Laws of physics are not the same everywhere

Defying Einstein's equivalence principle, which states that the laws of physics are the same everywhere, researchers have found new evidence that supports the idea that we live in an area of the universe that is just right for our existence.

The controversial finding comes from an observation that one of the constants of nature appears to be different in different parts of the cosmos.

"This finding was a real surprise to everyone," New Scientist quoted John Webb of the University of New South Wales in Australia as saying.

Even more surprising is the fact that the change in the constant appears to have an orientation, creating a "preferred direction", or axis, across the cosmos.

That idea was dismissed more than 100 years ago with the creation of Einstein's special theory of relativity.

But the new study focuses on the fine structure constant, also known as alpha.

This number determines the strength of interactions between light and matter.

Taking data from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile Webb has observed that alpha varies in space rather than time.

The VLT data suggests that, elsewhere in the universe, the value of alpha is very slightly bigger than on Earth.

The difference in both cases is around a millionth of the value alpha has in our region of space.

Moreover, the team's analysis of around 300 measurements of alpha in light coming from various points in the sky suggests the variation is not random but structured, like a bar magnet.

The Universe seems to have a large alpha on one side and a smaller alpha on the other.

This "dipole" alignment nearly matches that of a stream of galaxies mysteriously moving towards the edge of the universe.

However, it does not line up with another unexplained dipole, dubbed the axis of evil, in the afterglow of the big bang.

Earth sits somewhere in the middle of the extremes for alpha.

If correct, the result would explain why alpha seems to have the finely tuned value that allows chemistry – and thus life – to occur.

Grow alpha by 4 percent, for instance, and the stars would be unable to produce carbon, making our biochemistry impossible.

ANI

Mars puzzle may reveal whether life existed on planet

Experiments prompted by a 2008 surprise from NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander suggest that soil examined by NASA’s Viking Mars landers in 1976 may have contained carbon-based chemical building blocks of life.

“This doesn’t say anything about the question of whether or not life has existed on Mars, but it could make a big difference in how we look for evidence to answer that question,” said Chris McKay of NASA.

Scientists had found two organic chemicals - chloromethane and dichloromethane - when the Viking landers heated samples of Martian soil.

Those are exactly what the new study found when a little perchlorate -- the surprise finding from Phoenix - was added to desert soil from Chile containing organics and analyzed in the manner of the Viking tests.

“Our results suggest that not only organics, but also perchlorate, may have been present in the soil at both Viking landing sites,” said Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City.

Even if Mars has never had life, scientists before Viking anticipated that Martian soil would contain organics from meteorites.

“For 30 years we were looking at a jigsaw puzzle with a piece missing. Phoenix has provided the missing piece: perchlorate. The perchlorate discovery by Phoenix was one of the most important results from Mars since Viking,” McKay said.

If organic compounds can indeed persist in the surface soil of Mars, contrary to the predominant thinking for three decades, one way to search for evidence of life on Mars could be to check for types of large, complex organic molecules, such as DNA, that are indicators of biological activity.

“If organics cannot persist at the surface, that approach would not be wise, but if they can, it’s a different story,” McKay said.

ANI

Hawking: God did not create the universe

God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

In "The Grand Design," co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book "A Brief History of Time," an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity.

Since 1974, the scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics - Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.

His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.

He wrote in A Brief History ... "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God."

In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God.

"That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions -- the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes.

Hawking, who is only able to speak through a computer-generated voice synthesizer, has a neuro muscular dystrophy that has progressed over the years and left him almost completely paralyzed.

He began suffering the disease in his early 20s but went on to establish himself as one of the world's leading scientific authorities, and has also made guest appearances in "Star Trek" and the cartoons "Futurama" and "The Simpsons."

Last year he announced he was stepping down as Cambridge University's Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position once held by Newton and one he had held since 1979.

"The Grand Design" is due to go on sale next week.

Bureau Report

UFO Over Norway

What is being called "astonishing" footage of a UFO was submitted to the AllNewsWeb news site. The footage was taken in the northern region of Norway on August 13.

Of interest is that the video was taken in the same area of last year's "spiral" event. A witness to the UFO made the following statement:

"This was in the same area where the Spiral UFO of December 2009 was observed, however any connection with this or the HAARP/EISCAT facility is unknown."

Brisbane man finally spots 'UFO' after 30yrs of waiting

A man from Brisbane has finally spotted 'UFO', after spending 30 years on searching for one.

Erik Black, 49, who has been interested in UFOs since he was a child, revealed that he had only heard or read about them and had never seen a "real one" until 2010 election night.

"I have been researching UFOs for almost all my life and every time I came to the Northern Territory for holidays I read a UFO story in the newspaper, so I thought the NT was the place to be," the Courier Mail quoted him as telling the NT News.

Black said he had already spent four weeks of unsuccessful UFO-hunting in Darwin's rural area before he finally came across "something very unexpected" in Humpty Doo.

He described the object as being "amber-coloured" and "shaped like a hamburger, with black dots" and "weird-looking headlights".

"I thought it was a low-flying plane ... suddenly it was straight over my head - I wasn't really expecting what I saw," he stated.

Black said he was enveloped by "dead silence", when the "thing" was above him for about 30 seconds before it "disappeared rapidly".

He said he felt good to have finally spotted a UFO, but was "terribly disappointed" that he was not able to take a picture, as he was too busy staring at the object.

"I had my camera there and everything, but I just stared," he said.

"But I'll be coming back next year. The Territory is the place to see UFOs," he added.

ANI

Aliens exist but are yet to visit Earth

Extra-terrestrial beings do exist but they have not yet come to visit our planet, and the best way to communicate with aliens is to send radio signals, a top Chinese official said Tuesday.

Zhu Jin, curator of the Beijing Planetarium, said aliens are likely to be present on some planets. Since there are about one trillion planets going around fixed stars, the possibility of the earth being the only planet with living creatures was "too slim to be true", China Daily reported.

But as to reports of sighting of unidentified flying objects (UFOs), Zhu said they cannot be true.

Some UFOs were proved to be planes, kites or other normal objects, and many weird situations can be re-demonstrated and re-created, he said.

Zhu said the distance the Voyager 1 spacecraft has travelled in the past 33 years only accounts for one-thousandth of the solar system's reach. It will take 10,000 years for human beings to visit planets outside the solar system.

So, if aliens living in a faraway planet have a similar level of intelligence as human beings, it was impossible for them to travel to earth, he said.

IANS

ISS astronauts contacted from ancient Incan city

The ancient Incan civilisation city of Machu Picchu in Peru made history on Thursday when a radio contact was established from there with the International Space Station (ISS).

The Russian and Peruvian delegations talked with the ISS crew for 10 minutes Thursday.

The conversation was made in three languages -- Russian, Spanish and the Peru Indian language of Quechua. ISS Commander Alexander Skvortsov said it was the first time Quechua had ever been heard on the ISS.

Quechua is spoken by some 10 million native South American Indians.

Russia is helping Peru to build its first ever satellite, media reports said. It has also agreed to grow Peruvian potatoes on the ISS.

The rector of the Peruvian National University of Engineering, Aurelio Padilla Rios said the potatoes "will be healthy for the cosmonauts' food ration during a proposed three-year flight to Mars."

The current ISS crew is made up of Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov, Mikhail Korniyenko and Fedor Yurchikhin, US astronauts Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Shannon Walker and Douglas Wheelock.

Machu Picchu, "The Lost City of the Incas", is Peru's top archeological site, and was built in the middle of the 15th century.

IANS

Earth's upper atmosphere shrinking

Earth's atmosphere
Image credit: NASA

The upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere are unexpectedly shrinking and cooling due to lower ultraviolet radiation from the sun, US scientists said on Thursday.

The sun's energy output dropped to unusually low levels from 2007 to 2009, a significantly long spell with virtually no sunspots or solar storms, according to scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

During that period, the thermosphere, whose altitude ranges from about 55 to 300 miles (90 to 500 kilometers), shrank and contracted from the sharp drop in ultraviolet radiation, said the study published in the American Geophysical Union's journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The thermosphere cooled by 74 degrees Fahrenheit (41 Celsius) in 2008 compared to 1996, and shrank by 30 percent, "more than at any time in the 43-year era of space exploration" the researchers said.

"Our work demonstrates that the solar cycle not only varies on the typical 11-year time scale, but also can vary from one solar minimum to another," said study lead author Stanley Solomon.

A narrower, less dense thermosphere is good news for satellites orbiting Earth, including the International Space Station, since reduced friction means they can remain aloft longer, said University of Colorado professor and study co-author Thomas Woods.

"This is good news for those satellites that are actually operating, but it is also bad because of the thousands of non-operating objects (debris) remaining in space that could potentially have collisions with our working satellites," he added.

Woods said the research shows the sun could be going through a period of relatively low activity, as it did in the early 19th and 20th centuries. "If it is indeed similar to certain patterns in the past, then we expect to have low solar cycles for the next 10 to 30 years," he added.

Bureau Report

Aliens may be using thinking robots

Aliens could be operating through sentient robots and the hunt for extraterrestrial life should take this possibility into account, a leading astronomer has said.

Seth Shostak, of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in California, said humans had a greater chance of picking up signals from alien-operated robots than from the biological lifeforms that had created them.

The quest to find alien life so far has generally followed standard rules of biochemistry, working on the assumption that detectable extraterrestrial beings would be biologically "alive".

But Dr Shostak said astronomers may be overlooking the existence of "sentient machines" from outerspace, the Telegraph reported.

The astronomer argued that while evolution can take a large amount of time to produce beings capable of inter-planetary communication, technology could advance fast enough to move beyond the species that created it.

"If you look at the timescales for the development of technology, at some point you invent radio and then you go on the air and then we have a chance of finding you," he said.

"But within a few hundred years of inventing radio -- at least if we're any example -- you invent thinking machines.

Founded in 1984, the SETI institute has the mission to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe.

PTI

Massive solar storm to hit Earth in 2012

Astronomers are predicting that a massive solar storm, much bigger in potential than the one that caused spectacular light shows on Earth earlier this month, is to strike our planet in 2012 with a force of 100 million hydrogen bombs.

Several US media outlets have reported that NASA was warning the massive flare this month was just a precursor to a massive solar storm building that had the potential to wipe out the entire planet’s power grid.

Despite its rebuttal, NASA's been watching out for this storm since 2006 and reports from the US this week claim the storms could hit on that most Hollywood of disaster dates - 2012.

Similar storms back in 1859 and 1921 caused worldwide chaos, wiping out telegraph wires on a massive scale. The 2012 storm has the potential to be even more disruptive.

"The general consensus among general astronomers (and certainly solar astronomers) is that this coming Solar maximum (2012 but possibly later into 2013) will be the most violent in 100 years," News.com.au quoted astronomy lecturer and columnist Dave Reneke as saying.

"A bold statement and one taken seriously by those it will affect most, namely airline companies, communications companies and anyone working with modern GPS systems.

"They can even trip circuit breakers and knock out orbiting satellites, as has already been done this year,” added Reneke.

No one really knows what effect the 2012-2013 Solar Max will have on today’s digital-reliant society.

Dr Richard Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics division, told Reneke the super storm would hit like "a bolt of lightning”, causing catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.

NASA said that a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could cause “1 to 2 trillion dollars in damages to society’s high-tech infrastructure and require four to 10 years for complete recovery”.

The reason for the concern comes as the sun enters a phase known as Solar Cycle 24.

Most experts agree, although those who put the date of Solar Max in 2012 are getting the most press.

They claim satellites will be aged by 50 years, rendering GPS even more useless than ever, and the blast will have the equivalent energy of 100 million hydrogen bombs.

“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Fisher told Reneke.

“Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the Earth and it’s rapid, just like a lightning bolt. That’s the solar effect,” he added.

The findings are published in the most recent issue of Australasian Science.

ANI

Smallest Full Moon Tomorrow

Saguaro Moon
Image credit: NASA

The full Moon on Tuesday will appear the smallest this year as it would be the farthest from Earth.

Tuesday's full Moon will be around 15 percent smaller and its light intensity 30 per cent less as compared to the biggest full Moon during the year.

"The Moon will be farthest from the earth tomorrow and, therefore, appear smallest," Director of Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE) CB Devgun said.

"This is because the Moon's orbit is an ellipse with one side 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other," he said.

The full Moon, also known as grain Moon or Green Corn Moon in August, will be seen at its best at around 12:05 am.

The full Moon will lie more than 2,52,000 miles away, in contrast to the Moon's average distance of about 2,39,000 miles.

The next farthest full Moon will be seen on October 12, 2011.

PTI

Telescope captures galactic super volcanic explosion

The eruption of a galactic "super-volcano" in the massive galaxy M87
Image credit: NASA

A spectacular "super volcano" that erupted trillions of miles away from earth has been clicked by a NASA telescope.

The staggering eruption was filmed by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array.

Astronomers said shock waves between a giant black hole and cooling gas, caused the mind boggling explosion, reports a newspaper.

The explosion then blasted through the "massive" Messier 87 galaxy more than 50 million light years away. One light year is the equivalent of 5.9 trillion miles.

Researchers said the black hole powered the "galactic super-volcano" and prevented hundreds of millions of new stars from being formed.

They said that normally such stars would form in the galaxy when "superheated" gas cooled but this particular blast interrupted that process.

Nasa said the cosmic "eruption" was very similar to the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, which shot plumes of ash and smoke into the atmosphere and caused chaos for world travel earlier this year.

"With Eyjafjallajokull, pockets of hot gas blasted through the surface of the lava, generating shock waves that can be seen passing through the grey smoke of the volcano," a NASA spokesperson said.

IANS

Astronauts as weak as 80-year-olds in space

STS-123 crew portrait aboard the International Space Station.
Image credit: ialreadyhaveawatch.com

Astronauts can become as weak as 80-year-olds after six months at the International Space Station, according to a new study that raises serious health concerns as NASA contemplates prolonged trips to asteroids and Mars.

Marquette University biologist Robert Fitts, who led the study, stresses that the accelerated space aging is temporary: Astronauts' muscles recover after a few months back on Earth.

But what if a crew needed to make an emergency landing here on the home planet and rush from a burning spacecraft? What if after arriving at Mars, an urgent spacewalk was needed for repairs? Would the Mars men and women even be able to muster the strength for routine work?

"I'd be concerned," Fitts said this week in an interview.

Astronauts can avoid becoming weaklings, however, with more research and the right equipment for hitting the space gym, Fitts observed. "I really think this is all preventable," he said.

Fitts bases his findings on calf muscle biopsies that his team collected on nine US and Russian space station residents from 2002 to 2005. It's the first muscle study of long-flying astronauts that gets down to the cellular level, with actual biopsies conducted.

Each astronaut spent six months aboard the orbiting lab, and submitted to a biopsy before rocketing away and immediately upon returning to Earth.

The researchers discovered that the astronauts had lost more than 40 percent of the power in the slow-twitch fibers of their calf muscles. Those are the muscles so crucial for balance and posture, and seem to take more of a space-beating than other parts of the body.

Fitts said the muscle decline in the 40-something space station astronauts was equivalent to that of a person twice as old.

It didn't matter how musclebound someone was going into the mission. Fitts said the strongest weightlifting astronauts suffered the greatest muscle atrophy in orbit.

This considerable deterioration of the calf muscles occurred even though the astronauts devoted one to two hours a day to exercise. NASA has long realized the importance of weightless workouts, and the space station is equipped with treadmills, stationary cycles, and resistive-exercise machines for leg squats and calf raises.

NASA expects a new resistive exercise machine flown up last year to improve upon the old one. Tests are planned to see if that bears out. Astronauts complained that using the old model was like lifting a barbell without weights.

As it is now, astronauts returning from six-month space station missions must undergo physical therapy and, because of balance issues, cannot drive for two to four weeks. An expedition to Mars would last a minimum of three years.

Besides better exercise routines and equipment, astronauts also need to eat more, Fitts noted.

Bureau Report

Climate change killed woolly mammoths

A new study has revealed that the woolly mammoths died out because of dwindling grasslands - rather than being hunted to extinction by humans.

There was a severe decline in the pasture on which the mammoths fed after the ice age 21,000 years ago.

"What our results have suggested is that the changing climate - through the effect it had on vegetation - was the key thing that caused the reduction in the population and ultimate extinction of mammoths and many other large herbivores," the BBC quoted Brian Huntley of Durham University as saying.

Professor Huntley and his colleagues created a computer simulation of vegetation in Europe, Asia and North America over the last 42,000 years.

The researchers combined the estimates of climatic condition during this period with models of how various plants grow under different conditions.

They discovered that the cold and dry conditions during the ice age, with low levels of carbon dioxide, didn’t support the growth of trees.

So, instead of forests there were vast areas of pasture, which was ideal for large herbivores, such as woolly mammoths.

However, at the end of ice age, warmer and wetter climate and higher level of carbon dioxide helped in the growth of tress at the expense of pastures.

"During the height of the ice age, mammoths and other large herbivores would have had more food to eat," said Huntley.

"But as we shifted into the post-glacial stage, trees gradually displaced those herbaceous ecosystems and that much reduced their grazing area," he added.

ANI

Why matter prevails over antimatter

Physicists working at the Fermilab Tevatron particle collider have offered clues as to why matter prevails over antimatter in the universe.

They found that colliding protons in their experiment produced short-lived B meson particles that almost immediately broke down into debris that included slightly more matter than antimatter.

The two types of matter annihilate each other, so most of the material coming from these sorts of decays would disappear, leaving an excess of regular matter behind.

This sort of matter/antimatter asymmetry accounts for the fact that just about all the material in the universe is made of the normal matter we''re familiar with.

Physicists have long known about processes described by current physics theory that would produce tiny excesses of matter, but the amounts the theories predict are far smaller than necessary to create the universe we observe.

The Tevatron experiments suggest that we are on the verge of accounting for the quantities of matter that exist today.

But the truly exciting implication is that the experiment implies that there is new physics, beyond the widely accepted Standard Model, that must be at work.

If that''s the case, major scientific developments lie ahead.

The results emerge from a complicated and challenging analysis, and have yet to be confirmed by other experiments.

The results are being published in the APS journals Physical Review Letters and Physical Review D.

ANI

‘Magnetar’ challenges stellar evolution, black hole theory

This artist's impression of a magnetar contains hundreds of very massive stars,
some shining with a brilliance of almost one million suns. Photo: ESO

A neutron star with a mighty magnetic field has challenged the theories about stellar evolution and the birth of black holes, according to astronomers.

The "magnetar" lies in a cluster of stars known as Westerlund 1, located 16,000 light years away in the constellation of Ara, the Altar.

Westerlund 1, discovered in 1961 by a Swedish astronomer, is a favoured observation site in stellar physics.

It is one of the biggest cluster of superstars in the Milky Way, comprising hundreds of very massive stars, some shining with a brilliance of almost a million Suns and some two thousand times the Sun's diameter.

And by the standards of the Universe the cluster is also very young.

The stars were all born from a single event just three and a half to five million years ago.

Within Westerlund 1 is the remains of one of galaxy’s few magnetars - a particular kind of neutron star, formed from the explosion of a supernova, that can exert a magnetic field a million, billion times strong than Earth’s.

The Westerlund star, which eventually became the magnetar must have been at least 40 times the mass of the Sun, according to the study.

If so, intriguing questions are raised.

While popular assumption is that stars of between 10 and 25 solar masses go on to form neutron stars, but those above 25 solar masses produce black holes -- the light-gobbling gravitational monsters that are formed when a massive, dying star collapses in on itself.

In that case, the magnetar's mother should have become a black hole because it was so big.

But another alternative, say the authors, is that the star "slimmed" to a lower mass, enabling it to become a neutron star.

And, according to the paper, the reason could behind this could lie in a binary system- the star that became the magnetar was born with a stellar companion.

As the stars evolved, they began to interact, and the companion star, like a demonic twin, began to steal mass from the progenitor star.

Eventually the progenitor exploded, becoming a supernova.

The binary connection was sundered by the blast and both stars were ejected from the cluster, leaving just glowing remnants, which are the magnetar, according to this theory.

"If this is the case, it suggests that binary systems might play a key role in stellar evolution," the Telegraph quoted Simon Clark, who led the team, as saying.

He used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Paranal, Chile, to make the observations.

A binary system could be "the ultimate cosmic ''diet plan'' for heavyweight stars, which shifts over 95 per cent of their initial mass," he said.

The study appears in the research journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

ANI

Legless android first human-like robot in space

Conspicuous by his powerful white torso, the legless android named Robonaut 2 seems to be straight out of Star Wars movies.

The three-foot-four-inch tall Robonaut 2 will become the seventh crew member on board the next Discovery shuttle launch.

NASA will send Robonaut or R2 to permanently reside on the International Space Station later this year. He will become the first humanoid robot in space, reports the Daily Mail.

NASA and General Motors jointly developed R2 as a robotic assistant that can help human astronauts in space.

The 127-kg R2 comprises a head and a torso with two arms and two hands. It will be used for microgravity experiments in fluid physics, materials science, biology and biotechnology.

Its powerful arms are two feet eight inches long and are powerful enough to carry 20 pounds each in Earth's gravity.

But the robot's fingers are also extremely sensitive and allow R2 to operate machinery with almost the same dexterity as a human astronaut.

R2 will launch on space shuttle Discovery as part of a mission planned for Nov 1. Once aboard the station, engineers will monitor how the robot operates in weightlessness.

The dexterous robot not only looks like a human but also is designed to work like one. With human-like hands and arms, R2 is able to use the same tools station crew members use.

It will also keep people back on Earth up to date with its adventures with its very own Twitter account.

IANS

Jupiter swallowed planet 10 times the size of Earth

Jupiter, the biggest planet in the solar system, might have gained its dominant position after swallowing up a smaller planet, scientists believe.

Studies on Jupiter have revealed that the giant planet, which is more than 120 times bigger than the Earth, has an extremely small core that weighs just two to 10 Earth masses.

Now scientists have claimed that Jupiter's core might have been vaporised in huge collision with a planet up to ten times the size of Earth, the New Scientist reported.

Researchers led by by Shu Lin Li of Peking University in China have modelled what might have happened in the wake of the collision. Their simulations showed that the incoming rocky body flattened like a pancake when it hit the gas giant's atmosphere.

Then it barrelled into the giant's core about half an hour later and the energy of the collision could have vaporised much of the core.

These vaporised heavy elements would then have mixed with the hydrogen and helium of the gas giant's atmosphere, leaving only a fraction of the gas giant's former core behind.

This could explain not only why Jupiter's core is so small, but also why its atmosphere is richer in heavy elements compared with the Sun, the scientists said.

Study co-author Douglas Lin at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said the super-Earth might have grown into a gas giant itself one day if it had not collided with Jupiter.

"It may very well have been on its way to becoming a gas giant, but lost the race and got gobbled up."

Saturn has a similar overabundance of heavy elements in its atmosphere and the scientists believe this could also be due to impacts by rocky objects smaller than Earth that decelerated and broke up before they could reach Saturn's core.

The team's simulations suggest that this would have left the core intact, or even added to its mass as fragments rained down onto it.

"It's an interesting explanation of why you might have a variety of core masses in giant planets," said William Hubbard of the University of Arizona in Tucson. "It's a very useful contribution."

According to scientists, the planets in the solar system were created by collisions between small dwarf planets orbiting the newborn Sun.

In the collisions the small planets melted together and formed larger planets. The Earth and Moon are the result of a gigantic collision between two planets the size of Mars and Venus, they said.

PTI

Spectacular conjunction of Mars, Saturn, Venus with Moon

A rare beautiful conjunction of three planets with Moon will be visible in the night sky theatre on Friday.

Mars, Saturn, Venus and the very tender crescent Moon will be visible in the western sky, Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE) Director C B Devgun said.

The geometrical pattern will provide an opportunity to the sky gazers to watch and click the celestial spectacle, he added.

The rare alignment, where the three planets will form a triangle, along with the moon will be visible in the night dome, N Sri Raghunandan Kumar said today.

The beautiful gathering of planets in the sunset sky - Venus, Mars, Saturn and the crescent Moon apart from the Perseids meteor shower is a bonus for the sky gazers, Devgun said, adding it will be visible to the naked eyes.

PTI

NASA may land probe on asteroid coming towards Earth

American space agency NASA is contemplating to land a probe on an asteroid which is hurtling towards the Earth, a plan which mirrors the plot of the 1998 blockbuster Hollywood film 'Deep Impact', a media report said.

Though asteroid 1999 RQ36 has a one-in-1,000 chance of hitting Earth before the year 2200, but if it happens, then the collision would cause an explosion equivalent to hundreds of nuclear bombs detonating at once.

An analysis of its orbit has predicted that it is most likely to hit us on September 24, 2182 but scientists want to collect a sample of the rock to help forecast its trajectory more accurately.

If NASA gives the plan the green light, the spacecraft would blast off in 2106 to map out and collect rock samples from the asteroid, which is 1,800 feet-wide, British newspaper 'The Daily Telegraph' reported.

The planned mission, called OSIRIS-Rex, is one of two finalists in competition for funding as part of the cash- strapped US space agency?s New Frontiers program. The other contender is a mission to land on Venus. The winner will be announced next year.

NASA has officially classified RQ36 as a "potentially hazardous asteroid" as it passes within about 280,000 miles of Earth. Its orbit, which brings it closer to Earth, makes it easier to reach than other asteroids.

Michael Drake, who would lead the OSIRIS-Rex team if the project was chosen, was quoted as saying, "Being one of the easiest targets to get to coincidentally means that it also can easily hit us, too."

Clark Chapman, a planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said an impact from RQ36 would cause a catastrophic explosion. "It would be an enormous impact, like hundreds of the biggest nuclear bombs ever built exploding at once, creating a crater may be 10 kilometers across," he said.

An expert panel, appointed by US President Barack Obama to assess NASA's future space programme last year, has recommended bypassing the Moon in favour of a mission to land on an unidentified asteroid.

PTI

Hawking: Must colonise space to survive

The human race will become extinct unless it leaves Earth and colonises space within the next two centuries, according to Prof Stephen Hawking, the world's most famous astrophysicist.

In an interview with 'Big Think' portal, Prof Hawking has said he's an "optimist" but the next few hundred years had to be negotiated carefully if the human race is to survive. He said: "I see great danger for the human race. There have been a number of times in the past when survival has been a question of touch and go. The Cuban missile crisis in 1963 is one of these.

"The frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future. We shall need great care and judgment to negotiate them all successfully. But I am an optimist. If we can avoid disaster for the next two centuries our species should be safe as we spread into space."

Prof Hawking has warned that mankind was entering "an increasingly dangerous period of our history". "Our population and use of the finite resources of planet Earth and growing exponentially along with out technical ability to change the environment for good and ill.

"But our genetic code carries selfish and aggressive instincts that were a survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next 100 years let alone the next thousand or a million. Our only chance of long term survival is not to remain on Earth but to spread into space.

"We have made remarkable progress in the last 100 years but if we want to continue beyond the next 100 years our future is in space," the 'Daily Mail' quoted him as telling the portal.

Bureau Report

Scientists begin search for long lost frogs

A team of experts have begun scouring the world for lost gold – as part of a quest to trace 100 ‘missing’ species of amphibian.

The conservationists hope to find possibly extinct animals including the golden toad, the hula painted frog, the Jackson’s climbing salamander and the gastric brooding frog.

Some of the species on the list have not been seen for decades, including the Turkestanian salamander, last seen in 1909.

‘This is something that has never been done before and is hugely significant,’ said Dr Claude Gascon, of Conservation International, which is running the scheme in 14 countries.

'The search for these lost animals may well yield vital information in our attempts to stop the amphibian extinction crisis and information that helps humanity to better understand the impact that we are having on the planet.’

Amphibians are particularly sensitive to environmental changes, with more than 30 per cent facing extinction. They play a vital role controlling insects that spread diseases, while chemicals in their skins have been used to create life-saving drugs, including a painkiller 200 times more potent than morphine.

Bureau Report

Suits for Mars mission tested in Alps

Planetary scientists are testing out suits for the first manned missions to Mars — by boldly going to the snow-capped Alps.

This is because the scientists believe that conditions under Austria’s Kaunertaler Glacier are ideal for replicating conditions that astronauts would be facing on the Red Planet, where temperatures can plunge to -113°C, the Sun reported.

“It’s perfect. The permafrost conditions there closely resemble the climate on Mars,” Gernot Groemer who has designed the 27kg space suit, said.

The suits need to be significantly lighter and more flexible than the iconic Apollo spacesuits.

The glacier, some five hours drive from the Austrian capital Vienna, is best known as a ski resort but if the space-suit trials are succcessful could be remembered as one of the first steps on the long road to Mars.

In fact, Russia last year announced its plans to build a nuclear-powered spacecraft for a manned mission to Mars.

Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, told a government commission that the plan was crucial if Russia wanted to maintain a competitive edge in the space race, according to Russian media reports.

ANI

UFO photographed above Perm, Siberia

Over the last week a number of residents of the city of Perm in Siberia have complained to local authorities of unusual glowing orbs following them around. The local police have received at least three official reports of this nature.

Some of the witnesses have video-taped and taken photos (see above) of the UFO events and authorities are now believed to be examining the footage. It has been also claimed that unusual activity on the ground was reported in the vicinity of these UFOs. Apparently in one case one of the UFOs burnt a round area in grass remotely.

UFO sightings are a common occurrence in Perm and many residents claim to have had alien encounters over the years.

Masha Dimitriov
allnewsweb.com

Churchill, Eisenhower covered up RAF plane's UFO encounter

Britain's wartime Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill and American General Dwight Eisenhower had agreed to cover up an encounter between a Royal Air Force aircraft and a unidentified flying object (UFO) during World War II, declassified documents have revealed.

According to the declassified Ministry of Defence files, Churchill had allegedly ordered that the unexplained incident over the east coast of England should be kept secret for at least 50 years because it would provoke "mass panic".

The claim, recounted in declassified MoD files, was made by a scientist who said that his grandfather was one of Churchill's, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

Allegations of the cover-up emerged when the man, from Leicester, wrote to the government in 1999 seeking to find out more about the incident. He described how his grandfather, who served with the RAF in the war, was present when Churchill and Eisenhower discussed how to deal with the UFO encounter.

The man, who is not named in the files, said Churchill was reported to have exclaimed: "This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic amongst the general population and destroy one's belief in the church."

The incident allegedly involved an RAF reconnaissance plane returning from a mission in France or Germany towards the end of the war.

It was over or near the English coastline when it was suddenly intercepted by a strange metallic object which matched the aircraft's course and speed for a time before accelerating away and disappearing.

The scientist recounted: "This event was discussed by Mr Churchill and General Eisenhower, neither of whom knew what had been observed. There was a general inability for either side to match a plausible account to these observations, and this caused a high degree of concern."

He added: "During the discussion with Mr Churchill, a consultant (who worked in the Cumbria area during the war) dismissed any possibility that the object had been a missile, since a missile could not suddenly match its speed with a slower aircraft and then accelerate again.

"He declared that the event was totally beyond any imagined capabilities of the time. Another person at the meeting raised the possibility of an unidentified flying object, at which point Mr Churchill declared that the incident should be immediately classified for at least 50 years and its status reviewed by a future Prime Minister."

PTI

Astronomers obtain 3D view of stellar explosion

The material around SN 1987A (artist’s impression)
Image credit: ESO

Astronomers have obtained a three-dimensional view of the distribution of the innermost material expelled by a recently exploded star.

The Very Large Telescope showed that the blast more concentrated in one particular direction – indicating that the supernova must have been very turbulent.

Supernova 1987A was the first naked-eye supernova to be observed for 383 years (eso8704), and because of its relative closeness, it has made it possible for astronomers to study the explosion of a massive star and its aftermath in more detail than ever before.

It provided several notable observational ‘firsts’, like the detection of neutrinos from the collapsing inner stellar core triggering the explosion and the localisation on archival photographic plates of the star before it exploded.

The first material to be ejected from the explosion travelled at an incredible 100 million km per hour, which is about a tenth of the speed of light or around 100 000 times faster than a passenger jet.

“Just how a supernova explodes is not very well understood, but the way the star exploded is imprinted on this inner material,” said Karina Kjær.

“Because we know the time that has passed since the explosion, and because the material is moving outwards freely, we can convert this velocity into a distance. This gives us a picture of the inner ejecta as seen straight on and from the side,” Kjær added.

ANI

Moon isn't as watery as previously believed

A new study has revealed that the inside of the Moon isn't as watery as previously reported.

For decades, astronomers had thought the Moon is bone dry inside and out. However, recent moon-impact missions found water ice on the lunar surface, and reanalysis of rocks brought back by Apollo astronauts found evidence for significant amounts of water inside the Moon in the form of hydroxyl (-OH), a hydrogen compound formed by the breakdown of water (H2O).

In a new study of Apollo moon rocks, geochemist Zachary Sharp of the University of New Mexico and colleagues measured the moon rocks'' chlorine isotopes, or different forms of the chlorine atom.

Chlorine is strongly attracted to hydrogen. As magma cools and solidifies, hydrogen and chlorine present in the molten rock tend to bond to form hydrogen chloride gas.

On Earth, volcanic magma contains more hydrogen than chlorine, so most of the chlorine bonds with hydrogen. Due to the nature of the bond, the ratio of chlorine isotopes left behind in the cooling rock is about the same as the ratio that gets released as gas.

"We analyzed the Moon, and we found that the chlorine isotope values vary by 25 times more than the Earth's," National Geographic News quoted Sharp as saying.

The best way to explain this result is that the rocks, formed as the Moon cooled 4.5 billion years ago, are low in hydrogen.

Instead of becoming mostly hydrogen chloride gas, the chlorine in lunar magma was free to bond with other elements and form salts such as iron chloride and zinc chloride, leading to a wider range of chlorine isotopes in the rock.

And if moon rocks lack hydrogen, they must lack water, the study concluded.

The findings have been published online by the journal Science.

ANI

Saturn, Mars and Venus will shine in twilight through mid-August

Mid-August will be a treat for sky gazers, as Saturn, Mars and Venus come into view just as twilight begins to fade out.

"Venus will leap out at you. Saturn and Mars are fainter, so you may need to wait for the sky to darken a bit more before they glimmer into view," said Alan MacRobert, a senior editor of Sky and Telescope magazine.

Saturn and Mars will spend the week sliding to the right with respect to Venus, creating a planetary triangle that changes shape from day to day.

The crescent Moon joins the twilight planet scene on Thursday, August 12th (when it’s below Venus) and Friday the 13th (when it’s left of Venus).

Venus shines much brighter due to its close proximity to us, and Mars and Saturn look similar in brightness for reasons that cancel out.

Saturn is 35 times larger than Mars, but it’s much farther both from us and from the Sun.

"Don’t miss this chance to do some easy astronomy from your backyard, balcony, or rooftop," says Sky and Telescope editor in chief Robert Naeye.

"It's a big universe, and planets await!"

ANI

Solar tsunami may hit Earth tonight

Solar tsunami
Image credit: NASA

The Earth could be hit by a "solar tsunami" anytime now as an unusually complex magnetic eruption on the Sun has flung a large cloud of electrically charged particles towards our planet, scientists have warned.

Several satellites, including NASA's new Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), recorded on Sunday a small solar flare erupting above sunspot 1092, the size of the Earth.

The satellites also recorded a large filament of cool gas stretching across the Sun's northern hemisphere also exploded into space.

The explosion, called a coronal mass ejection, was aimed directly towards Earth, which then sent a "solar tsunami" racing 93 million miles across space, the New Scientist reported.

When the violent cloud hits, which could be anytime now, it could spark aurorae in the skies around the poles and pose a threat to satellites, although not a severe one, it said.

Despite being separated by hundreds of thousands of kilometres, the two events may be linked, said astronomers who studied the images from SDO that hint at a shock wave travelling from the flare into the filament.

"These are two distinct phenomena but they are obviously related," said Len Culhane, a solar physicist at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London.

Experts said the wave of supercharged gas will likely reach the Earth on Tuesday, when it will buffet the natural magnetic shield protecting Earth.

It is likely to spark spectacular displays of the aurora or northern and southern lights.

"This eruption is directed right at us," said Leon Golub, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.

"It's the first major Earth-directed eruption in quite some time," Golub was quoted as saying by the Telegraph.

NASA recently warned that Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation "space storm".

Earlier scientists had said that they believed the Earth would be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes "from a deep slumber" sometime around 2013.

It remains unclear, however, how much damage this latest eruption will cause the world's communication tools.

Dr Lucie Green, of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Surrey, who followed the flare-ups using Japan's orbiting Hinode telescope, said this was a very rare event.

"Not one, but two almost simultaneous eruptions from different locations on the Sun were launched toward the Earth.

"These eruptions occur when immense magnetic structures in the solar atmosphere lose their stability and can no longer be held down by the Sun's huge gravitational pull. Just like a coiled spring suddenly being released, they erupt into space."

"This means we have a very good chance of seeing major and prolonged effects, such as the northern lights at low latitudes."

PTI

Every black hole may hold a hidden universe

A hidden universe could exist inside every black hole, a Polish cosmologist has claimed, suggesting that our own universe could be inside a black hole as well.

A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, including light, can escape. It is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits it, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics.

Using an adaptation of Einstein's general theory of relativity, Nikodem Poplawski, from the Indiana University in Bloomington, analysed the theoretical motion of particles entering a black hole.

He concluded that it was possible for a whole new universe to exist inside every black hole, which means our own universe could be inside a black hole as well, the Telegraph reported.

"May be the huge black holes at the centre of the Milky Way and other galaxies are bridges to different universes," he said.

"If that is correct -- and it's a big 'if' -- there is nothing to rule out our universe itself being inside a black hole."

Explaining his theory in the journal 'Physics Letters B', Poplawski said he used the Einstein-Cartan-Kibble-Sciama (ECKS) theory of gravity in his analysis to account for the angular momentum of particles in a black hole.

It has made it possible to calculate a quality of space-time, called torsion, a property believed to repel gravity, he said.

Instead of matter reaching infinite density in a black hole called 'singularities' in Einstein's theory of relativity, the behaviour of the space-time acts more like a spring being compressed with matter rebounding and expanding continuously.

This "bounce-back" effect, the scientist explained, is caused by the torsion of space-time having a repulsive force against the gargantuan strength of gravity in a black hole.

He also claimed that "this recoiling effect could be what has led to our expanding universe that we observe today and could explain why our universe is flat, homogeneous and isotropic without needing cosmic inflation".

"It is hard to see how we could test whether or not Dr Poplawski's theory is correct; the force of gravity in black holes is such that nothing can escape, so no information about what is going on inside one can ever reach us."

However, Poplawski said, if we were living a spinning black hole then the spin would transfer to the space-time inside, meaning the universe would have a preferred direction -- something "we would be able to measure".

Such a preferred direction could be related to the observed imbalance of matter and anti-matter in the universe and could explain the oscillation of neutrinos, he added.

Bureau Report