Hurricane predictors warned us this season could be a bad one, and could bring unknown consequences for the ongoing BP oil spill. We may soon find out what those consequences are, as Tropical Storm Alex moves toward the Gulf and may reach hurricane status today.

More Delays

Supposing Alex reaches the spill, it might not be all bad.

Waves churned up by Alex — as high as 12 feet — could help break up the patches of oil scattered across the sea. The higher-than-normal winds that radiate far from the storm also could help the crude evaporate faster. “The oil isn’t in one solid sheet. It’s all broken up into patches anyway. It will actually work to break those patches down,” said Piers Chapman, chairman of the oceanography department at Texas A&M University [AP].

But while the storm conceivably could help in the long term, in the short term it might mean delays and frustration—skimming boats stuck in port because of dangerous waters, and perhaps all that containment boom proving ineffective in such turbulent seas. If responders have to remove the equipment and replace it later, that could waste a lot of time. Admiral Thad Allen of the Coast Guard says he doesn’t expect Alex to affect the relief well operations, though hurricanes can prove unpredictable.

Backups for Backups

Speaking of the relief wells, they’re getting closer. The New York Times reports that the first has drawn within 1,000 vertical feet of intercepting the well, and the second is right behind. But since the relief well was a backup plan to all the other efforts that failed, BP’s Kent Wells says the company is now developing a backup to its backup, lest that fail as well.

The backup plan would involve continuing to collect the oil through several systems at the wellhead and pumping it through a subsea pipeline to an existing production platform at least several miles away. Mr. Wells said several platforms had been identified as possibilities, although no decisions had been made [The New York Times].

Wanted: Bird Habitat. Will Pay.

While BP crafts another in its long line of possible solutions, the federal government came up with an answer of its own to the oiled bird problem: If they’re running out of oil-free habitat, we’ll just create more habitat. Under a program called the Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative, the Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service will pay farmers to flood some of their fields.

Landowners would be expected to flood fields and promote the growth of vegetation favored by migratory birds, or to enhance existing wetlands on their properties, for three to five years, said NRCS spokeswoman Chris Coulon. Rice fields and fish farms are particularly suited to the initiative [Los Angeles Times].

The government allocated $20 million for this, though we shall see just how many farmers want to take the money and flood out their land.

Recent posts on the BP oil spill:
80beats: This Hurricane Season Looks Rough. What If One Hits the Oil Spill?
80beats: Is Louisiana’s Oil-Blocking Sand Berm Project Doomed?
80beats: Will Methane Gas in Gulf Waters Create a Massive Dead Zone?
80beats: From Marsh Grass to Manatees: The Next Wave of Life Endangered by BP’s Oil
80beats: BP to Kevin Costner: We’ll Take 32 of Your Oil Clean-up Machines

Image: NASA, Tropical Storm Alex

Last week, I began writing about the relationship between energy and food - a topic that I intend to explore in detail over the coming months. That post dealt with limited micronutrients in other parts of the world, but just because they are more readily available here in the US does not mean that our children are getting what they need. Today the Food Research and Action Center--an anti-hunger group that tracks summer meal programs--released a report called Hunger Doesn’t Take A Vacation (pdf) which looks at national trends. Using data from the Agriculture Department and state nutrition officials, they show that regional governments around the country are not adequately funded to feed low-income kids during the summer. The states most in trouble are California, Louisiana, South Carolina, Kentucky, Hawaii and Utah. Consider: In 2009, 73,000 fewer children participated in summer meal programs than in 2008--even though the number of those in need skyrocketed due to our troubled economy. Among the students who ate free or reduced-cost lunches during the regular school term, just 16 percent were fed adequately when out of school. Back in 2001, that figure was 21 percent. In other words, a lot more children in the United States will ...

[Warning: comic book nerdiness ensues. Be ye fairly warned, says I.]

I received an odd message from my friend Deric Hughes (who is totally cool and writes for "Warehouse 13" and is not a nerd at all, nossir) on Twitter. It said:

THIS was inside the latest issue of Ultimate Avengers2. I think Nick Fury paid you a special visit.

"THIS" was a blurry picture, but clear enough to show me that I had to immediately go to my local comic book store (Time Warp, cool place) and buy myself a copy of issue 4 of Avengers 2. Why? Here’s why:

HOLY FRAK MY NAME IS IN BLACK WIDOW’S PHONE BOOK!!

OK, backing up a bit:

In this part of the story, Black Widow (translation for the non-comic-book nerds^*: she was played by Scarlett Johansson in Iron Man 2) is recounting how she and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson in Iron Man 2) used to be a couple. She noticed something odd in her phone book one day: some of her friends and family had red dots next to their names. That last panel shows her phone book, with, for some reason, my name in it.

OK? OK. Now, there are several avenues my thinking is taking here.

1) Perhaps the writer, Mark Millar, is familiar with my writing. However, as cool as that is, it is perhaps eclipsed by the idea that…

2) I’m in Black Widow’s phone book. Now why would that be? I don’t know; perhaps she has a history of sudden astronomical emergencies and has me in speed dial as a lifeline. Or perhaps there are um, other reasons. I don’t feel a lengthy explanation is necessary here. However, I’ll note that while I don’t know if this book will in any way lead to this story getting up on the Big Screen, you never know.

3) I noticed there are no red dots by my name. [SPOILER ALERT!] In the story, people with dots by their name had been paid a visit by Fury. And the adjective generally associated with such a visit is conjugal.

4) … and it’s perhaps more relevant to say that there’s no red dot by my name yet. And there are two more issues in this story’s series.

Hmmmm.

Happily, I have a potential pathway to enlightenment here: Comic Con. I’ll be attending in late July, and perhaps someone there will be able to clear this up. I’ll seek out Mark Millar, of course, since that’s a good path to an explanation.

But maybe there’s a more direct route.

Black Widow, hon, if you’re reading this: you obviously have my number. Let’s work this out.

Perhaps you think Steve exaggerated the resolution of the band new iPhone 4. Perhaps you’re peeved that the phone’s reception can disappear, depending on how you hold it. Perhaps you’re afraid of dropping it and shattering its sleek face.

Perhaps you just want to know: Will it blend?

We showed the (successful) attempt to blend the iPad in April. Now the blender company Blendtec–which has also destroyed glow-sticks and various Guitar Hero iterations–has tried the same with Apple’s newest toy:

Mmm…black powder, cameos, and not-so-subtle references to Gizmodo.

Those with a flare for the dramatic might prefer to scorch their iPhone using a 64-inch Fresnel lens, as shown on the blog DVICE.

Too impatient for blending or burning? This video, seen on The Telegraph website, shows what happens when iPhone 4 meets sniper rifle.

Now it’s time to go home and hug your iPad.

Related content:
Discoblog: Will The iPad Blend? Watch and Find Out.
Discoblog: So, a Guy Walks Into a Bar… and Discovers Apple’s Latest iPhone
Bad Astronomy: Resolving the iPhone resolution
80beats: The iPhone 4: Snappy Visuals and Shiny New Video Chats
Discoblog: Weird iPhone Apps (our growing compendium of the oddest apps out there)

Perhaps it’s a fitting tribute. The Japanese–designers of some of the world’s most ingenious robots–can now watch a traditional art form get a robotic makeover. As described in a paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, MIT and Harvard researchers have made self-folding origami that can mold itself into a boat or an airplane.

Why? Origami is just a first step; researchers picture the “shape-shifting” robots used for everything from “smart” cups that could change from grande to venti based on how much coffee you need to a “Swiss army knife” that will bend to its user’s will, forming a variety of tools.

Study coauthor Robert Wood, an electrical engineering professor at Harvard, described the work as a proof of concept for future application.

“Imagine foregoing all the tools in your toolbox and instead using a stack of self-folding sheets to produce the tools and structures you need for a particular job,” says Wood. [New Scientist]

The square sheet is a little larger than 1.5 inches wide and about 2 hundredths of an inch thick. To make the square, researchers attached fiberglass triangular sections with flexible silicone rubber–the places where the sections join are the equivalent of origami folds. Strips of metal alloy along the joints that contract and expand when heated and cooled (as current runs through them) serve as the folding robot’s muscles.

When the alloy strips reached 178 degrees F, they bent, taking the whole sheet with them. The sheets folded into a variety of shapes in a matter of a few seconds, and magnetic closures helped them stay in place. Eventually, the 32-tile sheets folded into boats and airplanes. [MIT computer scientist Daniela] Rus says the key was figuring out algorithms for folding. It was like learning origami. [Popular Science]

One might picture “programmable matter” like this in the depths of space. Perhaps it could have been handy as a folding solar sail like the one on the Japanese Ikaros solar-sail project? Given other morphing robots, might we also see folding robots crawl under doors in search and rescue attempts? In fact, perhaps the least of its benefits will be folding paper, where we, humans, continue to rule:

The researchers note that although the algorithms produce a workable folding pattern to make a given shape, human experts are often able to design a more efficient scheme. “It doesn’t know how to get creative, and sometimes human origamists can see a few moves ahead, like a chess player,” Rus says. “You see patterns that are not obvious to a computer program that does a step-by-step process.” [Scientific American]

Related content:
80beats: Huge Mirrors, DNA Robots, & Brain Communication Win 2010 Kavli Prizes
80beats: Pioneering Deep-Sea Robot Is Lost to a Watery Grave
80beats: Sunken Oil Rig Now Leaking Crude; Robots Head to the Rescue
80beats: To Win the Evolutionary Race, Robots Learn to Deceive
80beats: “DNA Origami” May Allow Chip Makers to Keep Up With Moore’s Law

Video: Robert Wood, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Daniella Rus, MIT/CSAIL.

Coming soon: Salmon that grow to full size in half the time?

With all sorts of genetically modified crops on the market and in the grocery store in the United States, genetically modified animals have been the next step waiting to happen. The New York Times reports that salmon could be the first up: This year the Food and Drug Administration will weigh approval of a GM salmon created by the company AquaBounty, which could be the first GM animal eaten by Americans.

It is an Atlantic salmon that contains a growth hormone gene from a Chinook salmon as well as a genetic on-switch from the ocean pout, a distant relative of the salmon. Normally, salmon do not make growth hormone in cold weather. But the pout’s on-switch keeps production of the hormone going year round. The result is salmon that can grow to market size in 16 to 18 months instead of three years, though the company says the modified salmon will not end up any bigger than a conventional fish [The New York Times].

AquaBounty tried to assure everyone that it would not be creating grotesque gigantic superfish, but rather would harvest the salmon once they’ve reached “normal” size in a hurry. But those who aren’t placated by assurances have no other option at the moment: The FDA says it is reviewing the safety of GM animals the same way it would new drugs for animals, and that means silence during the process.

“There is no opportunity for anyone from the outside to see the data or criticize it,” said Margaret Mellon, director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. When consumer groups were invited to discuss biotechnology policy with top F.D.A. officials last month, Ms. Mellon said she warned the officials that approval of the salmon would generate “a firestorm of negative response” [The New York Times].

The AquAdvantage Salmon, as AquaBounty calls its Incredible Hulk of a fish, wouldn’t hit shelves for at least two to three years if it garners FDA approval. The question on many minds, though, is whether shoppers should be notified that their salmon is GM. Right now, the FDA’s presumed answer is no. Other GM products aren’t labeled unless the modification changes their nutritional content.

One thing is clear: If our eating habits don’t change, we need to do something to save salmon.

Demand has put a lot of pressure on fish populations, with no end in sight. Is a genetically altered salmon (sterile females only; raised on inland farms, not in ocean pens) part of the answer? [Dallas Morning News].

Maybe. But, as DISCOVER noted last year, even normal farmed fish that escape can harm wild populations. It’s a good thing these new ones will all be sterile so they can’t interbreed, but they seem prime candidates for unexpected consequences.

Follow DISCOVER on Twitter.

Related Content:
DISCOVER: The Gift of Salmon
DISCOVER: Fish Farming Threatens Wild Salmon
80beats: Controversial Study Says Dams Aren’t Killing Off the Pacific Salmon
80beats: California’s Water Management Threatens Salmon With Extinction
80beats: Are Fish Farms the Answer to World Hunger or a Blight on the Oceans?
80beats: Biotech Potato Wins European Approval; May Signal a Larger Shift in GM Crops

Image: Wikimedia Commons

At Argentina’s Sanagasta Geological Park, there is a volcanic nursery for giants. It’s a site that is strewn with the fossilised eggs of giant dinosaurs – sauropods. Each of their 80 or so egg clusters sits next to a geyser, a hot vent or other volcanically heated sites. This is no coincidence – eggs need moisture and heat to incubate properly and big eggs are particularly demanding. These dinosaurs were using the planet to keep their babies warm.

Argentina is a haven for any palaeontologist looking for dinosaur eggs. Different provinces have yielded several large nesting sites. Most belonged to the giant sauropods and some even contain eggs with fossilised embryos inside. The sites have told us much about how dinosaurs looked after their young and even what ate baby dinosaurs but until now, scientists have largely ignored the question of why these particular sites were such inviting locations for expectant dinosaurs.

Enter Gerald Grellet-Tinner & Lucas Fiorelli. They were the duo who discovered the Sanagasta egg clutches in a valley heavy with geothermal activity. The area is littered with geysers and vents, each around 4 metres high and at least 15 metres wide. Today, they are surrounded by characteristic crystals and minerals, as well as traces of fossilised mud. These signs tell us that all of these structures were already active during the Cretaceous period although they (like the dinosaurs whose eggs they incubated) are long extinct.

The eggs themselves told Grellet-Tinner and Fiorelli that they were buried in heavily moist soil. For a start, each egg clutch sites within 3 metres of one of these geothermal structures. The shells have an extensive network of pores. These give them a spongy appearance in cross-section (see below), and they suggest that the eggs were buried in soil that was saturated in water. On the shell’s outer surface, each pore sits between small, rounded nodules that prevent sediment from clogging them up.

Each huge egg measured around 21 centimetres in diameter. Their shells are almost a centimetre thick and their fragments have been preserved well enough that they could be reassembled into a whole. They are so big and thick that they must have been laid by very large animal indeed, probably one of the giant sauropods. Unfortunately, no skeletons have actually been found so Grellet-Tinner and Fiorelli can’t tell us what species laid these eggs. Whatever they were, they clearly laid their eggs in the valley repeatedly and en masse, forming a long-lasting relationship with this special place.

It’s not surprising that at least some extinct dinosaurs did this because some of their living relatives – birds – use the same strategy. The megapodes – a group of birds including brush turkeys and mallee fowl – all bury their eggs in soil that they maintain at specific temperatures, kicking soil on and off an incubation mound and taking the temperature with their sensitive beaks. The rare Polynesian megapode probably comes closest –in its home at Niuafo Island, Tonga, it buries its eggs at nesting sites on that are heated by volcanoes. It’s a strategy that has clearly been around for millions of years.

Reference: Nature Communications http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1031

All images courtesy of Gerald Grellet-Tinner/Lucas Fiorelli

More on dinosaur reproduction:

• Duck-billed dinosaur defended itself by outgrowing predators
• Dinosaur daddies took care of their young alone
• Sanajeh, the snake the ate baby dinosaurs
• Dramatic restructuring of dinosaur feathers revealed by two youngsters of same species

If you haven’t heard about the site Fake Science, then go there now. They/he/she post(s) retro posters with great drawings and well, fake science adages on them. The one shown here is from Thursday, and is typical. It’s really funny, and I always look forward to the next one!

Morning Edition has a strange story today about the exploration of one neuroscientist of his own family’s history, specifically its psychological and neurological quirks. To not put too fine a point on it, the scientist in question finds out that he has a history of violence in his family, and, that he carries a genetic variant implicated in violent behavior under particular conditions, as well as telling neurological patterns found among psychopaths. Here’s the relevant section:

After learning his violent family history, he examined the images and compared them with the brains of psychopaths. His wife’s scan was normal. His mother: normal. His siblings: normal. His children: normal.

“And I took a look at my own PET scan and saw something disturbing that I did not talk about,” he says.

What he didn’t want to reveal was that his orbital cortex looks inactive.

“If you look at the PET scan, I look just like one of those killers.”

Fallon cautions that this is a young field. Scientists are just beginning to study this area of the brain — much less the brains of criminals. Still, he says the evidence is accumulating that some people’s brains predispose them toward violence and that psychopathic tendencies may be passed down from one generation to another.

The Three Ingredients

And that brings us to the next part of Jim Fallon’s family experiment. Along with brain scans, Fallon also tested each family member’s DNA for genes that are associated with violence. He looked at 12 genes related to aggression and violence and zeroed in on the MAO-A gene (monoamine oxidase A). This gene, which has been the target of considerable research, is also known as the “warrior gene” because it regulates serotonin in the brain. Serotonin affects your mood — think Prozac — and many scientists believe that if you have a certain version of the warrior gene, your brain won’t respond to the calming effects of serotonin.

Fallon calls up another slide on his computer. It has a list of family members’ names, and next to them, the results of the genotyping. Everyone in his family has the low-aggression variant of the MAO-A gene, except for one person.

“You see that? I’m 100 percent. I have the pattern, the risky pattern,” he says, then pauses. “In a sense, I’m a born killer.”

Fallon is being a bit dramatic for effect obviously, but as I said to Eric Michael Johnson this is like finding out you have a history of alcoholism in the family, as well as a genetic variant which results in the less efficient metabolization of alcohol. You know what you know, and you know what you have to do to not put yourself in a position where your predispositions could mix with a dangerous set of choices.

Going back to this example and being more practical, what if behavior genomics and neuroscience advance to the point where you can find out the odds of your child having issues with impulse control, heightened aggression, and reduced independent ethical judgement (e.g., guilt as opposed to shame) are all greater than than expectation. All things being equal the research is telling you that instead of having a 0.1% chance of landing in jail for violent crime, your offspring has a 5% chance. There are all sorts of things you might do, and choices you might make. If, for example, you yourself know that guilt is just something you aren’t heavily gifted with, and that gets you intro trouble in the long term (as you make a sequence of ‘rational’ unethical choices on a regular basis), you might choose a profession which is very transparent so that you don’t have to make ethical decisions on a regular basis where short term self-interest is in conflict with long term self-interest & socialized conceptions of right & wrong. Go into finance if you can do math. Become a lawyer if you can’t.

Update: The American Academy paper is now live. Download it here. My Washington Post piece is receiving a truly unexpected blog critique. It is basically being criticized for being relatively brief, and not getting into that much detail. In other words, it is being criticized for being what it is by definition--a short newspaper commentary. Thus Orac, PZ Myers, and Evil Monkey all fault the piece for not providing more on solutions. The irony is that the byline of the Post piece mentions that I've done a more in depth paper on all this for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. And that 15 page paper, in turn, is based on a reading of hundreds of pages of transcripts for four expert workshops put together by the Academy. There is more talk of solutions in the transcripts than the paper, and more in the paper than in the Post piece...and so on. As you'd expect. In any event, the paper releases today, whereupon it will be available at this link. Thus far, the link isn't working, but it should pretty soon. So for those who want more detail, please download the paper. Or, if you prefer, criticize the Post piece and then download the paper! [Note: ...

~ Qui-Gon Jinn
(Image by C.Letenneur)
New discovery, ancient whale: Meet Leviathan melvillei (Is that a great name or what?!) Ed's got the details and you can read the full article in Nature. Spectacular!

World cup soccer players tend to be born with sun and moon in adjacent zodiacal signs.

“The ecliptic elongation of the moon with respect to the sun does not show uniform distribution on the birth dates of the 704 soccer players selected for the 1998 World Cup. However, a uniform distribution is expected on astronomical grounds. The World Cup players show a very pronounced tendency (p = 0.00001) to be born on days when the sun and moon are in adjacent zodiacal signs.”

Image: flickr/wakanmuri

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: But can seers see Cici selling seashells by the seashore?
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: World Cup Week: Can watching World Cup football kill you?
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: World Cup Week: Celebrate FTW!

WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!

Is mulitcellular life like us just the new kid on the biological block, a latecomer to a world dominated by single-celled organisms like bacteria? Perhaps not—multicellular life could be nearly half as old as the Earth itself.

A new study out today in Nature identifies fossils from Gabon in Africa that date back 2.1 billion years. The organic material is long gone, but the scientists say these are the oldest multicellular organisms ever found. That date takes them way back before the Cambrian explosion 500 million years ago that made multiple-celled life widespread on the planet.

“We have these macrofossils turning up in a world that was purely microbial,” says Stefan Bengtson, a palaeozoologist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm and a co-author on the report. “That’s a big deal because when you finally get big organisms, it changes the way the biosphere works, as they interact with microbes and each other” [Nature].

It’s hard to know for sure that these specimens—which don’t have a name yet and grew up to five inches across—are truly multicellular, because no organic material remains. Sometimes bacteria live in larger sheets, and those aren’t true multicellular organisms. But in this case, study author Abderrazak El Albani says, the complex structure shown by the fossil remains show signs of communication between cells.

And, he says, the timing of these fossils suggests why the organism was able to become more complex: There was suddenly lots of oxygen back then.

Just a few million years before … the newly discovered fossils appear in the fossil record, Earth experienced what’s called the Great Oxidation Event. The sudden evolution of photosynthesizing bacteria radically changed Earth’s atmosphere, kick-starting its transformation from nearly oxygen-free into today’s breathable air [Wired.com].

With all that oxygen just waiting to be breathed, this was probably just one of many times multicellular life took off independently, according to paleontologist Philip Donoghue.

Importantly, even if these fossils are the oldest-known multicellular organisms, that doesn’t mean they were the ancestors of all multicellular life, Donoghue said. “Multicellularity hasn’t evolved just once; it’s evolved almost 20 times even amongst living lineages,” he said. “This is probably one of a great number of extinct lineages that experimented with [increased] organismal complexity” [The Scientist].

Related Content:
80beats: Ancient Australian Reef May Hold Fossils of Earliest Animal Life
DISCOVER: The Strange Process That Made Earth’s Oxygen
DISCOVER: Six Sites That Are the Galapagos for Modern Darwins
DISCOVER: When Life Was Odd

Image: Abderrazak El Albani and Arnaud Mazurier

Twelve million years ago, one sperm whale was king. Between 40 and 60 feet in length the beast scientists named Leviathan melvillei wasn’t any bigger than today’s sperm whales, but look at those teeth!

As described in a paper published in Nature today, Olivier Lambert discovered the whale’s fossils in a Peruvian desert. The creature’s name says it all:

[It] combines the Hebrew word ‘Livyatan’, which refers to large mythological sea monsters, with the name of American novelist Herman Melville, who penned Moby-Dick — “one of my favourite sea books”, says lead author Olivier Lambert of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. [Nature News]

The prehistoric sperm whale may have eaten baleen whales, and its largest chompers are a foot long and some four inches wide. For all the details, check out Ed Yong’s post on Not Exactly Rocket Science.

Related content:
80beats: Lady Humpback Whales Make Friends & Meet up for Summer Reunions
80beats: Whales vs. Navy: NOAA May Limit Sonar Tests, but Another Case Heads to Court
80beats: Primitive Proto-Whales May Have Clambered Ashore to Give Birth
80beats: Update: International Whaling Deal Falls Apart
80beats: Is the Whaling Ban Really the Best Way to Save the Whales?

Image: Nature

A Spitzer Space Telescope image of a Brown Dwarf (?), Click for larger. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/P. Eisenhardt (JPL)

This image shows what astronomers think is one of the coldest brown dwarfs discovered so far (red dot in middle of frame). The object, called SDWFS J143524.44+335334.6, is one of 14 such brown dwarfs found by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope using infrared light. Follow-up observations are required to nail down this “failed” star’s temperature, but rough estimates put this particular object at about 700 Kelvin (800 degrees Fahrenheit).

In this image, infrared light with a wavelength of 3.6 microns is color-coded blue; 4.5-micron light is red. The brown dwarf shows up prominently in red because methane is absorbing the 3.6-micron, or blue-coded, light.

The Spitzer Space telescope has found 14 brown dwarfs using its infrared vision.  The image shows (they think) one of coldest found so far, it’s the red star in the center of the image.  Cool in this case is only about 800 degrees, certainly no where near a true star.  It has a name too: SDWFS J143524.44+335334.6, catchy eh?  To be sure more observations will be necessary.

Brown dwarfs you will recall are essentially failed stars, they are small in terms of stellar mass and not hot enough to trigger the required thermonuclear reactions in their cores or if they manage a reaction they cannot sustain them.  Why?  Again they are too small and the heating creating by gravitational contraction just doesn’t make it.

Brown dwarfs are quite interesting objects.  They are pretty much invisible because they are cool and just don’t give off much light.  There is speculation that a brown dwarf might even be closer than the closest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri at 4.2 light-years.  If there is one, the WISE spacecraft will hopefully find it.

Visit the Spitzer website.

The nation’s political focus this week is on the plodding confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan to become a Supreme Court justice. But if you need a break from choreographed political spectacle, it’s a good time to remember that the man she would replace, Justice John Paul Stevens, casts a long shadow over science and tech.

Ars Technica revisits Justice Stevens’ legacy—he was a onetime Navy cryptographer who helped Internet freedom by ruling against parts of the Communications Decency Act and opposing software patents. And if you still have drawers full of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes you taped off TV, you have Stevens’ decision in Sony v. Universal to thank for that (as well as setting the precedent that stopped the music industry from suppressing mp3 players).

In that 1984 case, the Supreme Court came just one vote short of banning the Betamax VCR on the grounds that taping television shows off the air was an infringement of copyright. Justice Stevens wrote for a 5-4 majority that “time shifting”—the practice of recording shows for later viewing—was a fair use under copyright law. Stevens concluded that manufacturers were not liable for their customers’ infringement if their devices were capable of “substantial non-infringing use.” He noted that Congress was free to amend copyright law to give Hollywood control over VCR technology, but concluded that the courts shouldn’t do so unilaterally [Ars Technica].

You, sir, shall be missed.

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DISCOVER: The Intellectual Property Fight That Could Kill Millions

Image: Library of Congress

Once reserved for those who couldn’t pay their electricity bills or wanted to grow weed inside, snagging some free power via grappling hook is now a military operation. As described on the National Defense Education Network website, the Air Force has designed a “Bat Hook” which soldiers can heave into the air — action-hero style — to steal some juice from suspended power lines.

“We work very closely with Special Operations,” says Dave Coates, lead engineer on the project at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (in the video below, and as shown by Popular Science). Their request? “Is there a way that you could possibly give us something like Batman?”

The Bat Hook system, technically called Remote Auxiliary Power System (RAPS), pierces the power line’s insulation to draw current directly where it’s needed, to charge batteries on the ground, for example.

Surprisingly this isn’t the only power line research ongoing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and RASP isn’t the only comic book gadget that can perform on high wires. Air Force engineers are also in the midst of designing robotic flying cameras that can perch on the power lines. The parasitic cameras get their power from currents induced by the alternating magnetic fields surrounding the lines. Once they finish surveying, and charging their batteries (also from the stolen electricity), they can fly to another location.

Note: As warned in the film and suggested in our man-with-meat-hook vs. power line story, trying to Batman your own power line is just plain stupid.

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Image: Department of Defense

This is one of the first of our shiny new Discover galleries, loaded with great Leviathan pics. The full article is below.

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In today’s oceans, killer whales hunt other species of whales, working in packs to take down their much bigger prey. But living whales have it easy. Those that swam off the coast of Peru around 12 million years ago were hunted by a far bigger predator, a recently discovered animal with a very appropriate name: Leviathan.

Leviathan melvillei, named after the Biblical sea monster and the author of Moby Dick, was a giant sperm whale that has just been discovered by Belgian scientist Olivier Lambert. At between 13.5 and 18.5 metres in length, it was no bigger than the modern sperm whale, but it was clearly far more formidable.

Today’s sperm whale has no functional teeth in its upper jaw and only small ones in its lower jaw (which are mostly used in fights). It feeds through suction, relying on a rush of water to carry its prey into its open mouth. But Leviathan’s mouth was full of huge teeth, the largest of which were a foot long and around 4 inches wide. This was no suction feeder! Leviathan clearly grabbed its prey with a powerful bite, inflicting deep wounds and tearing off flesh as killer whales do, but with a skull three times bigger.

Leviathan was at the very top of the food chain and it must have needed a lot of food. While modern sperm whales mainly eat squid, Lambert thinks that Leviathan used its fearsome teeth to kill its own kind – the giant baleen whales. At the same point in prehistory, baleen whales started becoming much bigger and they were certainly the most common large animals in the area that Leviathan lived in. Lambert thinks that the giant predator evolved to take advantage of this rich source of energy. He says, “We think that medium-size baleen whales, rich in fat, would have been very convenient prey for Leviathan.”

It’s perhaps no coincidence that the biggest shark in history – the mighty Megalodon – also appeared at the same time in the same part of the world. It too was thought to have hunted whales and many of its teeth have also been found at Cerro Colorado. For the moment, it’s hard to say if the two predators were direct competitors, since they may have swum in different parts of the Peruvian seas. Lambert speculates that the adults of either species could have eaten the young of the other but there’s no evidence for this yet.

In the last few years, other smaller prehistoric sperm whales have been found in Peru and Italy. Their powerful teeth told us that these predators bit their prey in the manner of killer whales. The teeth were generally quite small but, as early as 1877, fossil hunters have found much larger teeth that looked very much like those of a sperm whale. The teeth provided tantalising hints of a much bigger animal but they were never accompanied by an actual skull. Their owner remained an enigma.

Lambert set out to find that skull in 2006, leading several expeditions into Peru’s Pisco-Ica desert. The digs weren’t fruitful but the team’s luck took a turn for the amazing at the very end. “In November 2008, on the last day of the field trip, my Dutch colleague Klaas Post discovered a very large cetacean skull,” says Lambert. “Usually large skulls belong to baleen whales, but Klaas immediately noted enormous teeth, both on the upper and lower jaw.” They had found Leviathan.

The skull is beautifully adapted to capture large, powerful prey. The snout was short and wide, allowing it to bite more strongly with its front teeth and resist the struggles of its prey. Its temporal fossa – the shallow depression on the side of the skull – was enormous and could old huge jaw-closing muscles. The bite would have been the largest of any tetrapod (the animal group that includes mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians). And the teeth were deeply embedded in the jaw bones for each support, and interlocked to give the animal a shearing, meat-carving bite. They were also angled forwards, giving Leviathan a better grip on prey with curved bodies.

The skull also creates a mystery. Sperm whales have a unique organ in their heads called the spermaceti, and Leviathan’s was particularly large. The spermaceti is full of a waxy substance that was originally thought to be the animal’s sperm (hence the name). Its purpose isn’t clear although there are many theories, all of which must now be considered in the light of Leviathan’s very different lifestyle.

The sperm whale might use it to control its buoyancy during a dive by pumping in cold water, solidifying the wax and increasing the density of its head. At the depths, the energy expended during a hunt heats up the wax and melts it again. But Leviathan probably didn’t hunt for squid and probably wasn’t a deep-diver like the modern sperm whale. In light of this, other explanations become more intriguing. The case containing the spermaceti could be used as a battering ram during fights. It could also boost the sperm whale’s echolocation, allowing it to stun its prey with sound, or woo females (the male’s organ is particularly big).

Reference: Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature09067

More on ancient whales:

• Whales evolved from small aquatic hoofed ancestors
• Sperm whale poo offsets carbon by fertilising the oceans with iron
• Ever since there have been whales, there have been Osedax worms eating their bones
• Scientists, film-makers team up to expose illegal international trade in whale meat
• Echolocation in bats and whales based on same changes to same gene
• Fossil foetus shows that early whales gave birth on land

If the citation link isn’t working, read why here

When Japan’s Hayabusa space probe returned home from a sever-year odyssey this month, we got to see the amazing video as it broke up in a brilliant flash in the atmosphere and deposited its sample container (hopefully containing asteroid material) in Australia. Three high school students from Massachusetts, however, got a much better view. They experienced it first hand, and helped make that video for the world to see, thanks to a little white lie told by their teacher.

Ron Dantowitz of Brookline, Massachusetts, gave the three a challenge: If you had to track an object entering the atmosphere at 27,000 miles per hour, how would you know where to look, how would you keep the camera trained on the careening object, and what could you learn about the temperatures the object encountered? After they worked on the project for half a year, Dantowitz let loose his secret—this was no hypothetical scenario. He and the three students got to fly on the DC-8 over Australia and help NASA film Hayabusa’s return.

“We had flown several practices, but when we took off for the real thing, I felt a surge of adrenaline,” says [James] Breitmeyer. “I was on the edge of my seat, anxious for our plane to arrive at the right place at the right time.”

“We got to the rendezvous area 30 minutes ahead of time,” says Dantowitz. “So we practiced the rendezvous to make sure everyone knew which stars to line the cameras up with to capture Hayabusa’s re-entry. By the time we finished the trial run, we had only 2 or 3 minutes to go” [NASA Science News].

The students also captured spectral images like this one, showing how Hayabusa and its sample return container reacted with the atmosphere.

Concerning the mission itself, scientists at Japan’s space agency JAXA are slowly prying open the container to find out whether their plucky explorer captured any samples from its visit to an asteroid.

The presence of a low-pressure gas inside the capsule has already been detected, the agency is reporting. The nature of the gas, and whether it’s of extraterrestrial origin, has not yet been determined. The opening of the capsule is expected to take a week or more, though JAXA has not stated whether this is due to prudence on the part of the scientists or simply being unable to pry the darn package open [Popular Science].

We hope they find something inside. It would be the first time a probe has brought back samples from an asteroid it visited. And Hayabusa’s return after a long and troubled journey has inspired the Japanese government to pledge the funds for a sequel, the Washington Post reports.

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Related Content:
80beats: Japanese Probe Makes It Home. But Did It Collect Any Asteroid Dust?
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Bad Astronomy: Video of Hayabusa’s Return
Bad Astronomy: A Piece of Asteroid Falls To Earth In June, But in a Good Way

Image: NASA

Astronomers have confirmed that an object in an image from 2008 — thought at the time to possibly be a direct image of a planet orbiting another star — is in fact a planet.

I’ll explain in a sec, but I want people to understand that this discovery is being touted as the first direct image of a planet around another star. It isn’t. Nor is it the first direct image of a planet orbiting a sun-like star. What this is is the first direct image of a planet orbiting a sun-like star taken using a ground-based telescope. While that may sound overly picky, it’s actually a significant achievement, and worth noting.

First, the planet picture:

This image, taken in 2008 by the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, shows the star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (I’ll call it 1RXS 1609) in the center, and the planet (1RXS 1609b) indicated by the red circle. As I wrote about this in 2008:

The image come from the monster 8 meter Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. The star is 1RSX J160929.1-210524 (for those taking notes at home) — it’s a K7 dwarf, a bit cooler and smaller than the Sun — and the planet is the blip circled at the upper left. It has no real name as yet — it hasn’t been confirmed yet; more on that in a sec — but if it’s a planet orbiting the star, it has a mass of about 8 times that of Jupiter.

The problem was, it might have been a background galaxy or another, fainter star. It’s happened before; I spent weeks working on a similar image from Hubble that turned out to be a background star (grrr). However, new images revealed the object is in fact orbiting the star, and is a planet. Here’s the proof:

On this plot, the separation of the star and object are shown on the y-axis, and time on the x. The star is very slowly moving across the sky as it orbits the center of our galaxy. If the object were a background star, moving at a different rate, the separation between it and the star would fall on or near the purple line, changing as they move separately. If the object were a planet, the separation wouldn’t change much at all as they traveled together across the sky. The observations of the object are shown as black dots, and fall pretty much right on the line marking it as a planet.

Cool!

Given these observations, and the distance of the star of about 500 light years, we know the planet 1RXS 1609b has about 8 times the mass of Jupiter, orbits the star 45 billion km (27 billion miles) from its star — 300 times the Earth-Sun distance — and has a temperature of 1500 C (2700° F). The star is a bit less massive than the Sun, and isn’t nearly hot enough to heat the planet to that temperature. The reason the planet is hot is because it’s young, only 5 million years old. It’s still cooling off from being formed, and in a few billion years will be very cold. But right now it’s warm enough to glow and be detected by us.

This discovery is a technological achievement because the star and planet are very close together in the sky, and difficult to separate. From the ground, the Earth’s atmosphere blurs the images and scatters the star’s light, making the planet extremely hard to see at all. Even more amazing is that they could get an actual spectrum of the planet and use that to determine its temperature; that’s even harder to do (like juggling is hard, but doing it on a unicycle even harder). So all in all, a truly remarkable event.

However, as I pointed out, it’s not being reported completely accurately.

First, it’s not the first exoplanet even seen directly. That distinction belongs to the planet 2M1207b, which orbits a brown dwarf about 230 light years away. Brown dwarfs are smaller and cooler than the Sun, and are not fusing hydrogen into helium in their cores, so some people don’t consider them to be real stars. So while the object seen is a planet, it’s not orbiting a sun-like star.

OK, but a planet already has been directly imaged orbiting the star Fomalhaut. That star is hotter and more massive than the Sun, but is far more sun-like than a brown dwarf. The first image of the planet Fomalhaut b was taken in 2004 using Hubble Space Telescope, and the second confirming image in 2006. It took two more years to make sure everything was correct, and the news announced in 2008. So while this was announced after the image of 1RXS 1609b was first taken in 2008, the first image of Fomalhaut b was taken in 2004, four years earlier.

So some people are saying this observation of 1RXS 1609b is the first direct image of a planet orbiting a sun-like star taken by a telescope on Earth (Hubble is orbiting in space). I’ll grant that. And while that may seem a bit nit picky, it’s actually pretty cool. Observing exoplanets from space is in some ways easier than from the ground, because there’s no air to screw up the image. It’s still incredibly hard, but easier. From the ground, though, there are techniques that improve the odds a lot. Still, these are very difficult observations and are a fantastic achievement.

I’ve seen this reported with inaccurate headlines all over the place, so please be aware that there are misleading and even exaggerated reports about this. But also keep in mind that despite the breathless hyperbole, this really is pretty cool news.