Author: Alan Boyle

Mandel Ngan / AFP – Getty Images

Click for interactive: Skulls of early Homo sapiens (right) and a Neanderthal (left, in background) sit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Scientists say a third hominin group may have co-existed with those two groups 40,000 years ago. Click on the image to learn more about human evolution, in the past and perhaps in the future.

A DNA sample taken from an ancient pinky bone suggests that a previously unknown group of human ancestors mixed it up with Neanderthals and modern humans 40,000 years ago. Was it a completely different species? Too early to say, but it might depend on what your definition of “species” is.

Wired: Is geoengineering ‘a bad idea whose time has come’? 
New Scientist: Did Neptune eat a planet and steal its moon?
The Guardian: Are mega-cities merging into ‘mega-regions’? 
Nature: What life forms lurk in Antarctica’s hidden lakes? …(read more)

EMC2 Fusion Development Corp.

Plasma shines brightly inside EMC2 Fusion’s WB-7 device, which was built to validate earlier experiments in inertial electrostatic confinement fusion.

There’s more than one way to do fusion energy research: Some approaches rely on applying well-accepted physics, at a cost of billions of dollars, on a timeline that could stretch out for decades. Other approaches follows unconventional paths that could get to the goal much more quickly, for much less money … but could also lead to dead ends.

Over the past couple of weeks, the folks following unconventional paths to fusion have signaled that they’re a little surer about their progress – while some of the folks following the mainstream path are running into a little more trouble.

Does that mean low-budget fusion will prevail? Not necessarily. But it does mean that fusion research could heat up in the years to come.

Mark Greenberg / Virgin Galactic

The SpaceShipTwo rocket plane is attached between the twin fuselages of its WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane, as seen from below during Monday’s test flight from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port.

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane took to the air for the first time this morning from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port.

The craft, which has been christened the VSS Enterprise, remained firmly attached to its WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane throughout the nearly three-hour test flight. It will take many months of further tests before SpaceShipTwo actually goes into outer space. Nevertheless, today’s outing marks an important milestone along a path that could take paying passengers to the final frontier as early as 2011 or 2012.

	JAXA
	An artist’s rendering shows Japan’s Ikaros solar sail in flight.

As Japan gears up to send the first working solar sail into deep space in a couple of months, the Planetary Society is moving ahead with its own solar-sail project. You can put your name on both sails … if you act now.

Sunday is the deadline for adding your name to the list for Japan’s Ikaros spacecraft, due to piggyback on the May 18 launch of the Venus-bound Akatsuki orbiter aboard a Japanese H-2A rocket. More than 25,000 people have signed up already using the Planetary Society’s “Sail Away” Web page – and when those are added to the Japanese list, the tally goes up to 60,000 names.

Science / AAAS

This graphic shows a 3-D nanostructure, consisting of a bumpy gold surface layer with the tailored “invisibility cloak” underneath. The cloak, made from laser-sculpted layers of polymer, hides the bump from optical detection.

Scientists have designed a more stylish cloak of invisibility that can hide a bumpy feature from view, even if you’re looking right at it from a wide range of perspectives. But don’t expect boy wizard Harry Potter to be modeling this cloak anytime soon.

It’s actually more like an ultra-thin carpet of invisibility, created from layers of laser-sculpted polymer and topped off with a bumpy coating of gold.

“In our carpet, you could put any object beneath the bump, and it would be hidden because the bump itself is hidden,” Tolga Ergin, a physicist at Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, told me. The research conducted by Ergin and his colleagues was published online today by the journal Science.

	msnbc.com
	Click for interactive: Learn more about quantum mechanics and its application to computing.

The quantum world may seem so small and weird that there’s no connection with everyday reality, but that impression couldn’t be further from the truth. Newly published studies – and a newly released documentary – explore the big frontiers of the quantum information revolution.

Actually, quantum physics is as connected to everyday reality as the device that’s displaying these words of mine. If it weren’t for the quantum nature of light, inventions such as computers, TVs and DVD players would be impossible.

Some aspects of quantum mechanics are easier to understand than others, however. It’s one thing to wrap your mind around the idea that light comes in individual packets called photons, and quite another to suggest that a single photon can travel along two paths at once. Or to suggest that two photons can be linked so strongly that doing something to one of them affects the other. Even Albert Einstein said that was “spooky.”

It may be that our brains just aren’t programmed to pick up on the weirder implications of quantum physics, such as superposition, information teleportation and particle entanglement. But Anton Zeilinger, a University of Vienna physicist who pioneered the technology behind teleportation, says that doesn’t always have to be the case.

…(read more)

L. Fletcher / ESO / NASA / JPL / ESA

The thermal image at left charts temperature variations in three storms on Jupiter — the Great Red Spot, Oval BA and Baby Red. The Hubble Space Telescope image at right shows the same scene in visible light. Both images were captured in May 2008. Click on the picture to see a larger version.

Thermal images have charted the temperature of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot in unprecedented detail, revealing that the very center of the spot is warmer than the outer edges. The readings reveal the meteorological mechanics behind the solar system’s strongest storm.

	G. Neukum / FU Berlin / DLR / ESA
	Use red-blue glasses to get a 3-D view of Phobos, and click on the image for a larger version.

Fresh imagery from Europe’s Mars Express orbiter shows the Martian moon Phobos in sharp, 3-D detail. This isn’t the first time Phobos has gotten its close-up, but interest in the irregular moon is rising – in part because it’s increasingly seen as a steppingstone for Mars-bound astronauts.

Last month, NASA shifted its focus from sending humans back to the moon to a “flexible path” that includes the moons of Mars as potential destinations. The idea is that low-gravity locales such as Phobos (and Mars’ other moon, Deimos) should be easier to get to because they’re more accommodating for landing and ascent.

Phobos – a pockmarked, potato-shaped lump that measures only 17 miles (27 kilometers) in its widest dimension – could well serve as the prime staging ground for telerobotic operations on the Martian surface, or for eventual human landings on Mars.

But first, scientists want to figure out what Phobos is made of.

Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co.

A stylized postcard from Seattle’s Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co. celebrates Pluto and its moons. The company is planning a tongue-in-cheek teach-in and rally at 1 p.m. PT Saturday to protest Pluto’s plight.

It’s sad to see how many people are willing to pick on a dwarf planet when it’s down. Take Pluto, for instance: A couple of years ago, when I visited a “solar system walk” that was erected near my hometown in Iowa, there was a big black X drawn across Pluto’s name – as if it didn’t belong in the lineup because of its controversial reclassification in 2006.

That was one of the reasons why I wrote “The Case for Pluto.” I felt as if somebody had to stand up for the little guy. (You can read all about my Iowa encounter here.)

I’m feeling a lot better these days: Over the past week, I’ve been in Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois to talk with Midwesterners about the book, and I’ve been heartened by the experience. Although the faded X can still be seen on the solar system monument in Mount Vernon, it looks as if Pluto and its little pals are finding their proper place, figuratively and literally.

DigitalGlobe

The WorldView-2 satellite photo at left shows an oil refinery near Concepcion, Chile, on Feb. 27 after the area was hit by an 8.8 earthquake. A pre-quake image of the same area, seen at right, was taken by the QuickBird satellite on Feb. 21.

How did the magnitude-8.8 earthquake in Chile compare with January’s 7.0 earthquake in Haiti? Was Chile’s quake 60 times stronger? 600 times stronger? And exactly how much time will we be losing every day because the 8.8 quake affected Earth’s rotation?

If it’s just a question of running the numbers, scientists can provide extremely precise answers. But the realities of earth science aren’t always easy to pin down on a yardstick or a stopwatch.

…(read more)

Michael West / ESO / ESA / NASA

The elliptical galaxy ESO 306-17 looks like a fuzzball with a bright center and a large halo in this image, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Swirls of stars seem to surround a huge galaxy half a billion light-years from Earth. But that’s just an illusion: In reality, the hazy galaxy spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope is a big fat loner. The big fat mystery is … why?

	Lemelson-MIT Program
	MIT graduate student Erez Lieberman-Aiden holds models of DNA fractal globules and is surrounded by designs symbolizing other research interests, ranging from evolutionary graph theory to the iShoe.

Four amazingly inventive students have won $30,000 each for innovations ranging from a DNA puzzle-solver to a low-cost prosthetic arm to an “iShoe” that checks your sense of balance.

The monetary payoff came today from the Lemelson-MIT Collegiate Student Prize Program, which has rewarded inventors with cash prizes since 1994. But the biggest payoffs from the winning inventions are still to come, in the form of new medical therapies, more efficient energy storage devices and lives more fully lived.

A century ago, the stereotypical inventor was a Thomas Edison type, slaving away in a lab, trying to blend 1 percent inspiration with 99 percent perspiration to come up with a stroke of genius. Nowadays, the stereotype is more likely a Borg-type hive mind, in which legions of anonymous engineers come up with innovation by design.

Erez Lieberman-Aiden, a 30-year-old student winner at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thinks the truth is somewhere in the murky middle.

JPL: Mars orbiter speeds past data milestone
ISEC: Do space elevator research and win a prize
IT Pro: Mind-reading computer unveiled (via Slashdot)
Space Transport News: Two rocket racers flown on same day
NASA: International Space Station program wins Collier Trophy…(read more)

Getty Images

Bottles containing poison could be found on household shelves a century ago.

If you think the investigators on “C.S.I,” “Law and Order” and other cop shows have it tough, imagine what it was like a century ago – when a confessed poisoner went free because no one could prove he did it. Forensic science, as it’s practiced today on television and in thousands of real-life crime labs, hadn’t yet been invented.

“It wasn’t just that they didn’t have the tests,” Pulitzer-winning science writer Deborah Blum told me today. “They didn’t have the apparatus to do the tests.”

Blum tells the tale behind the birth of forensic science in “The Poisoner’s Handbook,” a saga that literally lets readers pick their poison.

AP file

When it came to scooping up medals at the 2010 Olympics, Canada led the pack in the gold category but Team USA won the most overall.

The gold medal for predicting the Olympic medal count goes to … neither the math geeks nor the sports jocks. The clearest winners are the folks who shifted their forecasts after the Vancouver Games actually started and put their virtual money on Team USA. But the judges will have to make the final ruling – and that means you, gentle reader.

NASA / JPL / SSI

A stereo image from the Cassini orbiter shows the Saturnian moon Prometheus in all its 3-D glory. Use red-blue glasses to see the stereo effect.

As the Cassini orbiter whirls past Saturn and its moons, it’s racking up a growing inventory of cool imagery – including 3-D views that are worth pulling out your red-blue glasses to see.

This week’s reviews of NASA’s new plan for space exploration have been mixed at best, and grim at worst. The plan calls for canceling the back-to-the-moon Constellation program, extending utilization of the International Space Station, and developing technologies step-by-step to go beyond Earth orbit. The problem is, where should NASA go? And when?

Julie Fletcher / Orlando Sentinel file via AP

SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau is shown while performing on Dec. 30, 2005. Brancheau was killed during an encounter with an orca at SeaWorld on Wednesday.

Experts on marine mammals say that dolphins – including “killer whales,” which are more properly called orcas – rank among the most intelligent species on the planet. So what was that orca thinking when he dragged his human trainer into the water and killed her?

“I have no way of knowing what the whale had in mind,” Richard Ellis, a marine conservationist at the American Museum of Natural History, told The Associated Press. “But I can tell you that killer whales, because they’re supposed to be so intelligent, don’t do things accidentally. This was not an insane, uncontrollable act. This was premeditated. And the whale, for whatever whale reasons, did this intentionally.”

ESA

In this artist’s conception, an ascent module lifts off from the Martian surface, carrying samples of soil and rock on a key part of the journey back to Earth.

Fifty years after NASA began grappling with the idea of life beyond our planet, it’s in the midst of planning missions to bring potential traces of Martian life back to Earth … again.