Group items tagged

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

Only the largest eruptions could melt all the ice above them and poke through to the surface, but even smaller eruptions could potentially cause global sea level to rise, although no one knows how big the rise might be

The crust is thinned by the West Antarctic Rift System, a series of giant rift valleys beneath the ice sheet

erupted lava from underground magma chambers has burst through the ice repeatedly over geological history as the plates moved over the top

No one knew whether magma was still stirring

until seismic monitoring stations were installed on the ice between 2007 and 2010.

Researchers built the stations to study the shifting crustal blocks of the West Antarctic Rift System

But seismologist

found another use

They noticed a series of small earthquakes, mainly occurring during two “seismic swarms” in January and February 2010 and March 2011

These earthquakes were unusual: The ground was shaking much more slowly during the quakes than one would expect from the plates grinding against each other

looked at two different types of waves that come in—the P wave, which is the primary wave, and the S wave, which is the secondary wave

calculations revealed that the waves had come from 25 to 40 kilometers below Earth's surface and were centered around a point

approximately the point the volcanic activity should have reached if it had continued the linear trend of volcanoes to the south

The exact cause of these deep quakes is not understood, but they are thought to result from the movement of magma deep below active or soon-to-be active volcanoes

They found that the area showed a slightly higher magnetic field than the surrounding area and that there was a bump in the crust—common signals of magmatic activity

Radar mapping also indicated a layer of volcanic ash embedded in the ice

probably

from an eruption of Mount Waesche about 8000 years ago—very recent geological history

There is no evidence of an actual eruption since then, but, because magma is still moving deep under the Earth, an eruption could occur at any time

The current center of volcanic activity is covered by at least 1 kilometer of ice, and it would take an exceptionally large eruption to melt all this

But an eruption could make its presence felt in subtler ways. As fresh snow adds to their own mass, ice sheets flow downward into the sea

melting the base of the ice sheet, an eruption could speed up this flow, potentially raising the level of the ocean. No one knows how significant such a rise might be

Any effect on the ice sheet above, and thus any effect on the oceans, would probably be quite small

a proper study is needed to find out how significant volcanic activity could be to future sea levels

The rover reached a vantage point for its cameras to survey four different types of rock intersecting in an area called "the Kimberley,"

This is the spot on the map we've been headed for, on a little rise that gives us a great view for context imaging of the outcrops at the Kimberley

science planning lead for what are expected to be several weeks of observations, sample-drilling and onboard laboratory analysis of the area's rocks

snapped by Curiosity’s high resolution Mastcam camera earlier this week on Sunday, April 20, 2014

whilst she was scanning about during daylight for her next drilling target at “The Kimberley” waypoint she pulled into at the start of this month.

Ceres and Vesta appear as streaks since the Mastcam image was taken as a 12 second time exposure.

“This imaging was part of an experiment checking the opacity of the atmosphere at night in Curiosity’s location on Mars, where water-ice clouds and hazes develop during this season,” said camera team member Mark Lemmon

“The two Martian moons were the main targets that night, but we chose a time when one of the moons was near Ceres and Vesta in the sky.”

Ceres, the largest asteroid, is about 590 miles (950 kilometers) in diameter. Vesta is the third-largest object in the main belt and measures about 350 miles (563 kilometers) wide.

the tinier of Mars’ moons, Deimos, was also caught in that same image.

Mars largest moon Phobos as well as massive planets Jupiter and Saturn were also visible that same Martian evening, albeit in a different pointing.

The two asteroids and three stars would be visible to someone of normal eyesight standing on Mars.

Those photoreceptors send information they receive to another type of neural cell known as bipolar cells

they in turn convert received signals to another signal format which is then sent to what are known as starburst amacrine cells (SACs)

Signals from the SAC are sent via the optic nerve to the brain

scientists believe they have a pretty good idea about how the whole process works for static images, they have not been able to get a handle on what happens when images sent to the eyeball have information about things that are moving

In this new effort, the researchers sought to do just that—via assistance from thousands of gamers on the EyeWire game playing site

The problem with figuring out how nerve cells work in the eye, of either mice or humans, is the inability to watch what happens in action—everything is too tiny and intricate

To get around that problem, researchers have been building three dimensional models on computers

even that gets untenable when considering the complexity and numbers of nerves involved

That's where the EyeWire gamers came in, a game was created that involved gamers creating mouse neural networks—the better they were at it the more points they got

only the best at it were invited to play

The result was the creation of a model that the researchers believe is an accurate representation of the cells involved in processing vision, and the networks that are made up of them

the rest was up to the research team

They noted that in the model, there were different types of bipolar cells connecting to SACs—some connected to dendrites close to the cells center, and others connected to dendrites that were farther away

Prior research had shown that some bipolar cells take longer to process information than others

The researchers believe that the bipolar cells that connect closer to the center are of the type that take longer to process signals

This, they contend, could set up a scenario where the center of the SAC receives information from both types of bipolar cells at the same time—and that, they suggest, could be how the SAC comes to understand that motion—in one direction—is occurring

The researchers suggest their theory can be real-world tested in the lab, and expect other teams will likely do so

If they are right, the mystery of how our eyes detect motion will finally be solved.

team of researcher

has identified the first "sibling" of the Sun -- a star that was almost certainly born from the same cloud of gas and dust as our star

there is a chance, "small, but not zero," Ramirez said, that these solar sibling stars could host planets that harbor life

The solar sibling his team identified is a star called HD 162826, a star 15 percent more massive than the Sun, located 110 light-years away in the constellation Hercules

The star is not visible to the unaided eye, but easily can be seen with low-power binoculars, not far from the bright star Vega.

The team identified HD 162826 as the Sun's sibling by following up on 30 possible candidates found by several groups around the world looking for solar siblings.

All of these observations used high-resolution spectroscopy to get a deep understanding of the stars' chemical make-up.

several factors are needed to really pin down a solar sibling

. In addition to chemical analysis, his team also included information about the stars' orbits

where they had been and where they are going in their paths around the center of the Milky Way galaxy

Combining information on both chemical make-up and dynamics of the candidates narrowed the field down to one: HD 162826.

By "lucky coincidence,"

this star has been studied by the McDonald Observatory Planet Search team

for more than 15 years

Those studies,

together with calculations

have ruled out any "hot Jupiters" -- massive planets orbiting close to the star

The studies indicate that it's unlikely that a Jupiter analog orbits the star, either, but they do not rule out the presence of smaller terrestrial planets.

the project has a larger purpose: to create a road map for how to identify solar siblings

"The idea is that the Sun was born in a cluster with a thousand or a hundred thousand stars. This cluster, which formed more than 4.5 billion years ago, has since broken up,"

Ivan Ramirez/Tim Jones/McDonald

The member stars have broken off into their own orbits around the galactic center, taking them to different parts of the Milky Way today. A few, like HD 162826, are still nearby. Others are much farther

even with information on more stars to work with, it's not like "we're going to throw this data into a machine and it's going to spit out the answer,"

"You can concentrate on certain key chemical elements that are going to be very useful

." These elements are ones that vary greatly among stars which otherwise have very similar chemical compositions.

team has identified the elements barium and yttrium as particularly useful.

Once many more solar siblings have been identified, astronomers will be one step closer to knowing where and how the Sun formed.

To reach that goal, the dynamics specialists will make models that run the orbits of all known solar siblings backward in time, to find where they intersect: their birthplace.

the bots that could become part of our lives, in our own lifetimes, won’t look like Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, or NASA’s (and GM’s) Robonaut 2. Chances are, they’ll look a lot more like a walking stick, with a bunch of stuff bolted onto it.

a navigation-aid,

the robotic cane being developed by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock acts as a kind of seeing-eye walking stick

It maps the user’s path with a vision and 3D camera, and picks out stairways, low overhangs, and other features of interest to the visually-impaired

the bot will be able to verbally warn or guide the operator, speaking through a Bluetooth earpiece (and possibly through tactile feedback), it will also be able to perform limited steering maneuvers

. “In navaid mode, the device's roller tip is activated, and may drive the cane and point it towards the desired direction of travel

The six-degree-of-freedom roller isn’t driving the operator, but making suggestions, and can be toggled on and off by switching between navaid and white cane modes

robots designed by companies like iRobot can already drive themselves around indoors with a minimum of collisions

problems of obstacle detection and avoidance are far from licked

The margin of failure for a robot cane has to be vanishingly small, and that level of accuracy could also benefit systems that aren’t attached to humans

the co-robotic cane was co-funded for a three-year period by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) and the National Eye Institute (NEI), both of which are part of NIH

One of the new projects funded by NSF is an effort to make robots that can better read the emotional needs of Parkinson’s sufferers, specifically those whose faces have been significantly paralyzed

In order to serve as mediators between victims of “facial masking” and their caregivers

the project aims to “develop a robotic architecture endowed with moral emotional control mechanisms, abstract moral reasoning, and a theory of mind that allow corobots to be sensitive to human affective and ethical demands

whether it will be an existing system, or a new one

is unclear

one of the project’s collaborators is

the famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) roboticist who proposed the use of so-called “ethical governors” for autonomous military robots

The original Big Bang theory was really a theory of the aftermath of the bang

described how the universe was cooled by the expansion, and how the expansion was slowed by the attractive force of gravity

Inflation proposes that the expansion of the universe was driven by a repulsive form of gravity.

According to Newton, gravity is a purely attractive force, but this changed with Einstein and the discovery of general relativity

General relativity describes gravity as a distortion of spacetime, and allows for the possibility of repulsive gravity

Modern particle theories strongly suggest that at very high energies, there should exist forms of matter that create repulsive gravity

Inflation

proposes that at least a very small patch of the early universe was filled with this repulsive-gravity material

During the period of exponential expansion, any ordinary material would thin out, with the density diminishing to almost nothing

The repulsive-gravity material actually maintains a constant density as it expands, no matter how much it expands

While this appears to be a

violation

of the conservation of energy, it is actually

consistent

a peculiar feature of gravity: The energy of a gravitational field is negative

As the patch expands at constant density, more and more energy, in the form of matter, is created

But at the same time, more and more negative energy appears in the form of the gravitational field that is filling the region

The total energy remains constant, as it must, and therefore remains very small.

It is possible that the total energy of the entire universe is exactly zero, with the positive energy of matter completely canceled by the negative energy of gravity

At some point the inflation ends because the repulsive-gravity material becomes metastable

decays into ordinary particles, producing a very hot soup of particles that form the starting point of the conventional Big Bang

point the repulsive gravity turns off, but the region continues to expand in a coasting pattern for billions of years to come

inflation is a prequel to the era that cosmologists call the Big Bang, although it of course occurred after the origin of the universe, which is often also called the Big Bang.

Q: What is the new result announced this week, and how does it provide critical support for your theory?

The early universe, as we can see from the afterglow of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, was incredibly uniform,

to have structure form at all, there needed to be small nonuniformities at the end of inflation

The tiny nonuniformities that did exist were then amplified by gravity

these nonuniformities—which later produce stars, galaxies, and all the structure of the universe—are attributed to quantum theory

The temperature nonuniformities in the cosmic microwave background were first measured in 1992 by the COBE satellite

have not generally been seen as proof of inflation, in part because it is not clear that inflation is the only possible way that these fluctuations could have been produced.

The stretching effect of inflation,

also acts on the geometry of space itself, which according to general relativity is flexible

Space can be compressed, stretched, or even twisted.

The geometry of space also fluctuates on small scales, due to the physics of quantum theory, and inflation also stretches these fluctuations, producing gravity waves in the early universe.

The new result,

is a measurement of these gravity waves, at a very high level of confidence.

They do not see the gravity waves directly, but instead they have constructed a very detailed map of the polarization of the CMB in a patch of the sky.

They have observed a swirling pattern in the polarization (called "B modes") that can be created

by gravity waves in the early universe

This is the first time that even a hint of these primordial gravity waves has been detected

it is also the first time that any quantum properties of gravity have been directly observed.

Q: How would you describe the significance of these new findings, and your reaction to them?

The significance of these new findings

help tremendously in confirming the picture of inflation.

As far as we know, there is nothing other than inflation that can produce these gravity waves

it tells us a lot about the details of inflation that we did not already know

it determines the energy density of the universe at the time of inflation, which is something that previously had a wide range of possibilities.

By determining the energy density of the universe at the time of inflation, the new result also tells us a lot about which detailed versions of inflation are still viable, and which are no longer viable

The current result is not by itself conclusive, but it points in the direction of the very simplest inflationary models that can be constructed.