Sunday, March 30, 2014
You’ve know you’ve worked too long in a lab when…
My fellow scientists, you’re not alone in thinking “is it […]
Professor attacked during lecture
This Brilliant Invention Helps Disabled Kids Walk and Play
Elnatan took the Upsee to Leckey, a child accessory manufacturer in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. On Monday, the company released Upsee for global distribution. You can find a promotional video below.
Woman Has Her Own Skull Replaced with a 3D Printed Plastic One
Dr. Verweij had worked with skull implants before, but never as large as this one. The operation was nonetheless tremendously successful. The patient has regained her sight and recovered enough to return to work. You can read more about her case at Wired.
What we lose if we lose antibiotics
If antibiotics no longer work, we also lose organ transplantation, cancer treatments, kidney dialysis, safe childbirth, many types of surgery, and cheap meat.
First comprehensive atlas of human gene activity released
A large international consortium of researchers has produced the first […]
Medical Marijuana Legalization Doesn’t Lead to More Crime
The legalization of medical marijuana has sparked debate across the […]
Clusters of ‘broken hearts’ may be linked to massive natural disasters
Sleep, Chronic Pain and Zombies
Chronic stress in early life causes anxiety, aggression in adulthood
Autism linked to second-trimester fetal brain development
Scientists found differences in the brain structures of kids with
autism compared to kids who don't have autism.Those specific structures form during the second trimester of pregnancy, suggesting that autism is something that is present long before birth
Archeologists Discover Tomb of Attila the Hun
Construction
workers building the foundations of a new bridge over the Danube
River in the Hungarian capitol of Budapest, have unearthed a spectacular 5th century sepulcher. The analysis of the monument revealed that it was the burial
chamber of a great Hunnic leader, most likely that of King Attila
himself.
“This site is absolutely incredible!” explains Albrecht
Rümschtein, an historian from the Lorand Eötvös University in Budapest
and member of the team of specialists investigating the tomb. “We found
many horse skeletons, as well as various weapons and other artifacts,
all traditionally associated with Huns. These objects include a large
sword made of meteoric iron, which could certainly be Attila’s legendary
“Holy War Sword of the Scythians”, allegedly given to him by the god
Mars himself. In fact, this definitely seems to be the resting place of
the almighty Attila, but further analysis needs to be done to confirm
it.”Nicknamed “the scourge of God” by roman historians, Attila was the ruler of the Huns, a nomadic people originating possibly from Central Asia. He ruled from 434 A.D., until his death in 453 after a feast celebrating his latest marriage to a beautiful and young Gothic princess named Ildico. He led many military raids on both the Eastern and Western Roman Empires provoking what has become known as the Barbarian Invasions or the Great Migration, a large movement of Germanic populations that greatly accelerated the fall of Rome and the advent of the Middle Ages in Europe. He his considered by most Hungarians, as the founder of the country.
The discovery of this funerary site could bring many clarifications concerning the origins and identity of the Hunnic people and of Attila himself, which have both been sources of debate for centuries. The analysis of pieces of pottery and jewelry found on the site, should bring a new light on their cultural origins and trade networks, and help scientists better understand this badly documented people.
The Vikning Sun-Compass ... After Dark
A clever combination of Viking sunstones and a specialized
sundial might have enabled Vikings to navigate after sunset.
1,300-Year-Old Egyptian Mummy Had Biblical Tattoo
A mummy of an Egyptian woman dating back to 700 A.D. has been
scanned and stripped to reveal a tattoo on her thigh that displays the
name of the biblical archangel Michael.
Roman Emperor Dressed as Pharaoh in Newfound Carving
An ancient stone carving on the walls of an Egyptian temple
depicts the Roman emperor Claudius dressed as an Egyptian pharaoh,
wearing an elaborate crown.
Art Masterpieces Recorded Centuries of Pollution
Artists' sunsets turned increasingly crimson after major
volcanic eruptions and increases in pollution.
Satellite 3-D
A satellite launched by NASA and Japan's space agency can for
the first time can detect light rain and snowfall from space.
First Asteroid With Rings Discovered
Move over, Saturn—rings aren't just for giant planets anymore.
This illustration shows the ring system detected around Chariklo, an asteroid-like object called a centaur.
Saturn has rings, of course, and so do the other gas giants of our solar system—Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune—albeit wispier ones than Saturn's.
But
until now it seemed that only giant planets had the gravity to hold on
to the billions of bits of orbiting ice and dust that make up a ring.
In a paper published in Nature, astronomers report the discovery of two icy rings around a small object named Chariklo that orbits between Saturn and Uranus. Chariklo is only 154 miles (248 kilometers) across.
"When I first heard of it, it was unbelievable," says Joseph Burns, an astronomer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who wasn't involved with the ring discovery.
"It's a mind-blowing kind of observation," says Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who also wasn't involved with the study.
"This probably will be the biggest discovery of my career," says Felipe Braga-Ribas of the National Observatory in Brazil, who led the team that found the rings, and who received his Ph.D. just last year.
A Comet? An Asteroid? A Minor Planet?
Chariklo, which was discovered in 1997, is the largest of a strange class of objects known as centaurs.
There are a few hundred of them. Like the mythological hybrid of horse
and human, they straddle two realms: that of the rocky asteroids, which
orbit closer to Earth than Jupiter, and that of the icy comets, which
mostly lie beyond Neptune.
Centaurs may hail originally
from the comet belt, but they now circulate between Jupiter and Neptune
on unstable orbits that cross the path of one of the giant planets. That
means they're probably doomed, within ten million years or so, to be
flung into the inner solar system or out into interstellar space.
There's
a lot that's not known about centaurs, including how many have enough
gravity to pull themselves into a round shape, which would earn them the
title of "dwarf planet."
On June 3, 2013, Braga-Ribas
and his colleagues observed Chariklo as it passed in front of a distant
star—an event called an occultation. By using seven different telescopes
around South America to determine exactly when and for how long the
star's light was dimmed by the centaur, they hoped to measure Chariklo's
size and shape precisely.
The event lasted only a few
seconds. At first, the team thought the brief, unexpected dips in
starlight they recorded were evidence that Chariklo was giving off jets
of gas, like a comet. The same phenomenon had been seen previously on
Chiron, another centaur.
But from the pattern of the
light dips, which came before and after the dimming caused by Chariklo
itself, it soon became clear to the researchers that they had observed
two closely spaced but distinct rings passing in front of the star.
"It was a complete surprise," says Braga-Ribas.
The
rings are about four and two miles (seven and three kilometers) wide,
and are respectively 243 miles (391 kilometers) and 251 miles (405
kilometers) from the center of Chariklo. They are chock-full of water
ice, Braga-Ribas says, and are bright and dense, resembling a miniature
version of Saturn's majestic bands.
In retrospect, the
discovery of the rings may clear up a mystery about Chariklo's behavior.
From 1997 to 2008 it got progressively dimmer, and signs of water ice
seemed to disappear from its spectrum. Braga-Ribas says the most likely
explanation is that Chariklo's bright rings were gradually assuming an
edge-on orientation and becoming invisible to observers on Earth. As the
rings tilted back to face Earth, Chariklo brightened and signs of
water—most likely locked up in the rings—became apparent again.
The Power of the Occult
Astronomers
aren't sure how Chariklo got its rings. But they provide a great
opportunity to learn how rings form in general, Burns says.
One
possibility is that a collision with a smaller object created a disk of
debris around Chariklo, and that the smaller pieces were then corralled
into rings by the gravity of some of the bigger pieces. Such "shepherd
satellites" help give Saturn's rings their sharp edges. The shepherd
satellites that may orbit Chariklo, however, could be less than a mile
across, making them difficult to detect with a telescope.
Since
making their discovery, Braga-Ribas and his colleagues have watched
Chariklo pass in front of another star, and they're planning to observe
more such events this year. They're also keeping their eye out for rings
around 50 other centaurs that are predicted to occult.
"If
this sort of thing can happen and is commonplace, what is that telling
us?" says Buie. "This is really new stuff and it's going to take a while
for the full ramifications to sink in."
"Discovering a new object is a pretty good experience," Braga-Ribas says. "We are making history here."
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