UniverseToday has an interesting look at geomagnetic reversal, the process in which the Earth’s magnetic poles trade places. The article cites known trends and recent studies to debunk doomsday myths and unsubstantiated claims about the process. One such study is attempting to model the earth’s core with a 26-ton ball of molten metal. Another recently found evidence that the Earth has a second, weaker magnetic field. We do know that this magnetic pole flip-flop has occurred many times in the last few million years; the last occurred 780,000 years ago according to ferromagnetic sediment. A few scaremongering articles have said geomagnetic reversal occurs with ‘clockwork regularity’ — this is simply not true
— via Slashdot
Does seeing through skin cells sound like crazy science fiction to you? Think again. Professor Leonid Yaroslavsky, a researcher from Tel Aviv University, Israel, thinks that humans have an ability to see through their skin. This discovery may lead to new therapies that could help the blind see
A new space race is officially under way, and this one should have the sci-fi geeks salivating. The project is a space elevator, and some experts now believe that the concept is well within the bounds of possibility — maybe even within our lifetimes
We all know it and science has proved it — wires, string, and hair will inevitably tie themselves in knots. This astonishing non-revelation is one of 10 pieces of real research honoured this year with Ig Nobel Prizes. The spoof alternatives to the rather more sober Nobel prizes were presented in a ceremony at Harvard University. Other winners included studies that showed Coca Cola was an effective spermicide; and that fleas on dogs jump higher than fleas on cats
For many blind or partially sighted people, implants that stimulate healthy nerve cells connected to their retinas could help restore some normal vision. Researchers have been working on such implants since the 1980s but with only limited success. A major hurdle is making an implant that can stay in the eye for years without declining in performance or causing inflammation. Now researchers with the Boston Retinal Implant Project, which was spun out of MIT, Harvard Medical School, and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in 1988, have developed hardware they say overcomes such issues. The implants have been tested in animals, and the group plans to start human trials by 2010
The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be shut off until spring 2009 while engineers probe a magnet failure. The incident on 19 September caused a tonne of liquid helium to leak out into the experiment’s 27km-long tunnel. Officials said the time required to fully investigate the problem precluded a re-start before the lab’s winter maintenance period
Plans to begin smashing particles at the Large Hadron Collider may be delayed after a magnet failure forced engineers to halt work. The failure, known as a quench, caused some of the LHC’s super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100 degrees. The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel at Cern, near Geneva
Researchers at Cern have confirmed that the Large Hadron Collider managed only a few hours of operation before being shut down. The multi-billion dollar apparatus went live on 10 September and beams were sent around the 27km underground acceleration ring successfully. However, a large transformer failed a few hours into testing and has had to be replaced
Engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have achieved a breakthrough in the use of a one-atom thick structure called graphene
as a new carbon-based material for storing electrical charge in ultracapacitor devices, perhaps paving the way for the massive installation of renewable energies such as wind and solar power
Scientists may soon shed light on a way to conquer superbugs
with nanotechnology and a simple flip of a switch. A new type of paint for walls and ceilings may, when exposed to fluorescent light, be able to kill superbugs
, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, according to preliminary studies led by Lucia Caballero from Manchester Metropolitan University in England. Many paints are infused with titanium dioxide for its brightening power. But when these particles are small, on the nanoscale of a billionth of a metre, they have more surface area exposed to light. As a result, they create a more reactive environment
Scientists have made the world’s first synthetic tree: a palm-sized duplication of the elegant process by which trees drink. Known as transpiration
, the hydration process appears to require no biological energy. Scientists theorise that as evaporation occurs on the surface of a tree’s leaves, the resulting drop in water pressure propels water from the earth and through their bodies. The same principle pulls oil through the wick of a candle
Greek hackers were able to gain momentary access to a CERN computer system of the Large Hadron Collider while the first particles were zipping around the particle accelerator on 10 September. Scientists working at CERN were worried about what the hackers could do because they were one step away
from the computer control system of one of the huge detectors of the machine, a vast magnet that weighs 12,500 tons, measuring around 21m in length and 15m wide/high. If they had hacked into a second computer network, they could have turned off parts of the vast detector and, said the insider, it is hard enough to make these things work if no one is messing with it
— via Slashdot
Tiny invertebrates called water bears
can survive in the vacuum of space, a European Space Agency experiment has shown. They are the first animals known to be able to survive the harsh combination of low pressure and intense radiation found in space. Water bears, also known as tardigrades, are known for their virtual indestructibility on Earth. The creatures can survive intense pressures, huge doses of radiation, and years of being dried out
Last night, physicists near Geneva switched on the largest, most powerful scientific tool ever built and the world did not vanish down a black hole, as alarmists had predicted. Instead, the $US8 billion ($9.9 billion) Large Hadron Collider successfully sent the first beam of protons — members of a group of subatomic particles called hadrons — hurtling around a 27km circular tunnel running beneath Switzerland and France. The event caused sighs of relief from more than 2000 scientists from 150 institutes in 45 countries, including Australia, who had waited 14 years for the moment
Scientists say an understanding of how the Twin Towers collapsed will help them develop the materials needed to build fusion reactors. New research shows how steel will fail at high temperatures because of the magnetic properties of the metal. The New York buildings fell when their steel backbones lost strength in the fires that followed the plane impacts. Dr Sergei Dudarev told the British Association Science Festival that improved steels were now being sought. The principal scientist at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) said one of the first applications for these better performing metals would be in the wall linings of fusion reactors where temperatures would be in a similar range to those experienced in the Twin Towers’ fires
A team of biologists and chemists is closing in on bringing non-living matter to life. It’s not as Frankensteinian as it sounds. Instead, a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can almost be called life
Yale Researchers Find ‘Junk DNA’ May Have Triggered Key Evolutionary Changes in Human Thumb and Foot
Out of the 3 billion genetic letters that spell out the human genome, Yale scientists have found a handful that may have contributed to the evolutionary changes in human limbs that enabled us to manipulate tools and walk upright. Results from a comparative analysis of the human, chimpanzee, rhesus macaque and other genomes reported in the journal Science suggest our evolution may have been driven not only by sequence changes in genes, but by changes in areas of the genome once thought of as junk DNA
Scientists have found that bumblebees learn from their near-death
encounters with crab spiders and adapt their future foraging strategies. They watched real bees in an artificial meadow — containing yellow flowers
and robotic crab spiders. Bees that had been captured
spent longer inspecting flowers during subsequent foraging trips. They may outwit the spiders — but at the expense of valuable foraging time
Oregon Health & Science University scientists have successfully produced functional auditory hair cells in the cochlea of the mouse inner ear. The breakthrough suggests that a new therapy may be developed in the future to successfully treat hearing loss
Researchers discovered that cattle have a good sense of direction and tend to point in a northerly direction. It has long been observed that cows appear to have a talent for weather forecasting and are able to predict when rain is on the way, but until now their navigational abilities have been largely ignored. Their innate ability to find north is believed to be a relic from the days when their wild ancestors needed an accurate sense of direction to migrate across the plains of Africa, Asia and Europe. Dr Sabine Begall and colleagues from the University of Duisburg-Essen looked at thousands of images of cattle on Google Earth in Britain, Ireland, India and the USA. They also studied 3,000 deer in the Czech Republic. The deer tended to face north when resting or grazing. Although, in many cases, the images were not clear enough to determine which way the cattle were facing they were aligned on a north/south axis
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