Is the Sun Missing Its Spots?

SUN GAZING These photos show sunspots near solar maximum on July 19, 2000, and near solar minimum on March 18, 2009. Some global warming skeptics speculate that the Sun may be on the verge of an extended slumber. NASA

From The New York Times:

The Sun is still blank (mostly).

Ever since Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, a German astronomer, first noted in 1843 that sunspots burgeon and wane over a roughly 11-year cycle, scientists have carefully watched the Sun’s activity. In the latest lull, the Sun should have reached its calmest, least pockmarked state last fall.

Indeed, last year marked the blankest year of the Sun in the last half-century — 266 days with not a single sunspot visible from Earth. Then, in the first four months of 2009, the Sun became even more blank, the pace of sunspots slowing more.

Read more ....

Alien-Wasp Swarms Devouring Birds, Bugs in Hawaii

Invasive western yellowjacket wasps in Hawaii (above, a wasp eats an unidentified insect near another wasp) are munching their way through an "astonishing diversity" of creatures, from caterpillars to ring-necked pheasants, a July 2009 study says. The voracious wasps, which have exploded in their new habitat, can wipe out whole swaths of prey insects surrounding their nests. Photograph courtesy Erin Wilson

From National Geographic:

Attacking from nests as big as pickup-truck beds, invasive western yellowjacket wasps in Hawaii are munching their way through an "astonishing diversity" of creatures, from caterpillars to pheasants, a new study says.

Adult yellowjackets consume only nectar. But they kill or scavenge prey to deliver needed protein to their growing broods.

Read more ....

Nasa Finds Monster Black Hole Sucking Up Gas, Dust And Stars At Centre Of Galaxy

The galaxy NGC-1097 with a monstrous black hole surrounded by a ring of stars at its centre
Photo: REUTERS / NASA

From The Telegraph:

Nasa has found a monster black hole 100 million times the mass of the Sun feeding off gas, dust and stars at the centre of a galaxy 50 million light-years away.

The star-ringed black hole forms the eye of a galaxy called NGC-1097 which was photographed by the US space agency's Spitzer Space Telescope in California.

A black hole is a region of space in which the gravitational pull is so powerful that nothing, including whole planets, can escape being sucked in if they come within its reach.

Read more ....

Sensational Collection Of Satellite Images Captures Earth's Natural Wonders From Space

This image shows how dust from the Sahara desert blew all the way over the British Isles

From The Daily Mail:

For decades, man has gazed up at the stars and marvelled at the wonders of the universe.

But, as this amazing selection of images shows, there are many mind-blowing sights to behold from the other direction.

Pictures taken by astronauts and Nasa satellites give a fascinating bird's-eye view of Earth's natural wonders - including hurricanes, volcanoes and other powerful weather formations - from space.

Read more ....

What NASA's Return To The Moon May Look Like

To explore the lunar surface, NASA envisions a pressurised rover that will act as a mobile habitat, allowing astronauts to explore the lunar surface for weeks at a time without returning to their base. If supply depots are scattered along the way, these rovers could potentially have a range of hundreds of kilometres. (Image: Regan Geeseman)

From New Scientist:

The Apollo era may have ended as funding fizzled, and the programme's astronauts may be bigger fans of Mars, but the hope of returning to the moon never really went away.

Twenty years ago, on the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, then-President George H. W. Bush proposed that the US build a base on the moon and send an expedition to Mars. The call fell flat with Congress, which never provided the funding to back up the plan.

But a decade and a half later, his son, President George W. Bush, articulated a similar vision with a clear deadline – an aim to return humans to the moon by 2020, as a stepping-stone on the way to Mars.

Read more ....

Wireless Power System Shown Off

From BBC:

A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference.

The technique exploits simple physics and can be used to charge a range of electronic devices over many metres.

Eric Giler, chief executive of US firm Witricity, showed mobile phones and televisions charging wirelessly at the TED Global conference in Oxford.

He said the system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries.

Read more ....

China Announces First Panda From Frozen Sperm

From Yahoo News/AP:

BEIJING – China announced the first successful birth of a panda cub from artificial insemination using frozen sperm, giving a new option for the notoriously poor breeders, officials said Friday.

Panda females have only three days a year in which they can conceive — one reason their species is endangered.

Female panda You You (pronounced Yo Yo) gave birth to the new cub Thursday morning at the Wolong Giant Panda Research Center in southwestern Sichuan. It is You You's third baby, and the 10th panda cub born at Wolong this year.

Read more ....

Auroras In Northern And Southern Hemispheres Are Not Identical

Asymmetric aurora. (Credit: Polar VIS Earth (J. B. Sigwarth) and IMAGE WIC (S. B. Mende))

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 24, 2009) — Norwegian researchers have shown that the auroras in the Northern and the Southern hemispheres can be totally asymmetric. These findings contradict the commonly made assumption of aurora being mirror images of each other.

The study was performed by PhD student Karl Magnus Laundal and professor Nikolai Østgaard at the Institute of Physics and Technology at the University of Bergen.

Read more ....

Money Relieves Pain

Money dulls physical pain and eases the sting of rejection, new research shows.

From Live Science:

Money dulls physical pain and eases the sting of social rejection, new research shows.

Through six experiments, psychologists and a marketing professor probed the power of money as a proxy for social acceptance. Among their results, they found that merely touching bills or thinking about expenses paid affected the participants both physically and emotionally.

Because it affects pain, money may be a clue to how the brain evolved to process social interactions, the researchers wrote in a paper published in the June edition of the journal Psychological Science.

Read more ....

My Comment: And a lack of money causes a lot of pain and grief. Tell me sonething that I do not know.

New NASA Administrator Delays Ares Launch, Decries "Path We Are On"

Bolden Looks Ahead: NASA administrator Charles Bolden testifies at his confirmation hearing before the Senate on July 8, 2009. NASA/Bill Ingalls

From Popsci.com:

Charlie Bolden rips off the Spock mask, and the space agency delays its new rocket test until Halloween

Former NASA administrator Mike Griffin once likened himself to Spock in his rational, emotionally-detached approach. Now Griffin's replacement, Charles Bolden, seems ready to inject new passion into a space agency that is struggling to reevaluate both long term goals and its vision for space exploration.

The new administrator choked up five times during a speech to agency employees on Tuesday where he pushed back against criticism that President Obama is uncommitted to space exploration, according to the Washington Post. Part of that emotional upwelling came as Bolden described meeting with the Apollo 11 astronauts on the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing.

Read more ....

100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About

From Geek Dad/Wired Science:

There are some things in this world that will never be forgotten, this week’s 40th anniversary of the moon landing for one. But Moore’s Law and our ever-increasing quest for simpler, smaller, faster and better widgets and thingamabobs will always ensure that some of the technology we grew up with will not be passed down the line to the next generation of geeks.

That is, of course, unless we tell them all about the good old days of modems and typewriters, slide rules and encyclopedias …

Read more ....

CSI Stone Age: Did Humans Kill Neanderthals?

A painting imagines the world of Neanderthal men
Mansell / Time Life Pictures / Getty

From Time Magazine:

It is one of the world's oldest cold cases. Sometime between 50,000 and 75,000 years ago, a Neanderthal male known to scientists as Shanidar 3 received a wound to his torso, limped back to his cave in what is now Iraq and died several weeks later. When his skeleton was pieced together in the late 1950s and early '60s, scientists were stumped by a rib wound that almost surely killed him, hypothesizing that it could have been caused by a hunting accident or even a fellow Neanderthal. New research suggests that Shanidar 3 may have had a more familiar killer: a human being.

Read more ....

Historic Snow Event In South America

In Bahia Blanca, a coastal city in the Southern part of the Buenos Aires, the snow storm is heavy and local authorities describe it as the worst snow event in 50 years. Roads are already blocked by snow and ice in the regional. TN news channel reports some areas of the Sierra de La Ventana could pick up even 3 feet of snow, unimaginable to the region.

From Watts Up With That:

Early this Wednesday afternoon, satellite pictures were showing a band of clouds advancing to the North and snow precipitation could no be ruled out in the capital Buenos Aires. In July 9th and 10th 2007 it snowed in the city of Buenos Aires for the first time in 89 years and it could snow again just two years later. Snow was also reported in the capital of Chile Santiago. MetSul Weather Center is not ruling out snow also in Uruguay.

Read more ....

New Discovery Suggests Trees Evolved Camouflage Defense Against Long Extinct Predator

Pseudopanax crassifolius, adult foliage and developing fruit, Mangaweka, Central North Island, New Zealand. The Araliaceae tree has several defences which researchers suggest are linked to the historic presence of moa. Seedlings produce small narrow leaves, which appear mottled to the human eye. Saplings meanwhile produce larger, more elongated leaves with thorn-like dentitions. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain Image)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 23, 2009) — Many animal species such as snakes, insects and fish have evolved camouflage defences to deter attack from their predators. However research published in New Phytologist has discovered that trees in New Zealand have evolved a similar defence to protect themselves from extinct giant birds, providing the first evidence of this strategy in plant life.

Read more ....

Far-Out Photo: Sunrise in Space

This sunrise was photographed with a handheld camera by astronauts during space shuttle mission STS-127 on July 17, 2009. Credit: NASA

From Live Science:

Astronauts orbiting Earth see a lot more sunrises and sunsets that those of us stranded on the surface. They circle the planet every 90 minutes, and the sun just keeps coming.

A new picture of a sunrise from space was taken with a handheld camera by astronauts Friday on the day the Space Shuttle Endeavour docked with the International Space Station during shuttle mission STS-127.

Read more ....

The Business Of Personal Genomes

Image: Genomic profile: Shown here is a close-up look at a genetic sequence done by Knome, a personal genomics startup in Cambridge, MA. The image shows a chromosome (top) and the letter-by-letter sequence (bottom) in a small section of that chromosome. The pink box highlights a specific genetic variation. Credit: Knome

From Technology Review:

Jorge Conde speaks on the complexities of personal genomics.

In some ways, Jorge Conde, cofounder of the genomics startup Knome, knows his clients more intimately than any other company president. Knome is the first company to sequence and analyze a consumer's complete genome. And Conde and his team have spent a full day with each member of their select clientele, going through the minute details of the results in search of hidden genomic time bombs, subtle health risks, and other information.

Read more ....

Living, Breeding Mice Grown From Skin Cells

From Wired Science:

Cells from flakes of skin have grown into living, breeding mice, through a bit of biotechnological wizardry.

This feat helps confirm that reprogrammed adult cells, considered a potentially convenient source of stem cell therapies, share the shape-changing powers of embryonic stem cells.

The goal was to create an animal made entirely from reprogrammed cells, and to confirm that reprogrammed cells “are as good as embryonic stem cells,” said Beijing National Stem Cell Bank director Qi Zhou, co-author of the study published Thursday in Nature.

Read more ....

Circus Performer's Flight Preview Steals NASA Show

In this image provided by NASA the Japanese Logistics Module is handed over from Endeavour's remote manipulator system to the space station's remote manipulator system during unberthing and mating operations Tuesday July 21, 2009. (AP Photo/NASA)

From Yahoo News/AP:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A former stiltwalker and fire-eater stole NASA's show Thursday, saying he'll be "like a kid in a candy store" experimenting with zero-gravity tricks on his upcoming tourist trip to the international space station.

Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte is shelling out a reported $35 million for his round-trip ticket aboard a Russian spacecraft. He will rocket into orbit from Kazakhstan at the end of September with a professional astronaut and cosmonaut, and spend more than a week at the space station.

Read more ....

The Cost Of Maintaning The Climate Industry -- A Commentary

Government Monopsony Distorts Climate Science, says SPPI -- Trans World News

The climate industry is costing taxpayers $79 billion and counting.

The Science and Public Policy Institute announces the publication of Climate Money, a study by Joanne Nova revealing that the federal Government has a near-monopsony on climate science funding. This distorts the science towards self-serving alarmism. Key findings:

The US Government has spent more than $79 billion of taxpayers’ money since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, propaganda campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks. Most of this spending was unnecessary.

Read more ....

Testing Relativity, Black Holes And Strange Attractors In The Laboratory

Through the optical-mechanical analogy, metamaterials and other advanced optical materials can be used to study such celestial phenomena as black holes, strange attractors and gravitational lenses. Here an air-GaInAsP metamaterial mimics a photon-sphere, one of the key black hole phenomena in its interactions with light. (Credit: Xiang Zhang)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 22, 2009) — Even Albert Einstein might have been impressed. His theory of general relativity, which describes how the gravity of a massive object, such as a star, can curve space and time, has been successfully used to predict such astronomical observations as the bending of starlight by the sun, small shifts in the orbit of the planet Mercury and the phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. Now, however, it may soon be possible to study the effects of general relativity in bench-top laboratory experiments.

Read more ....