Tasmanian devils have given rise to a weird new quasi-form of life: a cancer that spreads from animal to animal like a parasite. In tomorrow’s New York Times, I report on the latest analysis of devil’s facial tumour disease, published in this week’s Science. Scientists have now tracked down the cancer to its progenitor: nerve cells known as Schwann cells.

Now scientists can use this evolutionary history to design diagnostic tests for the cancer and perhaps even vaccines. Let’s hope they succeed–the cancer has wiped out 60 percent of all Tasmanian devils since 1996 and has the potential to drive the whole species extinct in a matter of decades.

For more on cancer as a new form of life, check out my earlier blog post on the only other documented case in the wild: a tumor that jumps from dog to dog. (The one major update to that post is that it now looks as if the tumor escaped its original dog host thousands of years ago, instead of hundreds as previously thought.) While dogs and Tasmanian devils are so far the only known hosts to these sorts of cancer, free-ranging tumors may actually be more common than we know right now. They may be particularly likely to arise in small, inbred populations. The similar immune systems of these animals may be easy for the cancer to evade, allowing it to spread quickly. Another hint that infectious cancer isn’t all that rare is the violence with which we reject transplanted organs. Why should our bodies be so well-primed to attack the cells of other humans? One possibility is that invasive cancers have been a long-term threat to the health of our ancestors.

(And for more on cancer as an evolutionary disease, see my article in Scientific American, reprinted in The Best American Science Writing 2008 )

Reference: EP Murchinson et al, “The Tasmanian Devil Transcriptome Reveals Schwann Cell Origins of a Clonally Transmissible Cancer.” Science http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1180616

Image: Wikipedia

[Update 12/31 3 pm: Headline de-apostrophed.]

See here. Their reviewer calls our book a “tour-de-force statement about the current state of science in America,” continuing:

The writing is engaging and should find an important audience. As opposed to many science-centered books, this book will appeal not only to teachers, but, more importantly, to undergraduates who are slowly becoming aware of political issues. This book should therefore find readership beyond just science students to all students interested, or becoming interested, in current issues important to politics, education, and the general state of our nation.

You can read the full review/recommendation here. We are also of course psyched that our fellow Discover blogger Phil Plait also recently gave Unscientific America an Xmas-time plug, observing,

This book doesn’t complain about how the public doesn’t get science, it actually has advice — good advice — for how people can take up this charge.

You can read Phil’s full take here. We’re very gratified by the new wave of attention the book is receiving this holiday season, and are just about to begin updating it for the paperback due out next summer. So, more soon….

China’s Harmony train can now boast of being the fastest long distance passenger train on the planet. The Harmony express raced 1,100 km in less than three hours on Saturday, travelling from Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong province, to the central city of Wuhan. The journey previously took at least 11 hours [Financial Times]. That’s almost like traveling from New York City to Indianapolis by train in three hours. Even if you encountered a two and a half hour delay, which happened to one unlucky load of Harmony riders this week, you’d still make great time.

See the train in action in the video below:

The train will run 56 times per day and the cheapest fare is 490 yuan (roughly $72), however many slower trains along the same route will be axed to help cover costs.

Harmony reached a top speed of 217 miles per hour (350 km per hour) on its debut, bumping off Japan’s Shinkansen bullet train and France’s TGV, both of which can travel at 186 miles per hour (300 km per hour). Embarrassingly for the United States, Amtrak’s Acela service takes three and a half hours to travel the 186 miles (300 km) between New York and Boston.

For a look at Chinese high speed rail, both present and future, and the state of U.S. high speed rail spending, click over to Next Big Future.

Related Content:
80beats: Are Digital Strip Searches Coming Soon To Every Airport Near You?
80beats: Virgin Galactic Unveils New Rocket for (Super-Rich) Space Tourists
80beats: Computer Glitch Delays Airline Flights Around the Country

Video: YouTube / itnnews

Quite by accident, just the other day I found myself embroiled in a controversy on Twitter of my own making. I made an offhand mention that the decade would be ending in a few short days. That seemed obvious enough to me, but apparently not so to many others. What ensued was something of a firestorm of people, many of whom disagreed with me. However, I maintain that I was right all along. Here’s the scoop.

My claim is that December 31, 2009 — today, as this is posted — is not just the last day of the year, but the last day of a decade. Now, I don’t mean that in the trivial sense that any moment is the last moment of the past ten year period — you can always talk about the last ten years that end at any time.

I meant, and still mean, specifically the first decade of the 2000s. That does in deed and in fact end today.

What people were arguing over were things like centuries and millennia, and how there was no year 0, and therefore the last day of the decade is actually December 31, 2010. But that’s not relevant because we don’t measure decades the same way we do centuries.

Certainly, the last day of the 20th century was December 31, 2000. In that case, there was no year 0, so the first year of the 1st century ended on December 31, 1 A.D. Doing the math, it’s easy to see that 1999 more years needed to elapse to end the 20th century, and so its demise was on that last calendar day of 2000. January 1, 2001 marked the first day of the 21st century.

But we don’t reckon decades like that. We refer to them by the tens place in the year’s numerals: the 70s, the 80s, the 90s. And since we do, clearly, today is the last day of the decade we will call the aughts or zeroes or whatever.

Actually, looking at this now, it seems to me that centuries are more formal, with an actual method of naming them, whereas decades are more of a nickname, a handy handle to use when referring to a time period.

Also, you wouldn’t say that 1990 was part of the 80s, would you? I think it’s clear that December 31, 1989 was the last day of the 80s, just as December 31, 2009 is the last day of whatever term we’ll wind up using to refer to the first 10 years of the 2000s.

Confusing this a bit is that we might refer to something happening in the 1900s versus saying it happened in the 20th century. Those terms are synonymous, barring the year of 1900, which was in the 19th century, and 2000, which was in the 20th century but not in the 1900s.

If we did reckon decades the same way as centuries then a point would be made that the decade ends in 2010. But we don’t, and in this case there truly is a year 0: the year 2000. So once again, the first decade of the 2000s ends today.

A couple of people pointed out that this means the first decade in our calendar only had 9 years: AD 1 – 9. I suppose that’s true, and so it’s not really a decade then in the strict definition of the word. But since we’re not using a rigorous naming convention, and references to decades are more like nicknames. Plus, who talks about the first ten years of our calendar that way anyway?

Confusing this even more was the case someone made that when you are 30, you no longer say you are in your 20s (unless you’re lying). But all during that last year, when you say you are 29, you are actually living your 30th year on Earth. After all, when we say a baby is 1, really they have already been around 12 months. We change the number after the fact, so when you turn 30 you’ve already lived out your 30th year. The whole time you are 29, you’re plowing through your 30th year.

Perhaps it would lessen the issue if, when asked how old you are on your birthday, instead of saying "I am 30," you say "I have just completed my 30th year." I suspect that won’t catch on, however.

Still, be all that as it may, when you are 29 you are still in your 20s, and when you turn 30 you ain’t.

The lessons here are many fold. One is that, and pardon my repetition, the first decade of the 2000s ends today. A second is that people are still terribly confused about how to delineate centuries. A third is that this can be generalized to people being confused on how we delineate time.

Fourth is that this is all arbitrary and a bit silly. But we do make rules, and sometimes those rules have to make sense, and sometimes it’s fun to talk about them even when it means some people disagree.

And fifth? People shouldn’t argue with me on Twitter. At least not until the next decade starts.

And if I may indulge myself, one final thing:

Happy new year!

And happy new decade. May the 10s and teens treat us all better — and may we make them better — than the aughts.

ABC News reports on an unusual and tragic case of a heart attack triggered by blasting music. A British teenager died shortly after complaining of loud music at a London nightclub, according to reports. Details are sketchy but U.S. doctors suspect a genetic condition may be to blame.

From ABC News:

“Any time someone in a setting of excitement has a sudden cardiac arrest, especially at a young age with a seemingly normal heart, you have to consider [an inherited condition] such as long QT,” said Dr. Richard Page, chair of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and president of the Heart Rhythm Society. “One of the genetic variants is especially predisposed to having an arrhythmia when exposed to loud sound.”

Long QT, an inherited affliction, is named for the points Q and T on a heart monitor. Longer-than-usual intervals between these points is one
major marker of this syndrome. People with QT can go into cardiac arrest when exposed to loud sounds such as alarms, music or sirens. Although it’s a rare disorder, it’s also deadly if left untreated. Fortunately, EKGs and genetic tests can detect most cases and pacemakers have been proven to help considerably.

As for the sad case of the British teenager, the world may never know if loud music killed him. Only an autopsy can confirm this and his family
is keeping mum for now.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Health Hazard Alert: Head-Banging May Hurt Your Brain
80beats: Seriously: Frank Sinatra Songs Restored Eyesight to Stroke Patients
80beats: Clubbers More Likely to Give Cigarettes If You Ask Their Right Ears

Image: flickr / Kaloozer

This week, a eight-year double-blind study of the nutritional supplement ginkgo biloba finally reached the pages of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Many health food stores sell ginkgo supplements to people who are hoping to improve their wits and memory, and particularly to elderly people worried about cognitive decline and dementia. But the conclusion by lead researcher Steven DeKosky? Save your money.

In the GEM [Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory] study, participants aged 72-96 years with little or no cognitive impairment were recruited from four communities in the eastern United States and received either a twice-daily dose of 120-milligrams of extract of G biloba or an identical-looking placebo [AFP]. For the more than 3,000 study participants, researchers found no difference in age-related cognitive decline—including the incidence of dementia or Alzheimer’s—between ginkgo takers and placebo takers.

What about younger people taking ginkgo? The findings don’t necessarily apply to acute use of the extract — or to younger patients who are attempting to prevent disease many years in the future. Yet DeKosky noted that “there’s nothing about antioxidants that would make you think they’d help in the short-term” [ABC News].

For more, check out this post by Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy.

Related Content:
80beats: Lack of ZZZZs Linked to Alzheimer’s in Mice
80beats: New Theory of Alzheimer’s: Brain’s Memory Center is “Overworked”
80beats: Herbal Remedy Doesn’t Help Kids With Attention Deficit Disorder
DISCOVER: Alternative Medicine Man

Image: Wikimedia Commons / darkone

I don’t have a whole lot to add to this amazing shot from Cassini of Saturn’s moon Rhea reappearing from behind the giant moon Titan:

[Click to entitanate.]

Except: coooool. Titan is over three times the size of Rhea, and Rhea was more than twice as far from Cassini when this was taken, making Rhea look even smaller in comparison. Also, check out how the high-altitude haze in Titan’s atmosphere isn’t the same height all the way around the moon. Near the top you can see they poof up higher. If you look closely, can you see the Enterprise?

Are your phone conversations about to become less secure? A German encryption expert says he’s cracked the two-decade-old algorithm that protects most of the world’s cellphones: GSM (Global System for Mobile communication).

Karsten Nohl says his intentions were noble; he wanted to show the world that though GSM protects 80 percent of the cellphones in the world, it’s far from invincible. “This shows that existing G.S.M. security is inadequate,” Mr. Nohl, 28, told about 600 people attending the Chaos Communication Congress, a four-day conference of computer hackers that runs through Wednesday in Berlin. “We are trying to push operators to adopt better security measures for mobile phone calls” [The New York Times].

Nohl and a team of others had been working independently since August to hack the code. Developed in 1988, the system prevents the interception of calls by forcing phones and base stations to change frequencies constantly [The Guardian]. Nohl and the others generated countless random code combinations until they’d completed an encryption code book. As an analogy, think of encryption like a jigsaw puzzle where you have to find one specific puzzle piece. If the puzzle only has 25 pieces, it won’t take you too long to accomplish. That is like a weak encryption algorithm. However, if the puzzle has 10,000 pieces it will take significantly longer [PC World].

Despite the fact that it took 21 years before someone figured out their jigsaw puzzle, GSM’s creators at the GSM Association aren’t pleased. “We consider this research, which appears to be motivated in part by commercial considerations, to be a long way from being a practical attack on GSM,” said Claire Cranton, a spokeswoman. “To do this while supposedly being concerned about privacy is beyond me” [The Guardian].

While Nohl claims his works was academic and GSM spokespeople say it’s not a threat, not everyone is convinced it’s so harmless. Law enforcement officials and well-financed cyber criminals have been able to crack GSM encryption for sometime, but the investment was so high that it didn’t pose much of a threat. This new method lowers the price of entry to the point that it is more of an issue, but still not a high risk [PC World].

Related Content:
80beats: A Hack of the Drones: Insurgents Spy on Spy Plans with $26 Software
80beats: Editing Goof Puts TSA Airport Screening Secrets on the Web
80beats: How to Prevent Heart Hackers from Turning Off Pacemakers
80beats: Electrical Espionage: Spies Hack Into the U.S. Power Grid

Image: flickr / Ed Yourdon

Tinnitus, the perceived ringing and buzzing in one’s ears, may not be fully understood, but what is known is that it can severely disrupt a person’s life. Treatment for the condition has been unreliable, but now scientists are reporting a new way to turn down the ringing by turning up music, according to a new study.

Scientists altered participants’ favourite music to remove notes which matched the frequency of the ringing in their ears. After a year of listening to the modified music, individuals reported a drop in the loudness of their tinnitus [BBC News]. Participants who listened to music in which notes of a different frequency were removed reported no such improvement. The treatment could be a cheap way to help the three percent of the population that suffers from tinnitus, say the researchers, who published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The idea is to remove the spectrum of noise linked to tinnitus from the music a person listens to so that the area of the brain associated with that frequency will not be as active. The researchers propose that the therapy might work by re-wiring parts of the auditory cortex that have become over-active to instead tune into surrounding—but different—tones. Another possibility is that with deprivation, these specially tuned auditory neurons would undergo “long-term depression,” causing them to become less active overall [Scientific American]. How ironic that one of the causes of ringing ears may also be the solution.

Related Content:
80beats: Clubbers More Likely to Give Cigarettes If You Ask Their Right Ears
80beats: Stem Cells Could Regenerate Inner Ear Hairs—and Hearing
80beats: Forget the Hearing Aid: Why Not Regrow Inner Ear Cells?

Image: flickr / Neil T

It’s about that time of year when people return home from spending holidays with the family, only to realize they need a vacation to recover from their vacation. Well, if you’re a resident of the U.K. or Germany who’s in good health, between 18 and 64 years old, and can keep a diary for two and a half weeks, your vacation to Mexico or Guatemala could be gratis. Oh, and one more thing: You have to be a guinea pig for a potential diarrhea drug.

A U.S. vaccine manufacturer called Intercell calls it the “Trek Study.” The company says it needs 1,800 volunteers between now and May to visit these locales, where sun-seeking tourists often get diarrhea. But fear not, travelers: A smaller study Intercell did on Americans showed a 75 percent reduction in diarrhea incidence, so perhaps fewer of you will spend your Caribbean holiday in excruciating, gut-wrenching pain than you normally would.

From BBC News:

Intercell’s clinical director, Nigel Thomas, told the UK’s Independent newspaper: “We are looking for people who have already planned to go to Mexico or Guatemala and think this would add another interesting aspect.

“It is almost like going on a package holiday. They will be met by a concierge who will take them to their hotel and arrange for them to give their first blood sample within 48 hours.”

Fake leprosy, it seems, isn’t the only way to snag a medical vacation in the tropics.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Darwin May’ve Had Cyclical Vomiting Syndrome (It’s as Much Fun as It Sounds)
80beats: Oh No! No Fresh Salsa Due to Salmonella Outbreak
DISCOVER: Vital Signs: Fishy Food, on the perils of eating fish in Bora-Bora
DISCOVER: Megadeath in Mexico

Image: flickr / lightmatter

Today, December 29, 2009, the New Horizons Pluto probe crosses an arbitrary but psychologically important line: it is now closer to Pluto than it is to Earth.

If there were people on board the small interplanetary probe, no doubt they’d be popping champagne. I’m sure that back on Earth, the team behind NH are pretty happy. This probe has a checkered history, having been planned, canceled, re-planned, delayed, on and on. It’s amazing it got to launch at all. But on January 19, 2006 the small, half-ton probe was sent on its way, and on July 14, 2015 it’ll sail past Pluto and its collection of moons, snapping pictures and taking data.

Today marks the official halfway point, where New Horizons has half its path already behind it. Here’s a plot of its distance to Earth (in blue) and Pluto (red) care of the New Horizons site:

Distance in the graph is measured in Astronomical Units (a yardstick used by astronomers for convenience; it’s the distance of the Earth to the Sun, about 150 million km (93 million miles)). The distance to Earth is wiggly because the Earth goes around the Sun as New Horizons moves out, and the distance to Pluto decreases steadily as the spacecraft catches up on its journey. Where the two lines cross is where the distances are equal, and that’s now, today!

You may be wondering about the timing: New Horizons is halfway in distance to Pluto, but the mission timeline halfway point isn’t until October 16, 2010 (if I’ve done the math correctly). The probe was launched at high speed, slowed down due to the Earth’s and Sun’s gravity, picked up a kick from Jupiter in early 2007, and has been slowing ever since. Since it was moving faster before, it reached the distance halfway point before the schedule halfway point.

New Horizons is now 16.37 AU – 2.449 billion km, or 1.522 billion miles — from home. But maybe now, home is no longer Earth. Once it crossed that line today, home became deep space. Even Pluto and its moons Charon, Nix, and Hydra are only milestones for it. It won’t be stopping when it gets there; New Horizons will sail on by, continuing into deep space. It’ll become one of several other spacecraft we’ve sent out of the solar system itself, set to wander interstellar space forever.

That is, unless one day we catch up to them ourselves. I imagine in a few hundred years they’d make fine museum pieces. Or maybe, if poetry still exists in humans all those far-flung centuries from now, we’ll let those probes continue on. I rather like that idea better.

You can follow the New Horizons probe on Twitter, which is how I found out about this milestone today.

Art credit: ESO/L. Calçada

This news came out a little while ago but I didn’t cover it at the time, and it’s cool enough that it deserves to be covered. I got it from my friends with NASA’s Fermi satellite outreach group. I used to work on Fermi outreach before the satellite launched and was still called GLAST (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope), and it was fun trying to come up with lesson plans and educational efforts based on gamma rays (the Hulk came up a lot).

Anyway, one thing Fermi can do is measure the exact time when high-energy gamma rays hit its detectors. Not too long ago, photons from a distant explosion slammed into Fermi, and it found that all these photons arrived essentially simultaneously from the event, irrespective of their energies.

So what? So, Einstein was right. Check it out for yourself:

Basically, the idea is that some quantum mechanics theories propose that space is irregular, foamy, and bumpy on incredibly small scales, and this means the speed at which photons travel may change very slightly if they are more or less energetic. The difference is so small that it takes very long trips to detect it — imagine two cars traveling at 50 versus 50.5 kph: after a few seconds you’ll hardly see any difference, but over an hour they’re separated by half a kilometer. So the longer the trip, the easier it is to measure.

After 7 billion years, if those specific QM theories are right, two photons should arrive at very different times, but Fermi found that the high energy gamma rays hit Fermi less than a second after the low energy ones. This means that space really is smooth, or at smooth at scales smaller than predicted by those quantum theories. QM is still a solid model for the Universe — after all, solar panels, computers, and nuclear bombs do work — but this means that we need to rethink certain aspects of them.

I love hearing stuff like this. We have lots of ideas on how the Universe works, but we need observations of the Universe to know if we’re traveling down the correct path or not. Fermi has shown us that some of these paths lead to dead ends, and we need to look elsewhere for our journey to continue. And I will guarantee that not only will that journey go on, but we’ll find ever-more roads to investigate as we travel.

Cheers, all.  I know you missed me… admit it.  Sorry for the sudden abandonment, but hopefully life has returned to normal for me.   I believe I owe Dwight a post about planetary development.  So without further ado:

The most generally accepted theory on planetary development is that they come together through accretion of matter.  That’s when particles “stick together” due to the forces of gravity.  This works for gas giants, also, in that the gas particles come together through gravity, and as the matter builds up, the particles in the center of the mass are compressed closer and closer together.

The formation of planets, and indeed solar systems, is cyclical in nature.  It all starts with a star.

Credit:  Hubble/NASA  Ancient white-dwarf stars in the Milky Way

For those tired of changing light bulbs, we’ve got some good news. A light-emitting wallpaper may replace light bulbs as soon as 2012, according to The Times:

A chemical coating on the walls will illuminate all parts of the room with an even glow, which mimics sunlight and avoids the shadows and glare of conventional bulbs.

Apply a low voltage current to the wallpaper and bam!—no more light bulbs. The organic LED wallpaper, under development by the Welsh company Lomax, will be at least twice as efficient as current energy saving bulbs. And no, the glowing wallpaper will not create an electric fence in your living room—Lomax says their electric wallpaper will be safe to touch.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Suits Revolting: Bangladesh PM Bans Suits, Ties to Conserve Energy
Discoblog: Color-Changing Solar Tiles Will Blow Your Mind, Heat Your House
Discoblog: Monitor Your Daily Energy Use With Google’s PowerMeter

Image: flickr / nodomain1

I’m not too surprised to find out that a rigorous scientific test of gingko biloba found that it did not have the effects claimed by alt-med enthusiasts, including helping memory retention. Just speaking statistically, knowing the sheer number of claims made by people using "alternative" medicines, the vast majority of them are bound to actually not be true. Almost without exception, these kinds of claims are anecdotal in nature, which is unreliable. We need properly-handled blinded medical studies to find out the real nature of these claims, and this one, unfortunately, has not panned out.

I don’t expect this to have any impact whatsoever on either the sales of gingko biloba or the way it’s advertised, of course. In general, the practice of alt-med as it is presented to the public is not based in scientific analysis of evidence, so it doesn’t matter how much evidence is provided that shows that a particular claim is false.

That doesn’t mean we in the reality-based world want these tests to fail. My favorite part in the article is this:

The study finding is “disappointing news,” says Steven DeKosky, dean of the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the study’s senior author. The only positive thing the researchers found is that ginkgo appears to be safe, he says.

DeKosky is dean of a prestigious medical school, and says he’s disappointed. Of course he is. Despite what a lot of the alt-medders (and antivaxxers) say, doctors really do want what’s best for their patients. If gingko had panned out, then that would be another weapon in doctors’ arsenals to make us healthier, and make us healthier for longer in our lives. But it didn’t work, so he was disappointed.

Those of us skeptical of these alternatives to modern medicine don’t want these things to fail. We already know that some mainstream medicines are based on what could once have been called herbal medicines — aspirin is the obvious example, originally made from willow bark — so we know better than to dismiss these potential additions to medicine out of hand.

What we do dismiss are anecdotes provided as evidence, or used to make claims that aren’t warranted from the evidence. All those anecdotes are is a place to start investigating the evidence for a potential medicine, not evidence in and of themselves.

Tip o’ the gingko berry to Fark.

A lone wolf named Brutus is helping U.S. Geological Survey scientists study Arctic wolf migrations in remote regions of Canada. These migrations can traverse hundreds of miles in 24-hour winter darkness at temperatures that reach 70 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

There’s no way humans can physically follow the wolves under these brutal conditions, so Brutus is sporting a GPS collar that beams his coordinates back to a satellite every 12 hours. As it turns out, the wolves are covering a lot of ground, as can be seen in the map above. Now, the fjords visible in the summer image above have frozen and can be crossed on foot. In one trip, the wolf and his pack traveled 80 miles from Ellesmere Island to Axel Heiberg Island and back in just 84 hours. Just through November 30, Brutus has traveled 1,683 miles [Wired.com].

The tracking is part of the Northwest Territories’ Central Arctic Wolf Project and the project is chronicled by researchers Dave Mech and Dean Cluff on the International Wolf Center blog.

David Mech admitted that despite studying the wolves for 25 years, he had no clue what they did each winter after he left. Now he knows the wolves are traveling in packs, most likely to hunt enough food to survive to the spring. The members of the pack – 11 adults and an unknown number of pups that can now travel with the pack – hunt muskoxen and Arctic hares, which flourish on Axel [Heiberg Island]. “That would be the only reason to travel so far,” writes Mech. He and Cluff receive reports every four days, emailed to their computers from the Argos satellite of the collar’s twice-daily location check [Toronto Star].

Next the researchers hope to answer how a pack of this size is able to kill enough prey under the cover of 24-hour darkness to stay alive. Making the leap from pens and notebooks to GPS and satellites should help.

Related Content:
80beats: For the First Time in 36 Years, Rocky Mountain Wolves Are in the Crosshairs Again
80beats: Dogs Think Like Babies, While Wolves Think for Themselves
80beats: Wolves Have Dogs to Thank for Their Dark Fur

Image: USGS

I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about actual asteroid impacts — I think about them, but the odds of a big impact are too low to panic about. We should be concerned, and absolutely we should take steps in case we find The Big One headed our way. But I sometimes wonder if I should worry more about our reactions to potential impacts. Or, more specifically, Russia’s reaction.

Apophis is an asteroid, a chunk of rock over 200 meters across orbiting the Sun. The problem is, the orbit of Apophis crosses that of the Earth. If the two are in the same place at the same time, well, bang! It’s big enough to blow up with the force of several of hundred megaton bombs. That’s not enough to wipe out life on Earth, but it’s certainly enough to do a whole lot of damage, and if it happens over a city… well.

In April 2029 Apophis will pass within a few thousand kilometers of the Earth’s surface. It won’t hit, but Earth’s gravity will change the orbit of the asteroid. If the asteroid passes us at just the right distance — in a region of space a few hundred meters across called the keyhole — it’ll swing back in seven years and hit us.

We don’t know the exact orbit of Apophis well enough to know for sure how close it’ll pass in 2029; we can only assign probabilities. The odds of it hitting the keyhole are pretty low, though: about one in 250,000 (downgraded from 1:45,000 recently as better orbital determinations were made).

Enter the Russian space agency. Anatoly Perminov, the head of the agency, was recently quoted in an AP news article that he wants to consider putting together a mission to move it out of the way, making sure it doesn’t hit. I’m all for that! What worries me is this quotation:

Without mentioning NASA findings [of downgraded odds of an impact], Perminov said that he heard from a scientist that Apophis is getting closer and may hit the planet. “I don’t remember exactly, but it seems to me it could hit the Earth by 2032,” Perminov said.

Now, I know he’s not an astronomer, but he does run a national space agency. I’d feel a whole lot better about his organizing a meeting to deflect this rock if a) he had the date right (it cannot hit before 2036, and the odds then are very low), and 2) he could actually, y’know, name his source.

Yikes.

Now, maybe he was misquoted by the AP. Or maybe it was out of context. And again, I don’t expect the head of the space agency to be on top of every detail; it could simply be an honest mistake with the date. But I am not particularly happy when someone in that position bases a decision at least partly because he heard it from some guy he knows but can’t remember who or when.

Did I say yikes before? Yeah.

I do think governments should take this seriously. I also know that as of right now, NASA is not taking this seriously enough. Perhaps if Russia gets this ball rolling, and other countries (like India, China, and Japan) join in, then NASA will be forced to take a better look at this situation. I know I was being a little snarky above (this is a blog, after all), but in the end some good may come of this. We just don’t know enough about asteroids and how to push them out of the way. We need to set up and fly missions to a few near-Earth asteroids to understand them better and add to our knowledge of their composition, structure, and behavior.

Theory is all well and good, but nothing beats some good practical experience. And while I dread the day when an announcement of a statistically significant likelihood of impact for a rock is announced, I’d be a whole lot happier and more comfortable if we had a dozen missions to asteroids already under our belt when that happens. Even if they got their start with this sketchy quote from the head of the Russian space agency.

Read more about this on Discover Magazine’s 80 Beats blog.

Pier 39, famous for these charismatic critters, sits eerily silent:

A pair of genetic sleuths from New York City’s Trinity high school discovered a bit of food foul play. Seniors Matt Cost and Brenda Tan collected DNA samples from items around their homes and school, sequenced the fragments and analyzed them with a publicly available database, and found there is little truth in advertising, according to Cosmic Log:

The real detective work came into play when [they] matched the DNA code against a couple of publicly available databases for animal species. They found out that an expensive brand of sheep’s-milk cheese was actually made from cow’s milk, that “sturgeon caviar” was actually Mississippi paddlefish, and that dog treats supposedly made from venison were actually made from beef.

The duo also analyzed DNA from a cockroach that looks like a typical American cockroach. However, Cost and Tan found that its genetic information was different from normal and they think their mystery bug may actually be a previously unidentified species.

For most people in New York City, this will not be a surprise.

Related Content:
80beats: DNA Scanner Proves That NYC Sushi Contains Endangered Bluefin Tuna
80beats: DNA Forensics Traces Sharks Killed for Their Fins
Discoblog: Small Comfort: Cockroaches, Too, Get Fat on an Unbalanced Diet

Image: Mark Stoeckle / Rockefeller Univ.

What’s with all the tongue-eating parasites popping up these days?

At least this one is pretty. (As it should be, given that it’s the winner of the symbiosis-and-parasitism photo contest over at WetPixel.)