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Mysterious Speed Record May Explain Mystery of Sun

SPACE.com
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:05 EST

A new study reports that the top of the gigantic conveyor belt of plasma moving inside the sun has been running at record-high speeds for the past five years.

The phenomenon might be the reason why the sun has continued to have so few sunspots recently when it should be ramping up the production of these surface-blotching storms.

"I believe this could explain the unusually deep solar minimum we've been experiencing," said David Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA and co-author of a new study describing the findings, in a NASA statement. "The high speed of the conveyor belt challenges existing models of the solar cycle and it has forced us back to the drawing board for new ideas."

Amy Coopes
Agence France-Presse
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:54 EST

Sydney - Australian archaeologists have uncovered what they believe to be the world's southernmost site of early human life, a 40,000-year-old tribal meeting ground, an Aboriginal leader said Wednesday.

The site appears to have been the last place of refuge for Aboriginal tribes from the cannon fire of Australia's first white settlers, said Michael Mansell of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.

The find came during an archaeological survey ahead of roadworks near Tasmania's Derwent River and soil dating had established the age of the artefacts found there.

"When the archaeological report came out it showed that (life there) had gone back longer than any other recorded place anywhere else in Tasmania, dating back to 40,000 years," Mansell told AFP.

Up to three million artefacts, including stone tools, shellfish fragments and food scraps, were believed to be buried in the area, which appeared to have been a meeting ground for three local tribes.

They died out after white settlers arrived in the late 18th century.

"They (settlers) hunted people here to this place and shot them just so they could get the land," said Mansell. "Many others were imprisoned until they died."

BBC News
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00 EST

Fifty-one decapitated skeletons found in a burial pit in Dorset were those of Scandinavian Vikings, scientists say.

Mystery has surrounded the identity of the group since they were discovered at Ridgeway Hill, near Weymouth, in June.

Analysis of teeth from 10 of the men revealed they had grown up in countries with a colder climate than Britain's.

Archaeologists from Oxford believe the men were probably executed by local Anglo Saxons in front of an audience sometime between AD 910 and AD 1030.

The Anglo Saxons were increasingly falling victim to Viking raids and eventually the country was ruled by a Danish king.

ScienceDaily
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00 EST

© University of Minnesota
This illustration shows the molecular details of a multi-protein battery and wire that generates and conducts biological electricity.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have created a molecular image of a system that moves electrons between proteins in cells. The achievement is a breakthrough for biology and could provide insights to minimize energy loss in other systems, from nanoscale devices to moving electricity around the country.

The research, led by Carrie Wilmot, an associate professor in the College of Biological Sciences, is published in the March 12 issue of Science.

"Evolution has been fine-tuning electricity in organisms for a lot longer than humans have been using it," Wilmot says. "We can learn a lot from nature about how to use it more efficiently. This new glimpse at how the body uses electricity could lead to nanotechnology to shrink electronic circuitry even further or a more efficient grid to provide power to homes and businesses."

Auroras From Space

Space Weather
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:58 EST

A solar wind stream is buffeting Earth's magnetic field and stirring up geomagnetic activity around the Arctic Circle. "On March 11th," reports Paul McCrone, "the DMSP F-18 weather satellite recorded a dramatic auroral event over northern Canada."

McCrone processed the image at the US Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center in Monterey, California. It shows a broad swirl of Northern Lights stretching from Newfoundland across Quebec to the Hudson Bay. "I included an infrared image to show that this is really not a cloud," he says. Auroras are not strong sources of infrared radiation, but clouds are, so infrared images can be used to distinguish the two.

The solar wind continues to blow. High-latitude sky watchers should remain alert for auroras.

Bright Sun-Grazing Comet

Space Weather
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:51 EST

A newly-discovered comet is plunging toward the sun and probably will not survive. The encounter is too close to the sun for human eyes to see, but the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is able to monitor the action using an opaque disk to block the sun's glare.

The doomed comet is probably a member of the Kreutz sungrazer family. Named after a 19th century German astronomer who studied them in detail, Kreutz sungrazers are fragments from the breakup of a giant comet at least 2000 years ago. Several of these fragments pass by the sun and disintegrate every day. Most are too small to see but occasionally a big fragment--like this one--attracts attention.

Click here to launch a 12-hour time-lapse animation

Bill Steigerwald
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:52 EST

Meet asteroid 1999 RQ36, a chunk of rock and dust about 1,900 feet in diameter that could tell us how the solar system was born, and perhaps, shed light on how life began. It also might hit us someday.

"This asteroid is a time capsule from before the birth of our solar system," said Bill Cutlip of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., one of the leaders of Goddard's effort to propose a mission called OSIRIS-REx that will return a sample from RQ36.

If selected, Goddard will provide overall mission management for OSIRIS-REx, working with the Principal Investigator, Dr. Michael Drake, Director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, who will lead the OSIRIS-REx team. Lockheed Martin Space Systems will build the spacecraft.

Michelle Bryner
TechNewsDaily
Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:42 EST

© Christine Daniloff
A carbon nanotube (shown in illustration) can produce a very rapid wave of power when it is coated by a layer of fuel and ignited, so that heat travels along the tube.

Researchers have found a way to produce large amounts of electricity from tiny cylinders made from carbon atoms.

The achievement could replace decades-old methods of generating electricity, such as combustion engines and turbines, the researchers say.

In the future, coated carbon nanotubes crafted from individual atoms could power everything from cell phones to hybrid-electric vehicles. The team envisions such nanotube-based power being available to consumers in the next five years.

Getting WISE About Nemesis

Leslie Mullen
Astrobiology Magazine
Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:16 EST

© NASA
Size comparison of our Sun, a low mass star, a brown dwarf, Jupiter, and Earth. Stars with less mass than the Sun are smaller and cooler, and hence much fainter in visible light. Brown dwarfs have less than eight percent of the mass of the Sun, which is not enough to sustain the fusion reaction that keeps the Sun hot. These cool orbs are nearly impossible to see in visible light, but stand out when viewed in infrared. Their diameters are about the same as Jupiter's, but they can have up to 80 times more mass and are thought to have planetary systems of their own.

A dark object may be lurking near our solar system, occasionally kicking comets in our direction.

Nicknamed "Nemesis" or "The Death Star," this undetected object could be a red or brown dwarf star, or an even darker presence several times the mass of Jupiter.

Why do scientists think something could be hidden beyond the edge of our solar system? Originally, Nemesis was suggested as a way to explain a cycle of mass extinctions on Earth.

The paleontologists David Raup and Jack Sepkoski claim that, over the last 250 million years, life on Earth has faced extinction in a 26-million-year cycle. Astronomers proposed comet impacts as a possible cause for these catastrophes.

Our solar system is surrounded by a vast collection of icy bodies called the Oort Cloud. If our Sun were part of a binary system in which two gravitationally-bound stars orbit a common center of mass, this interaction could disturb the Oort Cloud on a periodic basis, sending comets whizzing towards us.

Eric Bland
Discovery News
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:22 EST

© Discovery Communications
On Christmas Day 2009, an alleged Al-Qaeda plot to blow up a plane was thwarted. But what if it had succeeded?

An experiment that detonated a bomb similar to the so-called "underwear bomber's" shows that the plane would have withstood the impact.

Even if the "Underwear Bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had exploded his device on Christmas day, 2009, the Airbus A330 would have survived, according to an experiment conducted by a BBC documentary team.

And while the person sitting next to Abdulmutallab probably would have died, the worst injury most passengers would have suffered would have been ruptured eardrums.

"What we tried to do was simulate, as far as we could, what might have happened over Detroit," said explosives expert John Wyatt, who was part of the BBC experiment. "We used the same type of explosive and the same amount and put it in the same position as the bomber."

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