Dome News

News of Astronomy, Space, Science, & Technology

Table of Contents

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Mystery Soil on Mars

Unusual Bright Soil on Mars

Astronomy Picture of the Day Apr 6 2006

What is this bright soil on Mars?

Several times while rolling across Mars, the treads of the robotic rover Spirit have serendipitously uncovered unusually bright soil. Spirit uncovered another batch unexpectedly last month while rolling toward its winter hibernation location on McCool Hill.

The physics and chemistry instruments on Spirit have determined the soil, shown above, contains a high content of salts including iron-bearing sulfates. A leading hypothesis holds that these salts record the presence of past water, with the salts becoming concentrated as the water evaporated.

See Astronomy Picture of the Day for links to further info.

The International Space Station

Nasa's ISS site

For the latest information see NASA human spaceflight page

Crew Swap Moves On

ISS Astronauts Pass Halfway Mark in Crew Swap

SPACE.com Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:19 AM ET

Space station commander Bill McArthur said Wednesday that he is looking forward to a steaming cup of coffee on Earth now that he and four other astronauts have passed the midpoint of a week-long orbital crew swap.

See SPACE.com for links to further info.

The Future in Space

Coping with the Sticky Moondust Nuisance

Moondust's Magnetic Charms

Science Blog - Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:19 AM ET

Thirty-plus years ago on the moon, Apollo astronauts made an important discovery: Moondust can be a major nuisance. The fine powdery grit was everywhere and had a curious way of getting into things. Moondust plugged bolt holes, fouled tools, coated astronauts' visors and abraded their gloves. Very often while working on the surface, they had to stop what they were doing to clean their cameras and equipment using large--and mostly ineffective--brushes.

Dealing with "the dust problem" is going to be a priority for the next generation of NASA explorers. But how? Professor Larry Taylor, director of the Planetary Geosciences Institute at the University of Tennessee, believes he has an answer: "Magnets." ...

Magnets aren't the only way to deal with moondust. NASA is considering a whole suite of options from airlocks to vacuum cleaners. But, if Taylor is right, magnets will prove important, and astronauts won't find moondust so troublesome the next time around.

Other Nations in Space

Space exploration by nations other than the United States

China Plans for a Big Future in Space

China Unveils Ambitious Space Plans at National Space Symposium

SPACE.com Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:19 AM ET

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - China is celebrating its 50th anniversary of space progress this year, but also laying out a sweeping plan for lofting Earth orbiting satellites for a multitude of duties, expanding its human spaceflight abilities, and carrying out a multi-step program of lunar exploration.

Europe Makes a Major Contribution to Space and Astrobiology Research

How small nations think big ...

Astrobiology Magazine Apr 6 2006

Long before Astrobiology was even a real word, scientists in Europe had started using space research to try and find answers to deep-rooted questions about life. From simple beginnings, the experiments became more complex and more ambitious. Looking at the effects of space on living systems, exploring new worlds for life or the building blocks of it, searching for habitable planets outside our Solar System; step by step Europe has developed a strong and diverse programme of space research for astrobiology.

Watching the Sky

Sky events visible to the casual observer or amateur astronomer

SATURN AND THE MOON

SpaceWeather.com Apr 6 2006

When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look up. See the quarter Moon? The bright yellow "star" right beside it is Saturn: sky map. With one quick sweep of a backyard telescope you can behold the Moon's mountains and craters and Saturn's spectacular rings--try it!

See SpaceWeather.com for links to further info.

Watching a Dying Comet

href="http://spaceweather.com/" target="new">COMET FRAGMENTS

SpaceWeather.com Apr 6 2006

Astronomers have long known that Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann would fly past Earth in May 2006, closer than any comet has come in decades, but no one imagined it would arrive in so many pieces. The dying comet is falling apart before our very eyes forming a "string of pearls" at least twenty fragments long.

Two of them, fragments B and G, appear in this March 30th photo taken by amateur astronomer Tristan DiLapo of Colden, New York: [above].

On March 30th, fragment B was about as bright as a 14th magnitude star, requiring a nine-minute exposure through DiLapo's 12-inch telescope. By May 14th when it passes only 6 million miles from Earth, fragment B should brighten to 8th magnitude, a 250-fold increase in brightness. This would make it an easy target for small telescopes--unless of course it falls apart into lots of small, dim pieces. But that would be interesting to watch, too. Whatever happens, May will be a good month for backyard astronomers.

See SpaceWeather.com for links to further info.

Space Weather

Solar activity, auroras & magnetic storms, and the solar wind

A space weather FAQ

AURORA SURPRISE

SpaceWeather.com Apr 6 2006

he aurora borealis made a surprise appearance over Michigan yesterday, turning the sky--and the landscape--vivid green. Shawn Malone of Marquette, MI, was awake at 2 a.m. and took this picture from a beach on Lake Superior: [above].

There was no solar flare or CME. So where did these auroras come from? Answer: The interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) near Earth tilted south on April 5th, opening a crack in Earth's magnetic defenses. Solar wind flowed in and sparked the unexpected display.

See SpaceWeather.com for links to further info.

The Global Environment

Global climate change, the ozone layer, worldwide disease threats, & other world environmental issues

Global Warming FAQs:

US National Climate Data Center
Natural Resources Defense Council
Union of Concerned Scientists
Skepticism About Global Warming from Brian Carnell's Skepticism.net
See Wikipedia for both sides of the debate

Ozone Layer FAQs:

Ozone Hole FAQ from The Weather Underground
Ozone Depletion FAQs from faqs.org

Power Plants Can Reduce CO₂ Emissions

New case for regulating CO2 emissions

Christian Science Monitor | Sci/Tech Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:18 AM ET

A report finds progress in fighting air pollution and suggests that could hold for carbon dioxide, too.

... If the American electric industry can cut its air pollution in response to toughened standards, the reasoning goes, then strict controls on greenhouse gases could do the same.

"What this report shows is that with careful government regulation, companies can lower the pollution coming from power plants smokestacks - and we should be doing this with greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, too," says David Hawkins, climate director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which coauthored the report with Ceres, a national coalition of environmental and investor groups, and Public Service Enterprise Group, a power company.

Mars

NASA's Mars Rover site at JPL

A gallery of Spirit's images and slideshow

A gallery of Opportunity's images and slideshow

Google Mars

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)

New Orbiter Begins Aerobraking

Probe takes its first dip in the Martian atmosphere

New Scientist - Latest Headlines Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:19 AM ET

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will take six months to reach its final planet-hugging orbit over the Red Planet.

The Cosmos

Stars, galaxies, nebulae, and cosmology

Also fundamental physics with possible astronomical or cosmological implications

Tutorials:

Big Bang   Inflation   The Cosmic Microwave Background   Dark Matter   Dark Energy - For a more technical discussion go here.   Measuring Stellar & Galactic Distances (difficult!)   Supernovas   Supernovas & Pulsars   Black Holes   Pulsars   Cosmology (very difficult!)   

Supernovas Blow Bubbles

Giant Bubble Bullies Our Space

SPACE.com Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:19 AM ET

Our bubble is being pinched and bullied backward by another expanding bubble forged from multiple supernovas.

When stars explode as supernova, they carve giant bubbles in space. Our own solar system is enveloped by such a structure from a long-ago explosion.

Now scientists have shown that our bubble is being pinched and bullied backward by another expanding bubble forged from multiple supernovas.

Our bubble is called the Local Bubble by astronomers. It's shaped like an hourglass. The bully goes by the name of Loop 1 Superbubble; it's the result of several exploded stars over the past few million years, researchers figure.

Superbubble's outer boundaries are marked by hot, expanding gas that radiates low-energy X-rays.

Superbubble is expanding faster than Local Bubble, so it compresses an area of cool dense gas, known as the Wall, situated between the two shells. In fact, the new study concludes, this interaction is what gives our bubble the waist in its hourglass shape.

The observation was made with the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton Space Telescope. It wasn't easy.

See SPACE.com for links to further info.

More on our Local Bubble - giant bubble in the interstellar medium

Supermassive Black Holes Spiral Toward Collision

Study Finds Two Supermassive Black Holes Spiraling Toward Collision

RedOrbit News - Space Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:18 AM ET

A pair of supermassive black holes in the distant universe are intertwined and spiraling toward a merger that will create a single super-supermassive black hole capable of swallowing billions of stars, according to a new study by astronomers at the University of Virginia, Bonn University and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

The study appears in the April 6, 2006 issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

... In some cases, two galaxies containing supermassive black holes collide and merge together, and eventually the two supermassive black holes fall into the center of the merged larger galaxy, and spiral together. Ultimately, they merge into one even larger hole. Sarazin's team found that the two merging supermassive black holes in Abell 400 appear to be swallowing gas from their host galaxy, and each is ejecting a pair of oppositely-directed jets of radio-emitting plasma. As the supermassive black holes fall through the gas in the cluster Abell 400, jets of radio-emitting plasma are swept back behind them.

"The jets are similar to the contrails produced by planes as they fly through the air on Earth," Sarazin said. "From the contrails, we can determine where the planes have been, and in which direction they are going. What we see is that the jets are bent together and intertwined, which indicates that the pair of supermassive black holes are bound and moving together."

Study finds two supermassive black holes spiraling toward collision

EurekAlert! - Space and Planetary Science Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:18 AM ET

A pair of supermassive black holes in the distant universe are intertwined and spiraling toward a merger that will create a single super-supermassive black hole capable of swallowing billions of stars, according to a new study.

How Spiral Galaxies are Transformed into Lenticular ("Disk") Galaxies

Slow Motion Mergers in Galaxy Clusters Provide Conditions to Transform Spirals

RedOrbit News - Space Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:18 AM ET

Astronomers at Liverpool John Moores University may have solved the mystery of how spiral galaxies in clusters are transformed over time into smooth disks. Results from a study of galaxy clusters confirm that the slow-motion conditions needed for the transformation are occurring among populations of galaxies falling towards the cluster centre.

Exoplanets

Formation of planetary systems - including our own Solar System

Planets outside the solar system

See exoplanets.org for further information.

Also see the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia. and Planet Quest at JPL

Space Missons seeking earthlike planets:

The Kepler Mission

The Darwin Mission

The Space Interferometer Mission

The Terrestrial Planet Finder observatories

Planets Around Dead Stars

How Dead Stars Make Planets

SPACE.com Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:19 AM ET

The discovery of a debris disk formed in the aftermath of a supernova explosion helps explain how planets can form around dead stars.

Rings of debris formed in the aftermath of stellar explosions could fuel the birth of new, rocky planets around dead stars. They could also provide an alternative way to make black holes, scientists said today.

Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, researchers detected a cool disk of material glowing in infrared light around a young X-ray pulsar, a type of neutron star that sends out regular, directed pulses of radiation like a lighthouse beam. A neutron star is a dead star that has lost most of its material in an explosion.

An animation shows how the process might work.

The finding was to be announced at a NASA teleconference today and will be detailed in the April 6 issue of the journal Nature. ...

See SPACE.com for links to further info.

Even pulsars can harbour planet-forming discs

New Scientist - Latest Headlines Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:19 AM ET

A dusty debris disc is seen for the first time around an extremely dense, rotating dead star, revealing it is never too late for a star to form planets.

Hints of Planet Birth Around Dead Star

Science Blog - Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:19 AM ET

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has uncovered new evidence that planets might rise up out of a dead star's ashes. The infrared telescope surveyed the scene around a pulsar, the remnant of an exploded star, and found a surrounding disk made up of debris shot out during the star's death throes. The dusty rubble in this disk might ultimately stick together to form planets.

Spitzer sees protoplanetary disk around dead star

spacetoday.net Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:19 AM ET

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected potential evidence of planets forming around a supernova...

See spacetoday.net for links to further info.

Did a Terrestrial Planet Once Orbit Inside the Asteroid Belt?

We're going on a planet hunt

EurekAlert! - Space and Planetary Science Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:18 AM ET

A fifth terrestrial planet may once have orbited between Mars and Jupiter, according to recent simulations by US researchers. Gravitational disturbances would have sent the fifth planet either into the sun or out of the solar system altogether long ago. But the researchers believe there is evidence today in an asteroid belt which shows some memory of this long-gone planet.

Creationism vs. Darwin

Background to latest controversies:

In Kansas, A Sharp Debate on Evolution, Washington Post May 6, 2005
[Dover, Pa] School board OKs challenges to evolution, MSNBC, Nov 12, 2004
Court rejects 'intelligent design' in science class, CNN Dec 20 2005

Creationist FAQs on Intelligent Design: here and here

A collection of creationist articles on the Bible, "intelligent design," and criticism of Darwinian evolution

FAQ cataloging rebuttals to many creationist arguments against evolution

A collection of essential articles explaining evolution.

Informative FAQs on evolution

New York Times coverage of the current evolution controversy

The precedent setting Scopes trial of 1925

New Discovery Creates Even Bigger Hole in Creationist Argument

A Fish with Fingers?

TIME Magazine Online: Top Science and Health Stories Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:19 AM ET

The "Fishapod" fossil is crucial link in the evolutionary chain.

People who doubt the truth of Darwinian evolution love to claim that there are no transitional fossils--no remains of ancient creatures that have the characteristics of two different kinds of organism, mixed together. If evolution were true, you'd expect to see them.

Actually, you do: transitional forms like Archaeopteryx, a lizard-like bird, have been known for many decades, and more pop up all the time. But casts from a newly discovered fossil, slated to go on display at the London Science Museum tomorrow are, by all accounts, the most impressive example to date of a transitional form. They come from a remarkable creature, mostly fish-like but with some clear adaptations that let it operate on land. It fits perfectly with the conventional tale told by evolutionists the epochal moment when animals first began to emerge from their ancestral ocean.

Fossil Called Missing Link From Sea to Land Animals

NYT > Home Page Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:19 AM ET

Scientists found evidence of limbs in the making in the 375-million-year-old fish's forward fins. By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD.

Fish out of water could bridge fossil gap between sea and land creatures

USATODAY.com Science and Space - Top Stories Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:18 AM ET

A fish with a toothy jaw and swiveling neck that crawled around 383 million years ago is showing scientists how land creatures first arose from the sea, a team of paleontologists reports Thursday. The creature had the body of a fish but the jaws, ribs and limb-like fins seen in the earliest land mammals.

News: Newfound Fossil Is Transitional between Fish and Landlubbers

Scientific American - Official RSS Feed Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:19 AM ET

By Kate Wong.

Technology

Robot Learns How to Walk

Speedy robot legs it to break record

New Scientist - Latest Headlines Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:19 AM ET

"RunBot" has a simple control mechanism that mimics the way human neurons control reflexes -- and it achieves quite a pace for its small stature.

Out of Left Field

News interesting to the editor that doesn't fit into other categories

Weird stuff also goes here

1986 Nuclear Disaster Still Claiming Lives

How many more lives will Chernobyl claim?

New Scientist - Latest Headlines Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:19 AM ET

The cloud of radiation spewed out by the world's worst nuclear accident 20 years ago could kill up to 60,000 people, suggests a new report.

Stone Age Dentistry

Man Was Enduring the Dentist's Drill 9,000 Years Ago

NYT > Science Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:18 AM ET

People living in a Neolithic village in Pakistan had holes drilled into their molars and survived the procedure, according to a new study. By KYLE JARRARD International Herald Tribune.

9,000-Year-Old Dentistry

Wired News: Top Stories Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:18 AM ET

Anthropologists discover evidence of dental drilling dating back as far as 7000 B.C., proving that primitive man had a certain sophistication -- and an amazing tolerance for pain.

Avian Flu

CDC Bird Flu site

U. S. Government Flu site

NPR in depth reports on bird flu

Factfile on bird flu

The Online Flu Encyclopedia - Note: Flu Wiki allows anonymous editing and contributions as in the Wikipedia

The CDC website on pandemic flu

The 1918 Killer Flu Pandemic

Watch Out! Cats and Dogs Can Carry the Virus Too

Article on Bird Flu Criticizes Effort to Monitor Cats and Dogs

NYT > Science Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:18 AM ET

Five leading European scientists think officials should better monitor cats, dogs and other carnivores for their possible role in transmitting avian influenza. By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN.

A Russian Bird Flu Vaccine?

Russia readies bird flu vaccines

Physics Org Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:18 AM ET

Russia is conducting clinical trials of bird flu vaccines by which it hopes to avoid a bird-flu pandemic that could affect up to one-third of the population.

Bird Flu Reaches Germany

Bird flu found at German poultry farm

Physics Org Download time: Apr 6 2006 6:18 AM ET

The avian flu virus has been confirmed at a poultry farm in Germany for the first time.