Washington, U.S.A. — NASA’s Space Technology Program is turning science fiction into science fact. The program has selected 28 proposals for study under the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program.

Eighteen of these advanced concept proposals were categorized as Phase I and 10 as Phase II. They were selected based on their potential to transform future aerospace missions, enable new capabilities, or significantly alter and improve current approaches to launching, building and operating aerospace systems.

The selected proposals include a broad range of imaginative concepts, including a submarine glider to explore the ice-covered ocean of Europa, an air purification system with no moving parts, and a system that could use in situ lunar regolith to autonomously build concrete structures on the moon.

“These selections represent the best and most creative new ideas for future technologies that have the potential to radically improve how NASA missions explore new frontiers,” said Michael Gazarik, director of NASA’s Space Technology Program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington.

“Through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, NASA is taking the long-term view of technological investment and the advancement that is essential for accomplishing our missions. We are inventing the ways in which next-generation aircraft and spacecraft will change the world and inspiring Americans to take bold steps.”

NIAC Phase I awards of approximately $100,000 for one year enable proposers to explore basic feasibility and properties of a potential breakthrough concept. NIAC Phase II awards of as much as $500,000 for two years help further develop the most successful Phase I concepts and analyze their potential to enable new or radically improved future NASA missions and potential applications with benefits for industry and society.

“We’re excited to be launching Phase II, allowing the 2012 NIAC portfolio to feature an exciting combination of new ideas and continued development of last year’s Phase I concepts,” said Jay Falker, NIAC program executive at NASA Headquarters.

NASA solicited visionary, long-term concepts for technological maturation based on their potential value to NASA’s future space missions and operational needs. These projects were chosen through a peer-review process that evaluated their innovation and how technically viable they are. All are very early in development — 10 years or longer from use on a mission.

NASA’s early investment and partnership with creative scientists, engineers, and citizen inventors from across the nation will provide technological dividends and help maintain America’s leadership in the global technology economy.

The portfolio of diverse and innovative ideas selected for NIAC awards represent multiple technology areas, including power, propulsion, structures, and avionics, as identified in NASA’s Space Technology Roadmaps. The roadmaps provide technology paths needed to meet NASA’s strategic goals.

NIAC is part of NASA’s Space Technology Program, which is innovating, developing, testing, and flying hardware for use in NASA’s future missions. These competitively-awarded projects are creating new technological solutions for NASA and our nation’s future.

Image Courtesy of  nasa hq photo

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Washington, U.S.A. – NASA is seeking proposals from accredited U.S. universities focused on innovative, early-stage space technologies that will improve shielding from space radiation, spacecraft thermal management and optical systems.

Each of these technology areas requires dramatic improvements over existing capabilities for future science and human exploration missions. Early stage, or low technology readiness level (TRL) concepts, could mature into tools that solve the hard challenges facing future NASA missions. Researchers should propose unique, disruptive or transformational space technologies that address the specific topics described in this new solicitation.

“Both science and human deep space missions pose serious challenges that require new, innovative technological solutions,” said Space Technology Program Director Michael Gazarik at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Radiation, thermal management and optical systems were all identified in the National Research Council’s report on NASA Space Technology Roadmaps as priority research areas. This call seeks new ideas in these areas.”

Space radiation poses a known danger to the health of astronauts. NASA is seeking proposals in the area of active radiation shielding (such as “shields” of electromagnetic force fields surrounding a spacecraft to block incoming radiation) or new, multifunction materials that are superior to those that exist today are sought. NASA also is interested in new technologies for active monitoring and read-out of radiation levels astronauts receive during long space trips.

Current space technology for thermal management of fuels in space is limited. NASA is seeking early-stage technologies to improve ways spacecraft fuel tanks and in-space filling stations store cryogenic (very low temperature) propellants, such as hydrogen, over long periods of time and distances. NASA also is seeking novel, low-TRL heat rejection technologies which operate reliably and efficiently over a wide range of thermal conditions.

The next generation of lightweight mirrors and telescopes requires advanced optical systems. NASA is seeking advancement of early-stage active wavefront sensing and control system technologies that enable deployable, large aperture space-based observatories; technologies which enable cost-effective development of grazing-incidence optical systems; and novel techniques to focus and detect X-ray photons and other high-energy particles.

NASA expects to make approximately 10 awards this fall, based on the merit of proposals received. The awards will be made for one year, with an additional year of research possible. The typical annual award value is expected to be approximately $250,000.

Image Courtesy of  NASA

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Three school student teams in the fifth through eighth grades have been selected as the winners of NASA’s second annual Spaced Out Sports challenge. The students designed science-based games that will be played by astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The games illustrate and apply Newton’s laws of motion by showing the differences between Earth’s gravity and the microgravity environment of the space station. The challenge is part of a broader agency education effort to engage students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) activities.

To design their game, students use up to five items from a two-page list of objects aboard the ISS. The list includes such items as socks, exercise putty, bungees, cotton swabs, tape, rubber bands, zipper-top bags, chocolate-covered candies and drink bags.

Students at Pierremont Elementary MOSAICS Academy in Manchester, Mo., earned the top prize with their game “Starfield.” In this activity, astronauts will travel through a course to gather “power stars” and throw them through a “black hole target.”

Second-place honors went to students at East Brook Middle School in Paramus, N.J., for their “Outstanding Obstacles” game. It calls on astronauts to race through obstacles including “hair band shooting” and “ring toss.”

Third-place winners were students at Tyngsborough Middle School in Tyngsborough, Mass., for their “Learning Takes You around the World” game, in which astronauts will propel through rings, collecting slips of paper.

“Congratulations to the 2012 Spaced out Sports winners,” said Leland Melvin, associate administrator for education at NASA Headquarters in Washington and two-time shuttle astronaut. “By combining solid STEM skills with imagination and teamwork, these students have demonstrated that they have what it takes to be our next generation of engineers and designers.”

The Spaced Out Sports challenge is a NASA Teaching from Space activity and was first offered in 2010. Using an accompanying curriculum, teachers lead students through a study of Newton’s laws, highlighted by hands-on activities and video podcasts featuring NASA scientists and engineers explaining how the laws are used in the space program.

“The three top games were selected but everyone really is a winner in this challenge,” said Katie Wallace, director of NASA’s Stennis Space Center Office of Education near Bay St. Louis, Miss., where the challenge and accompanying curriculum were developed. “Every student involved wins by learning more about science and establishing an educational foundation that will serve them well throughout their careers and life.”

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The economic crisis has raised unemployment, universities have reduced their available spots, and tuition is becoming inaccessible to the poor and middle class. So, is a college education really worth it?

Students must be certain that they want to go to a college these days. Though motivations vary – pressure from home, aggressive marketing, or social tendencies in the political arena – a university education is considered a good investment because higher pay has traditionally followed a higher education. However, many students argue that their decision is not only about money and that they see the value of a college education as a way to expand their knowledge and learn independence.

Students have to learn the hard lesson that going to a university is not enough. You also have to study the right subjects, not just your preferences. This way, you will have business contacts for when you graduate. Many students try to avoid the toughest subjects, such as math and chemistry, and instead, they choose the “easy” or ” fun” ones. They waste their time by choosing fields in the humanities that give little prospect of landing a job.

For instance, some students receive futile degrees in media, photography, or fashion, so they can get interesting jobs. However, employers will take advantage of them because they have many candidates to choose from since the market is already over-saturated.

I am not saying that the humanities is the wrong way to go, but graduates in those subjects have lower wages and are less likely to find work in their fields compared to those who graduate with a degree in science. According to a study conducted by Andrew Sum, a labor economist at Northeastern University and leading expert on the youth labor market, more than half of all humanities graduates get jobs that do not require university degrees.

The tuition fees and certain majors are the two main reasons to discourage students from going to college. First, the idea that they will be spending their twenties and thirties paying off their university or college debts once they have graduated is a big negative, and second, their preferred major will not guarantee them a job in their field, or they will end up working menial jobs.

According to a report by myUface in 2009,  U.K. tuition is between $5,500 and $28,500 USD per year, whereas in the U.S., the tuition is between $5,000 and $30,000. On top of that, you must add $8,000 for living expenses, if the student moves away from his or her hometown.

I am not discouraging students from going to a university, but they have to take tuition fees and their chosen field of study into account before they make their final decision. Choosing a science degree is a safer investment than a humanities degree because there are more jobs and less competition. Nowadays, majoring in the humanities field is a gamble, but if students want to succeed in this competitive field, they must know that there will be blood, sweat, and tears all the way.

If students do not choose higher education, there are other interesting professions, such as becoming an electrician or plumber. You can make good money, and skip three or four years at a college or university and the financial struggle from student loan debts. Dear students, the decision is yours.

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In the wake of SOPA and PIPA’s defeat, a new online boycott, some 8,209 researchers strong, is beginning to gain momentum.  The protest focuses on Elsevier, a publisher of renowned scientific journals such as Cell or The Lancet, whose aggressive business tactics have for years have been a thorn in scientists’ sides.

The main problem for scientists (or anyone interested in reading articles from the journals) is that in order to have access to the whole text- and not just the abstract or the first few paragraphs- they must pay upwards of forty dollars to rent them for a few days. They can also pay a few hundred dollars to own a copy.

In addition, many scientific articles in the U.S. are produced by government-sponsored organizations, which means that while taxpayers’ money funded the experiments, they do not get to see the articles without paying more money. This includes even the authors of the article.

While these outrageous prices are not anything new, the cause of the protest, a new bill titled the Research Works Act (RWA), is relatively recent.  The bill, designed to negate the effects of the Open Access Policy created by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008, that allowed the public to view any article that is the result of NIH-funded research, was submitted to Congress last December.

A little more than a month later, Timothy Gowers, a mathematics professor at Cambridge University, posted a short article about his difficulties with Elsevier and his frustrations at the RWA.  A few days later, he launched the boycott, calling on colleagues to boycott Elsevier.

While there are cheaper, alternative journals researchers can publish their work in, such as those run by professional societies, these do not come without their own can of worms.

Patricia Kelley, a Geology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, says, “Societies… tend to require authors to pay charges to publish their articles.  For instance, Journal of Paleontology editorial policy states:  ‘Authors are asked to pay as much page charges as they can for articles of all lengths. Paying extra page charges is mandatory for articles that run 26-40 pages.’”

Elsevier, despite costly subscription, can help get researchers around these problems.  “The benefits to the authors are that publication is rapid and they don’t require page charges,” says Kelley.

Some previously “high cost” journals are beginning to make the switch.  The Open Directory keeps a list of journals that have made the jump and are now free-for-all, or are trying out new payment methods. Elsevier, though, still stands strong.  Despite its aggressive moneymaking tactics, the benefits of publishing through the company are obvious.

Says Kelley, “So authors find themselves in a tight spot.  Do we pay a non-for-profit journal to publish our work, or do we publish for free with a company such as Elsevier?”

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The stakes are high in Houston as four high schools and universities prepare for Shell Eco-marathon Americas. St. John’s High School and the University of Houston are competing again this year and for the first time, Westside High School and Rice University are also getting ready to compete.

They and more than 1,000 other high school and university students across the Americas are preparing for the sixth annual Shell Eco-marathon Americas. Shell Eco-marathon challenges students to build, design and compete with their high-mileage vehicles in competitions held annually in Europe, the Americas and Asia. Shell Eco-marathon brings together future leaders in science and engineering who are passionate about finding solutions to global energy challenges.

At the University of Houston, the Superleggera team expects its entry to achieve the equivalent of 1,000 miles per gallon. “We want our vehicle to represent the school well and start a legacy that can be continued by future teams,” said Superleggera team leader Jose Guerrero. “We also hope that one day soon, our school can claim the number one spot – not only at Shell Eco-marathon Americas – but among all the Houston schools competing!”

“This is our first year participating in Shell Eco-marathon Americas and we are excited to show everyone, especially theUniversity of Houston, just what Rice University can do,” said Andrew Owens of the Rice Solar Car team. “Our two universities have a long-standing rivalry between them and we’d love to bring a win home to Rice, especially when it involves the future of energy.”

From March 29 through April 1, students and their fuel-efficient vehicles will navigate the streets of downtown Houston, amid the skyscrapers, and strive to break the astounding 2,564.8 miles per (one) gallon achieved in 2011 by Quebec’s Universite Laval team, which will compete again this year.

That far outperformed the 50 miles per gallon attained by a Shell scientist in 1939 in a challenge that has evolved into today’s Shell Eco-marathon. Since then, the event has brought together thousands of students from more than 30 countries to put their futuristic vehicles to the test.

“Shell Eco-marathon is an important part of the energy challenge facing our planet,” says Mark Singer, global project manager. “The future will require a mosaic of energy solutions, and we believe we’re contributing to a smarter energy future with more responsible options for our customers and credible advice for our markets and policymakers. Shell Eco-marathon is an amazing experience for students and spectators alike.”

For first-time competitors from Rice University, participating in this year’s event goes beyond what number the team places in the challenge. “Our participation involves motivating and educating students through a large scale, interdisciplinary, hands-on project in which students can collaborate to create something spectacular,” said Rice Solar Car team spokesman Robert Wilson. “We hope to introduce students to the fun side of engineering by allowing them to practice some of the skills they’ve developed in their classes and build something they can be proud of.”

“By encouraging students around the world to design, build and test vehicles that travel farther using less energy, Shell Eco-marathon provides an education platform for students to apply real-life skills to meet the increasing demand for energy,” says Singer. “These students and their innovative ideas can help shape the future of energy.”

Shell Eco-marathon Americas is family-friendly, free and open to the public; so, spectators can come out to watch and cheer on the teams. There will be a variety of activities and displays on-hand at Discovery Green and George R. Brown Convention Center, including: Science and education displays in the park for children and families including The Children’s Museum ofHouston, the Offshore Energy Center, Houston Community College-NE, the University of Texas: GeoFORCE Program, San Jacinto College, Trinity Science Solutions LLC, HoustonWorks, Fiat and a variety of educational Shell displays and booths in the park.

Additionally, the National CSTEM Challenge, which is a cross curriculum project incorporating Communications, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math to encourage students of all ages to develop problem solving skills and solutions, will also be taking place at George R. Brown Convention Center.

In addition to the student competition, Shell along with media sponsor The New York Times, will host the 2012 Energy Summit: Earth 2050: The Nexus of Food, Energy, Water. The two-day symposium will be attended by a variety of leaders representing policy, the environment, business and academia.

Shell Eco-marathon Americas coincides with another key Shell community event, the 2012 Shell Houston Open, which will be played the week of March 26-April 1 at Redstone Golf Club-Tournament course. Phil Mickelson is defending champion. Visit www.ShellHoustonOpen.com and www.shell.com/ecomarathon/americas for details.

For more information on all 2012 events across the globe, including the complete Americas 2012 roster, schedule and official rules, please visit Shell Eco-marathon website at www.shell.com/ecomarathon/americas.

Image Courtesy of   http://www.flickr.com/photos/vermin87/

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This week, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) spacecraft, Kepler, detected eleven planetary systems, which, overall, contain 26 new exoplanets (short for extrasolar planets, which exist beyond out solar system). Located in the Lyra and Cygnus constellations, each system contains two to five planets. The systems have been dubbed Kepler-23, Kepler-24, Kepler-25, Kepler-26, Kepler-27, Kepler-28, Kepler-29, Kepler-30, Kepler-31, Kepler-32, and Kepler-33.

The sizes of the exoplanets range from 1.5 to 5 times the size of Earth to larger than Jupiter. All of them orbit their parent stars closely; none of them lie in the habitable zone, an area in which a planet is not too close or too far away from a star so that it can sustain water and life. Each of their orbits is closer than that of Venus. The farthest exoplanet has years that last fewer than 200 days and the surface temperature of hundreds of degrees.

Kepler primarily detects planets through a process known as transiting, in which it measures a star’s periodic change in brightness generated by a planet crossing its parent star, causing the star’s light to drop a bit in brightness.

The NASA spacecraft was able to find these newer exoplanets by means of measuring Transit Timing Variations (TTVs). With this method, Kepler calculates changes in the acceleration of planets due to the gravitational pull on one another from being so close together. TTVs help Kepler find the more distant – hence fainter – star systems.

“Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky,” said Doug Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in the press release on NASA’s Kepler website.

“Now,” Hudgins continues, “in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits.”

Kepler has been in space for nearly three years. Its mission is to search for Earth-like exoplanets that orbit stars in the habitable zone. Ever since its launch in March 2009, Kepler has made numerous momentous findings, especially in the last couple of months.

On December 5, the spacecraft detected Kepler-22b, the first planet to be found in a habitable zone, and on December 20, it discovered the first two Earth-sized exoplanets, Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f. Kepler’s most recent significant detection occurred earlier this month: exoplanets KOI-961.01, KOI-961.02, and KOI-961.03, the tiniest exoplanets thus far.

Based on the diversity of the types of exoplanets, astronomers believe they will attain a better understanding of how planets form.

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An international team of astronomers has produced a map that covers a billion light-years worth of dark matter in the universe. Never before has dark matter been mapped on such a large scale.

Two members of the team, Catherine Heymans of the University of Edinburgh and Associate Professor Ludovic Van Waerbeke of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, presented their findings at the 119th meeting of American Astronomical Society, held last week.

The project took place at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLensS) in Hawaii and collected data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey. For more than five years, the team accumulated images of ten million galaxies – six billion light-years away – from four different regions in the sky during each of the seasons. Essentially peering at the universe when it was but six billions years old, they studied  how dark matter warped the light emitted by the galaxies.

The process of producing the map was completed through a method called gravitational lensing, in which bodies (e.g. galaxies, or, in this case, dark matter) are so massive that they curve space-time and distort light, making it travel in a curve, rather than in a line. By studying the distortions of the galaxies’ light, the team was able to determine the structure of the dark matter and plot its distribution.

“It is fascinating to be able to ‘see’ the dark matter using space-time distortion,” says Waerbeke at the American Astronomical society meeting. “It gives us privileged access to this mysterious mass in the Universe which cannot be observed otherwise. Knowing how dark matter is distributed is the very first step towards understanding its nature and how it fits within our current knowledge of physics.”

The universe is more or less a cosmic web of dark matter and galaxies. Dark matter is impossible to be detected by itself, making it seem invisible, though it makes its presence known through warping space-time and light. The mysterious substance makes up a whopping 23 percent of the universe, with dark energy taking up 72 percent and everything else (stars, planets, etc.) only 4 percent.

With creating such a large map of the cosmic web, astronomers and cosmologists are becoming closer to understanding the nature of dark matter and, ergo, a large portion of the universe. Dr. Heymans, a lecturer of physics and astronomy, says, “By analyzing light from the distant Universe, we can learn about what it has travelled through on its journey to reach us.

We hope that by mapping more dark matter than has been studied before, we are a step closer to understanding this material and its relationship with the galaxies in our Universe.”

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Researchers have discovered that a subtype of leukemia characterized by a poor prognosis is fueled by mutations in pathways distinctly different from a seemingly similar leukemia associated with a much better outcome. The findings from the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital – Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project highlight a possible new strategy for treating patients with this more aggressive cancer.

The work provides the first details of the genetic alterations fueling a subtype of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) known as early T-cell precursor ALL (ETP-ALL). The results suggest ETP-ALL has more in common with acute myeloid leukemia than with other subtypes of ALL. The study appears in the January 12 edition of the journal ‘Nature’.

ALL is the most common childhood cancer and about 12 percent of patients have T-ALL. T-ALL arises from T-lineage white blood cells that make up one branch of the immune system. ETP-ALL was discovered by St. Jude researchers and accounts for about 12 percent of T-cell ALL. Many ETP-ALL patients fail to respond to current therapy and never enter remission. Only 30 to 40 percent of these patients become long-term survivors, compared to about 80 percent of children battling other T-ALL subtypes.

“The mutations and gene expression profile we identified in this study suggest that patients with ETP-ALL might benefit from treatment that includes drugs developed for treatment of acute myeloid leukemia,” said Charles Mullighan, M.D., Ph.D., an associate member of the St. Jude Department of Pathology and one of the study’s corresponding authors.

Mullighan said ETP-ALL was selected for inclusion in the pediatric cancer genome project due to the poor outcome and the lack of information on the genetic lesions that underlie this aggressive subtype of leukemia. “St. Jude is a pioneer in increasing overall ALL survival rates, which today exceed 90 percent for St. Jude patients. Now, we are working toward similar progress against this rare form of the disease,” he said.

The human genome is the complete set of instructions needed to assemble and sustain human life. Leukemia and other cancers develop when normal cells accumulate mutations in the genome that cause the unchecked cell growth that is a hallmark of cancer. The three-year Pediatric Cancer Genome Project is sequencing the genomes of tumor cells and matched normal DNA samples of 600 children with some of the most poorly understood and aggressive cancers. Investigators believe the findings will be the foundation for the next generation of clinical tools.

For this study, researchers sequenced and analyzed the normal and cancer genomes of 12 St. Jude patients with ETP-ALL. Investigators then checked for some of the same mutations in an additional 94 young leukemia patients with either ETP-ALL or other types of T-cell ALL.

“We found mutations unique to ETP-ALL that are not seen in other forms of ALL,” said co-author Richard Wilson, Ph.D., director of The Genome Institute at Washington University. “The results provide new targets for therapy and a way to use genetic tests to identify ETP-ALL patients early and earmark them for more aggressive therapy.”

The pattern of mutations identified in ETP-ALL was reminiscent of changes associated with AML, Mullighan said. The alterations were concentrated in genes in the cytokine receptor and RAS signaling pathways that are involved in the type of cell regulation disrupted in cancer. The mutations, which included NRAS, FLT3, JAK3, IL7R, and other genes, were found in about 67 percent of patients with ETP-ALL, but in only 19 percent of other T-ALL patients.

In addition, mutations in genes known or predicted to disrupt normal development of blood stem cells or lymphocytes were identified in 58 percent of ETP-ALL patients, but in just 17 percent of other T-ALL patients. The affected genes included ETV6, RUNX1, IKZF1, and GATA3. GATA3 helps regulate the early stages of T cell development, and mutations in the gene were found exclusively in ETP-ALL patients.

Epigenetic mutations, which are alterations affecting genes that indirectly influence the activity of other genes, were also more common in ETP-ALL patients. These genes, including EZH2 and SUZ12, were mutated or deleted in 45 percent of ETP-ALL patients, but in just 11 percent of the comparison group. The targeted genes modify proteins known as histones, which control gene activity through DNA binding.

Researchers also showed that ETP-ALL includes recurring mutations in about a half-dozen genes not previously linked to blood cancers. The list includes the genes RELN and DNM2. “The pattern of mutations we found in those genes suggests they function as tumor suppressors and their loss contributes to the malignant transformation of developing blood cells,” Mullighan said.

Mullighan said work is underway to develop laboratory models of human ETP-ALL and to use these models to identify AML drugs that are most likely to benefit ETP-ALL patients. The list of possible drugs includes high-dose cytarabine and targeted chemotherapy agents that inhibit activity in the cytokine receptor and JAK signaling pathways found in this study to be disrupted in ETP-ALL patients, researchers said. Those pathways help regulate cell division and normal development of the blood system.

“This is the first of a series of important discoveries on the genomic basis of childhood cancers that are emerging from the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, which is on schedule to fully sequence 600 pediatric cancer genomes by 2013,” said Dr. William E. Evans, St. Jude director and CEO.

James Downing, M.D., St. Jude scientific director, St. Jude PCGP site leader and a corresponding author of the study, added, “This study highlights how the genome project is generating new insights into the genetic alterations that underlie some of the most aggressive childhood cancers and in turn is pointing us toward new therapeutic options that may increase the survival rates for children with these cancers.”

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A team of physicists at Cornell University have learned how to hide an event by using time. This process is called “temporal cloaking”, which is built on experiments researchers have previously conducted where they verified that it is possible to hide objects from view. Scientists have already accomplished “spatial cloaking”. It involves bending light around an object in a way that makes it seem invisible to the eye, while temporal cloaking involves interrupting light to make a seeming gap in time where an event can be concealed. So far, the time gap scientists made is around 50 trillionths of a second, so practical implications of the process are a long way coming.

Alexander Gaeta, the leader of the team, said that researchers are interested in attempting to make the amount of time a beam’s gap stays open longer. Essentially, the team turned off a laser beam for a brief amount of time in such a way that instruments receiving the beam did not have the ability to detect it. An observer of this would have no idea that the beam had blinked and would possess no evidence that anything had happened to the beam in the time frame of 50 trillionths of a second.

Zhimin Shi and Robert Boyd, physicists at the University of Rochester, were not a part of Dr. Gaeta’s team, but they compared the occurrence to cars at a railroad crossing. The crossing gate falls and interrupts the flow of traffic (the beam) as the train passes. From the train’s perspective, there are no cars, and it can pass freely (the hidden event). After the gate climbs back up once the train has passed, traffic begins flowing again. If one were to see this from one or two miles away, the traffic flow would not show any sign of interruption and no evidence that the train had been there.

To accomplish the feat of opening up a gap in the laser beam, researchers took advantage of how fast different colors travel at different speeds when light goes through a material. The researchers employed a laser-based mechanism called a time lens to change colors in a section of the laser beam. Typical glass lenses will bend light and alter its distribution in three-dimensional space, but time lenses “do really funny things” to light by changing its traits for a certain period of time, said Gaeta.

In the case of the team’s experiment, the modified time lenses gave two adjoining parts of the green beam a red hue and a blue hue for a short period of time. When these parts traveled through a specially designed length of optical fiber, the blue light went faster, while the red light grew slower. This difference opened up a gap in the beam- meaning there was no light- and lasted for around 50 trillionths of a second. The researchers reversed the process once it came out the other side and slowed the blue hue and sped up the red. They then passed the colors through another time lens and returned the beam to its previous green hue with almost no evidence of its temporary alteration.

For now, a lot of work will center on gaining a better understanding of the physics involved in the process and how to better take advantage of them, said Dr. Shi of Rochester.

Image Courtesey of  Cornell University

First row: Yoshi, Moti, Vivek, Kasturi
Secon row: Alex, Jordan, Robert, Bonggu
Third row: Ryan, Pablo, Stephane
Fourth row: Alessandro, Henry, Sam

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In early December, an international team of astronomers discovered an incredibly fast rotating star, rotating at a radial velocity of 1.6 million km/h (1 million mph), which is approximately 100 times faster than the sun rotates (roughly four times a day). If the star, dubbed VFTS (short for VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey) 102, spun any faster, the centrifugal forces would rip it apart.

Working at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranel Observatory in Chile, the team located VFTS 102 160,000 light-years away from the Earth in the Tarantula Nebula, which is part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way galaxy. They detected the star because its traveling velocity was 30 km/s (70,000 mph) – much faster than those of other stars in the vicinity.

Philip Dufton, lead author of the paper that presents the team’s findings, stated, “The remarkable rotation speed and the unusual motion compared to the surrounding stars led us to wonder if this star had an unusual early life.” Dufton works at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. “It was suspicious.”

The centrifugal forces of VFTS 102 (which is a blue giant and has twenty-five times the mass and 100,000 times the luminosity of the sun) are so great that the star has an oblate spheroid shape. Furthermore, they cause VFTS 102 to spin out a disk of plasma at its equator.

The team of astronomers speculate that VFTS 102 had a violent past. It may have been part of a binary star system in which it and its companion star closely rotated around each other. VFTS 102′s fast rotation may have come from the two stars being so close together, which could have caused the companion star to stream gas over to VFTS 102.

Another member of the team, Matteo Cantiello, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, further explains in the university’s press release, “This gas falls onto the companion star, increasing the mass and spinning it up. Similar to a tennis ball spinning fast after being hit by a glancing blow, a star rotates quickly after being hit off-center by the in-falling gas.”

At some point, the companion star went supernova, expelling much of its gas. The intense explosion ejected VFTS 102, which was sent hurdling through space at the current velocity in which it was discovered. Presently, a supernova remnant and pulsar lie near the blue giant. That these two objects are located nearby VFTS 102 serves as evidence that supports the team’s hypothesis, as the supernova remnant and pulsar may belong to the late companion star, which may have collapsed into a neutron star following its exploding.

“This is a compelling story because it explains each of the unusual features that we’ve seen,” Dufton writes. “This star is certainly showing us unexpected sides of the short, but dramatic lives of the heaviest stars.”

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My journey to Logan Hall – at the Institute of Education in Russell Square – last Thursday had been unremarkable. The entrance was dotted with people nervously thumbing mobile phones, a solitary policeman, and little else. Inside, the deceptively large lecture theatre was growing steadily replete with its eager audience.

By 7.20 pm we had taken our seats, the hall was eighty percent full, and the chant began. Approximately thirty people were wedged into the doorway – presumably having rushed the ticket desk – chanting a tune in which the only audible words were “Dawkins” and (I think) “job losses”. The two security guards that had been holding them back capitulated, and they quickly took to the stage. The already large audience was perplexed and then furious. The majority of the audience was comprised of members of the British Humanist Association,  and the heckles thrown at the protestors showed that at least some of those present thought the combination of chanting and an anti-Dawkins message to mean ‘religious nut-jobs’ (who are generally fond of a good chant).

Organising atheists is notoriously difficult; Dawkins himself has likened it to “herding cats”, and they did not take kindly to this interjection, especially when many believed it to be religiously motivated. Only a dozen protesters made it into Logan Hall  and their chanting was completely drowned out by the 700 strong audience. Within a few minutes however, the general mood had shifted from anger to mockery. In the second row a young man began enacting scenes from Monty Python’s Life of Brian with considerable gusto and to ample applause.

The protesters, who had resorted to merely sitting on the edge of the stage, were visibly irked. Theatrically, they had been outdone. In response, the volume was stepped up, and they abandoned chanting in favour of shouting: “Dawkins is supporting A.C. Grayling’s elitist New College of the Humanities” and other similarly explanatory phrases. The protestors were in fact there to defend free education, and protest the New College’s plan to function as a private Higher Education institution, charging £18,000 a year. Unfortunately, this crowd was interested in just one thing: seeing Professors Myers and Dawkins. In response to a particularly loud protester’s cry that “these academics are not welcome here!”, came a perfectly synchronised – almost pantomime – “Yes, they are!”.

The pantomime continued. Intent on ending the affair, almost the entire audience turned their backs on the protesters, attempting to deprive the fire of oxygen. As interesting a gambit as this was, no-one had enough staying-power to stick with it, and it quickly collapsed. Several of the audience then attempted to take matters into their own hands individually. A young Romanian man took to the stage himself, and announced that he had spent the equivalent of a week’s worth of food on getting to the UK to see Myers, and that he was going to start ejecting “these idiots … starting with James Dean here [pointing at an accurately described protester]”. He was calmed by a police officer.

One of the protestors, a student from UCL named Aaron, explained his motives: “Dawkins says that he stands for enlightened values, but the NCH goes completely against that. We’re here to try to reverse this ethical paralysis, which will entrench a class divide.”

At 7.40pm a team of a dozen police officers entered the building, and the protesters promptly left. The pantomime appeared to be over, and the crowd applauded the curtain. Professors Myers and Dawkins took to the stage to a round of applause that shook the, now full, theatre at 7.55pm (a total delay of only 25 minutes). After the noise subsided, Richard started to speak. “I’m very interested”, he began, “in science and …”, before being cut off from a shout from the back: “AND PROFIT MAKING”. The new interlocutor was roundly booed, and ejected by a large man in a dark suit. Richard’s response, however, once again upstaged any possibility of subversion: “every penny of every lecture I give goes to charity” – thundering applause and cheering.

I have to hand it to the protest. At the cost of considerable loss of face, they certainly spread the message. I would just have made some signs and stood outside, but while they earned themselves some chagrin, they definitely got some real attention. This event was unfortunately the wrong target. A thousand people who had paid to see two charismatic scientists and public speakers were simply not interested in talking about the NCH that night.

Oh, and the lecture was excellent by the way.

Image Courtesey:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanepope/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hyfen/

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A groundbreaking satellite survey of Egypt has revealed a dizzying array of lost tombs and settlements, including 17 previously unknown pyramids.

Dr. Sarah Parcak, an Egyptologist with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and her colleagues used infra-red satellite imagery to peer beneath the surface and discover hitherto unknown sites.  In addition to the pyramids, her team also discovered evidence of 1,000 other tombs and 3,100 settlements.

Initial test excavations seem to confirm the validity of Parcak’s findings.  Archaeologists digging at the great necropolis of Saqqara have confirmed the presence of at least one buried pyramid.  Furthermore, she was able to identify the remains of a 3,000 year old house at Tanis, the northern city that served as Egypt’s capital during the 21st and 22nd dynasties.  When the site was excavated, the remains of the house matched the satellite image almost exactly.

Parcak told the BBC that she believed that this technology would be a boon to archaeologists.  “It’s an important tool to focus where we’re excavating. It gives us a much bigger perspective on archaeological sites. We have to think bigger and that’s what the satellites allow us to do,” she said.

The BBC funded Parcak’s work and BBC One will show a documentary highlighting her findings on May 30.  American Egyptophiles will have to wait until the Discovery Channel airs its own documentary on the subject later this summer.

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