Want to name an asteroid? NASA needs your help
(SPACE.com) NASA is calling on students around the world to help name a potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroid that the agency is hoping to visit with an unmanned probe that will collect samples of the space rock and return them home.
The asteroid, currently known as (101955) 1999 RQ36 could pose a threat to Earth when it swings close to our planet 170 years from now. Measuring 1,837 feet (560 meters) wide, asteroid 1999 RQ36 has a 1-in-1,000 chance of slamming into Earth in the year 2182, researchers have said. |  |
Cameras to Focus on Dark Energy
Even the best pictures of a distant galaxy are a bit lopsided. But this is an attribute, not a bug. Because mass distorts space-time, light coming from distant galaxies is bent as it passes through intervening shoals of invisible matter, leaving the images of these distant objects minutely sheared and stretched.
Two astronomical surveys now scheduled to come online seek to take advantage of this effect, which is known as weak gravitational lensing. The surveys aim to use the technique to get a firmer handle on dark energy, the mysterious force that is apparently speeding up the expansion of the Universe. |  |
Ancient Egyptian faience may be key to printing 3D ceramics
We like to think of technology as always being forward looking. It’s supposed to be about nanoparticles and the Cloud, not steam engines and the telephone exchange. But every now and again the past reaches out, taps the 21st century on the shoulder and says, “Have a look at this.” That’s what happened to Professor Stephen Hoskins, Director of the University of West England, Bristol's Centre for Fine Print Research. He is currently working on a way of printing 3D ceramics that are self-glazing, thanks to a 7,000-year old technology from ancient Egypt.
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Curiosity could be carrying Earth bacteria, threatening search for Mars life
When searching for life on another world, the most fundamental precaution that any space agency needs to take with any probe or rover is to ensure it doesn't carry Earth microbes. However, if reports are to be believed, Nasa may have screwed up -- and is hoping that it doesn't find any water when it drills into the Martian soil.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the possible contamination occurred six months before the rover's launch in November 2011. Curiosity's drillbits were designed to be stored in a sealed box, separate from the drill mechanism -- however, a Nasa engineer worried that a rough landing might make assembling the drill on Mars impossible (and thus rendering one of the rover's most important tools impotent), and opened the sealed unit to install one drill bit as a kind of backup. This happened without consulting Nasa's team dedicated to avoiding contaminating Mars with Earth bacteria. |  |
New Mars theory casts doubt on planet's habitability
A new theory is pouring some cold — actually, some really hot — water on the idea that Mars could have been habitable in the past.
Planetary scientists searching the Red Planet for places that could have contained the building blocks for life look for clues in clays, which can offer some indication that water must have flowed on or just under Mars' surface. But a new study suggests that, at least in some cases, those clays might be a red herring. |  |
Explosion on Jupiter Spotted by Amateur Astronomers
An apparent impact on Jupiter early Monday (Sept. 10) created a fireball on the planet so large and bright that amateur astronomers on Earth spotted the flash.
The surprising impact on Jupiter was first reported by amateur astronomer Dan Peterson of Racine, Wisc., who was observing the largest planet in our solar system when the event occurred, according to the website Spaceweather.com, which tracks space weather and night sky events. |  |
Acupuncture works, one way or another
Many people with chronic pain swear by acupuncture, but skeptics of the ancient needle-based treatment have long claimed that it's little more than an elaborate placebo.
A new study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine appears to at least somewhat vindicate the acupuncture believers. After re-analyzing data from 29 high-quality clinical trials dating back to the 1990s, researchers have concluded that the pain relief derived from acupuncture is partly real, in that it can't be ascribed entirely to the placebo effect. |  |
Human Remains Found in Search for King Richard III's Grave
A hunt for the grave of King Richard III has turned up human remains at the medieval church where the English monarch is said to be buried — but there is no word yet on whether the remains belong to the king.
University of Leicester archaeologists will announce the details of the new findings tomorrow (Sept. 12). Until then, the researchers are remaining tight-lipped about the find. |  |
Virgin births discovered in wild snakes
Virgin births have been reported in wild vertebrates for the first time.
Researchers in the US caught pregnant females from two snake species and genetically analysed the litters. That proved the North American pit-vipers reproduced without a male, a phenomenon called facultative parthenogenesis that has previously been found only in captive species. Scientists say the findings could change our understanding of animal reproduction and vertebrate evolution. |  |
'Death march' of ancient horseshoe crab fossilized
More than 100 million years ago, a harsh storm washed an unlucky horseshoe crab into a toxic lagoon. The doomed crustacean scrambled and plodded along the muddy bottom before succumbing, leaving behind a now-fossilized death march that ends with the crab's body.
Such a find is "extremely rare," the researchers write on Aug. 29 in Ichnos: An International Journal for Plant and Animal Traces. Once plopped into the oxygen-free, highly salty lagoon, the creature did not live long, the researchers say; even so, it did live long enough to try to escape, creating a track extending 32 feet (9.7 meters) long with an average width of 1.7 inches (4.25 centimeters). |  |
Landmark Higgs boson announcement clears key hurdle
PARIS — The announcement two months ago that physicists have discovered a particle consistent with the famous Higgs boson cleared a formal hurdle on Monday with publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Two laboratories working at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) had jointly announced on July 4 they had detected a new fundamental particle in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. The discovery has been hailed as one of the biggest scientific achievements ever. |  |
The 'even larger' hadron collider: Cern reveals plans for new experiments
After discovering the smallest particle that could ever exist, the team at Cern is now considering scaling up - with a brand new collider.
The Geneva-based team which discovered what they believe to be the Higgs Boson particle this summer is now looking to the future, and are proposing a new underground accelerator with a circumference of 50miles (80kms) - three times the size of the current one under Geneva. The collider will be used to solve a new batch of mysteries of the universe, such as how gravity interacts on a molecular level. Any new collider is unlikely to be built until 2025, but the Cern team wish to get a head-start, concerned by the 25-year wait it took between proposing the first collider, and its completion in 2008. The team is considering a range of options now the original $4.6billion particle collider has served its intended purpose. |  |
Could wind power ever meet the world’s energy needs?
At the moment, wind power supplies about 4.1 percent of electric power in the United States. Still a bit player. Yet there’s a whole lot of untapped wind left in the world. Wind whipping through the Great Plains. Wind gusting off the shores. Wind circulating high up in the sky. So what would happen if we tried to harvest all of that wind?
We’d have enough energy to power the world. At least in theory. A new study published this week in Nature Climate Change finds that there’s enough wind potential both on the Earth’s surface and up in the atmosphere to power human civilization 100 times over. Right now, humans use about 18 terawatts of power worldwide. And, technically, the study found, we could extract about 400 terawatts of wind power from the Earth’s surface and 1,800 terawatts of power from the upper atmosphere. |  |
High-altitude winds have large potential as a source of clean energy
SCIENCE CODEX
Airborne wind energy—an emerging approach to harnessing high-altitude winds—could scale up fairly quickly if given significant government support for research and development, according to a survey of experts by Near Zero, a nonprofit energy research organization.
Winds near Earth's surface are already used to generate substantial amounts of electricity. However, higher in the sky—much higher than today's wind turbines can reach—winds tend to be stronger and steadier, making these winds an even larger source of energy. According to recent research, the amount of energy that can potentially be extracted from high-altitude winds is enormous. However, the field of airborne wind energy is still in its infancy and faces many challenges before it becomes commercially competitive.
Winds near Earth's surface are already used to generate substantial amounts of electricity. However, higher in the sky—much higher than today's wind turbines can reach—winds tend to be stronger and steadier, making these winds an even larger source of energy. According to recent research, the amount of energy that can potentially be extracted from high-altitude winds is enormous. However, the field of airborne wind energy is still in its infancy and faces many challenges before it becomes commercially competitive.
FAA: Mysterious Roof Holes Not Caused by Falling Frozen Waste
Two Long Island families with mysterious holes in their roofs think plummeting frozen waste from overhead airplanes might be the cause of their troubles.
Lois Farella awoke to a thunderous crash at 3:30 a.m. on Sunday morning (Sept. 9) and found that her roof had a hole the size of a basketball leading straight through the shingles, plywood and insulation, according to CBS New York. At the same time, the roof of Farella's next-door neighbor's house got a similar makeover. And when her roofer, Bryan Lanzello, investigated the damage, he reportedly found a brown, wet stain in the attic where the offending object would have landed. Pictures here |  |
What Is the Future of Computers?
In 1958, a Texas Instruments engineer named Jack Kilby cast a pattern onto the surface of an 11-millimeter-long "chip" of semiconducting germanium, creating the first ever integrated circuit. Because the circuit contained a single transistor — a sort of miniature switch — the chip could hold one "bit" of data: either a 1 or a 0, depending on the transistor's configuration.
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Mathematician Claims Proof of Connection between Prime Numbers
A Japanese mathematician claims to have the proof for the ABC conjecture, a statement about the relationship between prime numbers that has been called the most important unsolved problem in number theory.
If Shinichi Mochizuki's 500-page proof stands up to scrutiny, mathematicians say it will represent one of the most astounding achievements of mathematics of the twenty-first century. The proof will also have ramifications all over mathematics, and even in the real-world field of data encryption. |  |
Social Networks and Mythology
Studying the structures of social networks has yielded a wide variety of insights, as well as the recognition that, despite the variety of social networks studied, they often have certain properties in common. Of course, many of these network properties are those shared by many other networks found “in the wild,” from high amounts of clustering to short path lengths between any two nodes as well as heavy-tailed distributions of connections.
However, one property that distinguishes social networks from at least certain other types of networks is that of assortative mixing: highly connected nodes are more likely to be connected to other highly connected nodes (popular people are also friends with other popular people). However, social networks are by no means the only networks that display this property. For example, certain biological networks display assortative mixing as well. |  |
Prehistoric Animated Cave Drawings Discovered In France
News out of France concerning Prehistoric cave drawings that were animated by torch-light is taking the art history world by storm, and has overwhelmed this artist to the point of awe.
The cave drawings were found by archaeologist Marc Azema and French artist Florent Rivere, who suggest that Paleolithic artists who lived as long as 30,000 years ago used animation effects on cave walls, which explains the multiple heads and limbs on animals in the drawings. The images look superimposed until flickering torch-light is passed over them, giving them movement and creating a brief animation. |  |
Mammoth fragments raise cloning hopes
Russia's North-Eastern Federal University said an international team of researchers had discovered mammoth hair, soft tissues and bone marrow some 328 feet (100 meters) underground during a summer expedition in the northeastern province of Yakutia.
Expedition chief Semyon Grigoryev said Korean scientists with the team had set a goal of finding living cells in the hope of cloning a mammoth. Scientists have previously found bones and fragments but not living cells. Mr Grigoryev told the online newspaper Vzglyad it would take months of research to determine whether they have indeed found the cells. |  |
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