Cloaking upon us

Funded, of course, by War Inc.

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, whose work is funded by the American military, have engineered materials that can control light’s direction of travel. The world’s two leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, are expected to report the results this week.

It follows earlier work at Imperial College London that achieved similar results with microwaves. Like light, these are a form of electromagnetic radiation but their longer wave-length makes them far easier to manipulate. Achieving the same effect with visible light is a big advance.

Underlying the work is the idea that bending visible light around an object will hide it.

Xiang Zhang, the leader of the researchers, said: “In the case of invisibility cloaks or shields, the material would need to curve light waves completely around the object like a river flowing around a rock.” An observer looking at the cloaked object would then see light from behind it – making it seem to disappear.

credit: Times Online UK

Like cream drops in black coffee

How hot is this shit?!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Astronomers have found some matter that had been missing in deep space and say it is strung along web-like filaments that form the backbone of the universe.

The ethereal strands of hydrogen and oxygen atoms could account for up to half the matter that scientists knew must be there but simply could not see, the researchers reported on Tuesday.

Scientists have long known there is far more matter in the universe than can be accounted for by visible galaxies and stars. Not only is there invisible baryonic matter -- the protons and neutrons that make up atoms -- but there also is an even larger amount of invisible "dark" matter.

Now about half of the missing baryonic matter has turned up, seen by the orbiting Hubble space telescope and NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, or FUSE.

"We think we are seeing the strands of a web-like structure that forms the backbone of the universe," said Mike Shull of the University of Colorado, who helped lead the study published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The matter is spread as superheated oxygen and hydrogen in what looked like vast empty spaces between galaxies.

However, observations of a quasar -- a bright object far off in space -- show its light is diffused much as a lighthouse can reflect on a thin fog that was invisible in the dark.

"It is kind of like a spider web. The gravity of the spider web is what produced what we see," Shull said in a telephone interview. "It's very thin. Some of it is very hot gas, almost a million degrees."

This is where the dark matter comes in. The dark matter is heating up the gas, Shull said.

"Dark matter has gravity. It pulls the gas in," Shull said. "This causes what I call sonic booms -- shock waves. This shock heats it to a million degrees. That makes it even harder to see."

The atoms of oxygen are in a stripped-down, ionized form. Five of the eight electrons are gone. It emits an ultraviolet spectrum of light that instruments aboard FUSE and Hubble can spot, Shull said.

These web-like filaments of matter are the structure upon which the galaxies form, he said.

"So when we look at the distribution of galaxies on a very large scale, we see they are not uniform," Shull said. "They spread out in sheets and filaments."

Some faint dwarf galaxies or wisps of matter in these structures could be forming galaxies right now, the researchers said.

Shull and colleagues said these webs of hydrogen and oxygen are too hot to be seen in visible light and too cool to be seen in X-rays.

credit:By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
(Editing by Will Dunham and Xavier Briand)

(too many cooks, but still....--ss)

Killing Blue Tuna

credit:washpo

Blue tuna's going extinct. Guess why:

For years, Europeans have been overfishing bluefin tuna that breed in the Mediterranean. In fact, for the past four years European Union officials have set catch quotas at nearly double the levels their scientists recommended, and fishermen have exceeded those already-elevated quotas by 50 percent each year. In the United States, the federal government has imposed greater restrictions, but fishermen can still bring home bluefin tuna they incidentally catch as the fish are spawning each spring in the Gulf of Mexico.

Great lede, btw.

For centuries, humans have mythologized the bluefin tuna, an elite, warmblooded fish that can traverse the Atlantic basin in less than a month and a half and grow to weigh three-quarters of a ton. Romans put bluefin on their coins; Salvador Dali painted them.

Artificial life created?

imagecredit:postsecret

Scientist says he's created a synthetic chromosome that could combat global warming

Mr Venter told the Guardian he thought this landmark would be "a very important philosophical step in the history of our species. We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before".

The Guardian can reveal that a team of 20 top scientists assembled by Mr Venter, led by the Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith, has already constructed a synthetic chromosome, a feat of virtuoso bio-engineering never previously achieved. Using lab-made chemicals, they have painstakingly stitched together a chromosome that is 381 genes long and contains 580,000 base pairs of genetic code.

The DNA sequence is based on the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium which the team pared down to the bare essentials needed to support life, removing a fifth of its genetic make-up. The wholly synthetically reconstructed chromosome, which the team have christened Mycoplasma laboratorium, has been watermarked with inks for easy recognition.

credit:guardian.UK

Uh, where does climate change come into play here?

Mr Venter believes designer genomes have enormous positive potential if properly regulated. In the long-term, he hopes they could lead to alternative energy sources previously unthinkable. Bacteria could be created, he speculates, that could help mop up excessive carbon dioxide, thus contributing to the solution to global warming, or produce fuels such as butane or propane made entirely from sugar.

Space Storm

Space.com had this on Dec. 13, 2006~>New Forecast: Severe Space Storm Headed to Earth

Space weather forecasters revised their predictions for storminess after a major flare erupted on the Sun overnight threatening damage to communication systems and power grids while offering up the wonder of Northern Lights.

"We're looking for very strong, severe geomagnetic storming" to begin probably around mid-day Thursday, Joe Kunches, Lead Forecaster at the NOAA Space Environment Center, told SPACE.com this afternoon.

...

Radio communications, satellites and power grids could face potential interruptions or damage, however.

Solar flares send radiation to Earth within minutes. Some are also accompanied by coronal mass ejections (CME), clouds of charged particles that arrive in a day or two. This flare unleashed a strong CME that's aimed squarely at Earth.

"It's got all the right stuff," Kunches said.

However, one crucial component to the storm is unknown: its magnetic orientation. If it lines up a certain way with Earth's magnetic field, then the storm essentially pours into our upper atmosphere. If the alignment is otherwise, the storm can pass by the planet with fewer consequences.

Kunches and his team are advising satellite operators and power grid managers to keep an eye on their systems. In the past, CMEs have knocked out satellites and tripped terrestrial power grids. Engineers have learned to limit switching at electricity transfer stations, and satellite operators sometimes reduce operations or make back-up plans in case a craft is damaged.

Another aspect of a CME involves protons that get pushed along by the shock wave. Sometimes these protons break through Earth's protective magnetic field and flood the outer reaches of the atmosphere—where the space station orbits—with radiation. The science of it all is a gray area, Kunches said

"All is a miracle. The stupendous order of nature, the revolution of a hundred millions of worlds around a million of stars, the activity of light, the life of all animals, all are grand and perpetual miracles."
~ Francois Voltaire

The Van Allen Belt Flip

For those of you who had Mrs. Henley in Freshman year science class at ole CGHS, from the AP :::

JAMES VAN ALLEN, 91

Found fame, honor in space

BY TODD DVORAK
Associated Press
IOWA CITY, Iowa - Physicist James A. Van Allen, a leader in space exploration who discovered the radiation belts surrounding the Earth that now bear his name, died Wednesday. He was 91.

In a career that stretched over more than a half-century, Van Allen designed scientific instruments for dozens of research flights, first with small rockets and balloons, and eventually with space probes that traveled to distant planets and beyond.

Van Allen gained global attention in the late 1950s when instruments he designed and placed aboard the first U.S. satellite, Explorer I, discovered the bands of intense radiation that surround the earth, now known as the Van Allen Belts.

The bands spawned a whole new field of research known as magnetospheric physics, an area of study that now involves more than 1,000 investigators in more than 20 countries.

The discovery also propelled the United States in its space exploration race with the Soviet Union and prompted Time magazine to put Van Allen on the cover of its May 4, 1959, issue.
The folksy, pipe-smoking scientist, called ''Van'' by friends, retired from full-time teaching in 1985. But he continued to write, oversee research, counsel students and monitor data gathered by satellites. He worked in a large, cluttered corner office on the seventh floor of the physics and astronomy building that bears his name.

Though he was an early advocate of a concerted national space program, Van Allen was a strong critic of most manned space projects, once dismissing the U.S. proposal for a manned space station as ``speculative . . . and poorly founded.''

Explorer 1, which weighed just 31 pounds, was launched Jan. 31, 1958, during an emotional time just after the Sputnik launches by the Soviet Union created new Cold War fears. The instruments that Van Allen developed for the mission were tiny Geiger counters to measure radiation.

The success of the flight created nationwide celebration. Equally exciting for the scientists was the discovery of the radiation belts, a discovery that happened slowly over the next weeks and months as they pieced together data coming from the satellite.

Later in 1958, another scientist proposed naming the belts for Van Allen. His later projects included the Pioneer 10 and 11 flights, which studied the radiation belts of Jupiter in 1973 and 1974 and the radiation belts of Saturn in 1979.

Van Allen was born Sept. 7, 1914, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. He got his master's and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa.

The HIV elite

Reuters:"Elite" HIV patients mystify doctors

Wed Aug 16, 2006 5:45pm ET

TORONTO (Reuters) - As many as one in 300 HIV patients never get sick and never suffer damage to their immune systems and AIDS experts said on Wednesday they want to know why.

Holy shit! Since always?!?!

Most have gone unnoticed by the top researchers, because they are well, do not need treatment and do not want attention, said Dr. Bruce Walker of Harvard Medical School.

...

So far Walker and colleagues have not been able to find out why certain people can live for 15 years and longer with the virus and never get ill. The AIDS virus usually kills patients within two years if they are not treated.

...

A few years into the AIDS epidemic, researchers identified people who were called "long-term non-progressors." These were patients infected with HIV who did not become ill.

...

Loreen Willenberg, of Diamond Springs, California, is a newly designated "elite." Now 52 and healthy, she said she became infected in 1992.

"I dreamed that I was HIV positive," Willenberg told the news conference.

"I was really going through a very bad flu." She sought testing, and after getting an inconclusive result was later declared HIV positive.

HIV patients are not immediately put onto drugs that can keep them healthy, but wait until the virus reaches a certain level in the blood or until the virus kills a certain number of immune system cells called CD4 T-cells.

Willenberg, a landscape designer, never got to that point.

"I am in perfect health. I think I have had maybe only one cold in the past 14 years," she said.

Walker has tracked down 200 elite patients and has now joined up with other prominent AIDS researchers to find at least 1,000 "elites" in North America and as many as possible globally.
Based on research done so far, Walker estimates there are 2,000 of them in the United States.

James Cameron and Exodus ?!?!

I saw this on TV and it rocks. I REALLY recommend it.

The Sunday Times : Volcanic eruption 'triggered biblical parting of Red Sea'

August 06, 2006

James Cameron, the director of Titanic, is the executive producer of a new documentary that claims to have uncovered fresh evidence confirming one of the most dramatic episodes in the Old Testament — the parting of the Red Sea and the Jewish exodus from Egypt.

In The Exodus Decoded, a 90-minute documentary that will be shown in America this month, Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici, the Canadian film producer, claim a volcanic eruption on the Greek archipelago of Santorini triggered a chain of natural catastrophes recorded in the Bible as the 10 plagues that God visited upon Egypt as punishment for enslaving the Jews.

Cameron believes the parting of the Red Sea may have been a tsunami that destroyed the pharaoh’s army as it pursued the escaping Jews. The documentary claims the episode occurred not at the Red Sea but at the smaller Sea of Reeds, a marshy area at the northern end of the Gulf of Suez. An underwater earthquake may have released poisonous gases that turned the waters red.

Jacobovici said “the common wisdom is there isn’t a single piece of archeological evidence backing up the biblical story of the exodus”. Jewish scholars have reluctantly concurred that an episode central to their faith — commemorated each year at Passover — may never have taken place.

Yet Cameron and Jacobovici claim to have unearthed more than a dozen archeological relics that suggest the exodus took place three centuries earlier than biblical scholars estimate. By reinterpreting artwork at museums in Luxor, Cairo, Athens and elsewhere, Jacobovici dates the exodus to around 1500BC.

That was about the time when some geologists believe the Santorini volcano, 400 miles north of Egypt, erupted in the eastern Mediterranean. Scientists and historians have long speculated that the 10 “plagues” suffered by Egypt might have been linked in a “domino theory” of natural causes.

The documentary’s website argues that a series of earthquakes may have “destabilised the entire Nile Delta system and resulted in part of the delta sliding off the African continental shelf”. This would have raised the level of land around the Sea of Reeds, believed to have been saltwater swamps around El Balah, the now extinct lake.

“In other words, the sea parted,” the website says. “Water would have cascaded from higher ground to lower ground . . . creating dry land on which the Israelites could cross. This event would also have caused an enormous ‘backsplash’ of water, a veritable tsunami. If the waves went a mere seven miles inland they would have engulfed the Egyptian army.”

The Exodus producers believe the waters were turned red by chemicals released by underwater tremors. Something similar happened to the lakes in Cameroon in 1986. If the waters were poisoned, amphibians would hop ashore, producing the biblical plague of frogs. When the frogs died, insects would have bred on their bodies leading to plagues of locusts, fleas and lice.

They in turn would have spread disease to humans, the plague of boils, and animals, the plague of dying livestock. They would also have threatened crops, forcing the Egyptians to store grain which might have then turned mouldy. Contaminated food might account for the plague of deaths among first-born Egyptian males. Weather conditions spawned by the eruption might also have caused the plagues of hailstorms and darkness.

Two-faced kitten

sent from the twisted awareness of the Friendly Stranger

Yikes. This line bothers me the most:

It has two mouths that meow in unison, two noses and four eyes that have not opened yet...

Um, acutally not that one but:

Dr. Shane Bateman with The Ohio State University Veterinary Hospital said a two-faced kitten is extremely rare and there's no real explanation as to why it would have happened.

Dude, it's the roll of the genetic dice, slightly loaded thanks to all the fucked-up shit we put into the world.

Deep Impact

(Spotted by the Friendly Stranger)

New asteroid at top of Earth-threat list

* 11:52 01 March 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Kimm Groshong

Observations by astronomers tracking near-Earth asteroids have raised
a new object to the top of the Earth-threat list.

The asteroid could strike the Earth in 2102. However, Don Yeomans,
manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US, told New Scientist: "The most
likely situation, by far, is that additional observations will bring
it back down to a zero."

He adds: "We're more likely to be hit between now and then by an
object that we don't know about."

On 23 February, new observations allowed researchers to more
accurately calculate the orbit of the asteroid, named 2004 VD17, which
was originally detected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's
LINEAR project. Since the improvement did not rule out a potential
collision with the Earth on 4 May 2102, they increased the asteroid's
rating to level 2 on the Torino Scale, a relatively rare event.

Degrees of danger

The Torino Scale, adopted in 1999, is akin to a Richter scale for
asteroid impacts. The vast majority of the 4000 or so near-Earth
objects (NEOs) detected so far have been assigned to level zero on the
Torino scale, meaning they have "no likely consequences".

Level 1, colour-coded green, suggests a possible impact that "merits
careful monitoring". Beyond that, the risk continues to rise along the
scale – levels 2, 3 and 4 are yellow; 5, 6 and 7 are orange; while 8,
9 and 10 earn red.

The highest level ever reached by an asteroid was level 4 by Apophis
(2004 MN4) in December 2004, but subsequent calculations downgraded
that concern to a level 1. So VD17 currently claims the top spot on
NASA's online list of potential asteroid impacts.

Despite the rarity of the yellow designation, Yeomans says "Torino 2
is not very alarming." He notes that the scale does not take account
of how soon an impact may occur, unlike its rival, the Palermo Scale.

Based on current observations, he says the asteroid has a 1 in 1600
chance of striking the Earth in 2102 and a 1 in 500,000 chance of
hitting two years later. But further observations will soon refine the
orbit calculation for VD17 – and hopefully ease minds.

NEO hunter, Andrea Milani Comparetti of the University of Pisa, Italy,
says VD17 "is a serious problem, but not for our generation". He also
notes that VD17 is dim and distant and is not projected to pass close
by the Earth before 2102. "You will need fairly powerful telescopes to
see it before it arrives," he told New Scientist.
Smaller threats

Since 1998, NASA has had a US Congressional mandate to locate 90% of
all NEOs of 1 kilometre or larger by 2008. Yeomans says that 830 out
of a predicted 1100 have been found so far, along with thousands of
smaller objects.

In the NASA Authorization Act of 2005, Congress directed the space
agency to study and report back on the best way to cost-effectively
locate 90% of all asteroids down to a diameter of just 140 metres.
Yeomans says there are likely to be about 100,000 such NEOs.

Yeomans and Bill Bottke of the Southwest Research Institute in
Boulder, Colorado, were both members of a team that reported in 2003
that a survey to locate such small asteroids would be cost-effective,
considering the damage an impact could cause. Bottke says the group
found that to find 90% of the remaining hazard would cost roughly $300
million.

2004 VD17 is estimated to have a diameter of about 580 metres. An
asteroid of that size would produce an impact crater about 10
kilometres wide and an earthquake of magnitude 7.4 if it struck land.

Schrödinger's computer

Quantum computer works best switched off

* 22 February 2006
* From New Scientist Print Edition

Even for the crazy world of quantum mechanics, this one is twisted. A
quantum computer program has produced an answer without actually
running.

The idea behind the feat, first proposed in 1998, is to put a quantum
computer into a "superposition", a state in which it is both running
and not running. It is as if you asked Schrödinger's cat to hit "Run".

With the right set-up, the theory suggested, the computer would
sometimes get an answer out of the computer even though the program
did not run. And now researchers from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign have improved on the original design and built a
non-running quantum computer that really works.

They send a photon into a system of mirrors and other optical devices,
which included a set of components that run a simple database search
by changing the properties of the photon.

The new design includes a quantum trick called the Zeno effect.
Repeated measurements stop the photon from entering the actual
program, but allow its quantum nature to flirt with the program's
components - so it can become gradually altered even though it never
actually passes through.

"It is very bizarre that you know your computer has not run but you
also know what the answer is," says team member Onur Hosten.

This scheme could have an advantage over straightforward quantum
computing. "A non-running computer produces fewer errors," says
Hosten. That sentiment should have technophobes nodding
enthusiastically.

Journal reference: Nature (vol 439, p 949)

Thanks Friendly Stranger

NASA Detects 'Totally New' Mystery Explosion Nearby

Astronomers have detected a new type of cosmic outburst that they
can't yet explain. The event was very close to our galaxy, they said.

The eruption might portend an even brighter event to come, a supernova.

It was spotted by NASA's Swift telescope and is being monitored by
other telescopes around the world as scientists wait to see what will
happen.

Neil Gehrels, principal investigator for the Swift mission at NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center, called the event "totally new, totally
unexpected."

If the eruption indeed precedes a supernova, then it would reach peak
brightness in about a week, scientists said.

The event, detected Feb. 18, looks something like a gamma-ray burst
(GRB), scientists said. But it is much closer—about 440 million
light-years away—than others. And it lasted about 33 minutes. Most
GRBs are billions of light-years away and last less than a second or
just a few seconds.

Other aspects of the newfound eruption were inexplicable, astronomers
said. It was dimmer than most. Even so, the newly spotted point of
light in the sky outshines the entire galaxy in which the event
occurred.

"This could be a new kind of burst, or we might be seeing a gamma-ray
burst from an entirely different angle," said Swift scientist John
Nousek at Penn State University.

Astronomers don't fully understand gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). But they
theorize that when one is pointed our way, it appears brighter than
when the beams it produces shoot off in other directions.

The explosion has been catalogued as GRB 060218. It is the
second-closest GRB ever detected. But it's not clear if it will
ultimately be called one.

Italian researchers using the European Southern Observatory's Very
Large Telescope in Chile found signs in the event's optical afterglow
that it may become a supernova. The scenario outlined by some
researchers is that a very massive star has collapsed into a black
hole and then exploded.

If the event is indeed a supernova in the making, scientists may get
the first look at one unfolding from start to finish.

The eruption occurred in the constellation Aries.

(Credit: Friendly Stranger for the catch)

Icecaps Melting

Climate change: On the edge

Greenland ice cap breaking up at twice the rate it was five years ago, says scientist Bush tried to gag

By Jim Hansen

Published: 17 February 2006
A satellite study of the Greenland ice cap shows that it is melting far faster than scientists had feared - twice as much ice is going into the sea as it was five years ago. The implications for rising sea levels - and climate change - could be dramatic.

Yet, a few weeks ago, when I - a Nasa climate scientist - tried to talk to the media about these issues following a lecture I had given calling for prompt reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases, the Nasa public affairs team - staffed by political appointees from the Bush administration - tried to stop me doing so. I was not happy with that, and I ignored the restrictions. The first line of Nasa's mission is to understand and protect the planet.


I think sea-level rise is going to be the big issue soon, more even than warming itself.

click headline link for more