SPACE & SCIENCE NEWS: December 2004Home > Space & Science News > Space & Science News: December 2004: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Cassini makes Titan return pass
(Dec 13, 2004)
The Cassini spacecraft has made one last flyby of Titan before it despatches the Huygens probe for a rendezvous with the Saturnian moon. It will give engineers a final chance to obtain detailed information on the behaviour of the satellite's atmosphere This data will be essential if Huygens is to have a fighting chance of surviving its 6km/s entry into Titan's thick "air" on 14 January next year. The flyby will also give scientists another peek at the mysterious moon.
Spitzer, Hubble capture evolving planetary systems
(Dec 12, 2004)
Two of NASA's Great Observatories, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, have provided astronomers an unprecedented look at dusty planetary debris around stars the size of our sun. Spitzer has discovered for the first time dusty discs around mature, sun-like stars known to have planets. Hubble captured the most detailed image ever of a brighter disc circling a much younger sun-like star. The findings offer "snapshots" of the process by which our own solar system evolved, from its dusty and chaotic beginnings to its more settled present-day state.
Lonely whale's song remains a mystery
(Dec 11, 2004)
A lone whale with a voice unlike any other has been wandering the Pacific for the past 12 years. Marine biologist Mary Ann Daher of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, US, and her colleagues used signals recorded by the US navy’s submarine-tracking hydrophones to trace the movements of whales in the north Pacific. The partially declassified records show that a lone whale singing at around 52 hertz has cruised the ocean every autumn and winter since 1992. Its calls do not match those of any known species, although they are clearly those of a baleen whale, a group that includes blue, fin and humpback whales.
Nuclear space explorer to solve riddles of Neptune
(Dec 10, 2004)
A team of American engineers is studying the feasibility of a nuclear-powered mission to Neptune and its icy moons, on the outer edges of the solar system. A huge spacecraft driven by a compact nuclear reactor could drop a series of probes into Neptune's atmosphere and help answer questions about the birth of the solar system. The team, led by Boeing and backed by NASA, has begun the 12-month study of what one scientist calls "the ultimate in deep space exploration". Neptune is a gas giant, the eighth - and, through an accident of planetary orbits sometimes the most distant - of the nine planets.
Frozen heavenly body hints at a warm heart
(Dec 9, 2004)
The outer solar system may not be a cemetery full of dead, frozen bodies, suggest new observations of a large object called Quaoar. The study, which says the large body could once have been “warm”, supports theoretical predictions that "planetary" processes such as volcanism can occur in objects at extreme distances from the Sun. Quaoar is 1250 kilometres in diameter – about half the size of Pluto – and is the largest known Kuiper-Belt Object (KBO). These ice-and-rock bodies are left over from the formation of the solar system and form a ring – the Kuiper Belt – beyond Neptune's orbit. Scientists have found about 1000 KBOs so far, but little is known about their composition because they are so distant and faint. Now, observations with the 8-metre Subaru telescope in Hawaii have revealed the spectral signature of crystalline water-ice – and possibly ammonia – in sunlight reflected from Quaoar.
Russian scientists are selecting volunteers to be locked in a capsule for 500 days to test plans for a trip to Mars. The mock mission is designed to simulate the tough conditions of a space trip to the Red Planet. A team of six men will be physically cut off from the outside world to test equipment intended to make them self-sufficient for long periods. Their capsule will consist of a bedroom, a kitchen and a laboratory.
A team of US researchers has shown that controlling devices with the brain is a step closer. Four people, two of them partly paralysed wheelchair users, successfully moved a computer cursor while wearing a cap with 64 electrodes. Previous research has shown that monkeys can control a computer with electrodes implanted into their brain. The New York team reported their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted what may be the youngest galaxy ever seen in the Universe. The spring chicken may be as young as 500 million years old - so recent that complex life had already arisen on Earth by the time it started to bloom. Called I Zwicky 18, it has provided astronomers with a rare glimpse into what the Universe's first diminutive galaxies might have looked like. The finding is reported in the latest issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
Primitive cells similar to bacteria have been created by US researchers. These synthetic cells are not truly alive, because they cannot replicate or evolve. But they can churn out proteins for days, and could be useful for drug production, as well as advancing the quest to build artificial life from scratch. Vincent Noireaux and Albert Libchaber of the Rockefeller University in New York have managed to package up some of the molecular machinery of a cell inside an artificial, bacterium-sized membrane. And they can perforate the membrane with holes that allow nutrients and energy-rich molecules to get into the cells from the surroundings.
Star's pulse of radiation is strongest ever
(Dec 6, 2004)
The brightest pulse of radiation ever seen has come from a pulsar nearly 12,000 light years away. Lasting less than 15 billionths of a second (15 nanoseconds), the burst was recorded by a massive radio telescope at Tidbinbilla in Australia. Although the star was discovered decades ago, it is only now that telescopes have become sensitive enough to record such a fleeting phenomenon. At the point where the pulse was emitted “the electromagnetic field strengths would be capable of totally vaporising and ionising all known materials, shredding them into hot plasma”, says Wayne Cannon of York University in Toronto, Canada, though the pulse was harmless by the time it reached Earth.
