Science & TechnologyS


Galaxy

NASA image shows spiral galaxy being torn


Nature World News
Wed, 05 Mar 2014 15:34 UTC
Image
© NASA, ESA/ Ming Sun (UAH), and Serge MeunierThis new Hubble image shows spiral galaxy ESO 137-001, framed against a bright background as it moves through the heart of galaxy cluster Abell 3627.
A new image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 being ripped into several pieces.

Discovery News has described the image as the Universe's R-rated movie, complete with an innocent galaxy being butchered at the heart of a star cluster called Abell 3627.

The blue streaks of light seen in the image are stars that are being torn apart from the galaxy. According to Hubble, ESO 137-001 is undergoing a process known as ram pressure stripping.

Ram Pressure is a drag force experienced by a body moving through a fluid. It's almost like the pressure of wind experienced by a moving bicyclist. In the present context, the "fluid" is superheated gas in the center of a galaxy cluster. Ram pressure stripping of a galaxy is a commonly observed phenomenon.

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Info

Plants are far more intelligent than we ever assumed

April McCarthy
Prevent Disease
Tue, 04 Mar 2014 22:50 UTC
Plant
© Prevent Disease
Like higher organisms, plants appear able to make complex decisions. A new study shows that plants may be able to initiate a survival mechanism by aborting their own seeds to prevent parasite infestation.

Plants have previously been shown to draw alternative sources of energy from other plants. Plants influence each other in many ways and they communicate through "nanomechanical oscillations" vibrations on the tiniest atomic or molecular scale or as close as you can get to telepathic communication. Plants exhibit intelligence with an intrinsic ability to process information from several type of stimuli that allows optimal decisions about future activities in a given environment.

Stefano Mancuso from the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology at the University of Florence, Italy, and his colleagues are starting to apply rigorous standards to study plant hearing (Trends in Plant Sciences, vol17, p323). Their preliminary results indicate that corn roots grow towards specific frequencies of vibrations. What is even more surprising is their finding that roots themselves may also be emitting sound waves. For now, though, we have no idea how a plant might produce sound signals let alone how they might detect them.

Scientists from the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the University of Gottingen have now shown from their investigations on Barberry (Berberis vulgaris), that it is is able to abort its own seeds to prevent parasite infestation.

The results, as reported in a news release, are the first ecological evidence of complex behaviour in plants. They indicate that this species has a structural memory, is able to differentiate between inner and outer conditions as well as anticipate future risks, scientists write in the renowned journal American Naturalist -- the premier peer-reviewed American journal for theoretical ecology.
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Fireball

270m asteroid swings past Earth almost exactly a year after a meteor burst over Russia


news.com.au
Tue, 18 Feb 2014 16:33 UTC
Chelyabinsk
© Oleg Kargopolov/AFP Fire in the sky ... the meteorite trail seen above an apartment block in Chelyabinsk.
Just days after the anniversary of the Chelyabinsk meteor that injured 1,000 when the spectacular fireball burst over Russia, a massive asteroid has flashed past Earth.

The trajectory of the 270m diameter near-Earth asteroid, named 2000 EM26, posed no threat to our planet as it whizzed past at 12.37km per second earlier today.

At its closest point, it was about 8.8 times further from Earth than the Moon.

Unfortunately the Slooh Observatory on the Canary Islands was 'iced up' so it wasn't possible to record any live images of the asteroid.
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Fireball 5

Asteroid expected to whizz between the Earth and the moon on March 5


RT.com
Tue, 04 Mar 2014 12:28 UTC
Asteroid
© AFP Photo/NASA/JPL CaltechThis NASA image shows an artist's animation that illustrates a massive asteroid belt.
An Apollo class asteroid is expected to whizz between the Earth and the moon on March 5. The 98-foot-wide space rock is expected to come within 218,000 miles of earth (0.9 lunar distances), creating quite the site for stargazers.

The asteroid, named 2014 DX110, is expected to make its closest approach at 21:07 GMT on Wednesday at a blistering speed of 14.85 km/s (32,076 mph). Although the space rock poses no threat to earth, it highlights the earth's susceptibility to near-Earth asteroids.

For amateur astronomers interested in watching the flyby as it happens, the virtual telescope project will offer live coverage via Slooh, which allows viewers to peer through a telescope via the web.

DX110 belongs to the Apollo class of asteroids, a group of Earth-crossing asteroids, which pose a potential threat to humankind. The February-15, 2013, 65-foot-wide meteor, which exploded over the town of Chelyabinsk in the southern Urals region of Russia, belonged to the Apollo class. The meteor explosion was 30 times stronger than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. As windowpanes shattered throughout the city, 1,500 people were injured, but luckily no one was killed.

Nearly one year after the Chelyabinsk atmospheric extravaganza, another massive asteroid sailed past the Earth. The space-rock known officially as 2000 EM26 had an estimated diameter of 885 feet, roughly the equivalent of 3 football fields. It however, only came within some 2,094,400 miles of Earth.
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Info

Strange signal from Galactic Center is looking more and more like dark matter?

Adam Mann
Wired.com
Mon, 03 Mar 2014 13:53 UTC
Dark Matter?
© NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT CollaborationThe sky as seen in gamma rays from the Fermi telescope. The red line through the center is the disk of our galaxy.
The more that scientists stare at it, the more a strange signal from the center of the Milky Way galaxy appears to be the result of dark matter annihilation. If confirmed, it would be the first direct evidence for dark matter ever seen.

Dark matter is a mysterious, invisible substance making up roughly 85 percent of all matter in the universe. It floats throughout our galaxy, but is more concentrated at its center. There, a dark matter particle can meet another dark matter particle flying through space. If they crash into one another, they will annihilate each other (dark matter is its own antiparticle) and give off gamma rays.

To search for a dark matter signal, astronomers use NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope to map the gamma radiation throughout the galaxy. Then, they try to account for all known sources of light within this map. They plot the location of gas and dust that could be emitting radiation and subtract that signal from their gamma-ray map. Then they determine where all the stars are and subtract out that light, and so on for every object that might be emitting radiation. Once all those sources are gone, there remains a tiny excess of gamma radiation in the data that no known process can account for.
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Info

Giant virus resurrected from permafrost after 30,000 years

Tia Ghose
LiveScience
Mon, 03 Mar 2014 14:00 UTC
Virus
© Julia Bartoli and Chantal Abergel, IGS and CNRS-AMUAn ultrathin section of a Pithovirus particle in an infected Acanthamoeba castellanii cell observed by transmission electron microscopy with enhancement.
A mysterious giant virus buried for 30,000 years in Siberian permafrost has been resurrected.

The virus only infects single-celled organisms and doesn't closely resemble any known pathogens that harm humans.

Even so, the new discovery raises the possibility that as the climate warms and exploration expands in long-untouched regions of Siberia, humans could release ancient or eradicated viruses. These could include Neanderthal viruses or even smallpox that have lain dormant in the ice for thousands of years.

"There is now a non-zero probability that the pathogenic microbes that bothered [ancient human populations] could be revived, and most likely infect us as well," study co-author Jean-Michel Claverie, a bioinformatics researcher at Aix-Marseille University in France, wrote in an email.

"Those pathogens could be banal bacteria (curable with antibiotics) or resistant bacteria or nasty viruses. If they have been extinct for a long time, then our immune system is no longer prepared to respond to them."

(A "non-zero" probability just means the chances of the event happening are not "impossible.")
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Mr. Potato

Climate change swindlers' excuse #9: Pause in global warming just a 'coincidence' says NASA scientist

Michael Bastasch
The Daily Caller
Fri, 28 Feb 2014 14:14 UTC
Image
Climate scientists have put forward the ninth major explanation for the 17-year pause in global warming: it's just a coincidence.

According to a paper co-authored by NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt, the lack of warming since the late 1990s is mere coincidence and does not disprove the theory that humanity's burning of fossil fuels for energy is warming the planet.

"Here we argue that a combination of factors, by coincidence, conspired to dampen warming trends in the real world after about 1992," wrote Schmidt and his colleagues.

"Nevertheless, attributing climate trends over relatively short periods, such as 10 to 15 years, will always be problematic, and it is inherently unsatisfying to find model - data agreement only with the benefit of hindsight," Schmidt's paper continued.

The "coincidence" argument is the ninth major explanation pushed by climate scientists to explain why the Earth stopped warming - and has even cooled slightly - in the last 17 years or so.

Comment:
Climate Change Swindlers and the Political Agenda
Forget About Global Warming: We're One Step From Extinction!

You can read more about what is causing hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts and other extreme weather in the Comets and Catastrophe Series of Sott.net

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Cell Phone

How to foil the NSA and GCHQ with strong encryption

Egan Orion
The Inquirer
Fri, 28 Feb 2014 16:05 UTC
Image
© Inquirer
"Ye are many - they are few." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

The most interesting device shown at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week was the secure Blackphone developed by Silent Circle and Geeksphone.

The Blackphone features anonymous search, automatic disabling of non-trusted WiFi hotspots, and private texting, calling and file transfer capabilities. It's available to the general public, and bundles additional security features that apparently go beyond the basic messaging security provided by Blackberry to enterprise customers in its Blackberry Messaging (BBM) service.

US-based aerospace and defence firm Boeing also unveiled its own Black phone - not to be confused with the Silent Circle and Geeksphone Blackphone - at MWC this week, but that appears to be restricted for sale only to government security agencies and defence industry customers, and therefore likely won't be available to the public through mobile operators or in retail shops.
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Sherlock

Ancient mysteries behind leprosy: The oldest human-specific infection

Jim Newman
University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
Thu, 20 Feb 2014 15:37 UTC
Image
Research at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is finally unearthing some of the ancient mysteries behind leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, which has plagued mankind throughout history. The new research findings appear in the current edition of journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. According to this new hypothesis, the disease might be the oldest human-specific infection, with roots that likely stem back millions of years.

There are hundreds of thousands of new cases of leprosy worldwide each year, but the disease is rare in the United States, with 100-200 new cases annually. Leprosy is known for attacking a patient's skin and nerves. Effective antimicrobial treatments exist today. However, when misdiagnosed or untreated, the disease can lead to extensive skin lesions, deformities in the patient's face and extremities, disabilities, and even death. Leprosy carries a social stigma and diagnosis is frequently and notoriously delayed.

An incidental yet important discovery

Work led by MD Anderson pathologist Xiang-Yang Han, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in laboratory medicine, resulted in the discovery in 2008 of a new leprosy-causing species, called Mycobacterium lepromatosis. Before that time, only one species of bacteria, called Mycobacterium leprae, was known to cause leprosy.

In the past several years, Han and other researchers have found the new leprosy agent in patients from Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Singapore, and Myanmar. Han's team, in collaboration with Francisco Silva, an evolutionary geneticist from Spain, analyzed 20 genes of Mycobacterium lepromatosis and compared them with those of Mycobacterium leprae.
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Info

Reciprocity and parrots: Griffin the grey parrot appears to understand benefits of sharing, study suggests


sciencedaily.com
Tue, 25 Feb 2014 11:27 UTC
Image
© University of LincolnGriffin the grey parrot.
A study into whether grey parrots understand the notion of sharing suggests that they can learn the benefits of reciprocity. The research involved a grey parrot called Griffin, who consistently favoured the option of 'sharing' with two different human partners.

A study into whether grey parrots understand the notion of sharing suggests that they can learn the benefits of reciprocity. The research involved a grey parrot called Griffin, who consistently favoured the option of 'sharing' with two different human partners.

Griffin was presented with a choice of four different coloured cups. A green cup (the sharing option) meant he and his partner each got treats. A pink cup represented the selfish choice as only Griffin got a treat, an orange cup was the giving option as only his partner got a treat, and a violet cup denoted the spiteful selection as no one got treats.

With few exceptions he consistently favoured green for each human partner, indicating he understood the benefits of choosing the 'sharing' option.
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