New model 'permits time travel'

By Julianna Kettlewell
BBC News science reporter

If you went back in time and met your teenage parents, you could not split them up and prevent your birth - even if you wanted to, a new quantum model has stated.

Researchers speculate that time travel can occur within a kind of feedback loop where backwards movement is possible, but only in a way that is "complementary" to the present.

In other words, you can pop back in time and have a look around, but you cannot do anything that will alter the present you left behind.

The new model, which uses the laws of quantum mechanics, gets rid of the famous paradox surrounding time travel.

Paradox explained

Although the laws of physics seem to permit temporal gymnastics, the concept is laden with uncomfortable contradictions.

The main headache stems from the idea that if you went back in time you could, theoretically, do something to change the present; and that possibility messes up the whole theory of time travel.

Clearly, the present never is changed by mischievous time-travellers: people don't suddenly fade into the ether because a rerun of events has prevented their births - that much is obvious.

You go back to kill your father, but you'd arrive after he'd left the room, you wouldn't find him, or you'd change your mind Professor Dan Greenberger, City University, New York

So either time travel is not possible, or something is actually acting to prevent any backward movement from changing the present.

For most of us, the former option might seem most likely, but Einstein's general theory of relativity leads some physicists to suspect the latter.

According to Einstein, space-time can curve back on itself, theoretically allowing travellers to double back and meet younger versions of themselves.

And now a team of physicists from the US and Austria says this situation can only be the case if there are physical constraints acting to protect the present from changes in the past.

Weird laws

The researchers say these constraints exist because of the weird laws of quantum mechanics even though, traditionally, they don't account for a backwards movement in time.

Quantum behaviour is governed by probabilities. Before something has actually been observed, there are a number of possibilities regarding its state. But once its state has been measured those possibilities shrink to one - uncertainty is eliminated.

So, if you know the present, you cannot change it. If, for example, you know your father is alive today, the laws of the quantum universe state that there is no possibility of him being killed in the past.

It is as if, in some strange way, the present takes account of all the possible routes back into the past and, because your father is certainly alive, none of the routes back can possibly lead to his death.

"Quantum mechanics distinguishes between something that might happen and something that did happen," Professor Dan Greenberger, of the City University of New York, US, told the BBC News website.

"If we don't know your father is alive right now - if there is only a 90% chance that he is alive right now, then there is a chance that you can go back and kill him.

"But if you know he is alive, there is no chance you can kill him."

In other words, even if you take a trip back in time with the specific intention of killing your father, so long as you know he is happily sitting in his chair when you leave him in the present, you can be sure that something will prevent you from murdering him in the past. It is as if it has already happened.

"You go back to kill your father, but you'd arrive after he'd left the room, you wouldn't find him, or you'd change your mind," said Professor Greenberger.

"You wouldn't be able to kill him because the very fact that he is alive today is going to conspire against you so that you'll never end up taking that path leads you to killing him."

Greenberger and colleague Karl Svozil introduce their quantum mechanical model of time travel on the ArXiv e-print service.

Scientists: Nothing to fear from atom-smasher

By DOUGLAS BIRCH
Associated Press Writer

MEYRIN, Switzerland (AP) -- The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on in August.

But some critics fear the Large Hadron Collider could exceed physicists' wildest conjectures: Will it spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth? Or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump?

Ridiculous, say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN - some of whom have been working for a generation on the $5.8 billion collider, or LHC.

"Obviously, the world will not end when the LHC switches on," said project leader Lyn Evans.

David Francis, a physicist on the collider's huge ATLAS particle detector, smiled when asked whether he worried about black holes and hypothetical killer particles known as strangelets.

"If I thought that this was going to happen, I would be well away from here," he said.

The collider basically consists of a ring of supercooled magnets 17 miles in circumference attached to huge barrel-shaped detectors. The ring, which straddles the French and Swiss border, is buried 330 feet underground.

The machine, which has been called the largest scientific experiment in history, isn't expected to begin test runs until August, and ramping up to full power could take months. But once it is working, it is expected to produce some startling findings.

Scientists plan to hunt for signs of the invisible "dark matter" and "dark energy" that make up more than 96 percent of the universe, and hope to glimpse the elusive Higgs boson, a so-far undiscovered particle thought to give matter its mass.

The collider could find evidence of extra dimensions, a boon for superstring theory, which holds that quarks, the particles that make up atoms, are infinitesimal vibrating strings.

The theory could resolve many of physics' unanswered questions, but requires about 10 dimensions - far more than the three spatial dimensions our senses experience.

The safety of the collider, which will generate energies seven times higher than its most powerful rival, at Fermilab near Chicago, has been debated for years. The physicist Martin Rees has estimated the chance of an accelerator producing a global catastrophe at one in 50 million - long odds, to be sure, but about the same as winning some lotteries.

By contrast, a CERN team this month issued a report concluding that there is "no conceivable danger" of a cataclysmic event. The report essentially confirmed the findings of a 2003 CERN safety report, and a panel of five prominent scientists not affiliated with CERN, including one Nobel laureate, endorsed its conclusions.

Critics of the LHC filed a lawsuit in a Hawaiian court in March seeking to block its startup, alleging that there was "a significant risk that ... operation of the Collider may have unintended consequences which could ultimately result in the destruction of our planet."

One of the plaintiffs, Walter L. Wagner, a physicist and lawyer, said Wednesday CERN's safety report, released June 20, "has several major flaws," and his views on the risks of using the particle accelerator had not changed.

On Tuesday, U.S. Justice Department lawyers representing the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation filed a motion to dismiss the case.

The two agencies have contributed $531 million to building the collider, and the NSF has agreed to pay $87 million of its annual operating costs. Hundreds of American scientists will participate in the research.

The lawyers called the plaintiffs' allegations "extraordinarily speculative," and said "there is no basis for any conceivable threat" from black holes or other objects the LHC might produce. A hearing on the motion is expected in late July or August.

In rebutting doomsday scenarios, CERN scientists point out that cosmic rays have been bombarding the earth, and triggering collisions similar to those planned for the collider, since the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.

And so far, Earth has survived.

"The LHC is only going to reproduce what nature does every second, what it has been doing for billions of years," said John Ellis, a British theoretical physicist at CERN.

Critics like Wagner have said the collisions caused by accelerators could be more hazardous than those of cosmic rays.

Both may produce micro black holes, subatomic versions of cosmic black holes - collapsed stars whose gravity fields are so powerful that they can suck in planets and other stars.

But micro black holes produced by cosmic ray collisions would likely be traveling so fast they would pass harmlessly through the earth.

Micro black holes produced by a collider, the skeptics theorize, would move more slowly and might be trapped inside the earth's gravitational field - and eventually threaten the planet.

Ellis said doomsayers assume that the collider will create micro black holes in the first place, which he called unlikely. And even if they appeared, he said, they would instantly evaporate, as predicted by the British physicist Stephen Hawking.

As for strangelets, CERN scientists point out that they have never been proven to exist. They said that even if these particles formed inside the Collider they would quickly break down.

When the LHC is finally at full power, two beams of protons will race around the huge ring 11,000 times a second in opposite directions. They will travel in two tubes about the width of fire hoses, speeding through a vacuum that is colder and emptier than outer space.

Their trajectory will be curved by supercooled magnets - to guide the beams around the rings and prevent the packets of protons from cutting through the surrounding magnets like a blowtorch.

The paths of these beams will cross, and a few of the protons in them will collide, at a series of cylindrical detectors along the ring. The two largest detectors are essentially huge digital cameras, each weighing thousands of tons, capable of taking millions of snapshots a second.

Each year the detectors will generate 15 petabytes of data, the equivalent of a stack of CDs 12 miles tall. The data will require a high speed global network of computers for analysis.

Wagner and others filed a lawsuit to halt operation of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state in 1999. The courts dismissed the suit.

The leafy campus of CERN, a short drive from the shores of Lake Geneva, hardly seems like ground zero for doomsday. And locals don't seem overly concerned. Thousands attended an open house here this spring.

"There is a huge army of scientists who know what they are talking about and are sleeping quite soundly as far as concerns the LHC," said project leader Evans.

North Pole could be ice-free this summer, scientists say

By Alan Duke

(CNN) -- The North Pole may be briefly ice-free by September as global warming melts away Arctic sea ice, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

Scientists say it's a 50-50 bet that the thin Arctic sea ice will completely melt away at the geographic North Pole.

"We kind of have an informal betting pool going around in our center and that betting pool is 'does the North Pole melt out this summer?' and it may well," said the center's senior research scientist Mark Serreze.

It's a 50-50 bet that the thin Arctic sea ice, which was frozen last autumn, will completely melt away at the geographic North Pole, Serreze said.

The ice retreated to a record level in September when the Northwest Passage -- the sea route through the Arctic Ocean -- opened up briefly for the first time in recorded history.

"What we've seen through the past few decades is the Arctic sea ice cover is becoming thinner and thinner as the system warms up," Serreze said.

Specific weather patterns will determine whether the North Pole's ice cover melts completely this summer, he said.

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"Last year, we had sort of a perfect weather pattern to get rid of ice to open up that Northwest Passage," Serreze said. "This year, a different pattern can set up so maybe we'll preserve some ice there. We're in a wait-and-see mode right now. We'll see what happens."

The brief lack of ice at the top of the globe will not bring any immediate consequences, he said.

"From the viewpoint of the science, the North Pole is just another point in the globe, but it does have this symbolic meaning," Serreze said. "There's supposed to be ice at the North Pole. The fact that we may not have any by the end of this summer could be quite a symbolic change."

Serreze said it's "just another indicator of the disappearing Arctic sea ice cover" but that it is happening so soon is "just astounding to me."

"Five years ago, to think that we'd even be talking about the possibility of the North Pole melting out in the summer, I would have never thought it," he said.

The melting, however, has been long seen as inevitable, he said.

"If you talked to me or other scientists just a few years ago, we were saying that we might lose all or most of the summer sea ice cover by anywhere from 2050 to 2100," Serreze said. "Then, recently, we kind of revised those estimates, maybe as early as 2030. Now, there's people out there saying it might be even before that. So, things are happening pretty quick up there."

Serreze said those who suggest the Arctic meltdown is just part of a historic cycle are wrong.

"It's not cyclical at this point. I think we understand the physics behind this pretty well," he said. "We've known for at least 30 years, from our earliest climate models, that it's the Arctic where we'd see the first signs of global warming.

"It's a situation where we hate to say we told you so, but we told you so," he said.

Serreze said the Arctic sea ice will not be the same for decades.

"If we had a few cold years in a row, we could put sort of a temporary damper on it, but I think at this point going to an ice-free Arctic Ocean is inevitable," he said. "I don't think we can stop that now."

Reduced greenhouse gas emissions could "cool things down a bit," he said.

"It would recover fairly quickly, but it's just not going to happen for a while," he said. "I think we're committed at this point."

There are some positive aspects to the ice melting, he said. Ships could use the Northwest Passage to save time and energy by no longer having to travel through the Panama Canal or around Cape Horn.

"There's also, or course, oil at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean," he said. "Now, the irony of that is kind of clear but the fact that we are opening up the Arctic Ocean does make it more accessible."

The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center Web site -- NSIDC.org -- publishes a near-realtime image of the Arctic sea ice cover.

How did the universe begin?

By Miranda Marquit

One of the most interesting questions considered by astrophysicists deals with the start of our universe. Indeed, there is a great deal of speculation on the subject, with different theories about how the universe began, and what may have existed before the universe came into being.

Several prominent astrophysicists around the world are interested in answering these questions. In one paper, “No-Boundary Measure of the Universe,” published in Physical Review Letters, James Hartle, Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog calculate the probabilities that the no-boundary wave function predicts in terms of classical space-time possibilities.

“Theories regarding the beginning of the universe are expressed as wave functions,” Hartle tells PhysOrg.com. “The no-boundary wave function is one theory about the origins of the universe.” The goal of this particular work with Hawking and Hertog, he continues, was to model the universe and see what kind of probabilities exist that the current universe could have originated in a certain way.

The no-boundary proposal predicts that expansion in the early universe would have proceeded smoothly from a moment in time. The idea is that inflation was a feature of our early universe. “It collapsed from a previous large phase, bounced at a small but not zero radius, and expanded again to the large phase we are living in,” says Hartle.

The no-boundary wave function also states that space-time was not what we see today at the outset of universal expansion. “When the universe started out,” Hartle explains, “there wasn’t ordinary space-time. Instead of three space directions, as we have now, there were four space directions. At some point, a transition was made to ordinary space-time.”

Hartle and his colleagues examined models of the universe that were homogenous, isotropic and closed. A cosmological constant was assumed, as was a scalar field with quadratic potential. They looked at entire classical histories, examining the ideas of a singularity, such as a Big Bang, or considering a bounce with a finite radius. The point was to get a picture of which scenarios are most likely to produce a universe that is similar to what we see currently.

“Both things, a Big Bang or a bounce, are possible,” Hartle says. “However, we found a significant probability that the early universe might have bounced.”

Hartle does admit that the simple model used by him and his colleagues does have its limitations. For one thing, the universe is not completely homogenous as the model assumes. “You see a certain lumpiness in the real universe,” he concedes. However, most of the irregularities are small, and many of them can, in fact, be ultimately accounted for in a no-boundary proposal.

“Our model does make a number of strong assumptions,” Hartle continues. But, he insists, “this is a standard trade-off in physics. Our model is simplified so that we can analyze it completely.”

“In present cosmology, we test models to see if different proposals fit the universe that we see. In this instance, we see that the no-boundary wave function does,” Hartle says. “We see that there is a good chance the universe originated in a bounce.”

“We hope that can extend this to other, more sophisticated models, with different potentials and different degrees of freedom.”

Sports bra saves US hiker in German Alps

Associated Press

BERLIN — An American hiker stranded in the Bavarian Alps for nearly three days was rescued after using her sports bra as a signal, police in southern Germany said Monday.

Berchtesgaden police officer Lorenz Rasp said that he helped lift 24-year-old Jessica Bruinsma of Colorado state to safety by helicopter on Thursday after she attracted the attention of lumberjacks by attaching her sports bra to a cable used to move timber down the mountain.

"She's a very smart girl, and she acted very resourcefully," said Rasp. "She kept her shirt and jacket for warmth, but thought the sports bra could work as a signal."

An Alpine rescue team, including five helicopters and 80 emergency workers, had been searching for Bruinsma since she went missing June 16 after losing her way in bad weather while hiking with a friend near the Austrian border.

She fell 16.4 feet (five meters) to a rocky overhang, where she spent the next 70 hours on the narrow ledge, sustained by water that she found by breaking into a supply box on the ledge.

She badly bruised a leg and dislocated a shoulder in the fall, and the cliff was too isolated for her to climb free, Rasp said.

Rasp said the cable was only within reach because the timber transport system was out of service. When a repairman restored the line on Thursday, the cable car started moving up the mountain and Bruinsma's bra reached the worker at the base. He knew of the missing hiker and immediately called police.

Rasp said his team followed the cable line up the cliffside in a helicopter and found Bruinsma standing on the ledge, waving with her good arm. After circling once, they lowered a winch to Bruinsma and lifted her aboard.

"She did so well because she is in very good shape," Rasp said. "She has been training for a marathon — her goal is to finish in 3 hours and 10 minutes."

Bruinsma told Rasp that she has scrapped plans to stay in Berchtesgaden to learn German and plans to return home to Colorado Springs with her parents. He said she still plans to run the marathon, if she recovers in time to keep training.

Surfers Attack Photographer

MALIBU, Calif. — A paparazzo trying to photograph Matthew McConaughey at the beach told police he was attacked by a mob of surfers who threw his camera in the ocean.

The 29-year-old photojournalist told sheriff's deputies that a large group of surfers near Paradise Cove in Malibu approached him and other paparazzi about 2 p.m. Saturday and demanded the group stop taking pictures and filming.

"There was apparently a fight, and the photographer gave a statement that he received injuries," Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said Sunday. Detectives are investigating, he said.

McConaughey was not involved in the attack, authorities said.

A call to McConaughey's publicist was not immediately returned.

The celebrity Web site TMZ.com posted a video Sunday showing about a dozen young men in swimsuits approaching what appears to be a group of paparazzi and yelling and swearing at them.

A scuffle breaks out after one of the photographers exchanges insults with the group and at first refuses their orders to leave.

"I'll give you a thousand bucks if you leave right now," one of the young men in swimsuits tells the photographers.

Another shoves a photographer filming the scene, and still another says, "We'll draw a line in the beach, and we'll fight for the beach. If you guys win, you can have the beach."

When one member of the group shouts at a photographer, "Get a ... real job," the photographer replies, "This is a real job. What do you do?"

The man replies: "I just drink beer and party."

Nasa's Phoenix Mars lander 'discovers ice'

By Nick Allen

Nasa scientists believe they have found ice buried on Mars.

Phoenix Mars lander begins testing Martian soil Phoenix Mars lander takes detailed pictures of alien dust Telegraph science homepage The Phoenix Mars lander exposed bits of what appeared to be ice while digging a trench near the Martian north pole. The trench dubbed 'Dodo-Goldilocks' Crumbs of bright material initially photographed in the trench later vanished, meaning they are likely to have been frozen water that vaporized after being exposed. The Nasa mission’s principal investigator Peter Smith, of the University of Arizona, said: “These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. “There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can’t do that.” The Phoenix Mars lander is studying whether the arctic region of the Red Planet could be habitable. It is using its robotic arm to dig up soil samples and scientists have been hoping it will find frozen water. The bright material was seen in the bottom of a trench dubbed “Dodo-Goldilocks” that Phoenix enlarged on Sunday. advertisement Several of the bright crumbs were gone when the spacecraft looked into the trench again early on Thursday, NASA said. Phoenix’s arm also encountered a hard surface while digging another trench called “Snow White 2” and scientists are hopeful of uncovering an icy layer there, the space agency said. In 2002 the orbiting Mars Odyssey probe detected hints of a vast store of ice below the surface of polar regions on Mars. The arctic terrain where Phoenix touched down has polygon shapes in the ground similar to those found in Earth’s permafrost regions. The patterns on Earth are caused by seasonal expansion and shrinking of underground ice. Phoenix landed near the Martian north pole on May 25 and the £200 million mission is planned to last 90 days.

Large ‘Planet X’ may lurk beyond Pluto

By Ker Than

An icy, unknown world might lurk in the distant reaches of our solar system beyond the orbit of Pluto, according to a new computer model.

The hidden world — thought to be much bigger than Pluto based on the model — could explain unusual features of the Kuiper Belt, a region of space beyond Neptune littered with icy and rocky bodies. Its existence would satisfy the long-held hopes and hypotheses for a "Planet X" envisioned by scientists and sci-fi buffs alike.

"Although the search for a distant planet in the solar system is old, it is far from over," said study team member Patryk Lykawka of Kobe University in Japan.

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The model, created by Lykawka and Kobe University colleague Tadashi Mukai, is detailed in a recent issue of Astrophysical Journal.

If the new world is confirmed, it would not be technically a planet. Under a controversial new definition adopted by the International Astronomical Union last week, it would instead be the largest known "plutoid."

The Kuiper Belt contains many peculiar features that can't be explained by standard solar system models. One is the highly irregular orbits of some of the belt's members.

The most famous is Sedna, a rocky object located three times farther from the sun than Pluto. Sedna takes 12,000 years to travel once around the sun, and its orbit ranges from 80 to 100 astronomical units. One AU is equal to the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

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According to the model, Sedna and other Kuiper Belt oddities could be explained by a world 30 to 70 percent as massive as Earth orbiting between 100 AU and 200 AU from the sun.

At that distance, any water on the world's surface would be completely frozen. However, it might support a subsurface ocean like those suspected to exist on the moons Titan and Enceladus, said Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona.

"The interesting thing for me is the suggestion of the kinds of very interesting objects that may yet await discovery in the outer solar system," said Sykes, who was not involved in the study. "We are still scratching the edges of that region of the solar system, and I expect many surprises await us with the future deeper surveys."

Chase turns sour for lemonade stand robber

From MSNBC.com

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - Call it a lemonade standoff.

A young girl whose lemonade stand was robbed of $17.50 chased the suspect into a nearby home and called police, who spent nearly an hour trying to coax the man into surrendering.

“The guy came up and was, like, ‘Give me your money,’” said Dominique Morefield, who was running the lemonade stand with a group of friends. “I was shocked. It was just my immediate reaction to chase after him.”

Dominique dashed after the man who ran into a house, and then she called police. Officers eventually persuaded Steve Tryon, 18, to come outside after 45 minutes and arrested him on a preliminary felony charge of robbery.

Tryon was jailed and was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday. The Vigo County prosecutor’s office did not immediately know if he had an attorney.

“I didn't think anyone would come up to a lemonade stand and steal, that's really low,” 12-year-old Fred Erstine said.

The kids said they would continue to sell lemonade, but with an adult’s supervision.

5th human foot washes up on Canada coast

By JEREMY HAINSWORTH, Associated Press Writer

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - A fifth human foot in a year has washed ashore off the coast of

Police said two people out for a walk spotted the left foot floating in water off Westham Island on Monday morning.

Delta Police Const. Sharlene Brooks said officials are working with the B.C. Coroner's office to see if this foot is linked to any other partial remains recovered in the province.

Westham Island is at the mouth of the Fraser River, about 15 miles south of Vancouver.

"A passerby noticed a shoe floating in the water, pulled it in and notified police," Brooks said. "We're treating it as a criminal investigation."

While the similarities to the other found feet is strong, she said there's no indication this foot is related to the other cases.

"We're certainly not discounting the possibility that this may be linked to the other recovered feet, but it's just too premature and very speculative for us to even entertain that right now," she said.

The last foot was found May 22 on Kirkland Island in the Fraser River, about one mile away from Monday's discovery.

The first in the series was found nearly a year ago on Jedidiah Island in the Strait of Georgia. Within days, another right foot was found inside a man's Reebok sneaker on nearby Gabriola Island. The third was found in the same area, on the east side of Valdez Island in early February.

The origin on any of the remains is still unknown.

"This might take a long time," Brooks said. "This is not CSI." She said in order to identify the foot, other remains from the body or identifying material such as a DNA would be needed. "It's going to be pretty difficult."

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has said there's no evidence the feet were severed or removed from the victims' legs by force.

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer based in Seattle, Wash., said when a human body is submerged in the ocean, the main parts like arms, legs, hands, feet and the head are usually what come off the body.

He said his theory is that the feet came along as a result of an accident that might have happened up along the Fraser River, that washed down and spread out along the Straight of Georgia.

Ebbesmeyer said when the third foot was found the feet could have drifted from as far as 1,000 miles away. Ebbesmeyer said the feet could have been severed or detached from their bodies on their own.

We may all be space aliens: study

by Marlowe Hood

PARIS (AFP) - Genetic material from outer space found in a meteorite in Australia may well have played a key role in the origin of life on Earth, according to a study to be published Sunday.
European and US scientists have proved for the first time that two bits of genetic coding, called nucleobases, contained in the meteor fragment, are truly extraterrestrial.

Previous studies had suggested that the space rocks, which hit Earth some 40 years ago, might have been contaminated upon impact.

Both of the molecules identified, uracil and xanthine, "are present in our DNA and RNA," said lead author Zita Martins, a researcher at Imperial College London.

RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is another key part of the genetic coding that makes up our bodies.

These molecules would also have been essential to the still-mysterious alchemy that somehow gave rise, some four billion years ago, to life itself.

"We know that meteorites very similar to the Murchison meteorite, which is the one we analysed, were delivering the building blocks of life to Earth 3.8 to 4.5 billion years ago," Martins told AFP in an interview.

Competing theories suggest that nucleobases were synthesised closer to home, but Martins counters that the atmospheric conditions of early Earth would have rendered that process difficult or impossible.

A team of European and US scientists showed that the two types of molecules in the Australian meteorite contained a heavy form of carbon -- carbon 13 -- which could only have been formed in space.

"We believe early life may have adopted nucleobases from meteoric fragments for use in genetic coding, enabling them to pass on their successful features to subsequent generations," Martins said.

If so, this would have been the start of an evolutionary process leading over billions of years to all the flora and fauna -- including human beings -- in existence today.

The study, published in Earth Planetary Science Letters, also has implications for life on other planets.

"Because meteorities represent leftover materials from the formation of the solar system, the key components of life -- including nucleobases -- could be widespread in the cosmos," said co-author Mark Sephton, also at Imperial College London.

"As more and more of life's raw materials are discovered in objects from space, the possibility of life springing forth wherever the right chemistry is present becomes more likely," he said.

Uracil is an organic compound found in RNA, where it binds in a genetic base pair with another molecule, adenine.

Xanthine is not directly part of RNA or DNA, but participates in a series of chemical reactions inside the RNA of cells.

The two types of nucleobases and the ratio of light-to-heavy carbon molecules were identified through gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, technologies that were not available during earlier analyses of the now-famous meteorite.

Even so, said Martins, the process was extremely laborious and time-consuming, one reason it had not be carried out up to now by other scientists.

Princess 'caught frolicking naked'

From CNN

LONDON, England -- Britain's Princess Eugenie has been reprimanded by her school after being caught frolicking naked on college grounds, it was reported Saturday.

Princess Eugenie is sixth in line to the British throne.

The 18-year-old daughter of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and Sarah Ferguson, was apprehended for her involvement in end of term "high jinks" at the exclusive Marlborough College, west of London, the UK Press Associated said.

A royal source told the Press Association: "It was nothing more than high jinks at the end of term in May. A group of them were reprimanded and that's the end of the matter."

The tabloid Sun newspaper reported that a college staff member was woken by playful shrieks and found several young women dancing around without clothes.

It said there was no suggestion boys were present or that drugs were involved but claimed a pupil said the students had been drinking.

Princess Eugenie, the sixth in line to the British throne, is studying art, history of art and English at the $46,000-a-year college, PA said.

It said the princess was expected to be among guests celebrating the official birthday of Queen Elizabeth II on Saturday.

A spokesman for the Princess made no comment about the claims, PA reported.

Where are the Sunspots? Are we in for a Quiet Solar Cycle?

Written by Ian O'Neill

So what's up with our Sun? Is it going through a depression? It seems as if our closest star is experiencing a surprisingly uneventful couple of years. Solar minimum has supposedly passed and we should be seeing a lot more magnetic activity, and we certainly should be observing lots more sunspots. Space weather forecasts have been putting Solar Cycle 24 as a historically active cycle… but so far, nothing. So what's the problem? Is it a ticking bomb, waiting to shock us with a huge jump in solar activity, flares and CMEs over a few months? Or could this lack of activity a prelude to a very boring few years, possibly leading the Earth toward another Ice Age?

It's funny. Just as we begin to get worried that the next solar maximum is going to unleash all sorts of havoc on Earth (i.e. NASA's 2006 solar storm warning), scientists begin to get concerned as to whether there is going to be a solar maximum at all. In a conference last week at Montana State University, solar physicists discussed the possibility that the Sun could be facing a long period of calm, leading to the concern that there could be another Maunder Minimum. The Maunder Minimum (named after the late 19th Century solar astronomer Edward W. Maunder, who discovered the phenomenon) was a 17th Century, 30-year period when very few sunspots were observed on the disk of the Sun. It is thought by many scientists that this period contributed to what became known as the "Little Ice Age" here on Earth. As the Sun provides Earth with all its energy, during extended periods when the solar output is lower than average, it seems possible a lack of sunspots on the Sun (i.e. low activity) may be linked with periods of cold down here.

"It continues to be dead. That's a small concern, a very small concern." - Saku Tsuneta, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and program manager for the Hinode solar mission.

However, solar physicists are not too worried about this possibility, after all, it's only been two years since solar minimum. Although activity has been low for the beginning of Cycle 24, sunspots have not been non-existent. In January of this year, a newborn spot was observed, as expected, in high latitude regions. More spots were seen in April. In March, sunspots from the previous solar cycle even made an appearance, putting on an unexpected show of flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs).

As pointed out by David Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, the fact that sunspots have already been observed in this new cycle means that it is highly unlikely we face anything as extreme as another Maunder Minimum. Hathaway says there is nothing unusual about having a relatively understated solar cycle after several particularly active cycles. Solar Cycle 23 was a very active period for the Sun with a greater than average number of sunspots observed on the solar surface.

It appears there are two different predictions for the activity level of the next solar cycle. On the one hand we have scientists that think this cycle might be below average, and on the other hand we have scientists who believe the next cycle will be the biggest yet. We certainly have a long way to go before we can begin making any accurate solar forecasts…

'Electron turbine' could print designer molecules

By # NewScientist.com news service
# Kate McAlpine

A carbon nanotube that spins in a current of electrons, like a wind turbine in a breeze, could become the world's smallest printer or shrink computer memory, UK researchers say.

The design is simple. A carbon nanotube 10 nanometres long and 1 nm wide is suspended between two others, its ends nested inside them to form a rotating joint. When a direct current is passed along the tubes, the central one spins around.

That design has as yet only been tested using advanced computer simulations by Colin Lambert and colleagues at Lancaster University, Lancashire, UK.

But Adrian Bachtold of the Catalan Institute for Nanotechnology, who was not involved in the work, intends to build the electron turbines and says it should be straightforward.

Researchers have made or designed a range of small-scale motors in recent years, using everything from DNA to light sensitive molecules to cell-transport proteins.

The Lancaster design is one of the simplest yet. Imagined applications for nanomotors range from shrinking optical communications components to new forms of computer memory.
Tiny turbine

Conventional water or wind turbines spin by deflecting oncoming air or water in one direction. This causes a reaction force to push them in the opposite direction.

Similarly, when electrons move through the nanotube turbine, they tend to bounce off its spiral arrangement of carbon rings in a particular direction. This redirects the electrons into a spiral flow, and causes the tube to rotate in the opposite direction.

The Lancaster team is confident this electron "wind" can overcome any friction forces that would prevent the middle tube spinning. They also hope to minimise friction at the joints by making the nanotubes as smooth as possible.
Tiny inkjet

The Lancaster researchers say their motor could be used to pump atoms and molecules through the spinning middle tube. Multiple pumps could precisely control a chemical reaction, driving atoms in a pattern to engineer new molecules. "It's like a nanoscale inkjet printer," says Lambert.

Atoms pumped through the motor could also be used to represent digital data, with an array of motors shuttling atoms between the 1 and 0 ends of the middle tube to store or process information. This method could store data in a space about 10 times smaller than today's state-of-the-art commercial systems, says Lambert.

"The work of Lambert's group is exciting," says Bachtold, "the proposed motors should be rather straightforward to fabricate". But he points out that only experiments will reveal whether this new nanomotor design lives up to its promise.

A paper on the electron windmills will be published in Physical Review Letters this month. A pre-review version is available on the arXiv pre-print website.

700-pound Mexican man hopes to stand for wedding

From Newsvine

MONTERREY — Manuel Uribe, who once weighed a half ton but has slimmed down to about 700 pounds, celebrates his 43rd birthday on Wednesday with a simple wish for the coming year: to be able to stand on his own two feet to get married.

Interviewed at his home in northern Mexico, where he can still do little more than sit up on a bed, Uribe said more than two years of steady dieting have helped him drop about 550 pounds from his Guinness record weight of 1,235 pounds.

He hopes Guinness representatives will confirm in July that he holds a second title: The world's greatest loser of weight.

But Uribe is still unable to walk his fiancee, Claudia Solis, down the aisle.

"It frustrates me a little, because it is not easy to get out," said Uribe, who has not been able to leave bed for the last six years.

His most recent attempt to escape the house — to attend Solis' 38th birthday party in March — fell through when a flatbed tow truck brought to transport his reinforced bed got caught beneath an underpass.

But Uribe vowed not to be deterred: "We are in love, and this year my birthday wish is to be able to stand when we get married," he said.

Uribe said he met Solis, a 38-year-old hairdresser, four years ago. They have been together for the last two.

"We are a couple," Uribe said. "We have sex, and in the eyes of God we are already married."

Proudly showing off her sparkling engagement ring, Solis said life with a heavyweight is not always easy.

"I bathe him every day, and we get along very well," she said. "At times, yes, people say things ... that it's a fake relationship, but what we have is real."

Solis said her family initially opposed the match with Uribe, because her first husband, who was also obese, died of respiratory failure.

"They were worried about me being involved with another fat man, because they thought another husband would die on me," she said.

Uribe, a former auto parts dealer, said his birthday party Wednesday will be a low-key dinner with the family.

"We were going to go out, but the last time out scared me so much," he said. "When we crashed into the lighting conduits on the underpass, I thought we were going to get an electric shock."

Uribe said his weight problem spiraled out of control after he moved to the United States for a few years in 1988 and indulged in a nonstop diet of junk food and soft drinks.

A botched liposuction that damaged his lymph nodes left him with giant tumors on both legs weighing a total of 220 pounds. The tumors are the main reason he is unable to walk.

"It is all because of the junk food," he said.

About two years ago, a team of doctors stepped in to help Uribe change his eating habits and tackle his extreme obesity.

Today he says he eats small portions of food five times a day, including chicken, ham, egg-white omelets, fruit and vegetables. Sitting in bed, Uribe exercises his arms with pull-ups and by pedaling with his hands.

Hoping his struggle will inspire others, he plans to launch the Manuel Uribe Foundation this year to educate people about nutrition and to combat obesity — a growing problem in Mexico.

Solis is focused more on the present.

"It is a miracle he is still alive," she said. "He's going to turn 43, and that is something we have to celebrate."

Parasitoid Turns Its Host Into A Bodyguard

ScienceDaily (Jun. 9, 2008) — There are many examples of parasites that induce spectacular changes in the behaviour of their host. Flukes, for example, are thought to induce ants, their intermediate host, to move up onto blades of grass during the night and early morning. There, they firmly attach themselves to the substrate with their mandibles, and are thus consumed by grazing sheep, the fluke's final host. In contrast, uninfected ants return to their nests during the night and the cooler parts of the day. As another example, terrestrial insects parasitized by hairworms commit suicide by jumping into water, where the adult worms reproduce.
See also:
Plants & Animals

* Insects and Butterflies
* Agriculture and Food
* Behavioral Science
* Pests and Parasites
* Invasive Species
* Animals

Reference

* Parasitism
* Cat flea
* Biological pest control
* Caterpillar

Behavioural changes like these are thought to be induced by the parasite so as to increase its transmission to the final host, but there are alternative explanations. It is possible, for example, that the hosts already behaved differently before becoming infected. Hence, infection is a consequence of different behaviour, not its cause. Increased transmission can also be called into question: the behavioural changes of the host may result in increased attacks by other non-host animals, and this would seriously decrease the probability of transmission. Increased transmission should therefore always be tested under natural conditions.

A research team from University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and the Federal University of Viçosa, Brazil, led by Arne Janssen, now offer evidence that behavioural changes of a host are indeed beneficial to the parasite in the field. In research supported by WOTRO, carried out in Brazil, they studied a moth, the caterpillars of which feed on leaves of the native guava tree and on an exotic eucalyptus. Small caterpillars are attacked by an insect parasitoid wasp, which then quickly inserts up to 80 eggs into it.

Inside the caterpillar host, a cruel drama takes place: the eggs of the parasitoid hatch and the larvae feed on the body fluids of the host. The caterpillar continues feeding, moving and growing like its unparasitized brothers and sisters. When the parasitoid larvae are full-grown, they emerge together through the host's skin, and start pupating nearby. Unlike many other combinations of host and parasitoid, the host remains alive but displays spectacular changes in its behaviour: it stops feeding and remains close to the parasitoid pupae. Moreover, it defends the parasitoid pupae against approaching predators with violent head-swings.

The caterpillar dies soon after the adult parasitoids emerge from their pupae, so there can be no benefit whatsoever for the caterpillars. In contrast, unparasitized caterpillars do not show any of these behavioural changes, but continue feeding and developing into adults. The research team found that, in the field, parasitoid pupae which were guarded by caterpillars suffered half as much predation as those which had no bodyguard. Hence, the behavioural changes of the host result in increased survival of the parasitoids due to the host that acts as a bodyguard of the parasitoid pupae.

Whereas it is still unclear how the parasitoid changes the behaviour of its host, it is tempting to speculate. The research team found that one or two parasitoid larvae remained behind in the host. Perhaps these larvae affect the behaviour of the caterpillar, and sacrifice themselves for the good of their brothers and sisters.

Mystery surrounds identity of aircraft or UFO that exploded over Vietnam.

By Australia.to

BRISBANE, Australia - What type of aircraft exploded high in the sky over Vietnam in late May 2008?

It appears that some sort of aircraft was destroyed by an explosion over Vietnam last week. Local residents have paraded metallic objects that appear to be conventional aircraft parts possibly of Vietnam - United States War origin.

UFO watchers have claimed it as a UFO.

On the more bizarre side is this report from India.

"UFO made of biochemical derivatives explodes over Vietnam. No trace can be found
India Daily Technology Team
Jun. 1, 2008

It was the UFO that carries no extraterrestrial life but transmits information about earth and its habitat. It is the drone of the advanced extraterrestrial civilization.

These advanced drones are made of biochemical derivatives. These mimic intelligent life with the ability to be in mission for thousands of light years, fix its own problems and eventually reproduce to move on.

The biochemical nature of the materials resembles the life in earth. But in reality it is itself an advanced life form unidentifiable by our terrestrial type zero science and technologies.

According to media reports from state media of Vietnam, an unidentified flying object exploded in mid-air over a southern Vietnamese island, a day after Cambodia's air force retracted a report of a mysterious plane crash. Area residents reported finding shards of grey material, including one 1.5 meters long. According to the Vietnam News Agency, authorities said the crash may have been a plane, but they were unable to identify whether it was a civil or military aircraft. The agency added that soldiers were sent out to look for wreckage and survivors, and local authorities contacted airlines in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, but received no reports of missing aircraft.

Some army personnel in Vietnam is perplexed at what they found at the site. There is no clear evidence of any explosion. Metallic parts they found is that of era of US-Vietnam war and has nothing to do with this UFO mid air explosion.

Biochemical UFOs do not leave trace of any nature. Because of their nature and power to bio-disinegrate fast, they do not leave any trace. They travel through wormholes bending space and time. They go across universes through the Hyperspace. They can defy the basic laws of quantum physics. They are propelled by gravity waves. They have the stealth of electromagnetic flux. They are navigated and controlled from parallel universes."

Back on Earth the local Vietnamese report included a picture of wreckage.

UFO debris ?

"Lam Quang Chanh, the provincial People’s Committee’s spokesman, told Thanh Nien metal pieces had rained down in Ganh Dau and Cua Can communes on the island of Phu Quoc at about 10:20 a.m. on May 27.

The Military Command of Phu Quoc District said militias and residents had recovered 14 metal pieces allegedly deposited on the island from the explosion.

Rumors in Phu Quoc also suggest that some individuals have retrieved “dollars” or “very cold” metal pieces following the UFO’s explosion.

Nguyen Thanh Banh, Kien Giang police deputy chief, told Thanh Nien anyone found guilty of spreading rumors from the incident that would negatively affect security on the island would be dealt with according to law.

Banh also said the security on Phu Quoc Island has been stable thus far.

When residents found the metal debris on Tuesday, district authorities said they contacted airlines in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand but did not receive immediate news of any missing aircraft.

Reported by Tien Trinh" Link

Reuters published a story by Grant McCool and Ed Cropley in Bangkok referring to a UFO crash.

"HANOI (Reuters) - An unidentified flying object exploded in mid-air over a southern Vietnamese island, state media said Wednesday, a day after Cambodia's air force retracted a report of a mysterious plane crash.

The Vietnam News Agency said residents of Phu Quoc island, 10 km (6 miles) off the coast of the Cambodian province of Kampot, found shards of grey metal, including one 1.5 meters (1.5 yards) long.

"The explosion happened at about 8 km (5 miles) above the ground, and perhaps it was a plane, but authorities could not identify whether it was a civil or military aircraft," VNA said in a report headlined "UFO explodes over Phu Quoc Island."

Soldiers were sent out to look for wreckage and survivors, and local authorities contacted airlines in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, but received no reports of missing aircraft, the official state news agency added.

Villagers in Kampot said Tuesday that they had heard a loud explosion. Wednesday they told Reuters they had found small chunks of metal near the coastline.

Kung Mony, deputy commander of Cambodia's Air Force, said Tuesday he had been told of a foreign plane crashing in Kampot province, but later backed off his claims of an aircraft accident.'

So what did explode and crash over Vietnam? There is a mystery waiting to be solved. Perhaps it was a secret US aircraft known as Aurora. The owner of the copyright to an apparent UFO taken from a classified STS or Shuttle mission wants it made very clear that his photo reproduced below is not connected to the presumed object shot down in Vietnam.

Perhaps the India Daily is right, worm hole travellers encountered an electromagnetic flux from a parallel universe !.

Here is what the Aurora is said to be.

Mother's love worth $117,000 per year, study says

From CNN.com

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- If a stay-at-home mom could be compensated in dollars rather than personal satisfaction and unconditional love, she'd rake in a nifty sum of nearly $117,000 a year.
art.family.jpg

At-home moms reported working an average of 94.4 hours per week, said the survey.

That's according to a pre-Mother's Day study released in May by Salary.com, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based firm that studies workplace compensation.

The eighth annual survey calculated a mom's market value by studying pay levels for 10 job titles with duties that a typical mom performs, ranging from housekeeper and day care center teacher to van driver, psychologist and chief executive officer.

This year, the annual salary for a stay-at-home mom would be $116,805, while a working mom who also juggles an outside job would get $68,405 for her motherly duties.

One stay-at-home mom said the six-figure salary sounds a little low.

"I think a lot of people think we sit and home and have a lot of fun and don't do a lot of work," said Samantha Russell, a Fremont, New Hampshire, mother who left her job as pastry chef to raise two boys, ages 2 and 4. "But they should try cleaning their house with little kids running around and messing it up right after them."
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* In Depth: Work at Home

The biggest driver of a mom's theoretical salary is the amount of overtime pay she'd receive for working more than 40 hours a week. The 18,000 moms surveyed about their typical week reported working 94.4 hours -- meaning they'd be spending more than half their working hours on overtime.

Working moms reported an average 54.6 hour "mom work week" besides the hours they spent at paying jobs.

Russell agreed her job as a stay-at-home mom is more than full-time. But she said her "job" brings intangible benefits she wouldn't enjoy in the workplace.

"The rewards aren't monetary, but it's a reward knowing that they're safe and happy," Russell said of her sons. "It's worth it all."

NASA finds ice on Mars

By Daily Mail Reporter

NASA scientists yesterday said they had found ice on Mars -- a step towards finding evidence of life.

Sharp new images received from their Phoenix lander convinced scientists that the spacecraft's thrusters had uncovered a large patch of ice just below the Martian surface, team members said.

That bodes well for the mission's main goal of digging for ice that can be tested for evidence of organic compounds that are the chemical building blocks of life.
Ice on Mars

Ice work: The area underneath the Phoenix lander where the descent engine blew away the soil, revealing what scientists believe to be either rock or ice

Washington University scientist Ray Arvidson said the spacecraft's thrusters may have blown away dirt covering the ice when the robot landed one week ago.

Scientists said a detailed image taken under the lander shows one of the craft's three legs sitting on coarse dirt and a large patch of what appears to be ice -- possibly 3 feet (0.9 metres) in diameter -- that apparently had been covered by a thin layer of dirt.

"We were worried that it may be 30-, 40-, 50-centimeters deep, which would be a lot of work. Now we are fairly certain that we can easily get down to the ice table," said Peter Smith, a University of Arizona scientist who is the chief project investigator.

The spacecraft is equipped with a shovel-like robotic arm that will be used to dig into the ground and retrieve samples for testing in the lander's small laboratories.
Ice on Mars


robotic arm

The robotic arm with a backhoe dug into the surface to retrieve samples leaving a footprint behind

The lander was sent to a spot on Mars' northern regions in hopes of finding frozen water, but just how deep underground it would be found was unknown.

The robot arm is expected to begin its first digging operations after several more days of testing.

Once the arm starts digging, dirt and ice it scoops up will be deposited in several small ovens to be heated. Measuring devices will test the resulting gases.

The University of Arizona in Tucson is leading and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is managing the three-month scientific mission.