Eager for this year to end? Bad news: you'll have to wait an extra second for 2009. On December 31, the planet's official timekeepers will add a “leap second” to the coordinated universal time scale (UTC) followed around the world. The additional second makes up for the difference in two clocks – one based on Earth’s rotation and the other on the more precise atomic time of the UTC.
In the U.S., the extra second will be added by the U.S. Naval Observatory at 6:59:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (11:59:59 p.m. Universal time). It will be the 24th “leap second” tacked on to the universal time scale since 1972.
Universal time is based on atomic energy, with one second defined as the length of 9,192,631,770 energy transitions of the cesium atom. Before the era of atomic time, seconds were based on the speed of Earth’s rotation – but that’s been slowing by 2 milliseconds per day per century because of tidal friction.
To keep the time scales within 0.9 seconds of each other, the International Earth Rotation Reference Systems Service, which tracks the differences between the clocks, periodically inserts or subtracts a second to Universal time. The last one was added on New Year’s Eve three years ago.
The “leap second” is different from “leap year,” which occurs every four years on February 29. Leap years are based on the fact that it takes Earth 365 days plus six hours to completely circle the sun, according to Reuters.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Thanksgiving sky: Jupiter, Venus, moon together
WASHINGTON – It's not just families that are getting together this Thanksgiving week. The three brightest objects in the night sky — Venus, Jupiter and a crescent moon — will crowd around each other for an unusual group shot.
Starting Thanksgiving evening, Jupiter and Venus will begin moving closer so that by Sunday and Monday, they will appear 2 degrees apart, which is about a finger width held out at arm's length, said Alan MacRobert, senior editor at Sky and Telescope magazine. Then on Monday night, they will be joined by a crescent moon right next to them, he said.
Look in the southwestern sky around twilight — no telescope or binoculars needed. The show will even be visible in cities if it's a clear night.
"It'll be a head-turner," MacRobert said. "This certainly is an unusual coincidence for the crescent moon to be right there in the days when they are going to be closest together."
The moon is the brightest, closest and smallest of the three and is 252,000 miles away. Venus, the second brightest, closest and smallest, is 94 million miles away. And big Jupiter is 540 million miles away.
The three celestial objects come together from time to time, but often they are too close to the sun or unite at a time when they aren't so visible. The next time the three will be as close and visible as this week will be Nov. 18, 2052, according to Jack Horkheimer, director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium.
But if you are willing to settle for two out of three — Venus and the crescent moon only — it will happen again on New Year's Eve, MacRobert said.
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – Tue Nov 25, 4:21 pm ET
Starting Thanksgiving evening, Jupiter and Venus will begin moving closer so that by Sunday and Monday, they will appear 2 degrees apart, which is about a finger width held out at arm's length, said Alan MacRobert, senior editor at Sky and Telescope magazine. Then on Monday night, they will be joined by a crescent moon right next to them, he said.
Look in the southwestern sky around twilight — no telescope or binoculars needed. The show will even be visible in cities if it's a clear night.
"It'll be a head-turner," MacRobert said. "This certainly is an unusual coincidence for the crescent moon to be right there in the days when they are going to be closest together."
The moon is the brightest, closest and smallest of the three and is 252,000 miles away. Venus, the second brightest, closest and smallest, is 94 million miles away. And big Jupiter is 540 million miles away.
The three celestial objects come together from time to time, but often they are too close to the sun or unite at a time when they aren't so visible. The next time the three will be as close and visible as this week will be Nov. 18, 2052, according to Jack Horkheimer, director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium.
But if you are willing to settle for two out of three — Venus and the crescent moon only — it will happen again on New Year's Eve, MacRobert said.
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – Tue Nov 25, 4:21 pm ET
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Cave bears killed by Ice Age, not hunters: study
OSLO (Reuters) - Giant cave bears froze to death during the last Ice Age in Europe about 28,000 years ago, according to a study on Wednesday that cleared human hunters of driving them to extinction thousands of years later.
The largely vegetarian bears, weighing up to a tonne and bigger than modern polar bears or Kodiak bears, apparently died off as a sharp cooling of the climate led to a freeze that killed off the fruits, nuts and plants they ate.
The bears vanished 27,800 years ago, or about 13,000 years earlier than previously believed, the scientists in Austria and Britain said in a study of bear remains using radiocarbon dating including at hibernation sites in the Alps.
"There is little convincing evidence so far of human involvement in extinction of the cave bear," they wrote in the journal Boreas. Some past reports have suggested that the cave bears' demise was linked to over-hunting.
Cave bears ranged from what is now Spain to the Ural Mountains, and were one of several large creatures -- such as the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, giant deer and cave lion -- to vanish during the Ice Age that ended 10,000 years ago.
"Our work shows that the cave bear ... was one of the earliest to disappear," Martina Pacher, one of the co-authors at the University of Vienna, said in a statement.
"Other, later extinctions happened at different times within the last 15,000 years," she said. Previous studies had errors in dating samples and sometimes confused remains of cave bears with those of brown bears, which still survive.
"A fundamental question to be answered by future research is: why did the brown bear survive to the present day, while the cave bear did not?" said Anthony Stuart, the other author at the Natural History Museum in London.
Answers might involve differing diets, hibernation habits, geographical ranges, habitat and perhaps hunting by people, he said
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
The largely vegetarian bears, weighing up to a tonne and bigger than modern polar bears or Kodiak bears, apparently died off as a sharp cooling of the climate led to a freeze that killed off the fruits, nuts and plants they ate.
The bears vanished 27,800 years ago, or about 13,000 years earlier than previously believed, the scientists in Austria and Britain said in a study of bear remains using radiocarbon dating including at hibernation sites in the Alps.
"There is little convincing evidence so far of human involvement in extinction of the cave bear," they wrote in the journal Boreas. Some past reports have suggested that the cave bears' demise was linked to over-hunting.
Cave bears ranged from what is now Spain to the Ural Mountains, and were one of several large creatures -- such as the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, giant deer and cave lion -- to vanish during the Ice Age that ended 10,000 years ago.
"Our work shows that the cave bear ... was one of the earliest to disappear," Martina Pacher, one of the co-authors at the University of Vienna, said in a statement.
"Other, later extinctions happened at different times within the last 15,000 years," she said. Previous studies had errors in dating samples and sometimes confused remains of cave bears with those of brown bears, which still survive.
"A fundamental question to be answered by future research is: why did the brown bear survive to the present day, while the cave bear did not?" said Anthony Stuart, the other author at the Natural History Museum in London.
Answers might involve differing diets, hibernation habits, geographical ranges, habitat and perhaps hunting by people, he said
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Scientists Say Copernicus' Remains, Grave Found
Researchers said Thursday they have identified the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus by comparing DNA from a skeleton and hair retrieved from one of the 16th-century astronomer's books. The findings could put an end to centuries of speculation about the exact resting spot of Copernicus, a priest and astronomer whose theories identified the Sun, not the Earth, as the center of the universe.
Polish archaeologist Jerzy Gassowski told a news conference that forensic facial reconstruction of the skull, missing the lower jaw, his team found in 2005 buried in a Roman Catholic Cathedral in Frombork, Poland, bears striking resemblance to existing portraits of Copernicus.
The reconstruction shows a broken nose and other features that resemble a self-portrait of Copernicus, and the skull bears a cut mark above the left eye that corresponds with a scar shown in the painting.
Moreover, the skull belonged to a man aged around 70 — Copernicus's age when he died in 1543.
"In our opinion, our work led us to the discovery of Copernicus's remains but a grain of doubt remained," Gassowski said.
So, in the next stage, Swedish genetics expert Marie Allen analyzed DNA from a vertebrae, a tooth and femur bone and matched and compared it to that taken from two hairs retrieved from a book that the 16th-century Polish astronomer owned, which is kept at a library of Sweden's Uppsala University where Allen works.
"We collected four hairs and two of them are from the same individual as the bones," Allen said.
Gassowski is head of the Archaeology and Anthropology Institute in Pultusk, in central Poland, and Allen works at the Rudbeck Laboratory of the Genetics and Pathology Department of Uppsala University.
Copernicus was known to have been buried in the 14th-century Frombork Cathedral where he served as a canon, but his grave was not marked. The bones found by Gassowski were located under floor tiles near one of the side altars.
Gassowski's team started his search in 2004, on request from regional Catholic bishop, Jacek Jezierski.
"In the two years of work, under extremely difficult conditions — amid thousands of visitors, with earth shifting under the heavy pounding of the organ music — we managed to locate the grave, which was badly damaged," Gassowski said.
Copernicus is believed to have come up with his main idea of the Sun at the center of the universe between 1508 and 1514, and during those years wrote a manuscript commonly known as Commentariolus (Little Commentary).
His final thesis was only published, however, in the year of his death. His ideas challenged the Bible, the church and past theories, and they had important consequences for future thinkers, including Galileo, Descartes and Newton.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA Associated Press Writer
WARSAW, Poland November 20, 2008
Polish, Swedish scientists say they have identified Copernicus' remains, grave
Polish archaeologist Jerzy Gassowski told a news conference that forensic facial reconstruction of the skull, missing the lower jaw, his team found in 2005 buried in a Roman Catholic Cathedral in Frombork, Poland, bears striking resemblance to existing portraits of Copernicus.
The reconstruction shows a broken nose and other features that resemble a self-portrait of Copernicus, and the skull bears a cut mark above the left eye that corresponds with a scar shown in the painting.
Moreover, the skull belonged to a man aged around 70 — Copernicus's age when he died in 1543.
"In our opinion, our work led us to the discovery of Copernicus's remains but a grain of doubt remained," Gassowski said.
So, in the next stage, Swedish genetics expert Marie Allen analyzed DNA from a vertebrae, a tooth and femur bone and matched and compared it to that taken from two hairs retrieved from a book that the 16th-century Polish astronomer owned, which is kept at a library of Sweden's Uppsala University where Allen works.
"We collected four hairs and two of them are from the same individual as the bones," Allen said.
Gassowski is head of the Archaeology and Anthropology Institute in Pultusk, in central Poland, and Allen works at the Rudbeck Laboratory of the Genetics and Pathology Department of Uppsala University.
Copernicus was known to have been buried in the 14th-century Frombork Cathedral where he served as a canon, but his grave was not marked. The bones found by Gassowski were located under floor tiles near one of the side altars.
Gassowski's team started his search in 2004, on request from regional Catholic bishop, Jacek Jezierski.
"In the two years of work, under extremely difficult conditions — amid thousands of visitors, with earth shifting under the heavy pounding of the organ music — we managed to locate the grave, which was badly damaged," Gassowski said.
Copernicus is believed to have come up with his main idea of the Sun at the center of the universe between 1508 and 1514, and during those years wrote a manuscript commonly known as Commentariolus (Little Commentary).
His final thesis was only published, however, in the year of his death. His ideas challenged the Bible, the church and past theories, and they had important consequences for future thinkers, including Galileo, Descartes and Newton.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA Associated Press Writer
WARSAW, Poland November 20, 2008
Polish, Swedish scientists say they have identified Copernicus' remains, grave
Friday, November 14, 2008
First Extrasolar Planets Caught On Camera
Morning Edition, November 14, 2008 · Astronomers are getting their first real glimpses of planets in orbit around distant stars.
Over the past decade, more than 300 otherworldly worlds have been detected indirectly — typically their gravitational pull makes their host-stars wobble and astronomers can pick up that wobble. But the most recent planet discoveries are actual photo-ops.
For the first time, scientists have produced images of multiple planets orbiting a star other than our own sun. There have been three reports in the past two months purporting to show images of planets in solar systems around nearby stars.
Science Express published two of the new finds online Thursday. One involves a planet that appears to be orbiting just inside a giant ring of gas that encircles a star known as Fomalhaut, a mere 25 light-years from Earth. Paul Kalas of the University of California, Berkeley, suspects the planet is shepherding the star's massive gas ring and keeping it organized, much the way "shepherd moons" circle the rings of Saturn and keep them tidy.
The planet, dubbed Fomalhaut b, is a gas giant that is much bigger than Jupiter and apparently is surrounded by rings of its own. It's more than 100 times farther from its star than Earth is from the sun.
Meanwhile, an international team of astronomers say they've seen not just a single planet, but a small solar system around a star called HR 8799 (The name might sound like a personnel form, because astronomers sometimes can't decide whether to be scientific or romantic.)
These three planets in this system also appear to be gas giants, and all are at least five times bigger than Jupiter. Their orbits aren't too different from the orbits of our own outermost planets. And that makes this solar system somewhat like our own — though the star and its planets are much younger than our 5 billion-year-old solar system.
"Not only is it exciting just because we have pictures for the first time, but also because these pictures are revealing an entirely new population of planets that were not accessible to the previously used method for planet detection," says Ray Jayawardhana, an astronomer at the University of Toronto. He was part of a team that in September announced yet another image of what it claims is a planet at a nearby star.
But astronomers have not found what they would dearly like to see: an earth-like planet around a sun-like star.
"That's a little ways away, I'm afraid," Jayawardhana says.
We'll probably have to wait for the space telescope that will replace Hubble sometime in the coming decade.
Over the past decade, more than 300 otherworldly worlds have been detected indirectly — typically their gravitational pull makes their host-stars wobble and astronomers can pick up that wobble. But the most recent planet discoveries are actual photo-ops.
For the first time, scientists have produced images of multiple planets orbiting a star other than our own sun. There have been three reports in the past two months purporting to show images of planets in solar systems around nearby stars.
Science Express published two of the new finds online Thursday. One involves a planet that appears to be orbiting just inside a giant ring of gas that encircles a star known as Fomalhaut, a mere 25 light-years from Earth. Paul Kalas of the University of California, Berkeley, suspects the planet is shepherding the star's massive gas ring and keeping it organized, much the way "shepherd moons" circle the rings of Saturn and keep them tidy.
The planet, dubbed Fomalhaut b, is a gas giant that is much bigger than Jupiter and apparently is surrounded by rings of its own. It's more than 100 times farther from its star than Earth is from the sun.
Meanwhile, an international team of astronomers say they've seen not just a single planet, but a small solar system around a star called HR 8799 (The name might sound like a personnel form, because astronomers sometimes can't decide whether to be scientific or romantic.)
These three planets in this system also appear to be gas giants, and all are at least five times bigger than Jupiter. Their orbits aren't too different from the orbits of our own outermost planets. And that makes this solar system somewhat like our own — though the star and its planets are much younger than our 5 billion-year-old solar system.
"Not only is it exciting just because we have pictures for the first time, but also because these pictures are revealing an entirely new population of planets that were not accessible to the previously used method for planet detection," says Ray Jayawardhana, an astronomer at the University of Toronto. He was part of a team that in September announced yet another image of what it claims is a planet at a nearby star.
But astronomers have not found what they would dearly like to see: an earth-like planet around a sun-like star.
"That's a little ways away, I'm afraid," Jayawardhana says.
We'll probably have to wait for the space telescope that will replace Hubble sometime in the coming decade.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Space station trash plunging to Earth
A piece of space station trash the size of a refrigerator is poised to plunge through the Earth's atmosphere late Sunday, more than a year after an astronaut tossed it overboard.
NASA and the U.S. Space Surveillance Network are tracking the object — a 1,400-pound (635-kilogram) tank of toxic ammonia coolant thrown from the international space station — to make sure it does not endanger people on Earth. Exactly where the tank will inevitably fall is currently unknown, though it is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere Sunday afternoon or later that evening, NASA officials said.
"This has got a very low likelihood that anybody will be impacted by it," said Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager, in an interview. "But still, it is a large object and pieces will enter and we just need to be cautious."
NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson threw the ammonia tank from the tip of the space station's Canadian-built robotic arm during a July 23, 2007, spacewalk. He tossed away an unneeded video camera stand overboard as well, but that 212-pound (96-kilogram) item burned up harmlessly in the atmosphere early this year, Suffredini said.
NASA expects up to 15 pieces of the tank to survive the searing hot temperatures of re-entry, ranging in size from about 1.4 ounces (40 grams) to nearly 40 pounds (17.5 kilograms).
If they reach all the way to land, the largest pieces could slam into the Earth's surface at about 100 mph (161 kilometers per hour). But a splashdown at sea is also possible, as the planet is two-thirds ocean.
"If anybody found a piece of anything on the ground Monday morning, I would hope they wouldn't get too close to it," Suffredini said.
Known as the Early Ammonia Servicer, or EAS, the coolant tank is the largest piece of orbital trash ever tossed overboard by hand from the space station. Larger unmanned Russian and European cargo ships are routinely destroyed in the Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean after their space station deliveries, but those disposals are controlled and preplanned.
The recent destruction of the European Space Agency's Jules Verne cargo ship was eagerly observed by scientists hoping to glean new information on how objects behave as they enter Earth's atmosphere. Observers aboard two chase planes caught photographs and video of the double-decker bus-sized spacecraft's demise, but no such campaign is possible with the returning ammonia tank.
The last object to re-enter Earth's atmosphere with prior notice was a small asteroid the size of a kitchen table that exploded in midair as it flew over Africa on Oct. 7.
It's taken more than year for the ammonia tank to slowly slip down toward Earth due to atmospheric drag. During its time aboard the station, the tank served as a coolant reservoir to boost the outpost's cooling system in the event of leaks. Upgrades to the station last year made the tank obsolete, and engineers were concerned that its structural integrity would not withstand a ride back to Earth aboard a NASA space shuttle.
Instead, they tossed it overboard, or "jettisoned" it in NASA parlance.
Suffredini said that while astronauts have accidentally lost a tool or two during spacewalks, the planned jettison of larger items is done with the utmost care to ensure the trash doesn't hit the station or any other spacecraft as it circles the Earth. Engineers also make sure the risk to people on Earth is low, as well.
"As a matter of course, we don't throw things overboard haphazardly," Suffredini said. "We have a policy that has certain criteria we have to meet before you can throw something overboard."
In the event the tank re-enters over land, NASA advised members of the public to contact their local authorities, or the U.S. Department of State via diplomatic channels if outside the U.S., if they believe they've found its remains.
© 2007 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com
Tank of toxic ammonia coolant thrown from station more than a year ago
By Tariq Malik
Senior editor
NASA and the U.S. Space Surveillance Network are tracking the object — a 1,400-pound (635-kilogram) tank of toxic ammonia coolant thrown from the international space station — to make sure it does not endanger people on Earth. Exactly where the tank will inevitably fall is currently unknown, though it is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere Sunday afternoon or later that evening, NASA officials said.
"This has got a very low likelihood that anybody will be impacted by it," said Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager, in an interview. "But still, it is a large object and pieces will enter and we just need to be cautious."
NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson threw the ammonia tank from the tip of the space station's Canadian-built robotic arm during a July 23, 2007, spacewalk. He tossed away an unneeded video camera stand overboard as well, but that 212-pound (96-kilogram) item burned up harmlessly in the atmosphere early this year, Suffredini said.
NASA expects up to 15 pieces of the tank to survive the searing hot temperatures of re-entry, ranging in size from about 1.4 ounces (40 grams) to nearly 40 pounds (17.5 kilograms).
If they reach all the way to land, the largest pieces could slam into the Earth's surface at about 100 mph (161 kilometers per hour). But a splashdown at sea is also possible, as the planet is two-thirds ocean.
"If anybody found a piece of anything on the ground Monday morning, I would hope they wouldn't get too close to it," Suffredini said.
Known as the Early Ammonia Servicer, or EAS, the coolant tank is the largest piece of orbital trash ever tossed overboard by hand from the space station. Larger unmanned Russian and European cargo ships are routinely destroyed in the Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean after their space station deliveries, but those disposals are controlled and preplanned.
The recent destruction of the European Space Agency's Jules Verne cargo ship was eagerly observed by scientists hoping to glean new information on how objects behave as they enter Earth's atmosphere. Observers aboard two chase planes caught photographs and video of the double-decker bus-sized spacecraft's demise, but no such campaign is possible with the returning ammonia tank.
The last object to re-enter Earth's atmosphere with prior notice was a small asteroid the size of a kitchen table that exploded in midair as it flew over Africa on Oct. 7.
It's taken more than year for the ammonia tank to slowly slip down toward Earth due to atmospheric drag. During its time aboard the station, the tank served as a coolant reservoir to boost the outpost's cooling system in the event of leaks. Upgrades to the station last year made the tank obsolete, and engineers were concerned that its structural integrity would not withstand a ride back to Earth aboard a NASA space shuttle.
Instead, they tossed it overboard, or "jettisoned" it in NASA parlance.
Suffredini said that while astronauts have accidentally lost a tool or two during spacewalks, the planned jettison of larger items is done with the utmost care to ensure the trash doesn't hit the station or any other spacecraft as it circles the Earth. Engineers also make sure the risk to people on Earth is low, as well.
"As a matter of course, we don't throw things overboard haphazardly," Suffredini said. "We have a policy that has certain criteria we have to meet before you can throw something overboard."
In the event the tank re-enters over land, NASA advised members of the public to contact their local authorities, or the U.S. Department of State via diplomatic channels if outside the U.S., if they believe they've found its remains.
© 2007 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com
Tank of toxic ammonia coolant thrown from station more than a year ago
By Tariq Malik
Senior editor
Space Litter To Hit Earth Tomorrow
A refrigerator-sized tank of toxic ammonia, tossed from the international space station last year, is expected to hit earth tomorrow afternoon or evening. The 1,400-pound object was deliberately jettisoned — by hand — from the ISS's robot arm in July 2007. Since the time of re-entry is uncertain, so is the location.
"NASA expects up to 15 pieces of the tank to survive the searing hot temperatures of re-entry, ranging in size from about 1.4 ounces (40 grams) to nearly 40 pounds (17.5 kilograms). ... [T]he largest pieces could slam into the Earth's surface at about 100 mph (161 kph). ...'If anybody found a piece of anything on the ground Monday morning, I would hope they wouldn't get too close to it,' [a NASA spokesman] said."
Posted by kdawson on Saturday November 01, @05:39PM
from the leave-only-memories-take-only-footprints dept
"NASA expects up to 15 pieces of the tank to survive the searing hot temperatures of re-entry, ranging in size from about 1.4 ounces (40 grams) to nearly 40 pounds (17.5 kilograms). ... [T]he largest pieces could slam into the Earth's surface at about 100 mph (161 kph). ...'If anybody found a piece of anything on the ground Monday morning, I would hope they wouldn't get too close to it,' [a NASA spokesman] said."
Posted by kdawson on Saturday November 01, @05:39PM
from the leave-only-memories-take-only-footprints dept
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
NASA probe shows Mercury more dynamic than thought
WASHINGTON – Earth's first nearly full look at Mercury reveals that the tiny lifeless planet took a far greater role in shaping itself than was thought, with volcanoes spewing "mysterious dark blue material."
New images from NASA's Messenger space probe should help settle a decades-old debate about what caused parts of Mercury to be somewhat smoother than it should be. NASA released photos Wednesday, from Messenger's fly-by earlier this month, that gave the answer: Lots of volcanic activity, far more than signs from an earlier probe.
Astronomers used to dismiss Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, as mere "dead rock," little more than a target for cosmic collisions that shaped it, said MIT planetary scientist Maria Zuber.
"Now, it's looking a lot more interesting," said Zuber, who has experiments on the Messenger probe. "It's an awful lot of volcanic material."
New images of filled-in craters — one the size of the Baltimore-Washington area and filled in with more than a mile deep of cooled lava — show that 3.8 to 4 billion years ago, Mercury was more of a volcanic hotspot than the moon ever was, Zuber said.
But it isn't just filled-in craters. Using special cameras, the probe showed what one scientist called "the mysterious dark blue material." It was all over the planet. That led Arizona State University geologist Mark Robinson to speculate that the mineral is important but still unknown stuff ejected from Mercury's large core in the volcanic eruptions.
That material was seen with NASA's first partial view of Mercury by Mariner 10 in the 1970s. It was spotted again in Messenger's first images of Mercury's unseen side earlier this year. The latest Messenger images, added to earlier photos show about 95 percent of the planet, and the blue stuff was in many places, more than astronomers had anticipated.
Although Robinson described the material as "dark blue," it only looks that way to special infrared cameras. In normal visible light, it would have "a soft blue tinge and it would be less red" than the rest of Mercury, he said.
It's too early to tell what that material is, but it may have iron in it, Robinson said. That would be a surprise because Mariner 10 didn't find much iron, he said
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – 2 hrs 39 mins ago
New images from NASA's Messenger space probe should help settle a decades-old debate about what caused parts of Mercury to be somewhat smoother than it should be. NASA released photos Wednesday, from Messenger's fly-by earlier this month, that gave the answer: Lots of volcanic activity, far more than signs from an earlier probe.
Astronomers used to dismiss Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, as mere "dead rock," little more than a target for cosmic collisions that shaped it, said MIT planetary scientist Maria Zuber.
"Now, it's looking a lot more interesting," said Zuber, who has experiments on the Messenger probe. "It's an awful lot of volcanic material."
New images of filled-in craters — one the size of the Baltimore-Washington area and filled in with more than a mile deep of cooled lava — show that 3.8 to 4 billion years ago, Mercury was more of a volcanic hotspot than the moon ever was, Zuber said.
But it isn't just filled-in craters. Using special cameras, the probe showed what one scientist called "the mysterious dark blue material." It was all over the planet. That led Arizona State University geologist Mark Robinson to speculate that the mineral is important but still unknown stuff ejected from Mercury's large core in the volcanic eruptions.
That material was seen with NASA's first partial view of Mercury by Mariner 10 in the 1970s. It was spotted again in Messenger's first images of Mercury's unseen side earlier this year. The latest Messenger images, added to earlier photos show about 95 percent of the planet, and the blue stuff was in many places, more than astronomers had anticipated.
Although Robinson described the material as "dark blue," it only looks that way to special infrared cameras. In normal visible light, it would have "a soft blue tinge and it would be less red" than the rest of Mercury, he said.
It's too early to tell what that material is, but it may have iron in it, Robinson said. That would be a surprise because Mariner 10 didn't find much iron, he said
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – 2 hrs 39 mins ago
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
India launches unmanned moon mission
SRIHARIKOTA, India, Oct 22 - India launched its first unmanned moon mission on Wednesday following in the footsteps of rival China, as the emerging Asian power celebrated its space ambitions and scientific prowess.
Chandrayaan-1 (Moon vehicle), a cuboid spacecraft built by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) blasted off from a southern Indian space centre shortly after dawn in a boost for the country’s ambitions to gain more global space business.
Chinese astronauts were feted as national heroes last month after their country’s first space walk, and India did not want to be left behind.
”What we have started is a remarkable journey,” G. Madhavan Nair, chairman of ISRO, told reporters.
India’s national television channels broadcast the event live. Some scientists thumped their chests, hugged each other and clapped as the rocket shot up into space.
Greeted with patriotism in the media, the launch appeared to have helped India regain its self-confidence, which has taken a beating in recent weeks amid signs of an economic slowdown as well as international criticism over Hindu attacks on Christians. Perhaps remarkably in a country where hundreds of millions of people still live in desperate poverty and millions of children remain malnourished, the cost of the moon mission has scarcely been questioned.
”Destination Moon ... Historic Day For India” blazed one TV channel on its screen.
Barring any technical failure, the spacecraft will reach the lunar orbit and spend two years scanning the moon for any evidence of water and precious metals.
A gadget called the Moon Impactor Probe will detach and land on the moon to kick up some dust, while instruments in the craft analyse the particles, ISRO says.
A principal objective is to look for Helium 3, an isotope which is very rare on earth but is sought to power nuclear fusion and could be a valuable source of energy in the future, some scientists believe.
It is thought to be more plentiful on the moon, but still rare and very difficult to extract.
The project cost $79m, considerably less than the Chinese and Japanese probes in 2007 and ISRO says the moon mission will pave the way for India to claim a bigger chunk of the global space business.
The mission is also expected to carry out a detailed survey of the moon to look for precious metals and water.
For many Indians, the launch is another notch in India’s ambitions to be a global player. India recently signed a civil nuclear deal with the United States, effectively making it a defacto nuclear power.
In April India sent 10 satellites into orbit from a single rocket, and ISRO says it is planning more launches before a proposed manned mission to space and then onto Mars in four years time.
ISRO is collaborating with a number of countries, including Israel on a project to carry an ultra-violet telescope in an Indian satellite within a year.
It is also building a tropical weather satellite with France, collaborating with Japan on a project to improve disaster management from space, and developing a heavy lift satellite launcher, which it hopes to use to launch heavier satellites by 2010.
India has launched 10 remote sensing satellites since 1998, has several broadcast satellites in space to control 170 transponders and has also launched light-weight satellites for Belgium, Germany, Korea, Japan and France.
Chandrayaan-1 (Moon vehicle), a cuboid spacecraft built by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) blasted off from a southern Indian space centre shortly after dawn in a boost for the country’s ambitions to gain more global space business.
Chinese astronauts were feted as national heroes last month after their country’s first space walk, and India did not want to be left behind.
”What we have started is a remarkable journey,” G. Madhavan Nair, chairman of ISRO, told reporters.
India’s national television channels broadcast the event live. Some scientists thumped their chests, hugged each other and clapped as the rocket shot up into space.
Greeted with patriotism in the media, the launch appeared to have helped India regain its self-confidence, which has taken a beating in recent weeks amid signs of an economic slowdown as well as international criticism over Hindu attacks on Christians. Perhaps remarkably in a country where hundreds of millions of people still live in desperate poverty and millions of children remain malnourished, the cost of the moon mission has scarcely been questioned.
”Destination Moon ... Historic Day For India” blazed one TV channel on its screen.
Barring any technical failure, the spacecraft will reach the lunar orbit and spend two years scanning the moon for any evidence of water and precious metals.
A gadget called the Moon Impactor Probe will detach and land on the moon to kick up some dust, while instruments in the craft analyse the particles, ISRO says.
A principal objective is to look for Helium 3, an isotope which is very rare on earth but is sought to power nuclear fusion and could be a valuable source of energy in the future, some scientists believe.
It is thought to be more plentiful on the moon, but still rare and very difficult to extract.
The project cost $79m, considerably less than the Chinese and Japanese probes in 2007 and ISRO says the moon mission will pave the way for India to claim a bigger chunk of the global space business.
The mission is also expected to carry out a detailed survey of the moon to look for precious metals and water.
For many Indians, the launch is another notch in India’s ambitions to be a global player. India recently signed a civil nuclear deal with the United States, effectively making it a defacto nuclear power.
In April India sent 10 satellites into orbit from a single rocket, and ISRO says it is planning more launches before a proposed manned mission to space and then onto Mars in four years time.
ISRO is collaborating with a number of countries, including Israel on a project to carry an ultra-violet telescope in an Indian satellite within a year.
It is also building a tropical weather satellite with France, collaborating with Japan on a project to improve disaster management from space, and developing a heavy lift satellite launcher, which it hopes to use to launch heavier satellites by 2010.
India has launched 10 remote sensing satellites since 1998, has several broadcast satellites in space to control 170 transponders and has also launched light-weight satellites for Belgium, Germany, Korea, Japan and France.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Finland's Martti Ahtisaari Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Morning Edition, October 10, 2008 · The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Friday that Finland's former president Martti Ahtisaari has won the Nobel Peace Prize. He was cited for his long career of peace mediation work including a 2005 accord between Indonesia and rebels in its Aceh province.
by Rob Gifford and Renee Montagne
by Rob Gifford and Renee Montagne
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Nobel Panel Decides Against U.S. HIV Discovery
All Things Considered, October 6, 2008 · This year's Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine recognizes two landmarks in the history of viral diseases. Two French researchers won for discovering the virus that causes AIDS. And a German scientist got the prize for showing that human papilloma viruses cause most cases of cervical cancer. The scientists will split the $1.4 million prize.
This year's medical Nobel ends decades of speculation about who would win the everlasting credit for discovering HIV — the deadliest virus of our time.
The surprise is not that French researchers Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier won the Nobel, but that American Robert Gallo did not share in it. Throughout most of the 1980s, the American and French researchers fought bitterly over who deserved the credit. Eventually, President Ronald Reagan and French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac signed a declaration that they were co-discoverers.
Today Gallo directs the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland. Its Web site identifies him as the co-discoverer of HIV. But the Nobel committee said no, the French got there first.
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health said that's the way the scientific cookie crumbles.
"When the Nobel committee looks at it, they look and they say, 'First observation, 1983.' Boom, that's it," Fauci said. "I respect that. It's just too bad, because Bob's contribution was very important. But there's a limited number of people that can get the prize."
The rules say only three people can share a Nobel. And the Nobel committee chose to split the award this year between the HIV and papilloma virus discoveries rather than include Gallo in a singular HIV prize.
Fauci says that while the French were first to isolate the virus, Gallo did a lot of the work that proved it causes AIDS.
"The actual intellectual link between the virus and HIV as the cause of AIDS was really very much slam-dunk in the series of papers in 1984 by Gallo's group" in the journal Science, Fauci said.
Today, Gallo told a reporter he was disappointed. Montagnier, who is in Africa, said his old rival deserved to share the prize. But San Francisco researcher Jay Levy — the third scientist to publish the discovery of AIDS — was content.
"In the end, what they did was quite, quite fair," Levy said. "And I congratulate them."
No such questions hover over this year's other medical Nobel laureate, German scientist Harald zur Hausen. He's worked since 1970 to convince skeptics that human papilloma viruses cause cervical cancer. Bennett Jenson, a scientific colleague at the University of Louisville, says zur Hausen has been in the running for a Nobel for a long time.
"He's the founding father, and we would have been sorely upset if he hadn't been the Nobel Prize laureate for medicine this year," Jenson said.
Fauci says zur Hausen was way ahead of his time. It's been 24 years since he first tried to persuade drug companies to develop a vaccine against cervical cancer.
Two years ago, the first such vaccine won approval. Zur Hausen wasn't available Monday. But Jensen says his friend hopes the $350 cost of the vaccine can be brought way down so millions of women around the world can avoid cervical cancer.
by Richard Knox
This year's medical Nobel ends decades of speculation about who would win the everlasting credit for discovering HIV — the deadliest virus of our time.
The surprise is not that French researchers Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier won the Nobel, but that American Robert Gallo did not share in it. Throughout most of the 1980s, the American and French researchers fought bitterly over who deserved the credit. Eventually, President Ronald Reagan and French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac signed a declaration that they were co-discoverers.
Today Gallo directs the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland. Its Web site identifies him as the co-discoverer of HIV. But the Nobel committee said no, the French got there first.
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health said that's the way the scientific cookie crumbles.
"When the Nobel committee looks at it, they look and they say, 'First observation, 1983.' Boom, that's it," Fauci said. "I respect that. It's just too bad, because Bob's contribution was very important. But there's a limited number of people that can get the prize."
The rules say only three people can share a Nobel. And the Nobel committee chose to split the award this year between the HIV and papilloma virus discoveries rather than include Gallo in a singular HIV prize.
Fauci says that while the French were first to isolate the virus, Gallo did a lot of the work that proved it causes AIDS.
"The actual intellectual link between the virus and HIV as the cause of AIDS was really very much slam-dunk in the series of papers in 1984 by Gallo's group" in the journal Science, Fauci said.
Today, Gallo told a reporter he was disappointed. Montagnier, who is in Africa, said his old rival deserved to share the prize. But San Francisco researcher Jay Levy — the third scientist to publish the discovery of AIDS — was content.
"In the end, what they did was quite, quite fair," Levy said. "And I congratulate them."
No such questions hover over this year's other medical Nobel laureate, German scientist Harald zur Hausen. He's worked since 1970 to convince skeptics that human papilloma viruses cause cervical cancer. Bennett Jenson, a scientific colleague at the University of Louisville, says zur Hausen has been in the running for a Nobel for a long time.
"He's the founding father, and we would have been sorely upset if he hadn't been the Nobel Prize laureate for medicine this year," Jenson said.
Fauci says zur Hausen was way ahead of his time. It's been 24 years since he first tried to persuade drug companies to develop a vaccine against cervical cancer.
Two years ago, the first such vaccine won approval. Zur Hausen wasn't available Monday. But Jensen says his friend hopes the $350 cost of the vaccine can be brought way down so millions of women around the world can avoid cervical cancer.
by Richard Knox
Jellyfish Protein Researchers Win Chemistry Nobel
All Things Considered, October 8, 2008 · The scientific work that gets a Nobel Prize these days is often hard to understand and describe. But this year's chemistry award is a crowd pleaser: It went to one Japanese and two American scientists who made things glow in the dark — with a jellyfish gene.
Roger Tsien, a professor at the University of California San Diego; Martin Chalfie of Columbia University; and Osamu Shimomura, a Japanese researcher at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., were recognized for their work in advancing understanding of the machinery inside living cells.
Life is essentially an intricate dance of proteins inside every cell of our bodies — proteins that were too tiny to be seen.
So for decades, scientists have been trying to find a way to make that invisible world visible.
Fifteen years ago, Tsien tried attaching chemical dyes to a protein. It didn't work very well, and he thought what he really needed was a gene that makes the protein visible.
"Nobody knew of such a thing in the literature, but I sort of vaguely remembered that there was this protein thing called 'green fluorescent protein,'" Tsien says.
The protein came from a type of jellyfish and had been purified and described by Shimomura in the 1960s. It also glowed green when exposed to ultraviolet light.
Both Tsien and Chalfie tried inserting the gene that produced the protein into cells. No one knew if the technique would work, Tsien says, but "the amazing thing is that nature suddenly smiled."
The gene worked beautifully in bacteria, worms and lots of other creatures. Under ultraviolet light, it made proteins in the cell glow a ghostly shade of green. Thousands of researchers worldwide now use it to track proteins; they can watch cancer cells or viruses multiply and spread.
Tsien, Chalfie and Shimomura all got telephone calls from the Swedish Academy of Sciences early this morning.
Chalfie says he slept through his call. At a news conference later, he explained that he'd accidentally set his phone to ring very softly. When he got out of bed, though, he remembered it was the day the Nobel Prize in chemistry was to be announced.
"So I decided to find out who the schnook was that won it this year, so I opened up my laptop and found out that I was the schnook," Chalfie says. "The other two people are very good scientists."
Chalfie's research group was the first to insert the gene that produces the green florescent protein into another cell.
Tsien expanded the technique, creating an entire toolbox of glowing genes. He tinkered with the gene, creating dozens of new versions that glow in many colors. This allows researchers to tag different proteins with distinctive colors and observe their interactions.
"This is a practical Nobel Prize. This is something that has transformed medical research," says John Frangioni of Harvard Medical School.
"When we're able to cure terrible human diseases such as cancer and neurologic diseases, we're going to be able to trace that back to research that at some point used these fluorescent proteins," Frangioni says.
Tsien was thinking that maybe it was time to stop working on florescent proteins and move on to something new. But he says he recently discovered something else about them that's worth pursuing.
"The science calls," he says, "I can't quite punt this one away."
by Dan Charles
Roger Tsien, a professor at the University of California San Diego; Martin Chalfie of Columbia University; and Osamu Shimomura, a Japanese researcher at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., were recognized for their work in advancing understanding of the machinery inside living cells.
Life is essentially an intricate dance of proteins inside every cell of our bodies — proteins that were too tiny to be seen.
So for decades, scientists have been trying to find a way to make that invisible world visible.
Fifteen years ago, Tsien tried attaching chemical dyes to a protein. It didn't work very well, and he thought what he really needed was a gene that makes the protein visible.
"Nobody knew of such a thing in the literature, but I sort of vaguely remembered that there was this protein thing called 'green fluorescent protein,'" Tsien says.
The protein came from a type of jellyfish and had been purified and described by Shimomura in the 1960s. It also glowed green when exposed to ultraviolet light.
Both Tsien and Chalfie tried inserting the gene that produced the protein into cells. No one knew if the technique would work, Tsien says, but "the amazing thing is that nature suddenly smiled."
The gene worked beautifully in bacteria, worms and lots of other creatures. Under ultraviolet light, it made proteins in the cell glow a ghostly shade of green. Thousands of researchers worldwide now use it to track proteins; they can watch cancer cells or viruses multiply and spread.
Tsien, Chalfie and Shimomura all got telephone calls from the Swedish Academy of Sciences early this morning.
Chalfie says he slept through his call. At a news conference later, he explained that he'd accidentally set his phone to ring very softly. When he got out of bed, though, he remembered it was the day the Nobel Prize in chemistry was to be announced.
"So I decided to find out who the schnook was that won it this year, so I opened up my laptop and found out that I was the schnook," Chalfie says. "The other two people are very good scientists."
Chalfie's research group was the first to insert the gene that produces the green florescent protein into another cell.
Tsien expanded the technique, creating an entire toolbox of glowing genes. He tinkered with the gene, creating dozens of new versions that glow in many colors. This allows researchers to tag different proteins with distinctive colors and observe their interactions.
"This is a practical Nobel Prize. This is something that has transformed medical research," says John Frangioni of Harvard Medical School.
"When we're able to cure terrible human diseases such as cancer and neurologic diseases, we're going to be able to trace that back to research that at some point used these fluorescent proteins," Frangioni says.
Tsien was thinking that maybe it was time to stop working on florescent proteins and move on to something new. But he says he recently discovered something else about them that's worth pursuing.
"The science calls," he says, "I can't quite punt this one away."
by Dan Charles
France's Le Clezio wins Nobel literature prize
STOCKHOLM, Sweden October 9, 2008, 01:12 pm ET · France's Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won the 2008 Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for works characterized by "poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy" and focused on the environment, especially the desert.
Le Clezio, 68, is the first French writer to win the prestigious award since Chinese-born Frenchman Gao Xingjian was honored in 2000 and the 14th since the Nobel Prizes began in 1901.
The decision was in line with the Swedish Academy's recent picks of European authors and followed days of vitriolic debate about whether the jury was anti-American.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed Le Clezio's win as a sign of France's worldwide cultural influence.
"A child in Mauritius and Nigeria, a teenager in Nice, a nomad of the American and African deserts, Jean-Marie Le Clezio is a citizen of the world, the son of all continents and cultures," Sarkozy said. "A great traveler, he embodies the influence of France, its culture and its values in a globalized world."
The academy called Le Clezio, who also holds Mauritian citizenship, an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."
Le Clezio made his breakthrough as a novelist with "Desert," in 1980, a work the academy said "contains magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants."
That novel, which also won Le Clezio a prize from the French Academy, is considered a masterpiece. It describes the ordeal of Lalla, a woman from the Tuareg nomadic tribe of the Sahara Desert, as she adapts to civilization imposed by colonial France.
The Swedish Academy said Le Clezio from early on "stood out as an ecologically engaged author, an orientation that is accentuated with the novels 'Terra Amata,' 'The Book of Flights,' 'War' and 'The Giants.'"
Speaking to reporters in Paris, Le Clezio said he was very honored and described feeling waves of emotion upon hearing the news.
"(I felt) some kind of incredulity, and then some kind of awe, and then some kind of joy and mirth," he said.
Asked if he deserved the prize, he replied "Why not?"
Le Clezio said he would attend the prize ceremony in December in Stockholm and was already planning to travel to Sweden later this month to receive another award — the Stig Dagerman prize, which honors efforts to promote the freedom of expression.
Since Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe won the award in 1994, the selections have had a distinctively European flavor. Since then 12 Europeans, including Le Clezio and last year's winner Doris Lessing of Britain, have won the prize.
The last U.S. writer to win the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993.
Last week, Academy Permanent Secretary Horace Engdahl told The Associated Press that the United States is too insular and ignorant to challenge Europe as the center of the literary world. The comments ignited a fierce reaction across the Atlantic, where the head of the U.S. National Book Foundation offered to send Engdahl a reading list.
"I was very surprised that the reaction was so violent. I don't think that what I said was that derogatory or sensational," Engdahl told AP after Thursday's prize announcement.
He added his comments had been "perhaps a bit too generalizing."
Asked how he thought the choice of Le Clezio would be received in the United States, he said he had no idea.
"He's not a particularly French writer, if you look at him from a strictly cultural point of view. So I don't think this choice will give rise to any anti-French comments," he said. "I would be very sad if that was the case."
Richard Howard, an award-winning poet who has translated many works from French, including a couple of early short stories by Le Clezio, called him "a very gifted and remarkable writer."
"I loved the first books and I regard him with a great deal of respect and affection," Howard said.
Le Clezio has spent much time living in New Mexico in recent years. He has long shied away from public life and often traveled, especially to the world's deserts. The academy said he and his Moroccan wife, Jemia, split their time between Albuquerque, N. M., Mauritius and Nice.
He has published several dozen books, including novels, essays and children's books. His most famous works are tales of nomads, mediations on the desert and childhood memories. He has also explored the mythologies of native Americans.
The academy said Le Clezio's long stays in Mexico and Central America in the mid-70s had a decisive influence on his work.
Engdahl called Le Clezio a writer of great diversity.
"He has gone through many different phases of his development as a writer and has come to include other civilizations, other modes of living than the Western, in his writing," Engdahl said.
Le Clezio was born in Nice in 1940 and at eight the family moved to Nigeria, where his father had been a doctor during World War II. They returned to France in 1950. Le Clezio tells the story of his father in the 2004 "L'Africain."
He studied English at Bristol University in 1958-59 and completed his undergraduate degree at the Institut d'etudes Litteraires in Nice. He went on to earn a master's degree at the University of Aix-en-Provence in 1964 and wrote a doctoral thesis on Mexico's early history at the University of Perpignan in 1983.
Le Clezio has taught at universities in Bangkok; Mexico City; Boston; Austin, Texas and Albuquerque among other places, the academy said.
In Brussels, the European Commission said it was "delighted" that the award went to a European.
Besides the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) check, Le Clezio will also receive a gold medal and be invited to lecture at the academy's headquarters in Stockholm's Old Town.
The Nobel Prize in literature is handed out in Stockholm on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896 — along with the awards in medicine, chemistry, physics and economics. The Nobel Peace Prize is presented in Oslo, Norway.
———
Associated Press writers Malin Rising and Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Alfred de Montesquiou in Algiers, Angela Doland in Paris and Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.
———
On the Net:
http://www.svenskaakademien.se
http://www.nobelprize.org
from The Associated Press
Le Clezio, 68, is the first French writer to win the prestigious award since Chinese-born Frenchman Gao Xingjian was honored in 2000 and the 14th since the Nobel Prizes began in 1901.
The decision was in line with the Swedish Academy's recent picks of European authors and followed days of vitriolic debate about whether the jury was anti-American.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed Le Clezio's win as a sign of France's worldwide cultural influence.
"A child in Mauritius and Nigeria, a teenager in Nice, a nomad of the American and African deserts, Jean-Marie Le Clezio is a citizen of the world, the son of all continents and cultures," Sarkozy said. "A great traveler, he embodies the influence of France, its culture and its values in a globalized world."
The academy called Le Clezio, who also holds Mauritian citizenship, an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."
Le Clezio made his breakthrough as a novelist with "Desert," in 1980, a work the academy said "contains magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants."
That novel, which also won Le Clezio a prize from the French Academy, is considered a masterpiece. It describes the ordeal of Lalla, a woman from the Tuareg nomadic tribe of the Sahara Desert, as she adapts to civilization imposed by colonial France.
The Swedish Academy said Le Clezio from early on "stood out as an ecologically engaged author, an orientation that is accentuated with the novels 'Terra Amata,' 'The Book of Flights,' 'War' and 'The Giants.'"
Speaking to reporters in Paris, Le Clezio said he was very honored and described feeling waves of emotion upon hearing the news.
"(I felt) some kind of incredulity, and then some kind of awe, and then some kind of joy and mirth," he said.
Asked if he deserved the prize, he replied "Why not?"
Le Clezio said he would attend the prize ceremony in December in Stockholm and was already planning to travel to Sweden later this month to receive another award — the Stig Dagerman prize, which honors efforts to promote the freedom of expression.
Since Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe won the award in 1994, the selections have had a distinctively European flavor. Since then 12 Europeans, including Le Clezio and last year's winner Doris Lessing of Britain, have won the prize.
The last U.S. writer to win the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993.
Last week, Academy Permanent Secretary Horace Engdahl told The Associated Press that the United States is too insular and ignorant to challenge Europe as the center of the literary world. The comments ignited a fierce reaction across the Atlantic, where the head of the U.S. National Book Foundation offered to send Engdahl a reading list.
"I was very surprised that the reaction was so violent. I don't think that what I said was that derogatory or sensational," Engdahl told AP after Thursday's prize announcement.
He added his comments had been "perhaps a bit too generalizing."
Asked how he thought the choice of Le Clezio would be received in the United States, he said he had no idea.
"He's not a particularly French writer, if you look at him from a strictly cultural point of view. So I don't think this choice will give rise to any anti-French comments," he said. "I would be very sad if that was the case."
Richard Howard, an award-winning poet who has translated many works from French, including a couple of early short stories by Le Clezio, called him "a very gifted and remarkable writer."
"I loved the first books and I regard him with a great deal of respect and affection," Howard said.
Le Clezio has spent much time living in New Mexico in recent years. He has long shied away from public life and often traveled, especially to the world's deserts. The academy said he and his Moroccan wife, Jemia, split their time between Albuquerque, N. M., Mauritius and Nice.
He has published several dozen books, including novels, essays and children's books. His most famous works are tales of nomads, mediations on the desert and childhood memories. He has also explored the mythologies of native Americans.
The academy said Le Clezio's long stays in Mexico and Central America in the mid-70s had a decisive influence on his work.
Engdahl called Le Clezio a writer of great diversity.
"He has gone through many different phases of his development as a writer and has come to include other civilizations, other modes of living than the Western, in his writing," Engdahl said.
Le Clezio was born in Nice in 1940 and at eight the family moved to Nigeria, where his father had been a doctor during World War II. They returned to France in 1950. Le Clezio tells the story of his father in the 2004 "L'Africain."
He studied English at Bristol University in 1958-59 and completed his undergraduate degree at the Institut d'etudes Litteraires in Nice. He went on to earn a master's degree at the University of Aix-en-Provence in 1964 and wrote a doctoral thesis on Mexico's early history at the University of Perpignan in 1983.
Le Clezio has taught at universities in Bangkok; Mexico City; Boston; Austin, Texas and Albuquerque among other places, the academy said.
In Brussels, the European Commission said it was "delighted" that the award went to a European.
Besides the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) check, Le Clezio will also receive a gold medal and be invited to lecture at the academy's headquarters in Stockholm's Old Town.
The Nobel Prize in literature is handed out in Stockholm on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896 — along with the awards in medicine, chemistry, physics and economics. The Nobel Peace Prize is presented in Oslo, Norway.
———
Associated Press writers Malin Rising and Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Alfred de Montesquiou in Algiers, Angela Doland in Paris and Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.
———
On the Net:
http://www.svenskaakademien.se
http://www.nobelprize.org
from The Associated Press
Controversy Embroils Nobel Literature Prize
Even before the 2008 Nobel Prize in literature was announced Thursday morning, it was already drawing attention — for the wrong reasons. An official of the Swedish Academy — which awards the Nobel Prizes — caused a furor last week when he described American literature as isolated and insular, and therefore unqualified for literature's most prestigious award.
Playwright Edward Albee, whose credits include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Zoo Story, has gained a sort of cranky perspective when it comes to awards. "All prizes are peculiar," he says. "There's politics in everything, and some judges just don't know what they're doing."
Albee points to a long list of great 20th century writers who were passed over by the Nobel judges: Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov and W.H. Auden.
Novelist Richard Russo says you could create a pretty good award out of just that list. Russo won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for his novel Empire Falls. He was baffled when the Swedish Academy's permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl, told the Associated Press last month that "Europe still is the center of the literary world … not the United States."
Russo called the statement "more curious than anything else. This idea of suggesting that literature is in a physical place — that doesn't make sense to me at all." Nor did it make sense to Russo when Engdahl charged that the United States does not participate in the "big dialogue" of literature.
"I think the book itself is the dialogue," says Russo. "If I or any other writer writes a great book, then that book is our contribution to the dialogue."
Some American Writers Were Furious
At least one writer responded to Engdahl's statement with language unprintable here. An essayist for the online magazine Slate proposed that the U.S. secede from what he called "the sham the Nobel Prize for literature has become."
That makes author Francine Prose chuckle. "Actually, I'd prefer to retain our ties with the international community, as attenuated as it might be," she says.
Prose is president of the Pen American Center, which champions writers' rights around the world. Because three of the past four Nobel literature winners have been outspoken critics of the U.S. and its foreign policy, some people have accused the Swedish Academy of favoring anti-American writers. Prose is not so sure.
"Any prize goes through phases," she says, "and it seems as if, for a certain number of years, they're rewarding certain kinds of books, but the range is — and always has been — really quite enormous."
Still, Prose says that Engdahl had a point when he criticized U.S. publishers for not promoting more literature in translation. Novelist Junot Diaz — who won this year's Pulitzer Prize in literature — says something good could actually come out of this controversy.
"If this encourages the average American to read one more book in translation — if only to spite the kind of sneering Eurocentric elitism of this one individual — that's not a bad thing," he says.
Nor would it be so bad, Diaz says, if it incited U.S. publishers to translate more work from other parts of the world. He has a tip for them: the young Mexican writer Martin Solares. His work, Diaz says, is brilliant, but mostly unavailable in English — or, in Swedish.
by Neda Ulaby
Playwright Edward Albee, whose credits include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Zoo Story, has gained a sort of cranky perspective when it comes to awards. "All prizes are peculiar," he says. "There's politics in everything, and some judges just don't know what they're doing."
Albee points to a long list of great 20th century writers who were passed over by the Nobel judges: Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov and W.H. Auden.
Novelist Richard Russo says you could create a pretty good award out of just that list. Russo won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for his novel Empire Falls. He was baffled when the Swedish Academy's permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl, told the Associated Press last month that "Europe still is the center of the literary world … not the United States."
Russo called the statement "more curious than anything else. This idea of suggesting that literature is in a physical place — that doesn't make sense to me at all." Nor did it make sense to Russo when Engdahl charged that the United States does not participate in the "big dialogue" of literature.
"I think the book itself is the dialogue," says Russo. "If I or any other writer writes a great book, then that book is our contribution to the dialogue."
Some American Writers Were Furious
At least one writer responded to Engdahl's statement with language unprintable here. An essayist for the online magazine Slate proposed that the U.S. secede from what he called "the sham the Nobel Prize for literature has become."
That makes author Francine Prose chuckle. "Actually, I'd prefer to retain our ties with the international community, as attenuated as it might be," she says.
Prose is president of the Pen American Center, which champions writers' rights around the world. Because three of the past four Nobel literature winners have been outspoken critics of the U.S. and its foreign policy, some people have accused the Swedish Academy of favoring anti-American writers. Prose is not so sure.
"Any prize goes through phases," she says, "and it seems as if, for a certain number of years, they're rewarding certain kinds of books, but the range is — and always has been — really quite enormous."
Still, Prose says that Engdahl had a point when he criticized U.S. publishers for not promoting more literature in translation. Novelist Junot Diaz — who won this year's Pulitzer Prize in literature — says something good could actually come out of this controversy.
"If this encourages the average American to read one more book in translation — if only to spite the kind of sneering Eurocentric elitism of this one individual — that's not a bad thing," he says.
Nor would it be so bad, Diaz says, if it incited U.S. publishers to translate more work from other parts of the world. He has a tip for them: the young Mexican writer Martin Solares. His work, Diaz says, is brilliant, but mostly unavailable in English — or, in Swedish.
by Neda Ulaby
French Novelist Awarded Nobel Literature Prize
All Things Considered, October 9, 2008 · French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio has been awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature. Antoine Compagnon, a professor of French Literature at Columbia University, says there are two periods in Le Clezio's work: it was more experimental in the 1960s and '70s, and later it featured traveling and exoticism.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
3 share Nobel prize for work on AIDS and cancer
Three European scientists shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for separate discoveries of viruses that cause AIDS and cervical cancer, breakthroughs that helped doctors fight the deadly diseases.
French researchers Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were cited for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, in 1983.
They shared the award with Germany's Harald zur Hausen, who was honored for finding human papilloma viruses that cause cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women.
U.S. researcher Dr. Robert Gallo was locked in a dispute with Montagnier in the 1980s over the relative importance of their roles in groundbreaking research into HIV and its role in AIDS. Gallo told The Associated Press that he was disappointed at not being included in the prize.
Montagnier told the AP in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where he is attending an international AIDS conference, that he was still optimistic about conquering the disease.
The prize, he said, "encourages us all to keep going until we reach the goal at the end of this effort."
Montagnier said he wished the prize had also gone to Gallo.
"It is certain that he deserved this as much as us two," he said.
Zur Hausen, a German medical doctor and scientist, received half of the 10 million kronor (US$1.4 million) prize, while the two French researchers shared the other half.
Zur Hausen discovered two high-risk types of the HPV virus and made them available to the scientific community, ultimately leading to the development of vaccines protecting against infection.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccine Gardasil in 2006 for the prevention of cervical cancer in girls and women ages 9 to 26.
The vaccine works by protecting against strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV — including the two that zur Hausen discovered — that cause most cases of cervical cancers. The HPV virus, transmitted by sexual contact, causes genital warts that sometimes develop into cancer.
"I'm not prepared for this," zur Hausen, 72, of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, told the AP by telephone. "We're drinking a little glass of bubbly right now."
In its citation, the Nobel Assembly said Barre-Sinoussi and Montagnier's discovery was one prerequisite for understanding the biology of AIDS and its treatment with antiviral drugs. The pair's work in the early 1980s made it possible to study the virus closely.
That in turn let scientists identify important details in how HIV replicates and how it interacts with the cells it infects, the citation said. It also led to ways to diagnose infected people and to screen blood for HIV, which has limited spread of the epidemic, and helped scientists develop anti-HIV drugs, the citation said.
"The combination of prevention and treatment has substantially decreased spread of the disease and dramatically increased life expectancy among treated patients," the citation said.
Barre-Sinoussi said that when she and Montagnier isolated the virus 25 years ago they naively hoped that they would be able to prevent the global AIDS epidemic that followed.
"We naively thought that the discovery of the virus would allow us to quickly learn more about it, to develop diagnostic tests — which has been done — and to develop treatments, which has also been done to a large extent and, most of all, develop a vaccine that would prevent the global epidemic," she told the AP by telephone from Cambodia.
Gallo, director of the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland and a prominent early researcher in HIV, said it was "a disappointment" not to be honored along with Montagnier and Barre-Sinoussi.
But he said all three of the award's recipients deserved the honor. No more than three people can share a Nobel Prize.
His dispute with Montagnier reached such a level in 1987 that then-President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac of France penned an agreement dividing millions of dollars in royalties from the AIDS blood test. The settlement led to an agreement that officially credited the Gallo and Montagnier labs with co-discovering the virus.
In the 1990s, however, the U.S. government acknowledged that the French deserved a greater share of the royalties. The admission solidified the French position that Montagnier had isolated the virus in 1983, a year before Gallo.
Maria Masucci, member of the Nobel Assembly, said there was no dispute in the scientific community that the French pair discovered and characterized the virus.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, agreed there's no doubt the French scientists first identified the virus. He said they, and zur Hausen, deserved the Nobel.
Fauci said that if additional researchers could have been included, Gallo "would have been an obvious choice to be added to that list."
That's because of Gallo's roles in showing that HIV causes AIDS and in the technical advance that allowed the isolation of HIV, Fauci said.
The Nobel Assembly said zur Hausen "went against current dogma" when he found that some kinds of human papilloma virus, or HPV, caused cervical cancer. He realized that DNA of HPV could be detected in tumors, and uncovered a family of HPV types, only some of which cause cancer.
The discovery led to an understanding of how HPV causes cancer and the development of vaccines against HPV infection, the citation said.
Barre-Sinoussi, 61, is director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Union at the Institut Pasteur in France, while Montagnier, 76, is the director for the World Foundation for AIDS Research in Prevention, also in the French capital.
from The Associated Press.
French researchers Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were cited for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, in 1983.
They shared the award with Germany's Harald zur Hausen, who was honored for finding human papilloma viruses that cause cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women.
U.S. researcher Dr. Robert Gallo was locked in a dispute with Montagnier in the 1980s over the relative importance of their roles in groundbreaking research into HIV and its role in AIDS. Gallo told The Associated Press that he was disappointed at not being included in the prize.
Montagnier told the AP in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where he is attending an international AIDS conference, that he was still optimistic about conquering the disease.
The prize, he said, "encourages us all to keep going until we reach the goal at the end of this effort."
Montagnier said he wished the prize had also gone to Gallo.
"It is certain that he deserved this as much as us two," he said.
Zur Hausen, a German medical doctor and scientist, received half of the 10 million kronor (US$1.4 million) prize, while the two French researchers shared the other half.
Zur Hausen discovered two high-risk types of the HPV virus and made them available to the scientific community, ultimately leading to the development of vaccines protecting against infection.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccine Gardasil in 2006 for the prevention of cervical cancer in girls and women ages 9 to 26.
The vaccine works by protecting against strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV — including the two that zur Hausen discovered — that cause most cases of cervical cancers. The HPV virus, transmitted by sexual contact, causes genital warts that sometimes develop into cancer.
"I'm not prepared for this," zur Hausen, 72, of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, told the AP by telephone. "We're drinking a little glass of bubbly right now."
In its citation, the Nobel Assembly said Barre-Sinoussi and Montagnier's discovery was one prerequisite for understanding the biology of AIDS and its treatment with antiviral drugs. The pair's work in the early 1980s made it possible to study the virus closely.
That in turn let scientists identify important details in how HIV replicates and how it interacts with the cells it infects, the citation said. It also led to ways to diagnose infected people and to screen blood for HIV, which has limited spread of the epidemic, and helped scientists develop anti-HIV drugs, the citation said.
"The combination of prevention and treatment has substantially decreased spread of the disease and dramatically increased life expectancy among treated patients," the citation said.
Barre-Sinoussi said that when she and Montagnier isolated the virus 25 years ago they naively hoped that they would be able to prevent the global AIDS epidemic that followed.
"We naively thought that the discovery of the virus would allow us to quickly learn more about it, to develop diagnostic tests — which has been done — and to develop treatments, which has also been done to a large extent and, most of all, develop a vaccine that would prevent the global epidemic," she told the AP by telephone from Cambodia.
Gallo, director of the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland and a prominent early researcher in HIV, said it was "a disappointment" not to be honored along with Montagnier and Barre-Sinoussi.
But he said all three of the award's recipients deserved the honor. No more than three people can share a Nobel Prize.
His dispute with Montagnier reached such a level in 1987 that then-President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac of France penned an agreement dividing millions of dollars in royalties from the AIDS blood test. The settlement led to an agreement that officially credited the Gallo and Montagnier labs with co-discovering the virus.
In the 1990s, however, the U.S. government acknowledged that the French deserved a greater share of the royalties. The admission solidified the French position that Montagnier had isolated the virus in 1983, a year before Gallo.
Maria Masucci, member of the Nobel Assembly, said there was no dispute in the scientific community that the French pair discovered and characterized the virus.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, agreed there's no doubt the French scientists first identified the virus. He said they, and zur Hausen, deserved the Nobel.
Fauci said that if additional researchers could have been included, Gallo "would have been an obvious choice to be added to that list."
That's because of Gallo's roles in showing that HIV causes AIDS and in the technical advance that allowed the isolation of HIV, Fauci said.
The Nobel Assembly said zur Hausen "went against current dogma" when he found that some kinds of human papilloma virus, or HPV, caused cervical cancer. He realized that DNA of HPV could be detected in tumors, and uncovered a family of HPV types, only some of which cause cancer.
The discovery led to an understanding of how HPV causes cancer and the development of vaccines against HPV infection, the citation said.
Barre-Sinoussi, 61, is director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Union at the Institut Pasteur in France, while Montagnier, 76, is the director for the World Foundation for AIDS Research in Prevention, also in the French capital.
from The Associated Press.
Nobel Prize In Medicine For Major Virus Discoveries
Morning Edition, October 6, 2008 · The 2008 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine goes to two French scientists for discovering the virus that causes AIDS. A German researcher shares the prize for discovering the viruses that cause cervical cancer.
Half the $1.4 million prize goes to Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi for their discovery of the AIDS virus. The other half goes to Harald zur Hausen, who established that most cervical cancer is caused by two types of human papilloma viruses.
In the case of HIV, or the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, the Nobel committee clearly waited until the dust settled over a bitter controversy over who really discovered the virus in the early 1980s — Americans or the French. The committee apparently accepts the results of an investigation done 15 years ago, which concluded that the American virus was actually a contaminant from the French lab.
Zur Hausen's work with HPV led to highly effective new vaccines — among the first to protect against cancer.
by Richard Knox and Steve Inskeep
Half the $1.4 million prize goes to Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi for their discovery of the AIDS virus. The other half goes to Harald zur Hausen, who established that most cervical cancer is caused by two types of human papilloma viruses.
In the case of HIV, or the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, the Nobel committee clearly waited until the dust settled over a bitter controversy over who really discovered the virus in the early 1980s — Americans or the French. The committee apparently accepts the results of an investigation done 15 years ago, which concluded that the American virus was actually a contaminant from the French lab.
Zur Hausen's work with HPV led to highly effective new vaccines — among the first to protect against cancer.
by Richard Knox and Steve Inskeep
Nobel Honors Glimpse Into Universe's Design
All Things Considered, October 7, 2008 · An American physicist and two Japanese physicists won the Nobel Prize on Tuesday for their work on understanding the breakdown of symmetries in the laws of nature.
Most people intuitively know what symmetry is; they see it in people's faces and in snowflakes. But theoretical physicists think about symmetry as it relates to the fundamental workings of the universe.
Yoichiro Nambu, 87, was woken up early this morning by a phone call — a call he'd pretty much given up on. It was Sweden's Royal Academy of Sciences, telling him he had won the Nobel Prize for a paper he wrote on something called spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics. Nambu's paper helped explain some of the fundamental forces of nature, and why different particles have different masses.
"My paper came out 1960, I believe. It was a long, long time ago," says Nambu. He added that he's honored and happy to get the prize, but that he didn't expect it after so many years had passed.
He shares the prize, and $1.4 million, with two researchers in Japan. Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa explored another kind of symmetry breaking. Their work in the 1970s led to the prediction that physicists should eventually find new types of the subatomic particles known as quarks. And experiments have proved them right.
"These three gentlemen provided theories that explain one of the most fundamental aspects of existence. How symmetric is the universe?" says Philip Schewe, a spokesperson for the American Institute of Physics.
"We sort of instinctively want the universe to be symmetric, we want it to be regular, and the fact that it's not is kind of interesting."
Experts say that understanding asymmetries is important because they are at the heart of what makes life possible.
For example, when the Big Bang created the cosmos some 14 billion years ago, it didn't create equal amounts of matter and antimatter. That's a good thing, because they would have cancelled each other out. Scientists are still trying to understand why there was just a tiny bit of extra matter created, a little asymmetry that was the seed of our whole universe. The person who figures that one out might someday win a Nobel of their own.
Nambu came to the United States from Japan in 1952 and is now a citizen. He's worked at the University of Chicago for decades. Some of his colleagues in Chicago say the honor is long overdue.
"We'd been talking about it for years that he deserved it. He's such a shy and humble man; those kinds of people don't always win the prize," says Joe Lykken, a particle physicist at Fermilab in Illinois.
"But the Nobel committee has finally wised up and done the right thing for him," Lykken says of the man he calls one of his personal heroes.
Kobayashi and Maskawa's research, Lykken says, was built on the work of an Italian physicist named Nicola Cabibbo.
"These three people — Cabibbo, Kobayashi, and Maskawa — are mentioned so often together that we usually just say C-K-M rather than saying all three of their multisyllabic names," says Lykken.
Some scientists might wonder why Cabibbo wasn't honored by the committee. But the rules state that the Nobel can go to only three scientists.
by Nell Greenfieldboyce
Most people intuitively know what symmetry is; they see it in people's faces and in snowflakes. But theoretical physicists think about symmetry as it relates to the fundamental workings of the universe.
Yoichiro Nambu, 87, was woken up early this morning by a phone call — a call he'd pretty much given up on. It was Sweden's Royal Academy of Sciences, telling him he had won the Nobel Prize for a paper he wrote on something called spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics. Nambu's paper helped explain some of the fundamental forces of nature, and why different particles have different masses.
"My paper came out 1960, I believe. It was a long, long time ago," says Nambu. He added that he's honored and happy to get the prize, but that he didn't expect it after so many years had passed.
He shares the prize, and $1.4 million, with two researchers in Japan. Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa explored another kind of symmetry breaking. Their work in the 1970s led to the prediction that physicists should eventually find new types of the subatomic particles known as quarks. And experiments have proved them right.
"These three gentlemen provided theories that explain one of the most fundamental aspects of existence. How symmetric is the universe?" says Philip Schewe, a spokesperson for the American Institute of Physics.
"We sort of instinctively want the universe to be symmetric, we want it to be regular, and the fact that it's not is kind of interesting."
Experts say that understanding asymmetries is important because they are at the heart of what makes life possible.
For example, when the Big Bang created the cosmos some 14 billion years ago, it didn't create equal amounts of matter and antimatter. That's a good thing, because they would have cancelled each other out. Scientists are still trying to understand why there was just a tiny bit of extra matter created, a little asymmetry that was the seed of our whole universe. The person who figures that one out might someday win a Nobel of their own.
Nambu came to the United States from Japan in 1952 and is now a citizen. He's worked at the University of Chicago for decades. Some of his colleagues in Chicago say the honor is long overdue.
"We'd been talking about it for years that he deserved it. He's such a shy and humble man; those kinds of people don't always win the prize," says Joe Lykken, a particle physicist at Fermilab in Illinois.
"But the Nobel committee has finally wised up and done the right thing for him," Lykken says of the man he calls one of his personal heroes.
Kobayashi and Maskawa's research, Lykken says, was built on the work of an Italian physicist named Nicola Cabibbo.
"These three people — Cabibbo, Kobayashi, and Maskawa — are mentioned so often together that we usually just say C-K-M rather than saying all three of their multisyllabic names," says Lykken.
Some scientists might wonder why Cabibbo wasn't honored by the committee. But the rules state that the Nobel can go to only three scientists.
by Nell Greenfieldboyce
Friday, October 03, 2008
Trouble on Hubble delays last shuttle service mission: NASA
WASHINGTON (AFP) - NASA has delayed the final service mission of the Atlantis space shuttle to the Hubble space telescope, probably until early 2009, after a "significant anomaly" occurred on the orbiting telescope.
"It's obvious that October 14 is off the table" for launching Atlantis, John Burch, the shuttle program manager at NASA's space center in Houston, Texas, told a telephone news conference.
The most likely new launch date for the mission to Hubble would be in February next year, the officials said.
On Saturday, Science Data Formatter side A, the unit on Hubble that took data from five instruments, formatted it and sent it back to the ground, providing NASA with spectacular images of space, "totally failed," Preston Burch, Hubble manager at Goddard space flight center near Washington said.
NASA was working to get Hubble back up and "doing science" in a matter of days by reconfiguring a unit on Hubble that has laid dormant during the 18 years that the telescope has been in orbit, to do the work of the failed unit.
But that would require some complex manoeuvers and would only be a stop-gap measure, the scientists said.
"If we just switch over to Side B of the Science Data Formatter, we would be left with a system that has several single-point failures, and that would be a risk to the mission for the long duration," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington.
"Barring some unforeseen circumstance, our plan right now is to take the delay and put up the new hardware so that we can keep Hubble going as long as possible," he said.
"If we're going to spend the money and take all the risk involved in a shuttle mission we want to make sure that we leave Hubble as healthy as we possibly can and potentially locked in for the next five to 10 years," Weiler said.
Hubble is due to be replaced in 2013 by a new space telescope with an eagle-eyed camera that scientists hope will lift the veil from the origins and mysteries of the universe.
Every month that the service mission to Hubble is delayed represents a cost to NASA of around 10 million dollars, the officials said.
But the extra cost was unlikely to prompt the US space agency to "throw up its hands and abandon Hubble," Weiler said.
"I don't see anyone throwing in the towel because we have to spend a few more tens of millions to get this done," he said.
"Think about the other option -- if this failure had occurred two weeks after this last service mission," he said.
Launched 18 years ago, Hubble revolutionized astronomy by peering deep into the universe, beaming back dazzling images free of the distortions from Earth's atmosphere.
Orbiting 575 kilometers (360 miles) above Earth, Hubble has enabled scientists to better measure the age and origins of the universe, observe distant supernovas, and identify and study bodies in and outside the solar system.
All that, in spite of the Hubble program being declared dead in 1990.
"Not only did it survive, but we became the great American comeback story," Weiler said.
"Hubble has a habit of coming back from adversity... we'll find a way to get this fixed," he said.
"Luckily we have a spare. We have to test it out and do due diligence to make sure it's working right, but we do have a spare on the ground. We anticipated this kind of problem 20 years ago," he said.
"It's obvious that October 14 is off the table" for launching Atlantis, John Burch, the shuttle program manager at NASA's space center in Houston, Texas, told a telephone news conference.
The most likely new launch date for the mission to Hubble would be in February next year, the officials said.
On Saturday, Science Data Formatter side A, the unit on Hubble that took data from five instruments, formatted it and sent it back to the ground, providing NASA with spectacular images of space, "totally failed," Preston Burch, Hubble manager at Goddard space flight center near Washington said.
NASA was working to get Hubble back up and "doing science" in a matter of days by reconfiguring a unit on Hubble that has laid dormant during the 18 years that the telescope has been in orbit, to do the work of the failed unit.
But that would require some complex manoeuvers and would only be a stop-gap measure, the scientists said.
"If we just switch over to Side B of the Science Data Formatter, we would be left with a system that has several single-point failures, and that would be a risk to the mission for the long duration," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington.
"Barring some unforeseen circumstance, our plan right now is to take the delay and put up the new hardware so that we can keep Hubble going as long as possible," he said.
"If we're going to spend the money and take all the risk involved in a shuttle mission we want to make sure that we leave Hubble as healthy as we possibly can and potentially locked in for the next five to 10 years," Weiler said.
Hubble is due to be replaced in 2013 by a new space telescope with an eagle-eyed camera that scientists hope will lift the veil from the origins and mysteries of the universe.
Every month that the service mission to Hubble is delayed represents a cost to NASA of around 10 million dollars, the officials said.
But the extra cost was unlikely to prompt the US space agency to "throw up its hands and abandon Hubble," Weiler said.
"I don't see anyone throwing in the towel because we have to spend a few more tens of millions to get this done," he said.
"Think about the other option -- if this failure had occurred two weeks after this last service mission," he said.
Launched 18 years ago, Hubble revolutionized astronomy by peering deep into the universe, beaming back dazzling images free of the distortions from Earth's atmosphere.
Orbiting 575 kilometers (360 miles) above Earth, Hubble has enabled scientists to better measure the age and origins of the universe, observe distant supernovas, and identify and study bodies in and outside the solar system.
All that, in spite of the Hubble program being declared dead in 1990.
"Not only did it survive, but we became the great American comeback story," Weiler said.
"Hubble has a habit of coming back from adversity... we'll find a way to get this fixed," he said.
"Luckily we have a spare. We have to test it out and do due diligence to make sure it's working right, but we do have a spare on the ground. We anticipated this kind of problem 20 years ago," he said.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Chinese Astronaut Takes Nation’s First Spacewalk
BEIJING — A Chinese astronaut orbiting the earth lifted himself out of the Shenzhou VII spacecraft Saturday afternoon and performed the nation’s first spacewalk, another milestone in China’s space program.
Zhai Zhigang pulled himself out of the orbital module about 4:40 p.m. Beijing time, latched himself to a handrail with two safety cords and then waved to a national audience during a live broadcast of the country’s third space mission with an astronaut.
“I am here greeting the Chinese people and the people of the world,” Mr. Zhai said, waving to a camera attached to the module.
The feat was part of China’s effort to establish a space station by 2020 and eventually to land on the moon.
For the Chinese government, which devotes extensive media coverage to its space missions with astronauts, the achievement was another step toward establishing the country as an economic and technological superpower.
President Hu Jintao was in the space command center in Beijing on Saturday.
After pulling himself fully out of the orbital module and tethering himself to the safety cords, Mr. Zhai waved a small Chinese flag, to the cheers of technicians in the central command center in Beijing.
Another astronaut, Liu Boming, briefly poked his head and part of his body out of the module, becoming the second Chinese astronaut to touch outer space, while the third astronaut, Jing Haipeng, stayed behind in the re-entry module, which will take them back to earth, in case of an emergency.
About two hours later, the astronauts released a small monitoring satellite.
This was the country’s third human space mission in five years. Before China, only the United States and the Soviet Union, and later Russia, had sent people into space, though astronauts from other countries have joined the missions.
By DAVID BARBOZA
Zhai Zhigang pulled himself out of the orbital module about 4:40 p.m. Beijing time, latched himself to a handrail with two safety cords and then waved to a national audience during a live broadcast of the country’s third space mission with an astronaut.
“I am here greeting the Chinese people and the people of the world,” Mr. Zhai said, waving to a camera attached to the module.
The feat was part of China’s effort to establish a space station by 2020 and eventually to land on the moon.
For the Chinese government, which devotes extensive media coverage to its space missions with astronauts, the achievement was another step toward establishing the country as an economic and technological superpower.
President Hu Jintao was in the space command center in Beijing on Saturday.
After pulling himself fully out of the orbital module and tethering himself to the safety cords, Mr. Zhai waved a small Chinese flag, to the cheers of technicians in the central command center in Beijing.
Another astronaut, Liu Boming, briefly poked his head and part of his body out of the module, becoming the second Chinese astronaut to touch outer space, while the third astronaut, Jing Haipeng, stayed behind in the re-entry module, which will take them back to earth, in case of an emergency.
About two hours later, the astronauts released a small monitoring satellite.
This was the country’s third human space mission in five years. Before China, only the United States and the Soviet Union, and later Russia, had sent people into space, though astronauts from other countries have joined the missions.
By DAVID BARBOZA
China Launches Spacewalk Mission
SHANGHAI — The Chinese Shenzhou VII spacecraft blasted off at 9:07 p.m. Thursday, carrying three Chinese astronauts into space on this country’s third manned space mission in five years.
The three-day mission is expected to include the country’s first attempt at a spacewalk.
The Chinese government has spent billions of dollars in recent years building up a space program that it hopes will help China establish a space station by 2020 and eventually will put a man on the moon, accomplishments that would certainly bring the country international prestige.
The launching of Shenzhou VII from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu Province, which is in western China, was shown live on state television.
At a ceremony before the launching, President Hu Jintao praised the space project’s effort. “You will definitely accomplish this glorious and sacred mission,” he told the astronauts before the launching. “The motherland and the people are looking forward to your triumphant return.”
China sent into space three experienced fighter pilots, all of them 42-year-old men. One is expected to walk in space for 30 minutes on Friday or Saturday, according to the state media.
The three taikonauts — the Chinese term for astronauts — plan to run tests in space and launch a small satellite monitoring station. They are carrying traditional Chinese medicine on board, in case of sickness, and their diet includes shredded pork sautéed with garlic and grilled beef with spicy sauce.
One astronaut is wearing what the state-run news media has dubbed “the most complicated, advanced and expensive suit in the world,” a $4.4 million space suit designed and produced in China. The spacecraft was launched by what the Chinese space agency calls the Long March II-F carrier rocket, which took the spacecraft into a low orbit, about 210 miles above Earth. The mission, which is being covered extensively in the Chinese media, is another milestone for a country that got a late start in space exploration but is now aggressively launching commercial satellites, putting humans in space and even shooting down aging satellites.
“They have joined a very exclusive club; only the U.S. and Russians are members,” said Roger D. Launius, a senior curator and expert on space history at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, referring generally to China’s space program. “It’s a great start, even though it’s nowhere near what the Russians and the U.S. have accomplished with space flight.”
Russia and the United States conducted their first spacewalks in 1965, and in 1969 the United States became the first country to put a person on the moon.
But Michael D. Griffin, the administrator of NASA, has repeatedly warned that despite the head start by other nations, the Chinese program is moving swiftly and could overtake American efforts to return to the moon by 2020. In testimony to the Senate last year, Mr. Griffin said it was likely that “China will be able to put people on the Moon before we will be able to get back.” He added: “I admire what they have done, but I am concerned that it will leave the United States in its wake.”
The Chinese government also hopes the national space program will aid the nation economically by helping to create technological breakthroughs that may someday be applied to computers or other digital equipment.
India and Japan are now aggressively developing their own space programs, creating some competition in Asia for space flight, and the Europeans have joined forces to explore space.
But China says its space program is speeding along, often with Chinese technology, helping establish the country as a technological power and bringing another dose of pride to the nation after the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer.
Because spaceflight requires large booster rockets and other sophisticated technology that often has military applications, national space programs are often veiled in secrecy, and cooperation among nations is complicated.
Indeed, on Wednesday, the F.B.I. arrested a Chinese-born physicist in Newport News, Va., on charges of illegally exporting space launching technical data and services to China beginning in January 2003. The physicist, Shu Quan-Sheng, 68, was born in China but was a naturalized American citizen. He has a doctorate in physics.
Mr. Shu was also accused of offering bribes to Chinese government officials in exchange for a business contract, according to an F.B.I. statement.
The three Chinese astronauts before the launching on Thursday. The Chinese government hopes the space program can help establish a space station and eventually put a person on the moon.
By DAVID BARBOZA
The three-day mission is expected to include the country’s first attempt at a spacewalk.
The Chinese government has spent billions of dollars in recent years building up a space program that it hopes will help China establish a space station by 2020 and eventually will put a man on the moon, accomplishments that would certainly bring the country international prestige.
The launching of Shenzhou VII from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu Province, which is in western China, was shown live on state television.
At a ceremony before the launching, President Hu Jintao praised the space project’s effort. “You will definitely accomplish this glorious and sacred mission,” he told the astronauts before the launching. “The motherland and the people are looking forward to your triumphant return.”
China sent into space three experienced fighter pilots, all of them 42-year-old men. One is expected to walk in space for 30 minutes on Friday or Saturday, according to the state media.
The three taikonauts — the Chinese term for astronauts — plan to run tests in space and launch a small satellite monitoring station. They are carrying traditional Chinese medicine on board, in case of sickness, and their diet includes shredded pork sautéed with garlic and grilled beef with spicy sauce.
One astronaut is wearing what the state-run news media has dubbed “the most complicated, advanced and expensive suit in the world,” a $4.4 million space suit designed and produced in China. The spacecraft was launched by what the Chinese space agency calls the Long March II-F carrier rocket, which took the spacecraft into a low orbit, about 210 miles above Earth. The mission, which is being covered extensively in the Chinese media, is another milestone for a country that got a late start in space exploration but is now aggressively launching commercial satellites, putting humans in space and even shooting down aging satellites.
“They have joined a very exclusive club; only the U.S. and Russians are members,” said Roger D. Launius, a senior curator and expert on space history at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, referring generally to China’s space program. “It’s a great start, even though it’s nowhere near what the Russians and the U.S. have accomplished with space flight.”
Russia and the United States conducted their first spacewalks in 1965, and in 1969 the United States became the first country to put a person on the moon.
But Michael D. Griffin, the administrator of NASA, has repeatedly warned that despite the head start by other nations, the Chinese program is moving swiftly and could overtake American efforts to return to the moon by 2020. In testimony to the Senate last year, Mr. Griffin said it was likely that “China will be able to put people on the Moon before we will be able to get back.” He added: “I admire what they have done, but I am concerned that it will leave the United States in its wake.”
The Chinese government also hopes the national space program will aid the nation economically by helping to create technological breakthroughs that may someday be applied to computers or other digital equipment.
India and Japan are now aggressively developing their own space programs, creating some competition in Asia for space flight, and the Europeans have joined forces to explore space.
But China says its space program is speeding along, often with Chinese technology, helping establish the country as a technological power and bringing another dose of pride to the nation after the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer.
Because spaceflight requires large booster rockets and other sophisticated technology that often has military applications, national space programs are often veiled in secrecy, and cooperation among nations is complicated.
Indeed, on Wednesday, the F.B.I. arrested a Chinese-born physicist in Newport News, Va., on charges of illegally exporting space launching technical data and services to China beginning in January 2003. The physicist, Shu Quan-Sheng, 68, was born in China but was a naturalized American citizen. He has a doctorate in physics.
Mr. Shu was also accused of offering bribes to Chinese government officials in exchange for a business contract, according to an F.B.I. statement.
The three Chinese astronauts before the launching on Thursday. The Chinese government hopes the space program can help establish a space station and eventually put a person on the moon.
By DAVID BARBOZA
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Stonehenge mystery finally revealed?
IT has been variously described as a giant calendar, a place of worship and a royal burial ground.
But now, more than 4000 years after its first stones were dragged from the Welsh mountains to the Salisbury plains, Stonehenge may finally have given up its secret.
Pictures: Rock stars party at Stonehenge
Pictures: Weird wonders of the world
Research suggests the eerie monument was a neolithic Lourdes to which the sick and injured travelled from far and wide to be healed by its magical powers.
The first excavation of Stonehenge for almost 50 years has revealed the soil to be littered with fragments from its smaller bluestones – thought to have been chipped off as lucky charms.
As well, a disproportionate number of people buried in nearby tombs show signs of serious illness and many were not born in the area.
Taken together, the clues point to Stonehenge being the casualty department of southern England.
The study, by Professor Tim Darvill of Bournemouth University and Proessor Geoffrey Wainwright of the Society of Antiquaries of London, shows that bluestone chippings greatly outnumber those from the massive Sarsen stones that form the towering trilithon structures of Stonehenge.
What is more, most of the fragments had been deliberately chipped off the stones, which originated 250km away in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire.
"It could be that people were flaking off pieces of bluestone in order to create little bits to take away… as lucky amulets," said Professor Wainwright.
It is unclear why the stones, which are blue-green with white spots, were so revered. However, the idea of the Preseli Hills' healing powers lingers to this day, with spring water from the area said to ease arthritis and other conditions.
Professor Darvill said: "Taking those pieces to become talismans, lucky charms, to be used in the healing process, is very important. Their meaning and importance to prehistoric people was sufficiently powerful to warrant the investment of time, effort and resources to move the bluestones from the Preseli Hills to the Wessex Downs."
The professors said that "an abnormal number" of bodies entombed nearby showed signs of severe illness or injury.
And analysis of teeth recovered from graves showed that about half belonged to people not native to the area.
Prof Darvill said Stonehenge would attract not only people who were unwell but people who were capable of healing them.
The professors believe the rest of the monument, including the Sarsen stones, which came from Marlborough 40km away, grew up around the bluestones healing centre.
Prof Darvill said: "It could have been a temple at the same time as it was a healing centre, just as Lourdes is still a religious centre."
They added, however, that it was likely the monument had more than one purpose.
Source: Daily Mail
But now, more than 4000 years after its first stones were dragged from the Welsh mountains to the Salisbury plains, Stonehenge may finally have given up its secret.
Pictures: Rock stars party at Stonehenge
Pictures: Weird wonders of the world
Research suggests the eerie monument was a neolithic Lourdes to which the sick and injured travelled from far and wide to be healed by its magical powers.
The first excavation of Stonehenge for almost 50 years has revealed the soil to be littered with fragments from its smaller bluestones – thought to have been chipped off as lucky charms.
As well, a disproportionate number of people buried in nearby tombs show signs of serious illness and many were not born in the area.
Taken together, the clues point to Stonehenge being the casualty department of southern England.
The study, by Professor Tim Darvill of Bournemouth University and Proessor Geoffrey Wainwright of the Society of Antiquaries of London, shows that bluestone chippings greatly outnumber those from the massive Sarsen stones that form the towering trilithon structures of Stonehenge.
What is more, most of the fragments had been deliberately chipped off the stones, which originated 250km away in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire.
"It could be that people were flaking off pieces of bluestone in order to create little bits to take away… as lucky amulets," said Professor Wainwright.
It is unclear why the stones, which are blue-green with white spots, were so revered. However, the idea of the Preseli Hills' healing powers lingers to this day, with spring water from the area said to ease arthritis and other conditions.
Professor Darvill said: "Taking those pieces to become talismans, lucky charms, to be used in the healing process, is very important. Their meaning and importance to prehistoric people was sufficiently powerful to warrant the investment of time, effort and resources to move the bluestones from the Preseli Hills to the Wessex Downs."
The professors said that "an abnormal number" of bodies entombed nearby showed signs of severe illness or injury.
And analysis of teeth recovered from graves showed that about half belonged to people not native to the area.
Prof Darvill said Stonehenge would attract not only people who were unwell but people who were capable of healing them.
The professors believe the rest of the monument, including the Sarsen stones, which came from Marlborough 40km away, grew up around the bluestones healing centre.
Prof Darvill said: "It could have been a temple at the same time as it was a healing centre, just as Lourdes is still a religious centre."
They added, however, that it was likely the monument had more than one purpose.
Source: Daily Mail
A New Contender For Earth's Oldest Rock
All Things Considered, September 25, 2008 · When geologist Jonathan O'Neil goes walking on some flat, exposed bedrock on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay in Quebec, he believes that he may be walking on the world's oldest rocks.
"When you actually walk on the rock, it's kind of special just to think, well, I could walk here 4.3 billion years ago and I probably would have walked on the same rocks," says O'Neil, a Ph.D. student at McGill University in Montreal.
The Earth is only around 4.6 billion years old. Scientists believe it started as a big, hot blob of molten metal and rock, and then began to cool and form a crust. Scientists would love to have samples of rock from those early days. But they're hard to find in part because the planet's surface is constantly changing.
Scientists have found isolated mineral grains called zircons that date back to 4.36 billion years ago, but the rock that was originally around these grains has eroded away. So until now, the oldest-known rock has been the Acasta Gneiss, an outcropping in Canada's Northwest Territories that's thought to be 4.03 billion years old. But O'Neil and his colleagues think their rock could be even more ancient.
Some scientists will question the claim, says O'Neil. "Of course there's going to be controversy," he says. "I'm expecting that."
In the past, scientists have established the age of ancient rocks by looking at the composition of zircons. But O'Neil says his rock didn't have any of those tiny mineral grains. So he and his colleagues used a technique previously used to establish the age of meteorites that looks at the rare elements neodymium and samarium. In their study in the journal Science, they concluded that the rocks could have formed 250 million years before any previously discovered rocks.
"The jury is still out," says Jeff Vervoort, a geologist with Washington State University in Pullman. "Truly, the data are equivocal."
He says the rocks themselves may be 4.28 billion years old, or they could be the product of a two-stage process: For example, they may be younger rocks that formed after a section of early crust separated from the underlying mantle layer at that earlier time.
Still, Vervoort says, "this is an exciting paper with some very nice data on some extremely interesting old rocks. This paper will undoubtedly spur interest in further work in this area, looking for additional evidence from Earth's earliest history."
John Valley, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says scientists have long expected to find rocks from this time period. "We've always been puzzled by our failure to find them. So the question then arises: Were the earliest rocks completely destroyed by some unusual process? Or do these early relics really exist and we just don't know how to recognize them?"
He says the method used in this study does look like it could be helpful for identifying sections of the Earth's early crust.
"Possibly, there are even rocks as old as 4.3 billion years," Valley says. "And if that's correct, then they may hold the key to timeless questions about the evolution of the Earth and possibly even the emergence of life."
He says that because life can exist only under certain conditions, finding the earliest rocks should help geologists understand when exactly the Earth became friendly enough for life to evolve.
by Nell Greenfieldboyce
"When you actually walk on the rock, it's kind of special just to think, well, I could walk here 4.3 billion years ago and I probably would have walked on the same rocks," says O'Neil, a Ph.D. student at McGill University in Montreal.
The Earth is only around 4.6 billion years old. Scientists believe it started as a big, hot blob of molten metal and rock, and then began to cool and form a crust. Scientists would love to have samples of rock from those early days. But they're hard to find in part because the planet's surface is constantly changing.
Scientists have found isolated mineral grains called zircons that date back to 4.36 billion years ago, but the rock that was originally around these grains has eroded away. So until now, the oldest-known rock has been the Acasta Gneiss, an outcropping in Canada's Northwest Territories that's thought to be 4.03 billion years old. But O'Neil and his colleagues think their rock could be even more ancient.
Some scientists will question the claim, says O'Neil. "Of course there's going to be controversy," he says. "I'm expecting that."
In the past, scientists have established the age of ancient rocks by looking at the composition of zircons. But O'Neil says his rock didn't have any of those tiny mineral grains. So he and his colleagues used a technique previously used to establish the age of meteorites that looks at the rare elements neodymium and samarium. In their study in the journal Science, they concluded that the rocks could have formed 250 million years before any previously discovered rocks.
"The jury is still out," says Jeff Vervoort, a geologist with Washington State University in Pullman. "Truly, the data are equivocal."
He says the rocks themselves may be 4.28 billion years old, or they could be the product of a two-stage process: For example, they may be younger rocks that formed after a section of early crust separated from the underlying mantle layer at that earlier time.
Still, Vervoort says, "this is an exciting paper with some very nice data on some extremely interesting old rocks. This paper will undoubtedly spur interest in further work in this area, looking for additional evidence from Earth's earliest history."
John Valley, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says scientists have long expected to find rocks from this time period. "We've always been puzzled by our failure to find them. So the question then arises: Were the earliest rocks completely destroyed by some unusual process? Or do these early relics really exist and we just don't know how to recognize them?"
He says the method used in this study does look like it could be helpful for identifying sections of the Earth's early crust.
"Possibly, there are even rocks as old as 4.3 billion years," Valley says. "And if that's correct, then they may hold the key to timeless questions about the evolution of the Earth and possibly even the emergence of life."
He says that because life can exist only under certain conditions, finding the earliest rocks should help geologists understand when exactly the Earth became friendly enough for life to evolve.
by Nell Greenfieldboyce
Friday, September 19, 2008
Transformer breaks on world's largest atom smasher
GENEVA - With 30-tone to transform that cools the world' S largest particle collider malfunctioned, sustained pressure physicists to stop using the atom smasher just has day after launching it to great brass band, the European Organization for Nuclear Research said Thursday.
The faulty to transform has been replaced and the boxing ring in the 17-mile circular tunnel under the Swiss-French to border has been cooled back down to near absolute zero - but washout 459.67 dismantle Fahrenheit - the most efficient operating temperature, said has statement by CERN, ace the organization is known. When to transform malfunctioned, operating temperatures pink from below 2 Kelvin to 4.5 Kelvin - extraordinarily cold by most standard, normal goal warmer than the operating temperature.
Broad The High-energy particle Collider was launched Sept. 10, when scientists circled has beam off protons in has clockwise direction At the speed off light. That was followed by has counterclockwise beam.
“Several hundred orbits” were made, said the statement.
One the evening off Sept. 11, scientists were whitebait to control the counterclockwise beam with equipment that keeps the protons bunched tightly and ready for collisions before to transform failed and the system was shut down, the statement said.
Now that to transform has been replaced and the equipment rechilled, has similar attempt is expected shortly to tighten the clockwise beam and prepares experiments in coming weeks, it said.
Broad The High-energy particle Collider is designed to collide protons in the beams so that they shatter and reveal more butt the makeup off matter and the universe.
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer
The faulty to transform has been replaced and the boxing ring in the 17-mile circular tunnel under the Swiss-French to border has been cooled back down to near absolute zero - but washout 459.67 dismantle Fahrenheit - the most efficient operating temperature, said has statement by CERN, ace the organization is known. When to transform malfunctioned, operating temperatures pink from below 2 Kelvin to 4.5 Kelvin - extraordinarily cold by most standard, normal goal warmer than the operating temperature.
Broad The High-energy particle Collider was launched Sept. 10, when scientists circled has beam off protons in has clockwise direction At the speed off light. That was followed by has counterclockwise beam.
“Several hundred orbits” were made, said the statement.
One the evening off Sept. 11, scientists were whitebait to control the counterclockwise beam with equipment that keeps the protons bunched tightly and ready for collisions before to transform failed and the system was shut down, the statement said.
Now that to transform has been replaced and the equipment rechilled, has similar attempt is expected shortly to tighten the clockwise beam and prepares experiments in coming weeks, it said.
Broad The High-energy particle Collider is designed to collide protons in the beams so that they shatter and reveal more butt the makeup off matter and the universe.
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Protons and Champagne Mix as New Particle Collider Is Revved Up
BATAVIA, Ill. — Science rode a beam of subatomic particles and a river of Champagne into the future on Wednesday.
After 14 years of labor, scientists at the CERN laboratory outside Geneva successfully activated the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest, most powerful particle collider and, at $8 billion, the most expensive scientific experiment to date.
At 4:28 a.m., Eastern time, the scientists announced that a beam of protons had completed its first circuit around the collider’s 17-mile-long racetrack, 300 feet underneath the Swiss-French border. They then sent the beam around several more times.
“It’s a fantastic moment,” said Lyn Evans, who has been the project director of the collider since its inception in 1994. “We can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe.”
Eventually, the collider is expected to accelerate protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts and then smash them together, recreating conditions in the primordial fireball only a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Scientists hope the machine will be a sort of Hubble Space Telescope of inner space, allowing them to detect new subatomic particles and forces of nature.
An ocean away from Geneva, the new collider’s activation was watched with rueful excitement here at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, which has had the reigning particle collider.
Several dozen physicists, students and onlookers, and three local mayors gathered overnight to watch the dawn of a new high-energy physics. They applauded each milestone as the scientists methodically steered the protons on their course at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Many of them, including the lab’s director, Pier Oddone, were wearing pajamas or bathrobes or even nightcaps bearing Fermilab “pajama party” patches on them.
Outside, a half moon was hanging low in a cloudy sky, a reminder that the universe was beautiful and mysterious and that another small step into that mystery was about to be taken.
Dr. Oddone, who earlier in the day admitted it was a “bittersweet moment,” lauded the new machine as the result of “two and a half decades of dreams to open up this huge new territory in the exploration of the natural world.”
Roger Aymar, CERN’s director, called the new collider a “discovery machine.” The buzz was worldwide. On the blog “Cosmic Variance,” Gordon Kane of the University of Michigan called the new collider “a why machine.”
Others, worried about speculation that a black hole could emerge from the proton collisions, had called it a doomsday machine, to the dismay of CERN physicists who can point to a variety of studies and reports that say that this fear is nothing but science fiction.
But Boaz Klima, a Fermilab particle physicist, said that the speculation had nevertheless helped create buzz about particle physics. “This is something that people can talk to their neighbors about,” he said.
The only thing physicists agree on is that they do not know what will happen — what laws and particles will prevail — when the collisions reach the energies just after the Big Bang.
“That there are many theories means we don’t have a clue,” said Dr. Oddone. “That’s what makes it so exciting.”
Many physicists hope to materialize a hypothetical particle called the Higgs boson, which according to theory endows other particles with mass. They also hope to identify the nature of the invisible dark matter that makes up 25 percent of the universe and provides the scaffolding for galaxies. Some dream of revealing new dimensions of space-time.
But those discoveries are in the future. If the new collider were a car, then what physicists did Wednesday was turn on an engine that will now warm up for a couple of months before anyone drives it anywhere. The first meaningful collisions, at an energy of five trillion electron volts, will not happen until late fall.
Nevertheless, the symbolism of the moment was not lost on all those gathered here.
Once upon a time the United States ruled particle physics. For the last two decades, Fermilab’s Tevatron, which hurls protons and their mirror opposites, antiprotons, together at energies of a trillion electron volts apiece, was the world’s largest particle machine.
By year’s end, when the CERN collider has revved up to five trillion electron volts, the Fermilab machine will be a distant second. Electron volts are the currency of choice in physics for both mass and energy. The more you have, the closer and hotter you can punch back in time toward the Big Bang.
In 1993, the United States Congress canceled plans for an even bigger collider and more powerful machine, the Superconducting Supercollider, after its cost ballooned to $11 billion. In the United States, particle physics never really recovered, said the supercollider’s former director, Roy F. Schwitters of the University of Texas in Austin. “One nonrenewable resource is a person’s time and good years,” he said.
Dr. Oddone, Fermilab’s director, said the uncertainties of steady Congressional financing made physics in the United States unduly “suspenseful.”
CERN, on the other hand, is an organization of 20 countries with a stable budget established by treaty. The year after the supercollider was killed, CERN decided to build its own collider.
Fermilab and the United States, which eventually contributed $531 million for the collider, have not exactly been shut out. Dr. Oddone said that Americans constitute about a quarter of the scientists who built the four giant detectors that sit at points around the racetrack to collect and analyze the debris from the primordial fireballs.
In fact, a remote control room for monitoring one of those experiments, known inelegantly as the Compact Muon Solenoid, was built at Fermilab, just off the lobby of the main building here.
“The mood is great at this place,” he said, noting that the Tevatron was humming productively and still might find the Higgs boson before the new hadron collider.
Another target of physicists is a principle called supersymmetry, which predicts, among other things, that a vast population of new particle species is left over from the Big Bang and waiting to be discovered, one of which could be the long-sought dark matter.
The festivities started at 2 a.m. Chicago time. Speaking by satellite, Dr. Evans, the collider project director at CERN, outlined the plan for the evening: sending a bunch of protons clockwise farther and farther around the collider, stopping them and checking their orbit, until they made it all the way. He noted that for a previous CERN accelerator it had taken 12 hours. “I hope this will go much faster,” he said.
Twenty minutes later, the displays in the control room showed that the beam had made it to its first stopping point. A few minutes later, the physicists erupted in cheers when their consoles showed that the muon solenoid had detected collisions between the beam and stray gas molecules in the otherwise vacuum beam pipe. Their detector was alive and working.
Finally at 3:28 Chicago time (10:28 a.m. at CERN), the display showed the protons had made it all the way around to another big detector named Atlas.
At Fermilab, they broke out the Champagne. Dr. Oddone congratulated his colleagues around the world. “We have all worked together and brought this machine to life,” he said. “We’re so excited about sending a beam around. Wait until we start having collisions and doing physics.”
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: September 10, 2008
After 14 years of labor, scientists at the CERN laboratory outside Geneva successfully activated the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest, most powerful particle collider and, at $8 billion, the most expensive scientific experiment to date.
At 4:28 a.m., Eastern time, the scientists announced that a beam of protons had completed its first circuit around the collider’s 17-mile-long racetrack, 300 feet underneath the Swiss-French border. They then sent the beam around several more times.
“It’s a fantastic moment,” said Lyn Evans, who has been the project director of the collider since its inception in 1994. “We can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe.”
Eventually, the collider is expected to accelerate protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts and then smash them together, recreating conditions in the primordial fireball only a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Scientists hope the machine will be a sort of Hubble Space Telescope of inner space, allowing them to detect new subatomic particles and forces of nature.
An ocean away from Geneva, the new collider’s activation was watched with rueful excitement here at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, which has had the reigning particle collider.
Several dozen physicists, students and onlookers, and three local mayors gathered overnight to watch the dawn of a new high-energy physics. They applauded each milestone as the scientists methodically steered the protons on their course at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Many of them, including the lab’s director, Pier Oddone, were wearing pajamas or bathrobes or even nightcaps bearing Fermilab “pajama party” patches on them.
Outside, a half moon was hanging low in a cloudy sky, a reminder that the universe was beautiful and mysterious and that another small step into that mystery was about to be taken.
Dr. Oddone, who earlier in the day admitted it was a “bittersweet moment,” lauded the new machine as the result of “two and a half decades of dreams to open up this huge new territory in the exploration of the natural world.”
Roger Aymar, CERN’s director, called the new collider a “discovery machine.” The buzz was worldwide. On the blog “Cosmic Variance,” Gordon Kane of the University of Michigan called the new collider “a why machine.”
Others, worried about speculation that a black hole could emerge from the proton collisions, had called it a doomsday machine, to the dismay of CERN physicists who can point to a variety of studies and reports that say that this fear is nothing but science fiction.
But Boaz Klima, a Fermilab particle physicist, said that the speculation had nevertheless helped create buzz about particle physics. “This is something that people can talk to their neighbors about,” he said.
The only thing physicists agree on is that they do not know what will happen — what laws and particles will prevail — when the collisions reach the energies just after the Big Bang.
“That there are many theories means we don’t have a clue,” said Dr. Oddone. “That’s what makes it so exciting.”
Many physicists hope to materialize a hypothetical particle called the Higgs boson, which according to theory endows other particles with mass. They also hope to identify the nature of the invisible dark matter that makes up 25 percent of the universe and provides the scaffolding for galaxies. Some dream of revealing new dimensions of space-time.
But those discoveries are in the future. If the new collider were a car, then what physicists did Wednesday was turn on an engine that will now warm up for a couple of months before anyone drives it anywhere. The first meaningful collisions, at an energy of five trillion electron volts, will not happen until late fall.
Nevertheless, the symbolism of the moment was not lost on all those gathered here.
Once upon a time the United States ruled particle physics. For the last two decades, Fermilab’s Tevatron, which hurls protons and their mirror opposites, antiprotons, together at energies of a trillion electron volts apiece, was the world’s largest particle machine.
By year’s end, when the CERN collider has revved up to five trillion electron volts, the Fermilab machine will be a distant second. Electron volts are the currency of choice in physics for both mass and energy. The more you have, the closer and hotter you can punch back in time toward the Big Bang.
In 1993, the United States Congress canceled plans for an even bigger collider and more powerful machine, the Superconducting Supercollider, after its cost ballooned to $11 billion. In the United States, particle physics never really recovered, said the supercollider’s former director, Roy F. Schwitters of the University of Texas in Austin. “One nonrenewable resource is a person’s time and good years,” he said.
Dr. Oddone, Fermilab’s director, said the uncertainties of steady Congressional financing made physics in the United States unduly “suspenseful.”
CERN, on the other hand, is an organization of 20 countries with a stable budget established by treaty. The year after the supercollider was killed, CERN decided to build its own collider.
Fermilab and the United States, which eventually contributed $531 million for the collider, have not exactly been shut out. Dr. Oddone said that Americans constitute about a quarter of the scientists who built the four giant detectors that sit at points around the racetrack to collect and analyze the debris from the primordial fireballs.
In fact, a remote control room for monitoring one of those experiments, known inelegantly as the Compact Muon Solenoid, was built at Fermilab, just off the lobby of the main building here.
“The mood is great at this place,” he said, noting that the Tevatron was humming productively and still might find the Higgs boson before the new hadron collider.
Another target of physicists is a principle called supersymmetry, which predicts, among other things, that a vast population of new particle species is left over from the Big Bang and waiting to be discovered, one of which could be the long-sought dark matter.
The festivities started at 2 a.m. Chicago time. Speaking by satellite, Dr. Evans, the collider project director at CERN, outlined the plan for the evening: sending a bunch of protons clockwise farther and farther around the collider, stopping them and checking their orbit, until they made it all the way. He noted that for a previous CERN accelerator it had taken 12 hours. “I hope this will go much faster,” he said.
Twenty minutes later, the displays in the control room showed that the beam had made it to its first stopping point. A few minutes later, the physicists erupted in cheers when their consoles showed that the muon solenoid had detected collisions between the beam and stray gas molecules in the otherwise vacuum beam pipe. Their detector was alive and working.
Finally at 3:28 Chicago time (10:28 a.m. at CERN), the display showed the protons had made it all the way around to another big detector named Atlas.
At Fermilab, they broke out the Champagne. Dr. Oddone congratulated his colleagues around the world. “We have all worked together and brought this machine to life,” he said. “We’re so excited about sending a beam around. Wait until we start having collisions and doing physics.”
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: September 10, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
New Sphere in Exploring the Abyss
CUDAHY, Wis. — The deep is legendary for inky darkness. William Beebe, the first person to eye the abyss, called it perpetual night.
The darkness is matched by the intense pressure. Four miles down, it amounts to nearly five tons per square inch. That is too much even for Alvin, the most famous of the world’s tiny submersibles, which can take a pilot and two scientists down to a maximum depth of 2.8 miles.
But a new submersible is being built here, and even the process of construction seems a rebuke to the darkness. The work lighted up a cavernous factory with fireworks on a recent visit. Hot reds and oranges burst into showers of spark and flame as blistering metal began to yield to the demands of the submersible’s design.
“Amazing,” Tom Furman, a senior engineer at Ladish Forging, said after a big press bore down on an 11-foot disk of hot metal, making the delicate manipulation look as easy as rearranging a gargantuan pat of butter.
The new vehicle is to replace Alvin, which was the first submersible to illuminate the rusting hulk of the Titanic and the first to carry scientists down to discover the bizarre ecosystems of tube worms and other strange creatures that thrive in icy darkness.
The United States used to have several submersibles — tiny submarines that dive extraordinarily deep. Alvin is the only one left, and after more than four decades of probing the sea’s depths it is to be retired. Its replacement, costing some $50 million, is to go deeper, move faster, stay down longer, cut the dark better, carry more scientific gear and maybe — just maybe — open a new era of exploration.
Its architects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod describe it as “the most capable deep-sea research vehicle in the world.”
Alvin can transport a pilot and two scientists down 2.8 miles, providing access to 62 percent of the dark seabed. The new vehicle is expected to descend more than four miles, opening 99 percent of the ocean floor to inquiry. But the greater depth means that the vehicle’s personnel sphere and its many other systems will face added tons of crushing pressure.
“Technologically, it’s quite challenging,” Robert S. Detrick Jr., a senior scientist and vice president for marine facilities and operations at Woods Hole, said of forging the new personnel sphere. “It’s also something that hasn’t been done for a long time in the United States.”
To better resist the sea’s pressure, the wall of the new personnel sphere is to be nearly three inches thick, up from Alvin’s two inches. Deep explorers always use spheres to make crew compartments because that geometry best resists the crushing force.
“We have confidence it can be done,” Dr. Detrick said in January of the sphere’s forging. “But we don’t have a lot of margin for error. If the first forging is bad, it would be quite expensive to redo it.”
That air of uncertainty hung over teams of engineers and oceanographers who gathered in late June at Ladish in the Milwaukee suburb of Cudahy.
The objective of the metalworking company was to transform two giant disks of titanium — stronger and lighter than steel, and perfect for withstanding the vast pressures of the deep — into twin hemispheres. If forged successfully, the cuplike hemispheres would be welded together to form the beginnings of the personnel sphere, initiating the vehicle’s birth.
Ladish, its plant nearly a mile long, is a maze of ovens and workshops, forges and presses — giant versions of the hammers that blacksmiths use to manipulate hot metal. Employees wear hardhats, safety goggles and, when conditions warrant, ear plugs.
“No hot loads,” a sign warned as a group of visitors moved deep inside the factory. “Hardhats required beyond this point,” read another.
A star of the site is hydraulic press No. 154, a behemoth that rises some five stories high. For decades, its operators have quietly advanced the nation’s exploration agenda by turning ingots of hot steel into rocket casings.
Now, the operators have turned their attention to inner space. In late June, after much preparation and computer modeling, sirens wailed and they drove the ram of their giant press down onto blistering hot titanium, the glowing disk half a foot thick and 11 feet wide. Smoke and flame shot upward.
“You have to move fast,” Douglas B. Roberts, a manager at Ladish, said amid the fireworks. “That big a piece cools off quickly.”
In seconds, the big press transformed the radiant disk into an enormous cup. The next day, it made another. Even after an hour of cooling, the big cup still radiated waves of heat.
“It went fantastic,” Mr. Furman, the chief engineer for design engineering at Ladish, told a group of officials and visitors.
The overall process of forging, welding, machining, heat treating, cutting view ports, annealing, finishing and testing the new personnel sphere is to be done at several companies around the country and is expected to take about two years. The completed crew cabin, seven feet across, will be a foot wider than Alvin’s.
Oceanographers say the new sphere will help open the sea’s depths. Its volume is 18 percent larger than Alvin’s, allowing twice as much room inside for racks of scientific equipment and a bit more space for passengers.
Alvin has three thick windows through which the pilot and scientists can peer out at the undersea world. The new vehicle will have five, increasing the field of view and the chance for discovery and careful observation.
“It’s going to be incredible,” said Cindy L. Van Dover, a professor of marine biology at Duke University who has spent hundreds of hours diving in Alvin. She noted that scientists would have two windows that look forward. By contrast, Alvin’s scientific viewports look off to the side, with only the pilot getting the central view.
“Forward is cool,” she said, calling it rich in drama, lights and action.
For instance, Dr. Van Dover said the forward view could best reveal a towering hot spring surrounded by exotic forms of life.
“In Alvin, a scientist can’t see that,” she said. “Also, you want to see where your samples are being taken and how they’re being taken. You want to be able to direct the pilot.”
Dr. Detrick of Woods Hole called forging the new personnel sphere one of three big technical hurdles. The others, he said, are making the vehicle’s foam and its banks of batteries. The foam must be hard enough to resist crushing pressure yet buoyant enough to counteract the vehicle’s great weight. And the batteries must be unusually sturdy and powerful.
If successful, the new batteries will allow the vehicle to stay on the bottom for up to eight hours, compared with six for Alvin. Improvements in the vehicle’s propulsion system, including more powerful thrusters, will let it move faster. And the vehicle’s new lights and cameras will better pierce the darkness.
Still, like its predecessor, the new vehicle, over all, is to be no larger than a small truck.
Dr. Van Dover said one of the big payoffs would be the submersible’s ability to dive deep.
“Depth is a big deal,” she said. “It’s hard to wax lyrical on the subject because we don’t know what’s there. So we can’t guarantee a discovery. Yet we know that every time we extend our ability to go somewhere, we discover new things about how the planet works, about how life on the planet is adapted.”
The new vehicle is also seen as building national pride and international goodwill, because foreign scientists at times join the dives.
Submersibles can also foster geopolitical aims. A year ago, a team of Russians trekked to the North Pole and plunged through the ice pack in a submersible to the dark ocean floor. There, they planted Russia’s flag and, upon surfacing, declared that the feat had strengthened Moscow’s claims to nearly half the Arctic seabed.
Just when the replacement Alvin will join the world’s small fleet of submersibles has become uncertain.
Like many federal projects, it faces cost overruns and financing troubles. When first proposed in 2004, the anticipated bill ran to $21.6 million. But delays set in and the price of materials, planning and contracting ran higher than expected. Officials say titanium alone has seen a fivefold price increase.
The National Science Foundation, the federal agency that sponsors the project, has too many competing needs to meet the new estimated cost of about $50 million. So officials at Woods Hole came up with a phased approach that promises to lower the immediate expense.
In an Aug. 8 letter, Susan K. Avery, the president of Woods Hole, outlined the plan to Deborah Kelley, a University of Washington oceanographer and chairwoman of the Deep Submergence Science Committee, a team of researchers that advises the government on abyssal exploration.
The new personnel sphere, she said, might first be fitted onto Alvin’s body, giving the old submersible a life extension and a capability boost. Alvin would also get new batteries, new electronics, better lights, cameras and video systems. But the hybrid would be limited to Alvin’s depth of 2.8 miles.
The second phase, Dr. Avery said, would build a new submersible body that would let the replacement vehicle dive to the full intended depth of four miles.
How soon? The original schedule of 2004 foresaw the replacement vehicle as ready in 2008. Early this year, amid growing uncertainty, the keepers of the schedule put the date at 2010. Now, the soonest the upgraded Alvin might hit the water is estimated to be 2011. And the full replacement, according to Woods Hole officials, might not materialize until 2015.
“Phase 2 is about finding additional resources,” Dr. Detrick said. “It’s a matter of money.”
Officials talk about a $25 million shortfall and hopes that a private donor might materialize who could close the gap and ensure the speedy debut of the new submersible and its program of deep inquiry.
For explorers like Dr. Van Dover, that day cannot arrive soon enough. “We can apply 40 years of experience and build it right,” she said. “That’s the beauty.”
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: August 25, 2008
The darkness is matched by the intense pressure. Four miles down, it amounts to nearly five tons per square inch. That is too much even for Alvin, the most famous of the world’s tiny submersibles, which can take a pilot and two scientists down to a maximum depth of 2.8 miles.
But a new submersible is being built here, and even the process of construction seems a rebuke to the darkness. The work lighted up a cavernous factory with fireworks on a recent visit. Hot reds and oranges burst into showers of spark and flame as blistering metal began to yield to the demands of the submersible’s design.
“Amazing,” Tom Furman, a senior engineer at Ladish Forging, said after a big press bore down on an 11-foot disk of hot metal, making the delicate manipulation look as easy as rearranging a gargantuan pat of butter.
The new vehicle is to replace Alvin, which was the first submersible to illuminate the rusting hulk of the Titanic and the first to carry scientists down to discover the bizarre ecosystems of tube worms and other strange creatures that thrive in icy darkness.
The United States used to have several submersibles — tiny submarines that dive extraordinarily deep. Alvin is the only one left, and after more than four decades of probing the sea’s depths it is to be retired. Its replacement, costing some $50 million, is to go deeper, move faster, stay down longer, cut the dark better, carry more scientific gear and maybe — just maybe — open a new era of exploration.
Its architects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod describe it as “the most capable deep-sea research vehicle in the world.”
Alvin can transport a pilot and two scientists down 2.8 miles, providing access to 62 percent of the dark seabed. The new vehicle is expected to descend more than four miles, opening 99 percent of the ocean floor to inquiry. But the greater depth means that the vehicle’s personnel sphere and its many other systems will face added tons of crushing pressure.
“Technologically, it’s quite challenging,” Robert S. Detrick Jr., a senior scientist and vice president for marine facilities and operations at Woods Hole, said of forging the new personnel sphere. “It’s also something that hasn’t been done for a long time in the United States.”
To better resist the sea’s pressure, the wall of the new personnel sphere is to be nearly three inches thick, up from Alvin’s two inches. Deep explorers always use spheres to make crew compartments because that geometry best resists the crushing force.
“We have confidence it can be done,” Dr. Detrick said in January of the sphere’s forging. “But we don’t have a lot of margin for error. If the first forging is bad, it would be quite expensive to redo it.”
That air of uncertainty hung over teams of engineers and oceanographers who gathered in late June at Ladish in the Milwaukee suburb of Cudahy.
The objective of the metalworking company was to transform two giant disks of titanium — stronger and lighter than steel, and perfect for withstanding the vast pressures of the deep — into twin hemispheres. If forged successfully, the cuplike hemispheres would be welded together to form the beginnings of the personnel sphere, initiating the vehicle’s birth.
Ladish, its plant nearly a mile long, is a maze of ovens and workshops, forges and presses — giant versions of the hammers that blacksmiths use to manipulate hot metal. Employees wear hardhats, safety goggles and, when conditions warrant, ear plugs.
“No hot loads,” a sign warned as a group of visitors moved deep inside the factory. “Hardhats required beyond this point,” read another.
A star of the site is hydraulic press No. 154, a behemoth that rises some five stories high. For decades, its operators have quietly advanced the nation’s exploration agenda by turning ingots of hot steel into rocket casings.
Now, the operators have turned their attention to inner space. In late June, after much preparation and computer modeling, sirens wailed and they drove the ram of their giant press down onto blistering hot titanium, the glowing disk half a foot thick and 11 feet wide. Smoke and flame shot upward.
“You have to move fast,” Douglas B. Roberts, a manager at Ladish, said amid the fireworks. “That big a piece cools off quickly.”
In seconds, the big press transformed the radiant disk into an enormous cup. The next day, it made another. Even after an hour of cooling, the big cup still radiated waves of heat.
“It went fantastic,” Mr. Furman, the chief engineer for design engineering at Ladish, told a group of officials and visitors.
The overall process of forging, welding, machining, heat treating, cutting view ports, annealing, finishing and testing the new personnel sphere is to be done at several companies around the country and is expected to take about two years. The completed crew cabin, seven feet across, will be a foot wider than Alvin’s.
Oceanographers say the new sphere will help open the sea’s depths. Its volume is 18 percent larger than Alvin’s, allowing twice as much room inside for racks of scientific equipment and a bit more space for passengers.
Alvin has three thick windows through which the pilot and scientists can peer out at the undersea world. The new vehicle will have five, increasing the field of view and the chance for discovery and careful observation.
“It’s going to be incredible,” said Cindy L. Van Dover, a professor of marine biology at Duke University who has spent hundreds of hours diving in Alvin. She noted that scientists would have two windows that look forward. By contrast, Alvin’s scientific viewports look off to the side, with only the pilot getting the central view.
“Forward is cool,” she said, calling it rich in drama, lights and action.
For instance, Dr. Van Dover said the forward view could best reveal a towering hot spring surrounded by exotic forms of life.
“In Alvin, a scientist can’t see that,” she said. “Also, you want to see where your samples are being taken and how they’re being taken. You want to be able to direct the pilot.”
Dr. Detrick of Woods Hole called forging the new personnel sphere one of three big technical hurdles. The others, he said, are making the vehicle’s foam and its banks of batteries. The foam must be hard enough to resist crushing pressure yet buoyant enough to counteract the vehicle’s great weight. And the batteries must be unusually sturdy and powerful.
If successful, the new batteries will allow the vehicle to stay on the bottom for up to eight hours, compared with six for Alvin. Improvements in the vehicle’s propulsion system, including more powerful thrusters, will let it move faster. And the vehicle’s new lights and cameras will better pierce the darkness.
Still, like its predecessor, the new vehicle, over all, is to be no larger than a small truck.
Dr. Van Dover said one of the big payoffs would be the submersible’s ability to dive deep.
“Depth is a big deal,” she said. “It’s hard to wax lyrical on the subject because we don’t know what’s there. So we can’t guarantee a discovery. Yet we know that every time we extend our ability to go somewhere, we discover new things about how the planet works, about how life on the planet is adapted.”
The new vehicle is also seen as building national pride and international goodwill, because foreign scientists at times join the dives.
Submersibles can also foster geopolitical aims. A year ago, a team of Russians trekked to the North Pole and plunged through the ice pack in a submersible to the dark ocean floor. There, they planted Russia’s flag and, upon surfacing, declared that the feat had strengthened Moscow’s claims to nearly half the Arctic seabed.
Just when the replacement Alvin will join the world’s small fleet of submersibles has become uncertain.
Like many federal projects, it faces cost overruns and financing troubles. When first proposed in 2004, the anticipated bill ran to $21.6 million. But delays set in and the price of materials, planning and contracting ran higher than expected. Officials say titanium alone has seen a fivefold price increase.
The National Science Foundation, the federal agency that sponsors the project, has too many competing needs to meet the new estimated cost of about $50 million. So officials at Woods Hole came up with a phased approach that promises to lower the immediate expense.
In an Aug. 8 letter, Susan K. Avery, the president of Woods Hole, outlined the plan to Deborah Kelley, a University of Washington oceanographer and chairwoman of the Deep Submergence Science Committee, a team of researchers that advises the government on abyssal exploration.
The new personnel sphere, she said, might first be fitted onto Alvin’s body, giving the old submersible a life extension and a capability boost. Alvin would also get new batteries, new electronics, better lights, cameras and video systems. But the hybrid would be limited to Alvin’s depth of 2.8 miles.
The second phase, Dr. Avery said, would build a new submersible body that would let the replacement vehicle dive to the full intended depth of four miles.
How soon? The original schedule of 2004 foresaw the replacement vehicle as ready in 2008. Early this year, amid growing uncertainty, the keepers of the schedule put the date at 2010. Now, the soonest the upgraded Alvin might hit the water is estimated to be 2011. And the full replacement, according to Woods Hole officials, might not materialize until 2015.
“Phase 2 is about finding additional resources,” Dr. Detrick said. “It’s a matter of money.”
Officials talk about a $25 million shortfall and hopes that a private donor might materialize who could close the gap and ensure the speedy debut of the new submersible and its program of deep inquiry.
For explorers like Dr. Van Dover, that day cannot arrive soon enough. “We can apply 40 years of experience and build it right,” she said. “That’s the beauty.”
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: August 25, 2008
Friday, August 01, 2008
Airbus superjumbo to land at New York's JFK
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Airbus' A380 superjumbo is set to touch down at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport Friday, marking the first commercial arrival of the giant, double-decker passenger plane on U.S. soil.
The Emirates aircraft, carrying 489 passengers, took off from Dubai earlier in the day, and is scheduled to arrive at 2.45 p.m. EDT (1845 GMT) after a 14-hour flight.
The Gulf-based carrier, owned by the government of Dubai, is the second airline to put the A380 into service, following Singapore Airlines (other-otc: SGPJF.PK - news - people ), which started A380 flights to Sydney in October.
The plane, costing $327 million at list prices, did visit New York and Los Angeles in March last year for route-testing purposes, but Friday's flight is the first regularly scheduled arrival of an A380 in the United States.
With its huge capacity and relatively fuel-efficient engines, airlines are hoping the world's biggest passenger jet will be the most cost-effective way of serving high-volume routes linking big cities, especially in the light of soaring oil prices.
A successful touchdown will be a hard-won victory for Airbus, a unit of aerospace group EADS, which spent $10 billion and more than a decade on Europe's largest industrial project, in the face of widespread skepticism.
Airbus has now sold about 200 of the planes to 16 airlines, but none to U.S. carriers. The company is still struggling to iron out production problems on the plane, after an 18-month delay in getting the first one out of its Toulouse, France, plant.
The delays ended up pushing Airbus into loss and toppling its management, and are still causing political aftershocks in France.
OUTSELLING BOEING
Despite problems, the plane is outselling its nearest competitor, Boeing (nyse: BA - news - people ) Co's revamped, expanded 747-8 jumbo, known as the Intercontinental.
Boeing, which invented the concept of mass travel over great distances with its original 747 in the 1970s, has sold only 27 passenger 747-8s so far. The plane, which can seat 467 people in a standard layout, is set to fly first in Lufthansa colors in 2010.
While the success of the A380 may be bad news for Boeing, plenty of U.S. suppliers are providing parts and electronics for the superjumbo, including Honeywell International Inc (nyse: HON - news - people ) , Spirit AeroSystems Holdings (nyse: SPR - news - people ) Inc, Rockwell Collins Inc (nyse: COL - news - people ) and Goodrich (nyse: GR - news - people ) Corp.
The engines on Emirates' A380 are also U.S.-made, produced by the Engine Alliance, a joint venture between General Electric Co (nyse: GE - news - people ) and Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp. (nyse: UTX - news - people )
Emirates, the world's No. 7 airline in terms of international passengers, is the biggest buyer of A380s, with 58 on order, worth almost $190 billion at list prices. After New York, it plans to fly the planes to London from December, then Sydney and Auckland from February.
Some 20 airports worldwide are currently able to handle the giant A380, which needs extra-wide runways for its long wingspan and two-tiered facilities for loading and unloading passengers.
Emirates took possession of the plane in a glitzy ceremony in Hamburg on Monday, flying it to Dubai then over to New York. The plane has 14 first-class suites, two on-board showers and a bar for first-class customers, as well as a lounge for premium passengers.
Emirates, and regional rivals Qatar Airways, Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways and Bahrain's Gulf Air, are expanding their fleets and routes even as European and U.S. carriers find themselves pinched by high fuel prices and waning demand.
Oil-rich Emirates is hoping to use its new planes to help transform itself into a world business and leisure capital in the next few years, aiming to attract 15 million visitors a year by 2012. (Reporting by Bill Rigby, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
Singapore - By Bill Rigby
The Emirates aircraft, carrying 489 passengers, took off from Dubai earlier in the day, and is scheduled to arrive at 2.45 p.m. EDT (1845 GMT) after a 14-hour flight.
The Gulf-based carrier, owned by the government of Dubai, is the second airline to put the A380 into service, following Singapore Airlines (other-otc: SGPJF.PK - news - people ), which started A380 flights to Sydney in October.
The plane, costing $327 million at list prices, did visit New York and Los Angeles in March last year for route-testing purposes, but Friday's flight is the first regularly scheduled arrival of an A380 in the United States.
With its huge capacity and relatively fuel-efficient engines, airlines are hoping the world's biggest passenger jet will be the most cost-effective way of serving high-volume routes linking big cities, especially in the light of soaring oil prices.
A successful touchdown will be a hard-won victory for Airbus, a unit of aerospace group EADS, which spent $10 billion and more than a decade on Europe's largest industrial project, in the face of widespread skepticism.
Airbus has now sold about 200 of the planes to 16 airlines, but none to U.S. carriers. The company is still struggling to iron out production problems on the plane, after an 18-month delay in getting the first one out of its Toulouse, France, plant.
The delays ended up pushing Airbus into loss and toppling its management, and are still causing political aftershocks in France.
OUTSELLING BOEING
Despite problems, the plane is outselling its nearest competitor, Boeing (nyse: BA - news - people ) Co's revamped, expanded 747-8 jumbo, known as the Intercontinental.
Boeing, which invented the concept of mass travel over great distances with its original 747 in the 1970s, has sold only 27 passenger 747-8s so far. The plane, which can seat 467 people in a standard layout, is set to fly first in Lufthansa colors in 2010.
While the success of the A380 may be bad news for Boeing, plenty of U.S. suppliers are providing parts and electronics for the superjumbo, including Honeywell International Inc (nyse: HON - news - people ) , Spirit AeroSystems Holdings (nyse: SPR - news - people ) Inc, Rockwell Collins Inc (nyse: COL - news - people ) and Goodrich (nyse: GR - news - people ) Corp.
The engines on Emirates' A380 are also U.S.-made, produced by the Engine Alliance, a joint venture between General Electric Co (nyse: GE - news - people ) and Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp. (nyse: UTX - news - people )
Emirates, the world's No. 7 airline in terms of international passengers, is the biggest buyer of A380s, with 58 on order, worth almost $190 billion at list prices. After New York, it plans to fly the planes to London from December, then Sydney and Auckland from February.
Some 20 airports worldwide are currently able to handle the giant A380, which needs extra-wide runways for its long wingspan and two-tiered facilities for loading and unloading passengers.
Emirates took possession of the plane in a glitzy ceremony in Hamburg on Monday, flying it to Dubai then over to New York. The plane has 14 first-class suites, two on-board showers and a bar for first-class customers, as well as a lounge for premium passengers.
Emirates, and regional rivals Qatar Airways, Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways and Bahrain's Gulf Air, are expanding their fleets and routes even as European and U.S. carriers find themselves pinched by high fuel prices and waning demand.
Oil-rich Emirates is hoping to use its new planes to help transform itself into a world business and leisure capital in the next few years, aiming to attract 15 million visitors a year by 2012. (Reporting by Bill Rigby, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
Singapore - By Bill Rigby
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Space probes show solar system dented, not round
WASHINGTON - When viewed from the rest of the galaxy, the edge of our solar system appears slightly dented as if a giant hand is pushing one edge of it inward, far-traveling NASA probes reveal.
Information from Earth's first space probes to hit the thick edge of the solar system — called the heliosheath where the solar wind slows abruptly — paint a picture that is not the simple circle that astronomers long thought, according to several studies published Thursday in the journal Nature. Surprised astronomers said they will have to change their models for what the solar system looks like.
In 1977, NASA launched two space probes on missions beyond the solar system. Voyager 1 went north and Voyager 2 went south. What startled astronomers is that when the two of them hit the heliosheath they did so at different distances from the sun.
Voyager 2 hit the southern edge of the solar system nearly 1 billion miles closer to the sun than Voyager 1 did to the north. Voyager 2 hit the edge at 7.8 billion miles from the sun.
"We used to assume that it's all symmetric and simple," said Leonard Burlaga, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It's literally like a hand pushing."
That push is from the magnetic field that lies between star systems in the Milky Way. The magnetic field hits the solar system at a different angle on the south than on the north, probably because of interstellar turbulence from star explosions, said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone.
Both spacecraft still have several more years before they completely exit the solar system and continue deeper into the space between stars, said Stone, former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
___
On the Net:
Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
Information from Earth's first space probes to hit the thick edge of the solar system — called the heliosheath where the solar wind slows abruptly — paint a picture that is not the simple circle that astronomers long thought, according to several studies published Thursday in the journal Nature. Surprised astronomers said they will have to change their models for what the solar system looks like.
In 1977, NASA launched two space probes on missions beyond the solar system. Voyager 1 went north and Voyager 2 went south. What startled astronomers is that when the two of them hit the heliosheath they did so at different distances from the sun.
Voyager 2 hit the southern edge of the solar system nearly 1 billion miles closer to the sun than Voyager 1 did to the north. Voyager 2 hit the edge at 7.8 billion miles from the sun.
"We used to assume that it's all symmetric and simple," said Leonard Burlaga, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It's literally like a hand pushing."
That push is from the magnetic field that lies between star systems in the Milky Way. The magnetic field hits the solar system at a different angle on the south than on the north, probably because of interstellar turbulence from star explosions, said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone.
Both spacecraft still have several more years before they completely exit the solar system and continue deeper into the space between stars, said Stone, former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
___
On the Net:
Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
Monday, March 31, 2008
Researchers: Asteroid Destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah
A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness's account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that it recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across.
The tablet, found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the royal place at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, is thought to be a 700 B.C. copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky.
He referred to the asteroid as a "white stone bowl approaching" and recorded it as it "vigorously swept along."
Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, scientists have pinpointed his sighting to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123 B.C.
About half the symbols on the tablet have survived and half of those refer to the asteroid. The other symbols record the positions of clouds and constellations. In the past 150 years scientists have made five unsuccessful attempts to translate the tablet.
Mark Hempsell, one of the researchers from Bristol University who cracked the tablet's code, said: "It's a wonderful piece of observation, an absolutely perfect piece of science."
He said the size and route of the asteroid meant that it was likely to have crashed into the Austrian Alps at Köfels. As it traveled close to the ground it would have left a trail of destruction from supersonic shock waves and then slammed into the Earth with a cataclysmic impact.
Debris consisting of up to two-thirds of the asteroid would have been hurled back along its route and a flash reaching temperatures of 400 Centigrade (752 Fahrenheit) would have been created, killing anyone in its path.
About one million sq kilometers (386,000 sq miles) would have been devastated and the impact would have been equivalent to more than 1,000 tons of TNT exploding.
Dr Hempsall said that at least 20 ancient myths record devastation of the type and on the scale of the asteroid's impact, including the Old Testament tale of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the ancient Greek myth of how Phaeton, son of Helios, fell into the River Eridanus after losing control of his father's sun chariot.
The findings of Dr. Hempsall and Alan Bond, of Reaction Engines Ltd., are published in a book, "A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels Impact Event."
The researchers say that the asteroid's impact would explain why at Köfels there is evidence of an ancient landslide 3 miles wide and a quarter of a mile thick.
Tale of devastation
"Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven; and he overthrew those cities and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities ... [Abraham] looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace."
Source: Genesis 19:24-28
By Lewis Smith
Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that it recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across.
The tablet, found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the royal place at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, is thought to be a 700 B.C. copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky.
He referred to the asteroid as a "white stone bowl approaching" and recorded it as it "vigorously swept along."
Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, scientists have pinpointed his sighting to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123 B.C.
About half the symbols on the tablet have survived and half of those refer to the asteroid. The other symbols record the positions of clouds and constellations. In the past 150 years scientists have made five unsuccessful attempts to translate the tablet.
Mark Hempsell, one of the researchers from Bristol University who cracked the tablet's code, said: "It's a wonderful piece of observation, an absolutely perfect piece of science."
He said the size and route of the asteroid meant that it was likely to have crashed into the Austrian Alps at Köfels. As it traveled close to the ground it would have left a trail of destruction from supersonic shock waves and then slammed into the Earth with a cataclysmic impact.
Debris consisting of up to two-thirds of the asteroid would have been hurled back along its route and a flash reaching temperatures of 400 Centigrade (752 Fahrenheit) would have been created, killing anyone in its path.
About one million sq kilometers (386,000 sq miles) would have been devastated and the impact would have been equivalent to more than 1,000 tons of TNT exploding.
Dr Hempsall said that at least 20 ancient myths record devastation of the type and on the scale of the asteroid's impact, including the Old Testament tale of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the ancient Greek myth of how Phaeton, son of Helios, fell into the River Eridanus after losing control of his father's sun chariot.
The findings of Dr. Hempsall and Alan Bond, of Reaction Engines Ltd., are published in a book, "A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels Impact Event."
The researchers say that the asteroid's impact would explain why at Köfels there is evidence of an ancient landslide 3 miles wide and a quarter of a mile thick.
Tale of devastation
"Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven; and he overthrew those cities and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities ... [Abraham] looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace."
Source: Genesis 19:24-28
By Lewis Smith
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