The secret to a smarter, smoother robot

The secret to a smarter, smoother robot - A Smarter & Smoother Robot Arm. Researchers have figured out a way to turn "moving like a robot" into a compliment. If someone tells you that you move like a robot it's not a compliment, unless you're doing the dance, just ask Al Gore. Robots have always been famous for making very rigid and stiff movements and there's a reason for that. While it's simple for a human to move their hand from the keyboard, pick up a cup of coffee, take a sip and put it back down, it's extremely difficult to come up with an equation for a robot to do the same thing.

Massive Black Hole Yields its Mysteries to Astronomers

Massive Black Hole Yields its Mysteries to Astronomers - To strive for the most complete understanding of a black hole, astronomers have turned their telescopes to the double-star system Cygnus X-1, which boasts the first of these discovered oddities. The move paid off, providing detailed information on the black hole's mass, spin and its distance from the sun.

5 biggest brain myths busted

5 biggest brain myths busted - It’s often said that we use only 10% of our brain, but imaging studies show a different picture. True or false: The brain’s hippocampus contains an “Oprah neuron” that lights up when we see pictures of Ms. Winfrey or even hear her name. If you guessed “false,” check out British neuroscientist Rodrigo Quian Quiroga’s quirky research, which not only found specialized Oprah neurons, but also brain cells devoted to Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry, basketball great Michael Jordan, and even Luke Skywalker. There was also a brain cell that preferred watching “The Simpsons” to Madonna and Quiroga, researchers found.

NASA rover launched to seek life on Mars

NASA rover launched to seek life on Mars - An unmanned Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Saturday, launching a $2.5 billion nuclear-powered NASA rover toward Mars to look for life habitats there. The 20-story-tall booster built by United Launch Alliance lifted off from its seaside launch pad at 10:02 a.m. EST, soaring through partly cloudy skies as it headed into space to send NASA's Mars Science Laboratory on a 354-million mile (556 million km), nearly nine-month journey to the 'Red Planet'.

The car-sized rover is expected to touch down on August 6, 2012, to begin two years of detailed analysis of a 96-mile (154-km) wide impact basin near the Martian equator called Gale Crater.

Scientists chose the landing area because it has a three-mile (4.8-km) high mountain of what appears from orbital imagery and mineral analysis to be layers of rock piled up like the Grand Canyon, each layer testifying to a different period in Mars' history.

The rover, nicknamed Curiosity, has 17 cameras and 10 science instruments, including chemistry labs, to identify elements in soil and rock samples to be dug up by the probe's drill-tipped robotic arm.

The base of the crater's mountain has clays, evidence of a prolonged wet environment, said planetary scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology and the mission's lead scientist.

Water is considered to be a key element for life, but not the only one. Previous Mars probes, including the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, searched for signs of past surface water.

With Curiosity, which is twice as long and three times heavier than its predecessors, NASA shifts its focus to look for other ingredients for life, including possibly organic carbon, the building block for life on Earth.

"It's a long shot, but we're going to try," Grotzinger told reporters before launch.

Curiosity is powered by heat from the radioactive decay of plutonium. It is designed to last one Martian year, or 687 Earth days.

via: reuters

Pieces of Einstein's Brain Go On Display For First Time

Pieces of Einstein's Brain Go On Display For First Time - If you've ever wondered what the brain of a genius looks like, make your way to Philadelphia. There, the public can view for the first time 46 slivers of the brain of Albert Einstein, the theoretical physicist who developed the Theory of General Relativity. The brain is on display at Philadelphia's Mütter Museum and Historical Medical Library, in a whirlwind exhibit built in about nine working days, according to museum curator Anna Dhody. Visitors can view 45 of the brain slides as-is, and see one magnified under a lens.

"He was a unique individual, and to have the organ that's most associated with intelligence of this great man is a wonderful opportunity," Dhody told Livescience. "What we're hoping to do is to showcase this and to really talk about the brain and the physiology."

The brain slices have had a strange journey since Einstein's death in 1955 at age 76 from an abdominal aneurism. The pathologist who completed Einstein's autopsy, a man named Thomas Harvey, removed Einstein's brain as part of standard autopsy procedure — and then failed to put it back. Harvey later said that Einstein's son had given him permission to take the scientist's brain, but the Einstein family disputed that claim.

Harvey lost his job over the Einstein scandal, but he kept the brain. Over the years, he would send portions to neuroscientists trying to understand if something about the man's brain structure made him so brilliant. It's some of these hair-thin sections that are now on display at Philadelphia's Mütter Museum and the Historical Medical Library.

"Dr. Harvey had done some of his training in Philadelphia, and he came back to Philadelphia and asked specifically for one of his slide technicians," Dhody said. "All the boxes and all the series of slides were done in Philadelphia."

As a "thank you" to the Philadelphia pathologist who allowed the slides to be made in his lab, Harvey gifted him a box of 46 slides of ultra-thin brain slices, each just 20 to 50 microns thick. (For comparison, an average human hair is about 100 microns in diameter.)

When that pathologist, William Ehrich, died in 1967, his widow passed the slides to another local doctor, Allen Steinberg, who, in turn, gave the slides to Lucy Rorke-Adams, the senior neuropathologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Rorke-Adams recently decided to donate the slides to the Mütter Museum, which is run by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

"I think the time has come to turn them over to the College and the Mütter Museum as they are a part of medical history," Rorke-Adams said in a statement.

Einstein's brain will be in good company at the museum, which also boasts displays of a tumor from President Glover Cleveland and neck tissue from John Wilkes Booth. The goal, Dhody said, is to let visitors see what the brain of a genius looks like, while emphasizing that no one really knows if anything about Einstein's brain structure made him great.

Various researchers have uncovered out-of-the-ordinary features in the brain, including extra support cells called glial cells in some regions involved in complex thinking. But human anatomy is notoriously individualistic, and it's tough to say whether any given aspect of Einstein's brain structure made him a genius, was the result of his genius, or was just a quirk. 

According to Rorke-Adams, Einstein's brain does look unusually young on a microscopic level. He lacks a build-up of lipofuscin, cellular waste associated with aging. His blood vessels are also in remarkably good shape.

"He died at the age of 76, so he was an older individual," Dhody said. "But Dr. Rorke-Adams said looking at his brain, you would think it was the brain of a younger person."

The brain will stay on display for the foreseeable future at the museum, Dhody said, and the museum may consider loaning out slides for future neuroscience research. In the meantime, the museum staff hopes to expand the exhibit with micro-level photographs of the slides.

"It's Einstein's brain!" Dhody said. "It's one of the greatest minds of the 20th century in our museum. What more can you ask for?"

via: yahoo

NASA rover to seek signs of life on Mars

NASA rover to seek signs of life on Mars - The nuclear-powered vehicle is set to begin a nine-month journey to explore the distant planet.New NASA rover to scout for life's habitats on Mars. A nuclear-powered rover as big as a compact car is set to begin a nine-month journey to Mars this weekend to learn if the planet is or ever was suitable for life.

The launch of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory aboard an unmanned United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket is set for 10:02 a.m. EST (1502 GMT) on Saturday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, located just south of the Kennedy Space Center.

The mission is the first since NASA's 1970s-era Viking program to directly tackle the age-old question of whether there is life in the universe beyond Earth.

"This is the most complicated mission we have attempted on the surface of Mars," Peter Theisinger, Mars Science Lab project manager with NASA prime contractor Lockheed Martin, told reporters at a pre-launch press conference on Wednesday.

The consensus of scientists after experiments by the twin Viking landers was that life did not exist on Mars. Two decades later, NASA embarked on a new strategy to find signs of past water on Mars, realizing the question of life could not be examined without a better understanding of the planet's environment.

"Everything we know about life and what makes a livable environment is peculiar to Earth," said astrobiologist Pamela Conrad of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and a deputy lead scientist for the mission.

"What things look like on Mars are a function of not only the initial set of ingredients that Mars had when it was made, but the processes that have affected Mars," she said.

Without a large enough moon to stabilize its tilt, Mars has undergone dramatic climate changes over the eons as its spin axis wobbled closer or farther from the sun.

The history of what happened on Mars during those times is chemically locked in its rocks, including whether liquid water and other ingredients believed necessary for life existed on the planet's surface, and if so, for how long.

In 2004, the golf cart-sized rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on opposite sides of Mars' equator to tackle the question of water.

Their three-month missions grew to seven years, with Spirit succumbing to the harsh winter in the past year and Opportunity beginning a search in a new area filled with water-formed clays. Both rovers found signs that water mingled with rocks during Mars' past.

The new rover, nicknamed Curiosity, shifts the hunt to other elements key to life, particularly organics.

"One of the ingredients of life is water," said Mary Voytek, director of NASA's astrobiology program. "We're now looking to see if we can find other conditions that are necessary for life by defining habitability or what does it take in the environment to support life."

The spacecraft, which is designed to last two years, is outfitted with 10 tools to analyze one particularly alluring site on Mars called Gale Crater. The site is a 96-mile (154-kilometer) wide basin that has a layered mountain of deposits stretching 3 miles above its floor, twice as tall as the layers of rock in the Grand Canyon.

Scientists do not know how the mound formed but suspect it is the eroded remains of sediment that once completely filled the crater.

Curiosity's toolkit includes a robotic arm with a drill, onboard chemistry labs to analyze powdered samples and a laser that can pulverize rock and soil samples from a distance of 20 feet away.

If all goes as planned, Curiosity will be lowered to the floor of Gale Crater in August 2012 by a new landing system called a sky crane. Previously, NASA used airbags or thruster jets to cushion a probe's touchdown on Mars but the 1,980-pound (900-kilogram) Curiosity needed a beefier system.

"There are a lot of people who look at that and say, 'What are you thinking?'" Theisinger said. "We put together a test program that successfully validated that from a design standpoint it will work. If something decides to break at that point in time, we're in trouble but we've done everything we can think of to do."

The rover, which is twice as long and about three times heavier than the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, also needed more power for driving at night and operating its science instruments.

Instead of solar power, Curiosity is equipped with a plutonium battery that generates electricity from the heat of radioactive decay.

Similar systems have been used since the earliest days of the space program, including the Apollo moon missions, the Voyager and Viking probes and more recently in the Cassini spacecraft now circling Saturn and NASA's Pluto-bound New Horizons mission.

Radiation monitors have been installed through the area around the Cape Canaveral launch site in case of an accident, though the device has been designed to withstand impacts and explosions, said Randall Scott, director of NASA's radiological control center at the Kennedy Space Center.

Meteorologists were predicting good weather for Saturday's launch. Earth and Mars will be favorably aligned for launch until December 18.

via: yahoo

Alien Skull Discovered in Peru

Alien Skull Discovered in Peru - 'Alien' Skull Discovery Tops South American Bone Finds. It wasn't discovered by Indiana Jones and it isn't crystal, but an elongated skull that is as long as the 20-inch body it belongs to is raising interest after it was discovered in Peru. According to a report from The Sideshow, the remains of the unidentified "creature" was described as having a "triangle-shaped" skull and was at first believed to have been a child with a misshapen head, but according to a news report, anonymous Russian and Spanish scientists claim the remains belong to an extraterrestrial being.

While the discovery of the skull seems to be a somewhat real-life version of the popular movie "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" in which archaeologist-adventurer Indiana Jones sets off to solve the mystery of similar triangular-shaped skulls in South America, the end result in the movie is that the crystal skulls are indeed not of this world.

As far as the most recent bone skull in Peru? No word yet on its origins.

The strange skull in Peru isn't the only recent odd bone discovery. South America appears to be full of mystery of the skeletal kind.

In Chile's Atacama Desert -- the driest spot on Earth -- scientists have discovered the fossilized bones of over 75 prehistoric whales. In another report from The Sideshow, scientists believe that the whales beached themselves on the Pacific coast of South America over 2 million years ago.

What scientists are unsure of is exactly how the whale remains got where they are now -- in the middle of the desert. Theories abound -- including the idea that surface shifting pushed the bones into the desert over time or that the whales were stranded in a lagoon by a storm or a landslide. Researchers who are looking into the discovery are pretty sure about one thing though -- all of the whales most likely died at the same time.

The skeletons are each about 25 feet in length -- about the size of a school bus -- and 20 of the skeletons are intact. In addition to the whales, the excavation at the site uncovered a sperm whale, an extinct dolphin that had two tusks, an extinct aquatic sloth and a seabird that had a massive 17-foot wingspan.

The South American continent continues to offer up more wonders from the ancient past. An article on Physorg.com in early November reported the discovery of two mammal skulls discovered in Argentina. What makes these skulls unique? They are the first known mammals discovered from the Late Cretaceous period known as the "Age of Dinosaurs."

The skulls are of a small mammal that has been dubbed "Cronopio dentiacutus." Cronopio was a sabre-toothed squirrel much like the well-known "Ice Age" movie critter known as Scrat.

via: yahoo

New find shakes up beliefs about holy site

New find shakes up beliefs about holy site - Coins dug up beneath one of the world's most sacred landmarks may help rewrite history. New find sheds light on ancient site in Jerusalem. Newly found coins underneath Jerusalem's Western Wall could change the accepted belief about the construction of one of the world's most sacred sites two millennia ago, Israeli archaeologists said Wednesday.

The man usually credited with building the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary is Herod, a Jewish ruler who died in 4 B.C. Herod's monumental compound replaced and expanded a much older Jewish temple complex on the same site.

But archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority now say diggers have found coins underneath the massive foundation stones of the compound's Western Wall that were stamped by a Roman proconsul 20 years after Herod's death. That indicates that Herod did not build the wall — part of which is venerated as Judaism's holiest prayer site — and that construction was not close to being complete when he died.

"The find changes the way we see the construction, and shows it lasted for longer than we originally thought," said the dig's co-director, Eli Shukron.

The four bronze coins were stamped around 17 A.D. by the Roman official Valerius Gratus. He preceded Pontius Pilate of the New Testament story as Rome's representative in Jerusalem, according to Ronny Reich of Haifa University, one of the two archaeologists in charge of the dig.

The coins were found inside a ritual bath that predated construction of the renovated Temple Mount complex and which was filled in to support the new walls, Reich said.

They show that construction of the Western Wall had not even begun at the time of Herod's death. Instead, it was likely completed only generations later by one of his descendants.

The coins confirm a contemporary account by Josephus Flavius, a Jewish general who became a Roman historian. Writing after a Jewish revolt against Rome and the destruction of the Temple by legionnaires in 70 A.D., he recounted that work on the Temple Mount had been completed only by King Agrippa II, Herod's great-grandson, two decades before the entire compound was destroyed.

Scholars have long been familiar with Josephus' account, but the find is nonetheless important because it offers the "first clear-cut archaeological evidence that part of the enclosure wall was not built by Herod," said archaeologist Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, who was not involved in the dig.

Josephus also wrote that the end of construction left 18,000 workmen unemployed in Jerusalem. Some historians have linked this to discontent that eventually erupted in the Jewish revolt.

The compound, controlled since 1967 by Israel, now houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the golden-capped Muslim shrine known as the Dome of the Rock. The fact that the compound is holy both to Jews and Muslims makes it one of the world's most sensitive religious sites.

The dig in which the coins were discovered cleared a Roman-era drainage tunnel that begins at the biblical Pool of Siloam, one of the city's original water sources, and terminates with a climb up a ladder out onto a 2,000-year-old street inside Jerusalem's Old City. The tunnel runs by the foundation stones of the compound's western wall, where the coins were found.

The drainage tunnel was excavated as part of the dig at the City of David, which is perhaps Israel's richest archaeological excavation and its most contentious.

The dig is being carried out inside the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, and is funded by a group associated with the Israeli settlement movement that opposes any division of the city as part of a future peace deal.

The excavation of the tunnel has also yielded a Roman sword, oil lamps, pots and coins that scholars believe are likely debris from an attempt by Jewish rebels to hide in the underground passage as they fled from the Roman soldiers.

via: yahoo

Google pulls plug on solar plan

Google pulls plug on solar plan - Google pulls plug on renewable energy plan. Search giant quitting non-core projects, including solar power. Google Inc. has abandoned an ambitious project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal, the latest target of Chief Executive Larry Page's moves to focus the Internet giant on fewer efforts.

Google said on Tuesday that it was pulling the plug on seven projects, including Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal as well as a Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia service known as Knol.

The plans, which Google announced on its corporate blog, represent the third so-called "spring cleaning" announcement that Google has made since Google co-founder Page took the reins in April.

The changes come as Google is facing stiff competition in mobile computing and social networking from Apple Inc and Facebook, and as some investors have groused about rising spending at the world's No.1 Internet search company.

"To recap, we're in the process of shutting down a number of products which haven't had the impact we'd hoped for, integrating others as features into our broader product efforts, and ending several which have shown us a different path forward," wrote Google Senior Vice President of Operations Urs Holzle in the blog post.

Google said that it believed other institutions were better positioned to take its renewable energy efforts "to the next level."

Google began making investments and doing research into technology to drive down the price of renewable energy in 2007, with a particular focus on solar power technology.

In 2009, the company's so-called Green Energy Czar, Bill Weihl, told Reuters that he expected to demonstrate within a few years working technology that could produce renewable energy at a cheaper price than coal.

"It is even odds, more or less," Weihl said at the time. "In three years, we could have multiple megawatts of plants out there."

A Google spokesman said that Weihl had left Google earlier this month.

Google noted in its blog post that it would continue efforts to generate "cleaner, more efficient energy," including procuring renewable energy for its data centers.

Among the other projects included in Tuesday's "spring cleaning" were Google Knol, Google Search Timeline, Google Gear, Google Friend Connect, Google Bookmarks Lists and Google Wave, an ill-fated social networking and communication service that Google had previously said it would cease developing.

Google said that in December its email and calendar applications will no longer work with Gears technology, which allows Google's software to work when not connected to the Internet. Google said it is working to create offline capabilities into HTML5 technology instead.

Google Friend Connect, which allows website publishers to add social features to their sites, will be retired in March for all non-Blogger websites, Google said. It suggested that websites use its Google+ social network instead.

Earlier this year, Google said it would "wind down" Google Labs, a website that offered public access to experimental Google products, as well as terminating products that let consumers monitor their home energy consumption and keep track of their personal health records.

via: msn

Inside the Brains of Psychopaths

Inside the Brains of Psychopaths - Differences in psychopaths' brains may help explain their anti-social behavior, according to new research. Psychopaths are identified as highly selfish, and lacking in emotion and conscience. Experts estimate that about 1 percent of the general population and as many as 25 percent of male offenders in federal correctional settings are psychopaths. Research looking into the minds of psychopaths has found not only differences in their brains but also, at least in one recent study, speech patterns.

In the new study, which relied on scans of the brains of psychopaths incarcerated in Wisconsin, the researchers found reduced connections between a part of the brain associated with empathy and decision-making, known as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), and other parts of the brain.

Using two different types of images, the researchers compared the brains of male prisoners diagnosed as psychopaths with those of prisoners who did not receive this diagnosis. Among the psychopathic prisoners, the researchers found weaker connections between the vmPFC and other parts of the brain, including the amygdala.

The amygdala itself is associated with emotion, memory and fear. Interactions between the vmPFC and the amygdala are believed to underlie aspects of emotion regulation, aggression and stimulus reinforced associations, the researchers write in an article published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

"Those two structures in the brain, which are believed to regulate emotion and social behavior, seem to not be communicating as they should," said Michael Koenigs, a study researcher and assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

This study builds on previous work in which Koenigs and colleague Joseph Newman, a psychology professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, showed that psychopaths responded to decision-making tests in a manner resembling that of patients who had suffered damage to their vmPFC.

via: yahoo

Scientists stumped by massive fossil find

Scientists stumped by massive fossil find - The unearthing of whale skeletons in a desert ignites a debate of creationism versus evolution. Ancient Whale Bones Discovered in Desert, Parents Outraged by Hooters Waitress’s Visit to Special-Needs School. Paleontologists in Chile have made a surprising discovery in the desert. Scientists uncovered what appears to be a massive graveyard of whale bones in Copiapo, more than a half-mile from the ocean. 

More than 80 whales, including 25 complete skeletons, were found in one of the driest deserts in the world. There is currently a construction project to widen the highway near the Atacama Desert, where the bones were found. Scientists believe the bones could be between 2 million and 7 million years old. So how did the whales make their way from the ocean to the desert and end up so close to one another when they died? 

Scientists have many theories: Maybe the area was once a lagoon and it dried up, maybe there was a giant wave that flung the whales onto shore, or maybe a giant earthquake sealed them off. Whale bones were not the only find for the paleontologists. A dolphin carcass with walrus-like tusks was also uncovered. Scientists say this discovery gives them a glimpse of ancient sea life. 

One paleontologist said, "The fossils are exceptionally well preserved and quite complete--a rare combination in paleontology and one that will likely shed light on many facets of the . . . ecology and evolution of these extinct species." People on social media are debating creationism vs. evolution theories. Some people are just waiting for a scientific explanation. Still others are saying they should "accept the biblical account of the flood."

Parents in Clearwater, Florida, are upset after a certain speaker was brought in to talk to their kids at school. Brittany Morgan, a Hooters waitress, spoke during "the Great American Teach-In," a career event at the special-needs school. Morgan discussed looking presentable at work, tipping, and Hooters charity work with the students at Calvin A. 

Hunsinger School. She did not wear the Hooters uniform (skimpy orange shorts, low-cut white tank top, flesh-toned hosiery, white socks, and white sneakers) to speak in front of the kids. One parent was still disturbed, saying, "It's just the wrong message . . . like we're telling them that you're the bad kids and this is all you'll be in life." Some people on Twitter agree, saying, "Can we raise the bar for kids' aspirations?" Morgan said she understands why the parents might be upset, but that there was nothing inappropriate about her speech. Morgan added, "Most of us are going to school. We're aspiring to do other things in life. 

This isn't our career." The principal of Hunsinger, Stephani Bessette, defended Morgan's appearance, saying "Working as a waiter or waitress to achieve higher goals should be commended." Hooters states that its mission is "to provide a family of hospitality and services that achieves excellence and enhances lifestyles of all who come in contact with the Hooters brand."

via: yahoo

Photos catch monster Saturn storm

Photos catch monster Saturn storm - Spectacular images emerge of the 200-day, 9,000-mile event, the planet's largest in 20 years. Spectacular Photos of Monster Saturn Storm Snapped by NASA Spacecraft. A NASA spacecraft has chronicled the birth, evolution and death of the biggest storm to hit Saturn in two decades.

The monster storm on Saturn emerged in the ringed planet's northern hemisphere on Dec. 5, 2010. It started out as a tiny spot but grew rapidly, completely encircling the planet by late January 2011. It eventually extended about 9,000 miles (15,000 kilometers) from north to south before sputtering out in late June.

The storm's 200-day active period makes it the longest-lived planet-encircling tempest ever observed on Saturn, researchers said. And NASA's unmanned Cassini probe watched everything unfold, snapping pictures all the while.

Such monster storms, known as Great White Spots, tend to pop up every two to three decades on the ringed planet, for reasons that remain mysterious.

"The Saturn storm is more like a volcano than a terrestrial weather system," said Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member at Caltech in Pasadena, in a statement. "The pressure builds up for many years before the storm erupts. The mystery is that there's no rock to resist the pressure — to delay the eruption for so many years."

A tempest of similar size was last seen on Saturn in 1990. But it lasted just 55 days before petering out, suggesting that the most recent storm was something special.

"This new storm is a completely different kind of beast compared to anything we saw on Saturn previously with Cassini," said UCLA's Kunio Sayanagi, a Cassini imaging team associate. "The fact that such outbursts are episodic and keep happening on Saturn every 20 to 30 years or so is telling us something about deep inside the planet, but we have yet to figure out what it is."

Cassini snapped hundreds of images of the new storm, sneaking quick looks when it wasn't performing other scheduled observations of Saturn, its rings or its moons. These images allowed scientists to track the storm's progress in great detail.

The maelstrom first appeared at about 35 degrees north latitude and eventually wrapped around the entire planet, covering approximately 2 billion square miles (5 billion square km). It was a single thunderstorm that raged continuously for more than 200 days, affecting nearly 20 percent of Saturn's northern hemisphere, researchers said.

The storm's active phase is over, they added, but some of the clouds it created still linger in the planet's atmosphere today.

Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004 and is slated to keep studying the ringed planet and its many moons through 2017. So the spacecraft may well spot some other exciting atmospheric goings-on before it's done.

"It is the capability of being in orbit and able to turn a scrutinizing eye wherever it is needed that has allowed us to monitor this extraordinary phenomenon," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "Seven years of taking advantage of such opportunities have already made Cassini one of the most scientifically productive planetary missions ever flown."

via: yahoo

Moon May Outshine Leonid Meteor Shower Peak Tonight

Moon May Outshine Leonid Meteor Shower Peak Tonight - Leonid meteor shower may be outshone. The annual light display will likely be upstaged by a celestial neighbor tonight. The Leonid meteor shower peaks tonight (Nov. 17), but bright moonlight is threatening to wash out this year's light display. The annual Leonid meteor shower is expected to reach peak activity tonight at approximately 10:40 p.m. EST (0340 GMT on Nov. 18), but a luminous third quarter moon could outshine even the brightest meteors, said Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

"The moon is going to be a major interference, but we could see a rate of about 20 per hour," Cooke told SPACE.com.

Meteor showers occur when Earth orbits through clouds of particles and dust on its path around the sun. Meteors are often referred to as "shooting stars," because of how they streak across the sky, but these dazzling streaks of light are really triggered by pieces of debris that hit Earth's atmosphere and burn up.

The Leonids are leftovers of the comet Tempel-Tuttle, which travels around the sun and leaves clouds of dust in its wake. This small, dusty comet was discovered in the late 19th century, and as Earth travels through the trails of debris left behind from the comet's previous passes through our orbit, fragments impact the atmosphere and blaze across the night sky. 

While Leonid meteors appear to rain from the constellation of Leo the Lion, they can actually be viewed in all parts of the sky. According to the editors of StarDate magazine, a bi-monthly publication from The University of Texas at Austin McDonald Observatory, the best way to view Leonid meteors is to face the darkest part of the sky, away from the moon and the constellation of Leo.

Every 33 years, the Leonids put on a truly spectacular display of more than a thousand meteors per hour in what is known as a meteor storm. This occurs when the comet dives close to the sun and Earth passes through the resulting thick concentration of cosmic debris.

The last Leonid meteor storm happened in 1999, but one of the most famous and most dazzling ever witnessed was the Great Leonid Storm of 1966, when skywatchers in central and western North America were treated to a hail of meteors that were too numerous to count.

Overall, Cooke said the 2011 meteor shower season has been somewhat subdued because of the brightness of the moon during many of the showers' peaks.

After the Leonids, skywatchers will be able to look forward to December's Geminid meteor shower, which is generally thought to be one of the best displays of the year. And while the shining moon may have lunar observers rejoicing, meteor shower enthusiasts can take comfort in early forecasts that show that next year's meteor shower season will be a much more dazzling affair.

"Next year will be better," Cooke said. "I think we're going to have to wait for next year to have a knock-your-socks-off meteor shower."

via: yahoo

Water found on Jupiter moon

Water found on Jupiter moon - (IANS) NASA's Galileo spacecraft has found evidence of water beneath the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa, researchers said. The data suggest there is significant exchange between Europa's icy shell and the ocean beneath, they added. This information could bolster arguments that Europa's global subsurface ocean represents a potential habitat for life elsewhere in our solar system, Xinhua reported, quoting NASA.

Europa, which is slightly smaller than Earth's moon, is believed to have a large ocean of salty water deep beneath its frozen crust.

The Galileo spacecraft, launched by the space shuttle Atlantis in 1989, studied Jupiter, which is the largest planet in the solar system, and some of its many moons.

Pictures sent by Galileo revealed cracks and jumbled ice on Jupiter's surface. Seeking to understand how such topography evolved in a place with such dim sunlight, scientists believe that the answer lies in similar processes on Earth.

Europa's ice shell is about 10 km thick and within it are giant pockets of water, lying at depths as shallow as three kilometers. Warm water from these sub-surface lakes wells up in plumes, causing the ice to become brittle, crack and collapse.

'Now, we see evidence that it's a thick ice shell that can mix vigorously and new evidence for giant shallow lakes. That could make Europa and its ocean more habitable,' said Britney Schmidt, lead author of the study and fellow at the Institute for Geophysics, University of Texas, Austin.

via: yahoo

Ghost alps of Antarctica reveal their secret

Ghost alps of Antarctica reveal their secret - An astonishing mountain range deep below the ice has baffled scientists for more than 50 years. 'Ghost alps' of Antarctica reveal their secret. For more than half a century, geologists have wrangled over the origins of an astonishing range of mountains found beneath ice up to three kilometers (two miles) thick in East Antarctica. Named after the Soviet geophysicist who detected them in 1958 during the first International Polar Year exploration, the Gamburtsev mountains are 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) long, with jagged peaks up to 2,700 meters (8,900 feet) high intersected by deep troughs and valleys.

How this chain came into being is one of the many mysteries of the great white continent.

The Gamburtsevs are located at high elevation and on a continent that geologically is ancient and long free of the tectonic upheaval that throws up mountains.

Yet their sharp edges, like Europe's Alps, clearly attest to a youthful range barely touched by the erosive forces of wind, snow and water.

An international team of scientists, reporting in the journal Nature on Wednesday, say they have the answer to the riddle.

The key, they believe, lies in a network of lakes and rifts in the bedrock, remarkably mirroring features found in the parched African tropics half a world away.

"The East Antarctic rift system resembles one of the geological wonders of the world, the East African rift system," said head investigator Fausto Ferraccioli of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

"It provides the missing piece of the puzzle that helps explain the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains. The rift system was also found to contain the largest subglacial lakes in Antarctica."

The rift network was found thanks to a second exploration of the Gamburtsevs, carried out in the last International Polar Year, which despite its name ran from 2007-2009 in order to cover the seasons at both poles.

The seven-nation project mapped the subglacial topography in central East Antarctica using two Twin Otter aircraft fitted with penetrating radar and sensors to map changes in Earth's gravitational and magnetic field.

What they propose is a narrative starting a billion years ago.

Several mini-continents collided together to form a super-continent called Gondwana, creating a mountain range at the point of impact.

Eventually, the uplifted rock collapsed under its own weight and over aeons eroded away, leaving an underlying crustal "root."

There next followed two periods of rifting, some 250 million years ago and again about 100 million years ago, in which Gondwana pulled part in tectonic agony.

This created a 3,000-km (2,000-mile) fracture in the planet's crust that extends from East Antarctica across the ocean to India.

The residual "root," combined with the rifting, helped force up the land that is now East Antarctica.

In doing so, this developed an extensive rift-valley system, whose flanks were incised by rivers -- and then by glaciers, as Earth moved from warmth into deepening chill.

Some 34 million years ago, the magnificent mountains became smothered by the East Antarctic icesheet, an area the size of Canada. Like Sleeping Beauty, they retained their eerie youthfulness.

Piecing together the story of the Gamburtsevs as a tale of mountain rejuvenation was an exercise in humility, said Carol Finn of the US Geological Survey (USGS).

"We are accustomed to thinking that mountain-building relates to a single tectonic event rather than sequences of events," she said.

"The lesson we learned about multiple events forming the Gamburtsevs may inform studies of the history of other mountain belts."

via: yahoo

At last a true protoceratops nest

At last a true protoceratops nest - “The fossil record is incredible when it preserves things,” paleontologist Jack Horner said during his talk about dinosaurs and evolution the other night, “but it’s not a complete record.” Many of the sessions and posters I have seen at the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting so far are a testament to that truth, either in a positive or negative sense.

In one of the most talked-about presentations delivered so far, McMaster University masters student Ben Novak brought up some substantial obstacles that he and his co-authors have discovered to the hypothesis that remnants of dinosaur soft tissues and proteins have been found in the fossil record. The evidence for long-lived Tyrannosaurus goo may not be as good as previously thought, Novak explained, and the record of proposed dinosaur soft tissue remnants accumulated so far should be reexamined. The fossil record may not be as kind to us with dinosaur remnants as we would like.

Then again, there were notices of some exquisite finds which will provide researchers with a way to better understand dinosaur lives. A poster created by paleontologists Jingmai O’Connor, Zhou Zhonghe and Xu Xing from Beijing’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology presented fossil evidence for a Cretaceous turducken. Inside the gut contents of the non-avian, feathered dinosaur Microraptor were the partial remains of a prehistoric bird, and the fact that the bird probably lived in the trees may provide some supporting evidence for the notion that Microraptor may have also been an arboreal animal. Like anything presented at the conference, these findings will be further researched, scrutinized and hopefully published, but such preliminary announcements illustrate the difficulties and the wonders of the fossil record.

But not all the cool announcements are exclusive to SVP. Significant new discoveries pop up regularly in journals, and one that caught my eye is the first description of a Protoceratops nest by University of Rhode Island paleontologist David Fastovsky and colleagues in the Journal of Paleontology. This discovery has been a long time coming.

During the 1920s, American Museum of Natural History expeditions to Mongolia brought back, among other things, dinosaur eggs that they attributed to the horned dinosaur Protoceratops. The researchers were so confident in this assignment that the remains of a small theropod dinosaur found in the same deposits as the supposed Protoceratops eggs was named Oviraptor: “egg thief.” Restorations of Protoceratops parents guarding their nests from Oviraptor hungry from an omelet proliferated through dinosaur books. But reexamination of those eggs during the 1990s showed that paleontologists had the story wrong. Developing dinosaurs preserved inside some eggs were actually oviraptorid dinosaurs—the “egg thief” was more likely a parent! Good thing for us Oviraptor can’t sure for defamation of character.

How Protoceratops nested once again became a mystery, as paleontologists continued to amass more evidence of oviraptorid nests. The closest thing to a Protoceratops nest was an aggregation of small, juvenile dinosaurs found in China and attributable to an evolutionary cousin known as Psittacosaurus. But the new paper by Fastovsky and colleagues documents a rare discovery than can give us some insight into how Protoceratops reproduced and grew up.

The nest in question was found in the roughly 84- to 75-million-year-old strata of the Upper Cretaceous Djadokhta Formation in central Asia. Rather than being a nest full of eggs, though, this Protoceratops nest is packed with baby dinosaurs. Fastovsky and co-authors count as many as 15 juvenile animals inside the nest, but these were not newborns. The degree of skeletal development among the little dinosaurs and a lack of eggshells within the nest indicates that they had already been in the nest for some time. Sadly, these little dinosaurs were buried alive, probably by a sandstorm.

What this discovery indicates about parental care in Protoceratops is uncertain. No adult dinosaur was found in association with the babies. Perhaps the adult continued to care for the little dinosaurs while they remained in the nest, or perhaps they left the nest and the baby dinosaurs remained together in the nest area. With any luck, future discoveries will provide more insight into these points. Nevertheless, the new find adds to the growing body of evidence that many dinosaurs stuck together as juveniles. Their tragedy is a boon for paleontologists hoping to understand dinosaur lives.

via: smithsonianmag

"Great Lakes" Discovered on Jupiter Moon?

"Great Lakes" Discovered on Jupiter Moon? - Hidden inside the thick, icy crust of Jupiter's moon Europa may be a giant saltwater body equal to the Great Lakes (map) combined, NASA announced today. Lying about 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) from the surface, the ice-trapped lake may represent the newest potentially habitable environment in the solar system—and one of the best prospects for the search for life beyond Earth.

"For decades scientists have thought Jupiter's moon Europa was a likely place for life, but now we have specific, exciting regions on the icy moon to focus our future studies," Don Blankenship, senior research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics, told National Geographic News.

Similar in size to Earth's moon, Europa is already thought to house a global, salty ocean beneath its 62-mile-thick (100-kilometer-thick) ice shell. NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which orbited Jupiter and its moons from 1995 to 2003, first discovered evidence of the ocean.

In a new study, Blankenship and his team located the lake by specifically focusing on two circular, bumpy features in decade-old Galileo images of the moon's surface. These so-called chaos terrains are a traffic jam of floating icebergs and colliding ice flows—collapsing parts of the moon's global ice shelf.

The team was able to infer the presence of Europa's lake by making a connection between processes seen on Europa and Earth. The team drew upon both observations of Antarctica's floating ice shelves and ground-penetrating radar that can peer through thick layers of ice sheets. This technology has already located dozens of subglacial lakes in Antarctica, for example.

"It's only been in recent years [that] we have been able to witness and study the breakup of ice shelves with satellites on our planet," said Blankenship, whose study appears tomorrow in the journal Nature.

"So now we are using the Earth['s] perspective to take a new look at explaining some of the paradoxes found in the Galileo data," he said.

An orbiting spacecraft equipped with ice-penetrating radar is needed to confirm and map Europa's lake in detail. NASA is currently considering such a flagship mission for launch sometime before 2022.

There probably are many more lakes under Europa's ice, Blankenship added.

Likewise, the prospects for searching for life on Europa could improve dramatically, as research suggests some of these icy lids covering the lakes may be much thinner than thought. (Read "Searching for New Earths" in National Geographic magazine.)

"It's possible for lake water to be only a few tens of meters of depth [under the moon's surface], meaning that there may be great opportunities to land and sample remnants of the salty ocean with relative ease," he said.

"We aren't talking of drilling tens of kilometers anymore—I think this will naturally create more enthusiasm for a future landing on Europa."

via: ng

Mysterious sight in China desert explained

Mysterious sight in China desert explained - Symbols that sparked wild speculation aren't messages to aliens or a street map of D.C., an expert says.Mysterious Symbols in China Desert Are Spy Satellite Targets, Expert Says. Newfound Google Maps images have revealed an array of mysterious structures and patterns etched into the surface of China's Gobi Desert. The media from mainstream to fringe has wildly speculated that they might be Chinese weapons-testing sites, satellite calibration targets, street maps of Washington, D.C., and New York City, or even messages to (or from) aliens.

It turns out that they are almost definitely used to calibrate China's spy satellites.

So says Jonathon Hill, a research technician and mission planner at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, which operates many of the cameras used during NASA's Mars missions. Hill works with images of the Martian surface taken by rovers and satellites, as well as data from Earth-orbiting NASA instruments.

The grids of zigzagging white lines seen in two of the images — the strangest of the various desert structures — are spy satellite calibration targets. Satellite cameras focus on the grids, which measure approximately 0.65 miles wide by 1.15 miles long, and use them to orient themselves in space. 

The existence of these calibration targets may seem suspicious or revelatory, but Hill said it really isn't; China was already known to operate spy satellites, and many other countries (including the United States) do so as well. In fact, the U.S. also uses calibration targets. "An example I found just now is a calibration target for the Corona spy satellites, built back in the 1960s, down in Casa Grande, Ariz., [at coordinates] 32° 48' 24.74" N, 111° 43' 21.30" W," Hill told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.

The 65-foot-wide white lines that make up China's grids are not made of reflective metal as many news sites have suggested. "They have gaps in them where they cross little natural drainage channels and the lines themselves are not perfectly filled in, with lots of little streaks and uneven coverage. I think it's safe to say these are some kind of paint," Hill said, noting that if they were made of white dust or chalk, the wind would have caused them to streak visibly.

The calibration targets are larger than might have been expected, he said, suggesting that the satellite cameras they are being used to calibrate have surprisingly poor ground resolution.

Another strange image taken not far away shows a Stonehenge-like arrangement of objects radiating outward, with fighter jets parked at its center. "This is almost certainly a calibration/test target for orbital radar instruments," Hill said. "Since a significant amount of radar return is due to differences in surface roughness, they're probably testing ways of making the areas around planes 'bumpy' enough that the planes are partially masked."

In other words, the Chinese military probably uses radar instruments to send signals down at the target from above, and determine how much radar bounces back to the instruments from the fighter jets, and how much gets scattered by the Stonehenge-like arrangement of bumps surrounding them. From this, the country's radar experts can learn how best to hide China's military operations from other countries' satellites, and possibly get clues for how to find carefully hidden objects in other countries. However, the fact that the planes are made out of metal will increase their radar return and make it very hard to completely mask them, Hill said.

Since the initial reports of these structures became widespread, industrious readers of the gadget blog Gizmodo have spotted a few more interesting structures in China. One, Hill said, appears to be a weapons testing zone, perhaps for evaluating explosives. Elsewhere, a giant grid resembles a Yagi antenna array. Instruments like this can be used for any number of things, such as weather tracking, space weather tracking and high-altitude atmospheric research.

Hill noted that most of these structures are quite closer to each other. "I think we're seeing some sort of military zone/test range, which explains the large amount of equipment and technology in an otherwise remote area," he said. "Sometimes the truth can be just as interesting, if not more so, than the conspiracies that people come up with."

via: yahoo

Mysterious sight in China desert explained

Mysterious sight in China desert explained - Symbols that sparked wild speculation aren't messages to aliens or a street map of D.C., an expert says.Mysterious Symbols in China Desert Are Spy Satellite Targets, Expert Says. Newfound Google Maps images have revealed an array of mysterious structures and patterns etched into the surface of China's Gobi Desert. The media from mainstream to fringe has wildly speculated that they might be Chinese weapons-testing sites, satellite calibration targets, street maps of Washington, D.C., and New York City, or even messages to (or from) aliens.

It turns out that they are almost definitely used to calibrate China's spy satellites.

So says Jonathon Hill, a research technician and mission planner at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, which operates many of the cameras used during NASA's Mars missions. Hill works with images of the Martian surface taken by rovers and satellites, as well as data from Earth-orbiting NASA instruments.

The grids of zigzagging white lines seen in two of the images — the strangest of the various desert structures — are spy satellite calibration targets. Satellite cameras focus on the grids, which measure approximately 0.65 miles wide by 1.15 miles long, and use them to orient themselves in space. 

The existence of these calibration targets may seem suspicious or revelatory, but Hill said it really isn't; China was already known to operate spy satellites, and many other countries (including the United States) do so as well. In fact, the U.S. also uses calibration targets. "An example I found just now is a calibration target for the Corona spy satellites, built back in the 1960s, down in Casa Grande, Ariz., [at coordinates] 32° 48' 24.74" N, 111° 43' 21.30" W," Hill told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.

The 65-foot-wide white lines that make up China's grids are not made of reflective metal as many news sites have suggested. "They have gaps in them where they cross little natural drainage channels and the lines themselves are not perfectly filled in, with lots of little streaks and uneven coverage. I think it's safe to say these are some kind of paint," Hill said, noting that if they were made of white dust or chalk, the wind would have caused them to streak visibly.

The calibration targets are larger than might have been expected, he said, suggesting that the satellite cameras they are being used to calibrate have surprisingly poor ground resolution.

Another strange image taken not far away shows a Stonehenge-like arrangement of objects radiating outward, with fighter jets parked at its center. "This is almost certainly a calibration/test target for orbital radar instruments," Hill said. "Since a significant amount of radar return is due to differences in surface roughness, they're probably testing ways of making the areas around planes 'bumpy' enough that the planes are partially masked."

In other words, the Chinese military probably uses radar instruments to send signals down at the target from above, and determine how much radar bounces back to the instruments from the fighter jets, and how much gets scattered by the Stonehenge-like arrangement of bumps surrounding them. From this, the country's radar experts can learn how best to hide China's military operations from other countries' satellites, and possibly get clues for how to find carefully hidden objects in other countries. However, the fact that the planes are made out of metal will increase their radar return and make it very hard to completely mask them, Hill said.

Since the initial reports of these structures became widespread, industrious readers of the gadget blog Gizmodo have spotted a few more interesting structures in China. One, Hill said, appears to be a weapons testing zone, perhaps for evaluating explosives. Elsewhere, a giant grid resembles a Yagi antenna array. Instruments like this can be used for any number of things, such as weather tracking, space weather tracking and high-altitude atmospheric research.

Hill noted that most of these structures are quite closer to each other. "I think we're seeing some sort of military zone/test range, which explains the large amount of equipment and technology in an otherwise remote area," he said. "Sometimes the truth can be just as interesting, if not more so, than the conspiracies that people come up with."

via: yahoo

Milky Way may be facing midlife crisis

Milky Way may be facing midlife crisis - Experts think our galaxy is transitioning from a young, dynamic region into a stagnant one. Why the Milky Way May Be Facing a Midlife Crisis. Our Milky Way galaxy and its neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, seem to be going through a midlife crisis. New research reveals that both galaxies are in the middle of transitioning from young, star-forming regions into older, stagnant ones, a transition that is revealed by the galaxies' color. Generally, such a change comes after two galaxies collide, astronomers said, but this pair seems to be making the shift on its own.

In galaxies, star formation rates and color are closely related. But, analyses of the shade of the Milky Way are surprisingly rare.

A team of Australian astronomers, led by Simon Mutch, of the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, sought to determine the color the Milky Way and the nearby spiral Andromeda galaxy.

Instead of the young, active signs they expected, the astronomers determined that both galaxies are not the typical blue or red color, but instead, fall in an in-between state of green.

Scientists have long regarded the Milky Way as a "typical" spiral galaxy, but in regards to color, the galaxy doesn't quite follow the standard model.

"Green galaxies are commonly thought to represent galaxies which are undergoing the transition from being young, dynamic, energetic, star-forming blue galaxies to being old, lethargic red galaxies," Mutch told SPACE.com in an email interview.

"In terms of a human being, this transitional phase could be thought of being akin to a midlife crisis."

Astronomers can't figure out the color of the Milky Way easily by examining it from the inside, because the position of the sun within the galaxy makes it a challenge.

"Determining the state of our own galaxy, while we're stuck inside it, is very difficult to do," Mutch said. "The phrase 'hard to see the forest for the trees' rings true here. When we look at the galaxy, much of it is obscured from our view by intervening gas and dust."

To peek inside, Mutch and his team studied the mass of stars, the rate of star formation and the brightness and color of the stars within the two galaxies. These measurements provide a snapshot of the galactic pair.

The astronomers then modeled how galaxies grow, selecting an evolutionary track that fulfilled several of the properties of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies today.

Now, instead of looking at the galaxy from the inside, the team was able to get a glimpse from the outside instead, which gave them a clear view of the color.

Star formation dominates in blue galaxies, where the glow of young stars gives a galaxy its shine. As the stars die, they explode in supernova blasts that distribute gas throughout the galaxy, which is then recycled into newborn stars.

But galaxies aren't sitting quietly; they are constantly moving in the expanding universe. When galaxies collide, gas flows into the black hole at the newly merged center.

The resulting active galactic nucleus, or AGN, is among the brightest radio signals in the universe, and can be seen across great distances. Because it consumes the gas that baby stars need, the AGN slows star formation, and the galaxy loses its blue hue and gradually shifts to red, the astronomers said.

But the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy are shifting from blue to red without a collision, which was a surprising discovery, the researchers explained.

Since they are already slowing down, when they crash into each other in the future, the collision most likely won't generate a new powerhouse.

"Our finding that both the Milky Way and Andromeda are green suggests that there will be little cold gas left in both these galaxies when they merge sometime in the next 5 billion years or so," Mutch said. "They will likely be unable to produce an AGN."

So, why is the Milky Way running out of dust? Mutch isn't sure.

Sometimes black holes will inject large amounts of energy into the surrounding region, Mutch explained. This keeps new gas from being accreted.

"However, we know from observations that the central black hole of our galaxy is not particularly active," Mutch said.

The new color "provides us with an interesting open question as to what exactly is causing the Milky Way and Andromeda to be running out of fuel for producing new stars."

via: yahoo