Furthest object said to pave way for probing early cosmos

An ex­plo­sion in space de­tected April 23 marks the most dis­tant, longest-a­go event and ob­ject known, as­tro­no­mers say.

Ob­jects seen fur­ther away in space al­so ap­pear as fur­ther back in time, since it takes time for their light to get he­re.

Al­though there have been a num­ber of such rec­ord-breakers in the past, as­tro­no­mers say each rec­ord paves the way for prob­ing ear­li­er and ear­li­er in­to the his­to­ry of the uni­verse, al­low­ing an un­prec­e­dent­ed un­der­stand­ing of its ev­o­lu­tion.

Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090428_grb

Tiny "invisibility cloak" is like a magic carpet

Researchers have created a "carpet cloak" that
conceals objects under it from detection using light
near the human-visible part of the spectrum.

Re­search­ers have cre­at­ed a ti­ny “car­pet cloak” that con­ceals ob­jects un­der it from de­tec­tion us­ing light near the hu­man-vis­i­ble part of the spec­trum. While the car­pet it­self is vis­i­ble, the bulge of the ob­ject un­derneath it “dis­ap­pears” from the view of in­stru­ments that use this near-infrared light.

Re­search­ers say they’re hope­ful that with more pre­cise fab­rica­t­ion their strat­e­gy should yield a true “in­vis­i­bil­ity car­pet” that works in the ar­ea of the col­or spec­trum uti­lized by hu­man eyes, and at a larg­er size.

The car­pet works such that shin­ing a beam of light on the bulge shows a re­flec­tion iden­ti­cal to that of a beam re­flected from a flat sur­face.

Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090504_carpet

Complex organic molecules detected in space

Sci­en­tists say they have de­tected two of the most com­plex mol­e­cules yet dis­cov­ered in space. Their com­put­er mod­els al­so in­di­cate still larg­er mol­e­cules may be out there, in­clud­ing the so-far elu­sive ami­no ac­ids, es­sen­tial for life as we know it.

The find­ings from the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Ra­dio As­tron­o­my in Bonn, Ger­ma­ny, Cor­nell Uni­ver­s­ity in New York, and the Uni­ver­s­ity of Co­logne, Ger­ma­ny, were pre­s­ented April 21 at the Eu­ro­pe­an Week of As­tron­o­my and Space Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­s­ity of Hert­ford­shire, U.K.

The re­search­ers used the IRAM 30-me­ter tel­e­scope in Spain to de­tect light emis­sions from mol­e­cules in the star-forming re­gion Sag­it­ta­ri­us B2, near the cen­ter of our gal­axy. The mol­e­cules were iden­ti­fied in a hot, dense gas cloud known as the Large Mol­e­cule Hei­mat, which con­tains a lu­mi­nous young star.


Source http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090421_organic

Physicists see the cosmos in a coffee cup

A professor and a graduate student say they have found a new "universal principle."

A pro­fes­sor and a grad­u­ate stu­dent have found a “u­ni­ver­sal prin­ci­ple” that they say un­ites the in­ter­play of light and shade on the sur­face of your cof­fee, with the way gra­vity dis­torts dis­tant ga­lax­ies’ light.

They think sci­en­tists will be able to use vi­ola­t­ions of this prin­ci­ple to map un­seen clumps of mys­te­ri­ous “dark mat­ter” in the uni­verse.

Light rays nat­u­rally re­flect off a curve like the in­side sur­face of a cof­fee cup in a curv­ing, ivy leaf pat­tern that comes to a point in the cen­ter and is bright­est along its edge.




Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090416_coffee

Martian mountain may answer big question:

One Martian volcano is about three times Mount
Everest's height. But it's the small details that
two geologists are looking at.

The Mar­tian vol­ca­no Olym­pus Mons is about three times Mount Ever­est’s height. But it’s the small de­tails that ge­ol­o­gists Pat­rick Mc­Gov­ern and Jul­ia Mor­gan are look­ing at in think­ing about wheth­er the Red Plan­et ev­er had – or still sup­ports – life.

In sim­u­lat­ing the moun­tain’s forma­t­ion by com­put­er, Mc­Gov­ern and Mor­gan reached the con­clu­sion that an­cient wa­ter may still be trapped un­derneath. Their find­ings are pub­lished in Febru­ary’s is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Ge­ol­o­gy.



Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090305_olympus

New life on Mars -- by Discovery

New life on Mars -- by Discovery

Source: http://science.discovery.com/stories/mars/mars.html