Cannibalistic Jupiter ate its early moons

THE four giant “Galilean” moons orbiting Jupiter are the last survivors of at least five generations of moons that once circled the gas giant.

“All the other moons – and there could have been 20 or more – were devoured by the planet in the early days of the solar system,” says Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

The four Galilean moons have played a key role in the history of science – their discovery by Galileo 400 years ago provided irrefutable evidence that not all bodies orbited the Earth. But until recently, nobody had suspected that Jupiter had once had many more moons.

Astronomers have long been aware of a mystery thrown up by simulations of the way Jupiter and its moons formed, says Canup. These models indicate that the mass of the debris disc around Jupiter, from which the moons formed, was several tens of a per cent of the mass of giant planet. And yet only 2 per cent is enough to make the moons we see today.

Now Canup and her colleague William Ward believe they know why. The extra mass can be explained if other moons formed while the debris disc was still present (www.arxiv.org/abs/0812.4995). “A key process is therefore the interaction between the growing moons and the disc material still flowing in from the solar system,” says Canup. This interaction would have caused the early moons to spiral in towards Jupiter and eventually be “eaten”.

This would explain the discrepancy in the earlier simulations, says Canup: as one set of moons was swallowed, a new set immediately began to form. “There could have been five generations of moons,” she says. “The current Galilean moons formed just as the inflow of material into the disc from the solar system choked off, so they escaped the fate of their unfortunate predecessors.”

via Cannibalistic Jupiter ate its early moons – space – 07 March 2009 – New Scientist.

The Geordie Lizard Man and others

This is an interesting story from Mike Hallowell:

… In my last blog, I mentioned the fact that two witnesses had come forward, both of whom claim to have espied a strange “lizard man”; one in Northumberland, and the other somewhat closer to home. I’m still investigating these claims, and have not, as yet, satisfied myself that they are entirely genuine. I believe they are at this juncture, mainly because the experients do not seem to know each other. Both appear to be perfectly sincere, and the intriguing thing is that their descriptions of the creature tally almost perfectly.

Witness A described the creature as five ft. in height, brown/green in colour and scaled. The beast, he said, was essentially anthropomorphic, but also possessed a tail, had no discernible ears and sported a reddish, serrated crest upon its head and spine. Its face was “snout-like” and resembled that of a German Shepherd in shape. I contacted him again several days ago, and asked him to relate to me once again his sighting in detail. His account is as follows, minus some details regarding the exact location which I am withholding at this time:

Last summer – one Sunday in July, as he recalls – Witness A left his home in Northumberland and drove to a remote spot further north to engage in a spot of rambling. He arrived at his destination and parked his car at approximately 1040hrs, and then walked up a path which took him between two small hillocks. In his backpack was a flask of tea and a packet of biscuits.

After walking between the hillocks, Witness A came across a large area covered with shrub, and scattered amongst it were a number of small, boggy areas filled with peat. He noticed that as he walked forward the ground was becoming increasingly waterlogged and spongy. Suddenly, to his right, he saw what he at first thought was a man running across the ground “at high speed”. He estimates that he was approximately twenty yards away from him, and was puzzled as he could not see where he had came from.

“He seemed to come out of nowhere”, the witness told me, “as if he had suddenly popped up out of the ground”.

Witness A told me that the creature – by now he’d realised that it certainly wasn’t human – had a gait that was perfectly human-like: “There wasn’t anything funny about the way he ran. If it hadn’t been for his strange appearance I would have thought it was just a man”.

Within seconds the creature had crossed the path of Witness A and gave no indication of being aware that he was not alone. It was, said the witness, “as if I wasn’t there”. The witness also recalled seeing occasional splashes of water near the creature’s feet as it disturbed the boggy ground beneath him. Then, without warning, he claimed that it, “just seemed to sink into the ground, as if he had fallen into a hole. There was no noise or anything…he just disappeared.”

Witness A then retraced his steps, found his car and proceeded to drive home. His ramble had been of incredibly short duration, but the incident had removed any desire to prolong it. …
via CRYPTOZOOLOGY ONLINE: Still on the Track: GUEST BLOGGER MIKE HALLOWELL: The Geordie Lizard Man and others.

Kangaroo comes crashing into bedroom

When a dark intruder smashed through his bedroom window and repeatedly bounced on his bed, Beat Ettlin at first was relieved to discover it was a kangaroo. “My initial thought when I was half awake was, ‘It’s a lunatic ninja coming through the window,’” the 42-year-old told The Associated Press on Monday. “It seems about as likely as a kangaroo breaking in.”

But his relief was short-lived. As Ettlin cowered beneath the sheets with his wife and 9-year-old daughter at 2 a.m. Sunday, the frantic kangaroo bounded into the bedroom of his 10-year-old son Leighton Beman, who screamed, “There’s a ‘roo in my room!”

“I thought, ‘This can be really dangerous for the whole family now,’” Ettlin said.

The ordeal played out over a few minutes in the family’s house in Garran, an upmarket suburb in the leafy national capital of Canberra.

Ettlin, a chef originally from the Swiss city of Stans, said he jumped the 90 pound (40 kilogram) marsupial from behind and pinned it to the floor. He grabbed it in a headlock and wrestled the trashing and bleeding intruder into a hallway, toward the front door.

He used a single, fumbling hand to open the front door and shoved the kangaroo into the night.

“I had just my Bonds undies on. I felt vulnerable,” he said, referring to a popular Australian underwear brand.

The kangaroo, which Ettlin said was around his height, 5 foot 9 inches (176 centimeters), left claw gouges in the wooden frame of the master bed and a trail of blood through the house. The animal was cut when it came crashing through the bedroom window.

via News from The Associated Press.

What would you do?

The lost world beneath the Antarctic ice

British scientists are about to mount one of the boldest-ever missions to search for life forms that have survived for possibly millions of years in a frozen “lost world” beneath an ancient ice sheet. This week a team of Antarctic scientists has been given the go-ahead to drill through a two-mile-thick sheet of ice that has sealed a sub-glacial lake from the rest of the biosphere for at least as long as Homo sapiens has walked the Earth.

They hope to find species that have survived below the ice sheet since it formed between 400 000 and two million years ago. Finding life in such an extreme environment would be one of the most important discoveries of the century raising the prospect of searching for extra-terrestrial life on Europa a moon of Jupiter where life is thought to exist beneath a frozen ocean.

The scientists plan to use sophisticated ice-drilling technology developed in the UK to penetrate the ice cap and enter the liquid-water world of Lake Ellsworth in West Antarctica one of about 150 sub-glacial lakes scientists have recently mapped with ice-penetrating radar.

via The lost world beneath the Antarctic ice – Science, News – The Independent.

Two hearts are better than one

A BRAVE Brazilian man is fighting for his life – with TWO beating hearts inside his body.

The unnamed 53-year-old is in a stable condition after a 12-hour operation.

But docs at Sao Paulo’s Heart Institute fear he only has a 50 per cent chance of surviving.

The patient has suffered severe lung hypertension that stopped his heart pumping blood around his body.

So he was given the new donor organ to prop up his own heart.

The “new” heart was place on the right side of his chest and is linked to his original heart by a vein, arteries of the lung and the aorta.

Surgeon Alfredo Fiorelli, who carried out the transplant, said: “This is not a routine transplant, the situation is exceptional. The next 72 hours will be fundamental to evaulate his state.”

“One heart would not be capable of pumping enough blood to the whole body since the patient’s lungs were damaged.

“The traditional transplant would not be recommended and the only alternative was placing a sedond heart besides the original one as an aide.

“This is an exceptional method due to the patient´s grave state.”

He added: “The patient will be kept alive in an artificial state for two months.Without this operation, the patient’s chances of survival were unlikely.

“Eventually the healthy heart is expected to take over the principal functions of its weaker counterpart, which will beat slower and slower with time.”

via Two hearts are better than one | The Sun |News.

Has anyone ever lived who had two hearts because they were born that way?  I mean, besides conjoined twins.