The stellar baby boom period of the Milky Way sparked a flowering and crashing of life here on Earth, a new study suggests.
Some 2.4 billion years ago when the Milky Way started upping its star production, cosmic rays--high-speed atomic particles--started pouring onto our planet, causing instability within the living. Populations of bacteria and algae repeatedly soared and crashed in the oceans.
The researchers counted the amount of carbon-13 within sedimentary rocks, the most common rocks exposed on the Earth's surface. When algae and bacteria were growing in the oceans, they took in carbon-12, so the ocean had an abundance of carbon-13.
Many sea creatures use carbon-13 to make their shells. If there is a lot of carbon-13 stored in rocks, it means life, the origin of which is still unknown, was booming. Therefore, variations in carbon-13 are a good indicator of the productivity of life on Earth.
The researchers found that the biggest fluctuation in productivity coincided with star formation, which had an affect on Earth's climate and therefore on the productivity of life on our planet.
According to one theory, when a star explodes far away in the Milky Way, cosmic rays penetrate through the Earth's atmosphere and produce ions and free electrons. The released electrons act as catalysts and accelerate the formation of small clusters of sulfuric acid and water molecules, the building blocks of clouds. Therefore, cosmic rays increase cloud cover on Earth, reflecting sunlight and keeping the planet relatively cool.
Although cold and icy times are generally considered unfriendly to life, the data reveals that biological productivity kept oscillating between very high and very low. The reason, the researchers suggest, is that stronger winds during icy epochs stirred the oceans and improved the supply of nutrients in the surface waters.
"The odds are 10,000-to-1 against this unexpected link between cosmic rays and the variable state of the biosphere being just a coincidence, and it offers a new perspective on the connection between the evolution of the Milky Way and the entire history of life over the last 4 billion years," said study author Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center.
The study was detailed in a recent issue of the journal Astronomische Nachrichten.
This article is part of SPACE.com's weekly Mystery Monday series.
The Strangest Things in Space
Cosmic Rays Linked to Global Warming
Baffled Scientists Say Less Sunlight Reaching Earth
How Life Began: New Research Suggests Simple Approach
Original Story: Galactic Baby Boom Influenced Life on Earth
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Sara Goudarzi
Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Thursday, October 19, 2006
New image gives insight into colliding galaxies
A seemingly violent collision of two galaxies is in fact a fertile marriage that has birthed billions of new stars, and an image released on Tuesday gives astronomers their best view yet.
The new image of the Antennae galaxies allows astronomers working with the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope to distinguish between new stars and the star clusters that form them.
Most of these clusters, created in the collision of the two galaxies, will disperse within 10 million years but about 100 of the largest will grow into "globular clusters" -- large groups of stars found in many galaxies, including our own Milky Way.
The Antennae galaxies, 68 million light years from Earth, began to fuse 500 million years ago.
A light year is the distance light waves travel in one year -- about 6 trillion miles.
The image serves as a preview for the Milky Way's likely collision with the nearby Andromeda Galaxy, about 6 billion years from now.
Reuters
Friday, October 13, 2006
Nobel Prize in Literature: Turkish author Orhan Pamuk wins
Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, author of "My Name is Red", "Snow" and half-a-dozen other novels, won the Nobel Literature Prize for a body of work that probes the crossroads of Muslim and Western cultures.
The Swedish Academy said Pamuk "in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city (Istanbul) has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures."
Pamuk said he was honored to be awarded the prize.
"It's such a great honor, such a great pleasure," Pamuk told journalists at Columbia University in New York, where he studied as a visiting scholar in the 1980s. "I'm very happy about the prize."
The boyish Turkish author, who is now a fellow at Columbia, said the award was a cause for celebration not just for him, but his country and culture.
"I think that this is first of all an honour bestowed upon the Turkish language, Turkish culture, Turkey and also recognition of my labours ... my humble devotion to that great art of the novel," he said.
The 54-year-old writer is Turkey's best-known author at home and abroad, but also a political rebel whose pronouncements on his country's history have put its respect for freedom of expression under the international spotlight.
"In his home country, Pamuk has a reputation as a social commentator even though he sees himself principally a fiction writer with no political agenda," the Nobel jury noted.
Turkey's decades-old striving to become European -- characterized by clashes between Islam and secularism, tradition and modernity -- along with the painful impact of an aggressive Westernization after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, permeate Pamuk's writing.
Pamuk was the first author in the Muslim world to publicly condemn the 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and he took a stand for his Turkish colleague Yasar Kemal when the latter was put on trial in 1995.
Pamuk himself faced prosecution after telling a Swiss newspaper last year that 30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians had been killed during World War I under the Ottoman Turks.
The charges against him sparked widespread international protest, and were dropped earlier this year.
Just hours before the Swedish Academy made its announcement, the French lower house of parliament approved a bill making it a punishable offence to deny that the massacre of Armenians constituted genocide.
He declined to be drawn by reporters' questions on the issue on Thursday.
"This is a time for celebration, for enjoying this, rather than making political comments," he told journalists.
When pushed, he said: "This is a day for celebration, for being positive. I have lots of critical energy deep in me but I'm not going to express it today."
Joy at his achievement was particularly effusive in Turkey.
"It is great happiness for us all that a Turkish writer has won such a prestigious award," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told reporters.
And French President Jacques Chirac added his voice to the congratulations, saying he was "delighted" Pamuk had won the prize and that his "reflection on society is... intelligent, strong and liberal".
Pamuk is the first Turk to win the prestigious prize, and had been rumoured as one of the frontrunners this year.
A chain-smoker, he mostly shuns the public eye, writing for long hours in an Istanbul flat overlooking the bridge over the Bosphorus linking Europe and Asia.
Born in 1952 into a prosperous, secular family, Pamuk was intent on becoming a painter in his youth. He studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University but later turned to writing and studied journalism in Istanbul.
He published his prize-winning first novel, "Cevdet Bey and His Sons", in 1982, a family chronicle in which he describes the shift from a traditional Ottoman family environment to a more Western lifestyle.
His second novel, "The House of Silence", came out in 1983, but it was his third book, "The White Castle", published two years later, that gave him an international reputation.
Structured as a historical novel set in 17th century Istanbul, it is "on a symbolic level, the European novel captured then allied with an alien culture," the Swedish Academy said.
With the 2000 book "My Name is Red" -- a love story, murder mystery and discussion on the role of individuality in art -- Pamuk explores the relationship between East and West, describing an artist's different relationship to his work in each culture.
His latest novel is the critically-acclaimed "Snow", set in Turkey's border town of Kars, once a border city between the Ottoman and Russian empires.
"The novel becomes a tale of love and poetic creativity just as it knowledgeably describes the political and religious conflicts that characterise Turkish society of our day," the Academy commented.
Pamuk will take home the prize sum of 10 million kronor (1.07 million euros, 1.37 million dollars).
He will receive the Nobel Prize, which also consists of a gold medal and a diploma, from Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.
by Pia Ohlin
The Swedish Academy said Pamuk "in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city (Istanbul) has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures."
Pamuk said he was honored to be awarded the prize.
"It's such a great honor, such a great pleasure," Pamuk told journalists at Columbia University in New York, where he studied as a visiting scholar in the 1980s. "I'm very happy about the prize."
The boyish Turkish author, who is now a fellow at Columbia, said the award was a cause for celebration not just for him, but his country and culture.
"I think that this is first of all an honour bestowed upon the Turkish language, Turkish culture, Turkey and also recognition of my labours ... my humble devotion to that great art of the novel," he said.
The 54-year-old writer is Turkey's best-known author at home and abroad, but also a political rebel whose pronouncements on his country's history have put its respect for freedom of expression under the international spotlight.
"In his home country, Pamuk has a reputation as a social commentator even though he sees himself principally a fiction writer with no political agenda," the Nobel jury noted.
Turkey's decades-old striving to become European -- characterized by clashes between Islam and secularism, tradition and modernity -- along with the painful impact of an aggressive Westernization after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, permeate Pamuk's writing.
Pamuk was the first author in the Muslim world to publicly condemn the 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and he took a stand for his Turkish colleague Yasar Kemal when the latter was put on trial in 1995.
Pamuk himself faced prosecution after telling a Swiss newspaper last year that 30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians had been killed during World War I under the Ottoman Turks.
The charges against him sparked widespread international protest, and were dropped earlier this year.
Just hours before the Swedish Academy made its announcement, the French lower house of parliament approved a bill making it a punishable offence to deny that the massacre of Armenians constituted genocide.
He declined to be drawn by reporters' questions on the issue on Thursday.
"This is a time for celebration, for enjoying this, rather than making political comments," he told journalists.
When pushed, he said: "This is a day for celebration, for being positive. I have lots of critical energy deep in me but I'm not going to express it today."
Joy at his achievement was particularly effusive in Turkey.
"It is great happiness for us all that a Turkish writer has won such a prestigious award," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told reporters.
And French President Jacques Chirac added his voice to the congratulations, saying he was "delighted" Pamuk had won the prize and that his "reflection on society is... intelligent, strong and liberal".
Pamuk is the first Turk to win the prestigious prize, and had been rumoured as one of the frontrunners this year.
A chain-smoker, he mostly shuns the public eye, writing for long hours in an Istanbul flat overlooking the bridge over the Bosphorus linking Europe and Asia.
Born in 1952 into a prosperous, secular family, Pamuk was intent on becoming a painter in his youth. He studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University but later turned to writing and studied journalism in Istanbul.
He published his prize-winning first novel, "Cevdet Bey and His Sons", in 1982, a family chronicle in which he describes the shift from a traditional Ottoman family environment to a more Western lifestyle.
His second novel, "The House of Silence", came out in 1983, but it was his third book, "The White Castle", published two years later, that gave him an international reputation.
Structured as a historical novel set in 17th century Istanbul, it is "on a symbolic level, the European novel captured then allied with an alien culture," the Swedish Academy said.
With the 2000 book "My Name is Red" -- a love story, murder mystery and discussion on the role of individuality in art -- Pamuk explores the relationship between East and West, describing an artist's different relationship to his work in each culture.
His latest novel is the critically-acclaimed "Snow", set in Turkey's border town of Kars, once a border city between the Ottoman and Russian empires.
"The novel becomes a tale of love and poetic creativity just as it knowledgeably describes the political and religious conflicts that characterise Turkish society of our day," the Academy commented.
Pamuk will take home the prize sum of 10 million kronor (1.07 million euros, 1.37 million dollars).
He will receive the Nobel Prize, which also consists of a gold medal and a diploma, from Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.
by Pia Ohlin
Nobel Peace Prize: Yunus, Grameen Bank win
Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the bank he founded won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for pioneering the use of microcredit, the extension of small loans to benefit poor entrepreneurs.
Grameen Bank has been instrumental in helping millions of poor Bangladeshis, many of them women, improve their standard of living by letting them borrow tiny sums to start businesses.
Loans go toward buying items such as cows to start a dairy, chickens for an egg business, or cell phones to start businesses where villagers who have no access to phones pay a small fee to make calls.
"Lasting peace can not be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty," the Nobel Committee said.
Yunus said the award was "great news" for his homeland.
"I am so so happy," Yunus told The Associated Press when reached by telephone at his Dhaka home shortly after the prize was announced.
Yunus founded Grameen Bank in 1976, after lending $27 out of his pocket to help 42 women in Bangladesh buy weaving stools.
"They got the weaving stools quickly, they started to weave quickly and they repaid him quickly," said Ole Danbolt Mjoes, chairman of the committee.
"Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development," the Nobel Committee said in its citation.
Today the bank claims to have 6.6 million borrowers, 97 percent of whom are women, and provides services in more than 70,000 villages in Bangladesh. Its model of micro-financing has inspired similar efforts around the world.
"At GB, credit is a cost effective weapon to fight poverty and it serves as a catalyst in the overall development of socio-economic conditions of the poor who have been kept outside the banking orbit on the ground that they are poor and hence not bankable," the committee said.
Yunus and the bank will share in the $1.4 million prize as well as a gold medal and diploma.
The peace prize was the sixth and last Nobel prize announced this year. The others, for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and economics, were announced in Stockholm, Sweden.
By DOUG MELLGREN
Grameen Bank has been instrumental in helping millions of poor Bangladeshis, many of them women, improve their standard of living by letting them borrow tiny sums to start businesses.
Loans go toward buying items such as cows to start a dairy, chickens for an egg business, or cell phones to start businesses where villagers who have no access to phones pay a small fee to make calls.
"Lasting peace can not be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty," the Nobel Committee said.
Yunus said the award was "great news" for his homeland.
"I am so so happy," Yunus told The Associated Press when reached by telephone at his Dhaka home shortly after the prize was announced.
Yunus founded Grameen Bank in 1976, after lending $27 out of his pocket to help 42 women in Bangladesh buy weaving stools.
"They got the weaving stools quickly, they started to weave quickly and they repaid him quickly," said Ole Danbolt Mjoes, chairman of the committee.
"Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development," the Nobel Committee said in its citation.
Today the bank claims to have 6.6 million borrowers, 97 percent of whom are women, and provides services in more than 70,000 villages in Bangladesh. Its model of micro-financing has inspired similar efforts around the world.
"At GB, credit is a cost effective weapon to fight poverty and it serves as a catalyst in the overall development of socio-economic conditions of the poor who have been kept outside the banking orbit on the ground that they are poor and hence not bankable," the committee said.
Yunus and the bank will share in the $1.4 million prize as well as a gold medal and diploma.
The peace prize was the sixth and last Nobel prize announced this year. The others, for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and economics, were announced in Stockholm, Sweden.
By DOUG MELLGREN
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Nobel Economie Prize: Jobs and Inflation
An American economist who developed theories about unemployment that better capture how workers and companies make decisions about jobs has been named winner of the 2006 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts Edmund S. Phelps, a professor at Columbia University in New York, was cited yesterday for research into the relationship between inflation and unemployment, giving governments better tools to formulate economic policy.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which announced Phelps's selection in Stockholm, said in its citation that his work ``has fundamentally altered our views on how the macroeconomy operates."
Americans have swept all the Nobels disclosed so far this year, with Phelps being the sixth named for one of the prestigious awards. The economics prize carries an award of $1.4 million.
The winner of the Nobel for literature will be unveiled Thursday, followed by the peace prize on Friday.
Phelps said he had waited for the award for a long time, but wasn't expecting it this year. ``I thought for a time I would get it in my 60s, then I thought I would get it in my 70s, and, more recently, I've been thinking that I would get it in my 80s," he said.
The Swedish academy cited research by Phelps that challenged the view that there was a predictable tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. That view held that any government wanting to reduce joblessness by stimulating the economy would have to tolerate rising prices.
Phelps argued that this view didn't take workers' or companies' decision-making into account, and his research showed that their expectations about both unemployment and inflation affected their actions.
Edmund S. Phelps
Edmund S. Phelps became the first solo winner of the economics prize since 1999.
Age: 73
Education: Bachelor's degree from Amherst College, 1955; master's degree from Yale University, 1956; and PhD from Yale, 1959.
What he does now: Director of Columbia University's Center on Capitalism and Society, now part of the Earth Institute headed by former Harvard University economics professor Jeffrey Sachs.
His theory: Phelps looked at the relationship between inflation and unemployment and showed there is a "natural" rate of unemployment, below which inflation pressures are likely to intensify.
Why his work matters: His theories led to increased vigilance against inflation at the Federal Reserve and other major central banks.
By Associated Press
Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts Edmund S. Phelps, a professor at Columbia University in New York, was cited yesterday for research into the relationship between inflation and unemployment, giving governments better tools to formulate economic policy.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which announced Phelps's selection in Stockholm, said in its citation that his work ``has fundamentally altered our views on how the macroeconomy operates."
Americans have swept all the Nobels disclosed so far this year, with Phelps being the sixth named for one of the prestigious awards. The economics prize carries an award of $1.4 million.
The winner of the Nobel for literature will be unveiled Thursday, followed by the peace prize on Friday.
Phelps said he had waited for the award for a long time, but wasn't expecting it this year. ``I thought for a time I would get it in my 60s, then I thought I would get it in my 70s, and, more recently, I've been thinking that I would get it in my 80s," he said.
The Swedish academy cited research by Phelps that challenged the view that there was a predictable tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. That view held that any government wanting to reduce joblessness by stimulating the economy would have to tolerate rising prices.
Phelps argued that this view didn't take workers' or companies' decision-making into account, and his research showed that their expectations about both unemployment and inflation affected their actions.
Edmund S. Phelps
Edmund S. Phelps became the first solo winner of the economics prize since 1999.
Age: 73
Education: Bachelor's degree from Amherst College, 1955; master's degree from Yale University, 1956; and PhD from Yale, 1959.
What he does now: Director of Columbia University's Center on Capitalism and Society, now part of the Earth Institute headed by former Harvard University economics professor Jeffrey Sachs.
His theory: Phelps looked at the relationship between inflation and unemployment and showed there is a "natural" rate of unemployment, below which inflation pressures are likely to intensify.
Why his work matters: His theories led to increased vigilance against inflation at the Federal Reserve and other major central banks.
By Associated Press
Saturday, October 07, 2006
"Monster" fossil found in Jurassic graveyard
Scientists have found a fossil of a "Monster" fish-like reptile in a 150 million-year-old Jurassic graveyard on an Arctic island off Norway.
The Norwegian researchers discovered remains of a total of 28 plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs -- top marine predators when dinosaurs dominated on land -- at a site on the island of Spitsbergen, about 1,300 km (800 miles) from the North Pole.
"One of them was this gigantic monster, with vertebrae the size of dinner plates and teeth the size of cucumbers," Joern Hurum, an assistant professor at the University of Oslo, told Reuters on Thursday.
"We believe the skeleton is intact and that it's about 10 meters (33 feet) long," he told Reuters of the pliosaur, a type of plesiosaur with a short neck and massive skull. The team dubbed the specimen "The Monster."
Such pliosaurs are known from remains in countries including Britain and Argentina but no complete skeleton has been found, he said. The skull of the pliosaur -- perhaps a distant relative to Scotland's mythical Loch Ness monster -- was among the biggest on record.
Scientists would return next year to try to excavate the entire fossil, buried on a hillside.
Plesiosaurs, which swam with two sets of flippers, often preyed on smaller dolphin-like ichthyosaurs. All went extinct when the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago.
The scientists rated the fossil graveyard "one of the most important new sites for marine reptiles to have been discovered in the last several decades."
"It is rare to find so many fossils in the same place -- carcasses are food for other animals and usually get torn apart," Hurum said.
Hurum reckoned the reptiles had not all died at the same time in some Jurassic-era cataclysm but had died over thousands of years in the same area, then become preserved in what was apparently a deep layer of black mud on the seabed.
At that time, the area of Spitsbergen under water several hundred km (miles) further south, around the latitude of Anchorage or Oslo.
Hurum said the presence of fossils was also an interesting pointer for geologists hunting for oil and gas deposits in the Barents Sea to the east. "A skull we found even smells of petrol," he said.
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
The Norwegian researchers discovered remains of a total of 28 plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs -- top marine predators when dinosaurs dominated on land -- at a site on the island of Spitsbergen, about 1,300 km (800 miles) from the North Pole.
"One of them was this gigantic monster, with vertebrae the size of dinner plates and teeth the size of cucumbers," Joern Hurum, an assistant professor at the University of Oslo, told Reuters on Thursday.
"We believe the skeleton is intact and that it's about 10 meters (33 feet) long," he told Reuters of the pliosaur, a type of plesiosaur with a short neck and massive skull. The team dubbed the specimen "The Monster."
Such pliosaurs are known from remains in countries including Britain and Argentina but no complete skeleton has been found, he said. The skull of the pliosaur -- perhaps a distant relative to Scotland's mythical Loch Ness monster -- was among the biggest on record.
Scientists would return next year to try to excavate the entire fossil, buried on a hillside.
Plesiosaurs, which swam with two sets of flippers, often preyed on smaller dolphin-like ichthyosaurs. All went extinct when the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago.
The scientists rated the fossil graveyard "one of the most important new sites for marine reptiles to have been discovered in the last several decades."
"It is rare to find so many fossils in the same place -- carcasses are food for other animals and usually get torn apart," Hurum said.
Hurum reckoned the reptiles had not all died at the same time in some Jurassic-era cataclysm but had died over thousands of years in the same area, then become preserved in what was apparently a deep layer of black mud on the seabed.
At that time, the area of Spitsbergen under water several hundred km (miles) further south, around the latitude of Anchorage or Oslo.
Hurum said the presence of fossils was also an interesting pointer for geologists hunting for oil and gas deposits in the Barents Sea to the east. "A skull we found even smells of petrol," he said.
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Mexican archeologists make major Aztec find
Mexican archeologists have made the most significant Aztec find in decades, unearthing a 15th century altar and a huge stone slab at a ruined temple in the throbbing heart of Mexico City.
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The works were uncovered last weekend at the Aztec empire's main Templo Mayor temple, near the central Zocalo square, which was used for worship and human sacrifice.
It was the most meaningful find since electricity workers stumbled upon an eight-tonne carving of an Aztec goddess at the same site in 1978.
"It is a very important discovery, the biggest we have made in 28 years. It will allow us to find out a lot more," Mexico City's mayor, Alejandro Encinas, said on Wednesday.
The altar has a frieze of the rain god Tlaloc and an agricultural deity.
Archeologists are still unearthing the 11-foot (3.5-m) monolith, which they think might be part of an entrance to an underground chamber.
At the site, excavators with pick axes and shovels hacked at the earth above the monolith while groups of archeologists, government officials and reporters waited around the deep pit.
"The importance of the monolith is what we are going to discover...It's likely that it is part of a chamber, of some offering. We won't know until we get close. First we have to get the stone out," said Alberto Diaz, a member of the archeological team.
The Aztecs, a warlike and deeply religious people who built monumental works, ruled an empire stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and encompassing much of modern-day central Mexico.
Their often bloody reign began in the 14th century and ended when they were subjugated in 1521 by the Spanish led by Hernan Cortes.
TALE OF THREE CITIES
The Aztecs began building the Templo Mayor pyramid-shaped temple in 1375. Its ruins are now only yards from downtown's choking traffic.
The temple was a center of human sacrifice. At one ceremony in 1487, historians say tens of thousands of victims were sacrificed, their hearts ripped out.
Spanish conquistadors destroyed the temple when they razed the city and used its stones to help build their own capital.
Now the site is surrounded by Spanish colonial buildings like Mexico City's cathedral and the historical National Palace as well as convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.
"Really, when we begin to excavate, we realize that we are in three different times, three different cities: You see the current city, the colonial city and the pre-Hispanic city," said Diaz.
By Gunther Hamm
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The works were uncovered last weekend at the Aztec empire's main Templo Mayor temple, near the central Zocalo square, which was used for worship and human sacrifice.
It was the most meaningful find since electricity workers stumbled upon an eight-tonne carving of an Aztec goddess at the same site in 1978.
"It is a very important discovery, the biggest we have made in 28 years. It will allow us to find out a lot more," Mexico City's mayor, Alejandro Encinas, said on Wednesday.
The altar has a frieze of the rain god Tlaloc and an agricultural deity.
Archeologists are still unearthing the 11-foot (3.5-m) monolith, which they think might be part of an entrance to an underground chamber.
At the site, excavators with pick axes and shovels hacked at the earth above the monolith while groups of archeologists, government officials and reporters waited around the deep pit.
"The importance of the monolith is what we are going to discover...It's likely that it is part of a chamber, of some offering. We won't know until we get close. First we have to get the stone out," said Alberto Diaz, a member of the archeological team.
The Aztecs, a warlike and deeply religious people who built monumental works, ruled an empire stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and encompassing much of modern-day central Mexico.
Their often bloody reign began in the 14th century and ended when they were subjugated in 1521 by the Spanish led by Hernan Cortes.
TALE OF THREE CITIES
The Aztecs began building the Templo Mayor pyramid-shaped temple in 1375. Its ruins are now only yards from downtown's choking traffic.
The temple was a center of human sacrifice. At one ceremony in 1487, historians say tens of thousands of victims were sacrificed, their hearts ripped out.
Spanish conquistadors destroyed the temple when they razed the city and used its stones to help build their own capital.
Now the site is surrounded by Spanish colonial buildings like Mexico City's cathedral and the historical National Palace as well as convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.
"Really, when we begin to excavate, we realize that we are in three different times, three different cities: You see the current city, the colonial city and the pre-Hispanic city," said Diaz.
By Gunther Hamm
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Genetic code, DNA, is copied by an Enzyme
this year's winner of the 2006 Nobel Chemistry Prize, has been immersed in research since childhood and comes from a family that lives and breathes science.
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Kornberg is not a stranger to the Nobels either. In 1959, as a wide-eyed 12-year-old, he accompanied his father Arthur to Stockholm to see him receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
At the time of his father's award, Kornberg junior was already interested in science.
"Science was part of our conversations at the dinner table and part of our afternoon and weekend activities ... and the joy of science was completely natural for me and my brothers," Kornberg once told a science journal.
Arthur Kornberg, now in his 80s, was honoured for advancing understanding on how genetic information is transferred from a mother cell to its daughters.
The younger Kornberg's achievement was to portray how the genetic code, DNA, is copied by an enzyme and the copy is then stored in the outer part of the cell, in a process called transcription.
His mother Sylvy Ruth Levy was also a biochemist of note and contributed significantly to her husband's discovery of DNA polymerase, the enzyme that assembles the building blocks into DNA.
The day after her husband was awarded the Nobel prize, she was quoted in a newspaper as saying "I was robbed".
Born in Saint-Louis in 1947, Roger D. Kornberg is the eldest of three brothers.
Thomas is a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California in San Francisco.
Even Kenneth, the youngest of the trio, has not entirely escaped the science bug. Although an architect, he specialises in laboratory design.
Roger Kornberg gained a degree in chemistry at Havard and earned his PhD, also in chemistry, from Stanford University.
Following postdoctoral work at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Cambridge, England, in 1978, he joined the staff there.
He later became part of the faculty in the Department of Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School in the United States. He returned to Stanford in 1984, where he worked as professor of structural biology until 2002.
The following year he took up his current post as professor of medicine at Stanford University Medical School in California.
Kornberg is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Kornberg is not a stranger to the Nobels either. In 1959, as a wide-eyed 12-year-old, he accompanied his father Arthur to Stockholm to see him receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
At the time of his father's award, Kornberg junior was already interested in science.
"Science was part of our conversations at the dinner table and part of our afternoon and weekend activities ... and the joy of science was completely natural for me and my brothers," Kornberg once told a science journal.
Arthur Kornberg, now in his 80s, was honoured for advancing understanding on how genetic information is transferred from a mother cell to its daughters.
The younger Kornberg's achievement was to portray how the genetic code, DNA, is copied by an enzyme and the copy is then stored in the outer part of the cell, in a process called transcription.
His mother Sylvy Ruth Levy was also a biochemist of note and contributed significantly to her husband's discovery of DNA polymerase, the enzyme that assembles the building blocks into DNA.
The day after her husband was awarded the Nobel prize, she was quoted in a newspaper as saying "I was robbed".
Born in Saint-Louis in 1947, Roger D. Kornberg is the eldest of three brothers.
Thomas is a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California in San Francisco.
Even Kenneth, the youngest of the trio, has not entirely escaped the science bug. Although an architect, he specialises in laboratory design.
Roger Kornberg gained a degree in chemistry at Havard and earned his PhD, also in chemistry, from Stanford University.
Following postdoctoral work at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Cambridge, England, in 1978, he joined the staff there.
He later became part of the faculty in the Department of Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School in the United States. He returned to Stanford in 1984, where he worked as professor of structural biology until 2002.
The following year he took up his current post as professor of medicine at Stanford University Medical School in California.
Kornberg is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Nobel Prize in Physics : The Origin of the Universe and How it grew into Galaxies
Two American astronomers who uncovered evidence about the origin of the universe and how it grew into galaxies were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics today.
The researchers, John Mather of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and George Smoot of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, will split the prize of 10 million Swedish kroners, about $1.37 million.
Dr. Mather and Dr. Smoot led a team of more than 1,000 scientists, engineers and technicians that built and launched the Cosmic Background Explorer, or Cobe, satellite in 1989 to study a haze of microwave radiation that is believed to be a remnant of the explosion that, according to the Big Bang theory, started the universe.
Cobe’s measurements of the temperature and distribution of the microwaves, including the detection of tantalizingly faint irregularities from which things like galaxies could have grown, were a resounding confirmation of the theory of a universe that was born in a terrific explosion of space and time 14 billion years ago and in which the ordinary matter that makes up stars and people is overwhelmed by some mysterious “dark matter.”
“What we have found is evidence for the birth of the universe and its evolution,” Dr. Smoot said in a press conference about the results in 1992. About a map showing the splotchy seeds of galaxy formation, he famously said, “If you are religious, it is like looking at God.”
Today’s announcement delighted astronomers who had long anticipated a Nobel for the Cobe work. In the wake of that research wake came a wave of Big Bang theorizing and a series of balloon and satellite experiments to provide increasingly detailed data on the cosmic microwaves, including NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Project, or WMAP, which is still orbiting and beaming down data contributing to the emerging picture of a preposterous universe, full of dark energy pushing it apart, as well as dark matter.
James Peebles, a Princeton cosmologist, said, “Cobe was deeply important: those two measurements set cosmology on the track to our present well-based theory of the expanding universe.”
Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, said the Cobe measurements had ushered in an era of “precision cosmology” that continues to this day. “This is likely to the first of a number of prizes in cosmology in this golden age we find ourselves in.”
By DENNIS OVERBYE
The researchers, John Mather of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and George Smoot of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, will split the prize of 10 million Swedish kroners, about $1.37 million.
Dr. Mather and Dr. Smoot led a team of more than 1,000 scientists, engineers and technicians that built and launched the Cosmic Background Explorer, or Cobe, satellite in 1989 to study a haze of microwave radiation that is believed to be a remnant of the explosion that, according to the Big Bang theory, started the universe.
Cobe’s measurements of the temperature and distribution of the microwaves, including the detection of tantalizingly faint irregularities from which things like galaxies could have grown, were a resounding confirmation of the theory of a universe that was born in a terrific explosion of space and time 14 billion years ago and in which the ordinary matter that makes up stars and people is overwhelmed by some mysterious “dark matter.”
“What we have found is evidence for the birth of the universe and its evolution,” Dr. Smoot said in a press conference about the results in 1992. About a map showing the splotchy seeds of galaxy formation, he famously said, “If you are religious, it is like looking at God.”
Today’s announcement delighted astronomers who had long anticipated a Nobel for the Cobe work. In the wake of that research wake came a wave of Big Bang theorizing and a series of balloon and satellite experiments to provide increasingly detailed data on the cosmic microwaves, including NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Project, or WMAP, which is still orbiting and beaming down data contributing to the emerging picture of a preposterous universe, full of dark energy pushing it apart, as well as dark matter.
James Peebles, a Princeton cosmologist, said, “Cobe was deeply important: those two measurements set cosmology on the track to our present well-based theory of the expanding universe.”
Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, said the Cobe measurements had ushered in an era of “precision cosmology” that continues to this day. “This is likely to the first of a number of prizes in cosmology in this golden age we find ourselves in.”
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Monday, October 02, 2006
Nobel Prize in physiology or Medicine: Turn off the Effect of Specific Genes
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Americans Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine Monday for discovering a way to turn off the effect of specific genes.
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"RNA interference" is already being widely used in basic science as a method to study the function of genes and it is being studied as a treatment for virus infections, heart diseases, cancer and several other conditions.
Fire, of Stanford University, and Mello, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, published their seminal work in 1998.
RNA interference occurs naturally in plants, animals, and humans. The Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which awarded the prize, said it is important for regulating the activity of genes and helps defend against viral infection.
"This year's Nobel laureates have discovered a fundamental mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information," the institute said.
Genes produce their effect by sending molecules called messenger RNA to the protein-making machinery of a cell. In RNA interference, certain molecules trigger the destruction of RNA from a particular gene, so that no protein is produced. Thus the gene is effectively silenced.
Fire, who conducted the research while at the Carnegie Institution, said he was honored that the work "has received such positive attention."
"Science is a group effort. Please recognize that the recent progress in the field of RNA-based gene silencing has involved original scientific inquiry from research groups around the world," he said in a statement released by the Carnegie Institution.
The announcement opened this year's series of prize announcements. It will be followed by Nobel prizes for physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics.
Last year's medicine prize went to Australians Barry J. Marshall and Robin Warren for discovering that bacteria, not stress, causes ulcers.
The Nobel committees do not reveal who has been nominated for the awards, but that does not stop experts and Nobel-watchers from speculating on potential winners.
Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in his will in the categories of literature, peace, medicine, physics and chemistry. The economics prize is technically not a Nobel but a 1968 creation of Sweden's central bank.
Winners receive a check of $1.4 million, handshakes with Scandinavian royalty, and a banquet on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896. All prizes are handed out in Stockholm except for the peace prize, which is presented in Oslo.
By MATT MOORE and KARL RITTER, Associated Press Writers
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"RNA interference" is already being widely used in basic science as a method to study the function of genes and it is being studied as a treatment for virus infections, heart diseases, cancer and several other conditions.
Fire, of Stanford University, and Mello, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, published their seminal work in 1998.
RNA interference occurs naturally in plants, animals, and humans. The Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which awarded the prize, said it is important for regulating the activity of genes and helps defend against viral infection.
"This year's Nobel laureates have discovered a fundamental mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information," the institute said.
Genes produce their effect by sending molecules called messenger RNA to the protein-making machinery of a cell. In RNA interference, certain molecules trigger the destruction of RNA from a particular gene, so that no protein is produced. Thus the gene is effectively silenced.
Fire, who conducted the research while at the Carnegie Institution, said he was honored that the work "has received such positive attention."
"Science is a group effort. Please recognize that the recent progress in the field of RNA-based gene silencing has involved original scientific inquiry from research groups around the world," he said in a statement released by the Carnegie Institution.
The announcement opened this year's series of prize announcements. It will be followed by Nobel prizes for physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics.
Last year's medicine prize went to Australians Barry J. Marshall and Robin Warren for discovering that bacteria, not stress, causes ulcers.
The Nobel committees do not reveal who has been nominated for the awards, but that does not stop experts and Nobel-watchers from speculating on potential winners.
Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in his will in the categories of literature, peace, medicine, physics and chemistry. The economics prize is technically not a Nobel but a 1968 creation of Sweden's central bank.
Winners receive a check of $1.4 million, handshakes with Scandinavian royalty, and a banquet on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896. All prizes are handed out in Stockholm except for the peace prize, which is presented in Oslo.
By MATT MOORE and KARL RITTER, Associated Press Writers
Friday, September 22, 2006
Remains of earliest child discovered in Ethiopia
A 3.3 million-year-old skeleton of the earliest child ever found shows the ancient ancestor of modern humans walked upright but may also have climbed trees, scientists said on Wednesday.
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They found the well-preserved remains of a three-year-old girl of the species Australopithecus afarensis -- which includes the fossil skeleton known as "Lucy" -- in the Dikika area of Ethiopia, 400 kms northeast of the capital Addis Ababa.
"It represents the earliest and most complete partial skeleton of a child ever found in the history of paeleoanthropology," said Dr Zeresenay Alemseged, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
The skull, torso and upper and lower limbs, including the hand, show both human and ape-like features. The state of the ancient bones suggest she was buried in a flood which may also have caused her death.
The remains provide the first evidence of what babies of early human ancestors looked like. The nearly complete skeleton will also provide information about the child's height and structure.
"This child will help us understand a lot about the species to which it belongs," said Alemseged, leader of the international team of scientists who reported the findings in the journal Nature.
"The lower part of the body, which includes the foot, the shin bone and the thigh bone clearly shows us that this species was an upright walking creature," he told Reuters.
But some of the features from the upper part of the body, including the shoulder blade and arms are more ape-like. The fingers are long and curved which suggest she might have been able to swing through trees.
"The finding is the most complete hominid skeleton ever found in the world," Zeresenay Alemseged, who is head of the Paleoanthropological Research Team, told a news conference in Addis Ababa.
He said the fossil was older than the 3.2-million-year-old remains of "Lucy" discovered in 1974 and described by scientists as one of the world's greatest archaeological finds.
"The new bones belong to a three-year-old girl who lived 3.3 million years ago, 150,000 years before Lucy," Zeresenay said.
The fossil has been named "Selam," which means peace in Ethiopia's official Amharic language.
JUVENILE "LUCY"
Dr Simon Underdown of Oxford Brookes University in England described it as a massively exciting discovery of a juvenile "Lucy." "This tremendous fossil will make us challenge many of the ideas we have about how and why we came to walk on two feet," he said.
An analysis of the sediment in which the remains were found enabled researchers to build a picture of the type of environment in which the child lived.
It was a lush area with flowing water, forests and grassland which was also affected by volcanic eruptions. The range of habitats was suitable for hippos, crocodiles and relatives of the wildebeest.
"We can see from the sediment that the region was very much characterized by a mosaic of environment that ranged from forests and woodlands near the rivers, to seasonally flooded grasslands to a flood plain that would have supported more open vegetation," said Dr Jonathan Wynn of the University of South Florida who dated the sediments surrounding the remains.
By Patricia Reaney
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They found the well-preserved remains of a three-year-old girl of the species Australopithecus afarensis -- which includes the fossil skeleton known as "Lucy" -- in the Dikika area of Ethiopia, 400 kms northeast of the capital Addis Ababa.
"It represents the earliest and most complete partial skeleton of a child ever found in the history of paeleoanthropology," said Dr Zeresenay Alemseged, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
The skull, torso and upper and lower limbs, including the hand, show both human and ape-like features. The state of the ancient bones suggest she was buried in a flood which may also have caused her death.
The remains provide the first evidence of what babies of early human ancestors looked like. The nearly complete skeleton will also provide information about the child's height and structure.
"This child will help us understand a lot about the species to which it belongs," said Alemseged, leader of the international team of scientists who reported the findings in the journal Nature.
"The lower part of the body, which includes the foot, the shin bone and the thigh bone clearly shows us that this species was an upright walking creature," he told Reuters.
But some of the features from the upper part of the body, including the shoulder blade and arms are more ape-like. The fingers are long and curved which suggest she might have been able to swing through trees.
"The finding is the most complete hominid skeleton ever found in the world," Zeresenay Alemseged, who is head of the Paleoanthropological Research Team, told a news conference in Addis Ababa.
He said the fossil was older than the 3.2-million-year-old remains of "Lucy" discovered in 1974 and described by scientists as one of the world's greatest archaeological finds.
"The new bones belong to a three-year-old girl who lived 3.3 million years ago, 150,000 years before Lucy," Zeresenay said.
The fossil has been named "Selam," which means peace in Ethiopia's official Amharic language.
JUVENILE "LUCY"
Dr Simon Underdown of Oxford Brookes University in England described it as a massively exciting discovery of a juvenile "Lucy." "This tremendous fossil will make us challenge many of the ideas we have about how and why we came to walk on two feet," he said.
An analysis of the sediment in which the remains were found enabled researchers to build a picture of the type of environment in which the child lived.
It was a lush area with flowing water, forests and grassland which was also affected by volcanic eruptions. The range of habitats was suitable for hippos, crocodiles and relatives of the wildebeest.
"We can see from the sediment that the region was very much characterized by a mosaic of environment that ranged from forests and woodlands near the rivers, to seasonally flooded grasslands to a flood plain that would have supported more open vegetation," said Dr Jonathan Wynn of the University of South Florida who dated the sediments surrounding the remains.
By Patricia Reaney
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Timeline: 50 Years of Hard Drives
Over the past five decades, hard drives have come a long way. Travel through time with us as we chronicle 50 milestones in hard-drive development--from product firsts to new technologies, and everything in between.
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1956: IBM ships the first hard drive, the RAMAC 305, which holds 5MB of data at $10,000 a megabyte. It is as big as two refrigerators and uses 50 24-inch platters. (For the full story and interviews with key players, read "The Hard Drive Turns 50.")
1961: IBM invents heads for disk drives that "fly" on a cushion of air or on "air bearings."
1963: IBM comes up with the first removable hard drive, the 1311, which has six 14-inch platters and holds 2.6MB.
1966: IBM introduces the first drive using a wound-coil ferrite recording head.
1970: General Digital Corporation (renamed Western Digital in 1971) is founded in California.
1973: IBM announces the 3340, the first modern "Winchester" hard drive, which has a sealed assembly, lubricated spindles, and low-mass heads.
1978: First RAID (Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks) technology patent is filed. (Read "How to Buy a Hard Drive: Key Features" for a description of this technology.)
1979: A group headed by Al Shugart founds disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology.
1979: IBM's 3370 uses seven 14-inch platters to store 571MB, the first drive to use thin-film heads.
1979: IBM's 62 PC, "Piccolo," uses six 8-inch platters to store 64MB.
1979: Seagate introduces the ST-506 drive and interface, which is then used in all early microcomputer implementations.
1980: IBM introduces the first gigabyte hard drive. It is the size of a refrigerator, weighs about 550 pounds, and costs $40,000.
1980: Seagate releases the first 5.25-inch hard disk.
1981: Shugart Associates joins NCR to develop an intelligent disk drive interface called the Shugart Associates Systems Interface (SASI), a predecessor to SCSI (Small Computer System Interface).
1982: Western Digital announces the first single-chip Winchester hard drive controller (WD1010).
1983: Rodime releases the first 3.5-inch hard drive; the RO352 includes two platters and stores 10MB.
1984: Western Digital makes the first Winchester hard drive controller card for the IBM PC/AT--and sets an industry standard.
1985: Control Data, Compaq Computer, and Western Digital collaborate to develop the 40-pin IDE interface. IDE stands for Intelligent Drive Electronics, more commonly known as Integrated Drive Electronics.
1985: Imprimis integrates the first hard drive controller into a drive.
1985: Quantum introduces the Plus Hardcard, which allows the addition of a hard drive without an available bay or a separate controller card.
1985: Western Digital produces the first ESDI (Enhanced Small Device Interface) controller board, which allows larger capacity and faster hard drives to be used in PCs.
1986: The official SCSI spec is released; Apple Computer's Mac Plus is one of the first computers to use it.
1988: Prairie Tek releases the 220, the first 2.5-inch hard drive designed for the burgeoning notebook computer market; it uses two platters to store 20MB.
1988: Connor introduces the first 1-inch-high 3.5-inch hard drive, which is still the common form factor. Before this, hard drives were either full height or half-height.
1988: Western Digital buys the disk-drive assets of Tandon Corporation with an eye to manufacturing IDE drives.
1990: Western Digital introduces its first 3.5-inch Caviar IDE hard drive.
1991: IBM introduces the 0663 Corsair, the first disk drive with thin film magnetoresistive (MR) heads. It has eight 3.5-inch platters and stores 1GB. (The MR head was first introduced on an IBM tape drive in 1984.)
1991: Integral Peripherals' 1820 Mustang uses one 1.8-inch platter to store 21MB.
1992: Seagate comes out with the first shock-sensing 2.5-inch hard drive.
1992: Seagate is first to market with a 7200-revolutions-per-minute hard drive, the 2.1GB Barracuda.
1992: Hewlett-Packard's C3013A Kitty Hawk drive uses two 1.3-inch platters to store 2.1GB.
1994: Western Digital develops Enhanced IDE, an improved hard drive interface that breaks the 528MB-throughput barrier. EIDE also allows for attachment of optical and tape drives.
1996: IBM stores 1 billion bits per square inch on a platter.
1996: Seagate introduces its Cheetah family, the first 10,000-rpm hard drives.
1997: IBM introduces the first drive using giant magneto resistive (GMR) heads, the 16.8GB Deskstar 16GP Titan, which stores 16.8GB on five 3.5-inch platters.
1998: IBM announces its Microdrive, the smallest hard drive to date. It fits 340MB on a single 1-inch platter.
2000: Maxtor buys competitor Quantum's hard drive business. At the time, Quantum is the number-two drive maker, behind Seagate; this acquisition makes Maxtor the world's largest hard drive manufacturer.
2000: Seagate produces the first 15,000-rpm hard drive, the Cheetah X15.
2002: Seagate scores another first with the Barracuda ATA V Serial ATA hard drive.
2002: A demonstration by Seagate yields a perpendicular magnetic recording areal density of 100 gigabits per square inch.
2002: Among its many 2002 technology accomplishments, Seagate successfully demos Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording. HAMR records magnetically using laser-thermal assistance and ultimately aims to increase areal density by more than 100 times over 2002 levels.
2003: IBM sells its Data Storage Division to Hitachi, thus ending its involvement in developing and marketing disk drive technology.
2003: Western Digital introduces the first 10,000-rpm SATA hard drive, the 37GB Raptor, which is designed for the enterprise, but which gamers quickly learn is a hot desktop performer in dual-drive RAID setups.
2004: The first 0.85-inch hard drive, Toshiba's MK2001MTN, debuts. It stores 2GB on a single platter.
2005: Toshiba introduces its MK4007 GAL, which stores 40GB on one 1.8-inch platter, fielding the first hard drive using perpendicular magnetic recording.
2006: Seagate completes the acquisition of Maxtor, further narrowing the field of hard drive manufacturers.
2006: Seagate's Momentus 5400.3 notebook hard drive is the first 2.5-inch model to use perpendicular magnetic recording, which boosts its capacity up to 160GB.
2006: Seagate releases the Barracuda 7200.10, at 750GB the largest hard drive to date.
2006: Western Digital launches its 10,000-rpm Raptor X SATA hard drive, boosting its capacity to 150GB and placing a flashy transparent window that allows specially designed computer cases to showcase its inner workings.
2006: Cornice and Seagate each announce a 1-inch hard drive that holds 12GB. The drives are slated to ship in the third quarter of 2006.
Rex Farrance, PC World
ADVERTISEMENT
1956: IBM ships the first hard drive, the RAMAC 305, which holds 5MB of data at $10,000 a megabyte. It is as big as two refrigerators and uses 50 24-inch platters. (For the full story and interviews with key players, read "The Hard Drive Turns 50.")
1961: IBM invents heads for disk drives that "fly" on a cushion of air or on "air bearings."
1963: IBM comes up with the first removable hard drive, the 1311, which has six 14-inch platters and holds 2.6MB.
1966: IBM introduces the first drive using a wound-coil ferrite recording head.
1970: General Digital Corporation (renamed Western Digital in 1971) is founded in California.
1973: IBM announces the 3340, the first modern "Winchester" hard drive, which has a sealed assembly, lubricated spindles, and low-mass heads.
1978: First RAID (Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks) technology patent is filed. (Read "How to Buy a Hard Drive: Key Features" for a description of this technology.)
1979: A group headed by Al Shugart founds disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology.
1979: IBM's 3370 uses seven 14-inch platters to store 571MB, the first drive to use thin-film heads.
1979: IBM's 62 PC, "Piccolo," uses six 8-inch platters to store 64MB.
1979: Seagate introduces the ST-506 drive and interface, which is then used in all early microcomputer implementations.
1980: IBM introduces the first gigabyte hard drive. It is the size of a refrigerator, weighs about 550 pounds, and costs $40,000.
1980: Seagate releases the first 5.25-inch hard disk.
1981: Shugart Associates joins NCR to develop an intelligent disk drive interface called the Shugart Associates Systems Interface (SASI), a predecessor to SCSI (Small Computer System Interface).
1982: Western Digital announces the first single-chip Winchester hard drive controller (WD1010).
1983: Rodime releases the first 3.5-inch hard drive; the RO352 includes two platters and stores 10MB.
1984: Western Digital makes the first Winchester hard drive controller card for the IBM PC/AT--and sets an industry standard.
1985: Control Data, Compaq Computer, and Western Digital collaborate to develop the 40-pin IDE interface. IDE stands for Intelligent Drive Electronics, more commonly known as Integrated Drive Electronics.
1985: Imprimis integrates the first hard drive controller into a drive.
1985: Quantum introduces the Plus Hardcard, which allows the addition of a hard drive without an available bay or a separate controller card.
1985: Western Digital produces the first ESDI (Enhanced Small Device Interface) controller board, which allows larger capacity and faster hard drives to be used in PCs.
1986: The official SCSI spec is released; Apple Computer's Mac Plus is one of the first computers to use it.
1988: Prairie Tek releases the 220, the first 2.5-inch hard drive designed for the burgeoning notebook computer market; it uses two platters to store 20MB.
1988: Connor introduces the first 1-inch-high 3.5-inch hard drive, which is still the common form factor. Before this, hard drives were either full height or half-height.
1988: Western Digital buys the disk-drive assets of Tandon Corporation with an eye to manufacturing IDE drives.
1990: Western Digital introduces its first 3.5-inch Caviar IDE hard drive.
1991: IBM introduces the 0663 Corsair, the first disk drive with thin film magnetoresistive (MR) heads. It has eight 3.5-inch platters and stores 1GB. (The MR head was first introduced on an IBM tape drive in 1984.)
1991: Integral Peripherals' 1820 Mustang uses one 1.8-inch platter to store 21MB.
1992: Seagate comes out with the first shock-sensing 2.5-inch hard drive.
1992: Seagate is first to market with a 7200-revolutions-per-minute hard drive, the 2.1GB Barracuda.
1992: Hewlett-Packard's C3013A Kitty Hawk drive uses two 1.3-inch platters to store 2.1GB.
1994: Western Digital develops Enhanced IDE, an improved hard drive interface that breaks the 528MB-throughput barrier. EIDE also allows for attachment of optical and tape drives.
1996: IBM stores 1 billion bits per square inch on a platter.
1996: Seagate introduces its Cheetah family, the first 10,000-rpm hard drives.
1997: IBM introduces the first drive using giant magneto resistive (GMR) heads, the 16.8GB Deskstar 16GP Titan, which stores 16.8GB on five 3.5-inch platters.
1998: IBM announces its Microdrive, the smallest hard drive to date. It fits 340MB on a single 1-inch platter.
2000: Maxtor buys competitor Quantum's hard drive business. At the time, Quantum is the number-two drive maker, behind Seagate; this acquisition makes Maxtor the world's largest hard drive manufacturer.
2000: Seagate produces the first 15,000-rpm hard drive, the Cheetah X15.
2002: Seagate scores another first with the Barracuda ATA V Serial ATA hard drive.
2002: A demonstration by Seagate yields a perpendicular magnetic recording areal density of 100 gigabits per square inch.
2002: Among its many 2002 technology accomplishments, Seagate successfully demos Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording. HAMR records magnetically using laser-thermal assistance and ultimately aims to increase areal density by more than 100 times over 2002 levels.
2003: IBM sells its Data Storage Division to Hitachi, thus ending its involvement in developing and marketing disk drive technology.
2003: Western Digital introduces the first 10,000-rpm SATA hard drive, the 37GB Raptor, which is designed for the enterprise, but which gamers quickly learn is a hot desktop performer in dual-drive RAID setups.
2004: The first 0.85-inch hard drive, Toshiba's MK2001MTN, debuts. It stores 2GB on a single platter.
2005: Toshiba introduces its MK4007 GAL, which stores 40GB on one 1.8-inch platter, fielding the first hard drive using perpendicular magnetic recording.
2006: Seagate completes the acquisition of Maxtor, further narrowing the field of hard drive manufacturers.
2006: Seagate's Momentus 5400.3 notebook hard drive is the first 2.5-inch model to use perpendicular magnetic recording, which boosts its capacity up to 160GB.
2006: Seagate releases the Barracuda 7200.10, at 750GB the largest hard drive to date.
2006: Western Digital launches its 10,000-rpm Raptor X SATA hard drive, boosting its capacity to 150GB and placing a flashy transparent window that allows specially designed computer cases to showcase its inner workings.
2006: Cornice and Seagate each announce a 1-inch hard drive that holds 12GB. The drives are slated to ship in the third quarter of 2006.
Rex Farrance, PC World
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Russian refuses math's highest honor
A reclusive Russian won the math world's highest honor Tuesday for solving a problem that has stumped some of the discipline's greatest minds for a century — but he refused the award.
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Grigory Perelman, a 40-year-old native of St. Petersburg, won a Fields Medal — often described as math's equivalent of the Nobel prize — for a breakthrough in the study of shapes that experts say might help scientists figure out the shape of the universe.
John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union, said that he had urged Perelman to accept the medal, but Perelman said he felt isolated from the mathematics community and "does not want to be seen as its figurehead." Ball offered no further details of the conversation.
Besides shunning the award for his work in topology, Perelman also seems uninterested, according to colleagues, in a separate $1 million prize he could win for proving the Poincare conjecture, a theorem about the nature of multidimensional space.
The award, given out every four years, was announced at the mathematical union's International Congress of Mathematicians. Three other mathematicians — Russian Andrei Okounkov, Frenchman Wendelin Werner and Australian Terence Tao — won Fields medals in other areas of mathematics.
They received their awards from King Juan Carlos to loud applause from delegates to the conference. But Perelman was not present.
"I regret that Dr. Perelman has declined to accept the medal," Ball said.
Perelman's work is still under review, but no one has found any serious flaw in it, the math union said in a statement.
The Fields medal was founded in 1936 and named after Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields. It come with a $13,400 stipend.
Perelman is eligible for far more money from a private foundation called The Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass.
In 2000, the institute announced bounties for seven historic, unsolved math problems, including the Poincare conjecture.
If his proof stands the test of time, Perelman will win all or part of the $1 million prize money. That prize should be announced in about two years.
The Poincare conjecture essentially says that in three dimensions you cannot transform a doughnut shape into a sphere without ripping it, although any shape without a hole can be stretched or shrunk into a sphere.
Proving the conjecture — an exercise in acrobatics with mindboggling imaginary doughnuts and balls — is anything but trivial. Colleagues say Perelman's work gives mathematical descriptions of what the universe might look like and promises exciting applications in physics and other fields.
"It is very important indeed because it really gives us an insight into geometry and in particular the geometry of the space we live in," said Oxford University math professor Marcus du Sautoy. "It does not say what the shape (of the universe) is. It just says, 'look, these are the things it could be.'"
Academics have been studying Perelman's proof since he left the first of three papers on it on a math Web site in Nov. 2002. Normal procedure would have been to seek publication in a peer-approved journal.
Three separate teams have presented papers or books explaining the details of Perelman's work, which draws heavily from a technique developed by another mathematician, Richard Hamilton of Columbia University. The Clay Mathematics Institute says the two men could conceivably share the Poincare money.
Ball said he asked Perelman if he would accept that money. Perelman said that if he won, he would talk to the Clay institute.
Perelman is believed to live with his mother in St. Petersburg. Repeated calls over many days to a telephone number listed as Perelman's went unanswered. Acquaintances refused to give out his address or the number they use to contact him, saying he did not want to talk to the media.
By DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writer
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Grigory Perelman, a 40-year-old native of St. Petersburg, won a Fields Medal — often described as math's equivalent of the Nobel prize — for a breakthrough in the study of shapes that experts say might help scientists figure out the shape of the universe.
John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union, said that he had urged Perelman to accept the medal, but Perelman said he felt isolated from the mathematics community and "does not want to be seen as its figurehead." Ball offered no further details of the conversation.
Besides shunning the award for his work in topology, Perelman also seems uninterested, according to colleagues, in a separate $1 million prize he could win for proving the Poincare conjecture, a theorem about the nature of multidimensional space.
The award, given out every four years, was announced at the mathematical union's International Congress of Mathematicians. Three other mathematicians — Russian Andrei Okounkov, Frenchman Wendelin Werner and Australian Terence Tao — won Fields medals in other areas of mathematics.
They received their awards from King Juan Carlos to loud applause from delegates to the conference. But Perelman was not present.
"I regret that Dr. Perelman has declined to accept the medal," Ball said.
Perelman's work is still under review, but no one has found any serious flaw in it, the math union said in a statement.
The Fields medal was founded in 1936 and named after Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields. It come with a $13,400 stipend.
Perelman is eligible for far more money from a private foundation called The Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass.
In 2000, the institute announced bounties for seven historic, unsolved math problems, including the Poincare conjecture.
If his proof stands the test of time, Perelman will win all or part of the $1 million prize money. That prize should be announced in about two years.
The Poincare conjecture essentially says that in three dimensions you cannot transform a doughnut shape into a sphere without ripping it, although any shape without a hole can be stretched or shrunk into a sphere.
Proving the conjecture — an exercise in acrobatics with mindboggling imaginary doughnuts and balls — is anything but trivial. Colleagues say Perelman's work gives mathematical descriptions of what the universe might look like and promises exciting applications in physics and other fields.
"It is very important indeed because it really gives us an insight into geometry and in particular the geometry of the space we live in," said Oxford University math professor Marcus du Sautoy. "It does not say what the shape (of the universe) is. It just says, 'look, these are the things it could be.'"
Academics have been studying Perelman's proof since he left the first of three papers on it on a math Web site in Nov. 2002. Normal procedure would have been to seek publication in a peer-approved journal.
Three separate teams have presented papers or books explaining the details of Perelman's work, which draws heavily from a technique developed by another mathematician, Richard Hamilton of Columbia University. The Clay Mathematics Institute says the two men could conceivably share the Poincare money.
Ball said he asked Perelman if he would accept that money. Perelman said that if he won, he would talk to the Clay institute.
Perelman is believed to live with his mother in St. Petersburg. Repeated calls over many days to a telephone number listed as Perelman's went unanswered. Acquaintances refused to give out his address or the number they use to contact him, saying he did not want to talk to the media.
By DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writer
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Happy 25th Birthday to the PC
August 12, 1981. If you were ready to plunk down about $1,600, you could have owned a piece of history: The original IBM 5150 PC, generally considered to be the "first" PC.
At 25 years old, it's fun to look back on how far we've come. At 21 pounds (without drives), the 5150 wasn't much fatter than the PCs of today. Under the hood, things looked a bit different: 40KB of read-only memory and 16KB of RAM (upgradable to 256KB). You could configure the machine with one or two 160KB floppy drives, but a jack for a cassette player was included. Users certainly loved the "power-on automatic self-test of system components" and "built-in speaker for musical programming." And the keyboard (included) weighed six pounds. The 11.5-inch monochrome monitor, capable of displaying 25 lines of text, weighed in at 17 lbs. and supported both upper- and lowercase characters. Whoa.
Mock it if you must, but remember that the 5150 was unlike anything anyone had ever seen. The Apple II, released a few years earlier, came close, but it was more of a hacker toy and game-playing machine than something that would be at home in a business. The 5150 had built-in BASIC and Pascal support for writing programs, and it included a ton of business software: VisiCalc, Peachtree accounting software, and the EasyWriter word processor. And yes, Microsoft Adventure, a text-based adventure game, was available for diversions.
So that was 25 years ago. Looking ahead 25 years is almost impossible (and the further we get from the birth of the PC, the harder and harder it gets), but let's imagine. Magnetic storage will still be around, and your average hard drive will hold something in the vicinity of 30 terabytes (30,000GB) and cost $50 or less. CPU architecture will be vastly different. If we're still using silicon wafers, you could have a 32-core CPU with dedicated encryption and graphics components. In 25 years, graphics will have evolved to the point where Toy Story will seem quaint. You'll be able to compose a production like that in real time, and it'll look perfect on your wall-sized display. And dare we dream of something in true 3-D? Memo to Silicon Valley: Better get busy!
For another walk down memory lane (or rather, a walk down a lane filled with computers that predate the PC most of which you have probably never heard of), check out this page of personal computer milestones, dating back to 1950. And let's hear your memories of the early days of the personal computer. What was your first machine, and how did it change your life? The comments are open!
By Christopher Null
At 25 years old, it's fun to look back on how far we've come. At 21 pounds (without drives), the 5150 wasn't much fatter than the PCs of today. Under the hood, things looked a bit different: 40KB of read-only memory and 16KB of RAM (upgradable to 256KB). You could configure the machine with one or two 160KB floppy drives, but a jack for a cassette player was included. Users certainly loved the "power-on automatic self-test of system components" and "built-in speaker for musical programming." And the keyboard (included) weighed six pounds. The 11.5-inch monochrome monitor, capable of displaying 25 lines of text, weighed in at 17 lbs. and supported both upper- and lowercase characters. Whoa.
Mock it if you must, but remember that the 5150 was unlike anything anyone had ever seen. The Apple II, released a few years earlier, came close, but it was more of a hacker toy and game-playing machine than something that would be at home in a business. The 5150 had built-in BASIC and Pascal support for writing programs, and it included a ton of business software: VisiCalc, Peachtree accounting software, and the EasyWriter word processor. And yes, Microsoft Adventure, a text-based adventure game, was available for diversions.
So that was 25 years ago. Looking ahead 25 years is almost impossible (and the further we get from the birth of the PC, the harder and harder it gets), but let's imagine. Magnetic storage will still be around, and your average hard drive will hold something in the vicinity of 30 terabytes (30,000GB) and cost $50 or less. CPU architecture will be vastly different. If we're still using silicon wafers, you could have a 32-core CPU with dedicated encryption and graphics components. In 25 years, graphics will have evolved to the point where Toy Story will seem quaint. You'll be able to compose a production like that in real time, and it'll look perfect on your wall-sized display. And dare we dream of something in true 3-D? Memo to Silicon Valley: Better get busy!
For another walk down memory lane (or rather, a walk down a lane filled with computers that predate the PC most of which you have probably never heard of), check out this page of personal computer milestones, dating back to 1950. And let's hear your memories of the early days of the personal computer. What was your first machine, and how did it change your life? The comments are open!
By Christopher Null
Monday, August 07, 2006
Beams reveal Archimedes' hidden writings
Previously hidden writings of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes are being uncovered with powerful X-ray beams nearly 800 years after a Christian monk scrubbed off the text and wrote over it with prayers.
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Over the past week, researchers at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park have been using X-rays to decipher a fragile 10th century manuscript that contains the only copies of some of Archimedes' most important works.
The X-rays, generated by a particle accelerator, cause tiny amounts of iron left by the original ink to glow without harming the delicate goatskin parchment.
"We are gaining new insights into one of the founding fathers of western science," said William Noel, curator of manuscripts at Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, which organized the effort. "It is the most difficult imaging challenge on any medieval document because the book is in such terrible condition."
Following a successful trial run last year, Stanford researchers invited X-ray scientists, rare document collectors and classics scholars to take part in the 11-day project.
It takes about 12 hours to scan one page using an X-ray beam about the size of a human hair, and researchers expect to decipher up to 15 pages that resisted modern imaging techniques. After each new page is decoded, it is posted online for the public to see.
On Friday, members of the public watched the decoding process via a live Web cast arranged by the San Francisco Exploratorium.
"We are focusing on the most difficult pages where the scholars haven't been able to read the texts," said Uwe Bergmann, the Stanford physicist heading the project.
Born in the 3rd century B.C., Archimedes is considered one of ancient Greece's greatest mathematicians, perhaps best known for discovering the principle of buoyancy while taking a bath.
The 174-page manuscript, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest, contains the only copies of treatises on flotation, gravity and mathematics. Scholars believe a scribe copied them onto the goatskin parchment from the original Greek scrolls.
Three centuries later, a monk scrubbed off the Archimedes text and used the parchment to write prayers at a time when the Greek mathematician's work was less appreciated. In the early 20th century, forgers tried to boost the manuscript's value by painting religious imagery on some of the pages.
In 1998, an anonymous private collector paid $2 million for the manuscript at an auction, then loaned it to the Walter Arts Museum for safekeeping and study.
Over the past eight years, researchers have used ultraviolet and infrared filters, as well as digital cameras and processing techniques, to reveal most of the buried text, but some pages were still unreadable.
"We will never recover all of it," Noel said. "We are just getting as much as we can, and we are going to the ends of the earth to get it."
By TERENCE CHEA, Associated Press Writer
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Over the past week, researchers at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park have been using X-rays to decipher a fragile 10th century manuscript that contains the only copies of some of Archimedes' most important works.
The X-rays, generated by a particle accelerator, cause tiny amounts of iron left by the original ink to glow without harming the delicate goatskin parchment.
"We are gaining new insights into one of the founding fathers of western science," said William Noel, curator of manuscripts at Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, which organized the effort. "It is the most difficult imaging challenge on any medieval document because the book is in such terrible condition."
Following a successful trial run last year, Stanford researchers invited X-ray scientists, rare document collectors and classics scholars to take part in the 11-day project.
It takes about 12 hours to scan one page using an X-ray beam about the size of a human hair, and researchers expect to decipher up to 15 pages that resisted modern imaging techniques. After each new page is decoded, it is posted online for the public to see.
On Friday, members of the public watched the decoding process via a live Web cast arranged by the San Francisco Exploratorium.
"We are focusing on the most difficult pages where the scholars haven't been able to read the texts," said Uwe Bergmann, the Stanford physicist heading the project.
Born in the 3rd century B.C., Archimedes is considered one of ancient Greece's greatest mathematicians, perhaps best known for discovering the principle of buoyancy while taking a bath.
The 174-page manuscript, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest, contains the only copies of treatises on flotation, gravity and mathematics. Scholars believe a scribe copied them onto the goatskin parchment from the original Greek scrolls.
Three centuries later, a monk scrubbed off the Archimedes text and used the parchment to write prayers at a time when the Greek mathematician's work was less appreciated. In the early 20th century, forgers tried to boost the manuscript's value by painting religious imagery on some of the pages.
In 1998, an anonymous private collector paid $2 million for the manuscript at an auction, then loaned it to the Walter Arts Museum for safekeeping and study.
Over the past eight years, researchers have used ultraviolet and infrared filters, as well as digital cameras and processing techniques, to reveal most of the buried text, but some pages were still unreadable.
"We will never recover all of it," Noel said. "We are just getting as much as we can, and we are going to the ends of the earth to get it."
By TERENCE CHEA, Associated Press Writer
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