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Futurology #151: space, cells, neutrinos & arthur
Monday, 19 July 2010
Antimatter inside Earth predicts quakes: A massive particle detector, which is a massive nylon sphere containing 1000 tons of hydrocarbon fluid located a mile underground, has found bits of antimatter known as geo-neutrinos deep inside the Earth. The find proves the Earth derives most of its power from radioactivity and could help us predict volcanoes and earthquakes.
Geo-neutrinos are antimatter particles created by the radioactive decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium deep within the Earth's crust and mantle. Although geo-neutrinos had first been found in 2005, this is the first real confirmation that they originate in large quantities deep underground. The successful detection using what amounts to a geo-neutrino "telescope" also means geologists have gained a powerful new tool to examine what the Earth's interior looks like.
Comment — they think a worldwide network of these particle detectors could help in prediction.
The thermosphere is contracting: The thermosphere layer of earth's atmosphere begins 80 to 90 kilometers above the surface and extends several hundred kilometers into the sky; this layer is home to numerous satellites and the International Space Station. The thermosphere occasionally cools and contracts, but a recent study of satellite orbital decay (due to light atmospheric drag) found that the contraction during 2008 and 2009 was significantly more severe than expected, leaving researchers at a loss for how to explain it.
Comment — the sky is falling in!
Mercury flyby reveals more detail: The results from the Messenger spacecraft's third and final flyby of Mercury are in and cover ground never before mapped.
NASA's orbiter swung around Mercury on Sept. 29, 2009 to get a gravitational boost before settling into orbit in March 2011. The snapshots it took as it flew past provide tantalising glimpses of young volcanic vents, violent magnetic storms and mysterious concentrations of calcium in the atmosphere. But the view was cut short by the spacecraft going into safe mode just before its closest approach.
Comment — sounds like my old MacBook Pro.
Comment — sounds like my old MacBook Pro.
As IO9 reports, the real stumbling block for quantum computers is finding something that can practically be used to house a qubit, the building blocks of quantum information.
Comment — which points to smaller, faster more powerful computing.
Cold new vaccines: Scientists say they may have discovered a way to develop new vaccines by replacing essential genes in a mammalian pathogen with their counterparts from Arctic bacteria. Strains have been created that provoke a protective immune response in mice, but that don't spread to the warm parts of the body where they could do serious harm. The team hopes that the method will lead to a new generation of vaccines for major bacterial diseases such as tuberculosis.
Comment — cold mice may help to warm humans.
Cells live many ways, die few: Many of an animal's cells kill themselves for the greater good of the organism they're part of. In adults, cells with a viral infection or extensive DNA damage (or immune cells that react to the body itself) are induced to commit an organised suicide, slicing up their DNA into short fragments and packaging up their membranes and proteins for easy digestion by their neighbors. The process also takes place during development: we all have webbing between our digits in utero that's gone by birth, and millions of apparently healthy neurons die off to form the adult brain.
Comment — So, cells are like ants? Nobel prize winner Robert Horvitz's work is fascinating and may lead to anti-aging breakthroughs.
King Arthur's castle: New evidence suggests that King Arthur's castle was probably in Chester, a British walled city whose roots go back to an ancient Roman settlement. On IO9, you can see an artist's interpretation (detail above) of what that Roman city would have looked like, hundreds of years before Arthur claimed it.
According to the Telegraph historians believe regional noblemen would have sat in the front row of a circular meeting place, with lower ranked subjects on stone benches grouped around the outside.
They claim rather than Camelot being a purpose built castle, it would have been housed in a structure already built and left over by the Romans.
Comment — it has long been known that 'Arthur' was most likely a Romano-Celtic British nobleman.
