Tag Archives: mass

Coastal Antarctic Permafrost Melting Faster Than Expected

By Guest PostJuly 25, 2013Environmentandrew fountain, antarctic peninsula, Arctic, arctic like slump, austin, boston university, brown university, coastal antarctic, coastal arctic, david marchant, dry valleys contain, frozen water, garwood valley, ground ice, ice free islands, institute for geophysics, jaclyn watters, james dickson, james head, joseph levy, layers of sediment, lidar, marianne okal, mass, mcmurdo dry valleys, permafrost melting, phenomenon, present geologic epoch, retrogressive thaw slumps, ross sea, scientific reports, section of antarctica, tibet, university of texas, warming antarctic continent, weather station data

AUSTIN, Texas — For the first time, scientists have documented an acceleration in the melt rate of permafrost, or ground ice, in a section of Antarctica where the ice had been considered stable. The melt rates are comparable with the Arctic, where accelerated melting of permafrost has become a regularly recurring phenomenon, and the change could offer a preview of melting permafrost in other parts of a warming Antarctic continent.

Tracking data from Garwood Valley in the McMurdo Dry Valleys region of Antarctica, Joseph Levy, a research associate at The University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics, shows that melt rates accelerated consistently from 2001 to 2012, rising to about 10 times the valley’s historical average for the present geologic epoch, as documented in the July 24 edition of Scientific Reports. (more…)

Mussels Cramped by Environmental Factors

By Guest PostFebruary 22, 2013Environment, Natureautumn hurricanes, biodiversity, breed resistant, bungee cords, byssal threads, byssus, coast of washington, commercial growers, crabs, cramp, david garrison, emily carrington, environmental biologist, environmental factors, environmental fluctuation, fibrous threads, filaments, golden colored threads, hydrothermal vents, keystone species, laura newcomb, lobsters, marine food web, mass, mussel populations, mussels, Nature, ocean acidification, possible environmental culprits, rocky intertidal areas, science arena, sea anemones, seasonal weakening, spawning cycle, species, storms, stressor, typical summer temperatures, university of washington

The fibrous threads helping mussels stay anchored – in spite of waves that sometimes pound the shore with a force equivalent to a jet liner flying at 600 miles per hour – are more prone to snap when ocean temperatures climb higher than normal.

Emily Carrington, a University of Washington professor of biology, reported Saturday (Feb. 16) that the fibrous threads she calls “nature’s bungee cords” become 60 percent weaker in water that was 15 degrees F (7 C) above typical summer temperatures where the mussels were from. She spoke at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston. (more…)

Higgs Boson Discussion Launches UChicago Discovery Series

By Guest PostFebruary 20, 2013Education, Science17 miles, accelerator, aircraft, argonne physicist, atlas, calibrate, cern physics laboratory, circumference, critical mass, david logan center, detector, donald levy, elementary particles, fermi, gigantic machines, higgs boson, high energy physics, internet, Large Hadron Collider, lch, lightening arresters, louis block professor, marcela carena, mark oreglia, mass, national accelerator laboratory, particle, particle beams, patricia mcbride, physics, protocol for communicating, sterilize milk cartons, switzerland, theoretical physicists, time, tom lecompte, toroidal lhc apparatus, uchicago discovery series, universe, university of chicago, virtual audience, young kee kim

The long-sought Higgs boson—the particle that endows all elementary particles in the universe with mass—was elusive no longer when scientists at the CERN physics laboratory in Switzerland, discovered it last summer.

The July 4, 2012 announcement of the discovery appealed to both the general public and the media: Fifty-five media organizations and more than one billion television viewers made it an event that couldn’t be missed. Time even dubbed the Higgs boson “Particle of the Year.” (more…)

Secret of Scent Lies in Molecular Vibrations

By Guest PostFebruary 2, 2013General, Sciencealexander fleming, athens, atom, bonds, british chemist, bsrc, chemists, cyclopentadecanone, deuterium odorants, electron cloud, Greece, hydrogen atom, hydrogen musk molecules, inelastic electron tunnelling, lcn, luca turin, malcolm dyson, mass, molecular shape, molecular vibrations, nano scale changes, quantum mechanism, secret of scent, simon gane, spectroscope, ucl scientists, vibration of molecule

Molecular vibrations, rather than molecular shape, give substances their distinct smell according to a new study by UCL scientists.

In a study designed to find out how smell is written into a molecule’s structure, scientists tested whether changing how a molecule vibrates on a nano-scale changes its smell.

Molecules are made of atoms connected by bonds. The arrangement of bonds and atoms defines the vibration of the molecule. Chemists can therefore identify molecules by their vibrations, using a spectroscope. (more…)

Testing Einstein’s E=mc2 in Outer Space

By Guest PostJanuary 5, 2013Sciencealbert einstein, andrei lebed, atomic bomb, conceptual model, cornell university library, curvature, electron, energy, energy level, everything, explosion, galileo galilei, general relativity, gps navigation, gravitational field, gravitational mass, gravity, hydrogen atom, iconic equation, mass, motion, moving object, nucleus, object, paradigm in physics, principles in physics, proton, quantum mechanics, quantum objects, relativistic, Space, special relativity, speed of light, stockholm, theory, theory of gravitation, ua physicist, unifying theory, university of arizona

UA physicist Andrei Lebed has stirred the physics community with an intriguing idea yet to be tested experimentally: The world’s most iconic equation, Albert Einstein’s E=mc2, may be correct or not depending on where you are in space.

With the first explosions of atomic bombs, the world became witness to one of the most important and consequential principles in physics: Energy and mass, fundamentally speaking, are the same thing and can, in fact, be converted into each other.

This was first demonstrated by Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity and famously expressed in his iconic equation, E=mc2, where E stands for energy, m for mass and c for the speed of light (squared). (more…)

Bright Stars to Black Holes: UA Astronomer Awarded for Her Research

By Guest PostDecember 17, 2012Scienceabsorbs material, astronomy, astrophysical phenomena, black holes, cloud, collapsed stars, collision, dense remnants, energetic, feryal ozel, Galaxy, hydrogen gas, mass, nasa hubble fellow, neutron stars, neutrons, radiation, radio astronomers, radio telescopes, subatomic particles, sun, super, university of arizona

In addition to being selected as one of 50 scholars awarded fellowships each year at the prestigious Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the UA’s Feryal Ozel has won the 2013 American Physical Society’s Maria Goeppert Mayer Award for her cutting-edge research on neutron stars.

Feryal Ozel studies two things most people don’t think about everyday: neutron stars and black holes.

An associate professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, Ozel has won the 2013 American Physical Society’s Maria Goeppert Mayer Award for her work on neutron stars and her dedication to public outreach and education in science and astronomy. In addition, this year she is completing a prestigious fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. Ozel came to the UA in 2003 as a NASA Hubble fellow and began a faculty position in 2005. (more…)

Texas Astronomers Measure Most Massive, Most Unusual Black Hole Using Hobby-Eberly Telescope

By Guest PostNovember 29, 2012Scienceastronomer, austin, bosch, constellation perseus, elliptical, Galaxy, galaxy mass, het data, hobby eberly telescope, karl gebhardt, lenticular galaxy, mass, massive black hole, massive galaxy survey, mcdonald observatory, Milky Way, neptune, ngc 1277, oddball galaxy, pennsylvania state university, remco, sun mass, texas, university, van den

FORT DAVIS, Texas — Astronomers have used the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory to measure the mass of what may be the most massive black hole yet — 17 billion times our sun’s mass — in galaxy NGC 1277. The unusual black hole makes up 14 percent of its galaxy’s mass, rather than the usual 0.1 percent. This galaxy and several more in the same study could change theories about how black holes and galaxies form and evolve. The work will appear in the journal Nature on Nov. 29.

NGC 1277 lies 220 million light-years away in the constellation Perseus. The galaxy is only 10 percent the size and mass of our Milky Way. Despite NGC 1277’s diminutive size, the black hole at its heart is more than 11 times as wide as Neptune’s orbit around the sun. (more…)

Nearby Super-Earth Likely a Diamond Planet

By Guest PostOctober 11, 2012Science55 cancri e, atmosphere, cancer, carbon, carbon rich, chemistry, compound, constellation, core, david spergel, Diamond, diamond planet, earth, earth mass, element, fahrenheit, formation, gas planet, graphite, habitable world, hyper speed, interior, kanani lee, mass, mineral, molten iron, mountain formation, nikku madhusudhan, olivier mousis, oxygen, planet, plate tectonics, princeton university, radius, rocky planet, scientist, seismic activity, silicates, silicon carbide, size, specific characteristics, star, stellar composition, super earth, surface, temperature, thermal evolution, volcanism, water, yale university

New research led by Yale University scientists suggests that a rocky planet twice Earth’s size orbiting a nearby star is a diamond planet.

“This is our first glimpse of a rocky world with a fundamentally different chemistry from Earth,” said lead researcher Nikku Madhusudhan, a Yale postdoctoral researcher in physics and astronomy. “The surface of this planet is likely covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and granite.”

The paper reporting the findings has been accepted for publication in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters. (more…)