PODCAST: Extraterrestrial DJs, Astrobiology Magazine,  21 April 2011
Would extraterrestrials like to listen to our music? A new collaboration between science and music has created musical messages that might one day be sent to alien worlds. URL.

The Importance of Being Magnetized, Astrobiology Magazine,  21 March 2011
Despite its magnetic field, Earth is losing its atmosphere to space at about the same rate as planets that lack this protective barrier against the solar wind. Scientists now are beginning to question whether magnetic fields really are vital to helping a planet hold on to its atmosphere. URL.

A double whammy of x rays, Physics,  04 March 2011
In ionization experiments using a recently commissioned x-ray laser, scientists have for the first time observed two-photon absorption with x-rays. URL.

Musical Chairs around the Periodic Table, Astrobiology Magazine,  17 February 2011
The claim of a microbe that swaps arsenic for phosphorus may be questionable, but alternative chemistries for life is still a question worth considering, say researchers. URL.

Relativity Powers Your Car Battery, Physical Review Focus, 29 January 2010

You don't need a near-light-speed spaceship to see the effects of relativity--they can arise even in a slow-moving automobile. The lead-acid battery that starts most car engines gets about 80 percent of its voltage from relativity, due to fast-moving electrons in the lead atom. URL.

Green Gasoline: Fuel from Plants, ChemMatters, February 2010

Nature took millions of years to turn dead plants into petroleum and other fossil fuels. Now, chemists are divising ways to turn biomass, such as corn husks and wood chips, into gasoline -- all in the matter of seconds. This biofuel would be a drop-in replacement for the gasoline that cars currently use. URL.

Detecting Our Martian Cousins, Astrobiology Magazine, 15 February 2010

The possibility that life was shared between Earth and Mars could be tested with a DNA analyzer. One research team has built a prototype and plans field tests on a South American volcano. URL.

Chemistry Drives Convection, Physical Review Focus, 29 January 2010

Stirring a mixture can accelerate chemical reactions between the ingredients, but less obvious is the reverse: reactions can stir up a mixture. In a simple acid-base experiment, researchers have demonstrated a clear-cut case of the chemistry "tail" wagging the fluid dynamics "dog." Such chemically-driven fluid motion may have important effects in geology, astrophysics, and pollution control. URL.

Hunting for Planets in the Dark, Astrobiology Magazine, 19 November 2009

A proposed space mission that aims to measure dark energy could also detect planets that current surveys are unable to find. URL.

Storage Ring Dust-Up, Physical Review Focus, 26 October 2009

Inside multi-million dollar storage rings, high-speed trains of electrons are often derailed by micron-sized specks of dust. A Japanese team has serendipitously caught on video one of the tiny grains being swept along in the electron beam--the particle physics equivalent of a criminal caught by a security camera. The feat opens the possibility for further characterization of the dust. URL.

Rock Bands Spin an Oxygen Record, Astrobiology Magazine 22 June 2009

The rise of oxygen on early Earth may have been caused by a microbial changing of the guard between methane-producers and oxygen-producers. This swap may have been initiated by a drop in the ocean's nickel abundance. Continuing studies of the world's largest iron ore deposits could cement the case. URL.

Reanimating Extinct Genes, Astrobiology Magazine 27 April 2009

Can evolution be played over again in the lab? A group of researchers plans to insert an ancient gene in a modern day bacteria and see if this gene will mutate back to its current-day form. The results will give insight into how unique the evolutionary path may be. URL.

How Life Shatters Chemistry's Mirror, Astrobiology Magazine 6 April 2009

Handedness, or "chirality," is when molecules come in two forms that are mirror images of each other, like right- and left-handed gloves. Even though chiral molecules are produced equally in nature, life seems to prefer one hand over the other. The reason for this is a mystery that scientists are struggling to answer. URL.

Molecule in a cage, Physical Review Focus, 8 January 2009

Objects exhibit quantum behavior when squeezed into a tight space. A new experiment has clearly demonstrated the wave-like properties of a hydrogen molecule inside a tiny carbon cage. Using neutrons to probe the state of the molecular prisoner, the researchers showed quantized states in both rotation and linear motion of the molecule, much like the "ladder" of excited electron states in an atom. URL.

How We Could Power the Future with… LiveScience, June-December 2008

A series of articles on environmental technology solutions. Compressed Air URL; Less Zoom Zoom URL; Satellites URL; a Man-Made Tornado URL; a Solar Tower URL; Jungle Rot URL; Tides URL; Smart Homes URL; Quantum Physics URL; Kites URL; Lunar Soil URL; Bubble Wrap URL; Tiny Life URL; Smarter Cars URL; Dispelling Wind Energy Myths URL; an Egg Beater URL; Food Labels URL; Green Collar Jobs  URL; Green gasoline URL; Financial Crisis URL; Oil Drilling URL; Parked Cars URL; Clean Coal URL; Floating 'Energy Islands' URL; A Timeline URL; Geothermal Heat Pumps URL; Fishy Technology URL; Crazy Ideas URL; Green Gifts URL.  

Grammar tool could help unpick alien messages, New Scientist, 18 October 2008

Speaking to extraterrestrials is probably the alien hunter's ultimate dream but first we have to understand what they're actually saying. A good place to start would be recognising that an extraterrestrial signal will probably be made up of words and sentences. URL.

Diamonds May Be Life's Birthstone, Astrobiology Magazine, 25 September 2008

One of the hurdles in origin of life theories is that the pieces that make up complex biomolecules do not readily come together by themselves. A group of scientists proposes that diamonds provided a kind of "work bench" for biomolecule manufacturing on early Earth. URL.

 

Light and Electrons Cooperate, Physical Review Focus, 16 September 2008

Light hitting a surface creates very different kinds of disturbances depending on whether it's a metal or a semiconductor. But combining these two materials in a single nanostructure could lead to optical computers, plasmon lasers, or improved solar cells. In order to better understand how this might work, researchers have now characterized the coupling between excitons--excited electron states in semiconductors--and plasmons, which exist in metals. URL.

 

No Slimming Down for Dwarf Galaxies, ScienceNOW, 27 August 2008

Imagine putting 100 people of various sizes on a scale and finding they all weigh the same. Astronomers have discovered something equally puzzling while surveying a group of tiny galaxies that neighbor the Milky Way: No matter how many stars they contain, every galaxy has the same mass. The results may reveal something profound about how galaxies form--or even about the very nature of the mysterious substance known as dark matter. Restricted URL.

 

Threading Light Through the Opaque, ScienceNOW, 8 August 2008

Freshly fallen snow is blinding white because the jumble of flakes scatter light in all directions. Such scattering also implies that little light passes through snow, so that if you're ever buried deep in it, you'll find yourself in the dark. But according to theoretical physicists, it should always be possible to fiddle with light waves to make them wend their way through such a disordered material, no matter how thick. And now a duo of experimenters has demonstrated that feat. Restricted URL.

 

Can a Nuclear Blast Alter Earth's Rotation? LiveScience, 1 August 2008

Nuclear bombs are humankind's most powerful weapon, but their destructive impact would unlikely alter the spinning of the Earth on its axis. URL.

 

Particles Retain Weight for Billions of Years, Space.com, 14 July 2008

Unlike most of us, subatomic particles don't gain weight as they get older. The mass of these tiny bits of matter has remained constant over the last 6 billion years, recent astronomical observations indicate. Whether an electron was lighter or heftier in the past is a question of fundamental importance. Variations in particle masses and other so-called constants of nature, such as the speed of light, may help explain the mystery of dark energy and determine if hidden dimensions exist. URL.

 

Unlocking Martian Rocks, Astrobiology Magazine, 10 July 2008

Signs of life on Mars may be hiding under its rocks, or perhaps hiding inside those rocks. A new study offers a simplified technique for detecting biological and pre-biotic molecules that become trapped inside minerals. URL.

 

Ocean on Enceladus May Be Short-Lived, Astrobiology Magazine, 19 June 2008

Three years ago, surprising evidence came out for an ocean underneath the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus. But a new report indicates just how hard it may be to keep water from freezing on this tiny moon. URL.

 

Biological Stowaways on Mars, Astrobiology Magazine, 5 June 2008

Astrobiologists hope to find evidence for life on Mars. Sending spacecraft from Earth to study the planet could introduce biological contamination, however, and lead to a false detection of alien life. New research adds to these concerns with evidence that ATP -- an energy-storage molecule vital to life on Earth -- could survive for months or even years onboard a martian probe. URL.

 

Reflection of a Ghost, Physical Review Focus, 23 April 2008

Under special optical arrangements, physicists can create an image of an object using light that has never interacted with the object. This "ghost imaging" has been around for more than a decade, but it has yet to find much practical use. Researchers have now generated a ghost image of an opaque object, which could lead to improved satellite imaging through clouds. URL.

 

Dark Physics Beats Light Limit, Physical Review Focus, 13 February 2008

Current laser-based techniques to make computer chips cannot fashion components much smaller than the light's wavelength, but researchers are devising tricks to beat this so-called diffraction limit. A new idea is to use a dark state--which a laser-induced combination of atomic states--to write patterns in the absorbing material. Calculations show that the technique could create structures far smaller than the beams' wavelengths without using the dangerously high intensities needed with other proposed techniques. URL.

 

New Cosmic Theory Unites Dark Forces, Space.com, 11 February 2008

The two biggest mysteries in cosmology may be one. A new theory says that dark matter and dark energy could arise from a single dark fluid that permeates the whole universe. Counterintuitive as it may be, this one substance could be both a gravitational anchor for galaxies and anti-gravity force for the universe. URL.

 

What is Relativity? LiveScience, 11 February 2008

Albert Einstein was famous for many things, but his greatest brainchild is the theory of relativity. This is the notion that the laws of physics are the same everywhere. We here on Earth obey the same laws of light and gravity as someone in a far off corner of the universe. The universality of physics means that history is provincial. What for us is a million years may just be a blink of an eye for someone flying in a high speed rocket or falling into a black hole. URL.

 

Columbus module heads to the space station, Physicsworld.com, 7 February 2008

After a 16-year delay, Europe's Columbus laboratory successfully launched into space towards its eventual home on the International Space Station (ISS). The 10-tonne Columbus module will be the single largest contribution by the European Space Agency (ESA) to this international effort. URL.

 

Why Sleep? Physical Review Focus, 8 January 2008

Why we sleep remains a mystery. Competing theories claim various "house-cleaning" brain activities occur during sleep, but they can't say why we need to power down to accomplish them. A new mathematical study suggests that a sleep-wake cycle, where the brain focuses on one task at a time, is more efficient than being half awake, half asleep all the time. URL.

 

Whatever Happened to…? LiveScience, October 2007-January 2008

A series of articles on environmental technology solutions that haven't yet fulfilled their full promise. Wave energy URL; Fuel cells URL; Earth ships URL; Nuclear power URL; Biodiesel URL; Geothermal URL; Solar power URL; Energy conservation URL; Wind power URL.

 

Stretching More with Pores, Physical Review Focus, 5 December 2007

Devices ranging from sonar to precision valves use materials that change shape when exposed to a magnetic field. Researchers have now created a porous foam with a shape-change effect as large as any commercial material. The pores allow more freedom for crystal structures to respond to the magnetic field. Because this foam is cheaper and lighter than other magnetically sensitive materials, the researchers believe it could be used in tiny motion control devices or pumps without mechanical parts. URL.

 

Europe maps out its plans for space exploration, Physics World, December 2007

The European Space Agency has selected a handful of candidate missions for the next phase of its space exploration progamme, entitled Cosmic Vision 2015-2025. Among the possibilities are a mission to explore Saturn's moon Titan, a pair of X-ray collecting satellites and a probe of the mysterious dark energy.

 

Chemists Concoct Part of Life's Recipe, LiveScience, 16 November 2007

For decades, scientists have argued about and pondered over whether biology began on our planet or arrived from above. If it started here, it presumably took millions of years for Earth to cook up life's essential molecules from scratch. Now a team of chemists has computed a possible real-world recipe for one of these biomolecules, in research that suggests life started in a local pond rather than raining down from space. URL.

 

Nobel Focus: Chemistry in 2D, Physical Review Focus, 18 October 2007

In chemistry, two dimensions are often better than three, since surface-bound reactions can be probed in greater detail than those in a liquid solution. Gerhard Ertl was awarded the chemistry Nobel Prize last week for his many contributions to the field of surface chemistry. A professor emeritus at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, Ertl devoted years to understanding many surface-mediated reactions important in atmospheric science and industry, including the reaction that cleans up the fumes in a car's exhaust. URL.

 

Gravity waves prove a weighty challenge, Physics World, September 2007

Einstein's general relativity predicts that when giant masses rattle around each other, space-time itself reverberates out in all directions. Ground detectors have yet to measure one of these gravitational waves, whose crests do not climb to the height of an atom. A future space mission called LISA may provide the best opportunity to detect these tiny ripples, but a precursor mission to test the technology has proven harder than expected. PDF.

 

Quartz's Superficial Attraction, Physical Review Focus, 28 August 2007

Positronium is a strange sort of atom in which an electron and a positron--the electron's antimatter partner--orbit one another without a nucleus. Physicists may have already made the first positronium molecules, and they have plans to make larger condensates, but understanding how the atom interacts with material surfaces is an important theoretical step. URL.

 

Hybrid Vehicles Are Only 'Green' When Lean, LiveScience, 9 August 2007

Thanks in part to tax incentives, the hybrid car market is gaining speed. But the full potential of these fuel-saving vehicles is being offset by the fact that 30 percent of hybrids sold in 2006 were SUVs. An environmentally-conscious car buyer might do better buying a smaller traditional vehicle than a hybrid SUV. URL.

 

Greatest Mysteries: What Makes a Scientist?, LiveScience, 1 August 2007

The scientist's job is to figure out how the world works, to "torture" Nature to reveal her secrets, as the 17th century philosopher Francis Bacon described it. But who are these people in the lab coats and how do they work? It turns out that there is a good deal of mystery surrounding the mystery-solvers. URL.

 

Harsh light shines on free energy, Physics World, August 2007

An Irish firm that last year claimed to have built a device that can make energy from nothing has been forced to call off the first public demonstration of its technology. Steorn, which is based in Dublin, had planned to unveil its Orbo technology at an exhibition in London last month. It blamed the malfunctioning of the device on "excessive heating" from lights in the museum's display area -- rather than on the triumph of the first law of thermodynamics. PDF.

 

Planet-Saving Remedy Proposed: Stop Shopping, LiveScience, 19 June 2007

The good news is that industrialized nations are recycling more. The bad news is that they are wasting more as well. In most places, recycling can't keep up with higher and higher consumption rates. The problem is that capitalism creates hardened consumers, so even if many buy green, they still buy too much. The situation is seen as unsustainable by many economists. If everyone in the world consumed like North Americans, for example, we would need the collective resources of five planet Earths, according to a World Wildlife Fund assessment. URL.

 

Destination Moon, Physics World, May 2007

Not since the heyday of the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s has so much attention been poured on the Moon. Like the US-Soviet contest, this interest is spurred on by national rivalry. But now the field of contestants is much wider, with Europe, China, Japan and India, as well individual European nations and private enterprises, joining the US. PDF.

 

Snowball Fight Erupts over Frozen Earth Theory, LiveScience, 6 May 2007

The theory that the Earth long ago froze completely over, like a giant snowball, is challenged by new data from desert outcroppings in Oman. The geological measurements indicate that even as glaciers spread across all the continents 700 million years ago, warm spells with liquid water were still common. The question now is how did our planet resist becoming a popsicle. URL.

 

Moving Walls with Current, Physical Review Focus, 4 May 2007

Imagine a hard drive that doesn't spin. In one scheme for increasing computer data storage and speed, an electric current would push magnetic regions along a wire instead of the computer relying on the physical motion of a disk to read data. Researchers have demonstrated that they can push so-called magnetic domain walls at 110 meters per second--100 times faster than ever before--by using nanosecond pulses of electric current. But the bad news is that the walls sometimes move much slower--or not at all--as they become stuck on imperfections in the wire. URL.

 

The Enduring Mystery of Light, LiveScience, 26 February 2007

It goes through walls, but slows to a standstill in ultra-cold gases. It carries electronic information for radios and TVs, but destroys genetic information in cells. It bends around buildings and squeezes through pinholes, but ricochets off tiny electrons. It's light. And although we know it primarily as the opposite of darkness, most of light is not visible to our eyes. URL.

 

The Daytona 500: Flying Without Leaving the Ground, LiveScience, 15 February 2007

In the 49th annual Daytona 500 Sunday, NASCAR fans will see some of the most high-tech, finely tuned aerodynamics at work anywhere on or off the planet. Aerodynamics has always been important to racing. But it has become more crucial as cars have become faster, given that drag caused by air friction is proportional to the square of the speed (which means the faster you go, the more the air works against you). URL.

 

Way-out solutions to climate change, Physics World, February 2007

With the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere higher than they have been for 650 000 years, most scientists and politicians agree that the best way to counteract global warming is to reduce emissions of this particular greenhouse gas. However, a small band of researchers is considering something far more radical. In case we cannot deal with the causes of climate change, they say, we should consider ways of counteracting its effects -- and doing so on a massive scale. Restricted URL.

 

The Strangest Little Things in Nature, LiveScience, 8 November 2006

When small cannot get any smaller, you enter the quantum world of quarks, photons, and space-time foam. Here's a quick tour of the quantum underbelly of the things around us. URL.

 

Black Holes that Don't Trap, Physical Review Focus, 18 October 2006

Three decades ago Stephen Hawking discovered that black holes can emit radiation, so they aren't really black. Now it seems that they may not necessarily be holes. Theorists a black hole "analogue" -- a fluid flow in which the downstream current acts like a gravitational pull -- found that Hawking waves appeared even without the inescapable region normally associated with black holes. URL.

 

Waves of Destruction, Physical Review Focus, 1 September 2006

The movie Poseidon features a giant wave that comes out of nowhere to flip a star-packed ocean liner. Such freakishly tall waves in the middle of the ocean are no longer considered fictional, thanks in part to recent satellite observations and computer simulations. Using a new simulation where two wave trains meet at an angle, researchers observed so-called rogue waves appearing more rapidly and looking more realistic than in other simulations. Better understanding of the causes of such waves may lead to improved ship designs and better forecasts of wave conditions. URL.

 

Europe Draws Up Road Map, With Added CLICs, Science, 21 July 2006

European particle physicists have laid out their priorities for their future in a document that gives top billing to the nearly completed Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European particle physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland. Commissioned by the CERN Council, the adopted road map runs parallel to a recently released U.S. strategy but differs slightly about future machines -- a nuance that has raised some eyebrows. Restricted URL.

 

Scientists Question Nature's Fundamental Laws, Space.com, 11 July 2006

Public confidence in the "constants" of nature may be at an all time low. Recent research has found evidence that the value of certain fundamental parameters, such as the speed of light or the invisible glue that holds nuclei together, may have been different in the past. URL.

 

How Life Began: New Research Suggests Simple Approach, Livescience, 9 June 2006

Somewhere on Earth, close to 4 billion years ago, a set of molecular reactions flipped a switch and became life. Scientists try to imagine this animating event by simplifying the processes that characterize living things. New research suggests the simplification needs to go further. URL.

 

An Ointment in the Fly, ScienceNOW, 23 March 2006

Viruses are deceptive little buggers, mutating often to dodge their hosts' immune defenses. Plants fight back using a weapon called RNA interference (RNAi), which rips apart the viral machinery. Now, a new study shows that fruit flies employ the same defense--the first example of animals using this antiviral strategy. According to a related study, the genes behind this resistance are evolving rapidly to keep up with an ever-changing adversary. URL.

 

Hot Soup Not So Tasty for Early Life, ScienceNOW, 15 February 2006

Imagine that 4 billion years ago, extraterrestrials arrived on our planet determined to seed it with life. Where might these Johnny Appleseeds have placed their "life start-up kit" amidst the hot lava and ground-shattering meteors of early Earth? A recent experiment apparently rules out puddles of volcanically heated water. URL.

 

For Nuclear Fusion, Could Two Lasers Be Better Than One?, Science, 9 December 2005

Whereas fusion energy from the sun is free, generating it on Earth costs. But laser researchers think they may have a budget route to boundless electricity. Summary. URL.

 

Irish History Takes a Paternity Test, ScienceNOW, 21 December 2005

Legend has it that, while raiding England around 500 C.E., the Irish warlord Niall of the Nine Hostages took a young St. Patrick prisoner and brought him to Ireland. Perhaps more certain is that Niall founded the most powerful ruling dynasty in Irish medieval history, the Uí Néill. Now, a study reveals that this royal lineage may be imprinted in the genes of roughly a tenth of Irish men living today. URL.

 

James Webb Space Telescope: Over Budget but On Track, AdAstra, December 2005

The proposed successor to the Hubble Space Telescope has run into a dramatic increase in its price tag. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is now estimated at $4.5 billion -- a billion dollars over its proposed budget. In response, NASA brought together this summer a science assessment team, made up of external scientists, and asked them to reevaluate the mission and prioritize its capabilities. The preliminary outlook is that the main aspects of the mission will remain intact.

 

An Elephant Never Forgets ... Its Mortality, ScienceNOW, 26 October 2005

Anthropologists often cite prehistoric burial rituals as a sign of an emerging human consciousness. But is a preoccupation with one's dead exclusively a human trait? New research shows that, when elephants are offered an array of objects and bones, they behave uniquely toward elephant skulls and ivory, suggesting the creatures may have a special affinity for their dead. URL.

 

Unexpected Beat in Heart of Milky Way, Space.com, 4 October 2004

The center of our galaxy is approximately 27,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. At its core lies a supermassive black hole surrounded by millions of closely-huddled stars. Recent observations have shown that somewhere in this crowded region there is a mysterious source of intense energy -- gamma rays -- that astronomers are struggling to identify. URL.

 

Top 10 Reasons Alexander the Great Was, Well ... Great!, LiveScience, 2004

In the wake of Oliver Stone's epic movie, here is a reassessment of Alexander the Great's major triumphs. As king of Macedon, he parlayed his father Philip II's conquest of Greece into an empire that expanded from the Balkans to the Nile to the Himalayas, subduing tens of millions of people along the way. A bit of an over-achiever, the historian Plutarch wrote that Alexander wept upon learning that the universe was infinite. "There are so many worlds, and I have not yet conquered even one." URL.

 

Getting a Grip on Antimatter, Space.com, 31 August 2004

Shortly after the Big Bang theoretically kicked off everything, the universe was a hot soup of equal parts matter and antimatter. Why the former came to dominate is a question that physicists have yet to answer fully. URL.

 

T. Rex Teens Would Have Been a Handful, Scientific American.com, 12 August 2004

It's hard to imagine the king of the dinosaurs as an uncoordinated teenager, but recent analysis of the fossil record shows that Tyrannosaurus rex, one of the largest meat-eaters to ever roam the land, grew nearly five pounds a day between ages 14 and 18. This growth spurt accounted for more than 70 percent of its adult mass. URL.

 

Early Bird Had the Brains to Fly, Scientific American.com, 5 August 2004

As any ostrich knows, getting off the ground requires more than just wings and feathers. A thorough study of the earliest known bird, Archaeopteryx, provides evidence of the specific neural machinery thought to be necessary for flight. URL.

 

Images Reveal Wild 2 Is Unique Kind of Comet, Scientific American.com, 18 June 2004

On January 2, NASA's Stardust spacecraft passed within 240 kilometers of Comet Wild 2. Researchers have since analyzed 72 photographs taken during the 20,900 kilometer-per-hour flyby and their findings seem to contradict one popular theory for the makeup of comets. URL.

 

Milky Way's 'Satellite Problem' Solved, Scientific American.com, 14 June 2004

Our Milky Way galaxy is surrounded by a dozen smaller orbiting galaxies. The size of this cosmic neighborhood has perplexed astrophysicists for some time because the currently favored theory of galaxy formation predicts 10 times as many satellites. But new computer simulations have shown that the relative paucity of Milky Way companions may not be such a concern after all. URL.

 

GM Salmon Muscle In on Wild Fish, Scientific American.com, 8 June 2004

The advance of genetically modified crops and farm animals has opened up fears of ecological disaster if the engineered, or transgenic, organisms were to escape the confines of the farm. New laboratory research has found that wild salmon tend to experience reduced growth in the company of salmon engineered to attain a large body size. The presence of transgenic fish also increases the likelihood of population collapse when food is in short supply. URL.