Comment Re:Not dinosaurs (Score 1) 272
Or, better yet, the sea cow:
Submission + - Mystery About Earth's Mantle May Be Solved
explosivejared writes: "Recent observations made by the University of British Columbia may give insight to an old question about the composition of Earth's mantle, precisely why Earth's mantle doesn't resemble chondrite more. The article discusses the findings of John Hernlund about how the dynamics of magma account for the discrepancies in the theoretical composition of Earth and the actual composition of the mantle."
Submission + - Boeing completes prototype heat shield for NASA (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: "Boeing said today it had completed a developmental heat shield designed to protect future NASA astronauts from extreme heat during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere following lunar and low-Earth orbit missions. Specifically this shied is targeted for use on NASA's Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) which is the space agency's planned mission to send human explorers back to the moon, and then onward to Mars. NASA says Orion will enter Earth's atmosphere at 6.8 miles per second, generating surface temperatures equivalent to more than 4,800 degrees Fahrenheit — about five-times the amount of heat the space shuttle's heat shield endures.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/21904"
Submission + - Virtual Earth with dynamic real world weather (blogs.com)
gmezero writes: "Hamlet Au writes about his recent visit to a virtual recreation of the Earth within Second Life built entirely from Sculptie prims and featuring a real-time cloud layer to track weather around the world. This mashup features data from several sources including NASA's Blue Marble, and live cloud data from satellite tracking feeds. This installation provides a dramatic view on how weather patterns interact with the Earth's topology. A short video is also provided as a preview to the build."
Submission + - SpaceX's Falcon Plummets
JHarrison writes: "Spaceflight Now is running a story on the SpaceX Falcon 1 launch yesterday. Those of you watching the stream will have no doubt noticed the telemetry failure at 04:50, and turns out that was more than them turning the webcast off.. "A year after its maiden flight met a disastrous end, the SpaceX booster lifted off at 9:10 p.m. EDT (0110 GMT Wednesday) from a remote launch pad on Omelek Island, part of a U.S. Army base at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Controllers lost contact with the Falcon during the burn of the second stage that would have placed the rocket into orbit around Earth. "We did encounter, late in the second stage burn, a roll-control anomaly," Elon Musk, founder and chief executive officer of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., said in a post-launch call with reporters. Live video from cameras mounted aboard the rocket's second stage showed increasing oscillations about five minutes after liftoff, just before the public webcast was cut off. The rolling prevented the necessary speed to achieve a safe orbit, instead sending the stage on a suborbital trajectory back into the atmosphere.""
Submission + - SpaceX Launches Falcon 1 to Space
RockyPersaud writes: "SpaceX's second Falcon 1 launch attempt successfully reached space, though it misses its target orbit. The video cuts out at the end with telemetry was lost. At this point it appears the rocket only reach about 300km altitude, so short about 125km from its target orbit, and it probably re-entered the atmosphere to fall into the ocean. While not a total success, this launch indicates SpaceX can successfully deliver satellites to orbit at a much lower cost than competitors, opening up possibilities for orbital tourism and cheap delivery of commercial payloads to space.
Read more here."
Submission + - Scientist Finds Beginnings of Morality in Primates
loid_void writes: "The New York Times is reporting that: Last year Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, proposed in his book "Moral Minds" that the brain has a genetically shaped mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar to the neural machinery for learning language. In another recent book, "Primates and Philosophers," the primatologist Frans de Waal defends against philosopher critics his view that the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes."
How Scientific Paradigms Relate 163
Here is a giant chart mapping relationships among scientific paradigms, as published in the journal Nature. This map was constructed by sorting roughly 800,000 published papers into 776 different scientific paradigms (shown as pale circular nodes) based on how often the papers were cited together by authors of other papers. Information Esthetics, an organization founded by map co-creator W. Bradford Paley, is giving away 25" x 24" prints of the Map of Science (you pay postage and handling via PayPal). There are also links to a 3000+ pixel wide jpg of the chart. It would be all one long spectrum except for Computer Science, which makes the connection (via AI) between the hard sciences and the soft sciences.
Submission + - NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
Maggie McKee writes: "NASA will likely shut down its Institute for Advanced Concepts, which funds research into futuristic — and often far-out — ideas in spaceflight and aeronautics, officials say. "This is one of the few places at NASA that embodies far-thinking, new stuff," NASAWatch editor Keith Cowing says. "When they're cutting stuff like this, they're desperate, or stupid, or both."
The move was apparently motivated by a lack of money in NASA's budget — a problem that led to much criticism last year, when the agency cut science funding to pay for overruns in the shuttle program. But shutting down the institute to save $4 million in NASA's annual $17 billion budget shows NASA is now "going after nickels and dimes," Cowing says."
Submission + - Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality
sas-dot writes: In an earlier New york times article reported here in slashdot, threw up many interesting questions like Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God — evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity?. Now Scientists question the Philosophers and Theologians hold on the subject of Morality as reported in this new article. They find Chimpanzees social behaviours as precursors for Human morality. So now Biologists holds the rules for morality?
Submission + - Possible massive meteorite found
johkir writes: "Geologists think they may have found a meteorite the size of a small town. They were looking for oil but instead found space dust and a possible mammoth meteorite. The possible meteorite is buried deep in the ground about ten miles west of Stockton, Calif. in an area called Victoria Island. 3-D images show that the circular crater created by the rock is estimated to have been about 3 miles wide. The meteorite is also believed to have fallen to earth over 50 million years ago. Per the news feed, 'The impact would have been as powerful as 100-thousand atomic bomb blasts and would have been seen and heard for hundreds of miles.' BBC has the story, as does a local CBS affiliate (with flash video), and there is an abstract for the upcoming AAPG conference."
Submission + - proving general relativity with the kids
@10u8 writes: Tom Van Baak of leapsecond.com may be the ultimate geek dad. A letter to Physics Today has been picked up by Wired who have commented on the trip he and his kids took with their atomic clocks in order to prove that time runs faster at high elevation.
Submission + - The search for dark matter and dark energy
mlimber writes: The New York Times Magazine has a lengthy, popular article on dark matter and dark energy, discussing the past, present, and future:
'Astronomers now realize that dark matter probably involves matter that is nonbaryonic ["meaning that it doesn't consist of the protons and neutrons of 'normal' matter"]. And whatever it is that dark energy involves, we know it's not "normal," either. In that case, maybe this next round of evidence will have to be not only beyond anything we know but also beyond anything we know how to know.'
Submission + - Do Not Talk About Polar Bears!
eldavojohn writes: Scientific American has an article on a memo for foreign travelers on U.S. government business says that requests for foreign travel
Sounds like a good policy. I'm sure that the problem will just fix itself."involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice, and/or polar bears" require special handling, including notice of who will be the official spokesman for the trip. The Fish and Wildlife Service top officials need assurance that the spokesman, "the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears" understands the administration's position on these topics."
Drug Selectively Removes Rats' Memory 64
rednuhter writes "Nature online is reporting scientists have used drugs to selectively remove one memory while not affecting another.
Musical tones were played to the rats and at the same time the subjects were given a mild electric shock. Half the study group were given the drug (not approved for use in humans) and then the experiment was repeated with a new tone. The following day the rats that had not been given the treatment were afraid of both tones while the treated half were only afraid of the second tone: the memory of fear of the first had been erased."
