2011- New Challenges and Hope

The discovery of the first Earth twin, the rise of robot avatars and major leaps forward for commercial space flight are just some of the developments that will define 2011 - or will they?
 Last year, we used this slot to preview the stories we were most looking forward to in 2010. Some happened: the first cells with synthetic genomes were created and there is now a rough draft of the Neanderthal genome. Others... not so much. Even the first of NASA's shuttles to be scheduled for retirement failed to make its final flight.

This year we decided to take prediction science a step further, by enlisting the powers of Samuel Arbesman, who works on computational approaches to the study of science at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He is pioneering ways to employ scientometrics - a field that attempts to measure scientific progress - to make predictions about when new discoveries will occur. In September, he famously used the properties of known alien worlds to predict that the first life-friendly exoplanet had a 50 per cent chance of being found before May 2011; such a planet showed up a few weeks later.
We asked Arbesman to apply similar methods to a list of breakthroughs we thought might happen in 2011. He whittled this down to four that lent themselves to his methods, and attempted to calculate the probability of each one occurring in the next 12 months.
In the articles below you can gauge these predictions for yourself, along with four more stories that we reckon have a good chance of defining 2011.

Earth's doppelganger

Like meeting an estranged twin you didn't know you had, Earthlings will thrill at finding their planetary double. To predict the timing of this momentous occasion, we turned to a measure of "Earth-like-ness" devised earlier this year by one of us (Arbesman), along with Greg Laughlin of the University of California, Santa Cruz. This "habitability index" is based on estimates of a planet's average temperature and size. "Hot Jupiters", searingly hot worlds that orbit their hosts in just days, score close to zero, while one with similar properties to Earth would get a value of 1.
In September, plotting the index of each planet against the date of its discovery and extrapolating the resulting curves predicted that an Earth-like planet would be found by May 2011. Two weeks later, such a planet - Gliese 581 g - was spotted although the detection is awaiting further confirmation.Exoplanet-hunting may get a boost in February, when NASA's Kepler telescope is set to release a flood of data. Even if Earth's twin doesn't emerge then, there are plenty of other exoplanet searches that could spot it too. Samuel Arbesman and Rachel Courtland

The internet Boom

The internet will be weaving its way around the world for decades, but will there be fewer new users in 2011 than there were in 2010? The internet is already considered so important in Finland, Spain and Estonia that access is a legal right. And the list of online possibilities keeps on growing. In 2010, the launch of Apple's iPad and other touchscreen computers made surfing more fun and intuitive, while several smartphone operating systems, especially Google's Android, took off, extending the mobile net's reach.

The Electric car

Gentlemen - and women - plug in your engines. This will be the year of the electric car. No, seriously. After seemingly endless testing, technical hiccups and plain reluctance on the part of manufacturers to move electric vehicles from the concept phase to the showroom, it's finally happening. A fleet of new cars powered by the plug instead of the pump will take to the road in 2011.
Leading the charge is the Chevy Volt. With a 16-kilowatt-hour battery and a 110-kilowatt (149-horsepower) electric motor, it can go 60 kilometres on a single charge, plenty for commuting and weekend grocery runs. Critics point out that a 1.4-litre gasoline engine kicks in when the battery runs down, making the Volt a mere hybrid rather than a fully fledged electric car.

A new Hope Stem Cell

Human embryonic stem cells have inspired hope and loathing in almost equal measure. Next year hESCs could prove their worth, thanks to trials of two very different treatments.HESCs are unique in their ability to form all 200 tissues of the human body. In principle, cells derived from them could regenerate almost any tissue or organ. But because they come from embryos that are later destroyed, their use is controversial. To pacify the opposition the stem cells need to live up to expectation.
Within weeks, surgeons will inject retinal cells derived from hESCs into the eye of an individual with Stargardt's macular dystrophy, in the hope of delaying or preventing blindness, says Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Worcester, Massachusetts, which is developing the treatment. Eleven more patients are due to be injected in 2011. Any improvements in vision should be obvious and could take as little as six weeks to emerge.
The eye, however, is something of a special case. Insulated from the immune system, cells there are less likely to be rejected than in other parts of the body. To find out whether hESCs have broader therapeutic potential, we need to look to another, more ambitious trial.In October, a paralysed person received a spinal injection of hESC-derived oligodendrocyte progenitor cells. Ten more patients are due to receive cells in 2011. The stem cells should repair damaged nerves and prompt the growth of new ones, says Geron of Menlo Park, California, which is developing this treatment.
Unlike the ACT trial, the benefits may take longer to show themselves. If the spinal cells do no more than show they are safe, this will be an important milestone. Also in the pipeline are therapies to restore sight in people with age-related macular degeneration and blood cells for use in transfusions.

Private Space Taxies

PRIVATE companies have been promising for years that they can slash the cost of space travel, breaking the government monopoly on space flight and opening up the final frontier to the rest of us. At long last these efforts may be bearing fruit.On 8 December, the California-based firm SpaceX launched its Dragon capsule into orbit and safely parachuted it into the ocean - the first time a private company has achieved the feat.
Under a contract signed with NASA in 2008, the Dragon capsule will carry cargo to the International Space Station. SpaceX founder Elon Musk hopes it will eventually be permitted to carry astronauts as well.
NASA, facing the retirement of the shuttle fleet in 2011, is actively encouraging the development of private space taxis. In 2010 alone it distributed $50 million to private space firms, including SpaceX, and Congress is considering spending hundreds of millions more in 2011.
So what do we have to look forward to in 2011? SpaceX plans two more demonstration flights, the first of which will likely blast off mid-year and is expected to fly within a few kilometres of the ISS. The second would actually dock with the station, marking another first for a non-governmental spacecraft.
Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by airline mogul Richard Branson, is also set to take some giant leaps forward in 2011

Astronomy Events and Space Launches in 2011

2 January – Conjunction between Jupiter and Uranus at 13:41 UTC, with Jupiter 34 minutes of arc to the south; the third conjunction of a triple Conjunction.
4 January – Partial Solar Eclipse visible over most of Europe, the Arabian peninsula, North Africa, and Western Asia.
3 February - Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-133 Launch, Lunch Time-1:37 am EDT
18 March – NASA's MESSENGER Spaceraft is scheduled to arrive in orbit around Mercury.
18 March – NASA's Pluto probe New Horions will cross the orbit of Uranus, after a five-year journey. This will be faster than Voyager-2, which took eight years.
01 April – Space shuttle Endeavour mission STS-134 Launch. Launch Time 3:15 am EDT . The Space Shuttle will undertake its final mission before retirement.
Pakistan will launch its first space satellite.
May - Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and Mars all visible within a roughly 6° area of sky.
1 June – Partial solar eclipse in the Arctic.
15 June – Total Lunar Eclipse, mainly visible in Africa, India, and the Middle East.
July - The Dawn Spaceraft is scheduled to arrive at the dwarf planet Vesta during July. The exact date remains uncertain.
1 July – Partial Solar Eclipse off the coast of Antarctica.
10 July – Neptune completes its first full orbit since its discovery in 1846
15 July – The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the second Dragon spacecraft, called Dragon C2. The mission will demonstrate proximity operations during an approach within 6 miles of the International Space Station.
05 August – First Mission to Jupiter NASA's Juno spacecraft will launch at 12:10 pm to 1:40 pm EDT. Juno will investigate the giant planet's formation, evolution and structure from an elliptical orbit. Mission Juno will reach Jupiter in 2016
15 August – The comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova will pass within 0.0601AU about 8,995,100 km of Earth
08 September – NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission will launch at 8:35 am - 9:14 am EDT. GRAIL includes two spacecraft in lunar orbit to study the moon's interior and thermal evolution.
08 October – The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the third Dragon spacecraft, called Dragon C3 to resupply missions to the International Space Station.
25 November – Partial Solar Eclipse in Antarctica.
25 November – NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission will launch at 10:21 am from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Mars Science Laboratory mission is the Curiosity rover, which will assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life and to determine the planet's habitability.
07 December – Dragon C4 will be the fourth rocket launched by SpaceX. This mission will be the first operational cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station
10 December – Total Lunar Eclipse, visible mainly in Asia, Australia and Alaska.
25 December - Russia's flagship planetary mission, Phobos-Grunt will launch. Phobos-Grunt Mission's key goal is landing on the surface of the Martian moon Phobos and returning its soil samples back to Earth.
- Predicted Solar Maximum also predicted by other research groups for 2012
- China’s permanent space station, will be launched anytime this year. The craft, an orbiting laboratory known in Mandarin as Tiangong-1, would initially serve as a docking station for other spacecraft.

A water world 40 Light Year away !

The extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, GJ 1214b was discovered last year orbiting a dim, red star about 40 light-years from Earth. The planet is about 2.7 times larger than Earth and about 6.5 times more massive.
Based on the planet's density, astronomers estimate that GJ 1214b would be about three-quarters water with a solid core and an atmosphere—not unlike Earth. But it seems the similarities stop there. The planet is so close to its star that any water would be turned to vapor, and the atmosphere should be so thick that the pressure would be immense.
Now new measurements show that GJ 1214b's atmosphere is made of either dense, ultrahot steam or a noxious, cloudy haze of hydrogen. "Either way, it would be unpleasant if you were there," said Greg Laughlin, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the study.

Starlight Carries Chemical Imprints
Astronomers were able to "sample" the planet's atmosphere by watching the world pass in front of its host star, as seen from Earth.Using the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope in Chile, the team captured the light filtered around the edges of the planet when the world was blocking the star."That light has imprinted on it the signature of chemicals in the atmosphere," said study leader Jacob Bean of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Similar measurements have revealed gases such as hydrogen and sodium in the atmospheres of so-called hot Jupiters, exoplanets that are more massive than our gas giants but that orbit very close to their host stars.This is the first time, however, that astronomers have been able to analyze the atmosphere of an Earth-size planet.

Planet Has "Noxious Soup" or Steamy Blanket?
The data show that GJ 1214b's atmosphere isn't, as previously theorized, a puffy, cloud-free layer of mainly hydrogen gas. Instead the atmosphere appears to block a significant amount of light, the team reports in this week's issue of the journal Nature. For such an atmosphere to be made mostly of hydrogen, it must be topped by a thick layer of clouds like the atmosphere of Venus.
If that's the scenario, "it would make the atmospheres around the worst oil refineries look absolutely pristine," UC Santa Cruz's Laughlin said. Light that does filter through the haze would trigger chemical reactions in the hydrogen gas, creating a "noxious soup of stuff" near the planet's surface.
However, based on the new data, it's also possible that GJ 1214b's atmosphere is a dense blanket of hot water vapor, aka steam. In that case, "it would be the most unique exoplanet we've found so far," study leader Bean said. "We have nothing like that in our solar system."

10 Questions with Pr. Hawking

If God doesn't exist, why did the concept of his existence become almost universal?

I don't claim that God doesn't exist. God is the name people give to the reason we are here. But I think that reason is the laws of physics rather than someone with whom one can have a personal relationship.An impersonal God.
Does the universe end? If so, what is beyond it?

Observations indicate that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. It will expand forever, getting emptier and darker. Although the universe doesn't have an end, it had a beginning in the Big Bang. One might ask what is before that, but the answer is that there is nowhere before the Big Bang, just as there is nowhere south of the South Pole.

Do you think our civilization will survive long enough to make the leap to deeper space?

I think we have a good chance of surviving long enough to colonize the solar system. However, there is nowhere else in the solar system as suitable as the Earth, so it is not clear if we would survive if the Earth was made unfit for habitation. To ensure our long-term survival, we need to reach the stars. That will take much longer. Let's hope we can last until then.

If you could talk to Albert Einstein, what would you say?

I would ask him why he didn't believe in black holes. The field equations of his theory of relativity imply that a large star or cloud of gas would collapse in on itself and form a black hole. Einstein was aware of this but somehow managed to convince himself that something like an explosion would always occur to throw off mass and prevent the formation of a black hole. What if there was no explosion?

Which scientific discovery or advance would you like to see in your lifetime?

I would like nuclear fusion to become a practical power source. It would provide an inexhaustible supply of energy, without pollution or global warming.

What do you believe happens to our consciousness after death?

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one's memories.

Given your reputation as a brilliant physicist, what ordinary interests do you have that might surprise people?

I enjoy all forms of music--pop, classical and opera. I also share an interest in Formula One racing with my son Tim.

Do you feel that your physical limitations have helped or hindered your study?

Although I was unfortunate enough to get motor neuron disease, I have been very fortunate in almost everything else. I was lucky to be working in theoretical physics, one of the few areas in which disability was not a serious handicap, and to hit the jackpot with my popular books.

Does it feel like a huge responsibility to have people expecting you to have all the answers to life's mysteries?

I certainly don't have the answers to all life's problems. While physics and mathematics may tell us how the universe began, they are not much use in predicting human behavior because there are far too many equations to solve. I'm no better than anyone else at understanding what makes people tick, particularly women.

Do you think there will ever come a time when mankind understands all there is to understand about physics?

I hope not. I would be out of a job.

Discovery of First Alien planet of outside our Milky Way

Astronomers have confirmed the first discovery of an alien planet in our Milky Way that came from another galaxy.The Jupiter-like planet orbits a star that was born in another galaxy and later captured by our own Milky Way sometime between 6 billion and 9 billion years ago, researchers said. A side effect of the galactic cannibalism brought a faraway planet within astronomers' reach for the first time ever.
"This is very exciting," said study co-author Rainer Klement of the Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany. "We have no ability to directly observe stars in foreign galaxies for planets and confirm them." Stars currently residing in other galaxies are simply too far away, Klement added.
The find may also force astronomers to rethink their ideas about planet formation and survival, researchers said, since it's the first planet ever discovered to be circling a star that is both very old and extremely metal-poor. Metal-poor stars are lacking in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.
The newfound planet, called HIP 13044b, survived through its star's red-giant phase, which our own sun will enter in about 5 billion years. So studying it could offer clues about the fate of our solar system as well, researchers said. HIP 13044b sits extremely close to its parent star, which has now contracted again. The planet completes an orbit every 16.2 days, and it comes within about 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) of its parent star at closest approach — just 5.5 percent of the distance between Earth and the sun.
Searching for telltale tugs
The newly discovered alien planet is at least 25 percent more massive than Jupiter, researchers said. It orbits the star HIP 13044 about 2,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Fornax. HIP 13044 is about as massive as the sun, and it is nearing the end of its life. The star has already gone through its red giant phase — when sun-like stars bloat enormously after exhausting the hydrogen fuel in their cores.
The star is also composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. It is less than 1 percent as metal-rich as our sun, making it the most metal-poor star known to host a planet, researchers said.
The research team scrutinized HIP 13044's movement using a telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile. After six months of observing, they detected tiny movements that betrayed the gravitational tug of an orbiting planet. "For me, it was a big surprise," said study lead author Johny Setiawan, also of MPIA. "I was not expecting it in the beginning." Setiawan, Klement and their colleagues report their results online in the Nov. 18 issue of Science.

An extragalactic origin

Last year, another research team announced it may have detected a planet in the Andromeda galaxy. However, that faraway find will be nearly impossible to confirm. The astronomers performing that previous study used a method called gravitational microlensing, which only works when a planet-hosting star happens to line up with another star. Such events happen very rarely.
HIP 13044, on the other hand, belongs to the Helmi stream of stars that were once part of a nearby dwarf galaxy. Astronomers believe our own Milky Way gobbled up the Helmi stream between 6 billion to 9 billion years ago.While it's technically possible that the planet was born in the Milky Way and then stripped from its parent star by the interloping HIP 13044, the odds of that happening are minuscule, researchers said.
So HIP 13044 almost certainly has an extragalactic origin.
"We can be pretty sure about that," Klement told. "Stellar encounters in the Milky Way essentially don't occur. The chance that the star captured the planet from another star by an encounter is very, very unlikely."

Rethinking theories of planet formation

Most of the nearly 500 alien planets discovered so far orbit metal-rich stars, researchers said. And a metal-rich star is fundamental to the dominant theory explaining how giant planets form — the core-accretion model. This model posits that dust and gas particles circling a young star cling together and gradually become larger, forming rocks, boulders and eventually the stony cores of giant, gassy planets like HIP 13044b.
Because its parent star is so metal-poor, HIP 13044b may have formed in a different way, researchers said. The planet may have arisen via the gravitational attraction between gas molecules, through a process termed the disk-instability model. So it may not have a rocky core at all.
"You are able to form pure gas planets by this method," Klement said. The fact that such a metal-poor star can host planets should inspire astronomers to look at other stars like it, Klement added. Astronomers haven't examined many up to this point, so they don't have a good handle on how frequently planets might pop up around low-metal stars.
The discovery also hints that planets may have studded the cosmos from the universe's early days — back when pretty much all stars were metal-poor. "You can think of the very first stars in the universe, or the second or third generation of stars," Klement said. "Could they already have been able to form planets? That's a very fascinating question."

Vision of our solar system's fate?

Our own sun is on the same stellar-evolution track as HIP 13044; scientists predict it will blot into a red giant in 5 billion years or so. So astronomers may be able to learn something about the fate of our solar system by studying HIP 10344b and its parent star, researchers said.
That fate would not be pretty for Earth. HIP 13044b likely once orbited much farther away from its star but spiraled closer and closer during the red giant phase due to friction with the swollen star's envelope, researchers said. Any more interior planets would have been destroyed during this process.
When our own sun enters its red giant phase, Earth will likely get cooked.
"The inner planets, including Earth, maybe will not survive," Setiawan told . "But Jupiter, Saturn and the outer planets might move to closer-in orbits, exactly like we detected."
HIP 13044b is a survivor, but it won't live forever. Its parent star is due to expand again in the next phase of its stellar evolution, researchers said, and this time the planet will almost certainly be engulfed.

Milky Way may have inflated two huge bubbles of gamma rays

An ancient eruption of a supermassive black hole in the Milky Way may have inflated two huge bubbles of gamma rays which were just now discovered and are considered a new type of astronomical object.
"It shows, once again, that the universe is full of surprises," said Jon Morse, director of astrophysics at NASA headquarters. Combined, the bubbles, which are aligned at the center of the Milky Way, span a vast distance of about 50,000 light-years. The structures are very distinct, with defined edges, and have as much energy in them as 100,000 supernova.
They were found with NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope, which surveys the sky every three hours for the highest-energy light.Among the 1,500 sources of gamma rays Fermi has mapped so far, nothing resembles the bubble-shaped structures, which stretch across more than half of the visible sky, from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus.
"You have to ask where could energy like that come from," said astronomer Doug Finkbeiner, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.Hints of the bubbles appeared years earlier in X-ray surveys and in maps of the cosmic microwave background radiation stemming from the Big Bang explosion.
"We had a hypothesis before Fermi launched that there should be some gamma ray emission in this part of the sky. We were thinking something a bit more modest, maybe something within 10 or 20 or 30 degrees of the center, not these giant structures reaching all the way up to 50 degrees," Finkbeiner said.
Scientists have two possible explanations for the Fermi bubbles. Theory one: a burst of star-formation at the center of the galaxy generated short-lived massive stars with energetic winds that blasted high-energy particles out into space.
Finkbeiner points out that it would take some time to accumulate as much energy as what's inside the bubbles, however. He favors an alternative theory: an outburst from the supermassive black hole lurking in the center of the galaxy. In other galaxies, astronomers have seen evidence for jets of particles triggered by matter that is being pulled into a black hole, objects that have so much gravitational pull that not even light can escape their grasp.
There's no evidence that the Milky Way's central black hole, which is about 400 million times more massive than our sun, has jets, but astronomers suspect it might have in the past."We know it didn't get to be that big by sitting there quietly all the time. It certainly has had big accretion events in the past, where material falls on it and then some of that material comes back out as high-energy particles blasted out in the form of a jet," Finkbeiner said.
"We've never really seen very good evidence of it. This might be the first evidence for a major outburst of the black hole at the center of the galaxy. When it's going full-blast … it would not actually take an enormous amount of time -- maybe 10,000 or 100,000 years -- for it to produce enough energy to create these structures," Finkbeiner said.
"This result is very exciting," added Fermi scientist Simona Murgia, with the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif. "These features could reveal unexpected and very important physical processes in our galaxy that until now we knew nothing about despite the fact that these features could possibly be almost as large as the Milky Way and might have been around for millions of years."

LHC creates mini big bangs

The world's largest particle smasher - the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, near Geneva in Switzerland - has seen the highest temperatures ever produced by a science experiment, thanks to a flurry of "mini big bangs".
On 7 November, the LHC started smashing lead ions head-on, instead of the usual proton-proton collisions. This produced what are referred to as mini big bangs: dense fireballs that have temperatures of about 10 trillion °C.
At such temperatures and energies, the nuclei of atoms melt into a mix of their constituent quarks and gluons. The fireball is known as a quark-gluon plasma. The formation of the plasma is a key prediction of the extremely successful theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), which tells us that as we go back to earlier and earlier times in the universe's history, the strength of strong interactions falls almost to zero. The discovery of this so-called "asymptotic freedom" is what resulted in a Nobel Prize for David Politzer, Frank Wilczek and David Gross in 2004.
The quark-gluon plasma has been studied in great detail at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Upton, New York, which smashes gold ions head-on. In February 2010, RHIC researchers reported the creation of plasma that had temperatures of 4 trillion °C.
Now, thanks to a 287 TeV beam, the LHC's lead ions are colliding with energies about 13.5 times greater than what has been achieved at RHIC.The resultant plasma fireballs will allow physicists at CERN using the 10,000-tonne ALICE (A Large Heavy Ion Experiment) detector to study the universe as it was about a millionth of a second after the big bang.
One can only wonder about what surprises are in store. At RHIC, the biggest surprise was that the quark-gluon plasma, instead of being a gas, acts like a perfect liquid.

World Action Plan to Combat Asteroid Threat

Space agencies around the world are working to be ready to coordinate their response to any potentially harmful asteroid headed for Earth.To help focus a world-class planetary defense against threatening near-Earth objects, the space experts are seeking to establish a high-level Mission Planning and Operations Group, or MPOG for short.
Veteran astronauts and space planners gathered here at the European Space Agency's European Space Operations Center Oct. 27-29 to shape the asteroid threat response plan and establish an Information Analysis and Warning Network.
The MPOG workshop was organized by the European Space Agency, the Association of Space Explorers and Secure World Foundation (for whom this columnist is a research associate).
"It was the first face-to-face meeting of representatives from space agencies wrestling with the tough geopolitical and technical issues which they will face when we're confronted with an actual impact threat," said former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, a workshop leader and longtime activist on ways to protect the Earth from future asteroid impacts.

Sticky issues with space rocks


While the technical issues – early warning and deflection – are challenging, they essentially pale in comparison with the very sticky issues that will confront the community of nations when they have to make a collective decision to act on an actual threat, Schweickart told SPACE.com. [5 Reasons to Care About Asteroids]
"This really has to be a collective decision," Schweickart said, "since, in the deflection process, there will be a trail of nations across which the impact point moves as we shift it off the Earth."
The space agencies in the MPOG workshop grappled with the questions of what would have to be performed and how they would do it, Schweickart said, "either as the 'designated hitter,' as it were ... or collectively in some way. These are difficult geopolitical challenges, and the workshop provided the first face-to-face setting for many of the space agencies to grapple with it together."
The workshop touched upon a number of strategies to deflect an incoming object, but there was also discussion of using a "physics package," space slang for a nuclear bomb if need be. There remains a good deal of discussion over which deflection strategy best serves the planet and humankind – if time is on our side.
Asteroid workshop findings.
Participants agreed that the "sooner the better" would be the best approach to identifying a menacing NEO. Early identification would enable a much more coordinated approach between nations to fend off any head-on collision between our sweet world and a large space rock.
"Understanding how to react if we were really faced with an imminent asteroid impact threat is very important. This workshop was an important part of defining the decision process," said Detlef Koschny, Near-Earth Object segment manager of ESA in the Netherlands and a coordinator of the MPOG workshop.

In a post-workshop handout, the attendees concluded that -

A Mission Planning and Operations Group should be established.

The MPOG should identify to space agencies the technical issues involved in planetary defense, to take advantage of synergies between human exploration, science, and study of the NEO hazard.

The MPOG should propose research themes in NEO deflection for use by space agencies, addressing those areas most critical for effective deflection strategies.

There is great value in finding hazardous NEOs early, to reduce the costs of deflection missions. Early detection would require upgraded NEO search and tracking capabilities.

What next?

The results of the workshop will be folded into the ongoing work of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in its sessions next spring and summer. This will all come together as a set of recommendations or procedures that will be put before the U.N. General Assembly in about a year.
"By coordinating future MPOG meetings with the asteroid decision-making efforts in the U.N., the spacefaring nations can prepare for joint action against a future asteroid impact," said former astronaut Tom Jones, chairman of the Association of Space Explorers' Committee on Near-Earth Objects.
"This meeting advanced the technical solutions we'll need to respond to an impact threat," Jones added.
"The U.N. process addresses international decision-making ... when to mount a deflection campaign. Both efforts will need to progress far beyond these early discussions to create a true asteroid response capability," Jones told SPACE.com.

ESA's multi-pronged approach

Moving out on the planetary defense issue is the European Space Agency. For its part, the ESA has kick-started a multi-pronged and phased Space Situational Awareness Preparatory Program, said Nicolas Bobrinsky, who is head of the effort.
The initiative would give Europe the capability to watch for objects and natural phenomena that could harm satellites in orbit or facilities on the ground. Bobrinsky noted that an asteroid impact would release devastating kinetic energy causing a myriad of woes, from blast waves and tsunamis to atmospheric disturbances and electromagnetic effects.
The NEO component of the ESA plan includes discovery, identification and orbit-prediction functions, as well as a future civil warning capability. Full operational services are to be implemented in 2012-19.
Meanwhile, Schweickart said the truism in the forefront of the NEO-versus-Earth dialogue today is, "Find them early, find them early, and find them early."
"Upgrading our telescopic capability to find the far more numerous smaller but still very dangerous asteroids is the most important investment we can make," Schweickart concluded.

Superstitious Beliefs, now becoming more common

It's that time of year again. Ghosts, goblins and other spooky characters come out from the shadows and into our everyday lives.For most people, the thrill lasts for a few weeks each October. But for true believers, the paranormal is an everyday fact, not just a holiday joke.

To understand what drives some people to truly believe, two sociologists visited psychic fairs, spent nights in haunted houses, trekked with Bigfoot hunters, sat in on support groups for people who had been abducted by aliens, and conducted two nationwide surveys.

Contrary to common stereotypes, the research revealed no single profile of a person who accepts the paranormal. Believers ranged from free-spirited types with low incomes and little education to high-powered businessmen. Some were drifters; others were brain surgeons.
Why people believed also varied, the researchers report in a new book, called "Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture." For some, the paranormal served as just another way of explaining the world. For others, extraordinary phenomena offered opportunities to chase mysteries, experience thrills and even achieve celebrity status, if they could actually find proof. "It's almost like an adult way to get that kidlike need for adventure and exploration," said co-author Christopher Bader, of Baylor University in Waco, Texas. "Other people are sitting at home and renting videos, but you're sitting in a haunted house that is infested with demons."
"These guys who are hunting Bigfoot are out chasing a monster," he added. "I could see the real appeal in going out for weekend and never knowing what you might find." There is no hard data on how common it is to believe in the paranormal, which Bader and co-author Carson Mencken define as beliefs or experiences that are not fully accepted by science or religion.
But trends in television programming offer a sense that there is a widespread interest in mystical phenomena that is becoming more common. In the 1970s and 80s, Bader said, there were maybe one or two paranormal-themed shows in the TV line-up. Today, there are dozens, including programs about ghost hunters, psychic kids, haunted homes and even possessed pets.
Plenty of scientists have put energy into debunking paranormal claims. Bader and Mencken wanted to look instead at what drives people to believe.They started with two nationwide surveys that interviewed a total of more than 3,000 Americans about their beliefs, experiences and interests.
When the scientists broke down the results, they found that people who are moderately religious are most likely to believe in the paranormal. This could be because they are open enough to believe in the unknown, but not so rigid in their religious beliefs to reject mysterious experiences altogether.
The numbers also showed that different types of paranormal entities appeal to different demographics. Women, for instance, are most likely to believe they live in haunted houses. College graduates are most likely to have out-of-body experiences. Unmarried white men are most likely to believe in UFOs.Bigfoot hunters were perhaps the most surprising group, Bader said. They defied all stereotypes of paranormal pursuers who wear flowing clothes and commune with spirits.

Instead, they were very serious, extremely conventional and often highly professional. In fact, their beliefs contradicted their lifestyles so much that many of them were plagued by anxiety, which drove them even further to stick to their beliefs. "Their friends and family consider them kooky," Bader said. "Everyone is saying they're nuts. So, they have a real aggressive style and seriousness of purpose. They want to prove everyone wrong."

For one hunter, the search began one day when he was out in the woods and, he swears, he saw Bigfoot cross his path. "Imagine the stress that would put on your life," Bader said. "You consider yourself a normal, smart guy, and you think you just saw a giant monkey walk in front of you. Now, you have to fit that into your life."

"These are not people trying to explain a crazy world," he added. "They are trying to prove to themselves that they aren't crazy." Regardless of the person or the phenomenon, paranormal experiences are purely quirks of the human brain, said Michael Shermer, executive director of the Skeptics Society, an educational organization, and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine. Whether it's hearing creaks in an old house or watching dots move randomly on a computer screen, he said, people tend to look for patterns and meanings in everything. "The default condition in brain is that all patterns are real," Shermer said. "It's just what we do."

Rubbish Astrology?

Like many astronomers, I found myself (yet again) in an uncomfortable position last weekend. A stranger, upon learning I was an astronomer, said, "Oh, I'm a Gemini, what are you?" How many more times can I smile sweetly back, with a laugh, and say: "I'm not an astrologer, that's not what I do, I'm an astronomer."? According to the latest statistics there are more people now than ever before who read their star signs in the daily news. We live in a time that is more scientifically aware than any other period in history and yet people still believe the stars and planets can determine their fate.
Interestingly, astronomy and astrology share the same origins; in fact it's accurate to say that astrology came first. Ancient civilizations tried to find sense in the happenings in the sky and attribute them to their lives. We soon learned that perhaps there was no mystical force determining our future and the two subjects split into astronomy (the branch of physics that studies celestial bodies and the Universe as a whole) and astrology (a pseudoscience claiming divination by the positions of the planets, sun and moon).
Today though, astrology has turned into nothing more than a fairground act and astronomy has turned into a science having to point out the difference! And this is where I come in. I thought it was interesting, as an (ahem) impartial writer that I highlight a couple of stumbling blocks supporting my belief that astrology really is a load of rubbish.
The zodiac is the band around the sky where the sun, moon and planets move through. The signs of the zodiac are the constellations of stars within this band. Both astronomers and astrologers agree on this bit.
But according to astrologers there are 12 signs of the zodiac. Wrong! There are 13 signs of the zodiac; Ophiuchus is the 'new' one yet for some curious reason I have never come across an Ophiuchian!
Taking the concept of the signs of the zodiac, I was born in July which means that when I was born the sun was in Cancer. Wrong again. Originally yes, the sun would have been in Cancer when the star/sun charts were produced about 2000 years ago. But in reality, the wobble of the Earth on its axis -- which we call "precession" -- has led to them being all out of sync.
In fact, when I was born, way back in July 1973, the Sun was in Gemini. you're all reading the wrong star signs! All those astrology columns you've read that seemed spot-on were a fluke. Surprising eh? The last point I want to throw out to the cyber world is the discovery of planets. Until 1781 there were only five planets known to affect us in the minds of astrologers: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
In 1781, astronomer Sir William Herschel spotted an object moving in the sky and originally thought it was a comet but later realized its planetary nature. The object was the gas giant Uranus. In 1846, another discovery was confirmed, the eighth planet in the solar system. This was an ingenious piece of work combining mathematics and observation. Astronomers noticed some peculiarities in the way Uranus moved through the sky and, after painstaking observation, concluded it must have been the gravitational tug from another object causing its curious motion. The position of the new planet was calculated from the movements of Uranus and subsequently identified telescopically. Neptune had been found.
The interesting thing here is that until the scientific discovery of the two new planets, astrologers had not once mentioned them. Following their discovery they found their way into astrological predictions. If they had a real impact on our lives, surely astrologers should have discovered them or at least known they were out there before astronomers?
Finally, don't even get me started on the nature of the magic/fairy dust that allows a planet to affect us here on Earth. Science has shown us through measurement, observation and experimentation that there are four forces in the Universe: electromagnetism, strong interaction, weak interaction and gravitation. For reasons too detailed to go into in this article, none of them can impact humanity purely from the positions of the stars in the sky or how aligned the planets are.
If there is some mystical force (other than the fundamental four above) affecting our lives from the planets, then clearly distance is no object for this force as it doesn't matter if a planet or star is near or far. How does it work, then, that we have found hundreds of exoplanets orbiting other stars? Or that there are over 200 billion stars in the Milky Way? Surely that 'force' would also be affecting us. Thankfully it doesn't, otherwise we would all be running round as complete loonies with all these 'influences' flying at us from all directions.

As you can tell, I'm not fond of astrology. It's all about telling people what they want to hear and us fragile human’s wanting something to believe in. After all, I've never once heard someone read out their predictions telling them that today is going to be a rubbish day; may as well just stay in bed.

Doubts about Existence of Gliese-581g

Ever since the announcement of the discovery of exoplanet Gliese 581g, there has been a buzz in the news, on websites, Twitter – pretty much everywhere, about the first potentially habitable extrasolar planet. But the past couple of days there has been a different sort of buzz about this distant world. Two stories have surfaced and they both can’t be true. The first one is fairly off the deep end: an astrophysicist from Australia claims that while doing a SETI search two years ago, he picked up a “suspicious signal” from the vicinity of the Gliese 581 system, and a couple of websites have connected some dots between that signal and a potentially habitable Gliese 581g.
The second one is more sobering. At an International Astronomical Union meeting this week, other astronomers have raised doubts whether Gliese 581g actually exists. Unless you’ve been under a rock the past two weeks, you likely know that this newest and most promising of potential habitable extra solar planets was described by the scientists who discovered it as a rocky world about 3 times the mass of Earth, and it orbits within the red dwarf star’s habitable zone, the place that is just right for water to remain as a liquid on a planetary surface. And it is fairly close to us, too, at about 20 light years away, located in the constellation Libra.
Also announced was the discovery of planet ‘f’, a 7- Earth mass planet with a 433-day orbit around Gliese 581. Astronomer Steven Vogt announced the discoveries by his team, which used the HIRES instrument on the Keck I telescope in Hawaii. They also used 119 measurements from the HARPS instrument on the La Silla telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
On Monday, Steinn Siggurdson broke the news on his Dynamics of Cats blog that an astronomer who works on HARPS data at the Geneva Observatory, said at the IAU meeting this week that his team could not confirm the existence of Gliese 581 g. In an article on the Astrobiology Magazine website today (Tuesday) the astronomer, Francesco Pepe, said that not only can they not confirm the existence of planet ‘g’, but also the ‘f’ planet.
In 2009, the Geneva team announced the discovery of planet ‘e’ in the Gliese 581 solar system. At approximately 1.9 Earth masses, this ‘e’ planet is the lowest mass extrasolar planet found at that time, and has a 3.15-day orbital period around the star.Pepe said they have studied this planet-rich system frequently, gathering a total of 180 data points in 6.5 years (with about 60 of those data points since 2009) and they can only see evidence of the 4 previously announced planets b, c, d, and e.
There is a signal which could possibly be f, but the signal amplitude of this potential fifth planet is very low and basically at the level of the measurement noise, said Pepe..

Global warming theory in chaos after report finds increased solar activity may COOL the Earth

A puzzling discovery has raised a question mark over the Sun's impact on climate change and could provide ammunition for sceptics, it was revealed today. Until now it has been assumed that less activity from the Sun equates to less warming of the Earth. But the new research, which focuses on a three-year snapshot of time between 2004 and 2007, suggests the opposite may be true.
As solar activity waned at the end of one of the Sun's 11-year cycles, the new data show the amount of energy reaching the Earth at visible wavelengths rose rather than fell. Scientists believe it may also be possible that during the next up-turn of the cycle, when sun activity increases, there might be a cooling effect at the Earth's surface.
A further twist arises from the fact that over the past century, overall solar activity has been increasing. If the new findings apply to long as well as short time periods, this could translate into a small degree of cooling rather than the slight warming effect shown in existing climate models. It would effectively turn received wisdom on its head. Sceptics are likely to say the results further undermine the reliability of climate change science, especially with regard to solar effects.
Professor Joanna Haigh, from Imperial College London, who led the study, said: 'These results are challenging what we thought we knew about the Sun's effect on our climate. However, they only show us a snapshot of the Sun's activity and its behaviour over the three years of our study could be an anomaly.
'We cannot jump to any conclusions based on what we have found during this comparatively short period and we need to carry out further studies to explore the sun's activity and the patterns that we have uncovered on longer timescales.
'However, if further studies find the same pattern over a longer period of time, this could suggest that we may have overestimated the sun's role in warming the planet, rather than underestimating it.' Speaking at a news briefing in London, she denied that it would fuel scepticism about climate change research. 'I think it doesn't give comfort to the climate sceptics at all,' she said. 'It may suggest that we don't know that much about the Sun. It casts no aspersions at all upon the climate models.'
The research, published in the journal Nature, is based on data from a satellite called SORCE (Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment) that has been measuring the Sun's energy output at X-ray, ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared wavelengths.
Prof Haigh's team found that, above an altitude of 28 miles, concentrations of ozone in the atmosphere increased as total solar output decreased. The ozone rise accompanied a steep fall in levels of ultraviolet radiation. Closer to the ground, an increase in visible radiation caused heating of the lower atmosphere.
'At face value, the data seem incredibly important,' Michael Lockwood, a space physicist at the University of Reading, told.
'If solar activity is out of phase with solar radiative forcing, it could change our understanding of how processes in the troposphere and stratosphere act to modulate Earth's climate.' 'The findings could prove very significant when it comes to understanding, and quantifying, natural climate fluctuations,' he added.
'But no matter how you look at it, the Sun's influence on current climate change is at best a small natural add-on to man-made greenhouse warming.' 'All the evidence is that the vast majority of warming is anthropogenic. It might be that the solar part isn't quite working the way we thought it would, but it is certainly not a seismic rupture of the science.'

50 Years of Exobiology and Astrobiology

In 1959, NASA funded its first exobiology investigation, a life-detection experiment for Viking mission to Mars. In 1960, the agency established an exobiology program, whose early managers adopted an approach to advancing this field of study by funding forward-thinking, boundary-bending, multidisciplinary research projects that other funding sources tended to judge as too risky.

NASA’s Viking mission included three exobiology experiments designed to look for evidence of life on Mars. By the 1980s, NASA expanded its exobiology program to encompass studies of evolutionary biology. In the 1990s, NASA again expanded the breadth and depth of this program, broadening the boundaries of “exobiology” to establish “astrobiology” as a program encompassing studies of chemical evolution in interstellar space, the formation and evolution of planets, and the natural history of Earth in addition to exobiology and evolutionary biology.

Today NASA’s Astrobiology Program addresses three fundamental questions: How does life begin and evolve? Is there life beyond Earth and, if so, how can we detect it? What is the future of life on Earth and in the universe? In striving to answer these questions and improve understanding of biological, planetary and cosmic phenomena and relationships among them, experts in a range of relevant disciplines are participating in astrobiology research and helping to advance the enterprise of space exploration.

British university scientists win Nobel prize for physics for discovery of 'graphene' - an atom-thick carbon layer 200 times stronger than steel

Graphene could lead to new super-fast electronics

Bonds between carbon atoms are the strongest in nature

Novoselov is youngest Nobel laureate since 1973

Two British-based scientists have shared the Nobel Prize for physics for their discovery of a new material that is only an atom thick and which could change the future of electronics. Russian-born Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both from Manchester University, today won the prize for their 'groundbreaking experiments' with graphene - a microscopic flake of carbon.
The award comes after yesterday's long-awaited Nobel prize for medicine for British scientist Professor Richard Edwards - the inventor of IVF. Since its discovery in 2004 by the pair, graphene has rapidly become one of the hottest topics in materials science and solid-state physics.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that their experiments with graphene could lead to the development of new materials and 'the manufacture of innovative electronics'. Geim, 51, is a Dutch national while Novoselov, 36, holds British and Russian citizenship. Both are natives of Russia and started their careers in physics there. Geim said he was shocked by the announcement but planned to go back to work as usual today. 'My plan for today is to go to work and finish up a paper that I didn't finish this week,' he said. 'I just try to muddle on as before.'
Professor Konstantin Novoselov said: 'I was really shocked when I heard the news and my first thought was to go to the lab and tell the team.' The pair extracted the super-thin material from a piece of graphite such as that found in ordinary pencils using sticky tape. 'Playfulness is one of their hallmarks, one always learns something in the process and, who knows, you may even hit the jackpot,' the committee said in its release.
One millimetre of graphite actually consists of 3 million layers of graphene stacked on top of each other, although they are weakly held together. Graphene was discovered at Manchester University in 2004. It is a single atomic layer of carbon atoms bound in a hexagonal network.
The bonds between the carbon atoms are the strongest in nature and the free electrons are highly mobile. It not only promises to revolutionise semiconductor, sensor, and display technology, but could also lead to breakthroughs in fundamental quantum physics research. It is often depicted as an atomic-scale chicken wire made of carbon atoms and their bonds. Scientists believe it could one day be used to make transparent conducting materials, biomedical sensors and even extremely light, yet strong, aircraft of the future.
Similar to another important nanomaterial - carbon nanotubes - graphene is incredibly strong - around 200 times stronger than structural steel. Geim last year received the prestigious Korber European Science Award for his discovery of two-dimensional crystals made of carbon atoms, particularly graphene, the university said on its website. It said the discovery 'has the potential to revolutionise the world of microelectronics'.
Dr Mark Miodownik, Head of the Materials Research Group, King's College London, said: 'The award of this Nobel Prize will bring a smile to the face of every scientist because it shows you can still get a Nobel Prize by mucking about in a lab. 'Professors Geim and Novoselov happened across graphene, a new material that has the potential to revolutionise electronics, by discovering they could pluck atomic layers of carbon from the lead of a pencil using nothing more sophisticated than sticky tape.
'It turns out that anyone who has ever held a pencil could have discovered this amazing new material, but it was Professors Geim and Novoselov who took the time to look carefully. Bravo!
'Another reason to recognise that British science is a special culture, admired throughout the world for its originality and genius, and needs to be nurtured not cut by the government if they want to foster future technology and wealth in the UK.' University of Manchester President and Vice-Chancellor Nancy Rothwell said: 'This is fantastic news. We are delighted that Andre and Konstantin’s work on graphene has been recognised at the very highest level by the 2010 Nobel Prize Committee.
'This is a wonderful example of a fundamental discovery based on scientific curiosity with major practical, social and economic benefits for society.' Professor David Delpy, Chief Executive of the EPSRC, said: 'This work represents an enormously important scientific development. An exciting new material that has a huge range of applications and will no doubt bring significant benefits to the UK economy.'
The 2010 Nobel Prize announcements started yesterday with the medicine award going to British researcher Robert Edwards for work that led to the first test tube baby.

Q-A About Habitable Planet Gliese 581g

A newfound Earth-sized planet discovered in the habitable zone of a nearby star looks very promising for the possibility of extraterrestrial life, but many unknowns remain. The planet, Gliese 581g, is one of two new worlds discovered orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581, which now has a family of planets that totals six. [Tour the six Gliese 581 Planets] . Here is Starry Messenger's look at what scientists know so far about the intriguing world, as well as a few questions that don't quite have answers yet. Consider it a new entry into Earth's own hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy -

How do I say the planet's name?
 
Gliese 581g may look like it should rhyme with "Grease," but it is actually pronounced as two-syllables as (Glee-zuh). The name comes from the German astronomer Wilhelm Gliese, who catalogued the planet's parent star Gleise 581 as part of a star survey first published in 1957.

Where is Gliese 581g?

The planet Gliese 581g orbits the red dwarf star Gliese 581, which sits 20 light-years from Earth in the constellation Libra. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km).


How far is it from the parent star?

Early estimates suggest Gliese 581g is 0.15 astronomical units from its star. One astronomical unit is the average distance between the Earth and sun, which is approximately 93 million miles (150 million km). That distance means the planet is close enough to its star so that it can complete an orbit in a little less than 37 days. One of its sibling planets was closer to the hot edge of the habitable zone around the star Gliese 581, and one was farther out the colder edge of the habitable zone. Gliese 581g is located just right between the two.

What is a habitable zone?


Think of a star's habitable zone as the swath of space surrounding a star where conditions for life as we know it are possible. Closer in, a planet roasts. Farther out, it freezes. Planets within that habitable zone, also known as the Goldilocks zone, have a range of surface temperatures that allow for readily available liquid water and other conditions that may support the rise of life. This cosmic sweet spot can vary, because it depends upon the type of star and the point in time for any given star's lifespan.
For instance, our sun's current habitable zone is farther out than that of the star Gliese 581, a red dwarf about 50 times dimmer than our sun. The cooler red dwarf allows the Gliese 581 planets to orbit much closer and still remain in the habitable zone.
A planet within the habitable zone does not have a guaranteed chance of originating life, because biology also depends upon the planet's size and a host of conditions, including chemical makeup. But what little researchers know about Gliese 581g makes it a highly promising candidate.

How big is Gliese 581g in relation to Earth?


The planet is lumped into the "nearly Earth-sized" category. It is between three and four times the mass of our Earth — bigger, but small enough to be rocky rather than gaseous. Its radius is anywhere between 1.3 and two times the size of Earth.

How much would I weigh on Gliese 581g?

An Earth-sized planet with three times the mass of our planet would pull down on your body with three times the force of Earth's standard gravity. That means if you weighed 120 pounds on Earth, you would weigh about 120 x 3 pounds on an Earth-sized planet with three times the mass, or 360 pounds.
But Gliese 581g also has a somewhat larger radius, so that also factors into the equation. A 120 pound person would weigh about 213 pounds on Gliese 581g at the lower end of the size and mass estimates. This all remains theoretical until astronomers can pin down the actual size and mass.

What's it like on the surface?

There is no solid evidence at the moment that suggests what surface conditions might be like, or even if liquid water and an atmosphere are actually present.What researchers know is that the planet exists at the right distance from its star to have liquid water. It's also at the right distance to have an atmosphere which can protect that water, if exists on the surface.
But one of the planet's discoverers, astronomer Steven Vogt of the University of California, Santa Cruz, pointed out that "it's pretty hard to imagine that water wouldn't be there." He likened it to the examples of the Earth, its moon, Mars, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. He also noted that the Orion Nebula is making enough water every 24 seconds to fill all the oceans of the Earth. Researchers also know that the planet is tidally locked to its star. That means one side experiences eternal daylight, and the other side experiences unending darkness. Such a locked configuration helps to stabilize the planet's surface climate, Vogt said.
3-D global circulation models have shown that the temperature differences on the day and night sides of the planet would not be enough for water to either freeze or boil off. They also suggest that the atmospheric circulation and wind patterns would be relatively benign.

Does it have moons?

There's one called Pandora...just kidding! There's no info on any moons around Gliese 581g, or around any other planets in its solar system yet. But astronomers have long assumed that alien planets could have moons, and that some of the moons might harbor life.


How long would it take to get there?

This question depends upon how fast you travel. Given our current lack of Star Trek's warp drives, any interstellar expedition would have to travel far slower than the speed of light.A spaceship traveling at a one-tenth of the speed of light would reach Gliese 581g within about 220 years, Vogt said. That would allow the spaceship to begin getting close-up pictures and a sense of the planet's atmosphere.That time scale is not promising for existing human lifespans, but robotic explorers could more easily take up the challenge. However, the fastest spaceships built so far don't come anywhere near even that one-tenth light-speed mark.

What kind of life would we expect to find?

Any discussion about alien life on Gliese 581g is purely speculative at this point, according to co-discoverer Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in Washington, D.C. Butler took a more cautionary approach as opposed to Vogt, who said his gut feeling told him "the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent." Still, even Butler noted that anywhere you find water on Earth, you find life. He suggested that a similar condition should hold for almost anywhere in the universe, including Gliese 581g if it does hold water.


Why doesn't the planet have a real name?

The planet is called Gliese 581g because its star, Gliese 581, is designated "a," and the four previously discovered planets in the system are called b, c, d and e. But Vogt said that he has unofficially begun calling the planet "Zarmina's World," in honor of his wife.

What would aliens living on Gliese 581 see if they looked toward our sun?

You remember that we don't have evidence of alien life on the planet yet, right? But assuming they exist, aliens could spot our own sun as star in their sky without requiring any telescopes or binoculars. If the alien astronomers had our current level of technology, they would be also able to easily detect Neptune, and possibly Jupiter and Saturn.

...Hey Tom, It's America !

Susan Reverby describes her finding that several hundred Guatemalans were exposed to syphilis by the US Public Health Service.
Susan Reverby is a historian and professor of women's and gender studies at Wellesley College near Boston in Massachusetts. She is an authority on the notorious Tuskegee experiments, during which treatment was withheld from more than 600 African American men with syphilis. Her recent discovery that the US Public Health Service exposed several hundred Guatemalans to the disease in an undocumented research project in 1946–48 led last week to an official apology from the United States to the Guatemalan government and the promise of a full investigation.

Why did the US government do this research?

By 1946 it was known that syphilis could be cured with penicillin. The primary aim of the study was to look at whether penicillin could also be used as a prophylaxis to get rid of the disease before it established itself in the body. They were looking for something that would be more successful than the 'pro-kits' soldiers had been given during the Second World War, which required them to apply a mercury-based ointment. As you can imagine, there was not a lot of compliance with that approach. They were also interested in whether or not someone could be re-infected with syphilis once cured by penicillin.
The arrangements were set up through Juan Funes, a Guatemalan doctor who had previously trained with the US Public Health Service (PHS) and was then the chief of the venereal disease control division of the Guatemalan Sanidad Publica. Funes and [PHS researcher] John Cutler, who later participated in the Tuskegee experiments, essentially did the study together.

How was the study conducted?

Prostitution was legal in Guatemala, as was bringing in a prostitute for sexual servicing of prisoners in the central penitentiary. They plied some of the prisoners with alcohol and sent in prostitutes whom they knew were infected with syphilis. When not enough infection appeared and they couldn't get enough cases, they made an inoculum. In later tests, they abraded people's bodies — their forearms, cheeks or penises — and applied the inoculum to a piece of cotton or gauze that was held to the abrasion for an hour and a half to two hours. But they had trouble transferring the infection this way, and eventually interest waned. By 1948, the studies were called off. [The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) subsequently found that 427 of 696 subjects were judged to be infected; 369 of those subsequently received "adequate treatment" with penicillin.]

Were these experiments approved?

You can't just walk into the Guatemalan central penitentiary and start doing something like this without someone in charge saying yes. Likewise for the National Mental Health Hospital, where later studies were done. At the mental hospital, Cutler and Funes were able to arrange access by giving the institution things like a projector, and metal plates and utensils. They also provided the anti-epileptic drug Dilantin [phenytoin], because a lot of people in the hospital were actually epileptics and had no medicine to help them control their seizures. That was the trade-off with the asylum keepers.

Was any of this work ever published?

No. In the early 1950s, Cutler was part of a syphilis inoculation project in Sing Sing Prison in New York. That study is published and they make it clear that they asked the permission of the prisoners. They don't reference the Guatemala work. I think they knew it was on an ethical edge. And there were internal questions in the PHS about what they were doing.
But at the time, syphilis was an enormously debilitating disease that health officials were very worried about. They thought they were at war with the disease and they were trying to find things that would help. In a war there are soldiers. I think they saw their subjects as soldiers in that war.

How did you come across all this?

Two years ago, while I was doing research at the University of Pittsburgh, I learned that Cutler, who had taught there, had left papers behind. I asked to see the papers in case there were any documents about Tuskegee I had not already seen. What I found was the Guatemalan material. I was shocked. I could see the papers were talking about inoculations. I've been working on Tuskegee for two decades now and I've spent a lot of time explaining to people that no one was given syphilis in Tuskegee. So you can imagine what it was like to be sitting there reading this. It was just unbelievable.

What happened next?

After completing my book Examining Tuskegee I went back to the University of Pittsburgh in June 2009 and re-did my research on the Guatemalan study to make sure I had it right. I wrote about it in an article that will be published [in the Journal of Policy History] this January. I gave a copy of it to David Sencer, who was the CDC director when Tuskegee broke in 1972 and who I've been in contact with since I interviewed him for the book. He felt this was important and asked if he could take it to people at the CDC. They, in turn, were shocked enough to send a syphilis expert back to Pittsburgh to look at the data. He confirmed what I had found and then it went up the chain of command.

What can today's researchers learn from this?

Most US drug trials are now conducted internationally. We have controls in the United States, but what's being done elsewhere in the world? If the Guatemalan study had been done by a private drug company, I never would have known about it. The lesson for today is the importance of institutional review boards, and of making sure that informed consent is really understood and applied in international trials.
 

Courtesy – Nature

"king" on the subject of God

The Great debate is going on, It's a reaction that I received by email. I'm sharing it with you aa an openion. The writer's mail is given at the end of the article.

How is Prof.Hawkin's - a "king" on the subject of God and the creation of the Universe -

I'm eliminating this article, because of the objection of the writer. Though he send this article as his reaction...sorry for the inconvenience.
This blog is dedicated to Science and new Knowledge, and I welcome to everybody to share his thoughts and views. Keep visiting Starry Messenger for new and thought provoking information of the Scientific World.

‘The Evolution of Religion and God’

If you asked me that how did religion emerge from evolved human traits and behaviors? Then my answer would be,Well, for example, take the intuition that you see in some kinds of religious context that there’s something that is a source of evil, or a source of contamination. Something that has this metaphysical property that should lead you to keep your distance. Well, that could make sense as a product of natural selection in the context of things that could give you a disease. So for example, it may be that the kind of revulsion that people have at kind of rotting flesh, or something – Okay, that’s bad stuff, get away from it. That could have a clear-cut foundation in natural selection. But that kind of aversion, the idea of something giving off some kind of vibes that should lead you to steer clear of it, can then become more of a religious conception in other contexts. Or an emphasis on ritual purity in that sense, this basic distinction between the pure and the kind of non-pure, and the idea that there’s these things you do to make sure you’re on the right side. That’s just one example of something whose ultimate roots could be in natural selection and yet there’s a kind of a – some cultural evolution has to happen before it assumes the forms that we’re most familiar with.
Its quite interesting to know, how has the religion itself evolved since our hunter-gatherer days? To judge by observed hunter/gatherer societies, and there were a lot of them that have been observed before they had a whole lot of contact with more technologically advanced societies. To judge by them, there was a time before the invention of agriculture when apparently every society on the planet was essentially polytheistic. There was a belief that there were a lot of gods and spirits and they were responsible for the good things and the bad things. And in fact, it appears that the original function of religion was to figure out, why do good things happen to us? Why do bad things happen to us? How can we manipulate the forces responsible for those good things and bad things, which were assumed to be kind of human-like beings, psychologically, you know, these gods that were deposited. How can we manipulate those to increase the number of good things that will happen and reduce the number of bad things? How can we reduce the amount of disease, the number of horrible storms, and increase the number of wars we win, or the number of – the amount of food that grows around us or something.
So, originally religion did not seem to have been concerned with morality the way we think of religion being now. And one reason is because in a hunter/gather society, morality is not such a complicated issue. When you’ve got a small group of people living around each other day-to-day, people just kind of keep each other honest. There’s not – as far as like theft, which is one thing that came to be a big issue, in a hunter/gather village, the two things about theft are, there’s no where to hide what you steal, and there’s not much to steal anyway. Right? So, it’s kind of not an issue.
Now, as time wore on and societies grew more complex, you had larger and larger societies, and people interacting with one another who weren’t on such kind of close terms, didn’t know each other so well. The more and more you did have what we consider kind of moral/ethical issues like theft. And then you do see religion begin to assume the role of the enforcer of these kinds of moral sanctions. So, when you get to kind of chiefdoms, which are when you have – at the point where you have agriculture, but writing hasn’t yet been invented, you have these kind of modestly complex societies known as chiefdoms, and in a lot of those you see these ideas that people who steal fruit from a tree that’s on somebody else’s property they will be punished by the gods and stuff like that.
The pages of history has filled with the differences and struggles in the name of religion. Religious beliefs have evolved over time. It’s that there are some kinds of beliefs that are more characteristic of large civilizations that existed only after the invention of writing. I wouldn’t say that that fact makes them better. The fact that they are more evolved in that sense is not a value judgment. On the other hand, it’s true that as time has worn on, especially in situation where people have had productive contact with different kinds of people. People with different ethnicities, different nations, that has tended to kind of broaden their moral horizon. This is something Peter Singers has documented in his book, The Expanding Circle. So, they tended to start thinking, well maybe it isn’t just people of our group that are human beings and deserve to be treated decently. Maybe people who speak a different language, people of a different ethnicity.
I think that constitutes moral progress. And sometimes that has been associated with religion. In other words, it doesn’t have to be, you can have a sheerly secular philosophical version of that belief, but given how pervasive religion has been in the belief system of most societies, that kind of moral progress has shown up in the evolution of religion. And I think you can call it moral progress. It’s not confined to religion and I think it’s a product of a kind of concrete forces – it kind of happens in recognition of enlightened self-interest. But I think it’s good. It’s one of the hopeful things about the direction of history that a belief that a lot of us take for granted now, the idea that people everywhere are human beings and deserve to be treated decently did have to be kind of invented, and was invented. And I think history was on the side of the eventual discovery of that moral truth.

Robert Wright

Author, “The Evolution of God”

I want to know how God created this world : Einstein

I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The rest are details.(1) The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously.(2) If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. [He was speaking of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.] My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God.(3)
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.(4)
I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.(5)
Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of Nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.(6)
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.(7)
It is very difficult to elucidate this [cosmic religious] feeling to anyone who is entirely without it. . . The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it ... In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.(8)
I see a pattern, but my imagination cannot picture the maker of that pattern. I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one? (9) We know nothing about [God, the world] at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. Possibly we shall know a little more than we do now. but the real nature of things, that we shall never know, never.(10)
I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being. The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.

References -

(1) (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p.202)
(2) (Albert Einstein, Letter to Hoffman and Dukas, 1946)
(3) (Albert Einstein,The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press)
(4) (Albert Einstein, Obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955)
(5) (Albert Einstein, The World as I See It)
(6) (Albert Einstein, 1936, The Human Side. Responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray.)
(7) (Albert Einstein, 1954, The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press)
(8) (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, p. 207)
(9) (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p. 208)
(10) (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, Page 208)