News at Nine, October 24

Ebola vaccine trials to be tested as early as December

Ebola vaccine trials could begin in West-Africa in December, public health authorities said Friday, and could know by April whether the vaccine is effective or not.

According to Marie-Paule Keiny of the World Health Organization, the trials in December would be a month earlier than originally planned. At least five other vaccines could enter human testing in the first few months of 2015.

Participants in the trial would include health care workers in high risk areas. While a trial in Liberia would include others at high risk like burial workers or family members caring for Ebola patients.

Source: The New York Times

Ocean debris discovered on Kaua'i reveal possibility of mammoth tsunami risk

Massive marine debrisdiscovered in a sinkhole on the island of Kaua'i reveal there has been at least one mammoth tsunami that struck the islands about 500 years ago, and that another could happen again.

According to scientists led by Rhett Butler, director of the Hawai'i institute of geophysics and planetology(HIGP) at UH Mnoa, a wall of water up to nine meters (30 feet) high surged onto Hawaiian shores almost half a century ago. The massive tsunami was caused by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of the Aleutian Islands.

The new study examined deposits believed to have come from the extreme event and used models to show how it might have occurred.

An earthquake in the eastern Aleutian Trench big enough to generate a massive tsunami such as the one in the study is expected to occur once every thousand years.

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News at Nine, October 24

Hubble Maps the Temperature and Water Vapor on an Exoplanet

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Newswise A team of scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made the most detailed global map yet of the glow from a planet orbiting another star, revealing secrets of air temperatures and water.

The map provides information about temperatures at different layers of the world's atmosphere and traces the amount and distribution of water vapor on the planet. The findings have ramifications for the understanding of atmospheric dynamics and the formation of giant planets like Jupiter.

"These measurements have opened the door for a new kind of comparative planetology," said team leader Jacob Bean of the University of Chicago.

"Our observations are the first of their kind in terms of providing a two-dimensional map of the planet's thermal structure that can be used to constrain atmospheric circulation and dynamical models for hot exoplanets," said team member Kevin Stevenson of the University of Chicago.

The Hubble observations show that the planet, called WASP-43b, is no place to call home. It's a world of extremes, where seething winds howl at the speed of sound from a 3,000-degree-Fahrenheit day side that is hot enough to melt steel to a pitch-black night side that sees temperatures plunge below a relatively cool 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

As a hot ball of predominantly hydrogen gas, there are no surface features on the planet, such as oceans or continents that can be used to track its rotation. Only the severe temperature difference between the day and night sides can be used by a remote observer to mark the passage of a day on this world.

WASP-43b is located 260 light-years away and was first discovered in 2011. WASP-43b is too distant to be photographed, but because its orbit is observed edge-on to Earth, astronomers detected it by observing regular dips in the light of its parent star as the planet passes in front of it.

The planet is about the same size as Jupiter, but is nearly twice as massive. The planet is so close to its orange dwarf host star that it completes an orbit in just 19 hours. The planet is also gravitationally locked so that it keeps one hemisphere facing the star, just as our moon keeps one face toward Earth.

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Hubble Maps the Temperature and Water Vapor on an Exoplanet

Hubble project maps temperature, water vapor on wild exoplanet

A team of scientists including a University of Colorado Boulder professor used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to make the most detailed global map yet of the glow from a giant, oddball planet orbiting another star, an object twice as massive as Jupiter and hot enough to melt steel.

The Hubble observations show that the planet, called WASP-43b, is no place to call home. It's a world of extremes, where winds howl at the speed of sound from a 3,000-degree-Fahrenheit dayside to a pitch-black nightside when temperatures plunge to a relatively cool 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, still hot enough to melt silver.

The map provides information about temperatures at different layers of the planet's atmosphere and traces the amount and distribution of water present. The findings have ramifications for understanding the atmospheric dynamics and the formation of giant planets like Jupiter, said team leader Jacob Bean of the University of Chicago. "These measurements have opened the door for a new kind of comparative planetology."

A paper on the subject was published online in Science Express.

As a ball of predominately hot hydrogen gas, there are no surface features on WASP-43b like oceans or continents that can be used to track its rotation, said CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Jean-Michel Desert, second author on the new study. Only the drastic temperature difference between the dayside and nightside can be used by remote observers to mark the passage of a day on the strange, gaseous planet, he said.

"WASP-43b is extreme in many ways," said Desert. "It's the size of Jupiter with twice its mass. Its orbit around its host star, called an orange dwarf, takes only about 19 hours - the blink of an eye compared to the 365 days it takes Earth to orbit the sun."

Desert said the study is compelling to those trying to understand planetary formation. "Basically it is like taking a planet like Jupiter into a giant laboratory, then warming it at such a high temperature that all of the atoms and molecules comprising its atmosphere are in a gas phase."

Another bizarre thing about WASP-43b is its orbit. It orbits so close to its host star it always "shows" the same hemisphere, a phenomena similar to the orbit of the moon around Earth that is known as known as "tidal locking."

Discovered in 2011, WASP-43b is 260 light-years away -- too distant to be photographed. But because its orbit is observed "edge-on" to Earth, astronomers detected it by observing regular dips in the light of its parent star as the planet passed in front of it, said Desert of CU-Boulder's Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences.

"These observations allow us to determine the abundance of water in the planet's atmosphere, which is a major element involved in planetary formation," said Desert.

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Hubble project maps temperature, water vapor on wild exoplanet

Water on earth originated outside the solar system, scientists prove

Human beings have always obsessed over whether they are alone in the universe. Now scientists say theyve proved that at least some of the water on Earth has to have originated from outside the solar system (and they add that its older than the sun).

The news has set the flying-saucer-sphere abuzz with the thought that other planets in the universe are therefore more likely to have had water, at some stage at least, and to therefore have developed life.

That however is not claimed by the paper published in Science Magazine on September 26, when life forms in Israel were celebration the new Jewish year.

It isnt news that water in the solar system is older than the sun, explains Prof. Morris Podolak of Tel Aviv Universitys Department of Geosciences, an expert on planetology and the evolution of comets: it had to be. What is news is that the water on earth cannot have originated in the protoplanetary nebular disk from which the planets, including Earth, formed.

It all started with the big bang

Current thinking is that the universe began with the big bang, which created mainly hydrogen and some helium, Podolak explains. Things like oxygen and other heavier elements were made in secondary processes, like inside stars, which threw out the material. Our sun is second-generation, made of material that originated with an earlier generation of stars, he says.

In other words, our sun was formed already including heavier elements such as carbon and oxygen made after the big bang but before the suns birth, Podolak explains.

Moreover, the universe has a huge amount of hydrogen, a lot of helium and the third most prevalent element is oxygen, says Podolak. Water consists of hydrogen and oxygen (two hydrogen atoms to one of oxygen, to be accurate).

So the interstellar void in which the solar system, and Earth, formed had water bobbing about that would by definition be older than the sun. We would expect water to be abundant in that void, says Podolak.

The weird thing discovered by the team headed by Ilsedore Cleeves of the University of Michigans Astronomy department is that the water on Earth doesnt have the same chemical signature deuterium-to-hydrogen enrichment as primordial water in the solar system. Nor could processes in that disk have created the signature of the water on earth, the team says. So the question is where it came from.

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Water on earth originated outside the solar system, scientists prove

Earth Has Water Older than the Sun

Not all water in the solar system today could have formed in our solar system

The Sun did not wipe out all of the water contained in the interstellar cloud from which it formed, scientists say. Credit:ASA/European Space Agency

As much as half of the water in Earths oceans could be older than the Sun, a study has found.

By reconstructing conditions in the disk of gas and dust in which the Solar System formed, scientists have concluded that the Earth and other planets must have inherited much of their water from the cloud of gas from which the Sun was born 4.6 billion years ago, instead of forming later. The authors say that such interstellar water would also be included in the formation of most other stellar systems, and perhaps of other Earth-like planets.

The dense interstellar clouds of gas and dust where stars form contain abundant water, in the form of ice. When a star first lights up, it heats up the cloud around it and floods it with radiation, vaporizing the ice and breaking up some of the water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.

Until now, researchers were unsure how much of the 'old' water would be spared in this process. If most of the original water molecules were broken up, water would have had to reform in the early Solar System. But the conditions that made this possible could be specific to the Solar System, in which case many stellar systems could be left dry, says Ilsedore Cleeves, an astrochemist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who led the new study.

But if some of the water could survive the star-forming process, and if the Solar Systems case is typical, it means that water is available as a universal ingredient during planet formation, she says.

To find out, Cleeves and her colleagues modelled the conditions soon after the Sun lit up. They calculated the amount of radiation that would have hit the Solar System, both from the young star and from outer space, and how far that radiation would have travelled through the cloud.

Those conditions determine how new water molecules form from hydrogen and oxygen, and in particular the odds that the molecules include deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen whose nucleus contains a neutron, in addition to the usual single proton. The model predicted an abundance of deuterium-containing water, also known as heavy water, that was lower than that in the Solar Systems water today.

But the interstellar clouds where Sun-like stars are currently forming and thus, presumably, the material from which the Sun formed have a higher proportion of heavy water compared to the current Solar System. This is because these clouds are subject to the continuous bombardment of cosmic rays, which tend to favour the inclusion of deuterium. Therefore, the authors concluded, the young Suns radiation was insufficient to account for the amount of heavy water seen in the Solar System today, and some must have existed before. They estimate that somewhere between 30% and 50% of the water in Earths oceans must be older than the Sun.

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Earth Has Water Older than the Sun

Planetology – National Geographic Store – Shop Atlases …

In a stunning and completely new view of the solar system, an astronaut and a geologist team up to investigate, through parallel views made possible by cutting-edge space technology, how the earth can help science unravel the mysteries of the heavens.

Noted planetary geologist Ellen Stofan and veteran astronaut Tom Jones pair images of Earthmany captured by space shuttle and space station crewmemberswith astonishing scenes of alien surfaces beamed home by NASA's far-ranging robotic probes.

This comprehensive new portrait of the solar system brings to light an array of important features never seen until todayand it highlights, for the first time, the similarities and contrasts between Earth and its neighbors in space.

Anecdotal stories from space flights and exploratory missions make Planetology an absorbing read and an informative resource. The book's unique concept draws intriguing comparisons across multiple physical processes, and its dynamic design offers a fresh approach to the study of space.

"Jones provided a preview of his forthcoming book...which blends imagery of Earth and other celestial bodies to show the similarities and contrasts in climate and geology."msnbc Cosmic Blog

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Planetology - National Geographic Store - Shop Atlases ...

Springer to collaborate with 5 Japanese societies on an open access journal

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

12-May-2014

Contact: Renate Bayaz renate.bayaz@springer.com 49-622-148-78531 Springer

Springer is starting an open access publication of the journal Earth, Planets and Space (EPS) on behalf of five academic societies in Japan. EPS is the official journal of The Society of Geomagnetism and Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences; The Seismological Society of Japan; The Volcanological Society of Japan; The Geodetic Society of Japan; and The Japanese Society for Planetary Sciences. EPS is a long-running journal, formerly published by Terrapub under a traditional subscription model.

Earth, Planets and Space covers scientific articles in earth and planetary sciences, and in particular geomagnetism, aeronomy, space science, seismology, volcanology, geodesy and planetology. The journal also publishes articles in new and interdisciplinary subjects, including instrumentations. In 2012 EPS had an impact factor of 2.921.

The journal includes new and original articles with no page limit, letters limited to eight pages, frontier letters and technical reports. Frontier letters are articles which are invited by the editor-in-chief, while technical reports are presentations of software tools, experimental or computational methods, or hardware designs.

The Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Yasuo Ogawa from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, said, "It really is a great challenge to change the publication style and the publisher. We hope to have a broader readership as one of the leading international journals in these disciplines."

"We are proud to work with these five prominent societies on the open access publication of their reputed journal, which will further enhance our strong international publishing programs in the earth and planetary science fields," said Takeyuki Yonezawa, Editorial Director Physical Sciences and Engineering at Springer Japan. "We look forward to helping our new partners to achieve wider distribution and better presence of their Earth, Planets and Space."

The back issues are being transferred to SpringerOpen as open access articles under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

###

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Springer to collaborate with 5 Japanese societies on an open access journal

Oxygen In Exoplanet Atmospheres Could Fool Search For Life

Oxygen is a signal of life on our own planet, but that's not necessarily the case elsewhere. Particularly when it comes to young planets, signs of oxygen do not necessarily indicate the presence of biological processes, new research argues.

Water vapor in the upper atmosphere of a young planet could break into hydrogen and oxygen by incoming ultraviolet and extreme ultraviolet rays from the parent star.

"Atomic hydrogen is so light that it can escape to space and lead to the oxidization of the planet," said Robin Wordsworth, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago. "It will just keep continuing and oxidizing the atmosphere. That's what we try and investigate in the paper."

The researchers investigated water photolysis, which happens when a water molecule is torn apart by high-energy photons from the sun. Usually the water (two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom) is broken into two parts, OH and H. The H escapes to space because it is so light. Over time, more oxygen molecules build up until eventually O2 (molecular oxygen) form as well.

"The real novelty of our paper was to study the consequences of hydrogen loss from water photolysis, when molecules break down into smaller units after absorbing light," said Wordsworth.

Wordsworth co-led the research with Raymond Pierrehumbert, who is a geophysicist in his department.

The paper, called "Abiotic oxygen-dominated atmospheres on terrestrial habitable zone planets" is available on the pre-publishing site Arxiv and has been accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Searches for second Earth picking up Due to their diminutive size, Earth-sized planets are hard to spot in telescopes searching for exoplanets. They don't tug on their parent stars as much as the Jupiter-sized worlds, which induce "wobbles" in a star's movement.

If the terrestrial-sized planets pass across the face of their star, their shadow is also incredibly tiny. Trying to pick out details such as land features or even atmospheres is also difficult because of their small size. For now, astronomers expect better success with bigger worlds, of which there are plenty to choose from.

Most planets found outside the Solar System have been Jupiter's size or larger. However, NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has begun spotting more small worlds. A large "planet bonanza" of 715 new worlds was released in February.

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Oxygen In Exoplanet Atmospheres Could Fool Search For Life

DSS 2014: Hyperspectral satellite set to monitor Hawaiian volcano

by Ford Burkhart in Baltimore A suitcase-size satellite called SUCHI is now scheduled for launch from Kauai Island in Hawaii in the fall of 2014, after a year's delay to fine-tune its hyperspectral sensing technology, a team member said at the outset of SPIEs defense, security and sensing (DSS) event in Baltimore.

The delay was to allow more work on a little of everything said Sarah T. Crites, a doctoral candidate in geophysics at the University of Hawaii who is working on the project. We need more testing of the whole spectrometer. We wanted to know more about what it would do.

Speaking at a conference session on May 5, the researcher said that SUCHI was undergoing tests to see how its components would survive the intense shaking of a rocket launch. Im excited to have the vibration testing going on today. The SUCHI will be fastened to a table that is shaking like a satellite launch. This is the first time for these tests, Crites said.

SUCHI stands for Space Ultra-Compact Hyperspectral Imager for small satellites, and Crites report was part of a session called Pervasive Techologies Supporting Responsive Space, in the Sensors and Systems for Space Applications conference at the DSS meeting, held at the Baltimore Convention Center.

Lava flows The imager is designed to study geological phenomena like volcanic eruptions and lava flows, with a six-month primary mission that could be extended to two years. The ultra-compact satellite, measuring just over 16inches in length, 4inches deep and 5inches wide, will run on solar panels approximately the size of a notebook.

Inside it is a FLIR A35 camera, mounted in a sealed vessel and collecting images at a resolution of 336x256 pixels. Each pixel measures 38m.

Actually a trimmed-down version of a 2012 design for the satellite for long-wave infrared (LWIR) hyperspectral imaging, it was developed by a University of Hawaii team and built at the Hawaii Space Flight Lab in Manoa, a suburb of Honolulu.

During its short deployment, it will help geologists to monitor volcanic gas emissions and rates at which lava cools. The captured images are also expected to be useful in the mapping of major rock mineralogy, Crites said.

Tracking vog gas One key application is to monitor sulfur dioxide, a volcanic gas constantly erupted by the active Hawaiian volcano Kilauea. The gas forms aerosols that locals call vog (volcanic fog), which floats across the islands and can cause respiratory problems. The gas can be tracked and quantified using spectroscopy in the 9m region of the infrared spectrum.

That part of the spectrum is also an ideal wavelength range for geological mapping of certain minerals.

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DSS 2014: Hyperspectral satellite set to monitor Hawaiian volcano

Hyperspectral satellite set to monitor Hawaiian volcano

by Ford Burkhart in Baltimore A suitcase-size satellite called SUCHI is now scheduled for launch from Kauai Island in Hawaii in the fall of 2014, after a year's delay to fine-tune its hyperspectral sensing technology, a team member said at the outset of SPIEs defense, security and sensing (DSS) event in Baltimore.

The delay was to allow more work on a little of everything said Sarah T. Crites, a doctoral candidate in geophysics at the University of Hawaii who is working on the project. We need more testing of the whole spectrometer. We wanted to know more about what it would do.

Speaking at a conference session on May 5, the researcher said that SUCHI was undergoing tests to see how its components would survive the intense shaking of a rocket launch. Im excited to have the vibration testing going on today. The SUCHI will be fastened to a table that is shaking like a satellite launch. This is the first time for these tests, Crites said.

SUCHI stands for Space Ultra-Compact Hyperspectral Imager for small satellites, and Crites report was part of a session called Pervasive Techologies Supporting Responsive Space, in the Sensors and Systems for Space Applications conference at the DSS meeting, held at the Baltimore Convention Center.

Lava flows The imager is designed to study geological phenomena like volcanic eruptions and lava flows, with a six-month primary mission that could be extended to two years. The ultra-compact satellite, measuring just over 16inches in length, 4inches deep and 5inches wide, will run on solar panels approximately the size of a notebook.

Inside it is a FLIR A35 camera, mounted in a sealed vessel and collecting images at a resolution of 336x256 pixels. Each pixel measures 38m.

Actually a trimmed-down version of a 2012 design for the satellite for long-wave infrared (LWIR) hyperspectral imaging, it was developed by a University of Hawaii team and built at the Hawaii Space Flight Lab in Manoa, a suburb of Honolulu.

During its short deployment, it will help geologists to monitor volcanic gas emissions and rates at which lava cools. The captured images are also expected to be useful in the mapping of major rock mineralogy, Crites said.

Tracking vog gas One key application is to monitor sulfur dioxide, a volcanic gas constantly erupted by the active Hawaiian volcano Kilauea. The gas forms aerosols that locals call vog (volcanic fog), which floats across the islands and can cause respiratory problems. The gas can be tracked and quantified using spectroscopy in the 9m region of the infrared spectrum.

That part of the spectrum is also an ideal wavelength range for geological mapping of certain minerals.

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Hyperspectral satellite set to monitor Hawaiian volcano

Media advisory 4: On-site registration, press conferences streamed online

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

22-Apr-2014

Contact: Brbara Ferreira media@egu.eu 49-892-180-6703 European Geosciences Union

The General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), a meeting with over 11,000 scientists that covers all disciplines of the Earth, planetary and space sciences, is taking place next week (27 April 2 May) in Vienna, Austria. Interested journalists can register on-site free of charge. Those who cannot make it to Vienna, can watch press conferences remotely through a webstreaming link. Media briefings include presentations on the latest news from the Cassini mission and an update from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Other events of interest include debates on mining and geoengineering, which will also be streamed online.

Contents

Press conference schedule Online streaming Meeting programme Union-wide sessions of interest Media registration and badge collection

Press conference schedule

Press conferences at the EGU General Assembly will be held at the Press Centre located on the Yellow Level (Ground Floor) of the Austria Center Vienna. All times are CEST.

Documents relating to the press conferences listed below, such as press releases and presentation slides, will be made available from the Documents page at http://media.egu.eu during the meeting.

SINKING COASTAL CITIES Monday, 28 April, 14:00

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Media advisory 4: On-site registration, press conferences streamed online

Regolith of small asteroids formed by thermal fatigue

The centimeter-sized fragments and smaller particles that make up the regolith -- the layer of loose, unconsolidated rock and dust -- of small asteroids is formed by temperature cycling that breaks down rock in a process called thermal fatigue, according to a paper published today in the Nature Advance Online Publication.

Previous studies suggested that the regolith of asteroids one kilometer wide and smaller was made from material falling to the surface after impacts and from boulders that were pulverized by micrometeoroid impacts. Recent laboratory experiments and impact modeling conducted by a team of researchers from Observatoire de la Cte d'Azur, Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Institut Suprieur de l'Aronautique et de l'Espace and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) have shown that the debris from large impacts reaches escape velocities and breaks free from the gravitational pull of these asteroids, indicating this mechanism is not the dominant process for regolith creation.

The team's research showed that thermal fragmentation, which is induced by mechanical stresses caused by temperature variations of the rapidly spinning asteroid's short night and day, to be the process primarily responsible for breaking up rocks larger than a few centimeters on asteroids.

"We took meteorites as the best analog of asteroid surface materials that we have on the Earth," said Dr. Marco Delbo of the Observatoire de la Cte d'Azur. "We then submitted these meteorites to temperature cycles similar to those that rocks experience on the surfaces of near-Earth asteroids and we found that microcracks grow inside these meteorites quickly enough to entirely break them on timescales much shorter than the typical lifetime of asteroids."

Model extrapolation of these experiments also showed that thermal fragmentation caused rocks to break down an order of magnitude faster than from micrometeoroid impacts, particularly at distances of 1 astronomical unit (about 93 million miles) with the speed of breakdown slowing at distances further from the Sun.

"Even asteroids significantly farther from the Sun showed thermal fatigue fragmentation to be a more relevant process for rock breakup than micrometeoroid impacts," said Dr. Simone Marchi, a scientist in the SwRI Space Science and Engineering Division.

The results of this study suggest that thermal fragmentation, combined with solar radiation pressures that sweep away surface particles, could completely erode small asteroids at distances closer to the Sun (about 28 million miles) in about 2 million years.

The French Agence National de la Recherche SHOCKS, BQR of the Observatoire de la Cte d'Azur, the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, the Laboratory GeoZur, the French National Program of Planetology, and NASA's Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute funded this research.

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The above story is based on materials provided by Southwest Research Institute. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Regolith of small asteroids formed by thermal fatigue

French, American team finds regolith of small asteroids formed by thermal fatigue

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

2-Apr-2014

Contact: Maria Martinez Stothoff maria.martinez@swri.org 210-522-3305 Southwest Research Institute

The centimeter-sized fragments and smaller particles that make up the regolith the layer of loose, unconsolidated rock and dust of small asteroids is formed by temperature cycling that breaks down rock in a process called thermal fatigue, according to a paper published today in the Nature Advance Online Publication.

Previous studies suggested that the regolith of asteroids one kilometer wide and smaller was made from material falling to the surface after impacts and from boulders that were pulverized by micrometeoroid impacts. Recent laboratory experiments and impact modeling conducted by a team of researchers from Observatoire de la Cte d'Azur, Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Institut Suprieur de l'Aronautique et de l'Espace and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) have shown that the debris from large impacts reaches escape velocities and breaks free from the gravitational pull of these asteroids, indicating this mechanism is not the dominant process for regolith creation.

The team's research showed that thermal fragmentation, which is induced by mechanical stresses caused by temperature variations of the rapidly spinning asteroid's short night and day, to be the process primarily responsible for breaking up rocks larger than a few centimeters on asteroids.

"We took meteorites as the best analog of asteroid surface materials that we have on the Earth," said Dr. Marco Delbo of the Observatoire de la Cte d'Azur. "We then submitted these meteorites to temperature cycles similar to those that rocks experience on the surfaces of near-Earth asteroids and we found that microcracks grow inside these meteorites quickly enough to entirely break them on timescales much shorter than the typical lifetime of asteroids."

Model extrapolation of these experiments also showed that thermal fragmentation caused rocks to break down an order of magnitude faster than from micrometeoroid impacts, particularly at distances of 1 astronomical unit (about 93 million miles) with the speed of breakdown slowing at distances further from the Sun.

"Even asteroids significantly farther from the Sun showed thermal fatigue fragmentation to be a more relevant process for rock breakup than micrometeoroid impacts," said Dr. Simone Marchi, a scientist in the SwRI Space Science and Engineering Division.

The results of this study suggest that thermal fragmentation, combined with solar radiation pressures that sweep away surface particles, could completely erode small asteroids at distances closer to the Sun (about 28 million miles) in about 2 million years.

Originally posted here:

French, American team finds regolith of small asteroids formed by thermal fatigue

A Question of Atmospheres: On Earth and Beyond

Scientists recently discovered the source of naturally occurring aerosol particles in Earth's atmosphere that play an important role in cloud formation. The particles in questions are known as 'climate-active organic aerosols,' and are vapors composed of large molecules that contain almost equal numbers of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.

The international research team found that these vapors form shortly after the release of plant emissions into the air. The vapors condense on small particles, causing them to grow bigger and bigger. Eventually, they reach a size that is large enough to cause noticeable changes in the atmosphere - like reflecting sunlight, and acting as nuclei for cloud formation.

The research was published in the journal Nature, and shows a direct mechanism for how life on Earth can influence the production of particles that play a big role in processes affecting Earth's climate.

The study is useful for astrobiologists who are interested in the connections between Earth's biosphere and climate, and how climate change will affect the future habitability of our planet. But could studies like these also have implications in comparative planetology and the search for life beyond Earth?

As the new study shows, life on Earth can have a noticeable affect on the composition and behavior of our planet's atmosphere. There are now over 1,000 identified exoplanets in orbit around distant stars (and the number keeps growing). Scientists are now exploring techniques that could be used to study the atmospheres of these planets in detail. The ultimate goal is to find atmospheric biosignatures that would identify alien life.

Astrobiology Magazine spoke with Dr. Nancy Kiang of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies about the prospect of using climate-active organic aerosols as a biosignature. Dr. Kiang is a specialist when it comes to the interactions between Earth's biosphere and atmosphere, and how these interactions could produce signs of life at global scales.

First off, plants themselves could provide biosignatures on an exoplanet. If you observe how light reflects off a planet's surface, and if that surface is covered by a lot of plants, you can actually 'see' the plants due to the way in which their chlorophyll absorbs light. This is a spectral signature known as the "vegetation red edge."

"Satellites can see this to identify where plants are on our planet," said Dr. Kiang. "If we were to see a feature like this on another planet, it would tell us that advanced life had evolved on land. At least 20 percent of the planet's surface would have to be covered with vegetation AND cloud-free for a strong enough signal for a telescope to see."

Dr. Kiang points out that the results of the new study could actually pose more problems for this type of direct detection of plants on another planet.

"The catch is that plants promote cloud formation through transpiration of soil moisture back to the atmosphere," said Dr. Kiang. "Thus vegetation can help its own persistence and even its spread through enhancing the availability of moisture."

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A Question of Atmospheres: On Earth and Beyond

The Science Jerks – Episode 15: Thermology, Astrogeology and Planetology with Curtis Rainsberry – Video


The Science Jerks - Episode 15: Thermology, Astrogeology and Planetology with Curtis Rainsberry
Comedy writer and performer Curtis Rainsberry, @crainsberry, chats with us about what lies beyond absolute zero, giving the moon a new moon and why Luke Skyw...

By: The Science Jerks

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The Science Jerks - Episode 15: Thermology, Astrogeology and Planetology with Curtis Rainsberry - Video

Microbes, How Low Can You Go?

The Sun was once thought to provide energy for all life on Earth - meaning that life could not survive without it. In the 20th century, as astrobiologists began to explore the Earth's most remote and harsh environments, scientists began to question that assumption.

We now know that numerous microorganisms are able to obtain the energy they need for life through chemical reactions that do not involve sunlight. These incredible organisms can be found in many environments - from sediments below the dark ocean floor to microscopic pockets of water inside solid rock.

Many questions about these microbial ecosystems remain. How do microbes get into the deep subsurface in the first place? Are communities capable of growing, or do they just sort of sit there in the rock recycling nutrients and carbon from dead cells? How much of the deep biosphere is actually living, and how much of it is just dead matter trapped in the slow, grinding motion of our planet's geology?

Field studies have revealed that subsurface microorganisms can and do live active lives, even when buried kilometers under the surface. But we're still not entirely sure how large the living subsurface biosphere is, how deep it actually goes, and how it originated.

Previous Studies: A Community Harvest Organisms in the deep subsurface can be identified by simply digging up samples, sticking them under a microscope, and then seeing what's there. The problem is, even though microbes might be present, it's sometimes hard to tell if they're active - or how they behave in their native environment.

Previously, scientists have tried to define the depth limit for life based on environmental constraints like temperature. In general, the environment gets hotter and hotter as you get closer and closer to the Earth's core. Life simply cannot survive when it gets too hot. However, it's hard to tell just how close to that boundary a living community can get.

"The reality is that in order to live at high temperatures, you are forced to replace your proteins very frequently," said Tullis Onstott, a geoscience professor at Princeton University. "If you do not have enough metabolic energy to support that replacement then you, as an individual cell, cannot live."

High temperature environments can be challenging for life. Cellular components break down at an increased rate. If a cell cannot actively repair the damage, the conditions quickly take a turn toward the uninhabitable. Proteins stop working, causing metabolism to grind to a halt. Cell membranes, cell walls and DNA also begin to deteriorate. So it's not temperature alone that affects habitability, it also comes down to an organism's ability to repair the damage that high temperatures cause.

"You will die at a lower temperature even though under energy and nutrient-rich situations you can live at higher temperatures and to much greater depths," said Onstott. "The most important constraint that this places on deep life is its abundance as a function of depth."

The depth and abundance of living organisms in Earth's subsurface depends on how active they are, and how quickly they can repair and reproduce. This is a question of resources and energy. Previous studies have often focused on the resource part of the question - specifically the resource of organic carbon.

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Microbes, How Low Can You Go?

Planetology, the New Earth Science – About.com Geology

The space program changed the planets as a concept. Before that, the planets were astronomical entities, little better known than when the ancients saw them as gods in the heavens. Today all the planets are viewed as distinct worlds, having been visited by spacecraftand Pluto (and its oversize moon Charon) will get its turn in the limelight in 2015. (Unfortunately Pluto is no longer considered a true planet.)

But within living memory, scientists used to think the most fantastical things about the planets. In the 1960s, popular guides still showed Mercury and Mars crisscrossed with canals, the lines that Giovanni Schiaparelli, squinting through the best telescopes of 1877, had mapped and named canali (channels). (A splendid book about those times is online.)

Today only Pluto remains mysterious in that antique sense. Pay attention, because in less than a decade a spacecraft will bring us clear pictures of Pluto, and with the ancient overlord of the underworld revealed as yet another pockmarked iceball, that former dreamlike sense of the universe will utterly disappearexcept in astrology.

Scientists had only the crudest ideas about the structure of the other planets, and essentially none about their history, until 14 July 1965. On that day the Mariner 4 spacecraft sent back the first close-ups of Marscovered with craters like the Moon's.

Instantly the "canals" were shown to be optical illusions; instantly scientists had something to chew on; instantly Mars, and by extension the other planets, became a fit object for study by geoscientists, and a new Earth science, planetology, could arise. Even as a child, seeing that first photo in the newspaper, I appreciated what had happened.

More flybys were launched. New data let us ask questions of other planets that we could compare with Earth. Landers landed. Actual rocks began to be retrieved, or analyzed at the site. Every few years a new wave of spacecraft raised new vistas. In 1968 the American Geophysical Union created its Planetology Section, led by the late Gene Shoemaker. The journals began to fill with breakthrough papers, putting the strange landforms of Venus on the same footing as the earthly Tibetan plateau, the geology of Mars, the basins of Mercury, the methane lakes of Titan and the volcanoes of Io.

To see where we are today, just visit Views of the Solar System, the best one-stop treatment of our planetary neighborhood on the Web. Compared to the situation a generation ago, it is like a modern globe put next to a medieval T-O map. Scientists can now talk confidently of the interiors and histories of the planets, even the solar system itself, in ever-growing detail.

Indeed, planetology now encompasses planets around other stars, and inexorably we are finding ever-smaller and more Earthlike examples. The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia is keeping up to date on that story. Now we know that planets are everywherenot special at all, more like aphids in the cosmic vegetation. And now Earth science extends to the whole universe.

More of Earth Science in Space > How the World Turns > Page 4, 5, 6, 7

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Planetology, the New Earth Science - About.com Geology

University of Hawaii scientists make a big splash

Researchers from the University of Hawaii - Manoa (UHM) School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and University of California - Berkeley discovered that interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) could deliver water and organics to the Earth and other terrestrial planets.

Interplanetary dust, dust that has come from comets, asteroids, and leftover debris from the birth of the solar system, continually rains down on the Earth and other Solar System bodies. These particles are bombarded by solar wind, predominately hydrogen ions. This ion bombardment knocks the atoms out of order in the silicate mineral crystal and leaves behind oxygen that is more available to react with hydrogen, for example, to create water molecules.

"It is a thrilling possibility that this influx of dust has acted as a continuous rainfall of little reaction vessels containing both the water and organics needed for the eventual origin of life on Earth and possibly Mars," said Hope Ishii, new Associate Researcher in the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) at UHM SOEST and co-author of the study.

This mechanism of delivering both water and organics simultaneously would also work for exoplanets, worlds that orbit other stars. These raw ingredients of dust and hydrogen ions from their parent star would allow the process to happen in almost any planetary system.

Implications of this work are potentially huge: Airless bodies in space such as asteroids and the Moon, with ubiquitous silicate minerals, are constantly being exposed to solar wind irradiation that can generate water. In fact, this mechanism of water formation would help explain remotely sensed data of the Moon, which discovered OH and preliminary water, and possibly explains the source of water ice in permanently shadowed regions of the Moon.

"Perhaps more exciting," said Ishii, "interplanetary dust, especially dust from primitive asteroids and comets, has long been known to carry organic carbon species that survive entering the Earth's atmosphere, and we have now demonstrated that it also carries solar-wind-generated water. So we have shown for the first time that water and organics can be delivered together."

It has been known since the Apollo-era, when astronauts brought back rocks and soil from the Moon, that solar wind causes the chemical makeup of the dust's surface layer to change.

Hence, the idea that solar wind irradiation might produce water-species has been around since then, but whether it actually does produce water has been debated. The reasons for the uncertainty are that the amount of water produced is small and it is localized in very thin rims on the surfaces of silicate minerals so that older analytical techniques were unable to confirm the presence of water.

Using a state-of-the-art transmission electron microscope, the scientists have now actually detected water produced by solar-wind irradiation in the space-weathered rims on silicate minerals in interplanetary dust particles. Futher, on the bases of laboratory-irradiated minerals that have similar amorphous rims, they were able to conclude that the water forms from the interaction of solar wind hydrogen ions (H+) with oxygen in the silicate mineral grains.

This recent work does not suggest how much water may have been delivered to Earth in this manner from IDPs.

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University of Hawaii scientists make a big splash

Interstellar Dust Particles Carry Water, Organic Compounds To Earth

January 27, 2014

Image Caption: The surfaces of tiny interplanetary dust particles are space-weathered by the solar wind, causing amorphous rims to form on their surfaces. Hydrogen ions in the solar wind react with oxygen in the rims to form tiny water-filled vesicles (blue). This mechanism of water formation almost certainly occurs in other planetary systems with potential implications for the origin of life throughout the galaxy. Credit: John Bradley, UH SOEST/ LLNL

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports Your Universe Online

Dust that originates from comets, asteroids and leftover debris from the birth of the Solar System could deliver water and organic material to the Earth and other terrestrial planets, according to a recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Science paper.

In the study, researchers from the University of Hawaii-Manoa (UHM) School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California-Berkeley explain that these interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) continually rain down upon our planet and other worlds in our Solar System.

The IDPs are bombarded by solar wind, especially hydrogen ions, and these ions disturb the order of the atoms in the silicate mineral crystal. This process leaves behind oxygen, which is more readily available to react with hydrogen in order to create water molecules, the study authors explained in a statement Friday.

It is a thrilling possibility that this influx of dust has acted as a continuous rainfall of little reaction vessels containing both the water and organics needed for the eventual origin of life on Earth and possibly Mars, said study co-author and UHM SOEST Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) associate researcher Hope Ishii.

This mechanism of delivering both water and organics simultaneously would also work for exoplanets, worlds that orbit other stars. These raw ingredients of dust and hydrogen ions from their parent star would allow the process to happen in almost any planetary system, the university added. Implications of this work are potentially huge.

For example, airless bodies such as the Moon and asteroids, with abundant amounts of silicate minerals, are being exposed to solar wind irradiation constantly. This mechanism could generate water, and would help explain remotely sensed Moon data that detected OH and preliminary water, the researchers said. Furthermore, it might help explain what caused water ice to form in the permanently shadowed areas of the lunar surface.

Perhaps more exciting, Ishii said, interplanetary dust, especially dust from primitive asteroids and comets, has long been known to carry organic carbon species that survive entering the Earths atmosphere, and we have now demonstrated that it also carries solar-wind-generated water. So we have shown for the first time that water and organics can be delivered together.

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Interstellar Dust Particles Carry Water, Organic Compounds To Earth

News at Nine, January 27

Arrests of Halawa corrections officers continue

A second corrections officer has been arrested at the Halawa Correctional Facility as investigations continue on Methamphetamine distribution and dealing at the prison.

According to officials, the officer has been identified as 45-year old Mark Samson Damas. He was taken into custody by FBI agents while on duty on Sunday morning. According to FBI special agent Tom Simon, Damas has been charged with one count of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine at Halawa Corrections Facility. Damas is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Federal Court.

Damas is the second officer to be arrested. James Kimo Sanders III was arrested two weeks ago in the prisons parking lot for similar charges.

Source: HawaiiNewsNow

UHM faculty discover new IDPs role

IDPs, interplanetary dust particles, were discovered to have the ability to deliver water and organics to the Earth and other terrestrial planets.

The discovery was made by researchers from UHMs School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the University of California-Berkeley.

It is a thrilling possibility that this influx of dust has acted as a continuous rainfall of little reaction vesselscontaining both the water and organics needed for the eventual origin of life on Earth and possibly Mars, Hope Ishii, new Associate Researcher inthe Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) at UH Mnoa's SOEST and co-author of the study said in a statement.

Researchers will next attempt to estimate water abundances delivered to Earth by IDPS.

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News at Nine, January 27