Darryl Cunningham, who took down homeopathy and Andrew Wakefield in comic form, has turned his attention to the Moon Hoax. His cartoon about it is very well done and worth checking out.

At TAM8 I was accosted by an honest-to-Armstrong Moon Hoax believer. I was surprised, as this particular species is very close to extinction, even in the wilds of places like YouTube. Perhaps I’ll tell that tale in detail sometime, as it was interesting, but suffice to say that while I was happy to be interviewed by him at first, his persistent and accusatory sideswipes at me (and My Close Personal Friend Adam Savage™) at the meeting quickly grew tiresome, and I told him to go away. I would’ve talked to him, but it was obvious that he couldn’t take "no" for an answer — he clearly had an arsenal of things he wanted to confront me with, and I knew if I engaged him I’d never get away from him. It was a matter of return on investment; spend an hour or more debunking his claims, or go have skeptical fun with friends I only get to see once per year during the short time we’re together at TAM. Hmmmm… but too bad. It would’ve been interesting to talk to him about all this, but he made it impossible.

We know that the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is often strapped for cash. But what if the aliens out there trying to reach us, rather than being far superior technologically and beaming signals in all directions, are actually starving scientists, too?

In a pair of papers in Astrobiology, three members of the Benford family—Gregory, an astrophysicist and sci-fi author; James, president of Microwave Sciences; and James’ son Dominic, of NASA—ponder the possibility of E.T. trying to reach us on a budget, and say that we might have to revise the way we hitherto have watched.

Aliens wishing to communicate would probably broadcast at frequencies between 1 and 10 gigahertz, where there is less astronomical background noise than in other wavebands. Most SETI projects tune in to the “cosmic water hole” waveband between 1.42 and 1.72 gigahertz. The reasoning goes that alien astronomers might expect earthly scientists to be looking there anyway as this is the frequency of radiation emitted by interstellar hydrogen and hydroxyl clouds [New Scientist].

But, the Benfords say, it would be more cost-effective from the aliens’ perspective to transmit closer to 10 GHz. Given the energy needed to continuously broadcast in all directions, the authors say that aliens probably wouldn’t do that either. Instead, it’s more likely they send short pulses, and that they do it across the plane of the galaxy toward as many stars as possible.

“This approach is more like Twitter and less like ‘War and Peace,’” said James Benford [Space.com].

The problem, then, becomes picking out a tweet from the noise in space. The best candidates, the Benfords say, would be brief flashes that shone for a few seconds and then vanished. Because those kinds of signals have been spotted before, they’re trying to get scientists to comb the records for possibilities. But, there are other possible explanations for this kind of phenomena, like flare stars and pulsars.

We don’t have to just sit and watch, either. The Benfords propose a way for humans to create the kind of signals they say aliens are likely to make, and might therefore expect. However, for astronomers focused on cost-cutting, they’re talking about an awful lot of money.

They calculated that a galactic-scale beacon, with an antenna roughly a half-mile (0.9 km) wide with a range of a little more than 1,000 light-years, could be built for $1.3 billion. It would cost $200 million annually to operate. To work economically, it would use only narrow, high-power microwave beams and 35-second bursts aimed at each target star. “Of course, if you want to send a message, first you have to find a billionaire for this,” Gregory Benford [says] [Space.com].

Related Content:
80beats: Vatican to E.T.: Hello, Brother
80beats: Upgrading from Analog TVs Is Making Earth Invisible to ETs
DISCOVER: Who’s Out There?
DISCOVER: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Aliens
DISCOVER: Is Anyone Out There?

Image: flickr / Tama Leaver

A depression near the Bahamas is now on the verge of being upgraded to tropical storm status, which would make it TS Bonnie. What is troubling about this one is the forecast track–possibly toward land across the slick. Fortunately, the system is not currently forecast to become a hurricane due to its surrounding conditions, but even a tropical storm is trouble for the ongoing disaster in the Gulf:

Jeff Masters has a lot more on the storm that may soon be Bonnie.

I’ve said many times already that I have a lot of fears about this hurricane season. Now, it seems the tropics are starting their firing. Let’s hope I’m not right in my concerns.

More adorable, breathtaking, and wondrous photos from deep in the North Atlantic at CNN…

Researchers at Antarctica’s McMurdo Station may face annual average temperatures of minus .4 degrees Fahrenheit and drifting snow of depths around five feet–but at least they have easy access to cash. Since around 1998, Antarctica has had an operating ATM.

The blog NeedCoffeeDotCom interviewed a Wells Fargo representative about the challenges of keeping an Antarctic ATM working. According to a vice president in the ATM banking division, David Parker, there are actually two of the machines in the remote McMurdo Station, but one serves exclusively as a back-up that can be “cannibalized” for parts in case the other fails. The machine recycles the station’s limited cash supply, since–beyond chucking dollar bills at penguins–there aren’t many things to do with cash outside the snug walls of McMurdo.

Parker says that the machines were a hard sell at first (the bank wondered “Why would we need an ATM in Antarctica?”), but researchers and workers employed by Raytheon Company have been putting the cash machine to good use for over a decade.

Station workers are trained to perform basic repairs, but Wells Fargo sends a technician every other year for complete machine tune-ups. Parker says that “mission: Antarctica ATM” requires a ten-month preparation process, and notes that the technician must wait in line to get a flight, since all flights are prioritized according to the station’s needs. Trash removal, for example, is ahead of ATM-repair.

The machines themselves are similar to Wells Fargo ATMs in more traditional locales except McMurdo researchers have one perk: no surcharge.

Related content:
Discoblog: How Antarctica’s Scientists Chill Out: With a Rugby Match on the Ice
Discoblog: To Track Penguins, Scientists Use High-Tech Satellite Images of…Droppings
DISCOVER: The Coolest Science Experiments in Antarctica (photo gallery)
DISCOVER: The Ground Zero of Climate Change

Image: flickr / TheTruthAbout…

When Ikaros unfurled, it unfurled like a spinning top blossoming into a pinwheel. Out in space earlier this month, the center piece of Japan’s solar sail was rotating quickly when it began to extend the arms that had been wrapped up inside. As they stretched out into a stiff X shape, like the stakes that hold a kite taut, the craft slowed to a gentler rotation (a consequence of conservation of angular momentum, like the way a figure skater’s spin slows down when she extends her arms). The JAXA scientists then could let Ikaros stretch the shining sail into a square that spanned 66 feet diagonally.

When Ikaros unfurled, it also breathed new life into a technology that has been dreamed for decades—using the the pressure of sunlight itself to cruise the solar system, and perhaps beyond.

In Brooklyn this week, solar sail enthusiasts gathered for an international symposium. Last night Osamu Mori of the Ikaros team (seen above with a mock-up) was the toast of the party, and a group of experts joined him to celebrate and look forward to a bevy of new explorations. The roster included Planetary Society current director Louis Friedman and director-to-be Bill Nye, NASA’s Les Johnson, Malcolm McDowell of the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, and Roman Kezerashvili of the host New York City College of Technology.

“I feel like they deserve a ticker-tape parade here in New York City,” Friedman said, “rather than just showing up for a scientific conference.”

So far, Mori said, Ikaros has succeeded in stretching out its sail, confirming that it is accelerating under pressure from the sun’s photons, and demonstrating its clever way of steering. Solar cells cover the surface of Ikaros’ sail, which is only microns thick, allowing the craft to create photovoltaic electricity. But the sail also carries small sets of LEDs. When the Ikaros team changes the color of particular lights, they change how much light that side of the sail absorbs, which can turn it. “It creates differential torque,” Friedman told me. “That’s very creative.”

While Ikaros prepares to cruise on a flyby of Venus in the months to come, the Planetary Society’s own project nears a launch. Friedman has long been an enthusiast of solar sailing, and the society previously built a craft that was lost during a launch accident—the price of not having hundreds of millions of dollars to launch your own rocket. But now its new LightSail-1 has passed its design review, and Friedman is angling to send the craft, which weighs just about 10 pounds, as a piggyback on a NASA launch next year.

NASA, too, is back in the game. Johnson, of the Marshall Spaceflight Center, said NASA investigated solar sails in the early 2000s, but the work mostly faded into the background. Now, with JAXA having shown that a solar sail can be achieved, NASA’s solar sail scientists are regrouping. In the hopper, Johnson said, are square sail ideas that look very much like Ikaros and LightSail-1. But NASA also has a much wilder design, a ribbon hundreds of meters long but less than one meter across. Surface area is what matters for solar sails, and different engineers will try any number of designs to find the most efficient.

Nye and the other panelists all praised this nascent solar sailing success as a open door to exploration. These missions, Johnson said, are by far the best way to make round-trips in space. “Most other missions run out of gas,” he says. But here, “as long as the sun is shining, you’ve got thrust.”

Dreamers like Friedman and Nye even imagine solar sails as the propulsion mechanism of choice to visit other stars. However, once you get too far from the sun you’d need a new way to push your vessel along: Like, maybe, ultra-powerful lasers in Earth orbit beaming a stream of photons across the expanse of space. As you might imagine, we don’t have ultra-powerful lasers in Earth orbit. Someday, though, we might. “You could be driven all over the universe by the momentum of photons,” Nye said.

We may all be long gone by the time that happens. But after so many years of yearning for this to work, Friedman finally has the chance to soak it in. “Of course,” he told DISCOVER, “I’m tremendously gratified to beat the naysayers.”

Related Content:
80beats: Today in Space: Japanese Craft Spreads a Solar Sail
80beats: Solar Sail Success: Japanese Craft Powered by the Sun’s Force
80beats: Spacecraft That Sails on Sunshine Aims for Liftoff in 2010
DISCOVER: Japan Stakes Its Claim in Space, on the Hayabusa mission

Add one more job to the list–along with vacuuming floors and assisting in surgeries, now robots can try on clothes for you. The company Fits.me is developing a robotic torso for online shoppers that can morph to match shoppers’ body dimensions, creating virtual fitting rooms on clothing websites.

Men can try a demo version of the product on the company’s site. After entering measurements such as neck and waste size, and selecting from three torso types, the site displays what you might look like in a particular shirt. The torso doesn’t morph in real time; instead, the site pulls from a database of pictures–2,000 body size combinations, the company reports, systematically showing users if pinstripes in small, medium, or large will make them look fat. Shirt sellers Hawes and Curtis is already testing a version of the system on their site.

As reported by the BBC, the company next hopes to develop a version of the torso for women. Maarja Kruusma a professor of biorobotics at the University of Tallinn who helped the company develop the system, told the BBC that it’s a difficult task. Women’s clothing comes in more intricate styles, and their torsos are more complicated to model, she says:

“You can’t just take a male mannequin and put breasts on it. That doesn’t work.”

Related content:
Discoblog: How to Make High Fashion From Bacterial Slime
Discoblog: Fashion Grows an Eco-Conscience: Waterless Dye Debuts at Fashion Week
Discoblog: For Guilt-Free Fur, Wear a Coat Made From an Invasive Water Rat
Discoblog: Robot Model Struts the Catwalk in Japan
Discoblog: Swine Flu Fashion? Japan Introduces Swine Flu-Proof Suit

Spring boarding from Amos’ paper on Thursday’s Discover panel, I want to delve into some unexplored tension. The panel focused on how science could make storytelling better, and it included a mix of scientists and TV writers.

Jamie Paglia (Co-creator of Eureka) conceded that sometimes he’s had to “stretch the boundaries a little thin for my comfort zone,” and he was somewhat abashed thinking of those moments. But Fringe producer Zach Stentz threw down the gauntlet.

“Sometimes you have to break the rules to tell the story you want to tell,” he said, and ran a Fringe clip in which Olivia and Peter realize that Bell has extracted memories from Walter’s brain by removing actual pieces of Walter’s brain.

“He literally had his memories removed,” Stentz said. “We knew when we wrote it that memories aren’t stored in a discrete portion of your brain.”

Which I thought was a pretty direct challenge to Kevin Grazier, Sean Carroll, and Phil Plaitt, all scientists trying to make the case that accurate science can ratchet up the tension and provide a more satisfying resolution.

Alas, the argument never got going, and it left me wondering: where’s the line between acceptable and unacceptable scientific rule breaking?

Obviously we accept violations of physical laws all the time in our science fiction, but to my mind, it’s OK to break rules when doing so is a fundamental and permanent feature of the fictional universe: (Fringe’s alternative dimensions and creepy crawlies, Star Trek faster than light travel, The Force, etc.). Those concepts are fundamental to the universe of those shows, and once established, they become scientific laws unto themselves that other events must bend to.

And the audience is in on it. Everyone knows we can’t travel faster then light, so we accept a universe where we all agree that the technology exists. But the brains/memories plot device hinges on the audience being too ignorant to understand the inaccuracy. The rule breaking isn’t based on the paranormal or on advanced technology. It’s based on the audience not knowing better. That seems like the wrong kind of rule breaking to me.

Maybe I’m just being pretentious, I don’t know, but this seems as good a space as any to pick up the argument. Readers, what do you think? Am I just being a poor man’s Sheldon Cooper?

Sure scientists enjoy the first Iron Man movie. They’re human beings after all, and that was a pretty decent movie. But I would never have expected scientists to love it for…well, for its approach to science.

At the NewSpace panel I attended yesterday, Mark Street, from XCOR, said he and a group of colleagues went to see the first film together.

“Our favorite part was the testing,” he said at the panel. “You know the part where he tries out the rocket boots, and he turns them on at like 10% and gets thrown onto the roof of car? We cracked up because that’s exactly what happens.”

Obviously, Street was joking, but his point was that Iron Man was one of the few movies to offer a smatter of realism in how science gets done: Have an idea, test it, have it not work right, try again.

“It never works the way you think it’s going to work the first time,” said Molly McCormick, an engineer who designs space suits for Orbital Outfitters.

At Discover’s panel Thursday, Discover blogger Sean Carroll, who I don’t think attended the space panel, made the same point on his own.

“Iron Man had the scientific method,” he said. “It didn’t always work.”

“Dragons? Awesome. Napoleonic wars? Awesome. Together? Even more awesome.” So said Naomi Novik in kicking off yesterday’s Comic-Con panel on combining genres. Novik was so happy with that particular mishmash that she used it in her Temeraire series, which reared its dragony head for the sixth time with the publication of Tongues of Serpents this month.

All of the authors on the panel write in genre-bending styles, but they use the technique differently, and their reasons for doing it vary, too. Novik said her motivation for crossing the streams was simple: “It’s absolutely for short attention spans. The Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup theory.”

Daryl Gregory, author of The Devil’s Alphabet (“transcription divergence syndrome” turns residents of small town into three different kinds of monsters—sci-fi/small-town drama), said it allows authors to reach out to more readers: “It lets you combine things and bring someone into something new. If they know dragons but not regency fiction, you can bring them in.”

Messing with genre came more serendipitously to Justin Cronin, author of the bestseller The Passage (immunity-boosting drug made from bat virus turns humans into vampirish things; apocalypse ensues), the movie rights to which were bought by Ridley Scott. Cronin said he used to write “regular fiction,” but then questioned it when his 9-year-old daughter became concerned it might be boring. So he planned The Passage in consultation with her. “The one rule we had was be interesting. That was the goal. The Passage is a combination of all genres, everything I loved. Adventure novels, postapocalyptic stories, Westerns, Thrillers, Poe, in a big happy bag. You put ideas together, they have idea sex.”

So fusing genres is inclusive, sexy, and fit for the short-attention-spanned. But it’s not all smiles and sunshine.

China Miéville, creator of the Lovecraft-inspired New Weird style, said the “aesthetic arithmetic” didn’t always wind up as described by Novik. “Awesome plus awesome is not always two awesomes. Sometimes it’s an abomination. Like Reese’s Peanut Butter cups.” (Apparently, taste in confections is a pretty subjective thing.) He said that the mashup style is not as new as it’s sometimes thought, and sometimes it’s just “gimmicky marketing…It’s the classic Hollywood formula: it’s dinosaur love story; it’s steampunk cookery.”

And other panelists came up with a couple of combinations that should never be perpetrated upon the reading public: young-adult erotica and driver’s ed books with unreliable narrators.

Coitus as Revealed by Ultrasound in One Volunteer Couple.

“The anatomy and function of the G-spot remain highly controversial. Ultrasound studies of the clitoral complex during intercourse have been conducted to gain insight into the role of the clitoris and its relation to vagina and urethra during arousal and penetration. Aim. Our task was to visualize the anterior vaginal wall and its relationship to the clitoris during intercourse. Methods. The ultrasound was performed during coitus of a volunteer couple with the Voluson(R) General Electric(R) Sonography system (Zipf, Austria) and a 12-MHz flat probe. The woman was in a gynecologic position, and her companion penetrated her with his erected penis from a standing position. We performed a coronal section on the top of the vulva during the penetration. Main Outcome Measure. We focused on the size of the clitoral bodies before and after coitus. Results. The coronal section demonstrated that the penis inflated the vagina and stretched the root of the clitoris that has consequently a very close relationship with the anterior vaginal wall. This could explain the pleasurable sensitivity of this anterior vaginal area called the G-spot. Conclusions. The clitoris and vagina must be seen as an anatomical and functional unit being activated by vaginal penetration during intercourse.”

Photo: flickr/jemsweb

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: The pressing question this Penis Friday: how hard is hard enough?
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: What kind of erotic film clips should we use in female sex research? An exploratory study.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: The G-Spot: nature vs. nurture.

WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!

I was travelling on Monday so couldn’t post the open thread and then forgot. But now that I think about I think Friday would be better in any case, because I don’t post much on the weekends. So again, questions, links, what you’re reading. You know my motto, “Don’t be stupid” (fwiw, posting links to flickr photos of your cats is not stupid).

Yesterday evening we held our third annual Comic-Con panel on the science of science fiction. And in our unbiased opinion, it rocked. (Attendees said the same, but then they probably wouldn’t have told us it was lame, would they?)

One theme that emerged from the panel was that skillful use of science could make stories better. But being Discover, we needed some evidence. And how better to present this evidence than as a scientific publication:

The Enhancement of Dramatic and Aesthetic Qualities of Fictional Works Through Application of Authentic or Apocryphal Scientific Theories

Abstract: Anthropological evidence suggests humans have engaged in storytelling since at least the birth of complex culture. Over the past century, these stories increasingly take the form of science fiction, in which advances in science and/or technology figure prominently in the story. Here we present evidence supporting Carroll’s Hypothesis: that clear, consistent use of rules corresponding to real-world or even imagined scientific theories increases the artistic value of fictional works.

Methods: A panel of science-fiction experts was assembled at the San Diego International Comic-Con. Experts showed clips from films where successful use of scientific rules enhanced value and where unsuccessful use decreased value. The moderator was Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy blog), and the panel comprised Sean Carroll (Cosmic Variance, CalTech), Kevin Grazier (Science Not Fiction, JPL), Jamie Paglia (Eureka), and Zack Stentz (Fringe).

Results: Plait showed a clip from Armageddon in which rain falls on Bruce Willis as he stands on an asteroid. (We leave it to the reader to surmise the feasibility of this type of event.) Grazier showed a clip from the same film illustrating the effects of a massive asteroid impacting Earth, and pointed out inaccuracies in the depiction. He also showed a similar but much more scientifically accurate clip from Deep Impact. Plait argued that Armageddon is “the worst film ever made”; Grazier agreed.

Paglia showed a clip from Eureka in which tiny robotic “nanoids” self-assemble into human forms. The protagonists of the show use a speaker to broadcast powerful infrasound waves at the nanoids’ communication frequency, shaking the human-shaped nanoid collectives into dust. Paglia asserted that assuming the existence of the as-yet unrealistic nanoids, the internally consistent logic of their destruction led to a strong climax of a strong episode.

Stentz showed a scene from the film The Arrival, in which a radio astronomer who is fired from his job becomes a professional antenna installer and cleverly coordinates the antennae to operate with the power of a much larger one, much as the Very Large Array does. Stentz said the implausible aspect of the scene was actually not a scientific point: Charlie Sheen’s casting as a brilliant radio astronomer.

Discussion: An entirely subjective regression of the anecdotal data presented shows a strong causative connection between adherence to scientific rules (even imaginary ones) and artistic success of fictional works. Stentz pointed out one potential explanation for the connection: “Drama comes from a struggle–from characters not being able to do something they’re trying to do.” The rules of science can provide those obstacles–and also methods to circumvent them. Crucially, the science invoked should be internally consistent within the work. If writers use scientific-based miracles to advance plots, “that’s not science fiction, that’s science magic. That’s the line we try not to cross,” said Paglia.

To test the basics of quantum theory, physicists recently pulled out an antique. In a paper published today in Science, they confirmed a staple of quantum mechanics, using a test derived from a classic nineteenth century light experiment.

In particular, the researchers questioned how particles move through three slits, something previously too difficult to measure. They found that the particles behaved just like quantum theory–or more specifically the Born Rule–would have predicted.

As physicist Chad Orzel describes in his blog, that’s bad news for theorists hoping to tweak this rule to solve Nobel Prize-worthy problems related to quantum gravity or Grand Unifying Theories.

[The study is good news if] you’re the ghost of Max Born, or the author of an introductory quantum book…. This was disappointing news for some theorists, though, as there are a number of ways to approach problems … that would require some modification of the Born rule. [Uncertain Principles]

But how did they do it?

Step 1: Watching Light Waves

Throw a pebble in a pond and it creates waves. Throw two pebbles in a pond and they will create waves that interact. Where the peaks of two waves meet, they will create an even bigger wave. Where the peak of a wave meets the trough of another, they will cancel each other out–as if there is no wave at all.

Thomas Young’s 1800s double-slit experiment involves shining one color of light through two open slits to hit a screen. If light is a particle, Young imagined, then you get two streaks, like spray-paint through a stencil. That’s not what he saw. Invisible ripples created visible effects. On the screen, bright lines appeared where the waves built on one another. Other places the light waves canceled each other out leaving only darkness.

Step 2: Watching Particles Wave, Too

In the 20th century, quantum physicists did a similar experiment with particles, including electrons, firing them through two open slits. Classical physics would predict that the particles would land in two streaks on the other side. Instead, they saw a sight just like Young’s interference pattern. The particles were somehow interfering with each other, and more amazingly, even a particle fired alone created the pattern. It was interfering with itself.

This surprising effect provided one of the first clues to the weird world of quantum mechanics. Now precise measurements have been made on a version with three slits–and they again confirm the predictions of quantum mechanics. [New Scientist]

Why would you even bother trying three slits? That gets into the specifics of quantum mechanics and the Born Rule.

Step 3: Watching Probability Waves

So what type of waves are crashing into one another when a particle passes through a slit? Probability waves.

The value of a probability wave in various experiments is in part calculated by the Born Rule. In a double slit experiment–the probability waves values show that the electron is more likely to appear in one of the “bright” spots of the interference pattern and less likely to appear in one of the dark spots.

The Born Rule says that that we need to look at the interactions of probability waves only from two slits at a time–as opposed to looking at how ripples from all three slits interact at once. If the probability could include an extra value from interactions including all three slits at once, then interference pattern would change.

There was no experimental verification of this proposition until now…. “The existence of third-order interference terms would have tremendous theoretical repercussions–it would shake quantum mechanics to the core,” says [coauthor Gregor] Weihs. [ScienceDaily]

Step 4: Adding and Subtracting Slits

Urbasi Sinha of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada and his team made a comparison. First they looked at the probability values formed by all three slits. Then, by covering up each of the slits in turn, they looked at the pattern formed from two slits at at time.

Adding up the values from each of the two slits, they got the overall pattern formed by three–meaning the Born Rule was right for as close as they could measure.

[T]he three-path interference term came to more or less zero. Co-author Ray Laflamme of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, “always hoped for three-path interference”, says Weihs. “But then he’s more of a theoretician. If there was three-path interference, there would be a Nobel prize waiting.” [Nature News]

Related content:
80beats: Quantum Cryptography Improves by Factor of 100; Ready for Primetime?
80beats: Quantum Leaf? Algae Use Physics Trick to Boost Photosynthesis Efficiency
80beats: Physicists Achieve Quantum Teleportation Across a Distance of 10 Miles
80beats: Confirmed: Scientists Understand Where Mass Comes From

Image: Wikimedia / Copyright © Armedblowfish, all rights reserved.

Dr. Daniel MacAthur & Dan Vorhaus offer their takes on the recent hearings in Congress on the direct-to-consumer genomics industry, A sad day for personal genomics & “From Gulf Oil to Snake Oil”: Congress Takes Aim at DTC Genetic Testing. I guess I lean toward light regulation. I don’t think that DTC personal genomics will result in systemic decrease in human happiness, and tight regulation will increase the costs of innovation and constrain access and reduce affordability. Though I guess that for some that’s a feature, not a bug.

My main point, which I think I got across on the Genomes Unzipped comments is that fraud, error and misrepresentation are rife across many health-related sectors in American society. The nutrition and diet industry are prime examples. Bad journalism on the health beat causes way more suffering than DTC genomics kits ever will, as people who are not intelligent make precipitous decisions based on the latest result which managed to slip through the p-value gauntlet and are sexy enough to be written up in USA Today. And, there are widespread distortions within our health care sector which really need to be addressed (I’m thinking in particular of frank talk about end of life palliative care). With that as the basis for judgement I don’t think that the fraud and misrepresentation one can find in DTC personal genomics is exceptionally worrisome or notable to warrant such attention or focus. This is an inefficient allocation of concern and regulatory resources, driven more by the industry’s puffed up claims and the apocalyptic projections of the skeptics.

I like the Milky Way. I dare say it’s my favorite galaxy, being home and all. But a blue star called HE 0437-5439 is in one big hurry to leave.

The star is zooming away from the Milky Way’s center at 16 million miles per hour, three times faster than our own sun glides across the galaxy. Astronomers had spotted the hasty traveler before—it’s one of 16 known “hypervelocity” stars. Now, with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, Warren Brown of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics traced the path of the star back to the event that allowed it to reach such great speed: a meeting with a black hole.

A hundred million years ago this star was one of three traveling together at a more sedate pace.

But the threesome passed dangerously close to the center of our galaxy where the supermassive black hole lurks. The space scientists say it swallowed up one of the stars and booted the other two out of the Milky Way. As they flew, the two stars merged to form one super-hot blue star [Christian Science Monitor].

After the stellar smashup, the black hole flung this remaining star away. That helps explain its path and its haste, Brown says.

“The star is traveling at an absurd velocity, twice as much as it needs to escape the galaxy’s gravitational field. There is no star that travels that quickly under normal circumstances — something exotic has to happen” [Wired.com].

The conflagration also explains the star’s blue appearance, which has scientists scratching their heads—it looked like it was only 20 million years old, but its long trajectory meant it had to be much older. Brown says that when the star absorbed its partner, that refreshed its appearance and made it look young again.

The study appears in The Astrophysical Journal.

Related Content:
DISCOVER: Amazing Images of the Heart of the Milky Way
80beats: Massive Blue Supergiant Challenges Theory of How Big a Star Can Be
80beats: Astronomer: Earth-Like Planets Are Common, But Stars Have Eaten Many
80beats: How a Massive Star Is Born (with gallery)

Image: NASA

Guess what?  It’s time for another bonus riddle.  Get ready, get set… Monday, August 9th will be the day.  For a prize this time, we’re offering a copy of Confessions of an Alien Hunter, by Dr. Seth Shostak, and a mug from the SETI Institute.

Dr. Shostak's book - a very enjoyable read

Dr. Shostak is the lead astronomer for the SETI Institute.  He’s an author, lecturer, educator, astronomer, and all-around cool guy.  His book, Confessions of an Alien Hunter is a look at SETI from the inside.  He also talks about the ideology behind SETI, and with whom (or what) we can anticipate contact… in the next twenty years.  The book is an enjoyable read on all levels, and a great addition to your library.

While you’re curled up reading, you’ll be able to enjoy your favorite beverage in a SETI mug — direct to you from the SETI Institute.  You cannot buy this mug in stores.

One side of the SETI mug

I know you know this, but let’s go over the rules again:

• Tom and I will post the bonus riddle at noon CDT, August 9th.  That’s Monday. You’ll have a few more chances to solve a riddle to become eligible to participate.
• Guesses will be by email to Tom or Marian.
• You will have 24 hours to submit your guesses; from noon CDT Monday August 9th, until noon CDT Tuesday August 10th.
• You get three guesses.
• Comments will be closed on the bonus riddle until after the submission deadline.
• The winner will be the first person to submit the correct answer.  If nobody solves the riddle by noon CDT August 10, it will be opened for everybody to give it a shot.
• Tom will have the final say in any controversy.

Remember, you will not get any feedback from us, except that we received your guess.  We will compare your emailed guesses against previous comments to make sure we have the right person.  Again, it’s not that we don’t trust you; we want to be able to prove the prize went to someone to whom we’re not related.  Besides — Tom and I both really, really want that SETI mug.

The riddle winners so far for this cycle (bonus riddle to bonus riddle) are:  Carl Legge, Rob, George, Sean, Nick, Roger, Steve, Emily, Kristian, Frank, Jerry, Ubiraci, Dwight, and Amresh.  You still have the riddles July 24th, July 31st, and August 7th to get your name on the list.

At the the Houston Museum of Natural Science thousands of visitors are lining up for the smell of rotting bodies. They want a look at a five-foot-tall plant affectionately called the “corpse flower,” or more specifically, Lois. The flower will bloom for the first time in seven years and release its stench for an expected three days.

The flower, native to Indonesia, will be the 29th to bloom in the United States; another bloomed last summer at San Francisco State University. Sporting buttons that say “Bring on the Funk” and “Amorphophallus titanum (Latin for AWESOME),” 4,000 to 5,000 visitors a day have been coming to the Houston museum to sniff, Reuters reports. In its pre-bloom phase, it smells a bit like rotting pumpkins–which is disappointing to museum visitors with a nose for rancid corpses, museum spokeswoman Latha Thomas told Reuters.

“They want to smell the flower. I think that’s why they keep coming back over and over because they are so excited about smelling it.”

The AP reports that not everyone is excited. Jessica Zabala has booked the museum for her wedding this week and is hoping the flower doesn’t foul up her ceremony.

The museum has provided a live webcam, for those who want to see without smelling.

Related content:
Discoblog: Vicious Hogweed Plant Could Star in “Little Shop of Horrors” Sequel
Discoblog: Make Room For Space Florists: First Plants to Be Grown on the Moon
Discoblog: Can Plants Talk to Each Other? Researchers Say Yes
Discoblog: DNA Cops Crack Down on Flower Theft and Other High Crimes

Image: Wikimedia

Yes, you read that right.

Finally, at last, after many months, I can now officially reveal the project that has kept me so busy over all this time. I think you’re gonna like this… so why not just jump right in to the teaser trailer posted online by a small TV network you may have heard of called THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL!

[evil laugh]

[UPDATE: D'oh! There was a problem with the video, and Discovery is in the process of fixing it. It should be back up soon.]

How ’bout that?

I’ve been working with the Discovery Channel on hosting a new TV science show called "Phil Plait’s Bad Universe". It’s a three-part program where I dissect issues in astronomy and science, putting claims to the test. There’s no air date yet, but I’m hoping it’ll be on your TV sets this fall.

As you can see in the trailer, the first episode is about asteroid impacts, and we tackle the issue in a way that I don’t think has been done on TV. I get right into the mix, blowing things up, flying in a jet, going where the action is so that I can participate in experiments with scientists and try to find out what works and what doesn’t. The idea here is not to have some dry, narrated documentary. Instead I will show you what’s going on, take you along, so that you can see how these things work and what we’re doing to investigate these issues.

I’ve been having a tremendous time filming this, flying around the country, seeing things I ordinarily would never get to see. And the beauty is, you can come too!

Eventually I’ll post some pictures I’ve taken on this adventure, and we’ll be posting more video online as well as more information about the show soon. I’d like to thank everyone at Discovery Channel and Morningstar Entertainment for giving me this chance to fulfill a long-standing dream of mine. We’ve worked very hard on this program, and I hope you like it.

Yay!

Kamil crater, at only about 150 feet wide and 50 feet deep, may not break any size records–but what the Egyptian crater lacks in range it makes up for with cleanliness. In an paper published yesterday in Science, researchers say that its “pristine” impact, spotted in 2009 during a Google Earth survey, makes the crater an ideal model to understand similar impacts.

The best place to see a clean crater? Rocky or icy planets without an atmosphere. Earth’s weather quickly erodes a crater’s structures, making it difficult to determine how exactly a meteorite struck. The Kamil crater, study leader Luigi Folco says, has avoided this fate:

“This crater is really a kind of beauty because it’s so well-preserved that it will tell us a lot about small-scale meteorite impacts on the Earth’s crust…. It’s so nice. It’s so neat. There is something extraordinary about it.” [Space.com]

The crater rises above its desert surroundings, and during visits to the site over the past two years researchers have collected around 5,000 iron meteorites (the dark rocks pictured at right). They estimate that the original meteorite weighed between 5 and 10 tons and smacked the site at 7,800 miles per hour, giving the crater its characteristics, including “rays” that are visible in satellite photos.

These rays, which emanate from the impact site like spokes from the hub of a wheel, are what drew researchers’ attention to the crater, says Folco. While such “rayed craters” are common on the moon and other airless bodies of the solar system, they are exceedingly rare on Earth because erosion and other geological processes quickly erase such evidence. [Science News]

Researchers estimate that the site is relatively young, only about 5,000 years old, given that it must have struck at a time when Egypt’s deserts were in their current arid state.

Related content:
80beats: Latest Mercury Pics Reveal Massive Craters & Possible Volcanic Vents
80beats: Asteroid Photo Session: Rosetta Spacecraft Snaps Pics of Battered Lutetia
80beats: Disappointing News: No Icy Patches in the Lunar Craters
80beats: Nano-Diamond Discovery Suggests a Comet Impact Killed the Mammoths

Images: Museo Nazionale dell’Antartide Universita di Siena