How much water is on the moon?
By Robert C. Cowen | 11.16.09
Streams of electrically charged particles from the Sun and outer space are turning out to be major players in our solar system’s cosmic drama. They help shape planetary atmospheres, sterilize exposed surfaces, and even bring possibly life-supporting oxygen to an icy Jovian moon.
In their latest act, solar protons (the nuclei of hydrogen atoms) allow our own supposedly arid moon to make enough water every day to offset evaporation and maintain trace amounts of moisture all over its surface. Forget those bone dry textbook images. In September, several research teams made the case for a damp moon in Science online. A decade of data from several spacecraft showed water concentrations up to a liter per ton of lunar “soil”. The European Space Agency (ESA) confirmed that finding with a study of its own announced last month. That’s still pretty dry. But MIT planetary scientist Benjamin Weiss says that, given it might be easy to recover the water, “I think this makes it a promising resource for astronauts.”
The water trick works like this. Lunar “soil” is a loose mix of dust grains that soaks up protons in the so-called solar wind. Trapped between the dust grains and absorbed, the solar protons react with the oxygen there to make water. They continuously make enough to offset the water that evaporates back into space. A European-supplied instrument on board India’s Chendrayaan-I craft now orbiting the Moon found the data to back up this scenario.
They also contained a surprise. One in five of those incoming positively charged solar protons bounced back without joining the water project. Instead, it picked up an electron, became electrically neutral, and escaped the grasp of the magnetic fields that guide the electrically charged solar wind. Stas Barabash with the Swedish Institute of Space Physics says that’s something “we didn’t expect to see.”
This potentially opens a whole new field of space observations – using the paths of electrically neutral hydrogen atoms such as light rays to form images. Photons leaving the lunar surface fly away on straight paths unaffected by magnetic fields or lunar gravity. Those paths (light rays) point directly back to their source. ESA explained that the bounce-back hydrogen atoms also travel in straight lines unaffected by magnetic fields or weak lunar gravity. Images of the surface can be made by tracing each atom back to its source. Areas emitting the most hydrogen will show up the brightest. Dr. Barabash and his team members are honing their skills at such image making.
Meanwhile, cosmic rays work some potentially life-sustaining molecular magic on Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Scientists think its icy surface covers a vast ocean. They also believe that cosmic particles undergo reactions in the surface ice to produce oxygen. But it’s been hard to imagine how to get that oxygen through the ice into the water to support oxygen-breathing life. Now Richard Greenberg from the University of Arizona in Tucson has shown it’s theoretically possible for processes that renew the surface ice to work fast enough to maintain ample oxygen in the covered over ocean. Explaining his scheme at an American Astronomical Society meeting in Puerto Rico last month, he estimated there would be enough oxygen to support 3 billion kilograms of “macrofauna.”
Where would our solar system be without the subtle influence of those speeding interplanetary particles?
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Plants and wasps are smarter than you think
By Robert C. Cowen | 10.16.09
Plants and pea brains can be smarter than you think. Plants like those that discriminate between siblings and strangers within their own species, that is. And pea brains like the tropical paper wasp that reorganizes its tiny brain to tackle increasingly complex tasks.
These research tidbits illustrate the fact that acquiring and using information is a fundamental aspect of organic life.
Plant siblings grow from seeds produced by the same “mother” plant. They cooperate with each other, but compete with strangers, in the struggle for food and water. That may be one reason why a batch of nursery seedlings doesn’t always thrive as well as expected in the garden.
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Why don’t pregnant women tip over? Ask an Ig Noble winner.
By Matthew Shaer | 10.02.09
It’s October again, which means it’s time for the Ig Nobles – a set of prizes awarded to discoveries “that cannot, or should not, be reproduced.” The Ig Nobels were dished out last night at Sanders Theater, on the campus of Harvard University, and the awards, which cover categories ranging from physics to physiology, appear to have gone to the appropriate “innovators.”
Here’s the full list of winners, courtesy of the Associated Press:
• Veterinary medicine: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson for showing that cows with names give more milk than unnamed cows.
• Peace: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl for investigating whether it is better to be struck over the head with a full beer bottle or with an empty beer bottle.
• Economics: Executives of four Icelandic banks for showing how tiny banks can become huge banks, and then become tiny banks again.
• Chemistry: Javier Morales, Miguel Apatiga and Victor Castano for creating diamonds out of tequila.
• Medicine: Donald Unger for cracking just the knuckles on his left hand for 60 years to see if knuckle cracking contributes to arthritis.
• Physics: Katherine Whitcome, Liza Shapiro and Daniel Lieberman for figuring out why pregnant women don’t tip over.
• Literature: The Irish national police for issuing 50 tickets to one Prawo Jazdy, which in Polish means “driver’s license.”
• Mathematics: Gideon Gono and the Zimbabwean Reserve Bank for printing bank notes in denominations from 1 cent, to $100 trillion.
• Biology: Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei for demonstrating that bacteria in panda poop can help reduce kitchen waste by 90 percent.
The Ig Nobles, which are curated by the folks at the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research, were first presented in 1991. Since then, they’ve grown increasingly in stature, often attracting a good deal of press attention. The 2009 event was centered around the theme of “risk.”
“Not the pinnacle of my academic achievements,” Stephan Bolliger, the head of the beer bottle experiment, told the Associated Press. Still, he said winning an Ig Nobel was certainly “one of the most interesting or memorable moments of my professional life.”
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iPhone MMS update makes AT&T happy. The users? Not so much.
“We are pleased with the roll-out of MMS,” an AT&T spokesperson said Friday. Yet many ran into frustrating stumbling blocks trying to activate the service.
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Are you on Twitter? We are. Follow @CSMHorizonsBlog
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When ‘back to basics’ leads to breakthroughs in science
By Robert C. Cowen | 09.18.09
Sometimes scientists need to take a fresh look at fundamentals to improve familiar materials. That means getting down to the basic molecular and atomic structures.
When a research group that calls itself “Liquid Stone” recently did that with cement, it found that what scientists thought they knew about the fundamental structure of that ubiquitous material just isn’t so. One team member likens the implications of their new understanding of that structure to the boost biologists got when they discovered the basic structure of the DNA molecule.
Taking a similar fundamental look at the basic dynamics of magnetism, another research team has shown, for the first time, that a gas can be made to behave magnetically like a bar magnet. Team member Wolfgang Ketterle at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called it “an important discovery, which will advance our understanding of magnetism.” That’s important in a world where so much technology depends on the use of magnetic materials. Think computer hard drives.
In spelling out the details of this research in the Sept. 18 issue of Science, the MIT team says it appears to have answered the long standing question of whether or not a gas can become “ferromagnetic.” That means it can act like solid materials whose crystal structure allows them to become magnetized. The answer is a qualified “yes.”
Solid magnets have a basic crystal structure that allows their atomic electrons to line up in the same direction. That constitutes magnetism. The MIT team worked with a form of lithium called lithium-6. Its atoms have the same quantum properties that allow bar magnet electrons to line up like soldiers. The team believes it has shown that, when cooled to almost absolute zero, atoms in a lithium-6 gas can line up the same way. Team member David Pritchard called the evidence “pretty strong” but “not yet a slam dunk.” He wants confirmation of its results through further experimentation.
The Liquid Stone group – another MIT team – is even more certain of its conclusions. The technical details were reported earlier this month in the online Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Add water to cement powder and it forms a paste called cement hydrate. Scientists had thought that this paste, which hardens into concrete, had a crystal structure. The team now has shown that its structure actually is part crystal and part amorphous frozen liquid like glass and water ice.
Team member Franz-Josef Ulm considers this insight so fundamentally important he called it finding “the DNA of concrete.” He explained: “Now that we have a validated molecular model, we can manipulate the chemical structure to design concrete for strength and environmental qualities, such as the ability to withstand higher pressure or temperatures.”
Back to basics is a useful strategy in many areas of life. It’s crucial in science and engineering where familiarity can mislead experts when they think they understand the subject they are dealing with. The new insights into magnetism and the structure of cement are the kind of breakthroughs on the research frontier that can save self-assured experts from themselves.
[Editor’s note: The original version of this article misstated David Pritchard’s name.]
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Hey, global warming skeptics, take your heads out of the sand
By Robert C. Cowen | 09.04.09
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has seen the meltdown of the Arctic for himself. Alarmed at the changes, he warned that “our foot is stuck on the [climate change] accelerator and we are heading towards an abyss.”
It might be easy to dismiss this as more alarmist hype except for the coincidental publication of a major Arctic climate study. This latest research makes it crystal clear that the forces of human-driven climate change have overwhelmed the natural forces that had put Arctic climate on a long-term cooling trend.
Mr. Ban, who recently visited the Arctic, was addressing a 150-nation climate conference in Geneva on Sept. 3. The research, published the next day in Science, backs up his concern point by point. Led by Northern Arizona University (NAU) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., this five-year international study reconstructed 2,000 years of Arctic summer temperatures. Until now, the record extended back only 400 years. The research team combined data from lake sediments with previous data from ice cores and tree rings to build the longer record.
Ban noted that “the Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth.” The study shows the Arctic is warming two to three times faster than anywhere else at a time when it should be cooling down. Natural changes in Earth’s orbit vary our distance from the Sun over a 21,000 year cycle. The closer we are, the warmer the Arctic and vice versa. Right now, we’re in the cool down part of that cycle. The study confirms a cooling trend over the past 2,000 years until it reversed about a century ago. The Arctic summer now is about 2.5 degrees warmer than it should be.
In an announcement of this result, team member Nicholas McKay explained that, “The 20th century is the first century for which how much energy we’re getting from the Sun is no longer the most important thing governing the temperature of the Arctic.” His co-author, Caspar Ammann at NCAR, said, “This study provides a clear example of how increased greenhouse gases are now changing our climate.”
Climate theory predicts that the Arctic should warm faster than elsewhere. Loss of reflective ice and snow cover lets the region absorb more solar heat. Mr. Ban emphasized this point in Geneva. The new study confirms this so-called “Arctic amplification” of global warming.
Ban also noted that methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more heat-trapping than CO2, is escaping from reservoirs in melting permafrost and from the sea bed. In a study of such emissions published Aug. 29 in the Journal of Geophysical Research, a research team by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, underscored this. It concluded “that we may be greatly underestimating the methane fluxes presently occurring in the ocean and from underground into Earth’s atmosphere.” If so, this could drive global warming even faster than anticipated.
The Secretary General warned that, if you add this prospect to the Arctic warming signal, it looks like “we are certainly going to face a dire crisis, if not a catastrophe, across the world.” He worries about sea level rise, unprecidented regional droughts, and the like. While this may sound alarmist, it’s sobering to realize that ongoing climate research increasingly backs up such concern.
