We take a look at counting Earth-like planets, what musical training does for your brain, the Olympic torch, viewer feedback about sharks, a spacecraft update on India’s Mars Orbiter Mission, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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How Common Are \’Earth-Like\’ 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
• Kepler Space Telescope
• Launched in 2009 its mission was to look for planets around other stars by looking for a \’dip\’ in the brightness of a star, about one hundredth of one percent, indicating that something was passing in front of it
• After 3 consecutive dips in light from the star it is labeled a exoplanet candidate
• About 150,000 stars were photographed every 30 minutes for four years leading to the current reported number of more than 3,000 planet candidates
• Kepler had to be pointed with such precision in order to find these planets that it would be like steadily looking at a grain of salt from a 0.4 km [1/4 mi] away
• The Keck Telescopes in Hawaii helps astronomers to determine each star\’s true brightness and calculate the diameter of each transiting planet, with an emphasis on Earth-diameter planets.
• \”Habitability\”
• The team\’s defined habitable as a planet that receives between four times and one-quarter the amount of light that Earth receives from the sun
• Earth-size planets in Earth-size orbits are not necessarily hospitable to life, even if they orbit in the habitable zone of a star where the temperature is not too hot and not too cold
• Some of those planets may have thick atmospheres, making it so hot at the surface that DNA-like molecules would not survive
• A habitable planet would have a rocky surfaces that could harbor liquid water suitable for living organisms
• Narrowing Down The Data
• The team focused on the 42,000 stars that are \’sun-like\’ and found 603 candidate planets orbiting them
• Of those only 10 were Earth-size, that is, one to two times the diameter of Earth and orbiting their star at a distance where they are heated to lukewarm temperatures suitable for life
• Extrapolating
• All of the potentially habitable planets found in their survey are around K stars, which are cooler and slightly smaller than the sun although analysis shows that the result for K stars can be extrapolated to G stars like the sun
• In order to get a better idea of the number of stars with planets around them you have to account for missed planets, as well as the fact that only a small fraction of planets are oriented so that they cross in front of their host star as seen from Earth
• Adding in those numbers led them to believe that roughly 22 percent of all sun-like stars in the galaxy have Earth-size planets in their habitable zones.
• The astronomers in this study defined sun-like stars to be of two class types, Class G (like our sun) and Class K
• Class G and K stars make up roughly 19.5% of all stars, 22% of those stars gives 4.3% of ALL stars have potentially habitable Earth-size planets. (1 out of 25)
• Multimedia
• YouTube | One in Five Sun-Like Stars Have \’Goldilocks\’ Planets | VideoFromSpace
• Further Reading / In the News
• Prevalence of Earth-size planets orbiting Sun-like stars | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
• Astronomers answer key question: How common are habitable planets? | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Musical Training and the Brain

• Older adults who took music lessons as children but haven\’t actively played an instrument in decades have a faster brain response to a speech sound than individuals who never played an instrument
• The Brains Response Time
• As people grow older, they often experience changes in the brain that compromise hearing and show a slower response to fast-changing sounds, which is important for interpreting speech
• Previous studies have show such age-related declines are not inevitable, in fact recent studies of musicians suggest lifelong musical training may offset these and other cognitive declines
• The Study
• This recent study, explored whether limited musical training early in life is associated with changes in the way the brain responds to sound decades later
• For the study, 44 healthy adults, ages 55-76, listened to a synthesized speech syllable (\”da\”) while researchers measured electrical activity in the auditory brainstem
• The brainstem is the region of the brain processes sound and is a hub for cognitive, sensory, and reward information
• Results
• The results showed that the more years study participants spent playing instruments as youth, the faster their brains responded to a speech sound.
• In fact none of the study participants had played an instrument in nearly 40 years, so it wasn\’t simply a recent or \’maintenance\’ result
• Participants who completed 4-14 years of music training early in life had the fastest response to the speech sound (on the order of a millisecond faster than those without music training).
• A millisecond faster may not seem like much, but the brain is very sensitive to timing and a millisecond compounded over millions of neurons can make a real difference
• Further Reading / In the News
• Just a few years of early musical training benefits the brain later in life | MedicalXPress.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Olympic Torch in Space

• The Olympic Torch was taken on a space walk for the first time on Nov 9, 2013
• Russian officials made it clear that the torch would remain unlit at all times for safety reasons.
• The Olympic torch was carried into space ahead of the 1996 and 2000 Olympics in Atlanta and Sydney but has never before been taken on a spacewalk
• In an usual situation, when the new crew arrived there were nine crew members and three Soyuz vehicles at the ISS, there have not been nine crew members on the ISS since 2009.
• The new crew brought the unlit torch along, then the space station’s current crew, took the torch out on a spacewalk, the three returning crew members brought the torch back to Earth
• The real reason for the spacewalk is to do some routine Russian maintenance outside the station
• The torch was given back to Olympic officials and it will be used in the opening ceremonies of the February games
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Raw: Spacewalkers Hand Off Olympic Torch | AssociatedPress
• Further Reading / In the News
• Russia launches Sochi Olympic torch into space | Phys.org
• Crew Launches to Space Station with Olympic Torch | UniverseToday.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

New Shark Species

• Michael Thalleen ‏@ThalleenM
• Two new shark species have been discovered
• Carolina Hammerhead
• Rare New Species of Carolina Hammerhead Shark Discovered | ScienceWorldReport.com
• Scientists have now announced that they\’ve discovered a new species of rare shark, the Carolina hammerhead
• The Carolina hammerhead has long eluded discovery due to the fact that it is outwardly indistinguishable from the common scalloped hammerhead
• The new species, named Sphyrna gilberti, was actually discovered as scientists were looking for more common hammerheads.
• South Carolina is a well-known pupping ground for several species of sharks, which means that researchers were collecting samples there for study
• The scalloped hammerheads that they were collecting had two different genetic signatures in both the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes
• The scientists found that the anomalous scalloped hammerhead had been described in 1967 and had 10 fewer vertebrae than the normal scalloped hammerhead. Intrigued
• In the end, the scientists found that there was genetic evidence to show that this hammerhead was, in fact, a new species.
• At this point scientists aren\’t sure exactly how many individuals still exist in the wild
• \’Walking\’ Shark
• New \’Walking\’ Shark Species Caught on Video | LiveScience
• YouTube | New species of \”walking\” shark found in Indonesia – Conservation International (CI) – 2013 | ConservationDotOrg
• A new species of \”walking\” shark has been discovered in a reef off a remote Indonesian island
• Hemiscyllium halmahera, named after the eastern Indonesian island of Halmahera where it was found
• These sharks don\’t always rely on \”walking\” to move about — often, they only appear to touch the seafloor as they swim using their pectoral and pelvic fins in a walk like gait
• The shark grows up to 70 cm [27 in] long and is harmless to humans
• The animals lay eggs under coral ledges, after which the young sharks lead relatively sedentary lives until adulthood
• These sharks do not cross areas of deep water and are found in isolated reefs

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission

• Last time on SciByte
• SciByte 107 | Dinosaurs & Satellites (October 29, 2013)
• The Trip to Mars
• India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) safely injected into its initial elliptical Earth parking orbit on Nov. 5
• India’s PSLV rocket is not powerful enough to send MOM on a direct flight 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
• The goal is to gradually maneuver MOM – India’s 1st mission to the Red Planet – into a hyperbolic trajectory so that the spacecraft will
• The spacecraft was initial in an elliptical orbit around Earth, it then proceeds to fire its engines when it is at its closest point in orbit above Earth.
• 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
• They expected to achieve escape velocity on Dec. 1 and depart Earth’s sphere of influence tangentially to Earth’s orbit to begin the 300 day (10 month) voyage to Mars
• Estimates are that it will arrive in the vicinity of Mars on September 24, 2014
• Small Glitch
• During a fourth repositioning, on Mon Nov 11, that was to take it 100,000 kilometres (62,000 miles) from Earth, the thruster engines briefly failed, leading the autopilot to take over.
• The supplemental burn on Nov 12 successfully raised it to the proper orbit
• The Other Mars Mission
• NASA\’s MAVEN orbiter remains on target to launch on Nov. 18 – from Cape Canaveral, Florida
• It\’s goal is to \”Study the Martian atmosphere , unlock the mysteries of its current atmosphere and determine how, why and when the atmosphere and liquid water was lost\”
• Both Mission Goals
• The main aim of MOM is to detect methane in the Martian atmosphere, which could provide evidence of some sort of life form
• Both MAVEN and MOM’s goal are to study the Martian atmosphere
• MOM science teams have said they will “work together” with NASA\’s MAVEN team to unlock the secrets of Mars atmosphere and climate history
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Mars Mission Isro successfully completes first midnight manoeuver | rajnews41
• Further Reading / In the News
• Indian Mars mission on track, makes first engine burns | Phys.org
• India\’s Mars Orbiter Mission Rising to Red Planet – Glorious Launch Gallery | UniverseToday.com
• Indian Mars mission suffers glitch but \’no setback\’ | Phys.org

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Warm Reset
• NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity experienced an unexpected software reboot (also known as a warm reset) on the 7th
• During a communications pass as it was sending engineering and science data to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, for later downlinking to Earth
• occurred about four-and-half hours after new flight software had been temporarily loaded into the rover\’s memory
• At the time the event occurred, Curiosity was in the middle of a scheduled, week-long flight software update and checkout activity
• A warm reset is executed by flight software when it identifies a problem with one of its operations
• The reset restarts the flight software into its initial state. Since the reset, the rover has been performing operations and communications as expected
• This is the first time that Curiosity has executed a fault-related warm reset during its 16-plus months of Mars surface operations
• Multimedia
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity Performs Warm Reset | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• Nov 16, 1972 : 41 years ago : Skylab III : Skylab III, carrying a crew of three astronauts, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on an 84-day mission that remained the longest American space flight for over two decades (until Norm Thagard broke it aboard Mir in 1995 and Shannon Lucid, Feb 2002-Sep 2003). The Skylab III crew, Gerald P. Carr, William R. Pogue and Edward C. Gibson, maintained their physical condition by walking treadmills and riding an on-board stationary bicycle. Among the thousands of experiments conducted during this flight, the astronauts took four space walks, including one on Christmas Day to observe the comet Kohoutek. After 1214 orbits, the crew returned to Earth, splashing down on 8 Feb 1974. Skylab 3 | Wikipedia

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Friday, Nov 15 | After dark | The Summer Triangle | You can see the bright star Vega high in the W-NW after dark this month, the brightest star above it is Deneb with the dimmer Altair to the lower left.
• Planets
• Venus | Dusk | In the SW setting at least and hour after dark
• Mars | 1-2am local | High in the SE, still moving E against the background stars moving farther to the lower left of Regulus

• Jupiter | 9pm local | Rises in the E-NE with the stars Castor and Pollux to its 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 ‘Earth-Like’ Planets & Sharks | SciByte 109 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at Bilingualism, cancer cell mortality, one smart dog, bringing Mars to Earth, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Path of Destruction: Star Wars: Darth Bane, Book 1

• 2,000 years after KOTOR
• 1,000 years before New Hope
• Before, but general area of Yoda being born (+/- 50 or so)
• Connected to prophesy from Dark Forces Books/Game, dealing directly with Kyle Katarn

Brains and Bilingual Language

• According to new research, individuals who learn two languages at an early age seem to switch back and forth between separate \”sound systems\” for each language
• Previous Ideas on the Brain and Languages
• One idea was that people who speak more than one language have different processing modes for their two languages
• One mode for processing speech in one language and then a mode for processing speech in the other language
• Another view was that bilinguals just adjust to speech variation by calibrating to the unique acoustic properties of each language
• New Research Supports…
• Kalim Gonzales, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Arizona, research supports the first view
• When most people think about the difference in languages they think of the different words and grammar, but at the root of the languages are different sounds
• The Study – Setup
• The study looked at 32 Spanish-English early bilinguals, who had learned their second language before age 8
• Participants were presented with a series of pseudo-words beginning with a \’pa\’ or a \’ba\’ sound and asked to identify which of the two sounds they heard
• \’pa\’ and \’ba\’ sounds exist in both English and Spanish, how those sounds are produced and perceived in the two languages varies subtly
• For example, for English speakers \’ba\’ typically begin to vibrate their vocal chords the moment they open their lips
• Spanish speakers begin vocal cord vibration slightly before they open their lips and produce \’pa\’ in a manner similar to English \’ba.\’
• English-only speakers might, in some cases, confuse the \’ba\’ and \’pa\’ sounds they hear in Spanish
• The Study – Bilingual Participants
• The bilingual participants were divided into two groups. One group was told they would be hearing rare words in Spanish, while the other was told they would be hearing rare words in English
• Both groups heard audio recordings of variations of the same two non real words bafri and pafri
• Both groups heard the same series of words, but for the group told they were hearing Spanish, the ends of the words were pronounced slightly differently, with the \’r\’ getting a Spanish pronunciation
• Participants perceived \’ba\’ and \’pa\’ sounds differently depending on whether they were told they were hearing Spanish words, with the Spanish pronunciation of \’r,\’ or whether they were told they were hearing English words, with the English pronunciation of \’r.\’
• When they put people in \”English mode,\” they actually would act like English speakers, and then if you put them in Spanish mode, they would switch to acting like Spanish speakers
• Hearing the exact same \’ba\’s and \’pa\’s would label them differently depending on the context
• The Study – Bilingual Participants
• When the study was repeated with 32 English monolinguals, participants did not show the same shift in perception
• They labeled \’ba\’ and \’pa\’ sounds the same way regardless of which language they were told they were hearing
• What Does That Mean?
• Difference between the two groups provided the strongest evidence for two sound systems in bilinguals
• This is primarily true for those who learn two languages very young
• If you learn a second language later in life, you usually have a dominant language and then you try to use that sounds system for the other language, which is why you end up having an accent
• Bilinguals who learn two languages early in life learn two separate processing modes, or \”sound systems\”
• One of the reasons it sounds different when you hear someone speaking a different language is because the actual sounds they use are different
• Someone might sound like they have an accent if they learn Spanish first is because their \’pa\’ is like an English \’ba,\’ so when they say a word with \’pa,\’ it will sound like a \’ba\’ to an English monolingual
• Further Reading / In the News
• Study shows how bilinguals switch between languages | MedicalXPress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Diet Help Makes Cancer Cells Mortal

• New research suggests that a compound abundant in the Mediterranean diet takes away cancer cells\’ \”superpower\” to escape death
• By altering a very specific step in gene regulation, this compound essentially re-educates cancer cells into normal cells that die as scheduled.
• Apigenin
• One way that cancer cells thrive is by inhibiting a process that would cause them to die on a regular cycle that is subject to strict programming
• Researchers, found that a compound in certain plant-based foods, called apigenin, could stop breast cancer cells from inhibiting their own death.
• Parsley, celery and chamomile tea are the most common sources of apigenin, but it is found in many fruits and vegetables
• Through additional experimentation, the team established that apigenin had relationships with proteins that have three specific functions
• Among the most important was a protein called hnRNPA2, which influences the activity of messenger RNA, or mRNA, which contains the instructions needed to produce a specific protein
• Splicing
• The production of mRNA results from the splicing, or modification, of RNA that occurs as part of gene activation, abnormal splicing is the culprit in an estimated 80 percent of all cancers
• In cancer cells, two types of splicing occur when only one would take place in a normal cell – a trick on the cancer cells\’ part to keep them alive and reproducing.
• Researchers observed that apigenin\’s connection to the hnRNPA2 protein restored this single-splice characteristic to breast cancer cells, eliminating the splicing form that inhibited cell death
• This suggests that when splicing is normal, cells die in a programmed way, or become more sensitive to chemotherapeutic drugs.
• Multimedia
• XKCD | Cancer Cells
• Further Reading / In the News
• The compound in the Mediterranean diet that makes cancer cells \’mortal\’ | MedicalXPress.com

Dog Understanding Grammer

• In experiments directed by her owner a 9-year-old border collie has demonstrated a grasp of the basic elements of grammar by responding correctly to commands such as “to ball take Frisbee” and its reverse, “to Frisbee take ball.”
• Word Training
• The dog had previous, extensive training to recognize classes of words including nouns, verbs and prepositions
• Throughout the first three years of the dogs life she was trained to recognize and fetch more than 1,000 objects by name
• Researchers also taught the meaning of different types of words, such as verbs and prepositions and sentence training at age 7
• The dog learned that phrases such as “to Frisbee” meant that she should take whatever was in her mouth to the named object.
• An experimenter would say, for instance, “to ball take Frisbee.” In initial trials, the experimenter pointed at each item while saying its name.
• After several weeks of training, two experiments were conducted
• The Experiments – \’Eyeing the Prize\’
• In one experiment the dog had to choose an object from one pair to carry to an object from the other pair
• Researchers read commands that included words for those objects. Only some of those words had been used during sentence training
• To see whether Chaser grasped that grammar could be used flexibly student also read sentences in the reversed form of “take sugar to decoy.”
• In 28 of 40 attempts, the dog grabbed the correct item in her mouth and dropped it next to the correct target.
• The Experiments – Hidden in Plain Sight
• Another experiment tested the dogs ability to understand commands when she couldn’t see the objects at first
• Researchers placed two objects behind her at the other end of the bed, after hearing a command, the dog turned around and nabbed one of the objects.
• Then ran to the living room and delivered the item to one of another pair of objects. She succeeded on all 12 trials
• What is Exactly Happening
• Exactly how the dog gained her command of grammar is unclear although researchers suspects that she first mentally linked each of two nouns she heard in a sentence to objects in her memory
• Multimedia
• Chaser – The intelligent Border Collie | PetfansDotnet
• Further Reading / In the News
• Dog sniffs out grammar | Psychology | Science News

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

A Year on Mars, on Earth

• The Mars Society has just announced a year long simulation of astronauts on Mars in the arctic
• The proposed Mars Arctic 365 (MA365) mission on Canada’s Devon Island would take place at Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station
• According to the Mars Society the arctic is a lot like Mars in that it is cold, isolated, and dangerous
• The society is asking for $50,000 from supporters in the next 24 days before starting the first phase (basically retrofitting the station and adding equipment) in July
• More information on MA365 – perhaps with information on crew selection – should come in August, when members of the Phase 1 crew issue a report at the 16th Annual International Mars Society Convention
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars Society Proposes A Year-Long Arctic Mission To Better Prepare for the Red Planet | UniverseToday.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Kepler Strategies

• What\’s the Latest?
• Kepler engineers are now strategizing about how to remotely repair one of two broken reaction wheels that precisely point the telescope
• It will take at least several weeks before they beam commands up to the $600-million telescope, and they admit that a fix is a long shot.
• Kepler Exoplanet History
• When Kepler was launched into space astronomers knew that the galaxy contained at least 350 exoplanets, nearly all of them the size of Jupiter or larger
• Kepler’s then spent four years adding nearly 3,000 planets
• Now astronomers are convinced that the Milky Way contains hundreds of billions of planets, roughly one for every star, with at least 17 billion of them Earth-sized
• Kepler’s main goal was to determine the frequency of Earthlike planets in the galaxy while they now have enough data to make an intelligent extrapolation about what that number is, determining a more exact number will remain in limbo unless the telescope comes back online
• What\’s the Next Mission
• NASA’s next exoplanet-hunting mission, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS, is scheduled for a 2017 launch
• Whereas Kepler has fixed its gaze on distant stars, TESS will focus on bright, nearby stars so that powerful telescopes like the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will be able to probe the atmospheres of planets that TESS discovers
• While less sensitive than Kepler, will nonetheless uncover plenty of planets in our neighborhood, including a handful of Earth-sized worlds
• Astronomers hope to pair size measurements of planets observed by telescopes such as TESS with mass readings from ground-based scopes that look for subtle wobbles in stars’ motion caused by the gravitational pull of orbiting planets.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Gone perhaps, but Kepler won\’t soon be forgotten | Atom & Cosmos | Science News

Opportunity, Still Hard at Work

• Opportunity, has just discovered the strongest evidence to date for an environment favorable to ancient Martian biology
• Opportunity’s analysis of a new rock target named “Esperance” confirmed that it is composed of a “clay that had been intensely altered by relatively neutral pH water
• Esperance is unlike any rock previously investigated by Opportunity; containing far more aluminum and silica which is indicative of clay minerals and lower levels of calcium and iron.
• Most, but not all of the rocks inspected to date by Opportunity were formed in an environment of highly acidic water
• This represents the most favorable conditions for biology that Opportunity has yet seen in the rock histories it has encountered
• Water that moved through fractures during this rock’s history would have provided more favorable conditions for biology than any other wet environment recorded in rocks Opportunity has seen
• Opportunity accomplished the ground breaking new discovery by exposing the interior of Esperance with her still functioning Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) and examining a pristine patch using the microscopic camera and X-Ray spectrometer on the end of her 3 foot long robotic arm.
• This discovery comes at the conclusion of a 20 month long science expedition circling around a low ridge called “Cape York,” the team even committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it
• Esperance stems from a time when the Red Planet was far warmer and wetter billions of years ago.
• What’s so special about Esperance is that there was enough water not only for reactions that produced clay minerals, but also enough to flush out ions set loose by those reactions
• Opportunity can clearly see the alterations caused by that process
• Further Reading / In the News
• Opportunity Discovers Clays Favorable to Martian Biology and Sets Sail for Motherlode of New Clues | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Self-Portrait
• This self-portrait of NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity combines dozens of exposures taken by the rover\’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 177th Martian day, or sol, on Mars (Feb. 3, 2013)
• In addition three exposures were taken during Sol 270 (May 10, 2013) to update the appearance of part of the ground beside the rover
• The updated area, which is in the lower left quadrant of the image, shows gray-powder and two holes where Curiosity used its drill on the rock target \”John Klein.\”
• The rover\’s robotic arm is not visible in the mosaic. MAHLI, which took the component images for this mosaic, is mounted on a turret at the end of the arm.
• Wrist motions and turret rotations on the arm allowed MAHLI to acquire the mosaic\’s component images. The arm was positioned out of the shot in the images, or portions of images, used in the mosaic
• Radiation Reading Findings
• Announcement coming on Thurs, May 30
  Multimedia
• May\’s Planet Dance | SkyandTelescope
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Updated Curiosity Self-Portrait at \’John Klein\’ | mars.jpl.NASA.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• May 25, 2011 : 2 years ago : SciByte 1 : After appearing on a few shows on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network, most specifically after doing \”Space Wednesday\’s\” on Jupiter@Night, Heather (chatroom handle : Mars_Base) started doing a science based show with Jeremy. The show had a short hiatus between SciByte 16 and 17, leading to a change in style and co-host, Chris. Throughout it\’s life the show has been about spreading science information, and in general making Science Happy.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Venus and Jupiter remain close to each other in the NW

• Saturn | Twilight | Look to the SE for Saturn with Spica to it\’s upper right. It will be at it\’s highest point not long after dark

• 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 Bilingualism & A Smart Dog | SciByte 95 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at sad news for the Kepler space telescope, wireless brain imaging, remote ancient water, cancer genes, sound imaging, viewer feedback, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Kepler\’s Last Dance?

• NASA’s Kepler telescope lost its ability to precisely point toward stars when one of the reaction wheels –devices which enable the spacecraft to aim in different directions without firing thrusters – has failed
• Launched in 2009, the Kepler mission completed its 3.5-year planned run last year.it monitors some 150,000 sunlike stars in search of transiting planets
• Reaction Wheels
• Reaction wheels try to balance the forces from the solar pressure, that’s what forces a wheel to run
• Last year reaction wheel #2 failed, and now #4 has failed
• In July 2012 reaction wheel #2 failed, then earlier this year elevated friction was detected in reaction wheel #4, they saw some movement on the wheel but it went back quickly
• Extending Fuel Supplies
• They are currently using thrusters to stabilize the spacecraft, and in its current mode, the onboard fuel will last for several months
• They could extend the fuel to last a period of several years in a “Point Rest State,” where we can park the vehicle
• Point Rest State is a loosely-pointed, thruster-controlled state that minimizes fuels usage while providing a continuous X-band communication downlink
• The software to execute that state was loaded to the spacecraft last week
• There is the possibility of the wheel running in the opposite direction, but running the wheel backward would mean they would need to use more thruster fuel
• What Lies Ahead
• The spacecraft needs at least three reaction wheels to be able to point precisely enough to hunt for planets orbiting distant stars, but it might be possible to use the telescope for another purpose that does not require such precise pointing abilities
• They will continue to analyze the situation to try and get the telescope back online
• Even if the Kepler spacecraft is unable to make more observations, there are still terabytes of data to pore over with two years of data that has yet to be searched through
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Kepler Update on This Week @NASA | NASATelevision
• Further Reading / In the News
• Kepler mission may be over | Atom & Cosmos | Science News
• Planet-Hunting Kepler Spacecraft Suffers Major Failure, NASA Says | Space.com
• Kepler spacecraft\’s planet-hunting days may be over | Phys.org
• Malfunction Could Mark the End of NASA\’s Kepler Mission – ScienceInsider | ScienceMag.org
• Kepler Planet-Hunting Mission in Jeopardy | UniverseToday.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Wireless Brain Imaging

• A new technology is using wireless signals to provide real-time, non-invasive diagnosis of brain swelling or bleeding.
• The device analyzes data from low energy, electromagnetic waves, similar to the kind used to transmit radio and mobile signals
• It could potentially become a cost-effective tool for medical diagnostics and to triage injuries in areas where access to medical care, especially medical imaging, is limited
• The Prototype
• Engineers fashioned two coils into a helmet-like device, fitted over the heads of the study participants
• One coil acts as a radio emitter and the other serves as the receiver. Electromagnetic signals are broadcast through the brain from the emitter to the receiver
• The waves are extremely weak, and are comparable to standing in a room with the radio or television turned on
• The device\’s diagnoses for the brain trauma patients in the study matched the results obtained from conventional computerized tomography (CT) scans
• Researchers take advantage of the characteristic changes in tissue composition and structure in brain injuries
• For brain edema, swelling results from an increase in fluid in the tissue and for brain hematomas, internal bleeding causes the buildup of blood in certain regions of the brain.
• Because fluid conducts electricity differently than brain tissue, it is possible to measure changes in electromagnetic properties.
• Then computer algorithms interpret the changes to determine the likelihood of injury.
• Prototype Testing
• The researchers tested a prototype in a small-scale pilot study of healthy adults and brain trauma patients admitted to a military hospital for the Mexican Army
• The study involved 46 healthy adults, ages 18 to 48, and eight patients with brain damage, ages 27 to 70.
• The results from the healthy patients were clearly distinguishable from those with brain damage, and data for bleeding was distinct from those for swelling
• Why is it Important?
• Symptoms of serious head injuries and brain damage are not always immediately obvious, and for treatment, time is of the essence.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Wireless signals could transform brain trauma diagnostics | MedicalXPress.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Ancient Water Story

• A UK-Canadian team of scientists has discovered ancient pockets of water, which have been isolated deep underground for billions of years and contain abundant chemicals known to support life
• Before this finding, the only water of this age was found trapped in tiny bubbles in rock and is incapable of supporting life
• The Water
• The crystalline rocks surrounding the water are thought to be around 2.7 billion years old. But no-one thought the water could be the same age, until now
• Using ground-breaking techniques researchers show that the fluid is at least 1.5 billion years old, but could be significantly older.
• The interconnected fluid system in the deep Canadian crystalline basement that is billions of years old, and capable of supporting life
• Scientists say the water found in the Canadian mine pours from the rock at a rate of nearly two litres per minute yet don\’t yet know if the underground system in Canada sustains life
• Hydrogen, Methane, and Life
• Researchers have analysed water pouring out of boreholes from a mine 2.4 kilometres beneath Ontario, Canada
• They have found that the water is rich in dissolved gases like hydrogen, methane and different forms – called isotopes – of noble gases such as helium, neon, argon and xenon
• The amount of hydrogen in the water is similar to that around hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean, where microbial life has been found
• The hydrogen and methane come from the interaction between the rock and water, as well as natural radioactive elements in the rock reacting with the water
• These gases could provide energy for microbes that may not have been exposed to the sun for billions of years.
• What This Means On a Larger Scale
• The similarity between the rocks that trapped it and those on Mars raises the hope that comparable life-sustaining water could lie buried beneath the red planet\’s surface
• Further Reading / In the News
• Billion-year-old water could hold clues to life on Earth and Mars | Phys.org

Flipping Genes for Cancer

• Researchers at Johns Hopkins have identified a gene that, when repressed in tumor cells, puts a halt to cell growth and a range of processes needed for tumors to enlarge and spread to distant sites
• The work shows for the first time that switching this gene off in aggressive cancer cells dramatically changes their appearance and behavior
• The team applied the same techniques to several strains of human breast cancer cells in the laboratory, including the so-called triple negative cells
• Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
• Triple-negative breast cancer cells tend to behave aggressively and do not respond to many of our most effective breast cancer therapies
• Cells with suppressed HMGA1 grow very slowly and fail to migrate or invade new territory
• The team then implanted tumor cells into mice, the tumors with HMGA1 grew and spread to other areas, such as the lungs, while those with blocked HMGA1 did not grow well in the breast tissue or spread to distant sites.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Making cancer less cancerous: Blocking a single gene renders tumors less aggressive | MedicalXpress.com

Sound Pictures of Your Car

• Researchers have created a camera that creates a heat map-like view of machinery, or anything else
• 30 digital microphones and a high-res camera pick up on what\’s making noise, and an image shows the different levels of noise, organized by a color gradient with blue meaning a little noise, and red is the most extreme level.
• While this is not the first sound camera, at about 4 pounds it is one of the most portable
• Further Reading / In the News
• This Sound Camera Could Help You Fix Your Car | Popular Science

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Space Station Patch

• Peter Daintree / \”Korlus\” – Check This Out!
• Space Station ammonia Leak and Fix
• Answer
• Expedition 35 Flight Engineers inspected and replaced a pump controller box on the International Space Station’s far port truss (P6) leaking ammonia coolant
• Coolant Pump
• The device contains the mechanical systems that drive the cooling functions for the port truss.
• The ammonia cools the 2B power channel, one of eight power channels that control the all the various power-using systems at the ISS
• While the coolant is vital to the operation of the ISS for the electricity-supplying systems, the crew was not in any danger
• The Fix
• The spacewalk is the 168th in support of the assembly and maintenance of the space
• While astronauts on the station prepared in space, Astronauts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center used the Neutral Buoyancy lab – a 12- meter (40 ft.) deep swimming pool with mockups of the space station that simulates the zero-gravity conditions in space – going through the entire expected EVA
• A little more than 2 1/2 hours into the spacewalk removed the 260-pound pump controller box from the P6 truss and replaced it with a spare that had been stowed nearby
• What Happened in the \”Down Time\”
• All the systems that use power from the 2B channel, the problem area, were transferred throughout the day to another channel
• The 2B channel will eventually shut down when the coolant is depleted, and the power is being diverted in order to keep everything up and running on the station
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Station Ammonia Leak Prompts Spacewalk Preps | ReelNASA
• Further Reading / In the News
• NASA – Astronauts Complete Spacewalk to Repair Ammonia Leak, Station Changes Command | NASA.gov
• Emergency Spacewalk Likely for ‘Serious’ ISS Coolant Leak | UniverseToday.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Opportunity’s Driving Marathon

• Last Time on SciByte
• SciByte 79 | Multitasking & Tractor Beams – Opportunity rover still on the move [29 Jan, 2013]
• Marathon Driving
• Over the course of three days in December 1972 Apollo 17 astronauts drove their mission\’s Lunar Roving Vehicle 22.21 mi [19 nautical mi / 35.74 kilometers] holding the record for the farthest travelled NASA vehicle until recently
• Opportunity rover drove 263 feet (80 meters) on May 15, bringing its total odometry on the Red Planet to 22.22 miles [35.768 km], beating Apollo 17\’s record
• The Mission
• The golf-cart-sized Opportunity and it\’s twin Spirit landed on Mars in January 2004 on three-month missions to search for signs of past water activity on the Red Planet
• Spirit stopped communicating with Earth in 2010 and was declared dead a year later
• In the meantime Opportunity has been working at a section of the rim dubbed \”Cape York\” since the middle of 2011
• Now it has began trekking toward an area called Solander Point, which lies 1.4 miles (2.2 km) away
• The Future
• Opportunity still trails another robot for the international distance record, the Soviet Union\’s remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover traveled 23 miles (37 km) on the moon in 1973.
• Although Opportunity\’s handlers have said they\’d like to add this milestone to the rover\’s resume as well, though science remains the mission\’s top priority
• Multimedia
• IMAGE | Comparisons among the distances driven by various wheeled vehicles on the surface of Earth\’s moon and Mars | Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
• Further Reading / In the News
• Nine-Year-Old Mars Rover Passes 40-Year-Old Record – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory | JPL.NASA.gov
• Mars Rover Breaks U.S. Record for Off-Planet Driving | Scientific American
• Mars Rover Opportunity Breaks US Record for Off-Planet Driving | Space.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Second Drilling Location
• The first drilling location was at a target called \”John Klein\” three months ago
• The new target Cumberland resembles John Klein and lies about nine feet (2.75 meters) farther west
• On May 19th Curiosity drilled a hole into Cumberland about an 0.6 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter and about 2.6 inches (6.6 centimeters) deep
• Preliminary findings from analysis of the first site, \”John Klein,\” indicate that the location long ago had environmental conditions favorable for microbial life
• The science team expects to use analysis of the new material from Cumberland to check against those results
• ”Blinking Image”
• Before-and-After Blink of \’Cumberland\’ Drilling | NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
• This pair of images from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity shows the rock target \”Cumberland\” before and after Curiosity drilled into it to collect a sample for analysis
• The \”before\” image was taken during the 275th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity\’s work on Mars (May 15, 2013).
• Curiosity drilled into Cumberland on Sol 279 (May 19, 2013) and took the second image later that same sol.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Curiosity Rover Report (May 16, 2013): Rover Readies for Second Drilling | JPLNews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars Science Laboratory: NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Drills Second Rock Target | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• May 27, 1931 : 82 years ago : Balloon Record : In 1931, Auguste Piccard and Charles Knipfer took man\’s first trip into the stratosphere when they rode their balloon to an altitude of 51,800 feet (nearly 10 miles above the earth). This required the use of a pressurized cabin, which Piccard had designed. On-board experiments included the use of an electroscope to investigate cosmic rays

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Saturn | Twilight | In the SE with the blue giant star Spica to it\’s upper right
• Venus | Twilight | In the W-NW to the lower right of Jupiter
• Jupiter | Twilight | In the W-NW it is appearing lower and lower each day
• The Conjunction | When objects in the sky appear to be close from our perspective | As seen in the video, Jupiter and Venus are getting closer and closer in the W-NW about 40 min after sunset. They will be at their closest point May 28th, when they will only be 1 degree apart, or about the width of your pinky finger held at arms length

• YouTube | Conjunction Video | SkyandTelescope

• 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 Kepler & Ancient Water | SciByte 94 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at habitable zone exoplanets, diabetes treatment advances, water in Jupiter, living on Mars, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

More Habitable Zone Exoplanets

• 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
• Kepler Space Telescope
• As of April 2013, Kepler data has uncovered more than 2,700 potential planets, with about 120 of them having been confirmed to date
• Mission scientists expect that more than 90 percent of the planets detected are real and not illusions in the data
• Until now planets in the habitable zone were discovered by what is known as the radial velocity method, which gives a lower limit for the planet’s mass, but no information about its radius
• While a small radius (less than 2 Earth radii) is a strong indicator that a planet around is indeed rocky it is difficult to assess whether or not a planet is rocky, like the Earth.
• Finding planets in the habitable zones of larger stars is harder because those planets have relatively long orbits and barely cast a shadow as they pass across the faces of their suns
• Kepler-62
• Kepler62 is a red dwarf star, about two-thirds the size of the sun and several hundred degrees Celsius cooler
• It is only 20 percent as bright as the sun and is about 1,200 light years away and contains five planets currently identified
• Two of the worlds, Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f 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
• Life on these worlds would be under water with no easy access to metals, to electricity, or fire for metallurgy
• The biggest uncertainty right now is about both planets composition, early evidence suggests that at least 62f is rocky
• Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f would exhibit distinctly different colors and make our search for signatures of life easier on such planets in the near future
• Kepler-62e
• Orbit is 122 days
• 1.6 times the diameter of Earth
• Kepler-62e would have a bit more clouds than Earth according to computer models to sustain an ocean
• An astronomer at the University of Washington not involved in the research says that Kepler-62e may be too close to its star – and therefore too hot – to sustain life
• If 62e is a rocky planet, it’s almost certainly tidally locked with its star, half of its surface always facing the star, and the other always facing away
• Kepler62-f
• Orbit is 267 days
• 1.4 times the diameter of Earth
• Kepler-62f would need the greenhouse effect from plenty of carbon dioxide to warm it enough to host an ocean
• Kepler-69 System
• Kepler-36 is a sun-like star located 2,700 light-years away,
• The Kepler-69 system contains one known planet in that star\’s habitable zone
• Kepler-69c
• 1.7 times bigger than Earth, sits on the inner edge of the habitable zone and is almost certainly a super-Venus rather than a super-Earth
• Habitable Zone Types
• The \”empirical habitable zone\” is where liquid water can exist on the surface of a planet if that planet has sufficient cloud cover
• The \”narrow habitable zone\” is where liquid water can exist on the surface even without the presence of a cloud cover
• Of Note
• According to the Planetary Habitability Laboratory, there are now nine potential habitable worlds outside of our solar system, with 18 more potentially habitable planetary candidates found by Kepler waiting to be confirmed
• Astronomers predict there are 25 potentially habitable exomoons
• Kepler cannot search for signs of life on worlds like Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Kepler-69c, but the telescope is paving the way for future missions that should do just that
• Next-generation missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which NASA approved earlier this month for launch in 2017, will take on the task of finding nearer planets that astronomers can study in depth
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Animation of the Kepler 62 Planetary System | UniverseTodayVideos
• YouTube | NASA\’s Kepler Discovers Its Smallest \’Habitable Zone\’ Planets to Date | NASASolarSystem
• Infographic | 3 Potentially Habitable Super-Earth Planets Explained | Space.com
• IMAGE | Diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-69 | Image credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech
• IMAGE | Diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-62 | Image credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech
• IMAGE | Current known potentially habitable exoplanets | Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory/University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo.
• IMAGE | The habitable zone for different types of stars | Image: L. Kaltenegger (MPIA)
• YouTube | Full Anouncement | Kepler Makes Discoveries Inside the Habitable Zone | NASAtelevision
• Further Reading / In the News
• Discovered! Most Earth-Like Alien Planet & 2 Other Possibly Habitable Worlds | Space.com
• Most Earthlike planets yet seen bring Kepler closer to its holy grail | Atom & Cosmos | Science News
• Habitable Worlds? New Kepler Planetary Systems in Images | UniverseToday.com
• Kepler Team Finds System with Two Potentially Habitable Planets | UniverseToday.com

— NEWS BYTE —

New Possible Diabetes Treatment Option

• Researchers have discovered a hormone that holds promise for a dramatically more effective treatment of type 2 diabetes and believe that the hormone might also have a role in treating type 1, or juvenile, diabetes
• Type 1 Diabetes
• While betatrophin primarily as a treatment for type 2 diabetes, it is believed it might play a role in the treatment of type 1 diabetes as well
• Perhaps boosting the number of beta cells and slowing the progression of that autoimmune disease when it\’s first diagnosed
• Type 2 Diabetes
• Type 2 diabetes is usually caused by a combination of excess weight and lack of exercise and causes patients to slowly lose beta cells and the ability to produce adequate insulin
• Provide this hormone, the type 2 diabetic will make more of their own insulin-producing cells, and this will slow down, if not stop, the progression of their diabetes
• Betatrophin
• The hormone, called betatrophin, causes mice to produce insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cells at up to 30 times the normal rate
• In addition the new beta cells only produce insulin when called for by the body, offering the potential for the natural regulation of insulin
• The researchers know that the hormone exists in human plasma; betatrophin definitely exists in humans
• The Research
• The team wasn\’t just looking at what happens when an animal doesn\’t have enough insulin, they were able to find this a gene that had largely gone unnoticed before
• Another hint came from studying what happens during pregnancy, when there are more beta cells needed, and it turns out that this hormone goes up
• When a woman gets pregnant, her carbohydrate load, her call for insulin, can increase an enormous amount because of the weight and nutrition needs of the fetus
• The Future
• Betatrophin could be in human clinical trials within three to five years, an extremely short time in the normal course of drug discovery and development
• If it works as they hope it will it could eventually mean that instead of taking insulin injections three times a day, you might take an injection of this hormone once a week or month, or even year
• The researchers who discovered betatrophin caution that much work remains to be done before it could be used as a treatment in humans
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Potential Diabetes Breakthrough | Harvard
• Further Reading / In the News
• Potential diabetes breakthrough: Researchers discover new hormone spurring beta cell production | MedicalXPress.com

Soaking up Venom in Blood

• A tiny sponge camouflaged as a red blood cell could soak up toxins ranging from anthrax to snake venom, new research suggests
• Bacteria and Poisons
• One of the mainstay strategies of bacteria and poison is to poke holes in cells, disrupting their internal chemical balance and causing them to burst
• So far, researchers haven\’t had much success creating all-purpose treatments to exploit this vulnerability
• Nanosponges
• Researchers created a tiny spherical core of a lactic acid byproduct, which forms naturally during metabolism in the human body
• To get the outer skin of red blood cells, they used a difference in particle concentration inside and outside the cells to cause them to burst, and then collected their outer membranes
• They then wrapped the cores in the outer surface of the red blood cell
• The nanoparticles, also called nanosponges, act as decoys that lure and inactivate the deadly compounds
• The entire ensemble became a tiny nanosponge, which was about 85 nanometers in diameter, or 100 times smaller than a human hair
• The sponges\’ tiny size means a small amount of blood, for camouflage, can be used to make an effective dose
• In cell cultures, the camouflaged sponges act as decoys, luring the toxins from the bacteria that causes strep throat and bee venom
• The toxins then bind to the structure the \”poisons\” normally use to poke through cells
• When they stick onto the nanosponge, that particular damaging structure gets preoccupied, since the sponges are so small they can circulate freely through blood vessels, and then the body can digest the entire particle
• Experiment
• The team injected 18 mice with a lethal dose of a MRSA, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, toxin. Half the mice then got a dose of the nanosponges
• Whereas all the mice in the control group died, all but one that received the treatment survived
• When injected into mice, the tiny decoys protect mice against lethal doses of a toxin produced by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
• The Future
• The researchers want to see whether the method works in human blood, and against other toxic chemicals, such as scorpion venom and anthrax, which use similar attack strategies
• Because so many bacteria use the same pore-forming strategy, the nanosponges could be used as a universal treatment option when doctors don\’t know exactly what is causing an illness
• Further Reading / In the News
• Tiny Sponge Soaks Up Venom in Blood | Scientific American

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Water in Jupiter\’s Clouds

• How Did It Get There?
• In July 1994, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 plowed into Jupiter leaving behind millions of gallons of water.
• Water from the impact still makes up at least 95 percent of the water in the planet’s upper atmosphere
• Telescopes had previously spotted water in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, some 100 kilometers above the planet’s ammonia cloud tops, but those surveys could not determine where the water came from
• Now astronomers have created a high-resolution map of water vapor distribution throughout Jupiter’s atmosphere
• They found that the concentration of water peaked in the planet’s southern hemisphere, right in the region where the comet struck
• More water also appeared at higher altitudes around the planet, which supports the comet as its origin.
• Water from other sources such as Jupiter’s icy moons would likely spread out more evenly around the planet and would gradually filter down to lower altitudes
• Multimedia
• Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 – How The Universe Works | DiscoveryTV
• Further Reading / In the News
• News in Brief: Comet\’s water still hanging around on Jupiter | Atom & Cosmos | Science News

MarsOne and Life on Mars and Science

• Mars colony project will do its best to avoid disturbing potential Red Planet life rather than aggressively hunt it down
• Science and Life
• The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One opened its astronaut-selection process on April 22
• They plan to land four people on the Red Planet in 2023 to make a permanent human colony on the Red Planet, with new crews arriving every two years thereafter
• Human explorers will doubtless contaminate whatever site is chosen for the settlement, so the organization will try to pick a place unlikely to host indigenous life to localize the pollution
• Mars One is working with experts to minimize the risks its colonization effort may pose to potential Red Planet lifeforms
• While Mars One hasn\’t picked a precise location for its settlement yet, the organization is targeting a swath of the Red Planet between 40 and 45 degrees north latitude
• Mars One astronauts will not necessarily be scientists
• Anyone over the age of 18 is eligible to apply, with the selection committee prizing traits such as intelligence, resourcefulness, determination and psychological stability over academic background
• Science is not the main focus of what we are doing; although, crewmembers will take some scientific gear with them
• Mars One officials won\’t dictate what the experiments should be, but there will be a budget for equipment that they want to take for scientific research
• Multimedia
• Mars 2023 – Inhabitants wanted | MarsOneProject
• YouTube Channel | Mars One – Human Settlement of Mars
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars One
• Private Mars Colony Won\’t Seek Martian Life | Mars One | Space.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK—

Peter, AKA \”Korlus\” | Check This Out!

• On April 4, 2012 he Fermi spacecraft almost ended it\’s mission to map the highest-energy light in the universe because of a collision with a dead Cold-War spy satellite
• What Happened?
• An automatically generated report arrived from NASA\’s Robotic Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis (CARA) team based at NASA\’s Goddard Space Flight Center was sent to the FERMI team just one week away from an unusually close encounter with Cosmos 1805, a defunct spy satellite dating back to the Cold War.
• The two objects, speeding around Earth at thousands of miles an hour in nearly perpendicular orbits, were expected to miss each other by a mere 700 feet
• An update days later indicated the satellites would occupy the same point in space within 30 milliseconds of each other
• Using thrusters for use at the end of Fermi\’s operating life designed to take it out of orbit and allow it burn up in the atmosphere they were able to adjust the orbit just slightly enough to evade a collision
• The U.S. Space Surveillance Network continues to keep tabs on every artificial object larger than 4 inches across in Earth orbit. Of the 17,000 objects currently tracked, only about 7 percent are active satellites
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Near Miss – Dead Russian Spy Satellite Forces NASA Probe Move | VideoFromSpace
• YouTube | Animation of Earth with Near-Earth Orbital Debris [HD] | TheMarsUnderground
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars One
• Private Mars Colony Won\’t Seek Martian Life | Mars One | Space.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

New Atlantis Exhibit Prep

• The Space shuttle Atlantis is set to go on public display June 29 at NASA\’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida
• Shuttle Reveal
• It was revealed Friday, April 26 after workers spent two days peeling off its protective shrink-wrap cover of the past five months.
• Workers began carefully cutting back the 16,000 square feet (1,486 square meters) of shrink wrap that protected Atlantis as its $100 million exhibition building was completed around it
• By the end of the first day, the shuttle\’s nose, tail, aft engines and left wing were exposed, the workers completed the process the next day, revealing Atlantis\’ right wing and its 60-foot-long (18 meter) payload bay
• Opening the payload bay is set to begin in May, will take about two weeks, as the doors are very slowly hoisted open, one by one.
• Atlantis has been mounted. Thirty feet (9 meters) in the air, the space shuttle has been tilted 43.21 degrees, such that its left wing extends toward the ground.
• Atlantis will appear to be back in space – an effect that will be enhanced by lighting and a mural-size digital screen that will project the Earth\’s horizon behind the shuttle
• Multimedia
• YouTube Clip | Uncovering the Nose
• YouTube Clip | Uncovering a Wing
• YouTube Clip | Peeling Back the Layers
• YouTube | Shuttle Atlantis Unwrapped & Revealed at Kennedy Visitor Center | SpaceVidsNet
• Further Reading / In the News
• Atlantis Exposed: Space Shuttle Fully Unwrapped for NASA Exhibit | Kennedy Space Center | Space.com

SpaceShipTwo

• Last Time on SciByte
• SciByte 91 | Apollo 13 and Brain Training | Virgin Galactic Test Flight
• Lights Hybrid Rocket Engines
• Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) commercial spaceliner named “Enterprise” lit up her hybrid rocket engines in flight and reached supersonic speeds for the first time in history on
• The Breakdown
• Once SpaceShipTwo is operational, WhiteKnightTwo will carry the vehicle up to an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,240 meters) before releasing it.
• After separation, SpaceShipTwo will accelerate to 2,500 mph (4,000 km/h) and eventually pass an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers), the point at which passengers are considered astronauts
• The spaceship will reach a peak altitude of 68 miles (110 km), giving the six passengers and two pilots about five minutes of weightlessness
• Upon re-entry, SpaceShipTwo will be able to land on a conventional runway
• A seat on board a SpaceShipTwo flight costs $200,000. More than 550 people have put down deposits to reserve a spot
• Multimedia
• YouTube Clip | Release and Rocket Start
• YouTube Clip | In Orbit
• YouTube Clip | Weightless M-M\’s
• YouTube | Virgin Galactic 8 5min video
• Further Reading / In the News
• SpaceShipTwo Fires Rocket Engines for First Ever Supersonic Test Flight- Photos & Video | UniverseToday.com

Opportunity Rover Back Fron Glitch

• Mars rover Opportunity has overcome a glitch that put the robot into standby mode late last month
• What Happened?
• Opportunity apparently put itself into standby auto mode, in which it maintains power balance but waits for instructions from the ground, on April 22, after sensing a problem during a routine camera check, mission officials said.
• The rover\’s handlers didn\’t notice the problem until April 27, when Opportunity got back in touch after a nearly three-week communications moratorium
• They then prepared a new set of commands on April 29 designed to get things back to normal, and the fix has apparently worked
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars Rover Opportunity Back in Action After Glitch | Mars Solar Conjunction | Space.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Smithsonian Award
• The team in charge of successfully landing NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity has received the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum\’s highest group honor
• The award is for Current Achievement honors outstanding achievements in the fields of aerospace science and technology
• Several NASA planetary mission teams have won the award in previous years, including last year, when NASA\’s Cassini mission to Saturn
• Haiku to Mars
• NASA is inviting members of the public to submit their names and a personal message online for a DVD to be carried aboard a spacecraft that will study the Martian upper atmosphere
• Information in the show was not all correct, corrected information to come next week
• Conjunction
• YouTube | Mars in a Minute: What Happens When the Sun Blocks our Signal? | JPLnews
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Current Achievement Trophy Award 2013: Mars Science Laboratory Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) Team | airandspace
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• National Air and Space Museum’s Trophy Awarded to Joseph Sutter and the Mars Science Laboratory EDL Team | Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Press Release
• Curiosity Wins National Air and Space Museum Trophy | https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• NASA Wants To Send Your Haiku To Mars | Popular Science

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• May 01, 1958 : 55 years ago : Van Allen radiation belts : The discovery of the powerful Van Allen radiation belts that surround Earth was published in the Washington Evening Star. The article covered the report made by their discoverer James. A. Van Allen to the joint symposium of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society in Washington DC. He used data from the Explorer I and Pioneer III space probes of the earth\’s magnetosphere region to reveal the existence of the radiation belts – concentrations of electrically charged particles. Van Allen (born 7 Sep 1914) was also featured on the cover of the 4 May 1959 Time magazine for this discovery. He was the principal investigator on 23 other space probes

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Thurs | May 9 | New Moon is around 8:28pm EDT in the NW
• Fri | May 10 | ~30 min after sunset you might be able to see a very thin crescent moon near Venus
• Fri | May 10 | An annular eclipse of the Sun crosses parts of Australia and the central Pacific. The eclipse is partial for all of Australia, Indonesia, and Hawaii Map and details
• Sat | May 11 | Evening twilight in the W you can see the crescent moon below Jupiter
• Planets
• Venus | About 15-20 min after sunset in the W-NW it i starting to appear in the evening
• Jupiter | The first \”star\” to come out in the W after sunset, appearing a little lower each day and moving towards the horizon over the course of each night

• Saturn | Was at opposition last week, but still glows bright in the lower E-SE skies in late twilight

• 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
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The post Habitable Exoplanets & Diabetes | SciByte 92 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at recovering Apollo 11 hardware, James Cameron’s ocean dive, sprinting planets, Lego science, coffee, Einstein’s writings, Hubble image competition, viewer feedback and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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