Splash! NASA moon crash struck lots of water

By ALICIA CHANG AP Science Writer © 2009 The Associated Press
Nov. 13, 2009, 8:04PM
www.chron.com


LOS ANGELES — Suddenly, the moon looks exciting again. It has lots of water, scientists said Friday — a thrilling discovery that sent a ripple of hope for a future astronaut outpost in a place that has always seemed barren and inhospitable.

Experts have long suspected there was water on the moon. Confirmation came from data churned up by two NASA spacecraft that intentionally slammed into a lunar crater last month.

"Indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn't find just a little bit. We found a significant amount," said Anthony Colaprete, lead scientist for the mission, holding up a white water bucket for emphasis.

The lunar crash kicked up at least 25 gallons and that's only what scientists could see from the plumes of the impact, Colaprete said.

Some space policy experts say that makes the moon attractive for exploration again. Having an abundance of water would make it easier to set up a base camp for astronauts, supplying drinking water and a key ingredient for rocket fuel.

"Having definitive evidence that there is substantial water is a significant step forward in making the moon an interesting place to go," said George Washington University space policy scholar John Logsdon.

Even so, members of the blue-ribbon panel reviewing NASA's future plans said it doesn't change their conclusion that the program needs more money to get beyond near-Earth orbit. The panel wants NASA to look at other potential destinations like asteroids and Mars.

"This new and terrific result reassures us about lunar resources, but ... the challenges currently facing the human spaceflight program remain," Chris Chyba, a Princeton astrophysicist who is on the panel, said in an e-mail.

President George W. Bush had proposed a more than $100 billion plan to return astronauts to the moon, then go on to Mars; a test flight of an early version of a new rocket was a success last month. President Barack Obama appointed the special panel to look at the entire moon exploration program. The decision is now up to the White House, and NASA's lunar plans are somewhat on hold until then.

As for unmanned exploration, previous missions had detected the presence of hydrogen in lunar craters near the moon's poles, possible evidence of ice. In September, scientists reported finding tiny amounts of water in the lunar soil all over the moon's surface.

But it was NASA's Oct. 9 mission involving the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, LCROSS, that provided the stunning confirmation announced Friday — water, in the forms of ice and vapor.

"Rather than a dead and unchanging world, it could in fact be a very dynamic and interesting one," said Greg Delory of the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the mission, led by NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

The LCROSS spacecraft only hit one spot on the moon and it's unclear how much water there is across the entire moon.

The October mission involved two strikes into a permanently shadowed crater near the south pole. First, an empty rocket hull slammed into the Cabeus crater. Then, a trailing spacecraft recorded the drama live before it also crashed into the same spot four minutes later.

Though scientists were overjoyed with the plethora of data beamed back to Earth, the mission was a public relations dud. Space enthusiasts who stayed up all night to watch the spectacle did not see the promised giant plume of debris.

NASA scientists had predicted the twin impacts would spew six miles of dust into the sunlight. Instead, images revealed only a mile-high plume, and it was not visible to many amateur astronomers peering through telescopes.

Scientists spent a month analyzing data from the spacecraft's spectrometers, instruments that can detect strong signals of water molecules in the plume.

"We've had hints that there is water. This was almost like tasting it," said Peter Schultz, professor of geological sciences at Brown University and a co-investigator on the LCROSS mission.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who in 1969 made his historic Apollo 11 moonwalk with Neil Armstrong, was pleased to hear the latest discovery, but still believes the U.S. should focus on colonizing Mars.

"People will overreact to this news and say, `Let's have a water rush to the moon,'" Aldrin said. "It doesn't justify that."

Mission scientists said it would take more time to tease out what else was kicked up in the moon dust.

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AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

LCROSS mission: http://www.nasa.gov/mission(underscore)pages/LCROSS/main/

Man-Made (But Very Tiny) Black Holes Possible

By Ian O'Neill | Thu Nov 12 2009
Discovery News


Did you hear the one about the particle accelerator that created a micro-black hole? You know, the one where this black hole exponentially grows into an Earth-eating behemoth, destroying all life as we know it?

You probably did hear that little piece of comedy in the build-up to the grand start-up of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in September 2008, and at first, you might have thought there was some real physics behind this manmade doomsday theory.

Alas, the physics was flawed and the Hawaiian guy at the center of it all saw CONSPIRACY! hiding behind every super-cooled electromagnet.

The Earth (in fact, all celestial bodies) is bombarded with particles (cosmic rays) of far higher energies than the ones collided in the LHC. We're still here. What's more, I haven't seen any black holes float around my neighborhood recently.

The Black Hole Hunt

We know the Earth-munching, LHC-generated black hole theory has more flaws in it than Europa's crust, but scientists do think the next-generation particle accelerator could generate tiny black holes.

This is actually rather exciting. If micro-black holes are generated after the high-energy collisions inside the LHC, they could provide the first experimental evidence of Hawking Radiation, the only radiation predicted to be emitted from a black hole's event horizon. If the radiation predicted by Stephen Hawking is discovered (via the detection of evaporating black holes), a Nobel Prize for Physics wouldn't be far away.

Hold on, isn't there a mixed message here? On the one hand, we have conspiracy nuts scaring the world (yet thrilling the tabloid press), saying that "reckless" physicists could destroy the world with a black hole, and then we have physicists confirming that they would love to see black holes generated in the LHC. What's going on?

It's a little thing called mass, and the micro-black holes that are theorized to be produced by the LHC simply do not have enough of it to cause any damage.

More Mass = More Suck

Cosmic black holes are created after the collapse of a massive star. They are, by definition, massive. If something is massive, it has a strong gravitational field. Any planets, stars or space cows that stray too close will be sucked in, making the black hole more massive.

Micro-black holes are miniscule. They have next to no mass, exert a near-zero gravitational pull on matter, and therefore do not grow. In fact, they most likely do the opposite; they evaporate. Fast.

Even if they had the opportunity to grow, they would accrete matter so slowly that they still wouldn't attain any measurable growth for billions and billions of years.

In a recent publication, a group of physicists decided to crunch the numbers on the likelihood of the LHC generating these vanishingly small micro-black holes, and they pretty much drew the same conclusions as CERN physicists have been saying for the last year. Any black hole generated at the LHC would pose zero threat to Earth.

Brane Leak

The leading theory about how micro-black holes might form in our Universe is made possible by the existence of extra-dimensions. The theory is that more dimensions exist than the four we experience (i.e. three spatial dimensions and one time dimension that constitute "space-time" as described by Einstein's theory of General Relativity).

The four dimensional Universe we live in can be considered to be a "brane," where other branes exist alongside ours, exerting a force. This description of out multidimensional Universe is very useful as it helps to explain why the force of gravity is many orders of magnitude weaker than the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces -- gravity is 'leaking' into our 4D universe from the neighboring branes.

All this talk of branes and extra-dimensions may sound complex, but their existence allows the production of micro-black holes should the collisions inside the LHC be energetic enough. Therefore, if micro-black holes are detected in the LHC, we have experimental evidence for some of the most complex theories mankind has ever devised. In short, these are very exciting times.

The Fast Die Young, The Slow Don't Grow

So, what did the researchers from Italy, US and Germany find out?

"First, we found that tidal black holes would evaporate (almost) instantly," says Roberto Casadio from the University of Bologna, Italy, and his three colleagues in their publication titled Theoretical survey of tidal-charged black holes at the LHC.

This is all well and good, but what if a micro-black hole shoots through the Earth at high speed?

"[We] show that the black holes with a large value of the initial momentum would cross the Earth in a matter of seconds and come out with velocities much larger than the Earth's escape velocity," say Casadio et al.

Once these speeding black holes pop out the other side of the Earth, they stop accreting mass (from the Earth's interior) and are flung into space and evaporate as they radiate Hawking Radiation. But don't worry about these welterweights punching a hole in the ground beneath you, on the entire trip through our planet, a single black hole will have swept up a meager 10-22 kg of rock.

10-22 kg is the mass of a hemoglobin molecule inside a red blood cell.

But say if the black hole isn't very speedy and it drops like a stone into the Earth... and stays there?

The researchers point out that the slower the black hole, the less mass it accretes; so although it might pop out of the LHC and sink into our planet, it will suck up very little mass.

If a slow-moving micro-black hole set up home inside Earth and sat there for 13.7 billion years (the age of the Universe), it would weigh in at a puny 10-18 kg (the mass of a virus).

"Our overall conclusion is therefore that the tidal charged black holes are a viable model of micro-black holes which might be produced at the LHC. The model predicts that such black holes cannot grow to catastrophic size, but might live long enough to escape the detectors and result in significant amounts of missing energy." --Casadio et al., 2009
When the LHC gets fired up in the coming weeks, let's see if any energy goes "missing" after a particle collision, it might be a sign of black hole birth (but not of the "Earth-munching" variety).

Source: Theoretical survey of tidal-charged black holes at the LHC, Casadio et al., 2009. arXiv:0911.1884v1 [hep-th]

Image: NASA/CERN/Ian O'Neill

Precise Radio-Telescope Measurements Advance Frontier Of Gravitational Physics

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2009) — Scientists using a continent-wide array of radio telescopes have made an extremely precise measurement of the curvature of space caused by the Sun's gravity, and their technique promises a major contribution to a frontier area of basic physics.

"Measuring the curvature of space caused by gravity is one of the most sensitive ways to learn how Einstein's theory of General Relativity relates to quantum physics. Uniting gravity theory with quantum theory is a major goal of 21st-Century physics, and these astronomical measurements are a key to understanding the relationship between the two," said Sergei Kopeikin of the University of Missouri.

Kopeikin and his colleagues used the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio-telescope system to measure the bending of light caused by the Sun's gravity to within one part in 30,000. With further observations, the scientists say their precision technique can make the most accurate measure ever of this phenomenon.

Bending of starlight by gravity was predicted by Albert Einstein when he published his theory of General Relativity in 1916. According to relativity theory, the strong gravity of a massive object such as the Sun produces curvature in the nearby space, which alters the path of light or radio waves passing near the object. The phenomenon was first observed during a solar eclipse in 1919.

Though numerous measurements of the effect have been made over the intervening 90 years, the problem of merging General Relativity and quantum theory has required ever more accurate observations. Physicists describe the space curvature and gravitational light-bending as a parameter called "gamma." Einstein's theory holds that gamma should equal exactly 1.0.

"Even a value that differs by one part in a million from 1.0 would have major ramifications for the goal of uniting gravity theory and quantum theory, and thus in predicting the phenomena in high-gravity regions near black holes," Kopeikin said.

To make extremely precise measurements, the scientists turned to the VLBA, a continent-wide system of radio telescopes ranging from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands. The VLBA offers the power to make the most accurate position measurements in the sky and the most detailed images of any astronomical instrument available.

The researchers made their observations as the Sun passed nearly in front of four distant quasars -- faraway galaxies with supermassive black holes at their cores -- in October of 2005. The Sun's gravity caused slight changes in the apparent positions of the quasars because it deflected the radio waves coming from the more-distant objects.

The result was a measured value of gamma of 0.9998 +/- 0.0003, in excellent agreement with Einstein's prediction of 1.0.

"With more observations like ours, in addition to complementary measurements such as those made with NASA's Cassini spacecraft, we can improve the accuracy of this measurement by at least a factor of four, to provide the best measurement ever of gamma," said Edward Fomalont of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). "Since gamma is a fundamental parameter of gravitational theories, its measurement using different observational methods is crucial to obtain a value that is supported by the physics community," Fomalont added.

Kopeikin and Fomalont worked with John Benson of the NRAO and Gabor Lanyl of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They reported their findings in the July 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adapted from materials provided by National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Einstein's 'Spooky Physics' Gets More Entangled

By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Staff Writer
03 June 2009 01:00 pm ET


Quantum entanglement is just spooky — even Einstein thought so. As if particles (as in particle physics) have telepathic empathy.

The theory of quantum mechanics predicts that two or more particles can become "entangled" so that even after they are separated in space, when an action is performed on one particle, the other particle responds immediately. Scientists still don't know how the particles send these instantaneous messages to each other, but somehow, once they are entwined, they retain a fundamental connection.

This bizarre idea riled Einstein so much he called it "spooky action at a distance."

A new study found that this eerie quantum link can apply even to situations that resemble the larger, everyday world. Scientists entangled two pairs of vibrating particles separated in space, so that when one pair was forced to change its movement, the other pair did as well.

"We've entangled something that has never been entangled before, and it's the kind of physical, oscillating system you see in the classical world, just much smaller," said John Jost, a physics graduate student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a guest researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Jost and team describe their findings in the June 4 issue of the journal Nature.

Previous experiments have entangled the internal properties of particles, such as spin states, but this is the first time scientists have entangled the particles' pattern of motion.

The breakthrough could help researchers build quantum computers, which could theoretically make calculations much faster than existing technology.

"Apart from adding another toy to the quantum mechanic’s playground, this is an important tool for further developments in quantum-state engineering," wrote physicist Rainer Blatt of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in a separate essay in the June 4 issue of Nature. Blatt was not involved in the new study.

To achieve this feat of entanglement, Jost and colleagues set up two pairs of ions (atoms with one electron removed, so that they have a positive charge). Each pair included one beryllium and one magnesium ion, vibrating back and forth toward and away from each other as if they were connected by an invisible spring.

Using electric fields and lasers, the researchers herded the ions into separate pairs and then entangled their motion. Then they separated the pairs by 240 micrometers (millionths of a meter), which is actually quite a span for an atom. Even at this distance, when the researchers changed the motion of one pair — stopped or started the vibrations — the other responded immediately, stopping or starting in kind.

The experiment proved that this kind of everyday springy motion is entangle-able, and blurred the boundary between the quantum world and the regular macroscopic world we live in, where normal objects don't behave like that.

As for why this entanglement, or any entanglement, is possible, physicists aren't so sure.

"It’s a very difficult question," Jost told LiveScience. "I would just have to say that it stems from the laws and rules of quantum mechanics. There are a lot of people trying to understand what it means."

•Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena

•How Quantum Physics Could Power the Future

•The Greatest Mysteries in Science

EINSTEIN NEWS: Astronomers snap most distant black hole in universe, which is 1bn times bigger than the Sun

By Claire Bates
Last updated 03rd September 2009
MailOnline



Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole near the edge of the known universe. It lies within a galaxy the size of the Milky Way, which is 12.8billion light-years from Earth. The light from this galaxy has travelled for most of the universe's 13.7billion-year lifespan to reach us.

Most scientists believe the universe is rapidly expanding following a catastrophic event known as the Big Bang.

Light from distant objects is therefore stretched and shifted to longer wavelengths. This process, known as the redshift, is used to calculate huge distances in space.
Study leader Dr Goto said: 'It is surprising that such a giant galaxy existed when the universe was only one-sixteenth of its present age, and that it hosted a black hole one billion times more massive than the sun.

'The galaxy and black hole must have formed very rapidly in the early universe.'

Scientists hope the new images will explain how galaxies and black holes have managed to evolve together.
Black holes cannot be seen directly because they are so dense that light cannot escape from their gravitational pull.

However, matter falling into a black hole heats up from friction as it swirls around the event horizon of the black hole at great speeds. The hot material radiates strongly in ultraviolet and visible light. Until now, studying host galaxies in the distant universe has been extremely difficult because the blinding bright light from the vicinity of the black hole makes it more difficult to see the already faint light from the host galaxy.

Black holes cannot be seen directly because they are so dense that light cannot escape from their gravitational pull. To see the supermassive black hole, the team of scientists used new red-sensitive charge-coupled devices (CCDs) installed in the Suprime-Cam camera on the Subaru telescope on Mauna Kea.

CCDs are used in many light detecting gadgets from photocopiers to bar-code readers. In astronomy they are used to collect analogue information (such as light or an electrical charge from a distant object) and convert it into digital information that can be analyzed by computer software.

Professor Satoshi Miyazaki of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) is a lead investigator for the creation of the new CCDs and a collaborator on this project. He said: 'The improved sensitivity of the new CCDs has brought an exciting
discovery as its very first result.'

A careful analysis of the colours revealed that 40 per cent of light around 9100Angstrom is from the host galaxy itself and 60 per cent is from the surrounding ionized nebulae illuminated by the black hole.

Yousuke Utsumi, a member of the project team, said: 'We have witnessed a supermassive black hole and its host galaxy forming together. This discovery has opened a new window for investigating galaxy-black hole co-evolution at the dawn of the universe.'

Unlike smaller black holes, which form when a large star dies, the origin of the supermassive black holes remains an unsolved problem. A currently favored model requires several intermediate black holes to merge. The host galaxy discovered in this work provides a reservoir of such intermediate black holes.

The research will be published in the online version of the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society this month.

Stan Lee Reflects On 'Friendly' Relationship With Michael Jackson

Pair met 'a number of times' in the 1990s to discuss buying Marvel Comics.

By Rick Marshall
For MTV Movies Blog
July 29, 2009



SAN DIEGO — It's no secret that Michael Jackson was a comic book fan — just take a look at some of the items from his personal collection. But what many people don't realize is that the recently deceased pop icon was almost a comic book publisher too.

Last month, MTV's comic book movie blog Splash Page recalled how close Jackson came to buying Marvel Comics in the late 1990s alongside Stan Lee, the famous co-creator of Spider-Man, the X-Men, Fantastic Four and countless other superheroes.

During last weekend's Comic-Con, Lee said the relationship he developed with Jackson over the course of their business dealings extended well beyond professional courtesy. In fact, as various videos popping up around the Internet lately seem to attest, it wouldn't be out of line to call Jackson a fan of Lee and his creations.

"We had met a number of times," Lee told MTV News. "In fact, [Jackson] came to my house once with his son, and I remember my wife took care of his son for about an hour while Michael and I were talking.

"He was quite a good father," he added. "He was very solicitous, and he cared very much for the boy."

While their plan to buy Marvel never progressed past "the discussion phase," Lee said, the pair grew fairly close. At one point, Lee even made a trip to Jackson's home to discuss, of all things, Spider-Man.

"I had been to his place in Neverland," Lee said. "He wanted to do Spider-Man. I'm not sure whether he just wanted to produce it or wanted to play the role...our conversation never got that far along.

"He thought I'd be the one who could get him the rights [to make a Spider-Man movie], and I told him I couldn't," Lee continued. "He would have to go to the Marvel company. But we did become friendly...and he was a great guy."

10 Lessons Every Student Can Learn From Einstein

Posted by Site Administrator in Education
Aug 5th, 2009
Online College.org


Albert Einstein was one of the greatest scientists to ever live. Einstein’s physics theories are still confounding scientists more than half a century after his death. In addition to his grand technical accomplishments, the kindly German doctor was also a philosopher and ethicist of the highest order. More than simply a scientist, Einstein’s legacy provides insight into a number of fields. Here are the ten lessons every student can learn from Albert Einstein, pulled directly from his quotes and sayings.

1."Imagination is more important than knowledge.": Without the ability to dream or imagine Einstein never would have been remembered as a famous scientist. In fact Einstein even used imagination as a scientific tool by developing theories through thought experiments conducted entirely in the mind.
2."Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.": Not all Einstein’s breakthroughs came easily and despite his renowned intellect, he often claimed deficiencies as a mathematician. Though many claim he failed math as kid, this endearing story is sadly not true.
3."The only real valuable thing is intuition.": Einstein understood the value of instinct and intuition when tackling problems. While knowledge and information are necessary, trusting your first reaction is often best.
4."Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.": Falling flat on ones face is an essential part of the human experience. Failure allows time and hindsight to explore mistakes and review other courses of action.
5."The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.": Learning is a lifelong process that frequently relies more on interests and passions then official curricula. Students that follow their interests end up successful and fulfilled.
6."I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.": Despite having contributed heavily to the atomic bomb, Einstein deplored its use and lobbied American presidents to limit the weapons’ proliferation.
7."We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.": Finding solutions means finding different routes of failure. Success can only be achieved with focused effort and well thought out solutions.
8."The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.": Questions are good. They shape all academic disciplines and lead to more knowledge. Unfortunately, asking questions is an easy habit to break. Einstein constantly reminded people to indulge their curiosity.
9."Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.": For all his genius and success, Einstein was aware he would never discover all the answers. This humility and down to earth sensibility has made Einstein an icon of human thought for generations.
10."Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.": This sign hung in Einstein’s Princeton University office as a reminder of the truly important things in life: love and happiness.