Cool Science News

Monday, December 14, 2009

Black Hole Found to Be Much Closer To Earth Than Previously Thought

An international team of astronomers has accurately measured the distance from Earth to a black hole for the first time. (Credit: Image courtesy of SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 14, 2009) — An international team of astronomers has accurately measured the distance from Earth to a black hole for the first time. Without needing to rely on mathematical models the astronomers came up with a distance of 7800 light years, much closer than had been assumed until now. The researchers achieved this breakthrough by measuring the radio emissions from the black hole and its associated dying star.

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Real Christmas Trees 'Greener' Than Fake

From Live Science:

It may not sound like "tree-hugging," but cutting down a real tree for Christmas is actually greener than going with the artificial kind, one scientist says.

"It is a little counterintuitive to people," said Clint Springer, a biologist at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia.

Because of concerns over deforestation around the world, many people naturally worry that buying a real tree might contribute to that problem, Springer says. But most Christmas trees for sale these days are grown not in the forest but on tree farms, for the express purpose of being cut.

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Super-Earths Orbit Neighboring Stars

Astronomers have found up to six new planets orbiting stars that resemble the sun, paving the way forward for the discovery of a truly extraterrestrial Earth. NASA

From Discovery News:

The discovery of up to six planets breaks new ground in the search for worlds like our own.

The race to find Earth-like planets around stars similar to our sun edged closer to a finish with the announcement on Monday that up to six "super-Earths" have been found orbiting sun-like neighbor stars.

The smallest of the bunch weighs in at about five times the mass of Earth and orbits a star known as 61 Virginis, which is visible with the naked eye in the constellation Virgo. The star is 28 light-years from Earth and closely resembles the sun in size, age and other attributes.

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Wine Tastes Better In Blue Or Red Lit Rooms

From The Telegraph:

Wine tastes better if a room is backlit with red or blue ambient lights, a psychologist has found.

Drinkers' brains are tricked into thinking a glass of white wine is better and more expensive tasting when exposed to the red or blue background lighting than those in rooms with green or white background lighting.

And connoisseurs are warned to be wary of unscrupulous bar owners who try to pass off cheap plonk in trendy lit bars.

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The 100,000 Words A Day That Are Changing Our Brains And Ruining Our Concentration

From The Daily Mail:

Having trouble concentrating on this story? It could be because your brain is bombarded with more than 100,000 words a day.

The average adult hears or reads 100,500 words a day, research shows.

And the 'day' takes into account only waking hours outside work - meaning the true figure is much higher.

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Will The Google Phone Change the Mobile Game By Being Entirely Ad-Supported?

Google NexusOne, Built by HTC As leaked to Engadget

From Popular Science:

Which may sound altogether unappealing, until you realize it could be how Google plans to give away their Google Phone for free and potentially shake up the whole mobile industry in the process.

The last few days have seen Google's perceived positition regarding a Google-branded Android phone do an almost complete 180. Contrary to their previously publicized lack of interest in releasing a phone of their own, the Wall Street Journal this weekend reported on details of the Nexus One, a phone to be marketed directly to consumers as the "Google Phone" in the first quarter of 2010.

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Learning To Love To Hate Robots

Low expectations are easily surpassed (Image: Steve Olson/Getty)

From New Scientist:

ROBOTIC helpers are not yet in every home. But in recent years robots have steadily marched into the real world to perform tasks such as cleaning floors, delivering drugs or simply entertaining.

That has let anthropologists and roboticists give these mechanical workers their first report cards - and results are mixed. Despite evidence that we can find robots useful, even lovable colleagues, they can also trigger annoyance and violence. The results should help make future robots easier to work with.

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Russia Reigns Over Its Weather

Snow may be an icon of Russian winters, but city officials in Moscow say it's too expensive to clear. They're considering a cloud-seeding process that would prevent heavy snowfalls in the capital. (Sergei L. Loiko / Los Angeles Times / December 8, 2009)

From The L.A. Times:

Moscow officials have already chased away clouds on public holidays. Now they're considering cloud seeding to keep snow-removal costs down in the winter. Neighboring towns may get dumped on.

Reporting from Moscow - In the snow-hushed woods on Moscow's northern edge, scientists are decades deep into research on bending the weather to their will. They've been at it since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin paused long enough in the throes of World War II to found an observatory dedicated to tampering with climatic inconveniences.

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Growing Body Parts

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U.S. And Russia In Secret Cyber Warfare Talks

Russia and the US are in talks to combat the threat of cyber warfare, according to the New York Times
Photo: CLARE KENDALL

US And Russia In 'Secret' Cyber Warfare Talks -- The Telegraph

Russia and the United States are discussing how best to safeguard the internet against hostile attacks.

The talks, which are taking place between the US, Russia and a United Nations arms control committee, are aimed at finding ways of strengthening internet security and limiting the military use of cyberspace, according to a report in the New York Times.

Online attacks against government websites, corporate computer systems and other business-critical infrastructures have increased in the last two years. Anonymous hackers have managed to access the Pentagon's computers and overwhelm government websites, and President Obama has ordered an urgent review of the United States' internet security.

Apple’s Next Media Frontier Will Be Streaming Video

From Gadget Lab:

Video entertainment was “the one that got away” from Apple, but recent moves reveal the company is taking a second stab at the category, and that streaming video will play a major role.

The addition of video cameras to Apple’s latest iPhone and iPod Nano were just the first hints of the company’s new personal-media strategy. The company is also building a 500,000 square-foot data center in North Carolina, which could provide the massive bandwidth required for ubiquitous streaming video. And Apple’s recent acquisition of Lala suggests it’s interested in rebooting iTunes into a streaming service, according to Wall Street Journal. That means music, in Lala’s case, but the same infrastructure could be shared with streaming video.

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Understanding Apples' Ancestors

Researchers study wild Malus orientalis in the Caucasus region.
(Credit: Photo by Phil Forsline)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 14, 2009) — Wild Malus orientalis -- species of wild apples that could be an ancestor of today's domesticated apples -- are native to the Middle East and Central Asia. A new study comparing the diversity of recently acquired M. orientalis varieties from Georgia and Armenia with previously collected varieties originating in Russia and Turkey narrows the large population and establishes a core collection that will make M. orientalis more accessible to the breeding and research communities.

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Turtles Act Like Chameleons

A dark-colored midland painted turtle darkens to adapt to its surroundings.
Credit: John Rowe.

From Live Science:

Freshwater turtles’ skin and shells often match the color of their habitat’s substrate, which may help them deceive predators and prey alike. But what happens if turtles change abodes, from a black swamp, say, to a sandy-bottomed pond?

John W. Rowe, of Alma College in Michigan, and three colleagues collected gravid female midland painted turtles and red-eared sliders from the wild, brought them to the lab, and injected them with oxytocin, a hormone that induces egg laying.

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Barley + Space = Space Beer!

From Wired Science:

I love beer, and I love space. So how could I not love beer from space? I’m not usually one for beer gimmicks, but somehow Sapporo’s Space Barley is an exception.

The beer was made with grains descended from barley that spent five months in the Zvezda Service Module on the International Space Station. The very limited results, just 250 precious six-packs, will be sold through a lottery for 10,000 yen ($110) each. But only people living in Japan are eligible. Sigh.

Why are the Russian Academy of Sciences, Okayama University and presumably Russia’s space agency Roscosmos aiding this scheme? Well, science of course. And charity.

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Carnival Of Space 133 With North Pole Mysteries, Astronomy And Future Space Colonization

From Next Big Future:

1. Above is a piece of the 370 megapixel image of 500,000 galaxies.

Phil Plait, the bad astronomer, discusses the huge image just released by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey Deep Field #1, a ginormous mosaic of the night sky.

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Nano-Test Quickly Detects Cancer Tests

The test could detect the concentration of a single grain of salt dissolved in a large swimming pool, say rsearchers (Source: iStockphoto)

From ABC News (Australia)/AFP:

Scientists have developed a nanosensor for the quick detection of cancers through a simple blood test.

A technique developed at Yale University in the United States allows scientists to "detect tiny amounts of cancer biomarkers in a small volume of whole blood in just 20 minutes," according to the report in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

WISE Satellite Set To Map The Infrared Universe

Photo: EYE FOR THE INVISIBLE: Technicians prepare the WISE satellite for launch. NASA

From Scientific American:

NASA's latest space surveyor should be able to peer at distant galaxies and uncover dim objects right in our own celestial backyard.

Nestled into the payload of a Delta 2 rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California is a satellite that should open new targets for astronomical study both near and far. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), slated for launch no earlier than 6:09 A.M. Pacific Standard Time on December 11, is charged with mapping the sky in the mid-infrared to create an atlas of objects whose emitted light is invisible to human eyes and largely absorbed by Earth's atmosphere.

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Cheap, Plastic Memory For Flexible Devices

Photo: Flexible flash: This plastic sheet is arrayed with 676 flash memory cells. Credit: Science/AAAS

From Technology Review:

A new type of flash could be used in e-readers.

Cheap and plastic aren't words often associated with cutting-edge technology. But researchers in Tokyo have created a new kind of plastic low-cost flash memory that could find its way into novel flexible electronics.

Flash memory stores data electrically, in specially designed silicon transistors. Information can be recorded and read quickly and is retained even when the power is off. This makes flash ideal for MP3 players, cameras, memory cards, and USB drives. But the technology is still more expensive than conventional hard disks.

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Video: NASA Drops A Helicopter From Midair To Test New Anti-Crash Tech

From Popular Science:

No stranger to rough landings, NASA just engineered a crash of its own design to test a new crash countermeasure for helicopters. NASA dropped a donated Army MD-500 carrying four crash test dummies from 35 feet, to determine whether a new honeycomb cushion made of Kevlar strapped to the bottom of the copter could absorb the brunt of the impact. The result: a more or less intact MD-500, and the cool impact video below.

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Modern Life Causes Brain Overload, Study Finds

People are bombarded with the equivalent of 34 gigabytes of information a day.

From the Telegraph:

The wealth of media in modern life means the average person is bombarded with enough information every day to overload a laptop computer, a study has found.

Through email, the internet, television and other media, people are deluged with around 100,500 words a day – equivalent to 23 words per second, researchers claim.

Scientists from the University of San Diego, California, who conducted the research, believe that the information overload may be having a detrimental effect on our brains.

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