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Being Dead Is No Excuse for Not Being Environmentally Conscious | Discoblog

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

dead-body No one dreams of leaving a lasting carbon footprint on the world when they depart. But if it’s a choice between that and being reduced to a brown soupy liquid and a pile of bones, which option would you take?

The California legislature is considering allowing funeral homes to provide a third alternative to burial or cremation. Instead of hauling out the backhoe or firing up an incinerator to dispose of human remains, funeral directors could offer a method called alkaline hydrolysis or “bio-cremation.” This technique uses hot water, pressure, and sodium- or potassium-hydroxide (the strongly basic chemicals often referred to as lye) to break down the body’s tissues into simple molecules in a matter of a few hours.

Proponents of bio-cremation say it’s the eco-friendly death option. They note that cremation produces air pollution and greenhouse gases, while burials use tons of wood for caskets and involve treating bodies with hazardous embalming chemicals.

Four other states have already approved bio-cremation, but before funeral homes can offer the service, they have to figure out what to do with the environmentally friendly liquid remains. Last week, an undertaking service in Minnesota asked its local city council for permission to pour it down the drain.

Out of respect for the dead, or reverence for the city’s sewer system, or maybe just gut-level disgust, the council rejected the proposal.

Image: iStockphoto

DARPA’s New Sniper Rifle Offers a Perfect Shot Across 12 Football Fields | 80beats

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

sniper “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes,” American revolutionaries supposedly yelled at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Legend has it that the rebels were trying to conserve ammunition, given the inaccuracy of their 18th century guns.

But things have come a long way since 1775. With DARPA’s new “One Shot” sniper system [PDF], scheduled to be in soldier’s hands by the fall of 2011, the U.S. military will give snipers the ability to take out an enemy at a distance of .7 miles in winds around 10 to 20 miles per hour. Military brass hopes the system will give snipers a perfect shot at least six times out of ten.

The One Shot system still wouldn’t come close to matching the record for shooting accuracy: In November of last year, British Army sniper Corporal Craig Harrison made two shots at a distance of 1.53 miles in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. But Harrison modestly thanked perfect shooting conditions: no wind, great visibility, and mild weather. The DARPA program aims to give soldiers the technology to hit a target despite adverse conditions.

To meet that goal, engineers first had to figure out what to do about wind. The prototype gun can’t get rid of the wind, but it needs to correct for it. Otherwise, over long distances, the bullets will veer off course; DARPA notes that a 10 mph crosswind can produce a miss even at a distance of a quarter of a mile.

The One Shot sniper scope has a computer system that uses lasers to track not only distance, but also the wind turbulence in the path of the bullet. A set of crosshairs appears not in direct line with the gun’s barrel, but instead where the bullet will actually hit, and also displays the confidence of that shot.

US military trials have found that a laser beam shone on the target can do more than just determine the range: it can also be used to “measure the average down range crosswind profile”. The laser information can be combined with automatic readings of temperature, humidity etc and a “ballistic solution” computed. [The Register]

But there’s more work to be done on the One Shot system before it arrives in combat zones. These high-tech systems can’t require a lot of training or give off a lot of heat.

What the agency really wants is a battle-ready system that doesn’t require tricky in-field optical alignment and fiddling with lasers. Night and day accuracy also means that the laser, which is used to help calculate and subtract wind turbulence between the predator and his prey, can’t be infrared. Enemies with night-vision goggles would see that from a mile away. [Wired]

DARPA has just finished its first phases of the project, developing and testing the computer targeting system. Among other things, the next steps include making the system the right size and weight for battle, and completing some tweaks to the target crosshairs. With these improvements, according to a DARPA announcement this month, the Agency will ask for 15 “fully operational and field hardened systems” for field testing.

Image: flickr / The U.S. Army

Ultramarathon blogging! | The Loom

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

Stuart Pimm, a leading conservation biologist, is turning out to be a blogger to follow. He’s down in the Delaware Bay right now, studying some of the birds that are migrating unbelievable distances (see my story in today’s Times). Unfortunately, the birds are having a rough time because we’re taking away the food they need to power their long-haul flights: horseshoe crab eggs. Check it out.

Munster galaxy | Bad Astronomy

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

No, that title is not a typo. Here’s the galaxy:

This is an irregular galaxy about 15 million light years away that’s undergoing a "starburst" — a massive wave of star formation. I won’t go into details like I usually do (the press release for the image is pretty good, so go read that)… but I just wanted to make the joke.

The name of the galaxy? NGC 1313.

Image credit: my buddy, Travis Rector of the University of Alaska, Anchorage

Will Venter’s “Synthetic Cell” Patents Give Him a Research Monopoly? | 80beats

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

Venter Here in the United States, people are all atwitter about Craig Venter’s announcement last week of a new “synthetic cell,” and whether it constitutes creating life or simply a nifty new step in genetic engineering. Across the pond in the U.K., however, there are increasing rumblings of a more practical matter: Whether the patents that Venter is seeking to protect his work will bring a chill to genetic engineering research elsewhere.

Dr Venter’s [team] has applied for patents on the methods it used to create the new organism, nicknamed Synthia, by transferring a bacterial genome built from scratch into the shell of another bacterium. Synthia’s genetic code contains four DNA “watermarks”, including famous quotations and the names of the scientists behind the research, that could be used to detect cases of unauthorised copying [The Times].

Nobel winner John Sulston is the main man sounding the alarm (pdf); he argues that Venter is trying to obtain a “monopoly” on a range of genetic engineering techniques, which would prevent other researchers from freely experimenting with those methods. He’s also a familiar adversary to Venter. The two butted heads a decade ago when scientists were rushing to sequence the human genome.

Craig Venter led a private sector effort which was to have seen charges for access to the information. John Sulston was part of a government and charity-backed effort to make the genome freely available to all scientists [BBC News].

Venter found himself in another intellectual property vs. public domain flare-up in 2007, when a Canadian organization called the ETC Group challenged patents that Venter’s company, Synthetic Genomics, tried to file on the artificial microbe his lab had in development. After that public fight, Nature Biotechnology recognized the need for commercial biotech firms to protect their work, but called on national organizations and non-profits to continue putting as much DNA information as possible into the public domain so that research doesn’t get bogged down in a sea of legal battles.

This time around, the response from Venter’s organization is much the same as before: Relax, everybody.

In response to Sulston’s latest broadside, a spokesman for the J Craig Venter Institute told the BBC, “There are a number of companies working in the synthetic genomic/biology space and also many academic labs. Most if not all of these have likely filed some degree of patent protection on a variety of aspects of their work so it would seem unlikely that any one group, academic centre or company would be able to hold a ‘monopoly’ on anything” [Nature].

These fights will go on, and that’s a good thing: We need innovators, and we need agitators. While Venter’s work will push genetic engineering forward, and will likely make oodles of cash in the process, Sulston and others can keep questioning the balance of information power so it doesn’t all end up in once place.

Image: Amy Eckert

Best Name For A Disease? | The Loom

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

I’m at the American Society for Microbiology Annual Meeting, swimming in a lot of excellent new research. I also just learned about a disease I never heard of before, with a truly awesome name: Burning Mouth Syndrome.

When I posted this on Twitter, the writer Michael Paul Mason immediately responded with his own favorite: Smoking Stool Syndrome.

So what’s your favorite?

Atlantis set to land Wednesday morning at 08:48 EDT. | Bad Astronomy

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

atlantis_iss The Space Shuttle Atlantis is due to land — for the last time — at Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday morning at 08:48 Eastern time (12:48 UT). If she gets waved off, the next landing opportunity is at 10:22 EDT (14:22 UT). If that doesn’t happen, it’ll be Thursday at 09:13 and 10:48 (and more chances on Friday if needed as well).

This is it for Atlantis. It’ll be fixed up and kept active in case it’s needed for a rescue mission for Discovery in September, but if not, that’s the last flight. You can watch the landing live on NASA TV, follow NASA on Twitter, and get more info at the NASA shuttle website.

Image credit: NASA

Does Infinity in the Sky Mean Limitless Energy? | Visual Science

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

I got pretty excited when Makani Power staff photographer Andrea Dunlap showed me this photograph. For my purposes, it doesn’t get much better than this: sustainable energy, technology, the future, all rolled into a beautiful photograph. Pick up our June issue for a gander at the double-page spread.

This photograph is 30-second exposure taken during a test of a 10-kilowatt-scale prototype of an airborne wind turbine in Maui, Hawaii. The mobile turbine has a span of about 16 feet and is tethered to the ground using a long, flexible cable. A computer controls the flight pattern. These tests show that a flying generator can sweep through a bigger wind window than a traditional turbine, and without the massive supporting towers. Makani Power plans to have a functional megawatt version of the tethered turbine ready by 2011. Makani Power is partially funded by Google.org as a potential source of renewable energy. Google’s server farms and the Internet in general have ever increasing demands for power, which is in turn burning ever more coal.

Photograph courtesy Makani Power

Video: Comet Caught Crashing into the Sun | 80beats

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

CometCrashSun
Its doom was sealed six years ago.

In 2004, UC Berkeley researchers say, this comet was tugged by Jupiter’s gravity into a path bound for destruction in the cauldron of the sun. And when its end finally came this March, astronomers captured the comet plunging deep into the sun on video (see below), watching it go farther into the light than any suicide comet seen before.

Seeing comets and other small objects approach the sun is difficult because the objects are overwhelmed by the sun’s brightness. Scientists were able to track this one closer to the sun than ever, before it it burned up in the sun’s lower atmosphere [Wired.com].

The team watched the comet with NASA’s STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory), launched in 2006 and using satellites on opposites sides of the planet to survey the sun in 3D. The comet plunged through the corona and was tough enough to survive until it crossed into the chromosphere and met its final end.

Based on the comet’s relatively short tail, about 1.9 million miles long, the researchers believe that the comet contained heavier elements that do not evaporate readily. This would also explain how it penetrated so deeply into the chromosphere, surviving the strong solar wind as well as the extreme temperatures, before evaporating [Daily Mail].

The astronomers think this now-deceased comet was a Kreutz sungrazer. This is a group of comets that are the remnants of a single large comet that broke up, and periodically they graze too close for comfort and make death dives into the sun. The teams presented the findings yesterday at the American Astronomical Meeting in Miami.

Check out DISCOVER’s page on Facebook.

Image: NASA

Did Google Pac-Man Destroy Worker Productivity? We’re Unconvinced. | Discoblog

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

Pac-Man Expletives and MIDI music rose from office cubicles this past Friday: Pac-Man had returned.

On May 21, Google replaced its usual blue, yellow, red, and green title with what the company calls a “doodle.” But unlike previous replacements, which have celebrated everything from Pi day to Norman Rockwell’s birthday, for Pac-Man’s special day (the 30th Anniversary of the game’s Japan release) Google pulled out the big guns, er, ghost-eaters.

This time, the doodle was an animated and playable version of the 1980s Namco video game, complete with our pie-shaped hero and his multicolored ghost foes: Blinky (red), Pinky (pink), Inky (cyan), and Clyde (orange).

But some kill-joys complain that Friday’s Pac-Man play hindered productivity, and set out to determine just how much money had been frittered away as employees avoided their work.

The BBC reports that the firm Rescue Time tracked 11,ooo users’ online activity and noticed that Pac-Man kept them on Google’s site about 36 seconds longer than usual. Multiplying those 36 seconds by Google’s 504 million users, that means over 500 years worth of work time spent playing. The firm estimates an average worker’s salary at $25 an hour for a grand total of about $120 million in lost productivity.

How Rescue Time knew that employees playing Pac-Man would have otherwise spent those 36 seconds working seems a stretch. How do they know, for example, those otherwise dreary 36 seconds wouldn’t have instead been spent tweeting or reading about animal sex? After all, humans are eminently distractable, especially on a spring Friday.

If anyone was really affected by the Pac-Man celebration, perhaps it was those caught off guard by a glitch in an original release of the doodle. To the panic of some Firefox-users, the game’s sounds started automatically, even in hidden tabs. (The final version required the click of an “insert coin” button.)

As ComputerWorld reports:

“We had a new kind of ‘virus’ attack today that people were calling in about,” said Mike Williams, a support manager with Clearwater, Fla.-based Sunbelt Software. “A few people, including an admin[istrator], called in thinking they had virus with the sound of a siren in the background of their Web browser.”

Image: Google

Money weakens ability to savour life’s little pleasures | Not Exactly Rocket Science

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

Today is Towel Day, where fans around the world celebrate the works of beloved author Douglas Adams, a master of witty prose and observational humour. Consider his description of money:

“This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”

Adams was right to highlight the perceived link between money and happiness. Many people dream of the life they could lead if they won the lottery, a world of mansions, fine restaurants, and first-class travel. But few consider the costs. These fineries could lead to enjoyment overload, compromising our ability to savour life’s simpler pleasures, whether it’s a walk on a sunny day or the taste of a bar of chocolate. This idea of wealth as a double-edged sword is widely held and while it’s easy to suggest that it springs from jealousy, a new set of experiments supports the idea.

Jordi Quoidbach from the University of Liege showed that richer people aren’t as good as savouring everyday pleasures than their poorer counterparts. Even the mere thought of money can make us take mundane joys for granted. Normal people who were reminded about wealth spent less time appreciating a humble bar of chocolate and derived less enjoyment from it.

Quoidbach’s study helps to make sense of a trend in psychological research, where money has an incredibly weak effect on happiness. Once people have enough to buy basic needs and rise out of abject poverty, having extra cash has little bearing on their enjoyment of life. Perhaps this is because money both gives and takes away: it opens doors to new pleasures, while making delights that were already accessible seem less enticing. Obsessing over wealth is like being on a hedonic treadmill – continuously running to stay in the same emotional place.

To begin with, Quoidbach asked 351 university employees, from cleaners to senior staff, to complete a test that measures their ability to savour positive emotions. Each recruit was asked to put themselves in a detailed pleasant scenario, from finishing an important task to discovering an amazing waterfall on a hike. Afterwards, they were quizzed in detail about how they would react to the scenarios, to see how strongly they savoured the experiences.

Using other questionnaires, Quoidbach also assessed how happy they were, how much money it would take to live their dream life, how much money they earned and how much they had saved. And as a final twist, half of the questionnaires included picture of a large stack of euros, while the other half saw the same picture that had been blurred beyond recognition.

He found that the more money the recruits had, the worse they were at savouring their positive emotions. Of course, it’s possible that people who appreciate their lot in life are less eager to chase after wealth. But Quoidbach found that a person’s savouring ability was unrelated to their desire for money. And even suggesting the thought of money, by showing them the euro picture, had the same negative effect, dampening their to the happy imaginings.

Regardless, the recruits also tended to be slightly happier the more money they had. Other studies have found the same trend, but Quoidbach’s important result is the money would have had a far greater impact on the volunteers’ happiness were it not for its negative effect on their savouring ability.

Of course, there’s only so far you can take the results of the questionnaires. A more objective experiment would be better, and that’s exactly what Quoidbach did. He asked 40 students to volunteer for a taste test. They were given a binder that included a questionnaire about their attitudes toward chocolate. On the opposite page, marked as material for an unrelated study, was a picture of either money or a neutral object. Afterwards, all they had to do was eat a chocolate.

Two researchers kept an eye on them and not only timed their munching, but rated how much enjoyment they were showing. The results were clear – the recruits who saw the money took 32 seconds to eat the chocolate, significantly less than the 45 seconds spent by the others. And on average, their happiness rating, as judged by the observers, was 3.6 out of 7, compared to a higher score of 5 for their peers. (Incidentally, the observers didn’t know which group their subjects belonged to, and their scores strongly agreed with one another’s).

These studies are part of a growing body of research showing that the link between money and happiness is more complicated than we might imagine. Elizabeth Dunn, who also worked with Quoidback, has previously shown that money can buy happiness if it’s spent on others, but that having money reduces the odds that people will actually spend it in this way! Dunn has also found that money is better used to buy happiness if it’s spent on experiences rather than goods. And here we see that wealth can undercut the very happiness that it boosts.

In both experiments, a simple reminder of wealth undermined people’s ability to appreciate life’s little pleasures, be they imagined ones or the very physical joys of chocolate. That’s a striking result and Quoidbach explains it best himself. “One need not actually visit the pyramids of Egypt or spend a week at the legendary Banff spas in Canada for one’s savouring ability to be impaired,” he writes. “Simply knowing that these peak experiences are readily available may increase one’s tendency to take the small pleasures of daily life for granted.”

Reference: Psychological Science http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797610371963 or here

Image from Muffet on Flickr

More on happiness or money:

The Reasons For Sci Comm Training | The Intersection

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

When I blogged the other day about the media training I was doing at MIT, the first comment read as follows:
Frauds at work. Science is not about PR, Mooney. You and your ilk make me feel both ill, and embarassed to say I am a scientist. You should go crawl back under your rock.
To which Aileen Pincus, who also does media training, ably replied:
There’s no question that science is losing the public relations battle, so it’s interesting to me to still find scientists like the poster above who obviously believe that learning to communicate the science somehow harms the science. Yes, those who apply science commercially don’t suffer from such delusions, and they’re a good many of my clients. Others however, come to understand the real world of how science in funded only after long, losing struggles. Public support for science, essential to that funding, isn’t something to be scorned–and that can only happen when scientists learn how to talk to non-scientists.
Indeed--and that is only one of the reasons that many scientists are interested in having such trainings. I believe a lot of it has to do with the nastiness of the evolution and climate wars, and the sense that we have been ...

Masten and XCOR to partner

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

This morning Masten Space Systems and XCOR Aerospace announced a partnership to pursue anticipated NASA business for unmanned lander technology development efforts. Masten will develop the vehicles and XCOR will provide LOX/methane engines and composite propellant tanks. Full details are in the press release below, and the companies plan a joint telecon later today to provide additional details.

XCOR and Masten Announce Strategic Relationship for NASA Landers Business

May 25th, 2010, Mojave, CA, USA: XCOR Aerospace and Masten Space Systems, two of the leaders in the New Space sector, have announced a strategic business and technology relationship to pursue jointly the anticipated NASA sponsored unmanned lander projects. These automated lander programs are expected to serve as robotic test beds on Earth, on the lunar surface, Mars, near Earth objects and other interplanetary locales, helping NASA push the boundaries of technology and opening the solar system for future human exploration.

Masten’s award winning automated vertical take off, vertical landing (VTVL) flight vehicles combined with XCOR’s strong experience in liquid oxygen (LOX) / methane powered propulsion systems and nonflammable cryogenically compatible composite tanks, brings to NASA a powerful and competitive combination of innovative talent with a proven record of producing exceptional results quickly and affordably.

Last October, Masten won the $1 million first prize for Level II of NASA’s Lunar Lander Challenge, beating out a host of New Space rivals, and demonstrating they are the leading VTVL development group in the country. In 2007 XCOR Aerospace’s LOX/methane engine, developed for NASA, was named by Time Magazine as one of the “Inventions of the Year”, recognizing XCOR’s successive advancement in the state of the art of both pump and pressure fed reusable, throttle-able rocket propulsion systems. XCOR and Masten have also demonstrated the ability to rapidly take from concept to live fire, new propulsion and control system designs using innovative rapid prototyping techniques that surpass client requirements in much shorter periods of time than traditional aerospace methods.

Dave Masten, founder and President of Masten Space Systems commented “Masten Space and XCOR are next door neighbors here in Mojave. We’ve worked together on many tactical problems over the years and our corporate cultures mesh well. Working together on something like this simply made too much sense. We can’t wait to start working with Jeff, Dan, and the XCOR team to help NASA build affordable and responsive landing platforms.”

“Our company work ethic and styles are very compatible, and with XCOR propulsion and Masten VTVL technology, we can solve problems of national interest, and I am excited about the possibilities,” said Jeff Greason, CEO and Founder of XCOR.

Andrew Nelson, Chief Operating Officer of XCOR added, “It’s a no brainer, Dave’s team is the absolute best New Space company when it comes to VTVL and autopilot unmanned operations – they demonstrated that in October by winning NASA’s lander challenge. And we feel our LOX/methane engines are unsurpassed in the trade space today by anyone. We should bring this tandem set of best in class capabilities to NASA, it just makes sense for them and for us.”

XCOR and Masten will be jointly marketing their skill sets and services to the NASA community as prime contractors, and as joint teaming partners for larger systems integrators and prime contractors servicing the NASA community.

WISE Makes Progress on its Space Rock Catalog

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

NEOWISE principal investigator Amy Mainzer describes the ongoing tally of space rocks and comets amassed

This animation shows asteroids and comets observed so far by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. › View animation (mov)

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, is busy surveying the landscape of the infrared sky, building up a catalog of cosmic specimens -- everything from distant galaxies to "failed" stars, called brown dwarfs.

Closer to home, the mission is picking out an impressive collection of asteroids and comets, some known and some never seen before. Most of these hang out in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter, but a small number are near-Earth objects -- asteroids and comets with orbits that pass within about 48 million kilometers (30 million miles) of Earth's orbit. By studying a small sample of near-Earth objects, WISE will learn more about the population as a whole. How do their sizes differ, and how many objects are dark versus light?

"We are taking a census of a small sample of near-Earth objects to get a better idea of how they vary," said Amy Mainzer, the principal investigator of NEOWISE, a program to catalog asteroids seen with WISE.

So far, the mission has observed more than 60,000 asteroids, both Main Belt and near-Earth objects. Most were known before, but more than 11,000 are new.

"Our data pipeline is bursting with asteroids," said WISE Principal Investigator Ned Wright of UCLA. "We are discovering about a hundred a day, mostly in the Main Belt."

About 190 near-Earth asteroids have been observed to date, of which more than 50 are new discoveries. All asteroid observations are reported to the NASA-funded International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, a clearinghouse for data on all solar system bodies at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass.

"It's a really exciting time for asteroid science," said Tim Spahr, who directs the Minor Planet Center. "WISE is another tool to add to our tool belt of instruments to discover and study the asteroid population."

A network of ground-based telescopes follows up and confirms the WISE finds, including the NASA-funded University of Arizona Spacewatch and Catalina Sky Survey projects, both near Tucson, Ariz., and the NASA-funded Magdalena Ridge Observatory near Socorro, N.M.

Some of the near-Earth asteroids detected so far are visibly dark, but it's too early to say what percentage. The team needs time to properly analyze and calibrate the data. When results are ready, they will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. WISE has not found an asteroid yet that would be too dark for detection by visible-light telescopes on the ground.

"We're beginning the process of sorting through all the objects we're finding so we can learn more about their properties," said Mainzer. "How many are big or small, or light versus dark?"

WISE will also study Trojans, asteroids that run along with Jupiter in its orbit around the sun and travel in two packs -- one in front of and one behind the gas giant. It has seen more than 800, and by the end of the mission, should have observed about half of all 4,500 known Trojans. The results will address dueling theories about how the outer planets evolved.

With its infrared vision, WISE is good at many aspects of asteroid watching. First, infrared light gives a better estimate of an asteroid's size. Imagine a light, shiny rock lying next to a bigger, dark one in the sunshine. From far away, the rocks might look about the same size. That's because they reflect about the same amount of visible sunlight. But, if you pointed an infrared camera at them, you could tell the dark one is bigger. Infrared light is related to the heat radiated from the rock itself, which, in turn, is related to its size.

A second benefit of infrared is the ability to see darker asteroids. Some asteroids are blacker than coal and barely reflect any visible light. WISE can see their infrared glow. The mission isn't necessarily hunting down dark asteroids in hiding, but collecting a sample of all different types. Like a geologist collecting everything from pumice to quartz, WISE is capturing the diversity of cosmic rocks in our solar neighborhood.

In the end, WISE will provide rough size and composition profiles for hundreds of near-Earth objects, about 100 to 200 of which will be new.

WISE has also bagged about a dozen new comets to date. The icy cousins to asteroids are easy for the telescope to spot because, as the comets are warmed by the sun, gas and dust particles blow off and glow with infrared light. Many of the comets found by WISE so far are so-called long-period comets, meaning they spend billions of years circling the sun in the frigid hinterlands of our solar system, before they are shuttled into the inner, warmer parts. Others are termed short-period comets -- they spend most of their lives hanging around the space near Jupiter, occasionally veering into the space closer to the terrestrial planets. WISE's measurements of these snowy dirtballs will allow scientists to study their size, composition and density. Measurements of the comets' orbits will help explain what kicks these objects out of their original, more distant orbits and in toward the sun.

WISE will complete one-and-a-half scans of the sky in October of this year. Visit http://wise.astro.ucla.edu to see selected WISE images released so far.

JPL manages WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu .

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WISE Telescope has Heart and Soul

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

The Heart and Soul nebulae are seen in this infrared mosaic from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. › Full image and caption

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has captured a huge mosaic of two bubbling clouds in space, known as the Heart and Soul nebulae. The space telescope, which has completed about three-fourths of its infrared survey of the entire sky, has already captured nearly one million frames like the ones making up this newly released mosaic.

"This new image demonstrates the power of WISE to capture vast regions," said Ned Wright, the mission's principal investigator at UCLA, who presented the new picture today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Miami. "We're looking north, south, east and west to map the whole sky."

The picture is online at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/news/wise20100524.html .

The Heart nebula is named after its resemblance to a human heart; the nearby Soul nebula happens to resemble a heart too, but only the symbolic kind with two lobes. The nebulae, which lie about 6,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia, are both massive star-making factories, marked by giant bubbles blown into surrounding dust by radiation and winds from the stars. The infrared vision of WISE allows it to see into the cooler and dustier crevices of clouds like these, where gas and dust are just beginning to collect into new stars.

The new image was captured as WISE circled over Earth's poles, scanning strips of the sky. It is stitched together from 1,147 frames, taken with a total exposure time of three-and-a-half hours.

The mission will complete its first map of the sky in July 2010. It will then spend the next three months surveying much of the sky a second time, before the solid-hydrogen coolant needed to chill its infrared detectors runs dry. The first installment of the public WISE catalog will be released in summer 2011.

About 960,000 WISE images have been beamed down from space to date. Some show ethereal star-forming clouds, while others reveal the ancient light of very remote, powerful galaxies. And many are speckled with little dots that are asteroids in our solar system. So far, the mission has observed more than 60,000 asteroids, most of which lie in the main belt, orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. About 11,000 of these objects are newly discovered, and about 50 of them belong to a class of near-Earth objects, which have paths that take them within about 48 million kilometers (30 million miles) of Earth’s orbit.

One goal of the WISE mission is to study asteroids throughout our solar system and to find out more about how they vary in size and composition. Infrared helps with this task because it can get better size measurements of the space rocks than visible light.

"Infrared will help us understand more about the sizes, properties and origins of asteroids near and far," said Amy Mainzer, the principal investigator of NEOWISE, a program to study and catalog asteroids seen by WISE (the acronym comes from combining near-Earth object, or NEO, with WISE).

WISE will also study the Trojans, asteroids that run along with Jupiter in its orbit around the sun in two packs -- one in front of and one behind the gas giant. It has seen more than 800 of these objects, and by the end of the mission, should have observed about half of all 4,500 known Trojans. The results will address dueling theories about how the outer planets evolved.

"WISE is the first survey capable of observing the two clouds in a uniform way, and this will provide valuable insight into the early solar system," said astronomer Tommy Grav of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md., who presented the information today at the astronomy meeting.

Comets have also made their way into WISE images, with more than 72 observed so far, about a dozen of them new. WISE is taking a census of the types of orbits comets ride in. The data will help explain what kicks comets out of their original, more distant orbits and in toward the sun.

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Phoenix Mars Lander is Silent, New Image Shows Damage

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

The Phoenix Mars Lander in 2008 (top) and 2010 (bottom)

Two images of the Phoenix Mars lander taken from Martian orbit in 2008 and 2010. The 2008 lander image (left) shows two relatively blue spots on either side corresponding to the spacecraft's clean circular solar panels. In the 2010 (right) image scientists see a dark shadow that could be the lander body and eastern solar panel, but no shadow from the western solar panel. › Full image and caption

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has ended operations after repeated attempts to contact the spacecraft were unsuccessful. A new image transmitted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows signs of severe ice damage to the lander's solar panels.

"The Phoenix spacecraft succeeded in its investigations and exceeded its planned lifetime," said Fuk Li, manager of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Although its work is finished, analysis of information from Phoenix's science activities will continue for some time to come."

Last week, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter flew over the Phoenix landing site 61 times during a final attempt to communicate with the lander. No transmission from the lander was detected. Phoenix also did not communicate during 150 flights in three earlier listening campaigns this year.

Earth-based research continues on discoveries Phoenix made during summer conditions at the far-northern site where it landed May 25, 2008. The solar-powered lander completed its three-month mission and kept working until sunlight waned two months later.

Phoenix was not designed to survive the dark, cold, icy winter. However, the slim possibility Phoenix survived could not be eliminated without listening for the lander after abundant sunshine returned.

An image of Phoenix taken this month by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter suggests the lander no longer casts shadows the way it did during its working lifetime.

"Before and after images are dramatically different," said Michael Mellon of the University of Colorado in Boulder, a science team member for both Phoenix and HiRISE. "The lander looks smaller, and only a portion of the difference can be explained by accumulation of dust on the lander, which makes its surfaces less distinguishable from surrounding ground."

Apparent changes in the shadows cast by the lander are consistent with predictions of how Phoenix could be damaged by harsh winter conditions. It was anticipated that the weight of a carbon-dioxide ice buildup could bend or break the lander's solar panels. Mellon calculated hundreds of pounds of ice probably coated the lander in mid-winter.

During its mission, Phoenix confirmed and examined patches of the widespread deposits of underground water ice detected by Odyssey and identified a mineral called calcium carbonate that suggested occasional presence of thawed water. The lander also found soil chemistry with significant implications for life and observed falling snow. The mission's biggest surprise was the discovery of perchlorate, an oxidizing chemical on Earth that is food for some microbes and potentially toxic for others.

"We found that the soil above the ice can act like a sponge, with perchlorate scavenging water from the atmosphere and holding on to it," said Peter Smith, Phoenix principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "You can have a thin film layer of water capable of being a habitable environment. A micro-world at the scale of grains of soil -- that's where the action is."

The perchlorate results are shaping subsequent astrobiology research, as scientists investigate the implications of its antifreeze properties and potential use as an energy source by microbes. Discovery of the ice in the uppermost soil by Odyssey pointed the way for Phoenix. More recently, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter detected numerous ice deposits in middle latitudes at greater depth using radar and exposed on the surface by fresh impact craters.

"Ice-rich environments are an even bigger part of the planet than we thought," Smith said. "Somewhere in that vast region there are going to be places that are more habitable than others."

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reached the planet in 2006 to begin a two-year primary science mission. Its data show Mars had diverse wet environments at many locations for differing durations during the planet's history, and climate-change cycles persist into the present era. The mission has returned more planetary data than all other Mars missions combined.

Odyssey has been orbiting Mars since 2001. The mission also has played important roles by supporting the twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. The Phoenix mission was led by Smith at the University of Arizona, with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin in Denver. The University of Arizona operates the HiRISE camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., in Boulder. Mars missions are managed by JPL for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For Phoenix information and images, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix.

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Out of Whack Planetary System Offers Clues to a Disturbed Past

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

illustration of the Upsilon Andromedae A planetary system, where three Jupiter-type planets orbit the yellow-white star Upsilon Andromedae A

Astronomers are reporting today the discovery of a planetary system way out of tilt, where the orbits of two planets are at a steep angle to each other. This surprising finding will impact theories of how multi-planet systems evolve, and it shows that some violent events can happen to disrupt planets' orbits after a planetary system forms, say researchers.

"The findings mean that future studies of exoplanetary systems will be more complicated. Astronomers can no longer assume all planets orbit their parent star in a single plane," says Barbara McArthur of The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory.

McArthur and her team used data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the giant Hobby-Eberly Telescope, and other ground-based telescopes combined with extensive modeling to unearth a landslide of information about the planetary system surrounding the nearby star Upsilon Andromedae.

McArthur reported these findings in a press conference today at the 216th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Miami, along with her collaborator Fritz Benedict, also of McDonald Observatory, and team member Rory Barnes of the University of Washington. The work also will be published in the June 1 edition of the Astrophysical Journal.

For just over a decade, astronomers have known that three Jupiter-type planets orbit the yellow-white star Upsilon Andromedae. Similar to our Sun in its properties, Upsilon Andromedae lies about 44 light-years away. It's a little younger, more massive, and brighter than the Sun.

Combining fundamentally different, yet complementary, types of data from Hubble and ground-based telescopes, McArthur's team has determined the exact masses of two of the three known planets, Upsilon Andromedae c and d. Much more startling, though, is their finding that not all planets orbit this star in the same plane. The orbits of planets c and d are inclined by 30 degrees with respect to each other. This research marks the first time that the "mutual inclination" of two planets orbiting another star has been measured. And, the team has uncovered hints that a fourth planet, e, orbits the star much farther out.

"Most probably Upsilon Andromedae had the same formation process as our own solar system, although there could have been differences in the late formation that seeded this divergent evolution," McArthur said. "The premise of planetary evolution so far has been that planetary systems form in the disk and remain relatively co-planar, like our own system, but now we have measured a significant angle between these planets that indicates this isn't always the case."

Until now the conventional wisdom has been that a big cloud of gas collapses down to form a star, and planets are a natural byproduct of leftover material that forms a disk. In our solar system, there's a fossil of that creation event because all of the eight major planets orbit in nearly the same plane. The outermost dwarf planets like Pluto are in inclined orbits, but these have been modified by Neptune's gravity and are not embedded deep inside the Sun's gravitational field.

Several different gravitational scenarios could be responsible for the surprisingly inclined orbits in Upsilon Andromedae. "Possibilities include interactions occurring from the inward migration of planets, the ejection of other planets from the system through planet-planet scattering, or disruption from the parent star's binary companion star, Upsilon Andromedae B," McArthur said.

Barnes, an expert in the dynamics of extrasolar planetary systems, added, "Our dynamical analysis shows that the inclined orbits probably resulted from the ejection of an original member of the planetary system. However, we don't know if the distant stellar companion forced that ejection, or if the planetary system itself formed in such a way that some original planets were ejected. Furthermore, we find that the revised configuration still lies right on the precipice of instability: The planets pull on each other so strongly that they are almost able to throw each other out of the system."

The two different types of data combined in this research were astrometry from the Hubble Space Telescope and radial velocity from ground-based telescopes.

Astrometry is the measurement of the positions and motions of celestial bodies. McArthur's group used one of the Fine Guidance Sensors (FGSs) on the Hubble telescope for the task. The FGSs are so precise that they can measure the width of a quarter in Denver from the vantage point of Miami. It was this precision that was used to trace the star's motion on the sky caused by its surrounding - and unseen - planets.

Radial velocity makes measurements of the star's motion on the sky toward and away from Earth. These measurements were made over a period of 14 years using ground-based telescopes, including two at McDonald Observatory and others at Lick, Haute-Provence, and Whipple Observatories. The radial velocity provides a long baseline of foundation observations, which enabled the shorter duration, but more precise and complete, Hubble observations to better define the orbital motions.

The fact that the team determined the orbital inclinations of planets c and d allowed them to calculate the exact masses of the two planets. The new information told us that our view as to which planet is heavier has to be changed. Previous minimum masses for the planets given by radial velocity studies put the minimum mass for planet c at 2 Jupiters and for planet d at 4 Jupiters. The new, exact masses, found by astrometry are 14 Jupiters for planet c and 10 Jupiters for planet d.

"The Hubble data show that radial velocity isn't the whole story," Benedict said. "The fact that the planets actually flipped in mass was really cute."

The 14 years of radial velocity information compiled by the team uncovered hints that a fourth, long-period planet may orbit beyond the three now known. There are only hints about that planet because it's so far out that the signal it creates does not yet reveal the curvature of an orbit. Another missing piece of the puzzle is the inclination of the innermost planet, b, which would require precision astrometry 1,000 times greater than Hubble's, a goal attainable by a space mission optimized for interferometry.

The team's Hubble data also confirmed Upsilon Andromedae's status as a binary star. The companion star is a red dwarf less massive and much dimmer than the Sun.

"We don't have any idea what its orbit is," Benedict said. "It could be very eccentric. Maybe it comes in very close every once in a while. It may take 10,000 years." Such a close pass by the secondary star could gravitationally perturb the orbits of the planets.

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The Secret Museum Website and Exhibition Closing Party

Posted on May 27, 2010 by ev1

The Secret Museum is now a website!

I have just launched a full website for The Secret Museum, my exhibition of photographs (as seen above) exploring the poetics of hidden, untouched and curious collections from around the world. The website includes information, links, and, of course, a full gallery of photos, installation and otherwise; You can check it out by clicking here.

The Secret Museum exhibition proper will be on view until Sunday, June 6th at Observatory; please consider yourself cordially invited to a closing party that evening, featuring a last perusal of the museum, a bit of wine, a dimly-lit chandelier, and some esoteric music complements of Mister Friese Undine. The party--which will run from 6-10 at Observatory--is, of course, free of charge, and should be good fun. Address and travel details can be found here.

Hope very much to see you there!

All above images from The Secret Museum; captions from top to bottom:

"Femme à barbe," Musée Orfila. Courtesy of Paris Descartes University
Venus Endormie (breathing wax model), Spitzner collection Collection Spitzner, Musée Orfila, Paris Courtesy Université Paris Descartes
Opération de la Cesarienne, (wax model of Caesarean section) Collection Spitzner, Musée Orfila, Paris. Courtesy Université Paris Descartes
Skeleton and hand models for "la médecine opératoire" Musée Orfila, Paris. Courtesy Université Paris Descartes
Plaster Models in Pathological Cabinet, The Museum of the Faculty of Medicine at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow
Natural History Museum Backroom, Netherlands
Natural History Museum Backroom, Netherlands
Natural History Museum Backroom, Netherlands

Rumor: Avatar 3D Blu-ray To Be Bundled With Panasonic 3DTVs From August? [3dTv]

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

The to-ing and fro-ing of the Avatar 3D launch increased in noise today, with HDGuru.com reporting that the 3D Blu-ray will be bundled exclusively with Panasonic 3DTVs. We'd previously heard it'd be tethered to the purchase of Blu-ray players also. More »

Blu-ray Disc - Movies - Arts - Home Video - Blu-ray and HD

Musings, Dreams, Struggle, Hope, Possability

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Danzig

The dreams of space.

Those dreams that I often don’t let myself contemplate, for fear that it will take my attention away from the practical steps that I am focused on now that may enable me to achieve those dreams in the future.

When I am contemplative, I sit back and consider the current plans of those who struggle along side me in Man’s efforts to escape Earth and what is on her.

SpaceX, Orbital, Blue Origin, Boeing, XCOR. Astronautical Engineering courses. Sweeping arcs showing Launch Vehicle Kilograms to circular orbits or escape velocity. Job postings for dynamic Loads engineer, Avionics Test Engineer, Solar Array Engineer. Rarefied Gas Dynamics, Shock Waves and dynamic pressure, nozzle expansion ratios, Melting points, rotation rates, electric discharge arc voltages, power budgets, star trackers, Nickle hydrogen batteries, redundant wiring harnesses…

This is the swarm of brushes, paints on the palate, media types, artistic methods, and implements by which Man creates the works of art that are space exploration.

These are the building blocks of the dreams of spaceflight.

In Space, Man can reinvent society. Find solitude in a nature never beheld by man, and discover alien lifeforms and landscapes. He can plunge to great depths, explode to ultimate heights, insulate himself from the deepest colds and deflect the searing heat of stars far brighter than the sun. He can blast the new knowledge that he gathers through antenna dishes across light years of space or find complete isolation from any and all who could want to communicate. He can travel at incredible speeds or swing in spiraling arcs betwixt alien moons and super-massive planets.

Finally, Man can find himself and what it is to be man when the circumstances that crowd his home of Earth have fallen away leaving him singularly alone with his consciousness and ambition.

Mankind can roll the dice again on himself, his society, and world in a billion billion different places with as many new sets of rules and society-shaping constraints.

Water Jet Operator, Turbomachinery Engineer, Planetary Scientist, Ground Control operator, Mission director, Astronaut. We are legion.

I am John Wilson Benac. I am in the midst of a structured masters degree program from the University of Southern California to learn a coherent and synergistic set of skills to enable me to shape the machines to carry man’s dreams outward. I work 8 hours a day ensuring that the life support systems hardware that launches and returns from the International Space Station supports the mission requirements. I choose, along with thousands of others, the pursuit of space exploration as my careear’s work. And God willing, I shall move mankind outward into the void in which God placed us, to find the shores of distant lands which he created for his truly ambitions and blessed children to attain.

What paintings will be created with the pallet mankind so painstakingly prepares? The Space Shuttle, Space Station, Delta, Atlas, Proton, Soyuz, GPS, Arienne machines were once concepts alongside hundreds of other ideas which never were realized. As in the 1950s, countless tabletop designs ask for our limited resources to turn them into actual dream machines.

From Konstantin Tsiolkovsky’s 1903 “The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices” to Jules Verne’s 1865 “From the Earth to the Moon” and Hermann Oberth’s 1923 “The Rocket into Planetary Space,” all the way through the countless college students, practicing engineers, and enchanted layman, we dream and imagine together what man may do in the limitless star filled expanse that is outer space.

Perhaps I should indulge in the pleasure and wonder by conceiving of a few paintings of my own rather than focus on the palate from which the paintings are created.

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