Why Launch a Rocket Deep into an Aurora?

Man, some scientists sure know how to liven up a Saturday night! On Feb. 18, a NASA-funded collaboration launched a sounding rocket directly into a shimmering green aurora, from the Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska.

It's called the Magneto-Ionosphere Coupling in the Alfven Resonator mission, with the aim of studying so-called "space weather" -- arising from the stream of charged particles from the sun that mess with the magnetosphere, sometimes interfering with our electronic systems -- like the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. We would like our GPS to keep on working, and not be knocked out by a solar storm.

The rocket's instruments collected tons of real-time data as it shot through the display before coming back down to Earth a good 200 miles away. And the scientists got some pretty stunning photographs to boot.

Scientists are interested in studying auroral processes because they could shed light on how energy from the solar wind ends up coupling with Earth's magnetic field (the magnetosphere), before being summarily dumped into the upper atmosphere. Out of the solar wind's heartbreak comes our space weather.

There are two types of aurora: diffuse and discrete. With the former, you'll get a faint flow that might not even be visible at night; with the latter, you'll see that gorgeous, sharply defined band of colorful light most of us associate with the Northern Lights,or Aurora Borealis.

The MICA mission is especially interested in the discrete aurora, particularly one of the possible underlying mechanisms: Alfven waves, created by something in the ionosphere called the Alfven resonator.

It's a long narrow channel in space and the same beam of charged particles from the sun that creates the aurora, also boosts the electrical conductivity in the resonator. And this produces Alfven waves. That's the hypothesis, anyway; MICA's measurements should help validate it.

Marc Lessard of the Univeristy of New Hampshire's Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, provided a wonderfully poetic analogy for how this works in the UNH press release, comparing the Alfven resonator to a giant guitar string stretching through space:

    "The ionosphere... is one end of the guitar string and there's another structure over a thousand miles up in space that is the other end of the string. When it gets plucked by incoming energy, we get a fundamental frequency and other 'harmonies' along the background magnetic field sitting above the ionosphere."

Read more at Discovery News

Tallest, Fattest Penguin Found

The tallest and heaviest ever known penguin stood nearly 5 feet tall and tipped the scales at around 130 pounds, according to a 27-million-year-old fossil found in New Zealand.

The penguin, Kairuku grebneffi lived in what is now New Zealand and likely speared fish and squid with its curved beak. In comparison, today's largest penguin is the Emperor penguin, which measures just over 3 feet tall and weighs approximately 85 pounds.

Yet another new big fossil penguin, Kairuku waitaki, was also recently discovered. It lived alongside K. grebneffi. The finds by an international team of researchers was described in the latest Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

"The Kairuku penguins were the last generation of so-called "giant penguins," the term indicating any fossil penguins that were much larger than the living largest Emperor penguin," co-author Tatsuro Ando of the Ashoro Museum of Paleontology in Japan told Discovery News.

Ando explained that these big flightless birds emerged around 50 million years ago and thrived for about 25 million years before dying out. It remains a mystery as to why they disappeared, "but probably the drastic change in paleoenvironment was the cause of their demise," he said.

The researchers, led by Daniel Ksepka of North Carolina State University, analyzed the near-complete fossils for the penguins, which were unearthed at New Zealand's Waitaki Region. This area was known as Zealandia during prehistoric times, and it was a veritable penguin paradise.

"For much of its history, New Zealand has been sitting in the middle of the Southern Ocean, the sea that circles Antarctica," co-author Ewan Fordyce of Otago University told Discovery News. "For millions of years, it has provided suitable land for rookeries (breeding grounds) and access to rich food resources in nearby seas."

To this day, New Zealand is a center of diversity for penguins. Out of the 17 existing species of penguin, six live and breed in New Zealand.

The two new fossil species, from a distance, would have looked like modern penguins, Fordyce said.

"Up close, however, it is clear that both species had relatively longer bills and a more slender body than in living species," he explained. "The wing was probably able to flex a little more."

Their long beaks would have enabled these penguins to spear prey, such as fish and squid. Sharks and shark-toothed dolphins, a type of prehistoric super strong dolphin with heavily toothed jaws, probably hunted the enormous penguins, which could have snapped back with their beaks.

The research team, which also included Craig Jones, mentioned that the oldest known penguin so far is Waimanu from New Zealand.

"It lived 55-60+ million years ago, not long after the extinction of dinosaurs," Fordyce said.

Ksepka said one theory holds that penguins lost their ability to fly after the Cretaceous mass extinction. DNA evidence indicates that the closest living relatives of penguins are tubenose seabirds, such as albatrosses and petrels. Since the latter can dive to significant depths, the scientists suspect that the first penguins could both fly and dive underwater.

Read more at Discovery News

Science or Art? Astrophysics Lab for 'Gifted' Microbes

In January, San Francisco residents were treated to the unveiling of the world's first Celestial Observatory for Single-Celled Organisms -- actually, an art installation by Jonathon Keats that features cyanobacteria hooked up to the Hubble Space Telescope via a custom video feed.

"Bacteria have never been given observatory access, to study the cosmos for themselves," Keats told Wired (for which he is an occasional columnist) back in January. "Their experience of the universe has always been at the scale of microns."

Keats aims to rectify that appalling oversight, in hopes that his little cyanobacteria will succeed where humanity's greatest minds have failed: devising a viable theory of everything "reconciling cosmic and quantum observations... in their own bacterial way."

Keats' project is part of a larger exhibit called "Vast and Undetectable," at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, designed to "explore space that is either so large or so small we cannot conceive of it with our known processes of sight and comprehension."

The exhibit runs through April 14, and also includes installations centered on slime molds (video footage, not the actual slime molds, because gross!), embossed prints of star clusters stripped of colorization and presented in their raw form, and deconstructed color-coded maps from the Hubble Space Telescope's deep-field images.

Keats has made a bit of a name for himself over the years as the agent provacateur behind various wacky exercises in multimedia performance art -- or, as the New Yorker prefers to think of him, a "poet of ideas."

* He copyrighted his own mind in 2003, claiming it was a sculpture he had created, neuron by neuron, by thinking; he even created a conceptual futures market based on his copyright.

* In 2004, he collaborated with scientists at University of California, Berkeley, to genetically engineer god (they failed, but they garnered a lot of press).

* In 2005, he produced a series of paintings based on signals detected by the radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

* His most controversial project? Establishing The Atheon, the first temple devoted to the worship of science, that annoyed scientists and believers alike.

* And then there was the time he attempting to forge a brave new economy based on antimatter. No, really. You could even purchase your own anti-money by sending a check to The First Bank of Antimatter.

I think you get the idea. His celestial observatory for cyanobacteria is very much in the same vein.

There is no question that cyanobacteria deserve our respect, if only because they are the oldest known fossils -- dating back some 3.5 billion years -- and yet still flourish today. They get their name from their blue-green tinge that comes from a pigment, phycocyanin, which helps the bacteria capture sunlight to fuel their photosynthesis.

It's that photosynthetic ability that Keats is exploiting in his installation, figuring the cyanobacteria should be able to detect starlight much like we see light with our eyes -- or how telescopes gather light from distant stars.

His "celestial observatory" is actually terrestrial: rows of petri dishes teeming with cyanobacteria, thanks to brackish water, set on top of a flat screen monitor laid horizontally. Images from the Hubble Space Telescope are fed into the monitor, and the glow from those images should -- in theory -- be "detected" by the plucky little cyanobacteria. Then they'll be released into their natural habitat, and new batch of cyanobacteria will take their place.

Read more at Discovery News

Don't Miss the 2012 Annular Solar Eclipse

In days gone by the event often filled people with fear and dread.

To see the sun, which reliably shone day after day, disappear from view as though devoured by some great monster or at the hands of a disgruntled deity would have sent any observer into panic.

Fortunately, today we understand what's happening when the sun disappears from view and thankfully don't resort to human sacrifice to bring it back!

A solar eclipse has to be one of the most amazing natural displays and they happen just a few times each year. Because of the conditions that cause the eclipse you need to be in very specific locations on Earth to see them, unlike the lunar eclipses that are visible over half the Earth at a time.

These quite surreal events occur due to very specific alignments of the Earth, moon and sun. If the Earth lies between the sun and moon then it will block sunlight from reaching the moon and we see a lunar eclipse or "eclipse of the moon." If, on the other hand, the moon is between the Earth and sun, then sunlight is blocked from a very small patch of the Earth -- this is a solar eclipse or "eclipse of the sun."

Parts of the US (Nevada, California, Utah, Arizona, Colarado, New Mexico and Texas), Japan and China are treated to a solar eclipse on May 20 this year, although it's not going to be a total solar eclipse; it's going to be something a little special between 22:06 and 01:39 UTC (5:06 p.m. and 8:39 p.m. EST).

The moon's orbit around the Earth isn't perfectly circular, instead its shaped like an ellipse. This means the distance between the Earth and moon varies and with that, the apparent size of the moon in the sky varies a little.

When the moon's disk appears the same size or larger than the sun, we see a total solar eclipse where the bright photosphere of the sun is blocked from view, revealing the intricate glory of the outer atmosphere of the sun -- the corona. On occasions, though, the moon's disk is slightly smaller than the sun as it appears in the sky leading to the strange spectacle of an annular solar eclipse.

Annular solar eclipses differ visually from total eclipses as the moon isn't large enough to block the entire photosphere from view, leaving the moon surrounded by a ring of bright sunlight (as seen in the photo, top). It's for this reason that annular eclipses must be observed with filters or using projection techniques. At no point of the eclipse on May 20th will it be safe to look directly at the eclipsed sun with the naked eye or with optical aid.

Read more at Discovery News

Quantum Microphone Captures Extremely Weak Sound

Scientists from Chalmers University of Technology have demonstrated a new kind of detector for sound at the level of quietness of quantum mechanics. The result offers prospects of a new class of quantum hybrid circuits that mix acoustic elements with electrical ones, and may help illuminate new phenomena of quantum physics.

The results have been published in Nature Physics.

The "quantum microphone" is based on a single electron transistor, that is, a transistor where the current passes one electron at a time. The acoustic waves studied by the research team propagate over the surface of a crystalline microchip, and resemble the ripples formed on a pond when a pebble is thrown into it. The wavelength of the sound is a mere 3 micrometers, but the detector is even smaller, and capable of rapidly sensing the acoustic waves as they pass by.

On the chip surface, the researchers have fabricated a three-millimeter-long echo chamber, and even though the speed of sound on the crystal is ten times higher than in air, the detector shows how sound pulses reflect back and forth between the walls of the chamber, thereby verifying the acoustic nature of the wave.

The detector is sensitive to waves with peak heights of a few percent of a proton diameter, levels so quiet that sound can be governed by quantum law rather than classical mechanics, much in the same way as light.

"The experiment is done on classical acoustic waves, but it shows that we have everything in place to begin studies of proper quantum-acoustics, and nobody has attempted that before," says Martin Gustafsson, PhD student and first author of the article.

Read more at Science Daily

Amoeba May Offer Key Clue to Photosynthetic Evolution

The major difference between plant and animal cells is the photosynthetic process, which converts light energy into chemical energy. When light isn't available, energy is generated by breaking down carbohydrates and sugars, just as it is in animal and some bacterial cells. Two cellular organelles are responsible for these two processes: the chloroplasts for photosynthesis and the mitochondria for sugar breakdown. New research from Carnegie's Eva Nowack and Arthur Grossman has opened a window into the early stages of chloroplast evolution.

Their work is published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the week of February 27-March 2.

It is widely accepted that chloroplasts originated from photosynthetic, single-celled bacteria called cyanobacteria, which were engulfed by a more complex, non-photosynthetic cell more than 1.5 billion years ago. While the relationship between the two organisms was originally symbiotic, over evolutionary time the cyanobacterium transferred most of its genetic information to the nucleus of the host organism, transforming the original cyanobacterium into a chloroplast that is no longer able to survive without its host. A similar process resulted in the creation of mitochondria.

To sustain the function of the organelle, proteins encoded by the transferred genes are synthesized in the cytoplasm, or cell's interior, and then imported back into the organelle. In most systems that have been studied, the transport of proteins into the chloroplast occurs through a multi-protein import complex that enables the proteins to pass through the envelope membranes that surround the chloroplast.

Clearly the events that gave rise to chloroplasts and mitochondria changed the world forever. But it is difficult to research the process by which this happened because it took place so long ago. One strategy used to elucidate the way in which this process evolved has relied on identifying organisms for which the events that resulted in the conversion of a bacterium into a host-dependent organelle occurred more recently.

Nowack and Grossman focused their research on a type of amoeba called Paulinella chromatophora, which contains two photosynthetic compartments that also originated from an endosymbiotic cyanobacterium, but that represent an earlier stage in the formation of a fully evolved organelle.

These compartments, called chromatophores, transferred more than 30 of the original cyanobacterial genes to the nucleus of the host organism. While gene transfer has been observed for other bacterial endosymbionts, the function of the transferred genes has been unclear, since it does not appear that the endosymbionts (in contrast to organelles) are equipped to recapture those proteins, because they do not have appropriate protein import machineries.

The Carnegie team honed in on three of the P. chromatophora transferred genes, which encode proteins involved in photosynthesis, a process localized to the chromatophore. They set out to determine whether these proteins are synthesized in the cytoplasm of the amoeba and whether the mature proteins became localized to the chromatophore.

Using an advanced array of research techniques, they were able to determine that these three proteins are synthesized in the cytoplasm and then transported into chromatophores, where they assemble together with other, internally encoded proteins into working protein complexes that are part of the photosynthetic process.

Interestingly, the process by which these proteins are transported into chromatophores may also be novel and involve transit through an organelle called the Golgi apparatus, prior to becoming localized to the chromatophore. This suggests the occurrence of an initial, rudimentary process for proteins to cross the envelope membrane of the nascent chloroplast. This process ultimately evolved into one that is potentially more sophisticated and that uses specific protein complexes for efficient transport.

"This work demonstrates that P. chromatophora is a potentially powerful model for studying evolutionary processes by which organelles developed," Nowack said. "Obtaining a comprehensive list of proteins imported into chromatophores, including their functions and origins, as well as understanding the pathway by which these proteins are imported, could provide insight into the mechanism that eukaryotic cells use to 'enslave' bacteria and turn them into organelles such as chloroplasts and mitochondria."

This research was supported by Michael Melkonian, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the National Science Foundation.

Read more at Science Daily

Shallow Water May Shed Light on Supernovae

Although supernovae -- the violent death of massive stars -- are a well-known stellar event, the underlying mechanisms remain a mystery to astrophysicists. But with the help of a spinning cylinder of shallow water, one physicist thinks he may have spotted the phenomenon that gives these stellar explosions their "kick."

In 1987, astronomers spotted one of the brightest supernovae seen in 400 years, dubbed 1987A. Seventeen years later, the Hubble Space Telescope snapped the above image showcasing a new kind of light display from 1987A: a cosmic "ring of pearls" made up of several bright spots strewn along a ring of gas.

Those glowing pearls were the result of the original supersonic shock wave from the explosion colliding into the gassy ring at high speeds. The ring itself likely formed from ejected material before the original star exploded -- probably a by-product of it consuming another smaller star.

I bring it up because (a) it's such a pretty image, and (b) it's still possible for supernovae to surprise us. We have a lot to learn about stellar explosions, like, just what is the underlying mechanism that causes them to explode in the first place?

Yes, we understand the basics: It starts when the iron core of a massive star collapses and then stops collapsing abruptly, forming a neutron star. That sudden stop sends a giant shock wave ricocheting out into space.

But to get the explosions astrophysicists observe, something needs to re-energize that shock wave suddenly for it push through the star and separate the outer layers. We just don't know what that "something" might be.

And we don't understand why neutron stars rotate extremely rapidly right after their birth. Sure, it's because angular momentum is conserved: the slower rotation of the parent star starts to speed up as it collapses into the smaller, denser neutron progeny -- just like an ice skater will pull in his or her arms close to the body to achieve a faster spin. But what gives it that initial "kick"?

Enter French physicist Thierry Foglizzo, who worked with colleagues at CEA-Saclay to create an experimental analog of what might be going on in these stellar explosions using something a bit closer to home: shallow water.

He is not the first to notice some striking similarities in the behavior of hydrodynamical systems with supernova shock waves. There have been several large-scale numerical simulations modeling those processes.

For instance, it's now known that the shock wave itself is unstable. Tiny ripples or perturbations gradually become amplified so that you get a "sloshing" effect, similar to how water behaves when it's perturbed and starts sloshing against the sides of a container.

The hypothesis is that this underlying instability -- called a standing accretion shock instability (SASI) -- is the critical factor in stellar explosions, possibly even that "kick" that sets the neutron star's spin in motion.

But a simulation is still an abstract model. Foglizzo et al. came up with an ingenious way to test that hypothesis, in a set up they call the shallow water analog of a shock instability (SWASI). In true physicist fashion, they simplified matters, recreating just the primary components of a SASI: an infalling flow, and something akin to advective and sound waves. (Advective flow is what happens when water's motion carries silt or pollutants downstream.)

Surface gravity waves behave a lot like sound waves, while a good analog for shocks could be hydraulic jumps. The latter are common in river rafting or kayaking, for example, arising when a fast-flowing liquid, like water, slows suddenly and piles up on top of itself -- pretty much how a shock wave forms.

Read more at Discovery News

Aurora Mystery Solved?

A longstanding mystery about the origin of the energetic particles that cause Earth's dramatic aurora displays may have been solved.

The electrons responsible for the auroras -- also known as the northern and southern lights -- are likely accelerated to incredible speeds in an active region of Earth's magnetosphere, according to a new study. This region is 1,000 times larger than scientists had thought possible, providing enough volume to generate lots of the fast-moving electrons.

"People have been thinking this region is tiny," lead author Jan Egedal, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a statement. But now, he added, "we've shown it can be very large, and can accelerate many electrons."

Egedal and his colleagues analyzed data gathered by various spacecraft, including the European Space Agency's four Cluster probes. They also performed simulations using a supercomputer called Kraken at the United States Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Kraken has 112,000 processors working in parallel. The team used 25,000 of these processors for 11 days, following the motions of 180 billion simulated particles in space to map out how aurora-generating electrons move.

The researchers determined that these electrons are likely being rocketed to their tremendous speeds in the magnetotail, a portion of Earth's protective magnetosphere that has been pushed far into space by the solar wind.

As the solar wind -- the million-mph stream of charged particles coming from the sun -- stretches Earth's magnetic-field lines, the field stores energy like a rubber band being stretched, Egedal said. When the normally parallel field lines reconnect, that energy is released like a rubber band being snapped, and electrons are propelled back toward our planet at fantastic speeds.

When these fast-moving electrons hit molecules in Earth's upper atmosphere, the impact generates the phenomenon that we know as the northern and southern lights.

Some physicists had viewed this origin story for the aurora-causing electrons as improbable, because they didn't think the active magnetotail region was big enough to generate the huge numbers of electrons that slam into Earth's atmosphere.

Read more at Discovery News

Wireless Bicycle Brake, a Prototype On an Exciting Mission

Scientists have developed a wireless bicycle brake that enables the bike to brake within 250 milliseconds. At this time, wireless networks are able to brake just one bike, but in the future, the technical elements will be further developed to regulate entire trains as they travel over the lines. In view of that fact, computer scientists at Saarland University are designing mathematical calculations to check such systems automatically. The scientists will present their results at the computer fair Cebit. The trade show takes place in Hanover, Germany from March 6 to 10.

Professor Holger Hermanns, who holds the chair of Dependable Systems and Software, and who developed the wireless bicycle brake together with his group, explains: "Wireless networks are never a fail-safe method. That's a fact that's based on a technological background." Nonetheless, the trend is to set up wireless systems that, like a simple bicycle brake, have to function all the time. "In the field of the future European Train Service, for example, concrete plans already exist," Hermanns reports. Furthermore, he says that train and airplane experiments are far too sophisticated, and could even endanger the life of human beings in case of malfunction.

Therefore, the Saarland computer scientist's mathematical methods should now verify the correct function and interaction of the components automatically. "The wireless bicycle brake gives us the necessary playground to optimize these methods for operation in much more complex systems," Hermanns adds. Therefore, his research group examines the brake prototype with algorithms that normally are used in control systems for aircraft or chemical factories. As a result, they found out that the brake works with 99.9999999999997 percent reliability. "This implies that out of a trillion braking attempts, we have three failures," Hermanns explains and concludes: "That is not perfect, but acceptable."

To brake with the wireless brake, a cyclist needs only clench the rubber grip on the right handle. The more tightly the grip is clenched, the harder the disk brake on the front wheel works. It seems as if a ghost hand is in play, but a combination of several electronic components enables the braking. Integrated in the rubber grip is a pressure sensor, which activates a sender if a specified pressure threshold is crossed. The sender is integrated in a blue plastic box which is the size of a cigarette packet and is attached to the handlebar. Its radio signals are sent to a receiver attached at the end of the bicycle's fork. The receiver forwards the signal to an actuator, transforming the radio signal into the mechanical power by which the disk brake is activated. The electrical energy is supplied by a battery, which is also attached to the bicycle's fork. To enhance reliability, there are additional senders attached to the bicycle. These repeatedly send the same signal.

Read more at Science Daily

Bird Brains Follow the Beat

By training birds to 'get rhythm', scientists uncover evidence that our capacity to move in time with music may be connected with our ability to learn speech.

Even though typical dance-floor activity might suggest otherwise, humans generally demonstrate a remarkable capacity to synchronize their body movements in response to auditory stimuli. But is this ability to move in time to musical rhythm a uniquely human trait?

Some animals are capable of vocal learning, changing the sounds they make in response to those they hear from other members of their species. Scientists have hypothesized that such behavior may be associated with the capacity for so-called 'rhythmic synchronization'. "Motor control of vocal organs is naturally important in vocal learning," says Yoshimasa Seki of the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Wako. "Once auditory-motor coordination in the vocal control system has been established, a similar auditory-motor transformation system for other body parts might be derived from that."

Studies in vocal-learning species have largely focused on case studies of individual animals, but Seki and colleagues conducted larger-scale experiments and found that budgerigars (Fig. 1) may have an inherent capacity for rhythmic synchronization. The researchers tested their hypothesis by training eight budgerigars to peck a button in response to the rhythm of an external metronome, which could be adjusted to present the birds with audio-visual stimuli at varying intervals.

In all 46 experiments, the birds were able to consistently respond to rhythmic beats within a certain time-frame, demonstrating successful entrainment. However, the accuracy of their timing was dependent on the tempo. Only one out of seven birds was successfully able to match the onset of each beat when the stimuli were generated at 450 millisecond intervals, while all animals achieved this feat when that interval was lengthened to 1,500 or 1,800 milliseconds.

To confirm that actual synchronization was taking place, the researchers used computer simulations of other bird behavior scenarios, such as random pecking or responding directly to individual stimuli rather than the rhythm itself. However, none of these alternative models was sufficient to explain the observed activity. "Our results showed that budgerigars can show rhythmic movements synchronized with external stimuli, which means they potentially have this capability of auditory-motor entrainment as a species," says Seki.

Read more at Science Daily