*— UPDATE — *

Neutrino News

• Last Time on SciByte
• Neutrinos & Tatooine | SciByte 17 (Oct 18, 2011) - Faster than light Neutrinos
• Spacecraft Updates | SciByte 23 [November 30, 2011] - Faster than light Neutrinos : Update
• The low down
• An experiment that nearly weightless particles called neutrinos were apparently traveling faster than the speed of light.
• Though the physicists felt confident in their experimental setup, they and the rest of the scientific community suspected that the shocking result was probably due to some error, considering that light as the universe’s speed limit is a central tenet of Einstein’s theory of special relativity.
• During a second run of the experiment in November, neutrinos again appeared to arrive in Italy 60 nanoseconds earlier than light
• Also in November, another group of physicists also working at Gran Sasso Laboratory demonstrated that the neutrinos in question could not possibly have been traveling faster than light, because if they had, they would have given off a telltale type of radiation, which was not detected.
• Significance
• Faulty wiring has been proposed as the glitch that caused a European physics experiment to clock particles flying faster than light.
• A bad connection with a cable that relays satellite GPS signals to keep the experiment’s clocks in sync could have made each particle’s trip seem to take less time than it actually did.
• Tightening the connection changed the time it took for data to travel the length of the fiber by 60 nanoseconds
• The OPERA team will tighten its cables and repeat the experiment
• * Of Note*
• Another glitch could have caused the experiment to underestimate the particles’ speed correcting for an error in this device would actually increase the anomaly in neutrino velocity, making the particles even speedier than the earlier measurements seemed to show
• The two effects will get a new round of tests in May, when the two labs are scheduled to make velocity measurements with short-pulsed beams designed to give readings much more precise than scientists have achieved so far.
• New data, however, will be needed to confirm this hypothesis.
• Multimedia
• IMAGE: Universal Speed Limit?
• IMAGE - The Neutrino’s Path ‘Side Vies’
• IMAGE - The Neutrino’s Path ‘Top View’
• IMAGE - Global Gravity model
• VIDEO - Global Gravity model
• VIDEO - New results from OPERA on neutrino properties @ CERN
• CERNtv @ youtube.com
• IMAGE - Cern test ‘breaks speed of light’ @ bbc.co.uk
• IMAGE - Global Gravity model
• VIDEO - Global Gravity model
• VIDEO - New results from OPERA on neutrino properties @ CERN
• CERNtv @ youtube.com
• Social Media
• Twitter account for CERN @CERN
• Twitter Results for [#]()
• Further Reading / In the News
• 
  Neutrino experiment repeat at Cern finds same result @ BBC News
• Loose cable blamed for speedy neutrinos @ ScienceNews.com
• Loose Cable Explains Faulty ‘Faster-than-light’ Neutrino Result @ Space.com
• BREAKING NEWS: Error Undoes Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Results @ ScienceMag.org
• Official Word on Superluminal Neutrinos Leaves Warp-Drive Fans a Shred of Hope—Barely @ ScienceMag.org
• [Faster than light neutrinos? More like faulty wiring @ PhysOrg.com](https://www.physorg.com/news/2012–02-faster-neutrinos-faulty-wiring.html
• Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos: OPERA Confirms and Submits Results, But Unease Remains
• Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light, According to One Experiment @ news.sciencemag.org
• Tiny Neutrinos May Have Broken Cosmic Speed Limit @ NYtimes.com
• Speed-of-light results under scrutiny at Cern @ bbc.co.uk
• Faster-than-light neutrinos face time trial @ Nature.com
• Special Relativity May Answer Faster-than-Light Neutrino Mystery
• Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam @ Cornell University Library
• The OPERA neutrino velocity result and the synchronisation of clocks @ Cornell University Library
• A simple explanation of OPERA results without strange physics @ Cornell University Library
• Findings that showed faster-than-light travel were released to the public too soon @ PhysOrg.com
• OPREA - Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus
• Critics take aim at fast neutrinos

*— NEWS BYTE — *

Legged Squad Support System (LS3)

• The low down
• Today’s soldiers can carry more than 100 pounds of gear
• Increasing the weight of individual equipment has a negative impact on warfighter readiness
• To combat these issues DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] is developing semi-autonomous, highly mobile
• Significance
• It is designed to carry up to 400 lbs of gear and enough fuel for missions covering 20 miles and lasting 24 hours
• It can use its ‘eyes’ to follow a leader and can travel to designated GPS coordinates and sensors that allow the robot to distinguish between trees, rocks, terrain obstacles and people.
• At the end of an 18-month proving period, LS3 will embed with Marines conducting field exercises to see how it gets along in real maneuvers.
• It could also be used as a mobile power source to recharge batteries for radios or handheld devices
• * Upcoming *
• They are planning to add auditory technology so that it would be able to take spoken commands such as ‘stop’, ‘sit’, or ‘come here’
• Leader-follower tight where it will attempt to follow as close as possible to the path its leader takes
• Leader-follower corridor, where it would stick to the leader but with freedom to make local path decisions, so the leader doesn’t need to think about LS3’s mobility capabilities
• Go-to-waypoint where it uses its local perception to avoid obstacles on its way to a designated GPS coordinate
• Multimedia
• YouTube CHANNEL : DARPA Channel
• YouTube VIDEO : DARPA Legged Squad Support System (LS3)
• YouTube VIDEO : BigDog Evolution
• YouTube VIDEO : BigDog Overview (Updated March 2010)
• YouTube VIDEO : BigDog Beach’n
• YouTube VIDEO : BigDog robot
• Social Media
• DARPA @DARPA_News
• Further Reading / In the News
• LS3 / BigDog @ Boston Dynamics
• Legged Squad Support System (LS3) @ DARPA
• Darpa’s Legged Squad Support System (LS3) to lighten troops’ load @ PhysOrg.com
• Video: DARPA’s Legged Squad Support System (a.k.a. Big Dog) Goes Outside to Play @ PopSci
• DARPA Gives $32 Million For A Bigger Big Dog From Boston Dynamics @ PopSci
• BullDog: A Bigger, Scarier Version of BigDog Gets Closer to the Battlefield @ PopSci
• Video: Watch BigDog, PopSci’s Favorite Quadruped Bot, Romp and Grow Through the Years @ PopSci

*— TWO-BYTE NEWS — *

Science of Leap Year

• The low down
• A day, defined by how long it takes for a star to appear in the same place again, is 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds.
• During that time the Earth has moved forward one day in it’s orbit of the sun in order to keep up with this so that the Sun appears the in same place you have to add about 3min 56 seconds, and that’s where 24 hours comes from.
• Earths orbit is not precisely circular, it is actually a eccentric circle
• Average Year is 365.242374 days long, that’s 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, 12 seconds
• Significance
• Adding a day every fours years makes the average 365.25, which gets closer than the calenders 365
• Leap year are there to keep the calender aligned so that roughly noon on Dec 21 (solstice) the same point on the Earth is tilted towards the sun.
• To get even closer every 100 years is not a leap year but every 400 years is a leap year.
• * Of Note*
• Related to the Year 2000 computer program, many programs would have calculated leap year incorrectly
• For example, 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not. Similarly, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2500, 2600, 2700, 2900 and 3000 will not be leap years, but 2400 and 2800 will be.
• Multimedia
• IMAGE : Gregorian Calendarleap solstice @ Wikipedia
• Social Media
• Twitter Results for [#LeapYear](https://twitter.com/#!/search/leapyear)
• Further Reading / In the News
• Earth’s Orbit Creates More Than A Leap Year: Orbital Behaviors Also Drive Climate Changes, Ice Ages @ ScienceDaily
• How could the year 2000 be a leap year when 1900 was not? @ HowStuffWorks.

Solar Tornado

• The low down
• Not a tornado in the sense they are on Earth powered by winds, the suns are streams of plasma
• The particles are being pulled this way and that by competing magnetic forces. They are tracking along strands of magnetic field lines
• Significance
• Video shows swirling fountains of plasma creeping across the surface of the sun during a 30-hour period between Feb. 7 and 8.
• The bright backdrop is an active region rotating into view that provides a bright backdrop to the gyrating streams of plasma
• * Of Note*
• This particular ‘tornado’ is about the size of the Earth
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : NASA SDO - Plasma Indirection
• YouTube Channel : Solar Dynamic Observatory
• Social Media
• NASA SDO @NASA_SDO
• Further Reading / In the News
• Solar Dynamics Observatory Website @ NASA.gov
• Solar Tornadoes Dance Across Sun’s Surface in NASA Video@ Space.com
• Watch an Earth-sized “tornado” gyrate across the surface of the sun @ io9.com

SPACECRAFT UPDATE - Solar Dynamics Observatory

• * Last time on SciByte*
• Solar Storms & Private Space Flight | SciByte 30 (Jan 24, 2012) - You might have seen meets ‘Breaking’ Science with Coronal Mass Ejection
• Asteroids and Black Holes | SciByte 20 (Nov 08, 2011) - Largest Sunspot in Years Observed on the Sun
• Solar Storms | SciByte 7 (July 13, 2011)
• Recall
• Orbiting the Earth at a distance of 36,000 kilometers in geosynchronous orbit, the SDO usually has a spectacular, uninterrupted view of our nearest star.
• The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is where the animated gif’s that are sometimes in the shownotes come from when Coronal Mass Ejections happen
• Significance
• On Feb. 21, of a partial eclipse that was visible only from space.
• The sharp edge of the lunar limb helps researchers measure the in-orbit characteristics of the telescope, how light diffracts around the telescope’s optics and filter support grids
• Once these are calibrated, it is possible to correct SDO data for instrumental effects and sharpen the images even more than before
• In addition during its travels, the moon briefly blocked sunspot AR1422, an active region that is blasting strong ultraviolet emissions into space.
• This caused a dip in the EVE [extreme ultraviolet] output and may allow scientists to calibrate the energy emitted by the active region
• This eclipse can bring the lunar landscape into focus – mountains and valleys on the moon show up as a raggedy edge when viewed at high resolution.
• * Of Note*
• The next partial solar eclipse visible from Earth will occur May 20. Skywatchers in much of Asia, the Pacific and western North America will be able to see it
• A total solar eclipse will take place Nov. 13, but it will be visible only from parts of northern Australia and the South Pacific. However,
  skywatchers in much of Australia, New Zealand and southern South America will be able to see a partial eclipse on that day
• Social Media
• NASA SDO @NASA_SDO
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : NASA SDO - Plasma Indirection
• YouTube Channel : Solar Dynamic Observatory
• Further Reading
• Moon Eats a Chunk Out Of The Sun: Big Pic @ Discovery.com
• NASA’s sun-watching telescope sees solar eclipse @ SpaceFlightNow.com
• ‘Pac-Man Sun’: NASA Probe Sees Solar Eclipse in Space @ Space.com

* SPACECRAFT UPDATE - Opportunity*

• * Last time on SciByte*
• Solar Storms & Private Space Flight | SciByte 30 (Jan 24, 2012) - Opportunity Rover
• Moons Here & There | SciByte 28 (Jan 10, 2012) - Opportunity Rover gets ready for hibernation
• Recall
• Analyzing the signals from Mars scientists will be able to more precise measurements of the planets rotational speed
• Analyzing how Mars’ spin and spin access has changed since the Viking missions in the mid–70’s should allow scientists to get a better handle on the interior of the planet
• By measuring the minute variations of the planets rotation could reveal weather Mars has a solid or liquid core.
• After about three-to-six months researchers should have enough data to get an in-depth picture of the Martian interior
• * Of Note*
• Because Opportunity is covered with a thicker film of dust compared to her prior four Martian winters, the rover team was forced to employ the same “tilting” strategy they successfully used to keep her twin sister Spirit
• This is the first winter that Opportunity did not have sufficient power to continue roving across the surface.
• Opportunity has nearly finished snapping the 13 filter, 360 degree stereo Greeley
• Social Media
• Twitter for Spirit and Oppy @MarsRovers
• Multimedia
• Universe Today article with pictures
• Opportunity Rover - Raw Images Gallery @ NASA.gov
• Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Rover Multimedia Gallery: @ NASA.gov
• Mars Rover Missions Page - Multimedia Gallery: @ NASA.gov
• Further Reading
• Opportunity Phones Home Dusty Self-Portraits and Ground Breaking Science @ UniverseToday.com
• Opportunity phones home dusty self-portraits and ground breaking science @ PhysOrg.com
• Mars Exploration Program
• 8 Years on Mars: ‘Amazing’ NASA Rover Still Going Strong @ Space.com
• NASA Rover Spends Martian Winter Probing Inside Red Planet @ Space.com
• New App Downlinks Mars Rover Images Straight to Your Smartphone @ popsci.com
• Opportunity arrives at Greeley Haven – 5th Winter Haven Worksite on Mars @ UniverseToday.com
• ‘Greeley Haven’ is Winter Workplace for Mars Rover @ NASA.gov’
• OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Positioned at Candidate Site for Winter @ NASA
• Mars Rovers home @ NASA
• NASA Picks Mars Winter Rest Stop for Long-Lived Rover @ Space.com
• Opportunity Well Positioned For Another Winter On Mars @ MarsDaily.com

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

• Mar 06, 1869 : 143 years ago : Periodic Table : Dmitry Mendeleev published his first version of the periodic table of the elements. He was a Russian chemist who developed the periodic classification of the elements. In his final version of the periodic table (1871) he left gaps, foretelling that they would be filled by elements not then known and predicting the properties of three of those elements. The Periodic Table | SciByte 10 (Aug 3, 2011)
• Mar 06, 1950 : 62 years ago : Silly Putty : Silly Putty was introduced as a toy by Peter Hodgson, a marketing consultant, who packaged one-ounce portions of the rubber-like material in plastic eggs. It could be stretched, rolled into a bouncing ball, or used to transfer colored ink from newsprint. The original discovery was made in 1943 by James Wright who combined silicone oil and boric acid at the laboratories of General Electric. He was researching methods of making synthetic rubber, but at the time no significant application existed for the material. However, it was passed around as a curiosity. Hodgson saw a sample and realized its potential simply for entertainment and coined its name for marketing it as a toy. Its popularity made him a millionaire.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …

• Feb 29 : First Quarter Moon

• Mar 01 : Jupiter, Venus and Mercury are in a line to the W-SW about an hour after sunset, with Jupiter on top

• Mar 03 : Tonight Mars is at opposition, when the Earth is between the planet and the sun, and will be in the East during twilight

• Mercury is in the dimming sunset in the W to the lower right of Venus

• Jupiter and Venus remain in the SW to W after dusk, they continue to get closer narrowing to about one fist width held at arms length,10 degrees, with Jupiter still on top

• Further Reading and Resources

• More on whats in the sky this week

• Sky&Telescope

• SpaceWeather.com

• StarDate.org

• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au

• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org

• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz

• AstronomyNow

• HeavensAbove