Author: Discover Main Feed

Every now and again I think I’ve pretty much seen it all when it comes to astronomical images, and I’m getting jaded.

And then I see a picture like this:

Yeah, I still get a thrill from seeing things like this! Click to massively embiggen.

The image shows what’s called the Hickson Compact Group 31, a small collection of galaxies. It’s a combination of images from Hubble (visible light, shown in red, green, and blue), Spitzer (infrared, shown as orange), and the Galaxy Explorer or GALEX (ultraviolet, seen here as purple).

If I saw this picture with no caption, I’d know I was seeing dwarf galaxies colliding; the shape and the glow from newly-forming stars is a dead giveaway. But I’d also guess that the galaxies were young; old galaxies tend not to have much gas in them, and there’s clearly plenty of that in those galaxies! But in fact the galaxies here are very old; there are globular clusters (spherical collections of perhaps a million stars each that tend to orbit outside of galaxies) in the group that can be dated to being 10 or so billion years old. That means these are old objects, reinvigorated by their collision.

In fact, star clusters inside the galaxies can be dated as well, and appear to be only a few million years old. Oddly, the gas content of the galaxies is very high, with about five times as much as the Milky Way has. That’s pretty weird; it should’ve been used up a long time ago. Apparently, these galaxies have lived very sedate lives until very recently. I’ll note that they are relatively close to us, about 166 million light years away. Usually, colliding dwarf galaxies like this are seen billions of light years away, so we really are seeing them as they appeared recently.

Apparently, the lower-case g-shaped object on the left is the result of two galaxies smashing into each other, and the longer galaxy above them is separate. The spiral to the right is part of this as well and may be involved in the gravitational dance; you can see a splotchy arm of material pointing right at it from the collision on the left. Typically in collisions the gravity of one galaxy draws matter out of the other, and that can collapse to form stars. The red glow is from gas excited by newly born stars, and the blue glow is from these stars themselves. The galaxies are pouring out ultraviolet light (the purple glow) which is another dead giveaway of vigorous star formation.

The background galaxies are gorgeous, too. There’s a phenomenal distant open spiral on the bottom, to the left of center, and what looks like yet another pair of interacting galaxies at the bottom left, obviously much farther away than the Hickson group. Take a minute to look around the high-res version to see what else you might find!

Yup. I guess you can teach old galaxies new tricks… and even sometimes jaded astronomers, too.

Here’s a product for anyone who has ever huffed and puffed on the treadmill, while wishing they had done a better job of keeping fit. A new device called Oxyfit claims to make the workout experience a little easier by pumping oxygen-rich air directly into your breathing space. (Air out in the wild contains about 20 percent oxygen.) The increase in oxygen flow, claim the makers, will maximize your workout.

Japan Trend Shop sells the product, and extolls the merits of Oxyfit:

Not only can this help with fatigue and other symptoms of low oxygen, but it can actually boost brainpower and metabolism as well. More oxygen lets you run farther, work longer, and even lose weight! An increased supply of oxygen speeds up your body’s metabolic engine, burning more calories and stimulating fat loss. Finally, the improved circulation from increased oxygen levels can produce nootropic (brain-stimulating) and anti-aging effects (through increased moisturization of the skin).

Oxyfit doesn’t come cheap. It’s a whopping $2,681 plus $49 in shipping. For that money, marketers says you get an advanced electronic oxygen generation pack, a lithium-ion battery that provides 1.5 hours of run-time, a charger, and an oxygen tube. But the effectiveness of this expensive gadget is is up for debate.

For years, athletes like biker Lance Armstrong have trained at high altitudes because the thin air causes the body to create more red blood cells that carry oxygen. This meant that when Armstrong competed at normal altitudes, his body was able to flood oxygen to his muscles. With an artificial oxygen unit, some argue, the body soaks in the available fresh oxygen from the kit, but as a result the body isn’t prompted to produce more red blood cells. So a better alternative might be to forget the gadgets, and go for a jog in the mountains instead.

Related Content:
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Image: Oxyfit

The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute.

“OBJECTIVES: To determine the overall rate of loss of workplace teaspoons and whether attrition and displacement are correlated with the relative value of the teaspoons or type of tearoom. DESIGN: Longitudinal cohort study. SETTING: Research institute employing about 140 people. SUBJECTS: 70 discreetly numbered teaspoons placed in tearooms around the institute and observed weekly over five months. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Incidence of teaspoon loss per 100 teaspoon years and teaspoon half life. RESULTS: 56 (80%) of the 70 teaspoons disappeared during the study. The half life of the teaspoons was 81 days. The half life of teaspoons in communal tearooms (42 days) was significantly shorter than for those in rooms associated with particular research groups (77 days). The rate of loss was not influenced by the teaspoons’ value. The incidence of teaspoon loss over the period of observation was 360.62 per 100 teaspoon years. At this rate, an estimated 250 teaspoons would need to be purchased annually to maintain a practical institute-wide population of 70 teaspoons. CONCLUSIONS: The loss of workplace teaspoons was rapid, showing that their availability, and hence office culture in general, is constantly threatened.”

Read the full article here.

Thanks to Ralph, Ed, and Audun for today’s ROFL!

Photo: flickr/sunshinecity

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: BMJ week.

Good idea: High school issuing laptops to its students so they can access school materials at any time. Bad idea: High school administrators using the webcams in those computers to spy on the students at home.

Ridiculous as it may sound, that’s exactly what a lawsuit (pdf) in U.S. District Court alleges a Pennsylvania school did. The parents of Blake J. Robbins sued Lower Merion School District, saying that administrators remotely accessed the webcam to spy on their son. Nowhere in any “written documentation accompanying the laptop,” or in any “documentation appearing on any Web site or handed out to students or parents concerning the use of the laptop,” was any reference made “to the fact that the school district has the ability to remotely activate the embedded webcam at any time the school district wished to intercept images from that webcam of anyone or anything appearing in front of the camera,” the complaint states [Courthouse News].

How did the family find out about this surveillance? Assistant principal Lindy Matsko tried to discipline young Blake Robbins for undisclosed bad behavior in his own home (though what exactly makes high school principals think they have the right to regulate the entire world has always escaped me). And to prove the allegations, Matsko produced a photo from the webcam of Robbins’ computer.

Before we go off a cliff in condemning Lower Merion, though, we haven’t heard their side of it yet. Things may not have played out exactly as the suit alleges. If it was a MacBook, for example, Blake may have used the built-in Photo Booth software to take a picture of himself doing something questionable while at home, which may or may not be against the school’s policy. If that photo got posted online or even synced back with the school’s admins the next day, it’s possible that Matsko was given access to the photo for disciplinary purposes [Ars Technica]. It’s no stretch to believe that a high school-aged person would do this, especially one not considering the fact that webcams can be remotely accessed.

Even if Robbins were foolish enough to photograph himself, though, the school still must account for what Robbins father says: That Matsko confirmed to him the administration has the ability to remotely access the cameras. Never mind that the school owns the computers; just having the ability to spy into private homes sets the school up for a public relations fiasco, even if they hadn’t blatantly used the ability to try to punish a student.

The school’s leaders have yet to issue its defense to these charges. They better have a good one.

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Image: flickr / racatumba

If I had a TARDIS, you know the first thing I would do is go see what a supernova looks like up close. I’ve even tossed around the idea of a little fanfic… but Megan Argo beat me to it. She’s a radio astronomer at the Curtin University of Technology in Australia, and she wrote up a cute and engaging account of The Doctor and Martha witnessing an unusual exploding star (an audio version of the tale is available too)

The cool thing is, the story she wrote is actually part of a real event: the explosion of supernova SN2007gr, the death of a massive star. 2007gr was a Type Ic supernova, which is a star much more massive than the Sun, but has lost the majority of its outer layers over time due to a super-stellar wind. The core is basically all that’s left, and when it runs out of fuel it collapses and then explodes.

2007gr was seen to have gas screaming away from it at almost half the speed of light, far faster than is typical for an exploding star. That means that the gas was focused into twin beams, probably shaped that way by the material swirling around the newly-formed black hole at its heart that formed in milliseconds after the collapse. It wasn’t strong enough to be a monumentally violent gamma-ray burst, but it instead a sort-of hybrid object, one part normal supernova and one part GRB. We’ve known for some time that there is a connection between the two objects, but the actual events are difficult to study because they’re uncommon. Supernova 2007gr is a rare opportunity to study one in detail.

But not as much detail as we could see if we had a time machine. Oh Doctor, there are some many things you could show us. But, I suppose, most of the fun is in figuring it out for ourselves.

Related posts:
New Burst Vaproizes Cosmic Distance Record
GORT bags a burst
Earth was in the crosshairs

Image: SN: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; TARDIS: BBC; composition: Megan Argo

Even as California sinks under a massive budget crisis, the $8.7 million the state used to research the use of marijuana for medical purposes now seems money well spent. The state-funded Center for Medical Cannabis Research at the University of California, San Diego has confirmed that pot is effective in reducing muscle spasms associated with multiple sclerosis and pain caused by certain neurological injuries or illnesses, according to a report issued Wednesday [The New York Times].

In four clinical trials, participants suffering from multiple sclerosis, AIDS or diabetes, along with healthy volunteers injected with a chili pepper substance to induce pain, were randomly assigned to receive cigarettes filled with marijuana [The New York Times]. The researchers reported that not everybody who smoked marijuana felt better–but a substantial percentage of those who were in pain said they felt better, and the figure was comparable to the percentage of people who experienced relief after taking other pain medications. “I think that clearly cannabis has benefits,” said Dr. Donald I. Abrams, a San Francisco oncologist who led that study. “This substance has been a medicine for 2,700 years; it only hasn’t been a medicine for 70″ [Los Angeles Times].

The federal government currently views marijuana as an illegal substance with no medical value–but this unusual set of studies sanctioned by California could cause lawmakers to question that categorization. Said State Senator Mark Leno: “This is the first step in approaching the (U.S. Food and Drug Administration), which has invested absolutely nothing in providing scientific data to resolve the debate” [San Francisco Chronicle]. The state’s voters approved medical marijuana in 1996 (13 other states have since passed similar laws), and California has fairly open rules for who is eligible for medical marijuana. Anyone who can get a doctor to write a recommendation, based on just about any medical condition, can buy marijuana in California [Wall Street Journal].

Doctors who conducted the study, however, noted that people who smoke pot must be mindful of what they are inhaling. They pointed out that inhaling any smoke brings potential cardiovascular risks, and also mentioned that their patients reported some mild side effects, including dizziness.

The results of the study come at a time when further funding for the program seems unlikely because of California’s budget crisis. But a California ballot measure that would attempt to legalize the drug’s use by adults 21 and older is likely to come to a vote later this year [Wall Street Journal].

Related Content:
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Discoblog: Forget About Pot’s Surprising Memory Boost

Image: Flickr/ Neeta Lind

Paleontologists can make spectacular discoveries in remote badlands and deserts. But there are also things waiting to be found–or at least recognized–in the back rooms of museums. Things like giant filter-feeding fish.

The giant filter-feeding fish in this painting was discovered by Matt Friedman, a paleontologist at the University of Oxford. Friedman knows a thing or two about the treasures lurking in museum drawers. As I wrote in 2008, he showed that previously neglected fossils were actually transitional forms that track the evolution of the bizarre bodies of flatfish. Recently Friedman took a trip to the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Colorado to check out some other fish fossils. While he was there, the center paleontologists asked him to take a look at a massive slab of rock they had just brought in. They knew it contained a fish that dated back to some time between 89 and 66 million years ago, but they couldn’t tell quite what sort of fish.

Clearly, the fish was big. The bony shells that encased its eyes were the size of grapefruits. The slab contained huge scimitar fins. On closer inspection, Friedman recognized that the fish belonged to an extinct lineage of fish called pachycormids. Pachycormids branched off early from other ray-finned fish and evolved into tuna-like predators. As Friedman examined the fossil, though, he found something very strange. Its jaws were toothless. Instead, Friedman found a loose set of rods, each measuring over four feet long. The fish, which Friedman dubbed Bonnerichthys, did not bite its prey. Instead, it opened its mouth wide and trapped tiny animals in bony filters in its mouth.

Today, a number of big filter feeders swim in the oceans. Among sharks and their relatives, filter feeding has evolved a few times, in forms such as manta rays and whale sharks. Baleen whales evolved filter feeding as well, and have evolved into the biggest animals ever–perhaps the biggest animals possible.

Filter-feeding sharks and whales are relative new on the scene, only appearing after the end of the Mesozoic Era 65 million years ago. During the 150-million-year Mesozoic, the oceans were home to many giant marine reptiles. Yet none of them appear to have evolved into filter feeders. Scientists have puzzled why none of them evolved to take advantage of that particular niche. Perhaps there was some constraint that blocked them from that way of life.

Bonnerichthys hinted at a different explanation. Paleontologists had previously found a few filter-feeding pachycormid dating back to a narrow time range around 160 million years. They generally dismissed these fish as a fleeting evolutionary experiment. But Bonnerichthys was another filter-feeding pachycormid living 100 million years later. Friedman began to scour museum collections for similar fish. As Friedman and his colleagues report today in Science, they found a number of new species spanning those 100 million years, which had gone unnoticed before. Instead of a dead-end experiment, the filter feeders enjoyed a 100-million year dynasty.

In other words, the filter-feeding niche wasn’t empty through the Mesozoic. It was occupied by bizarre fishes that no one had noticed before, even as their bones sat for decades in museum drawers. At the end of the Mesozoic, the pachycormids died off in the same pulse of extinctions that wiped out the big dinosaurs on land. And only then did other animals–sharks and whales–take over the filter-feeding way of life. Friedman won’t speculate further about these remarkable animals for now. He’s going to hunt through some museum collections instead.

[Update 7 pm: Deep apologies for leaving off the painting credit! Image courtesy of Robert Nicholls, www.paleocreations.com]

Hint: It’s actually a lot closer to home than some exotic cave.

Thanks to a little technological ingenuity, we may soon get a look at what exactly is happening in the flying brain. In the journal Nature Neuroscience, Caltech researchers document how they managed to monitor the brain activity of fruit fly in flight.

“The challenge was to be able to gain access to the brain in a way that didn’t compromise the animal’s ability to fly, or to perform behavior,” said study researcher Michael Dickinson of Caltech. “We couldn’t just rip the brain out of the body and put it into a dish” [LiveScience]. Researchers have previously studied activity in the tiny brain of a living fruit fly, but only when it was restrained. Dickinson’s team created a way to look inside while the bug was flying around.

First they tethered a fly, clamping its head in place but leaving its wings free, and then they cut away a part of the brain’s covering so they could attach electrodes to neurons. Finally they induced the fly to flap its wings with a startling puff of air, and tracked it with digital cameras while the electrodes collected data.

Dickinson said the work, conducted with postdoctoral scholars Gaby Maimon and Andrew Straw, suggests at least part of the brain of the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) is in a different and more sensitive state during flight than when the fly is quiescent [UPI]. And, he says, they saw double the normal activity in the visual neurons. Having achieved this basic step, the team hopes to further figure out how the extra activity helps the flies see and steer while aloft.

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Image: Caltech

Is Paul Bethune a pirate? Bethune is an anti-whaling activist who boarded a Japanese whaling vessel on Monday, demanding to make a citizen’s arrest of the skipper; he reportedly planned to charge the skipper with attempted murder due to the collision between the whaling boat and the activists’ powerboat, the Ady Gil, last month. Not just that, he also slapped a bill on the captain, seeking $3 million dollars for the damage caused to the Ady Gil.

Bethune is now being held in the whalers’ custody, and may be tried in a Japanese court for charges of trespassing and assault. But one expert suggests that he also faces the possibility of being viewed as a pirate–for not just boarding a vessel illegally, but also making demands for money.

This incident is the latest in an escalating series of skirmishes on the high seas between anti-whaling activists of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, of which Bethune is a member, and the Japanese whaling industry. The whaling wars have also intensified a diplomatic tussle between Japan and Australian and New Zealand, with the Kiwis demanding a halt to the hunting and the Australian government saying it hasn’t ruled out the prospect of taking legal action against the whalers after gathering evidence that it’s presenting to the International Whaling Commission [BusinessWeek].

The International Whaling Commission placed a global moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986 but whales can still be killed for research purposes–a technical loophole that allows Japanese whalers to kill an estimated 1000 whales each year. The boats hunt hundreds of mostly minke whales, which are not an endangered species. Whale meat not used for study is sold for consumption in Japan, which critics say is the real reason for the hunts [Associated Press]. DISCOVER has documented complaints by American scientists that killing whales isn’t necessary for the research Japanese scientists are conducting. The International Whaling Commission continues to try to figure out how to amend its rules to contain Japan’s whaling efforts, thus far without success.

Japan now has six whaling ships in Antarctic waters for “scientific purposes.” The Sea Shepherd sends vessels to confront the fleet each year, trying to block the whalers from firing harpoons and dangling ropes in the water to try to snarl the Japanese ships’ propellers. The whalers have responded by firing water cannons and sonar devices meant to disorient the activists [Associated Press].

In recent days, activists have tried to one-up the whalers by throwing butyric bombs on board the vessels. These harmless bombs emit a foul odor similar to that of butter gone bad or vomit, making it hard for crew members to stay focused on work. For his part, if Bethune is charged with crimes by Japanese prosecutors he will stand trial in a Japanese criminal justice system that apparently has a 99.8 per cent conviction rate [The Australian].

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Discoblog: Japan Whaling Redux: American Scientists Say Slaughter Was Unnecessary
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Image: Flickr/ Rene Ehrhardt

I met Baba Brinkman at TAM London, and wasn’t sure what to make of him. He’s a big guy, noticeably white, and raps. About evolution.

OK then. Well, being a skeptic I had to wait for the evidence. So when he performed on stage I was attentive, and my scientific curiosity was quickly satisfied: he’s the real deal. He’s a great rapper, spontaneous, funny, and very intelligent. He had everyone in the audience rapping with him, which was awesome to behold.

And, via Hemant Mehta’s The Friendly Atheist blog, you can see for yourself:

Cool. If you get a chance to see him perform, take it.

Word^*.

Old and busted: whirling flying saucers. The new hotness: triangular-shaped vessels. It seems Unidentified Flying Objects’ shapes are changing with the times–or maybe with TV shows.

This week, the British Government released its fifth batch of files on alleged UFO sightings within the country, this set dating from from 1994 to 2000. The files total more than 6,000 pages and were released by the Ministry of Defense and the National Archives. What struck experts most was the changing shape of the reported UFOs.

CNN reports that the shift may have come about because of popular notions of what futuristic tech would look like:

“In the 1950s the next big leap in technology was thought to be a round craft that took off vertically, and it’s intriguing to note that this is the same period when people began to report seeing ‘flying saucers’ in the sky,” said David Clarke, author of a book called The UFO Files and a journalism lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. He pointed out that in the years covered by the latest file release, triangle-shaped U.S. stealth bombers and Aurora spy planes featured heavily on TV shows like “The X-Files” and movies like Independence Day.

But perhaps the most novel sighting was by a man who was presumably very hungry. He saw a “Toblerone-shaped” UFO hovering over Ananndale, Scotland. Those of you with a mouth full of sweet teeth know Toblerone to be a triangular-shaped Swiss chocolate bar.

For more info, here’s a video about the released files.

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Image: Wikimedia

With the genetics age coming into its own, the number of people who have had their genome sequenced could soon explode. But the genetic sequencing done so far has mostly left out African people, genetics researcher Stephan Schuster says. So he led a team that sequenced the genome of five people native to southern Africa—including famed anti-apartheid activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu—and found incredible genetic diversity compared to people in other parts of the world. The findings are in the journal Nature.

The genome of the archbishop, who is 79, was particularly important for the study because he is a Bantu descended from the Tswana and Nguni people, who account for around 80% of southern Africans [The Guardian]. The other four subjects were bushmen: One, named !Gubi, had his entire genome sequenced, while the other three were partially sequenced. (The exclamation point indicates a clicking sound in that Bushman language.) !Gubi is the first person from an African minority population to be fully sequenced, and comparing him to the other three men from the region shows as much genetic separation as you’d expect to find between European and Asian peoples. Says Schuster: “This is despite the fact that they sometimes live within walking distance of one another” [Nature News].

Africa isn’t just the cradle of humanity, then; the scientists say it’s also the cradle of human genetic diversity. (For a good explanation of why this is so, see DISCOVER blogger Carl Zimmer’s post.) The researchers found that !Gubi and Tutu each have about 1 million previously unseen variations in their genome [Science News]. They differ from each other by four million single nucleotide variations, while the differences between two European people might amount to only three million.

This genetic diversity opens many research windows, not the least of which is how doctors and drug-makers might address African people more specifically. The continent’s rich genetic diversity means that some drugs designed to treat Europeans do not work well in Africans. And genome-wide association studies designed to trace the genetic underpinnings of disease are difficult to execute in Africa because the arrays used to detect genetic variation were designed using mostly European sequences [Nature]. For instance, the bushmen carry a genetic variant linked to a rare disease called Wolman syndrome in previous studies, but although the disease is typically considered fatal, the Africans are still healthy at 80-plus years. However, there are also downsides to the African genome: the men also don’t have a genetic variant that leads to protection against malarial infection in other populations.

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

Type Ia supernovae are very important exploding stars. It’s thought that this particular type of supernova has a very special property: they all explode with about the same energy. This makes them very valuable, because it means that if you can simply measure how bright they appear to be, you can figure out how far away they are. It’s like seeing headlights on the highway; dim ones are far away, and bright ones are close.

Of course, in reality, it’s not that easy. But after a Herculean effort, astronomers in the late 1990s figured they had been able to account for any small differences in brightness and could use these stars as “standard candles”, benchmarks to calculate cosmic distances. Because they’re so bright, they make great milestones because they can be seen pretty much all the way to the edge of the observable Universe.

The thing is, it’s not clear how a type Ia actually forms. There are two models, both involving white dwarfs. These are the ultradense remnants of dead stars, the exposed cores of stars after they shed their outer layers. The Sun will one day be a white dwarf (in about 6 – 7 billion years, so don’t hold your breath). Because of complicated quantum physics, it turns out that white dwarfs can only have so much mass; if they exceed about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun they can collapse, either forming an even denser neutron star, or exploding as a supernova.

The first model of a Type Ia is a white dwarf orbiting a star like the Sun. The intense gravity of the dwarf draws material off the normal star, a process called accretion. The matter piles up, the mass limit is exceeded, and BANG! Supernova.

Well, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but close enough.

The second idea is that you have two white dwarfs orbiting each other. Over time they spiral in (this time due to relativistic effects called gravitational waves), get too close together, merge, and BANG! Supernova.

Astronomers have always assumed that the accretion scenario is the far more common of the two, because it takes a long time for two dwarfs to merge, whereas accretion can happen easily if a dwarf happens to be paired up with a normal star (which should be pretty common). But how do you tell which is which?

It turns out that the two different scenarios leading up to the explosion have two very different effects: accretion makes a lot of X-rays, while a merger does not. So astronomers did what you’d expect: they pointed the Chandra X-Ray Observatory at a bunch of galaxies and observed supernovae. What they found was pretty surprising: the amount of X-rays from Type Ia supernovae in nearby galaxies was 30 – 50 times lower than what would be expected from accretion. In other words, their observations strongly favor the idea that it’s the merger of white dwarfs that cause Type Ia supernovae.

Well! I was pretty surprised to hear that. Like other astronomers, I figured it was accretion that was the culprit. Now mind you, there are some caveats here. They observed elliptical galaxies, which tend to have an older population than spirals, so you might see more mergers than accretions. Also, it’s possible things were different in the past, and when we observe very distant galaxies were seeing them as they were billions of years ago.

But still, you just don’t expect to see what the astronomers saw, so it seems to me like they’re on to something here.

This has some interesting ramifications. It certainly affects a lot of fields of astronomy, like how binary stars form and change over time. But it may also affect cosmology, the study of the birth, evolution, and eventual fate of the Universe itself. If Type Ias are caused by a different scenario than previously thought, could it mean that our measurements of the distant Universe are wrong?

I asked this question specifically at the Chandra press conference, and was told that the two different scenarios produce explosions with pretty much the same energy, so this may only affect cosmological measurements a small amount. However, right now our theoretical models of the merger scenario are still pretty rough, so it’s unclear if the peak brightnesses of the two models are the same.

This may affect our measurements of dark energy, the mysterious pressure that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe. My gut reaction is that this won’t matter a huge amount, since we have lots of independent ways of measuring dark energy, and they all appear to be in rough agreement. But this means we have one more thing to take into account in those measurements. And it may prove to be useful; if we can distinguish between the two supernova generators, our measurements will get that much more accurate.

I have to say I’m pleased with this; I studied supernovae in college and grad school, eventually studying one for my PhD (though it was of an entirely different flavor from this kind). I remember reading a long technical paper about the different Type Ia scenarios back then: it’s been a mystery for a long, long time. But with perseverance, the right equipment, and more than a touch of cleverness, we’re a big step closer to figuring this all out!

Related posts:
Fireworks and Pinwheels (an overview of Type Ia supernovae)
Dark Energy site open for business (explaining dark energy)
The Universe is 13.73 +/- .12 billion years old
What astronomers do (about the discovery of dark energy)
The cosmological not-so-constant

Image credits: NASA, ESA, The Hubble Key Project Team, and The High-Z Supernova Search Team, and NASA/CXC/M.Weiss (adapted a bit by The Bad Astronomer)

UPDATE: Kevin Trudeau has been cited with contempt of court and must serve time in jail for it.

I love how that article describes Trudeau as “deeply tanned”. That’s awesome.

For those unaware, Trudeau is not one of the good guys. In fact, to describe him in the terms I want, I’d have to violate my own rules on this blog.

The bad part of this? He’s only getting 30 days. Once he’s out he’ll still have all his books and a radio show on which to shill them. But I still have hope the system will prevail. There is a limit to free speech, and fraud breeches that limit. As Trudeau should have learned the first time he was convicted of it.

Tip o’ the coral calcium to Chris Babarskas once again.

A precious case from Middle Earth.

“Sméagol (Gollum) is a single, 587 year old, hobbit-like male of no fixed abode. He has presented with antisocial behaviour, increasing aggression, and preoccupation with the “one ring.”… …His forensic history consists of Deagol’s murder and the attempted murder of Samwise Gamgee. He has no history of substance misuse, although like many young hobbits he smoked “pipe weed” in adolescence. Sméagol has forgotten many memories of his childhood, and we have limited collateral history on his premorbid personality. Before obtaining the ring he was an inquisitive child with odd interests, who enjoyed causing mischief and solitary activities such as burrowing under trees to look at roots. He dislikes himself, stale raw fish, and “hobbitses.”

Several differential diagnoses need to be considered, and we should exclude organic causes for his symptoms. A space occupying lesion such as a brain tumour is unlikely as his symptoms are long standing. Gollum’s diet is extremely limited, consisting only of raw fish. Vitamin B-12 deficiency may cause irritability, delusions, and paranoia. His reduced appetite and loss of hair and weight may be associated with iron deficiency anaemia. He is hypervigilant and does not seem to need much sleep. This, accompanied by his bulging eyes and weight loss, suggests hyperthyroidism. Gollum’s dislike of sunlight may be due to the photosensitivity of porphyria. Attacks may be induced by starvation and accompanied by paranoid psychosis.

An internet search found over 1300 sites discussing the nature of Gollum’s “mental illness.” We asked 30 randomly selected medical students if they thought Gollum had a mental illness. Schizophrenia was the most common diagnosis (25 students), followed by multiple personality disorder (three). On initial consideration schizophrenia seems a reasonable diagnosis. However, in the context of the culture at the time it is unlikely. Delusions are false, unshakeable beliefs, not in keeping with the patient’s culture. In Middle Earth, the power of the ring is a reality. The passivity phenomena Gollum experiences are caused by the ring, and these symptoms occur in all ring bearers. Gollum does not fulfil the ICD-10 criteria for the diagnosis of schizophrenia…

…Gollum displays pervasive maladaptive behaviour that has been present since childhood with a persistent disease course. His odd interests and spiteful behaviour have led to difficulty in forming friendships and have caused distress to others. He fulfils seven of the nine criteria for schizoid personality disorder (ICD F60.1), and, if we must label Gollum’s problems, we believe that this is the most likely diagnosis.”

Read the full article here.

Thanks to Ann for today’s ROFL!

Image: flickr/Memekiller

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Perched on top of an Atlas V rocket, on February 11 the Solar Dynamics Observatory launched into space. About a minute after leaving the Earth, the rocket did two things: it passed the speed of sound, and screamed past a sundog, a rainbow-colored optical effect in the sky caused by ice crystals.

And when it did, well, it was incredible. What’s below is just about the coolest video I have ever seen. And I mean that seriously. Click the “720” button and pay close attention at the 1:50 mark. You won’t miss it, the crowd in the audio will alert you…

Wow! I’m quite sure the footage shown here is legit and not a hoax. Several people I know said they saw the same thing, and there are photos of it as well. Those ripples were caused by the shockwave of the rocket going through the cloud, which quickly dispersed. Since the cloud had ice crystals in it, the sundog got literally blown away.

I love the digital revolution. There are so many video cameras out there that stuff no one would’ve believed before are becoming more and more common. Bright meteor fireballs, rocket launches like this, clear footage of flying saucers… oh, wait.

Anyway, awesome. If you ever get a chance to watch a rocket launch, take it. You never know what you might see!

Tip o’ the nosecone to jhumbug on Twitter.

In a bid to go green, British Airways has announced that come 2014, part of its fleet would be powered by biofuel derived from household trash. The airlines announced Monday that it has inked a deal with U.S. company Solena Group to set up Europe’s “first sustainable jet-fuel plant.”

The plant will be located in east London, and it will take food and plant waste from the city’s homes and businesses and convert it to bio-fuel. The airline said in a statement that the plant “will convert 500,000 tonnes of waste per year into 16 million gallons of green jet fuel through a process that offers lifecycle greenhouse gas savings of up to 95 percent compared to fossil-fuel derived jet kerosene.” The aviation fuel will be produced from gasification of the waste into a so-called syngas which is then converted by the Fischer Tropsch process into liquid fuel [Reuters]. The biofuel would power part of the British Airways fleet flying out of London. The airline also says that diverting waste from landfills will curb the production of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that is generated when garbage decomposes.

The move is part of a larger push by British Airways to get biofuels into the fuel tanks of its planes. BA plans to have biofuels make up 10 per cent of its total fuel usage by 2050, but not all will be derived from the Solena plant. Willie Walsh, BA chief executive, said the Solena partnership would pave the way for BA to cut net carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2050 [Financial Times].

But aviation authorities haven’t yet signed off on British Airways’ bid to use biofuel for its fleet. Officials want further tests to make sure aircraft safety and performance are not compromised by engines running on biojet fuel, rather than conventional 100% crude oil-based kerosene [The Guardian] Some experts think that using pure biofuel won’t work for planes, as planes require high operational performance at all times and because of the extremely cold temperatures in which airline engines must operate [The Guardian]. In the United States there is just one plant producing biofuel similar to the type Solena will produce in London, and U.S. safety authorities allow planes to only mix in 50 percent of the green fuel with the conventional kerosene jet fuel.

Activists also note that biofuel is expected to power only 2 percent of British Airlines’ total flights, barely impacting the fleet’s greenhouse emissions. They say that if the aviation industry in Britain is serious about reducing its carbon footprint, it must reconsider plans of building a third runway at Heathrow International Airport.

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Image: British Airways

Tonight, the 530 km (320 mile) wide asteroid Vesta is at opposition. That means that it’s opposite the Sun in the sky, so it rises when the Sun sets. That makes it easier to observe since you have literally all night to go out.

But it also means it’s at the point in its orbit when it’s closest to Earth. Since it orbits the Sun in the main asteroid belt, about twice the distance of the Earth to the Sun, it’s at perigee (closest to Earth) when the Sun, Earth, and Vesta are all in a line. The diagram above I made using my awesome Photoshop skillz should help.

Objects that are closer are brighter (and at opposition we’re looking straight down the beams of sunlight shining on Vesta’s surface, so it’s like a full moon effect too), so tonight is just about picture perfect to look for the asteroid.

Even better, it’s the brightest asteroid in the sky! It’ll be shining at about magnitude 6.1 tonight, which is just barely visible to the human eye without aid, though binoculars will help. It’s in Leo, not far from the bright star Regulus. Go to Sky and Telescope for a map.

And if you happen to spot the tiny world, take a moment and think about this: the NASA mission Dawn will settle into orbit around Vesta next year, in 2011. The image I posted above is from Hubble, and is pretty much the best one we have from here on Earth. In late 2011 we’ll have images of it that will be sharp and clear, and, I’m quite sure, jaw-dropping. But until then, go out and take a look for yourself! If not tonight, then sometime in the next week or two.

Astronomy is really cool, but what makes it so fantastic, to me, is that you can go out and do it yourself. Go.

Image credit: Ben Zellner (Georgia Southern University), Peter Thomas (Cornell University) and NASA

Four decades later, the Murchison meteorite is still full of surprises. When this extraterrestrial hunk fell to Earth near its namesake town in Australia in 1969, people managed to salvage more than 200 pounds of it. And now a new analysis of the meteorite, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that it could hold millions of carbon-containing compounds. Researchers say the findings provide insight into the complex chemistry present when the chunk of space-rock formed, back when our solar system was young.

Back in 1969, researchers found amino acids and many other molecules in the carbon-rich rock. Many researchers have analyzed the chondritic meteorite for amino acids and other possible precursors to life, because some theories hold that life on Earth began with the delivery of prebiotic organic compounds from space via asteroids or comets [Scientific American]. But scanning techniques have advanced since then, so the new team used tools like ultra-high-resolution mass spectrometry to take a fresh look at the meteorite.

In the tiny sample they crushed to study, the team turned up at least 14,000 unique organic (carbon-containing) compounds. They say that is actually conservative guess; the somewhat limited scope of their tool could have missed some, and the true number could be as high as 50,000. And because each collection of atoms can be arranged in numerous ways, the authors estimate that there may be millions of distinct organic compounds in the meteorite [Scientific American].

Not only is Murchison rich in organic compounds, it’s old. Scientists believe the Murchison meteorite could have originated before the Sun was formed, 4.65 billion years ago. The researchers say it probably passed through primordial clouds in the early Solar System, picking up organic chemicals [BBC News]. As a result, the researchers say the meteorite could have something to say about the origin of life and our solar system as it continues to let go of its secrets. It was only two years ago, after all, that scientists confirmed that the presence of subunits of DNA and RNA on Murchison were genuine, and not the result of soil contamination.

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Image: Wikimedia Commons