Long-lost Einstein telescope restored...

In this undated photo made available by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on Monday, Sept. 22, 2008, an unidentified man adjust a telescope that once belonged to Albert Einstein, at the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Students and visitors at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem will be able to look at the stars through Albert Einstein's long lost telescope starting Thursday university officials said, after it was retrieved from a storage shed and renovated. (AP Photo/Hebrew University in Jerusalem, HO)

Albert Einstein's long-lost telescope, forgotten for decades in a Jerusalem storage shed, goes on display this week after three years and $10,000 spent restoring the relic.

The old reflecting telescope is cumbersome by modern standards, but a demonstration for The Associated Press showed it still works well enough to see five of Jupiter's moons and stripes on the surface of the huge planet.

The legendary physicist who famously theorized relations among energy, speed and mass received the telescope in 1954, the year before he died. It was a gift from a friend named Zvi Gizeri, who probably made it himself, said officials at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem where the public will be able to view the telescope starting Thursday.

Einstein, who was a co-founder of the Hebrew University, willed his records to the school. There were rumors through the years that he also left a telescope, but it took modern sleuthing and some luck to find it.

The long black tube about eight inches in diameter and 6 feet long stands on a base experts say may have been taken from the German army. It was this unique base, recognizable in a picture of Einstein with the telescope, and a signature from Gizeri on one of its mirrors, that confirmed its authenticity in 2004, when a biologist named Eshel Ophir made the connection.

The forgotten telescope was first discovered in a storage shed in the late 1990s by a computer specialist at the Hebrew University. But he did not recognize it as Einstein's, and left it in the shed.

Ophir made the connection by accident, initially mistaking another forgotten telescope for the famous physicist's. After searching through the archives and photos, Ophir realized the real Einstein telescope was actually the one his colleague had found unceremoniously years earlier.

Ophir said he immediately took the telescope to the university's Meyerhoff Youth Center, where he was serving as director, to protect and clean it.

With the exception of a new eyepiece, the rest of the device, from lenses to optics, is original.

It is unlikely, though, that a theoretician like Einstein, who won a Nobel Prize in 1921 for his theory of relativity, would have had much use for a telescope in his work.

"I don't think anybody investigated Einstein's star-gazing habits," said Dvora Lang, the current director of the Meyerhoff Youth Center. "But it was for his pleasure, not for his work."

The telescope goes on display Thursday at the Meyerhoff center in conjunction with Researchers Day, when schools across Europe and Israel will open their laboratory doors to the public.

The newly unveiled telescope will not be housed with the rest of Einstein's documents at the Jewish National and University Library but will remain in the Meyerhoff center for use by students.

Lang said she hoped by looking into the telescope of one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, a new generation of Israeli children would be inspired to learn more about science.

"This is setting them on fire," she said.

US scientists unveil world’s thinnest balloon...

Scientists have created a balloon-like membrane that is just one atom thick, which can be effectively be called as the ‘world’s thinnest balloon’.

According to a report in the Chronicle Online, the membrane, made using a lump of graphite, a piece of Scotch tape and a silicon wafer, is ultra-strong, leak-proof and impermeable to even nimble helium atoms.

The research, by Scott Bunch, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Cornell professor of physics Paul McEuen and Cornell colleagues, could lead to a variety of new technologies from novel ways to image biological materials in solution to techniques for studying the movement of atoms or ions through microscopic holes.

The work was conducted at the National Science Foundation-supported Cornell Center for Materials Research.
Graphene, a form of carbon atoms in a plane one atom thick, is the strongest material in the world, with tight covalent bonds in two dimensions that hold it together even as the thinnest possible membrane.
It’s also a semimetal, meaning it conducts electricity but changes conductivity with changes in its electrostatic environment.

Scientists have used graphene in the multi-layer membrane of the world’s thinnest balloon, which could be used in various applications, including filters and sensors.

To test the material’s elasticity, the Cornell team deposited graphene on a wafer etched with holes, trapping gas inside graphene-sealed microchambers.

They then created a pressure differential between the gas inside and outside the microchamber.
With a tapping atomic force microscope, which measures the amount of deflecting force a tiny cantilever experiences as it scans nanometers over the membrane’s surface, the researchers watched the graphene as it bulged in or out in response to pressure changes up to several atmospheres without breaking.

They also turned the membrane into a tiny drum, measuring its oscillation frequency at different pressures.
They found that helium, the second-smallest element (and the smallest testable gas, since hydrogen atoms pair up as a gas), stays trapped behind a wall of graphene - again, even under several atmospheres of pressure.
Such a membrane could have all kinds of uses.

“This could serve as sort of an artificial analog of an ion channel in biology,” said McEuen, or as a way to measure the properties of an atom by observing its effect on the membrane.

“You’re tying a macroscopic system to the properties of a single atom, and that gives opportunities for all kinds of single atom sensors,” he added.

Archaeologists Say Stonehenge May Have Been Healing Site...

British Archaeologists have said on Monday that south-Britain monolithic site Stonehenge may have drawn ailing people from all over Europe who came in hopes of healing, according to the first archaeological digs to be conducted at the site for more than four decades.

Digs conducted by Bournemouth University archaeologists Geoffrey Wainwright and Timothy Darvill with special permission from Britain’s National Heritage organization, which administers and cares for national monuments, unearthed that grave-sites scattered around the Stonehenge area showed that not only were roughly half of them "not native to the Stonehenge area", but that most of them were suffering from some sort of injury or illness at the time of their death.

"Stonehenge would attract not only people who were unwell, but people who were capable of [healing] them," said Professor Darvill, "Therefore, in a sense, Stonehenge becomes 'the A & E' of southern England," or, differently put, an ancient equivalent of the modern-day Lourdes shrine, which is revered for the same miraculous healing powers.

Stonehenge is built from massive stones – as heavy as 50 tons – called sarsens, which are set up standing in concentric circles, surrounded by a circular earth mound and ditch (this earth formation is often encountered in the Neolithic as a primitive form of fortification). The sarsens are surrounded by smaller stones, made of white-speckled dolomite, also known as bluestones due to the bluish hue they take on when cut or wet. The sarsens were quarried 24 miles north of Stonehenge, in Marlborough Downs, while the bluestones were imported from Wales, regardless of the great effort, due to their believed healing abilities. As an aside, bluestones are first recorded in medieval literature as healing stones, although their presence here may indicate that their reputation as such is far older than that.

Scientists have also used the opportunity of this dig to conduct carbon dating of the site. They dug a 2.5m x 3.5m patch of earth beneath one of the bluestones, and sampled organic material from the area. This was carbon-dated, placing the site "between 2400BC and 2200BC,” with a generally-accepted average of 2300BC. This is 200 years earlier than previous estimates, and is the most precise dating of the site that archaeologists have been able to produce to date. "It's an incredible feeling, a dream come true," says Prof. Wainwright.

The date that scientists have resolved for the Stonehenge site coincides with one of the earliest skeletons found there, the “Amesbury Archer,” a wealthy, powerful fellow who seemed to have come from the Alps in Europe, and who had knowledge of metallurgy. One of the theories for his presence there is that he brought the trade to the area, and practiced it there, perhaps even had a hand in construction or other works on Stonehenge, but a serious knee injury and a grave dental problem that were discovered upon examination of the skeleton, propose another theory: that he may have been one of the early pilgrims who sought healing at the holy site; it’s unknown whether the stones were standing or not at the time.

The earliest signs of habitation however, according to the Bournemouth Univ. team’s findings, date as far back as 7200BC, that’s three and a half millennia before any previous finds. This means that, at the time of the giant stones’ erection, the place already had a long history.

Primitive Fingers Found in Prehistoric Fish...

An ancient fish sported something like fingers that were the precursors to our own digits, according to an analysis of a new fossil skeleton.

"It's really the last piece of evidence to say fingers are not new. They were really present in fish," said lead researcher Catherine Boisvert, an evolutionary biologist at Uppsala University in Sweden.

The fossilized skeleton belonged to Panderichthys, a predatory fish that spanned up to 4 feet (130 cm) and likely dwelled in shallow waters where it inched along the muddy bottom about 385 million years ago.

While the fossil was discovered in the 1990s by chance in a brick quarry in Latvia in northern Europe, scientists only recently analyzed the fins with computed tomography (CT) and found that the right paddle is tipped with four bony extensions.

If you were to turn back the clocks to the Devonian period when Panderichthys lived and spied the fish, you would not have noticed its "fingers," Boisvert explained.

That's because the bony digit precursors were tucked beneath the fin's skin and bony scales and rays.

The fan-like array of fingers, however, would have made Panderichthys' paddles broader at the ends. The broad fins would have made for stronger supports for the fish to lean on rather than for all-out swimming.

"It was probably using its front fins as supports to be able to look up, kind of doing push-ups at the bottom of the river looking outside with its eyes," Boisvert said, adding that the fish's eyes were on the top of its skull and thus probably good for looking above the mud for fish food.

Though Panderichthys was not made for landlubbing, if the need to hop from the water arose, the fish had the means.

"So if it was stuck in a pool and it was drying out, [the fish] would have been able to get itself out to the next water body," Boisvert told LiveScience. "It's doing push-ups on land with its big fins and then its pelvic fins (hind fins) are used for an anchor in the mud."

Basically, Panderichthys would have dragged its body along land. "It wouldn't have been pretty," she added.

The fossil finding, detailed in the Sept. 21 issue of the journal Nature, fills in a gap in the evolution of tetrapods, or four-legged animals. About 380 million years ago, our fishy ancestors crept onto land. Fossil evidence has continued to refine scientists' understanding of this transition, though they still have many questions regarding the fin-to-limb transition and development of other locomotion features.

For instance, one such transitional fish called Tiktaalik roseae lived about 375 million years ago and showed signs of both water living and land trekking. However, Boisvert said, even though Tiktaalik is closer evolutionarily to tetrapods, its specimens lack the distinct finger precursors seen on Panderichthys.

IBM Scientists Unlock the Secret of the Kondo Effect...

Scientists at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA have forged a breakthrough in understanding an intriguing phenomenon in fundamental physics: the Kondo effect. They report their findings today in the scientific journal Nature Physics.

The Kondo effect, one of the few examples in physics where many particles collectively behave as one object (a single quantum-mechanical body), has intrigued scientists around the world for decades. Now, using a technique that was developed by the same team in 2007, the IBM researchers have shown, for the first time anywhere, that it is possible to predict when the Kondo effect will occur -- and to understand why.

The key turns out to be in the geometry of a magnetic atom's immediate surroundings. By carefully studying how this geometry influences the magnetic moment (or "spin") of the atom, the emergence of the Kondo effect can now be predicted and understood. This result represents a major advancement in fundamental physics.

The achievement is one of the latest in IBM's more than two decades of nanotechnology leadership and exploration of the world of magnetism at the atomic scale. Starting with the invention of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) in 1981, IBM has been at the forefront of research aimed at expanding our abilities to investigate and manipulate individual atoms.

A look at the Kondo Effect

When a single magnetic atom is located inside a metal, the free electrons of the metal 'screen' the atom. That way, a cloud of many electrons around the atom becomes magnetized. Sometimes, if the metal is cooled down to very low temperatures, the atomic spin enters a so-called 'quantum superposition' state. In this state its north-pole points in two opposite directions at the same time. As a result, the entire electron cloud around the spin will also be simultaneously magnetized in two directions.

For more information about IBM, please visit www.ibm.com

An Einstein fridge that can run without power?

Scientists at Oxford University are working on a 1930 invention by Albert Einstein to develop an environmentally friendly refrigerator which they claim will run without electricity.

Previous researches have suggested that modern fridges emit greenhouse gases called freons and as a result damage the environment. Now the Oxford team is developing appliances that can work without electricity and thereby reduce the gases.

In fact, they have already completed a prototype of a type of fridge patented in 1930 by Einstein and his colleague, the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, 'The Observer' reported. The design was partly used in the first domestic refrigerators before more efficient compressors became popular in the 1950s. It avoids the need for freons and instead uses ammonia, butane and water and takes advantage of the fact that liquids boil at lower temperatures when air pressure is lower.

"If you go to the top of Mount Everest, water boils at a much lower temperature than it does when you're at sea level and that's because the pressure is much lower up there," lead scientist Malcolm McCulloch said.

At one side is the evaporator, a flask that contains butane. "If you introduce a new vapour above the butane, the liquid boiling temperature decreases and, as it boils off, it takes energy from the surroundings to do so. That's what makes it cold," he said. Pressurised gas fridges based around Einstein's design were replaced by freon-compressor fridges partly as they were not very efficient.

But, according to the British scientists, by tweaking the design and replacing the types of gases used it would be possible to quadruple the efficiency of the refrigerators that could well be the GenNext appliances.

Source: Business Standard

Google Inc.’s Sergey Brin Is Predisposed To Parkinson’s Disease...

In his recently opened blog page, Google Inc.’s co-founder Sergey Brin revealed the fact that he is predisposed to developing Parkinson’s disease, due to a genetic mutation. The discovery was made by his wife’s company, 23andMe, which studied his DNA and reached the conclusion that similar to some of his family members, there is a strong chance that he might also develop the disease.

"Because there are only a small number of genes which are known to have a very substantial effect on health (e.g. 10 times the average risk), I felt the possibility of discovering something very important to my health was just a hypothetical exercise," Brin explained in one of his posts. "So, when my wife asked me to look up [the gene mutation] in my raw data, I viewed it mostly as entertainment. But, of course, I learned something very important to me -- I carry the G2019S mutation and when my mother checked her account, she saw she carries it too."

He also revealed which of his relatives suffer from the degenerative brain disorder - him mother and his great aunt. Brin explained that he felt extremely fortunate to be in the possession of such information, as he is now informed about a certain aspect of his life decades before it is going to happen. This offers him the possibility to perform and support the research needed for better understanding the disease and finding an appropriate solution, which if found, will not only help him but also his family members and others.

Brin shows a lot of confidence in the future, as he now has a better chance of preparing for the things to come.

Blocking the Sky to Save the Earth...

TO the relief of climate scientists around the world, it appears that the polar ice cap hasn’t shrunk as much this summer as it did last summer.

The ice cap usually reaches its smallest extent around now, and although the total area of ice in September fluctuates from year to year, in the last two decades it has generally declined, probably because of carbon-driven global warming. Last year, the ice cap shrank at a record-breaking pace; at its minimum it was almost 39 percent smaller than the average from 1979 to 2000. This year it’s down about 33 percent.

A couple of years’ rapid melting may be a random event. But the ice loss of recent years puts the Arctic melt decades ahead of model predictions, raising concern that climate change is proving worse than expected.

We should also worry about the consequences of a decline in sea ice. As the Arctic Ocean loses sunlight-reflecting ice and gains sunlight-absorbing open water, energy circulation across the northern half of the planet could also shift, altering jet streams, storm tracks, rainfall patterns and food production much farther south. The loss of sea ice will probably cause faster melting of the Greenland ice cap and thus a faster rise in sea levels.

How should we respond? First, we must recognize that uncertainty and inertia are inescapable features of the climate system. For instance, we know that warming will melt Arctic permafrost, which, when it rots and releases carbon, causes more warming — but how bad will this cycle be? How much of the extra carbon will be absorbed by plants that grow faster in a carbon-rich atmosphere? Inertia refers to the long lags in the climate’s response to human carbon emissions.

Systems with lots of uncertainty and inertia are notoriously hard to control: we can’t effectively predict their future behavior, and we can’t quickly correct behavior we don’t like. By the time we find out that the climate dice have rolled against us, inertia could make conventional responses like carbon taxes and wind power inadequate. Planning our response around what we currently think is the most likely outcome is therefore reckless. We must hope for the best while laying plans to navigate the worst.

Navigating the worst could involve what scientists call geo-engineering — the intentional modification of the earth’s climate. Unfortunately, although specialist circles and blogs are alive with heated conversations about geo-engineering, the idea is so taboo that governments have provided virtually no research money. Most of these conversations focus on the idea of injecting sulfate particles into the stratosphere to screen out the sun’s radiation, as happens when volcanoes erupt. Also, most of the limited scientific research on geo-engineering has aimed to show why sulfate injections won’t work — like why they might damage the ozone layer or produce too much cooling and drying in places where we don’t want these changes.

Yes, it’s vital to have this “red team” of skeptics questioning geo-engineering. But we need more emphasis on a “blue team” to figure out what geo-engineering approaches might work, because we might need to move fast. Instead of replicating volcanoes, we might use synthetic particles made from metals or ceramics designed to scatter sunlight selectively or that exploit the physics that governs the motion of small particles in the upper atmosphere so that cooling is focused at the poles where it’s needed most.

Of course, flooding the atmosphere with man-made particles poses real risks. So to reduce the uncertainty surrounding geo-engineering, research should include real-world tests of various technologies that poke the climate system just a little. At first, tests might use existing research aircraft like NASA’s ER-2, a heavy version of the U-2, to release small payloads of particles and then measure the effects on solar radiation and the ozone layer. If these early tests showed the risks were low, enough material could then be released to have a detectable climate impact, while still keeping the amount substantially less than that needed to offset all human-driven global warming.

For the second stage of tests, we might use high-altitude aircraft to deliver a larger quantity of particles at about 65,000 feet in the tropics, which would then be carried much higher and toward the poles by the natural overturning circulation in the stratosphere. The reduction in climate risk from even a small-scale sun-shading scheme could easily be larger than the increase in risk from the scheme’s possible side effects. And in any case the effort would cost only a tiny fraction of the expense of meaningful efforts to reduce man’s carbon emissions.

The important thing is to get scientists, environmentalists and global-warming skeptics alike out of the nonsensical all-or-nothing dichotomy that characterizes much current thinking about geo-engineering — that we either do it full scale, or we don’t do it at all. While we should all hope that we never need to play God with the earth’s climate, we must also have the best science at hand to do what might be necessary if melting polar ice leads to a far more dangerous future.

Source: The New York Times

THEORY OF EVOLUTION...

A professor at a Vatican-sponsored university has expressed dismay that some Christians reject the theory of evolution.

Gennaro Auletta, who teaches at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, told reporters that recent popes have "recognized the scientific value of the theory of biological evolution."

Joining him at the news conference was a Vatican official who said, "Creationism from a strictly theological view makes sense, but when it is used in scientific fields, it becomes useless."

Pope Benedict XVI warned last week against literal interpretations of the Bible. He told intellectuals in Paris that "the word of God can never simply be equated with the letter of the text."

Church of England Issues Apology

Some 126 years after Charles Darwin's death, the Church of England has gone into 21st-century cyberspace to issue an official apology to the naturalist for its own 19th-century "misunderstanding" over his theory of evolution.

Darwin's thesis that all life evolved over millions of years was published in 1859 in his book, "On the Origin of Species," and almost instantly triggered controversy that still continues.

His antagonists, including the Church of England, vilified him for questioning their own creationist convictions that the universe and all its parts were solely the work of God, perhaps around 6,000 B.C. and certainly no earlier than 10,000 years ago.

But in a new section of the Church of England's Web site, the Rev. Malcolm Brown, director of missions and public affairs, addressed Darwin and conceded that the church "owes you an apology for misunderstanding you, by getting our first reaction wrong."

That reaction, Brown added, resulted in "encouraging others to misunderstand you still."

RADICAL ISLAM

Film Draws Muslim Protests

A movie being distributed as an advertising insert in more than 70 newspapers nationwide is drawing protests from Muslim groups who call it an attempt to stir up hate.

The movie, "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," argues that radical Islam is the greatest threat to American society and that 10 to 15 percent of the world's more than 1 billion Muslims are "radical."

"There's no other goal to it other than that these people hate Muslims," said Abdelmajid Jondy, president of the Flint Islamic Center in Michigan. The filmmakers "want to make everybody hate the Muslims."

The film was made by the New York nonprofit organization Clarion Fund, which was formed in 2006 to address threats to U.S. security, said Gregory Ross, director of communications.

The advertisement, which included a video of the movie, was disseminated in several competitive states in the upcoming presidential election, including Michigan, Ohio and Florida, according to the list of newspapers included in the ad.

Some have argued that the movie supports Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, who has a military background. Ross said the organization does not back a candidate, but said there was an "emphasis" on swing states.

"Whoever is president, we feel that this will be their greatest task," he said. "We want to make sure America is informed."

"Obsession" will be distributed to 28 million people this month and was inserted in national newspapers such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Ross said.

Google billionaire lives with genetic timebomb...

Sergey Brin, one of the billionaire founders of Google, announced last week that he is carrying a mutant gene regarded as an indicator of Parkinson’s disease.

Brin, 35, revealed that his DNA had been examined by 23andMe, a genetic testing company co-founded by his wife, Anne Wojcicki. The results showed that his genetic make-up included a mutation of a gene known as LRRK2, which several studies have linked to Parkinson’s.

Writing in a new blog, Brin acknowledged that the implications of his discovery were “not entirely clear”, but he added: “It is clear that I have a markedly higher chance of developing Parkinson’s in my lifetime than the average person.”

He cited studies that put that chance at anywhere between 20% and 80% — a margin that some researchers have said is too broad to be worth consideration. One New York neurologist noted that many people with Brin’s mutation, which is known to specialists as G2019S, never develop the disease.

Supporters of genetic testing argue that the DNA results provide important information about health probabilities that can inspire patients to take appropriate action. Critics have argued that the tests may cause psychological problems if patients begin to worry about diseases they may contract in decades ahead.

Brin declared himself “fortunate” to have learnt about his genetic make-up. His mother, Eugenia, has already been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and a DNA test has revealed that she also carries the G2019S mutation.

“This leaves me in a rather unique position,” Brin wrote in his blog. “I know early in my life something I am substantially predisposed to. I now have the opportunity to reduce those odds.”

Brin and his parents have already donated nearly £1m towards research at the hospital in Baltimore where his mother has been treated. With a fortune estimated at £8.7 billion — which according to Forbes magazine makes him America’s 13th richest person — he may be inclined to spend millions more on research into what is currently an incurable disease.

Mission to collect rock samples from asteroid...

The European Space Agency is planning an ambitious mission in which anuncrewed robot would land on an asteroid near Earth and extract up to 300 grammes of dust and rock.

Detailed plans for the Marco Polo mission are being developed at the company's EADS Astrium in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, and OHB in Bremen, Germany. If the plans are approved by ESA, the mission could launch in2 017. It would cost around EUR300m.

Understanding the composition of asteroids is of great interest to planetary scientists because they represent the debris that was left behind when the solar system formed 4.6bn years ago.

Dr Matthew Genge at Imperial College London said, "We've got over 30,000 meteorites in collections around the world, but we don't know where the majority of them come from - exactly which asteroids," he said.

"The value of going into space is that we know exactly which asteroid it comes from and that tells us how far from the sun it probably formed and that gives us that little extra information about the formation of our solar system."

Dr Ralph Cordey at Astrium said, "We've got to look at all elements - how we would design the mission, how to design the trajectory to one of a number of possible asteroids, how to optimise that so we use the smallest spacecraft, the least fuel and the smallest rocket."

One scenario would involve a launching from Europe's Kourou spaceport in French Guiana using a Soyuz rocket before undertaking a series of gradually higher orbits of the Earth. From here the space craft would fire off towards a near-Earth asteroid - a journey that could take two-and-a-half years.

Once there, the craft would spend months mapping the surface so that mission controllers could decide on a suitable landing site. After landing it would need to be kept in place using downward thrusters because of the asteroid's weak gravity. At the same time it would use a coring device to remove samples of dust and rock.

During take off it would take photographs of the landing site in order to give scientists the most information possible on the context of their samples. Next the spacecraft would return to Earth and jettison a cone-shaped module that would land on Earth without a parachute.

The mission is similar to the failed Japanese Hayabusa spaceship mission to Itokawa asteroid in 2005. The space agency hopes some dust from the asteroid has swirled into its sample chamber.

Source: The Hindu

Universe's 'dimmest-known galaxy' found...

Astronomers have identified the "dimmest galaxy" in the universe, which they claim is full of dark matter and an ideal candidate to search for evidence of the mysterious material.

According to them, the galaxy, known as Segue 1, is one of roughly two dozen dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way -- it sits close to the Sagittarius stream which is a river of stellar debris torn from another dwarf galaxy.

"It is the most dark matter-dominated galaxy in the universe," the 'New Scientist' quoted lead astronomer Marla Geha of Yale University as saying.

So far, only 24 stars are confirmed members of Segue 1. Because it is so dim, the astronomers originally thought it was a tight-knit group of stars called a globular cluster. But follow-up observations suggested it's indeed a dwarf galaxy.

The Yale team measured the velocity of its stars and found they were all moving at roughly five km per second, ten times faster than expected if they were gravitationally bound only by each other.

Although the total brightness of the galaxy adds up to less that 350 times the brightness of the Sun, it must weigh at least 450,000 suns -- and possibly 20 times that amount if it is as large as other dwarf galaxies.

There is little gas in the system, suggesting almost all of that mass seems to be made up of dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up most of the universe's mass, according to the astronomers.

In fact, the object is one of a larger group of recently discovered galaxies where dark matter seems to outweigh ordinary matter by a factor of 100 or 1000.

"These galaxies are basically invisible. We did not know these kinds of galaxies existed until a couple of years ago," team member Beth Willman said.

Source: The Hindu

Census uncovers what lies beneath...

Claws ... a white-topped coral crab collected from dead coral.
Photo: Queensland Museum

MORE than 100 new species of exquisitely coloured soft corals, strange-looking jellyfish and parasites that eat the tongues off fish are among the many creatures discovered in an extensive exploration of Australian coral reefs.

Researchers combed the waters off Heron Island and Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, and Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia, as part of the global Census of Marine Life project.

Julian Caley, a principal research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, AIMS, said they were surprised and excited by the variety of new animals that were found in areas familiar to so many divers.

"Our knowledge of marine life is a proverbial drop in the ocean," Dr Caley said.

The AIMS chief executive officer, Ian Poiner, said reefs faced threats from ocean acidification, pollution, global warming, overfishing and starfish outbreaks.

"Only by establishing a baseline of biodiversity and following through with later censuses can people know the impact of those threats and find clues to mitigate them," said Dr Poiner, who is also chairman of the scientific steering committee for the global census, which will release its first decade of findings in 2010.

The research team, which included scientists from the Australian Museum in Sydney, left plastic "dolls houses" on the ocean floor near Lizard and Heron islands for marine creatures to colonise. They will be collected during the next three years, when further expeditions will be carried out.

Among the weird new creatures found this time were shrimp-like animals with claws longer than their bodies, and one with a long, whip-like back leg.

In separate research, scientists have also identified more than 100 new Australian shark and ray species. A CSIRO taxonomist, Peter Last, said Australia had about 300 species in all, about half of which are found only in these waters.

"With the exception of Indonesia, we have the richest shark and ray fauna on the planet," Dr Last said.

His team used DNA techniques to separate similar looking animals, confirming that an angel shark with big "wing" fins that scouts the seabed off NSW was a separate species.

Likewise, the harmless northern river shark was separated from the aggressive bull shark which accounts for many attacks on people in harbours and estuaries.

The dark waters of Port Davey and Macquarie Harbour in south-western Tasmania provide the only known habitat for the dinner-plate sized maugean ray.

Dr Last said that warming seas threatened its habitat. "This ray really hasn't changed much in 80 million years. It would be catastrophic to see it just go in the blink of an eye."

Global warming will lead to biodiversity loss...

An analysis, carried out by a scientist of Indian origin, along with his colleagues, has shown that irreversible global warming will lead to biodiversity loss and substantial glacial melt.

The scientist in question is Professor V. Ramanathan from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC (University of California) San Diego.

The analysis has estimated that the earth will warm about 2.4 degree C above pre-industrial levels, even under extremely conservative greenhouse-gas emission scenarios and under the assumption that efforts to clean up particulate pollution continue to be successful.

That amount of warming falls within what the world's leading climate change authority recently set as the threshold range of temperature increase that would lead to widespread loss of biodiversity, de-glaciation and other adverse consequences in nature.

The researchers argue that coping with these circumstances will require "transformational research for guiding the path of future energy consumption."

"This paper demonstrates the major challenges society will have to face in dealing with a problem that now seems unavoidable," said the paper's lead author, Scripps Atmospheric and Climate Sciences Professor V. Ramanathan.

"We hope that governments will not be forced to consider trade-offs between air pollution abatement and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions," he added.

In their analysis, Ramanathan and co-author Yan Feng, a Scripps postdoctoral research fellow, assumed a highly optimistic scenario that greenhouse gas concentrations would remain constant at 2005 levels for the next century.

For the concentrations to remain at 2005 levels, the emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide must decrease drastically within the next decade.

Economic expansion, however, is expected to see emissions increase.

The researchers then analyzed expected future warming by assuming that the cooling effect of man-made aerosol pollution will be eliminated during the 21st Century.

Because soot and similar particles remain airborne only for a matter of weeks, it is expected that clean-up efforts produce relatively immediate results.

Therefore, the authors based their projections of temperature increase assuming the absence of these pollutants in the atmosphere.

By contrast, greenhouse gases can remain in the atmosphere for decades or, in the case of carbon dioxide, more than a century.

Ramanathan and Feng estimated that the increase in greenhouse gases from pre-industrial era levels has already committed Earth to a warming range of 1.4 degree C to 4.3 degree C.

About 90 percent of that warming will most likely be experienced in the 21st Century.

"Given that a potentially large warming is already in our rear-view mirror, scientists and engineers must mount a massive effort and develop solutions for adapting to climate change and for mitigating it," said Ramanathan.

"Drastic reduction of short-lived warming agents is one way to buy the planet time for developing cost-effective ways for reducing CO2 concentrations," he added.

Source: The Times of India

Upside down rainbow spotted in the UK...

"One of the most spectacular light shows observed on earth," author Donald Ahrens describes the rainbow in his text Meteorology Today. If observed carefully, you would find that the sun is always behind you when you face the rainbow and the center of the circular arc of the rainbow is in the opposite direction to the sun. But there have been sightings that have proved otherwise also.

An astronomer in Cambridge, UK, has captured on camera an "upside down rainbow", which is considered to be an anomaly of nature.

According to a report in the Telegraph, astronomer Dr Jacqueline Mitton captured the freak rainbow near her home in Cambridge. Normal rainbows are made when light penetrates raindrops and re-emerges out the other side in the same direction. But, the inverted types, known as circumzenithal arcs, are caused when sunlight bounces off ice crystals high in the atmosphere, sending the light rays back up.

"The conditions have to be just right: you need the right sort of ice crystals and the sky has to be clear," said Mitton. "We're not sure how big an area it was visible over, but it was certainly very impressive," she added. A spokesman for the Met Office confirmed the inverted rainbows are occasionally spotted in British skies. "It is convex to the sun and is formed by refraction in suitably-oriented ice crystals and may show vivid rainbow coloring, as in this case," he said

Well, we all know about the strange ways of nature and the even stranger creations, the 'upside down rainbow' is just another sense of humor by god, perhaps when the sky 'cries' with happiness!

Antarctica to have biggest ozone hole in ``one or two weeks''...

A new Canadian study says that cosmic rays, not chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), are the main cause of the depletion of the ozone layer in the earth's atmosphere. The study also predicts that the largest ozone hole - larger than the size of the US and Canada combined - will occur over Antarctica in ``one or two weeks.''

The ozone layer in the earth's atmosphere absorbs the sun's high-frequency ultraviolet rays which are deadly for life on earth and cause diseases such as skin cancer and cataracts.

Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo and a specialist in the study of ozone depletion, said on Tuesday that his study belies the two-decade-old theory that the earth's ozone layer is depleted by chlorine atoms produced by sunlight-induced destruction of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere.

On the contrary, he said, more and more evidence points to a new theory that the cosmic rays - energy particles that originate in space - play a major role in the destruction of the ozone layer. Lu said data from several sources, including satellites of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), confirmed a strong link between cosmic ray intensity and ozone depletion.

He said laboratory measurements also demonstrated a mechanism by which cosmic rays cause drastic reactions of ozone-depleting chlorine inside clouds over the South Pole (Antarctica).

Satellite data from 1980 to 2007, covering two full 11-year solar cycles, also demonstrated a significant link between cosmic rays and ozone depletion, he said.

``This finding, combined with laboratory measurements, provides strong evidence of the role of cosmic-ray driven reactions in causing the ozone hole and resolves the mystery why a large discrepancy between the sunlight-related photochemical model and the observed ozone depletion exists,'' said Lu.

Recent experiments by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, which use photochemical models, predict the earth's ozone hole will increase by one to 2.5 per cent and the Antarctic springtime ozone hole by five to 10 per cent between 2000 and 2020.

In sharp contrast, Lu said, his study predicted the severest ozone loss — resulting in the largest ozone hole — over the South Pole (Antarctica) this month.

He also predicted another large ozone hole around 2019.

Bleak forecast: Arctic sea ice just misses record melt...

The long, frigid Arctic autumn and winter began late last week—and the shrinking sea ice has begun to expand anew. That's good news for starving polar bears waiting for the ice to come in so they can hunt. But the dwindling ice pack—courtesy of global warming—bodes ill for Earth's future.

"The continued drastic melting of the Arctic sea ice is a disaster for the polar bear and a harbinger of what's to come for the rest of the world if we don't reduce greenhouse gas emissions," says Kassie Siegel, climate program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, who led the charge to list the polar bear as an endangered species.

This year's ice shrank to just 1.74 million square miles—860,000 square miles less than the average extent since 1979—and only slightly more than last year's record 1.59 million square mile icepack. In fact, the ice retreated so much that for the first time since record-keeping began ships this year could circumnavigate the Arctic Ocean.

Plus, this happened despite cooler temperatures that should have allowed much more ice to survive summer warming. Translation: the climate is shifting fast towards a total loss of sea ice in the Arctic in summer, something that hasn't happened during the extent of human civilization.

Arctic ice melts to second-lowest level: scientists...

Arctic sea ice melted to its second-lowest level this summer, rising slightly from 2007's record but still showing a downward trend that is a key symptom of climate change, U.S. scientists said on Tuesday.

The ice slipped to its minimum extent for 2008 on September 12, when it covered 1.74 million square miles (4.52 million square km), and now appears to be growing as the Arctic starts its seasonal cooldown, the National Snow and Ice Data Center said.

This is 33 percent below the average summer ice cover in the Arctic since satellites began measuring it in 1979 and is less than 10 percent above last year's all-time record low, said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the ice center.

"We're not as low as we were last year, which was the real mind-blowing record, but we're well below anything else we've had in the past," Meier said in a telephone interview from Boulder, Colorado.

One channel of the Northwest Passage -- a long-sought water route between Europe and Asia -- was open in both 2007 and 2008. This year also saw the opening of the Northern Sea Route, which runs through the Arctic Ocean along the Siberian coast.

The ice center said last month that there was substantial ice melt in the Chukchi Sea off the Alaskan coast in the Eastern Siberian Seas off Russia's east coast, home to one of the world's largest polar bear populations.

Because polar bears use sea ice floes as platforms for hunting seals, they are forced to swim longer distances when the ice melts, making them more likely to tire and drown.

Arctic ice is a factor in global climate and weather patterns. The difference between the cool air at the poles and warm air around the Equator drives air and water currents, including the jet stream, Meier said.

Sea ice helps hold in the cold around the North Pole because its white color reflects sunlight. When sea ice vanishes, the newly exposed dark water absorbs more of the sun's rays, accelerating the heating effect.

DOWNWARD TREND "GETTING STEEPER"

Even though the ice did not shrink as dramatically in 2008 as it did in 2007, Meier said this year's conditions were remarkable because they occurred in a relatively cool year. Last year's sea ice melt happened in a "perfect storm" of conditions -- the skies were warm and clear and winds pushed the ice around, spurring the melting.

This year it was cooler, Meier said. There were no favorable winds, "and yet we still came pretty close to the record."

"In terms of long-term climate, it's not a recovery in any sense of the word," he said. "The long-term trend is still steeply downward and getting steeper."

Because the climate system is so interconnected to what happens in the Arctic, there are likely to be more widespread impacts, he said.

The emission of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide -- produced by burning fossil fuels as well as natural sources, including human breath -- is spurring global climate change, and its effects are amplified in the Arctic, he said.

The last seven years are among the seven lowest on record in terms of Arctic sea ice, Meier said.

"That's a real indication that this isn't any kind of temporary climate cycle. It's more an indication that we're heading toward the point where we're going to have that sea ice completely melt in the coming decades or perhaps sooner."

Remembering is like 'relieving'...

Ever wondered how memory is made? Well, for the brain, remembering is like relieving, a new study has suggested. Researchers have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a memory, thus revealing where in the brain a specific experience is stored and how the brain is able to recreate it. "In a way, reliving past experience in our memory is the resurrection of neuronal activity from the past," lead researcher Dr Itzhak Fried of California University said. Dr Fried and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have based their findings on an analysis of the brains of 13 epilepsy patients being treated surgically at a medical centre in the US. Surgeons had placed electrodes in the patients' brains to locate the origin of their seizures before surgical treatment -- standard procedure in such cases. Fried made use of the same electrodes to record neuron activity as memories were being formed. In the study, the patients watched several video clips of short duration, including such things as landmarks and people, along with other clips of Jerry Seinfeld, Tom Cruise, Simpsons ’ character Homer Simpson and others. Source: The Times of India

Antarctic ozone hole already larger than in 2007...

The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica has already surpassed its 2007 size this year, and is set to keep growing for another few weeks, the U.N. weather agency said on Tuesday.

The Antarctic ozone hole appears every year and normally stretches to about the size of North America, reaching its maximum size in late September or early October.

But in 2008, the World Meteorological Organization said the protective layer, which shields the Earth from ultra-violet rays that can cause skin cancer, began to thin relatively late.

"During the last couple of weeks it has grown rapidly and has now passed the maximum size attained in 2007. Since the ozone hole is still growing, it is too early to determine how large this year's ozone hole will be," it said in a statement.

The ozone hole covered 27 million square km as of last Saturday (September 13), against 25 million square km at its peak last year, according to the WMO whose statement was issued on International Day for the Preservation of Ozone Layer.