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2013 in science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...2013_in_science

scibyte114 2013YearInReview

shared by Mars Base on 23 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Morocco in 2011, and report that it is a new type of Mars rock with an unusually high water content.[8][9][10] American researchers state that a gene associated with active personality traits is also linked to
  • Astronomers affiliated with the Kepler space observatory announce the discovery of KOI-172.02, an Earth-like exoplanet candidate which orbits a star similar to the Sun in the habitable zone
  • 13 January – Massachusetts doctors invent a pill-sized medical scanner that can be safely swallowed by patients, allowing the esophagus to be more easily scanned for disease
  • ...101 more annotations...
  • 17 January – NASA announces that the Kepler space observatory has developed a reaction wheel issue
  • 2 January A study by Caltech astronomers reports that the Milky Way Galaxy contains at least one planet per sta
  • 3 January
  • 8 January
  • 20 January – Scientists prove that quadruple-helix DNA is present in human cells
  • 25 January
  • An international team of scientists develops a functional light-based "tractor beam", which allows individual cells to be selected and moved at will. The invention could have broad applications in medicine and microbiology
  • 30 January – South Korea conducts its first successful orbital launch
  • 6 February
  • Astronomers report that 6% of all dwarf stars – the most common stars in the known universe – may host Earthlike planets
  • Scientists discover live bacteria in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Whillans
  • American scientists finish drilling down to the subglacial Lake Whillans, which is buried around 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) under the Antarctic ice
  • 10 February NASA's Curiosity Mars rover uses its onboard drill to obtain the first deep rock sample ever retrieved from the surface of another plane
  • 15 February A 10-ton meteoroid impacts in Chelyabinsk, Russia, producing a powerful shockwave and injuring over 1,000 people
  • 28 February
  • Astronomers make the first direct observation of a protoplanet forming in a disk of gas and dust around a distant sta
  • A third radiation belt is discovered around the Eart
  • 1 March – Boston Dynamics demonstrates an updated version of its BigDog military robot
  • 3 March – American scientists report that they have cured HIV in an infant by giving the child a course of antiretroviral drugs very early in its life. The previously HIV-positive child has reportedly exhibited no HIV symptoms since its treatment, despite having no further medication for a year
  • researchers replace 75 percent of an injured patient's skull with a precision 3D-printed polymer replacement implant. In future, damaged bones may routinely be replaced with custom-manufactured implants
  • 7 March
  • A study concludes that heart disease was common among ancient mummies
  • 11 March
  • 12 March NASA's Curiosity rover finds evidence that conditions on Mars were once suitable for microbial life after analyzing the first drilled sample of Martian rock, "John Klein" rock at Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater. The rover detected water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, chloromethane and dichloromethane. Related tests found results consistent with the presence of smectite clay minerals
  • 14 March CERN scientists confirm, with a very high degree of certainty, that a new particle identified by the Large Hadron Collider in July 2012 is the long-sought Higgs boson
  • 18 March
  • NASA reports evidence from the Curiosity rover on Mars of mineral hydration, likely hydrated calcium sulfate, in several rock samples, including the broken fragments of "Tintina" rock and "Sutton Inlier" rock as well as in the veins and nodules in other rocks like "Knorr" rock and "Wernicke" rock.[177] Analysis using the rover's DAN instrument provided evidence of subsurface water, amounting to as much as 4% water content, down to a depth of 60 cm
  • 27 March – A potential new weight loss method is discovered, after a 20% weight reduction was achieved in mice simply by having their gut microbes altered.
  • NASA scientists report that hints of dark matter may have been detected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station
  • 3 April
  • 15 April A functional lab-grown kidney is successfully transplanted into a live rat in Massachusetts General Hospital
  • 18 April – NASA announces the discovery of three new Earthlike exoplanets – Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, and Kepler-69c – in the habitable zones of their respective host stars, Kepler-62 and Kepler-69. The new exoplanets, which are considered prime candidates for possessing liquid water and thus potentially life, were identified using the Kepler spacecraft
  • 21 April The Antares rocket, a commercial launch vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, successfully conducts its maiden flight
  • After years of unpowered glide tests, Scaled Composites' SpaceShipTwo hybrid spaceplane successfully conducts its first rocket-powered fligh
  • 29 April
  • 1 May IBM scientists release A Boy and His Atom, the smallest stop-motion animation ever created, made by manipulating individual carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunnelling microscope
  • A new study finds that children whose parents suck on their pacifiers have fewer allergies later in life
  • NASA reports that a reaction wheel on the Kepler space observatory may be malfunctioning and may result in the premature termination of the observatory's search for Earth-like
  • 15 May
  • 16 May Water dating back 2.6 billion years, by far the oldest ever found, is discovered in a Canadian mine
  • 27 May Four-hundred-year-old bryophyte specimens left behind by retreating glaciers in Canada are brought back to life in the laboratory
  • 29 May
  • Russian scientists announce the discovery of mammoth blood and well-preserved muscle tissue from an adult female specimen in Siberia
  • A new treatment to "reset" the immune system of multiple sclerosis patients is reported to reduce their reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent
  • 4 June
  • During the Shenzhou 10 mission, Chinese astronauts deliver the country's first public video broadcast from the orbiting Tiangong-1 space laboratory
  • 20 June
  • China's Shenzhou 10 manned spacecraft returns safely to Earth, having conducted China's longest manned space mission to date
  • 26 June
  • 20 June
  • 20 June
  • 6 July
  • Scientists report that a wide variety of microbial life exists in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Vostok, which has been buried in ice for around 15 million years. Samples of the lake's water obtained by drilling were found to contain traces of DNA from over 3,000 tiny organisms
  • 15 July
  • ASA engineers successfully test a rocket engine with a fully 3D-printed injector
  • 19 July
  • NASA scientists publish the results of a new analysis of the atmosphere of Mars, reporting a lack of methane around the landing site of the Curiosity rover
  • Earth is photographed from the outer solar system. NASA's Cassini spacecraft releases images of the Earth and Moon taken from the orbit of Saturn
  • 29 July – Astronomers discover the first exoplanet orbiting a brown dwarf, 6,000 light years from Earth
  • exoplanet
  • 7 January
  • Astronomers
  • report that "at least 17 billion" Earth-sized exoplanets are estimated to reside in the Milky Way Galaxy
  • 20 February
  • NASA reports the discovery of Kepler-37b, the smallest exoplanet yet known, around the size of Earth's Moon
  • 10 June
  • Scientists report that the earlier claims of an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a star close to our Solar System, may not be supported by astronomical evidence
  • 25 June – In an unprecedented discovery, astronomers detect three potentially Earthlike exoplanets orbiting a single star in the Gliese 667
  • 11 July For the first time, astronomers determine the true colour of a distant exoplanet. HD 189733 b, a searing-hot gas giant, is said to be a vivid blue colour, most likely due to clouds of silica in its atmosphere
  • NASA announces that the failing Kepler space observatory may never fully recover. New missions are being considered
  • 15 August
  • Phase I clinical trials of SAV001 – the first and only preventative HIV vaccine – have been successfully completed with no adverse effects in all patients. Antibody production was greatly boosted after vaccination
  • 3 September
  • 12 September NASA announces that Voyager I has officially left the Solar System, having travelled since 1977
  • NASA scientists report the Mars Curiosity rover detected "abundant, easily accessible" water (1.5 to 3 weight percent) in soil samples
  • 26 September
  • In addition, the rover found two principal soil types: a fine-grained mafic type and a locally derived, coarse-grained felsic type
  • mafic
  • as associated with hydration of the amorphous phases of the soi
  • perchlorates, the presence of which may make detection of life-related organic molecules difficult, were found at the Curiosity rover landing site
  • earlier at the more polar site of the Phoenix lander) suggesting a "global distribution of these salts
  • Astronomers have created the first cloud map of an exoplanet, Kepler-7b
  • 30 September
  • 8 October The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"
  • 16 October Russian authorities raise a large fragment, 654 kg (1,440 lb) total weight, of the Chelyabinsk meteor, a Near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013, from the bottom of Chebarkul lake.
  • Researchers have shown that a fundamental reason for sleep is to clean the brain of toxins. This is achieved by brain cells shrinking to create gaps between neurons, allowing fluid to wash through
  • 17 October
  • 22 October – Astronomers have discovered the 1,000th known exoplanet
  • 4 November - Astronomers report, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy
  • 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars
  • 5 November – India launches its first Mars probe, Mangalyaan
  • The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has made the first discovery of very high energy neutrinos on Earth which had originated from beyond our Solar System
  • 21 November
  • 1 December – China launches the Chang'e 3 lunar rover mission, with a planned landing on December 16
  • 3 December – The Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence of water in the atmospheres of five distant exoplanets: HD 209458b, XO-1b, WASP-12b, WASP-17b and WASP-19b
  • 9 December NASA scientists report that the planet Mars had a large freshwater lake (which could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life) based on evidence from the Curiosity rover studying Aeolis Palus near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater
  • 12 December NASA announces, based on studies with the Hubble Space Telescope, that water vapor plumes were detected on Europa, moon of Jupiter
  • 14 December – The unmanned Chinese lunar rover Chang'e 3 lands on the Moon, making China the third country to achieve a soft landing there
  • 18 December
  • nomers have spotted what appears to be the first known "exomoon", located 1,800 light years away
  • 20 December – NASA reports that the Curiosity rover has successfully upgraded, for the third time since landing, its software programs and is now operating with version 11. The new software is expected to provide the rover with better robotic arm and autonomous driving abilities. Due to wheel wear, a need to drive more carefully, over the rough terrain the rover is currently traveling on its way to Mount Sharp, was also reported
Mars Base

Space Shuttle Discovery Enters Smithsonian for Museum Display | NASA Shuttle Retirement... - 0 views

www.space.com/covery-smithsonian-museum.html

scibyte43 shuttle discovery AprMedia

shared by Mars Base on 20 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Mars Base on 20 Apr 12
     
    ted with technological and scientific achievements, including the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit in 1990 and the deployment of the Ulysses solar probe the same year. The fleet leader, Discovery also returned the space shuttle program to flight after the losses of Challenger and Columbia in 1986 and 2003, respectively.
Mars Base

Was the real discovery of the expanding universe lost in translation? - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...stronomy-hubble-whodunnit.html

scibyte21

shared by Mars Base on 10 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The greatest astronomical discovery of the 20th century may have been credited to the wrong person. But it turns out to have been nobody's fault except for that of the actual original discoverer himself.
  • Hubble reported that the universe is uniformly expanding in all directions.
  • Hubble never got a Nobel Prize for this discovery
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  • Hubble did get the most celebrated telescope of modern history named after him
  • Hubble published his landmark paper in which he determined the rate of expansion of the universe in 1929
  • based on the apparent recessional velocities (deduced from redshifts) of galaxies, as previously measured
  • discovered that Lemaître omitted the passages himself when he translated the paper into English!
  • two years earlier, a Belgian priest and cosmologist, Georges Lemaître, published very similar conclusions, and he calculated a rate of expansion similar to what Hubble would publish two years later
  • But Lemaître's discovery went unnoticed because it was published in French, in a rather obscure Belgian science journal
  • Lemaître's work was later translated and published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. When published in 1931, some of Lemaître's own calculations from 1927, of what would be later called the Hubble Constant, were omitted!
  • The fact that paragraphs were missing from the translated paper has been known (although not widely) since 1984
  • Hubble's analysis showed that the farther the galaxy was, the faster it appeared to be receding
  • did not find advisable to reprint the provisional discussion of radial velocities which is clearly of no actual interest, and also the geometrical note, which could be replaced by a small bibliography of ancient and new papers on the subject
  • was not at all obsessed with establishing priority for his original discovery. Given that Hubble's results had already been published in 1929, he saw no point in repeating his more tentative earlier findings again in 1931
Mars Base

NASA to Reveal Vesta Discoveries by Dawn Asteroid Probe | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/discoveries-nasa-thursday.html

scibyte46 Asteroid Vesta dawn

shared by Mars Base on 09 May 12 - No Cached
  • NASA will showcase the latest discoveries from an asteroid probe orbiting the huge space rock Vesta on Thursday (May 10) in a press conference for reporters and the general public.
  • will present a new analysis of Vesta based on the latest observations from NASA's Dawn spacecraft
  • Dawn spacecraft launched in 2007 on a mission to visit two huge space rocks in the asteroid belt that orbits the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
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  • Dawn arrived in orbit around Vesta in July 2011
  • Vesta is the brightest asteroid in the solar system and second most massive object in the asteroid belt
  • Last month, NASA extended Dawn's stay at Vesta by an extra 40 days to give the spacecraft more time to study the asteroid
  • spacecraft has revealed that many new details about Vesta
  • it is rich in iron and magnesium
  • experiences chilly temperatures that range from minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius) in the sunlight, to minus150 degrees F (minus 100 degrees C) in shadowed areas.
  • Scientists think Vesta is a 4.5 billion-year-old relic left over from the formation of the solar system
  • In August the probe will move on to the Texas-size Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt and a space rock so large it is considered a dwarf planet.
  • expected to arrive at Ceres in February 2015
Mars Base

Nevermind the Apocalypse: Earliest Mayan Calendar Found : Discovery News - 0 views

news.discovery.com/...discovery-doomsday-120511.html

scibyte46 MayanCalender

shared by Mars Base on 11 May 12 - No Cached
  • This monumental finding supports the fact that the Maya used cyclical calendars.
  • But it wasn't these mathematical notations that first caught the archeologists' eye
  • an archaeologist from Boston University, was mapping the ancient Maya city of Xultun in northeast Guatemala in 2010 when one of his undergraduate students peered into an old trench dug by looters and reported seeing traces of ancient paint.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • Paint doesn't preserve well in the rain forest climate of Guatemala, and Saturno figured that the faint red and black lines his student had found weren't going to yield much information
  • The discovery was "certainly nothing to write home about
  • felt he had a responsibility to excavate the room the looters had tried to reach, if only to be able to report the size of the structure along with the paint finding.
  • shocked to run into a brilliantly painted portrait: a Mayan king, sitting on his throne, wearing a red crown with blue feathers flowing out behind him.
  • Another figure peeks out from behind him
  • On an adjoining wall, three loincloth-clad figures sit, wearing feathered headdresses
  • ext to the king, a man painted in brilliant orange wearing jade bracelets reaches out with a stylus, likely identifying him as a scribe. He is labeled as "Younger Brother Obsidian," or perhaps "Junior Obsidian
  • small, 6-foot-by-6-foot room
  • calendar seemed to have been added after the murals were completed
  • almost as if an ancient scribe got sick of flipping through a document to find his timekeeping chart and decided to put it on the wall for at-a-glance reference
  • captioned "Older Brother Obsidian," or "Senior Obsidian,"
  • calendar also appears to note the cycles of Mars and Venus,
  • Most likely
  • the wall calendar and the Dresden Codex both arose from earlier books that long ago rotted away
  • The murals only survived, because, instead of collapsing the room, Mayan engineers filled it with rubble and then built on top of it.
  • This is clearly a space where someone important was living, this important household of the noble class, and here you also have a mathematician working in that space," Stuart said. "It's a great illustration of how closely those roles were connected in Mayan society
  • Unfortunately, the name of the king pictured in the mural room has been lost.
  • Xultun was first discovered in 1915, less than 0.1 percent has been explored
  • Looters damaged much of the ancient city in the 1970s
  • much of historical significance has been lost. But archaeologists still don't even know how far the boundaries of the town extend.
Mars Base

Well-preserved strawberry-blond mammoth discovered in Siberia | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...-mammoth-discovered-in-siberia

scibyte41 WollyMammoth

shared by Mars Base on 04 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • juvenile mammoth, nicknamed "Yuka,"
  • found entombed in Siberian ice near the shores of the Arctic Ocean and shows signs of being cut open by ancient people.
  • remarkably well preserved frozen carcass
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • part of a BBC/Discovery Channel-funded expedition and is believed to be at least 10,000 years old, if not older
  • If further study confirms the preliminary findings, it would be the first mammoth carcass revealing signs of human interaction in the region.
  • in such good shape that much of its flesh is still intact, retaining its pink color. The blonde-red hue of Yuka's woolly coat also remains.
  • first relatively complete mammoth carcass -- that is, a body with soft tissues preserved -- to show evidence of human association
  • carbon dating is still in the works, the researchers believe Yuka died at least 10,000 years ago, but may be much older
  • The animal was about 2 ½ years old when it died.
  • appears that Yuka was pursued by one or more lions or another large field, judging from deep, unhealed scratches in the hide and bite marks on the tail
  • Yuka then apparently fell, breaking one of the lower hind legs
  • humans may have moved in to control the carcass, butchering much of the animal and removing parts that they would use immediately.
  • may, in fact, have reburied the rest of the carcass to keep it in reserve for possible later use
  • removed parts include most of the main core mass of Yuka's body, including organs, vertebrae, ribs, associated musculature, and some of the meat from upper parts of the legs
  • Kevin Campbell of the University of Manitoba also studied Yuka
  • Campbell famously published the genetic code of mammoth hemoglobin a few years ago
  • Most permafrost-preserved mammoth specimens consist solely of bones or bone fragments that currently provide little new insight into the species' biology in life
  • This extremely rare finding of a near complete specimen, like the discovery of the baby mammoth Lyuba in 2007, will be a boon to researchers as it will help them link observed phenotypes (morphological features that we can see) with genotype (DNA sequences)."
  • Such information could help reveal whether or not mammoths had all of the same hair colors that humans do
  • An intriguing and controversial application would be to bring a mammoth back to life via cloning.
  • producer and director of a forthcoming BBC/Discovery Channel show called "Woolly Mammoth"
  • told Discovery News that cloning a mammoth could take years or even decades.
Mars Base

'Orphan' Alien Planet Found Nearby Without Parent Star | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/ue-alien-planet-discovery.html

scibyte72 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 14 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • The free-floating object
  • is likely a gas giant planet four to seven times more massive than Jupiter,
  • Astronomers have discovered a potential "rogue" alien planet wandering alone just 100 light-years from Earth
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  • And if the discovery team is right about CFBDSIR2149's age, the body is likely a planet, with an average temperature of 806 degrees Fahrenheit (430 degrees Celsius), researchers said
  • There's still a slight chance that CFBDSIR2149 is a brown dwarf 
  • Additional observations should help decide the matter.
  • With a good distance measurement and a more accurate proper motion, we will be able to increase (or decrease) the probability that it is indeed a planet
  • One 2011 study, for example, estimated that rogue worlds outnumber "normal" planets with obvious host stars by at least 50 percent throughout the Milky Way
  • The discovery of a starless alien planet would not be shocking
  • In the last year or so, astronomers have spotted a number of such orphan worlds
Mars Base

Kepler wraps prime mission, begins extension - 0 views

phys.org/...r-prime-mission-extension.html

scibyte72 Kepler

shared by Mars Base on 15 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • NASA is marking two milestones in the search for planets like Earth; the successful completion of the Kepler Space Telescope's three-and-a-half-year prime mission and the beginning of an extended mission that could last as long as four years.
  • identify more than 2,300 planet candidates and confirm more than 100 planets
  • hundreds of Earth-size planet candidates have been found
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  • Highlights from the prime mission
  • confirmed the discovery of the first planetary system with more than one planet transiting the same star
  • the discovery of the first unquestionably rocky planet outside the solar system
  • 1.4 times the size of Earth
  • confirmed the existence of a world with a double sunset
  • discoveries of six additional worlds orbiting double stars further demonstrated planets can form and persist in the environs of a double-star system
  • first planet in a habitable zone
  • December 2011
  • September 2011
  • February 2012
  • transiting planet candidates
  • total of 2,321
  • Recently
  • The joint effort of amateur astronomers and scientists led to the first reported case of a planet orbiting a double star
Mars Base

Will the Europa Clipper Cruise to Jupiter's Moon? : Discovery News - 0 views

news.discovery.com/...-to-the-jovian-moon-130401.htm

scibyte89 Europa

shared by Mars Base on 09 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • a resolution
  • was recently passed by the House and Senate outlining the extent of government funding
  • “$75,000,000 shall be for pre-formulation and/or formulation activities for a mission that meets the science goals outlined for the Jupiter Europa mission
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Europa recently hit the headlines after planetary scientists
  • uncovered the presence of magnesium sulfate salt — a.k.a. Epsom salt — on Europa’s surface
  • the presence of magnesium sulfate is suggestive of a cycling of Europa’s salty ocean with the surface.
  • Although this is good news, it’s also a reminder that potentially habitable moons don’t only orbit Jupiter
  • Enceladus
  • the Saturnian moon
  • is known to possess salty liquid water beneath its surface, plus an internal heat source, that generates Enceladus’ famous geysers
Mars Base

Scientists analyse global Twitter gossip around Higgs boson discovery - 0 views

phys.org/...yse-global-twitter-gossip.html

scibyte79 twitter

shared by Mars Base on 23 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • A model of the spread of gossip on Twitter prior to the Higgs boson discovery announcement
  • For the first time scientists have been able to analyse the dynamics of social media on a global scale before, during and after the announcement of a major scientific discovery.
  • According to the analysed data, the rumours that the Higgs boson had been discovered started around 1st July 2012
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • one day before the announcement at Tevatron, and three days before the official announcement from CERN on 4th July.
  • research shows that rumours started to spread on Twitter firstly in the USA, UK, Spain, Canada, Australia, as well as Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany, all countries with strong scientific connections to the experiments at the LHC.
  • Other researchers on the project are also interested in how information spreads on social media
  • how messages can be placed and controlled. 'If you can understand the dynamics of an event, you can try to control it, and keep the interest in the topic going
  • This is really useful for practical applications such as marketing
  • For example if you want to run a global marketing campaign you can identify key people on social media to help you to spread your message
  • Once you have identified these key advocates, you can change and steer the message in a different direction, potentially modifying opinions of millions of people
  • Videos of the rumours spreading
Mars Base

Mayan Ruins Describe Dates Beyond 2012 'Doomsday' : Discovery News - 0 views

news.discovery.com/...yond-2012-doomsday-120511.html

scibyte46 MayanCalender

shared by Mars Base on 11 May 12 - No Cached
  • According to lead archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, the calendars mentioned are the 260-day ceremonial calendar, the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars.
  • So, the upshot is that this mind-blowing discovery exposes the Maya culture for what it really is: a complex, fascinating and forward-thinking ancient people, not the prophets of doom they've been portrayed by a few profit-seeking doomsayers.
Chris Fisher

NASA's Kepler Announces 11 Planetary Systems Hosting 26 Planets - Mainpage - 0 views

www.naturenplanet.com/...-planetary-systems-hosting.htm

nasa Kepler planets

shared by Chris Fisher on 25 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, the star.
  • The planets orbit their host star once every six to 143 days. All are closer to their host star than Venus is to our sun.
  • Chris Fisher on 25 Mar 12
     
    NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, the star. 
Mars Base

Pluto Has a Fifth Moon, Hubble Telescope Reveals | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/fth-moon-hubble-discovery.html

scibyte54 PlutoMoons

shared by Mars Base on 12 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • new moon has been discovered orbiting Pluto, scientists announced
  • July 11
  • discovery comes almost exactly one year after Hubble spotted Pluto's fourth moon, a tiny body currently called P4
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Pluto's other moons are Charon, Nix, Hydra and P4. Charon is by far the largest, measuring 648 miles (1,043 kilometers) across. Nix and Hydra range between 20 and 70 miles (32 to 113 km) wide, while P4 is thought to be 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km) across. 
  • concern about hazards is going up," he added, referring to the collision risk New Horizons will face when it cruises by Pluto in a few years
  • provisionally named S/2012 (134340) 1, though it's also going by the moniker P5
  • P5 appears to be irregularly shaped, with a diameter between 6 and 15 miles (10 to 24 km). It zips around Pluto at an average distance of 29,000 miles (47,000 km
  • Charon was first spotted in 1978, 48 years after the discovery of Pluto. Nix and Hydra were found by Hubble in 2005
  • Pluto orbits 3.65 billion miles (5.87 billion km) from the sun on average, about 39 times farther away than Earth does
  • The inventory of the Pluto system we're taking now with Hubble will help the New Horizons team design a safer trajectory for the spacecraft
Mars Base

Hubble Space Telescope Passes Major Science Milestone | Hubble 10,000th Science Paper |... - 0 views

www.space.com/cope-10000-science-papers.html

scibyte25

shared by Mars Base on 09 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Hubble Space Telescope has crossed a major milestone, accumulating 10,000 science papers based on its observations
  • After 21 years
  • it's actually in the best shape of its life
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • last space shuttle servicing mission was in May 2009.
  • Papers describing discoveries in nearly every field of astronomy and cosmology have been published based on data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope.
  • conducted by scientists in more than 35 countries
  • most papers written by researchers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain
  • Hubble's top five most referenced papers are on
  • The search for distant supernovas used to characterize dark energy
  • The precise measurement of the universe's rate of expansion
  • The apparent link between galaxy mass and central black hole mass
  • Early galaxy formation in the Hubble Deep Field
  • The evolutionary models for low-mass stars and brown dwarfs
  • 10,000th Hubble science paper
  • announces the discovery of the faintest supernova ever associated with a cosmic explosion called a long-duration gamma-ray burst, which spews high-energy radiation into space when a star dies
  • The first science paper based on Hubble data came about six months after the telescope's launch
  • a paper on observations of the center of galaxy NGC 7457, where scientists suspected a huge black hole lurked
Mars Base

Water-rich gem points to vast 'oceans' beneath Earth's surface, study suggests -- Scien... - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...140312150229.htm

scibyte124 water

shared by Mars Base on 13 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The first terrestrial discovery of ringwoodite confirms the presence of massive amounts of water 400 to 700 kilometers beneath Earth's surface
  • Ringwoodite is a form of the mineral peridot, believed to exist in large quantities under high pressures in the transition zone
  • Ringwoodite has been found in meteorites but, until now, no terrestrial sample has ever been unearthed because scientists haven't been able to conduct fieldwork at extreme depths
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • An international team of scientists
  • has discovered the first-ever sample of a mineral called ringwoodite
  • Analysis of the mineral shows it contains a significant amount of water -- 1.5 per cent of its weight
  • finding that confirms scientific theories about vast volumes of water trapped 410 to 660 kilometres beneath Earth's surface, between the upper and lower mantle.
  • This sample really provides extremely strong confirmation that there are local wet spots deep in the Earth
  • particular zone in the Earth, the transition zone, might have as much water as all the world's oceans put together
  • The diamond had been brought to the Earth's surface by a volcanic rock known as kimberlite -- the most deeply derived of all volcanic rocks.
  • the discovery was almost accidental in that
  • team had been looking for another mineral when they purchased a three-millimetre-wide, dirty-looking, commercially worthless brown diamond
  • The ringwoodite itself is invisible to the naked eye, buried beneath the surface, so it was fortunate that it was found
  • The sample underwent years of analysis using Raman and infrared spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction before it was officially confirmed as ringwoodite
  • one of the world's leading authorities in the study of deep Earth diamond host rocks, the discovery ranks among the most significant of his career
  • confirming about 50 years of theoretical and experimental work by geophysicists, seismologists and other scientists trying to understand the makeup of the Earth's interior.
  • Scientists have been deeply divided about the composition of the transition zone and whether it is full of water or desert-dry
  • Knowing water exists beneath the crust has implications for the study of volcanism and plate tectonics, affecting how rock melts, cools and shifts below the crust
Mars Base

ADHD: Scientists discover brain's anti-distraction system -- ScienceDaily - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...140418141244.htm

scibyte127 ADHD

shared by Mars Base on 19 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • This discovery opens up the possibility that environmental and/or genetic factors may hinder or suppress a specific brain activity that the researchers have identified as helping us prevent distraction.
  • doctoral student
  • made the discovery during his master's thesis research
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • This is the first study to reveal our brains rely on an active suppression mechanism to avoid being distracted by salient irrelevant information when we want to focus on a particular item or task
  • other scientists first discovered the existence of the specific neural index of suppression in his lab in 2009
  • r results show clearly that this is only one part of the equation and that active suppression of the irrelevant objects is another important part
  • psychologists say their discovery could help scientists and health care professionals better treat individuals with distraction-related attentional deficits
  • Distraction is a leading cause of injury and death in driving and other high-stakes environments
  • disorders associated with attention deficits, such as ADHD and schizophrenia, may turn out to be due to difficulties in suppressing irrelevant objects rather than difficulty selecting relevant ones
  • researchers are now turning their attention to understanding how we deal with distraction
  • looking at when and why we can't suppress potentially distracting objects, whether some of us are better at doing so and why that is the case.
Mars Base

Amber discovery indicates Lyme disease is older than human race - 0 views

phys.org/...covery-lyme-disease-older.html

scibyte133 LymeDidease

shared by Mars Base on 31 May 14 - No Cached
  • Lyme disease is a stealthy, often misdiagnosed disease that was only recognized about 40 years ago
  • new discoveries of ticks fossilized in amber show that the bacteria which cause it may have been lurking around for 15 million years
  • The findings were made
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • studied 15-20 million-year-old amber
  • that offer the oldest fossil evidence ever found of Borrelia, a type of spirochete-like bacteria that to this day causes Lyme disease
  • In a related study
  • scientists announced the first fossil record of Rickettsial-like cells, a bacteria that can cause various types of spotted fever
  • it's worth considering that these tick-borne diseases may be far more common than has been historically appreciated
  • Those fossils from Myanmar were found in ticks about 100 million years old.
  • plant and animal life forms found preserved in amber
  • are very efficient at maintaining populations of microbes in their tissues, and can infect mammals, birds, reptiles and other animals
  • "In the United States, Europe and Asia, ticks are a more important insect vector of disease than mosquitos
  • A series of four ticks from Dominican amber were analyzed in this study
  • In a separate report, Poinar found cells that resemble Rickettsia bacteria, the cause of Rocky Mountain spotted fever and related illnesses
  • This is the oldest fossil evidence of ticks associated with such bacteria
  • Evidence suggests that dinosaurs could have been infected with Rickettsial pathogens
Mars Base

'God particle' discovery poses Nobel dilemma - 0 views

phys.org/...cle-discovery-poses-nobel.html

scibyte66 scibyte67 HiggsBoson

shared by Mars Base on 08 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • But whether the July 4 fireworks will unlock the great prize is unclear.
  • cautious, given that the new particle has not yet been officially sealed as the Higgs.
  • almost certain it is the coveted beast
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • y still need to confirm this
  • s further work to see how it behaves and reacts with other particles
  • there is a remote possibility that the new particle is not the Higgs, although this would be an even more groundshaking announcement.
  • six physicists, each building on the work of others, published a flurry of papers on aspects of the theory within four months of each other back in 1964.
  • The first were Belgians Robert Brout, who died last year, and Francois Englert.
  • followed by Higgs, who was the first to say only a new particle would explain the anomalies of mass
  • further complication is that thousands of physicists worked in the two labs at CERN's Large Hadron Collider near Geneva where Higgs experiments were conducted independently of each other.
  • decide whether theoreticians or experimentalists—or both—should get the glory.
  • At most three names, although they can include organisations, can share a Nobel
  • e prize cannot be given posthumously.
  • The Nobel will "eventually" go to the Higgs
  • s not yet certain that the newly-discovered particle is in fact a Higgs boson
  • nothing stopping us from giving the prize to an organisation. But it has not been the custom in the scientific prizes
  • The Nobel Peace Prize has often been awarded to organisations. But in the science prizes we have tried to find the most prizeworthy individuals
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