What’s the News: Biologists have discovered an eel so bizarre that they didn’t initially know if it was an eel or some other kind of fish. The strange creature, dubbed Protoanguilla palau after a researcher found it in an undersea cavern off the coast of Palau, has very few of the anatomic features of modern eels, but displays many hallmarks of primitive eels from the Mesozoic era. It appears that the eel’s last common ancestor with any other living creature existed 200 million years ago, the researchers report in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

How the Heck:

Last year, Jiro Sakaue of the Southern Marine Laboratory of Palau came across the unique eel while diving in a deep fringing-reef cave near Palau. He brought the find to his colleagues to investigate.
Sakaue and his team began by analyzing the physical features of eight of the eel specimens. The researchers compared the creatures’ anatomic characteristics to those of modern eels—which includes over 800 species grouped into 19 families—and to ancient eel fossils.
The new species, the scientists found, showed traits present only in the fossils of the earliest eels, dating back to 100 million years ago. ...

Last Tuesday was back-to-school day for TLA*. On that day we got up early for the first time in a long time, prepped her, and with remarkably little fuss got her sent out the door.

… only to have her banging on the door literally ten seconds later. Figuring we had forgotten something, Mrs. BA† and I opened the door, whereupon TLA said "Come see this!"

We went outside, and this is what we saw:

[Click to hotairinflatenate.]

I ran back inside to grab my camera, and there ya go. We get lots of hot air balloons around here — the view of the foothills and Rockies must be stunning from up there — but I’ve never had such a perfectly framed shot like this one before.

Sometimes I like to use pictures like this as an excuse to talk about science — adiabatic expansion would fit here, or perspective and distance — but you know what? I think this is fine pretty much as it is.

* The Little Astronomer, who’s not so little anymore.

† Decidedly not her real name, either.

Related posts:

- Ephemeral snow ...

By Jon Winsor

According to Tech President and 140elect.com, Thursday’s pro-science tweet by Jon Huntsman was one of the most effective tweets on record by a GOP candidate. The 90 character message was retweeted over 3600 times (50% higher than Sarah Palin’s best) and earned him 4,275 followers on a single day. It also earned attention from major newspapers, such as the New York Times. Attention isn’t poll numbers (Huntsman isn’t polling well) but it’s attention.

Perhaps sensing that this could be an important theme for him, Huntsman is taking it to the airwaves. Jake Tapper posted some excepts from his interview with Huntsman airing tomorrow on ABC’s This Week:

TAPPER: These comments from Governor Perry prompted you to Tweet, quote: ”To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.” Were you just being cheeky or do you think there’s a serious problem with what Governor Perry said?

HUNTSMAN: I think there’s a serious problem. The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party – the anti-science party, we have a huge problem. We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012. When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Science – Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position.

The Republican Party has to remember that we’re drawing from traditions that go back as far as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, President Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and Bush. And we’ve got a lot of traditions to draw upon. But I can’t remember a time in our history where we actually were willing to shun science and become a – a party that – that was antithetical to science. I’m not sure that’s good for our future and it’s not a winning formula.

Huntsman also took on another subject that we’ve covered on this blog, the GOP debt ceiling deniers. (Early on, we covered Huntsman’s position opposing default.)

TAPPER: You were one of the only, if not the only Republican candidate, to support the deal to raise the debt ceiling. You called Congresswoman Bachmann’s position a, quote, “crash and burn” approach. Would you trust a President Bachmann to do the right thing with the economy?

HUNTSMAN: Well, I wouldn’t necessarily trust any of my opponents right now, who were on a recent debate stage with me, when every single one of them would have allowed this country to default. You can imagine, even given the uncertainty of the marketplace the last several days and even the last couple of weeks, if we had defaulted the first time in the history of the greatest country that ever was, being 25 percent of the world’s GDP and having the largest financial services sector in this world by a long shot, if we had defaulted, Jake, this marketplace would be in absolute turmoil. And people who are already losing enough as it is on their 401(k)s and retirement programs and home valuations, it would have been catastrophic.

To be fair, the notion that the other candidates would all have ”let the country default” is probably hyperbole. But the presidential candidates and other political actors did make noises that they didn’t take default seriously–to such an extent that this affected the S & P decision making (according to S & P officials’ own statements).

I’ll post an interview clip from ABC when it becomes available.

UPDATE:  Solved by Roger at 12:15 CDT

Happy Riddle Day!  Or, as the unenlightened like to say; Happy Saturday.  I’m glad to see you back to challenge the riddle once again.

Today’s riddle will be fun (I know, I say that every Saturday) and quick.  We’re still dealing with reality, so you’ll find your answer today in textbooks.  With that in mind, let’s hop right on it:

Modern bronze copy of Young Centaur, Malmaison

We think of this as one thing, but it’s actually composed of many things.

This was known to our ancestors.

You don’t have to go outside the neighborhood to find this one.

NASA/HST Gliese 623b (large one) and 623a (smaller star at about 4:00)

While considered to be very old, parts of this are much younger…

…which is odd, when you think about it.

In fact, it may have started out as something altogether different, and then got — well — disrupted.

Some studies seem to show a hungry little monster hiding out and quietly eating everything in its path.

But later studies seem to show otherwise.

Whatever is going on, there’s a lot of it.

Portrait by Thomas Murray, ca 1687

Of it’s group, today’s answer is one of the most massive.

This was incorrectly described in Ptolemy’s catalog.

The person who “discovered” it got it wrong, too.

Uh-oh. Looks like somebody divided by zero.

There you have it; one fresh, new riddle.  I know everybody will be right on top of this one, so get your guesses in early.  You know where to find me; as always, lurking in the comment section.  Hey!  I’m getting pretty good at lurking, aren’t I?

Darwin Got It Going On:

The lyrics are, for the most part, witty, sophisticated and scientifically accurate; and they lack the earnest defensiveness that sometimes haunts lectures on evolution. I spotted one or two small slips — a confusion of the praying mantis with the Australian redback spider (oh no!) — and there are a few moments of poetic license that a po-faced pedant might object to. Otherwise, it’s pretty rigorous.

Yesterday I wrote about scientists being able to see sunspots as they form deep inside the Sun, well before they rise to the surface.

Around the same time, more news about the Sun was released as well. And I was ready to write up a fancy schmancy post talking all about it, I really was. It would be about how my old friend Craig DeForest used data from NASA’s Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (aka STEREO) to track a coronal mass ejection (CME) — a huge blast of subatomic particles chock full o’ magnetic energy — all the way from the solar surface to the Earth… but then those folks at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center put together this terrific video explaining it really well, saving me the effort!

Very very cool. Here is a still from the actual animation of the blast:

[Click to embiggen.]

In this graphic, the Sun is on the right and the Earth on the left. The horizontal scale is logarithmic, which means it’s highly compressed; as you get farther away from the Sun (that is, looking more ...

Click here to view gallery

Oh, this is good.  I couldn’t resist putting this up today.  What an image!

NASA image of W340.

Here’s what NASA had to say about this amazing image (don’t forget to enlarge — it’s amazing):

VV 340, also known as Arp 302, provides a textbook example of colliding galaxies seen in the early stages of their interaction. The edge-on galaxy near the top of the image is VV 340 North and the face-on galaxy at the bottom of the image is VV 340 South. Millions of years later these two spirals will merge — much like the Milky Way and Andromeda will likely do billions of years from now. Data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple) are shown here along with optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, blue). VV 340 is located about 450 million light years from Earth.

Because it is bright in infrared light, VV 340 is classified as a Luminous Infrared Galaxy (LIRG). These observations are part of the Great Observatories All-Sky LIRG Survey (GOALS) combining data from Chandra, Hubble, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and ground-based telescopes. The survey includes over two hundred LIRGs in the local Universe. A chief motivation of this study is to understand why LIRGs emit so much infrared radiation. These galaxies generate energy at a rate this is tens to hundreds of times larger than that emitted by a typical galaxy. An actively growing supermassive black hole or an intense burst of star formation is often invoked as the most likely source of the energy.

Work on the full GOALS survey is ongoing, but preliminary analysis of data for VV 340 provides a good demonstration of the power of observing with multiple observatories. The Chandra data show that the center of VV 340 North likely contains a rapidly growing supermassive black hole that is heavily obscured by dust and gas. The infared emission of the galaxy pair, as observed by Spitzer, is dominated by VV 340 North, and also provides evidence for a growing supermassive black hole. However, only a small fraction of the infrared emission is generated by this black hole.

By contrast most of the ultraviolet and short wavelength optical emission in the galaxy pair — as observed by GALEX and HST — comes from VV 340 South. This shows that VV 340 South contains a much higher level of star formation. (The Spitzer and GALEX images are not shown here because they strongly overlap with the optical and X-ray images, but they are shown in a separate composite image.) VV 340 appears to be an excellent example of a pair of interacting galaxies evolving at different rates.

These results on VV 340 were published in the June 2009 issue of the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. The lead author was Lee Armus from the Spitzer Science Center in Pasadena, CA.

Image credit: X-ray NASA/CXC/IfA/D.Sanders et al; Optical NASA/STScI/NRAO/A.Evans et al

NGC 3521 in the constellation Leo from the ESO. Click for larger. Credit: ESO/O. Maliy

I decided to post this lovely image by the ESO thinking (apparently not too hard) this would be something to look for while watching the Perseid meteor shower.  The galaxy is about a magnitude 8.9, but perhaps with a nice dark sky with a lot of clarity I might be able to see it with binoculars and I could always use the scopes.

Then I remembered seeing and making a mental note of the moon rise about a week ago as I was playing with Holly (my getting large puppy) and realized there would be a full moon.  This will wash out the meteor shower some, still the moon is low in the sky and the Perseids are a fantastic shower so I’ll still be out there IF I have somewhat decent skies.

What about NGC 3521?  That’s the other part things not working out.  For one thing the galaxy is located 35 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo, specifically at:

RA 11h 06m 25s
Dec -00^o02’13″

and will be out of a viewing position for me by the time it’s dark enough to see it.  Oh well the image is incredible and way more detailed than any I’d get; I won’t say totally better than I would get because seeing it for myself is always more satisfying.

The caption below refers to Messier’s Catalog here’s the online version at SEDS.

Here’s the ESO caption for the image (you can larger versions at this link too):

This new picture from ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows NGC 3521, a spiral galaxy located about 35 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). Spanning about 50,000 light-years, this spectacular object has a bright and compact nucleus, surrounded by richly detailed spiral structure.

The most distinctive features of the bright galaxy NGC 3521 are its long spiral arms that are dotted with star-forming regions and interspersed with veins of dust. The arms are rather irregular and patchy, making NGC 3521 a typical example of a flocculent spiral galaxy. These galaxies have “fluffy” spiral arms that contrast with the sweeping arms of grand-design spirals such as the famous Whirlpool Galaxy, or M51, discovered by Charles Messier.

NGC 3521 is bright and relatively close-by, and can easily be seen with a small telescope such as the one used by Messier to catalogue a series of hazy and comet-like objects in the 1700s. Strangely, the French astronomer seems to have missed this flocculent spiral even though he identified several other galaxies of similar brightness in the constellation of Leo.

It was only in the year that Messier published the final version of his catalogue, 1784, that another famous astronomer, William Herschel, discovered NGC 3521 early on in his more detailed surveys of the northern skies. Through his larger, 47-cm aperture, telescope, Herschel saw a “bright center surrounded by nebulosity,” according to his observation notes.

In this new VLT picture, colorful, yet ill defined, spiral arms replace Herschel’s “nebulosity”. Older stars dominate the reddish area in the center while young, hot blue stars permeate the arms further away from the core.

Oleg Maliy, who participated ESO’s Hidden Treasures 2010 competition [1], selected the data from the FORS1 instrument on ESO’s VLT at the Paranal Observatory in Chile that were used to create this dramatic image. Exposures taken through three different filters that passed blue light (colored blue), yellow/green light (colored green), and near-infrared light (colored red) have been combined to make this picture. The total exposure times were 300 seconds per filter. Oleg’s image of NGC 3521 was a highly ranked entry in the competition, which attracted almost 100 entries.

The Rover Opportunity shows us that science can be beautiful.

NASA - Rover Opportunity's panoramic view of the Endeavour Crater - there's a great enlargement of this one, too

When we think about dwarf planets, the first one that comes to mind is Pluto.  Following that, we think about Makemake, Eris, Haumea, and Ceres.  We get this mental image of Pluto, followed by a cluster of little planets out in the Kuiper Belt.  That mental diagram is wrong for many reasons, but it’s mostly wrong because of Ceres.  Ceres is not in a cluster out in the Kuiper Belt; it’s in our own back yard.

From NASA, comparison of the Earth, Moon, and Ceres

Ceres, the largest object within the Asteroid Belt, is the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system.  Discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi on January 1st, 1801, Piazzi thought at first that he had found a comet.  After watching it for a while, Piazzi announced his discovery January 24th.  He did note that the “comet” was moving in such a slow and uniform manner that it might be something more interesting.  Indeed it was.

Ceres is named for the Roman goddess of the harvest, and was called “Hera” for a while in Germany, and “Demeter” in Greece.  Its astronomical symbol is the sickle – that looks like the universal symbol for “female” with a chunk missing from it in the 6:00 to 9:00 position.  Remember, the astronomical symbol for Venus is the female symbol.

NASA/ESA HST, images of Ceres - nature of the white spot unknown

For a long time Ceres was listed as a planet, along with 2 Pallas, 3 Juno, and 4 Vesta.  Its final designation, that of a dwarf planet, came about in 2006.  The largest object in the Asteroid Belt, Ceres is responsible for a full third of its mass.  Mostly spherical, its surface is probably a mixture of water ices and gooey carbonates and clays.

Modern observation has shown that Ceres appears to have differentiated into a rocky core with an icy mantle.  There may even be a sub-surface ocean of liquid water.  The Dawn space probe will visit Ceres in 2015.  That should prove exciting, so mark it on your calendars; only four more years to go!  It’s been estimated that Ceres contains more fresh frozen water than what we find on Earth.

NASA/ESA, A. Field - possible layers of Ceres

There has been some talk that Ceres may have captured biologically active ejecta from the young Earth, and with a warm, sub-surface (possibly salty) ocean, it could have been colonized.  While all discoveries of possible sub-surface liquid water leads to talk of extra-terrestrial life, Ceres is definitely in a better position to study than, say, Europa.

Ceres is certainly an interesting object to study.  With exceptional viewing conditions, a very sharp-sighted person can see Ceres (very dimly), but it mostly requires some sort of viewing aid.  Ceres will next be at perihelion December 18, 2012, so get those binoculars ready.

NASA/ESA HST enhanced (to show detail) image of Ceres

Click here to view the embedded video.

Love that title, so I “borrowed” it from the Dawn website. This video was made by putting a series of still images from the Dawn spacecraft’s framing camera. The images were taken on July 24, 2011 from a distance of 3,200 miles / 5,200 km.

We are looking at a full rotation of the asteroid which takes about 5 hours to occur.  Those “groove-like” features running in the direction of the rotation are very interesting, hopefully we will hear more about the from the Dawn team.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

As always you can get the very latest on the Dawn website.

Here’s a brief note to commemorate the fact that Not Exactly Rocket Science is five years old today! Once again, thanks to my wife, my science writer colleagues and all of you for giving me the motivation and support to carry on writing.

And by coincidence, I’m flying off to Peru for my first field-reporting assignment. More on that later.

E

(Image from camflam)

It’s booze week on NCBI ROFL! All this week we’ll be featuring articles about ethanol, ethyl alcohol, and even CH3CH2OH. Enjoy!

An explanation for enhanced perceptions of attractiveness after alcohol consumption.

“Acute alcohol consumption increases ratings of attractiveness to faces. This may help to explain increased frequencies of sexual encounters during periods of alcohol intoxication. At least in part, such increased attraction may be the result of alcohol consumption decreasing ability to detect bilateral asymmetry, presumably because of the reductions in the levels of visual function. We tested the hypotheses that acute alcohol consumption decreases ability to detect asymmetry in faces and reduces preference for symmetrical faces over asymmetrical faces. Twenty images of a pair of faces and then 20 images of a single face were displayed on a computer, one at a time. Participants were instructed to state which face of each of the face pairs displayed was most attractive and then whether the single face being displayed was symmetrical or not. Data were collected near campus bars at Roehampton University. Sixty-four self-selecting students who undertook the study were classified as either sober (control) or intoxicated with ...

What’s the News: Using data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, astronomers from Princeton University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered the darkest known planet. The exoplanet, called TrES-2b, is located about 750 light-years away from Earth and reflects less than 1 percent of the incident light from its parent star, making it blacker than the blackest piece of coal. The discovery was published recently in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (pdf).

What’s the Context:

For astronomers, albedo—the percentage of light that is reflected off an object’s surface—is a very useful concept that allows them to infer much about an object’s properties. For example, by comparing the albedo of an asteroid with the albedos of known materials here on Earth, astronomers can figure out how much of the body’s surface is covered with ice, dust, or metallic compounds. Albedo can also help pinpoint the temperature of a solar body.
For ...

Among gamers, Deus Ex is something of a legendary fusion of disparate gaming styles. Among science fiction buffs, Deus Ex is lauded for managing to take two awesome genres, William Gibson-esque cyberpunk and Robert Anton Wilson-level conspiracy theories, and jam them together into an immanentizing of the eschaton unlike anything you’ve seen since Doktor Sleepless. And among transhumanists, Deus Ex brought up every issue of humanity’s fusion with technology one could imagine. It is a rich video game.

So when Square Enix decided to pick up the reins from Eidos and create a new installment in the series, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DX:HR), I was quite excited. The first indication DX:HR was not going to be a crummy exploitation of the original’s success (see: Deus Ex 2: Invisible War), was the teaser trailer, shown above. Normally, a teaser trailer is just music and a slow build to a logo or single image that lets you know the game is coming out. Instead, the development team decided to demonstrate that it was taking the philosophy of the game seriously.

What philosophy? you might ask. Why transhumanism, of course. Nick Bostrom, chair of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, centers the birth of transhumanism in the ...

Compare the extremely detailed history of baseball cards and the somewhat skeletal entry on interior decorating on Wikipedia, the Font of All Knowledge, and you’ll get a sense of what a recent paper by computer scientists concluded: Wikipedia’s primarily a creation of man, not of woman.

After a NYTimes trend piece anecdotally discussed the disparity in January, citing Wikipedia’s male-heavy geek culture roots as the source, this intrepid bunch decided to actually do the numbers, pulling the data on editors’ gender from their profile information. And indeed, of the editors who joined in 2009 and disclosed gender, only about 16% were female, and they made only 9% of the cohort’s edits. Looking at signups over time, the researchers also saw that Wikipedia’s gender gap isn’t closing, in contrast to many social media sites, where women are now more likely to participate than men. This may be because Wikipedia looks like a slightly chilly place for new female users: self-identified women were more likely to get their early edits reverted than men were.

It’s neat that we now have real numbers in the discussion of Wikipedia’s gender politics. But there are few problems with a ...

In the justice system, a confession is often treated as proof of guilt—and yet, a surprising number of people confess to crimes they didn’t commit. In its latest issue, the Economist reviews recent research showing just how frequently innocent people ‘fess up, and what factors lead them to do it.

When an experimenter falsely accused subjects of crashing a computer, 25% of them confessed even though they’d done nothing wrong, one study found. If the accusation was corroborated by a (lying) eyewitness, that number jumped to 80%. In another study, participants falsely accused of cheating on a task were told that authority figures were processing evidence that could prove their guilt—in this case, a tape. Half the people confessed, even though they must have known the tape recorded their actual, innocent behavior. This is particularly worrying because police often use this same tactic when waiting to get DNA or fingerprint results.

While the situations—research subject vs. crime suspect—are of course quite different, the parallels are enough to give one pause.

Read the full story at the Economist.

Image courtesy of Pearson Scott Foresman / Wikimedia Commons

What with all the fun excitement blasting away from the Sun the past few days, now is a good time to point you toward this excellent guide to solar flares and their classification, presented by the good folks at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center:

Now I don’t have to always define what this all means every time the Sun flips its lid over the next couple of years. I like it when my tax money makes my life easier.

Tip o’ the lead apron to Scott Wiessenger.

Related posts:

- Another big solar flare
- Sun blows out another big one; expect aurorae tonight!
- The Sun lets out a brief flare
- Incredible solar flare video