February 2007 - Posts
Stone Aerospace |
After a successful deep-water test, an autonomous robot is gearing up to go where no machine - or human, for that matter - has gone before. It’s all part of an experiment that could set the stage for seeking life on Europa, an ice-covered moon of Jupiter.
The autonomous underwater robot is called the Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer, or DEPTHX for short. The contraption looks like an 8-foot-wide (2.5-meter-wide), 2,860-pound (1.2-metric-ton) orange mushroom - but it has the tools and the smarts to swim down to the depths of a water-filled cavern, create its own maps of the area, then come back up with scientific samples.
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• New Scientist: Microscope discerns atoms of different elements
• Nature: Graphene steps up to silicon's challenge
• ScienceDaily: Scientists invent real-life 'tricorder'
• UW-Madison: Major number theory puzzle unlocked
NASA’s New Horizons probe is zooming past Jupiter to pick up speed on its way to Pluto, becoming just the latest spacecraft to get a slingshot boost from a planetary flyby. It won’t be the last. Mission planners are increasingly taking advantage of celestial mechanics to speed up interplanetary trips.
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String theory - the idea that the fundamental constituents of matter are tiny strings or multidimensional membranes vibrating in particular ways - currently offers the best hope of bringing together the seemingly inconsistent theories that make up modern physics. Many consider it the best path to a "theory of everything."
But there's a big problem with string theory: How do you test whether it's true? Some physicists fear that the theory can never be put to the acid test - which would place it in the realm of philosophy rather than science. Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss is fond of saying that string theory is really a "theory of anything" - and therefore, a theory of nothing.
However, other researchers claim that string theory can indeed be put to the test, by checking the data from experiments aimed at producing the stuff of the early universe. And they say the theory already has passed an initial test.
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• NBC via YouTube: Quantum physics on 'Late Night'
• Boing Boing: First sci-fi film retracked online
• Flixxy: Medieval tech support
• NBC News: Robots may save troops' lives
Jennifer French is one of the nicest cyborgs you’ll ever meet. Nine years ago, French became paralyzed from the waist down at the age of 26 - but today she’s able to stand up from her wheelchair unaided, due to pushbutton-activated electrodes implanted in her leg muscles. Now she’s looking forward to the day when all she’ll need to do is think about walking, and she’ll walk. "Imagine a world where the bionic man isn’t just a TV show," she said. Believe it or not, that world is already becoming a reality.
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• Science News: Fractal or fake?
• Flight Int'l: Will SpaceShipTwo give NASA a lift? (via RLV/STN)
• Discover: 20 things you didn't know about movie scientists
• Cogito.org: Connecting young thinkers around the world
Warner Bros. |
OK, so maybe a rancher couldn’t build an orbital rocket in his barn, as the main character does in the newly released movie "The Astronaut Farmer." But putting the technical details aside, players in the private-sector space race say the movie does reflect the feelings and the dreams of those who are trying to make the final frontier accessible to regular folks.
They have one quibble, though: The bad guys in the movie are actually the good guys in real life.
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• 'Nova' on PBS: 'Treasures of the Sunken City'
• The Economist: Why so much medical research is rot
• Slate: The future of heat-beaming weapons
• Wired's Danger Room: Mind reading? Get real
Bigelow Aerospace |
An artist's conception shows a Bigelow Aerospace complex in Earth orbit. Such a
station could serve as the precursor for prefabricated lunar bases after 2020.
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Even as Bigelow Aerospace gears up for launching its second prototype space station into orbit, the company has set its sights on something much, much bigger: a project to assemble full-blown space villages at a work site between Earth and the moon, then drop them to the lunar surface, ready for immediate move-in.
In an exclusive interview this week, Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow confirmed that his company has been talking about the concept with NASA – and that the first earthly tests of the techniques involved would take place later this year. The scenario he sketched out would essentially make Bigelow a general contractor for the final frontier.
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• The New Yorker: The origami lab
• The Guardian: Einstein + DNA = Breakthrough
• 3-D pictures in German jigglevision (via GeekPress)
• PhysOrg: See Superbot. See Superbot go. Go, Superbot, go.
Burt Rutan, the iconoclastic aerospace designer behind Virgin Galactic's fleet of suborbital spaceships, is fond of saying that NASA (or "Naysay," as he jokingly pronounces it) stands for "No Adult Supervision Apparent." His California-based company, Scaled Composites, and the Virgin Galactic team have been cast as nimble mammals, running rings around the dinosaurs of the traditional space establishment. Was there ever an instance of mammals and dinosaurs helping each other out? Well, in the space business there is: Today NASA announced an agreement with Virgin Galactic to collaborate on items ranging from spacesuits to spaceships.
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• Nature: The state of cloning, 10 years after Dolly
• Popular Mechanics: Going back to the moon ... for good
• Weekly Standard: 'Civilization' and its contents
• Discovery.com: Biggest hurdle to space exploration? Humans!
• Got deep questions? Visit our discussion board
The bad press over the "astronaut love triangle" has made this a rough month for the straight-arrow image that NASA's astronauts used to have. But if you're looking for an antidote to tabloid toxicity, one woman you could turn to is Eileen Collins, NASA's first woman shuttle commander.
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• InfoWorld: 12 ideas so crazy they just might work (via Slashdot)
• ABC (Australia): Strange lights seen | More at SpaceWeather.com
• BBC: Freeze 'condemned Neanderthals'
• Popular Science: The prophet of garbage
The digital world has made it embarrassingly easy to fake a photograph, as illustrated by the doctored Beirut-bombing photo, the bogus Kerry-and-Fonda pairing and the Katie Couric slim-down plan. The good news is that digital tools are providing new ways to detect image manipulation - in fact, a Dartmouth College researcher says he's helping The Associated Press develop a system for finding fakes on the fly. The bad news is that this could mark just one more phase in an "arms race" between the fakers and the fake-fighters.
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• Science News: The small world inside your brain
• Scientific American: Mapping the cancer genome
• N.Y. Times: The Sputnik (maybe) Meets Beatnik Tour
• The Space Review: The other side of the Fermi paradox
NASA |
Today there are more than 100 entries on NASA's list of asteroids that just might possibly hit Earth, even if it's less than a one-in-a-million chance. One of them, called Apophis, currently has a risk rating of 1 in 45,000 - serious enough to get people thinking about how to avoid a "cosmic Katrina." Chances are that Apophis will soon no longer be considered a threat, but what about those others? And what about the thousands of space rocks that are expected to be added to the list over the next few years?
Somewhere out there is a killer asteroid with our name on it, and scientists, astronauts, diplomats and space law experts are just starting to draw up a plan for dealing with it - that is, once we figure out which asteroid it is.
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• 'Nova' on PBS: 'America's Stone Age Explorers'
• Discovery.com: Monster tornado could strike cities
• NASA: Commercial space partners complete milestones
• Join the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute
Hot on the heels of Darwin Day, scientists following the cultural debate over teaching evolution say focusing on Charles Darwin might be exactly the wrong thing to do. And based on the different experiences in the United States and Europe, some say the controversy has as much to do with the sorry state of religious literacy as with the sorry state of science literacy. These and other bits of unconventional wisdom were passed along today during a trans-Atlantic meeting of the minds at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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• Chandra: 'Pillars of Creation' seen in X-ray vision
• New Scientist: Spacesuits could generate power
• Slashdot: Open Sourcers update NASA's World Wind
• PNNL: Googling brain proteins with 3-D goggles
Outer-space romance has been getting a bad rap lately, thanks to an astronaut love triangle that has generated enough data traffic to draw the attention of extraterrestrials if they're watching. But all that bad press hasn't deterred a few couples from trying to score final-frontier firsts for love and marriage. "You’re always going to have the positive side, and you’re always going have the negative side, in space just like you do on Earth," said Cindy Cashman, a motivational speaker who is angling to become the first bride in space.
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• Quick! Send a valentine to the moon | ... or into orbit
• Inside Science News Service: The physics of a valentine treat
• Discovery.com: Zoos offer a look at hot animal love
• ESA: A stellar valentine from the Hubble Space Telescope
Bigelow Aerospace |
Seven months after launching its first inflatable space module, Bigelow Aerospace says the orbiting Genesis 1 module has proven itself to be surprisingly resilient and reliable. The North Las Vegas-based company has already hinted that the successors to the Genesis could serve as turnkey space stations, hotels or sports complexes in orbit - or even as pumped-up habitats for the moon and Mars. Now Bigelow is promising to be more specific about how it plans to make its space program profitable.
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• New Scientist: Satellite could see shadow of extra dimensions
• Technology Review: Building a cortex out of silicon
• BBC: Liftoff for Chinese space potato (via Slashdot)
• Discovery.com: Smart door recognizes people
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Arizona |
A dusty disk glows red at the center of the Helix Nebula in this color-coded view.
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The Helix Nebula is a popular pin-up for astronomy fans, thanks to clouds of gas and debris that make the planetary nebula look like the eye of God - or, for fans of "The Lord of the Rings," the eye of Sauron. The Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope have both taken turns producing glorious views of the Helix. Today, the Spitzer team released an even more dazzling infrared view - and as a result, there's a new dust-up over the old eye.
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Can a brain scan tell what's on your mind? Can your mind change your brain? And what is this thing called consciousness? Over the past week or so, cerebral subjects like these been popping up in a variety of contexts: Researchers report that they can indeed analyze magnetic-resonance readings to guess what experimental subjects intend to do before they do it (shades of precrime!). Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal's Sharon Begley discusses her new book, "Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain," with Earth & Sky. (You can read a PDF excerpt on National Public Radio's Science Friday Web site.) And The New Yorker profiles the work of consciousness researchers Patricia and Paul Churchland. (You'll have to check out that article at the library; it's not online.)
If you're into the whole scientific debate over consciousness, you could preorder next month's scheduled release of Douglas Hofstadter's latest book, "I Am a Strange Loop." But in the meantime, get an overview on the topic by checking out Susan Blackmore's "Conversations on Consciousness," a series of interviews with top philosophers and neuroscientists. Let's call this January's belated selection for the Cosmic Log Used-Book Club, our monthly effort to highlight books with cosmic themes that can usually be found at your local library or secondhand-book shop.
Post your suggestions for this month's CLUB Club selection, and if I choose yours as the next cosmic book of the month, I'll send you either Richard Restak's "The New Brain" or Peter Ward's "Life as We Do Not Know It."
• Science News: Vaccines against vice
• Popular Science: Mystery Science Theater
• The Times of London: Cosmic cause for climate change?
• The Independent: The Nazi quest for the Holy Grail (via Daily Grail)
AP file |
The calendar boasts plenty of religious holidays, but how many scientific holidays can you name? One of the red-letter days is coming up on Monday, when more than 850 events around the globe will mark Darwin Day, the 198th anniversary of the evolutionary theorist's birth. You can hear about Charles Darwin and the revolution he sparked from hundreds of church pulpits this weekend, as part of a program called Evolution Sunday.
Are those godless secularists trying to take on the trappings of religion? Not at all, says Robert Stephens, one of the organizers behind Darwin Day. "We're not trying to make a saint out of Darwin," he said. "We're just using him as a symbol." Stephens and his colleagues say this long holiday weekend is as good a time as any to turn science into a cause for celebration.
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• The New Yorker: Darwin's neglected double
• 'Nova' on PBS: 'The Last Great Ape'
• The Economist: Roses are blue, violets are red
• The Loom: Ulcers of the world, unite
NASA / JPL |
Cassini's radar readings reveal a crater (left) and a dune field (right) on Titan.
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There's been a lot of weirdness in the space world this week - but if want to go beyond this planet for something really weird, the Saturnian moon Titan is a good place to look. Over the past three years, the Cassini spacecraft has been looking quite a bit, using several methods to cut through Titan's smoggy shroud. The piggyback Huygens probe descended through the murk and spotted channels that may have been cut by flowing methane. Meanwhile, instruments aboard Cassini itself peered through the haze to map strange dark areas that may be fields of hydrocarbon-laced sand.
Now a panorama from Cassini's radar imager has provided a wide-angle view of the dune fields, plus one of the few craters seen on the surface.
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• NASA: Opportunity rover passes the 10K mark on Mars
• RLV / Space Transport News: SpaceX launch delayed until March
• Nature: Physicists make light wave vanish, then reappear elsewhere
• Purdue: Portable generator turns trash into electricity (via Slashdot)
• Improbable.com: The yet still further continuing adventures of Troy
For decades, astronauts have been built up to be larger-than-life heroes - and now we have a larger-than-life space scandal that has at least temporarily pushed Lindsay, Paris and Britney below the fold. Britney may not always wear panties, but let me know when she starts wearing diapers.
The buzz over the astronaut love triangle - focusing on Lisa Nowak, an astronaut who went after the purported girlfriend of fellow astronaut Bill Oefelein - is quickly entering its second phase: Does this episode point to the excesses of a "superstar culture" at NASA, where a blind eye is too often turned toward the indiscretions of its space fliers? Or does it merely prove that astronauts are people (and therefore sometimes unhinged), too?
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If an undersea volcano goes off in the middle of the ocean, does it make a sound? Oceanographers used to think it didn't, but now it sounds as if it does. In fact, fish may well heed the rumbling of a sea volcano and swim around it to avoid becoming bouillabaisse. Those are the conclusions of a study freshly published in Science. Check out the University of Washington's report to watch the video and hear the audio of a black smoker in full wail - then dig into the rest of today's scientific stew:
• Univ. of Washington: Good vibrations may keep fish out of hot water
• Sydney Morning Herald: DNA tests for China's legionary lore
• Scientific American: How your brain tells time
• BBC: 'Super-scope' opens for business
Lolita Parker Jr. / WGBH |
When American history books mention famous black scientists, the list usually doesn't go much further than botanist George Washington Carver, the former slave who did wonders for the peanut. Why aren't there more on the list? Over the decades, there's been a lot of talk about racial differences in intelligence scores, paralleling the debate over the gender gap in math and science. But the case of industrial chemist Percy Julian, a pioneer in the production of synthetic alkaloids and steroids, illustrates how racial stereotypes and downright discrimination served to dull black brilliance.
Perhaps you're asking, "Percy who?" Well, that's the whole point of a public-TV documentary premiering this week, titled "Forgotten Genius." The two-hour "Nova" presentation, timed to coincide with Black History Month, is the first in-depth program to tell Julian's story. And it's a tale that may well inspire future generations of brainy African-Americans.
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Over the next few days, I'll be involved in a writing project that will take me away from my MSNBC.com duties. So the Log entries will likely be limited to a daily dose of science, technology, exploration and speculation from elsewhere on the Internet. Here's today's recommended intake:
• Science News: Revisiting the nuclear winter
• PhysOrg: Ocean planets on the brink of detection (via Slashdot)
• The Guardian: Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study
• Scientific American: 16 mind-blowing microphotographs
When Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher slams into a running back during Sunday’s Super Bowl, he’ll experience a force of 10 G’s – more acceleration than astronauts feel during a rough landing. When two players collide helmet to helmet, the force can be the equivalent of getting conked on the head by a 16-pound bowling ball dropped from a height of 12 feet. And when a receiver catches a “bullet pass,” it’s the equivalent of stopping four actual bullets fired from a .44 Magnum.
Those are just a few of the science facts you can snack on during the big game, courtesy of University of Nebraska physicist Tim Gay, former football player and the author of “Football Physics: The Science of the Game.” Gay has a knack for making the gridiron game sound a lot more painful than it looks.
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As experts track more and more of the debris created by last month's Chinese anti-satellite test, they have determined that the incident will likely rank as the world's biggest case of space littering. Every day they're spotting additional pieces of the broken-apart weather satellite, which Beijing shot down Jan. 11 with one of its own ground-based missiles.
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• Discovery.com: Clothes made to smell (in a good way)
• Seed Magazine: Our expanded view
• The Economist: Local heroes in African science
• Science @ NASA: 181 things to do on the moon
It doesn't take an economist to come up with a betting strategy for this weekend’s Super Bowl: It’s the Colts by a touchdown. But based on his years of studying prediction markets, Wharton School economist Justin Wolfers does have some advice for the uninitiated bettors (I believe the scientific term is “morons”) who are entering the market. He also has some tips for sounding like a diehard football fan around the water cooler, even if you can’t tell Peyton Manning from Gary Payton – as well as some color commentary on the economic lessons taught by sports predictions.
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• YouTube / NASA Watch: 'Monkeys in Outer Space'
• Improbable Research / The Guardian: Fizzy logic
• New Scientist / Audi: Win a trip to space
• PhysOrg: The evolution of gratitude (via Daily Grail)
