A Welsh View

Astronomers Find Largest Exoplanet

A team of astronomers has discovered the largest known planet orbiting another star.

The "transiting" planet - meaning one that passes in front of its parent star as seen from Earth - is about 70% larger than Jupiter.

But the presumed "gas giant" has a much lower mass than Jupiter - the biggest planet in our Solar System - making it of extremely low density.

The planet lies 1,435 light-years away from Earth and is only 4.5 million miles from its parent star which means that the planet is very hot (about 1,327C).

Scientists Breed World’s First Mentally Ill Mouse

Scientists have created the world’s first schizophrenic mice in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the illness. It is believed to be the first time an animal has been genetically engineered to have a mental illness. Animal rights activists have obviously condemned the research.

Megaflood 'Made Island Britain'

New research has suggested that a megaflood some 200,000 years ago caused Britain to become an island.

Britain became separated from mainland Europe after a catastrophic flood some time before 200,000 years ago, a sonar study of the English Channel confirms.

The images reveal deep scars on the Channel bed that must have been cut by a sudden, massive discharge of water.

Scientists tell the journal Nature that the torrent probably came from a giant lake in what is now the North Sea.

Some event - perhaps an earthquake - caused the lake's rim to breach at the Dover Strait, they believe.

Dr Sanjeev Gupta, from Imperial College London, and colleagues say the discharge would have been one of the most significant megafloods in recent Earth history, and provides an explanation for Britain's island status.

13-Gigapixel Photo Of Harlem

An incredibly detailed panorama of Harlem, NY. The image is a composite of 2,045 individual photographs taken on August 13, 2006 over a duration of 2 hours 10 minutes (4:43pm – 6:53pm). It's amazing how far you can zoom in. [via]

Frozen Baby Mammoth

One of the best preserved specimens of frozen mammoth ever discovered is heading it's way to a Japanese university.

The nearly complete body of the female calf is estimated to have been less than one year old before it was preserved in ice about 10,000 years ago.

According to the Russian Tass news agency, a reindeer herder stumbled upon the 130 cm (4 ft 3 in) tall, 50 kg (110 lbs) frozen mammoth in May in an area of permafrost in northwestern Siberia, near the Yuribey River on the Yamal Peninsula, which extends into the Kara Sea. The mammoth, whose trunk and eyes remain intact and which still has some fur on its body.

“This is the first opportunity for anyone to perform an analysis on a complete mammoth body,” says Jikei University professor Naoki Suzuki, “and it should provide a more complete picture of its anatomy and how it lived.”

How Big Is The NCC-1701-D USS Enterprise?

The USS Enterprise is superimposed over US cities and landmarks to show how big it is.

A Dark Sky Over Death Valley

This 360-degree full sky panorama was taken in Death Valley - one of the darkest places left in the continental USA. As well as the stunning view of the night sky, also featured in the photo is one of the 'mysterious sliding rocks of Racetrack Playa'.

Diagram Of Solar System Objects Over 200 Miles In Diameter

An interesting diagram showing all known objects in the solar system that are over 200 miles in diameter. [via]

Japanese Spacecraft Reveals New Details About The Sun

NASA has released never-before-seen photos showing the sun's magnetic field to be more turbulent and dynamic than previously known. The images were recorded by Japan's Hinode spacecraft.

The spacecraft was launched in Sept. 2006 from the Uchinoura Space Center in Japan on a mission to study sunspots and solar flares. Hinode's Solar Optical Telescope, which some astronomers liken to "a Hubble for the Sun," produces crystal-clear images with 0.2 arc-second resolution. (Comparison: 0.2 arc-second is a tiny angle approximately equal to the width of a human hair held about 100 meters away.) "We're getting movies like these all the time now," he says.

This particular movie is visually stunning, but the most amazing thing about it, notes Davis, is where the scene unfolded--in the sun's chromosphere. "We used to think the chromosphere was a fairly uneventful place, but Hinode is shattering those misconceptions."

View more images and a video here. [via]

Snow Doughnuts

Whilst conducting avalanche-control work in Washington Pass, Mike Stanford, an avalanche-control expert with the state Department of Transportation (WSDOT) found doughnuts made from snow.

At first he couldn't believe his eyes: Perfectly shaped doughnuts had rolled down the mountainside and frozen in place.

He said it's only the second time in his 30 years of working in the snow that he's seen anything like it.

The larger of the snow rollers, as they are commonly called, was about 24 inches tall, he said, large enough for him to put his head through the hole.

Stanford said snow rollers form when there is a hard layer on the snow, covered by several more inches of dense snow. "Then you add a steep slope and a trigger such as a clump of snow falling out of a tree or off of a rock face."

As gravity pulls a clump down, it usually rolls down the hill and collapses, creating what the WSDOT calls a pinwheel. Or it will not roll at all, and come down in an avalanche of snow. But if the snow is the perfect density and temperature, it rolls down leaving a hole in the center, Stanford said.

Scientists Erase Specific Memories

Scientists have successfully erased a single memory from the brains of rats without damaging other memories. Science is getting scary!

Video: The Great Global Warming Swindle

Is global warming caused by humans or is it a natural occurence out of our control? The Great Global Warming Swindle was broadcast on UK TV last week and discusses why climate change is not a man-made phenomenon. [Thanks Steve]

Video: Lightning vs Car

Are you safe in a car that is struck by lightning? Top Gear finds out.

Divers Discover Huge Underground River

A British diver and his German partner have discovered what they claim is the world's largest submerged cave system - effectively an underground river - beneath Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.

Stephen Bogaerts and Robbie Schmittner had spent four years exploring whether the Sac Actun system links to other cave networks before they made the final connection that revealed a single system that is 95 miles long. Link

Lunar Eclipse Set For Saturday Night

I'm hoping that tonight I will be able to take a picture similar to the one above. Providing skies are clear tonight (currently it is forecast to be clear in south Wales), practically all of the UK will be able to observe the first lunar eclipse sine 2001.

The phenomenon occurs when the Earth passes directly between the Moon and the Sun. Light scattering through the Earth's atmosphere is reduced to predominantly-red wavelengths, which reflect off the lunar surface.

According to the Metro...

a partial eclipse will begin at 8.16pm as the Moon enters the Earth's penumbra, the twilight zone between shadow and illumination.

At this stage its effects will be difficult to see.

The Moon will be fully immersed in the Earth's shadow by 10.44pm. Mid-eclipse will occur at 11.21pm with the Moon 44 degrees above the southern horizon.

Snow Over The Northeast United States

Taken on February 19th, this image shows the huge snow and ice storm that blanketed northeastern USA. The snow stretches from Maine to Virginia and highlights the curving folds of the Appalachian Mountains, branch-like rivers and streams, and the solid white smoothness of frozen lakes.

Antarctic Ice Melt Reveals Exotic Creatures

Melting ice in Antarctica has allowed scientists to observe exotic creatures.

Spindly orange sea stars, fan-finned ice fish and herds of roving sea cucumbers are among the exotic creatures spied off the Antarctic coast in an area formerly covered by ice, scientists reported Sunday.

This is the first time explorers have been able to catalog wildlife where two mammoth ice shelves used to extend for some 3,900 square miles over the Weddell Sea.

At least 5,000 years old, the ice shelves collapsed in two stages over the last dozen years. One crumbled 12 years ago and the other followed in 2002.

Ants Hate Each Other

According to scienticians, ants hate each other but still work together.

Mystery Of The Himalayas Solved

Apparently, scienticians have solved the mystery of how the Himalayas formed.

...[a] massive slab - up to eight times the area of the UK and as thick as a dozen Everests on top of each other - dropped off, the lighter crust above it rebounded upwards like a cork released under water, geophysicists say. This "sudden uplift" would have raised the Himalayas by as much as 2km (1.24 miles) to their present height.

Hubble Snaps Death Throes Of Sun-Like Star

Fast forward 5 billion years or so and this is what out sun will look like.

Taken by the Hubble on February 6th, the picture shows the remnants of a stellar explosion. The tiny star at centre of the picture is a white dwarf, that is ending its life by shedding the layers of material that had surrounded its core. The gas it has expelled is glowing in the ultraviolet light shining out from the star. The material surrounding the star is called a planetary nebula. [via]

Human Skin Reveals Completely Unknown Bacteria

It appears that the skin, the largest organ in our body, is a kind of zoo and some of the inhabitants are quite novel, according to a new study. Researchers found evidence for 182 species of bacteria in skin samples. Eight percent were unknown species that had never before been described. Read more.

Did The Dinosaurs Invent Biplane technology?

Microraptor gui, a little dinosaur with four feathered limbs, may have glided through the air like a biplane, with its wings paired in parallel, say palaeontologists.

If the hypothesis is correct, it would be the only known example of a living creature employing such a flight mechanism. The microraptor fossil was found in China and measures just 77cm from the nose to the tip of its long tail. It dates from 125 million years before biplanes were invented. [via]

Self-Cleaning Underwear Goes Weeks Without Washing

Scientists working for the US Air Force have created fabrics that are self-cleaning. They have already created t-shirts and underwear that can be worn hygenically for weeks without washing.

The new technology attaches nanoparticles to clothing fibers using microwaves. Then, chemicals that can repel water, oil and bacteria are directly bound to the nanoparticles. These two elements combine to create a protective coating on the fibers of the material.

This coating both kills bacteria, and forces liquids to bead and run off.

The U.S. military spent more than $20 million to develop the fabric, deriving from research originally intended to protect soldiers from biological weapons.

Read more.

Video: Spectacular Video of A Meteor

A stunning video showing a meteor breaking up over Denver, Colorado. [via]

Update: The article originally said that the video showed a meteor breaking up but it turns out it was actually a spent Russian space rocket or "space junk".

The Top Ten Astronomy Images of 2006

Bad Astronomy Blog presents the top ten astronomy images of 2006. My favourite image has to be no.5 which shows the shuttle and the ISS in front of the Sun. [via]

Aurora Borealis from Space

The picture above is of the Aurora Borealis photographed from the recent space shuttle mission. City lights and stars are also visible in this image from space because of the long camera exposure. [via]

How The Shuttle Returns To Earth

The BBC explains the complex manouevres that the space shuttle has to perform whilst returning to Earth. [via]

World's Smallest Life Form Discovered

Scientists have discovered what may be the smallest form of life known to science. Discovered in drainage water as caustic as battery acid from a mine in Northern California, four million of them could fit into the full stop at the end of this sentence. Tests still need to be performed to confirmed that they can be considered a form of life.

Note: The 100 nanometer scale bar in the image above is approximately one-thousandth the width of a human hair. [Image via]

Hubble Telescope Images

Lots of stunning images taken by the Hubble Telescope.

Video: The Scale Of The Universe

A video showing the size of stars and planets in the Universe. It highlights just how insignificant Earth is compared to other stars and planets. [via]

Video: Saturn Fly-By

A video simulating passing saturn at 99% of the speed of light. Bendy. [via]

Tsunami To Hit Britain

The Independent has painted a grim roadmap of how the world is going to change over the next 50 or so years and predicts that around this time in 2060, Britain will be pounded by a huge tsunami that may be more catastrophic than the Boxing Day tsunami. If I'm still around I should be ok as the water probably won't reach as far as Wales. If you live on the east coast of Britain you could be stuffed.

Topless Skull Confirms Earliest Autopsy

Scientists have concluded that the earliest confirmed autopsy in North America was conducted more than 400 years ago by French colonists desperate to determine what was killing them as they endured a rugged winter on St. Croix Island.

A team of forensic anthropologists from the United States and Canada confirmed that the skull of a man buried on the island over the winter of 1604-05 showed evidence of having undergone an autopsy, scientists said.

Nearly half of the 79 settlers led by explorers Pierre Dugua and Samuel Champlain died over that winter from malnutrition and the harsh weather.

Venus And Moon In The Daylight

From UseMyComputer...

There's something behind these clouds. Those faint graceful arcs, upon inspection, are actually far, far in the distance. They are the Earth's Moon and the planet Venus. Both the Moon and Venus are bright enough to be seen during the day, and both are quite capable of showing a crescent phase. To see Venus, which appears quite small, in a crescent phase requires binoculars or a telescope. In the above dramatic daytime image taken from Budapest, Hungary, the Moon and Venus shared a similar crescent phase a few minutes before the Moon eclipsed the larger but more distant world. About an hour later, Venus reappeared.

Related: Star explosion is surprisingly neat

Coins Don't Smell, You Do

You know that smell that you get on your hands after handling coins? It's not the coins causing the smell, it's you.

A new study finds that the smell of iron is, ironically, a type of human body odor, created by the breakdown of oils in skin after touching objects that contain the element.

"That we are smelling the metal itself is actually an illusion," said study team member Dietmar Glindemann of the University of Leipzig in Germany.

Scientists think it works like this: When touching objects made of iron, perspiration from skin causes the iron atoms to gain two electrons. The doubly negative iron atoms react with oil in skin, causing them to decompose, forming 1-octen-2-one.

Because blood contains iron, rubbing blood over skin produces a similar metallic smell, the researchers said.

[via]

World To End On October 31...

The world is due to end on October 31st.... 2,252,006. The figures come from a team of geologists and paleontologists from across Europe, who studied an amazing 22million years-worth of fossils from central Spain. [via]

Universe In Perspective

A comparison of objects in the Universe (or maybe just the Milky Way) starting with some of the small moons in our Solar System and ending with VV Cephei, the largest star known. This star is a whopping 1,900 times the Sun's diameter and 315,000 more luminous. But if you thought that was big, it is but a mere speck of dust in the Milky Way.

Reading through Wikipedia's list of the largest stars, there may be some anomalies with the comparison. For example, Wikipedia lists the 'Pistol Star' as being bigger than both Antares and Betelguese but the comparison shows the Pistol Star as being much bigger than the other two. Not sure which is more accurate. [via]

Pale Blue Dot

The pale blue dot in the photo above, less than a pixel in size, is Earth as it was viewed in 1990 by the Voyager spacecraft. In this photo the Earth is 4 billion miles away and is barely visible. The picture was presented during a presentation in 1994 by the late Dr Carl Sagan. Here is an excerpt from his lecture.

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam."

[via]
Related: Video: One in a Million Telescope Sight

A Spot In The Sun

It looks like a speck of dust on the surface of the sun. But this spectacular picture shows the space shuttle Atlantis alongside the International Space Station (ISS) silhouetted as they orbit the earth.
The image was taken in Normandy by French astrophotographer Thierry Legault. He used a digital camera attached to a £5,000 specially kitted-out telescope.

Why Don't Insects Get Fat?

Scientists explain. [via]

Most Distant Galaxy Gives Clues To Early Universe

Scientists said Wednesday that they have found the most distant galaxy yet (the little red galaxy in the image above), nearly 13 billion light-years* away. This discovery could help explain how stars were formed at the dawn of time. At 12.88 billion light years away, the galaxy is 60 million years older than the previous furthest galaxy found. Named IOK-1, it is so far away that the light waves that reached Earth depict it as the system of stars existed shortly after the Big Bang created the universe 13.66 billion years ago.

* A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year, about 5.88 trillion miles. 12.88 billion multiplied by 5.88 trillion miles is a hell of a long way away.

Voyager 1 Sails Past 100 AU

Yesterday, the Voyager 1 spacecraft passed an important milestone on its epic journey to interstellar space.

On August 17th, Voyager 1 crossed an invisible boundary that marks 100 astronomical units (AU)* from the Sun or about 15 billion kilometers (9.3 billion miles). This is the farthest that any human-made object has gone in space. It is now well on its way to interstellar space. Voyager 2, at 80 AU, is about six years behind.

It is thought that Voyager 1, which was launched in 1977, should continue operating and transmitting data until 2020.

This article has a lot more about the Voyager 1 mission. [via]

*An AU is the distance between the Sun and the Earth.

Hubble Space Telescope Widescreen Wallpaper

An awesome collection of widescreen wallpapers of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Extreme Conditions Create Rare Antarctic Clouds

Rare mother-of-pearl coloured clouds caused by extreme weather conditions are seen above Australia's meteorological base known as Mawson Station in Antarctica in this July 25, 2006 picture. Known as nacreous clouds, the formations can only form in temperatures lower than minus 80 degrees Celcius (minus 112 Fahrenheit).

Bizarrely, these surface temperatures are among the lowest ever recorded yet experts are saying that the clouds are an indication of global warming.

Newfound Blob is Biggest Thing in the Universe

An enormous amoeba-like structure 200 million light-years wide and made up of galaxies and large bubbles of gas is the largest known object in the universe, scientists say.

The galaxies and gas bubbles, called Lyman alpha blobs, are aligned along three curvy filaments that formed about 2 billion years after the universe exploded into existence after the theoretical Big Bang. The filaments were recently seen using the Subaru and Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea.

Close Encounter Of Two Jupiter Red Spots

The image above shows two giant red spots brushing past one another in Jupiter's southern hemisphere. The image was taken by the Gemini Observatory. The image was obtained in near infrared light using adaptive optics which corrects, in real-time, for most of the distortions caused by turbulence in Earth's atmosphere. The result is a view from the ground that rivals images from space.

Click for bigger image. [via]

10 Deadly Poisons

The 10 deadly poisons. Contains the usual contenders along with a few I've never heard of.

Animal Controlled Pac-Man

An experiment in animal controlled computer games in which the ghosts in Pac-Man are controlled by cockroaches in a real-life versin of the maze. The site has videos of the game in action. [via]

Star's 4 Million MPH Explosion Captured By Astronomers

A team of astronomers from the UK and Germany found a nuclear explosion on the surface of a star 5,000 light-years from Earth. It resulted in a blast wave moving at over 1,700 km per second (one thousand miles per second or almost four million miles per hour).

The discovery was made by bringing together many of the world's radio telescopes into arrays capable of seeing the aftermath of the explosion in incredible detail. The star was in an area of sky on 5 millionths of a degree – the size of a football seen from 2,700 km (1,700 miles) away.

The Times has an artist's impression of what the explosion may have looked like.

STS-121: The Mission in Pictures

Images of the latest space shuttle mission. [via]