March 28, 2008 | 3:12 pm

March Geekiness—Caltech basketball doc ‘Quantum Hoops’

Posted by Adam Wills

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Caltech has more Nobel laureates than any other university, and is considered among the top five academic institutions in the world. The Pasadena campus’ contributions to science and technology are vast.

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March 26, 2008 | 4:38 pm

International Space Station getting space-themed mezuzot

Posted by Adam Wills

Two rocket-shaped mezuzot by Tel Aviv-based Judaica designer Laura Cowan are scheduled to be sent into space in May on the Discovery mission to the International Space Station. Flight Engineer and Science Officer Greg Chamitoff will carry the works to the ISS (no word yet on where they’ll be placed).

“I was contacted because of the space theme in my work,” Cowan told The Jerusalem Post. “All of my work has been space-themed, since I watched the moon landing on TV in 1969. I saw how excited people were, and just got carried away with the theme.”

The two mezuzot are:

Apollo Mezuza ($125/$140 + $35 for kosher scroll)

Shuttle Pewter Mezuza ($69/$71/$73 + $35 for kosher scroll)

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March 19, 2008 | 11:02 pm

Hubble finds organic molecule on exoplanet

Posted by Adam Wills

JPL announced today that astronomers have detected methane on a Jupiter-sized exoplanet in the constellation Vulpecula. While the planet itself is not capable of supporting life, the presence of the organic compound was detected by using an instrument about the Hubble Space Telescope, Nicmos (Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer), to measure the absorption of starlight in the atmosphere of the planet, HD 189733b. (New York Times)

“The big news is that we were able to do this at all,” said Mark Swain of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., the lead author of the study, being reported Thursday in the journal Nature. Other members of the team, which used the Hubble Space Telescope, were Gautam Vasisht of the propulsion lab and Giovanna Tinetti of University College London.

The work, they said, represents a shift from barely detecting the existence of so-called exoplanets to probing them chemically.

“We are able to start studying the conditions and chemistry of exoplanet atmospheres,” Dr. Swain said at a news conference on Wednesday. “That’s a very exciting development.”

David Charbonneau, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who was not part of the team, called the detection “both persuasive and important.”

Sara Seager, a planetary theorist at M.I.T., called it “another great day for exoplanets,” and a “tipping point” for the study of their detailed properties, though she cautioned that the findings still needed to be duplicated.

“Hubble was never been designed to make measurements like this,” she said. “This is pushing the telescope to its limits.”

She said she was looking forward to the day when the experiment would be repeated on Earth-like planets with the much more powerful James Webb Space Telescope, set to be launched in 2013. In that case, she said, the existence of methane and water would be indicative that the planet was habitable.

 

But given that HD 189733b is about 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, the possibility of finding life there is pretty slim. (OK Trekkies, repeat after me: It’s life Jim, but not as we know it.)

One lingering puzzle, [Dr. Adam Burrows, a theorist from Princeton University],  said, is why they did not detect carbon monoxide in the planet’s atmosphere. The models, he said, suggest that at high temperatures that molecule is more likely to form than methane, which predominates in colder regions.

Dr. Burrows theorized, however, that if the planet was tidally locked — with one side always facing its sun and being roasted while the other faces away and freezes — “the hot side would have more carbon monoxide, the cold one more methane.”

During the transits observed by Hubble, he pointed out, the starlight passes through the dividing line, or terminator, between the hot side and the cold side, where fierce winds might be blowing redistributing heat and chemical species around the planet.

But nobody really knows how chemistry, climate and cosmic history are manifested on these planets. Dr. Swain said he hoped to perform similar measurements on a half dozen other so-called transiting planets that are within reach.

Dr. Burrows said, “A lot of other shoes are about to drop in this subject.”

But time is of the essence. Hubble will have four more years if its scheduled refurbishment by astronauts goes well this August, but the other warhorse of the effort, the Spitzer, has only a year to go before it runs out of the cryogenics that keep its infrared detectors cold and sensitive.

“People are frantic to get as much data as they can in short term,” Dr. Burrows said.

 

Above image ESA, NASA and G. Tinetti (University College London, UK & ESA) via New York Times.

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March 3, 2008 | 10:50 pm

Which Asimov robot law does this violate?

Posted by Adam Wills

Sure, Baltar gets it on with Cylon hotties in the reboot sci-fi series “Battlestar Galatica,” but now London A.I. researcher David Levy is predicting those of us on Earth will be interfacing with artificial life forms by the mid-century mark.

The March issue of Scientific American features a piece on the “Love and Sex With Robots” author titled “Not Tonight, Dear, I have to Reboot” as well as a fascinating Q&A with Levy.

I’m sure this has probably been referenced in “Futurama,” but would the offspring from such a union celebrate a bot mitzvah?

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