Astronomers Capture Image Of Alien Planet Orbiting A 'Sun'

From The Telegraph:

Astronomers believe they have captured the first picture of an alien planet in orbit around a star that is similar to our own Sun.

Images of a young star and what is thought to be its companion planet have been taken by astronomers using the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

However they are puzzelled by the distance between the two.

Located around 500 light-years from Earth, the planet in the snapshot is around eight times bigger than Jupiter, the biggest in our solar system and lies more than ten times further from its star than the sun does from Neptune.

Even though the likelihood of a chance alignment between such an object and a similarly young star is thought to be small, it will take up to two years to verify that the star and its likely planet are moving through space together.

The parent star - called 1RXS J160929.1-210524 - is similar in mass to the Sun, but is much younger.

"This is the first time we have directly seen a planetary mass object in a likely orbit around a star like our Sun," said David Lafrenicre, one of the three University of Toronto scientists who describe the fascinating object in a paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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A Biological Clock for Dads Too

From Time Magazine:

Turns out women aren't the only ones with an expiration date on their fertility. An emerging body of research is showing that men, too, have a "biological clock."

Not only do men become less fecund as they age, but their fertility begins to decline relatively early — around age 24, six years or so before women's. Historically, infertility has been seen as a female issue, as has the increased risk of Down syndrome and other birth defects, but studies now also link higher rates of autism, schizophrenia and Down syndrome in children born to older fathers. A recent paper by researchers at Sweden's Karolinska Institute found that the risk of bipolar disorder in children increased with paternal age, particularly in children born to men age 55 or older.

It used to be that "if you had hair on your chest, it was your wife's problem," says Barry Behr, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Stanford Medical School and director of Stanford's in vitro fertilization laboratory. Even now, he said, though about half of infertility cases are caused by male factors, such as low sperm count or motility, there are many more tests to evaluate a woman's fertility than a man's.

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Testosterone Levels 'Affect Sexual Attraction'

From The Independent:

Women with high levels of testosterone are more attracted to masculine-looking men like James Bond actor Daniel Craig, scientists said today.

Meanwhile men, whose levels of the hormone are increased, are more attracted to feminine faces like Hollywood actress Natalie Portman.

Researchers at Aberdeen University Face Research Laboratory carried out the first study into the role testosterone plays in attraction between the sexes.

During the study, men and women completed four test sessions each conducted a week apart. In each session volunteers provided a saliva sample which was used to measure testosterone levels.

Researchers found that when asked to choose between different types of faces in each session, the subjects' attitudes changed depending on their testosterone level.

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Should Naples Fear A Big Bang From Vesuvius?

From New Scientist:

RESIDENTS of Naples, take note: the hazard posed by Vesuvius may have to be rethought after the discovery that its magma chamber has been moving upwards towards its mouth.

Bruno Scaillet at the University of Orléans, France, and colleagues studied the proportions and types of crystal in rocks erupted from Vesuvius on four different occasions: 7800 years ago, 3600 years ago, 1929 years ago (Pompeii) and 1536 years ago. This allowed them to estimate the pressure, and hence depth, that each sample crystallised at.

By combining this with results from previous research, they were able to show that Vesuvius's magma chamber has moved upwards by between 9000 and 11,000 metres over the last 22,000 years (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature/07232). It isn't clear why the magma chamber has shifted, but possible reasons include changes in the shape and size of Vesuvius's mouth, a decrease in magma density, and earthquake movements.

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Giant Honeybees Use Shimmering 'Mexican Waves' To Repel Predatory Wasps

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 15, 2008) — The phenomenon of "shimmering" in giant honeybees, in which hundreds—or even thousands—of individual honeybees flip their abdomens upwards within a split-second to produce a Mexican Wave-like pattern across the bee nest, has received much interest but both its precise mode of action and its purpose have long remained a mystery.

In a new study published in the journal PLoS ONE this week, researchers at the University of Graz, Austria, and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, UK, report the finding that shimmering—a remarkable capacity of rapid communication in giant honeybees—acts as a defensive mechanism, which repels predatory hornets, forcing them to hunt free-flying bees, further afield, rather than foraging bees directly from the honeybee nest.

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Fear Of Physics

From New York Times Science:

The new particle collider in Europe hasn’t hurt anyone there yet, but all the talk about a “doomsday machine” seems to be taking a toll elsewhere, according to Reuters (hat tip: Charles Mann). It reports from Bhopal that Indians were so alarmed by reports that the Large Hadron Collider could destroy the world that they flocked to temples to pray and fast. One teenage girl traumatized by the warnings on television committed suicide, according to Reuters, which quoted her father: “We tried to divert her attention and told her she should not worry about such things, but to no avail.”

My colleague Dennis Overbye has done a good job of debunking this week’s fears, and Ron Bailey of Reason Magazine has done a nice analysis of the odds.

For further reassurance, I recommend an analysis by Max Tegmark of M.I.T. and Nick Bostrom of Oxford University. (Dr. Bostrom was featured in my column last year about the possibility that we’re living in a computer simulation.) Dr. Tegmark and Dr. Bostrom estimate, based on the relatively late evolution of life on Earth and on what we observe in the rest of the universe, that the annual risk of our planet’s being annihilated by high-energy particle collisions (or, for that matter, by an asteroid or by extraterrestrials) is one in a trillion.

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Top 10 Human Inventions of All Time

Language Is The Number #1 Invention

From Top Tenz:

This list can’t help but be relative and therefore controversial. As always be kind and appreciate the effort even if you disagree.

Although humans are not alone as tool using animals, we are definitely the planet’s designated experts in the field. Our use of invention, or the innovation of altering an object or process in new ways, may be what truly defines us as a species. Every once in a long while, something is invented which changes, in some small way, the very nature of our lives. Over time, this has made us unique among the animals. While little inventions come out every day, it is these big ones that move us forward into whatever the destiny of mankind turns out to be.

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Blurred Out: 51 Things You Aren't Allowed to See on Google Maps

From IT Security:

IT Security Editors

Depending on which feature you use, Google Maps offers a satellite view or a street-level view of tons of locations around the world. You can look up landmarks like the Pyramids of Egypt or the Great Wall of China, as well as more personal places, like your ex’s house. But for all of the places that Google Maps allows you to see, there are plenty of places that are off-limits. Whether it’s due to government restrictions, personal-privacy lawsuits or mistakes, Google Maps has slapped a "Prohibited" sign on the following 51 places.

Read more and check out the following 51 places ....

The Science Of Glass

The Nature of Glass Remains Anything But Clear
-- New York Times Science

It is well known that panes of stained glass in old European churches are thicker at the bottom because glass is a slow-moving liquid that flows downward over centuries.

Well known, but wrong. Medieval stained glass makers were simply unable to make perfectly flat panes, and the windows were just as unevenly thick when new.

The tale contains a grain of truth about glass resembling a liquid, however. The arrangement of atoms and molecules in glass is indistinguishable from that of a liquid. But how can a liquid be as strikingly hard as glass?

“They’re the thickest and gooiest of liquids and the most disordered and structureless of rigid solids,” said Peter Harrowell, a professor of chemistry at the University of Sydney in Australia, speaking of glasses, which can be formed from different raw materials. “They sit right at this really profound sort of puzzle.”

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The Science Of Lightning Strikes

Struck By Lightning -- The Walrus

In the summer of 2002, I was camped at the mouth of the French River, lying on my Therm-a-Rest waiting out a thunderstorm, when my tent was struck by lightning. It was over before I knew what had happened, before adrenalin had any role to play, before fear took over. My tent poles took the charge and I was spared, completely. The narrow escape got me asking around. How often does this happen? It turns out everybody has a lightning story.

Floyd Woods, a retired truck driver from Ardbeg, Ontario, was twelve years old in 1943 when his house was hit. The strike shot through the radio antenna, exploded in the living room intoa blue fireball that roared down the hall, lifting up the linoleum runner by the tacks, ripping the nails out of the floor, splintering the house walls as fine as kindling before it ran off over the bedrock outside and died. Woods’ guitar was hanging on the wall over his bed. Sixty-five years later, he still shakes his head: “That strike burned the guitar strings off, bing, bing, bing, threw me right out of bed and across the room so I ached for a month. Nothin’ will move you faster than lightning. Nothin’.”

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How Quickly Can Sharks Detect Blood In The Water?

From The Straight Dope:

Dear Cecil:

We've all seen it in a movie: A small group of people are swimming in the sea. Someone gets hurt, blood touches water, and instantly sharks appear who then devour the party in a ruthless and very painful way. But how fast does the odor or taste of blood go in water? Am I right to believe that it takes a while for a shark a mile away to taste it?

— David, Belgium

Cecil replies:

I'll confess I haven't seen a lot of Belgian shark movies, David, but virtually any Hollywood studio exec would see a major problem with the treatment you've outlined above. If the shark shows up the second the hemoglobin hits the water, where's the unbearable tension? What we're missing is that excruciating interval of stillness between the close-up of slowly seeping blood and the moment the here-comes-the-shark music kicks in. You're right, though, to suspect that this interval does tend to run a little shorter on the big screen than in real life.

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Scientists: Is Sleep Essential?

From Med Gadget:

Writing in the latest PLoS Biology, researchers from the University of Wisconsin, Madison are wondering whether sleep is really a biological necessity, or maybe it's just a function created by evolution to kill time and avoid stress.

From the article in PLoS Biology:

Everybody knows that sleep is important, yet the function of sleep seems like the mythological phoenix: “Che vi sia ciascun lo dice, dove sia nessun lo sa” (“that there is one they all say, where it may be no one knows,” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte [1790], Così fan tutte). But what if the search for an essential function of sleep is misguided? What if sleep is not required but rather a kind of extreme indolence that animals indulge in when they have no more pressing needs, such as eating or reproducing? In many circumstances sleeping may be a less dangerous choice than roaming around, wasting energy and exposing oneself to predators. Also, if sleep is just one out of a repertoire of available behaviors that is useful without being essential, it is easier to explain why sleep duration varies so much across species. This “null hypothesis” would explain why nobody has yet identified a core function of sleep. But how strong is the evidence supporting it? And are there counterexamples?

So far the null hypothesis has survived better than alternatives positing some core function for sleep [8–10]. In what follows we shall test the null hypothesis by considering three of its key corollaries. If the null hypothesis were right, we would expect to find: (1) animals that do not sleep at all; (2) animals that do not need recovery sleep when they stay awake longer; and, finally, (3) that lack of sleep occurs without serious consequences.

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What Stuff Is Worth More Than Its Weight In Gold?

From Evil Mad Scientist:

It's a common figure of speech to say that x is worth its weight in y, where y is usually (but not always) gold. But most of us don't buy and weigh gold very often, so how do you connect that to real life? Does "worth its weight" in pennies or $100 bills make any more sense?

We have collected here a bunch of examples for different things that represent a wide range of monetary value per unit weight, in what might make a useful calibration chart for your future idiomatic usage.

Let's start this off with a down-to-earth question. Which has a higher monetary density: dimes or quarters? In other words, if you had to carry around $1000 worth of either dimes or quarters, which should you ask for?

Item -- Price per pound
Gold -- $12,000
Platinum -- $20,679
Fifty Dollar Bills -- $22,680
Cocaine -- $22,680
Hundred Dollar Bills -- $45,359
Rhodium -- $77,292
Good-quality, one-carat diamonds -- $11.4 M
LSD -- $55 M
Antimatter -- $26 Quadrillion

Read more ....

Top 10 Amazing Physics Videos

From Wired:

Tesla coils, superconductors, and hilarious music videos are great reasons to be excited about physics. Here are some of our favorites.

Read and watch the videos here ....

Ten Things You Don’t Know About The Earth

From Discover Magazine:

Good advice from the 70s progressive band. Look around you. Unless you’re one of the Apollo astronauts, you’ve lived your entire life within a few hundred kilometers of the surface of the Earth. There’s a whole planet beneath your feet, 6.6 sextillion tons of it, one trillion cubic kilometers of it. But how well do you know it?

Below are ten facts about the Earth — the second in my series of Ten Things You Don’t Know (the first was on the Milky Way). Some things I already knew (and probably you do, too), some I had ideas about and had to do some research to check, and others I totally made up. Wait! No! Kidding. They’re all real. But how many of them do you know? Be honest.

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The Rise And Fall Of The Space Shuttle

From American Scientist:

Since NASA's creation in the 1950s, its history has followed a course that calls to mind the Greek tragedies—tremendous early success, followed by a series of catastrophes and failures, which share the same root cause. Nearly 40 years have passed since NASA had its most notable successes, which culminated in Neil Armstrong's walk on the lunar surface. Since then, the agency has struggled to come up with meaningful goals that could take advantage of the sustained political support the agency has enjoyed over the decades. NASA has a rich tradition and employs the world's best scientists and engineers. Yet in recent decades its most notable moments have come in the form of disasters and their aftermath. And the institutional and cultural problems that led to the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 went largely uncorrected for 17 years and contributed to the Columbia accident in 2003. The agency's identity crisis continues and will stretch into the next presidential administration and perhaps beyond. How the story of its space shuttle program will end remains highly uncertain.

Read more ....

Full Coverage Of Hurricane Ike: Hurricane Blogs, News, And Webcam Links -- This Post Is Bumped To The Top Of Cool Science News Till Sunday

Tracking Hurricane Ike

Click Here For Updated Picture

Click Here For Updated Picture

Click Here For Updated Picture

HURRICANE BLOGS, NEWS, WEBCAMS, AND LINKS

Hurricane/Weather News

Storm Pulse
National Hurricane Center -- Home Site
National Hurricane Center -- Satellite Shots
National Hurricane Center -- Sign Up For Email Advisories
Weather.com -- Hurricane Central News Center
Weather.com -- Hurricane Central News Center Updates
NOLA -- New Orleans, Louisiana news
Houston Chronicle -- Hurricane News
NOAA Satellite And Information Service -- Home Page
Crown Weather Services -- Weather Aggregator

Texas/Louisiana Weather Observations

Coastal Texas Observations
Southwest Louisiana Observations
Southeast Louisiana Observations
Ike Marine Weather Observations

Weather And Hurricane Blogs

Weather Underground
Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog
Weather Nerd
Hurricane Track
Miami Hurricane

Blogs For Ike

Twitter search for “Hurricane Ike”
Google Blog Search for “Hurricane Ike”
BlogPulse search for “Hurricane Ike”
Flickr photo/video search for “Hurricane Ike”
YouTube video search for “Hurricane Ike”
HurricanePreparedness.org

News Links For Hurricane Ike

Global Storm Tracker -- Yahoo News
Weather News -- Yahoo News
Hurricane Ike -- Yahoo News (Recent Stories on Ike)
Hurricane Ike -- Google News (Stories For The Past 24 Hours)
News and Newspaper Websites in Louisiana -- ABYZ News Directory
News And Newspaper Websites In Mississippi -- ABYZ News Directory
News And Newspaper Websites In Texas -- ABYZ News Directory

Texas News Media Links (Hat Tip to Crown Weather)

Live News Cameras Hurricane Ike Center
Hurricane Ike Live TV Coverage Wall (FLHurricane)
Hurricane Ike Live TV Feeds From All Houston Stations
Live Hurricane Ike Coverage From All Houston Stations (MaroonSpoon)
Hurricane Ike Resources From OneStorm.org
Broadcast Coverage From Internet Partnership Radio
Broadcast Coverage From Hurricane City
Broadcast Coverage From The Weather Radio Broadcast Network
Texas News Media Links
KTRH AM 740 Radio Houston
MyFox Houston
KHOU TV Houston, TX
ABC 13 TV Houston, TX
Channel 2 TV Houston, TX
Houston/Galveston, Texas Radio Scanner Feed
KGBT TV 4 Local News From Harlingen, Texas
KRGV TV 5 Local News From Weslaco, Texas
Local News From KIII TV 3 From Corpus Christi, Texas
Local News From KRISTV From Corpus Christi, Texas
KURV 780 AM Talk Radio From Mcallen, Texas
Q94.5 Brownsville, TX
KQXX 105.5 From Brownsville, Texas
Wild 104 From Brownsville, Texas

Texas/Louisiana Webcam Links (Hat Tip To Crown Weather)

Webcamplaza.net
Louisiana Webcams
Texas Webcams
Louisiana Webcams
Texas Webcams (WeatherMatrix)
Louisiana Webcams (ABC Webcams)
Texas Webcams (ABC Webcams)
Upper Texas Coast Webcams (HurricaneCity)
Brownsville, Texas-Matamoras, Mexico Webcams
Corpus Christi, Texas Webcam #1
Corpus Christi, Texas Webcam #2
Freeport, TX Webcam
Galveston, TX Webcams
Galveston, TX Webcam (WeatherUnderground)
Galveston-Houston, TX Webcams
Houston, TX Traffic Cams
Houston, TX Webcams (KHOU TV)
Houston, TX Webcams (Ch. 2 TV)
Houston, TX Webcam (WeatherUnderground)
KRGV Tv5 Webcam, Weslaco, Texas
Matagorda Bay Webcam
Port Aransas, Texas Webcam #1
Port Aransas, Texas Webcam #2
Rio Grande Webcam
South Padre Island, Texas Webcams
South Padre Island, Texas Webcam #1
South Padre Island, Texas Webcam #2
South Padre Island, Texas Webcam #3
South Padre Island, Texas Webcam #4
Webcam From A Platform In The Western Gulf of Mexico (NDBC)

Experiment Boosts Hopes for Space Solar Power

From Space.com

WASHINGTON — A former NASA scientist has used radio waves to transmit solar power a distance of 92 miles (148 km) between two Hawaiian islands, an achievement that he says proves the technology exists to beam solar power from satellites back to Earth.

John C. Mankins demonstrated the solar power transmission for the Discovery Channel, which paid for the four month experiment and will broadcast the results Friday at 9 p.m. EDT. His vision is to transmit solar power collected by orbiting satellites as large as 1,102 pounds (500 kg) to lake-sized receiver stations on Earth.

Mankins, who worked at NASA for 25 years and managed the agency's space-based solar program before it was disbanded, transmitted 20 watts of power between the two islands in May. The receivers, however, were so small that less than one one-thousandth of a percent of the power was received, Mankins said.

Read more ....

World's Strongest Hurricanes Could Be Getting Stronger

Gustav and Hanna spin in the Caribbean Sea last week. A study released today found that the strongest Atlantic hurricanes have become stronger due to global warming over the past 25 years.

From USA Today:

The strongest hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean have become more intense due to global warming over the past 25 years, according to a new study in Wednesday's edition of the British journal Nature. The findings add fuel to the simmering argument in the meteorological community about the Earth's changing climate, and its relationship to the power of tropical systems worldwide.

Scientists from Florida State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison analyzed satellite data from nearly 2,000 tropical cyclones around the world from 1981 to 2006, and found that the strongest storms are getting stronger, especially over the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

Tropical cyclones are the umbrella term for hurricanes (in the Atlantic and east Pacific), typhoons (in the West Pacific) and cyclones (in the Indian).

"As seas warm, the ocean has more energy that can be converted to tropical cyclone wind," FSU professor of geography and study lead author James B. Elsner explained.

Read more ....

The Science Behind A Storm Surge

Hurricane Ike, still forming in the Gulf of Mexico, caused floods near Surfside Beach, Texas September 12, 2008. Hurricane Ike closed in on the Texas coast on Friday, pushing a wall of water that weather officials warned could bring certain death to those who did not heed mandatory evacuation orders.

From MSNBC:

As Hurricane Ike races toward Texas, it is pushing a mound of water in front of it that could inundate parts of the Gulf coast with up to 25 feet of water. The surge involves some incredible feats of physics, and in many hurricanes it’s the leading cause of death.

Galveston Island, Texas, destroyed at least once before by a major hurricane in 1900, began to see the Ike-related water creeping up along its beaches Thursday and by Friday, parts of the city of Galveston were flooded by the surge coming in from Galveston Bay.

And, "it's only going to get worse," said Lance Wood, the Science and Operations Officer for the Houston/Galveston National Weather Service (NWS) office.

Read more ....