Category Archives: Science

the red sun of krypton

Oddly Enough, Science, Science fiction, Space

Two news items caught my attention today. Though they don’t actually have anything to do with each other, reading them one after the other evokes a certain comic-book planet:

An international team of astronomers from Switzerland, France and Portugal have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date. The planet has a radius only 50 percent larger than Earth and is very likely to contain liquid water on its surface.

Unlike our Earth, this planet takes only 13 days to complete one orbit round its star. It is also 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is from the Sun. However, since its host star, the red dwarf Gliese 581, is smaller and colder than the Sun – and thus less luminous – the planet lies in the habitable zone, the region around a star where water could be liquid.

“We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid,” said Stiphane Udry from the Geneva Observatory, Switzerland and lead-author of the paper in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The planet is about 20 light years away, definitely visiting distance. It would definitely be a strange new world, but the presence of water (and all that implies) puts it at the top of the list of Places To Investigate.

In other news, a new mineral was discovered in a mine in Serbia:

“Towards the end of my research I searched the web using the mineral’s chemical formula – sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide – and was amazed to discover that same scientific name, written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film Superman Returns.

“The new mineral does not contain fluorine (which it does in the film) and is white rather than green but, in all other respects, the chemistry matches that for the rock containing kryptonite.”

Super-Earths, kryptonite… it just goes to show that truth is stranger than fiction. Now where’s that jet pack I ordered?

SpaceNet, the interplanetary supply chain

Science, Space, Technology

I’m sure this will come in handy someday soon.  MIT researchers have created SpaceNet, a software tool for modeling interplanetary supply chains.

“Increasingly, there is a realization that crewed space missions such as the International Space Station or the buildup of a lunar outpost should not be treated as isolated missions, but rather as an integrated supply chain,” said [MIT researcher Olivier L.] de Weck.

While “supply chain” usually refers to the flow of goods and materials in and out of manufacturing facilities, distribution centers and retail stores, de Weck said that a well-designed interplanetary supply chain would operate on much the same principles, with certain complicating factors. Transportation delays could be significant–as much as six to nine months in the case of Mars–and shipping capacity will be very limited.

I can’t wait for the day when I can order spare parts online and have them delivered to my house on Mars.

[via Boing Boing]

British backtrack on Iraq death toll

Government, Iraq, Medicine, Science

British backtrack on Iraq death toll, from the Independent Online:

British government officials have backed the methods used by scientists who concluded that more than 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion, the BBC reported yesterday.

The Government publicly rejected the findings, published in The Lancet in October. But the BBC said documents obtained under freedom of information legislation showed advisers concluded that the much-criticised study had used sound methods.

The study, conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, estimated that 655,000 more Iraqis had died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. The study estimated that 601,027 of those deaths were from violence.

Getting along: a survival strategy

Academia, Cosmetically Enhanced Vertebrates, Education, Evolution, Science

Well here’s something interesting, and in Newsweek, no less. Getting along, social bonding and using their wits are what helped our ancient ancestors to survive:

The realization that early humans were the hunted and not hunters has upended traditional ideas about what it takes for a species to thrive. For decades the reigning view had been that hunting prowess and the ability to vanquish competitors was the key to our ancestors’ evolutionary success (an idea fostered, critics now say, by the male domination of anthropology during most of the 20th century). But prey species do not owe their survival to anything of the sort, argues Sussman. Instead, they rely on their wits and, especially, social skills to survive. Being hunted brought evolutionary pressure on our ancestors to cooperate and live in cohesive groups. That, more than aggression and warfare, is our evolutionary legacy.

Both genetics and paleoneurology back that up. A hormone called oxytocin, best-known for inducing labor and lactation in women, also operates in the brain (of both sexes). There, it promotes trust during interactions with other people, and thus the cooperative behavior that lets groups of people live together for the common good.

So it was not big sticks, aggression or killing large prey that created the evolutionary success of our ancestors (in fact, there is a lot of evidence, according to the article, that our ancestors were prey, not predators), but trusting people and working together for the “common good.” Well, how about that?

This quote comes from the current cover story of Newsweek, “The Evolution Revolution.” It’s actually a good read and worth a look — lots of interesting tidbits about our deepening understanding of human evolution — we’ve got lots of extinct cousins, folks. But remember, it’s still Newsweek: the article has an almost apologetic use of God and Bible references — as if we can’t talk about evolution without refering to religion. It’s annoying.