Forever young: Secret of eternal life revealed by Russian science?

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Halley's comet 'was spotted by the ancient Greeks'

A celestial event seen by the ancient Greeks may be the earliest sighting of Halley's comet, new evidence suggests. According to ancient writers, a large meteorite smacked into northern Greece between 466BC and 467BC. The writers also described a comet in the sky at the time the meteorite fell to Earth, but this detail has received little attention, say the researchers.

Comet Halley would have been visible for about 80 days in 466BC, researchers write in the Journal of Cosmology. New Scientist magazine reports that, until now, the earliest probable sighting of the comet was an orbit in 240BC, an event recorded by Chinese astronomers.

If the new findings are confirmed, the researchers will have pushed back the date of the first observation of Comet Halley by 226 years. The latest idea is based on accounts by ancient authors and concerns a meteorite that is said to have landed in the Hellespont region of northern Greece in 466-467BC.

The space rock fell during daylight hours and was about the size of "a wagon load", according to ancient sources. The object, described as having a "burnt colour", became a tourist attraction for more than 500 years.

In his work Meteorology, Aristotle wrote about the event about a century after it occurred. He said that around the same time the meteorite fell, "a comet was visible in the west".

Astronomer Eric Hintz and philosopher Daniel Graham, both of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, reconstructed the likely path of Halley's comet, to see whether it agreed with the ancient observations.

They calculated that Halley's comet could have been visible for about 80 days between early June and late August in 466BC - depending on atmospheric conditions and the darkness of the sky.

"It's tough going back that far in time. It's not like an eclipse, which is really predictable," co-author Eric Hintz, from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, told BBC News.

"But we feel fairly good about this. If the [sighting] in 240BC is accepted, this has a fairly solid possibility." He added: "If accepted, this would be three orbits earlier [than the Chinese sighting]."Halley's Comet on the Bayeux Tapestry (Getty) In the 11th Century, Halley's Comet was depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry. The reconstruction of the comet's path agrees with the ancient reports, which say the comet was visible for about 75 days.

The researchers point out that while the Chinese and Babylonians kept meticulous records of heavenly phenomena for centuries, the ancient Greeks did not.Nevertheless, the Greek accounts do provide important information, say Graham and Hintz, such as the comet's period of visibility from Earth.

Source <www.bbc.co.uk>

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Greeks 'discover Odysseus' palace in Ithaca, proving Homer's hero was real'

An 8th BC century palace which Greek archaeologists claim was the home of Odysseus has been discovered in Ithaca, fuelling theories that the hero of Homer's epic poem was real.

Odysseus – known to the ancient Romans as Ulysses – famously took 10 years to return home to Ithaca after the fall of Troy.

On his journey, he was twice shipwrecked and encountered a cyclops, the spirit of his mother and tempting Sirens before returning to Ithaca, where he found his wife, Penelope, under pressure to remarry from a host of suitors who had invaded the royal palace.

With the help of his father, Laertes, and his son, Telemachus, he slaughtered his rivals and re-established his rule.

But despite the fantastical details in the Greek epic, a team of archaeologists has claimed the tale is anchored in truth - and that they have discovered his home on the island of Ithaca, in the Ionian sea off the north-west coast of Greece.

Nearly 3,000 years after Odysseus returned from his journey, the team from the University of Ioannina said they found the remains of an extensive three-storey building, with steps carved out of rock and fragments of pottery. The complex also features and a well from the 8th century BC, roughly the period in which Odysseus is believed to have been king of Ithaca.

The location "fits like a glove" with Homer's description of the view from the fabled palace, the archaeologists claim.

The layout of the complex, where Professor Thanassis Papadopoulos and his team have been digging for 16 years, is very similar to palaces discovered at Mycenae, Pylos and other ancient sites.

The claim will be greeted with scepticism by the many scholars who believe that Odysseus, along with other key characters from the Homer's epic such as Hector and Achilles, were purely fictional.

"Whether this find has a connection with Ulysses or not is interesting up to a certain point, but more important is the discovery of the royal palace," said Adriano La Regina, an Italian archaeologist.

Further complicating the identification of the site is the doubt over whether the ancient kingdom of Ithaca was located on its modern day namesake, Ithaki.

A British researcher, Robert Bittlestone, has said Homer's descriptions bear little resemblance to the island and that ancient Ithaca was in fact located on the Paliki peninsula, on the island of Cephalonia.

He believes that Paliki was once an island, separated from the rest of Cephalonia by a marine channel that has since been filled in by rock falls triggered by earthquakes.

Enlisting the help of geologists and ancient historians, he documented the controversial theory in a 2005 book, Odysseus Unbound – The Search for Homer's Ithaca.

Source <www.telegraph.co.uk>

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Solar toothbrush doesn't need toothpaste

Canadian researchers have designed a toothbrush that cleans teeth by creating a solar-powered chemical reaction in the mouth, doing away with the need for toothpaste, said physorg.com.

Dr Kunio Komiyama, a dentistry professor emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan, designed the first model of the unconventional toothbrush 15 years ago. Today, Komiyama and his colleague Dr Gerry Uswak are seeking recruits to test their newest model, the Soladey-J3X.

The toothbrush, which is manufactured by the Shiken company of Japan, will soon be tested by 120 teenagers to see how it compares to a normal toothbrush.

The Soladey-J3X has a solar panel at its base that transmits electrons to the top of the toothbrush through a lead wire. The electrons react with acid in the mouth, creating a chemical reaction that breaks down plaque and kills bacteria.

The toothbrush requires no toothpaste, and can operate with about the same amount of light as needed by a solar-powered calculator.

Last month, the researchers presented their research at the FDI Annual World Dental Conference in Dubai, where their poster won first prize out of 170 entries.

Source <www.emerites247.com>

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New Solar System Discovered

European astronomers on Tuesday said they had found a distant star orbited by at least five planets in the biggest discovery of so-called exoplanets since the first was logged 15 years ago.

The star is similar to our sun and its planetary lineup has an intriguing parallel with own solar system, although no clue has so far been found to suggest it could be a home from home, they said.

The star they studied, HD 10180, is located 127 light-years away in the southern constellation of Hydrus, the male water snake, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said in a press release.

The planets were detected over six years using the world's most powerful spectograph, an instrument to capture and analyze light signatures, at ESO's telescope at La Silla, Chile.

The method consists of observing a star and seeing how the light that reaches Earth "wobbles" as a result of the gravitational pull of a passing planet.

The tiny fluctuation in light can then be used as a telltale to calculate the mass of the transiting planet.

The five detected planets are big, being the size of Neptune, although they orbit at a far closer range than our own gas giant, with a "year" ranging from between six and 600 days.

The astronomers also found tantalizing evidence that two other candidate planets are out there.

One would be a very large planet, the size of our Saturn, orbiting in 2,200 days.

The other would be 1.4 times the mass of Earth, making it the smallest exoplanet yet to be discovered. It orbits HD 10180 at a scorchingly close range, taking a mere 1.18 Earth days to zip around the star.

If confirmed, that would bring the distant star system to seven planets, compared with eight in our own solar system.

A total of 402 stars with planets have been logged since the first was detected in 1995, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The tally of exoplanets stands at 472.

None, though, is even remotely similar to Earth, which is rocky and inhabits the famous "Goldilocks zone" where the temperature is just right to enable water, the stuff of life, to exist in liquid form.

ESO astronomer Christophe Lovis said knowledge was progressing fast.

"We are now entering a new era in exoplanet research -- the study of complex planetary systems and not just of individual planets," Lovis said. "Studies of planetary motions in the new system reveal complex gravitational interactions between the planets and give us insights into the long-term evolution of the systems.

Source <news.discovery.com>

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Did Churchill and Eisenhower cover up UFO encounter?

With a civilian population haunted by the Blitz and the Second World War still in the balance, it was one development Winston Churchill could have done without – an incursion into British airspace by an arrow-shaped metallic object feared to contain an invasion force of little green men.

Such was the sensitivity of an alleged UFO sighting by an RAF bomber crew returning to England from a mission over Germany that Churchill ordered it to be covered up with the words: "This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic amongst the general population and destroy one's belief in the Church."

This at least was the allegation put to the Ministry of Defence by relatives of a senior British military aide who claimed to have witnessed the cigar-chomping Prime Minister discuss the incident with General Dwight Eisenhower as part of a meeting about a succession of "foo fighter" sightings by Allied air crews in the Second World War.

The curious matter of visits by wartime aliens is one of hundreds of reports of strange celestial phenomena – from a space station covered in pulsating lights to an unusually agile rocket which buzzed a Boeing 737 at Manchester Airport – to be revealed in documents released today by the National Archives in Kew, west London.

The files are the latest tranche of 11,000 UFO sightings logged by the British Government between the early 1900s and 2000 to be released from Ministry of Defence files, providing a candid insight into a national obsession with suspected flying saucers and attempts by Whitehall functionaries to explain that they were – almost always – nothing of the sort.

Officials launched a investigation into the MoD files when the unnamed grandson of the British military aide to Churchill wrote in 1999 saying that the object seen by the RAF reconnaissance crew "appeared to hover noiselessly relative to the aircraft". The grandson, who described himself as a scientist, said: "It appeared metallic... the object very suddenly disappeared, leaving no trace of its earlier presence."

He added: "This event was discussed by Mr Churchill and General Eisenhower, neither of whom knew what had been observed. There was a general inability for either side to match a plausible account to these observations... another person raised the possibility of an unidentified flying object, at which point Mr Churchill declared the incident should be immediately classified for at least 50 years and its status reviewed by a future prime minister.

A trawl of documents revealed no existing record of the encounter. But it was one of many sightings of fireballs and moving lights by Allied aircraft during the Second World War. American pilots called them "foo fighters" after a comic strip character who often said, "where there's foo there's fire".

Any decision by Churchill to halt publicity about the sightings has also gone unrecorded but in July 1952, after a spate of reports in Britain and the US, he wrote to the Air Ministry saying: "What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?" Unknown to Churchill, intelligence chiefs had formed The Flying Saucer Working Party in 1950 to investigate the reports, with the blessing of Lord Mountbatten, who thought the UFOs were alien craft.

The MOD has long stated it "knows of no evidence that substantiates the existence of these alleged phenomena".

Source <www.independant.co.uk>

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Clownfish Change Size And Sex To Move Up The Ranks

What the movie "Finding Nemo" doesn't tell you about clownfish is that they're all transsexuals. In a study published in the journal Nature, evolutionary biologist Peter Buston and colleagues report that clownfish in Papua New Guinea reefs can change their sex at will for social reasons. Clownfish live in strict hierarchical communities. Each neighborhood is dominated by a top-ranking female breeder. Her male partner is next, followed by up to four progressively smaller, non-breeding fish. When the dominant female dies, her mate changes sex and becomes female. The top-ranking non-breeder becomes a sexually active male, and all the other fish shift up a rank. Clownfish also appear to regulate their size in order to remain part of the group. Each fish keeps its body mass 20 percent smaller than the fish directly above it in social rank, probably to avoid conflict. Fish who disrespectfully outgrow their rank are rejected by the clan.

Source <www.flmnh.ufl.edu>

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Huge Diamond in Space

When choosing a Valentine's Day gift for a wife or girlfriend, you can't go wrong with diamonds. If you really want to impress your favorite lady this Valentine's Day, get her the galaxy's largest diamond. But you'd better carry a deep wallet, because this 10 billion trillion trillion carat monster has a cost that's literally astronomical!

"You would need a jeweler's loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond!" says astronomer Travis Metcalfe (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), who leads a team of researchers that discovered the giant gem. "Bill Gates and Donald Trump together couldn't begin to afford it."

When asked to estimate the value of the cosmic jewel, Ronald Winston, CEO of Harry Winston Inc., indicated that such a large diamond probably would depress the value of the market, stating, "Who knows? It may be a self-deflating prophecy because there is so much of it." He added, "It is definitely too big to wear!"

The newly discovered cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallized carbon 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus. (A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles.) It is 2,500 miles across and weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds, which translates to approximately 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a one followed by 34 zeros.

"It's the mother of all diamonds!" says Metcalfe. "Some people refer to it as 'Lucy' in a tribute to the Beatles song 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.'"

The diamond star completely outclasses the largest diamond on Earth, the 530-carat Star of Africa which resides in the Crown Jewels of England. The Star of Africa was cut from the largest diamond ever found on Earth, a 3,100-carat gem.

The huge cosmic gem (technically known as BPM 37093) is actually a crystallized white dwarf. A white dwarf is the hot core of a star, left over after the star uses up its nuclear fuel and dies. It is made mostly of carbon and is coated by a thin layer of hydrogen and helium gases.

For more than four decades, astronomers have thought that the interiors of white dwarfs crystallized, but obtaining direct evidence became possible only recently.

"The hunt for the crystal core of this white dwarf has been like the search for the Lost Dutchman's Mine. It was thought to exist for decades, but only now has it been located," says co-author Michael Montgomery (University of Cambridge).

The white dwarf studied by Metcalfe, Montgomery, and Antonio Kanaan (UFSC Brazil), is not only radiant but also harmonious. It rings like a gigantic gong, undergoing constant pulsations.

"By measuring those pulsations, we were able to study the hidden interior of the white dwarf, just like seismograph measurements of earthquakes allow geologists to study the interior of the Earth. We figured out that the carbon interior of this white dwarf has solidified to form the galaxy's largest diamond," says Metcalfe.

Our Sun will become a white dwarf when it dies 5 billion years from now. Some two billion years after that, the Sun's ember core will crystallize as well, leaving a giant diamond in the center of our solar system.

"Our Sun will become a diamond that truly is forever," says Metcalfe.

A paper announcing this discovery has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters for publication.

Source <www.universetoday.com>

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The Earth is Growing!

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The Earth and Moon formed later than previously thought

The Earth and Moon were created as the result of a giant collision between two planets the size of Mars and Venus. Until now it was thought to have happened when the solar system was 30 million years old or approx. 4,537 million years ago. But new research from the Niels Bohr Institute shows that the Earth and Moon must have formed much later – perhaps up to 150 million years after the formation of the solar system. The research results have been published in the scientific journal, Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

"We have determined the ages of the Earth and the Moon using tungsten isotopes, which can reveal whether the iron cores and their stone surfaces have been mixed together during the collision”, explains Tais W. Dahl, who did the research as his thesis project in geophysics at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen in collaboration with professor David J. Stevenson from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

Turbulent collisions



The planets in the solar system were created by collisions between small dwarf planets orbiting the newborn sun. In the collisions the small planets melted together and formed larger and larger planets. The Earth and Moon are the result of a gigantic collision between two planets the size of Mars and Venus. The two planets collided at a time when both had a core of metal (iron) and a surrounding mantle of silicates (rock). But when did it happen and how did it happen? The collision took place in less than 24 hours and the temperature of the Earth was so high (7000º C), that both rock and metal must have melted in the turbulent collision. But were the stone mass and iron mass also mixed together?

Until recently it was believed that the rock and iron mixed completely during the planet formation and so the conclusion was that the Moon was formed when the solar system was 30 million years old or approximately 4,537 million years ago. But new research shows something completely different.

Dating with radioactive elements

The age of the Earth and Moon can be dated by examining the presence of certain elements in the Earth’s mantle. Hafnium-182 is a radioactive substance, which decays and is converted into the isotope tungsten-182. The two elements have markedly different chemical properties and while the tungsten isotopes prefer to bond with metal, hafnium prefers to bond to silicates, i.e. rock.

It takes 50-60 million years for all hafnium to decay and be converted into tungsten, and during the Moon forming collision nearly all the metal sank into the Earth’s core. But did all the tungsten go into the core?

"We have studied to what degree metal and rock mix together during the planet forming collisions. Using dynamic model calculations of the turbulent mixing of the liquid rock and iron masses we have found that tungsten isotopes from the Earth’s early formation remain in the rocky mantle”, explains Tais W. Dahl, Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

The new studies imply that the moon forming collision occurred after all of the hafnium had decayed completely into tungsten.

"Our results show that metal core and rock are unable to emulsify in these collisions between planets that are greater than 10 kilometres in diameter and therefore that most of the Earth’s iron core (80-99 %) did not remove tungsten from the rocky material in the mantle during formation", explains Tais W. Dahl.

The result of the research means that the Earth and the Moon must have been formed much later than previously thought – that is to say not 30 million years after the formation of the solar system 4,567 million years ago but perhaps up to 150 million years after the formation of the solar system.

Source <http://insciences.org>

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Blood test for cancer detection before it starts

In a major breakthrough, British researchers have developed a blood test that can detect cancer even before it develops and can be diagnosed with tests in use at present.

The new test, which replicates the cancer proteins that trigger the body’s response to the disease, has been developed by the University of Nottingham’s spin-out company Oncimmune Ltd. It will help detect cancer as much as five years earlier than testing methods like mammography and CT scans.
The blood test was developed from the early work of John Robertson, a world renowned breast cancer specialist and professor of surgery at Nottingham University. It is expected to change the current paradigm of diagnosis and treatment for most solid cancers such as lung, breast, ovarian, colon and prostate.
Initially, the blood test will be offered later this month via primary care physicians and pulmonologists in the United States for high risk asymptotic lung cancer patients as well as those who have indeterminate lung nodules. The test, which gives results within a week, will be introduced in the UK early next year.

“We believe this test, along with the others we will launch in the next few years, will lead to a better prognosis for a significant number of cancer sufferers,” according to Geoffrey Hamilton-Fairley, executive chairman of Oncimmune.

Initial research by Prof. Robertson was based on blood samples of breast cancer patients collected in Nottingham. His research revealed that cancer marker could be detected in some of the high-risk patients before they were subsequently diagnosed with cancer. Prof. Robertson showed that the test could have detected over half of the cancers up to four years before they were actually diagnosed.

http://www.asianage.com/newsmakers/%E2%80%98blood-test-cancer-detection-it-starts%E2%80%99-987

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Thicker brains fend off pain

Montreal, February 24, 2010 – People can reduce their sensitivity to pain by thickening their brain, according to a new study published in a special issue of the American Psychological Association journal, Emotion. Researchers from the Université de Montréal made their discovery by comparing the grey matter thickness of Zen meditators and non-meditators. They found evidence that practicing the centuries-old discipline of Zen can reinforce a central brain region (anterior cingulate) that regulates pain.

"Through training, Zen meditators appear to thicken certain areas of their cortex and this appears to be underlie their lower sensitivity to pain," says lead author Joshua A. Grant, a doctoral student in the Université de Montréal Department of Physiology and Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal. "We found a relationship between cortical thickness and pain sensitivity, which supports our previous study on how Zen meditation regulates pain."

As part of this study, scientists recruited 17 meditators and 18 non-meditators who in addition had never practiced yoga, experienced chronic pain, neurological or psychological illness. Grant and his team, under the direction of Pierre Rainville of the Université de Montréal and the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal, measured thermal pain sensitivity by applying a heated plate to the calf of participants and followed by scanning the brains of subjects with structural magnetic resonance imaging. According to MRI results, central brain regions that regulate emotion and pain were significantly thicker in meditators compared to non-meditators.

"The often painful posture associated with Zen meditation may lead to thicker cortex and lower pain sensitivity," says Grant, noting that meditative practices could be helpful in general for pain management, for preventing normal age-related grey matter reductions or potentially for any condition where the grey matter is compromised such as stroke.

Source< www.eurekaalert.org >

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Philosophy, Physics, Mathematics - “Dangerous Knowledge”

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Global Warming: Can Earth EXPLODE ?

The real danger for our entire civilization comes not from slow climate changes, but from overheating the planetary interior.

Galileo discovered that Earth moves. Copernicus discovered that Earth moves around the Sun. In 2000 Tom Chalko, inspired by Desmarquet's report, discovered that the solid nucleus of our planet is in principle a nuclear reactor, it is eccentric, and that our collective ignorance may cause it to overheat and explode. The discovery has been published in June 2001 by the new scientific journal NUJournal.net.

Polar ice caps melt not because the air there is warmer than 0 deg Celsius, but because they are overheated from underneath. Volcanoes become active and erupt violently not because the Earth's interior "crystallizes", but because the planetary nucleus is a nuclear fission reactor that needs COOLING.

It seems that the currently adopted doctrine of a "crystalline inner core of Earth" is more dangerous for humanity than all weapons of mass destruction taken together, because it prevents us from imagining, predicting and preventing truly global disasters.

In any nuclear reactor, the danger of overheating has to be recognized early. When external symptoms intensify it is usually too late to prevent disaster. Do we have enough imagination, intelligence and integrity to comprehend the danger before the situation becomes irreversible?


Read more here

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THE IMMORTALITY ENZYME

As the human body ages, it loses bone. Individual cells lose something equally vital. Every time one divides, it sheds tiny snippets of DNA known as telomeres, which serve as protective caps on the ends of chromosomes. After perhaps a hundred divisions, a cell's telomeres become so truncated that its chromosomes--site of the cell's genes--begin to fray, rather like shoelaces that have lost their plastic tips. Eventually, such aged cells die--unless, like "immortal" cancer cells, they produce telomerase, an enzyme that protects and even rebuilds telomeres. Scientists have long dreamed of drugs that would inhibit the immortalizing enzyme because, observes M.I.T. biochemist Robert Weinberg, "then maybe cancer cells would run out of telomeres and just poop out."

Wishful thinking? Maybe not. In papers published just a week apart in the journals Science and Cell, two teams of researchers--one led by Nobel-prizewinning biochemist Thomas Cech of the University of Colorado, the other by M.I.T.'s Weinberg--have announced a breakthrough that could help bring about such a drug. Both teams have managed to clone a gene that controls the activity of the telomerase enzyme in human cells. That could set the stage for development not only of inhibiting drugs but also of substances that switch on the enzyme--which might help combat degenerative diseases associated with aging.

Such possibilities, to be sure, are speculative, but that didn't stop Wall Street, where the stock of Geron Corp., a small biotech company based in Menlo Park, Calif., that helped Cech's group discover the gene, more than doubled, to 1618 a share. In fact, Geron researchers have been looking for antitelomerase compounds for several years, using indirect-screening methods. Because tumor cells--the main source of the human enzyme--produce it in vanishingly small quantities, the scientists lacked pure telomerase, which could have sped the search for drugs that might be used against it.

With the new gene in hand, the researchers should be able to churn out at will the protein for which it provides the genetic blueprint. That protein, they believe, is telomerase's most important building block. "For us," exults Calvin Harley, Geron's chief scientist, "it's like having access to an organism's brain."

The new protein, it turns out, bears an intriguing resemblance to an enzyme produced by HIV, the retrovirus that causes AIDS. Indeed, the AIDS drug AZT has already been shown to inhibit telomerase activity. But the viral enzyme and the human enzyme, says Colorado's Cech, are only 20% identical, which explains why AZT is not an ideal telomerase inhibitor. "What we want," he declares, "is a compound that fits telomerase the way a hand fits a glove."

The odds that such a compound will materialize now seem high. But experts caution that it could take years before the first telomerase inhibitors are ready to be tested on humans to determine if they'll have any serious side effects--or if they'll actually inhibit tumor growth. Such questions are perhaps one reason Geron's stock leveled off at week's end, closing at 12 1/4 a share.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,986922,00.html#ixzz0cZsIm6Hv

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Science news highlights of 2009

It was the year we learned of a spectacular smash-up in space, and scientists working on the world's biggest physics experiment delighted at collisions of an entirely different sort.
There were shockwaves, too, in Copenhagen, as the summit failed to reach a consensus on tackling climate change, instead merely noting a deal struck by major powers including the US and China.
The BBC's science reporter Paul Rincon looks back at the twists and turns of a year in science and the environment.

Source here

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Most Earth-Like Extrasolar Planet Found Right Next Door

Meet GJ 1214b, the most Earth-like planet ever found outside our solar system.

It’s not exactly Earth’s twin: It’s about six times bigger, a whole lot hotter and made mostly of water. But compared to the giant gas balls that account for nearly every other extrasolar planet ever found, it’s pretty darn close. And through a fortunate happenstance of cosmic geometry, astronomers will be able to study GJ 1214b in great detail.

“If you want to describe in one sentence what this planet is, it’s a big, hot ocean,” said Harvard University astronomer David Charbonneau. “We can even study its atmosphere. This planet will occupy us for years. That’s part of what’s so exciting about it.”

Described by Charbonneau and 17 other astronomers in a paper published Wednesday in Nature, GJ 1214b is the latest of roughly 400 planets detected by earthly telescopes. Of these, 28 are considered “super-Earths” — planets with a mass roughly comparable to our own.

The super-Earths themselves are too distant to be seen. Instead, astronomers infer their presence from subtle distortions in starlight, caused when photons travel through the super-Earths’ gravitational fields. Depending on the degree of distortion, astronomers can even calculate a planet’s mass.

That’s how Corot-7b, a rocky planet with roughly twice the heft of Earth, was spotted in February. Ditto Gliese 581c, identified two months later, and orbiting its star at a distance consistent with human notions of habitability.

Unfortunately, not much more will ever be known about those planets. Corot-7b is 500 light-years away, too distant for our telescopes to discern more detail. And from our viewing angle, Gliese 581c never quite crosses directly in front of its sun, causing photons to warp in ways that would reveal its atmospheric character.

GJ 1214b does pass in front of its sun. Separated from Earth by a distance of just 42 light years, it’s close enough to be studied. Scientists will finally get to look at another Earth-like world.

“Only rarely does a long-sought scientific frontier loom so prominently just beyond the horizon, that the next generation of instruments seems sure to reach it,” wrote Geoffrey Marcey, a University of California, Berkeley astronomer, in a commentary accompanying the findings. “They provide the most-watertight evidence so far for a planet that is something like our own Earth, outside our solar system.”

Based on its radius and mass — about 2.7 and 6.6 times that of Earth’s — Charbonneau and the other astronomers have calculated GJ 1214b’s density. It appears to be composed of extraordinarily deep oceans, surrounding a rocky core.

The planet’s atmosphere and precise composition remain a mystery, but it’s likely composed of many of the same elements found elsewhere at sites of planetary formation, in swirling disks of dust and gas that have yet to accrete: hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, magnesium, oxygen, carbon.

That list of ingredients raises at least the possibility of life. With an estimated temperature of 370 degrees Fahrenheit, GJ 1214b is an unlikely incubator (Earth’s toughest extremophile, a microbe that lives in deep-sea volcanic vents, maxes out at 284 degrees) but it’s not impossible.

“I don’t want to imply that there’s any indication of life as we know it. It might have life, but it would have to be a strange kind of life,” said Charbonneau.

The telescopes sure to be trained on GJ 1214b in the near future will try to answer that question. But even if it proves barren, other planets await. The telescopes that spotted GJ 1214b were custom designed to find Earth-like planets around nearby stars, and had only operated for a few months before striking water.

“We only look at a handful of stars before finding this planet, said Charbonneau. “Either we got lucky, or the planets are very common.”

Source<http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/super-earth/>

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Scientists Succeed With Teleportation Experiment

This story gets a little heady and, to be honest, we're not entirely sure we completely understand it ourselves. What we do know is that scientists have made a huge advancement in the field of teleportation, taking a step necessary to the development of quantum computers.

Scientists managed to teleport information from one atom to another from a distance of about one meter. While this isn't really getting us much closer to the 'Star Trek'-like ability to beam people around the universe, it does allow for instantaneous transmission of information without it passing through physical space.

Previously, similar accomplishments have been made with photons (the basic unit of light) and between nearby atoms with the assistance of a third, but these have not proven useful for the long-term storage and long-distance transmission of information.

This breakthrough was accomplished using a phenomena known as quantum entanglement. Atomic and sub-atomic particles can be entangled, meaning their states (such as spin or polarization) are linked, regardless of distance and obstacles. The state is unknowable until a measurement of either particle is made (see Schrödinger's cat), but once the state of one particle is measured the state of the other is instantly determined.

Once the atoms are entwined, the state of atom A is measured, destroying the data, which then reappears when the scientists go to retrieve it from atom B. The information isn't transmitted from A to B, it "teleports," instantaneously disappearing and reappearing with out any interaction between the atoms.

Not confused enough? Hit the read link for more head-scratching detail on the experiment. [From: FOXNews.com]

Source : http://www.switched.com/2009/01/26/scientists-succeed-with-teleportation-experiment/

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LHC Restarts operations at CERN

Geneva, 23 November 2009. Today the LHC circulated two beams simultaneously for the first time, allowing the operators to test the synchronization of the beams and giving the experiments their first chance to look for proton-proton collisions.

With just one bunch of particles circulating in each direction, the beams can be made to cross in up to two places in the ring.

From early in the afternoon, the beams were made to cross at points 1 and 5, home to the ATLAS and CMS detectors, both of which were on the look out for collisions.

Later, beams crossed at points 2 and 8, ALICE and LHCb.

“It’s a great achievement to have come this far in so short a time,” said CERN¹Director General Rolf Heuer. “But we need to keep a sense of perspective – there’s still much to do before we can start the LHC physics programme.”



Beams were first tuned to produce collisions in the ATLAS detector, which recorded its first candidate for collisions at 14:22 this afternoon. Later, the beams were optimised for CMS. In the evening, ALICE had the first optimization, followed by LHCb.

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LCROSS Impact Data Indicates Water on Moon

The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water.

Secrets the moon has been holding, for perhaps billions of years, are now being revealed to the delight of scientists and space enthusiasts alike.

NASA today opened a new chapter in our understanding of the moon. Preliminary data from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water during the Oct. 9, 2009 impacts into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus cater near the moon’s south pole.

The impact created by the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket created a two-part plume of material from the bottom of the crater. The first part was a high angle plume of vapor and fine dust and the second a lower angle ejecta curtain of heavier material. This material has not seen sunlight in billions of years.

"We're unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbor and by extension the solar system. It turns out the moon harbors many secrets, and LCROSS has added a new layer to our understanding," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Scientists have long speculated about the source of vast quantities of hydrogen that have been observed at the lunar poles. The LCROSS findings are shedding new light on the question of water, which could be more widespread and in greater quantity than previously suspected.

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