The end of the galaxy as we know it? Our Milky Way galaxy is an anomaly in more ways than one. And now, NASA scientists say they know exactly when it will come to an end. In a universe that is forever spreading apart, the Milky Way has been moving closer to celestial neighbor the Andromeda galaxy. But whether we are in for intergalactic Armageddon or an extraterrestrial fender bender has been a mystery – until now. “Very interestingly, we find that Andromeda galaxy does appear to be coming straight at us,” said Roeland van der Marel, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. The discovery was made thanks to images taken over the 22-year lifespan of the Hubble Space Telescope. New data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope proves, NASA says, that in 4 billion years the Milky Way and Andromeda will collide or pass each other by so closely that the gravitational force each exerts on the other will cause them to slow down to the point of merging. When galaxies collide Meaning in the cosmos.
Sc215.
Saturn's Largest Moon Seen in Unprecedented Detail | Wired Science. Titan is one of the solar system’s coldest places, but that hasn’t stopped Saturn’s largest moon from being incredibly dynamic.A collection of 13 new studies about Titan show previously undetected craters and river deltas, and provide improved maps of its surface and interior.They also reveal new details about the moon’s mysterious 29.5-Earth-year-long seasonal cycle (the equivalent of one year on Saturn, which orbits the sun at a distance of 890 million miles). “We’re really starting to see quite a lot of profound changes on Titan,” said planetary scientist Ralph Lorenz at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. “We’re learning things now that you could only learn after years of repeat observations.”The findings come from nearly 8 years of observations by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in the Saturn system.
The iceman gets his genome mapped | The Upshot. Talk about a cold case: the corpse of the world's oldest murder victim, "Oetzi the Iceman," has undergone the ultimate investigation: a mapping of his complete genome. The findings were published in the science journal Nature Communications. Here's what we now know: As reported by the BBC, the 5,300-year-old body, which was discovered frozen in the Alps in 1991, belongs to a man with brown eyes, who suffered from Lyme disease, was lactose-intolerant, and had type O blood. Like many of his modern brethren, he had a predisposition to heart disease. And distant relatives : The iceman is most closely related to the island people of Sardinia and Corsica. [Photos: Extinct giant penguin reconstructed] While scientists have yet to turn up leads on Oetzi's killer, in the past 20 years they have gained clues into the Tyrolean's life: He had cavities, was tattooed, and enjoyed a final meal of ibex before he was shot from behind by an arrow.
Ready, Set, Download the Universe. Download the Universe brings together 15 of the Internet's top science folks in an online forum that guides readers through the vast world of digital science e-books, texts and apps. It was born last month, after a group of writers and scientists had started gathering at Science Online to discuss the rapid growth of e-books. They saw a blissful future for science books - but how would readers be able to find out about them?
If you spend too much time on the Internet, you've probably noticed that science e-books do not get reviewed often, nor are they picked up by blogs. On Download the Universe, these 15 smart scientists have dedicated their time to reviewing books about science that only exist in the digital universe. Those may include self-published PDF manuscripts, Kindle Singles about science, or even apps with games in them. But why a website dedicated to only science e-books? And why now? "E-books are once again redrawing the boundaries. The first review is already up. Scientists Build a 'Perfect' Single-Atom Transistor. Scientists from the University of New South Wales have created a single-atom transistor using a repeatable technique — a world first. Using a scanning-tunneling microscope (STM), the scientists were able to precisely manipulate hydrogen atoms around a phosphorus atom on a silicon wafer inside an ultra-high vacuum chamber.
The result is the first single-atom transistor made with perfect precision, which could one day become a building block for a quantum computer. Single-atom transistors have been created before by chance, but using this method, the team from UNSW can produce them reliably. "This is the first time anyone has shown control of a single atom in a substrate with this level of precise accuracy," said Professor Michelle Simmons, team leader and director of the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication at UNSW. Although many experts expected Moore's Law to be wrong at some point, it has shown amazing resiliency, and has so far been quite accurate. [via Physorg]
Scientists Create Gas Colder Than Absolute Zero. Until recently, the coldest temperature a gas could get to was "absolute zero" on the Kelvin scale — a beyond-freezing minus 273 degrees Celsius (-460 degrees Farenheit). Physicists at Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching have achieved a temperature colder than absolute zero. Such a discovery could help scientists understand concepts such as dark energy. In the mid-19th century, mathematical physicist and engineer Lord Kelvin created the absolute temperature scale, and determined that nothing could be colder than absolute zero.
When particles are in absolute zero temperatures, they cease movement and have no energy. By the 1950s, physicists had already begun poking holes in this theory, saying that particles do not necessarily lose energy at absolute zero. The physicists at Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics created a gas that was able to reach temperatures colder than absolute zero.
Research on Deadly Bird Flu to Be Published in Full. What Does the Data Say? Hans Rosling Breaks Down the Impact of Foreign Aid. One of the great places to go on the web for perspective on global development and the impact of aid programs is Gapminder. It’s amazing. The Gapminder World web service lets you visualize and track all countries’ progress on many different measures of health, education and the other indices involved in the UN Millennium Development Goals. What’s really great is how Gapminder World converts dry numbers into enjoyable, animated, interactive graphics, which reveal patterns and relationships in stunning ways.
It’s a brilliant example of how the Internet and innovations in software have the potential to deliver truly extraordinary online learning experiences. Gapminder’s chairman is Hans Rosling, who teaches global health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and who does a fantastic job of using Gapminder graphics to explain the great progress being made in global development and the important role that aid plays in that progress. See a Video of the Dark Side of the Moon for the First Time. One of NASA's twin GRAIL spacecrafts has captured a video of the Moon's far side for the first time. Earth's tidal forces have slowed down the Moon's rotation so that it always presents one side to us. The other side, although receiving as much light as the front side, is called the far (or, more poetically, dark) side of the Moon, notably giving the name to one of Pink Floyd's most successful albums.
The far side of Earth's only natural satellite has been photographed before (by Apollo 16, for example), but there has been no ground exploration there and no video was ever taken. The GRAIL (Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory) project consists of two identical spacecraft orbiting the moon - Ebb and Flow - each carrying a special camera called MoonKAM (Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students.)
Thousands of fourth to eighth graders selected areas on the lunar surface to be photographed by the MoonKAM, and the imagery will be sent back to them to study. Image credit: NASA. Yale Discovers a Fungus That Eats Plastic. Plastic is possibly the greatest commercial creation of last 150 years. It's made it into tupperware, saran wrap, toys, car parts, computer parts, smartphones, and shopping bag all over the world. The only problem is that polyurethane is not biodegradable, and recycling plastic can be equated to just turning it into another product, so all that plastic already in landfills will stay there for centuries to come.
Scientists have not found a single way to break down polyurethane--luckily, nature has found a way on its own. Yale scientists recently found a fungus in the Amazonian rainforest that naturally eats polyurethane. [Hello, visitors from StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Hacker News! You've discovered PCWorld's GeekTech blog (geektech.pcworld.com), which covers hacks, gadgets, and geek culture. Like what you see here? This is the first fungus species, identified by the Yale researchers as Pestalotiopsis microspore, which exclusively subsists on polyurethane. Like this? Time in Space May Alter Astronauts' Genes | Wired Science. Spending long periods at low gravity may alter genes, suggests a new experiment involving a magnet-powered trick used on Earth to simulate weightlessness in space. Subjected to magnetic levitation that generated an effect similar to microgravity experienced by astronauts orbiting Earth, fruit flies experienced changes in crucial genes.
Humans won’t necessarily respond like fruit flies, but the system is considered an useful model for probing the effects of permanent free-fall on biology. However, it’s also possible that the gene disruption was caused by magnetism, not low gravity. “We have tried to separate the effects of microgravity and magnetism, but we’ve learned it’s not so easy,” said molecular biologist Raul Herranz of Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas in Spain, leader of the upcoming study in BMC Genomics. Sending anything into space is expensive. 'Everything works differently in space, including genetics.' Video: RJA Hill, OJ Larkin et al. Is Genetically Modified Food Dangerous? A controversial Atlantic article called “The Very Real Danger of Genetically Modified Food” drew 15,000 Facebook “Likes” and an inferno of flames from science bloggers, with Scientific American calling it “scare-mongering” and Slate dubbing it “paranoia.”
The timing of the article was particularly incendiary, since the FDA is currently weighing approval of fast-growing, genetically modified salmon critics call “frankenfish.” Read about the 13 worst foodborne illness outbreaks in U.S. history Can GM food harm your health? Many scientists and doctors have raised concerns about the potential health threats of GM food.
Based on animal studies, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) reports that these risks may include infertility, immune system disorders, accelerated aging, GI system changes, problems with insulin regulation, and allergies. Learn which foods can boost your immune system What’s GM food—and are you eating it? GMOs: Food-supply savior or health hazard? Sugar Should Be Regulated As Toxin, Researchers Say. A spoonful of sugar might make the medicine go down. But it also makes blood pressure and cholesterol go up, along with your risk for liver failure, obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Sugar and other sweeteners are, in fact, so toxic to the human body that they should be regulated as strictly as alcohol by governments worldwide, according to a commentary in the current issue of the journal Nature by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
The researchers propose regulations such as taxing all foods and drinks that include added sugar, banning sales in or near schools and placing age limits on purchases. Sour words about sugar The background is well-known: In the United States, more than two-thirds of the population is overweight, and half of them are obese. Worldwide, the obese now greatly outnumber the undernourished, according to the World Health Organization. Less known, and still debated, is sugar's role in the obesity and chronic disease pandemic. Speed Limits on the Evolution of Enormousness | Wired Science. If you’ve ever wondered whether mammalian evolution has a speed limit, here’s a number for you: 24 million. That’s how many generations a new study estimates it would take to go from mouse- to elephant-sized while operating on land at the maximum velocity of change.
The figure underscores just how special a trait sheer bigness can be. “Big animals represent the accumulation of evolutionary change, and change takes time,” said evolutionary biologist Alistair Evans of Australia’s Monash University. Evans and co-authors revisit a fossil record dataset of mammal body size during the last 70 million years, in a study published Jan. 31 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The data was originally used to describe the evolutionary growth spurts experienced by mammals soon after dinosaurs ceased to be Earth’s dominant animals. The relative sizes of mouse and elephant skulls. To go from mouse-sized to elephant-sized would take at least 24 million generations.
Physicists Discover Quantum Speed Limit | Wired Science. By Matthew Francis, Ars Technica The speed of light is the cosmic speed limit, according to physicists’ best understanding: No information can be carried at a greater rate, no matter what method is used. But an analogous speed limit seems to exist within materials, where the interactions between particles are typically very short-range and motion is far slower than light-speed. A new set of experiments and simulations by Marc Cheneau and colleagues have identified this maximum velocity, which has implications for quantum entanglement and quantum computations. [partner id="arstechnica" align="right"]In non-relativistic systems, where particle speeds are much less than the speed of light, interactions still occur very quickly, and they often involve lots of particles.
As a result, measuring the speed of interactions within materials has been difficult. Within a lattice (such as a crystalline solid), a particle primarily interacts with its nearest neighbors. Image: |M| Фотомистецтво/Flickr. How to Picture a Black Hole | Wired Science. This month, researchers are inaugurating the Event Horizon Telescope, a project that will try to take the first detailed pictures of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.This observation would be a remarkable achievement, underscoring the progress that has been made in black-hole research in just the last few decades.
As recently as the 1970s, astronomers still argued over whether black holes were theoretical constructs or real physical objects. They now have ample evidence that black holes are not only real, but abundant in the cosmos.Here on Earth, advanced computer simulations have given astronomers a wealth of information, leading theoretical physicist Kip Thorne of Caltech to suggest that black-hole research is entering a new golden age. Image: 1) LIGO Laboratory 2) ESA-C. Vijoux. U.S. Asks Journals to Censor Articles on Bird Flu Virus.