As of this past Sunday the world’s largest particle accelerator is back online and ready to do science according to a spokeswoman from the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
The agency, known as CERN in Europe, successfully sent low energy proton beams around the 27-kilometer collider over the weekend, marking the first such successful test run since mid-December when the facility was shut down for improvements and internal testing.
Scientists will begin sending much higher-energy beams by the end of this month with particle collisions expected to easily break the current record set by researchers at the Tevatron at Fermilab in the United States. By shattering subatomic particles, CERN scientists hope to learn more about the nature of antimatter and dark matter in their quest for a better understanding of the universe, and its beginnings, as a whole.
NASA’s Space Shuttle Endeavor and its six-person crew rocketed into orbit this morning with its payload of a new add-on room and observation desk to be delivered to the International Space Station.
After uncooperative weather forced yesterday’s planned launch to be delayed, Endeavor launched this morning just before sunrise; this launch marked the fifth last launch before the retirement of the space shuttle.
The crew aboard the shuttle and the five astronauts already in orbit about the International Space Station will install an addition to the living area dubbed Tranquility, a unit that will house life-support units, exercise equipment and an additional toilet. An additional seven-windowed dome will be installed to act as an observation deck.
Astronomers from Arizona-based observatory MEarth have announced the finding of a planet orbiting the red dwarf star GJ1214 about 40 light years from Earth. At 6.5 times the mass of the Earth, the planet takes honorary super-Earth status but ranks as one of the smallest found to date.
Adding to the fun is the fact that these astronomers located the planet using 16-inch diameter telescopes, very expensive but highly available pieces of equipment. The better-than-normal accessibility of the hardware needed to observe the same findings means that students and semi-casual astronomers around the world have the ability to join in on the hunt for additional data.
The currently available data shows that the exo-planet lies about two million kilometers from its host star but stays relatively cool with an estimated surface temperature of 200 C thanks to the star’s red dwarf status, meaning it is much cooler then our own sun.
Despite its hot temperature, this appears to be a water-world. It is much smaller, cooler and more Earth-like than any other known exoplanet. Since we found the super-Earth using a small ground-based telescope, this means that anyone else with a similar telescope and a good CCD camera can detect it too. Students around the world can now study this super-Earth
NASA successfully launched a Delta II rocket carrying the WISE space telescope this morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The WISE satellite will map areas of our sky that are difficult to observe from Earth, including areas over the north and south poles. WISE has the ability to detect currently unknown asteroids, brown stars and comets and will also map the position of distant galaxies in infrared light.
Because the WISE telescope requires extremely cool temperatures to avoid having the heat it generates effect its ability to see in the infrared, super-cooled hydrogen must be used to cool the satellite. This reliance on consumable coolant allows for a 10-month mission.
Sub-orbital rides for the wealthy will be one step closer to reality today as Virgin Galactic is expected to lift the lid on five years of secret construction of their latest space-faring vessel.
SpaceShipTwo, the fruition of collaboration between British billionaire Richard Branson and aviation designer Burt Rutan, is the follow-up to the original SpaceShipOne which won the Ansari X Prize in 2004 when it became the first privately constructed and manned craft to reach space.
Potential space tourists will be on hand during the unveiling today to get a glimpse of SpaceShipTwo – more details as they are released at the unveiling and following party and press conference.
Two butterflies have emerged from their pupal stage today aboard the International Space Station, the first time insects of their size have survived this long in orbit.
The Painted Lady butterflies are part of an experiment headed by the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, the University of Colorado and Baylor College of Medicine in an effort to study the effects of a near-zero-gravity environment on Earth-based life.the station. They went into orbit as six-day-old caterpillars aboard Atlantis last month. Other insects, such as fruit flies, have successfully emerged from their pupal stage as adults on the ISS.
Following a week spent docked in orbit with the International Space Station, NASA’s space shuttle Atlantis landed safely this morning in Florida with seven astronauts aboard.
The crew delivered various parts to the station and performed maintainenece that NASA says will allow the ISS to continue running for up to 10 additional years and also gave astronaut Nicole Stott a ride home; Stott had been a part of the ISS crew for the past 91 days. This mission was the second-to-last for Atlantis and only five more shuttle flights are scheduled before the retirement of the shuttle in 2012.
In related news, the five astronauts left aboard the ISS will be working with NASA ground control on Saturday afternoon as a 10-year-old piece of Delta rocket left orbiting the Earth after its use is expected to pass within 10 kilometers of the space station, posing a great risk.
A new dinosaur species has been discovered in South Africa according to a news conference held this morning in Johannesburg. Researchers directed under the guidance of paleontologist Adam Yates of the University of the Witwatersrand discovered the incomplete remains of the dinosaur, currently unnamed, earlier this year.
While very little specific data has yet been made public, leaving little room for early corroboration, Yates speculated that the find could represent a good transitional species between early two-legged dinosaur ancestors and the four-legged giants that dominate public imagination. This particular species is estimated to have lived about 200 million years ago during the early Jurassic period, standing on two feet and measuring about 1.7 meters in height.
What we have is a big, short-footed, barrel-chested, long-necked, small-headed dinosaur. The earliest ancestral dinosaur — the great granddaddy of all dinosaurs — walked on two legs. This (one) is intermediate between those bipedal forms and the true gigantic sauropods.
Scientists from Ohio State University published findings this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science following research on ice fields atop Africa’s highest peak, Mount Kilimanjaro, indicating that the ice could disappear within 25 years due to rising global temperatures.
Extrapolating data taken from ice cores drilled from the remaining ice, researchers reported that 85% of the ice that covered the African mountain in 1912 had disappeared by 2007; 26% of the ice that existed there is 2000 is gone today. The glaciers are shrinking in size both in their land coverage and their thickness at about equal rates today, indicating that the entire ice field could be gone by 2035.
For those that will mourn the loss of the African ice and don’t see a Kilimanjaro vacation happening in the near-future, do enjoy a first-hand account from none other than literary legend Ernest Hemingway in his The Snows of Kilimanjaro.
The October issue of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences has revealed a previously unknown species of armored dinosaur that lived in what is now Montana 112 million years ago.
Credit for the discovery goes to Bill and Kris Parsons of Buffalo, New York, a husband and wife paleontology team that first found the 90 per cent intact skull of the previously unknown ankylosaur in 1997, later locating partial ribs, vertebra and skin plates, allowing them to identify the creature as belonging to a previously unknown species.
Called Tatankacephalus cooneyorum, the find represents a new species of ankylosaurs, a plant-eating dinosaur with tank-like armor covering their bodies and a club-tipped tail. This find represents the first ankylosaur found from the early Cretaceous period, giving scientists a glimpse at a transitional form in the evolution of ankylosuars from the earlier Jurassic and late Cretaceous periods.
As of this past Sunday the world’s largest particle accelerator is back online and ready to do science according to a spokeswoman from the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
