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February 29, 2008Senior Statesmen on Campaign to Abolish NukesNPR: Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, Sam Nunn and William Perry argue the only way to stop nuclear weapons from falling into terrorist hands is to get rid of all of them. This week the former statesmen and their supporters convened in Oslo, Norway, for a conference. 'Northern lights lab' switched onNature: Aurora observatory opens on remote Arctic island. Feds pick up pace on energy ideasSan Francisco Chronicle: The federal government has picked three venture capital firms - two of them from the Bay Area - to take promising energy technology ideas from national laboratories and turn those concepts into companies. Discovery of space soot casts doubt on dark energy theoryGuardian Unlimited: In space, no one can hear you scream — which is no bad thing, because scientists have discovered that it is a lot filthier than they thought. Researchers revealed yesterday that limitless stretches of space are strewn with interstellar soot, making it harder to see very distant objects such as exploding stars or supernovae.
February 28, 2008Physicists discover a different way to board a planeNature: Fermilab's Jason Steffen became so frustrated over the delays in boarding an aircraft that he decide to do something about it. He has applied a computational technique commonly used to map the movement of atoms and molecules to simulate how passengers move around a gridded space on an aircraft. According to his research the most common way airlines use to board passengers on an aircraft is mathematically, an extremely inefficient technique. Instead he suggests applying a strictly ordered optimal sequence that cuts boarding times by a factor of 7. Radar map reveals details about the Moon's south poleThe New York Times: In the craggy terrain around the Moon’s south pole, the deepest craters dip 2.5 miles beneath the surface while the peaks reach as high as the highest mountain in North America — a 37,000-foot change of elevation. Opinion: Consensus downplays the dangers of climate changeSalon.com: Deniers continue to insist there's no consensus on global warming. Well, there's not. There's well-tested science and real-world observations. Spotlight on the LED RevolutionForbes.com: Apparently, it's time to ban Edison's venerable, now vilified, light bulb. European leaders, green pundits and the widely reported light bulb provisions of the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 all urgently push the abandonment of incandescent bulbs. February 27, 2008Europe launches £2bn nanotech pushZDNet: The European Commission has officially launched a €3bn (£2.3bn) public-private partnership aimed at the development of nanotechnology. Competition for Asteroid Hunter Announces WinnerWired: A hundred years after an asteroid flattened 2,000 square kilometers of forest in Russia, scientists are proposing to use satellites to keep tabs on potential repeat occurrences. How environmentally friendly is that solar cell?The New York Times: Solar power generated by photovoltaic cells is among the greenest of energy options. The cells just sit there, basking in the sun and emitting nothing but electrons. But cells are manufactured, and the manufacturing process is not benign. Over the life cycle of solar cells — from the mining of raw materials to the finished product — just how green are they? Canada Offers Golden Research ChairsScienceNow: Since assuming office in 2006, Canada's minority Conservative government has argued that it's more important to fund the best and the brightest in designated areas than to spread the wealth across the entire spectrum of scientific activity. Today, it reinforced that message in a new 2008-2009 budget that will shower 20 scientific superstars from within Canada and abroad with $10 million apiece over 7 years. February 26, 2008Election may impact NASA's futureUSA Today: Amid an election year that will put new leaders into the White House, many are questioning the direction of the nation's space program. New surprises in quantum physicsScenta: A French team of physicists have recently succeeded in trapping a single photon in a box on the time scale of seconds and have detected this photon many times without destroying it. Ulysses spacecraft dying as power source runs outYahoo!News: The Ulysses solar probe, after 17 years of studying the sun and solar system, is about to die by freezing to death, NASA and the European Space Agency said Friday. Plans for Lunar radio telescope revivedThe Washington Post: Since the beginning of the space age, astronomers have dreamed of putting telescopes and other instruments on the far side of the moon. February 25, 2008Nuclear centre aims to fill training gapFinancial Times: A leading university will today announce plans for a Centre for Nuclear Energy Technology to help plug severe skills gaps in Britain's nuclear sector. Move Over, Oil, There’s Money in Texas WindThe New York Times: The wind turbines that recently went up on Louis Brooks’s ranch are twice as high as the Statue of Liberty, with blades that span as wide as the wingspan of a jumbo jet. More important from his point of view, he is paid $500 a month apiece to permit 78 of them on his land, with 76 more on the way. Giving Earth an UmbrellaScienceNow: Spraying millions of metric tons of sulfate particles into the atmosphere could reverse some human-caused global warming, a new study shows. But the simulations also reveal that the technique, which mimics the short-term cooling effects of volcanic eruptions, could chill the planet if overdone. February 22, 2008What force does it take to push a single atom?
New York Times: IBM scientists have used the tuning fork in the atomic force microscope, which measures the interaction between the tip and the atom, to calculate the force needed to nudge one atom. About one-130-millionth of an ounce of force pushes a cobalt atom across a smooth, flat piece of platinum. Pushing the same atom along a copper surface is easier, just one-1,600-millionth of an ounce of force
Solar power: A flight to rememberNature: The dream of perpetual flight without fuel has inspired pilots to take to the skies in solar-powered planes. Vicki Cleave looks at a mission to fly a solar plane through the night — and around the world. Opinion: For space issues, what happened to diplomacy?San Francisco Chronicle: Hiding behind the faux skirts of public safety, the Pentagon has blasted one of its own spy satellites out of the sky. This provocative act is bad policy and bad politics. For background see also An Errant Satellite Is Gone, but Questions Linger (New York Times) Related news picks links House Panel Berates Science Adviser on 2009 'Shortfall'Science: Last week, both Democratic and Republican members of the House Committee on Science and Technology complained in one voice that President George W. Bush has fallen short on his promise to bolster U.S. innovation in his 2009 budget request. February 21, 2008Broken spy satellite hit by US missileVarious: The US has successfully hit USA 193, a 3-ton out-of-control spy satellite that failed 1.5 days after its launch in December 2006. Earlier this week the US announced plans to destroy the satellite because of the risk to humans over the toxic fuel the satellite was carrying. In a press conference held after the collision, General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that he was very confident that they had hit the satellite and that the hydrazine fuel tank was destroyed. "Thus far we've seen nothing larger than a football among the debris," he said. At least 552 pieces of the satellite have been spotted by amateur satellite watchers.
Earlier this week the US refused to discuss a proposed treaty by China and Russia to ban space-based anti-satellite weapons. According to Liu Jianchao, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, "The Chinese side is continuing to closely follow the US action, which may influence the security of outer space and may harm other countries." Bruce W. MacDonald and Charles D. Ferguson say that the action taken over USA 193, may lead to a new arms race. Related links Scientists urged to find advisors for the next US presidentNature: Policy experts tell researchers to lobby now for the next science adviser. Hunt for alien life to expand its scopeThe Christian Science Monitor: Researching the prospects for life beyond our solar system is moving to the next level. Exoplanet hunters are getting instruments that promise to spot Earth-like planets around alien stars. In some cases, they may even yield crude estimates of how life-friendly such a planet may be. Snap! Scientists make a self-healing rubber bandReuters: Anyone who has heard the snap of a rubber band breaking knows it's time to reach for a replacement. But a group of French scientists have made a self-healing rubber band material that can reclaim its stretchy usefulness by simply pressing the broken edges back together for a few minutes. February 20, 2008Long Nights, 90 Below. What More Could Astronomers Want?The New York Times: It’s been called the whitest place on Earth, and at 90 degrees below zero, it could be the coolest place on the planet for astronomy. North Canada, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans likely path of spy satellite debrisVarious: The first attempt at shooting down a disabled spy satellite will occur on Wednesday assuming bad weather does not delayed plans to launch. The US Navy had been waiting for the space shuttle Atlantis to land before its first attempt. Ted Molczan, an amateur satellite watcher says that the satellite is due to pass overhead at 10:30pm and according to space.com the Pentagon has warned aircraft to stay out of the area for the next two days. The strike will cost between $40 and $60 million. The decaying orbital path of the satellite suggests that debris from the satellite will burn up on re-entry over the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans or over the sparsely populated Northern Canada provinces.
More and more analysts are becoming convinced that the shootdown is a statement about missile defense rather than the risk of the satellite hitting a populated area says Laura Grego, an astrophysicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists Global Security Program. "If the Pentagon demonstrates that its missile defense systems can destroy satellites, it will be very difficult to convince other countries that they shouldn't develop a similar anti‑satellite capability," she adds. Moreover, the strike will tell us little about the effectiveness of the Navy system against an actual missile, Grego says, as the satellite does not have decoys or other countermeasures, and its trajectory and the time of the engagement are known in advance, none of which would be expected in a real‑world attack. Related links Their Deepest, Darkest DiscoveryThe Washington Post: Scientists create a black that erases virtually all light Physicist Neil Turok: Big Bang Wasn't the BeginningWired: For decades, physicists have accepted the notion that the universe started with the Big Bang, an explosive event at the literal beginning of time. Now, computational physicist Neil Turok is challenging that model -- and some scientists are taking him seriously. February 19, 2008How to turn greenhouse gases into gasolineThe New York Times: If two scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are correct, people will still be driving gasoline-powered cars 50 years from now, churning out heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — and yet that carbon dioxide will not contribute to global warming. Laser delivers intense interestNature: A record-breaking beam has been developed at the University of Michigan. Probing the universe's tiniest particlesWired: Wired.com recently toured the longest linear accelerator in the world, which resides beneath nondescript industrial buildings near the Stanford University campus. February 18, 2008The science of government
The Guardian: The American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting saw the first debate between science advisors to the Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns. See also stories by Peggy Grishman from CQ Politics and Yusra Tekbali from the Widlcat Online.
Precision clock traps atoms in light to keep time
Reuters: U.S. physicists have made a clock so accurate it will neither gain nor lose even a second in more than 200 million years, a finding sure to please even the most punctually minded.
Rocky planets more common than thought
BBC: New evidence suggests more than half the Sun-like stars in the Milky Way could have similar planetary systems. "Our observations suggest that between 20% and 60% of Sun-like stars have evidence for the formation of rocky planets not unlike the processes we think led to planet Earth," he said. "That is very exciting."
Nano-Driven Catalytic Converter
NanoScienceWorks: Japan's Mazda Motor Corp. is using nanotechnology to deliver what it says is a new generation of catalytic converters that use 70 to 90 per cent less of the precious metals which help to purify exhaust emissions. The converters use nanoparticles of the catalytic metal, less than five nanometers, studded onto the surface of tiny ceramic spheres.
More doubts surface over Pentagon's explanation for shooting down spy satellitePhysics Today: Updated 2/18/2008 An out-of-control spy satellite called USA 193, which was launched in December 2006 but never reached its correct orbit, will be shot down by the US Navy with a Aegis SM-3 missile before the satellite re-enters Earth's atmosphere, says Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman James Cartwright. The decision, ordered by President Bush, is causing controversy in the wake of China's shooting down a weather satellite last year (see Physics Today articles China Raises Stakes on Space Arms Race March 2007 and Space debris October 2007) and because of the reasons given by the Bush administration for destroying the satellite. In a Pentagon press conference held with deputy national security advisor James Jeffrey and NASA administrator Michael Griffin this afternoon (14 February 2008), Cartwright said the highly toxic hydrazine fuel that the spy satellite uses is a significant risk to human health, so dispersing the fuel before re-entry would be safer. USA 193 would be hit “just prior to its hitting the Earth's atmosphere,” Cartwright said. It would be the first time a tactical missile has been used to take out a satellite instead of another missile. Not everyone is convinced however by the Pentagon's explanation (more). The Pentagon believes that in some instances half the satellite could survive re-entry. Because the satellite was never activated, the 40-inch sphere fuel tank is full, says David Wright from the Union of Concerned Scientists. “There are a thousand-plus pounds of hydrazine fuel onboard,” says Jeffrey. “How serious that risk is, is hard to know,” adds Wright. Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard University who tracks rocket activity says, “There is only a small risk from the hydrazine, and in the unlikely event that the [satellite] landed in a populated area, one would only have to clear a few hundred yards.” Cartwright called the effects of hydrazine similar to chlorine gas poisoning; it would involve burning skin and lungs. Spacecraft use heaters to turn the hydrazine into a gas to use as fuel. On USA 193, the power has been out for months, and the hydrazine is in a frozen-solid state, “which leaves us with another unknown,” adds Cartwright, “how much of it would melt on re-entry.” “The chances of [USA 193] actually hitting land are low,” says Theresa Hitchens of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington think tank. “Because the fuel lines will rip off in re-entry, at least some of the fuel will vent on the way down. So chances of very serious contamination are probably not that high.” In 1998 the NASA Lewis spacecraft with full hydrazine tanks burned up on re-entry without any difficulty, although that vessel was smaller than USA 193. More than 27 spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere last year. The hydrazine tank on the space shuttle Columbia however, did survive re-entry says Cartwright. In that case, the fuel tank was nearly empty as Columbia was returning home. The Russian’s used to destroy their spy satellites in orbit before they decayed into the atmosphere, to protect their technology secrets, but Cartwright discounted this rationale for shooting the satellite down in the question and answer session of the press conference. “If they are able to hit the satellite directly, it will create a huge amount of debris,” says Wright. “This satellite is 2.5 tons [excluding fuel]—two and a half times more massive than the satellite China destroyed—and its destruction will create something like 100,000 pieces of debris larger than 1 cm.” Both McDowell and the Pentagon said this afternoon that because of the 240-km low orbit in which the US intends to hit the satellite, the debris field will disperse and burn up in the atmosphere relatively quickly, in hours or days. More than 50% of the debris should burn up on re-entry in under two days. Wang Ting, a researcher in China, who has modeled the potential debris field agrees with the administrations assessment, “most of fragments will decayed within 10 days,” he says. Independent confirmation after the shoot down of the size of the debris field will be difficult to obtain as the Pentagon is the only organization with a sophisticated radar system to track space debris. Plutonium unlikely to be the spacecraft’s power supply “You really have to ask yourself why we would even consider going to this extreme for a reentering satellite, especially after all the fallout from the Chinese anti-satellite test,” says another analyst. Instead, he suspects that the spacecraft contains a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), probably based on Plutonium 238, because of the small size of the satellite and because the spacecraft didn’t deploy any solar panels, despite having a suspected high-powered radar system onboard. However, Globalsecurity.org's Ted Molczan says disagrees and believes that USA 193 is solar-powered, and a thermal blanket may be covering up the solar panels from visual observations from the ground. Spy satellites have used RTG’s for many years and on 24 January, 1978 a Russian spy satellite Cosmos 954 crashed into Canada, contaminating a wide area with radioactive material. Under international law the nation who owns the crashed satellite has to pay clean up costs from any such accident. Shooting such a satellite down would limit the fallout risk. When queried by Physics Today, the National Reconnaissance Office denied that a RTG was onboard the spacecraft. Harold Finley the deputy assistant lab director for space programs at Idaho National Laboratory says the US has not used radioisotopes for earth orbiting satellites in decades. "Our security customers are all land based and our NASA missions are all solar system (not including earth)," he says. "We are not providing any radioisotopes for satellites that could fall back to earth." John R Pike from globalsecurity.org has a different theory for the shoot down. He believes that the spacecraft has a new high-tech radar system that doesn't require large amounts of power, and it is limiting access to this technology is the real reason for the satellite's destruction. But during the press conference Cartwright confirmed that everything other than the fuel tank would be destroyed on re-entry even without a missile strike. The real reason McDowell suspects that the US action is more about testing the missile defense system. Hitchens agrees. “I think it's probably a chance for the navy to demonstrate that the Aegis missile defense system is worth its price tag. That's my best guess.” The SM-3 missile is the most successful part of the missile defense program, by passing 11 of its last 13 tests under extremely restricted and controlled conditions. Three warships will be stationed to try and shoot down the satellite; only one missile will be fired at first. A second shot might be attempted if the satellite is only slightly damaged. The most dangerous aspect of the action could be political, adds Hitchens. The US is not breaking any treaties by shooting down a satellite with a ground missile, but “it certainly plays into fears abroad that our missile defense system is really a cover story for an offensive anti-satellite program. And . . . the new software they've put on the SM-3 to let it target a satellite is now there, and what would be stopping us from putting similar software on the ground missile defense interceptors that can actually reach an active satellite?” These concerns build on the paranoia already out there among both allies and potential competitors of the US, she adds. Cartwright said in today's press conference that the modification was a “one-time deal” and modifying the entire fleet to have the same capability would be “significant.” The actual date the spy satellite will be shot down will be sometime around 6 March, when the risk of the debris field colliding with other satellites, the space shuttle or the international space station is minimized. "Whether the engagement succeeds or fails, the US is prepared to offer assistance to governments to mitigate the consequences of any satellite debris impacts on their territory," US Ambassador Christina Rocca told the Conference on Disarmament currently underway in Switzerland. Related Physics Today articles Related News Picks Related background information February 15, 2008Chinese astronomers look to AntarcticNature: Frozen heights of Dome A to play host to observatory. 'Jumper'-Style Teleportation Just Barely PossibleFOXNews: The movie "Jumper," opening Thursday, has a hero with the extraordinary power to teleport anywhere on Earth by imagining the place he wants to go. Scientists Call for Space ExplorationThe New York Times: The next president of the United States should give NASA an additional $3 billion each year, both to get to Mars and to focus attention on science issues in space and on Earth, a group of scientists, industry figures and former astronauts said on Thursday. February 14, 2008Illinois campus mourns ocean science students killed by gunmanNew York Times: A gunman killed five students and wounded 16 others in a Northern Illinois University lecture hall on Thursday afternoon in DeKalb before killing himself, according to university and police officials. John G. Peters, the president of Northern Illinois University, reported at a news conference that four of the dead were women and two were men. He said four died at the scene, including the gunman, and the other two died at the hospital. All the wounded and the dead were students, including the graduate student leading the ocean sciences class. Federal Lab Says It Can Harvest Fuel From Air (With a Catch)The New York Times: Scientists there say they have developed a way to produce truly carbon-neutral fuel and useful organic chemicals at large scale using water and carbon dioxide removed from the air as raw materials. There are plenty of schemes brewing to capture carbon dioxide, both directly from the atmosphere and from the stacks of power plants. All of them, for the moment, are costly or hard to envision at the billion-tons-a-year scale that would be needed to blunt the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere coming mainly from fuel burning. Russia to build four more nuclear reactors in IndiaRIA Novosti: Russia and India have upgraded their unique cooperation in building civilian nuclear facilities by initializing an intergovernmental agreement on the construction of four additional energy units at the Kudankulam nuclear power station in Tamil Nadu and on joint work at other sites. Deputy Director of the Federal Atomic Energy Agency Nikolai Spassky, and head of the Indian Nuclear Power Corporation S.K. Jain confirmed the viability of this agreement in New Delhi on February 11. Now the document has to go through the last channels and be approved by the heads of state. How to reengineer an engineering major at a women's collegeThe Christian Science Monitor: A Smith College professor's program may provide a pattern for how to attract and keep women engineers. Nanotech Clothing Produces Power From MotionNational Geographic: Nanotech fabric that can harvest energy from motion could one day lead to clothing that can power portable electronics, researchers say. February 13, 2008U.N. Weighs a Ban on Weapons in Space, but U.S. Still Objects |
