Sciprint.org's blog in Astrophysics

Scientists Claim New State of Matter Created

2009-08-14T20:05:00.000-07:00

Scientists claim to have created a form of aluminum that's nearly transparent to extreme ultraviolet radiation and which is a new state of matter.

It's an idea straight out of science fiction, featured in the movie "Star Trek IV."

The work is detailed in the journal Nature Physics.

The normal states of matter are solid, liquid and gas, and a fourth state, called plasma, is a superheated gas considered more exotic. Other experiments have created strange states of matter for brief periods. This one, too, existed only briefly.

"What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before," said professor Justin Wark of Oxford University's Department of Physics.

"Transparent aluminum is just the start," Wark said. "The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of 'miniature stars' created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth."

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/scientistsclaimnewstateofmattercreated

In praise of astronomy

2009-08-14T19:59:00.000-07:00

In praise of astronomy, the most revolutionary of sciences

On August 25th 1609 an Italian mathematician called Galileo
Galilei demonstrated his newly constructed telescope to the merchants
of Venice. Shortly afterwards he turned it on the skies. He saw
mountains casting shadows on the moon and realised this body was a
world, like the Earth, endowed with complicated terrain.

He saw the
moons of Jupiter--objects that circled another heavenly body in direct
disobedience of the church's teaching. He saw the moonlike phases of
Venus, indicating that this planet circled the sun, not the Earth, in
even greater disobedience of the priests. He saw sunspots,
demonstrating that the sun itself was not the perfect orb demanded by
the Greek cosmology that had been adopted by the church. But he also
saw something else, a thing that is often now forgotten. He saw that
the Milky Way, that cloudy streak across the sky, is made of stars.

That observation was the first hint that, not only is the Earth not the
centre of things, but those things are vastly, almost incomprehensibly,
bigger than people up until that date had dreamed.

source: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14213985

Furthest object said to pave way for probing early cosmos

2009-05-13T16:15:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-13T16:14:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-13T16:12:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-13T16:08:00.000-07:00

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:

2009-05-13T15:37:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-13T15:36:00.000-07:00

New life on Mars -- by Discovery

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

Magnetic monopoles in spin ice

2009-04-15T01:26:00.000-07:00

Magnetic monopoles in spin ice
C. Castelnovo1, R. Moessner1,2 & S. L. Sondhi
Nature 451, 42-45 (3 January 2008)

Electrically charged particles, such as the electron, are ubiquitous. In contrast, no elementary particles with a net magnetic charge have ever been observed, despite intensive and prolonged searches (see ref. 1 for example). We pursue an alternative strategy, namely that of realizing them not as elementary but rather as emergent particles—that is, as manifestations of the correlations present in a strongly interacting many-body system. The most prominent examples of emergent quasiparticles are the ones with fractional electric charge e/3 in quantum Hall physics2. Here we propose that magnetic monopoles emerge in a class of exotic magnets known collectively as spin ice3, 4, 5: the dipole moment of the underlying electronic degrees of freedom fractionalises into monopoles. This would account for a mysterious phase transition observed experimentally in spin ice in a magnetic field6, 7, which is a liquid–gas transition of the magnetic monopoles. These monopoles can also be detected by other means, for example, in an experiment modelled after the Stanford magnetic monopole search8.

Spin-ice materials are characterized by the presence of magnetic moments.

Source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7174/full/nature06433.html

Magnetism: Freedom for the poles

2009-04-15T01:23:00.000-07:00

Magnetism: Freedom for the poles
By Oleg Tchernyshyov
Nature 451, 22-23 (3 January 2008)

Magnetic poles always come in twos, a north and a south. That received wisdom has not stopped physicists from searching for 'monopoles' in accelerators and cosmic rays. Theory now indicates a better place to look.

Despite some tantalizing clues for their existence from the realms of quantum physics, magnetic monopoles — single magnetic poles without a partner — remain elusive after decades of searching. Do they exist at all in the real world? On page 42 of this issue1, Castelnovo, Moessner and Sondhi argue yes: monopoles are alive and well in an exotic class of magnetic material known as spin ice2.

This asymmetry extends to the subatomic level. Elementary particles can carry a positive or negative electric charge, but the magnetic charge is zero without exception. Yet theory offers some hints that single magnetic poles might exist in nature. In the 1930s, Paul Dirac showed that magnetic monopoles could explain the observed quantization of electric charge. Extensions of the standard model of particle physics include particles with magnetic charge.

One environment in which monopoles might pop up is crystalline solids. In a crystal at a low temperature, excitations above the ground state often behave like elementary particles: they carry a quantized amount of energy, momentum, electric charge and spin. In their theoretical study, Castelnovo et al. find the first instance of such an excitation with a non-zero magnetic charge. Under certain conditions, these magnets behave as a gas of independent magnetic poles. There is even a phase transition at which a thin vapour of these monopoles condenses into a dense liquid.

URL:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7174/full/451022b.html

See also: http://scidok.sulb.uni-saarland.de/volltexte/2009/2083/pdf/CPALPhD2009.pdf

NASA researchers find clues to a secret of life

2009-04-01T01:26:00.000-07:00

GREENBELT, Md. - NASA scientists analyzing the dust of meteorites have discovered new clues to a long-standing mystery about how life works on its most basic, molecular level.

"We found more support for the idea that biological molecules, like amino acids, created in space and brought to Earth by meteorite impacts help explain why life is left-handed," said Dr. Daniel Glavin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "By that I mean why all known life uses only left-handed versions of amino acids to build proteins." Glavin is lead author of a paper on this research appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences March 16.

Proteins are the workhorse molecules of life, used in everything from structures like hair to enzymes, the catalysts that speed up or regulate chemical reactions. Just as the 26 letters of the alphabet are arranged in limitless combinations to make words, life uses 20 different amino acids in a huge variety of arrangements. Amino acid molecules can be built in two ways that are mirror images of each other, like your hands. Although life based on right-handed amino acids would presumably work fine, "you can't mix them," says Dr. Jason Dworkin of NASA Goddard, co-author of the study. "If you do, life turns to something resembling scrambled eggs -- it's a mess. Since life doesn't work with a mixture of left-handed and right-handed amino acids, the mystery is: how did life decide -- what made life choose left-handed amino acids over right-handed ones?"

Over the last four years, the team carefully analyzed samples of meteorites with an abundance of carbon, called carbonaceous chondrites. The researchers looked for the amino acid isovaline and discovered that three types of carbonaceous meteorites had more of the left-handed version than the right-handed variety – as much as a record 18 percent more in the often-studied Murchison meteorite. "Finding more left-handed isovaline in a variety of meteorites supports the theory that amino acids brought to the early Earth by asteroids and comets contributed to the origin of only left-handed based protein life on Earth," said Glavin.

Contact: Bill Steigerwald
william.a.steigerwald@nasa.gov
301-286-5017
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Source:
- http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/nsfc-nrf031709.php
- http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/space.php

Queen's scientists discover giant solar twists

2009-04-01T01:24:00.000-07:00

Scientists at Queen's University have made a finding that will help us to understand more about the turbulent solar weather and its affect on our planet.

Along with scientists at the University of Sheffield and California State University, the researchers have detected giant twisting waves in the lower atmosphere of the Sun.

The discovery sheds some light on why the Sun's corona, the region around the Sun, has a much higher temperature than its surface - something that has always puzzled scientists.

The recent discovery by the scientists, published today in the respected journal Science, has revealed the existence of a new breed of solar wave, called the Alfvén wave. This solar wave has been shown to transport energy into the Corona or outer layer.

Contact: Lisa Mitchell
lisa.mitchell@qub.ac.uk
44-781-442-2572
Queen's University Belfast

source:
- http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/qub-qsd032009.php
- http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/space.php

Finding Twin Earths: Harder Than We Thought

2009-04-01T01:22:00.000-07:00

Cambridge, MA - Does a twin Earth exist somewhere in our galaxy? Astronomers are getting closer and closer to finding an Earth-sized planet in an Earth-like orbit. NASA's Kepler spacecraft just launched to find such worlds. Once the search succeeds, the next questions driving research will be: Is that planet habitable? Does it have an Earth-like atmosphere? Answering those questions will not be easy.

In a new study, L. Kaltenegger (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and W. Traub (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) examined the ability of JWST to characterize the atmospheres of hypothetical Earth-like planets during a transit, when part of the light of the star gets filtered through the planet's atmosphere. They found that JWST would be able to detect certain gases called biomarkers, such as ozone and methane, only for the closest Earth-size worlds.

Source:
- http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/pr200909.html
- http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/space.php

AGU journal highlights -- March 12, 2009

2009-04-01T01:18:00.000-07:00

The following highlights summarize research papers that have been published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL).

In this release:

- Exploring how corals build their skeletons
- Earth cyclones may help explain Venusian vortices
- Model relates South Polar ozone concentrations and wind patterns
- Laboratory crystals give clues to deep Earth puzzle
- Spacecraft characterize perturbations that can affect orbiting satellites

Anyone may read the scientific abstract for these papers by clicking on the link provided at the end of each Highlight. You can also read the abstract by going to http://www.agu.org/pubs/search_options.shtml and inserting into the search engine the full doi (digital object identifier), e.g. 10.1029/ 2008GL036782. The doi is found at the end of each Highlight below.

Journalists and public information officers (PIOs) at educational or scientific institutions, who are registered with AGU, also may download papers cited in this release by clicking on the links below.

Contact: Maria-Jose Vinas
mjvinas@agu.org
202-777-7530
American Geophysical Union

Source:
- http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/agu-ajh031209.php
- http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/space.php

==========

Laboratory crystals give clues to deep Earth puzzle

Perovskite is the major mineral phase in the lower mantle—it dominates the seismic properties and viscous deformation of the deep Earth. At high pressures and temperatures, perovskite transforms into an altered crystal-packing form called postperovskite. The region where the transformation occurs, known as the D'' layer, is directly above the core-mantle boundary and is distinguished by large seismic velocity jumps. Using forms of a synthetic, solid compound containing calcium, iridium and oxygen as analogs for perovskite and postperovskite, Walte et al. conduct laboratory experiments to simulate the perovskite transitions under high temperatures and pressures. Expanding on past research that demonstrated that crystal lattice orientations in the analog postperovskite alter when deformed, the authors find that the transformation of the analog perovskite to analog postperovskite itself yields a crystal lattice structure different from postperovskite deformation textures. If the analogue between the compound used in the experiments and the perovskite crystal-packing system holds true, such lattice orientation transitions may explain the observed seismic jumps. On a more local level, the fast spikes in certain seismic velocities may be explained by downwelling material that underwent these observed crystal lattice transformations.

Like Earth, if you overlook the lava

2009-02-09T06:19:00.001-08:00

A European satellite has revealed a planet only
twice as large as Earth orbiting a distant star,
astronomers say.

Ref: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090204_exo-7b

Distant moons may have liquid oceans

2009-02-09T06:18:00.001-08:00

Tidal motions may generate enough heat to maintain
liquid oceans within the outer planets' icy moons, a
scientist says.

Ref: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/081210_moons

Our galaxy no longer "little sister"

2009-02-09T06:16:00.002-08:00

Fasten your seat belts: our galaxy spins faster,
weighs more, and is more likely to collide than we
thought, researchers claim.

Ref: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090106_milkyway

Materials for "Earths" may be common in unvierse

2009-02-09T06:16:00.001-08:00

New findings suggest rocky planets are a normal
occurrence, astronomers say.

Ref: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090105_planets

Wobbly planets could reveal Earth-like moons

2009-02-09T06:15:00.000-08:00

Moons outside our Solar System capable of supporting
life may have just become easier to find.

Ref:http://www.world-science.net/othernews/081212_moons

Vast underground glaciers reported on Mars

2008-12-09T06:28:00.000-08:00

The findings could present new avenues for the search for life or provide water to support future exploration, scientists claim.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has detected vast glaciers of water ice under Martian ground, researchers say. The findings could present new avenues for the search for life on Mars, they add, or provide water to support future human exploration.

Scientists analyzed data from the spacecraft’s ground-penetrating radar and report in the Nov. 21 issue of the research journal Science that buried glaciers extend for dozens of miles (kilometers) from the edges of mountains or cliffs.

A layer of rocky debris blanketing the ice may have preserved the underground glaciers as remnants from an ice sheet that covered middle latitudes during a past ice age, scientists said. This finding is similar to massive ice glaciers that have been detected under rocky coverings in Antarctica.

“Altogether, these glaciers almost certainly represent the largest reservoir of water ice on Mars that is not in the polar caps,” said John W. Holt of the University of Texas at Austin, lead author of the report. “Just one of the features we examined is three times larger than the city of Los Angeles and up to half a mile thick.”

Scientists have puzzled over what are known as aprons—gently sloping areas containing rocky deposits at the bases of taller geographical features—since NASA’s Viking orbiters first observed them on the Martian surface in the1970s. One theory has been that the aprons are flows of rocky debris lubricated by a small amount ice.

Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/081120_mars

Did a modern-day scourge save ancient Earth?

2008-12-09T06:24:00.000-08:00

A gas blamed for global warming may once have helped Earth escape a deep freeze, some scientists propose.

The researchers claim Earth never froze over completely during the so-called Cryogenian period. This view contradicts the “Snowball Earth” hypothesis, which claims Earth was locked in ice owing to a runaway, planet-cooling chain reaction.

What might have let the planet escape this fate is unclear, but the scientists point to recent research from the University of Toronto. This speculates that advancing ice was stalled by the interaction of the climate system and the carbon cycle of the ocean, with carbon dioxide playing a key role in insulating the planet.

Carbon dioxide is by the same token today blamed for global warming.

The Toronto scientists say that as Earth’s temperatures cooled, oxygen was drawn into the ocean, where it reacted chemically with organic matter, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/081130_snowball

Scientists say Copernicus' remains, grave found

2008-12-09T05:55:00.000-08:00

Researchers said Thursday they have identified the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus by comparing DNA from a skeleton and hair retrieved from one of the 16th-century astronomer's books. The findings could put an end to centuries of speculation about the exact resting spot of Copernicus, a priest and astronomer whose theories identified the Sun, not the Earth, as the center of the universe.

Polish archaeologist Jerzy Gassowski told a news conference that forensic facial reconstruction of the skull, missing the lower jaw, his team found in 2005 buried in a Catholic Cathedral in Frombork, Poland, bears striking resemblance to existing portraits of Copernicus.

The reconstruction shows a broken nose and other features that resemble a self-portrait of Copernicus, and the skull bears a cut mark above the left eye that corresponds with a scar shown in the painting.

Moreover, the skull belonged to a man aged around 70 — Copernicus's age when he died in 1543.

"In our opinion, our work led us to the discovery of Copernicus's remains but a grain of doubt remained," Gassowski said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081121/ap_on_re_eu/eu_poland_copernicus

New evidence for colored leptons

2008-12-09T05:36:00.000-08:00

Dear Vic,

During October I worked out a model of CDF anomaly (new light longlived particle) plus at least three other particles whose masses have been estimated by experimenters.

TGD predicts leptons to have colored excitations and I explained the anomalous production of electron positron pairs in heavy ion collisions observed already at seventies in terms of production of electropions at 1990: the two articles about this were actually my last published papers before the big silence.

CDF anomaly can be understood in terms of production of taupions, both charged and neutral and in free different p-adic mass scales differing powers of 2 and decaying to lighter ones such that decay products are almost at rest in cm system by the kinematics of the situation. The model predicts correctly lifetime of the long lived particle and also masses of the neutral states. Also production cross section comes out correctly using same assumptions as in the original electropion model as well as jet like production of muons.

I summarize the model in article "New evidence for colored leptons".

With Best Regards,

Mat Pitkanen

ps: the article can be found in sciprint.org --> hadron section

Working Theory - Magnetic Dipole Contours

2008-11-27T04:09:00.000-08:00

By M. Snyder

Remember Birefringence? Some crystals have a different speeds of light based on the
direction and polarization of the light ray. Basically you have an ordinary ray moving at one speed and an extraordinary ray moving at another speed of light.

Since the 1800’s Birefringence has been studied. For example, the Faraday Effect was
studied by Michael Faraday in 1845. He was able to rotate polarizations of a light waves using transparent dielectric materials and a strong magnetic field.

So, a molecule can act as an optical component via optical anisotropy, and a group of molecules can vary the refractive index for lights incident normally to the film. The conclusion is that light within a liquid based lens can be directed into circles or even spirographs by the externally aligned optical elements in the liquid.

M. Snyder

To read further on his experiment results, you can file his paper "Magnetic Dipole Contours" in 'hadron' folder of sciprint.org, or visit his video site in this URL:

http://sirzerp.blip.tv/posts?view=archive&nsfw=dc

Pioneer Anomaly and Hubble Constant

2008-11-27T04:00:00.000-08:00

Marco wrote:

I presented a solution to the Pioneer Anomaly and sent the paper to the
authors of the Pioneer Anomaly paper.

My calculation led me to a correction to Hubble equation and to the age of
the Universe (real age as opposed to what one can observe).

The perceived slowing down of Pioneer is due to the curvature of the 3D
Hypersphere within the 4D Spatial Manifold where our 3D Universe is
embedded.

It just happens that one has to make adjustments to the Hubble equation to
calculate red-shifting for different epochs of the evolution of the
Universe.

The calculation and paper are presented within my site.

I wrote this blog about the red shift and the required modification to the
Hubble Constant equation.

http://hypergeometricaluniverse.blogspot.com/2008/09/pioneer-anomaly_24.html

The maximum red shift depends upon when the first star started shinning
since it defines the angle of observation. This is a simple geometrical
arguments.

The paper is interesting in the sense that it introduces rotation to the
whole Universe. The same result would be expected if one consider that the
3D Universe is a light speed expanding Hypersphere as I proposed. My
proposition has the advantage of not offending conservation of energy (Tired
Photon Paradigm).

MP

Visit:
http://hypergeometricaluniverse.blogspot.com/2008/09/pioneer-anomaly_24.html

FIRST SIGHTING

2008-11-20T22:35:00.000-08:00

Nov 13th 2008

Planets are seen outside the Solar System

A FEW grainy smudges and computer-generated blobs are not much to look
at. But these are the first images of planets outside the Solar System,
or exoplanets as they are called. The star they are orbiting, the mass
of blobs seen in the picture, is known only as HR 8799. It is 128 light
years from Earth, and is just visible to the naked eye in the
constellation of Pegasus. The three red dots, marked b, c and d, are
exoplanets.

Since the 1990s more than 300 exoplanets have been found and the number
is growing. However, their presence can usually only be inferred
through the gravitational influences they have on their nearby star.
Images of the three planets at HR 8799, however, were captured directly
using two high-altitude telescopes in Hawaii.

This was quite a feat as the intense light from the star normally
obscures the subtle visual details necessary to distinguish a planet.
However Christian Marois, of the NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics
in Canada and his colleagues, developed a computer processing technique
that was able to separate the light from HR 8799 from the light the
planets are emitting--they are still so young that they are glowing
from heat left over from their formation about 60m years ago. Compared
with Earth, which is about 4.5 billion years old, these are newly
minted.

The three planets are all relatively large, having masses between five
and 13 times that of Jupiter, according to a report published in
SCIENCE this week. The smallest exoplanet is closest to the sun and the
largest is the farthest away, which is interesting to astronomers
because it resembles a scaled up version of the outer part of the Solar
System. This lends support to current theories of planetary formation.
Planets are believed to emerge from the accretion of particles in a
disk of gas and dust as they whirl around the star. The next step is to
look at the chemical composition of these planets, their cloud
structures and their thermal properties.

See this article with graphics and related items at http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature&story_id=12592240

Photo captures 3 planets by distant sun

2008-11-20T22:32:00.000-08:00

The technology for photographing planets in distant solar systems is making strides, astronomers say, with new images including one that shows three worlds around a young star.

Astrophysicist C. Marois and colleagues said they found the planets—which appeared as tiny dots by the star HR 8799—using the Keck and Gemini North telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Before now, astronomers had reported photographing just one planet of a star other than our sun. Other detections of such objects had been done through studying their gravitational effects rather than through imaging, which is difficult because the starlight tends to overwhelm any light from the planets.

source: http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/081113_planet-image

Neil Armstrong donating his papers to Purdue

2008-11-09T05:08:00.000-08:00

Armstrong's papers, boxes of which have already begun arriving at Purdue, will be an inspiration for students and invaluable for researchers, said Sammie Morris, assistant professor of library science and head of Purdue Libraries' Archives and Special Collections.

"For researchers, it's going to be a boon. No one has been able to research these papers or study them," Morris said.

Armstrong's papers and Hansen's interviews will serve as the starting point for Purdue Libraries' effort to build a comprehensive flight collection. They'll be housed in a special collection that also holds papers and artifacts related to aviator Amelia Earhart, who vanished in 1937 while attempting to fly around the world.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081101/ap_on_sc/purdue_armstrong_papers

Signs of Late Volcanism Seen on Moon

2008-11-09T05:06:00.000-08:00

olcanic activity on the far side of the moon may have lasted longer than previously thought, recent images from a Japanese lunar satellite suggest.

The finding, detailed in the Nov. 7 issue of the journal Science, could help shed light on the moon's formation and evolution.

Scientists think that the moon formed when a rogue planet about the size of Mars crashed into Earth and ripped out a chunk of the planet's molten mantle. Some of the material from that chunk began to orbit Earth, gradually cooling over millions of years to form the moon.

The lunar surface is dead now, but over the millions of intervening years since it formed, it experienced bouts of volcanic activity.

Scientists have studied lunar volcanic features, the most common of which are mare (dark "seas") basalts, from orbit to determine when they formed. Radiogenic dating is the best way to date mineral deposits, but samples from the moon's surface are limited, and come only from a few locations on the moon's nearside.

Another way to estimate the age of volcanic features is to count the number of impact craters they have: the younger the feature, the fewer the craters that mark its surface.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20081106/sc_space/signsoflatevolcanismseenonmoon;_ylt=Aj88A7s.nQ75skuj01_Q02ZxieAA

New Flares of Activity Spotted on the Sun

2008-11-09T05:05:00.000-08:00

After more than two years of very low sunspot activity and hardly any flares, the sun is ramping up activity now.

The sun's activity ebbs and flows on a roughly 11-year cycle. It can range from very quiet to violent space storms that knock out power grids on Earth and disrupt radio and satellite communications. The last peak was in 2000, and scientists have in recent months figured the low point was occurring. Fresh sunspots during October suggest the corner has been turned.

"I think solar minimum is behind us," said D. Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "Last month we counted five sunspot groups." he says.

Sunspots are cool areas on the solar surface where magnetic energy is bottled up. While five groups is not extraordinary, it is significant in comparison to the months of virtually no spots.

"This represents a real increase in solar activity," Hathaway said in a statement today.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20081107/sc_space/newflaresofactivityspottedonthesun;_ylt=AhrfmE0JICCxrNeBrzyLqHRxieAA

Doorstep Astronomy: The Autumn Dipper

2008-11-09T05:04:00.000-08:00

High overhead around the 8 p.m. local standard time is a bright configuration of stars that people unfamiliar with the sky often mistake for the Big Dipper. Big it is, but – at least in an official sense – a dipper it is not.

This large figure is not usually described as a dipper in most stargazing guides; you shouldn't expect to find any recognized authority for this Autumn Dipper. Truth be told, when starry dippers are mentioned, most people immediately think of the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper in the northern sky, and perhaps even the inverted Milk Dipper in Sagittarius.

The Autumn Dipper, in fact, looks like a much larger and brighter version of the Little Dipper.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20081107/sc_space/doorstepastronomytheautumndipper;_ylt=At4_ZwHqYHCu1FOS7hV5EatxieAA

NASA regains contact with Mars spacecraft

2008-11-09T05:02:00.000-08:00

LOS ANGELES – NASA's Phoenix Mars spacecraft regained contact with Earth more than a day after falling silent, but its days operating on the red planet are still numbered, mission managers said Thursday.

Waning sunlight and a dust storm this week drained the lander's power, forcing it to go into safe mode. It failed to respond to two wake-up calls from Earth but sent a signal late Thursday when the orbiting Odyssey spacecraft passed overhead.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081031/ap_on_sc/phoenix_mars

Two asteroid belts for solar system's young twin

2008-11-09T04:53:00.000-08:00

A nearby star has two rocky belts, an outer icy ring
and probably unseen planets, researchers say.

The nearby star Epsilon Eridani has two rocky asteroid belts and an outer icy ring, making it a triple-ring system, astronomers have found.

The inner asteroid belt is described as a near-twin of the one in our solar system. The outer asteroid belt holds 20 times more material, astronomers said, and the three rings’ presence implies that unseen planets confine and shape them.

Epsilon Eridani and its planetary system show remarkable similarities to our solar system at a comparable age, researchers said.

It’s like “a time machine to look at our solar system when it was young,” said Massimo Marengo of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Marengo is co-author of a paper on the findings, to appear in the Jan. 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/081027_eridani

Quantization in Astrophysics book at scribd.com

2008-11-09T04:49:00.000-08:00

Our previous common books are now available at scribd.com:

* Hadron models and New Energy issues
http://www.scribd.com/share/upload/5085329/cmts52l67rvkf48fczv

* Quantization in Astrophysics, Brownian Motion and Supersymmetry
http://www.scribd.com/share/upload/5085507/yyii3qp97z1hhq4pss1

The same Quantization book is also being reviewed by VINITI

========================
> > From: M.Lou
> > Subject: Progress in Physics & Quantization book
> reviewed in Russia by VINITI
> > To: "Florentin Smarandache"
> > Date: Thursday, October 30, 2008, 12:36 PM
> > > All-RUSSIAN INSTITUTE OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL
>
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> > >
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> > >
> > >
> > >
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> > >
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> > >
> > > http://www.viniti.ru
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Dear Sirs,
> > >
> > > We are enclosing a document confirming the
> abstracting
> > of
> > > articles from your publications in our Abstracts
> > Journal
> > > (REFERATIVNYI ZHURNAL).
> > >
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> are
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> journals
> > for
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> > > En este documento se indican las resumenes
> analiticos
> > de
> > > las publicaciones de su revista, mencionadаs en
> la
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> > > de Resumenes Analiticos (REFERATIVNYI ZHURNAL).
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Hypergeometrical Universe Predicts both Mercury Perihelion Precession

2008-10-28T06:26:00.000-07:00

Hypergeometrical Universe Predicts both Mercury Perihelion Precession and Gravitational Lensing

My theory is a 5D Spacetime theory with a 4D non-compact spatial Manifold. It is presented in this blog

http://hypergeometricaluniverse.blogspot.com

It is certainly consistent with Strict Relativity since its 4D Spacetime is Minkowskian (metric is Lorentz Transform). Within the theory I was able to prove that the speed of light is the limit as opposed to have it as a postulate as Einstein did in his Theory of Relativity.

Now I demonstrated that the theory also predicts the correct precession rate for the Mercury perihelion

http://hypergeometricaluniverse.blogspot.com/2008/10/precession-of-mercurys- perihelion.html

and the angle of deviation for the Gravitational Lensing Effect.

http://hypergeometricaluniverse.blogspot.com/2008/10/hypergeometrical-gravitational-lensing.html

In addition, my theory was able to explain the existence of White Orifices (double jets emanating from Cylindrical or Torus-like Black Holes)

http://hypergeometricaluniverse.blogspot.com/2008/10/white-orifice-on-black-hole.html

http://hypergeometricaluniverse.blogspot.com/2008/10/white-orifice-propelled-galaxy.html

I also created a Sam Wormley Challenge

http://hypergeometricaluniverse.blogspot.com/2008/10/sam-wormley-challenge.html

http://hypergeometricaluniverse.blogspot.com/2008/10/vacuous-criticism.html

offering a weekend trip to NYC to anyone of his students that proves my theory incorrect (find a fatal flaw in it..:) Please read the small print...:) Well, initially it was just for his students, later I expanded the scope of competitors...:)

I also provided the meaning of spin and requested criticism in the shape of a scientific argument...:)

http://hypergeometricaluniverse.blogspot.com/2008/10/spin.html

Marco

Evidence found of solar system around nearby star

2008-10-28T05:45:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON — For the first time, astronomers think that they've found evidence of an alien solar system around a star close enough to Earth to be visible.

The host star, slightly smaller and cooler than our sun, is in the constellation Eridanus — the name of a mythological river — near Orion in the northern sky.

"This really is a system like our solar system was when it was five times younger than it is now," said one of the discoverers, Massimo Marengo , an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "It's like a time machine for our solar system."

"This system probably looks a lot like ours did when life first took root on Earth," said Dana Backman , of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. , the lead author of a report to be published Jan. 10 in The Astrophysical Journal .

SETI chose Epsilon Eridani as one of the first targets in its long — but so far vain — search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence in 1960.

The suspected planets are too far away to be detected directly, so their presence has to be inferred by indirect measurements. Their star is so near, however, that some astronomers think that they may be able to see its planets with better telescopes within the next decade.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20081027/sc_mcclatchy/3082054_1

Small asteroid headed for light show over Africa

2008-10-28T05:26:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON – A small asteroid was headed for a fiery but harmless dive into Earth's atmosphere early Tuesday morning over Africa, astronomers said in a first of its kind advance warning.

Harvard scientists announced late Monday afternoon that the asteroid 2008 TC3 would burn up in the sky, making a fireball potentially visible to people in northern Africa. Measuring between 3 feet and 15 feet in diameter, the rock was expected to enter Earth's atmosphere above Sudan at 10:46 p.m. EDT Monday, just before dawn in Africa.

Harvard astronomer Tim Spahr said the asteroid was so small it wouldn't reach the ground before burning up and wouldn't hurt anyone, but the fireball should be seen heading from west to east.

"It's the first time we've been able to predict an impactor in advance and it'll be quite a celestial show for the world," said D. Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object program, which tracks asteroids and comets that come close.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081006/ap_on_sc/sci_falling_asteroid

Space exploration key to mankind's survival

2008-09-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Mankind's very survival depends on the future exploration of space, said NASA chiMichael Griffin in an interview with AFP marking the 50th anniversary of the US space agency.

This journey, said the veteran physicist and aerospace engineer, is full of unknowns and has only just begun.

"Does the survival of human kind depend upon it? I think so," he said.

Griffin compared the first walk on the Moon with Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas.

"He travelled for months and spent a few weeks in the Americas and returned home. He could hardly have said to have explored the New World."

"So we have just begun to touch other worlds," said Griffin.

"I think we must return to the Moon because it's the next step. It's a few days from home," he said, adding Mars was also "only a few months" from Earth.

But Griffin acknowledged that like the 15th century explorers who embarked on their adventures without knowing what they would find, a leap of faith is required for space travel.

"As we move out in our solar system, expanding human presence, we can't prove what we will find will be useful.

"It was understood in Columbus's time that if voyagers discovered new lands they would find valuable things. We can't prove today that we can exploit what we find to the benefit of humankind."

However, in the long run, Griffin believes "human populations must diversify if it wishes to survive."

Source; http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080925/sc_afp/usspacenasaanniversarygriffin

Something beyond visible universe detected?

2008-09-29T21:29:00.000-07:00

Scientists have measured an unexpected motion in distant clusters of galaxies—possibly caused, they say, by the gravitational pull of something outside the visible universe. “We never expected to find anything like this,” said lead researcher Alexander Kashlinsky of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

We can see only those areas of the cosmos close enough that their light could have reached us during our universe’s existence. What lies past those limits, if anything, has been unclear.

Kashlinksy and colleagues suggest whatever is pulling on the mysteriously moving galaxy clusters might lie outside the visible universe.

A report on the findings is to appear this week in the electronic edition of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“The clusters show a small but measurable velocity that is independent of the universe’s expansion,” Kashlinsky said.

The results are based on data from a NASA satellite, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. The device takes measurements of a subtle glow of radiation pervading the universe, the cosmic microwave background. It’s believed to be leftover light from the Big Bang, a sort of explosion that gave birth to our universe.

Hot, radiating gas in a galaxy cluster scatters this background light, astronomers say. The scattering can be measured to detect each cluster’s individual motion, although the signal is very weak, making the measurement hard to disentangle from other effects.

source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080923_wmap

Strange Clouds Spotted at the Edge of Space

2008-09-29T21:28:00.000-07:00

A weirdly wonderful sight appeared to astronauts aboard the International Space Station this summer — thin blue clouds hovering at the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and the void.

The noctilucent or "night-shining" clouds are at an altitude of 47 to 53 miles (76 to 85 km), where meteors and bright aurora lights are not uncommon and the atmosphere gives way to the blackness of space. The clouds remain a scientifically baffling phenomenon more than 120 years after their discovery.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080901/sc_space/strangecloudsspottedattheedgeofspace

NASA: snow found in Martian skies

2008-09-29T21:25:00.000-07:00

NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds, scientists say, and spacecraft soil tests have given evidence of past interaction between minerals and liquid water, processes seen on Earth.

A laser instrument designed to gather knowledge of how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars has detected snow from clouds about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) above the spacecraft’s landing site, the researchers reported. Data show the snow vaporizing before reaching the ground.

Phoenix experiments also yielded clues pointing to calcium carbonate, the main component of chalk, and particles that could be clay, agency scientists said. Most carbonates and clays on Earth form only in the presence of liquid water.

Source:http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080929_snow

Mars lander finds minerals suggesting past water

2008-09-29T21:18:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES - NASA's Phoenix spacecraft has discovered evidence of past water at its Martian landing site and spotted falling snow for the first time, scientists reported Monday. Soil experiments revealed the presence of two minerals known to be formed in liquid water. Scientists identified the minerals as calcium carbonate, found in limestone and chalk, and sheet silicate.

But exactly how that happened remains a mystery.

"It's really kind of all up in the air," said William Boynton, a mission scientist at the University of Arizona at Tucson.

A laser aboard the Phoenix recently detected snow falling from clouds more than two miles above its home in the northern arctic plains. The snow disappeared before reaching the ground.

Phoenix landed in the Martian arctic plains in May on a three-month mission to study whether the environment could be friendly to microbial life. One of its biggest discoveries so far is confirming the presence of ice on the planet.

Scientists long suspected frozen water was buried in the northern plains based on measurements from an orbiting spacecraft. The lander also found that the soil was slightly alkaline and contained important nutrients and minerals.

Scientists think there could have been standing water at the site in the past or the ice could have melted and interacted with the minerals.

"Is this a habitable zone on Mars? I think we're approaching that hypothesis," said chief scientist Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. "We understand, though, that Mars has many surprises for us and we have not finished our investigation."

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080930/ap_on_sc/phoenix_mars;_ylt=AqA0TW2lHa1phSWywya3QGtxieAA

On-and-off floods formed Mars valleys

2008-09-13T03:11:00.000-07:00

Floods that created distinctive features of Mars were not of a catastrophic sort, scientists claim.

Ancient networks of valleys on Mars were carved by recurrent floods over a long period when the climate may have been much like that of some arid or semiarid regions on Earth, a new study suggests.

The results don’t support an alternative theory that the valleys were carved by catastrophic flooding over a shorter time, the researchers said.

Often cited as evidence that Mars once had a warm environment with liquid water on the surface, valley networks are distinctive features of the Martian landscape. In the new study, scientists used computer models to simulate the processes that formed these features.

“Our results argue for liquid water being stable at the surface of Mars for prolonged periods,” said Charles Barnhart, a graduate student in Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Barnhart conducted the study as a Graduate Student Research Program scholar at NASA Ames Research Center, working with planetary scientist Jeffrey Moore at the agency and Alan Howard of the University of Virginia.

A paper describing their findings has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research—Planets.

“For several decades, scientists worked to determine whether or not there had ever been precipitation on Mars. Only in the last 10 years has NASA acquired high-resolution topographic data that cinched the case for massive ancient erosion from precipitation and runoff,” Moore said.

Source:http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080908_mars-valleys

Probe completes asteroid fly by

2008-09-13T03:10:00.000-07:00

BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Space Agency obtained on Saturday the first images of an asteroid 360 million km (224 million miles) from earth, part of a space mission which scientists hope will help them understand the origins of the planets.

The images were transmitted to the control team in Darmstadt, Germany, by Europe's Rosetta spacecraft which completed its flyby of the Steins asteroid, in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, late on Friday.

Steins was the first target for Rosetta in its more than eleven year mission to explore the nucleus of a far away comet.

Through the study of minor bodies, such as asteroids, Rosetta is opening up a new window onto the early history of the solar system, said the ESA in a statement.

"Steins looks like a diamond in the sky," said Uwe Keller, Principal Investigator for the Osiris imaging system from the Max Planck Institute for solar system research in Lindau, Germany.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080908/sc_nm/space_asteroid_dc

New collider promises to transform physics

2008-09-13T03:09:00.000-07:00

Physics is poised to enter unknown territory with the startup of a massive new particle smasher—the Large Hadron Collider—in Europe, scientists say. The first beam of protons, fundamental components of atoms, is scheduled to start speeding through the machine Sept. 10.

A particle collider has a simple basic purpose: to smash together atoms or their parts—the so-called fundamental particles of nature—to find out what’s inside them.

The results are often surprising and seemingly illogical, but have revealed plentiful insights into nature over decades. Physicists are hoping for more answers from larger, stronger colliders.

The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, would test hotly debated theories as it produces mountains of data.

Potential breakthroughs include an explanation of what creates mass and what is the mysterious “dark matter” that makes up most of the mass in the universe, physicists say. More exotic possibilities include evidence for new forces of nature or hidden extra dimensions of space and time.

Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080821_collider

Spaceship Could Fly Faster Than Light

2008-08-29T20:21:00.000-07:00

Travel by bubble might seem more appropriate for witches in Oz, but two physicists suggest that a future spaceship could fold a space-time bubble around itself to travel faster than the speed of light.

We're talking about the very distant future, of course.

The idea involves manipulating dark energy � the mysterious force behind the universe's ongoing expansion � to propel a spaceship forward without breaking the laws of physics.

"Think of it like a surfer riding a wave," said Gerald Cleaver, a physicist at Baylor University. "The ship would be pushed by the spatial bubble and the bubble would be traveling faster than the speed of light."

In theory, the universe grew faster than the speed of light for a very short time after the Big Bang, driven by the dark energy that represents about 74 percent of the total mass-energy budget in the universe. Dark matter constitutes 22 percent of the budget, and normal matter (stars, planets and everything you see) makes up the remaining 4 percent or so.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080813/sc_space/spaceshipcouldflyfasterthanlight

Mars Rover Leaves Crater for Martian Plains

2008-08-29T20:20:00.000-07:00

After nearly a year rolling around inside an expansive crater on Mars, NASA's trusty rover Opportunity is headed back out to explore the Martian plains.

"The rover is back on flat ground," said Paolo Belluta, engineer and rover driver at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"We're headed to the next adventure out on the plains of Meridiani," said John Callas, NASA's rover project manager for Opportunity and its robotic twin Spirit on the other side of Mars. "We safely got into the crater, we completed our exploration there and we safely got out."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080829/sc_space/marsroverleavescraterformartianplains;_ylt=AhNL.LHGXr46xLhFzqqdyzpxieAA

Rochester physicist's quantum-'uncollapse' hypothesis verified

2008-08-29T20:17:00.000-07:00

In 2006, Andrew Jordan, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, together with Alexander Korotkov at the University of California, Riverside, spelled out how to exploit a quantum quirk to accomplish a feat long thought impossible, and this week a research team at the University of California at Santa Barbara has tested the theory, proving it correct.
Quantum particles behave in ways that from our everyday experience seem utterly impossible. For instance, quantum particles have wave-like properties and can exist in many places at once. Why the objects we see around us every day—in what physicists call the "classical" world—don't behave this way despite being made of these very same strange quantum particles is a deep question in modern physics.

Most scientists have believed that the instant a quantum object was measured it would "collapse" from being in all the locations it could be, to just one location like a classical object. Jordan proposed that it would be possible to weakly measure the particle continuously, partially collapsing the quantum state, and then "unmeasure" it, causing the particle to revert back to its original quantum form, before it collapsed.

Jordan's hypothesis suggests that the line between the quantum and classical worlds is not as sharply defined as had been long thought, but that it is rather a gray area that takes time to cross.

In a recent issue of Nature News, Postdoctoral Fellow Nadav Katz explains how his team put the idea to the test and found that, indeed, he is able to take a "weak" measurement of a quantum particle, which triggered a partial collapse. Katz then "undid the damage we'd done," altering certain properties of the particle and performing the same weak measurement again. The particle was returned to its original quantum state just as if no measurement had ever been taken.

Because theorists had believed since 1926 that a measurement of a quantum particle inevitably forced a collapse, it was said that in a way, measurements created reality as we understand it. Katz, however, says being able to reverse the collapse "tells us that we really can't assume that measurements create reality because it is possible to erase the effects of a measurement and start again."

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news137245970.html

Tests clear way for Big Bang experiment

2008-08-29T20:14:00.000-07:00

GENEVA (Reuters) - Tests have cleared the way for the start-up next month of an experiment to restage a mini-version underground of the "Big Bang" which created the universe 15 billion years ago, the project chief said on Monday.

Lyn Evans of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) said weekend trials in the vast underground LHC machine in which the particle-smashing experiment will take place over the coming months and years "went without a hitch."

"We look forward to a resounding success when we make our first attempt to send a beam all the way round the LHC," said Evans, who heads the multinational team of scientists that shaped the project and the machine, the Large Hadron Collider.

The final tests involved pumping a single bunch of energy particles from the project's accelerator into the 27-km (17-mile) beam pipe of the collider and steering them counter- clockwise around it for about 3 kms (2 miles).

Earlier in the month a clockwise trial in the LHC -- which runs deep under French and Swiss territory between the Jura mountains and Lake Geneva -- had been equally successful, CERN said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080825/sc_nm/science_cern_dc

TV 'Mythbusters' Tackle Moon Landing Hoax Claims

2008-08-29T20:11:00.000-07:00

In 2005, Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, special effects experts better known by the title of their popular Discovery Channel series, "MythBusters", were asked during an interview about the myth they would most like to test provided an unlimited budget.

"Jamie and I have done the research, and figured that the only way to end the debate about the 'myth' of the Apollo moon landing is to go there," Savage replied to Slashdot, a technology news website, about the belief held by some that the United States faked the lunar landings.

Three years later, the Mythbusters are ready to share the results of their 'trip' as they devote their next show, airing on Wednesday, to the moon landing hoax claims.

"We built a hybrid rocket that was fueled by poo and nitrous oxide — thought we had enough Teflon tape on the seals but the stink got through anyway. Too bad that the footage got lost in transit to the editors," Hyneman told collectSPACE.com, explaining that their limited budget would not cover the cost of regular rocket fuel.

Of course, he was joking.

"Dude, I sooo wished we could have gone there," Savage admitted.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080826/sc_space/tvsmythbusterstacklemoonlandinghoaxclaims

=====================
See also:
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/top10apollohoaxes.html

TOP 10 MOON LANDING HOAXes
By Robert Myers and Robert Pearlman

In the early days of the Cold War, three men claim they were chosen by a powerful new government agency to undertake a historically perilous journey. They claim this well-funded operation was staffed with the best scientists and engineers using technology pioneered by the Nazis, and they created the most powerful machine ever built.

In July of 1969, they claim, they climbed aboard an enormous rocket assembled in a Florida swamp, and were sent hurtling at incredible speeds into the sky … all the way to the Moon! Two of them even claim they landed on the Moon, got out, and walked around!

And what prize did they bring back from this momentous journey? Well … they have a bunch of black and white photos of unidentifiable persons in bulky white spacemen costumes in a field of gravel (but curiously without any stars in the black sky) -- and several bags of gray, dusty rocks.

Put that way, the story of the Apollo program can sound pretty far-fetched.

But why should we believe the stories? What evidence is there, really, that the Apollo program landed men on the Moon and brought them back?

Phil Plait, an astronomer at Sonoma University in California, and the Web master of BadAstronomy.com, has his reasons.

If I were trying to fake this, I would put stars in the image," he said referring to the complaint made by hoax proponents that the Apollo photos lack stars. If this had been an oversight, he said, it's an amazingly stupid thing to have forgotten, considering the scope of the "hoax."

Not to mention that with the way cameras work, photographing stars under those conditions would have been nearly impossible.

"If you do know about physics and photographs, you can see these arguments are all ridiculous," Plait said.

So why do people even give an idea like this a second thought?

"I'm not exactly sure," said Plait, "Michael Shermer is a renowned skeptic… and he has a list of reasons (such as) we have an innate thing inside of our brain, we have a need to believe."

"But one thing he leaves off, is that some of these things are just believable. If you don't know much physics, these arguments might sound convincing."

Besides, Plait says the political realities of the time would have made a fraud of that scale almost impossible to pull off.

"We went to the moon to beat the Soviets. If the Soviets had suspected that we faked these missions in any way, they would have been screaming at the top of their lungs."

Scale models of the Orion

2008-08-29T20:06:00.000-07:00

Scale models of the Orion crew exploration vehicle recently were tested at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, or NBL, at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and at a wave tank at Texas A&M University in College Station.

NASA conducted a series of buoyancy and flotation characteristics tests using the NBL and a 1/4-scale model of the Orion crew capsule. The model was lowered into the NBL’s 6.2-million-gallon pool and was floated in a series of positions. This testing will allow the engineers and the NBL team to develop their full-scale crew training mock-up that will be used for mission training and for creating the crew safety procedures for water-based landings of the Orion crew capsule.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/main/index.html

NASA fixes moonship shaking with shock absorbers

2008-08-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - A space-age version of the rusty springs under old pickup trucks will help NASA fix the most pressing technical problem with its high-tech new rocket to send astronauts back to the moon.

NASA is going to use 17 super-sized shock absorbers in its not-yet-built rocket to keep the top from shaking too much for astronauts, agency officials said in a Tuesday press conference.

For close to a year, NASA engineers working on the new Ares 1 rocket and Orion crew capsule have been wrestling with the problem of heavy vibrations from the massive rocket engines about two minutes after launch. If the vibrations are not dampened, it could potentially harm the crew or make it too difficult for them to operate for a few seconds.

Officials on Tuesday said they have settled on a solution that is similar to what smooths the rides of pickup trucks: shock absorbers. But NASA's shock absorbers will be big and mostly remote-controlled.

The plan is to install 16 canisters in the bottom of the rocket with 100-pound weights attached to springs. Battery-powered motors will move the weights up and down to stop vibrations. Those are essentially remote-controlled shock absorbers, said Garry Lyles, who headed the team of NASA engineers tackling the shaking problem.

A 17th shock absorber will be a ring of weights and springs near the middle of the rocket.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080819/ap_on_sc/sci_nasa_moonship

The Lagoons of Titan: Oily Liquid Confirmed on Saturn Moon

2008-08-29T20:01:00.000-07:00

Earthlings might be scrambling to find liquid hydrocarbons buried in our planet, but Saturn's moon Titan has plenty to spare.

Scientists say that a dark, smooth surface feature spotted on the moon last year is definitely a lake filled primarily with liquid ethane, a simple hydrocarbon.

"This is the first observation that really pins down that Titan has a surface lake filled with liquid," said the paper's lead author, University of Arizona professor Robert Brown.

The new observations affirm that Titan is one of the likeliest places to look for life in our solar system. Some astrobiologists have speculated that life could develop in the moon's hydrocarbon lakes, although it would have to be substantially different from known life on Earth, which requires liquid water.

Mixed in solution with the ethane, the lake is also believed to contain nitrogen, methane, and a variety of other simple hydrocarbons.

The Cassini-Huygens probe determined the chemical composition of the liquid by the way it reflected light, a technique known as spectrometry that has provided most of our knowledge about other planets' atmospheric compositions.

"It was hard for us to accept the fact that the feature was so black when we first saw it," Brown said. "More than 99.9 percent of the light that reaches the lake never gets out again. For it to be that dark, the surface has to be extremely quiescent, mirror smooth. No naturally produced solid could be that smooth."

Further, the scientists saw the specific absorption signature of ethane, which absorbs light at exactly 2-micron wavelengths.

Source: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/07/lake-of-petrole.html?mbid=wir_newsltr

Plan a Trip to a Total Solar Eclipse

2008-08-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

A total solar eclipse will cut a swath of shadow through Greenland, the Arctic, Russia, Mongolia and China on August 1. And thousands of people will travel to remote locations just to stand in the dark for three minutes -- and maybe perceive the vast size of the solar system.

Locations are rarely convenient, and planning a successful eclipse trip involves specialized maps, astronomical charts, statistical weather data, GPS and optical gear, backcountry camping equipment (perhaps), and a good working relationship with uncertainty.

The reward, though, can be like a short trip into space. The corona itself is a big freakish thing: a feathery halo of streaming particles along magnetic field lines, which look not like nice summer rays but kill-you-dead radiation.

It's also so big and far away as to bend one's sense of scale. At least three planets are usually visible, and this August there will be four: Mercury, Venus, Saturn and Mars.

On my second eclipse the sight of the sun and grouping of planets overtook me: I knew I was looking at the Middle. The absence of the blinding photosphere provides depth perception, with the corona serving as a reference point relative to the planets in front of and beyond the sun. It allows you to see the big mechanical picture, like a life-sized version of the classroom model, minus a few parts. With some mental effort, it's possible to actually grasp a sense of the size of the solar system. It can crack your brain a bit.

I've seen three solar eclipses, venturing to Eastern Europe, South America and Africa. The plan this time is to trek into the Gobi Desert from Mongolia, where transport options are restricted to Jeep and camel, to an area in the center of the shadow's path in China. That's the plan, at least. There are border and government permission issues to deal with, and plans may not survive first contact.

Source: http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/06/solar_eclipse?mbid=wir_newsltr

Solar Eclipse footage, 1 aug 08

2008-08-16T03:20:00.000-07:00

Solar Eclipse footage, 1 aug 08

Source: http://atomic-motor.blogspot.com/2008/08/bill-gates-surprises-energy-debate.html

Watching the Skies: Space Is Really Big — But Not Too Big to Map

2008-08-16T03:18:00.000-07:00

Watching the Skies: Space Is Really Big — But Not Too Big to Map
By Michael D. Lemonick

In 1930, a young astronomer named Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto. He did it with a high tech marvel called a blink comparator; he put two photographs of the same patch of sky taken on different nights into the contraption and flipped back and forth between them. Stars would stay fixed, but objects like comets, asteroids, and planets moved.

Astronomers have since traded photographic plates for massive digital images. But Tombaugh's method — take a picture of the sky, take another one, compare — is still used to detect fast-changing stellar phenomena, like supernovae or asteroids headed toward Earth.

True, imaging the entire sky, and understanding those images, won't be easy. The first telescope that will be able to collect all that data, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, won't be finished until 2014. Perched atop Cerro Pachón, a mountain in northern Chile, the LSST will have a 27.5-foot mirror and a field of view 50 times the size of the full moon seen from Earth. Its digital camera will suck down 3.5 gigapixels of imagery every 17 seconds. "At that rate," says Michael Strauss, a Princeton astrophysicist, "the numbers get very big very fast."

The LSST builds on the most ambitious attempt to catalog the heavens so far, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Operating from a New Mexico mountaintop, the SDSS has returned about 25 terabytes of data since 1998, most of that in images. It has measured the precise distance to a million galaxies and has discovered about 500,000 quasars. But the Sloan's mirror is just one-tenth the power of the mirror planned for LSST, and its usable field of view just one-seventh the size. Sloan has been a workhorse, but it simply doesn't have the oomph to image the entire night sky, over and over, to look for things that change.

The LSST will cover the sky every three days. And within the petabytes of information it collects may lurk things nobody has even imagined — assuming astronomers can figure out how to teach their computers to look for objects no one has ever seen. It's the first attempt to sort astronomical data on this scale, says Princeton astrophysicist Robert Lupton, who oversaw data processing for the SDSS and is helping design the LSST. But the new images may allow him and his colleagues to watch supernovae explode, find undiscovered comets, and maybe even spot that killer asteroid.

Source: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/anderson08/anderson08_index.html

Visualizing Big Data: Bar Charts for Words

2008-08-16T03:07:00.000-07:00

A visualization of thousands of Wikipedia edits that were made by a single software bot. Each color corresponds to a different page.
Image: Fernanda B. Viégas, Martin Wattenberg, and Kate Hollenbach

The biggest challenge of the Petabyte Age won't be storing all that data, it'll be figuring out how to make sense of it. Martin Wattenberg, a mathematician and computer scientist at IBM's Watson Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a pioneer in the art of visually representing and analyzing complex data sets. He and his partner at IBM, Fernanda Viégas, created Many Eyes, a collaborative site where users can share their own dynamic, interactive representations of big data. He spoke with Wired's Mark Horowitz:

Wired: How do you define "big" data?

Wattenberg: You can talk about terabytes and exabytes and zettabytes, and at a certain point it becomes dizzying. The real yardstick to me is how it compares with a natural human limit, like the sum total of all the words you'll hear in your lifetime. That's surely less than a terabyte of text. Any more than that and it becomes incomprehensible by a single person, so we have to turn to other means of analysis: people working together, or computers, or both.

Wired: Why is a numbers guy like you so interested in large textual data sets?

Wattenberg: Language is one of the best data-compression mechanisms we have. The information contained in literature, or even email, encodes our identity as human beings. The entire literary canon may be smaller than what comes out of particle accelerators or models of the human brain, but the meaning coded into words can't be measured in bytes. It's deeply compressed. Twelve words from Voltaire can hold a lifetime of experience.

Wired: What will happen when we have digital access to everything, like all of English literature or all the source code ever written?

Wattenberg: There's something about completeness that's magical. The idea that you can have everything at your fingertips and process it in ways that were impossible before is incredibly exciting. Even simple algorithms become more effective when trained on big sets. Perhaps we'll find out more about plagiarism and literary borrowing when we have the spread of literature before us. We think of our current age as one of intellectual remixing and mashups, but maybe it's always been that way. You can only do that kind of analysis when you have the full spectrum of data.

Wired: Is that why, on Many Eyes, you have visualizations of Wikipedia using simple word trees and tag clouds?

Wattenberg: Wikipedia also has this idea of completeness. The information there again probably totals less than a terabyte, but it's huge in terms of encompassing human knowledge. Today, if you're analyzing numbers, there are a million ways to make a bar chart. If you're analyzing text, it's hard. I think the only way to understand a lot of this data is through visualization.

Source: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/anderson08/anderson08_index.html