Former Governor Reportedly Has Missing Moon Rock

A former Colorado governor reportedly has a moon rock given to the state in 1974.

Gov. John Vanderhoof tells Denver’s KMGH-TV that he has the rock, which officials only recently realized was unaccounted for. Vanderhoof says the rock is displayed in a golf-ball sized acrylic button on a plaque in his home.

The rock is valued at $5 million on the black market and few even realized it was missing until a college student began searching for them for an assignment.

Another set of moon rocks collected in 1969 was found in storage at the state history museum about a decade ago. They’re now on display on the third floor of the state Capitol.

via Former Governor Reportedly Has Missing Moon Rock – cbs4denver.com.

Jupiter gives us a taste of Armageddon

Last year, in July, something smacked Jupiter. Hard.

It was discovered when an amateur astronomer found a black spot marring Jupiter’s cloud tops. Followup observations saw the spot glowing in the infrared, meaning it was hot, and therefore was not just a storm (which are common). For real and for sure, something impacted Jupiter and exploded – and I mean exploded, releasing the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of nuclear weapons.

But what was it?

A new paper just published indicates that it was an asteroid that hit Jupiter. However, since it wasn’t seen beforehand, how do we know?

Because we’ve seen this sort of thing before. In 1994, the big planet was hit repeatedly by the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. The comet had broken up into dozens of pieces, including several chunks a kilometer or so across, and they slammed into Jupiter one after another over the course of a week. That was one of the most well-observed astronomical events in history; every telescope on the planet was focused on Jupiter at the time.

And telescopes off the planet were too: Hubble took a lot of data, and found two key differences between the 1994 and 2009 events.

One is that there was a halo of lighter debris around the comet impact points in 1994 (as seen in this image on the right), but no such halo around the 2009 impact site. That indicates that the impacting objects were different.

Also, Hubble observed Jupiter both times in the ultraviolet. Images like that show where small, lighter-weight particles fell from the impact because those particles absorb UV light, leaving dark spots. Even nearly two weeks later, dark spots on Jupiter were evident around the 1994 impact sites. Since comets have a lot of ices in them — what you might call frozen gases like ammonia, methane, and so on — that’s expected. The lighter particles floated around in Jupiter’s clouds, absorbing the UV for quite some time.

But observations from last year’s impact don’t show that behavior! As you can see in big the image above, the dark spot fades rapidly. That’s most likely due to the impact debris (made up of vaporized impactor plus material from Jupiter’s atmosphere that got heated and chemically altered) to sink beneath the clouds. That indicates the particles were heavier than the SL9 impact in 1994, pointing toward the impacting object being an asteroid, not a comet. This is also consistent with the lack of a halo as mentioned above; halos are also made by finer particles. The 2009 impact site lacking a halo means the particles were heavier, as you’d expect from an asteroid.

So even though we didn’t see the object before it hit, it left — haha! — a smoking gun pointing toward its origin.

And here’s a funny thing: this impact occurred 15 years to the week after the SL9 onslaught. I remember getting a lot of email asking me if that meant they were related, but if you think about it you’ll realize it has to be a coincidence: after all, why would Earth’s orbital period have to do with anything hitting Jupiter? And now we see that the object that hit was not comet-like, proving the point.

Asteroid and comet impacts are a real threat to us on Earth. Jupiter, being so much more massive than the Earth, is a bigger target; its gravity draws in more debris. By observing it we can get a better idea of just how much stuff is out there in the solar system, waiting to put the hurt on a planet, including our planet. Just in case you have any lingering doubts, astronomy is important. It is no exaggeration at all to say that learning about astronomy and astronomical events may very well save the human race one day.

via Jupiter gives us a taste of Armageddon | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine.

How did higher life evolve? Brown algal genome opens new door to understanding multicellularity and photosynthesis

With the world’s first complete sequencing of a brown algal genome, an international research team has made a big leap towards understanding the evolution of two key prerequisites for higher life on Earth — multicellularity and photosynthesis. As reported in the journal Nature, about 100 scientists and technicians, during a five-year research project, successfully decoded all hereditary information — commonly known as the “genome” — on Ectocarpus siliculosus, an up to 20 cm large brown seaweed, which occurs mainly along coastlines in temperate latitudes. They have analyzed approximately 214 million base pairs and assigned these to about 16,000 genes. The biologists, Dr. Klaus Valentin and Dr. Bank Beszteri of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association have been involved in this global project since the planning phase in 2005.

“As evolutionary scientists we are particularly interested in why the world has developed as we know it today,” said Klaus Valentin about this project. “During earth’s history, complex multicellular life has evolved from unicellular organisms along five independent paths, which are: animals, plants, fungi, red algae and brown algae.” Evolutionary scientists have therefore set themselves the goal to decode a complete genome from a representative of each of these lines and to look for comparable genetic information. “This goal has now been achieved for the brown algal genome. The decoding of a red algal genome has already been completed, and we are currently evaluating the data” says Valentin on the future prospects of comparative genomics. “And indeed, in the brown alga, we found many genes for so called kinases, transporter and transcription factors. Such genes are also commonly found in land plants, and we suspect that they also play a key role in the origin of multicellular organisms.”

The sequencing of the brown algal genome is also a milestone in the efforts to reconstruct the evolution of photosynthesis. “We now know that oxygen-producing photosynthesis was „invented” before about 3.8 billion years ago, by cyanobacteria, sometimes erroneously called ‘blue-green algae’,” says Valentin about the elemental capability of plants to convert sunlight into biologically usable energy, whilst releasing oxygen. “Green and red algae have developed this ability after their ancestors scavenged living cyanobacteria, and thus more or less captured photosynthesis, to the benefit of both sides, since this symbiosis resulted in tremendous competitive advantages in the primordial ocean.”

Brown algae were assumed to have arisen from the fusion of photosynthetically inactive colourless cells with a unicellular red alga. However, as discovered in a previous research project on single-celled diatoms, AWI researchers showed that brown algae also arose from the fusion of a green alga with a red alga and thus refuted a widespread theory among experts. …

via How did higher life evolve? Brown algal genome opens new door to understanding multicellularity and photosynthesis.

Lead poisoning kills 100 children in north Nigeria

More than 100 children have died of lead poisoning in Nigeria in recent weeks, health officials say.

The number has been rising since March, when residents started digging illegally for gold in areas with high concentrations of lead.

The victims were from several remote villages in the northern state of Zamfara.

A total of 163 out of 355 cases of poisoning have proved fatal, a Nigerian health ministry official told Reuters.

Dr Henry Akpan, the health ministry’s chief epidemiologist, said: “[The victims] were digging for gold, but the areas also have large concentrations of lead.”

Health authorities have set up two camps in the area to treat people who are suffering symptoms of lead poisoning.

Contaminated water?

The deaths were discovered during the country’s annual immunisation programme, when officials realised there were virtually no children in several remote villages in the northern state, says the BBC’s Abdullai Kaura Abubakar in Kaduna.

Villagers said the children had died of malaria and it was only when a team from international aid agency Medecins Sans Frontiers took blood tests from local people that the high concentrations of lead were discovered.

Zamfara State had recently employed a Chinese company to mine gold in the area, adds our correspondent.

But villagers had also attempted to capitalise by digging for the precious metal themselves – an illegal activity in Nigeria.

It is likely locals became sick after lead removed during the process of refining gold ore contaminated local water systems, our correspondent says.

via BBC News – Nigeria – lead poisoning kills 100 children in north.

Stephen Fry crowns most beautiful tweet at Hay Festival

The most beautiful tweet ever tweeted has been announced by broadcaster Stephen Fry.

Fry, whose musings on micro-blogging site Twitter have attracted 1.5 million followers, announced the winner at the Hay Festival.

The winning tweet read: “I believe we can build a better world! Of course, it’ll take a whole lot of rock, water & dirt. Also, not sure where to put it.”

Marc MacKenzie, 41, from Canada, said he was “pleasantly surprised” to win.

“The recognition and knowing Fry picked my tweet is a huge honour.”

Mr MacKenzie entered 35 tweets into the competition because it “was hard to choose one as when I come up with a good one, I’m proud of them”.

The father-of-two said he started tweeting because people kept telling him they enjoyed reading his Facebook updates.

“What I like about it is how my brain works. Occasionally I have these odd thoughts that come to me and they amuse me so I jot them down. I like sharing them and it’s an interesting form to work with.

“A certain percentage of tweets are tired cliche phrases so when they come into my head I think ‘That won’t do.’ I can’t stand triteness so I always look for ridiculousness in trite.”

Mr MacKenzie has previously been short-listed in a national competition in Canada for the best tweet.

“Despite the public nature of what I do with Twitter and Facebook, it’s not for me to divulge too much information about myself – although I would like more followers. I’m a conflicted person.” …

via BBC News – Stephen Fry crowns most beautiful tweet at Hay Festival.

At first I thought this article was going to be about a guy who makes bird noises.

BP cap captures ’10,000 barrels’ a day in US Gulf

A containment cap on a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico is now funnelling off 10,000 barrels of oil a day, BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward says.

The amount has risen since Saturday, and implies more than half the estimated 12,000 to 19,000 barrels leaking each day is now being captured.

The spill has been described as the biggest environmental disaster in US history.

Mr Hayward told the BBC that BP would restore the Gulf to its original state.

Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show, Mr Hayward said: “As we speak, the containment cap is producing around 10,000 barrels of oil a day to the surface.”

Asked what amount of the estimate that represented, the BP chief executive said it was expected to be “the majority, probably the vast majority” of the oil gushing out.

“We have a further containment system to implement in the course of this coming week which will be in place by next weekend so when those two are in place, we would very much hope to be containing the vast majority of the oil.”

His company, he said, was going to stop the leak and take care of the consequences.

“We’re going to clean up the oil, we’re going to remediate any environmental damage and we are going to return the Gulf coast to the position it was in prior to this event. That’s an absolute commitment, we will be there long after the media has gone, making good on our promises.”

But the man in charge of the federal efforts to cope with the spill said no-one should be pleased “as long as there’s oil in the water”.

Coast Guard Adm Thad Allen told CNN the spill was “an insidious enemy that’s attacking our shores”.

‘Nightmare’The Deepwater Horizon rig sank on 20 April after an explosion, killing 11 workers.

Both BP and the US government have been criticised for the response so far. …

via BBC News – BP cap captures ’10,000 barrels’ a day in US Gulf.