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The Mystery of Mercury

January 30, 2008 3:46 PM

"More like the Moon than the Moon."  That was the conventional wisdom about Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun, and also the smallest (not counting recently-demoted Pluto).

But now scientists have sent a ship called MESSENGER racing past, and "it was not the planet we expected," says the principal investigator, Sean Solomon.  "It was not the Moon."

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, which is running the mission for NASA, has been posting material HERE.  If you look at most of the pictures, you'll have a hard time telling them apart from Apollo Moon shots. 

But Mercury is the only inner planet, other than ours, that has a magnetosphere -- something essential to life on Earth.  It's the Earth's magnetic field that protects us from cosmic radiation, stuff that would make life here impossible.

Click HERE for a very large version of the picture above. There are differences the scientists point out.  For instance, the Moon has large, dark areas, known as maria, believed to be ancient depressions that were filled in by volcanic material from below.  Mercury seems to have the opposite -- there's a large circular feature, called the Caloris Basin, that's actually higher in elevation than what surrounds it.

There were deep furrow-like cuts in various places on the surface, possibly steep cliffs.  And one odd spot, nicknamed "The Spider" because it looked like one, had deep troughs radiating out from the center of a large basin called Caloris.  Cracks from when magma welled up from beneath?  Damage from the formation of a crater?  No saying yet.

MESSENGER will settle into orbit around Mercury in 2011, after a long, circuitous journey that trades length for fuel savings.  (NASA has wised up over the years about cost; this mission isn't cheap, but it was done on a relatively tight budget.)  The mission managers, anticipating the question, have assembled a page labeled "Why Mercury?"

When one thinks of space (or at least when I do), one's tempted to think of the eternal cold that consumes most of it.  Mercury is so close to the Sun that MESSENGER's most visible part is a giant sunshade.

January 30, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

An Asteroid With Our Name on It

January 29, 2008 4:43 PM

If you were up at 3:30 this morning, Eastern Time, you might have heard about asteroid 2007 TU24 making a pretty close call.

You say you missed it?  It missed us too -- coming within about 334,000 miles of Earth, or about 1.4 times the distance to the Moon.  Nothing much to worry about, especially since it was probably about 800 feet across.  The blob, at top left, is the best image they have of it so far (it's a radar image, combined from data from the giant dish antennae in Goldstone, Calif., and Arecibo, Puerto Rico).  Click HERE for a larger version, not that you can do much with an image that's a dozen pixels across.

If, on the other hand, it had hit the Earth, it might have -- well, there's some disagreement over what it might have done.

Mark Boslough of Sandia National Labs in New Mexico has done some modeling with a supercomputer, and decided the famous meteoroid impact in Tunguska, Siberia in 1908 may have been caused by something pretty trivial.  800 square miles of forest were blown down or burned out, and until now scientists estimated that whatever hit then, it had the force of a 10- to 20-megaton nuclear weapon. 

Boslough disagrees.  He says the Tunguska impact may have had a quarter as much force.  He can't say how large the object that hit us was -- there are tradeoffs between size, density, speed, etc. -- but he says his calculations show it may not have taken much.  More HERE.

This bodes ill for efforts to protect the Earth from future objects that may turn out to be headed our way, since it suggests we may have to be alert for many more than astronomers were already looking for.  There's a Near Earth Object Program already going, with a budget of about $4.1 million a year from NASA.  It may have to get more ambitious.  The Jet Propulsion Lab has posted a video HERE.

If the Java applet on your computer is working properly, there's an interactive diagram of TU24's orbit HERE.  It shows we missed.  But the scientists remind us there are others out there. 

January 29, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (15) | TrackBack (0)

Cowed

January 28, 2008 4:03 PM

If you worry about a warming climate you can look at your Hummer and feel anxious, or you can take comfort that some solutions don't demand that we give up such comforts.

Quoth the Times of London: "A team of Japanese boffins may have accidentally struck gold in the fight against global warming: they believe they have devised a way to neutralise the perilous belches of 1.5 billion cows."

This is not entirely a surprise; methane from ruminating cows has been cited for years as a source of greenhouse gases, and about a year ago the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization suggested barnyard methane may be a larger source than transportation.  (More HERE.)

Leo Lewis of the Times continues: "According to the team from Obihiro University of Agriculture, a few simple food additives, costing about 50p each day (about $1 U.S.) per cow, could remove virtually all methane from a herd’s daily output of greenhouse gas-enriched belches."

The Times has a nice, staid picture of a cow to illustrate its piece.  Gizmodo picked it up; their image, borrowed from Treehugger.com, is more, er, vivid.

Hat tip to Brian Hartman of our Washington bureau for this.

January 28, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (101) | TrackBack (0)

Maybe the Sky is NOT Falling

January 28, 2008 11:23 AM

So there's an American spy satellite -- its actual mission, orbit and size not made public -- which has lost power and, like all other objects in low Earth orbit, is gradually losing altitude because of friction with the tenuous atmosphere that exists even hundreds of miles up.

"Disabled Spy Satellite Threatens Earth," said many headlines, including our own.

"Duck!" joked an e-mail to me on Saturday. 

We could fully understand if you wanted to duck, what with all the talk of hydrazine fuel and chunks of beryllium raining to Earth. Only, only....

It's not quite like that. Here's what we can say:

First of all, the chance of harm to human beings is very small, if only because 70 percent of the planet's surface is water, and most of the land is mountain, desert, farmland or frozen tundra.  We earthlings crowd onto only a few percent of the space down here.

John Pike's GlobalSecurity.org suggests the satellite is labeled NROL-21, launched in December 2006 from Vandenberg Air Force Base (which would most likely put it in an orbit that takes it over both poles).  Pike's group reports it's a radar imaging satellite with large solar panels and a dish antenna.  If Pike is correct and it was launched by a Delta II rocket, it is not very massive, but sturdier parts could conceivably make it to the ground in an uncontrolled re-entry.

The vast majority of satellites are completely vaporized as they re-enter the atmosphere.

There are hundreds of satellites that have been large enough that parts survived descent, but nobody -- not a single person that we know of --has been hurt in the 50 years since Sputnik 1.  There was a woman named Lottie Williams, in Tulsa, Okla., who felt a soft tap on the shoulder when she was out walking one night; NASA decided the burnt piece of debris she found on the ground was lightweight insulation from a rocket nozzle. We interviewed her in 1999 and she said she was disappointed.  (I checked back recently and was told she is still unique.)

Most likely, today's errant satellite is large enough that the government fears embarrassment, or the compromising of secrets, if parts of it come down in the wrong country. That provoked some meetings last week, which probably provoked a leak on Saturday.

"Numerous satellites over the years have come out of orbit and fallen harmlessly. We are looking at potential options to mitigate any possible damage this satellite may cause," said Gordon Johndroe of the National Security Council. 

So there's the potential for a bit of intrigue.  But, no, you don't have to duck.

(Satellite concept sketch from globalsecurity.org.)

==========================

Update, added Monday afternoon: for more information on the toxicity of hydrazine fuels, see what the CDC has posted HERE.  More on beryllium is HERE. 

Meanwhile, the BBC has its own day-after story by Kathryn Westcott, which makes me feel un-original: "Why the spy satellite won't fall on your head." The subtitle: "This is not Armageddon: stand down, Bruce Willis, we don't need you!"  Find it HERE.

January 28, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (15) | TrackBack (0)

Artificial DNA

January 24, 2008 3:03 PM

J. Craig Venter, the iconoclast scientist who led part of the giant project to read the human genome, has not stopped there.  Since the mid-1990s he's been on a quest to create nothing less than artificial life.

That's right, synthetic life--and today Venter and his team announce a major advance.  They report, in the journal Science, that they have synthesized the genome -- the complete DNA -- of a bacterium called Mycoplasma genitalium. 

"We consider this the second in significant steps of a three-step process in our attempts to make the first synthetic organism," Venter said this morning in a telephone briefing from Davos, Switzerland, where he's attending the World Economic Forum.

They picked the bacterium because it's relatively simple; while the DNA in human cells has three billion "base pairs" -- rungs, if you will, on that familiar spiral ladder you so often see -- M. genitalium has fewer than 600,000. 

Venter talks of creating synthetic organisms that create energy to take the place of fossil fuels, or thrive by consuming toxic chemicals to allow easier cleanup.  Perhaps, he says, some can be created that consume large amounts of carbon dioxide, helping to stave off climate change. 

But, obviously, if he succeeds, Venter will raise all sorts of moral and ethical questions.  He knows that, and, when he began, assembled a panel of bioethicists and others to consider the implications.

I spoke to Glenn McGee, who edits the American Journal of Bioethics, and was on the panel, and he urges caution.  Will this project face the same political backlash as cloning?  What if a bunch of people "with a bit of knowhow and a lot of anger" decided to create, say, synthetic anthrax?

Finally, he asks, isn't this playing God, with all that implies?  Heavy stuff.

January 24, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (22) | TrackBack (0)

The Kite Runner

January 22, 2008 5:50 PM

The days of the great sailing ships may be over.  Or maybe not.

Witness the MS Beluga SkySails, a new cargo ship plying the route from Bremerhaven, Germany to Guanta, Venezuela.  It's equipped with a computer-controlled kite--1,722 square feet, which the company says could pull it along and reduce its fuel consumption by 20 percent.

With oil near $90 a barrel (it was down a bit today, which buoyed the stock markets), the inventors are quoted as saying the kite could save $1,600 a day in fuel costs.

It's also touted as reducing emissions from the ship's engines: "We aim to prove it pays to protect the environment," inventor Stephan Wrage tells Gulfnews.com. "Showing that ecology and economics are not contradictions motivates us all."

There's more HERE from SkySails, the maker of the kite, and a company video HERE, if you're interested in retrofitting your own cargo ship to use one.

January 22, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)

Cell Phones and Brain Cells

January 21, 2008 1:38 PM

It's enough to drive you crazy.  You can't see the signals from a cell phone, you can't feel them, and for 20 years now there have been all sorts of lingering fears that they're doing you harm.

The latest finding: a small study suggesting that cell phone calls before bedtime somehow interfere with sleep.  The work was done in Sweden and the U.S., published online in a small forum--and is getting all sorts of play in Britain (look HERE and HERE), Asia (look HERE) and Australia (HERE).

“The study indicates that during laboratory exposure to 884 MHz wireless signals, components of sleep, believed to be important for recovery from daily wear and tear, are adversely affected,” the researchers wrote.

But it turns out that "small" is, in this case, very small and not very reliable.  There were 71 volunteers who were exposed in a lab to three hours of the kind of radiation that comes from some cell phones (do you make a three-hour call before bed?).  After that, they lost an average of eight minutes of REM sleep -- but the standard deviation (essentially the level of uncertainty) was 28 minutes.  I've asked our medical unit about it, and they say the study is inconclusive. 

The study got funding from the Mobile Manufacturers Forum, an industry group based in Brussels that has an obvious interest in selling phones (though presumably an interest as well in not getting sued).  They're also quoted as saying the study was inconclusive.

Here's something the World Health Organization posted in 2004: "To date, no adverse health effects from low level, long-term exposure to radiofrequency or power frequency fields have been confirmed, but scientists are actively continuing to research this area."  The rest is HERE.

Still, the story is getting around--understandably, perhaps, because cell phones have become so ubiquitous (in the U.S., population 300 million, there are more than 240 million handsets--and we rank lower, per capita, than many other countries).

So on we go.  One medical consequence of cell phone use is clear: worrying about them can make you nuts.

January 21, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (17) | TrackBack (0)

'Moon Stuck'

January 19, 2008 8:06 AM

President Bush's plan to send astronauts back to the Moon by 2020 and eventually on to Mars has been slowly crumbling -- and now, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports that scientists, astronauts and former NASA managers are quietly meeting to propose an alternative.

Skip the Moon, they say.  Instead, send astronauts to land on an asteroid by 2025.  It would be more interesting and affordable, says Aviation Week, and better practice for Mars missions.

Aviation Week's full story, by Craig Covault, is HERE. 

Covault reports that an invitation-only February meeting is being planned at Stanford University in California, so that a new plan can be put together for presentation to Mr. Bush's successor.

Quoting Aviation Week:

"Participants in the upcoming meeting contend there's little public enthusiasm for a return to the Moon, especially among youth, and that the Bush administration has laid out grandiose plans but has done little to provide the funding to realize them on a reasonable timescale....

"'It's becoming painfully obvious that the Moon is not a stepping-stone for manned Mars operations but is instead a stumbling block,' says Robert Farquhar, a veteran of planning and operating planetary and deep-space missions.

"The prospect of challenging new manned missions to asteroids is drawing far more excitement among young people than a 'return' (as in going backward) to the Moon, says Lou Friedman, who heads The Planetary Society, the country's largest space interest group.

"The society is co-hosting the invitation-only VSE replanning session with Stanford. A lot of people going to the meeting believe 'the Moon is so yesterday,' says Friedman."


(NASA image: Computer graphic of NASA's proposed Orion spacecraft with Altair lander in lunar orbit.   Aviation Week quotes scientists proposing this mission be scrapped in favor of landings on asteroids.)

January 19, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (49) | TrackBack (0)

Mastodon For Sale

January 18, 2008 2:04 PM

"Welcome to Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum," says the banner on the website.  "Digging up the facts of God's Creation: One fossil at a time."

The Mt. Blanco Museum is in Crosbyton, Tex., about 35 miles east of Lubbock, population 1,874 in the 2000 Census.  Its director is Joe Taylor, a man with a long white beard.

"If you like fossils, dinosaur digs and other old things you have come to the right place," he writes. "Check the news reports. We want to show you why we do not believe that the evolution theory or the millions of years concept is good science."

In 2004 he bought and restored what he calls "the world's largest four tusk mastodon," a skull nicknamed "Lone Star."  He says job took more than $140,000. 

Which puts the museum in a deep hole -- in addition to the restoration costs, Taylor says he's had to pay $136,000 in a legal dispute over the finder's rights to an Allosaurus skeleton.  So he's auctioning Lone Star off.

"If it sells, well, then we can come another day," Taylor told the AP.  "This is very important to our continuing." 

The auction has begun online (opening bid is $60,000), and a floor auction will take place at Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas on Sunday. 

"We've struggled so long here just to keep this thing going," Taylor said. "We're kind of losing interest. You can just tread water for so long."

==================

UPDATE: The auction house says the skull fetched $191,200.

(Photo from Heritage Auction Galleries.)

January 18, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (60) | TrackBack (0)

The Whale

January 17, 2008 11:51 AM

Which is more important, national security or the health of 35 species of whales and other sea creatures who happen to get in the way?  It's not that simple.

You'll recall that President Bush issued a memorandum yesterday, giving the U.S. Navy an exemption from the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 so that it can conduct two anti-submarine exercises off the California coast, using sonar that is believed in some cases to have forced whales to beach themselves and die.

The exercises had not actually been stopped by a court order, but the Navy had been required to obey major restrictions against using sonar if a whale was in the area.

Some extra notes that came along as we slammed together last night's piece for World News:

Marine biologists say it's clear that mid-range sonar harms whales, and the Navy concedes this too.  But both the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Navy say they are not sure of the mechanism. 

Perhaps, suggested the NRDC, the whales are so undone by the blasts of undersea noise that they race to the surface and give themselves a version of the bends. Perhaps, if a pod leader is sickened, others in the group will follow it--even onto a shoreline.

The Navy says the science is uncertain, and it concedes only one case, in the Bahamas, where sonar combined with other factors to cause whales' deaths. More on their point of view is HERE.

Court orders (the most recent was Jan. 3) "created a significant and unreasonable risk that the Navy will not be able to conduct effective sonar training necessary to certify strike groups for deployment in support of world-wide operational and combat activities," says the Navy

"It's important that the Navy be Able to send trained sailors to sea to protect us and our interests around the glob," said retired Admiral Stephen Pietropaoli, now Executive Director of the Navy League of the United States.  "They cannot do that if there are excessive, unnecessary restrictions on their ability to do realistic training at sea."

"It's mystifying what they're thinking," said Joel Reynolds of the NRDC. He argues that, unquestonably, the Navy needs to be able to run practice exercises; it just needs to pay more attention to the environment than it has.  "Our position is that whales and other marine life should not have to die for practice." (Take a look at a past summary by the NRDC HERE.)

The White House does not have the power to override a court order, and the President's declaration did not try. But it gave Navy lawyers some powerful ammunition to use in court.

Which is where the issue has now returned.  Thoughts welcome as always.

January 17, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

"Great God! This is an awful place...."

January 14, 2008 5:37 PM

Ninety-six years ago this week, Robert Falcon Scott and his four comrades walked to the South Pole and found the first structure ever put there--a tent, half-buried in the snow, left by Roald Amundsen and his team.  The Norwegians had beaten the British by a month. 

You probably know the rest of the story--of how Amundsen, first to the pole, was eclipsed by Scott, who died with his men as they struggled back to their base on the Antarctic coast.  The research station at the pole is named Amundsen-Scott, in honor of both of them.

Now the National Science Foundation has finished building a new version, based on the harsh lessons learned over the years about how to survive in the perpetual cold.  The polar plateau is actually a desert: little snow falls, but when it does it never melts.  What's more, it blows around in the biting winds, burying almost anything the scientists have the temerity to build there.

The first building at Amundsen-Scott, put up in 1956, is now completely lost in the snow.  It was replaced in 1975 by a geodesic dome--but the dome is falling apart, and the station's staff spent much of its time digging the thing out.  Fuel for their snowplows had to be flown thousands of miles from the north, in cargo planes that gulped their own fuel, and the NSF decided the whole effort was costly, wasteful, and environmentally unfriendly.

The new research station cost $153 million, and there's an interactive graphic plus more information HERE.  There's also a slide show, to be found HERE. 

The building is on stilts, and its profile is inspired by that of an airplane wing.  It faces into the prevailing wind, and the shape, designers believe, will naturally scour out any snow that piles up underneath.

Why go to all this trouble for a place clearly not meant for human beings?  Amundsen, Scott and other explorers wrote of "conquering" the unknown, but times have changed.  The NSF says Antarctica, that least-populated of continents, is a hotbed of research.  Major clues about climate change have come from there.  It's also a good place for astrophysicists, far from the radio noise on the rest of the planet and shrouded in darkness for up to six months at a time.

This being an anniversary, the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge in England is displaying, for the first time, it says, the last letter Robert Falcon Scott is believed to have written from his tent as he lay dying with his last two comrades.  It is addressed "To My Widow," and begins, "Dearest darling -- we are in a very tight corner and I have doubts of pulling through."

"Dear it is not easy to write because of the cold -- 70 degrees below zero and nothing but the shelter of our tent -- you know I have loved you, you know my thoughts must have constantly dwelt on you and oh dear me you must know that quite the worst aspect of this situation is the thought that I shall not see you again."  The full text is HERE.

Parts of the letter were published along with Scott's diary -- which made him far more famous in death than in life.  But this, says the institute, is the first time the actual letter has been put on display.  It is as chilling as the Antarctic wind.

(Images: Top: Scott and his party at the South Pole, Jan. 18, 1912, courtesy University of Cambridge.  Middle: Schematic of new Amundsen-Scott Station, courtesy NSF)

January 14, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

Florida and the E-Word

January 11, 2008 4:56 PM

The Florida Department of Education included the word "evolution" in its proposed new standards for science education, and started brushfires around the state.  The school board of Taylor County, for example, on the Gulf Coast, replied with this resolution: (The full minutes are HERE; see p. 7)

"Whereas, the Florida Department of Education has drafted and is now proposing new Sunshine State Standards for Science, the Taylor County School Board opposes the implementation of the new standards as currently presented.

"Whereas, the new Sunshine State Standards for Science no longer present evolution as theory but as “the fundamental concept underlying all of biology and is supported in multiple forms of scientific evidence,” we are requesting that the State Board of Education direct the Florida Department of Education to revise/edit the new Sunshine State Standards for Science so that evolution is presented as one of several theories as to how the universe was formed."

"'One of several theories as to how the universe was formed?'" asks Daily Kos today. "Good grief, could they be any more blatant in their scientific ignorance? Evolutionary biology examines how living things change over time, regardless of how the universe (Or the earth) ‘formed.’ Evo is about as relevant to the origin of the universe as geology."

Florida Citizens for Science lists about a dozen counties that have objected in one way or another to the teaching of evolution without the teaching of competing ideas.

The arguments have been plenty.  The Florida School Board votes on the issue Feb. 19. 

January 11, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (400) | TrackBack (0)

Earth: Barely Big Enough

January 10, 2008 3:49 PM

We enjoy a planet that teems with life -- and we should count ourselves lucky, says a team of scientists from Harvard.  They say the Earth is barely big enough for its own good.

It's long been argued that in addition to having the right temperatures, Earth is the right size for life.  Smaller worlds (think of the Moon or Mercury) don't have enough gravity to hold onto an atmosphere.  Larger ones (e.g., Jupiter or Saturn) become gas giants, with atmospheres too thick for anything to survive. 

Diana Valencia, Richard O'Connell and Dimitar Sasselov offer some new wrinkles -- or perhaps, we should say, mountains and deep trenches.  They did some calculations on rocky exoplanets -- Earth-like planets circling other stars -- and argue, in a presentation at the American Astronomical Society, that if a planet is any smaller than ours, it is unlikely to have enough mass to allow for plate tectonics.

Plate tectonics, you say?  What does that have to do with life?  The shifting of the great tectonic plates that make up the Earth's crust is the stuff of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

True, but the Harvard team argues that plate tectonics are key to making a planet livable.  The churning of the Earth's outer layers, bringing material up from below, allows complex chemistry to evolve, including the organic compounds of which life is made.  And they allow the release of carbon dioxide trapped underground.  Amid all the talk these days of carbon capture -- pumping CO2 back into the ground so it doesn't trap more of the sun's heat in the atmosphere -- some carbon dioxide is essential.  Without greenhouse gases the planet would be too cold for much of today's life.

The team calculated the likely size range at which plate tectonics take place on Earth-like planets, and decided that our Earth is right at the bottom of the viable range.  (Venus, almost as large as Earth, is geologically quieter.)  If life exists on planets orbiting other stars, those planets are likely to be larger than ours -- with up to three times as much gravity.

A quote offered from Sasselov: "If a human were to visit a super-Earth, they might experience a bit more back pain, but it would be worth it to visit such a great tourist spot."

(Artist's conception of a "super-Earth" from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.)

January 10, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (27) | TrackBack (0)

iTunes May Start Movie Rentals

January 09, 2008 3:10 PM

Apple has remade the media business by allowing people to download music and videos, and now there's a new wrinkle.  Bloomberg News quotes sources as saying iTunes users will soon be able to rent movies for $3.99 for 24 hours.  There's more from Apple Insider.  The films would reportedly come from Disney, Warner Bros., Fox, Paramount and other studios.  (Disclaimer: Disney is the parent company of ABCNews.com, and Apple's Steve Jobs is on the Disney board of directors, but they are not the source of this information.)

It's a logical move.  When VCRs appeared in the 1980s, studios tried to sell movies on tape, but there wasn't much business for films that people would watch once and then put on the shelf to gather dust.  People were, however, happy to go to the corner store, rent a film, and drop it off when they were done with it. 

Will rental downloads work for Apple?  People certainly are comfortable downloading TV shows from iTunes, "owning" the files even though they may never watch more than once.  Netflix has tried downloaded film rentals already, but with a limited selection of films.

Word has it that Apple will announce the rental plan Jan. 15, and Apple stock jumped this morning.

January 9, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Boeing 787 May Have Security Flaw

January 08, 2008 3:52 PM

Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner, scheduled to start carrying passengers in November, may have the most unlikely of security flaws, according to Kim Zetter, who writes for WIRED. 

The plane will be equipped with online access, so that passengers can surf the web or do work in flight.  But Zetter quotes an FAA document warning that "the plane's computer systems connect the passenger network with the flight-safety, control and navigation network. It also connects to the airline's business and administrative-support network, which communicates maintenance issues to ground crews."  The FAA's "special conditions" document can be found HERE.

"The design 'allows new kinds of passenger connectivity to previously isolated data networks connected to systems that perform functions required for the safe operation of the airplane,' says the FAA document. 'Because of this new passenger connectivity, the proposed data-network design and integration may result in security vulnerabilities from intentional or unintentional corruption of data and systems critical to the safety and maintenance of the airplane.'"

Boeing's Lori Gunter is quoted as saying the FAA document overstates the case.  "There are places where the networks are not touching, and there are places where they are," she tells Wired.  She says Boeing has been working with the FAA for a number of years on this, and has agreed on tests that will be done well before the plane carries paying passengers.

(Image courtesy Boeing.)

January 8, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (15) | TrackBack (0)

Killer Bees Wiped Out Dinosaurs!

January 07, 2008 12:41 PM

Well, almost.  There's a new book, written by the husband-wife team of George and Roberta Poinar, that says the last dinosaurs may have been killed off by biting insects -- not simply, as prevailing theory has had it, by a meteorite impact 65 million years ago.

The Poinars argue that the Cretaceous dinosaurs did not die off instantly, as one might expect if there had been a catastrophe such as global dust from an impact, so it's time to look for additional explanations.

Their favorite: that primitive mosquitoes, mites and ticks spread disease; and early bees promoted the spread of flowering plants, crowding out the flora on which plant-eating dinosaurs would have fed.

The book is called "What Bugged The Dinosaurs? Insects, Disease And Death In The Cretaceous" (Princeton University Press) and it's getting a fair amount of play in British and Australian media today; take a look at The Independent from London and The Sydney Morning Herald. 

The Poinar name may be familiar--some of their past work, on insects preserved (with their DNA) in amber, was an inspiration for "Jurassic Park."  George Poinar has an appointment at Oregon State University; Roberta is retired from teaching.

Daniel Cressey, writing on "The Great Beyond" blog at Nature.com, says, "There might be some merit to Poinar’s ideas."  But he worries about some "fairly extravagant claims not tested by peer review."

He writes, "If dinosaurs couldn’t adapt to the changing conditions and the rise of insect/disease vectors why could other animals? Could biting insects even get through thick dinosaur skin? Why does no one mention peer-reviewed criticism of work including Poinar’s that any journalist could have picked up with a google search?"

Demise of the least fit?  Since a lot of you have been weighing in on evolution over the weekend, this may be fresh fodder. 

January 7, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (34) | TrackBack (0)

Evolution: the Pushback

January 04, 2008 11:50 AM

The National Academy of Sciences has had its say on evolution.  The Discovery Institute, which promotes the idea of intelligent design, replies that the academy "manages to celebrate evolution as an unassailable truth, completely misrepresent intelligent design, and rehash the same standard Darwinist arguments which have been refuted by critical scientists time and again."

You'll recall (see yesterday's POST and some fascinating comments if you missed them) the Academy released a book yesterday in which it argued that "scientists treat the occurrence of evolution as one of the most securely established of scientific facts."  And while it said evolution and religion need not be at odds, it said teaching "nonscientific alternatives in public schools compromises science education."

The Discovery Institute replies that the report is "long on assertion, short on evidence."  Its statement can be found HERE.

"Instead of treating evolutionary theory as an area open to further scientific inquiry, the NAS report canonizes evolution as perfect and immutable, 'so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter it.'”

The institute offers a download for teachers: "The Theory of Intelligent Design: A Briefing Packet for Educators."  Find it HERE.

"Teach the controversy," it says.  Of that, there is plenty.

January 4, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (421) | TrackBack (0)

Evolution: "Overwhelming and Compelling"

January 03, 2008 3:55 PM

The National Academy of Sciences has released a book called "Science, Evolution and Creationism" -- a strongly-worded answer to the Creationist movement and the doubts about Darwin that many people express in polls and elsewhere. 

"Evolution is both a fact and a process that accounts for the diversity of life on Earth," it says. 

"Scientists treat the occurrence of evolution as one of the most securely established of scientific facts," says an opening letter.  Later: "The scientific evidence supporting biological evolution continues to grow at a rapid pace."

It describes in detail the discovery of Tiktaalik, the four-legged fish fossil from the Canadian Arctic that appears to be the missing link between primitive fish and animals that walked up onto land.  And it argues that without an understanding of evolution, such threats as the SARS virus would be impossible to fight. 

As for the Intelligent Design movement, which lost a court battle in Pennsylvania and is now part of a debate in Florida over the use of the world "evolution" in school standards, the report says "the pressure to downplay evolution or emphasize nonscientific alternatives in public schools compromises science education."

The academy says the booklet -- actually an update of versions published in 1984 and 1999 -- is aimed at policy makers, school boards, science teachers "and others in the community who are committed to providing students with quality science education."  It's also intended for "students as well as adults who wish to become more familiar with the many strands of evidence supporting evolution...."

The report is careful not to discredit religion; it describes science and faith as different ways of arriving at truth.  Its closing line: "Many scientists have written eloquently about how their scientific studies have increased their awe and understanding of a creator....  The study of science need not lessen or compromise faith."

The Academy is offering the book as a PDF for free; click HERE for the full 86-page file.  It is also offering the book for sale, and PDFs of shorter sections; you can find them HERE.

There will doubtless be replies.  This is only one salvo in a debate that dates back to Darwin.

(Photograph: The Tiktaalik fossil, as published in the journal Nature in 2006.)

January 3, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (479) | TrackBack (0)

Ask Mom? Or the Internet?

January 02, 2008 4:45 PM

If you're in trouble -- if you have a medical problem, or the IRS has sent a strangely-worded letter -- where do you turn? 

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project:

"For help with a variety of common problems, more people turn to the internet than consult experts or family members to provide information and resources."

If the survey is to believed, more people used the web than asked a person.

Their numbers, from a phone survey of 2,800 Americans who were asked if they'd had medical questions or problems with government agencies:

-- 58% of those who had recently experienced one of those problems said they used the internet (at home, work, a public library or some other place) to get help.
--53% said they turned to professionals such as doctors, lawyers or financial experts.
--45% said they sought out friends and family members for advice and help.
--36% said they consulted newspapers and magazines.
--34% said they directly contacted a government office or agency.
--16% said they consulted television and radio.
--13% said they went to the public library.

Oh, and by the way, about 63 percent, give or take a little, said they got the answers they needed--regardless of the source.  This was less true for the 36 percent of adults who lack broadband access; they're generally older and poorer than the rest of those surveyed, and they said they found satisfaction about 54 percent of the time.  The full report is HERE.

Mom?  Dad?  Dr. Wilking?  I still trust you.

January 2, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Anyone Out There?

January 02, 2008 3:32 PM

For 40 years now, the antennae of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence have kept up the vigil, patiently scanning the sky for any signal that might have been sent our way by beings elsewhere in the universe, signals that presumably would stand out from the raw radio noise emitted by stars and galaxies.

So far, there hasn't been a peep.  A few oddities, none of which withstood scrutiny.  Government grew impatient.  Since 1984 the SETI Institute has been privately funded (backers have included Paul Allen of Microsoft fame). 

But the believers still believe.  There are so many stars out there, so many of them with planets, they argue, that the odds make it overwhelmingly likely someone is out there, sending radio signals that we will find.

If only we have the time and resources to keep listening.  For all its financial ups and downs, SETI says it is gathering 500 times more raw data from radio telescopes than just a short time ago.  Eight years ago, it began SETI@home, an effort to use the processors in people's computers to crunch the vast numbers.  320,000 personal computers are put to use when their users might otherwise turn them off. 
Now it's expanding, and looking for new volunteers.  New receivers, particularly on the Arecibo antenna in Puerto Rico, are pulling in 300 gigabytes per day. 

"Earthlings are just getting started looking at the frequencies in the sky; we're looking only at the cosmically brightest sources, hoping we are scanning the right radio channels," says Dan Werthimer, the chief scientist.  "If there are signals out there, we or our volunteers will find them."

SETI@home is based at Berkeley; find more HERE.  Dreamers welcome.

January 2, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (36) | TrackBack (0)