New Comet Lovejoy Dazzles Holiday Sky-Watchers

Comet Lovejoy seems to dive into the sunrise as seen from Cape Schanck in Melbourne, Australia, last Friday.

Officially known as C/2011 W3, comet Lovejoy was discovered by amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy of Brisbane, Australia, in late November. The ball of ice and dust was identified as a Kreutz sungrazer, a family of comets thought to be fragments from a larger body that broke up centuries ago.

Astronomers predicted comet Lovejoy would be destroyed when it made a close pass by the sun late on December 15, eastern time. But to the surprise of many—including its discoverer—the comet survived its solar encounter and reappeared after a few hours.

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Photograph by Alex Cherney, TWAN

New "Deep Fried" Planets Found — Survivors of Star Death

An artist's impression of planets orbiting close to a hot subdwarf star.

Illustration courtesy S. Charpinet

Two newfound Earth-size planets are probably the charred survivors of a near-death encounter with their fading parent star, scientists say.

The planetary pair, discovered using NASA's Kepler space telescope, are about 0.76 and 0.87 times Earth's radius, making the alien worlds the smallest planets detected so far around an active star, other than our sun.

But the planets didn't start small—astronomers think the worlds were once gas giants, akin to Jupiter or Saturn, that were stripped down after being swallowed by their swollen, aging parent. more here

The Public's appetite for Astronomy

Paul Crowther is a professor of astrophysics in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at The University of Sheffield. 

 

Has anyone else noticed that the mainstream media have gone slightly science gaga? Last week, Higgs-teria attracted front pages in broadsheets and lead stories in news bulletins, even though no more than “tantalizing hints” of the Higgs were announced. Before that, we had plenty of stories salivating over Kepler 22b, a.k.a. Earth 2.0, even though most exoplanet hunters were rather more cautious in their interpretation. Indeed, the Kepler team themselves only claimed Kepler 22b was a “milestone on the road to finding Earth’s twin.” Only yesterday the first genuinely Earth-sized planets were reported, although they wouldn’t resemble our planet in any other respect, given their close proximity to their host star. And not to mention the shenanigans with those pesky Italian faster-than-light neutrinos that spurred nuclear physicist, Jim Al-Khalili, into promising to eat his boxer shorts on live TV should the result be confirmed. - the interview here

Image : Neutrino experiment

Comet Lovejoy

Once again, space station commander Dan Burbank captured the elegant "sungrazing" comet hanging above the Earth's horizon. This view was photographed on Dec. 22, the day after Burbank's first viewing session on Wednesday.

Stunning stratification of the Earth's atmosphere is very clear in this photograph. Also, the two tails of Comet Lovejoy are visible. As with all comet tails, there are two distinct types -- a dust tail and ion tail. The dust tail will often form a curved trajectory, whereas the ion tail will point directly away from the sun, aligning itself with the sun's interplanetary magnetic field.

from here








Image credit: NASA/Dan Burbank

The Surprising Subject of the First Book of Photographs - Algae

If you do not know what was about the first book of photographs published, Scientific American will let you know.

In 1843 Anna Atkins, the daughter of John George Children, a scientist who worked in the British Museum’s Natural History Department was taught by her father more about science that most girls could expect to learn in those days, and it seems to have sparked a life-long love in her.

She and her father knew Sir John Herschel, the inventor of the cyanotype, and he, or someone who knew him, *cough*, exposed her to the new technique in about 1842 or 43. more here. 

Algae - Anna Atkins - 1843

Mercury's magnetic field

Focus on Mercury: The Messenger space probe - which took this image - has confirmed that the innermost planet has a magnetic field 150 times weaker than that of Earth. Researchers have now found an explanation for this. © NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Mercury, the smallest of the eight planets with a diameter of 4900 kilometres and the closest to the Sun, looks more like the Moon than the Earth from the outside. It is the only rocky planet that has a global magnetic field like Earth. But why is its magnetic field so much weaker than Earth’s? Scientists at the Technische Universität Braunschweig and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research have now presented a new explanation: the solar wind counteracts Mercury’s internal dynamo and thus weakens its magnetic field. more here

Stonehenge Stones Were Moved from Wales

 Stonehenge

Some of the volcanic bluestones in the inner ring of Stonehenge officially match an outcrop in Wales that's 160 miles (257 kilometers) from the world-famous site, geologists announced this week. See Wales pictures.

The discovery leaves two big ideas standing about how the massive pieces of the monument arrived at Salisbury Plain: entirely by human hand, or partly by glacier.

As it looks today, 5,000-year-old Stonehenge has an outer ring of 20- to 30-ton sandstone blocks and an inner ring and horseshoe of 3- to 5-ton volcanic bluestone blocks. See Stonehenge pictures

The monument's larger outer blocks, called the Sarsen stones, were likely quarried some 20 to 30 miles (32 to 48 kilometers) away in what's now England, where sandstone is a common material. more here

Outcrop in Wales

National Geographic : Top 10 Discoveries

1 - Area 51 Spy Plane, Intact - here

Suspended upside down, a titanium A-12 spy-plane prototype is prepped for radar testing at Area 51 in the late 1950s.
After a rash of declassifications, details of Cold War workings at the Nevada base, which to this day does not officially exist, are coming to light—including never before released images of an A-12 crash and its cover-up, National Geographic News reported in May.

Photograph from Roadrunners Internationale via Pangloss Films

2 - Rare "Cyclops" Shark Found - here

An extremely rare cyclops shark has been confirmed in Mexico, scientists announced in October.




Photograph courtesy Marcela Bejarano-Álvarez




3 - Yellowstone's Supervolcano Bulged - here

Yellowstone National Park's supervolcano recently took a deep "breath," causing miles of ground to rise dramatically, scientists reported in January.

 
Photograph by Mark Thiessen, National Geographic

4. Biggest Crocodile Caught? - here

Caught alive after a three-week hunt, a roughly 21-foot-long (6.4-meter-long) saltwater crocodile caught in the Philippines may be the largest crocodile yet captured, officials said in September. 

Photograph from Reuters

5. New Fungi Make "Zombie" Ants - here


A stalk of the newfound fungus species Ophiocordyceps camponoti-balzani grows out of a "zombie" ant's head in a Brazilian rain forest.
Originally thought to be a single species, called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the fungus is actually four distinct species—all of which can "mind control" ants—scientists announced in March.

Photograph courtesy David Hughes

6. Biggest Great White Shark Caught - here

Talk about a big fish: An expedition crew hauled up—and released—the biggestgreat white shark yet caught, a team said in May.

The 17.9-foot-long (5.5-meter-long) male behemoth was found off Mexico's Guadalupe Island in fall 2009.

Photograph courtesy National Geographic Channel

7. Planet at Right Distance for Life - here

A possible Earth twin was confirmed orbiting a sunlike star 600 light-years away. Discovered by the Kepler space mission, the new planet—dubbed Kepler-22b—is the first world smaller than Neptune mission scientists have found in the middle of its star's habitable zone.

Illustration courtesy Caltech/NASA

 
8. Lost Maya City Revealed - here

Archaeologist Brigitte Kovacevich crouches near a looters' tunnel inside the pyramid at the Head of Stone, an ancient Maya city that's finally coming into focus.Using GPS and electronic distance-measurement technology, the researchers plotted the locations and elevations of a seven-story-tall pyramid, an astronomical observatory, a ritual ball court, several stone residences, and other structures. Photograph courtesy Michael G. Callaghan

9 - Blackbeard's Sword? - here

Photograph courtesy Wendy M. Welsh, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

Could this partly gilded hilt have held Blackbeard's sword? There's no way to know for sure, though it was found amid the North Carolina wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge, the flagship of the infamous 18th-century pirate.

Photograph courtesy Wendy M. Welsh, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

10. Possible Earthlike Planet Spotted - here

Illustration courtesy L. Calçada, ESOA new planet found about 36 light-years away could be one of the most Earthlike worlds yet—if it has enough clouds. The rocky planet's discovery became the tenth most visited National Geographic News story of 2011.

Illustration courtesy L. Calçada, ESO

Head Features Diversified before Body Shapes and Types

Two radiations of ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii), Carboniferous forms (facing left) and acanthomorph teleosts (facing right) underwent distinct cranial (feeding) and later postcranial (habitat) stages in trait diversification. Credit: Photographs by Lauren Sallan and Matt Friedman

By analyzing the physical features of fossil fish that diversified around the time of two separate extintion events, scientists from the University of Chicago and the University of Oxford found that head features diversified before body shapes and types. The discovery disputes previous models of adaptive radiations and suggests that feeding-related evolutionary pressures are the initial drivers of diversification.

"It seems like resources, feeding and diet are the most important factors at the initial stage," said lead author Lauren Sallan, graduate student in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago. "Strange heads show up first – crushing jaws, animals with big teeth, with long jaws – but they're all pretty much attached to the same body." more here

Kepler 20E and Kepler 20F

A size comparison of two new planets with Earth and Venus.

Diagram courtesy Caltech/NASA

Two new planets found orbiting a sunlike star are the first truly Earth-size worlds discovered by NASA's Kepler Mission, scientists announced today.

The find comes on the heels of Kepler's first potentially Earthlike planet orbiting squarely within its star's water-friendly "Goldilocks zone"— the region that's not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to exist on a planet's surface.

Designated Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, the two new planets are comparable in size to Earth and Venus. At 0.87 times the size of Earth, Kepler-20e is slightly smaller than Venus, while Kepler-20f is 1.03 times Earth's radius.

But both new extrasolar planets—or exoplanets—orbit their star much too closely to be within the habitable zone. In fact, the entire Kepler-20 system is believed to contain at least five planets all orbiting their star within a distance smaller than that between Mercury and the sun.

This orbital distance makes the planets very hot. For instance, Kepler-20e is estimated to have an average surface temperature of 1,400ºF (760ºC), while Kepler-20f is a "cooler" 800ºF (427ºC).
By contrast, Earth's average surface temperature is 57.2ºF (14°C).

Still, this is the first confirmation of truly Earth-size planets by the Kepler team—a key goal of the overall mission.more here

Fossils of an extinct giant have been dicovered in Tasmania

An artist's impression of a dicynodont living in the lush forests of its time.
Credit: Pat Rick/Kadimaraka

Fossils found in Tasmania have scientists convinced the dicynodont, considered a distant ancestor of mammals, once roamed Australia and survived the Great Extinction.
The 250 million-year-old remains of the 'mammal-like reptile' were discovered by a nature-loving Hobart couple out on a walk.

The bull-sized creature, which scientists say had 10cm-long tusks and somewhat resembled a giant wombat, lived through an event sometimes called the Great Dying between the Permian and Triassic periods.

The disaster wiped out 90 per cent of land-based life and 70 per cent of that in the seas. The dicynodont pre-dated dinosaurs by 30 million years and became extinct around 20 million years ago.more here

Complex Molecules on Pluto's Surface

 Fotogr: Hubble

The new and highly sensitive Cosmic Origins Spectrograph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a strong ultraviolet-wavelength absorber on Pluto's surface, providing new evidence that points to the possibility of complex hydrocarbon and/or nitrile molecules lying on the surface, according to a paper recently published in the Astronomical Journal by researchers from Southwest Research Institute and Nebraska Wesleyan University.more here

Is Jupiter Eating Its Own Heart?

Jupiter's central core is eroding, but no one knows how fast.

Credit: Voyager 2/NASA/JPL/USGS

There's a core problem around Jupiter, our solar system largest planet. Cientists say that Jupiter is being a victim of his own sucess. 

This gas Giant, which is formed mainly of hydrogen and helium, is suffering an enormous pressure from the planet's gravity which squeezes most of the hydrogen into a metallic fluid that conducts electricity.

The hydrogen and helium which surround a central core, made of iron, rock, and ice weighs roughly 10 times as much as Earth, and is considered a small component in a planet that weighs 318 Earths.

Planetary scientist David Stevenson, (California Institute of Technology), says it’s important to look into this problem because scientists want to understand how Jupiter has changed over time in its core mass.

Calculations will have implications far beyond Jupiter. Many of the planets orbiting other stars are more massive than Jupiter, so their cores are even hotter. "For these planets, core erosion would be faster," says Militzer, which means gas giants several times heavier than Jupiter might be completely coreless, changing the view scientists have long held of these distant worlds.

The all news here

Neanderthal's Genome and the Human Species

 Photo: Mac Nelly

According to Brian Handwerk, Neanderthalers may have been victims of love, or at least of interspecies breading with modern humans.

Climate changes may have been one of the main reasons which gattered different species on an increasingly narrow territory which, eventually, led Neanderthalers to mate with the Human Specie. more here

Having a fragile DNA and being in small number Neanderthaler's genome may have been absorbed into the Homo Sapiens population which was in greater number.

Studies have concluded that most humans have as much as 1 to 4% of Neanderthal's genetic make up.more here

The Human Planet - BBC series

The Jaguar

The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.

The parrots shrick as if they were in fire, or strut

Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.

Fatigue with indolence, tiger and lion

Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor's coil

Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or

Stinks of sleeps from the breathing straw.

It might be painted on a nursery wall.

But who runslike the rest past these arrives

At a cage where the crowds stands, stares, mesmerized,

As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged

Through prison darkness after drills of his eyes

On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom-

The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,

By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear -

He spins from the bars, but there's no cage to him

More than to the visionary his cell:

His stride is wildness of freedom:

The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.

Over the cage floor the horizons comes.

Ted Hughes in The Hawk in The Rain

Gama Ray Burst - The Power of a Colapsing Star

Whenever STARS perish or collide and black holes form, there's an enormous amont of energy reliased in the atmosphere. That energy, is called Game Ray Burst and it's one of the most powerful forces of the universe. Cientists have been studying it for some time, focusing satelites to every eminent colliding stars trying to understand the impact which such explotions would have on our Gallaxy. If something like this happened not very far from our gallaxy, the ozone layer would be destroyed so as life on Earth.

Welcoming myself

When I heard the news, about some GAMA RAY BURSTS I thought it was an excellent opportunity to start a new blog which I was planning for quite a long time.

The news about the begining of the Universe and the birth of mankind have always fascinated me, so this blog will work out like a personal diary, collecting, in a most simple way, those numerous news which have captivated my attention for quite a while.