Sci-Fi News Generator - 24-Hour Mirror-Universe News from Around the Galaxy. The Essence of Time: Monumentally Important Clocks. Proton Somersault Study Could Explain Why Matter Still Exists. For the first time, physicists have watched a single proton flip over on its axis.
Aside from being a technical triumph, the measurement may eventually help determine why the universe contains more matter than antimatter. Cosmologists think the Big Bang should have produced the same amount of ordinary matter — the particles that make up stars, planets and people — and antimatter, which is just like matter, only with an opposite charge. But when matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate each other. That there’s enough matter left for us to exist is one of modern physics’ biggest puzzles. One possibility is that, opposite charge aside, antimatter isn’t always truly identical to matter, and so it doesn’t meet the requirements for triggering annihilation. Dinosaurs Had Mammal-Hot Blood. By Scott Johnson, Ars Technica Unless you’ve been fossilized in a cave for the last few decades, you’ve probably heard about the debate over whether dinosaurs were coldblooded or warmblooded.
Researchers have attacked this question using computer modeling to determine things like body mass and heat-loss rates, or compared locomotion and energy use. They’ve studied bone structure and they’ve even used oxygen isotopes in those bones to help determine body temperatures. High growth rates observed in bones have suggested high metabolic rates (i.e., warmblooded or endothermic), but modeling has shown that very large dinosaurs, if endothermic, would probably have had problems with overheating because they wouldn’t shed heat quickly enough.
New Uncontacted Group Confirmed in Brazil. What You Learned About Static Electricity Is Wrong. By John Timmer, Ars Technica.
Neutrino Transformation Could Help Explain Mystery of Matter. Two research teams have found new evidence of transformations in elusive elementary particles called neutrinos.
The findings may finally help explain why the universe didn’t vanish shortly after its birth. “These results are just the beginning of the story for neutrinos,” said physicist Robert Plunkett of Fermilab in Chicago. “They could lead to clues … and tell us why there’s now far more matter than antimatter.” Taz Devil Genome Sequenced to Fight Contagious Cancer. By Mark Brown, Wired UK American conservationists have sequenced the genome of the Tasmanian devil to help beat a vicious cancer that’s made the marsupial an endangered species.
[partner id="wireduk" align="right"]The toothy critter has been ravaged by Devil Facial Tumor Disease (DFTD) for the past 15 years. The cancerous pox took hold of the devil species in the late 1990s, and by 2009 the stocky marsupial was declared to be endangered. The disease spreads like a virus, manifesting as a cancer which spreads from animal to animal by mating, biting or even touching. “Just imagine a human cancer that spread through a handshake,” said Pennsylvania State professor Stephan Schuster in a press release. The plan is to put a handful of healthy devils that are genetically resistant to DFTD into “protective custody” at Tasmanian or Australian zoos. This data allowed the team to create a model which could determine the individual animals that should be selected for the breeding programs.
Defeated Videogame-Violence Experts: Science Was on Our Side. An analysis of competing videogame violence reports submitted to the Supreme Court found that researchers warning of links to real-world aggression had far stronger academic credentials than their opponents.
Two groups of researchers submitted briefs to court, which on June 27 ruled unconstitutional a California law banning the sale and rental of violent videogames to minors. One brief, named after attorney Steven Gruel, said that violent videogame play leads to aggression and is cognitively different than watching TV or reading. Young Darwin’s Marginalia Shows Evolution of His Theory. How Love Makes (Some) Pain Go Away. Gaze upon a lover’s picture, and pain won’t seem so sharp: It’s a poetic truth, and a scientific one too. But is it simply because that image provokes a tiny, on-demand burst of pleasure? Or does even the mere thought of a loved one serve as a shield, a buffer against hurt?
The latter appears to be the case. Love is safety. “From our prior work, we knew that viewing a picture of a loved person leads to reductions in pain,” said psychologist Naomi Eisenberger of the University of California, Los Angeles. In a study published June 28 in the , Eisenberger’s team used an fMRI machine to scan the brains of 17 women as they received brief, stinging shocks while looking at photographs of long-term romantic partners, strangers or objects. Just as Eisenberger expected, pain didn’t feel so bad when women looked at their lovers. X-Rays Reveal 19th-Century Artist’s Cover-Up. ANAHEIM, California — Experimenting with a vivacious blonde, only to settle instead on a somber brunette, is an old, clichéd storyline — in fact, it’s at least 200 years old.
A new analysis of a 19th century painting reveals that the artist first depicted a blonde with purple ribbons in her hair, before painting the canvas over with a sedate, unadorned brunette. Altering the original version of a painting, a practice known as pentimenti from the Italian pentirsi, to repent, is not uncommon, said Matthias Alfeld, who presented his finding March 29 at a meeting of the American Chemical Society. This particular instance of “the artist’s regret” was revealed by a technique known as scanning macro-X-ray fluorescence at DESY, the German accelerator laboratory in Hamburg. Stimulated by an X-ray beam, chemical elements in the painting fluoresce, revealing hidden pigments without damaging the artwork. LHC Locking In on New Elementary Particle. The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful atom smasher, may be only months away from finding a new elementary particle — a sign of a new force in nature — recent studies suggest.
[partner id="sciencenews" align="right"] The studies focus on the top quark, the heaviest of the six quarks, which are the fundamental building blocks of nature. Top quarks appear to behave badly when they are produced during proton-antiproton collisions at a lower-energy particle accelerator, the Fermilab’s Tevatron in Batavia, Illinois. Compared with what the standard model of particle physics predicts, these quarks fly off too often in the direction of the proton beam and not enough in the antiproton direction. The Tevatron finding was first reported in 2008, but the results could have been due to chance. Big Earthquakes Are Not Linked. Big earthquakes like the Sendai quake that devastated Japan in March don’t cause similar disasters on the other side of the globe, a new study suggests. Like ranks of falling dominoes, tremors on the scale of the Sendai quake can trigger other earthquakes, say geophysicists at the U.S.
Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California But, based on analyses of about 30 years of seismic data, those shocks are all very small or sit close to the original fault break, the group reports online March 27 in . “If California is ready to go, it’s because California is ready to go,” says Jian Lin, a geophysicist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. “Not because an earthquake in California would be triggered by Japan.” There was previously some room for doubt, says study co-author Tom Parsons. In the current study, the team narrowed its focus to just that: the big ones. Contrails Worse for Climate Change Than Planes’ Carbon Emissions.
By John Timmer, Ars Technica Air travel has come under fire for its potential contributions to climate change.
Most people probably assume that its impact comes through carbon emissions, given that aircraft burn significant amounts of fossil fuel to stay aloft. But the carbon released by air travel remains a relatively minor part of the global output; The impact of planes results from where they burn the fuel, not the mere fact that they burn it. [partner id="arstechnica" align="right"] A study in the brand-new journal Nature Climate Change reinforces that by suggesting that the clouds currently being generated by air travel have a larger impact on the climate than the cumulative emissions of all aircraft ever flown. New Study Finds No Sign of ‘First Habitable Exoplanet’ Things don’t look good for Gliese 581g, the first planet found orbiting in the habitable zone of another star.
The first official challenge to the small, hospitable world looks in the exact same data — and finds no significant sign of the planet. “For the time being, the world does not have data that’s good enough to claim the planet,” said astro-statistics expert Philip Gregoryof the University of British Columbia, author of the new study. Op-Ed: The Mass Extinction of Scientists Who Study Species. We are currently in a biodiversity crisis. A quarter of all mammals face extinction, and 90 percent of the largest ocean fish are gone. Species are going extinct at rates equaled only five times in the history of life. Multiple Asteroid Strikes May Have Killed Mars’s Magnetic Field.
Once upon a time, Mars had a magnetic field, just like Earth. Four billion years ago, it vanished, taking with it the planet’s chances of evolving life as we know it. Now scientists have proposed a new explanation for its disappearance. A model of asteroids striking the red planet suggests that, while no single impact would have short-circuited the dynamo that powered its magnetism, a quick succession of 20 asteroid strikes could have done the job. “Each one crippled a little bit,” said geophysicist Jafar Arkani-Hamed of the University of Toronto, author of the new study.
“We believe those were enough to cripple, cripple, cripple, cripple until it killed all of the dynamo forever.” Quantum Entanglement Could Stretch Across Time. In the weird world of quantum physics, two linked particles can share a single fate, even when they’re miles apart. Now, two physicists have mathematically described how this spooky effect, called entanglement, could also bind particles across time. If their proposal can be tested, it could help process information in quantum computers and test physicists’ basic understanding of the universe.
“You can send your quantum state into the future without traversing the middle time,” said quantum physicist S. New Doubts Raised About Potential Bee-Killing Pesticide. A federal entomologist has become the latest researcher to voice doubts about neonicotinoids, a controversial new type of pesticide that may be linked to the collapse of honeybee populations in the United States. Sleeping Protects Memories From Corruption. Legendary Dinosaur King Didn’t Survive on Fast Food. First Earth-Orbiting Solar Sail Unexpectedly Unfurls. 10 Critical Endangered-Species Battles. Ancient Tools May Mark Earlier Path Out of Africa. Hidden Fractals Suggest Answer to Ancient Math Problem. Researchers have found a fractal pattern underlying everyday math. Ultracold Quantum ‘Bullets’ Make Pendulums Speed Up. Vikings May Have Navigated Using Polarized Skylight. Invisibility Crystals Make Small Objects Disappear. Professor Snape beware — invisibility cloaks aren’t just for the microscopic anymore.
New Mexico Bill Seeks to Protect Anti-Science Education. Universe’s First Stars May Still Shine. Prehistoric Pregnancy Booster Now Fuels Diabetes. Astronomers Suggest Crowdsourcing Letters to Aliens. Navigational ‘Magic’ of Sea Turtles Explained. Tiny Spheres Turn Regular Microscopes Into Nanoscopes. Sight Gets Repurposed in Brains of the Blind. iPad Lets Scientists Drag, Pinch and Swipe Real Molecules. Sleep Quality May Be Tied to Covert Brain Wave. Physics of Pruney Fingers Revealed. Genetic Errors Nixed Penis Spines, Enlarged Our Brains. GOP Assault on Environment Defeated — For Now. Earthquake Is Biggest in Japan’s Recorded History. Sperm Whales May Have Names. Camera Traps Reveal Secret Animal Worlds. Oldest Female Elephants Have Best Memory. Japan Quake Epicenter Was in Unexpected Location. Understanding Japan’s Nuclear Crisis. Possible Early Warning Sign for Market Crashes. I See Rock People: Mimetoliths of the World.
Primordial Soup’s Missing Ingredient May Be Sulfur. Laser Space Telescope Could Test for Vanishing Dimensions. Pictured: One Sea Turtle’s Worth of Plastic. Flawed Diamonds Could Store Quantum Data. Lucy’s Feet Were Arched and Stiff, Just Like Ours. Winter Halts Drilling Into 14-Million-Year-Old Lake. Heady Brew: Ice Age Mug Made From Skull. Jefferson’s Hidden Change to the Declaration. 10 Crazy-Looking New Deep-Sea Creatures. Leafy Green Coherence: Quantum Physics Fuels Photosynthesis. Stone Age Europeans Get Older and Colder. Dark Matter May Be Building Up Inside the Sun.
Earth From Space: Greenland Glacier Shrinks Overnight. Cages and Cancer. Terahertz Detectors Could See Through Your Clothes From a Mile Away. Human Evolution Recapped in Kids’ Brain Growth. Death Star Off the Hook for Mass Extinctions. Salmon Killer Disease Mystery Solved. Frogs Jump Farther When Competing at County Fair. Our Eavesdropping-on-ET Strategy Not Likely to Work. Apes, Old World Monkeys May Have Split Later Than Thought. Happiness and Sadness Spread Just Like Disease.
A Mud-Loving, Iron-Lunged, Jelly-Eating Ecosystem Savior. Primordial Sperm Gene Found. Gene Makes Some Drink More When Other Boozers Are Around. Sea-Level Rise Will Be Worse for Some, We Just Don’t Know Who. Deep-Sea Vent Discovery Sets Hydrothermal Life’s New Depth Record. The Loris Lives! First Pictures of Primate Thought To Be Extinct. New Species of Frogs Disappearing as Fast as They’re Found.
Wired.com - Part 2. Creepy ‘Human Fish’ Can Live 100 Years. Why Money Makes You Unhappy. Fossil Jaw Could Be From World’s Oldest Known Dog. Meteor Crater Discovered With Google Earth. Help BP Learn How to Use Photoshop. 10 Years on, ‘The Genome Revolution Is Only Just Beginning’ Inca Skeletons Show Evidence of Spanish Brutality. Chemical From Plastic Water Bottles Found Throughout Oceans. Genetic Secrets of Living to 100. 2-Billion-Year-Old Fossils May Be Earliest Known Multicellular L.
NASA Needs You: 6 Ways to Help an Astronomer. Square Pixel Inventor Tries to Smooth Things Out. New Form of Gene Regulation Hints at Hidden Dimension of DNA. Oil Spill on Track to Reach Atlantic No Later Than October. Rare Gene Glitch a Clue to Genomics Mystery. Strange Hole-Punch Clouds Explained. Why Travelers Go South: North Seems Uphill. Random Guy Allegedly Steals Astronaut Sally Ride’s Flight Suit. Colossal Squid Is Far From Fearsome Predator. Weird Clouds Look Even Better From Space.