Who had their eye on the storm the whole time? Where is wild weather raging on in the universe? What galactic romance is forming a new world? And something for all the Trekkies out there on the Daily Orbit! Hello and welcome to the Daily Orbit. I’m Emerald Robinson. The tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma on Monday left incomprehensible devastation in its wake. But it also left behind imagery and data from a NASA and NOAA operated satellite system that is helping researchers determine how the storm system was generated. NASA’s Aqua satellite and NOAA’S GOES-13 provided imagery before, during and after the F-4 storm that had 166-200 mph winds. GOES-13 provided new images every 15 minutes tracking the storm’s movement and showing it’s beginning as seen near the bottom of a line of clouds resembling an exclamation point. The tornado, which touched down just outside Oklahoma City, claimed 24 lives, and we hope that one day technology can provide for earlier warnings. Our hearts go out to the people in Oklahoma. And wild weather is on the radar for elsewhere in the universe. A transition from spring to summer in Titan’s northern hemisphere could bring waves and hurricanes for Saturn’s largest moon. Titan has been dark since the arrival of the Cassini spacecraft in 2004 but the sun is creeping in with the promise of summer; it takes seven Earth years for season’s to change on Titan. Models show that as summer approaches, winds may increase up to 2 mph generating waves up to half a foot. Also, warming in the Northern hemisphere could bring hurricanes from methane vapor from Titan’s vast seas. One Titan forecaster said “if you think being a weather forecaster on Earth is difficult, it can be even more challenging on Titan!” So no excuses now Earthling weathermen! Love a good boy-meets-girl story? Me too, I’m a sucker for that stuff. But I’m an even bigger sucker for galaxy-meets-galaxy. Telescopes have spotted two galaxies far, far away merging, intertwined, and furiously making new stars. Ahh…little star babies. And eventually the two galactic love-birds will settle down to form an elliptical galaxy. Although mergers are common, this particular one is unusual because of the massive amount of gas and star formation. This formation goes against the current model suggesting that the biggest galaxies arise from minor acquisitions of smaller galaxies. And that’s the way our galaxy may have become an elliptical galaxy bunch! And this week we celebrate the 81st Anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s transatlantic flight. On May 20, 1932 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, flying from Newfoundland to Ireland. Five years later Earhart would attempt her round-the-world flight, never to be seen again. And carbon emissions are on the run! New research says that a typical pair of running shoes is responsible for 30 pounds of CO2 emissions. What doesn’t create a carbon emission?! But it’s not in the running, but in the making of the shoes. Two-thirds of attributed emissions come from powering manufacturing plants of shoes largely located in China that use coal for electricity. The remaining 1/3 arises from the acquisition of raw materials. They say this research could help designers identify ways to improve designs and even reduce the carbon footprint. That’s it I’m boycotting my running shoes! Guess, that means I can’t go for a run anymore! Ok Trekkies, get excited! As if the latest installment of Star Trek wasn’t enough, Scanadu is making a real-life Tricorder!!! For those of you who live under a rock and don’t know what that is, it’s a device from Star Trek meant to measure vital signs. Scanadu’s non-fictional version called “Scout” uses an optical sensor held up to your forehead or temple, and delivers information about blood pressure, stress levels, respiratory rate and temperature directly to your smartphone. The company, based out of NASA’s Ames Research Center, started an Indiegogo campaign to help make their Tricorder commercially available. And it’s getting street cred from the company’s NASA roots and for borrowing technology from the Curiosity Rover. Talk about a Trekkie Thrill! And that’s all for your Daily Orbit! See you tomorrow!

What’s NASA’s hot new mission? How do you like your pizza printed? Get his brain to the Greek. And we’re off the hook on the Daily Orbit. Hello and welcome to the Daily Orbit. I’m Emerald Robinson. NASA’s heating things up! They’re launching a new mission in June called the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, to help scientists learn more about the sun’s interface region—the area in the lower atmosphere of the sun where most ultraviolet emissions are generated that affect near-Earth space and our climate. IRIS will orbit Earth and use an ultraviolet telescope to capture high-resolution images of the sun to try to answer the question of how the corona gets so hot. They believe the interaction between the sun’s moving plasma and magnetic field may be the source of the energy that heats the corona. NASA is so hot! And NASA doesn’t just have its head in space. The agency is jumping on the 3D printing bandwagon. And its goal? Pizza! NASA’s dishing out $125,000 in grant money to build a 3D printer that uses sugars, complex carbohydrates, protein or some other basic building blocks for nutrition to create nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time from cartridges of powder and oils. And these ingredients have a 30 year shelf life. The company is looking to pizza first because it has distinct layers, but they have high hopes for this 3D food printer as a possible solution to an impending world food shortage. But it could also be what NASA needs to feed hungry astronauts in deep space travel. That’s taking processed food to a whole new level! Ugh! There’s an ant on my pizza! The other day we brought you news of how crazy ants were infesting homes in the Gulf, but today ants are responsible for a little inspiration. Researchers at Georgia Tech are looking at how these tiny creatures are masters at tunneling. Using video tracking and an imaging technique called tomography, researchers studied ants’ principal locomotion and how they move so quickly through tunnels. They found that ants in confined spaces use their antennae for locomotion as well as for sensing the environment—literally using their antennae to grab on when falling. Researchers hope to use this information to help create more effective search-and-rescue robots. They said ants can teach engineers a lot about using effective tricks for maneuvering in subterranean environments. I guess you build the world you play in, no? How about feeding your brain with a little hummus and olives? Yep, Mediterranean food is brain food. The Mediterranean diet with extra virgin olive oil or mixed nuts could improve the brainpower of older people. And researchers say it’s better for the brain than a low-fat diet. The Mediterranean diet consists of virgin olive oil as the main culinary fat with fruits, nuts, veggies, and legumes along with moderate fish and seafood. Yummy! Just what I like! And a moderate intake of red wine. So eat Greek and be smart! No, wonder I’m so smart. [ off-camera voice - “Yeah right!” ] Hey! So typically we humans get the blame for everything—global warming, climate change, species extinction, but guess what, we’re off the hook for the woolly mammoth. A new study found evidence of a large meteorite breaking apart in the atmosphere about 13,000 years ago—about the time of the mammoth die out. An event of this magnitude would have created toxic gas that would have filled the air and blocked out the sun, globally dropping temperatures, and rapidly changing the climate. They said animals and plants either had to “move, downsize, or...go extinct.” And there were two distinct groups: “winners and losers.” And well obviously the woolly mammoth fell into that last category. And that’s all for the Daily Orbit. [ woolly mammoth speak - “Hey lady, you calling me a loser?” ] The researchers said it! I didn’t…I mean…sorry?

Animals in space? Diving dolphins discover what? Channeling your inner-dolphin. And catching some rays on today’s Daily Orbit! Hello and welcome to the Daily Orbit. I’m Emerald Robinson. The latest space travelers were a little furry and a little scaly. The Russian capsule Bion-M No. 1 containing animals and biological experiments successfully returned to Earth Sunday landing 750 miles south of Moscow. The capsule contained 53 mice, lizards, gerbils, and other small animals. Sadly less than half survived the voyage. The capsule also carried some microflora and plants that also succumbed to the stresses of space travel. Despite the death toll, researchers say they obtained the data they were looking for on how microgravity affects the skeletal and nervous systems and the muscles and heart, which could help pave the way for a manned mission to Mars. The Russian space program hopes to begin construction on a lunar base in 2030 that would be used as part of a flight to Mars. Poor mice, they always get the short end of the stick., even in space! Scientists are looking to our “inner-dolphin” to help the blind and visually impaired. New research has shown the blind could possibly use echolocation, similar to bats and dolphins, to determine the location of an object. Experiments showed that both sighted and blind people with good hearing, even without previous echolocation experience, could successfully find where objects were by use of echoes. Researchers now want to develop echolocation training programs and assistive devices for the blind and for sighted people in low-vision situations. I’ll have to try that the next time I can’t find my glasses in the dark! And speaking of dolphins, two very special dolphins being trained by the US Navy uncovered a 19th Century Howell torpedo that is one of only 50 ever made and one of two in existence. The Navy trains dolphins to detect mines and other underwater objects because of their natural sophisticated sonar ability. The Howell torpedo found is non-functioning due to its underwater tenure but is being cleaned for display at the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington. And from undersea detective dolphins to landmine-sniffing bees—animal instincts are identifying bombs. Now, scientists are using honeybees in the hunt for unexploded landmines in Croatia and areas in the Balkans. De-mining is a major issue for the Croatian government who is set to join the European Union on July 1. During the War of Independence nearly 90,000 landmines were randomly buried with tens of thousands still in existence. Scientists are training the honeybees to detect the mines by mixing traces of TNT with their typical sugary food. But scientists say it’s easy to train one bee; it’s training their colony of thousand becomes a problem. And as summer is right upon us, most of us not so naturally bronzed goddesses are thinking about what kind of sunscreen we should use to protect us. But like so many other things in our lives, our SPF too may be misleading us. A survey of 1,400 sunscreen products did find that most met the December 2012 requirements put in place by the FDA, such as the need to filter out both UVA and UVB rays, as well as a ban of the misleading word “waterproof.” But some bottles still boast a 50-150 SPF which the group says is misleading because at 100-150 SPF, you’re only getting 1-2% more protection. They say this is a manufacturer gimmick and that all anyone needs is an SPF 30 to be reapplied every two hours. So remember all your fair maidens out there, slather on the SPF 30 and have fun in the sun! And that’s all for your Daily Orbit! I’m gonna catch some rays!

What new twist to toothpaste will get you hyped! Attack of the crazy ants! Want to shock your math skills into action? And the moon was a big hit! On the Daily Orbit! Hello and welcome to the Daily Orbit. I’m Emerald Robinson. Is your coffee, soda, Red Bull, or Wrigley’s gum not cutting it on the caffeine front? Well, here’s a way to get more of our favorite drug—caffeine-laden toothbrushes. Colgate-Palmolive has filed a patent for a new toothbrush that could secrete chemicals during brushing. According to the company, caffeine is a “homeopathic teething or inflammation soothing additive.” Teething? I’m pretty sure caffeine is the last thing you want to give a toddler. But it’s not just for caffeine. Chemical releasing patches could provide various flavors or release appetite suppressants or painkillers. Any more caffeinated goodies and I’m going to be totally cracked out. It’s attack of the crazy ants! Like the stuff cheesy B movies are made of—crazy ants are taking over the U.S.’s Gulf Coast. Residents never thought that the native fire ants would be a welcome sight, but this invader out of South America is proving to be a real pest. Although they don’t sting, they are an invasive species, entering people’s homes, nesting within in walls and crawl spaces, and damaging electrical equipment. And lucky for homeowners—they don’t consume most poison baits. Great. In South America, they are kept in control by other types of ants and predators but no such regulators live in the Gulf. Researchers say these invaders could impact the region’s entire biodiversity. Want to give your math skills a shock? Researchers have found that applying random electrical noise to stimulate the part of the brain involved in doing math, can actually boost your math skills. The study found that participants who underwent what is called “transcranial random noise stimulation” saw improved performance on both calculation and learning tasks, which lasted as long as six months. The technique is painless, easy and relatively affordable. They say this could one day be used in the clinic, classrooms, and even the home to help those who struggle with certain cognitive tasks. Hook me up! I could use a little stimulation these days. Well, the Mars Rover Opportunity has taken the lead! Sometimes I forget there’s another rover up there besides Curiosity. Opportunity surpassed the miles traveled record set back in 1972 by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt in their Lunar Roving Vehicle that drove 22.21 miles over a three-day period. Opportunity has traveled a total of 22.22 miles since January 2004, making it the farthest total distance any NASA vehicle has driven on a world other than Earth. But that is just the national record. The Soviet Union holds the international record with a total driving distance of 23 miles with its remote controlled Lunokhod 2 rover that rolled around the surface of the moon in 1973. And to all you armchair astronomers out there—if you weren’t moon-gazing on Friday night, you missed quite a sight! An object the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface and exploded with a flash nearly 10 times brighter than astronomers have seen before, so bright it was visible to the naked eye. But you had to be quick to see it! It lasted only about a second and glowed as bright as a 4th magnitude star. Astronomers believe the meteoroid was about 90 lbs and struck the moon with a force equal to 5 tons of TNT. NASA’s lunar monitoring program helps identify space debris that could pose a threat to the Earth-moon system, and they believe the March 17th impact could be a good candidate for their research. Why do I keep missing all these cool stellar events! Ugh! Well that’s all for the Daily Orbit! See you back here tomorrow!

What is the color of music? Could the “water of life” exist on Mars? A high-tech romance is in the air... And shame on me! On today’s Daily Orbit! “With every beat of my heart—doctors are getting a little closer to a new heart monitor!”  Okay, I thought we’d start Friday off with a little fun but in all seriousness professors have developed a heart monitor thinner than a dollar bill and no wider than a postage stamp.  It is flexible and skin-like and can be worn under an adhesive bandage on the wrist.  It is sensitive enough to help doctors detect stiff arteries and cardiovascular problems.  The fact that it is virtually noninvasive makes it ideal for newborns and high-risk patients who would be at risk of infection from current monitors that are inserted directly into the artery.  Doctors are now working to make it completely wireless, allowing for constant monitoring with data sent directly to your doctor’s cell phone!  Talk about a heart connection with you doc! And when I started out singing that pop song from the 90s what color did you see? Just as music lifts our mood and helps us cope, it colors our world.  A new study from UC Berkeley found that our brains are wired to make music-color connections based upon how the melodies make us feel.  The study conducted in the US and Mexico found that people share a common emotional palette, linking the same pieces of classical orchestral music with the same colors. Participants tended to pair faster-paced music in a major key with lighter, more vivid, yellow colors, whereas slower-paced music in a minor key were more likely to be teamed up with darker, grayer, bluer colors.  Researchers say the findings might have implications for creative therapies, advertising, and more fun music stuff. (soundbyte)  I’m seeing purple- my favorite color. There’s a new Hi-Tech “It-Couple” in town.  Google and NASA have joined a consortium of Universities to form a quantum computing artificial intelligence lab, using the most advanced commercially available quantum computer, the D-Wave Two.  The AI lab will focus on machine learning, which is how computers note patterns and information to improve their outputs.  Google believes quantum computing could improve web search and speech recognition technology and NASA will use it for a lot of stuff like simulating planetary atmospheres. The D-Wave will be installed at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and will be able available to government, industrial, and university research later this year. And maybe NASA can use the D-Wave Two to simulate the possibility that newly found billion-year-old water might indicate life on Mars.  Studying deep pockets of water under Ontario, Canada that have been isolated for billions of years, scientists found abundant chemicals known to support life.  The water was teaming with dissolved gasses like hydrogen, methane, and various isotopes of noble gases such as helium, neon, argon and xenon.  Scientists say that studying this water will give us insight into how microbes evolve in isolation, which is central to the question of the origin of life.  They say that IF there are microbes in the water sample, it will show that life can sustain regardless of how inhospitable surface conditions may be, and will have implications for how we look for life on Mars. “It ain’t my fault!  Did I do that?”  Yes, it is our fault says a new study.  Surprise—scientists think human activity is causing climate change!  Wait, I am wrong but didn’t we already know that?  A team of scientists and citizen scientists from three countries poured over the abstracts of 12,000 scientific papers on climate change published between 1991 and 2011 and it was almost unanimous—well 97% being pretty close—that scientists believe human activity is the naughty culprit behind our changing environment.  I feel like we need to pin a scarlet letter on ourselves and walk around in shame. Well that’s it for the Daily Orbit. (Pin a scarlet letter on) Have a great weekend!

What kind of action is happening on the Red Planet? Have you Googled where has Larry Page been? Bringing down the BAC. And women rule! On today’s Daily Orbit! Hello and welcome to the Daily Orbit. I’m Emerald Robinson. NASA continues to probe the Martian surface. Images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter helped scientists estimate that more than 200 small asteroids or bits of comet hit the Red Planet each year, forming craters at least 12 feet across. A systematic survey of a portion of the planet identified almost 250 fresh craters on the Martian surface in the past decade, leading scientists to extrapolate the 200 per year estimate. The impacts are caused by objects 3 to 6 feet in diameter, which do not burn up in Mars’ thin atmosphere. Images from the fresh craters were taken from MRO’s HiRISE camera, using previous images to bracket where exactly the impacts occurred. One scientist said the research is exciting because “it reminds you Mars is an active planet!” Where has Google’s co-founder Larry Page been? His absence didn’t go unnoticed at least year’s I/O Developers Conference in San Francisco with an “unspecified ailment” given as the excuse. Well, one day before this year’s conference got underway, the Internet mogul took to the medium he knows best to talk about his condition, on his Google+ page. Page has been diagnosed with left vocal cord paralysis, a condition that can make it difficult for him to exercise vigorously, and even speak at full volume; limiting his participation in company events.  But looking on the bright side, Page’s business partner says it probably makes Page a better CEO “because [he] has to choose his words more carefully.”  Way to be positive. We are wishing you all the best Larry Page! And the NTSB is trying to take the BAC down!!!! Literally. The National Transportation Safety Board recommended in a panel this week that states reduce the allowable blood-alcohol concentration by more than one-third, 0.08% to 0.05%, in an attempt to lessen the nearly 10,000 alcohol-related traffic deaths each year. They based their new number on research that showed that cognitive and visual function declines at a BAC of 0.05. What does that translate too? For a 180-pound man that’s two drinks instead of four over the course of an hour. The move is part of an effort to try to eliminate drunk driving, which accounts for 170,000 injuries and costs $66 billion each year. They estimate that 500 to 8000 lives could be saved per year with a lower allowable BAC. If it will save lives, I say, let’s do it! And we keep hearing in the news how science is helping us to live better and longer—case in point Angelina Jolie. Well, here’s another exciting breakthrough for stem cell research-scientists have successfully converted human skin cells into embryonic stem cells which are capable of transforming into any other cell type in the body. This type of stem cell therapy is patient-specific and holds the promise of replacing cells damaged through injury or illnesses such as Parkinson’s, MS, and spinal cord injuries. The new process is a variation of a commonly used method called somatic cell nuclear transfer or SCNT. It involves transplanting the nucleus of one cell with a person’s DNA into an egg cell that has had it genetic material removed. The unfertilized egg cell then develops and eventually produces stem cells. And it’s more ethically acceptable because it doesn’t use fertilized embryos. And women are often called the key to life—but we may also hold the key to a longer life. A new study shows that women tend to live longer than men because we have a superior immune system. Well, we have superior everything, so it just goes to show. A new study out of Japan has found that the levels of white blood cells and other parts of the immune system called cytokines decline faster in men. Why? They believe the female hormone estrogen can boost the immune systems response to infections. During the study, that found that, although white blood cells decreased in both sexes with age, T-cell and B-cell lymphocytes that are involved in fighting off bacterial infections decline faster in men. It’s only fair our immune system ages slower since we get the short end of the stick on aging on the outside! Well that’s it for the Daily Orbit! See you tomorrow!

Mr. Space Oddity himself has made a safe return to Earth. What music fits your mood? What do gator teeth and human teeth have in common? And a robot is serving up drinks on today’s Daily Orbit! Hello and welcome to the Daily Orbit. I’m Emerald Robinson. After 146 days in space and rocking out at the International Space Station, Commander Chris Hadfield and his Expedition 35 crew safely landed in Kazakhstan Monday evening. Hadfield relinquished command to Russian cosmonaut Paul Vinogradov, who is now commander of the Expedition 36 team. The astronauts brought back a test with them that looked at how gasses and liquids come together and separate in space. The experiment could lead to improvements in the shelf-life of household products, food and medicine. Saturday before their return, the two other astronauts had to conduct a spacewalk that lasted 5 and a half hours to fix an ammonia leak that NASA is reporting was successful. Good job team. And Commander Paul, you have a lot to live up to! The public now expects some creativity and regular tweets from the ISS! Maybe Commander Chris was trying to cope with the ending of his space journey with his rendition of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” that has set the web on fire. Because, well, that’s what we humans do according to new research—we use music to help lift our spirits or enable us to better cope. One study found that we seek solace in sad music that provides an aesthetic experience. When we’re frustrated, angry music suits us, and happy music can help pick us up out of a funk. Listening to upbeat music improves mood, which improves happiness. But conversely, listening to slow music can bring your mood down. You know, I’m going to have to make sure my Spotify isn’t linked to my Facebook anymore since music is a dead giveaway! Don’t you think so many more people would go green energy for their home if you could just simply “paint-on” solar panels? Well, that’s what a team at the University at Buffalo is looking to develop. The team is looking to use organic carbon-based polymers and small molecules to make solar panels. The photovoltaic cells will produce more power and cost less than current solar panels and are processed in liquid form that allows them to just be painted on surfaces. But they are not quite ready yet. Due to their thinness, the photovoltaic cells have poor electronic conductivity, limiting their optical absorption. The team hopes to get them up to at least 10% power conversion efficiency to make them competitive in today’s market. Come on guys! You’re so close! All of those gator catching reality shows down south make gator teeth look pretty scary! But one scientist says alligator teeth can benefit human teeth! It’s not like they’re going to implant them in your mouth but they are studying how gators can regenerate their teeth at least 50 times during their life. Although humans have the appropriate material to make more teeth in the future, our bodies just don’t as too many unlucky dudes in a bar fight have found out. Scientists want to identify stem cells that can be used as a resource to stimulate tooth renewal in adult humans who have lost teeth and they hope the alligator will provide clues into how it does just that! Well, if you haven’t gotten excited about cheetah-bot or turtle-bot or the robot that can rock it Gagnum Style—I bet this one will peak your interest! Engineers have developed a three-armed robot called “Makr Shakr” to mix drinks! With a few taps of a smartphone, the robot begins mixing libations. And he keeps it classy—serving it up in a plastic cup. A specially designed app lets patrons share their drink concoctions with others—complete with pics of course! The Makr Shakr can slice a lemon, shake a martini, and multi-task, keeping a running queue of what’s next—ohhh so it’s a female robot! And like a true friend, this robot won’t let you drive drunk. It measures consumption and blood alcohol levels and it will just cut you off. Try arguing with a robot—probably won’t work out so well. Well, that’s all for today’s Daily Orbit! Give me a beat ! An up beat!

One astronaut gets creative on the ISS. Rolls-Royce and the Bloodhound are on the hunt for a new record. Buggin’ out over world hunger. And losing our mind for technology on today’s Daily Orbit! Hello and welcome to the Daily Orbit, I’m Emerald Robinson. Well, if you haven’t seen this video yet—I don’t know what rock you’ve been hiding under! During his five months aboard the International Space Station, Canadian astronaut and Commander of Expedition 35, Chris Hadfield, has done some cool stuff like talking to William Shatner and being active on social media. But this time he’s topped it with a music video of his own rendition of David Bowie’s classic “Space Oddity.” And he gave it his own spin with modified lyrics referring to the Soyuz capsule in which he returned to Earth on Monday. He recorded the vocals in space, and some Earthlings added the piano and other musical instruments. I love when the guitar goes floating through the space station. This is the last space mission for the Canadian government due to budget cuts. Way to go out with a bang Chris! I love an astronaut with a sense of humor! What do you get when you put Rolls-Royce and a Bloodhound together? A really, really super-fast car! Rolls-Royce has announced its support of the jet-engine powered Bloodhound SuperSonic Car in an attempt to break the 1,000 mph World Land Speed Record. Rolls-Royce is providing the supercar with an EJ200 jet engine, typically found in a Eurofighter-Typhoon combat aircraft. It will reach speeds of 350 mph before igniting a rocket motor to take it supersonic. Wing Commander Andy Green will be in the driver’s seat to make the record-breaking attempt at a desert site in South Africa. And in an attempt to promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in education, they’re encouraging students to join in on the fun by having their names inscribed on the fin of the vehicle for just 10 British pounds. Also over 5,500 schools have signed up for Bloodhound themed lessons. Reps from Rolls say that promoting education is vital to keeping the UK at the forefront of global business. Feel bad about paying $15 for a burger at one of those gourmet burger joints? Try $325,000. That’s how much a Professor from the Netherlands says his test tube beef patties cost to make. The in-vitro burger (yeah that sounds real appetizing) is made from 100% beef products. Stem cells were harvested in the neck of a cow on its way to slaughter, then grown in fetal calf serum and other material used to recreate tissue. Yummy…ugh gag me! The flavor, well as you would suspect, not so great but the professor wants to reduce the world’s dependence on beef and says the test tube burger is simply the first step towards a solution for a possible-food shortage crisis. The burger will be served at a London event next month to a few lucky chosen guinea pigs. Yeah, I’d probably have to add a lot of ketchup to that burger to wolf it down. I might rather eat a bug than one of those burgers. [ bug tossed into scene ] Ahhh!! I was just kidding! But a new report says that creepy crawlers are an underutilized source of food in the battle against worldwide hunger. Researchers say that certain insects could be cultivated more efficiently as a food source. Insects are a good source of protein and 2 billion people worldwide already eat 1,900 insect species. But don’t panic. Researchers aren’t saying go out and eat a bug. They’re saying that it’s an untapped resource, but more research needs to be done on its safety. [ taking a bite ] Don’t knock it til ya try it I guess! And researchers say that dementia and deaths related to dementia are on the rise thanks to obesity and technology. A new UK study revealed that mid-life obesity doubles the risk of dementia and that nearly half of all men and 31% of women will be obese by 2050. By that time, they say 7% of those 65 plus will suffer from dementia. Another US study found a drastic increase in dementia-related deaths in people under the age of 74. They attribute the rise in dementia to environmental and social changes like the explosion of electronic devices causing a rise in background non-ionizing radiation like our PCs, microwaves, TVs, cell phones along with all the pollution, food additives, and so forth. They say you can’t change your age but you can change your lifestyle to help combat the risk of dementia. And we want to just follow up on yesterday’s report from NOAA that carbon dioxide levels had passed 400 parts per million. A revised reading actually put average levels for the week of May 9th at 399.89 ppm, just under 400, but still up from last year’s average. And that’s all for your Daily Orbit. Take it away Chris!

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Skylab. An unlikely treatment for lower back pain. And the Navy’s new pet “Tiger.” All that and more coming up on the Daily Orbit! Hello and welcome to the Daily Orbit. I’m Emerald Robinson. Today marks the 40th anniversary of the US space station that helped to pave the way for the International Space Station. Skylab first launched on May 14, 1973 with the first 3 astronauts spending 28 days in orbit followed by two other missions. The Skylab served as a solar observatory, a microgravity lab, a medical lab, an Earth-observing facility, and home for the astronauts. It led to new technologies like special showers, sleeping bags, and kitchen equipment to function in microgravity. But its work was cut short when the Skylab reentered the Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated on July 11, 1979. NASA commemorated the event today with a televised roundtable discussion at the James Webb Auditorium of NASA Headquarters in D.C. And the US Naval Research Laboratory has bested themselves! They broke their own endurance record with their fuel cell powered Ion Tiger Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. The UAV flew for 48 hours and one minute using liquid hydrogen fuel in a new cryogenic fuel storage tank and delivery system. Their previous record was 26 hours and two minutes set in 2009 using the same vehicle. The team said they were able to complete a longer duration flight with the liquid hydrogen because it is three times denser than 5000-psi hydrogen. Using liquid hydrogen to power unmanned aircraft is more efficient and reliable than hydrocarbon-fuel systems and provides longer flight than battery-powered systems. This aircraft could be used in providing forest fire information and to ensure unaffected communication between soldiers in mountainous terrain. And my personal favorite—to track pirates off the Horn of Africa. Arrrgghhhh! Do you suffer from lower back pain? You might be surprised by what the doctor could soon prescribe for that. A new study found that 40% of chronic lower back pain is actually caused by bacteria and antibiotics resulted in a significant amount of relief and increased quality of life for sufferers. The study is ground-breaking but researchers say more research needs to be done to verify the effects. But one neurologist is already pretty excited and said, “It is the stuff of Nobel prizes.” That’s a big statement! And in slightly less exciting news, NOAA has announced that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have reached an all-time high in human history. NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii is reading levels surpassing 400 parts per million, which experts say hasn’t happened on Earth for about 3 million years. To get some perspective, levels of CO2 were around 280 parts per million during the Industrial Revolution, when we started releasing sizable amounts of the pollutant into the atmosphere. This news comes on the heels of an effort by a group of scientists to track the carbon footprints of some of the world’s largest cities to make sure they’re meeting emissions standards. They will utilize data from pre-existing sensors in major cities like Los Angeles and Paris, as well as install their own gas analyzers. While scientists say this milestone level of carbon dioxide wasn’t unexpected, they hope this serves as a red flag to “jolt governments into action.” And as if that news wasn’t scary enough, scientists are saying that if global temperatures rise an additional 2 degrees Celsius, there will be a major impact on our ecosystems. Studying just under 50,000 common plant and animal species, scientists found that a 2 degree rise would result in the loss of half of the habitat for 34 percent of all animal species and 57 percent of plant species. Not only would this greatly reduce the biodiversity of even the most common species, but scientists say “there will also be a knock-on effect for humans because these species are important for things like water and air purification, flood control, nutrient cycling, and eco-tourism.” But not all is lost. They say by preventing the rise in temperature within the next three years, we can curb this habitat loss by as much as 60 percent. Ok, I think we’re running out of excuses not to act! Well that’s all for the Daily Orbit. See you tomorrow Orbiters!

Why does the moon have water? The tale of a rock-star. Finding evidence of Atlantis. And why pets are good for the heart! On today’s Daily Orbit! Hello and welcome to the Daily Orbit. I’m Emerald Robinson. Looks like the moon got water from its Mother Earth. Though still dry compared to Earth, lunar rock samples contain a surprising amount of water. It’s been long believed that the moon formed when a large object collided with the still-forming Earth, ejecting massive amounts of material into space and eventually forming the moon. Scientists thought that any amount of water would have evaporated from the ejected material following the large impact, but not so. By studying the ratio of hydrogen to deuterium in volcanic glass from the lunar rocks, which act as sort of a fingerprint, they found Earth and the moon share the same ratio. So simply put, “there was water on the proto-earth at the time of the giant impact. Some survived the impact, and that’s what we see in the Moon.” Here’s a story about a rock-star—no I mean rocky star! The Hubble Telescope has found the building blocks of Earth-like planets in an unlikely place—around dead stars. Hubble spotted planets surrounding two white dwarfs 150 light-years from here in the constellation Taurus. The dwarf stars are being polluted by asteroid debris falling on them, which suggests that rocky-planet assembly may be common around these stars. Astronomers say studying these systems might give us insight into what could happen in our own system in 5 billion years from now. And explorers say they have found a piece of Atlantis. Okay before you get too excited like I did at first, they’re calling it the “Brazilian Atlantis.” A joint expedition between Brazil and Japan was commissioned to assess the mineral potential of the region known as the Rio Grande Rise. They found a piece of granite on the seafloor 900 miles off the coast of Rio di Janeiro that they believe was part of a continent that disappeared nearly a hundred million years ago when Africa and South America separated. Researchers said that calling it the “Brazilian Atlantis” is “more in terms of symbolism.” But if they do find a continent in the middle of the ocean, “it will be a big discovery that could have various implications in relation to the extension of the continental shelf.” Just talking about Brazil makes me want to Samba! And moving on up the globe, scientists say an ice-free Arctic may be in Earth’s future. Studying the longest sediment core ever collected from the oldest and deepest lake in the Russian Arctic, scientists say they were able to read the Arctic’s climate history like a “detective novel.” The undisturbed sediment record revealed that the Arctic was very warm 3.6 to 2.2 million years ago when CO2 levels weren’t much higher than they are today, which tells us a little about where we may be headed. Researchers say this coincides with other research showing that there was a 1.2 million year period where the West Antarctic Ice Sheet didn’t exist at all. So the Arctic was once green and forested and could likely be again one day! You should thank your little furry friend for keeping your heart healthy. New research from the American Heart Association says that owning a pet—especially a dog—could reduce your risk of developing heart disease. The study showed that pet owners were more physically active because they walked their pets; dog owners alone were 54% more likely to get their recommended level of physical activity. The report showed that pets could be associated with lower blood pressure, decreased cholesterol, and a lower obesity rate. Hmmm… I can’t have pets in my place… Anyone want me to walk your dog? And that’s all for today’s Daily Orbit! Have a great weekend!

Virgin Galactic gets a new roommate. Making a Martian Colony Survivor Style. What a nose on that robot. We’re going nuts! On today’s Daily Orbit! Hello and welcome to the Daily Orbit. I’m Emerald Robinson. SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are going to be roommates. SpaceX has signed a 3-year deal to lease land and facilities at New Mexico’s ‘Spaceport America,’ where Virgin Galactic also currently calls home. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority has been readying the world’s first commercial spaceport, and they hope the addition of SpaceX will open the door for even more commercial tenants. SpaceX plans to begin their next phase of development for their reusable rocket program at the new site. The company said that the facility has the physical and regulatory landscape needed to complete the next phase of testing for their Grasshopper vehicle. A little roomie advice guys, put the lid back on the gas tank. And who would like to be my roommate on Mars? Mars One, an organization seeking to establish a human settlement says it has received over 78,000 applications in just two weeks from over 120 countries around the world. Mars One hopes to establish a permanent settlement on the Red Planet in 2023. And almost like a game of Survivor, applicants have to make it through four rounds to be selected, followed by 7 years of training. Want in the running? You’ve got until August 31 to get your application in! [ filling out application ] “Do you get motion sickness?” If I check yes do you think that hurts my chances? [ alarm ] “Emergency, Emergency—your breath sticks. Please grab a mint quickly.” Leave it to the Japanese to develop a robot to detect bad breath and body odor. The two new automatons—a female humanoid and a dog robot—utilize artificial olfaction sensors, or electronic noses, to detect foul odor. The female humanoid, Kaori, declares “emergency” if your breath stinks. Ouch! And the dog, Shuntaro, growls when it detects stinky feet. Why make robots like this? The engineer said he wanted to make a robot that could make people smile and laugh again after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. [ growling dog ] That is pretty funny. Talk about being hard headed! A teams of scientists have identified a new species of dog-sized bone-headed dinosaur that dates back over 85 million years. Studying two skull “caps” found in Alberta, Canada, the team says that the Acrotholus walked on two legs and had a thickened, dome skull above its eyes, which was used for display to other members of its species. Scientists say it may have used its head in head-butting contests. What a bonehead! The skulls are resistant to destruction and scientists say they will help reveal a few more details about the evolution of bone-headed dinosaurs and they feel like there are many new small dino species like Acrotholus waiting to be discovered! Well get to it! Because we love our dino news! And I’m going nuts over this next story—walnuts! New research found walnuts to be one of the healthiest nuts out there. We’ve known for a while the health benefits of eating nuts, like lower blood cholesterol and getting your fatty acid intake, but the new study found that both the whole walnut and its extracted oil are beneficial. They found whole walnuts helps HDL, or good cholesterol, remove excess cholesterols from the body. And it works in as fast as 30 minutes! They also found that the oil in walnuts maintains blood vessel function after you eat, which is often compromised in those with cardiovascular disease. Other components of walnuts play a role in heart health and researchers say they are a good addition to a heart healthy diet. Well, that’s it for the Daily Orbit. Remember to eat your walnuts for your heart!

A manned mission to Mars coming soon? Maybe. NASA is looking a little green. They’re coming! Who’s that exactly? We’ll let you know. And two is better than one on today’s Daily Orbit! Hello and welcome to the Daily Orbit. I’m Emerald Robinson. Our favorite Martian Man is at again, talking about well, Martian men or men on Mars at least. At the Humans to Mars Summit at George Washington University on Monday, Charles Bolden spoke about the growing interest to send humans to Mars by the 2030s, saying NASA’s entire program is “aligned to support this goal.” They are using the space station as a testing bed for technologies and systems for future manned Mars missions. Thinking about your own cosmic career? NASA had the second highest number of applicants ever last year with over 6,300 aspiring astronauts. Only 20 will make the cut and from that three will be trained for long duration space flight i.e. one to Mars. Sorry Bolden, but SpaceX’s Elon Musk plans to one up—sending to people to Mars in the 2020s. Sounds like a great Celebrity Death Match to me! NASA is going green! NASA announced it plans to switch to a greener, environmentally-benign rocket fuel by 2015. Hydrazine has been the propellant of choice due to its ability to produce lots of energy and hot gas from little liquid, but it’s highly toxic, highly volatile, and has limited capacity. So NASA is refining a new energetic ionic liquid propellant, or EIL, known for thermal stability and extremely low vapor pressure—making it good for rocket fuel. Scientists with NASA say that as EIL-propellants are developed, they will provide lower cost and safe propulsion systems operations along with greater mission flexibility and faster mission response times. “It’s the year of the cicadas!” Everyone keeps saying this to me since my recent move to the East Coast. “What is that?” They’ve been sleeping for 17 years and they’re ready to rise and storm the East Coast from Georgia to Connecticut. There’s no escape from these relatively harmless, cricket-like insects that are expected to outnumber us humans 600 to one. They will be leaving their hiding places once the ground reaches precisely 64 degrees F, to procreate and alas die, leaving a horde of carcasses behind. The mating song will fill the air with loud buzzing. This group’s name “Brood II,” is one of seven different species of periodical cicadas. So watch out “they’re coming.” Two is better than one, don’t you think? And that’s definitely the case when NASA maps volcanoes. The agency’s Landsat Data Continuity Mission satellite’s two instruments—the Operational Land Imager and Thermal Infrared Sensor were able to work in concert to provide insight on the Pacific’s Paluweh volcano in mid-eruption. The Imager also picked up the white-hot speck in the volcano’s caldera, which shows the volcanic activity. Scientists were able to image very diverse thermal activity with great detail. One researcher said, "Each instrument by itself is magnificent but when you put them together”…”it's greater than either could do by themselves." Didn’t you think we’d be cruising around George Jetson style by now? Yeah, me too! Well, maybe we’re getting closer. The company Terrafugia already developed the world’s first flying car years ago although it’s not yet in production. They are now moving on to the possibility of a four-seat, vertical takeoff and landing hybrid-electric flying car called the TF-X. It kinda resembles a helicopter and employs state-of-the-art intelligent systems, fly by wire controls and currently available technology to increase simplicity and safety in personal aviation. The company says it is nearing production of its first flying car, the Transition, which already has 100 orders at $279,000 a pop. So if the TF-X is a hybrid, can I park it at a meter for free? If so, I’m in—I can’t get any more parking tickets! And that does it for the Orbit today Orbiters!

Bidding on the beat of an All-American heart. Wind or water—more Mars secrets revealed. Where have the hanging gardens of Babylon been hanging around?  Not where you think! And science says go away gray hair on today’s Daily Orbit! Hello and welcome to the Daily Orbit.  I’m Emerald Robinson. Can I get $1000—What’s up for grabs on the auction block?  Well, it’s not your typical piece of art, but valuable all the same.  A New Hampshire auction house is about to begin offering a collection of over 800 historical space and aviation artifacts, including the electrocardiogram of Neil Armstrong’s heartbeat taken when he first stepped onto the moon from Apollo 11 in July 1969.  The RR Auction house will accept online bids from May 16 through May 23 for the full space auction.  One scientist pointed out how steady and slow Armstrong’s heartbeat looks in contrast to his fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin whose heart was a racin’!  Um most peoples’ would be.  They said it’s “typical of Neil….he was just that cool.” Well, scientists’ hopes that Mars’ Mount Sharp would reveal clues to a large body of water are blowing in the wind.   Actually wind being the key word.  They say that the 3.5 mile high mountain actually formed from wind instead of a large lake like they had previously thought.  They say the winds rise out of Gale Crater when the Martian surface warms during the day, then sweep back down its steep walls at night.  These “slope winds” eventually died down at the crater’s center where the fine dust in the air settled and accumulated to help form Mount Sharp.  Curiosity will be determining origins of already discovered clay, water molecules and organic compounds in the next few months but scientists say Mount Sharp isn’t likely to provide watery clues since it’s formed of dust.  So for those of you who were ‘Team Water’—sorry. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon have long mystified generations with their legend—but leaving us to wonder are they simply just that—legend?  However, historian Dr. Stephanie Dalley with Oxford University says they did exist and she knows where.  Her theory puts the gardens actually not in Babylon at all, but 300 miles north in Nineveh, and not built by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon but the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib.  She believes the Assyrians built the gardens in the north of Mesopotamia, in modern Iraq, rather than by their enemies the Babylonians.  Dalley came to her conclusions by deciphering cuneiform scripts and reinterpreting Greek and Roman texts, but to get the full story we’ll all have to wait for her book to be published next month.  I can’t wait! Meet HERB—Carnegie Mellon’s Robotic Institute’s new robot.  And HERB is pretty smart, because unlike most other robots, he can analyze and learn about new objects.  Using Kinect sensors, HERB can discover more than 100 objects in a home-like laboratory, so it can recognize the objects its needs to manipulate.  He is called the “Home-Exploring Robot Builder” -  Hence the name, HERB.  Researchers hope one day these robots will function as an assistive device for people, doing thing like fetching objects and microwaving meals. Say bye-bye to gray with new PC-KUS!  While it doesn’t sound as glamorous as some of the gray remedies on the market, this new topical, UVB activated compound could take care of gray from the source!  Researchers say the accumulation of hydrogen peroxide in the hair follicles causes the hair to bleach from the inside out—resulting in gray.  And it works for vitiligo—the skin condition marked by depigmentation of patches of the skin—the most well-known case was that of Michael Jackson.  So bye-bye gray…thank you researchers and whew just in time! And that’s all for your Daily Orbit!  How can I get some of that stuff?  Because I’m worth it!

Has a hundred year old mystery been solved? Mind over robots? RoboBees have lifted off! And honoring Tesla, on today’s Daily Orbit! Hello and welcome to the Daily Orbit. I’m Emerald Robinson. Well Saturn is making headlines again this week, as researchers say they finally understand how the gas giant’s magnetosphere changes with the seasons. Why is this interesting? Scientists say this provides an important clue in understanding the planet’s radio signal, which was once thought to be able to give an accurate measurement to the length of a Saturn day. The new results could also help scientists better understand variations in the Earth’s magnetosphere and the Van Allen radiation belts, which both affect things like spaceflight and cell service. Hey, I’m all about research that keeps my cell service in tact! A blast lit up the sky in 1908, the force of which was a thousand times greater than the Hiroshima bomb and took out 80 million trees in an 800 square mile area. This has been known as the Tunguska Event. No one really knew the culprit—until now that is. One scientist in Russia says that among rock samples he took from that area more than 20 years ago, three rocks are not “earthly” in origin. He claims they are characteristic of meteorites with evidence of melting and regmalypts, impressions typically caused by ablation as a rock falls through the atmosphere. He concludes a comet or asteroid collided with Earth that day. He named his three rocks “dental crown”, “whale” and “boat.” Which is which? You be the judge! And one of the most famous scientists of the twentieth century is being honored by what better than a science learning center and museum. Friends of Science East, Inc. partnered with the online comic Matthew Inman of TheOatmeal.com, to raise enough money via crowdsourcing to purchase Wardenclyffe—the site in Shoreham, New York, where scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla planned to build his wireless communications and energy transmission tower in the early 1900s. Due to financial woes, Tesla’s dream was never realized. Known for his contributions to radio and electricity, Tesla’s eccentricity earned him a “mad scientist” title. However, supporters of Tesla dream to restore the Wardenclyffe site laboratory and continue on Tesla’s legacy. They say they’ll need $10 million to complete the project and are calling on science lovers for contributions. And as a robotics enthusiast himself, Tesla would have loved this next story! Engineers at Harvard have had their own robotic dreams come true—creating a flying insect robot known as RoboBee! The team has been working more than a decade on this robot that is half the size of a paperclip, weighs less than a tenth a gram, and can flap its wings 120 times per second. The bug-bot currently has to be tethered to an energy source to fly, and high energy-density fuel cells must be developed before the RoboBees will be able to fly with much independence. Researchers say these tiny flying robots could one day help with environmental monitoring and crop pollination. And I loved what one engineer had to say—“it’s about the excitement of pushing the limits of what we think we can, the limits of human ingenuity.” Well, said Mr. Scientist! And here’s another one the mad scientist would have loved—manipulating robots with your mind. Students at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology are making all kinds of advancements in robotics. One Master’s student says he can control a robot with movements of his eyes, eyebrows, and other parts of his face by hooking himself up to an EEG machine where electrodes read the activity of the brain and send a message to the robot to move in a pre-defined way. Another team is working on controlling a robot with arm movements alone, attempting to train it to imitate human movements using the Kinect camera. And one supervisor at the University has developed a three-fingered grasper to improve robots’ effectiveness in the manufacturing industry. So much Mr. Tesla would have loved!!! Well that does it for the Daily Orbit! I feel like we should all do the Robot!

What's in an asteroid's name? What's more inspiring than Mother Nature? Solving the 20 year old mystery of the “Cave of Death.” And it's a material world on today's Daily Orbit! Hello and welcome to the Daily Orbit. I'm Emerald Robinson. What is in a name?—to quote Shakespeare. Well when it comes to asteroid 101955 1999 RQ36 it's complicated. NASA's OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft will launch in 2016 and touch down on said asteroid in 2018 to return samples to Earth in 2023 so we can learn more about the origins of our solar system. But that name? No! So NASA held a contest to rename it. And who won? A 9 year old boy from North Carolina name Michael Puzio who coined the name Bennu, after the soul of the Egyptian sun-god Ra, because he said OSIRIS-Rex resembled the drawings of Bennu. I can see the resemblance. Puzio said in response to his win “It's great! I'm the first kid I know that named part of the solar system!” Congrats Michael! Kids are so creative! And scientists are having to get creative in their Martian meteorite studies. A team of scientists is looking at a billion year old meteorite from Mars found in the Miller Range of Antarctica in 2003. This nakhlite meteorite is the size of a tennis ball and weighs 1.5 pounds. Their question--does the meteorite show that Mars could once sustain life? The rock shows habitable signatures, like water, but then it has been in a habitable environment here on Earth. However, they say their contribution to the research is “to provide additional depth and a little broader view than some work has done before in sorting out those two kinds of water-related alterations—the ones that happened on Earth and the ones that happened on Mars.” Good luck with that! Mother Nature is inspiring man yet again. Engineers are looking to the tail of the seahorse for a new robotic arm design. The seahorse tail is unique in that it can be compressed to nearly 50% of itself without damage thanks to connective tissue between the tail's bony plates and tail muscles that absorb the bulk of the pressure resulting from the displacement. They have varying plate sizes and degrees of hardness with joints that either glide or pivot. Engineers say that 3D printing technology could possibly be used to create a unique hybrid robotic arm that uses both hard and soft robotic devices inspired by the structure of the seahorse tail. The arm could be used medically, for underwater exploration, as well as detecting and detonating bombs. “We're living in a material world and I am a material girl!” Although one of my fav songs from the 80s—it's all too true of today's teens a new study shows. Researchers drew from a national survey of high school students conducted from 1976-2007 that focused on their willingness to work hard and the perceived importance of having lots of money and material goods. Results showed that the majority of recent grads believed it was important to have a lot of money, a house, and goodies as opposed to grads in the 70s. On the flip side, 39% of recent students admitted to not wanting to work hard whereas only 25% did in the 70s. Trends showed a peak in this “want-more-but-don't-want-to-work-hard” attitude in the 80s and 90s that has continued through present day. Interestingly, that's when advertising spending rose, leading researchers to believe that the rise in ads contributed to this attitude. It's always the media…geez. Come enter the “Cave of Death...” Well the cave of death isn't so deadly anymore but many carnivores between 9 and 10 million years ago didn't make it out. After studying 6,700 of the 18,000 well-preserved fossils found there, scientists believed that these meat-eaters were in search of prey or water and couldn't make their way out. Up until now the lack of herbivores had puzzled them but they said the clearly visible opening wouldn't have appealed to animals looking for vegetation. They say that sediment deposits from water brought an end to the cave's deadly reign and worked to preserve the fossils. And that is the story of the “Cave of Death!” Well that's all for the Deadly.. I mean Daily Orbit.

York UK (SPX) May 13, 2013 - An international team of physicists, including researchers from the Universities of York and St. Andrews, has demonstrated that chaos can beat order - at least as far as light storage is concerned.

In a collaboration led by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia, the researchers deformed mirrors in order to disrupt the regular light path in an optical cavity and, surprisingly, the resulting chaotic light paths allowed more light to be stored than with ordered paths.

The work has important applications for many branches of physics and technology, such as quantum optics and processing optical signals over the internet, where light needs to be stored for short periods to facilitate logical operations and to enhance light-matter interactions.

Solar cells may also benefit, as trapping more light in them improves their ability to generate electricity. The longer light is contained in the solar cell, the greater the chance that it will be absorbed and create electricity.

The research, which is reported in Nature Photonics, involved a study of optical cavities - also known as optical resonators - and their ability to store light. Optical cavities typically store light by bouncing it many times between sets of suitable mirrors.

Thomas Krauss, an Anniversary Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of York, said: "Our teenage children have known it all along, but now there is scientific proof - chaotic systems really are superior to ordered ones. Even very simple cavities, such as glass spheres show the effect: when the spheres were squashed, they stored more light than the regular spheres."

The researchers demonstrated a six-fold increase of the energy stored inside a chaotic cavity in comparison to a classical counterpart of the same volume.

Dr Andrea Di Falco, from the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St. Andrews, said: "The concept behind broadband chaotic resonators for light harvesting applications is very profound and complex. I find it fascinating that while we used state-of-the-art fabrication techniques to prove it, this idea can in fact be easily applied to the simplest of systems."

The project, which also involved researchers from Bologna University, Italy, was initiated by Professor Andrea Fratalocchi from KAUST, Saudi Arabia, who also developed the theory behind chaotic energy harvesting. Professor Fratalocchi said: "Chaos, disorder and unpredictability are ubiquitous phenomena that pervade our existence and are the result of the never-ending evolution of Nature.

The majority of our systems try to avoid these effects, as we commonly assume that chaos diminishes the performance of existing devices. The focus of my research, conversely, is to show that disorder can be used as a building block for a novel, low-cost and scalable technology that outperforms current systems by orders of magnitude.

"I am extremely happy about the enthusiastic reviews and the very positive editorial comments we received from Nature Photonics, who very much appreciate the novelty of this research. Thanks to the research grant obtained by KAUST for this project, I am now pursuing a programme of studies relating to commercial devices that can benefit from this work."

Professor Krauss, who moved to York from the University of St. Andrews last year, added: "Besides the obvious implications at the fundamental level, where we demonstrate the existence of a fundamental principle of thermodynamics in the framework of Photonics, our results also have real-world practical implications.

"The cost of many semiconductor devices, such as LEDs and solar cells, is determined to a significant extent by the cost of the material. We show that the functionality of a given geometry, here exemplified by the energy that can be trapped in the system, can be enhanced up to six-fold by changing the shape alone, i.e. without increasing the amount of material and without increasing the material costs."

The study was enabled by funds made available from KAUST University through Professor Fratalocchi's Research Grant 'Optics and Plasmonics for efficient energy harvesting' (Award No. CRG-1-2012-FRA-005), and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through the UK Silicon Photonics project and Dr Di Falco's EPSRC Fellowship (EP/ I004602/1).

 

Paris (ESA) May 10, 2013 - ESA's Herschel space observatory has made detailed observations of surprisingly hot molecular gas that may be orbiting or falling towards the supermassive black hole lurking at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy.

Our local black hole is located in a region known as Sagittarius A* - Sgr A* - after a nearby radio source. It has a mass about four million times that of our Sun and lies around 26 000 light-years away from the Solar System.

Even at that distance, it is a few hundred times closer to us than any other galaxy with an active black hole at its centre, making it the ideal natural laboratory to study the environment around these enigmatic objects.

Vast amounts of dust lie in the plane of the Milky Way between here and its centre, obscuring our view at visible wavelengths. But at far-infrared wavelengths, it is possible to peer through the dust, affording Herschel's scientists the chance to study the turbulent innermost region of our Galaxy in great detail.

Herschel has detected a great variety of simple molecules at the Milky Way's heart, including carbon monoxide, water vapour and hydrogen cyanide. By analysing the signature from these molecules, astronomers have been able to probe some of the fundamental properties of the interstellar gas surrounding the black hole.

"Herschel has resolved the far-infrared emission within just 1 light-year of the black hole, making it possible for the first time at these wavelengths to separate emission due to the central cavity from that of the surrounding dense molecular disc," says Javier Goicoechea of the Centro de Astrobiologia, Spain, and lead author of the paper reporting the results.

The biggest surprise was quite how hot the molecular gas in the innermost central region of the Galaxy gets. At least some of it is around 1000+ C, much hotter than typical interstellar clouds, which are usually only a few tens of degrees above the -273+ C of absolute zero.

While some of the heating is down to the fierce ultraviolet radiation pouring from a cluster of massive stars that live very close to the Galactic Centre, they are not enough to explain the high temperatures alone.

In addition to the stellar radiation, Dr Goicoechea's team hypothesise that emission from strong shocks in highly-magnetised gas in the region may be a significant contributor to the high temperatures. Such shocks can be generated in collisions between gas clouds, or in material flowing at high speed from stars and protostars.

"The observations are also consistent with streamers of hot gas speeding towards Sgr A*, falling towards the very centre of the Galaxy," says Dr Goicoechea. "Our Galaxy's black hole may be cooking its dinner right in front of Herschel's eyes."

Just before material falls into a black hole, it is heated up enormously and can cause high-energy X-ray and gamma-ray flares. While Sgr A* currently shows little sign of such activity, this could change soon.

Using near-infrared observations, other astronomers have spotted a separate, compact cloud of gas amounting to just a few Earth masses spiralling towards the black hole. Located much closer to the black hole than the reservoir of material studied by Herschel in this work, it may finally be gobbled up later this year.

Spacecraft including ESA's XMM-Newton and Integral will be waiting to spot any high-energy burps as the black hole enjoys its feast.

"The centre of the Milky Way is a complex region, but with these Herschel observations, we have taken an important step forward in our understanding of the vicinity of a supermassive black hole, which will ultimately help improve our picture of galaxy evolution," says Goran Pilbratt, ESA's Herschel project scientist.

"Herschel Far-Infrared Spectroscopy of the Galactic Center. Hot Molecular Gas: Shocks versus Radiation near Sgr A*" by J.R. Goicoechea et al., is published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, 7 May 2013.

 

Ann Arbor MI (SPX) May 10, 2013 - An international team of physicists has found the first direct evidence of pear shaped nuclei in exotic atoms. The findings could advance the search for a new fundamental force in nature that could explain why the Big Bang created more matter than antimatter - -a pivotal imbalance in the history of everything.

"If equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created at the Big Bang, everything would have annihilated, and there would be no galaxies, stars, planets or people," said Tim Chupp, a University of Michigan professor of physics and biomedical engineering and co-author of a paper on the work published in the May 9 issue of Nature.

Antimatter particles have the same mass but opposite charge from their matter counterparts. Antimatter is rare in the known universe, flitting briefly in and out of existence in cosmic rays, solar flares and particle accelerators like CERN's Large Hadron Collider, for example. When they find each other, matter and antimatter particles mutually destruct or annihilate.

What caused the matter/antimatter imbalance is one of physics' great mysteries. It's not predicted by the Standard Model - -the overarching theory that describes the laws of nature and the nature of matter.

The Standard Model describes four fundamental forces or interactions that govern how matter behaves: Gravity attracts massive bodies to one another. The electromagnetic interaction gives rise to forces on electrically charged bodies. And the strong and weak forces operate in the cores of atoms, binding together neutrons and protons or causing those particles to decay.

Physicists have been searching for signs of a new force or interaction that might explain the matter-antimatter discrepancy. The evidence of its existence would be revealed by measuring how the axis of nuclei of the radioactive elements radon and radium line up with the spin.

The researchers confirmed that the cores of these atoms are shaped like pears, rather than the more typical spherical orange or elliptical watermelon profiles. The pear shape makes the effects of the new interaction much stronger and easier to detect.

"The pear shape is special," Chupp said. "It means the neutrons and protons, which compose the nucleus, are in slightly different places along an internal axis."

The pear-shaped nuclei are lopsided because positive protons are pushed away from the center of the nucleus by nuclear forces, which are fundamentally different from spherically symmetric forces like gravity.

"The new interaction, whose effects we are studying does two things," Chupp said. "It produces the matter/antimatter asymmetry in the early universe and it aligns the direction of the spin and the charge axis in these pear-shaped nuclei."

To determine the shape of the nuclei, the researchers produced beams of exotic - short-lived- radium and radon atoms at CERN's Isotope Separator facility ISOLDE. The atom beams were accelerated and smashed into targets of nickel, cadmium and tin, but due to the repulsive force between the positively charged nuclei, nuclear reactions were not possible.

Instead, the nuclei were excited to higher energy levels, producing gamma rays that flew out in a specific pattern that revealed the pear shape of the nucleus.

"In the very biggest picture, we're trying to understand everything we've observed directly and also indirectly, and how it is that we happen to be here," Chupp said.

The research was led by University of Liverpool Physics Professor Peter Butler.

"Our findings contradict some nuclear theories and will help refine others," he said.

The measurements also will help direct the searches for atomic EDMs (electric dipole moments) currently being carried out in North America and Europe, where new techniques are being developed to exploit the special properties of radon and radium isotopes.

"Our expectation is that the data from our nuclear physics experiments can be combined with the results from atomic trapping experiments measuring EDMs to make the most stringent tests of the Standard Model, the best theory we have for understanding the nature of the building blocks of the universe," Butler said.

The paper is titled "Studies of nuclear pear-shapes using accelerated radioactive beams." Click here for more information.

 

Pasadena CA (SPX) May 08, 2013 - When a massive star exhausts its fuel, it collapses under its own gravity and produces a black hole, an object so dense that not even light can escape its gravitational grip.

According to a new analysis by an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), just before the black hole forms, the dying star may generate a distinct burst of light that will allow astronomers to witness the birth of a new black hole for the first time.

Tony Piro, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech, describes this signature light burst in a paper published in the May 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

While some dying stars that result in black holes explode as gamma-ray bursts, which are among the most energetic phenomena in the universe, those cases are rare, requiring exotic circumstances, Piro explains.

"We don't think most run-of-the-mill black holes are created that way." In most cases, according to one hypothesis, a dying star produces a black hole without a bang or a flash: the star would seemingly vanish from the sky-an event dubbed an unnova. "You don't see a burst," he says. "You see a disappearance."

But, Piro hypothesizes, that may not be the case. "Maybe they're not as boring as we thought," he says.

According to well-established theory, when a massive star dies, its core collapses under its own weight. As it collapses, the protons and electrons that make up the core merge and produce neutrons.

For a few seconds-before it ultimately collapses into a black hole-the core becomes an extremely dense object called a neutron star, which is as dense as the sun would be if squeezed into a sphere with a radius of about 10 kilometers (roughly 6 miles).

This collapsing process also creates neutrinos, which are particles that zip through almost all matter at nearly the speed of light. As the neutrinos stream out from the core, they carry away a lot of energy-representing about a tenth of the sun's mass (since energy and mass are equivalent, per E = mc2).

According to a little-known paper written in 1980 by Dmitry Nadezhin of the Alikhanov Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics in Russia, this rapid loss of mass means that the gravitational strength of the dying star's core would abruptly drop.

When that happens, the outer gaseous layers-mainly hydrogen-still surrounding the core would rush outward, generating a shock wave that would hurtle through the outer layers at about 1,000 kilometers per second (more than 2 million miles per hour).

Using computer simulations, two astronomers at UC Santa Cruz, Elizabeth Lovegrove and Stan Woosley, recently found that when the shock wave strikes the outer surface of the gaseous layers, it would heat the gas at the surface, producing a glow that would shine for about a year-a potentially promising signal of a black-hole birth.

Although about a million times brighter than the sun, this glow would be relatively dim compared to other stars. "It would be hard to see, even in galaxies that are relatively close to us," says Piro.

But now Piro says he has found a more promising signal. In his new study, he examines in more detail what might happen at the moment when the shock wave hits the star's surface, and he calculates that the impact itself would make a flash 10 to 100 times brighter than the glow predicted by Lovegrove and Woosley.

"That flash is going to be very bright, and it gives us the best chance for actually observing that this event occurred," Piro explains. "This is what you really want to look for."

Such a flash would be dim compared to exploding stars called supernovae, for example, but it would be luminous enough to be detectable in nearby galaxies, he says. The flash, which would shine for 3 to 10 days before fading, would be very bright in optical wavelengths-and at its very brightest in ultraviolet wavelengths.

Piro estimates that astronomers should be able to see one of these events per year on average. Surveys that watch the skies for flashes of light like supernovae-surveys such as the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF), led by Caltech-are well suited to discover these unique events, he says. The intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF), which improves on the PTF and just began surveying in February, may be able to find a couple of these events per year.

Neither survey has observed any black-hole flashes as of yet, says Piro, but that does not rule out their existence. "Eventually we're going to start getting worried if we don't find these things." But for now, he says, his expectations are perfectly sound.

With Piro's analysis in hand, astronomers should be able to design and fine-tune additional surveys to maximize their chances of witnessing a black-hole birth in the near future.

In 2015, the next generation of PTF, called the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), is slated to begin; it will be even more sensitive, improving by several times the chances of finding those flashes. "Caltech is therefore really well-positioned to look for transient events like this," Piro says.

Within the next decade, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will begin a massive survey of the entire night sky. "If LSST isn't regularly seeing these kinds of events, then that's going to tell us that maybe there's something wrong with this picture, or that black-hole formation is much rarer than we thought," he says.

The Astrophysical Journal Letters paper is titled "Taking the 'un' out of unnovae." This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Sherman Fairchild Foundation.

 

Pasadena, Calif. (UPI) May 6, 2013 - A new kind of cosmic flash may signal something never observed before, the birth of a black hole, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology says.

Tony Piro, a postdoctoral researcher in astrophysics, say his analysis suggest that just before the formation of a black hole -- when a dying star becomes an object so dense not even light can escape its gravity -- the star may generate a distinct burst of light that would allow astronomers to witness the birth of a new black hole for the first time.

Some dying stars that end in black holes explode as gamma-ray bursts, among the most energetic phenomena in the universe, but those cases are rare and require exotic circumstances, Piro wrote in the May 1 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"We don't think most run-of-the-mill black holes are created that way," he said.

Many astronomers say they believe in most cases a dying star produces a black hole without a bang or a flash, and instead the star would simply vanish from the sky, an event dubbed an unnova.

"You don't see a burst," Piro said. "You see a disappearance."

Just before a black hole is formed, researchers say, the dying star briefly become a neutron star, sending out a shock wave that would travel through its outer layers at more than 2 million miles per hour.

Piro said he estimated when the shock wave hits the star's surface it might create a distinctive flash of light.

Shining for 3 to 10 days before fading, the flash would be visible in optical wavelengths.

While such a flash would be dim compared to exploding stars called supernovae, it would be luminous enough to be detectable in nearby galaxies, Piro said.

"That flash is going to be very bright, and it gives us the best chance for actually observing that this event occurred," he said. "This is what you really want to look for."

Tallahassee FL (SPX) May 22, 2013 - Two research teams at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab) broke through a nearly 40-year barrier recently when they observed a never-before-seen energy pattern.

The butterfly-shaped pattern was first theorized by physicist Douglas Hofstadter in 1976, but it took the tools and technology now available at the MagLab to prove its existence.

"The observation of the 'Hofstadter butterfly' marks a real landmark in condensed matter physics and high magnetic field research," said Greg Boebinger, director of the MagLab. "It opens a new experimental direction in materials research."

This groundbreaking research demanded the ability to measure samples of materials at very low temperatures and very high magnetic fields, up to 35 tesla. Both of those conditions are available at the MagLab, making it an international destination for scientific exploration.

The unique periodic structure used to observe the butterfly pattern was composed of boron nitride (BN) and graphene. Graphene is a Nobel Prize-winning material that holds tremendous promise in revolutionizing computers, batteries, cell phones, televisions and even airplanes. A one-atom thick, honeycomb array of carbon atoms, graphene is virtually see-through, yet 300 times stronger than steel and 1,000 times more conducting than silicon.

"This is about a puzzle that has been solved," said Eric Palm, deputy director at the MagLab. "It is really about scientific curiosity. It is an exciting confirmation of a theory that was made years ago."

MagLab physicist Nicholas Bonesteel agreed, adding "The Hofstadter butterfly is a beautiful fractal energy pattern that has intrigued physicists for decades. Seeing clear experimental evidence for it is a real breakthrough."

One research team was led by Columbia University's Philip Kim and included researchers from City University of New York, the University of Central Florida, Tohoku University and the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan.

The team's work will be published today in the Advanced Online Publication of the journal Nature. Similar results were discovered at the MagLab by a group led by Pablo Jarillo-Herrero and Raymond Ashoori at MIT, as well as scientists from Tohoku University and the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan. Their work is expected to be published soon.

 

College Park MD (SPX) May 21, 2013 - Entanglement, by general consensus of physicists, is the weirdest part of quantum science. To say that two particles, A and B, are entangled means that they are actually two parts of an inseparable quantum thing. An important consequence of this inherent kinship is that measuring a property of A (say, the particle's polarization) is necessarily to know the corresponding property of B, even if you're not there with a detector to observe B and even if (as explained below) the existence of that property had no prior fixed value until the moment particle A was detected.

To create such entanglement it is generally necessary to generate particles two at a time and to generate them so that they are born with this connected property. The most basic step in measuring such a system is to measure and detect both particles and to do so efficiently. So it had better be the case that if one detector registers a particle, the other detector should collect and register the other particle.

Because we know that if we see one particle, the other must exist, we say that the detection of one particle "heralds" the existence of the other, just as medieval heralds, with their banners and bugles, signified the arrival of a king. Although in this case, because with these particles born in twos, one photon is no more regal than the other, so we can equally well say that one photon heralds the other and vice versa. But as in the case of a king, in real life even though the herald announces the king he may be waylaid and never appear.

An experiment conducted at the Joint Quantum Institute (*) establishes a new record for heralding efficiency for a pair of entangled photons (particles of light). The JQI work is published in the May 15 issue of the journal Optics Letters (**). What happens is this: about 84% of the time the researchers observe photon A they also observe photon B just where it should be, and vice versa.

The JQI detection scheme will be useful for a number of reasons: it should help experiments to tighten remaining loopholes over the fundamental sway of quantum reality; it shows that sources of single heralded photons can achieve a certain level of reliability; and that might be a critical ingredient in producing a source of random numbers in a way that guarantees that any nefarious attempts to "load the dice" are impossible.

Indeterminacy
The JQI experiment demonstrates a photon source which could allow one to get to the heart of counter-intuitive nature of quantum reality by looking at indeterminacy. In common experience a coin facing up has a definite value: it is a head or a tail. Even if you don't look at the coin you trust that it must be a head or tail. In quantum experience the situation is more unsettling: material properties of things do not exist until they are measured. Until you "look" (measure the particular property) at the coin, as it were, it has no fixed face up.

What this indeterminacy means is that until it is observed an object has no definite value for that property. So the property in question, whether it is position, velocity, charge, polarization, or some other attribute, cannot even be said to exist. Instead the object is said to be in a superposition of states and its physical attributes can potentially take on a variety of values.

When describing the existence of this particle, we can do no more than specify a set of probabilities that the object's properties have certain values. At the moment measurement occurs the object undergoes a "collapse of probability." The probability estimates in play just before measurement become superfluous. The property being measured - the polarization of a photon, say - has assumed a definite value, horizontal or vertical in this case.

Einstein's Reservations
Describing reality in terms of indeterminacy and probability bothered Albert Einstein. Surely, he said, a particle's property exists before it is measured and a theory more complete than quantum mechanics would include the existence of those properties before they were measured. Those properties before measurement must be contained in some variables hidden from the standard quantum mechanical representation. The search for those "hidden variables" pertaining to the existence of things occupied a lot of Einstein's time in the latter part of his life, and has been a topic of concern with physicists ever since.

In the 1960s John Bell proposed a number of experiments designed to test the validity of things like entanglement and indeterminacy. So far all such tests have supported the validity of quantum indeterminacy and have discouraged the idea of any hidden variables. But for some skeptics, loopholes remain, and they argue that the reality of entanglement has not yet been adequately demonstrated.

One reason for this is the difficulty in measuring properties of two or more (supposedly entangled) objects with sufficient efficiency. The relatively poor measurement efficiency, resulting in the failure to detect one or the other of the pair of entangled photons, allowed skeptics to assert that the measured sample of pairs did not constitute a good enough representation of the overall set of objects to be able to say something definitive about entanglement.

JQI Experiment
The experiment effort in Alan Migdall's JQI lab specifically targets the efficiency of the heralding process. To start, the researchers send a beam of ultraviolet photons into a special crystal where, at a rate of about one per billion, a UV photon is turned into a pair of entangled photons.

This process is called spontaneous parametric down-conversion (PDC). The laws of physics dictate that the momentum and energy of the incoming photon (from the pump beam) should be split between the daughter photons (one is called the "signal" and the other the "idler"). In this picture omega is the frequency of the respective photon and is proportional to its energy.

The daughters might, for instance, be a green photon plus a near-infrared photon, or two red photons, or any other combination of colors so long as the sum of the energies of the photons adds up the energy of the pump photon.

Each of the two photons makes its way through a lens and into a fiber so narrow that only a single mode can propagate. That is, if we think of the light not as a particle (photon) but as a bundle of electric and magnetic fields, the lateral profile of the ray will have a simple Gaussian shape. This kind of fiber, aligned to exacting standards, ensures that photons of a very specific energy and direction will be channeled into a photodetector where its presence and time of arrival can be determined.

Photon Or Vacuum?
"In effect the observation of photon A brings photon B into existence," says Alan Migdall, "at least if these are true entangled photons." This entanglement between the existence of a photon and no photon (or vacuum) is not what is usually considered to be entanglement but it is nonetheless.

The aim of this JQI experiment is not itself to test the Bell criteria for entanglement (as it turns out the polarizations of photons A and B are known be forehand), but rather to optimize the process of heralding - the ability to say that if A is here then B is there. For some theories a heralding efficiency must at least 82% if entanglement loopholes are to be closed.

New Heralding Record
The JQI physicists have now exceeded this yardstick. They typically observe about 50,000 signal photons (photon A) per second in their detector. And when this happens about 84% of the time a photon is seen in detector B. And simultaneously, when the roles of the two detectors are reversed a comparable percentage is registered. This is the highest symmetric heralding efficiency for a single-mode fiber yet seen in any experiment.

Migdall says that because of the random nature of observing a photon with an appropriately prepared polarization state, the measurement of a heralded photon can be turned into a number that is truly random and guaranteed to be free of tampering. Such random numbers can, in turn, be used in various schemes to encrypt messages that can never be cracked.

(*)The Joint Quantum Institute is operated jointly by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD and the University of Maryland in College Park.

(**) "Demonstrating highly symmetric single-mode, single-photon heralding efficiency in spontaneous parametric downconversion," Marcelo Da Cunha Pereira, Francisco E Becerra, Boris L Glebov, Jingyun Fan, Sae Woo Nam, and Alan Migdall, Optics Letters, May 15, 2013.

 

Wallops Island VA (SPX) May 21, 2013 - When did the first stars and galaxies form in the universe? How brightly did they burn their nuclear fuel?\

Scientists will seek to gain answers to these questions with the launch of the Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRIment (CIBER) on a Black Brant XII suborbital sounding rocket between 11 and 11:59 p.m. EDT, June 4 from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Jamie Bock, CIBER principal investigator from the California Institute of Technology, said, "The first massive stars to form in the universe produced copious ultraviolet light that ionized gas from neutral hydrogen.

CIBER observes in the near infrared, as the expansion of the universe stretched the original short ultraviolet wavelengths to long near-infrared wavelengths today. CIBER investigates two telltale signatures of first star formation - the total brightness of the sky after subtracting all foregrounds, and a distinctive pattern of spatial variations."

"The objectives of the experiment are of fundamental importance for astrophysics, to probe the process of first galaxy formation, but the measurement is also extremely difficult technically," he noted.

This will be the fourth flight for CIBER on a NASA sounding rocket. The previous launches were in 2009, 2010, and 2012 from the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. After each flight the experiment or payload was recovered for post-calibrations and re-flight.

For this flight CIBER will fly on a larger and more powerful rocket than before. This will loft CIBER to a higher altitude than those previously obtained, thus providing longer observation time for the instruments. The experiment, which will safely splash down in the Atlantic Ocean more than 400 miles off the Virginia coast, will not be recovered.

CIBER previously flew on two-stage Black Brant IX sounding rockets. Bock said, "The collection of data from the three flights allows us to compare data and rigorously test sources of potential systematic error from both the instrument and astrophysical foregrounds.

"We have been through the end-to-end process in analyzing our data, so we understand the benefits of going with a non-recovered Black Brant XII. We also know the performance of the instrument very well from these flights and that makes us confident going forward with this more capable but final flight."

The 70-foot tall four-stage Black Brant XII rocket will carry CIBER to an altitude of about 350 miles. According to Bock, "This flight is pioneering a new direction in the astrophysics program in that we are flying our instrument on a non-recovered Black Brant XII.

The XII gives us a significantly higher trajectory, providing about 560 seconds of flight time above 250 km (155 miles) altitude, compared with 250 seconds on standard Black Brant IX flights out of White Sands."

"Our experience in the near-infrared waveband is that we see appreciable emission from the atmosphere up to 250 km. The higher trajectory allows us to do some new things that are not possible on a Black Brant IX.

"For example, we expect to have enough independent images of the sky to directly determine the in-flight gain of the infrared cameras, which will allow us to measure background fluctuations in single exposures.

"This gives us a much more direct way to compare with satellite data than the statistical combinations we have had to use to date. The higher trajectory of course comes with a price in that the payload is not recovered," he said.

CIBER is a cooperative instrument designed and built by the California Institute of Technology, University of California Irvine, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). The same team is also developing an improved follow-on experiment, with more capable optics and detector arrays, that will be completed next year.

Backup launch days for this project are June 5 - 10.

 

Huntsville AL (SPX) May 22, 2013 - This composite image of a galaxy illustrates how the intense gravity of a supermassive black hole can be tapped to generate immense power. The image contains X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), optical light obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (gold) and radio waves from the NSF's Very Large Array (pink).

This multi-wavelength view shows 4C+29.30, a galaxy located some 850 million light years from Earth. The radio emission comes from two jets of particles that are speeding at millions of miles per hour away from a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The estimated mass of the black hole is about 100 million times the mass of our Sun. The ends of the jets show larger areas of radio emission located outside the galaxy.

The X-ray data show a different aspect of this galaxy, tracing the location of hot gas. The bright X-rays in the center of the image mark a pool of million-degree gas around the black hole. Some of this material may eventually be consumed by the black hole, and the magnetized, whirlpool of gas near the black hole could in turn, trigger more output to the radio jet.

Most of the low-energy X-rays from the vicinity of the black hole are absorbed by dust and gas, probably in the shape of a giant doughnut around the black hole. This doughnut, or torus blocks all the optical light produced near the black hole, so astronomers refer to this type of source as a hidden or buried black hole. The optical light seen in the image is from the stars in the galaxy.

The bright spots in X-ray and radio emission on the outer edges of the galaxy, near the ends of the jets, are caused by extremely high energy electrons following curved paths around magnetic field lines. They show where a jet generated by the black hole has plowed into clumps of material in the galaxy (mouse over the image for the location of these bright spots).

Much of the energy of the jet goes into heating the gas in these clumps, and some of it goes into dragging cool gas along the direction of the jet. Both the heating and the dragging can limit the fuel supply for the supermassive black hole, leading to temporary starvation and stopping its growth.

This feedback process is thought to cause the observed correlation between the mass of the supermassive black hole and the combined mass of the stars in the central region or bulge of a galaxy.

These results were reported in two different papers. The first, which concentrated on the effects of the jets on the galaxy, is available online and was published in the May 10, 2012 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

 

Orlando FL (SPX) May 20, 2013 - A team of researchers from several universities - including UCF -has observed a rare quantum physics effect that produces a repeating butterfly-shaped energy spectrum in a magnetic field, confirming the longstanding prediction of the quantum fractal energy structure called Hofstadter's butterfly.

This discovery by the team paves the way for engineering new types of extraordinary nanoscale materials that can be used to develop smaller, lighter and faster electronics, including sensors, cell phones, tablets and laptops.

First predicted by American physicist Douglas Hofstadter in 1976, the butterfly pattern emerges when electrons are confined to a two-dimensional plane and subjected to both a periodic potential energy and a strong magnetic field.

The Hofstadter butterfly is a fractal pattern-meaning that it contains shapes that repeat on smaller and smaller size scales. Fractals are common in systems such as fluid mechanics, but rare in the quantum mechanical world. The Hofstadter butterfly is one of the first quantum fractals theoretically discovered in physics but, until now, there has been no direct experimental proof of this spectrum.

Columbia University led the study and also involved scientists from the City University of New York, Tohoku University and the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan. Columbia prepared the sample and the UCF team measured the regular recurrence of the high-fidelity periodic pattern, engineered by inducing nanoscale ripples on graphene, a carbon material.

The measured recurrence served as the essential proof that the measured spectrum was indeed the Hofstadter butterfly. The image that captured the evidence was taken in UCF Assistant Professor Masa Ishigami's laboratory.

Jyoti Katoch, Ishigami's graduate student, used a non-contact atomic force high-resolution microscope to image the ripples, which have the height of only 0.2 angstroms (twenty trillionth of a meter), to confirm that the observed Hofstadter butterfly spectrum indeed matched the theoretical prediction.

"The arrangement of individual atoms, even just one atom can drastically alter properties of nanoscale materials. That is the basis for nanotechnology," Ishigami said.

"Atomic structures must be resolved to understand the properties of nanoscale materials. What we do here at UCF is to explain why nanoscale materials behave so different by resolving their atomic structures.

"Only when we understand the origin of the extraordinary properties of nanoscale materials, we can propel nanoscience and technology forward. What Jyoti has done here is to image how graphene is rippled to explain the observed Hofstadter spectrum."

UCF's laboratory utilizes a novel, the state-of-the-art microscopy technique to simultaneously determine the atomic structure and electronic properties of nanoscale materials such as graphene.

Katoch has been working with Ishigami since 2008, when Ishigami joined UCF. Katoch helped build the laboratory and developed the atomic-resolution capability critical to capturing the picture proof for this study.

Ishigami has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California at Berkeley and a bachelor's degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has won multiple awards, including the Intelligence Community postdoctoral fellowship and the Hertz graduate fellowship, and has published more than 30 papers in journals including Science.

The study is published in Nature.

 

Singapore (SPX) May 15, 2013 - Like small children, scientists are always asking the question 'why?'. One question they've yet to answer is why nature picked quantum physics, in all its weird glory, as a sensible way to behave. Researchers Corsin Pfister and Stephanie Wehner at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore tackle this perennial question in a paper published 14 May in Nature Communications.

We know that things that follow quantum rules, such as atoms, electrons or the photons that make up light, are full of surprises. They can exist in more than one place at once, for instance, or exist in a shared state where the properties of two particles show what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance", no matter what their physical separation.

Because such things have been confirmed in experiments, researchers are confident the theory is right. But it would still be easier to swallow if it could be shown that quantum physics itself sprang from intuitive underlying principles.

One way to approach this problem is to imagine all the theories one could possibly come up with to describe nature, and then work out what principles help to single out quantum physics. A good start is to assume that information follows

Einstein's special relativity and cannot travel faster than light. However, this alone isn't enough to define quantum physics as the only way nature might behave. Corsin and Stephanie think they have come across a new useful principle. "We have found a principle that is very good at ruling out other theories," says Corsin.

In short, the principle to be assumed is that if a measurement yields no information, then the system being measured has not been disturbed.

Quantum physicists accept that gaining information from quantum systems causes disturbance. Corsin and Stephanie suggest that in a sensible world the reverse should be true, too. If you learn nothing from measuring a system, then you can't have disturbed it.

Consider the famous Schrodinger's cat paradox, a thought experiment in which a cat in a box simultaneously exists in two states (this is known as a 'quantum superposition'). According to quantum theory it is possible that the cat is both dead and alive - until, that is, the cat's state of health is 'measured' by opening the box.

When the box is opened, allowing the health of the cat to be measured, the superposition collapses and the cat ends up definitively dead or alive. The measurement has disturbed the cat.

This is a property of quantum systems in general. Perform a measurement for which you can't know the outcome in advance, and the system changes to match the outcome you get. What happens if you look a second time? The researchers assume the system is not evolving in time or affected by any outside influence, which means the quantum state stays collapsed.

You would then expect the second measurement to yield the same result as the first. After all, "If you look into the box and find a dead cat, you don't expect to look again later and find the cat has been resurrected," says Stephanie. "You could say we've formalised the principle of accepting the facts", says Stephanie.

Corsin and Stephanie show that this principle rules out various theories of nature. They note particularly that a class of theories they call 'discrete' are incompatible with the principle. These theories hold that quantum particles can take up only a finite number of states, rather than choose from an infinite, continuous range of possibilities.

The possibility of such a discrete 'state space' has been linked to quantum gravitational theories proposing similar discreteness in spacetime, where the fabric of the universe is made up of tiny brick-like elements rather than being a smooth, continuous sheet.

As is often the case in research, Corsin and Stephanie reached this point having set out to solve an entirely different problem altogether. Corsin was trying to find a general way to describe the effects of measurements on states, a problem that he found impossible to solve. In an attempt to make progress, he wrote down features that a 'sensible' answer should have. This property of information gain versus disturbance was on the list. He then noticed that if he imposed the property as a principle, some theories would fail.

Corsin and Stephanie are keen to point out it's still not the whole answer to the big 'why' question: theories other than quantum physics, including classical physics, are compatible with the principle. But as researchers compile lists of principles that each rule out some theories to reach a set that singles out quantum physics, the principle of information gain versus disturbance seems like a good one to include.

"An information-theoretic principle implies that any discrete physical theory is classical", Nature Communications, doi: 10.1038/ncomms2821 (2013).

 

Madrid, Spain (SPX) May 15, 2013 - Improving our understanding of the human brain, gathering insights into the origin of our universe through the detection of gravitational waves, or optimizing the precision of GPS systems- all are difficult challenges to master because they require the ability to visualize highly fragile elements, which can be terminally damaged by any attempt to observe them.

Now, quantum physics has provided a solution. In an article published in Nature Photonics, researchers at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) report the observation of a highly fragile and volatile body through a new quantum-mechanical measurement technique.

Researchers from the group led by Morgan Mitchell applied the so-called "quantum non-demolition measurement" to a tiny cloud of atoms. They were able to observe the spinning of the electrons in the atoms, and more importantly, the atom cloud was not disturbed in the process.

It is the first time quantum non-demolition measurement has been demonstrated with any material object. The same method could be extended to permit the observation of individual atoms.

In the experiment, scientists prepared light pulses with photons in complementary states, and then sent them through the cloud of atoms, measuring their polarization on the way out.

"A first measurement gives us information reflecting the action of the first light pulse. A second measurement, taken with photons in a complementary state from the first, cancels the influence of the preliminary pulse, allowing us to observe the original characteristics of the object," explains Dr. Robert Sewell, researcher at ICFO. This process has enabled the team to gather precise information on the magnetic field of the atom's surroundings.

The information obtained exceeds the so-called "standard quantum limit", which quantifies the maximum amount of information obtainable with any traditional probing.

Two achievements made this possible. On one hand, researchers were able to structure the observation so that the noise resulting from the visualization was shifted away from the object being measured and into a different variable.

In addition, they introduced quantum statistical correlations among the atoms so that they were able to gather in one measurement what previously they needed a collection of measurements to observe. "This experiment provides rigorous proof of the effectiveness of quantum physics for measuring delicate objects" concludes Sewell.

Link to the paper.

 

New York NY (SPX) May 15, 2013 - New York University physicists have uncovered how energy is released and dispersed in magnetic materials in a process akin to the spread of forest fires, a finding that has the potential to deepen our understanding of self-sustained chemical reactions.

The study, which appears in the journal Physical Review Letters, also included researchers from the University of Barcelona, City College of New York, and the University of Florida. It may be downloaded here: http://bit.ly/18FKwFO.

Forest fires spread because an initial flame or spark will heat a substance-a trunk or branch-causing it to burn, which releases heat that causes the fire to spread to other trunks or branches, turning a small spark into a self-sustained, propagating front of fire that can be deadly and is irreversible.

In the Physical Review Letters study, the researchers sought to understand how energy is sustained and spreads in magnetic materials-"magnetic fire." Such knowledge is important in designing magnetic materials for energy storage applications. This is because magnetic fire can lead to a rapid and uncontrolled release of stored energy, producing significant energy loss in, for example, an electrical generator.

Research on bursts of energy within magnetic systems dates back two decades. But scientists haven't been able to measure and understand what prompts this phenomenon, known as "magnetic deflagration."

Part of this mystery lies in the nature of chemical reactions. In such reactions, which produce heat, the energy released is determined by the chemical constituents and cannot be easily varied. What is known as an "activation energy" is typically necessary to start a chemical reaction; energy is then released as the reaction proceeds. In other words, scientists have concluded that a spark is needed to begin this process-much the same way a forest fire begins with a single lit match.

But in magnetic materials the energies can be manipulated by magnetic fields and are therefore very easily varied in an experiment. Thus the activation energy and the energy released are controllable, enabling systematic studies of the physical mechanisms of energy flow.

To achieve this, the researchers surmised they could produce such a "spark" through a series of spins-the chemical equivalent of striking a match. In this case, they employed small single crystals of a molecular magnet- each magnetic molecule being just one billionth of a meter-that could be magnetized, much like the needle of a compass.

The researchers provided a pulse of heat as the spark, causing molecular spins near the heaters to flip in a magnetic field, a process that released energy and transmitted it to nearby material.

"When the molecules' spins are aligned opposite the applied field direction, they possess a high level of energy," explained Andrew Kent, a professor in NYU's Department of Physics and the study's senior researcher. "And then when the spins 'flip,' energy is released and dispersed into surrounding magnetic material that can cause a runaway reaction."

Moreover, the scientists were able to control the speed of this process by adjusting the make-up of the magnetic field in their experiments. Through this detailed examination, they could see under what conditions energy is released and how it propagates.

"These are exciting results and ones that have prompted us to further consider whether a spark is even necessary to start a magnetic fire," added Kent. "We hope to observe and study situations in which the fire starts spontaneously, without a spark."

The study was conducted at NYU by Pradeep Subedi and Saul Velez, both doctoral candidates, as well as Ferran Macia, a postdoctoral researcher, and included: Shiqi Li, a City College of New York (CCNY) doctoral candidate; Myriam Sarachik, a professor at CCNY; Javier Tejada, a professor at the University of Barcelona; Shreya Mukherjee, a University of Florida doctoral candidate; and George Christou, a professor at University of Florida.

 

Liverpool UK (SPX) May 14, 2013 - Scientists at the University of Liverpool have shown that some atomic nuclei can assume the shape of a pear which contributes to our understanding of nuclear structure and the underlying fundamental interactions.

Most nuclei that exist naturally are not spherical but have the shape of a rugby ball. While state-of-the-art theories are able to predict this, the same theories have predicted that for some particular combinations of protons and neutrons, nuclei can also assume very asymmetric shapes, like a pear where there is more mass at one end of the nucleus than the other.

The experimental observation of nuclear pear shapes is important for understanding the theory of nuclear structure and for helping with experimental searches for electric dipole moments (EDM) in atoms.

The Standard Model of particle physics predicts that the value of the EDM is so small that it lies well below the current observational limit. However, many theories that try to refine this model predict EDMs that should be measurable.

In order to test these theories the EDM searches have to be improved and the most sensitive method is to use exotic atoms whose nucleus is pear-shaped. Quantifying this shape will therefore help with experimental programmes searching for atomic EDMs.

Professor Peter Butler, from the University's Department of Physics who carried out the measurements, said: "Our findings contradict some nuclear theories and will help refine others. The measurements will also help direct the searches for atomic EDMs currently being carried out in North America and in Europe, where new techniques are being developed to exploit the special properties of radon and radium isotopes.

"Our expectation is that the data from our nuclear physics experiments can be combined with the results from atomic trapping experiments measuring EDMs to make the most stringent tests of the Standard Model, the best theory we have for understanding the nature of the building blocks of the universe."

Most nuclear isotopes predicted to have pear shapes have been out of reach of experimental techniques to measure them.

Now, at the ISOLDE facility at CERN, beams of very heavy, radioactive nuclei can be produced in high-energy proton collisions with a uranium carbide target. They are then selectively extracted using their chemical and physical properties before being accelerated to 8% of the speed of light and allowed to impinge on a target foil of isotopically pure nickel, cadmium or tin.

When this happens the relative motion of the heavy accelerated nucleus and the target nucleus creates an electromagnetic impulse that excites the nuclei. By studying the details of this excitation process it is possible to understand the nuclear shape.

This method has been used successfully to study the shape of short-lived isotopes 220Rn and 224Ra. The data show that while 224Ra is pear-shaped, 220Rn does not assume the fixed shape of a pear but rather vibrates about this shape.

The findings are published in Nature.

 

Madrid, Spain (SPX) May 14, 2013 - The so-called Elephant's Tomb in the Roman necropolis of Carmona (Seville, Spain) was not always used for burials. The original structure of the building and a window through which the sun shines directly in the equinoxes suggest that it was a temple of Mithraism, an unofficial religion in the Roman Empire. The position of Taurus and Scorpio during the equinoxes gives force to the theory.

The Carmona necropolis (Spain) is a collection of funeral structures from between the 1st century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D. One of these is known as the Elephant's Tomb because a statue in the shape of an elephant was found in the interior of the structure.

The origin and function of the construction have been the subject of much debate. Archaeologists from the University of Pablo de Olavide (Seville, Spain) have conducted a detailed analysis of the structure and now suggest that it may originally not have been used for burials but for worshipping the God Mithras. Mithraism was an unofficial religion that was widespread throughout the Roman Empire in the early centuries of our era.

Researchers have identified four stages in which the building was renovated, giving it different uses.

"In some stages, it was used for burial purposes, but its shape and an archaeoastronomical analysis suggest that it was originally designed and built to contain a Mithraeum [temple to Mithras]," as explained to SINC by Inmaculada Carrasco, one of the authors of the study.

Carrasco and her colleague Alejandro Jimenez focus their studies on a window in the main chamber built during the first stage. Earlier studies had already suggested that the purpose of the window was not to provide light, but that rather it may have served a symbolic and spiritual purpose.

The Sun, the Moon and the stars
"From our analysis of the window, we have deduced that it was positioned so that the rays of the sun reached the centre of the chamber during the equinoxes, in the spring and autumn, three hours after sunrise" explains Carrasco.

The authors believe that at that moment a statue of the tauroctony, the statue of Mithras slaying the bull (which has been lost), would have been illuminated.

In addition, during the winter and summer solstice, the sun would light up the north and south walls respectively.

Moreover, the position of the heavenly bodies at that time in the 2nd century reinforces the theory that the building was constructed for Mithraic worship, a religion that gave considerable importance to the constellations.

As the sun shines through the window during the spring equinox, Taurus rises to the East and Scorpio hides to the West. The opposite occurred during the autumn equinox.

Taurus and Scorpio were of special significance to the Mithraics. The main image of the cult is that of the God Mithras slaying a bull, and in the majority of these images there is also a scorpion stinging the animal's testicles.

Other constellations such as Aquarius, Orion or Leo, which were also of significance in this religion, appear in the path of the sun in the equinoxes and solstices at that time.

Moreover, according to the authors, the Moon, although having a secondary role, may have lit up the face of Mithras with a full moon on nights near to the equinoxes.

Four stages of renovation
Apart from the window, the architecture of the original building has similarities to other Mithraic constructions.

Carrasco explained that it is "an underground structure, with a room divided into three chambers, with a shrine or altar illuminated by the window at the head. The presence of a fountain is also highly significant as these are commonly found in the Mithraeums".

According to the authors, after its period as a Mithraic temple, the building was renovated three times, giving it new functions more in line with the functions of a necropolis. A burial chamber was built and at a later date, the roof was removed, leaving open courtyards. Lastly, it was filled with rubble and used as an area for burials.

However, there are some objections to the theory that it was a Mithraic temple as it is in a necropolis, an uncommon site for buildings used for this cult which were more often found in domestic, urban or rural environments.

"A similar case is that of Sutri (Italy) where the Mithraeum is on the outskirts of the town. The structure in Carmona is in a multi-purpose space, next to the Via Augusta which connected Cadiz to Rome, close to the amphitheatre and the circus, and consequently its position should not be considered an objection," says Jimenez.

A. Jimenez, I. Carrasco. "The tomb of the Elephant at the Roman Necropolis of carmona. A necessary review through the Building Archaeology and Archaeostromy" Archivo espanol de arqueologia. DOI: 10.3989/aespa.085.012.007