about 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit.

Interestingly, the team found strong evidence that the planet has extremely fast jet-stream winds that carry the heat around it. As a result, the hottest point on Kepler-76b isn’t the substellar point (”high noon”) but a location offset by about 10,000 miles. This effect has only been observed once before, on HD 189733b, and only in infrared light with the Spitzer Space Telescope. This is the first time optical observations have shown evidence of alien jet stream winds at work..

Although the new method can’t find Earth-sized worlds using current technology, it offers astronomers a unique discovery opportunity. Unlike radial velocity searches, it doesn’t require high-precision spectra. Unlike transits, it doesn’t require a precise alignment of planet and star as seen from Earth.

“We are looking for very subtle effects. We needed high quality measurements of stellar brightnesses, accurate to a few parts per million,” said team member David Latham of the CfA.

Although Kepler was designed to find transiting planets, this planet was not identified using the transit method. Instead, it was discovered using a technique first proposed by Avi Loeb of the CfA and his colleague Scott Gaudi (now at Ohio State University) in 2003. (Coincidentally, they developed their theory while visiting the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where Einstein once worked.)

“This is the first time that this aspect of Einstein’s theory of relativity has been used to discover a planet,” said co-author Tsevi Mazeh of Tel Aviv University.

The team also looked for signs that the star was stretched into a football shape by gravitational tides from the orbiting planet. The star would appear brighter when we observe the “football” from the side, due to more visible surface area, and fainter when viewed end-on. The third small effect was due to starlight reflected by the planet itself.

The graphic below shows Kepler-76b's orbit around a yellow-white, type F star located 2,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Although Kepler-76b was identified using the BEER effect (see above), it was later found to exhibit a grazing transit, crossing the edge of the star's face as seen from Earth.

Once the new planet was identified, it was confirmed by Latham using radial velocity observations gathered by the TRES spectrograph at Whipple Observatory in Arizona, and by Lev Tal-Or (Tel Aviv University) using the SOPHIE spectrograph at the Haute-Provence Observatory in France. A closer look at the Kepler data also showed that the planet transits its star, providing additional confirmation.

“Each planet-hunting technique has its strengths and weaknesses. And each novel technique we add to the arsenal allows us to probe planets in new regimes,” said CfA’s Avi Loeb.

Kepler-76b was identified by the BEER algorithm, whose acronym stands for relativistic BEaming, Ellipsoidal, and Reflection/emission modulations. BEER was developed by Professor Tsevi Mazeh and his student, Simchon Faigler, at Tel Aviv University, Israel.

“This was only possible because of the exquisite data NASA is collecting with the Kepler spacecraft,” added lead author Simchon Faigler of Tel Aviv University, Israel.The paper announcing this discovery has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and is available online.

The Daily Galaxy via CfA

Image Credits: Dood Evan/CfA

"Hacking the Cosmos" --Photon-Based Quantum Computing

2013-05-13T05:00:00-07:00

"Quantum computers can efficiently render every physically possible quantum environment, even when vast numbers of universes are interacting. Quantum computation is a qualitatively new way of harnessing nature," according to David Deutch, an Israeli-British physicist at the University of Oxford who pioneered the field of quantum computation and is a proponent of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Quantum computers, says Deutch, have the potential to solve problems that would take a classical computer longer than the age of the universe.

In a new development, scientists from the Group of Philip Walther from the Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna succeeded in prototyping a new and highly resource efficient model of a quantum computer -- the boson sampling computer. Quantum computers work by manipulating quantum objects as, for example, individual photons, electrons or atoms and by harnessing the unique quantum features.

Not only do quantum computers promise a dramatic increase in speed over classical computers in a variety of computational tasks; they are designed to complete tasks that even a supercomputer would not be able to handle. In recent years, there has been a rapid development in quantum technology the realization of a full-sized quantum computer is still very challenging.

While it is still an exciting open question which architecture and quantum objects will finally lead to the outperformance of conventional supercomputers, current experiments show that some quantum objects are better suited than others for particular computational tasks.

The huge advantage of photons -- a particular type of bosons -- lies in their high mobility. The research team from the University of Vienna in collaboration with scientist from the University of Jena (Germany) has recently realized a so-called boson sampling computer that utilizes precisely this feature of photons. They inserted photons into a complex optical network where they could propagate along many different paths.

"According to the laws of quantum physics, the photons seem to take all possible paths at the same time. This is known as superposition. Amazingly, one can record the outcome of the computation rather trivially: one measures how many photons exit in which output of the network," explains Philip Walther from the Faculty of Physics.

The Daily Galaxy via University of Vienna

Image of the Day: Supernova! Red Giant Emerging

2013-05-13T02:00:00-07:00

After only 4.5 million years (one-thousandth the age of the Sun), HD 192163 began its headlong rush toward a supernova catastrophe. First it expanded enormously to become a red giant and ejected its outer layers at about 20,000 miles per hour. Two hundred thousand years later - a blink of the eye in the life of a normal star - the intense radiation from the exposed hot, inner layer of the star began pushing gas away at speeds in excess of 3 million miles per hour!

When this high speed "stellar wind" rammed into the slower red giant wind, a dense shell was formed. In the image, a portion of the shell is shown in red. The force of the collision created two shock waves: one that moved outward from the dense shell to create the green filamentary structure, and one that moved inward to produce a bubble of million degree Celsius X-ray emitting gas (blue). The brightest X-ray emission is near the densest part of the compressed shell of gas, indicating that the hot gas is evaporating matter from the shell. The massive star HD 192183 that has produced the nebula appears as the bright dot at the center of the full-field image.

HD 192163 will likely explode as a supernova in about a hundred thousand years. This image enables astronomers to determine the mass, energy, and composition of the gaseous shell around this pre-supernova star. An understanding of such environments provides important data for interpreting observations of supernovas and their remnants.

The Hubble Space Telescope's image of the Crescent Nebula (top of page) revealed that the shell of matter surrounding the aging star HD 192163, is a network of filaments and dense knots, all enshrouded in a thin "skin" of gas [seen above in blue]. The skin is glowing because it is being blasted by ultraviolet light from HD 192163. Hubble's view covers a small region at the northeast tip of the structure, which is roughly three light-years across. A picture taken by a ground-based telescope [lower right] shows almost the entire nebula. The whole structure is about 16 light-years wide and 25 light-years long. The bright dot near the center of NGC 6888 is HD 192163. The white outline in the upper left-hand corner represents Hubble's view.

The Daily Galaxy Via NASA/Chandra Xray Space Telescope

Image Credit top of page: With thanks to J-P Metsavainio (http://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/)

Planets Born Before the Formation of the Milky Way --8 Billion Years Earlier than Earth (Weekend Feature)

2013-05-12T17:12:56-07:00

Two huge Jupiter-sized planets found orbiting a star 375 light-years away, that will soon transform into a red giant (image above), are the oldest alien worlds yet discovered, according to scientists at the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy. "The Milky Way itself was not completely formed yet," said study leader Johny Setiawan. During a survey using radial velocity, in which astronomers watch for periodic wobbles in a star's light due to the gravitational tugs of orbiting worlds, Setiawan and colleagues found the signatures of the two planets orbiting the star, dubbed HIP 11952.

At an estimated age of 12.8 billion years, the host star—and thus the planets—most likely formed at the dawn of the universe, less than a billion years after the big bang.

Based on the team's calculations, one alien planet is almost as massive as Jupiter and completes an orbit in roughly seven days. The other exo planet is nearly three times Jupiter's mass and has an orbital period of nine and a half months.

"Usually planets form just shortly after the star formation," Setiawan said. "Second-generation planets might also form after a star has died, but this is still under debate."

The discovery indicates that planet formation in the early universe was possible despite the fact that stars in existence back then were lacking in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, which runs counter to a widely accepted theory called the accretion model, which says that heavy elements are needed to form planets. In the case of HIP 11952, "its iron abundance is only about one percent that of our sun," Setiawan said.

The accretion theory has so far been backed up by observations: Most of the planet-harboring stars discovered to date are relatively young and have moderate to high amounts of metals, but Setiawan says that "astronomers may think the accretion model is correct because planet hunters using Kepler Mission data have been targeting mostly young, sunlike stars."

"To verify this issue, it is necessary to do a planet-search survey around [older] metal-poor stars," Setiawan said.

The Daily Galaxy via Astronomy & Astrophysics

Image credit: lcse.umn.edu

Alien Planet Chemistry --A Diamond and Graphite Surface (Weekend Feature)

2013-05-12T08:16:59-07:00

Exo-planet research led by Yale University scientists in 2012 suggests that a rocky planet twice Earth's size orbiting a nearby star has a distinctly alien chemistry. "This is our first glimpse of a rocky world with a fundamentally different chemistry from Earth," said lead researcher Nikku Madhusudhan, a Yale postdoctoral researcher in physics and astronomy. "The surface of this planet is likely covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and granite." The study estimates that at least a third of the planet's mass—the equivalent of about three Earth masses—could be diamond.

"By contrast, Earth's interior is rich in oxygen, but extremely poor in carbon—less than a part in thousand by mass," says co-author and Yale geophysicist Kanani Lee. The identification of a carbon-rich super-Earth means that distant rocky planets can no longer be assumed to have chemical constituents, interiors, atmospheres, or biologies similar to those of Earth.

The planet—called 55 Cancri e—has a radius twice Earth's, and a mass eight times greater, making it a "super-Earth." It is one of five planets orbiting a sun-like star, 55 Cancri, that is located 40 light years from Earth yet visible to the naked eye in the constellation of Cancer.

The planet orbits at hyper speed—its year lasts just 18 hours, in contrast to Earth's 365 days. It is also blazingly hot, with a temperature of about 3,900 degrees Fahrenheit, researchers said, a far cry from a habitable world. The planet was first observed transiting its star last year, allowing astronomers to measure its radius for the first time. This new information, combined with the most recent estimate of its mass, allowed Madhusudhan and colleagues to infer its chemical composition using models of its interior and computing all possible combinations of elements and compounds that would yield those specific characteristics.

Astronomers had previously reported that the host star has more carbon than oxygen, and Madhusudhan and colleagues confirmed that substantial amounts of carbon and silicon carbide, and a negligible amount of water ice, were available during the planet's formation.

Astronomers also thought 55 Cancri e contained a substantial amount of super-heated water, based on the assumption that its chemical makeup was similar to Earth's, Madhusudhan said. But the new research suggests the planet has no water at all, and appears to be composed primarily of carbon (as graphite and diamond), iron, silicon carbide, and, possibly, some silicates.

The discovery also opens new avenues for the study of geochemistry and geophysical processes in Earth-sized alien planets. A carbon-rich composition could influence the planet's thermal evolution and plate tectonics, for example, with implications for volcanism, seismic activity, and mountain formation.

"Stars are simple—given a star's mass and age, you know its basic structure and history," said David Spergel, professor of astronomy and chair of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University, who is not a co-author of the study. "Planets are much more complex.

This 'diamond-rich super-Earth' is likely just one example of the rich sets of discoveries that await us as we begin to explore planets around nearby stars." In 2011, Madhusudhan led the first discovery of a carbon-rich atmosphere in a distant gas giant planet, opening the possibility of long-theorized carbon-rich rocky planets (or "diamond planets").

The new research represents the first time that astronomers have identified a likely diamond planet around a sun-like star and specified its chemical make-up. Follow-up observations of the planet's atmosphere and additional estimates of the stellar composition would strengthen the findings about the planet's chemical composition.

For more information: "A Possible Carbon-rich Interior in Super-Earth 55 Cancri e," Astrophysical Journal Letters. Journal reference: Astrophysical Journal Letters

The Daily Galaxy via Yale University

Image credit: NASA

EcoAlert: CO2 Exceeds 400 ppm for 1st Time in Recorded History

2013-05-11T08:01:51-07:00

Carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning and other human activities is the most significant greenhouse gas (GHG) contributing to climate change. Its concentration has increased every year since scientists started making measurements on the slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano more than five decades ago. The rate of increase has accelerated since the measurements started, from about 0.7 ppm per year in the late 1950s to 2.1 ppm per year during the last 10 years.

“There’s no stopping CO2 from reaching 400 ppm,” said Ralph Keeling. “That’s now a done deal. But what happens from here on still matters to climate, and it’s still under our control. It mainly comes down to how much we continue to rely on fossil fuels for energy.” It was researcher Charles David Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, who began measuring carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa in 1958, initiating now what is known as the “Keeling Curve.” His son, Ralph Keeling, also a geochemist at Scripps, has continued the Scripps measurement record since his father’s death in 2005.

On May 9, the daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time since measurements began in 1958. Independent measurements made by both NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have been approaching this level during the past week. It marks an important milestone because Mauna Loa, as the oldest continuous carbon dioxide (CO2) measurement station in the world, is the primary global benchmark site for monitoring the increase of this potent heat-trapping gas.

“That increase is not a surprise to scientists,” said NOAA senior scientist Pieter Tans, with the Global Monitoring Division of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. “The evidence is conclusive that the strong growth of global CO2 emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas is driving the acceleration.”

Before the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, global average CO2 was about 280 ppm. During the last 800,000 years, CO2 fluctuated between about 180 ppm during ice ages and 280 ppm during interglacial warm periods. Today’s rate of increase is more than 100 times faster than the increase that occurred when the last ice age ended.

NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Thursday, levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time since measurements began in 1958. Pre-industrial carbon dioxide levels were 280 parts per million. Mauna Kea is in the background. NOAA photo.

NOAA scientists with the Global Monitoring Division have made around-the-clock measurements there since 1974. Having two programs independently measure the greenhouse gas provides confidence that the measurements are correct.

Moreover, similar increases of CO2 are seen all over the world by many international scientists. NOAA, for example, which runs a global, cooperative air sampling network, reported last year that all Arctic sites in its network reached 400 ppm for the first time. These high values were a prelude to what is now being observed at Mauna Loa, a site in the subtropics, this year. Sites in the Southern Hemisphere will follow during the next few years. The increase in the Northern Hemisphere is always a little ahead of the Southern Hemisphere because most of the emissions driving the CO2 increase take place in the north.

Once emitted, CO2 added to the atmosphere and oceans remains for thousands of years. Thus, climate changes forced by CO2 depend primarily on cumulative emissions, making it progressively more and more difficult to avoid further substantial climate change.

The Daily Galaxy via http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html

Scripps Institution of Oceanography carbon dioxide data: http://www.keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/

NOAA’s Maua Loa Observatory: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/

Bizarre State of Matter Found at Core of a Neutron Star (Weekend Feature)

2013-05-11T07:40:32-07:00

In 2011, evidence for a bizarre state of matter, known as a superfluid, was identified in the dense core of a neutron star, based on over a decade of observations. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory discovered the first direct evidence for a superfluid, a bizarre, friction-free state of matter, at the core of Cassiopeia A. Superfluids containing charged particles are also superconductors, meaning they act as perfect electrical conductors and never lose energy. The Chandra results strongly suggest that the remaining protons in the star's core are in a superfluid state and, because they carry a charge, also form a superconductor.

Superfluids created in laboratories on Earth exhibit remarkable properties, such as the ability to climb upward and escape airtight containers. The finding has important implications for understanding nuclear interactions in matter at the highest known densities.

Neutron stars contain the densest known matter that is directly observable. One teaspoon of neutron star material weighs six billion tons. The pressure in the star's core is so high that most of the charged particles, electrons and protons, merge resulting in a star composed mostly of uncharged particles called neutrons.

The onset of superfluidity in materials on Earth occurs at extremely low temperatures near absolute zero, but in neutron stars, it can occur at temperatures near a billion degrees Celsius. Until now there was a very large uncertainty in estimates of this critical temperature. This new research constrains the critical temperature to between one half a billion to just under a billion degrees.

Two independent research teams studied the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, or Cas A for short, the remains of a massive star 11,000 light years away that would have appeared to explode about 330 years ago as observed from Earth. Chandra data found a rapid decline in the temperature of the ultra-dense neutron star that remained after the supernova, showing that it had cooled by about four percent over a 10-year period.

"This drop in temperature, although it sounds small, was really dramatic and surprising to see," said Dany Page of the National Autonomous University in Mexico. "This means that something unusual is happening within this neutron star."

"The rapid cooling in Cas A's neutron star, seen with Chandra, is the first direct evidence that the cores of these neutron stars are, in fact, made of superfluid and superconducting material," said Peter Shternin of the Ioffe Institute in St Petersburg, Russia.

Both teams show that this rapid cooling is explained by the formation of a neutron superfluid in the core of the neutron star within about the last 100 years as seen from Earth. The rapid cooling is expected to continue for a few decades and then it should slow down.

"It turns out that Cas A may be a gift from the Universe because we would have to catch a very young neutron star at just the right point in time," said Page's co-author Madappa Prakash, from Ohio University. "Sometimes a little good fortune can go a long way in science."

Cas A will allow researchers to test models of how the strong nuclear force, which binds subatomic particles, behaves in ultradense matter. These results are also important for understanding a range of behavior in neutron stars, including "glitches," neutron star precession and pulsation, magnetar outbursts and the evolution of neutron star magnetic fields.

Small sudden changes in the spin rate of rotating neutron stars, called glitches, have previously given evidence for superfluid neutrons in the crust of a neutron star, where densities are much lower than seen in the core of the star. This latest news from Cas A unveils new information about the ultra-dense inner region of the neutron star.

"Previously we had no idea how extended superconductivity of protons was in a neutron star," said Shternin's co-author Dmitry Yakovlev, also from the Loffe Institute.

The cooling in the Cas A neutron star was first discovered by co-author Craig Heinke, from the University of Alberta, Canada, and Wynn Ho from the University of Southampton, UK, in 2010. It was the first time that astronomers have measured the rate of cooling of a young neutron star.

The Daily Galaxy via Chandra X-ray Center

Image Credit: This image presents a beautiful composite of X-rays from Chandra (red, green, and blue) and optical data from Hubble (gold) of Cassiopeia A, the remains of a massive star that exploded in a supernova.

Source of Moon's Water After "The Giant Impact"

2013-05-11T07:00:58-07:00

"The simplest explanation for what we found is that there was water on the proto-Earth at the time of the Giant Impact," said Alberto Saal, a geochemist at Brown University. "Some of that water survived the impact, and that's what we see in the Moon."Water is perhaps the most important molecule in our solar system. Figuring out where it came from and how it was distributed within and among the planets can help scientists understand how planets formed and evolved. New research demonstrates that water from the interiors of the Earth and Moon has a common origin.

The Moon is thought to have formed from a disc of debris left when a Mars-sized impactor hit the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, the Giant Impact. Scientists have estimated that the heat from an impact of that size would cause hydrogen and other volatile elements to boil off into space, meaning the Moon must have started off completely dry. But recently, NASA spacecraft and new research on samples from the Apollo missions have shown that the Moon actually has water, both on its surface and beneath. The Giant Impact theory also requires that most of the material that formed the Moon came from the impactor.

Hauri and his teammates—author Saal and co-author Malcolm Rutherford of Brown University and James Van Orman, of Case Western Reserve University—looked for evidence of this water's origin by honing in on the element hydrogen, and its heavier isotope deuterium. (Isotopes are atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons). The ratio of these isotopes can tell scientists about the water's origin.

Hauri used the Carnegie NanoSIMS 50L ion probe to determine the deuterium-hydrogen ratio for water trapped in extremely primitive volcanic glass samples from the Moon, which were brought back to Earth by the Apollo 15 and 17 missions. The measurements revealed that the hydrogen isotopes matched those from a type of meteorite called carbonaceous chondrites. Because Earth's water is also matched by carbonaceous chondrites, the two bodies likely have obtained their water from the same source. The evidence suggests that the Earth was already wet at the time of the Moon-forming collision and that the water within the Moon was inherited from the Earth.

"The measurements themselves were very difficult, but the new data provide the best evidence yet that the carbonaceous chondrite meteorites were a common source for the water in the Earth and Moon, and perhaps the entire inner solar system," Hauri said.

Co-author James Van Orman states "Our work suggests that even highly volatile elements may not be lost completely during a giant impact. We need to go back to the drawing board and discover more about what giant impacts do, and we also need a better handle on volatile inventories in the Moon."