Hello everyone and welcome back to SciByte!

We take a look at adding and subtracting exoplanets, diabetes research, spacecraft updates, viewer feedback, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | HD Video | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

Show Notes:

Exoplanets? … Not So Fast

• The controversial existence of two possible planets located in the habitable zone of a star now have a ‘final’ ending to their story
• Last Time on SciByte, … well J@N
• Planet Zarmina | J@N | 10.6.10
• Gliese 581 System
• Planets were first announced around the system in 2007
• September 30, 2010 | Gliese 581d and 581g
• There was the possible discovery of the closest Earth-sized planet found found at that time that also existed in the habitable zone
• Quotes from one of the scientists involved in the discovery
• “Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent” “I have almost no doubt about it.”
• It was phrased unfortunately, and the media have jumped on it, of course
• This led to many headline grabbing stories, concepts of alien worlds and a J@N episode
• The 581d and 581g Controversy
• Both 581d and 581g were considered to be in the “habitable” region around the dwarf star they orbited
• About two weeks after the discovery, another team said it could not find indications
• Two years later another research team saying that analysis of an “extended dataset” from HARPS did show Gliese 581g
• A press release at the time from the Planetary Habitability Laboratory the discovery would continue to be controversial
• An Ending to the Story of 581d and 581g?
• As of this week both 581d and 581g are crossed off
• A new study shows that the two potentially habitable planets in the Gliese 581 system are just false signals arising out of the star’s activity and rotation
• The uncertainty arises from the delicacy of looking for signals of small planets around much larger stars
• Astronomers typically find planets through watching them pass across the face of a star, or measuring the tug that they exert on their parent star during their orbit
• Researchers now say that only three planets exist around this star.
• Further Reading / In the News
• A Brief History Of Gliese 581d and 581g, The Planets That May Not Be | UniverseToday.com
• Could Chance for Life on Gliese 581g Actually Be “100%”? | UniverseToday.com
• Controversial clues of two ‘Goldilocks planets’ that might support life are proven false | ScienceDaily

— NEWS BYTE —

Research on Reversing Type 1 Diabetes

• Investigators at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have found a therapy that reverses new onset Type 1 diabetes in mouse models and may advance efforts in combating the disease among humans.
• Type 1 Diabetes
• In Type 1 diabetes, the body does not produce sufficient insulin, which is central to glucose metabolism: without insulin, blood glucose rises
• Type 1 diabetes is usually diagnosed in children and young adults and affects about 5 percent of all people with diabetes
• There is no cure for Type 1 diabetes though it can be controlled with insulin therapy
• Immune System
• In Type 1 diabetes, autoimmunity causes the body’s T-cells to attack its insulin-producing beta cells.
• There are two parts to the immune system: the innate immune system, which we are born with and attempts to fight infection straight away
• And the adaptive immune system, which takes time to mount a response that is more specific to the particular pathogen
• The innate immune system includes a group of cells known as dendritic cells that send messages to the adaptive immune system
• Previous studies have already established that non-obese diabetic mice have faulty innate immune cells, and that this could be partly due to a defect in TLR4, which many suspect helps to prevent type 1 diabetes when it functions normally
• Treatment
• By using an antibody to stimulate a specific molecule in the innate immune system the researchers can reverse, with a high rate of success, new onset diabetes in mice that have already developed the symptoms of diabetes
• The cause of this reversal is a preservation of the endocrine pancreatic beta cells that produce insulin
• These cells are preserved from the autoimmune attack which is the hallmark of Type 1 diabetes
• This approach differs from most in combating Type 1 diabetes because his team’s therapies in mice do not directly interact with T-cells
• Treatment of autoimmunity has often been directed at suppressing an over-zealous adaptive immune response by eliminating autoreactive T-cells
• There are two arms of the immune system, this treatment is targeting a different part of the immune system
• The innate system tends to have a stereotypical response. this new research is targeting a receptor that is found mostly on the innate immune cells, such as dendritic cells.
• The Future
• The key to reversing Type 1 diabetes in mice, is catching the disease at its onset, which is typically within a very short time window
• The time frame would be longer in humans, but it is still a relatively short time from new onset to end-stage Type 1 diabetes
• While the TLR4 pathway in humans is similar to that of mice, there are some differences, so further study is required to see if the treatment will work in humans.
• There is also a chance, if the therapy works in humans, that it will do so with an agonistic anti-TLR4 agent that is already approved, or under development
• Further Reading / In the News
• Reversal of type 1 diabetes in mice may eventually help humans | MedicalXPress.com
• Type 1 diabetes ‘reversed’ in mice | MedicalNewsToday.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

A New Earth-Like Exoplanet

• A potentially habitable Earth-like planet that is only 16 light years away has been discovered
• Discovery
• The planet was discovered from its gravitational pull on its parent star, which causes the star to wobble slightly
• This team had previously found, in 2009, that the star has a cold Jupiter-like planet with a near-circular orbit of about nine years, called Gliese GJ b.
• “Earth-Like” Planet
• The “super-Earth” planet, GJ 832 c, takes 16 days to orbit its red-dwarf star and has a mass at least five times that of Earth.
• It receives about the same average stellar energy as Earth does, because red dwarfs shine more dimly than our Sun, and may have similar temperatures to our planet
• These characteristics put it among the top three most Earth-like planets, according to the Earth Similarity Index developed by scientists at the University of Puerto Rica in Arecibo
• Possible Atmosphere
• The research group says that if the planet has a similar atmosphere to Earth it may be possible for life to survive, although seasonal shifts would be extreme
• “However, given the large mass of the planet, it seems likely that it would possess a massive atmosphere, which may well render the planet inhospitable” | Head of UNSW’s Exoplanetary Science research group, Professor Chris Tinney
• “A denser atmosphere would trap heat and could make it more like a super-Venus and too hot for life,” | Head of UNSW’s Exoplanetary Science research group, Professor Chris Tinney
• Further Reading / In the News
• Potentially habitable Earth-like planet discovered; May have similar temperatures to our planet | ScienceDaily

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Opportunity Rover

• Opportunity rover has reached a long sought after region of aluminum-rich clay mineral outcrops at a new Endeavour where ancient water once flowed billions of year ago.
• The crater ridge is now “named ‘Pillinger Point’ after Colin Pillinger the Principal Investigator for the [British] Beagle 2 Mars lander
• The Beagle 2 lander was built to search for signs of life on Mars
• Opportunity’s Road Trip
• The new photo mosaic above captured by Opportunity peering out from ‘Pillinger Point’ ridge on June 5, 2014 (Sol 3684) and showing a panoramic view around the eroded mountain ridge and into vast Endeavour crater
• The crater spans 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter
• For the past several months, the six wheeled robot has been trekking southwards from Solander towards the exposures of aluminum-rich clays
• The rover mission scientists ultimate goal is travel even further south to ‘Cape Tribulation’ which holds a motherlode of the ‘phyllosilicate’ clay minerals
• “The idea is to characterize the outcrops as we go and then once we reach the valley travel quickly to Cape Tribulation and the smectite valley, which is still ~2 km to the south of the present rover location,” | Prof. Ray Arvidson, Deputy Principal Investigator for the rover
• Of Note
• June 16 marked the 3696th Sol or Martian Day. Over 193,400 images have been taken during the 24.51 miles (39.44 kilometers) since touchdown on Jan. 24, 2004
• Further Reading / In the News
• Opportunity Peers Out from ‘Pillinger Point’ – Honoring British Beagle 2 Mars Scientist Where Ancient Water Flowed | UniverseToday.com

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission

• Last Time on SciByte …
• SciByte 111 | Memories & International Spacecraft (December 3,
  2013)
• SciByte 109 | ‘Earth-Like’ Planets & Sharks (November 12, 2013)
• SciByte 107 | Dinosaurs & Satellites (October 29, 2013)
• The Low Down
• Mars Orbiter Mission or MOM, has now celebrated 100 days and 100 million kilometers out from Mars on June 16, until the crucial Mars Orbital Insertion (MOI) engine firing
• Mars Orbiter Mission or MOM
• India’s MOM probe will study the atmosphere and sniff for signals of methane.
• MOM was designed and developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) at a cost of $69 Million and marks India’s maiden foray into interplanetary flight
• The probe has flown about 70% of the way to Mars, traveling about 466 million kilometers out of a total of 680 million kilometers (400 million miles) overall, with about 95 days to go.
• One way radio signals to Earth take approximately 340 seconds
• ISRO reports the spacecraft and its five science instruments are healthy. It is being continuously monitored by the Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) and NASA JPL’s Deep Space Network (DSN).
• Trajectory Correction Maneuvers (TMSs)
• Before reaching Mars, mission navigators must keep the craft on course from Earth to Mars through a series of in flight Trajectory Correction Maneuvers (TMSs).
• The second TCM was just successfully performed on June 11 by firing the spacecraft’s 22 Newton thrusters for a duration of 16 seconds
• TCM-1 was conducted on December 11, 2013 by firing the 22 Newton Thrusters for 40.5 seconds
• Two additional TCM firings are planned in August and September 2014.
• Indian Space Research Organization and NASA
• Although they were developed independently and have different suites of scientific instruments, the MAVEN and MOM science teams will “work together” to unlock the secrets of Mars atmosphere and climate history, MAVEN’s top scientist
• Working together, MOM and MAVEN will revolutionize our understanding of Mars atmosphere, dramatic climatic history and potential for habitability
• “We have had some discussions with their science team, and there are some overlapping objectives,” “At the point where we [MAVEN and MOM] are both in orbit collecting data we do plan to collaborate and work together with the data jointly,” | MAVEN’s principal Investigator
• Further Reading / In the News
• India’s 1st Mars Mission Celebrates 100 Days and 100 Million Kilometers from Mars Orbit Insertion Firing – Cruising Right behind NASA’s MAVEN | UniverseToday.com

ISEE3 Reboot Project

• The Ups and Downs
• This is the first #ISEE3 Delta V maneuver since 1986
• First burn completed ! #ISEE3
• Command received. #ISEE3 TCM Segment 2a burn initiated.
• TCM Segment 2a burn completed. Accelerometers not showing anything – yet. #ISEE3
• Current #ISEE3 signal. Definitely seeing Doppler delta as a result of firings. About 6 Hz so far.
• Go for initiate. Command sent. #ISEE3. Command accepted. We see acceleration but not as expected.
• Either we are low on fuel in System A or latch valve A is not working. FSS and accelerometers not indicating thrust #ISEE3
• Team is reviewing data from today’s TCM efforts. #ISEE3
• The velocity change is apparent in signal. Doppler corrected but using pre-burn velocity from NASA. #ISEE3
• Formulating a plan for another TCM burn attempt tomorrow. Our window at Arecibo opens at 12:39 pm EDT and extends to 3:26 pm EDT

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Titans Salty Ocean

• Twitter | Kenny MacLeod ‏@siabost9deas
• @JB_Mars_Base “Ocean on Saturn moon could be as salty as the Dead Sea” https://phys.org/news/2014-07-ocean-saturn-moon-salty-dead.html … #Cassini #Space #Titan #SaltySea
• The Low Down
• Scientists analyzing data from NASA’s Cassini mission have firm evidence the ocean inside Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, might be as salty as the Earth’s Dead Sea.
• The new results come from a study of gravity and topography data collected during Cassini’s repeated flybys of Titan during the past 10 years
• Salty Ocean or Brine
• Researchers found that a relatively high density was required for Titan’s ocean in order to explain the gravity data
• This indicates the ocean is probably an extremely salty brine of water mixed with dissolved salts likely composed of sulfur, sodium and potassium
• The density indicated for this brine would give the ocean a salt content roughly equal to the saltiest bodies of water on Earth
• “Knowing this may change the way we view this ocean as a possible abode for present-day life, but conditions might have been very different there in the past.” | Giuseppe Mitri of the University of Nantes in France
• Icy Shell / Crust
• Using the Cassini data, researchers presented a model structure for Titan, resulting in an improved understanding of the structure of the moon’s outer ice shell
• The additional findings support previous indications the moon’s icy shell is rigid and in the process of freezing solid
• Cassini data also indicate the thickness of Titan’s ice crust varies slightly from place to place.
• The researchers said this can best be explained if the moon’s outer shell is stiff, as would be the case if the ocean were slowly crystallizing, and turning to ice.
• Methane
• A further consequence of a rigid ice shell, according to the study, is any outgassing of methane into Titan’s atmosphere must happen at scattered “hot spots”- like the hot spot on Earth that gave rise to the Hawaiian Island chain
• Titan’s methane does not appear to result from convection or plate tectonics recycling its ice shell.
• How methane gets into the moon’s atmosphere has long been of great interest to researchers, as molecules of this gas are broken apart by sunlight on short geological timescales
• Titan’s present atmosphere contains about five percent methane. This means some process, thought to be geological in nature, must be replenishing the gas
• “Our work suggests looking for signs of methane outgassing will be difficult with Cassini, and may require a future mission that can find localized methane sources,” said Jonathan Lunine, a scientist on the Cassini mission at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
• Further Reading / In the News
• Ocean on Saturn moon could be as salty as the Dead Sea | Phys.org

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Driving Test Course
• Curiosity rover has what is often referred to as a stunt double here on Earth, called ‘Scarecrow,’ that engineers use to test drive on different types of terrain
• Scarecrow has a full-size version of Curiosity’s wheels and other driving equipment, but doesn’t have the “brains.”
• Engineers have been scouring the Dumont Dunes area and look for the best spot to practice driving over dunes like those Curiosity may drive over on Mars
• Recently engineers created a course of sand ripples for the Scarecrow rover to drive over to test the rover’s driving skills on soft sand ripples
• On Mars, the Curiosity rover may cross similar sand ripples on its way to Mount Sharp
• Another Travelling Milestone
• After traversing 82 meters on June 27, 2014, Sol 672, the rover stopped because it determined that it was slipping too much
• The rover automatically stopped when it encountered soft sand and sensed that it wasn’t making enough progress
• “Coincidentally, the rover stopped right on the landing ellipse, a major mission milestone” | Mission scientist Ken Herkenhoff
• Mission Info
• Curiosity still has about another 2.4 miles (3.9 kilometers) to go to reach the entry way at a gap in the dunes at the foothills of Mount Sharp sometime later this year
• To date, Curiosity’s odometer totals over 5.1 miles (8.4 kilometers) since landing inside Gale Crater on Mars in August 2012. She has taken over 162,000 images
• Multimedia
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Trekking Mars – Curiosity Roves Outside Landing Ellipse! | UniverseToday.com
• ‘Scarecrow’ Rover Goes Off-Roading in Dumont Dunes – Mars Science Laboratory | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• July 14, 1965 : 49 years ago : First Close-Up Photo of Mars : The Mariner 4 satellite sent a transmission of the first close-up photograph of Mars. It consisting of 8.3 dots per second of varying degrees of darkness. The transmission lasted for 8.5 hours and depicted the regions on Mars known as Cebrenia, Arcadia, and Amazonis. The satellite was 134 million miles away from earth and 10,500 miles from Mars. The 574-pound spacecraft had been launched at 9:22am on 28 Nov 1964, from Cape Canaveral, FL, by a two-stage Atlas-Agena D rocket. In addition to its camera with digital tape recorder (about 20 pictures), it carried instruments for studying cosmic dust, solar plasma, trapped radiation, cosmic rays, magnetic fields, radio occultation and celestial mechanics

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Fri, July 11 | At dusk you can see Mars and Spica in the SW sky just under 2* apart [1* is the width of your pinky held at arms length]
• Sat, July 12 | Full Moon
• Sun, July 13 | At dusk Mars and Spica are now just 1.3* apart
• Planets
• Mercury | Sunrise | low in the glow of sunrise to the lower left of Venus
• Venus | Dawn | Low in the E
• Mars | Dusk | High in the SW at dusk with Spica, a little fainter, closing in on it each day reaching their closest point on Sunday
• Jupiter is lost in the sunset

• Saturn | Late Twilight | Highest in the S

• Further Reading and Resources

• 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

The post Exoplanets & Diabetes | SciByte 135 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Hello everyone and welcome back to SciByte!

We take a look at a theory breaking exoplanet, a theory confirming star, Saturn moon Titan, lunar formation theories, story and spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | HD Video | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

Show Notes:

Breaking Planetary Formation Theories Again

• Astronomers have announced that they have discovered a new type of planet – a rocky world weighing 17 times as much as Earth
• Past theories believed such a world couldn’t form because anything so hefty would grab hydrogen gas as it grew and become a Jupiter-like gas giant
• This planet; however. is solid and much bigger than previously discovered “super-Earths,” making it a “mega-Earth.”
• Kepler-10c
• It is located about 560 light-years from Earth in the constellation Draco
• It’s orbit lasts 45 days
• The system also hosts a 3-Earth-mass “lava world,” Kepler-10b, in a remarkably fast, 20-hour orbit
• Discovery
• Kepler-10c was originally spotted by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft.
• By measuring the amount of dimming, astronomers can calculate the planet’s physical size or diameter
• However, Kepler can’t tell whether a planet is rocky or gassy
• Kepler-10c was known to have a diameter 2.3 times as large as Earth
• This suggested it fell into a category of planets known as mini-Neptunes, which have thick, gaseous envelopes
• It’s a Rocky Planet
• The team used the HARPS-North instrument on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) in the Canary Islands to measure the mass of Kepler-10c
• They found that it weighed 17 times as much as Earth – far more than expected, this showed that Kepler-10c must have a dense composition of rocks and other solids.
• It is so massive that it would have been able to hold onto an atmosphere if it ever had one
• Planetary Formation Theories
• Planet formation theories have a difficult time explaining how such a large, rocky world that need elements like silicon and iron, could develop
• The Kepler-10 system is about 11 billion years old, which means it formed less than 3 billion years after the Big Bang
• The early universe contained only hydrogen and helium
• Heavier elements are created and scattered through the universe when a star goes supernova, when help create later generations of stars and planets
• This process should have taken billions of years; however, Kepler-10c shows that the universe was able to form such huge rocks even during the time when heavy elements were scarce.
• What This Means
• This tells us that rocky planets could form much earlier than we thought
• This research implies that astronomers shouldn’t rule out old stars when they search for Earth-like planets
• If old stars can host rocky Earths too, then we have a better chance of locating potentially habitable worlds in our cosmic neighborhood
• Further Reading / In the News
• Astronomers find a new type of planet: The ‘mega-Earth’ | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

A New Sneaky Star Type

• A Thorne-Zytkow Object, or TZO are actually two stars in one: a binary pair where a superdense neutron star has been absorbed into its less dense supergiant
• Thorne-Zytkow Object
• First theorized in 1975 they are difficult to find in real life because of their similarity to red supergiants, it is only through detailed spectroscopy that the particular chemical signatures can be identified.
• While normal red supergiants derive their energy from nuclear fusion in their cores, TOs are powered by the unusual activity of the absorbed neutron stars in their cores
• Discovery
• The astronomers were examining the spectrum of light emitted from apparent red supergiants, which tells them what elements are present
• When the spectrum of one star, HV 2112, was analyzed the scientists were quite surprised by some of the unusual features
• They took a close look at the subtle lines in the spectrum they found that it contained excess rubidium, lithium and molybdenum
• Past research has shown that normal stellar processes can create each of these elements; however, high abundances of all three of these at the temperatures typical of red supergiants is a unique signature of TŻOs
• Only by absorbing a much hotter star – such as a neutron star left over from the explosive death of a more massive partner – is the production of such elements presumed to be possible
• Formation Theory
• TOs are thought to be formed by the interaction of two massive stars-a red supergiant and a neutron star formed during a supernova explosion-in a close binary system
• The much more massive red supergiant essentially swallows the neutron star, which spirals into the core of the red supergiant
• Scientists are careful to point out that HV 2112 displays some chemical characteristics that don’t quite match theoretical models
• There are some minor inconsistencies between some of the details of what we found and what theory predicts, but the theoretical predictions are quite old, and there have been a lot of improvements in the theory since then
• What This Might Mean
• Studying these objects represents a completely new model of how stellar interiors can work
• In these interiors we also have a new way of producing heavy elements in our universe
• Further Reading / In the News
• Astronomers discover first Thorne-Zytkow object, a bizarre type of hybrid star | ScienceDaily
• Astronomers Find Evidence of a Strange Type of Star | UniverseToday.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Waves on Saturns Moon?

• Cameras on NASA’s spacecraft Cassini recently saw what appear to be waves on one of Titan’s largest methane lakes, if confirmed, the discovery would mark the first time waves have been seen outside Earth.
• What Did They See?
• The team found patterns in the sunlight reflecting off a northern lake called Punga Mare that they interpret as two-centimeter-high waves
• It may simply be a mudflat instead of a deep lake, and a shallow film of liquid on top may be the cause of the unique light signature
• What it Might Mean
• Waves on Titan would confirm that the lakes actually are deep reservoirs of methane and ethane,
• If life on Titan exists, the best place to look is in large bodies of liquid, the kind that form waves
• True liquid bodies would also make a robotic spacecraft mission to explore Titan’s habitability more feasible
• More Certainty
• By 2017 scientists should know for certain whether what they are seeing is indeed caused by waves
• Cassini has been observing the moon during its northern winter, when weak winds are at work
• As spring starts over the next few years, it brings stronger winds to kick up seas, so the probe should capture more definitive evidence of waves if they exist
• Further Reading / In the News
• Lake on Saturn’s Largest Moon May Have Waves | Scientific American

Lunar Formation Theory Evidence?

• Current Lunar Formation Theory
• According to one lunar formation theory billions of years ago a Mars-sized body (sometimes called “Theia”) smashed into Earth
• Earth survived and the fragments from the crash gradually coalesced into the Moon that we see today
• The problem with this was that no evidence had been found of “Theia”
• Scientists now believe they have found traces of Theia in lunar rocks pulled from the Apollo missions
• Oxygen Isotopes
• Before, the “resolution” of microscopes couldn’t find any significant differences isotopes or types of oxygen of any of the Lunar samples of the Moon brought back by the Apollo missions
• New research appears to show a difference between the Earth and the Moon which implies that a body of different composition caused the changes
• The new data reveals the moon rocks have 12 parts per million more oxygen-17 than the Earth rocks
• “The differences are small and difficult to detect, but they are there,” | lead researcher Daniel Herwartz
• What This Means
• First, scientists can now be reasonably sure that the giant collision took place
• Second, it gives us an idea of the geochemistry of Theia
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Where Did The Moon Come From? – Do We Really Need the Moon? – Preview – BBC Two | BBC
• Further Reading / In the News
• The work was published in Science and will also be presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in California on June 11.
• Hulk Smash! Collision That Formed Our Moon Shows Up In Lunar Rocks, Study Says | UniverseToday.com
• New isotopic evidence supporting moon formation via Earth collision with planet-sized body | phys.org

—UPDATE—

Asteroid UQ4 Catalina Turns Comet – Still Looking Promising

• Last Time on SciByte …
• SciByte 130 | Solar Sibling & Comets | May 13, 2014
• Asteroid Turns Comet
• On October 23, 2013, astronomers with the Catalina Sky Survey picked up a very faint asteroid with an unusual orbit more like a that of a comet than an asteroid
• 2013 UQ4 belongs to a class of objects known as damocloids, these are thought to be inactive varieties of comet nuclei
• By May 7, the asteroid had grown a little fuzz, making the move to comethood, soon afterwards it displayed a substantial coma or atmosphere
• It is brightening on schedule and should be a binocular object greater than +10th magnitude by the end of June
• It will reach perihelion on July 6th only four days before its closest approach to the Earth
• At that point, the comet will have an apparent motion of about 7 degrees a day — that’s the span of a Full Moon once every 1 hour and 42 minutes
• Further Reading / In the News
• Asteroid-Turned-Comet 2013 UQ4 Catalina Brightens: How to See it This Summer | UniverseToday.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

ISEE-3 Reboot Project

• The team is now receiving information from the spacecraft’s magnetometer
• Last Time on SciByte …
• SciByte 132 | ISEE-3 Back To Life | May 27, 2014
• SciByte 133 | Orion Heat Shield & Dragon V2 | June 3, 2014
• What ISEE-3 Really Looks Like
• Spacecraft Mass: 479 kg [1,056 lb]
• Spacecraft Dimensions: 16-sided body 1.7m [5.6ft] diameter, 1.6m [5.2ft] high
• Spacecraft Power: solar cells
• Maximum Power: 173.0 W (nominal power)
• It has 4 large antennas that span 91 meters and it spins ~ once every 3 seconds
• The spacecraft is spinning at 19.16 rpm, the mission specification is 19.75 +/- 0.2 rpm so the spin rate of spacecraft is slightly below what it should be
• Image | ISEE-3 Status Report 5 June 2014 (Morning) | Space College
• Image | ISEE-3 Propulsion System Overview | Space College
• Using GNU Radio to Talk to ISEE-3
• The amazing accomplishment of successfully designing a deep-space uplink modulator in a couple of days was accomplished through a lot of team work, strong leadership, and generous support from the community at large
• The uplink commands to the spacecraft uses products like the Ettus Research USRP, the open source SDR framework GNU Radio have made this exceedingly easy
• Transmitting Rate Change
• On Just 9, the team was able to switch ISEE-3’s B transmitter to a data rate of 64 bps, they hope to eventually leave it this way so as to allow dishes smaller than Arecibo to complete the link and have solid two-way communication with ISEE-3.
• After this they were able to detect signals from the craft with an 8 foot dish
• Telemetry Data
• On June 12, telemetry from ISEE-3 indicating that its entire suite of science instruments is powered up and has been powered up since NASA last commanded the spacecraft many years ago
• The engineers are getting data back from the magnetometer that indicates that science data is coming back; however, just because an instrument is powered up doesn’t mean that it is functioning normally
• Some of the ISEE-3 instruments had begun to fail or become partially functional as early as 1982
• Spinning Up
• The team plans to briefly fire two of the spacecraft’s thrusters on 21 June so as to spin it up from 19.16 rpm to the mission specification of 19.75 +/- 0.2 rpm [the spin-up target is 19.733 rpm]
• This optimal spin rate is required in order to properly fire the axial thrusters during the much longer trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) we need to perform to adjust the spacecraft’s course
• Multimedia
• Image | ISEE-3 Status Report 5 June 2014 (Morning) | Space College
• Twitter | @ISEE3Reboot
• YouTube | ISEE-3 Reboot Channel
• Further Reading / In the News
• Space College: ISEE-3 Reboot Project Archives
• Contact With 36-Year Old Spacecraft Results in Dancing, Hugs. Now Comes Even Bigger Challenge | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• The Road Trip Continues
• Curiosity is currently driving toward Mount Sharp, the layered mountain at the middle of Mars’ Gale Crater.
• The rover is carrying with it some of the drilled powdered sample material from the Windjana location that can be delivered for additional internal laboratory analysis during pauses in the drive.
• Mercury Transit
• The observations were made on June 3, 2014
• Mercury fills only about one-sixth of one pixel as seen from such great distance, so the darkening does not have a distinct shape, but its position follows Mercury’s expected path based on orbital calculations.
• This is the first transit of the sun by a planet observed from any planet other than Earth, and also the first imaging of Mercury from Mars
• The same Mastcam frames show two sunspots approximately the size of Earth. The sunspots move only at the pace of the sun’s rotation, much slower than the movement of Mercury.
• Mercury and Venus transits are visible more often from Mars than from Earth, the next Mercury transit visible from Earth will be May 9, 2016.
• Mercury Passes in Front of the Sun, as Seen From Mars – Mars Science Laboratory | Mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Testing Future Landing Technologies
• Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) | nasa.gov
• The Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) will gather data about landing heavy payloads on Mars and other planetary surfaces
• As NASA plans increasingly ambitious robotic missions to Mars, laying the groundwork for even more complex human science expeditions to come, accommodating extended stays for explorers on the Martian surface will require larger and heavier spacecraft
• This test will use a helium balloon (that, when fully inflated, would fit snugly into Pasadena’s Rose Bowl) to lift the vehicle to 120,000 feet
• A fraction of a second after dropping from the balloon, and a few feet below it, four small rocket will stabilize the saucer
• A half second later, a solid-fueled rocket engine will send the test vehicle to the edge of the stratosphere
• “Our goal is to get to an altitude and velocity which simulates the kind of environment one of our vehicles would encounter when it would fly in the Martian atmosphere,” | Ian Clark, principal investigator of the LDSD project at JPL
• Two supersonic decelerator technologies that will be thoroughly tested during two LDSD flight tests next year.
• The SIAD-R, is essentially an inflatable doughnut that increases the vehicle’s size and, as a result, its drag to quickly slow the vehicle
• A second system being tested is the largest supersonic parachute ever flown, to be used when the craft first hits the supersonic flow
• NASA’s flying saucer-shaped test vehicle was not able to be flight tested during the reserved testing launch period unfavorable weather conditions, NASA is continuing to look at options for a future launch window.
• Multimedia
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mercury Passes in Front of the Sun, as Seen From Mars – Mars Science Laboratory | Mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• NASA’s LDSD ‘Flying Saucer’ Test–Update – Mars Science Laboratory | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• June 25, 1997 : 17 years ago : Space Station Mir Accident : The space-station Mir suffered a near-fatal mishap when a Progress ferry being docked via remote control by Russian cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev accidentally rammed into the Spektr science module, putting a hole in the pressure vessel and damaging its solar arrays beyond use. To salvage the station, which consisted of a core, a connecting node, and five science modules, crew members severed electrical and data connections between Spektr and the rest of the station and then sealed off the module. They saved the station but lost about half of their electrical power
• The One Martian Year Birthday to Curiosity June 24, 2014. The length of time for Mars to complete one orbit around the Sun is its sidereal year, and is about 686.98 Earth solar days.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Planets
• Mercury | Hidden by the sunrise
• Venus | Dawn | Low in the East
• Mars | Twilight | High in the SW, with the Blue-White giant star Spica to its left. Mars sets in the W ~ 1AM DST
• Jupiter | Twilight | Low in the W-NW in twilight, setting by nightfall

• Saturn | Evening | S sky in the evening

• Further Reading and Resources

• 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

The post Super-Earth & Lunar Formation | SciByte 134 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Hello everyone and welcome back to SciByte!

We take a look at an exoplanet picture, Autism Spectrum and sensory stimuli, a giant dinosaur in Argentina, viewer feedback, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | HD Video | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

Show Notes:

Direct Image of Exoplanet

• This week, an international team of researchers announced the discovery and direct image of an exoplanet 155 light years away
• The few planets for which we have an actual image are interesting because we can analyze their light directly, and thus learn much more about them
• The Exoplanet GU Psc B
• The primary star, GU Psc A, is an M3 red dwarf weighing in at 35% the mass of our Sun and is just 100 million years old
• It orbits its host star 2,000x farther than the distance from Earth to the Sun once every 80,000 Earth years
• It is also one of the “coolest” planets that have been directly imaged, showing methane absorption
• It is certainly the most distant exo-planet to a main-sequence star that has been found so far
• A Exo-Planet?
• The exoplanet is estimated to be 11 times the mass of Jupiter, just under the lower mass limit for brown dwarf status
• This distance makes GU Psc b very interesting from a theoretical point of view, because it’s hard to imagine how it could have formed in the protoplanetary disk of its star
• The current working definition of an exoplanet is based solely on mass (<13 Jupiter masses), so GU Psc b probably formed in a way that is more similar to how stars formed
• How Do We Know That They Are \’Together\’?
• The host star, GU Psc is relatively nearby; it displays a significant apparent proper motion relative to distant background stars and galaxies.
• On images taken one year apart with WIRCam on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, they observed that the companion displays the same big proper motion, i.e. they move together in the plane of the sky, while the rest of the stars in the field don’t
• The Technique
• Researchers targeted GU Psc after it was determined to be a member of the AB Doradus moving group of relatively young stars, which are prime candidates for exoplanet detection
• The fact that GU Psc B was captured by direct imaging at 155 light years distant is amazing
• Most planet hunting techniques using direct imaging involve state-of-the-art adaptive optics systems, but we the researchers ‘standard’ imaging without any exotic techniques
• The team was able to view the exoplanet by utilizing observations from the W.M. Keck observatory, the joint Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the Gemini Observatory and the Observatoire Mont-Mégantic in Québec.
• To find this planet, they used very sensitive ‘standard’ imaging, and carefully chose the wavelengths where planets display colors that are unlike most other astrophysical objects such as stars and galaxies
• Further Reading / In the News
• Direct Image of an Exoplanet 155 Light Years Away | UniverseToday.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Autism Spectrum and Sensory Stimuli

• A new small study shows certain areas in the brains of children diagnosed with autism spectrum overreact to sensory stimuli [i.e. touch of a scratchy sweater or loud traffic noises]
• The finding helps to explain why autistic kids are five times more likely than other children to be overwhelmed by everyday sensations
• The Low Down
• The finding helps to explain why kids with autism spectrum are five times more likely than other children to be overwhelmed by everyday sensations
• It\’s a condition called sensory over-responsivity, and it was recognized as one of the core features of autism spectrum disorder
• The Study
• Researchers recruited 32 children and teens. Half the group had been diagnosed as autism spectrum. The others were typically developing kids who were matched in age
• Scientists had them rest in a fMRI machine, a kind of scanner that can see brain activity in real time
• They touched the kids with a scratchy wool sweater, played loud traffic noises or did both at the same time. Each condition was repeated four times for 15 seconds
• Results
• The brains of children with autism spectrum reacted much more strongly to the sensory stimulation than did the brains of typically developing kids
• The two areas that seemed to be the most hyperactive were the primary sensory cortex, which is responsible for initially processing sensory information, and the amygdala, which is involved in emotional regulation.
• \”Typical kids, have an initial response almost immediately, then by the second time around, that response goes way down\” | Shula Green, Ph.D. candidate
• \”In kids with autism, that response really stays high throughout the scan. They\’re not getting used to it\” | Shula Green, Ph.D. candidate
• The hyperactivity the researchers saw on the brain scans became most intense when kids with autism spectrum experienced the two sensations at the same time
• \”I think if anybody ever had a doubt that this was just some sort of odd pickiness or something like that in people with autism spectrum,this shows, no, there really is a brain basis for this,\” | Dr. Paul Wang
• Further Reading / In the News
• Study probes why kids with autism are oversensitive to touch, noise | MedicalXPres

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

New Sauropod Dinosaur in Argentina

• Leinkupal Laticauda
• Scientists have identified a new diplodocid sauropod from the early Cretaceous period in Patagonia, Argentina — the first diplodocid sauropod discovered in South America
• Diplodocids are part of a group of sauropod dinosaurs known for their large bodies, as well as extremely long necks and tails
• Though the bones are fragmentary, scientists found differences between this species and other diplodocid species from North America and Africa in the vertebrae where the tail connects to the body
• These differences suggest to the authors that it may warrant a new species name, Leinkupal laticauda, and that it apparently lived much later than its North American and African cousins
• This existence suggests that the supposed extinction of the Diplodocidae around the end of the Jurassic or beginning of the Cretaceous period didn\’t occur globally and that they survived in South America at least during part of the Early Cretaceous.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | World\’s heaviest dinosaur bones discovered in Argentina, BBC News | MOSTNEWS©
• Further Reading / In the News
• First diplodocid sauropod from South America found -| ScienceDaily

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Greenhouses for Mars

• Contact form | Mark
• Mars Plant Experiment (MPX) Contribution to Mars 2020 Rover
• Mars Plant Experiment (MPX)
• Researchers have proposed putting a plant-growth experiment on NASA\’s next Mars rover scheduled to launch in mid-2020 and land on the Red Planet in early 2021, known as the Mars Plant Experiment (MPX),
• The designers of the MPX team say the project could help lay the foundation for the colonization of Mars,
• They aren\’t suggesting that the 2020 Mars rover should digging a hole with its robotic arm and planting seeds in the Red Planet\’s dirt.
• The experiment would be entirely self-contained, eliminating the chance that Earth life could escape and perhaps get a foothold on Mars.
  • MPX would employ a clear \”CubeSat\” box which would be affixed to the exterior of the 2020 rover
• This box would hold Earth air and about 200 seeds of Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant that\’s commonly used in scientific research
• The seeds would receive water when the rover touched down on Mars, and would then be allowed to grow for two weeks or so.
• MPX would provide an organism-level test of how Earth life deals with the Red Planet\’s relatively high radiation levels and low gravity, which is about 40 percent as strong as that of Earth,
• It also would be the first multicellular organism to grow, live and die on another planet
• Further Reading / In the News
• NASA May Put Tiny Greenhouse on Mars in 2021 | Space.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

New Horizons Message

• At the Smithsonian Future Is Here Festival in Washington, D.C., that NASA has agreed to upload a digital crowd-sourced message to the New Horizons spacecraft, New Horizons Message Initiative
• Last Time on SciByte …
• SciByte 104 | Fear & Lunar Formation | October 1, 2013
• SciByte 30 | Solar Storms & Private Space Flight | Jan 24, 2012
• Messages to Interstellar Space
• If all goes according to plan, New Horizons will become the fifth man-made object to travel beyond the solar system-after Pioneers 10 and 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2, it\’s the only one of the five not to launch with a message
• The Pioneer spacecrafts bore plaques on their sides, and the Voyagers each carried golden records (and the means to play them).
• When New Horizons\’ journey was being planned other missions had been scrapped and the budget was extremely tight and they didn\’t have the bandwidth for a message
• Now it doesn\’t cost massive amounts because there\’s no hardware, just uplinking ones and zeroes
• Jon Lomberg, who worked closely with Carl Sagan on the Voyager golden record in 1977, had an epiphany last year about sending the message digitally
• Lomberg approached Allan Stern, Principle investigator of New Horizons, who advised him that NASA would need evidence of public support
• In September 2013, Lomberg launched a website with a petition to NASA. By February 2014, 10,000 people from over 140 countries had signed it.
• Not a Prefect System
• \”As long as the spacecraft is healthy and the radio is working,\” \”there\’s no particular rush to send it\” but \”The spacecraft is so far away,\” \”that download times are like dial-up Internet.\”| Jon Lomberg,
• The New Horizons message won\’t last nearly as long as the metal missives attached to Pioneer and Voyager as cosmic radiation may eventually corrupt the spacecraft\’s electronic memory
• The Actual Message
• The project will officially launch August 25, 2014
• This message will be very different from the one Lomberg designed with Sagan almost 40 years ago, the 21st-century version will be a global self-portrait, pieced together by many willing hands
• Anyone on Earth will be able to upload potential content (images, sounds, software-the formats haven\’t been finalized) then everyone will be able to vote on what to include
• \”Our team is going to provide the overall architecture of the message,\” \”but we\’ll try to keep ourselves open to what we will send.\” | Jon Lomberg
• A National Geographic emerging explorer will have to figure out how to compress a planet\’s worth of opinions into the roughly 100 MB of memory New Horizons will have available on its computer.
• When Will It Be Sent?
• The message itself will be transmitted sometime after New Horizons does a flyby of Pluto in 2015 and sends back the scientific data that it collects
• The computer won\’t have any room in its memory until the data from Pluto are transmitted back to Earth, which could take more than a year
• There are also hopes that the spacecraft will have a shot at a flyby of another object in the Kuiper Belt of the solar system, if that happens, the message upload will be delayed
• Multimedia
• Twitter | NewHorizonsMsg: WE DID IT! – GLOBAL \”SELFIE\” | @NewHorizonsMsg
• Twitter | NewHorizonsMsg: .@NASA approved our petition! | @NewHorizonsMsg
• Further Reading / In the News
• New Horizons Web Site
• One Earth: New Horizons Message
• Global \”Selfie\” to Be Beamed to Outer Space | news.NationalGeographic.com
• Want to Phone Aliens? Help Get Your Messages On NASA\’s Pluto-Bound Spacecraft | Space.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Analyzing the Drilled Hole
• NASA\’s Curiosity Mars rover used the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) instrument on its robotic arm to illuminate and record a nighttime view of the sandstone rock target \”Windjana.\”
• The rover had previously drilled a hole to collect sample material from the interior of the rock and then zapped a series of target points inside the hole with the laser of the rover\’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument
• That instrument provides information about the target\’s composition by analysis of the sparks of plasma generated by the energy of the laser beam striking the target
• This view combines eight separate MAHLI exposures, taken at different focus settings to show the entire scene in focus
• The exposures were taken after dark on the 628th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity\’s work on Mars (May 13, 2014)
• Using MAHLI light-emitting diodes as well as a color camera yields an image of the hole\’s interior with less shadowing than would be seen in a sunlit image
• The camera\’s inspection of the interior of the hole provides documentation about what the drill bit passed through as it penetrated the rock — for example, to see if it cut through any mineral veins or visible layering
• Multimedia
• Preparing for drilling, Navcam Left B | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Preparing for drilling, Front Hazcam: Right B | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Nighttime Image of Laser Sharpshooting on Mars | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• May 26, 1676 : 338 years ago : Leeuwenhoek\’s Animalcules : Antonie van Leeuwenhoek applied his hobby of making microscopes from his own handmade lenses to observe some water running off a roof during a heavy rainstorm. He finds that it contains, in his words, “very little animalcules.” The life he has found in the runoff water is not present in pure rainwater. This was a fundamental discovery, for it showed that the bacteria and one-celled animals did not fall from the sky. When a ball of molten glass is inflated like a balloon, a small droplet of the hot fluid collects at the very bottom the bubble. Leeuwenhoek used these droplets as microscope lenses to view the animalcules. Despite their crude nature, those early lenses enabled Leeuwenhoek to describe an amazing world of microscopic life | Antonie van Leeuwenhoek | Wikipedia

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Thurs, May 22 | Fading Twilight | Mercury is low in the W-NW about 2.5 fist widths to the lower right of Jupiter
• Fri, May 23 | ~3am EDT | Possible new meteor shower, of unknown quality. Earth will pass through the debris trail of Comet 209P/Linear that will make closest approach on May 29 but will still be very faint
• Planets
• Mercury | Fading Twilight | In the W-NW to the lower right of Jupiter and will be fading as the week progresses
• Venus | \”Morning Star\” | Lower in the E

• Mars | Twilight | High in the S skies, setting in the West before dawn, Spika is to the far lower left

• Further Reading and Resources

• 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

The post Exoplanet Image & Autism Spectrum | SciByte 131 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at marijuana\’s effect on the brain, an \”Earth-like\” exoplanet, the brains distraction controls, a possible new moon for Saturn, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | HD Video | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

Show Notes:

Marijuana’s and Changes to the Brain

• Young adults who used marijuana only recreationally showed significant abnormalities in two key brain regions that are important in emotion and motivation
• The Study
• This is the first study to show casual use of marijuana is related to major brain changes
• Through different methods of neuroimaging, scientists examined the brains of young adults ages 18 to 25, from Boston-area colleges; 20 who smoked marijuana and 20 who didn\’t. Each group had nine males and 11 females
• The users underwent a psychiatric interview to confirm they were not dependent on marijuana
• The changes in brain structures indicate the marijuana users\’ brains are adapting to low-level exposure to marijuana
• Results
• The degree of brain abnormalities in these regions is directly related to the number of joints a person smoked per week, the more joints a person smoked, the more abnormal the shape, volume and density of the brain regions
• Some of these people only used marijuana to get high once or twice a week thinking a little recreational use shouldn\’t cause a problem; however, data directly says this is not the case
• Scientists examined the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala-key regions for emotion and motivation, and associated with addiction-in the brains of casual marijuana users and non-users
• Researchers analyzed three measures: volume, shape and density of grey matter to obtain a comprehensive view of how each region was affected.
• Both these regions in recreational pot users were abnormally altered for at least two of these structural measures and the degree of those alterations was directly related to how much marijuana the subjects used
• What is Means
• The study results fit with animal studies that show when rats are given tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) their brains rewire and form many new connections. THC is the mind-altering ingredient found in marijuana
• Think when people are in the process of becoming addicted, their brains from these new connections
• In animals, these new connections indicate the brain is adapting to the unnatural level of reward and stimulation from marijuana. These connections make other natural rewards less satisfying
• The brain changes suggest that structural changes to the brain are an important early result of casual drug use
• Researchers did not know the THC content of the marijuana, which can range from 5 to 9 percent or even higher, the THC content is much higher today than the marijuana during the 1960s and 1970s, which was often about 1 to 3 percent
• Further Reading / In the News
  • Casual marijuana use linked to brain abnormalities in students | MedicalXPress

— NEWS BYTE —

Another Earth-sized Exo-Planet

• The first Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of another star has been confirmed by observations with both the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Gemini Observatory
• The initial discovery, made by NASA\’s Kepler Space Telescope, is one of a handful of smaller planets found by Kepler and verified using large ground-based telescopes
• The System
• The host star, Kepler-186, is an M1-type dwarf star relatively close to our solar system, at about 500 light years and is in the constellation of Cygnus
• The star is very dim, being over half a million times fainter than the faintest stars we can see with the naked eye and is cooler than the Sun
• Five small planets have been found orbiting this star, four of which are in very short-period orbits and are very hot
• This Earth-sized planet, one of five orbiting this star, which is cooler than the Sun, resides in a temperate region where water could exist in liquid form
• Observations
• Neither Kepler (nor any telescope) is currently able to directly spot an exoplanet of this size and proximity to its host star all they can do is eliminate essentially all other possibilities so that the validity of these planets is really the only viable option
• With such a small host star, the team employed a technique that eliminated the possibility that either a background star or a stellar companion could be mimicking what Kepler detected
• Differential Speckle Survey Instrument (DSSI)
• The team obtained extremely high spatial resolution observations from the eight-meter Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii using a technique called speckle imaging, as well as adaptive optics (AO) observations from the ten-meter Keck II telescope
• The Gemini \”speckle\” data directly imaged the system to within about 400 million miles (about 4 AU, approximately equal to the orbit of Jupiter in our solar system) of the host star and confirmed that there were no other stellar size objects orbiting within this radius from the star
• It works on a principle that utilizes multiple short exposures of an object to capture and remove the noise introduced by atmospheric turbulence producing images with extreme detail
• The System
• Kenny MacLeod ‏@siabost9deas
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Kepler-186f : First Earth-size Planet Discovered in the Habitable Zone of Another Star [HD] | The Mars Underground
• Further Reading / In the News
• First potentially habitable Earth-sized planet confirmed: It may have liquid water | Phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

The Brains Distraction Control

• A new study to reveals that our brains rely on an active suppression mechanism to avoid being distracted by salient irrelevant information when we want to focus on a particular item or task
• This discovery opens up the possibility that environmental and/or genetic factors may hinder or suppress a specific brain activity that the researchers have identified as helping us prevent distraction.
• These results show clearly that this is only one part of the equation and that active suppression of the irrelevant objects is another important part
• Psychologists say their discovery could help scientists and health care professionals better treat individuals with distraction-related attentional deficits
• Distraction is a leading cause of injury and death in driving and other high-stakes environments
• Disorders associated with attention deficits, such as ADHD and schizophrenia, may turn out to be due to difficulties in suppressing irrelevant objects rather than difficulty selecting relevant ones
• Researchers are now turning their attention to understanding how we deal with distraction and why we can\’t suppress potentially distracting objects, whether some of us are better at doing so and why that is the case.
• Further Reading / In the News
• ADHD: Scientists discover brain\’s anti-distraction system | ScienceDaily

A New Moon for Saturn?

• A bright clump spotted orbiting Saturn at the outermost edge of its A ring may be a brand new moon in the process of being born
• The effects of this now 1,200-kilometer-long, 10-kilometer-wide arc of icy material were first seen in May 2012 traveling along the edge of the A ring
• The arc is thought to be the result of gravitational perturbations caused by an as-yet unseen embedded object about a kilometer wide – possibly a miniature moon in the process of formation
• The half-mile-wide object has been unofficially named “Peggy,” eventually it may coalesce into a slightly larger moon and move outward, establishing its own orbital path around Saturn
• This is how many of Saturn’s other moons are thought to have formed much further back in the planet’s history
• While it is possible that the bright perturbation is the result of an object’s breakup rather than formation, researchers are still looking forward to finding out more about its evolution.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Is Saturn Making a New Moon? | UniverseToday.com
• NASA Cassini Images May Reveal Birth of New Saturn Moon | NASA.gov
• NASA Cassini Missiom Page

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

SpaceX Dragon Delivery Mission

• Last Time on SciByte …
• SciByte 126 | Paraplegic Therapy & Exomoon – International Space Station (ISS) Glitch | April 15, 2014
• Latest Delivery
• The SpaceX 3 Dragon commercial cargo freighter successfully arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Easter Sunday morning, April 20
• The mission is the company’s third cargo delivery flight to the station and is loaded with nearly 2.5 tons of science experiments, it will remain attached to the station until May 18
• There are over 150 science experiments loaded aboard the Dragon capsule for research to be conducted by the crews of ISS Expeditions 39 and 40
• CRS-3 mission will deliver some 5000 pounds of science experiments, a high definition Earth observing imaging camera suite (HDEV), a pair of hi tech legs for Robonaut 2, a laser optical communications experiment (OPALS) and essential gear, the VEGGIE lettuce growing experiment, spare parts, crew provisions, food, clothing and supplies to the six person crews
• Included in this delivery is equipment needed for the repair of the Multiplexer-Demultiplexer (MDM) that controls a robotics mobile transporter, but also radiators and a joint to move the station’s solar arrays, among other things.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | U.S. SpaceX Dragon Ship Arrives at the International Space Station with Important cargo | NASA
• Further Reading / In the News
• Easter Sunday Space Station Rendezvous and Berthing for SpaceX Dragon Freighter Succeessful | UnivrseToday.com

New Horizons and Questions About Pluto

• Compositional Model Theories
• Two space researchers have published a paper where they describe three possible interior models of the former planet Pluto
• The possibilities include: an undifferentiated rock/ice mixture, a differentiated rock/ice mixture, and an ocean covered with ice, the third possibility suggests the likelihood, they claim, of tectonic action on the dwarf planet
• Scientists believe that Pluto came to exist as it does today, in part due to a collision billions of years ago that led also to the formation of its moon Charon
• When celestial bodies collide, not only do they knock each other around, they produce heat—heat, the researchers suggest that could still be evident today
• A theory that suggests that shortly after impact, Pluto and Charon were much closer together where the gravity attraction between them would have caused both to be egg shaped.
• As time passed, melted ice from the impact would have created an icy crust on top of an ocean on Pluto
• As Charon moved farther away, the attractive pull would have diminished, causing ice plates to form and crack against one another, a form of tectonics.
• If that were the case, the two add, then in all likelihood, when New Horizons begins sending back images, they should see evidence of such tectonic action—plate edges thrust into the air
• Pluto circles the sun in an elliptical orbit, thus sometimes it\’s much closer to the sun than other times, when near, it has a defined atmosphere, when far away however, its atmosphere actually freezes to its surface
• Something that could hide ridges in the ice and thus evidence of both tectonic activity and an ocean beneath the crust of ice
• New Horizons will arrive during a time when its atmosphere is frozen to the surface, it might be difficult to determine which of the three proposed models actually describes the relationship between its exterior and interior
• Further Reading / In the News
• Research pair offer three possible models of Pluto ahead of New Horizons visit | Phys.org
• New Horizons | NASA

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• New Science Location
• Scientists using NASA\’s Curiosity Mars rover are eyeing a rock layer surrounding the base of a small butte, called \”Mount Remarkable,\” as a target for investigating with tools on the rover\’s robotic arm
• The butte stands about 16 feet (5 meters) high. Curiosity\’s science team refers to the rock layer surrounding the base of Mount Remarkable as the \”middle unit\” because its location is intermediate between rocks that form buttes in the area and lower-lying rocks that show a pattern of striations
• Depending on what the mission scientists learn from a close-up look at the rock and identification of chemical elements in it, a site on this middle unit may become the third rock that Curiosity samples with its drill
• Multimedia
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• NASA Mars Orbiter Spies Rover Near Martian Butte | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• April 25, 1990 : 24 years ago : Hubble Space Telescope : In 1990, the $2.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope was deployed in space from the Space Shuttle Discovery into an orbit 381 miles above Earth. It was the first major orbiting observatory, named in honour of American astronomer, Edwin Powell Hubble. It was seven years behind schedule and nearly $2 billion over budget. In orbit, the 94.5-in primary mirror was found to be flawed, giving blurred images and reduced ability to see distant stars. However, correcting optics were successfully installed in 25 Dec 1993. The telescope 43-ft x 14-ft telescope now provides images with a clarity otherwise impossible due to the effect of the earth\’s atmosphere. Instrument packages capture across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Looking up this week

• Solar Eclipse
• On April 29th, an annular solar eclipse occurs over a small D-shaped 500 kilometre wide region of Antarctica
• 2014 has the minimum number of eclipses possible in one year, with four: two partial solars and two total lunars
• This month’s solar eclipse is also a rarity in that it’s a non-central eclipse with one limit, where the center of the Moon’s shadow – known as the antumbra during an annular eclipse – will juuuust miss the Earth and instead pass scant kilometres above the Antarctic continent
• Out of 3,956 annular eclipses occurring from 2000 BCE to 3000 AD, only 68 (1.7%) are of the non-central variety
• An annular eclipse occurs when the Moon is too distant to cover the disk of the Sun, resulting in a bright “annulus” or “ring-of-fire” eclipse
• Several southern Indian Ocean islands and all of Australia will still witness a fine partial solar eclipse from this event, a scattering of islands in the southern Indian Ocean will see a 55% eclipsed Sun.
• In Australia, Perth will see a 55% eclipsed Sun and Sydney will be able to see a 50% partial eclipse low to the horizon in west at sunset
• Don\’t Forget to Use Safe Viewing Practices
• The safest way | Pinhole camera/projector and telescope — pinhole projector
• Optical Filters | Eclipse glasses, welder\’s goggles rated at 14
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Safely See the Sun — Build a Shoebox Pinhole Camera | VideoFromSpace
• YouTube | The April 29th, 2014 Annular Eclipse: Sims from Space | astroguyz
• Further Reading / In the News

• Our Guide to the Bizzare April 29th Solar Eclipse UniverseToday.com

• Keep an eye out for …

• Fri, April 25 | Dawn | The thin crescent Moon is low in the E and left of Venus
• Planets
• Venus | \”Morning Star\” | Look to the E-SE as daylight approached
• Mars | Just past opposition you can see it most of the night. In the evening is is in the SW with Spica below it, both will be at their highest point around local 12pm DST moving towards the NE as dawn approaches
• Jupiter | Twilight | High in the SW sinking towards the W horizon as the night progresses

• Saturn | End of Twilight | Highest in the S around 2am

• Further Reading and Resources

• 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

The post Marijuana & “Exo-Earth” | SciByte 127 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at my top science stories and events of 2013, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

— Book Pic: —

• Area 51: An Uncensored History of America\’s Top Secret Military Base Audiobook | Annie Jacobsen | Audible.com

Curiosity | Evidence of Ancient Habitable Water Locations

• Habitable Water
• Jan | Curiosity sees calcium rich deposits that on Earth are associated with water percolating through cracks and fractured rocks.
• Mar | Drilling samples taken in Feb show that the minerals that are present in a lakebed sedimentary rock at John Klein were very different from just about anything ever analyzed before on Mars and was deposited in a freshwater environment
• Sep | The Curiosity rover team revealed that the first scoop of soil analyzed by the rover showed several percent water by weight.
• Dec | Curiosity rover has discovered evidence that an ancient Martian lake had the right chemical ingredients that could have sustained microbial life
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Curiosity Rover Report (Jan. 18, 2013): Curiosity Finds Calcium-Rich Deposits | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• YouTube | Curiosity Rover Report (Mar. 15, 2013): Rover Hits Paydirt | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Image | Pebbly Sandstone Conglomerate Rock at Curiosity’s Waypoint 1 | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• YouTube | Curiosity Rover Report (Dec. 9, 2013): Dating Younger Rocks | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• SciByte Episodes
• SciByte 78 | Dyscalculia & the Flu | January 22, 2013
• SciByte 86 | Exoplanet & Bee Venom | March 19, 2013
• SciByte 104 | Fear & Lunar Formation | October 1, 2013
• SciByte 112 | Typing & Dying Silk | December 10, 2013

— NEWS BYTE —

Voyager 1 | “Interstellar Space” Announcement

• September
• NASA says that the Voyager 1 spacecraft is in interstellar space and actually made the transition about a year ago.
• Evidence is overwhelming that Voyager 1 has crossed the heliopause, but acknowledge that they have to determine why the magnetic field direction didn’t shift.
• The data does show that Voyager 1 in certainly in a new region at the edge of the solar system where things are changing rapidly
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Voyager Captures Sounds of Interstellar Space | Sep 6, 2013
• YouTube | Voyager Welcomed To Interstellar Space | VideoFromSpace
• YouTube | Voyager 1 Goes Interstellar: Solar System Boundary Passed | VideoFromSpace
• SciByte Episodes
• SciByte 102 | Voyager 1 & Insect Gears | September 17, 2013

Exoplanets

• How Common are Habitable Planets
• Astronomers have analyzed all four years of Kepler data in search of Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of sun-like stars
• Based on the analysis, they estimate that 22 percent of stars like the sun have potentially habitable Earth-size planets, though not all may be rocky or have liquid water
• [SciByte 109 | ‘Earth-Like’ Planets & Sharks | November 12, 2013]
• Clouds on Alien Planet Mapped for 1st Time
• Astronomers using data from NASA\’s Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have created the first cloud map of a planet known as Kepler-7b
• Kepler\’s visible-light observations of Kepler-7b\’s moon-like phases led to a rough map of the planet that showed a bright spot on its western hemisphere
• That data was not enough on its own to decipher whether the bright spot was coming from clouds or heat
• [SciByte 105 | Exoplanet Clouds & Updates | October 15, 2013]
• Two Potentially Habitable Planets
• Astronomers have announced that they have found three new, potentially rocky, planets in the habitable zone of their stars by analyzing nearly three years’ worth of data
• Two of the worlds, are the smallest exoplanets yet found in a habitable zone, and they might both be covered in water or ice, depending on what kind of atmosphere they might have
• [SciByte 92 | Habitable Exoplanets & Diabetes | May 7, 2013]
• Exoplanet Atmosphere
• Found hints of ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and acetylene in an exo-planets’ atmosphere in the sharpest spectrum ever obtained of an extrasolar planet
• [SciByte 86 | Exoplanet & Bee Venom | March 19, 2013]
• Small Exoplanet Discovered by Listening to Star
• Scientists discovered a new planet orbiting a Sun-like star, and the exoplanet is the smallest yet found in data from the Kepler mission
• They discovered it by measuring oscillations in the star’s brightness caused by continuous star-quakes, and turning those tiny variations in the star’s light into sounds
• [SciByte 83 | Tiny Exo-planet & Medical Glue | February 26, 2013]
• Multimedia
• YouTube | One in Five Sun-Like Stars Have \’Goldilocks\’ Planets | VideoFromSpace
• YouTube | Remote Reconnaissance of Another Solar System | American Museum of Natural History
• 3D Visualization Tool | A fully rendered tool, available for download at eyes.nasa.gov/exoplanets

International and Private Space Travel

• India’s Mars Orbiter Mission
• India’s first ever Mars probe ‘MOM’ successfully fired its main engine on Dec. 1 to begin its nearly yearlong momentous voyage to Mars
• ISRO’s engineers devised a procedure to get the spacecraft to Mars on the least amount of fuel via six “Midnight Maneuver” engine burns over several weeks – and at an extremely low cost
• This maneuver increases the ship’s velocity and gradually widens the ellipse eventually raising the apogee of the six resulting elliptical orbits around Earth that eventually injects MOM onto the Trans-Mars trajectory
• SciByte 111| Memories & International Spacecraft (December 3, 2013)
• SciByte 109 | ‘Earth-Like’ Planets & Sharks (November 12, 2013)
• SciByte 107 | Dinosaurs & Satellites (October 29, 2013)
• Chinese Lunar Lander
• China had a successful touchdown of the Chang’e-3 probe with the ‘Yutu’ rover on the surface of the Moon on Dec. 14
• They landed on the lava filled plains of the Bay of Rainbows occurred at about 8:11 am EST or 9:11 p.m. Beijing local time
• Barely seven hours after the Chang’e-3 mothership touched down on Sunday, Dec. 15, the six wheeled ‘Yutu’, or Jade Rabbit, rover drove straight off a pair of ramps at 4:35 a.m. Beijing local time
• SciByte 113 | Freshwater Aquifers & Brain Plasticity (December 17, 2013)
• Bigelow Aerospace’s | Genesis, Inflatable Space Station Modules
• On Jan 11 NASA announced they have awarded a $17.8 million contract to Bigelow to provide a new inflatable module for the ISS, making it the first privately built module to be added to the space station
• The outer shell of their module is soft, as opposed to the rigid outer shell of current modules at the ISS, Bigelow’s inflatable modules are more resistant to micrometeoroid or orbital debris strikes it uses multiple layers of Vectran, a material which is twice as strong as Kevlar
• The company wants to launch and link up several of its larger expandable modules to create private space stations, which could be used by a variety of clients.
• SciByte 77 | Breath Analysis & Large Structures (January 15, 2013)
• SpaceX | Geostationary Orbit
• The Dec 3 liftoff at 5:41 p.m. EST (2241 GMT) marked SpaceX\’s first entry into the large commercial satellite market and its first launch into a geostationary transfer orbit needed for such a mission.
• Being able to launch into this new orbit will let SpaceX compete against Europe and Russia to haul large telecommunications satellites into orbit.
• This launch also marks the second of three certification flights needed to certify the Falcon 9 to fly missions for the U.S. Air Force under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program
• When Falcon 9 is certified, SpaceX will be eligible to compete for all National Security Space (NSS) missions

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Science Events of 2013

• Kepler Space Telescope
• Jan | Kepler develops another reaction wheel problem, \’rests\’ for 1 days and then goes back to work | SciByte 78 | Dyscalculia & the Flu | January 22, 2013
• May | [SciByte 94] | The second of four reaction wheel fails and may bring the mission to an end. NASA starts to put options together
• Aug | NASA announces that Kepler may not fully recover, ends primary mission, opens up the possibility and ideas of another mission
• K2 Second Light | Uses pressure from photons from the Sun some functionality will return
• Image Galleries | kepler.nasa.gov
• Twitter | NASA Kepler [@NASAKepler]
• Russian Chelyabinsk Meteorite
• SciByte 82 | Meteorites & Asteroids – 2013 Russian Meteorite Strike | February 19, 2013
• SciByte 83 |
  Tiny Exo-planet & Medical Glue – Russian Meteorite Orbital Calculations | February 26, 2013
• SciByte 84 |
  HIV & SpaceX Troubles – Russian Meteorite Chunk Found | March 5, 2013
• Infographic | Huge Russian Meteor Blast is Biggest Since 1908 | Space.com
• YouTube | Meteorite crash in Russia: Video of meteorite explosion that stirred panic in Urals region | RT
• YouTube Huge hole as Russian meteor smashes into icy lake | RT
• YouTube | Meteor Hits Russia 2013 – Best Footage Collection | Tuvix72

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Software Upgrade
• Curiosity engineers uploaded the third upgrade version of the software, completing the switch to the new software took about a week
• Wheel Wear
• An upcoming activity will be driving to a relatively smooth patch of ground to take a set of images of Curiosity\’s aluminum wheels, using the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the rover\’s arm.
• Curiosity\’s recent driving has crossed an area that has numerous sharp rocks embedded in the ground. Routes to future destinations for the mission may be charted to lessen the amount of travel over such rough terrain, compared to smoother ground nearby.
• Multimedia
• Image | Left-Front Wheel of Curiosity Rover, Approaching Three Miles | mars.nasa.gov/msl
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Curiosity Team Upgrades Software, Checks Wheel Wear | December 20, 2013

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• Jan 11, 1954 : 59 years ago : First UK TV Weather Broadcast : The first in-vision weather forecaster broadcast on BBC television. George Cowling of the Meteorological Office presented from the BBC\’s Lime Grove studios with two hand-drawn weather charts pinned to an easel.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Fri, Jan 10 | Nightfall | To the left of the moon you might be able to see the Pleiades star cluster, by 8-9 they will be above the moon
• Sat, Jan 11 | Dusk | The orange giant star Aldebaran, \’eye\’ of the Constellation Taurus, will be below the moon and moving to the left of the Moon by around 11
• Planets
• Venus | Hiding in the glare of the sun
• Mars | ~midnight | HIghest in the S before first light of dawn, with Spica to the lower left
• Jupiter | Rises at sunset, highest in the sky around midnight. In the evenings it is the brightest object in the sky. On Jan 5, it is in opposition, directly opposite the Sun from our perspective.

• Saturn | Dawn it\’s in the SE, far to the lower left of Mars and Spica

• Further Reading and Resources

• 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

The post Happy Science of 2013 | SciByte 114 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at a strange exo-planet, SpaceX rocket testing, an Australian ‘lost world’, simulating dinosaurs walk, viewer feedback about human regeneration, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

[asa]B00E8S2JZ4[/asa]

Hot Exoplanet is NOT a \’New Earth\’

• A team of astronomers have discovered an earth-like blazing hot planet that shouldn\’t exist
• No matter what the headlines say, just because an exoplanet has somewhat like Earth in density or size, it doesn\’t mean it\’s habitable.
• The Star Kepler 78
• A sun-like G-type star
• It is located 400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus
• Discovered using data from NASA\’s Kepler Space Telescope with follow up observations were made using W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii
• Kepler 78-b
• First known Earth-sized planet with an Earth-like density
• Diameter of 9,200 miles, 1.2 times the size of Earth
• Mass is 1.7 times more than Earth
• Composed of iron and rock
• Orbit Length | 8.5 hours
• Distance from star | 1.6 km / 1 mi
• Kepler 78-b Mass Measurements
• Two independent research teams have now confirmed the planet’s mass and density by measuring “wobbles” of its sun-like host star, seen as the exoplanet orbits around it
• Generally it is difficult to measure the mass of planets that Kepler finds because it is hard for ground-based telescopes to spot the subtle wobble of the star
• In the case of Kepler 78-b since it orbits so close to its star, the planet exerts a greater gravitational pull on the star that it would if it were as far as Earth is from our sun
• Breaking The Rules
• When this planetary system was forming, the young star was larger than it is now meaning that it would have been inside the swollen star
• The planet couldn’t have formed farther out and migrated inward, because it should have been drawn straight into the star
• One of the more exotic possibilities is that it is the remnant core of a disrupted gas giant
• The extreme gravitational pull from its star will draw it ever closer in, ripping the entire planet apart in about three billion years
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Earth-like planet Kepler 78b | Nature Newsteam
• Further Reading / In the News
  +New Earth-Like Blazing Hot Planet ‘Kepler-78b’ Discovered | ScienceWorld.com
• New-found Earth-size Exoplanet Doomed – News Watch | Newswatch.NationalGeographic.com
  +Kepler Discovers Earth-Sized Mystery Planet – Popular Mechanics

— NEWS BYTE —

SpaceX Will Be Renting Test Space From NASA

• SpaceX has signed a contract to research, develop and test Raptor methane rocket engines at the NASA Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi
• Testing
• SpaceX currently does most of its rocket testing in Texas
• Now the plan is to use the E-2 test stand at Stennis, which is able to support both vertical and horizontal rocket engine tests
• The E-2 stand is big enough for components, but SpaceX would need a bigger stand for the whole Raptor
• Reportedly SpaceX is working out a Space Act agreement to establish user fees, amongst other things, once an agreement is finalized the testing can begin as early as next year
• Used For?
• There is little information on SpaceX’s website about what the Raptor engine is or specific development plans
• Space News reports that it would be used for deep-space missions
• There are multiple reports that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has mentioned the engine previously when talking about Mars missions
• Raptor Rocket Engine, What We Know
• Intended to power a higher performance upper stage for SpaceX launch vehicles, powered by methane and liquid oxygen (LOX)
• Designed to produce more than 661,000 lbf (2,940 kN) thrust in vacuum, which is the space environment that the Raptor second-stage engine is designed for.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Methane Rocket | Christopher Martinez
• Further Reading / In the News
• Stennis Space Center
• SpaceX Signs Pact To Start Rocket Testing At NASA Stennis | UniverseToday.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Australian \’Lost World\’

• An expedition to a remote part of northern Australia has uncovered three new vertebrate species isolated for millions of years
• The Discovery
• James Cook University and a National Geographic film crew were dropped by helicopter onto the rugged Cape Melville mountain range on Cape York Peninsula
• Cape Melville, a plateau of boulder-strewn rainforest on top
• The virtually impassable mountain range is home to millions of black granite boulders the size of cars and houses piled hundreds of metres high
• National Geographic, the team plans to return to Cape Melville within months to search for more new species, including snails, spiders, and perhaps even small mammals
• What Was Found
• Leaf-tail gecko, a gold-coloured skink-a type of lizard-and a brown-spotted, yellow boulder-dwelling frog, none of them ever seen before
• The Cape Melville Leaf-tailed Gecko, which has huge eyes and a long, slender body, is highly distinct from its relatives
• A small boulder-dwelling frog, the Blotched Boulder-frog, which during the dry season lives deep in the labyrinth of the boulder-field where conditions are cool and moist. The tadpoles even develop within the egg and a fully formed frog hatches out in the absence of water
• Further Reading / In the News
• \’Lost world\’ discovered in remote Australia | Phys.org
• Leaf-tailed gecko, golden-coloured skink and boulder-dwelling frog: New species found in Australia\’s lost world | independent.co.uk
• Spectacular New Species Found in \”Lost World\” | news.nationalgeographic.com

How Dinosaurs Walked

• Researchers have managed to use an advanced computer model to recreate the walking and running movements of the vast Cretaceous Argentinosaurus dinosaur
• Argentinosaurus
• The dinosaur lived on the then-island continent of South America somewhere between 97 and 94 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous
• Not much of Argentinosaurus has been recovered, but the proportions of the bones found and comparisons with other sauropod relatives allow paleontologists to estimate the its size
• The dinosaur weighed about 80 tons, making it one of the largest known dinosaurs, and the model showed that it would have reached about 5 mph when it walked across the Earth
• The Computer Model
• To create this computer model, the researchers laser scanned a 40 meter-long skeleton of Argentinosaurus
• The simulation used the equivalent of 30,000 desktop computers to allow the dinosaur to take its first steps in over 94 million years
• The digitization of such vast dinosaur skeletons using laser scanners brings Walking with Dinosaurs to life…this is science not just animation
• Currently, the researchers plan to use this same computer technique in order to model the steps of other dinosaurs, such as the Triceratops, Brachiosaurus and T. rex.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Argentinosaurus dinosaur digital reconstruction The University of Manchester: Dr Bill Sellers | Alison Barbuti
• YouTube | Argentinosaurus – Planet Dinosaur – Episode 5 | BBC
• Further Reading / In the News
• Scientists Digitally Reconstruct Movements of Largest Dinosaur in the World (Video) | Phys.org
• Argentinosaurus | Wikipedia

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Human Regeneration … Soon-ish?

• Michael Thalleen ‏@ThalleenM
• Regrowing human body parts: The dream comes within reach | nbcnews.com
• Sometime in the next few decades, humans may be able to regrow a finger, toe, or among the most promising targets, maybe even fresh patches of beating heart tissue
• Research
• A decade ago scientists demonstrated that zebrafish have the ability to repair a badly damaged heart, thanks to a particular protein that regulates the regenerative process
• Young mice are able to regenerate toes, and the salamander can regrow a whole arm below the joint
• In 2010, one lab showed it was possible to enhance that same regenerative response in adult mice
• Researchers have been studying mouse toes to understand how a similar regrowth mechanism can be reactivated or imitated in adult humans
• In Humans
• Humans already have demonstrated some ability to regenerate body parts, very young children can fill out the tips of chopped off fingers and toes
• In August researchers from the Gladstone Institutes showed that they could turn human scar tissue into electrically conductive tissue in a lab dish by fiddling with just a few key genes
• Among the hurdles that lie ahead: taking that technique out of the lab and applying it to living human hearts
• Researchers are still cautious about predicting how studies of animal regeneration will be applied to humans and it\’s dangerous to say, \’Yes, we expect to regenerate a limb\’ although the field is reaching a turning point

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

h
+ NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity completed its first two-day autonomous drive Monday, Oct 28
+ During an autonomous drive the rover chooses a safe route to designated waypoints by using its onboard computer to analyze stereo images that it takes during pauses in the drive
+ The autonomous drive brought Curiosity to about 80m (262 ft) from \”Cooperstown,\” an outcrop bearing candidate targets for examination with instruments on the rover\’s arm.
+ Cooperstown is about one-third of the way along the route to Mount Sharp
+ Improvements
+ A key activity planned for this week, week of Nov. 4, is uploading a new version of onboard software the third such upgrade since landing
+ Include what information the rover can store overnight to resume autonomous driving the next day.
+ It also expands capabilities for using the robotic arm while parked on slopes
+ Multimedia
+ Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
+ Social Media
+ Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
+ Further Reading / In the News
+ Mars Science Laboratory: NASA\’s Curiosity Mars Rover Approaches \’Cooperstown\’ | mars.jlp.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• November 11, 1572 : 441 years ago : Tycho\’s Supernova / SN1572 : Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe began his meticulous observations of the supernova discovered in the W-shaped constellation of Cassiopeia. (Brahe was at the beginning of his career in 1572, and it was this supernova that inspired him to devote his lifetime to making accurate measurements of the positions of the stars and planets.) First noted by Wolfgang Schuler*of Wittenberg, for two weeks it was brighter than any other star in the sky and visible in daytime. By month\’s end, it began to fade but it remained visible to the naked eye for about 16 months until Mar 1574. Thus 16th-century astronomers learned that the heavens were not immutable, as had been believed. Brahe\’s book on his observations, De Nova Stella, originated the word “nova.”
• SN 1572 | Wikipedia

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Wed, Nov 6 | Evening | Venus and the crescent Moon are close in the SW sky
• Sat, Nov 9 | First-quarter Moon to the SW
• Planets
• Venus | dusk | Is in the SW around dusk moving to set in the E-NE near the stars Castor and Pollux of the constellation Gemini
• Mars | Rises around 1-2am standard | Moves E, opposite to the stars, moving farther away from Regulus (blue-white star) and by dawn both are high in the S sky
• Comet ISON | Just before dawn | Below mars, but still only a telescopic object

• Jupiter | 9-10am standard | Rises in the E-NE moving to the high Southern sky by dawn

• Further Reading and Resources

• 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

The post “Hot-Earths” & New Species | SciByte 108 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at exoplanetary clouds, updating atomic weights, plastic on Saturn\’s moon, viewer feedback, story and spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

[asa]B00E8G5H6Y[/asa]

— Show Notes —

Exoplanet Clouds

• Astronomers using data from NASA\’s Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have created the first cloud map of a planet known as Kepler-7b
• Kepler-7b
• One of the first five planets to be confirmed by NASA\’s Kepler spacecraft, and was confirmed in the first 33.5 days of Kepler\’s science operations
• Kepler-7b is a hot Jupiter that is about half the mass of Jupiter, but is nearly 1.5 times its size, and orbits its star every five days
• Previous observations of Kepler-7b revealed that it could float on water
• Temperature and Light Data
• Kepler\’s visible-light observations of Kepler-7b\’s moon-like phases led to a rough map of the planet that showed a bright spot on its western hemisphere
• That data was not enough on its own to decipher whether the bright spot was coming from clouds or heat
• Spitzer can fix its gaze at a star system as a planet orbits around the star, gathering clues about the planet\’s atmosphere
• Spitzer\’s ability to detect infrared light means it was able to measure Kepler-7b\’s temperature, estimating it to be between 1,500 and 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 and 1,300 Kelvin).
• What the Temperature and Lights Measurements Mean
• Those measurements are relatively cool for a planet that orbits so close to its star, within 0.06 astronomical units (one astronomical unit is the distance from Earth and the sun)
• The measurements are also too cool to be the source of light Kepler observed.
• Astronomers don\’t expect to see oceans or continents on this type of world, but they do detected a clear, reflective signature that they interpreted as clouds
• What it All Means
• By observing Kepler-7b with Spitzer and Kepler for more than three years, scientists were able to produce a very low-resolution \’map\’ of this giant, gaseous planet
• Astronomers determined that light from the planet\’s star is bouncing off cloud tops located on the west side of the planet.
• The patterns on this planet do not seem to change much over time, indicating it has a remarkably stable climate
• The Future
• Combining Spitzer and Kepler data together offers scientists with a multi-wavelength tool for getting a good look at exoplanets
• This is bringing advancements to exoplanet science, moving beyond just detecting exoplanets, and into the exciting science of understanding them
• 3D Visualization Tool
• A fully rendered tool, available for download at eyes.nasa.gov/exoplanets
• The program is updated daily with the latest findings from NASA\’s Kepler mission and ground-based observatories around the world as they search for planets
• Also Pointed Out By
• Paul Hill ‏@P_H_9_3 on Twitter
• Further Reading / In the News
• NASA Space Telescopes Find Patchy Clouds on Exotic World – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory | jpl.nasa.gov
• Clouds On Alien Planet Mapped for 1st Time | Space.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Updating Atomic Weights

• The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, IUPAC, has changed the official atomic weights of 19 elements
• Atomic Weights
• Every atom of an element, silver for example, has the same number of protons
• Silver has 47, but not every atom of an element necessarily has the same number of neutrons
• Different versions of an element\’s atoms are called isotopes, Silver occurs as silver-109 and silver-107
• Chemists calculate the atomic weight of an element that you see on the periodic table from the masses of its isotopes, giving more common isotopes more weight than less common isotopes
• This doesn\’t necessarily mean every sample of silver on Earth has an atomic weight of exactly
• Samples of elements vary from place to place, and the differences play an important role in many sciences
• The differences help chemists trace the origin of different materials and help date archaeological findings
• Not a Big a Deal, But Why Do It?
• The latest atomic weights measurements differ too little from their predecessors to really change science
• The changes in weights mostly come from continuing improvements in atomic mass measurements thanks to advances in the technology behind mass spectrometers
• They can also change how they view the number of isotopes an element has
• For example, the IUPAC had previously thought that thorium-230 was too rare to include in atomic weight calculations, they now recognize it
• The last time international chemistry really altered the periodic table was in 2009, when IUPAC decided to list the atomic weights of some elements as ranges, instead of single numbers
• The Changes
• Atomic weights are relative, so they don\’t have units
• Molybdenum, Losing 0.0122
• Thorium, Losing 0.000322
• Yttrium and Niobium, Tied, Losing 0.00001
• Selenium, Gaining 0.0088
• Cadmium, Gaining 0.0026
• Holmium, Thulium and Praseodymium, all Gaining 0.00001
• Further Reading / In the News
• Chemistry\’s Biggest Loser: Official Atomic Weights Change For 19 Elements | Popular Science
• Periodic Table of the Elements | chemistry.about.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013

• The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 | Nobelprize.org
• The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 was awarded jointly to Francois Englert and Peter W. Higgs \”for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN\’s Large Hadron Collider\”
• Last Time on SciByte
• SciByte53 | Higgs Boson July 10, 2012
• SciByte 76 | Resolutions & Martian Meteorite | January 8, 2013

Plastic in Titan’s Clouds?

• An essential chemical used in the creation of plastic on Earth has been found in Saturn\’s largest moon, Titan
• Scientists used Cassini\’s composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) instrument, which measures infrared light given off by Saturn and its moon, made the discovery
• Cassini Measures Propylene
• NASA\’s Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn, found that the atmosphere of Titan contains propylene
• Propylene is a key ingredient of plastic containers, car bumpers and other everyday items on Earth
• Strung together in long chains it can form a plastic called polypropylene
• Helps Explain Voyager 1 Data
• This helps answer a decades old question
• When Voyager 1 conducted the first close flyby of the moon in 1980, it recognized gasses in the moon\’s brown atmosphere as hydrocarbons.
• Those measurement were very difficult to make because propylene weak signature is crowded by related chemicals with much stronger signals
• Multimedia
• YouTube Clip | Plastic Moon: Propylene Detected On Titan | VideoFromSpace
• Further Reading / In the News
• [NASA Finds Ingredient for Plastic on Saturn\’s Moon Titan | Space.com](NASA Finds Ingredient for Plastic on Saturn\’s Moon Titan | Space.com)

Now There Are Robots Who Run …

• Last Time on SciByte …
• SciByte 62 | Stradivarius & Tigers – Boston-Dynamics Robot’s | September 11, 2012
• Boston Dynamics | The Wildcat
• The WildCat is a brand new robot created to run fast on all types of terrain, and so far its top speed has been about 16 mph on flat terrain using both bounding and galloping gaits.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Introducing WildCat | BostonDynamics
• YouTube | Cheetah Robot runs 28.3 mph; a bit faster than Usain Bolt | BostonDynamics
• Further Reading / In the News
• This Video of a Cyborg Quadriped Will Have You Gasping in Terror | Universetoday.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Ice Cap Growing/Shrinking?

• Nogal
• In the chat room I brought up the fact that the ice caps have been growing, yet everyone called me a nut
• Sorry, Staying Away From Hot Button Issues
• First SciByte will neither agree or disagree with a highly hot button issue
• Some studies can be made to agree in either direction you feel
• There are studies that say the area of the Antarctic polar cap is expanding while the Arctic is decreasing
• There are also studies arguing about the thickness of both polar sheets
• Adding to the confusion and arguments is an article from National Snow and Ice Data Center showing significant shrinking of the area of the polar cap actually had an error
• In addition there are arguments about global heating/cooling/climate change over what time span and comparing to historical data
• For issues such as this it is important to find data from as impartial sources as you can, and to also look at the data that argues against how you feel

Food Science

• Matt
• Have you ever considered doing an episode on some of Chris\’ beliefs about nutrition and food?
• Sorry, Staying Away From Some Food Health Science
• While I might talk about what science is saying about how food interacts with the human body I’m not a dietician or a medical doctor so I’m going to stay away from dietary issue
• Studies that talk about how one specific thing affects how interacts with your well being and health I view as somewhat bordering on fuzzy science
• There are so many things that can affect your health it is hard to say anything specific about the general population
• There are also many people with restrictive diets because of allergies or sensitivities that restrict diets that only affect specific portions of the population

— Updates —

Comet ISON

• Viewer Feedback – Nogal
• Any updates for Comet ISON?
• High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have released their first observations of the incoming Comet ISON
• Last Time on SciByte
• SciByte 103 [September 24, 2013] | Martian Methane & Deep Impact – End to the Deep Impact/EPOXI Mission
• SciByte 65 [October 2, 2012] | Chocolate & Black Holes – Comet ISON, 2013
• Seeing Comet ISON Now
• You will need a telescope in the 8-12 inch diameter range, a dark sky, and magnification of at least 200 to 300 power
• A comet appears as an \”extended\” object with the light inside the comet\’s head spread out over a larger area of space
• You will likely have much better success by looking off to one side of its position rather than staring right at it, called averted vision
• Averted vision works because there are no rods (cells which detect dim light in black and white) in the small area in the center of the eye
• Since the density of the rod cells usually reaches a maximum around 20 degrees off the center of vision you’ll be able to better detect its faint and fuzzy image
• Is is Breaking Up?
• A professor compared the similar photometric signals of comet ISON and comets that have disintegrated before
• Even with this comparative data there is no theoretical model that is capable of explaining all the details of comets
• Things May Not Be So Bad
• The comet will reach perihelion very near the Sun which is calculated to reach 2,700* C, 4,892*F, high enough to melt iron and lead
• It will also be passing the Roche limit, where it will experience solar tides that may tear apart the nucleus of the comet
• This combination of events may be too much for the once promising comet
• Even with those obstacles, some members of NASA’s Comet ISON Observing Campaign (CIOC) remain optimistic of it’s surviving it’s pass by the Sun
• The Future
• While it may not be the ‘comet of the century’ that we once thought it could be, it may yet still be the comet of the year, or fizzle to nothing
• The following few weeks will reveal the real fate of weird Comet ISON.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | NASA | Chasing Comet ISON | NASAexplorer
• Spaceweather.com Realtime Image Gallery
• Further Reading / In the News
• Comet ISON is doing just fine! | Comet ISON Observing Campaign | isoncampaign.org
• [Latest Images of Comet ISON Show it is ‘Doing Just Fine’ | UniverseToday.com](https://www.universetoday.com/105440/latest-images-of-comet-ison-show-it-is-doing-just-fine/7:51 PM 10/11/2013)
• Mars Orbiter Spies Lackluster Comet ISON | Discovery News
• Comet ISON Buzzing Mars Now: A Telescope Viewing Guide | Space.com
• Comet ISON and Mars Imaged Together During Close Approach | UniverseToday.com
• Comet ISON: 5 Things You Should Know | Discovery News
• Is comet ISON disintegrating? | Phys.org

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Private Space Travel – Orbital Science & SpaceX

• Orbital Science – Cygnus Spacecraft
• The Cygnus spacecraft initial docking was delayed a week due to an easily fixed communications glitch
• After docking, the hatches to Cygnus opened on Monday, Sept. 30 after completing leak checks
• Cygnus delivers about 1,300 pounds (589 kilograms) of cargo, including food, clothing, water, science experiments, spare parts and gear to the Expedition 37 crew
• SpaceX
• Also on Sept 29 the Next Generation commercial SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket had its demonstration test flight
• SpaceX Falcon 9 blasted off from Space Launch Complex 4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California
• They deployed Canada’s 1,060 pound (481 kg) Cascade, Smallsat, and Ionospheric Polar Explorer (CASSIOPE) weather satellite and several additional small satellites.
• Private Space Travel
• Both Cygnus and Falcon 9 were developed with seed money from NASA in a pair of public-private partnerships between NASA and Orbital Sciences and SpaceX
• With Orbital science\’s successful delivery there are now two commercial partner\’s with the ability to deliver supplies to the ISS
• Multimedia
• YouTube Clip Cygnus Spacecraft Captured By Space Station | videoFromSpace
• YouTube | [SpaceX] Launch of Inaugural Falcon 9 v1.1 Rocket with Cassiope! | SpaceVidsNet
• Further Reading / In the News
• Doubly Historic Day for Private Space: Cygnus docks at Station & Next Gen Falcon 9 Soars | UniverseToday.com

Opportunity

• Planning the Path to Prepare for Winter
• The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) recently succeeded in collecting “really interesting” new high resolution survey scans of Solander Point
• The new CRISM spectrometer survey from Mars orbit will vastly improve the spectral resolution – from 18 meters per pixel down to 5 meters per pixel
• It will take some time, a few weeks, to review and interpret the new spectral data from the MRO and decide on a course of action
• The new MRO data are crucial for targeting the rover’s driving in coming months.
• Solander Point
• Opportunity rover has begun the ascent of Solander Point, the first mountain she will ever climb
• Solander Point is an eroded ridge located along the western rim of huge Endeavour Crater where Opportunity is currently located
• Another important point about ‘Solander Point’ is that it also offers northerly tilted slopes that will maximize the power generation during Opportunity’s six month winter
• Recent Science
• The rover recently investigated an outcrop target called ‘Poverty Bush’.
• The 3 foot long (1 meter) robotic arm was deployed and the rover collected photos with the Microscopic Imager (MI)
• They collected several days of spectral measurements with the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS).
• What is interesting about this location is that there are several geologic units that are overlapping and Opportunity is sitting on the contact
• The east side of the contact are rocks maybe a billion years older than those on the west side of the contact
• Further Reading / In the News
• Opportunity Scaling Solander Mountain Searching for Science and Sun | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• More Autonomy
• Curiosity has now used a new technique, in placement of the tool-bearing turret on its robotic arm
• The technique, called proximity placement, uses the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) as if it were a radar for assessing how close the instrument is to a soil or rock surface
• The rover can then interpret the data and autonomously move the turret closer if it is not yet close enough
• This will enable placement of the instrument much closer to soil targets than would have been feasible without risk of touching the sensor head to loose soil
• It will also save extra days of having team members check the data and command arm movement in response
• Multimedia
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars Science Laboratory: Images | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• October, 18 1989 : 24 years ago : Jupiter orbiter Galileo launched
  : The Galileo space orbiter was released from the STS 34 flight of the Atlantis orbiter. Then the orbiter\’s inertial upper stage rocket pushed it into a course through the inner solar system. The craft gained speed from gravity assists in encounters with Venus and Earth before heading outward to Jupiter. During its six year journey to Jupiter, Galileo\’s instruments made interplanetary studies, using its dust detector, magnetometer, and various plasma and particles detectors. It also made close-up studies of two asteroids, Gaspra and Ida in the asteroid belt. The Galileo orbiter\’s primary mission was to study Jupiter, its satellites, and its magnetosphere for two years. It released an atmospheric probe into Jupiter\’s atmosphere on 7 Dec 1995.
• Galileo Spacecraft Website | NASA

Looking up this week

<img src=\”https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/ISON_Comet_captured_by_HST%2C_April_10-11%2C_2013.jpg/250px-ISON_Comet_captured_by_HST%2C_April_10-11%2C_2013.jpg” width=250 align=right>

• Keep an eye out for …
• Friday, Oct 18 | Evening | Full moon, with a slight penumbral eclipse Image you might be able to see it at it\’s max in the S-SE side
• North America maximum -> ~7:30pm EDT
• Europe/Africa -> ~23:00 GMT
• Planets
• Venus | Dusk | In the SW, moving slowly higher over the next few weeks
• Mars | ~3am local | Moving to the high E close to the star Regulus (blue-white)
• Jupiter | ~11-midnight local | Rises in the E-NE and moves to the upper S sky by dawn
• Comet ISON
• Is near Mars this week, but needs a telescope to view it
• Further Reading and Resources
• 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

The post Exoplanet Clouds & Updates | SciByte 105 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at a rule breaking exoplanet, non-toxic cancer therapy supplement, hidden antarctic mountains, a new astronaut class, story updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

Book Pick:

• Earth Strike: Star Carrier: Book One

• Earth Strike: Star Carrier, Book One Audiobook

Mysterious ExoPlanet

• The gap in the cloud seen in the dust surrounding one star, probably arose when a planet under construction swept through the dust and debris in its orbit
• This small planet (6 to 28 times Earth’s mass) if we can confirm it, shouldn’t be there according to conventional planet-forming theory
• Current Formation Theories
• Seeing such a gap follows what we think we know about planetary formation
• You start with a cloud of debris and gas swirling around a star, then gradually the bits and pieces start colliding, sticking together and growing bigger into small rocks, bigger ones and eventually, planets or gas giant planet cores
• If there is a planet and there is no dust larger than a grain of sand farther out, that would be a huge challenge to traditional planet formation models
• How we Think it Should Have Formed vs. How it Appears
• This planet is far from its star, TW Hydrae, about twice Pluto’s distance from the sun
• TW Hydrae is a red dwarf star, which lies about 176 light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra
• Given that alien systems’ age, that world shouldn’t have formed so quickly.
• Astronomers believe that Jupiter took about 10 million years to form at its distance away from the sun
• This planet near TW Hydrae should take 200 times longer to form because the alien world is moving slower, and has less debris to pick up
• TW Hydrae is only 55 percent as massive as our sun and is believed to be only 8 million years old.
• What This Might Mean
• Astronomers are seriously investigating other theories about how this potential planet can to be formed
• If we can actually confirm that there’s a planet there, we can connect its characteristics to measurements of the gap properties
• These observations will add to planet formation theories as to how you can actually form a planet very far out
• One alternative brought up in the press release: perhaps part of the disc collapsed due to gravitational instability
• If that is the case, a planet could come to be in only a few thousand years, instead of several million
• Direct collapse” theory, though: astronomers believe it takes a bunch of matter that is one to two times more massive than Jupiter before a collapse can occur to form a planet
• This world is no more than 28 times the mass of Earth, as best as we can figure and Jupiter itself is 318 times more massive than Earth
• There are also intriguing results about the gap, the dust grains in this system, orbiting nearby the gap, are still smaller than the size of a grain of sand
• Astronomers plan to use ALMA and the James Webb Space Telescope, which should launch in 2018, to get a better look
• Further Reading / In the News
• Should This Alien World Even Exist? This Young Disk Could Challenge Planet-Formation Theories | UniverseToday.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Non-Toxic Cancer Therapy Supplement

• A research team from the Hyperbaric Biomedical Research Laboratory at the University of South Florida has found that a combination of nontoxic dietary and hyperbaric oxygen therapies effectively increased survival time in a mouse model of aggressive metastatic cancer
• The research shows the effects of combining two nontoxic adjuvant cancer therapies, the ketogenic diet and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, in a mouse model of late-stage, metastatic cancer
• This study demonstrates potential cost-effective, nontoxic therapies to contribute to current cancer treatment regimens
• The Study
• Metastasis, the spreading of cancer from the primary tumor to distant spots, is responsible for over 90 percent of cancer-related deaths in humans
• In the study, mice with advanced metastatic cancer were fed either a standard high carbohydrate diet or carbohydrate-restricted ketogenic diet
• Mice on both diets also received hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which uses a special chamber to increase the amount of oxygen in the tissues
• Ketogenic Diet
• The ketogenic diet forces a physiological shift in substrate utilization from glucose to fatty acids and ketone bodies for energy
• Normal healthy cells readily adapt to using ketone bodies for fuel, but cancer cells lack this metabolic flexibility, and thus become selectively vulnerable to reduced glucose availability
• Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
• Solid tumors also have areas of low oxygen, which promotes tumor growth and metastatic spread
• Hyperbaric oxygen therapy involves breathing 100 percent oxygen at elevated barometric pressure, saturating the tumors with oxygen
• The Combination
• When administered properly, both the ketogenic diet and hyperbaric oxygen therapy are non-toxic and may even protect healthy tissues while simultaneously damaging cancer cells
• Both therapies slowed disease progression independently, animals receiving the combined ketogenic diet and hyperbaric oxygen therapy lived 78 percent longer than mice fed a standard high-carbohydrate diet
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Talk| UCLA Health
• Further Reading / In the News
• Nontoxic cancer therapy proves effective against metastatic cancer | MedicalXPress

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Buried Antarctic Mountain

• The British Antarctic Survey, Bedmap2 has used millions of new measurements of the frozen continent\’s surface elevation, ice thickness, and bedrock topography from a wide variety of sources collected over several decades
• The original Bedmap relied mostly on ground-based measurements, which limited the scientists in terms of how much land they could cover
• A NASA program called Operation IceBridge sends out airplanes that fly over the entire continent.
• The airplanes part of Operation IceBridge are equipped with lasers that measure the surface mountains\’ heights and other features, as well as ice-penetrating radar that maps subglacial bedrock-\”giving [scientists] a more 3-D picture of the ice sheet itself
• The new data has revealed several smaller features-both on Antarctica\’s surface and buried under the ice-that were missed in the previous Bedmap effort
• Scientists want to know the shapes of mountains and rocks to model how fast ice will move across these features on its way to the ocean, where the ice can melt and contribute to sea level rise
• Multimedia
• IMAGE | Interactive Slider of Two Views
• Further Reading / In the News
• Antarctic\’s Mountains Revealed By Sharpest Map Yet | NationalGeographic.com

New NASA Astronaut Class of 2013

• The 2013 astronaut candidate class comes from the second largest number of applications NASA ever has received — more than 6,100
• This group might be among the first to ride commercial spacecraft to the Space Station, or NASA says perhaps even missions to an asteroid or Mars
• The new astronaut candidates will begin training at NASA\’s Johnson Space Center in Houston in August
• The Astronauts
• Josh A. Cassada, Ph. D | A former naval aviator is a physicist by training and currently is serving as co-founder and Chief Technology Officer for Quantum Opus
• Victor J. Glover, Lt. Commander, U.S. Navy | An F/A-18 pilot and graduate of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School currently serving as a Navy Legislative Fellow in the U.S. Congress
• Tyler N. Hague, Lt. Colonel, U.S. Air Force | Currently is supporting the Department of Defense as Deputy Chief of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization
• Christina M. Hammock | Currently is serving as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Station Chief in American Samoa
• Nicole Aunapu Mannl, Major, U.S. Marine Corps | Is an F/A 18 pilot, currently serving as an Integrated Product Team Lead at the U.S. Naval Air Station, Patuxent River
• Anne C. McClain; Major, U.S. Army | Is an OH-58 helicopter pilot, and a recent graduate of U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station, Patuxent River
• Jessica U. Meir, Ph.D. | Currently is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
• Andrew R. Morgan, M.D, Major, U.S. Army | Has experience as an emergency physician and flight surgeon for the Army special operations community, and currently is completing a sports medicine fellowship
• Multimedia
• YouTube NASA Unveils 2013 Astronaut Class | VideoFromSpace
• Further Reading / In the News
• NASA Selects 2013 Astronaut Candidate Class | NASA.gov

— Updates —

ARKYD Telescope Upgrade Available

• Last Time on SciByte
• SciByte 96 | Mammoth Blood & Crowdsourced Telescope – Crowdsourced Telescope | June 3, 2013
• Upgrades
• Planetary Resources Inc. (the proposed asteroid miners) announced a new “stretch goal” for its asteroid-hunting Arkyd-100 telescope on June 11
• Should they reach $2 million, double its original goal, they promises to equip the Arkyd telescope to look at star systems for exoplanets
• Giving the Arkyd this ability would require improving its stability systems and devoting time to study candidate stars
• Partnering with exoplanet researchers at MIT [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Arkyd would use two methods to hunt down planets
• Transiting, or seeing the dip in a star’s brightness when a planet passes in front of it
• Gravitational microlensing, or finding planets by measuring how the gravity of the star (and its planets) distorts light from stars and galaxies behind
• If it can raise $1.3 million, Planetary Resources proposes to build a ground station at an undisclosed “educational partner” that would double the download speed of data from the orbiting observatory
• Two more stretch goals will be revealed if Arkyd receives 11,000 backers and 15,000 backers
• Multimedia
• YouTube | ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone | PlanetaryResources
• YouTube | Planetary Resources Announces ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone | PlanetaryResources
• YouTube | Planetary Resources Kickstarter Community Event with Star Trek\’s Brent Spiner (Lt. Cmdr Data) | PlanetaryResources
• Further Reading / In the News
• Asteroid Miners\’ Crowdfunded Space Telescope May Hunt Exoplanets | Space.com
• ‘Space Selfie’ Telescope Could Hunt Alien Planets … If It Raises A Cool $2M | UniverseToday.com

LEGO Curiosity Rover

• Last Time on SciByte
• SciByte 59 | Huntington’s & Heart Disease Treatment – LEGO Curiosity | August 21, 2012
• Approval!
• The LEGO CUUSOO group has chosen a fan-built model of the Curiosity rover to be the next release in its line of building brick toys.
• The user \”Pakbaz\” designed the model to feature many of the details of the real Mars rover, including its \”rocker-bogie\” wheel suspension that enables Curiosity to navigate the Martian surface
• He separately built a model of the rover\’s \”sky crane\” descent stage, which lowered Curiosity down into the crater, although whether that component will make it into the final product is not yet known
• The final product is still in development. Exact pricing and availability is still being determined
• The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover will be the fifth model in the LEGO CUUSOO line and the second to feature a space theme
• In March 2012, LEGO released a model of Japan\’s Hayabusa asteroid-sampling probe as designed and suggested by LEGO fan Daisuke Okubo
• Multimedia
• YouTube | LEGO CUUSOO Fall 2012 Review Results: Announcing LEGO CUUSOO #005 | LEGO
• Further Reading / In the News
• LEGO CUUSOO | Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover
• LEGO to Roll Out Mars Rover Curiosity as Toy Model | Space.com
• Results of the Fall 2012 LEGO® Review – The Official LEGO CUUSOO Blog

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Answering Camera Questions
• The team has received a lot of questions about the cameras on the rovers and are now trying to answer some of them
• The Curiosity rover actually has 17 cameras on it, which is the most of any NASA planetary mission ever.
• Many of the black and white images that come back from the rover are black and white, or gray scale, because that\’s all the rover really needs in order to detect rocks and other obstacles
• Other cameras are color, such as the Mastcam imager, because the scientists use the color information to learn about the soil and the rocks
• There are 1-megapixel black and white imagers for the engineering cameras and 2-megapixel color imagers for the science cameras
• Camera Rundown
• MARDI, or the Mars Descent Imager, took pictures as the rover was landing on Mars
• MAHLI is the camera mounted on the end of the arm, and that takes close-up, high-resolution color photos
• Hazard avoidance cameras, or the HazCams, there are four of these in the front and four in the back, and they\’re used to take pictures of the terrain near the wheels and nearby the rover
• Mast Cameras, which are color imagers, which are used to do geology investigations
• Navigation Cameras, which take pictures that are used to drive the rover
• A remote microscopic imager, is part of the ChemCam laser instrument and is used to document the laser spots, that the rover makes on the surface
• Video
• In addition to the video taken when the rover was descending to the surface, the team has taken movies of the soil being shaken in the scoop
• Since video files are pretty large and because they have a limited downlink each day, the scientists prefer to take still images of new targets
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Curiosity Rover Report (June 13, 2013): Curiosity\’s Cameras | JPLnews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Video Transcript: Curiosity\’s Cameras | jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• June (18?), 240 BC : 2253 years ago : Eratosthenes : A Greek astronomer and mathematician, estimated the circumference of the earth. As the director of the great library of Alexandria, he read in a papyrus book that in Syene, approaching noon on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, shadows of temple columns grew shorter. At noon, they were gone. The sun was directly overhead. However, a stick in Alexandria, far to the north, could cast a pronounced shadow. Thus, he realized that the surface of the Earth could not be flat. It must be curved. Not only that, but the greater the curvature, the greater the difference in the shadow lengths. By measurement on the ground and application of geometry, he calculated the circumference of the earth.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Wed, June 19 | Twilight | In the W, look for Mercury and Venus very close together, only 2* (or 2 pinkly widths at arms length) apart. Mercury is the one to the lower left
• Thurs, June 20 | Midsummer\’s Night, the shortest night of the year
• Sat, June 22 | Largest full Moon of 2013, sometimes called the \”Super Moon,\” in reality while it is the closest to the Earth it only appears 7% larger in diameter
• Planets
• Venus and Mercury | Twilight | In the W-NW they are only about 2-3 a part, 2-3 pinky fingers apart held at arms length. Venus being the brighter of the two, with Mercury being the fainter one to it\’s upper left
• Mars and Jupiter | Hiding in the glare of the sun

• Saturn | Evening | In the S-SW, the slightly dimmer looking star Spica is 12*, slightly more than a fist held at arms length, to it\’s right or lower right

• Further Reading and Resources

• 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

The post Strange Exoplanet & Cancer Therapy | SciByte 98 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at CoQ10 and your heart, a new Multiple Sclerosis treatment, smart LEGO, exoplanets, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

Book Pick:

• Earth Strike: Star Carrier: Book One

• Earth Strike: Star Carrier, Book One Audiobook

Coenzyme Q10 and Your Heart

• Recent results from a multicentre randomised double blind trial shows that Coenzyme Q10 decreases all cause mortality by half
• Making it the first drug to improve heart failure mortality in over a decade
• Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10)
• Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) occurs naturally in the body and is essential to survival
• It works as an electron carrier in the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cells, to produce energy and is also a powerful antioxidant
• CoQ10 levels are decreased in the heart muscle of patients with heart failure, with the deficiency becoming more pronounced as heart failure severity worsens
• Double Blind Trial
• Double blind controlled trials have shown that CoQ10 improves symptoms, functional capacity and quality of life in patients with heart failure with no side effects
• Until now, no trials have been statistically powered to address effects on survival
• The study randomised 420 patients with severe heart failure, into two groups with CoQ10 or placebo and followed them for 2 years
• The primary endpoint was time to first major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE), unplanned hospitalisation due to worsening of heart failure, cardiovascular death, urgent cardiac transplantation and mechanical circulatory support
• CoQ10 halved the risk of MACE, with 29 (14%) patients in the CoQ10 group reaching the primary endpoint compared to 55 (25%) patients in the placebo group
• CoQ10 also halved the risk of dying from all causes, which occurred in 18 (9%) patients in the CoQ10 group compared to 36 (17%) patients in the placebo group
• The CoQ10 treated patients also had significantly lower cardiovascular mortality and had a lower occurrence of hospitalisations for heart failure
• There were fewer adverse events in the CoQ10 group compared to the placebo group
• CoQ10 is the first medication to improve survival in chronic heart failure since ACE inhibitors and beta blockers more than a decade ago
• Other heart failure medications block rather than enhance cellular processes and may have side effects
• It\’s a Natural Substance
• CoQ10 is a natural and safe substance, corrects a deficiency in the body and blocks the vicious metabolic cycle in chronic heart failure called the energy starved heart
• It is present in food, including red meat, plants and fish, but levels are insufficient to impact on heart failure
• It is currently sold over the counter as a food supplement but food supplements can influence the effect of other medications including anticoagulants, so patients should seek advice from their doctor before taking them`
• Further Reading / In the News
• First drug to improve heart failure mortality in over a decade | MedicalXPress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Multiple Sclerosis Treatment

• A phase 1 clinical trial for the first treatment to reset the immune system of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients showed the therapy was safe and dramatically reduced patients\’ immune systems\’ reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent
• Multiple Sclerosis
• In MS, the immune system attacks and destroys myelin, the insulating layer that forms around nerves in the spinal cord, brain and optic nerve
• When the insulation is destroyed, electrical signals can\’t be effectively conducted, resulting in symptoms that range from mild limb numbness to paralysis or blindness
• The New Therapy
• Current therapies for MS suppress the entire immune system, making patients more susceptible to everyday infections and higher rates of cancer
• The new stops autoimmune responses that are already activated and prevents the activation of new autoimmune cells
• The Trial
• The MS patients\’ own specially processed white blood cells were used to stealthily deliver billions of myelin antigens into their bodies so their immune systems would recognize them as harmless and develop tolerance to them
• While the trial\’s nine patients were too few to statistically determine the treatment, the study did show patients who received the highest dose of white blood cells had the greatest reduction in myelin reactivity
• The primary aim of the study was to demonstrate the treatment\’s safety and tolerability
• The intravenous injection of up to 3 billion white blood cells with myelin antigens caused no adverse effects in MS patients
• The treatment did not reactivate the patients\’ disease and did not affect their healthy immunity to real pathogens
• Researchers also tested patients\’ immunity to tetanus because all had received tetanus shots in their lifetime
• One month after the treatment, their immune responses to tetanus remained strong, showing the treatment\’s immune effect was specific only to myelin
• Phase 2 Trials
• Human safety study sets the stage for a phase 2 trial to see if the new treatment can prevent the progression of MS in humans
• The trial, which has already been approved in Switzerland
• In the phase 2 trial researchers want to treat patients as early as possible in the disease before they have paralysis due to myelin damage
• What Does It Do?
• The patients\’ white blood cells are filtered out, specially processed and coupled with myelin antigens by a complex GMP manufacturing process
• Then billions of these dead cells secretly carrying the myelin antigens were injected intravenously into the patients
• The cells entered the spleen, which filters the blood and helps the body dispose of aging and dying blood cells
• During this process, the immune cells start to recognize myelin as a harmless and immune tolerance quickly develops
• This process may be useful for treating not only MS but also a host of other autoimmune and allergic diseases simply by switching the antigens attached to the cells
• Another Possible Carrier
• This therapy, recently published research in mice in which he used nanoparticles-rather than a patient\’s white blood cells-to deliver the myelin antigen
• Using a patient\’s white blood cells is a costly and labor-intensive procedure
• This new study showed the nanoparticles, which are potentially cheaper and more accessible to a general population, could be as effective as the white blood cells as delivery vehicles
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Multiple Sclerosis | AsapSCIENCE
• Further Reading / In the News
• Multiple sclerosis breakthrough: Trial safely resets patients\’ immune systems and reduces attack on myelin protein | MedicalXPress

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Smart and Awesome LEGO

• The Low Down
• A recent tour of the Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Tokyo, found LEGO with cameras, motors and some rudimentary AI
• Seen there was a motorized Lego platform controlled by a computer squared off against a platform controlled by a human with a PlayStation controller
• The project is still in the experimental phase, so it will be awhile before it reaches the commercial level
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Sony and Lego ponder next-gen toys in Tokyo
• Further Reading / In the News
• These Artificially Intelligent Legos Look Awesome | Popular Science

Exoplanet Found By Small Telescopes

• The Low Down
• Tiny telescopes in Arizona and South Africa have spotted a Saturn-like planet in orbit around a star about 700 light-years from Earth.
• The Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) and other ground-based tools spied the alien planet as it passed in front of its star
• The planet, KELT-6b, can be seen from the surface of Earth for five hours as it transits
• It has a year lasts only about 7.8 days, has no rings, and has a mass and size resemble the planet Saturn
• Further Reading / In the News
• Saturn-Like Alien Planet Found by Little Telescope | KELT-6b | Space.com

— Updates —

Exoplanet Heft

• A new study suggests that a large number of worlds found by NASA\’s Kepler alien planet-hunting space telescope are probably significantly larger than scientists previously estimated
• What’s Going On
• The Kepler Space Telescope has spotted more than 2,700 potential
• Now researchers have made detailed follow-up observations of 300 of the stars Kepler found likely to be harboring exoplanets
• One of the main findings of this initial work is that our observations indicate that most of the stars we observed are slightly larger than previously thought and one quarter of them are at least 35 percent larger
• This also mean that any planets orbiting these stars must be larger and hotter as well, which could reduce the number of candidate Earth-size planet analogues detected by Kepler
• Further Reading / In the News
• Planets Found by Kepler Spacecraft Likely Larger Than Thought | Space.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Curiosity will soon shift to a distance-driving mode headed for an area about 8 km / 5 mi away, at the base of Mount Sharp
• The Mission Objective
• The mission has also already accomplished its main science objective.
• Analysis of rock powder from the first drilled rock target, \”John Klein,\” provided evidence that an ancient environment in Gale Crater had favorable conditions for microbial life
• The rover team chose a similar rock, \”Cumberland,\” as the second drilling target to provide a check for the findings at John Klein
• Scientists are currently analyzing laboratory-instrument results from portions of the Cumberland sample
• Event
• To reach the first area of investigation, Glenelg where it is now, the rover drove east about a 500 m / 0.3 mi from the landing site
• No additional rock drilling or soil scooping is planned in the Glenelg area
• To reach the next destination, Mount Sharp, Curiosity will drive toward the southwest for many months.
• Although just because our end goal is Mount Sharp doesn\’t mean the team will not investigate interesting features along the way
• Capabilities
• One new capability being used is to drive away while still holding rock powder in Curiosity\’s sample-handling device to supply additional material to instruments later if desired by the science team
• For the drilling at Cumberland, steps that each took a day or more at John Klein could be combined into a single day\’s sequence of commands far more efficiently
• The team used the experience and lessons from our first drilling campaign, as well as new cached sample capabilities, to do the second drill
• In addition, they increased the use of the rover\’s autonomous self-protection. This allowed more activities to be strung together before the ground team had to check in on the rover
• Before the Road Trip Starts
• The science team has chosen three targets for brief observations before Curiosity leaves the Glenelg area
• The boundary between bedrock areas of mudstone and sandstone, a layered outcrop called \”Shaler\” which might be a river deposit.
• And a pitted outcrop called \”Point Lake\” which might be volcanic or sedimentary.
• A closer look at them could give us better understanding of how the rocks we sampled with the drill fit into the history of how the environment changed
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Curiosity Rover Report (June 7, 2013): Rover Ready to Switch Gears | JPLnews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• June 13, 1983 : 30 years ago : Pioneer 10 : Space probe vehicle Pioneer 10 crossed the orbit of Neptune and became the first manmade object to leave our Solar System. It was launched 2 Mar 1972. It is moving in a straight line away from the Sun at a constant velocity of about 12 km/sec. Some 30 years after its launch, on 27 Apr 2002, NASA made successful contact with telemetry received from Pioneer 10 when it was at a distance from Earth of 7.57 billion miles, and the round-trip time for the signal (at the speed of light) was 22-hr 35-min. The probe sent information from the one scientific instrument that was still working, the Geiger Tube Telescope. The spacecraft is heading generally towards the red star Aldebaran, which forms the eye of Taurus (The Bull)
• Voyager 1 launched on Sept 5, 1977 and overtook Pioneer 10 on Nov 17, 1998. It remains the most distant man-made object
• Voyager 2 launched on Aug 20, 1977

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Sat, Jun 15 | ~45 min after sunset | Look to the W-NW to see Mercury and Venus
• Planets
• Mercury and Venus | Remain in twilight, low in the W-NW, Mercury will be fading out this week
• Mars and Jupiter | Are hiding in the glare of the Sun

• Saturn | Evening | Is in the S with Spica to the right

• Further Reading and Resources

• 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

The post CoQ10 & Smart LEGO | SciByte 97 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at an exoplanets atmosphere, HIV killing bee venom, ancient sundials, viewer feedback, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

Support the Show:

[asa]B00BEZTMQ8[/asa]
[asa]B009SPZ11Q[/asa]

Show Notes:

Exoplanet Atmosphere

• A team led by an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, has found hints of ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and acetylene in an exo-planets’ atmosphere in the sharpest spectrum ever obtained of an extrasolar planet
• Searching for Exoplanets
• In the past, astronomers inferred the existence of exoplanets and their gases by looking for subtle changes in the light streaming from the planet’s star
• Now, with improved instruments, a team has detected light coming directly from a planet light-years away
• The data have high enough resolution to reveal not only the presence but the abundance of carbon monoxide and water in the planet’s atmosphere
• Such information could shed light on how the planet formed
• Studies could also reveal the presence of life on a distant planet, but this planet’s size and orbit have already ruled it out as a habitable world
• The System
• In 2008 the first image of a multi planet system outside the solar system, showing three gas giants orbiting the star HR 8799
• The results suggest the HR 8799 system is like a scaled-up Solar System
• HR 8799 is about 130 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Pegasus
• The planets are scorching hot, making them bright enough for astronomers to detect directly
• In 2010, the researchers imaged a fourth planet around HR 8799, a new study focused on one of these planets, HR 8799c.
• HR 8799c
• Five to 10 times as massive as Jupiter, HR 8799c sits about eight times farther away from its star than Jupiter does from the sun
• Because of that great distance, the astronomers could block the star’s light and record infrared light
• Even with water present on this world, it is incredibly hostile to life
• Like Jupiter, it has no solid surface, and it has a temperature of more than a thousand degree
• The Studies
• Because different gases absorb and emit light in distinct ways, the team could identify carbon monoxide and water but found no methane, which scientists had thought might be present.
• In another new study researchers simultaneously collected infrared light from the atmospheres of all four planets
• The chemistry of each planet varies different from anything in our own solar system
• Although the teams looked at different wavelengths of light, which pick up different types of molecules, the two studies appear consistent
• By peering at just one planet, one team obtained more detailed data that allowed the researchers to get a sense of how much carbon and oxygen is in HR 8799c’s atmosphere
• Knowing the ratio of carbon to oxygen in the atmosphere may reveal how the planet formed
• Planetary Formation Theories
• Astronomers have two competing theories of how planets arise from the disk of gas and dust encircling a young star
• In the gravitational instability model, some of the gas and dust suddenly clumps and collapses, simultaneously creating a planet’s core and atmosphere
• In this scenario, the chemical composition of a planet should match that of its star
• In the other model, known as core accretion, planets are built in two-steps
• First, material from the disk accumulates into a core, later the core captures gases swirling in the disk to form an atmosphere.
• In this case, the carbon-to-oxygen ratio of the planet may differ from the star because the accretion of cores may deplete the disk of certain elements
• What This Planet\’s Data Tells Us
• Compared with its star, HR 8799c appears to have slightly more carbon relative to oxygen, suggesting the planet originated via core accretion
• It is surmises that when the disk around HR 8799 formed, water froze into particles of ice, the bits of ice then collided to form the planet’s core, leaving behind little water vapor, and therefore less oxygen, when the planet accumulated its atmosphere later on
• Other researchers are not convinced by this conclusion saying “We don’t really understand planetary formation enough to make a strong case either way,”
• The Future
• Either Way the data from both new studies may help astronomers refine their simulations of planetary formation
• Not that astronomers have directly imaged planets around three distant stars researchers are poised to capture light from many more planets
• Project 1640, is looking for Jupiter-sized planets around some 200 stars
• “Ultimately, with better instruments, people will be able to use these methods on Earthlike planets.”
• Multimedia
• YouTube Remote Reconnaissance of Another Solar System | AMNHorg
• Video Clip Nearby Stars with planets| AMNHorg
• Video Clip HR 8799 System| AMNHorg
• Further Reading / In the News
• Exoplanet Atmospheres Provide Clues to Solar System Formation | UniverseToday.com
• Distant planets\’ atmospheres revealed | Atom & Cosmos | ScienceNews.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Bees Against HIV

• Nanoparticles carrying a toxin found in bee venom can destroy human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) while leaving surrounding cells unharmed
• What it Does
• Bee venom contains a potent toxin called melittin that can poke holes in the protective envelope that surrounds HIV, and other viruses
• The new study shows that melittin loaded onto these nanoparticles does not harm normal cells, because added protective bumpers to the nanoparticle surface
• When the nanoparticles come into contact with normal cells, which are much larger in size, the particles simply bounce off
• HIV, on the other hand, is even smaller than the nanoparticle, so HIV fits between the bumpers and makes contact with the surface of the nanoparticle, where the bee toxin awaits
• The advantage of this approach is that the nanoparticle attacks an essential part of the virus\’ structure. In contrast, most anti-HIV drugs inhibit the virus\’s ability to replicate.
• Drawbacks
• This anti-replication strategy does nothing to stop initial infection, and some strains of the virus have found ways around these drugs and reproduce anyway.
• Where it does work, because it attacks the inherent physical property of HIV, theoretically, there isn\’t any way for the virus to adapt to this treatment
• The potential for using nanoparticles with melittin as therapy for existing HIV infections, especially those that are drug-resistant
• Other Uses
• The hope is that in places where HIV is running rampant, people could use this gel as a preventive measure to stop the initial infection
• Since melittin attacks double-layered membranes indiscriminately, this concept is not limited to HIV.
• Many viruses, including hepatitis B and C, rely on the same kind of protective envelope and would be vulnerable to melittin-loaded nanoparticles
• In addition to antiviral therapy, the paper\’s senior author has shown melittin-loaded nanoparticles to be effective in killing tumor cells.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Nanoparticles loaded with bee venom kill HIV | MedicalXPress.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Worlds Oldest Egyptian Sundials

• Telling Time in Ancient Egypt
• During archaeological excavations in the Kings\’ Valley in Upper Egypt a team of researchers found one of the world\’s oldest ancient Egyptian sundials
• During this year\’s excavations the researchers found a flattened piece of limestone (so-called Ostracon) on which a semicircle in black color had been drawn
• The semicircle is divided into twelve sections of about 15 degrees each.
• A dent in the middle of the approximately 16 centimeter long horizontal baseline served to insert a wooden or metal bolt that would cast a shadow to show the hours of the day
• Small dots in the middle of each section were used for even more detailed time measuring
• It was found in an area of stone huts that were used in the 13th century BC to house the men working at the construction of the graves, possibly used to measure their work hours
• The division of the sun path into hours also played a crucial role in the so-called netherworld guides that were drawn onto the walls of the royal tombs
• These guides are illustrated texts that chronologically describe the nightly progression of the sun-god through the underworld.
• The sundial could also have served to further visualize this phenomenon.
• Multimedia
• Image Ancients Egyptian sun dial | Phys.org | Credit: University of Basel
• Further Reading / In the News
• One of the world\’s oldest sun dial dug up in Kings\’ Valley | Phys.org

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

ESTCube

• Karl Sakrits
• Estonia is sending up their first satellite, a CubeSat, made by University students to test the electric solar wind sail
• CubeSat
• The CubeSat standard for nanosatellites was followed during the engineering of ESTCube-1,
• The CubeSat standard has three different sizes corresponding to size 1U, 2U and 3U. Base side lengths are the same but height is 2 to 3 times bigger than 1U CubeSats
• Mass is also set in CubeSat standard, the highest possible mass for 1U CubeSat is 1300 grams, 2U CubeSat 2600 grams and 3U CubeSat 4000 grams
• CubeSat base side length must be 100.0 +/- 0.1 millimeters and satellite height must be 113.5±0.1 mm
• Purpose
• Although its main purpose was to educate students, the satellite does have a scientific purpose.
• On board of the satellite is an electric solar wind sail (e-sail) which was created by a Finnish scientist Pekka Janhunen, which will be the first real experimentation of the e-sail
• Subsystems
• ADCS – attitude determination and control system, determines and modifies satellite\’s alignment
• CAM – onboard camera for taking pictures of the Earth and the unreeled tether
• CDHS – command and data handling system, the satellite\’s main onboard computer
• COM – communications system for up- and downlinks
• EPS – electrical power system, provides electrical power for the satellite
• PL – payload, the satellite\’s experiment module, that contains the tether and everything else related to the experiment
• STR – satellite\’s structure
• Solar Wind Sail
• 10 meters of e-sail 50 to 20 micrometers thick wire of high-technology structure so-called Heytether will be deployed from the satellite.
• The deployment of the Heytether can be detected by decrease of the satellite\’s speed of rotation or by a on-board camera
• To control the loaded solar wind sail elements interaction with the plasma surrounding the earth and the effect it has on the spacecraft spinning speed the spacecraft has two on-board nanotechnologic electron emitters/gun
• The electron emitters are connected to the e-sail element and by shooting out electrons it loads the e-sail element positively to 500 volts
• The positive ions in the plasma push the e-sail element and have an influence on the satellites rotation speed
• The effect of the e-sail is measured by the change in rotation speed
• The camera is used to take a picture of Earth and the successfully deployed Heytether.
• Mission
• ESTCube-1 will be sent to orbit by the European Space Agency\’s rocket Vega in spring of 2013
• Half an hour after the satellites deployment from the start capsule satellites antennas will be opened and radio transmitter and important subsystems will be switched on
• The first days or weeks will be used to test the satellite and set it to work on full capacity
• They will then orient the satellite so the on-board camera will be faced to earth so that they can try to take a picture of Estonia
• They will rotate the satellite on an axis with a speed of 1 revolution per second
• The E-sail element will deploy from the satellite by a centrifugal force and will confirm the deployment via the on-board camera
• Then they will activate the electron emitter and loading the e-sail, measuring the e-sails and Lorentz force by satellites revolutions per second
• If possible they will use the negatively charged e-sail to take the satellite off orbit and burn it in the earths atmosphere
• Should everything go perfect the mission could be completed within a few weeks to a month
• Communication
• Communicating with the satellite will be held by two International Amateur Radio Unions three registered frequencies [437.250 MHz, 437.505 MHz]
• The maximum possible connection speed is 19,200 bits per second, only to be used when the satellite has been given a specific order
• Important satellite parameters will be transmitted every 3 to 5 minutes, and periodic but slow communication can be done on a telegraphic signal
• A 9600 baud connection speed and AX.25 standard is used, a slower communication frequency which allow a maximum of 25 kiloherz bandwidth, fast connection will only be used when the satellite has been given a specific
• Software
• FreeRTOS on the satellite\’s Command and Data Handling System and camera module
  TinyOS on the satellite\’s communication module
• Financing and costs
• This option is the cheapest possibility to send a satellite into orbit is offered by European Space Agency
• Estonia is an associated member of ESA most of the launch expenses (about 70,000 euros) will be covered from Estonian member fee for educational expenses
• The total expense, with launch cost, for the project are approximately 100,000 euros
• Multimedia
• YouTube estcube dissection2 | taavi torim
• YouTube Packing ESTCube-1 for shipping. Tallinn TV Tower 21.1.2013. | AjattaraQuad
• ESTCube.eu | Video Library
• Twitter
• ESTCube @ESTCube
• Further Reading / In the News
• ESTCube.eu

— Updates —

Space Shuttle Atlantis

• The plastic wrap protecting the Space Shuttle Atlantis from construction debris and will be unveiled to the public at the FLorida Kennedy Space Center Visitor complex in June 2013 in its new 90,000-square-foot home
• The Layout
• The payload bay doors will be carefully opened and the Canadian built remote manipulator system (RMS), or robotic arm, will be installed and extended
• Atlantis is mounted on steel pedestals 30 feet off the ground, at 43.21 degrees, simulating the ‘in flight’ tilt when it\’s orbiting Earth and approaching the International Space Station (ISS).
• With the tilt, the nose rises 26.5 feet above the ground and the portside wingtip sits only 7.5 feet from the floor, the opposite is 87 feet from the ground
• Next to the Atlantis will be a high fidelity full scale replica of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope
• Multimedia
• Space Shuttle Atlantis wraped in plastic shrink-wrap | UniverseToday.com | Credit: Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)
• Further Reading / In the News
• Atlantis Exhibit | Kennedy Space Center
• Plastic Wrapped Shuttle Atlantis Slated for Grand Public Unveiling in June | UniverseToday.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

SpaceX’s Grasshopper Hops Higher

• GrassHopper
• Grasshopper stands 10 stories tall and consists of a Falcon 9 rocket first stage tank, Merlin 1D engine, four steel and aluminum landing legs with hydraulic dampers, and a steel support structure
• The goal of Grasshopper is to eventually create a reusable first stage for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which would be able to land safely instead of falling back into the ocean and not being usable again
• On March 7, 2013, the vertical and takeoff and landing (VTVL) vehicle, rose 24 stories, 263 ft / 80m, hovered for approximately 34 seconds and then landed safely, and more accurately than ever before
• Previous Tests
• This is Grasshopper’s fourth in a series of test flights, with each test demonstrating exponential increases in altitude
• September 2012 | Flew to 8.2 ft / 2.5 meters
• November 2012 | Flew to 17.7 ft / 5.4 meters
• December 2012 | Flew to 131 ft / 40 meters
• Multimedia
• Ring of Fire | spacexchannel
• Further Reading / In the News
• SpaceX Grasshopper Takes a Leap Into a \’Ring of Fire\’ | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Analyzing the Drill Sample
• Curiosity obtained her first drill sample and passed that sample on to her onboard analytical lab instruments, called CheMin and SAM
• These powerful instruments can tell about what minerals are present in these rocks and whether they contain the ingredients necessary to sustain life as we know it.
• When the rover science team combine the data from remote sensing and contact science instruments from CheMin and SAM, we get a picture of an ancient watery environment, which would have been habitable had life been present in it.
• At that site of Opportunity rover, the sedimentary rocks record evidence of an environment that was only wet on a very intermittent basis, and when it was, the waters that were there were highly acidic, very salty, and not favorable for the survival of organic compounds.
• CheMin instrument, tells us that the minerals that are present in this lakebed sedimentary rock at John Klein are very different from just about anything we\’ve ever analyzed before on Mars and was deposited in a freshwater environment
• The SAM instrument is telling us that these rocks contained all of the ingredients necessary for a habitable environment
• The science team found carbon, sulfur and oxygen, all present and a number of other elements in states that life could have taken advantage of.
• Image Mosaic
• The mosaic of images from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity shows Mount Sharp in raw color as recorded by the camera.
• This mosaic was assembled from dozens of images from the 100-millimeter-focal-length telephoto lens camera mounted on the right side of the Mastcam instrument
• Raw color shows the scene\’s colors as they would look in a typical smart-phone camera photo, before any adjustment.
• White-balancing helps scientists recognize rock materials based on their experience looking at rocks on Earth
• White balancing yields an overly blue hue in images that have very little blue information, such as Martian landscapes, because the white balancing tends to overcompensate for the low inherent blue content.
• Multimedia
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report (Mar. 15, 2013) | Rover Hits Paydirt | JPLnews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• March 23, 2001 : 12 years ago : Mir destroyed : The Russian space station, Mir, ended 15 years in orbit by burning up in Earth\’s atmosphere as the way chosen to end its life. Mir, launched in 1986, had far exceeded its original planned five year lifespan. The Russian government decided in Oct 2000 that its poor condition could no longer justify the expense to maintain its use. A docked Progress tanker had been remotely commanded by mission controllers to fire rockets and lower its orbit and cause re-entry into the atmosphere. The debris that did not burn up during reentry fell harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean at the planned target zone between New Zealand and Chile. For safety, airlines had rerouted Pacific flights in anticipation of the event, and ships had been warned earlier

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Jupiter | sunset – Evening | High in the SW at sunset, moving to the W sky later in the evening. To its lower left is Aldebaran, and to the lower right are the Pleiades

• Saturn | ~ 11pm local (DST) | Rises in the E-SE, moving to the high in the S sky by early morning

• Further Reading and Resources

• 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

The post Exoplanet & Bee Venom | SciByte 86 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at a tiny exoplanet, new medical glue, dogs, private Mars mission, updates on bionic eyes and the Russian meteorite, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

• TechSNAP 100 Shirt

Show Notes:

Tiny Exo-planet

• Scientists have discovered a new planet orbiting a Sun-like star, and the exoplanet is the smallest yet found in data from the Kepler mission
• This discovery came from a collaboration between Kepler scientists and a consortium of international researchers who employ asteroseismology
• Asteroseismology\”
• Sound waves travel into the star and bring information back up to the surface, these waves cause oscillations that Kepler observes as a rapid flickering of the star’s brightness
• Asteroseismology is when scientists measure those oscillations in the star’s brightness caused by continuous star-quakes, and turn those tiny variations in the star’s light into sounds
• It is similar to how geologists use seismic waves generated by earthquakes to probe the interior structure of Earth
• Barely discernible, high-frequency oscillations in the brightness of small stars are the most difficult to measure, the bigger the star, the lower the frequency, or ‘pitch’ of its song
• Kepler-37b
• The measurements made by the astroseismologists allowed the Kepler research team to more accurately measure the tiny Kepler-37b
• Kepler-37b, is smaller than Mercury, but slightly larger than Earth’s Moon
• Orbits every 13 days at less than one-third Mercury’s distance from the Sun
• Very likely a rocky planet with no atmosphere or water, similar to Mercury
• Estimated surface temperature of this smoldering planet, at more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit (700 degrees Kelvin, hot enough to melt the zinc in a penny
• The rest of the Kepler-37 system
• Kepler-37 has a radius just three-quarters of the Sun, and is about 210 light-years from Earth.
• The size is known to 3 percent accuracy, which translates to exceptional accuracy in the planet’s size.
• Measurements also revealed two other planets in the same planetary system: one slightly smaller than Earth and one twice as large
• All three planets orbit the star at less than the distance Mercury is to the Sun Kepler-37c and Kepler-37d, orbit every 21 days and 40 days, respectively
• What this means
• This discovery took a long time to verify, as the signature of this very small exoplanet was hard to confirm
• Uncovering a planet smaller than any in our solar system orbiting one of the few stars that is both bright and quiet, where signal detection was possible
• “The detection of such a small planet shows for the first time that stellar systems host planets much smaller as well as much larger than anything we see in our own Solar System.” [Published paper in Nature]
• Multimedia
• Image | NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found | Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
• Image | Where in the sky Kepler is looking | Credit: Carter Roberts / Eastbay Astronomical Society
• Further Reading / In the News
• Tiny exoplanet smaller than Mercury: Smallest planet yet found outside solar system (Update) | phys.org
• Smallest Exoplanet Yet Discovered by \’Listening\’ to a Sun-like Star
• Moon-Size Alien Planet Is the Smallest Exoplanet | Space.com
• How Does Tiny Kepler-37b Measure Up? | news.discovery.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Medical \”Super Glue\” for Wet Surfaces

• The Problem\”
• Not even Super Glue will stick in a wet environment because a layer of water forms that keeps the two surfaces from bonding
• Mussels somehow elbow the water aside and bind themselves to rocks anyway by secreting liquid proteins that harden into a solid, water-resistant glue
• A Possible New Solution
• One researcher now says he has used the mollusk’s tricks to develop medical applications
• This biocompatible glue that could one day seal fetal membranes, allowing prenatal surgeons to repair birth defects without triggering dangerous premature labor
• The research team has now created a synthetic, thread-like polymer called polyethylene glycol that mimics the mussel protein
• Basis of a Mussels Sticking Ability
• Parts of the proteins that face out toward the hard surface
• This enables liquid holdfast proteins to solidify rapidly and stick flawlessly to wet and salty surfaces
• Initial Testing
• To see if the compound worked in live animals, a veterinary surgeon made a 2.5-centimeter incision in the carotid artery of a dog and placed four stitches along the length of that incision to hold it in place
• With stitches alone were used, the incision bled when the surgeon pressed it.
• After just 20 seconds after the mussel-based glue was applied, the artery was sealed and didn’t bleed.
• Recently the team began testing its glue on fetal membranes
• Possible Prenatal Use
• For the past few decades, surgeons have begun surgically repairing birth defects like spina bifida while a fetus is still in utero
• The process is risky because the surgery risks rupturing the fetal membrane prematurely, sending the mother into premature labor.
• There are no good adhesives on the market for surgeons to repair such fetal-membrane tears
• In recent, unpublished experiments in rabbits, the team has found that after a veterinary surgeon poked a 3.5-mm hole in the animal’s fetal membrane, the new, mussel-inspired glue readily sealed up the puncture
• Without the glue, only 40% of the fetal rabbits survived the surgery, but with the glue, 60% did.
• Fetal surgeons are now working with the research team to test whether the glue can help reseal the tissue surrounding the spinal cord to repair a serious birth defect known spina bifida in rabbits
• Recent Alterations
• In another recent result researchers chemically altered the polyethylene glycol polymer so that the glue would shrink when it hardened
• This could counter tissue swelling during surgery
• Multimedia
• Mytilus mussel withb yssus showing, on a rock atOcean Beach, San Francisco,California,USA | Brocken Inaglory
• Adding a glue modeled on the biochemistry of mussel attachment quickly sealed a punctured fetal membrane in rabbits, protecting the fetal bunnies inside | news.ScienceMag.org | Credit: Martin Ehrbar from University Hospital Zurich
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mussel Glue Could Help Repair Birth Defects – ScienceNOW | News.ScienceMag.org
• Translation of Mussel Adhesion to Beneficial New Concepts and Materials | AAAS.Confex.com

Food Ninja Dogs

• A new study suggests dogs might understand people even better than we thought
• The research shows that domestic dogs, when told not to snatch a piece of food, are more likely to disobey the command in a dark room than in a lit room
• Dogs have specialized skills in reading human communication, specific in dogs
• The Test
• A research team recruited 84 dogs, all of which were more than a year old, motivated by food, and comfortable with both strangers and dark rooms
• The team then set up experiments in which a person commanded a dog not to take a piece of food on the floor
• They then repeated the commands in a room with different lighting scenarios ranging from fully lit to fully dark
• What the team found was that the dogs were four times as likely to steal the food-and steal it more quickly—when the room was dark
• It was thought that whether the dogs saw the human would would affect the results, but weather the dogs saw the human or not didn\’t affect the behavior
• The dog\’s behavior depended on whether the food was in the light or not, suggesting that the dog made its decision based on whether the human could see them approaching the food
• Results and Future
• The study of dog cognition suddenly began about 15 years ago
• Many of the new dog studies are variations on research done with chimpanzees, bonobos, and even young children
• Dogs are better at reading human cues than even our closest mammalian relatives
• Researchers are now interested in whether the dog has a theory of mind, \”an understanding that others have different perspective, knowledge, feelings than we do\”
• While research reveals more and more insight into the minds we still don\’t know just how smart they are
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Siberian Husky – Kiba The Pizza Thief | SeberHusky
• Further Reading / In the News
• Confirmed: Dogs Sneak Food When People Aren\’t Looking | news.NationalGeographic.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Dennis Tito, Space Tourist, Now Mars Mission Planner

• ”The Plan\”
• Dennis Tito, the first-ever space tourist, is planning send a human mission to Mars in January 2018 on a round-trip journey lasting 501 days
• Reportedly, Tito has created a new nonprofit company called the Inspiration Mars Foundation to facilitate the mission
• Presentation
• Tito, along with several other notable people from the space community will provide more information in a press conference set for Wednesday, February 27th
• The paper Tito plans to present at the IEEE Aerospace Conference in March, will discuss a crewed free-return Mars mission that would fly by Mars, not going into orbit or landing
• Initial Mission Breakdown
• The 501-day mission would launch in January 2018, “using a modified SpaceX Dragon spacecraft launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket,”
• Existing environmental control and life support system (ECLSS) technologies would allow such a spacecraft to support two people for the mission,
• The paper outlines how NASA would also have a role in this mission in terms of supporting key life support and thermal protection systems, even though this is a private-sector effort
• Crew comfort would be limited to survival needs only, sponge baths are acceptable, with no need for showers
• Of Note
• No estimates of what such a mission would cost are included in the paper, but it does say it would be financed privately
• The paper adds that if they miss this favorable 2018 opportunity, the next chance to take advantage of this lower energy trajectory would be in 2031.
• Multimedia
• Image Dennis Tito, the first private citizen to visit the International Space Station | NASA via Wikipedia
• Further Reading / In the News
• Dennis Tito Wants to Send Human Mission to Mars in 2018 | UniverseToday.com

— Updates —

Another Step for Bionic Eyes

• Clinical Trials
• As part of the first module of second human clinical trials in Germany research found that, during the course of a three to nine month observation period, functional vision was restored in the majority of nine patients implanted with a subretinal microchip
• Patients were implanted with Retina Implant AG\’s subretinal wireless 3×3 mm2, 1500 pixel Alpha IMS microchip and are able to adjust the level of stimulation received to view objects at varied distances
• Test Data
• Visual acuity for two of the nine patients surpassed the visual resolution of patients from the Company\’s first human clinical trial
• Of the nine patients observed in the study, three patients were able to read letters spontaneously during observation in and outside the laboratory patients
• They also reported the ability to recognize faces, distinguish objects such as telephones and read signs on doors
• Results
• Results from the first trial concluded that the implantation of Retina Implant\’s microchip was successful in restoring useful vision in patients previously blind due to retinitis pigmentosa
• second clinical trial with a wireless device that allows patients to use the implant outdoors and at home and has since expanded into the multicentre phase
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Scientists help blind man see again | Channel4News
• YouTube | Blind man given bionic eye describes seeing again | Frank Swain
• YouTube | Animation of Retina Implant | jonmillsswns
• Further Reading / In the News
• Retina Implant AG
• Retinal implants with wireless microchip restore functional vision in retinitis pigmentosa patients, research finds | MedicalXpress.com

Russian Meteorite Orbital Calculations

• Initial Calculations
• Just a week after a huge fireball streaked across the skies of the Chelyabinsk region of Russia, astronomers published a paper that reconstructs the orbit and determines the origins of the space rock
• Scientists at the University of Antioquia in Colombia used a resource not always available in meteorite falls: the numerous dashboard and security cameras that captured the huge fireball
• Using the trajectories shown in videos posted on YouTube, the researchers were able to calculate the trajectory of the meteorite as it fell to Earth and use it to reconstruct the orbit in space of the meteoroid before its violent encounter with our planet.
• Although the results are preliminary and they are already working on getting more precise results, through their calculations, the team determined the rock originated from the Apollo class of asteroids
• In addition to the video data they Google Earth to reconstruct the path of the rock as it entered the atmosphere and showed that it matched an image of the trajectory taken by the geostationary Meteosat-9 weather satellite.
• Even with the plethora of video\’s due to variations in time and date stamps on several of the videos, some which differed by several minutes, they decided to choose two videos from different locations that seemed to be the most reliable
• From triangulation, they were able to determine height, speed and position of the meteorite as it fell to Earth
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Preliminary Orbit of the Chelyabinsk Meteoroid.mp4 | Jorge Zuluaga
• YouTube | The video from Revolutionary Square in Chelyabinsk
• YouTube | Video recorded in Korkino
• YouTube Meteor Over Russia seen by Meteosat-9 [HD] | TheMarsUnderground
• Further Reading / In the News
• Astronomers Calculate Orbit and Origins of Russian Fireball | universetoday.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE / VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Dragon resupply

• On March 1 at 10:10 AM EST, the Dragon CRS-2 is slated to blast off on a Dragon cargo vehicle on what will be only the 2nd commercial resupply mission ever to the ISS
• The mission will carrying about 1,200 pounds of vital supplies and science experiments for the six man international crew living aboard the million pound orbiting outpost
• The Dragon will remain docked to the ISS for about three weeks while the crew unloads all manner of supplies including food, water, clothing, spare parts and gear and new science experiments
• The astronauts will replace all that cargo load with numerous critical experiment samples they have stored during ongoing research activities, as well as no longer needed equipment and trash totaling about 2300 pounds, for the return trip to Earth and a Pacific Ocean splashdown set for March 25
• ‏@Tubsta pointed this story out on Twitter as well
• Further Reading / In the News
• Commercial Resupply Launch | NASA.gov

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Rock Interior
• The first thing you notice about the material from inside the rock is that it\’s a different color, not the the reddish orange color on the surface but grey
• That reddish orange color is a sign of an iron oxidation. A kind of rusting process that\’s occurred all around on Mars
• Multimedia
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
• Image : First Curiosity Drilling Sample in the Scoop (Raw-colored) | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Image : First Curiosity Drilling Sample in the Scoop | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Image : Curiosity\’s Traverse Map Through Sol 166 | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Preparing Samples on Mars | nasa.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Remembering David McKay [September 25, 1936 – February 20, 2013]

• As a graduate student, McKay was in the audience when President John F. Kennedy gave his legendary \”We choose to go to the moon\” speech
• McKay joined NASA in June of 1965 and participated extensively in astronaut training leading up to 1969\’s historic Apollo 11 mission
• He also served as chief scientist for astrobiology at NASA\’s Johnson Space Center in Houston
• McKay was lead author of a 1996 paper in the journal Science that suggested ALH84001 may contain evidence of past life on Mars.
• While the claim still spurs controversy, it also sparked a shift in perspectives that is alive and well within NASA today and prompted the establishment of the NASA Astrobiology Institute
• McKay developed innovative new technology for both life detection and the use of lunar regolith as feedstock, radiation protection, fuel, nutrient source for microbial bioreactors and long-term lunar habitation.
• Publications
• David published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers on lunar samples, space resource utilization, cosmic dust, meteorites, astrobiology and Mars topics, as well as about twice that many published abstracts, and this body of work includes many contributions to our understanding of the development and evolution of the lunar regolith and space weathering processes
• Professional Positions
• Chief Scientist for Astrobiology and Planetary Science and Exploration, 1996 – 2013
• Assistant for Exploration and Technology – NASA Johnson Space Center, 1994 – 96
• Chief, Planetary Programs Office – NASA Johnson Space Center, 1991 – 94
• Chief, Mission Science and Technology Office – NASA Johnson Space Center, 1990 – 91
• Chief, Space Resources Utilization Office – NASA Johnson Space Center, 1987 – 90
• Staff Scientist – NASA Johnson Space Center, 1965 – 87
• Exploration Geophysicist, Exxon and Marine Geophysical, 1960 – 61
• Further Reading / In the News
• David S. McKay, Chief Scientist for Astrobiology | ares.jsc.nasa.gov
• Pioneering Moon, Mars Scientist David McKay Dies at 76 | Space.com

Looking back

• March 05, 1223 BC : 3236 years ago : Oldest Eclipse Record : The oldest recorded eclipse occurred, according to one plausible interpretation of a date inscribed on a clay tablet retrieved from the ancient city of Ugarit, Syria (as it is now). This date is favoured by recent authors on the subject, although alternatively 3 May 1375 BC has also been proposed as plausible. Certainly by the 8th century BC, the Babylonians were keeping a systematic record of solar eclipses, and possibly by this time they may have been able to apply numerological rules to make fairly accurate predictions of the occurrence of solar eclipses. The first total solar eclipse reliably recorded by the Chinese occurred on 4 Jun 180 BC.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
  

• Thursday, February 28 | ~11pm local | Spica will be very close to the Moon, in fact for people from SE Mexico through central S America the Moon will actually occults (pass in front of) Spica

• Friday, March 1 | ~11pm local | The moon rises in the E-SE with Saturn

• Jupiter | After sunset it appears high in the S moving to the SW later in the evening

• Further Reading and Resources

• 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

The post Tiny Exo-planet & Medical Glue | SciByte 83 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at a possible new “Super-Earths,” simulated skin, airless tires, Viewer Feedback, Curiosity update, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Download | Ogg Download | Video | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | Ogg Feed | iTunes Feed | Video Feed

Support the Show:

[asa]0345529413[/asa]
[asa]0803236395[/asa]

Annihilation: Star Wars: The Old Republic Audio Book