Curiosity Rover Zeroes in on Traces of Past Habitats on Mars
All science begins in a star trek mode: go where no one has gone before and discover new things without knowing in advance what they might be. As researchers complete their initial surveys and accumulate a long list of questions, they shift to a Sherlock Holmes mode: formulate specific hypotheses and develop ways to test them. The exploration of Mars is now about to make this transition. Orbiters have made global maps of geographic features and composition, and landers have pieced together the broad outlines of the planet's geologic history. It is time to get more sophisticated.
|  |
The Classic, Beautiful and Controversial Books That Changed Science Forever
Without the work of intellectual giants like Einstein, Newton and Darwin, we might still be in the dark ages. But how many scientists still read the dust-ridden texts where these luminaries first expounded their theories? Thanks to the internet, you no longer have to hunt down these yellowing tomes in a moldy library vault. Here’s the story of 10 famous publications that spun the scientific world off its orbit.
|  |
Protect whales from new oil industry threat, warns WWF
Conservationists on Tuesday appealed to countries to urgently address new threats to whales, dolphins and other cetaceans as climate change opens up previously inaccessible areas of the Arctic and industries move in to new areas.
As emotional arguments broke out in the annual International Whaling Commission's (IWC) conference between pro- and anti-whaling nations over the right of small, indigenous groups to hunt a few whales each year, WWF appealed to countries to better regulate fishing and stop the oil and gas industries devastating populations. |  |
South Korea unveils 'scientific' whaling proposal
South Korea is proposing to hunt whales under regulations permitting scientific research whaling, echoing the programmes of its neighbour, Japan.
Hunting would take place near the Korean coast on minke whales. How many would be caught is unclear. The South Korean delegation to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) said the research was needed "for the proper assessment of whale stocks". Many governments at the IWC meeting condemned the Korean announcement. |  |
Ouija board helps psychologists probe the subconscious
Beloved of spiritualists and bored teenagers on a dare, the Ouija board has long been a source of entertainment, mystery and sometimes downright spookiness. Now it could shine a light on the secrets of the unconscious mind.
The Ouija, also known as a talking board, is a wooden plaque marked with the words, "yes", "no" and the letters of the alphabet. Typically a group of users place their hands on a movable pointer , or "planchette", and ask questions out loud. Sometimes the planchette signals an answer, even when no one admits to moving it deliberately. |  |
At last, a gravitational physics mission in space?
You would be forgiven for thinking that shrinking space budgets are a total disaster. Certainly, they're not good news but the irony is that having less money may force us into missions that might previously have been overlooked, yet still have the potential to revolutionise our understanding of the universe.
In March this year, the European Space Agency issued a call for small mission ideas. This is something of a departure for the ESA, which in the past has only used smaller missions to test technology, such as with Smart-1 and Proba. |  |
Stephen Hawking Loses Higgs Boson Bet
Renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking said Wednesday the Nobel Prize should be given to Peter Higgs, the man who gave his name to the Higgs boson particle.
Former Cambridge University professor Hawking also joked that the discovery had actually cost him $100 in a bet. In an interview with the BBC Wednesday, Hawking, who has motor neurone disease, said: "This is an important result and should earn Peter Higgs the Nobel Prize. |  |
'Leap second' Wreaks Internet Havoc
An adjustment of a mere second in the official global clock sent dozens of websites crashing in an incident reminiscent of the Y2K bug over a decade ago.
The "leap second" was added to the Coordinated Universal Time to adjust clocks to the earth's rotation the night of June 30, delaying for one second the transition to July 1. The extra second was too much for some software to handle. |  |
Rocks in Mars craters reveal water once flowed miles below the surface
Water once flowed beneath the surface of Mars - and the warmer, wetter ancient planet could have been considerably more hospitable for life.
Scans by spectrometers on board the Mars Express and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiters have revealed 175 outcrops in Mars's Tyrrhena Terra mountains that are unmistakably 'weathered' by water. The rocks, found in craters, seem to have been 'carved' out from beneath the crust by asteroid impacts - and offer an insight into the planet's history, and what lies beneath the surface. The find proves water flowed beneath the surface of Mars for a 'long period', say the researchers. |  |
Antarctic moss lives on ancient penguin poo
Moss plants that survive the freezing conditions of Antarctica have an unusual food source, scientists say.
The vibrant green plants take nutrients from the poo left behind by penguins that lived in the same area thousands of years ago. Scientists made their discovery whilst testing the plants to find out how they manage to survive in the icy landscape. The findings were presented at the Society for Experimental Biology's annual meeting in Salzburg, Austria. |  |
It's just a slag heap, isn't it? The world heritage sites that defy belief
Viewed with a squint, in the dark, the great slag heaps of the Nord-Pas de Calais mining basin might take on the aspect of the Egyptian pyramids. Now these monuments to fossil fuel, in some cases over 140m high, have joined more than 900 properties on Unesco's swelling list of world heritage sites. So too have the old mines of Wallonia across the border in Belgium.
Britain can't get too sneery at the UN's cultural arm bowing to seven years' hard lobbying by mining officials in northern France. Unesco has already bestowed world heritage garlands on a swath of industrial Britain, including Ironbridge Gorge, Derwent Valley Mills, New Lanark, Saltaire and the Cornwall and West Devon mining landscape. |  |
Google wants to help save the world’s lost languages
In an effort to help preserve some of the world's rarest languages, Google has teamed up with various universities and cultural diversity organizations to form the Endangered Languages Project. The company is providing assistance to these groups to build a vast database of information on thousands of languages that are at risk of being completely forgotten.
According to the Endangered Languages Project, roughly 3,500 unique languages are at risk of being wiped out within the next century. As each language disappears, so does a piece of each culture's identity, and the spoken history of each group is threatened. You can explore the location of each threatened language using the built-in interactive map on the project's website, and even add your own input if you have special knowledge of a language on the site. |  |
The galaxy that shouldn’t be there
It’s generally said that discoveries in science tend to be at the thin hairy edge of what you can do — always at the faintest limits you can see, the furthest reaches, the lowest signals. That can be trivially true because stuff that’s easy to find has already been discovered. But many times, when you’re looking farther and fainter than you ever have, you find things that really are new… and can (maybe!) be a problem for existing models of how the Universe behaves.
Astronomers ran across just such thing recently. Hubble observations of a distant galaxy cluster revealed an arc of light above it. That’s actually the distorted image of a more distant galaxy, and it’s a common enough sight near foreground clusters. But the thing is, that galaxy shouldn’t be there. |  |
Drip Irrigation Expanding Worldwide
As the world population climbs and water stress spreads around the globe, finding ways of getting more crop per drop to meet our food needs is among the most urgent of challenges.
One answer to this call is drip irrigation, which delivers water directly to the roots of plants in just the right amounts. It can double or triple water productivity – boosting crop per drop – and it appears to be taking off worldwide. |  |
Australopithecus sediba: The Wood-Eating Hominid
Sometimes it’s good to have something stuck in your teeth—good for science, anyway. New research on food particles clinging to two-million-year-old teeth reveal Australopithecus sediba, a possible ancestor of the genus Homo, had unusual dining habits for a hominid: The species consumed wood.
Discovered in South Africa in 2010, A. sediba is known from two partial skeletons. To reconstruct the species’ diet, Amanda Henry of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and colleagues relied on three methods. First, they looked at the markings on molar surfaces made by food as it’s being chewed. This analysis showed A. sediba ate hard objects, just as the South African hominid Paranthropus robustus did. |  |
Will We Ever Find Dinosaurs Caught in the Act?
Earlier this month, I wrote a short article for Nature News about 47-million-year-old turtles that died at a very inopportune moment. Several pairs of prehistoric turtle were fossilized in the act of mating—the tragic consequence of sinking to the toxic depths of a prehistoric lake. An unfortunate fate for the reptiles, but a boon for the paleontologists who found the sexy fossils.
The discovery got me thinking about dinosaur sex. I’ve written quite a bit about the topic before—I ran a four-part series on what we know about dinosaur nooky earlier this year—but much of what we know about dinosaur reproduction only outlines the mating habits of Apatosaurus and company |  |
Fukushima reactor meltdown was a man-made disaster, says official report
Last year's accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was a manmade disaster caused by poor regulation and collusion between the government, the operator and the industry's watchdog, a report has said.
In a highly critical assessment published on Thursday, a Japanese parliamentary panel challenged claims by the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), that the triple meltdown at the plant in north-east Japan had been caused solely by a 14-metre tsunami on 11 March last year. The panel said the magnitude-9 earthquake that preceded the waves could not be ruled out as a cause of the accident. |  |
'Britain's Atlantis' found at bottom of North sea - swallowed in 6500BC
'Britain's Atlantis' - a hidden underwater world swallowed by the North Sea - has been discovered by divers working with science teams from the University of St Andrews.
Doggerland, a huge area of dry land that stretched from Scotland to Denmark was slowly submerged by water between 18,000 BC and 5,500 BC. Divers from oil companies have found remains of a 'drowned world' with a population of tens of thousands - which might once have been the 'real heartland' of Europe. A team of climatologists, archaeologists and geophysicists has now mapped the area using new data from oil companies - and revealed the full extent of a 'lost land' once roamed by mammoths. |  |
Ancient tribe gets legal protection
One of the world's most ancient societies has been given a legal buffer zone to guard it from the modern world.
India's Supreme Court has banned all commercial and tourism activity near their habitat in the country's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands in the Indian Ocean. The ruling bars hotels and resorts from operating within a three-mile buffer zone around the Jarawa reserve, which is home to the Jarawa tribal people. The order means resorts that had opened nearby will have to close. |  |