Posted on by Ian O'Neill

Poland “agrees” to host controversial US missile defence system

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In a controversial move likely to enflame tensions between Russia, Europe and the US, Poland has agreed (in principal) to host bases for the “Star Wars” US missile shield intended to protect against any future missile attack from rogue nations. Russia totally opposes plans, stating that a European missile system, so close to the Russian border, is akin to the Cuban missile crisis in the 1960s where the US and Soviet Union went to the brink of nuclear war…

Any space missile system intended to neutralize the threat of a nuclear attack from rogue states was bound to cause controversy and anger. As predicted, the future development of a European US missile shield has caused very loud opposition from Russian President Vladimir Putin, directly highlighting that such a move would cause another arms race and could create a nuclear standoff between Russia, US and Europe in between.

The Czech Republic is currently drawing up plans for involvement in the US project and now Poland, a country that directly borders Russia, has agreed to more discussions about installing ten interceptor missiles. The missile shield plans are in a direct response to the ongoing threat from “rogue states”, principally Iran and North Korea, from their nuclear arms development programs the US believes they are still pursuing, but understandably, Russia is suspicious that the US is attempting to gain strategic strength in Eastern Europe. Mr Putin has hinted strongly that although Russia is not planning to begin wholesale targeting of Europe, any “new targets” in the future would be connected to the “strategic nuclear potential of the United States… in Europe” (see BBC article “New era of discord for Russia and West” for full information on the new political unrest). Scary.

“We understand that there is a desire for defence modernisation in Poland and particularly for air defence modernisation in Poland. This is something that we support because it will make our ally, Poland, more capable,” – US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, supporting the missile defence plan in Poland.

The US missile shield concept depends on European fast response missiles to be launched as soon as the threat of imminent attack is detected from aggressors in the Middle East and beyond. By detecting possible nuclear missiles clearing cloud cover and entering space, radar bases within the EU can track and then guide conventional missiles from the shield network to intercept. Tests of such a system have so far had a mix of success and failure, but with improvement of the “Star Wars” technology (a name first coined in 1983 after announcement by US President Ronald Reagan for the commencement of the “Strategic Defence Initiative”) and rocket engineering, rates of successful interception are bound to increase.

Source: BBC

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Are We Living in a New Geologic Epoch?

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Have humans changed our planet Earth so much in the past 200 years that we are now living in a new geological age? A group of geologists believes this is the case. They have formally proposed designating a new geologic epoch, the Anthropocene, which would encompass the past 200 years or so of geologic history. The action is appropriate, they say, because during the past 2 centuries, human activity has caused most of the major changes in Earth’s topography and climate.

Like rings in a tree, each layer in Earth’s geologic record reflects the conditions of the time it was deposited and offers a glimpse into Earth’s past. In this geologic history that is written in the rocks and soil of our planet, researchers have differentiated the layers into classifications of time called eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages that reflect characteristic conditions. For example, the Carboniferous period, which lasted from 360 million to 300 million years ago, is known for the vast deposits of coal that formed from jungles and swamps. Even some of the longer stretches have been named based on biology, such as the Paleozoic (“old life”) and the Cenozoic (“recent life”).

Earth has been has always been subject to the same kinds of physical forces–wind, waves, sunlight–throughout the planet’s existence. But the life that has arisen on the planet has had a much more varied impact such as the rise of plants that has shaped the planet in dramatic ways. But in the past 200 years, ever since the human population has reached 1 billion, our influences have affected the composition of Earth’s strata, altering the physical and chemical nature of ocean sediments, ice cores and surface deposits. Some of these influences are the use of fossil fuels and the growth of large cities.

British Geologist Jan Zalasiewicz and several colleagues argue that the International Commission on Stratigraphy should officially mark the end of the current epoch. That would be the Holocene (“entirely recent”), which started after the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. The new epoch would be the Anthropocene.

The evidence the geologists cite include the dramatic increase in lead concentration in the soil and water since about 1800 and the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. They claim that human processes now vastly outpace the equivalent natural forces. “A reasonable case can be made for the Anthropocene as a valid formal unit,” Zalasiewicz says.

The argument has merit, says American geologist Richard Alley. “In land, water, air, ice, and ecosystems, the human impact is clear, large, and growing,” he says. “A geologist from the far distant future almost surely would draw a new line, and begin using a new name, where and when our impacts show up.”

Original News Source: AAAS ScienceNow

Posted on by Ian O'Neill

US Spy Satellite Could Crash To Earth In February

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After all the excitement surrounding the possibility of asteroid 2007 WD5 hitting Mars and the concern of Near Earth Asteroid 2007 TU24 dropping to Earth, we now have something new (and manmade) to worry about. A US spy satellite has lost power and its orbit has begun to degrade. Officials are sketchy about the details, but the large satellite could survive the burn of re-entry and crash into the surface… but we don’t know where. The satellite might contain dangerous materials… but we can’t be sure. Either way, the dead spy satellite is expected to drop to Earth late February or early March.

This event could prove embarrassing for the US government, as there is little idea where the site of impact will be, sensitive US secrets could be exposed about the technology behind the orbital capabilities of the superpower nation. Officials have declined to comment whether the satellite could be shot down by missile, but this will surely remain an option.

“Numerous satellites over the years have come out of orbit and fallen harmlessly. We are looking at potential options to mitigate any possible damage this satellite may cause.” – Spokesman for the National Security Council, Gordon Johndroe

The problem doesn’t stop with the possibility of fatal damage should the satellite fall in the wrong place. An anonymous official has added there may be the possibility the satellite could be carrying hazardous materials. During atmospheric burn-up, this unknown material could be spread over thousands of miles of atmosphere.

This usually isn’t a concern when satellites and other debris are brought to Earth in controlled re-entries. Large defunct satellites can usually have their orbital trajectories finely tuned so they fall safely though the atmosphere and crash into “satellite graveyards” in deep ocean trenches (i.e. the Mir space station was guided out of orbit in 2001 and sunk in the Pacific 6000 km off the Australian coast).

Hopefully a solution to this tricky problem can be found quickly, but it is hoped that most of the satellite will disintegrate during re-entry and any leftovers drop into the ocean… but it would be nice to know if there is a risk of impact anywhere other than the oceans. 

Source: MSNBC.com

Posted on by Nicholos Wethington

Using GPS Could Better Tsunami Warning System

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When there is a tsunami coming towards your home, you want to know about it as far in advance as possible. An early warning about such a disaster could save countless lives, and using Global Positioning System information may just be the way to speed up our reaction time in the future.

The traditional tsunami warning system relies on measuring the magnitude of the earthquake that causes the tsunami. This method is not always reliable, though, as calculating accurately the power of the resulting ocean waves takes hours or days.

For example, 2005 Nias quake near Indonesia was estimated to cause about the same size of tsunami as the powerful 2004 Indian Ocean quake, which destroyed cities in portions of Indonesia, India and Thailand and killed more than 225,000 people. The 2005 tsunami did not nearly meet the same proportions as the earlier quake. There have been five false tsunami alarms between 2005 and 2007, which can reduce the effectiveness of the warnings in the eye of the public.

In a study published in the December Geophysical Research Letters, researcher Y. Tony Song of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, showed that using GPS from coastal areas near the epicenter of the quake could help more accurately and quickly determine the scale of a tsunami.

Here’s how it would potentially work: data from seismometers near the earthquake’s epicenter is first registered, as in the traditional system. After that, GPS data of the seafloor displacement is factored in, which gives a more complete picture of the extent and power of the earthquake. The size of the predicted tsunami is then quickly calculated and given a number between 1 and 10 – 1 being the lowest – much like the Richter scale. This information could then be passed through the tsunami warning system to evacuate people to safety.

GPS data helps create a 3-dimensional model of the tsunami by giving details about the horizontal and vertical displacement of the seafloor, and this data can be sent and analyzed in minutes from coastal GPS stations. Song’s methods have accurately modeled three previous tsunamis: one in Alaska in 1964, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, and the 2005 Nias tsunami.

Source: JPL Press Release

Posted on by Nicholos Wethington

Regulating Traffic in the Final Frontier

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October of last year was the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the first spacecraft to be launched into orbit. Since then, we’ve come a long, long way. Think of all the stuff that’s floating around our planet right now: GPS, television, and military satellites, the International Space Station and the Hubble telescope, and a host of debris. With more satellites and projects launching into space, the issue of regulating all of this space traffic is starting to become an issue.

Current regulations of space come from a series of treaties and agreements between nations and organizations, starting with the Outer Space Treaty created 40 years ago. But with private companies like Virgin Galactic merging into space traffic, as well as nations like Japan, India, and China, launching satellites and scientific spacecraft, the need for a defined set of regulations is in order.

“While the current state can be regarded as a “piecemeal engineering”, space traffic management would provide a regulatory “big bang”. Space traffic management would not tackle single issues, but regard the regulation of space activities as a comprehensive concept. This concept is based on functionality, aiming at the provision of a complete set of rules of the road for the current and future way,” wrote Kai-Uwe Schrogl of the European Space Policy Institute in a paper titled “Space traffic management: The new comprehensive approach for regulating the use of outer space – Results from the 2006 IAA cosmic study,” published in the most recent issue of Acta Astronautica.

Space law would be concerned with four areas: keeping tabs on the current space traffic, a system of notification between nations or companies planning launches and missions to space, comprehensive rules for traffic to follow and a way to enforce these rules.

Tracking and notifying are both important to help keep spacecraft from crashing into each other, and would improve the performance of those satellites able to make avoidance maneuvers of space debris. The ISS and Hubble both do this on a regular basis, but other satellites lack the ability to change their orbit on a, so minimizing and tracking the amount of space debris – at least in certain high-traffic areas in Earth’s orbit – is instrumental.

The organizations and means of implementing these rules are still being debated. Possibilities include the creation of World Space Organization, or placing the responsibilities on the shoulders of the existing International Civil Aviation Organization, which currently regulates the skies closer to Earth.

Schrogl writes that a comprehensive space law is a ways off, but the debate about what rules are needed – and how to go about keeping the increasing number of parties launching into space in check – is currently picking up speed. This means that you shouldn’t expect to see any space police pulling over NASA’s Atlantis Shuttle for littering anytime soon.

Source: Acta Astronautica

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Study Shows More Antarctic Ice Loss

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Increasing amounts of ice mass have been lost from West Antarctica and the Antarctic peninsula over the past ten years, according to a 10-year study from the University of Bristol, England. But at the same time, however, the ice mass in East Antarctica has been roughly stable, with neither loss nor accumulation over the past decade.

Professor Jonathan Bamber at the University of Bristol and colleagues estimated a loss of 132 billion tons of ice in 2006 from West Antarctica “up from about 83 billion tons in 1996” and a loss of about 60 billion tons in 2006 from the Antarctic Peninsula.

“To put these figures into perspective,” Bamber said, “four billion tons of ice is enough to provide drinking water for the whole of the UK population for one year.”

The data comes from satellite imagery that cover 85% of Antarctica’s coastline, which the researchers compared with simulations of snow accumulation over the same period, using a regional climate model.

“Over the 10 year time period of the survey, the ice sheet as a whole was certainly losing mass,” said Bamber, “and the mass loss increased by 75% during this time. Most of the mass loss is from the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica and the northern tip of the Peninsula where it is driven by ongoing, pronounced glacier acceleration.”

In East Antarctica, the mass balance, which accounts for addition to the ice sheet due to snowfall and the subtraction of ice due to changes in the glacier, is near zero. But the thinning of its potentially vulnerable marine sectors suggests this may change in the near future.

As to the differences in the West and East Antarctic ice sheets, Bamber said, “The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is a “marine based” ice sheet resting on bedrock below sea level with bed slopes inclined downward inland. It has been suggested that this makes the WAIS more susceptible to change caused by the ocean than the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.”

The study conclude that the Antarctic ice sheet mass budget is more complex than indicated by the evolution of its surface mass balance or climate-driven predictions.

Changes in glacier dynamics are significant and may in fact dominate the ice sheet mass budget. This conclusion is contrary to model simulations of the response of the ice sheet to future climate change, which conclude that it will grow due to increased snowfall.

Satellite data was obtained from ERS-1, ERS-2, RADARSAT and ALOS.

Original News Source: University of Bristol Press Release

Posted on by Ian O'Neill

Radioactive Hot Spots on Earth’s Beaches May Have Sparked Life

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We’ve heard about life being created in a puddle of primordial chemical soup, sparked by lightning strikes, or organic molecules falling to Earth from comets or planets, such as Mars. But now, there is an alternative. Early Earth was radioactive; the Moon also had a lower orbit, generating strong tidal forces. Due to the close proximity to abundant water, radioactive beaches may have possessed all the essential ingredients for organic compounds, and eventually life, to thrive.

Research by the University of Washington, Seattle, suggests that perhaps the highly radioactive environment of Earth some 4 billion years ago may have been the ideal time for life to form. The orbit of the Moon also had a part to play in this offbeat theory.

Through strong tidal forces by a Moon that orbited far closer to the Earth than it does today, radioactive elements accumulated on the beaches could be gravitationally sorted. The chemical energy in these beach hot spots was probably high enough to allow self-sustaining fission processes (which occurs in natural concentrations of uranium). The main product from fission is heat, therefore powering chemical processes and the generation of organic, life-giving compounds.

“Amino acids, sugars and [soluble] phosphate can all be produced simultaneously in a radioactive beach environment.” – Zachary Adam, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington Seattle.

This is a hard theory to understand, it is well known that radioactivity breaks down organic molecules and causes a whole host of problems for us carbon-based creatures. But in the early Earth, devoid of plants and animals, radioactive processes may have provided energy for life to begin in the first place.

This theory also partially explains why life may be a very rare occurrence in the universe: there must be the correct concentration of radioactive elements, on the surface of a water-dominated developing planet, with tidal forces supplied by a closely orbiting stellar body. The Earth may, after all, be unique.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

Posted on by Nicholos Wethington

Magnetic “Ropes” Connect the Northern Lights to the Solar Wind

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This discovery comes just in time to light up Christmas: new observations of the Northern Lights – a spectacular phenomenon that lights up the night sky – show them to be more intricate than previously thought.

The Northern Lights were observed by NASA’s Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS), a system of ground cameras and five orbiting micro-satellites that work in combination to observe the phenomenon better than with a single satellite. This allowed scientists to map and understand the mechanisms of the Northern Lights better than before by giving them a 3D picture of the events.

The Northern Lights or “Aurora Borealis” occur when charged particles coming from the Sun interact with the Earth’s magnetic field. THEMIS found evidence that there are magnetic “ropes” — long, wound magnetic field lines that resemble the braids of a rope – connecting the Earth’s magnetic field with the solar wind. Particles are channeled through these ropes, which last a short time, and are focused in certain regions, boosting the energy of the Aurora Borealis.

“THEMIS encountered its first magnetic rope on May 20,” said David Sibeck, project scientist for the mission at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. “It was very large, about as wide as Earth, and located approximately 40,000 miles (70,000 km) above Earth’s surface in a region called the magnetopause.”

The magnetopause is where the Earth’s magnetic field meets the solar wind.

Electromagnetic explosions were also observed by THEMIS at the bow shock of the Earth’s magnetic field. The bow shock is where the magnetosphere bunches up as the Earth travels through space, kind of like how the waves in the front of a boat moving through the water are closer together than those behind the boat.

Sibeck said of the explosions,”It is where the solar wind first feels the effects of Earth’s magnetic field. Sometimes a burst of electrical current within the solar wind will hit the bow shock and – Bang! We get an explosion.”

The results were presented at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco this month. THEMIS will continue to observe the Aurora Borealis over the next two years, taking measurements of ions, electrons and electromagnetic radiation in space. Scientists from the US, Canada, Western Europe, Russia and Japan are contributing to the study of Earth’s own Christmas lights.

Original Source: NASA Press Release

Posted on by Nicholos Wethington

Cancer Rates Rise and Fall with Cosmic Rays

Showers of high energy particles occur when energetic cosmic rays strike the top of the Earth's atmosphere. Illustration Credit: Simon Swordy (U. Chicago), NASA.

Cancer is a mysterious and complicated disease, with many different types and causes. Researchers are still trying to track down all of the environmental effects that can lead to the disease, as anything from what someone eats to where they live determines the probability of developing cancer. A paper published in 2007 in the International Journal of Astrobiology looked at data for cancer deaths from around the world for the past 140 years, and found a strong correlation between rises in cancer deaths and the variation over time in the amount of galactic cosmic rays we encounter here on Earth.

In a paper titled, Correlation of a 140-year global time signature in cancer mortality birth cohorts with galactic cosmic ray variation by Dr. David A. Juckett from the Barros Research Institute at Michigan State University, he showed that the amount of deaths due to cancer on a global scale was higher when the background cosmic rays originating from outside the Solar System were more numerous.

The study looked at available cancer death data from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand for the past 100-140 years. These data were compared with the amount of variations in galactic cosmic rays during the same period, taken from analysis of ice core samples from Greenland and Antarctica.

Dr. Juckett showed that as the amount of cosmic ray activity increased, the number of people who died from cancer was also higher. There are two peaks in cosmic ray activity during this point, around 1800 and 1900, and a low point around 1860. The total deaths due to cancer were highest, though, around 1830 and 1930, and lowest in the 1890’s.

There is a 28-year lag between the increased presence of cosmic rays and the increase in cancer deaths. It’s not so simple as a person being exposed to cosmic rays and then developing cancer immediately afterwards. What is called the “grandmother effect” comes into play; the cosmic rays actually damage the germ cells of one’s parent while that parent is still in the grandmother’s womb.

“The grandmother would have to be exposed to radiation – which she is all the time – while she is pregnant with the mother of the affected individual. What this is basically implying is that, during a sensitive time in pregnancy, the constant background radiation may cause a chemical change in just the right cell and DNA stretch to lead to future cancer. The background radiation is causing very low level damage all the time to random cells in the body, but anything significant happening to germ cells would lead to a whole organism eventually carrying that damage (or predisposition),” said Dr. Juckett.

So, the parent is exposed to cosmic rays while the fetus is still developing, and this damage then emerges as cancer in child, but is not passed down further.

Galactic cosmic rays consist of high-energy radiation, and are composed primarily of high-energy protons and atomic nuclei. Their origin in not fully understood, but are thought to possibly come from supernovae, active galactic nuclei, quasars and/or gamma ray bursts.

There are several factors that may contribute to the flux of cosmic rays, and they may produce showers of secondary particles that penetrate and impact the Earth’s atmosphere and sometimes reach the surface.

In the study, the researchers found the trend between cosmic ray increase and cancer death increase was a global effect, but there are places on the Earth where the magnetosphere blocks more of the cosmic rays than others. At about 10°N of the equator, fewer cosmic rays get through than elsewhere on the Earth because of the way the Earth’s magnetosphere blocks energetic particles.

People in more northern and southern latitudes are exposed to more of this radiation, thus the rates of cancer death were higher in these regions than near the equator. On average, the oscillation in cancer deaths was between 10-15% during the period of the study.

Any good scientist will tell you that correlation does not necessarily mean causation; the increase in cosmic rays matches well the increase in cancer deaths over this time period, but there could yet be other reasons for this increase.

Dr. Juckett cautions, “Of course, other explanations could be hypothesized. Standard epidemiological approaches would partition individual cases by risk factors (e.g., smoking, environment pollution, diet, age-at-menarche, family history, etc.). Only when there is no correlation to these would other hypotheses, like cosmic rays be entertained. Unfortunately, to look at the 100-yr data for long-term trends, this kind of information is generally not available. The one thing that seems certain is that the common oscillations in the US, UK, CA, NZ, and AU data suggest a global environmental signal of some kind. This does limit things a bit (e.g., solar radiation effects, cosmic ray effects, global pollution).”

The effects that cosmic rays and other types of radiation have on human beings are important to study, as we venture outside the protective magnetic field of the Earth into space. The researchers said that “this effect has profound implications for evolution, long-distance space travel and the colonization of planets with high background radiation.” Long journeys in space would expose astronauts to this same type of radiation for long periods of time, so taking precautions to protect them makes good sense.

What can one do to protect themselves from this type of radiation here on Earth?

“I cannot of think of anything one can do to protect themselves from their inherited propensities. However, cancer is a multi-step process. It still requires other random ‘mutations’ to occur during life. Healthy living is still called for. In other words, reducing exposure to toxins, radiation, and injury. Eventually, the biochemical fingerprints of possible inherited changes may be deciphered and then testing could be possible,” said Dr. Juckett.

There is no cause for alarm, though; cosmic rays are only about 20-30% of the background radiation we are exposed to every day, and are a minimal cause of cancer in comparison to other environmental effects such as smoking.

Original Source: International Journal of Astrobiology

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Earth Had Oxygen Earlier Than Believed

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Take a nice deep breath, fill your lungs with oxygen. You can thank the plants for that. Scientists had originally found that oxygen showed up in the Earth’s atmosphere around 2.3-2.4 billion years ago; in a period called the “Great Oxidation Event”. But there’s new evidence, dug out of a rock in Australia, that puts that first date even earlier by 50-100 million years.

Researchers gathered samples from a region of Western Australia called Hamersley Basin. In one part of the kilometre-long rock sample, they found an ancient rock that shows how the atmosphere was switching over to the oxygen-rich air we enjoy today. Their research appeared in the September 28th issue of the journal Science.

According to one of the researchers, Ariel Anbar, from Arizona State University, “we seem to have captured a piece of time before the Great Oxidation Event during which the amount of oxygen was actually changing – caught in the act, as it were.”

During the summer of 2004, researchers bored a 1 km long sample of rock out of Hamersley Basin in Western Australia, a region famous for keeping a geologic history of the Earth. Because the sample was so deep underground, it had been untouched for billions of years. The researchers sliced the sample and kept half in Australia, and took the other half back to the US.

They began to analyze ancient portions of the sample, looking for the trace metals molybdenum, rhenium and uranium. The amount of these metals found in ocean deposits depends on the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. They found a region of time, ahead of the Great Oxidizing Event by about 100 million years, where oxygen was forming in the atmosphere.

It’s thought that life started learning how to produce oxygen then, but everything that made was soaked up by geologic processes. It took 100 million years for the life to overcome those effects and start seeding the atmosphere with oxygen.

Of course, this discovery will help astronomers search for life on other planets in the galaxy. They will eventually be able to measure the oxygen content precisely, and identify what stage of evolution life on the distant planet could be at. If none have undergone a similar Great Oxidation Event, it tells us how rare life might be in the Universe.

Original Source: ASU News Release