Puerto Rico activists fight to keep beaches public

Environmental activists and experts in Puerto Rico breathed a sigh of relief when a law that sought to privatize La Parguera, a public maritime zone in the western coast of Lajas, was rejected. But their battle is far from over. Several public beaches and maritime zones are fighting privatization proposals.

Project #1621, the bill that was recently rejected, intended to legalize floating water houses or casetas. Illegal casetas have existed in La Parguera for decades. The bill would have legalized these homes, allowed the owners to rent the property for up to 40 years and it would have turned the free public space along the casetas into an exclusive tourism zone.

Local mayors and business owners defended the proposed bill, stating that it could help increase tourism in the region. Some residents said that the owners of such homes help boost the local economy, claiming that they contribute around US$2 million to the small town, which represents 20% of Laja's budget.

“The beaches belong to the people”

Despite its supporters, environmental activists staunchly expressed their opposition through protests and social media, with the phrase “Las Playas son del Pueblo” or The Beaches belong to the People, which has become the official slogan for the anti-privatization movement.

Amigos del MAR (Friends of the SEA), an environmental organization founded in 1995 to protect Puerto Rico's natural resources, were actively lobbying against the bill, writing a letter to Governor Alejandro García Padilla urging him not to sign the controversial law, and recommending various, eco-friendly alternatives, such as allocating funds for studies related to environmental protection.

Legal scholars from various universities in Puerto Rico also joined environmental leaders in trying to orientate politicians about the potential effects of Project #1621, stating that it establishes a disastrous precedent because it conforms to an ongoing tendency of privatization in public areas and it would potentially eliminate access to such spaces.

La Parguera: a coastal gem
In 2014, the Interdisciplinary Center for Coastal Studies at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez published a comprehensive study of the environmental history of La Parguera, detailing its origins as a small fishing village to a popular tourist location with hotels, shops, restaurants and recreational activities. 

Famous for its Phosphorescent Bay, “the marine resources that were once the source of income for subsistence, recreational, and commercial nearshore fishing are mostly gone,” making the old fishing village a now distant memory for locals. The study also states that the casetas are indeed illegally occupying the zone and that they “constitute one of the key elements defining policy and governance.”

The law's original text stated that owners of these casetas have paid the expenses related to the sewage system in La Parguera, but this is also because the houses were responsible for much of the contamination in the area, as stated by the Association of Architects and Landscape Architects.

Puerto Rican anthropologist Rima Brusi has interviewed caseta owners, and, while these constructions are in fact illegal, many individuals are attached to them because they grew up there with their families. However, Brusi adds that there is a sense of ambivalence among locals regarding the law. The majority of the caseteros (floating house owners) belong to the professional class, with some residents claiming that they are typically wealthy, usually own other homes, and limit their boats’ access to the bay, but they also offer some temporary job opportunities cleaning or fixing anything in the casetas.

“Marriott, enemy of the environment”
Project #1621 was only one of several bills that intended to commodify public spaces on the island. In November 2015, an altercation between Marriott hotel's administration and environmental activists made headline news after a ten year struggle erupted into a protest in Isla Verde Beach in Carolina. The organization Coalición Playas Pa'l Pueblo had established a camp site in Isla Verde over ten years ago to protect free public access in a beach located in the northern city of Carolina. 

But in 2015, Playas Pa'l Pueblo received an eviction order from the township. Agencia EFE reported last November that the Puerto Rico National Parks Company had transferred the maritime zone to the city of Carolina in 2003; however, CH Properties, a real estate firm affiliated with Courtyard Marriott, has a 99-year lease on the site.

Mural in Isla Verde Beach: “The beaches belong to the people, they are not for sale.” Taken from Amigos del MAR's Facebook page. Used with permission

Amigos del MAR and Playas Pa'l Pueblo remain two of the most important environmental organizations trying to protect public beaches from privatization, stating that doing so would also affect Isla Verde's ecosystem, including a Leatherback Sea Turtle nest located on the area that could potentially become property of the Marriott. Earlier this year, the Carolina Appellate Court ordered the eviction of Amigos del MAR protesters from Isla Verde, but Carolina mayor José Carlos Aponte Dalmau was against such action, stating that it represents a violation of their constitutional rights.

Protesters in Isla Verde Beach in Carolina. Sign reads “Marriott, enemy of the environment.” Photo from Amigos del MAR's Facebook page. Used with permission

Project #2853
Another bill proposed this year by the House of Representatives was Project #2853, which intended to legalize the privatization of Puerto Rico's coastal zones. This project would have created a Trust for Ecotourist Conservation in Puerto Rico under the Department of Natural Resources for granting special licenses for the private use of the coastal maritime zone. The bill was rejected by the Senate, and during the night of its hearing, activists gathered outside the Capitol of Puerto Rico to protest, and activist Alberto de Jesús, better known as “Tito Kayak”, climbed a flag pole and replaced the American flag with one that read “Beaches belong to the people.”

While organizations, academics and environmental activists have united forces to protect public spaces and the Puerto Rican ecosystem, the island is routinely plagued by attempts to privatize beaches as an effort to boost tourism. On Friday, August 6, Amigos del MAR organized a protest in front of the Fortaleza in San Juan, the home of the island's Governor. The group used social media to encouraged Puerto Ricans to contact the Fortaleza via phone and urge Alejandro García Padilla not to sign the bill, and activist Tito Kayak announced a hunger strike to protest the project. Campamento Contra la Junta, a camp site established by activists against the federal control board (PROMESA) in front of the Federal Courthouse, also expressed their solidarity for Amigos del MAR.

The bill was vetoed by the governor on Saturday night, August 7. While this struggle proved to be a triumph for environmentalists, similar projects, like Marriott's expansion, are still ongoing and the future of Puerto Rico's shore will remain uncertain while similar proposals are presented.

This article by Ana Gabriela Calderón originally appeared on Global Voices on August 9, 2016.




Puerto Rico activists fight to keep beaches public

Bright meteor fireball visible from the entire island of Puerto Rico [Video]

A bright fireball struck the sky over Puerto Rico on June 2, 2016 at aound 9 pm.



The slow meteor was visible from the entire island moving from Northeast to Southeast.



The Caribbean Astronomical Society (SAC) noted that the remarkable meteor was reported from Juncos, Vega Alta and to Mayaguez, so across the entire island.



The bolide was bright enough to outshine the clouds.



It was like a glowing sphere, like a big shooting star with a long light blue tail.





Bright meteor fireball visible from the entire island of Puerto Rico

Astronomers Discover a New Kind of Radio Blast From Space

In November 2012, a powerful blast of radio waves hit the Earth. This event—called a fast radio burst—intrigued scientists with its extreme energy, faraway origin, and seeming lack of clues about whatever mysterious astrophysical engine had blasted the waves into space.

But unlike the few fast radio bursts that had been observed before, this one was destined to be more than a one-hit wonder.

In early 2015, another blast of radio waves was fired by the same unknown engine. And another. And then another, and another, until finally, over a period of three hours, a total of ten additional bursts emerged from the same location on the sky.

It’s the first time astronomers have caught a fast radio burst in the act of repeating, and—as reported this week in Nature—the observations provide crucial clues about the origin of these bursts, which have stumped astronomers for nearly a decade.

“I just plain love this discovery,” says astronomer Emily Petroff of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. “The observations and data are very solid. A super fascinating result and definitely a really big deal.”

Until now, fast radio bursts were generally thought to be the result of cataclysmic, one-time astrophysical events such as supernovas, stars collapsing into black holes, or colliding stars. That’s because no one had ever seen a burst go off more than once. But if the same source continues firing radio waves into space, that rules out a bunch of ideas. It’s not like a supernova can put the band back together and go on a revival tour.

“If it happened four years ago and it’s happening again now, it’s not some star that collapsed or black holes that merged,” says study co-author Scott Ransom of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “This is probably a very young, very fast spinning magnetar, in some local-ish galaxy, that occasionally goes into semi-outbursty form.”

Blasts from the Past

First detected in 2007, fast radio bursts have been a stubborn, messy puzzle to solve. Including these 10 new ones, roughly two dozen of the bursts have been observed, and many appear to be coming from billions of light-years away. Yet they last for just thousandths of a second. For years, scientists have argued over whether the bursts were really coming from outside the Milky Way galaxy—and whether the bursts were even real or were artifacts produced by telescopes on Earth.

As more observations trickled in, astronomers gradually began to agree that yes, the bursts are real, and yes, they do appear to be coming from far away. But their origins eluded capture.

Recently, an important piece of puzzle snapped into place when a team of scientists studying the large-scale structure of the universe serendipitously snared a burst that contained a new, essential piece of information: In addition to coming from very far away, the burst appeared to have traveled through a highly magnetized region of space, suggesting that perhaps a flaring, extremely magnetic neutron star—a magnetar—could be spinning away at its origin.

It’s a story that matches these new observations, and it could be a window into the world of at least one burst engine.

“A Minor Point of Interest”

First observed in 2012, the repeater burst is known colloquially as the Spitler burst, after Max Planck postdoc Laura Spitler, who discovered it while sifting through data from a pulsar survey at the Arecibo Observatory. Soon after that discovery, Spitler and her colleagues re-targeted the burst, known less colloquially as FRB 121102, and searched for repeats. They got nothing—just like the teams at Australia’s Parkes Observatory that had spent dozens and dozens of hours staring at bursts and waiting for them to go off again.

In mid-2015, Spitler and her colleagues decided to re-observe FRB 121102, knowing they might be on a futile hunt. Over three hours, Arecibo aimed its powerful eye at the burst’s spot on the sky. Then it was time to wait for supercomputers to process all the data. Later, when McGill University graduate student Paul Scholz took a look at the processed observations, he got a surprise. Well, ten of them.

“Right away, I knew that this was a big new part of the story of fast radio bursts,” Scholz says. “It kind of changes everything.”

As one does, Scholz decided to have a little fun with his team. He sent an email announcing the discovery with the subject line, “A minor point of interest regarding the Spitler burst.” In it, he revealed the ten additional bursts Arecibo had detected.

"I can just imagine how exciting a moment it must have been for their team to see the first repeat!” Petroff says. “This rules out loads of progenitor models. Cataclysmic models are out the window for this source. Whether that means they're out or not for the whole population remains to be seen.”

Curiously, the burst rate isn’t stable and is changing dramatically over time. Six bursts appeared within about 10 minutes, and several others were separated by weeks. “That means the object itself is changing somehow,” Ransom says. The team’s best guess is still that the bursts are flares from a magnetar, and that it’s somewhere on the order of a few hundred million light-years away. But giant pulses from extragalactic pulsars could also be plausible.

Duncan Lorimer, who discovered the first burst in 2007, suspects that more follow-up observations could reveal a pattern in the burst’s timing. “Sooner or later, I think it’s going to reveal its periodicity,” says Lorimer, who’s at West Virginia University. But more importantly, he notes, the observations should crush any lingering doubts about fast radio bursts being real.

“This one is repeating from the same patch of the sky, but at completely different epochs,” he says. “That’s just a really positive result from their paper. But of course, the conundrum it throws up then is, do all of them repeat? Or just some fraction?”

Multiple Burst Engines?

The story the Spitler burst tells is different than the one told by a fast radio burst described last week in Nature. That report, which has since been challenged by follow-up observations, describes a fast radio burst that may have originated from the catastrophic collision and merger of two neutron stars—an event that left a radio afterglow in its wake.

Assuming both observations are real, it’s not too surprising that there may be multiple ways to cook a fast radio burst. “It is still possible that fast radio bursts, at least some fraction of them, could be due to catastrophic events, and that maybe there’s two classes,” Ransom says.

Though two species of fast radio bursts might seem to defy the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the best, it wouldn’t be the first time the cosmos has decided to get a little tricky. In the 1960s, when gamma-ray bursts were first detected, scientists didn’t know what to make of them. By the 1990s, observations revealed that these blindingly bright blasts of gamma-rays could be produced by both supernovas and colliding neutron stars—and that the resulting species of bursts varied slightly from one another.

In other words, there’s no reason in the universe why fast radio bursts should only come from one source. The transient, flickering radio sky is not particularly well understood, and as astronomy has shown us for millennia: Each time we see the sky in a new light, unexplained, unimaginably complex phenomena emerge.

Related Stories:

Arecibo Observatory Detects Mysterious, Energetic Radio Burst

Rogue Microwave Ovens Are the Culprits Behind Mysterious Radio Signals

Mathematical Pattern Found in Enigmatic Radio Bursts, But It’s Not E.T.

Those Blasts of Radio Waves From Deep Space? Not Aliens.

By Nadia Drake

Astronomers Discover a New Kind of Radio Blast From Space

Sea turtles begin returning to Puerto Rico's beaches

The turtle nesting season on Puerto Rico's beaches has officially begun with the recording of the first arrival of sea turtles, the largest such creatures in the world, at the island's Northeast Ecological Corridor Nature Reserve, or RNCEN.

Puerto Rico's secretary of the Natural and Environmental Resources Department (DRNA), Carmen Guerrero, said in a statement that a turtle nested on one of RNCEN's beaches on the morning of Feb. 25.

The nesting season for the sea turtles, which since 1970 has been included on the endangered species list, typically begins in early March.

Last year, the first sea turtle nest was spotted on the beach at Isla Verde, in metropolitan San Juan.

Each year, the turtles migrate from Canadian waters to tropical climes to reproduce. The eggs are laid between March and mid-summer, and they hatch between July and September, after which the hatchlings take to the sea, where they spend the bulk of their existence.

Sea turtles can grow to a length of more than 2 meters (7 feet) and weigh up to 635 kg (1,400 lb.)

The DRNA Sea Turtles Program coordinator, Carlos Diez, said that 1,874 nests were tallied all around the island in 2015, compared to 1,386 in 2013.

The turtles exhibit biennial behavior, meaning that statistics can only be compared over two-year periods. Some 77,000 turtles were born on Puerto Rican beaches in 2015, compared to 67,000 in 2013.

"In Puerto Rico, we're ready and prepared to protect and monitor the nesting process of these endangered sea turtles," Guerrero said. EFE

Sea turtles begin returning to Puerto Rico's beaches

A 12-Step Guide to Building Your Very First Mobile App: Part 2

Designing and building your very first mobile app can be quite challenging. To help give you a general overview of the process, I’ve put together this 12-step introductory guide. This article is Part 2, covering steps 7 through 12. Make sure you read A 12-Step Guide to Building Your Very First Mobile App: Part 1 first to review steps 1 through 6.

Let’s summarize first: You’ve had an idea, sketched it out on paper, and created a testable wireframe prototype. Although it feels as if most of the work has already been done, the truth is that the actual process is just about to start!

This infographic provides a nice overview of the development of an Android or iOS app. It has been created from a survey of 100 developers and put into place based on their feedback (Note: You will find the wireframing process in this graphic near the end, whereas many developers will do their wireframes at the beginning of the project.)

How long does it take to make a mobile app?

From: Kinvey Backend as a Service

Step 7: Build the Back End of Your App

Now that your app has been defined pretty clearly, it is time to get started on the back end of your system. Your developer will have to set up servers, databases, APIs, and storage solutions.

Another important thing on your to-do list at this stage is signing up for developer accounts at the app marketplaces you are developing for. Getting your account approved may take several days (depending on the platform) and shouldn’t be left to the last minute.



Step 8: Design the App “Skins”

“Skins” are what designers/developers call the individual screens needed for the app. Your designer’s job is now to come up with high-resolution versions of what were previously your wireframes.

In this step it is crucial to include all comments from your prototype testers (see Step 6). After all, you are trying to build an app your target audience is actually going to use, therefore their feedback should guide you toward to the perfect UI-User Interface.

Step 9: Test Again (Yes, Again)

Once your designer has completed the design skins, you’re up for another round of testing. Don’t think that you are all set with what you’ve done so far. For the first time you have your actual app concept completely in place, all the graphics inserted, and all text as it should be. Which means you can finally test your app in the way it will really look and feel.

To test your app, two great testing apps come to mind: Solidify and Framer. These apps allow you to import your app designs and add links where needed to test the flow from screen to screen.

Don’t confuse this stage with Step 6 (wireframing). At first it was about creating the basic look and feel of the app. Here you’ve implemented the actual design and made it clickable.





Step 10: Revise and Continue to Build

Once you’ve given your design a test drive and collected more feedback from future users, you should use these new ideas to polish your app idea. You can still ask your designer to change the layout, and you can still tell your developer to change something on the back end.

Step 11: Refine Each Detail

As you continue to build you will want to have a constant look at your new app. On Android, for example, it is easy to install your app file on a device to test its functionality in a live environment. iOS is different. There you will require a platform like TestFlight to download and test your app as it proceeds.

This step is the last step in the app development process. You can monitor your app all the way until your product is complete.



Step 12: Release Time!

App marketplaces have very different policies when it comes to publishing a new app. Android, for example, does not review newly submitted apps right away. They’ll pass by at some point and check it out but you are able to instantly add your app to Google Play.

iOS, once again, is different here. Apple reserves the right to review and approve your app before it can go live. There is no set timeframe for this, but you can expect at least a week before you hear back from them.

To overcome this hold there is something else you can do: submit your app to PreApps. As you can probably guess from its name, PreApps is an app marketplace that gives developers the opportunity to reach early adopters (a.k.a. “lead users” — people who like to be first at trying out new inventions) and receive some of the very earliest feedback on your masterpiece.



Once you’ve gotten your app listed on the app stores of choice, it is time to market your app and get it seen, but that’s a topic for a whole other future article!

By Melanie Haselmayr

A 12-Step Guide to Building Your Very First Mobile App: Part 2

12-Step Guide to Building Your Very First Mobile App: Part 1

Did you wake up this morning with a creative idea for the perfect mobile app? One that nobody else has thought of before, and that you are certain will be very popular?

The only problem is, you don’t know how to even begin designing and building an app! Never fear — read this brief guide on the 12 key steps to bring your mobile app idea from your imagination to smartphone screens everywhere.

Step 1: Define Your Goal

Having a great idea is the starting point into every new project. Before you go straight into detailing though, you must clearly define the purpose and mission of your mobile app. What is it going to do? What is its core appeal? What concrete problem is it going to solve, or what part of life is it going to make better?

Defining a clear goal for the app is also going to help you get there faster.

Step 2: Start Sketching

By developing sketches you are laying the foundation for your future interface. In this step you visually conceptualize the main features and the approximate layout and structure of your application.



Having a first rough sketch of your app helps everyone on your team understand the mission. These sketches should be used as reference for the next phase of the project.

Step 3: Research

This research has four main purposes:

1. Find out whether there are other apps doing the same thing
2. Find design inspiration for your app
3. Find information on the technical requirements for your app
4. Find out how you can market and monetize your app

While you may think that you have a revolutionary idea, you may get your hopes crushed very quickly. There are more than 1 million apps for Android and iOS, so building something that hasn’t been done before is nearly impossible. Nonetheless you must not get discouraged by those who may playing in the same arena. It is imperative that you focus on your own project and your user acquisition. Learn from the key features and mistakes of your competitors, and drop all other thoughts about them.

There is a great marketplace for designers called Dribbble. Designers use Dribbble to showcase their work to others for feedback and to get inspiration from fellow artists. It is probably my favorite place to look for ideas about design and implementation.



This is also the right time to look into the technical aspects of your mobile app. Find out what your requirements are and get a clear picture of whether your idea is truly feasible or not from a technical standpoint. In most cases there will be an alternative solution to proceed on a slightly different route. This research extends into legal restrictions like copyright and privacy questions, giving you a complete understanding of your situation.

If you have connections in the industry, get an expert opinion on your idea right from the start.

Two other important points are marketing and monetization. Now that you have confirmed the feasibility of your app, you should think about your strategy of getting it out onto the market. Determine your niche — know exactly how you can reach your target user and how you need to approach him to make him see the value and use the app.

Another important consideration is figuring out how your app is going to generate money. Will you charge your user to download it? Or will you offer the app for free but run ads on it? This model would require a large user base, so think about that as well.

There are various ways to monetize an app and it is up to you to decide on the channel you want to use.

Step 4: Create a Wireframe and Storyboard

In this phase your ideas and features fuse into a clearer picture. Wireframing is the process of creating a mockup or prototype of your app. You can find a number of prototyping tools online. The most popular ones are Balsamiq, Moqups, and HotGloo, which allows you to not only drag and drop all your placeholders and representative graphics into place, but also add button functionality so that you can click through your app in review mode.



While you are working on your wireframes you should also create a storyboard for your app. The idea is to build a roadmap that will help you understand the connection between each screen and how the user can navigate through your app.

Step 5: Define the Back End of Your Mobile App

Your wireframes and storyboard now become the foundation of your back-end structure. Draw a sketch of your servers, APIs, and data diagrams. This will be a helpful reference for the developer, and as more people join the project you will have a (mostly) self-explanatory diagram for them to study.

Modify your wireframes and storyboard according to technical limitations, if there are any.

Step 6: Test Your Prototype

Revert to your wireframes and ask friends, family, colleagues, and experts to help you review your prototype. Grant them access to the wireframe and have them give your app a test run. Ask them for their honest feedback and to identify flaws and dead-end links. If possible, invite them to your studio and have them try out the prototype in front of you. Monitor how they use the app, taking note of their actions and adapting your UI/UX to them.

The goal is to concretize your app concept before it goes into the design process! Once you start designing it is much harder to change things around, so the clearer the prototype from the start, the better.

By Melanie Haselmayr

12-Step Guide to Building Your Very First Mobile App: Part 1

How Long Does it Take to Build a Mobile App?

“How long does it take to build a mobile app?” While the question isn’t as timeless as “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?” (spoiler alert: 3481), it is one that’s very dear to our community of mobile app developers. And now we’ve got an answer. 18 weeks.

Click image for full sized version

If you’d like to embed this infographic on your own site or blog, here’s the embed code: </p><div style="width:600px;background-color:#fff;padding:10px 20px 20px;font:14px/21px HelveticaNeue-Light, Helvetica Neue Light, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><h3 style="color:#da5024;clear:both;">How long does it take to make a mobile app?</h3><p><a href="http://www.kinvey.com/blog/2086/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-mobile-app"><img alt="Kinvey Backend as a Service" src="https://i2.wp.com/www.kinvey.com/blog/images/2013/01/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-an-app-kinvey.jpg" width="600" /></a></p><div style="width:100%;text-align:center;margin-top:5px;">From: <a style="text-decoration:none;color:#da5024;" href="http://www.kinvey.com/blog/2086/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-mobile-app">Kinvey Backend as a Service</a></div></div><p>

In collaboration with research firm AYTM, we surveyed 100 mobile designers to discover how long they expected it would take to build core front- and backend components of an Android or iOS app.  We averaged the responses and then teamed with the designers at Visual.ly to visualize the time required to develop each component of an MVP-quality native app.

For fun, we put app development time in context. Who knew you could drill three 3000-foot oil wells in the time it takes to launch the first version of your “drill for oil” iOS game?

Of course, there’s a subtext to this graphic. Specifically, it doesn’t have to take 18 weeks to build v1 of your app. It can take a lot less time. The backend alone is estimated to require 10 weeks, but a backend as a service like Kinvey can dramatically reduce that time. And our SDK partners, like Adobe PhoneGap, BrightCove and Trigger.io, can all help accelerate your frontend development efforts as well.

So, how long would it take you to develop a native app MVP?

Kelly Rice

How Long Does it Take to Build a Mobile App?

Ninth Planet May Exist Beyond Pluto, Scientists Report

 There might be a ninth planet in the solar system after all, and it is not Pluto.

Two astronomers reported on Wednesday that they had compelling signs of something bigger and farther away — something that would satisfy the current definition of a planet, where Pluto falls short.

“We are pretty sure there’s one out there,” said Michael E. Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology.

What Dr. Brown and a fellow Caltech professor, Konstantin Batygin, have not done is actually find that planet, so it would be premature to start revising mnemonics of the planets.

In a paper published in The Astronomical Journal, Dr. Brown and Dr. Batygin lay out a detailed circumstantial argument for the planet’s existence in what astronomers have observed — a half-dozen small bodies in distant elliptical orbits.

What is striking, the scientists said, is that the orbits of all six loop outward in the same quadrant of the solar system and are tilted at about the same angle. The odds of that happening by chance are about 1 in 14,000, Dr. Batygin said.

A ninth planet could be gravitationally herding them into these orbits.

For the calculations to work, the planet would be at least an equal to Earth, and most likely much bigger — perhaps a mini-Neptune with a mass about 10 times that of Earth. That would be 4,500 times the mass of Pluto.

Pluto, at its most distant, is 4.6 billion miles from the sun. The potential ninth planet, at its closest, would be about 20 billion miles away; at its farthest, it could be 100 billion miles away. One trip around the sun would take 10,000 to 20,000 years.

“We have pretty good constraints on its orbit,” Dr. Brown said. “What we don’t know is where it is in its orbit, which is too bad.”

Alessandro Morbidelli of the Côte d’Azur Observatory in France, an expert in dynamics of the solar system, said he was convinced. “I think the chase is now on to find this planet,” he said.

This would be the second time that Dr. Brown has upended the map of the solar system. In January 2005, he discovered a Pluto-size object, now known as Eris, in the Kuiper belt, the ring of icy debris beyond Neptune.

The next year, the International Astronomical Union placed Pluto in a new category, “dwarf planet,” because in its view, a full-fledged planet must be the gravitational bully of its orbit, and Pluto was not.

The first indication of a hidden planet beyond Pluto had come a couple of years earlier. The Kuiper belt extends outward from Neptune’s orbit, about 2.8 billion miles from the sun, to a bit less than twice Neptune’s orbit, about five billion miles.

Astronomers expected that beyond lay mostly empty space.

Thus they were surprised when Dr. Brown and two colleagues spotted a 600-mile-wide icy world at a distance of eight billion miles that remained well outside the Kuiper belt even at the closest point in its orbit.

No one could convincingly explain how the object, which Dr. Brown named Sedna, got there, and the hope was that the discovery of more Sedna-like worlds would provide enlightening clues.

Instead, astronomers looked and found nothing, deepening the mystery.

Finally, in 2014, Chadwick Trujillo, who had worked with Dr. Brown on the Sedna discovery, and Scott S. Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, reported a smaller object in a Sedna-like orbit, always remaining beyond the Kuiper belt.

Dr. Trujillo and Dr. Sheppard noted that several Kuiper belt objects had similar orbital characteristics, and they laid out the possibility of a planet disturbing the orbits of these objects. “It was the best explanation we could come up with,” Dr. Trujillo said.

But the particulars of their proposed planet did not explain what was in the sky, Dr. Brown said.

“The theorists didn’t really take it seriously,” he said. “They figured it was all some observational effect. The observers didn’t take it seriously, because they figured it was all some theoretical thing they couldn’t understand.”

Still, the peculiarities of the orbits appeared genuine.

Dr. Brown said he and Dr. Batygin “sat down and beat our heads against the wall for the last two years.”

First, they focused on the six objects in stable orbits and disregarded others that had been recently flung out by Neptune.

That made the picture clearer.

“They all point into the same overall direction,” Dr. Batygin said. “This is in stark contrast with the rest of the Kuiper belt.”

Besides the long odds of this alignment being coincidental, Dr. Batygin said, this pattern would disperse over time.

That argued for the force of some unseen body guiding Sedna and the others.

Dr. Batygin, a theorist, tried placing a planet among them, which scattered some Kuiper belt objects, but the orbits were not sufficiently eccentric.

Then he examined what would happen if a ninth planet were looping outward in the opposite direction. That, Dr. Batygin said, gave “a beautiful match to the real data.”

The computer simulations showed that the planet swept up the Kuiper belt objects and placed them only temporarily in the elliptical orbits. Come back in half a billion years, Dr. Brown said, and Sedna will be back in the Kuiper belt, while other Kuiper belt objects will have been pushed into elliptical orbits.

Another strange result in the simulations: A few Kuiper belt objects were knocked into orbits perpendicular to those of the planets. Dr. Brown remembered that five objects had been found in perpendicular orbits.

“They’re exactly where we predicted them to be,” he said. “That’s when my jaw hit my floor. I think this is actually right.”

Dr. Morbidelli said a possible ninth planet could be the core of a gas giant that started forming during the infancy of the solar system; a close pass to Jupiter could have ejected it. Back then, the sun resided in a dense cluster of stars, and the gravitational jostling could have prevented the planet from escaping to interstellar space.

“I think they’re onto something real,” he said. “I would bet money. I would bet 10,000 bucks.”

CONTINUE READING THE MAIN STORY
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COMMENTS
Dr. Brown said he began searching for the planet a year ago, and he thought he would be able to find it within five years. Other astronomers will most likely also scan that swath of the night sky.

If the planet exists, it would easily meet the definition of planet, Dr. Brown said.

“There are some truly dominant bodies in the solar system and they are pushing around everything else,” Dr. Brown said. “This is what we mean when we say planet.”

Correction: January 20, 2016
An earlier version of an animation accompanying this article carried an incorrect credit. It was made by Michael E. Brown, not Michael E. Clark.

An artist’s impression of a possible ninth planet. It would be quite large — at least as big as Earth — with a thick atmosphere around a rocky core. CreditCalifornia Institute of Techonology

By KENNETH CHANG

Ninth Planet May Exist Beyond Pluto, Scientists Report

Asteroid to pass Earth on Christmas Eve | Science Wire | EarthSky

A large asteroid is approaching the Earth-moon system and will provide a good opportunity for radar observations in the days ahead. Asteroid 163899 – also known as 2003 SD220 – will come closest to Earth on Christmas Eve (December 24, 2015). It’ll pass at a safe distance, and there’s no need to worry about reports claiming it will skim the Earth, or cause earthquakes. At its closest, asteroid 2003 SD220 will be some 6,787,600 miles (11 million km) from our planet’s surface. That’s more than 28 times the Earth-moon distance! It’s so far away that only professional and advanced amateur astronomers are likely to capture optical images of this space rock.

Don’t believe any media suggesting that this space rock may cause earthquakes. Those assertions are misleading and incorrect. Even if 2003 SD220 were passing closer, it’s doubtful earthquakes would result. In fact, there’s no scientific evidence that an asteroid’s flyby can cause any seismic activity, unless it collides with Earth, but – in this case – that clearly will not be the case.

This asteroid isn’t a newly discovered object. Its name – 2003 SD220 – indicates its discovery year. The Lowell Observatory Near-Earth Object Search (LONEOS) program in Flagstaff, Arizona discovered the asteroid on September 29, 2003.

One notable feature of this asteroid is its large size. Preliminary estimates suggested a size of 0.7 miles to 1.5 miles (1.1 km to 2.5 km). Now the size estimate has been bumped up, after recent radar observations from the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. The new observations suggest the asteroid is about 1.25 miles (2 km) long.

The asteroid is thought to have a very slow rotation of about one week.

Although some other asteroids such as 2015 TB145 (the Halloween asteroid) and 2004 BL86 (January, 2015) were visible using 8″ telescopes, the Christmas asteroid will be much more difficult to see because of its distance.

However, using radio telescopes, astronomers are already observing this asteroid by bouncing radio signals from the space rock’s surface. The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is studying asteroid 2003 SD220 from December 3 to 17, while the Goldstone Antenna in California is analyzing the space rock from December 5 to 20.

Image via Arecibo Observatory/NASA/NSF

This space rock – whose shape can be compared to a chicken tender – will make its approach to Earth on December 24, 2015 but will return again in 2018. NASA astronomer and asteroid expert Lance Benner said in a Goldstone radar observations planning document:

2003 SD220 is on NASA’s NHATS list of potential human-accessible targets, so observations of this object are particularly important.

The 2015 apparition is the first of five encounters by this object in the next 12 years when it will be close enough for a radar detection.

The Near-Earth Object Human Space Flight Accessible Targets Study (NHATS) is a program developed to identify those near-Earth objects that may be well-suited for future human-space-flight rendezvous missions.

Although this is a huge asteroid, there is no danger of a future collision. The orbit of asteroid 2003 SD220 is well known and NASA has verified that the space rock will not pass at any dangerous distance during the next two centuries.

The path of asteroid 2003 SD220 through our solar system. Image via NASA

Bottom line: Asteroid 163899 – aka 2003 SD220 – will pass safely, at more than 28 times the Earth-moon distance, on December 24, 2015. Astronomers at Arecibo in Puerto Rico and Goldstone in California are taking this opportunity to study it with radar as it approaches. It’ll pass too far away to be visible in small amateur telescopes. Media reports suggesting that this space rock may cause earthquakes are misleading and incorrect.

Image via Arecibo Observatory/NASA/NSF

Asteroid 163899 – aka 2003 SD220 – will pass safely, at more than 28 times the moon’s distance. Assertions it’ll cause earthquakes are misleading and incorrect.

Asteroid to pass Earth on Christmas Eve | Science Wire | EarthSky

SPACE PHONE: Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory

Of the many reasons to visit Puerto Rico: tropical climate, Caribbean cuisine and Latin Music, only one is truly out of this world.

When Earthlings finally make contact with an intelligent alien civilization, odds are, the conversation will originate from Puerto Rico's historic Arecibo Observatory, the world's largest single-aperture telescope.

In the not too distant future, when some hero scientist discovers a giant meteor hurtling towards Earth (hopefully) BEFORE it delivers a fiery knock out punch to life as we know it, this is where they'll sound the alarm. When yet another smarty-pants surveys the signature wavelengths bouncing off a far away planet and confirms the presence of liquid water and oxygen similar to habitat here on Earth, these are the screens that will announce those momentous results.

This National Science Foundation radio telescope, located a mountainous 40-minute, mostly freeway drive, from downtown San Juan, is the same facility featured in the Jody Foster/Carl Sagan movie Contact. It's also the home for the SETI@home project, Earth's most organized and scientific crowd-sourced Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. It is, quite simply, the super bowl of Space Exploration. And it looks like it.

Completed in 1963, the dish and its collectors are suspended by enormous grid wires strung across a natural bowl high in the mountains of northern Puerto Rico. The major update completed on the facility in 1974 has lead to many amazing space discoveries, including the Nobel Peace Prize winning discovery of the first binary pulsar by Hulse and Taylor. In 1989, the Observatory directly imaged an asteroid for the first time in history.

Even if you've seen photos of the telescope's radio dish, it's sheer size - 1000 fit across - must been experienced in person to appreciate. The bowl of the dish is made up of metal mesh, arrayed as a spherical reflector that collects radio waves from all over the universe and focuses them on the Gregorian Sub-Reflector suspended 500 feet above. The deluge of data streams across the gantry into the nearby control room where men and women with doctoral degrees, and kick ass Star Wars Halloween costumes, sift through the noise, listening and looking for... something. Anything; a coherent signal, a chemical signature - an "I'll know it when I see it" anomaly that in all probability would reward it's finder with a Nobel Prize.

Today, Arecibo is the focal point for the three major prongs of Earth's deep space research; Radio Astronomy, Atmospheric Science and Radar Astronomy. And you learn about all of it on your own tour.

Our tour was led by three of the leading space researchers working today, (l-r) Astronomy PhD Patrick Taylor, Andrew Seymour, the Physics Phd and Space & Planetary Science Phd Edgard Rivera-Valentin.

These guys, who look more like Ultimate Frisbee intramural players than the guys responsible for saving Earth from, well... everything we'd need saving from, took us on an amazing walking tour down into the ravine and under the dish.

They are each focused on their own speciality, actively teasing out the secrets of the Cosmos, much like Carl Sagan, the Cornell University professor who brought his wonder and excitement of space to the rest of us. Sagan was involved in the early history of Arecibo, which is one of the reasons the wonderful film CONTACT was shot on location here. Another is... there's no place else like it on Earth.

The Space Men took us on an hour-long tour of the facility and dish, and put up with far more stupid questions from me than they should have had to endure over a holiday weekend. The important take away, in layman's terms, is the rest of us are in good hands because these guys - and thousands of other men and women around the world working in similar fields - are crusading to squeeze amazingly esoteric truths from Terabytes of ones and zeroes. The kinds of truths that will one day, not maybe, but absolutely, save our planet.

Where do these uber-geniuses come from? The Dish. If you build it, they will come. Arecibo acts like a magnet, drawing in space nerds and crazy thinkers from all over the world to sit behind the wheel and study in its shadow.

On our walk they explained how Arecibo helps find new planets by their 'wobble,' new ways to spot NEO's [near Earth objects] before its too late, and nurture the next generation of scientists. Far as I could tell, they're Magna Cum Laude across the board.

After our tour with the current Wizards behind the curtain, we had an opportunity to talk with a group of high school kids during their summer residency at the dish. Normally, I am extremely cynical about 'these kids today.' But after spending an hour chatting with these kids inside a lab van during a tropical downpour, I'm convinced our future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.

Listen to their hilarious, and incredibly insightful conversation about the nature of science, humanity and the future of Earth itself on our Puerto Rico podcast, right here. And make sure you visit Arecibo during touring hours before you blast off back home. You'll never be the same.

Follow @MarkDeCarlo on Twitter to win travel prizes, get show and travel news and see our original travel videos. Listen to a new show every Thursday @ Orbitz

SPACE PHONE: Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory

Skull-Shaped Halloween Asteroid Zips by Earth, a Treat for Scientists

On Halloween night, while ghouls and goblins did their trick-or-treating, an asteroid that is most likely a dead comet made a close flyby of Earth, with radar images revealing its eerie skull shape.

On Saturday (Oct. 31), the asteroid 2015 TB145 passed by Earth at a range of just over 300,000 miles (480,000 kilometers), placing it just outside the orbit of the moon, where it posed no threat to the planet. The timing of the flyby earned the asteroid - which is about 2,000 feet (600 meters) across - the nickname "Spooky" and "Great Pumpkin."

Unfortunately for skywatching hobbyists, 2015 TB145 was extremely difficult to see from the ground, but the online Slooh Community Observatory hosted a webcast Saturday afternoon that featured updates on the asteroid's path, and discussions about the dangers of near-Earth asteroids. [Related: Boo! Halloween Asteroid Looks Just Like a Skull]

NASA observed the asteroid with radar in infrared using its NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) in Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

"The IRTF data may indicate that the object might be a dead comet, but in the Arecibo images it appears to have donned a skull costume for its Halloween flyby," Kelly Fast, IRTF program scientist and acting program manager for NASA's NEO Observations Program, said in a NASA statement Friday (Oct. 30).

Slooh used a remotely operated observatory in the Canary Islands to record animations of asteroid 2015 TB145 passing by. The "dead comet" asteroid looks like a bright object speeding across a starry background in those views. It was Slooh who nicknamed the asteroid "Spooky," and the online observatory was thrilled to see the space rock's skull shape in radar views.

"We all saw those dramatic images of the skull-like object whirling through space captured by NASA's Arecibo Observatory," Slooh's Tricia Ennis wrote in an email update. "We got a kick out of how appropriate our 'Spooky' moniker ended up being, here at Slooh."

The flyby was a treat for scientists, because it allowed them to see the space rock up close, with a radar resolution of as little as 6.6 feet (2 meters) on the surface. On Saturday, scientists fired radio waves at the passing space rock using a 110-foot-wide (34 m) antenna at NASA's Deep Space Network facility in Goldstone, California. The radio waves that bounced off the asteroid and came back to Earth were then collected using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory.

This first series of radar images of the Halloween asteroid 2015 TB145 show that it is about 2,000 feet (600 meters) wide and roughly spherical in shape. The images were taken by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

Credit: NAIC-Arecibo/NSF

View full size image

This radar image of asteroid 2015 TB145, which NASA says is likely a dead comet, was captured using the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on Oct. 30, 2015 with a resolution of 25 feet per pixel. The skull shaped asteroid flew by Earth on Halloween (Oct. 31). Credit: NAIC-Arecibo/NSF

by Calla Cofield

Skull-Shaped Halloween Asteroid Zips by Earth, a Treat for Scientists

Puerto Rico Demands Same Bankruptcy Help That States Get

Puerto Rican officials testifying at a Senate Committee on Finance hearing Tuesday urged U.S. lawmakers to provide Puerto Rico with the same access to Chapter 9 of the federal bankruptcy code that U.S. states receive as the territory struggles under a $73 billion debt cloud.

While Melba Acosta, president of the Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico, said the financial crisis has “passed the tipping point” and called on Congress to take immediate action, Puerto Rico’s representative in the U.S. Congress, Pedro R. Pierluisi, said disparities...

By Maya Rajamani

Puerto Rico Demands Same Bankruptcy Help That States Get

Puerto Rico gets $3.8 mn grant for brain research

The Institute of Neurobiology at the University of Puerto Rico's Medical Sciences Campus was awarded a $3.8 million U.S. National Science Foundation grant to conduct research on the rewards and decision mechanisms in the brain.

The project's goal is "to understand how the brain evaluates its environment and implements an action plan," Mark Miller, director of UPR's Neural Mechanisms of Reward and Decision Project, said.

"A better understanding of the decision-making process could lead us to improve strategies to solve problems in a more effective and appropriate manner," Miller said.

The project is being funded by NSF's Partnership in Research and Education program, which "recognizes that international alliances are essential to deal with critical problems in science and engineering," Miller said.

The Neural Mechanisms of Reward and Decision Project will link researchers from the UPR, Oklahoma State University, Canada, Egypt, Italy, Turkey and Chile.

The collaborative project is comprised of four interdisciplinary projects focused on the role that dopamine, a neurotransmitter present in a wide variety of animals, both vertebrates and invertebrates, plays in the brain's decision-making and reward mechanisms.

"This knowledge will also provide us with information about certain behavioral and developmental disorders that affect the decision-making process," Miller said. EFE

Puerto Rico gets $3.8 mn grant for brain research

Homo Naledi, New Species in Human Lineage, Is Found in South African Cave

Acting on a tip from spelunkers two years ago, scientists in South Africa discovered what the cavers had only dimly glimpsed through a crack in a limestone wall deep in the Rising Star Cave: lots and lots of old bones.

The remains covered the earthen floor beyond the narrow opening. This was, the scientists concluded, a large, dark chamber for the dead of a previously unidentified species of the early human lineage — Homo naledi.

The new hominin species was announced on Thursday by an international team of more than 60 scientists led by Lee R. Berger, an American paleoanthropologist who is a professor of human evolution studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The species name, H. naledi, refers to the cave where the bones lay undisturbed for so long; “naledi” means “star” in the local Sesotho language.

In two papers published this week in the open-access journal eLife, the researchers said that the more than 1,550 fossil elements documenting the discovery constituted the largest sample for any hominin species in a single African site, and one of the largest anywhere in the world. Further, the scientists said, that sample is probably a small fraction of the fossils yet to be recovered from the chamber. So far the team has recovered parts of at least 15 individuals.

“With almost every bone in the body represented multiple times, Homo naledi is already practically the best-known fossil member of our lineage,” Dr. Berger said.

The finding, like so many others in science, was the result of pure luck followed by considerable effort.

Two local cavers, Rick Hunter and Steven Tucker, found the narrow entrance to the chamber, measuring no more than seven and a half inches wide. They were skinny enough to squeeze through, and in the light of their headlamps they saw the bones all around them. When they showed the fossil pictures to Pedro Boshoff, a caver who is also a geologist, he alerted Dr. Berger, who organized an investigation.

Just getting into the chamber and bringing out samples proved to be a huge challenge. The narrow opening was the only way in.

Paul Dirks, a geologist at James Cook University in Australia, who was lead author of the journal paper describing the chamber, said the investigators first had a steep climb up a stone block called the Dragon’s Back and then a drop down to the entrance passage — all of this in the total absence of natural light.

For the two extended investigations of the chamber in 2013 and 2014, Dr. Berger rounded up the international team of scientists and then recruited six excavating scientists through notices on social media. One special requirement: They had to be slender enough to crawl through that crack in the wall.

One of the six, who were all women and were called “underground astronauts,” was Marina Elliott of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. She said the collection and removal of the fossils involved “some of the most difficult and dangerous conditions ever encountered in the search for human origins.”

Lee R. Berger, leader of a research team, in the Rising Star Cave near Johannesburg, where over 1,550 fossil elements were found. CreditNaashon Zalk for The New York Times

Besides introducing a new member of the prehuman family, the discovery suggests that some early hominins intentionally deposited bodies of their dead in a remote and largely inaccessible cave chamber, a behavior previously considered limited to modern humans. Some of the scientists referred to the practice as a ritualized treatment of their dead, but by “ritual” they said they meant a deliberate and repeated practice, not necessarily a kind of religious rite.

SOUTH AFRICA

Pretoria

Rising Star cave

NAMIBIA

BOTSWANA

MOZAM.

Johannesburg

Rising Star Cave

SWAZILAND

LESOTHO

Indian

Ocean

SOUTH AFRICA

20 Miles

By The New York Times

“It’s very, very fascinating,” said Ian Tattersall, an authority on human evolution at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was not involved in the research.

“No question there’s at least one new species here,” he added, “but there may be debate over the Homo designation, though the species is quite different from anything else we have seen.”

A colleague of Dr. Tattersall’s at the museum, Eric Delson, who is a professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, was also impressed, saying, “Berger does it again!”

Dr. Delson was referring to Dr. Berger’s previous headline discovery, published in 2010, also involving cave deposits near Johannesburg. He found many fewer fossils that time, but enough to conclude that he was looking at a new species, which he named Australopithecus sediba. Geologists said the individuals lived 1.78 million to 1.95 million years ago, when australopithecines and early species of Homo were contemporaries.

Pieces of a skeleton of Homo naledi, a newly discovered human species.CreditJohn Hawks/University of Wisconsin-Madison, via European Pressphoto Agency

Researchers analyzing the H. naledi fossils have not yet nailed down their age, which is difficult to measure because of the muddled chamber sediments and the absence of other fauna remains nearby. Some of its primitive anatomy, like a brain no larger than an average orange, Dr. Berger said, indicated that the species evolved near or at the root of the Homo genus, meaning it must be in excess of 2.5 million to 2.8 million years old. Geologists think the cave is no older than three million years.

The field work and two years of analysis for Dr. Berger’s latest discovery were supported by the University of the Witwatersrand, the National Geographic Society and the South African Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation. In addition to the journal articles, the findings will be featured in the October issue of National Geographic Magazine and in a two-hour NOVA/National Geographic documentary to air Wednesday on PBS.

Scientists on the discovery team and those not involved in the research noted the mosaic of contrasting anatomical features, including more modern-looking jaws and teeth and feet, that warrant the hominin’s placement as a species in the genus Homo, not Australopithecus, the genus that includes the famous Lucy species that lived 3.2 million years ago. The hands of the newly discovered specimens reminded some scientists of the earliest previously identified specimens of Homo habilis, who were apparently among the first toolmakers.

At a news conference on Wednesday, John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a senior author of the paper describing the new species, said it was “unlike any other species seen before,” noting that a small skull with a brain one-third the size of modern human braincases was perched atop a very slender body. An average H. naledi was about five feet tall and weighed almost 100 pounds, he said.

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Homo Naledi, New Species in Human Lineage, Is Found in South African Cave