20
April
2007
20-Apr-2007 A new undersea chimney emitting hot springs of iron-darkened water – a black smoker – has been discovered 8,500 feet down in the Pacific Ocean off Costa Rica. Living there the scientists have found a pink form of the jellyfish order stauromedusae, which may be a new species. The jellyfish looks a bit like Medusa, the serpent-haired monster of Greek mythology, said expedition leader Emily Klein. So they have now named this part of the sea-floor the Medusa Hydrothermal Vent Field.
12-Apr-2007 Scientists have reported one of the world’s greatest mass death of corals, caused directly by the earthquake in Indonesia on 28 March 2005.
2-Apr-2007 A high-tech villa, designed to resist earthquakes by self-healing cracks in its walls and monitoring vibrations through intelligent sensors, will be built on a Greek mountainside.
29-Mar-2007 Scientists show that lightning is a good indicator of volcanic activity by observing “spectacular lightning sequences” at Mount Augustine, Alaska.
4-Dec-2006 Tsunami story and science teaching resources (US or UK English) posted at www.realscience.org.uk
Posted: News updates
19
April
2007
19-Apr-2007 A new study of dark matter haloes shows they are shaped like frisbees, not rugby balls as had been suggested.
3-Apr-2007 Scientists propose a new model of large-scale gravitation in which the force on dark matter is different to that experienced by normal matter.
The Abnormally Weighting Energy hypothesis achieves a number of scientifically satisfactory outcomes: It agrees well with observation, particularly of distant supernovae. It does not require negative pressures. It predicts an age of the universe 3 billion years greater than current models. And unlike previous theories of dark matter, it does not lead to an exponentially expanding universe, but rather a normal Einstein-de Sitter space, in which expansion is slowed by gravitation.
Best of all, AWE explains with minimal change to existing physics the otherwise deeply mysterious “dark energy”.
4-Dec-2006 Observations from Hubble Space Telescope show that dark energy has been speeding up the expansion of the universe for the largest part of its existence. Story and science teaching resources (US or UK English) posted at www.realscience.org.uk
Posted: News updates
18
April
2007
18-Dec-2006 How does a school of fish or flock of birds know how to move instantly from one pattern to another? New research from the University of Alberta shows how movements by a single individual ripple through the whole group.
18-Dec-2006 Flotillas of smart dust particles could be the first emissaries from Earth to visit extra-solar planets. Story and science teaching resources (US or UK English) posted at www.realscience.org.uk
Posted: News updates
14
April
2007
14-Apr-2007 A new model of the physics of neutron stars helps explain the ’superbursts’ of X-rays that these exotic collapsed stars (one teaspoon of which weighs a billion tons) emit much more regularly than previous models predicted.
9-Apr-2007 When it comes to eerie astrophysical effects, magnetars are hard to beat. News story and science teaching resources (US or UK English) posted at www.realscience.org.uk
Posted: News updates
3
April
2007
3-Apr-2007 “The potential threat from near-Earth asteroids can sometimes seem purely theoretical, an academic exercise in how orbits are calculated and refined. But when we start quantifying possible damage from an asteroid strike, the issue becomes a little more vivid.” From Centauri Dreams.
29 March 2007 Astronomers describe in unprecedented detail the double asteroid Antiope, which is shown to be a pair of rubble-pile chunks of material, of about the same size, whirling around one another in a perpetual pas de deux.
27 March 2007 Received a wonderfully evocative short note today about one of the scientists for whom the YORP effect was named.
From Mary:
“O’Keefe was my father. He was also responsible for discovering that the earth is (slightly) pear shaped, for which reason, we received many lugs of pears for Christmas for several years. He figured out how to map China when going from flat to round was unusual (during WWII) and he figured out that a satellite would help us to map the earth. He said tektites were from the Moon, and when nobody would listen, we put it on his funeral program so he’d have one more chance. He liked Wyeth and always talked about his appreciation of how light looks red when it comes through smoke or fog, but looks blue if it bounces off. I found his earliest comments about this in a letter to my mother before they married; he had read Goethe’s Farbenlehre.
“He believed very strongly that, as a civil servant, he was in the employ of the citizens of the US, who had a claim on his attention. Therefore those who wrote to him always received polite answers, even the little old ladies who wanted him to repent of his belief that the earth is round, or that it circuits the sun.
“He always wanted to be an astronomer; now he has an asteroid and an astral effect named after him. Good.”
26 March 2007 “Asteroid missions are exciting for their daring, their potential for scientific return, their ability to help protect the planet, and their meaning in humankind’s growth into a spacefaring species.” Interesting, readable paper by aerospace engineer.
9 March 2007 YORP effect story and science teaching resources (US or UK English) posted at www.realscience.org.uk
Posted: News updates
1
April
2007
29-Mar-2007 The “world’s first truly robotic micro-drill” used in a surgical operation in Birmingham, UK.
16-Nov-2006 Self-healing robot story and science teaching resources (US or UK English) posted at www.realscience.org.uk
Posted: News updates
26
March
2007
28 Feb 2007 “A new day begins and the mist fades, revealing the teeming tropical forest. For the fog it is time to rest, while other creatures awaken…”
24 Jan 2007 Cloud forest story and science teaching resources (US or UK English) posted at www.realscience.org.uk
Posted: News updates
26
March
2007
14 March 2007 Deep inside Saturn’s moon Enceladus may be an organic brew, a heat source, and liquid water – all the key ingredients for life.
13 March 2007 Methane seas on Titan.
22 March 2007 Enceladus story and science teaching resources (US or UK English) posted at www.realscience.org.uk
Posted: News updates
26
March
2007
20 March 2007 “They may not be gold mines, but the discovery of what appear to be caves on Mars could prove just as rich.”
12 Feb 2007 Martian maps story and science teaching resources (US or UK English) posted at www.realscience.org.uk
Posted: News updates
25
March
2007
4 Dec 2006 Diversified social roles for men, women, and children may have given Homo sapiens an advantage over Neanderthals.
15 Jan 2007 Neanderthal story and science teaching resources (US or UK English) posted at www.realscience.org.uk
15 Nov 2006 Neanderthal story and science teaching resources (US or UK English posted at www.realscience.org.uk
Posted: News updates
