Recently in Science Category

"California has more than a 99% chance of having a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake within the next 30 years, according scientists using a new model to determine the probability of big quakes. The likelihood of a major quake of magnitude 7.5 or greater in the next 30 years is 46% -- and such a quake is most likely to occur in the southern half of the state." Memo to myself, re: the job hunt: Perhaps avoiding Southern California is in order...

"Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death. I have committed even before setting pen to paper the essential crime that contains all others unto itself." The shape of things to come? Scientists at Berkeley conceive a way to use MRI imaging to "map" images in the brain. "Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone. Imagine a general brain-reading device that could reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience at any moment in time...It is possible that decoding brain activity could have serious ethical and privacy implications downstream in, say, the 30 to 50-year time frame."

"It's very deep, like in a forest on the darkest night,' said Shawn-Yu Lin, a scientist who helped create the material at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. 'Nothing comes back to you. It's very, very, very dark.'" Dick Cheney's soul? Tonight's lunar eclipse? No, a great leap forward in "transformational optics"...and invisibility cloaks. The "paper-thin material...absorbs 99.955 percent of the light that hits it, making it by far the darkest substance ever made -- about 30 times as dark as the government's current standard for blackest black."

"'This is a landmark discovery because it implies that solar system analogs may be very common, at least scaled-down versions,' said Sara Seager, an extra-solar planet expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. '...We are on an inexorable path to finding other Earths.'" Astronomers find a solar system not unlike our own 5,000 light years away. "We are seeing the emergence of a new planet-finding technique -- one that opens up an entirely new capability for planet finding. It is more powerful than we ever thought possible."

Blah Blah Blah Berkeley...Scientists in Hungary have apparently developed a computer program that speaks basic canine. "After analyzing digital versions of the barks, overall the computer program correctly identified the kinds of barks the dogs made 43 percent of the time — about the same as humans' 40 percent...The software identified 'walk' and 'ball' barks better than people, although people identified 'play' and 'alone' barks better than the software."

Hmm. I don't want to dismiss the advance of science, but that's a pretty low success rate. (And I'd wager most dog owners can get the thread of their own pet's barking more often than 40% of the time.) More interestingly, though, "'I'm pretty sure this could work with any animal vocal signals,' Molnár told LiveScience" So, when the Dolphin Wars start, you'll know why.

Which reminds me, longtime readers may remember that Berk and I were part of the test group for the American release of the Bowlingual. Alas, that version of this technology wasn't really ready for primetime.

"It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science. If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions."

In today's NYT, Dennis Overbye attempts to explain the Boltzmann Brain problem, a theoretical puzzle causing consternation among cosmologists. “'It is part of a much bigger set of questions about how to think about probabilities in an infinite universe in which everything that can occur, does occur, infinitely many times,' said Leonard Susskind of Stanford, a co-author of a paper in 2002 that helped set off the debate. Or as Andrei Linde, another Stanford theorist given to colorful language, loosely characterized the possibility of a replica of your own brain forming out in space sometime, 'How do you compute the probability to be reincarnated to the probability of being born?'”

Um, yeah. The graphic sorta helps explain what may be going on: Minute fluctuations in the universe's general move towards entropy create random pockets of order, some of which could hypothetically organize as floating brains, or pocket universes or whales and flowerpots too, I suppose. Or something like that...Now my brain hurts.

"We have to realize that we are already living in a society where we are already self-medicating with caffeine." This one's been languishing in the bookmarks for awhile, but via Drudge and blog-twin FmH, scientists may have discovered a cure for sleep deprivation in Orexin A. "The study, published in the Dec. 26 edition of The Journal of Neuroscience, found orexin A not only restored monkeys' cognitive abilities but made their brains look 'awake' in PET scans. Siegel said that orexin A is unique in that it only had an impact on sleepy monkeys, not alert ones, and that it is 'specific in reversing the effects of sleepiness' without other impacts on the brain." But is it cheaper than my daily Red Bull?

"'This raises a range of big questions about what nature is and what it could be...Evolutionary processes are no longer seen as sacred or inviolable. People in labs are figuring them out so they can improve upon them for different purposes.'" A front-page story in today's WP announces we're on the threshold of completely synthetic life -- as in 2008 -- made from enhanced or even artificial DNA. "Some experts are worried that a few maverick companies are already gaining monopoly control over the core 'operating system' for artificial life and are poised to become the Microsofts of synthetic biology...In the past year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been flooded with aggressive synthetic-biology claims."

"...as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced." Scientists at NASA catch a glimpse of cosmic devastation on a galactic scale, as a "death star galaxy," fueled by a black hole, destroys its neighbor with a beam of radiation. "The telescope images show the bully galaxy shooting a stream of deadly radiation particles into the lower section of the other galaxy, which is about one-tenth its size...Tens of millions of stars, including those with orbiting planets, are likely in the path of the deadly jet...If Earth were in the way -- and it's not -- the high-energy particles and radiation of the jet would in a matter of months strip away the planet's protective ozone layer and compress the protective magnetosphere." And what does that mean? "'You would basically render extinct all surface forms of life,' Tyson said. 'But it may be that subterranean life is...immune to this kind of violence in the universe.'" You heard the man...start digging.

"Human beings evolved in gravity, and it makes perfect sense that some systems -- especially the immune and skeletal systems -- might not do well without it." A new NASA study finds microbes and viruses may be particularly lethal on long space flights. "Even though astronauts are not now getting sick on their missions, we see very clearly statistically significant and reproducible change in immune functioning after two weeks in space."

"'Nature is the final arbiter of truth," said Seager, the Lawrence Livermore computer scientist, but 'rather than doing experiments, a lot of times now we're actually simulating those experiments and getting the data that way. We can now do as much scientific discovery with computational science as we could do before with observational science or theoretical science.'" Developers tease the premiere of the first "petascale" computer, due out next year. It will be "capable of 1,000 trillion calculations per second [and] akin to that of more than 100,000 desktop computers combined." Well I, for one, welcome our new petascale overlords.

By way of Dangerous Meta, a cardiologist argues in a new, soon-to-be-published e-book that Abraham Lincoln might be the earliest known case of a rare genetic disorder. "Sotos believes Lincoln had a genetic syndrome called MEN 2B. He thinks the diagnosis not only accounts for Lincoln's great height, which has been the subject of most medical speculation over the years, but also for many of the president's other reported ailments and behaviors."

Have we inadvertently killed Schrödinger's cat? No, it's much, much worse. Cosmologists at Case Western Reserve and Vanderbilt speculate that mankind may have hastened the end of the universe by observing dark energy in 1998. "[Q]uantum theory says that whenever we observe or measure something, we could stop it decaying due what is what is called the 'quantum Zeno effect,' which suggests that if an 'observer' makes repeated, quick observations of a microscopic object undergoing change, the object can stop changing - just as a watched kettle never boils...Prof Krauss says that the measurement of the light from supernovae in 1998, which provided evidence of dark energy, may have reset the decay of the void to zero -- back to a point when the likelihood of its surviving was falling rapidly. 'In short, we may have snatched away the possibility of long-term survival for our universe and made it more likely it will decay,' says Prof Krauss." D'oh! But wouldn't this presume that at no other place or time in our unfathomably gigantic universe did any other civilization make the same observations? Given the odds of intelligent life out there, that seems unlikely. (And, if you think this all sounds goofy and ridiculous, just wait until we get to the multiverse...)

"Fact:...The density of Saturn is so low that if you were to put it in a giant glass of water it would float." And another pilfered link, which I meant to post last week: Megg of Quiddity points the way to 10 Cool Facts about Space (although, to paraphrase The Smiths, some facts are cooler than others.)

Ok, this one's a bit creepy. By way of Webgoddess, watch the rotating dancer to ascertain whether you're left-brained or right-brained. I'm pretty right-brained, it seems (which makes sense, since I'm both left-handed and left-footed). But, if I changed tasks while the dancer was on -- say went to click another window or focused on the list at left, she'd sometimes switch direction. Weird...well, I just hope my right-brain knows what my left-brain is doing.

"Kinsey's pioneering work is still one-of-a-kind because in all the time since, only a handful of sex researchers have even tried to match his breadth, depth, and scale. For all our obsession with sex, we're skittish about studying it. There's one major exception: a large survey, conducted in the 1990s, that far outdid Kinsey in terms of statistical reliability. It's the most authoritative sexual self-portrait the country has. But you've probably never heard of its author, because unlike Kinsey, he has worked hard to keep it that way. Alfred Kinsey may have gotten the biopic, but according to Slate's Amanda Schaffer, it's the University of Chicago's Edward Laumann we should now be turning to for reliable data on carnal matters. "Kinsey's data aren't the last word on matters sexual, but they're sometimes still the first."

"If the current proposals to restart human exploration fail politically, indeed, the human space flight endeavor conducted under government auspices might well lose its momentum. I obviously hope that doesn’t happen. But it’s far from a slam dunk that we’re going back to the Moon and on to Mars." Two companion pieces to today's reflection on 50 years of Sputnik which I missed earlier: The Grey Lady hypothesizes about the next fifty years of space travel (suggesting its future as a public enterprise might be dubious) and takes a moment to consider the pop culture ramifications of the space age. "'At the level of government, I think we’re still struggling as to why we’re sending people to space,' Dr. Logsdon said. 'It’s a decent question, and I think it’s an unanswered question.'" (My answer to this question, for what it's worth, is here.)

"It was the sound of wonder and foreboding. Nothing would ever be quite the same again -- in geopolitics, in science and technology, in everyday life and the capacity of the human species." On the eve of its fiftieth anniversary (Oct. 4), the NYT remembers the Sputnik launch. "It was an unprepossessing agent of alarm. A simple sphere weighing just 184 pounds and not quite two feet wide, it had a highly polished surface of aluminum, the better to reflect sunlight and be visible from Earth...The Russians clearly intended Sputnik as a ringing statement of their technological prowess and its military implications. But even they, it seems, had not foreseen the frenzied response their success provoked."

Is political conflict bred in the bone (or, put less charitably, do some among us just have an easier time with higher-order thinking)? A new joint NYU-UCLA neurobiological study finds once again that left- and right-leaning brains function differently, with liberal minds more receptive to change than their conservative counterparts. "Dozens of previous studies have established a strong link between political persuasion and certain personality traits. Conservatives tend to crave order and structure in their lives, and are more consistent in the way they make decisions. Liberals, by contrast, show a higher tolerance for ambiguity and complexity, and adapt more easily to unexpected circumstances...[In this case] respondents who had described themselves as liberals showed 'significantly greater conflict-related neural activity' when the hypothetical situation called for an unscheduled break in routine. Conservatives, however, were less flexible, refusing to deviate from old habits 'despite signals that this...should be changed.'"

"'We're thrilled to have identified clear signs of water on a planet that is trillions of miles away,' said study leader Giovanna Tinetti of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris in France." Scientists discover clear signs of existing water well outside the solar system at HD 189733b, a Jupiter-ish gas giant in the Vulpecula constellation, 64 light years away. "The researchers found that the planet absorbed starlight in such a way that could only be explained by the presence of water vapor in its atmosphere."

NASA prepares a probe, named Phoenix, to dig for water on Mars. "Upon reaching Mars in May 2008, the spacecraft is to land just as the winter ice begins to recede around the polar cap."

"I have long wanted to go into space, and the zero-gravity flight is the first step toward space travel." Physicist Stephen Hawking experiences zero gravity aboard the Vomit Comet. "Hawking said he hoped his flight would provide a boost for commercial spaceflight, in line with his oft-expressed belief that humanity's future depended on moving beyond Earth...'I think that getting a portion of the human race permanently off the planet is imperative for our future as a species. It will be difficult to do this with the slow, expensive and risk-averse nature of government space programs,' Hawking said, working in a veiled reference to NASA. 'We need to engage the entrepreneurial engine that has reduced the cost of everything from airline tickets to personal computers.'" I'm in full agreement...far be it from me to differ with a man as intelligent, knowledgeable, and solid on the mic as Mr. Hawking.

"Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X." The big news today, of course: Astronomers announce the discovery of an earth-like planet, Gliese 581c, at the galactically tiny distance of 120 trillion miles (20.5 light years) away. (For the stargazers, Gliese 581 is a red dwarf "located in the northeastern part of constellation Libra.") Of course, we still don't know if we even have to go that far to find extraterrestrial life -- Europa, Mars, Ganymede, and Callisto all still pose unresolved questions. Nevertheless, it's an exciting moment in our history to discover the first planet far afield that might possibly be inhabited (and inhabitable)...and even more exciting to know that there'll assuredly be many more to come. The stars, our destination!

A faraway Jupiter-like gas planet, HD 209458b, is found (by some) to have water in its atmosphere. I saw this on Blivet on Friday and spent the weekend dreaming about it: If my sleeping brain can be trusted, HD 209458b has winged, eel-like space reptiles cavorting amidst the gaseous clouds there. Alas, my subconscious makes for a lousy exobiologist: "[A] Jupiter-like gaseous planet such as this one, as opposed to a rocky one like Earth, is highly unlikely to harbour any kind of life." Well, damn.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd. Life imitates art as researchers hone in on drugs that will potentially erase traumatic memories. "'This is all very preliminary,' said Dr. Roger Pitman, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist. 'We're just getting started. There is some promising preliminary data but no conclusions.'"

"To not utilize that station the way I think it ought to be utilized is just wrong." Forty-five years to the day after his historic orbit, space pioneer and former US Senator John Glenn makes a case for the International Space Station.

"A drop of Budweiser (the 'King of Beers') immersed in mineral oil will form a beautiful 4 sided pyramid with sharp edges. Tiny bubbles accumulate at the top of the drop acting like a buoy that pulls on the droplet to create the growing pyramidal shape. The bubble cluster eventually spouts off in unison to the surface." Robotics engineer and old college friend Danny Sanchez has recently created VideoPhysics.com, a site containing mpgs of various scientific properties at work, all demonstrated with the safe confines of the Sanchez Laboratories. Check it out.

Love is a stranger in an open car...or is it just a much-needed dopamine fix? Somebody writes this story every Valentine's Day. Still, I guess it's something to keep in mind. (And sorry, Berk, you may be my Valentine again this year, but the same type of deconstruction applies to you. No hard feelings, bud.)

The source of that Hawaii link above deserves its own posting: DISCOVER magazine presents the Top 100 science stories of 2006.

New photos released by NASA from the Mars Global Surveyor seem to suggest the possibility of surface water on Mars, which would make any attempt to visit -- or colonize -- the red planet considerably easier (although, obviously, it's still no walk in the park.)

Using the thankfully soon-to-be-refurbished Hubble, astronomers find more evidence of "dark energy" in the early universe working along the lines of Einstein's famous fudge factor, the cosmological constant, to combat a gravitational crunch. "'Dark energy makes us nervous,' said Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved in the supernova study. 'It fits the data, but it's not what we really expected.'"

By way of my sister Tessa, a robotic gastronome determines human flesh tastes exactly like bacon (or possibly prosciutto.) Sigh...I was afraid of this. Once the machines acquire the taste, we're all in deep, deep trouble. Or have they already figured it out, and cubicle culture is really just an attempt by the mechs to fatten us up for harvest? Hmmm...is it too late to install a vegetarian subroutine?

As threatened in the past, Dubya has apparently signed a new National Space Policy that heavily emphasizes the weaponization of space. "Theresa Hitchens, director of the nonpartisan Center for Defense Information in Washington, said that the new policy 'kicks the door a little more open to a space-war fighting strategy' and has a 'very unilateral tone to it.'"

If you believe they put "a" man on the moon, then there's nothing up my sleeve, and nothing is cool. Also, you'll have no problem with the recent update to Neil Armstrong's famous first words there. Score one for the lunar grammarians.

Sorry, Virginia (and all the other kids out there who just memorized the solar system): As the dust dies down at the recent astronomer's conference, word comes to light that Pluto has in fact been demoted to "dwarf planet," a status it'll hold with UB313 (Xena) and Ceres.

At a meeting of 2,500 astronomers in Prague to determine the appropriate definition of "planet" (in part due to the Xena challenge), it appears Pluto might soon be reclassified as a "dwarf planet" (as opposed to a "terrestrial planet" (Earth, Mars) or a "gas giant planet." (Jupiter, Saturn)) rather than fully being demoted to non-planet status. Said one proponent of the plan: "I think we have done something that will make the Plutocrats and the children of the United States happy."

"'We certainly have not convinced the community, and that's been a little bit disappointing,' said David McKay, a NASA biochemist and leader of the team that started the scientific episode." Ten years later, CNN summarizes the simmering scientific dispute over a Martian meteorite, and the possible (albeit now seemingly quite unlikely) signs of life within.

As y'all probably know by now, Dubya -- so eager to exploit and enlargen executive power in other arenas -- vetoed his first bill in five years yesterday, when he decided to capitulate to the sad remnants of his base, set back medical science a few more years, and nip stem cell research in the bud once again. While Dubya said the bill would have forced "American taxpayers...for the first time in our history...to fund the deliberate destruction of human embryos," he made no argument for criminalizing fertility clinics, where similar embryos get tossed away unused every day. "'If that's murder, how come the president allows that to continue?' asked Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). 'Where is his outrage?' Harkin called the veto 'a shameful display of cruelty, hypocrisy and ignorance.'"

"'This is the cleanest orbiter than anyone ever remembers seeing," Griffin said in a post-landing news conference. He added that with Discovery's successful completion of all its on-orbit tasks, it had finished 'as good a mission as we have ever flown.'" Congrats to the crew of Discovery on a safe and successful landing.

"Blue Origin proposes to launch its reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) on suborbital, ballistic trajectories to altitudes in excess of 325,000 feet (99,060 meters) from a privately-owned space launch site in Culberson County, Texas." Some details emerge about the New Shepard Reusable Launch System, currently being developed by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, where -- full disclosure -- one of my best and smartest friends from college is currently employed. "Also on the group's to do list at the site is putting in place a vehicle processing facility, a launch complex and vehicle landing and recovery area, as well as an astronaut training facility, and other minor support amenities."

Authors of postapocalyptic sci-fi yarns, take note: Norway has announced it will host a post-Doomsday seed bank on the Svalbard archipelago. "While the facility will be fenced in and guarded, Svalbard's free-roaming polar bears, known for their ferocity, could also act as natural guardians, according to the Global Diversity Trust."

Also in news-of-the-future, China sets a lunar launch date of 2024.

"'It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species,' Hawking said. 'Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.'" Stephen Hawking makes the case for colonies in space. And Stephen Hawking is a very smart man (and, of course, not a bad MC.)

"This is certainly not the first time that politics has trumped science at the FDA. Another recent example: the agency's decision to block over-the-counter availability for emergency contraceptives in the face of overwhelming evidence that the treatment is safe and effective...From my standpoint as a doctor, the question is this: What do you do when federal agencies become so politicized that their recommendations can't necessarily be trusted?" In Slate, pediatrician Sydney Spiesel begins to doubt the FDA's credibility these days, particularly after their recent and apparently blatantly political decision against medicinal marijuana. "Marijuana as a medicine -- whatever its risk and benefits are eventually determined to be -- may turn out to be much less important than the question of whether we can count on agencies like the FDA to be honest in their dealings."

"'What Democrats want to do is gin up their turnout in the suburbs and divide Republicans, and right now they may do that' said Jennifer E. Duffy, who tracks Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. 'This is the first real wedge issue Democrats have had with Republicans.'" According to the NYT, congressional Dems think they may have a winner in November with the stem cell issue. And, also in election news, polls suggest the once-highly vulnerable Abramoff flunky Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) may be shedding the taint of Casino Jack, while potentially beatable Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH) looks to do the same with Donald Rumsfeld.

The WP takes a gander at the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), which "can see 13 billion years back in time, nearly to the big bang. With its 10-by-11-foot hexagonal mirror -- the largest of its type in the world -- SALT concentrates the faintest, most distant light in the universe. If a candle were to flicker on the moon, SALT could detect it."

"'In 1906, San Francisco was the largest city west of the Rockies. We had 400,000 people in the city,' Eisner said. 'Today we have 7 million in the Bay Area. And the consequences of a disaster of this magnitude in an urban area are significant.'" On the eve of tomorrow's centennial of the great San Francisco earthquake, a new study suggests another Big One would mean a Katrina-level disaster for the Bay Area. "Seismologists generally agree that a repeat of a 1906-size earthquake is inevitable, though when and where along the fault are unknown. In 2002, the U.S. Geological Survey reported a 62 percent chance of a magnitude-6.7 earthquake or greater hitting the Bay Area within 30 years." And, in a related story, historians look for lessons for post-Katrina New Orleans amid the rubble of 1906.

The WP files another dispatch regarding Dubya's war on science: "Employees and contractors working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a U.S. Geological Survey scientist working at an NOAA lab, said in interviews that over the past year administration officials have chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether. Their accounts indicate that the ideological battle over climate-change research, which first came to light at NASA, is being fought in other federal science agencies as well."

After discovering a disk of gas, dust, and rubble orbiting a pulsar, astronomers believe they've figured out how planets are made. "It shows that planet formation is really ubiquitous in the universe. It's a very robust process and can happen in all sorts of unexpected environments."

"Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative." A several-decade-long study by UC Berkeley professor Jack Block finds a controversial correlation between confidence in childhood and later political leanings. "He reasons that insecure kids look for the reassurance provided by tradition and authority, and find it in conservative politics. The more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives to the way things are, and find liberal politics more congenial." (Via Follow Me Here.)

"'The idea is to look at Mars and not think of it as a mysterious alien place,' Christensen said." Along the lines of Google Moon, one can now journey to Google Mars.

"I think that this mission will re-write the science books on Mars." More happy space news following the discovery of water on Enceladus: NASA successfully pilots the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter into Martian orbit. "It was picture perfect. We could not have planned it any better." (Phew...looks like everyone successfully converted to metric this time.)

"All these worlds are yours, except Europa...oh, and Enceladus." In very big news, NASA announces that Cassini has found water plumes on Enceladus, Saturn's moon. "This finding has substantially broadened the range of environments in the solar system that might support living organisms, and it doesn't get any more significant than that...I'd say we've just hit the ball right out of the park." What's more, "unlike Europa, which researchers believe harbors a vast ocean beneath kilometers of thick ice, Enceladus' water may be just below the surface."

A new theory by Glasgow paleontologist Neil Clark suggests the Loch Ness Monster was more circus elephant than pink elephant. "'It is quite possible that people not used to seeing a swimming elephant -- the vast bulk of the animal is submerged, with only a thick trunk and a couple of humps visible,' thought they saw a monster, Clark said in an interview Tuesday." Adding fuel to the fire is the 20,000 pound reward for Nessie's capture put forward by circus impresario Bertram Mills, who may w