This Week In Science News

[yevaud]

As an adjunct to "This Day in Science History," we also now bring you "This Week in Science News." Hope you enjoy it. (Note: this first "week" is a sample, though the stories are real)


The sun sends a charged cloud hurtling our way

An unusually complex magnetic eruption on the sun has flung a large cloud of electrically charged particles towards Earth.

New Scientist

Metamaterials Probe Changes in Spacetime Structure

At the time of the big bang, our universe may not have had exactly three dimensions of space and one of time, according to some theorists. In the 6 August Physical Review Letters, a team proposes a way to observe the postulated transition to our current universe using so-called metamaterials, structures in which the propagation of light can be precisely controlled. Experiments on such structures, they say, could test predictions that a "big flash" of radiation would accompany changes in the structure of spacetime that may have occurred in the early universe.

Physical Review Focus

Physicists use offshoot of string theory to describe puzzling behavior of superconductors

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists are divided on whether string theory is a viable theory of everything, but many agree that it offers a new way to look at physical phenomena that have otherwise proven difficult to describe. In the past decade, physicists have used string theory to build a connection between quantum and gravitational mechanics, known as gauge/gravity duality.

MIT physicists, led by Hong Liu and John McGreevy, have now used that connection to describe a specific physical phenomenon — the behavior of a type of high-temperature superconductor, or a material that conducts electricity with no resistance. The research, published in the Aug. 5 online edition of Science, is one of the first to show that gauge/gravity duality can shed light on a material's puzzling physical behavior.

Physorg

 

[yevaud]

Rethinking Einstein: The end of space-time

Physicists struggling to reconcile gravity with quantum mechanics have hailed a theory – inspired by pencil lead – that could make it all very simple

IT WAS a speech that changed the way we think of space and time. The year was 1908, and the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski had been trying to make sense of Albert Einstein's hot new idea - what we now know as special relativity - describing how things shrink as they move faster and time becomes distorted. "Henceforth space by itself and time by itself are doomed to fade into the mere shadows," Minkowski proclaimed, "and only a union of the two will preserve an independent reality."

And so space-time - the malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of stars, planets and matter - was born. It is a concept that has served us well, but if physicist Petr Horava is right, it may be no more than a mirage. Horava, who is at the University of California, Berkeley, wants to rip this fabric apart and set time and space free from one another in order to come up with a unified theory that reconciles the disparate worlds of quantum mechanics and gravity - one the most pressing challenges to modern physics.

New Scientist

Behold, the antilaser

Fifty years after physicists invented the laser, ushering in everything from supermarket scanners to music CDs (SN: 5/8/10, p. 18), scientists have conceived its opposite — the “antilaser.”

Unlike its more popular cousin, the antilaser is unlikely to take over the world. Still, it could be useful one day, for instance in new types of optical switches for computers.

No one has yet reported building an antilaser, but a theoretical description of one appears in a paper published July 26 in Physical Review Letters.

Sciencenews

 

[yevaud]

Senate committee approves NASA budget

Key components of the Constellation program were retained under a Senate committee’s NASA authorization bill, which was approved Thursday.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation’s approval of the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 would delay contractor layoffs in the Houston area by adding an additional shuttle flight after June 2011 and salvaging Constellation’s plans for a heavy-lift rocket and crew capsule.

Outlining NASA spending for the next three years, the bill calls for the development of a crew exploration vehicle based on designs and materials developed for the Orion crew capsule.

Galveston Daily News

 

[yevaud]

Beneath the Surface, the Moon Is Dry as a Bone

You can't squeeze blood from a turnip, and apparently you can't wring water from moon rocks, either. A new analysis of samples returned by the Apollo astronauts suggests that there is virtually no chance that water ever existed beneath the lunar surface.

Sciencemag

 

[yevaud]

Waist Size Linked With Longevity

Even if you don’t need to watch your weight, you still need to watch your waist.

That’s the conclusion of a new study from the American Cancer Society, which tracked the health of more than 100,000 people over nine years.

New York Times

 

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NASA mulls sending part of space station to an asteroid

The International Space Station, the $100 billion outpost that has steadfastly orbited the Earth for more than a decade, may get a chance to explore new horizons when it retires in 2020. NASA is considering using part of it to build a spaceship that would be sent to an asteroid, while also mulling more exotic artificial-gravity designs reminiscent of Arthur C Clarke.

President Barack Obama jettisoned his predecessor's plan to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 and in April proposed to send them to an asteroid by 2025 instead.

NASA is now trying to work out the details of how to carry out such a mission and is hosting a conference on the topic in Washington, DC, on Tuesday and Wednesday.

New Scientist

 

[yevaud]

Asteroid Hunters

Most of us do what we can for the environment, but Rik Hill’s actual job is to protect the planet. “Whoa, look at that!” he says, pointing at a moving blip of light on a computer screen. “It’s an unknown object. We just discovered one.”

We’re in an observatory on the summit of Mount Lemmon, a 9,000-foot peak north of Tucson, Arizona.

Hill’s boss, Ed Beshore, leans in and nods. “That’s an N-E-O,” he says, referring to a near Earth object. “It’s a nice one. It’s bright, and it’s moving fast.”

Smithsonian

 

[yevaud]

WHO says swine flu pandemic is over

GENEVA – The World Health Organization declared the swine flu pandemic officially over Tuesday, months after many national authorities started canceling vaccine orders and shutting down telephone hot lines as the disease ebbed from the headlines.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said the organization's emergency committee of top flu experts advised her that the pandemic had "largely run its course" and the world is no longer in phase six — the highest influenza alert level.

Yahoo

 

[yevaud]

Donated Computer Time Discovers New Star

WASHINGTON (ISNS) -- Astronomers announced Thursday the discovery of a new star, found with help from a most unusual source -- a screen saver.

Chris and Helen Colvin, owners of the personal computer running the screen saver are participants in a project called Einstein@home, an experiment in distributed computing which uses the donated idle time from hundreds of thousands of home computers across the globe in lieu of more expensive supercomputers. The June 11 discovery in Ames, Iowa of a pulsar -- a dense, rotating star that appears to pulse like a lighthouse beacon -- was confirmed on June 14 by another user's computer in Germany. It marks the first time an astronomical body has been discovered this way.

Inside Science

 

[yevaud]

100-year-old Scotch pulled from frozen crate

(AP) -- A crate of Scotch whisky that was trapped in Antarctic ice for a century was finally opened Friday - but the heritage dram won't be tasted by whisky lovers because it's being preserved for its historical significance.

The crate, recovered from the Antarctic hut of renowned explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton after it was found there in 2006, has been thawed very slowly in recent weeks at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch on New Zealand's South Island.

Physorg

 

[yevaud]

Celestial wish list

Astronomers tasked with compiling a priority list of U.S. astronomy projects for the next decade are seeing red, and not just because of NASA’s meager science budget. A National Research Council report released August 13 ranks several telescopes observing the universe at infrared and at even longer, redder wavelengths among the highest-priority instruments to be developed between 2012 and 2021.

These include the proposed Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, an estimated $1.6-billion orbiting observatory that would examine the nature of dark energy, provide broad snapshots of the infrared sky and search for habitable, Earthlike planets. The telescope, which could be launched around 2020, would complement the ultrasharp but narrow vision of the James Webb Space Telescope, the infrared successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that is set to launch around 2015.

Sciencenews

 

[yevaud]

Interview with the alien hunter

Seth Shostak, author of "Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence," is senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, a very down-to-Earth organization of scientists attempting to "explore, understand, and explain the origin, nature, and prevalence of life in the universe." Last weekend was the SETI's Institute's SETIcon and KALW radio spoke to Shostak before the event.

BoingBoing

 

[yevaud]

Strange Rocks May Preserve Some of Earth's First Animals

Some very old rocks and a nifty imaging technique have yielded what could be the oldest known animal fossils—spongelike organisms that lived on ocean reefs on what is now South Australia.

Princeton University geologist Adam Maloof wasn't looking for fossils. He was wandering the mountains of South Australia with graduate student Catherine Rose, looking at rocks from just before a major glaciation, about 635 million years ago, which may have covered much of the planet in ice.

ScienceMag

 

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A Quest to Make the Morgan Seaworthy

MYSTIC, Conn. — The shipbuilders are long dead, their knowledge gone. The shipyard no longer exists. No blueprints survive, nor ship’s models.

But the Charles W. Morgan is still here — the world’s last surviving wooden whaling vessel, built in 1841. And restorers are spending $10 million to turn the museum piece into a working ship able to ply the unruly sea. They plan to sail the ship on its first voyage in nearly a century, opening a new chapter in its long career.

NY Times

 

[yevaud]

How Much Mass Makes a Black Hole? Astronomers Challenge Current Theories

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, European astronomers have for the first time demonstrated that a magnetar -- an unusual type of neutron star -- was formed from a star with at least 40 times as much mass as the Sun. The result presents great challenges to current theories of how stars evolve, as a star as massive as this was expected to become a black hole, not a magnetar. This now raises a fundamental question: just how massive does a star really have to be to become a black hole?

Physorg

 

[yevaud]

Scientists Discover Substance That Causes Pain

WEDNESDAY, April 28 (HealthDay News) — The human body produces a substance similar to capsaicin — which makes chili peppers hot — at sites of pain, and blocking production of this substance can ease pain, a new study shows.

The findings may lead to the development of non-addictive painkillers, according to the researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.

Healthday

 

[yevaud]

Airborne Laser Test Delayed by Component Failure

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA)’s planned Aug. 17 flight test of the Airborne Laser system was postponed when one of its cooling systems failed in preparation for the test, the agency’s top official said Aug. 18.

Spacenews

 

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Iran prepares to start up first nuclear reactor

BUSHEHR, Iran – Iranian and Russian nuclear technicians made final preparations to start up Iran's first reactor on Saturday after years of delays, an operation that will mark a milestone in what Tehran considers its right to produce nuclear energy.

Nationwide celebrations are planned for the fuel loading at the Bushehr facility in southern Iran, while Russia pledges to safeguard the plant and prevent spent nuclear fuel from being shifted to a possible weapons program.

Yahoo

 

[yevaud]

Jack Horkheimer: Ambassador to the Stars

Amateur astronomy lost one its most iconic figures today. Jack Horkheimer, known to millions as public television's ebullient "Star Gazer," died this afternoon at age 72. The exact cause of death was not disclosed, though he had been battled chronic respiratory problems for decades.

Sky and Telescope

(Ed: his passing is keenly felt, and he will be sorely missed.)

 

[MeteorWayne]

That is very sad news. While a strange (in the Rip Taylor sort of way ) person, he did much to popularize "keep looking up". All of us who watch the sky owe him a debt of gratitude. Thanx for letting us know, Yev. I will think of him tonight when watching the sky.

 

[yevaud]

A 'Kill Switch' for Rogue Microbes

Biologists often speak of switching genes on and off to give microbes new abilities--like producing biofuels or drugs, or gobbling up environmental toxins. For the most part, though, it's nearly impossible to turn off a gene without deleting it (which means you can't turn it on again). This limits biologists' ability to control how much of a particular protein a microbe produces. It also restricts bioengineers' ability to design new microbes.

Now researchers at Boston University, led by biomedical engineering professor James Collins, have developed a highly tunable genetic "switch" that offers a greater degree of control over microbes.

Technologyreview

 

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Big quakes more frequent than thought on San Andreas fault

Earthquakes have rocked the powerful San Andreas fault that splits California far more often than previously thought, according to UC Irvine and Arizona State University researchers who have charted temblors there stretching back 700 years.

The findings, to be published in the Sept. 1 issue of Geology, conclude that large ruptures have occurred on the Carrizo Plain portion of the fault – about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles – as often as every 45 to 144 years. But the last big quake was in 1857, more than 150 years ago.

UC Irvine

 

[yevaud]

Metamaterials Probe Changes in Spacetime Structure

At the time of the big bang, our universe may not have had exactly three dimensions of space and one of time, according to some theorists. In the 6 August Physical Review Letters, a team proposes a way to observe the postulated transition to our current universe using so-called metamaterials, structures in which the propagation of light can be precisely controlled. Experiments on such structures, they say, could test predictions that a "big flash" of radiation would accompany changes in the structure of spacetime that may have occurred in the early universe.

Physical Review Focus

 

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New Cancer Drug Gets Dramatic Results

An experimental drug designed to block the effects of a genetic mutation often found in patients with malignant melanoma, a deadly cancer with few existing treatments, significantly shrank tumors in about 80 percent of those who carried the mutation. The findings, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, signal a major success for so-called targeted cancer therapies, which are designed to block the effects of genetic mutations that drive the growth of cancer cells.

Technologyreview

 

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Quantum Physicists Dream Up Smallest Possible Refrigerator

You may have a $10,000 Sub-Zero fridge in your kitchen, but this is cooler. Theoretical physicists have dreamed up a scheme to make a refrigerator out of a pair of quantum particles such as ions or atoms, or even a single particle. The fridges may be the smallest ones possible. “It’s very elegant and innovative,” says Nicolas Gisin, a theorist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. Theo Nieuwenhuizen, a theorist at the University of Amsterdam, says “I don’t see any error, so probably this would work.”

Sciencemag