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Go Ask ALICE: Learning About the Big Bang

By Guest PostDecember 15, 20101 commentSciencea lead ion collider experiment, alice, bang, big, big bang, CERN, european organization for nuclear research, galaxies, geneva, john harris, Large Hadron Collider, lhc, particle accelerator, particles, planets, soup, stars, switzerland, universe, yale

Nearly 14 billion years ago, the universe began with a bang — a big one.

Scientists believe that the universe and everything within it began as an extremely hot, dense “soup” that eventually gave rise to galaxies, stars, planets and life and that continues to expand to this day.

Now scientists around the world are pushing back the frontiers of our understanding about the moment the universe was born using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a giant particle accelerator at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) near Geneva, Switzerland. (more…)

What “Pine” Cones Reveal About the Evolution of Flowers

By Guest PostDecember 15, 20101 commentScienceafrica, angiosperms, arabidopsis, australia, avocado flowers, bees, bottlebrush, california poppy, conifers, cycads, doug soltis, floral organ, flowering plants, flowers, genetic fossils, genetic origin, gymnosperms, pine cone, pineapple lily, plant life, pollination agents, seed bearing plants, tepals, zamia, zamia furfuracea

*Research genetically traces flowers to a single common ancestor*

From southern Africa’s pineapple lily to Western Australia’s swamp bottlebrush, flowering plants are everywhere. Also called angiosperms, they make up 90 percent of all land-based, plant life.

New research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides new insights into their genetic origin, an evolutionary innovation that quickly gave rise to many diverse flowering plants more than 130 million years ago. Moreover, a flower with genetic programming similar to a water lily may have started it all. (more…)

Cassini Spots Potential Ice Volcano on Saturn Moon

By Guest PostDecember 15, 20101 commentScience3 d map, cassini, cassini huygens mission, cassini radar images, cassini spacecraft, cryovolcanoes, earth, enceladus, erupts, flagstaff, ice, ice volcanoes, Iceland, italy, jeffrey kargel, laki, molten rock, moon, mt etna, NASA, randolph kirk, saturn, solar system, sotra facula, subterranean geological activity, titan, topography, volcanic topography

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has found possible ice volcanoes on Saturn’s moon Titan that are similar in shape to those on Earth that spew molten rock.

Topography and surface composition data have enabled scientists to make the best case yet in the outer solar system for an Earth-like volcano landform that erupts in ice. The results were presented on December 14 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. (more…)

Atomic Weights of Ten Chemical Elements About to Change

By Guest PostDecember 14, 2010Scienceanalytical techniques, atomic weights, biological processes, boron, carbon, chemical, chemical elements, chlorine, elements, geological survey, hydrogen, isotopic abundances, isotopic measurements, iupac, lithium, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, stable isotope, sulfur, table of standard atomic weights, thallium, ty coplen

For the first time in history, a change will be made to the atomic weights of some elements listed on the Table of Standard Atomic Weights of the chemical elements found in the inside covers of chemistry textbooks worldwide.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry’s (IUPAC) Commission on Isotopic Abundances and Atomic Weights is publishing a new table that will express atomic weights of ten elements as intervals, rather than as single standard values. The new table is the result of cooperative research supported by the U.S. Geological Survey, IUPAC, and other contributing Commission members and institutions. (more…)

Saturn’s Rings Are Remnants of Massive Moon, Study Says

By PravdaDecember 13, 2010Sciencemoon, rings, saturn

Saturn’s rings. Image credit: NASA/JPL

A new study conducted by scientists at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has this week posited that Saturn’s rings are the remnants of a massive moon that once orbited Earth’s distant neighbour.

According to study author and astronomer Robin Canup, the moon plunged into Saturn around 4.5 billion years ago due to a giant ring of hydrogen gas responsible for creating rocky satellites but also for dragging larger moons out of orbit.

The scientific theory centres on the predominantly icy composition of Saturn’s rings, The Tech Herald reports. (more…)

WISE Sees an Explosion of Infrared Light

By Guest PostDecember 12, 20101 commentSciencecastor, constellation, dust, emitting light, eta geminorum, exploded star, gas, gas atoms, gemini, halo, ic 443 nebula, infrared light, infrared wavelengths, jet propulsion laboratory, massive stars, NASA, rainbow, shock waves, supernovae, wide field infrared survey explorer, wise, wise image

A circular rainbow appears like a halo around an exploded star in this new view of the IC 443 nebula from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

When massive stars die, they explode in tremendous blasts, called supernovae, which send out shock waves. The shock waves sweep up and heat surrounding gas and dust, creating supernova remnants like the one pictured here. The supernova in IC 443 happened somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago. (more…)

Tiny Protozoa May Hold Key to World Water Safety

By Guest PostDecember 11, 2010Environment, Sciencebarometers, better world, biologist, bob curtis, camera, car, climate change, department of defense, digital camera, dod, gasoline, groundbreaking technique, microscopic plankton, one celled protozoa, pesticides, plastic containers, protozoa, sbs, scott gallager, software, swimming behavioral spectrophotometer, Technology, toxins, underwater environment, wade mcgillis, water

Right now, it looks a little like one of those plastic containers you might fill with gasoline when your car has run dry. But Scott Gallager is not headed to the nearest Mobil station. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) biologist has other, grander plans for his revolutionary Swimming Behavioral Spectrophotometer (SBS), which employs one-celled protozoa to detect toxins in water sources.

Not only is he working on streamlining the boxy-looking contraption—eventually even evolving it into a computer chip—but he sees it as a tool to potentially “monitor all the drinking water in the world.

“It has a unique utility.” (more…)

Yale Scientists Find Molecular Glue Needed To Wire the Brain

By Guest PostDecember 11, 2010Sciencealzheimer, autism, brain cells, Germany, mental retardation, nerve pulses, neurological disorders, neuron, plasticity, puzzle, researchers, single molecule, synapses, synaptic plasticity, syncam 1, thomas biederer, valentin stein, ways to improve memory, yale university

Yale University researchers have found that a single molecule not only connects brain cells but also changes how we learn. The findings, reported in the December 9 issue of the journal Neuron, may help researchers discover ways to improve memory and could lead to new therapies to correct neurological disorders.

The junctions between brain cells over which nerve pulses pass — called synapses — are crucial for regulating learning and memory and how we think. Aberrations in the structure and function of synapses have been linked to mental retardation and autism, while synapses are lost in the aging brains of Alzheimer’s patients. (more…)

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