Prehistoric mammal hair found in Cretaceous amber

Palaeontologists have discovered two mammal hairs encased in 100 million-year-old amber.

While older 2D fossilised hairs are known, those preserved in the amber are the oldest 3D specimens known.

The hairs, found alongside a fly pupa in amber uncovered in southwest France, are remarkably similar to hair found on modern mammals.

That implies that the shape and structure of mammal hair has remained unchanged over a vast period of time.

“We have 2D hair imprints as early as the Middle Jurassic,” says Dr Romain Vullo of the University of Rennes, France, who discovered the hair.

The Jurassic Period lasted from 200 to 145 millions of years ago, followed by the Cretaceous Period which lasted to 65 million years ago.

“However, carbonised hair provides much less information about the structure than a 3D hair preserved in amber,” says Dr Vullo.

“Our specimens are the oldest known hair specimens in which we can observe the cuticular structure.”

Dr Vullo and Professor Didier Neraudeau identified the hairs, which were initially found by colleague Dr Vincent Girard in amber he was examining for microorganisms.

Details are published in the journal Naturwissenschaften.

The piece of amber, which is fossilised tree resin, was found in the Font-de-Benon quarry at Archingeay-Les Nouillers in Charente-Maritime, southwest France.

Dead or hungry?

The first hair fragment is 2.4mm long and 32 to 48 micrometres wide, while the second is just 0.6mm long and 49 to 78 micrometres wide.

A close analysis of the hairs showed they have a very similar cuticular structure to those of hair or fur carried by modern mammals…

via BBC – Earth News – Prehistoric mammal hair found in Cretaceous amber.

Helios Awakens

The Sun is beginning to rouse itself from a long period of quiescence.

What a difference a year can make, not only in our personal lives, but also in the life of the Sun. It was in June of 2009 that heliophysicists were reporting a period of low sunspot activity that had not been seen in 100 years or more. There were almost 800 days of inactivity between sunspot cycles 23 and 24.

However, according to a June 13, 2010 report from Spaceweather.com, sunspot number 1081 is “crackling” with C-class and M-class solar flares. Solar flares are categorized as A, B, C, M, or X: light, medium, or powerful, with a numerical intensity from 1 through 9 attached. The labels are primarily used to illustrate the potential effects that they might have on our planet. Thus, an X-17 flare is considered extremely intense, while a C-4 event will have little effect on satellites in Earth orbit or on electric power grids.

As standard theories state, solar flares, or coronal mass ejections (CME), occur when magnetic loops in the Sun’s atmosphere known as “prominences” connect with each other, causing a short circuit. The sudden release of “magnetic energy” is often described as millions of hydrogen bombs simultaneously detonating inside a confined space. Although no one knows what so-called “magnetic reconnection” is, it is the only explanation offered in science journals for why those gigantic solar explosions appear.

CMEs eject solar plasma in the billions of tons. A hallmark of CME ejections is an increase in auroral brightness and frequency, since the flares are composed of charged particles. Although the majority of researchers identify the stream of ions pouring out of the Sun as a “wind” and that the particles “rain down” on Earth’s magnetic field, the fact that they are attracted to and follow the polar cusps indicates their electrical nature.

Solar flares are sometimes observed to leave the Sun’s surface with unbelievable acceleration. In the past, velocities more than 70,000 kilometers per second have been clocked. The critical factor in that measurement is that the solar matter continued to accelerate as it left the Sun. If shock waves were responsible for the initial impetus, then surely the blast would have begun to decelerate as it moved toward Earth. Since the opposite effect was seen, there must be another phenomenon at work other than the forces that might propel a cannonball, for instance.

In an Electric Universe populated by electric stars the explanation seems obvious: electric fields in space can accelerate charged particles and create coherent electric currents. According to conventional doctrine, the Sun accelerates electrons (and protons) away from its surface in the same way that sound waves are amplified. Energetic pulsations in the solar photosphere travel upward through “acoustical wave-guides,” called magnetic flux tubes, that push “hot gas” outward. Giant formations called spicules rise thousands of kilometers above the photosphere and carry the hot gas with them.

The Electric Universe hypothesis is based on electrodynamic principles and not on kinetic behavior, or even electrostatic models. The basic premise of this alternative view is that celestial bodies are immersed in plasma and are connected by circuits. Since the Sun is also “plugged-in” to the galaxy and to its family of planets, it behaves like a charged object seeking equilibrium with its environment.

In his exhaustive work, The Physics of the Plasma Universe, Dr. Anthony Peratt describes field-aligned currents in this way: “…electric fields aligned along the magnetic field direction freely accelerate particles. Electrons and ions are accelerated in opposite directions, giving rise to a current along the magnetic field lines.”

Solar flares could be thought of as tremendous lightning bursts, discharging vast quantities of matter at near relativistic speeds. How those flares generate such highly energetic emissions is a continuing mystery to heliophysicists.

Early in the Twentieth century, Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén was contracted by the Swedish Power Company because some of the rectifiers used in their power transmission circuits had exploded for no apparent reason. When they shorted-out more energy was released than was contained by the plasma flow inside them. It was subsequently discovered that the power from an entire 900 kilometer long transmission line had instantly passed through the devices. The result was catastrophic failure and extensive damage. Alfvén identified the cause as unstable double layers within the plasma flow, otherwise known as plasma instabilities.

The circuit connecting the Sun is of unknown length, but probably extends for thousands of light-years. How much electrical energy might be contained in such magnetically confined “transmission lines”? No one knows, but astronomers are continually “surprised” by the incredible detonations that they observe from solar flares….

via Helios Awakens.

Nasa warns solar flares from ‘huge space storm’ will cause devastation

Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation “space storm”, Nasa has warned.

National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power in a few years.

Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.

Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.

Due to humans’ heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and “potentially devastating” problems for governments.

“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” said Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa’s Heliophysics division.

“It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world.

“Large areas will be without electricity power and to repair that damage will be hard as that takes time.”

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he added: “Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the earth that is rapid and like a lightning bolt. That is the solar affect.” …

A “space weather” conference in Washington DC last week, attended by Nasa scientists, policy-makers, researchers and government officials, was told of similar warnings.

While scientists have previously told of the dangers of the storm, Dr Fisher’s comments are the most comprehensive warnings from Nasa to date.

Dr Fisher, 69, said the storm, which will cause the Sun to reach temperatures of more than 10,000 F (5500C), occurred only a few times over a person’s life.

Every 22 years the Sun’s magnetic energy cycle peaks while the number of sun spots – or flares – hits a maximum level every 11 years.

Dr Fisher, a Nasa scientist for 20 years, said these two events would combine in 2013 to produce huge levels of radiation.

He said large swathes of the world could face being without power for several months, although he admitted that was unlikely….

via Nasa warns solar flares from ‘huge space storm’ will cause devastation – Telegraph.

Artificial life ‘needs regulation’ – public survey says

The public wants a say in how research in to the manufacture of synthetic life is conducted, according to a report.

The Synthetic Biology Public Dialogue was commissioned by the two UK research councils responsible for funding what has been dubbed “synthetic biology”.

It sets out to advise the funders of this research how best to proceed.

The report revealed that people are comfortable with the the idea of creating life, but only if it is properly regulated.

It also found that people wanted an assurance that the research could bring tangible benefits.

The research councils, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), embarked on their public dialogue in late 2009.

The resulting report concluded that people wanted scientists who worked with the bits and pieces of life to do so with humility and respect for the material they were working with.

It also showed that people wanted to have a say in how the research was conducted and how grants were awarded. There should be consideration of social values as well as scientific merit, they said.

Professor Paul Freemont, co-director of the UK centre for Synthetic Biology at Imperial College London, said his gut reaction to this idea was that it could be “very difficult”.

But he said that as he thought more about it, he decided it was a “good idea”.

“We want the science to flourish,” he said, “but we also want it to be acccepted. We want the public to engage with it, understand it and also to influence it”.

Such direct input by the public has never been tested in scientific research, but the report’s author Dr Brian Johnson argues that there has never before been anything as potentially world-changing as synthetic biology.

“We are dealing here with the emergence of a very new culture which is taking biology to where it’s always wanted to go,” he said.

“We have spent the past thousand years learning how organisms work and interact. What synthetic biology is attempting to do is to not just take organisms apart but to put them together in a new way.

“So this is a real quantum leap in science which people have described as the second industrial revolution”….

via BBC News – Artificial life ‘needs regulation’ – public survey says.

Microsoft unveils Xbox ‘Kinect’ motion controller

Microsoft has revealed final details of its Xbox 360 hands-free motion control system, which it has rebranded Kinect.

The device, which was originally codenamed Project Natal, was showcased ahead of the opening of the E3 games expo, which starts on 15 June in LA.

Microsoft has said Kinect will hit shelves before the end of the year.

It will face competition from Sony’s PlayStation Move controller and Nintendo’s upgraded WiiMotion Plus.

Both are expected to feature at the E3 expo, which runs from 15-17 June.

Kinect was shown off at a glitzy event alongside compatible games, which support the new hands-free interface and, in some cases, the facial and voice recognition capabilities.

These ranged from jumping and flying games to a yoga simulator and Star Wars shooter, in which players control a virtual light sabre and use hand gestures to control action on the screen.

There was also a virtual pet, which can be controlled and played with using Kinect. Microsoft says it will release the full details of its games at another media event on 14 June.

Another Kinect game that was demoed on the night was Dance Central from MTV Games which allows the player to coordinate their dance moves in time to an on-screen prompt. …

via BBC News – Microsoft unveils Xbox ‘Kinect’ motion controller.

Hayabusa asteroid-sample capsule recovered in Outback

ASTEROID 25143 ITOKAWA – A ‘PILE OF RUBBLE’

Hayabusa returned astonishing images from its encounter with Itokawa.

The 500m-long Itokawa has many boulders covering its surface. The biggest is 50m wide; it is nicknamed ‘Yoshinodai’. Observations revealed Itokawa’s density to be extremely low. Scientists say it is a pile of rubble that was produced in a collision/ Gravity would have collected the debris into the object we now see.

The Japanese space capsule which landed in the Australian Outback on Sunday night (local time) has been recovered.

The Hayabusa pod was picked up by a helicopter team and transferred to a control centre on the Woomera Prohibited Area.

The canister, which is believed to hold the first samples ever grabbed from the surface of an asteroid, will now be shipped to Tokyo.

The Japanese space agency (Jaxa) says the capsule looks to be intact.

The return was the culmination of a remarkable seven-year adventure, which saw Hayabusa visit asteroid Itokawa in 2005 and attempt to pluck dust from its surface before firing its engines for home.

The $200m mission encountered many technical problems, from being hit by a solar flare to experiencing propulsion glitches. But each time an issue came up, the Japanese project team found an elegant solution to keep Hayabusa alive and bring it back to Earth – albeit three years late.

The re-entry on Sunday, at 1351 GMT, produced a spectacular fireball in the Australian night sky.

The main spacecraft broke apart in a shower of light.

As these bright streaks faded, a single point could then be seen racing to the ground. This was the capsule protected against the 3,000-degree heat generated in the fall by its carbon shield.

It took about an hour to locate the capsule by helicopter, its position tracked by radar and a beacon that was transmitting from inside the canister.

It was only when daylight came up on Monday, however, that a recovery team began to approach the 40cm-wide pod which was lying on the ground still attached to its parachute….

via BBC News – Hayabusa asteroid-sample capsule recovered in Outback.

One Laptop per Child updates design for older pupils

The so-called $100 laptop has undergone a facelift in order to be used by secondary school children.

The machines, designed by One Laptop per Child (OLPC), are based on the original XO laptop, which was built for primary school children.

The new computers feature a larger keyboard and upgraded software.

Uruguay, which has already distributed nearly 400,000 XO laptops to primary schools, has ordered 90,000 of the new laptops, known as the XO-HS.

It has also ordered 10,000 machines designed by rival Intel, which makes the Classmate PC, also developed for children.

“We want to see how students react and analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each,” said Miguel Brechner, director of the Technological Laboratory of Uruguay, who is in charge of the country’s Plan Ceibal (Education Connect) project.

‘Full saturation’

The government scheme has given many people in the country their first taste of computers and the internet.

It has delivered 380,000 XO laptops to primary school students and nearly 20,000 to teachers.

“Uruguay is the only deployment that is complete,” Kalil Nicolas of the OLPC Association, told BBC News. “They have full saturation of their primary schools.”

The 90,000 XO-HS machines will be rolled out to some of Uruguay’s 230,000 high school students.

“We are expanding our reach,” said Mr Nicolas. “We still want to focus on 6-12 year olds – and motivate them – but they need a laptop to grow into.”

Deliveries of the new laptops will begin in September 2010.

Mr Nicolas said that they would also be offered to other countries interested in connecting high-school students.

Tablet future

The original XO laptop was designed specifically for children in the developing world and featured a rugged design aimed at keeping out water and dust, a sunlight-readable display and open source software.

It was designed by OLPC, a spin out from US university MIT.

The organisation originally aimed to sell the green and white machines in lots of one million to governments in developing countries for $100 each.

However, it had difficulty getting governments to commit to bulk orders.

Mr Nicolas said that 1.2 million machines had been deployed so far and OLPC was contracted to supply a further 500,000. Each laptop ordered by Uruguay cost $209….

via BBC News – One Laptop per Child updates design for older pupils.

US experiment hints at ‘multiple God particles’

There may be multiple versions of the elusive “God particle” – or Higgs boson – according to a new study.

Finding the Higgs is the primary aim of the £6bn ($10bn) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment near Geneva.

But recent results from the LHC’s US rival suggest physicists could be hunting five particles, not one.

The data may point to new laws of physics beyond the current accepted theory – known as the Standard Model.

The Higgs boson’s nickname comes from its importance to the Standard Model; it is the sub-atomic particle which explains why all other particles have mass.

However, despite decades trying, no one, so far, has detected it.

The idea of multiple Higgs bosons is supported by results gathered by the DZero experiment at the Tevatron particle accelerator, operated by Fermilab in Illinois, US.

DZero is designed to shed light on why the world around us is composed of normal matter and not its shadowy opposite: anti-matter.

Researchers working on the experiment observed collisions of protons and anti-protons in the Tevatron.

The collisions produced pairs of matter particles slightly more often than they yielded anti-matter particles.

The results showed a 1% difference in the production of pairs of muon (matter) particles and pairs of anti-muons (anti-matter particles) in these high-energy collisions.

Physicists had already seen such differences – known as “CP violation”, but these effects were small compared to those seen by the DZero experiment.

The DZero results showed much more significant “asymmetry” of matter and anti-matter – beyond what could be explained by the Standard Model.

Bogdan Dobrescu, Adam Martin and Patrick J Fox from Fermilab say this large asymmetry effect can be accounted for by the existence of multiple Higgs bosons.

They say the data point to five Higgs bosons with similar masses but different electric charges.

Three would have a neutral charge and one each would have a negative and positive electric charge. This is known as the two-Higgs doublet model.

Dr Martin told BBC News that the two-Higgs doublet could explain the results seen by the DZero team whilst keeping much of the Standard Model intact.

“In models with an extra Higgs doublet, it’s easy to have large new physics effects like this DZero result,” he explained.

“What’s difficult is to have those large effects without damaging anything else that we have already measured.”

Dr Martin explained that there were other possible interpretations for the DZero result.

But he added: “The Standard Model fits just about every test we’ve thrown at it. To fit in a new effect in one particular place is not easy.”

Developed in the 1970s, the Standard Model incorporated all that was then known about the interactions of sub-atomic particles.

Stepping stone

But today, many physicists regard it as incomplete, a mere stepping stone to something else.

The Standard Model cannot explain the best known of the so-called four fundamental forces: gravity; and it describes only ordinary matter, not the dark matter which makes up some 25% of the Universe.

The Standard Model only has one Higgs “doublet”. Although we tend to think of the Higgs boson as one particle, it actually comes in a package of four, explained Dr Martin.

“In the Standard Model, you only see one of them becuase the other three are absorbed into [other parts of the scheme] such as the W and the Z bosons. There’s only one left,” he told BBC News.

“So if you want to add another Higgs doublet – you actually have to add four more particles.”

The two-Higgs doublet model also ties in with a theory in particle physics known as supersymmetry.

Supersymmetry represents an extension to the Standard Model, in which each particle in the scheme has a more massive “shadow” partner particle.

But so far, physicists have lacked experimental evidence for the existence of these more massive particles.

Evidence for the Higgs and for supersymmetry could be uncovered by the LHC, the world’s most powerful “atom smasher” which is housed 100m under the French-Swiss border.

The researchers have published the latest DZero study on the pre-print server arXiv.org; the results were reported by Symmetry magazine.

via BBC News – US experiment hints at ‘multiple God particles’.

Yes, of course, there would be the Christian God particle, the Buddhist God Particle, the Hindu God Particle, the Muslim God Particle, and so on. 

‘Much more water’ found in lunar rocks

The Moon might be much wetter than previously thought, a group of scientists has said. A US-led team analysed the mineral apatite in lunar rocks picked up by the Apollo space missions and in a lunar meteorite found in North Africa.

The scientists found that there was at least 100 times more water in the Moon’s minerals than they had previously believed.The new study has been published in the journal PNAS.This group is one of several different teams of researchers hunting for evidence of water on the Moon – and clues to how it got there.Lead author Francis McCubbin from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC told BBC News that the water content on the Moon ranges from 64 parts per billion to five parts per million.

“It would be about 2.5 times the volume of the Great Lakes,” he said.

“Or another way of looking at it – if you took all of the water that was locked up inside the rocks of the Moon and put them on the surface, it would make a metre-thick layer covering the Moon.

“The scientist explained that the Moon most probably formed after a Mars-sized space body collided with the young Earth, some 4.5 billion years ago.

The high-energy impact produced molten debris, which eventually cooled to form our planet’s only natural satellite.

Back then, he said, there was a magma ocean on the Moon. Magma contained water, which eventually erupted via “fire fountains” on to the lunar surface.

Most of this water evaporated during the volcanic activity – but some of it stayed, said Dr McCubbin.

“I like to use the analogy of someone who’s trying to make non-alcoholic beer. There’s always going to be some alcohol left,” he explained.

via BBC News – ‘Much more water’ found in lunar rocks.