March 20, 2008 | 12:02 am

Hubble finds organic molecule on exoplanet

Posted by Adam Wills

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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.

March 3, 2008 | 11:50 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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February 24, 2008 | 11:31 pm

Blogger encouters puke ray in Jerusalem

Posted by Adam Wills

A recent blog post by Sharon Weinberger on Wired’s Danger Room details her encounter with a puke ray in Jerusalem.

Dr. Maurice Goldman, a retired dentist, is the U.S. managing director for Inferno, a line of products that markets itself as a “sound barrier.” The primary effect of the device, which sounds like a loud siren, is to force people to leave the protected area, he says. However, if the intruder doesn’t leave immediately, Inferno’s effects include “vertigo, nausea, and pain in the chest.”

Weinberger, natually, had to give it a try.

Two days later, we sat in a hotel office, with Dr. Goldman, holding the device. The version of Inferno he was demonstrating looked a bit like a long, slim speaker. You can’t take a pair of nail scissors on a plane these days, but Dr. Goldman has traveled around the world with Inferno and has had few, if any problems, boarding aircraft.

First, I dispatched Nathan, my husband, out of the room, using the logic that if it really did make us sick, one of us should be spared. Then I realized I needed pictures, so I called him back in, and without warning, Goldman turned the Inferno on. I’m not sure words can do justice to what can only be described as the most unbearable, gut-wrenching noise I’ve ever heard in my life. I screamed a few expletives, Nathan almost dropped the camera, and Dr. Goldman turned it off.

Here’s how it works: Inferno uses four frequencies spread out over 2 to 5 kHz. The idea behind it is that unlike a regular siren, these particular frequencies have a uniquely disturbing effect on people (and presumably cats, dogs and any other living thing). At 123 dB, it’s loud, but not significantly louder than any other alarm system. The advantage, according to Dr. Goldman, is the combination of frequencies. The human ear just doesn’t like it. I agree, I really didn’t like it.

How did I feel after the impromptu test? Nauseous, dizzy, or in pain? Hard to say, but Nathan looked pretty unhappy with me for the next hour or so. In fact, he still grumbles a bit when I mention his unwitting recruitment as a camera man/guinea pig. Love hurts.

To read more, click here.

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January 2, 2008 | 9:23 am

Weizmann team finds ‘telepathy’ between particles

Posted by Adam Wills

As a follow-up to the famous double-split experiment, which offered proof of quantum mechanics (that one object can be in two places at the same time), a team at the the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot has found that identical particles used a form of remote communication when fired through two tiny slits, reports Haaretz.

It turned out that the two particles were “reading each other’s thoughts”: Each electron “knew” the other’s trajectory, even though they were remote from each other. When the researchers slightly modified the trajectory of one electron, the other electron acted as though it were aware of the modification.

The experiment, whose results were published a few months ago in the scientific journal Nature, was conducted by a research team led by Prof. Mordehai Heiblum, who heads the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the Weizmann Institute.

Nissim Ofek, 33, a doctoral student from, is part of a research team that carried out a slightly different version of the experiment. He joined the team about three years after the start of the experiment. His job was to activate the tiny facility in which the unique phenomenon is measured, which is built of semiconductor materials and is one-tenth of a millimeter long.

“It’s like finding a needle in a haystack,” Ofek says. “The material has to be pure, and there are a great many things that have to be calibrated for something to come out of it.”

Here’s how the whole double-split thing works…

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December 21, 2007 | 7:34 am

Forget dancing angels, try the entire Torah on a pinhead

Posted by Adam Wills

Got a minyan? Check. Got the electron microscope so you can read the Torah? Check.

Scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology announced this week that they have printed the entire Torah onto a silicon chip smaller than a pinhead (less than 1/1000th of an inch).

The guy with the bright idea to write the Bible on such a tiny surface was physics professor Uri Sivan, who’s also head of the university’s Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute.

The text was written using a focused ion beam generator that shot tiny particles called Gallium ions onto a gold surface covering a base layer of silicon. The “writing” took just 90 minutes. The computer program that guided the FIB, however, took more than three months.

“The nano-Bible project demonstrates the miniaturization at our disposal,” Sivan said. “This research could lead to the creation of more advanced miniature structures—and imaging—on a nanometric scale, advances in storing information in very small spaces, and the use of DNA molecules to store information.”

The project was managed by graduate student Ohad Zohar and Dr. Alex Lahav, former head of the FIB laboratory in the Technion’s Wolfson Microelectronics Research and Teaching Center.

According to the researchers, the nano-bible will now be photographed and expand 10,000 times—and still be small enough to fit into a 75-square-foot frame to be hung in the Technion physics department. The photograph’s size will make it possible to read the entire Torah with the naked eye. The height of each letter will be three millimeters. The original nano-Bible will be displayed next to the photograph.

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December 12, 2007 | 12:37 pm

Turtledove on Atlantis flora and fauna

Posted by Adam Wills

L.A. native Harry Turtledove talked with SciFi about his latest alternative-history novel, “Opening Atlantis” (ROC), which explores the discovery and settlement of Atlantis over the course of several centuries. Turtledove said that he envisioned Atlantis as an isolated ecology like New Zealand.

“[Trying to imagine that] was a lot of fun, as was trying to conceive of the birds and reptiles and insects that might fill the niches mammals hold in most of the world.”

Among the animals are Honkers, moa-like birds descended from geese.

“Coming up with strange birds was particularly enjoyable, because I am a birder,” Turtledove said. “Oversized katydids fill the mouse niche. Not many flowering plants in Atlantis, either: The roles are taken by conifers and ferns and cycads.”

In the novel, Atlantis is actually the East Cost of the United States, which separated from the North American continent some 85 million years before.

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December 5, 2007 | 5:26 pm

Wishing you a Geeky Chanukah

Posted by Adam Wills

Props to Carvin for the great graphics!

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August 14, 2007 | 1:00 pm

Retro Ad: The Shat pitches Commodore’s Vic-20

Posted by Adam Wills

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