Clipmarks | pokkets's 'light' clips

Telescope spots monster galactic cluster

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:08:22 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: They theorize that the fact that it's 7.7 billion light years away (as far as they know) meant that it was before the acceleration due to dark energy made it impossible for galactic clusters that large to hold together.
It reminded me of a poem by Hughes Mearns.
'Antigonish'
As I was going up the stair,
I saw a star that wasn’t there.
It wasn’t there again today,
I wish, that star would stay away.
(I thought I'd adjust it to cover Light years, and dark matter.)

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

A massive cluster of galaxies in deep space imaged spotted by an orbiting observatory can only be explained by the exotic phenomenon known as dark energy, say astronomers.

The huge galactic cluster, which appears as a blue cloud in this image, may help confirm the existence of dark energy

The observation was made by a team led by Georg Lamer of the Potsdam Astrophysics Institute, Germany, using the European Space Agency's (ESA) orbiting x-ray telescope XMM-Newton.

Their findings will appear in

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Intrigued by the indicators of scorching gases spewed out by x-ray sources, the team followed up by obtaining a deep exposure image of the region from a large binocular telescope in the Arizona desert.

Known by its catalogue number of 2XMM J083026+524133, the cluster's mass is about 1000 times that of our own galaxy and lies 7.7 billion light years from earth

in more recent times, massive galaxy clusters have lacked the gravitational glue to be able to form

Nanomaterial cleans up flourescent bulbs

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:41:55 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Household energy saving bulbs are a concern because of the mercury they contain, and the number that are starting to be used today, but another example was the long fluorescent bulbs, which may not burn out or break too often, but are often shipped in bulk to recyclers after a renovation, or demolition.
The compact fluorescent bulb use less mercury than incandescent bulbs running on electricity from coal, which releases mercury when burned.
The mercury from the CFL bulbs can be recovered.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Jessica Marshall

A new nanomaterial promises to clean up potentially nasty mercury spills that result from broken fluorescent light bulbs.

The mercury in a compact fluorescent light bulb takes several days to vapourise

The technology is timely as people are encouraged to switch from incandescent light globes to the energy-saving fluorescent form of lighting.

Research led by Professor Robert Hurt of Brown University has created a product that absorbs mercury 70 times better than the best available technology.

The results were presented at a recent meeting of the American Chemical Society.

You are not supposed to vacuum it up. You can distribute the mercury around the house

It's very hard to imaging poisoning an adult with a CFL [compact fluorescent light bulb

the greatest release happens immediately

where it is associated with a solid powder

the risk would be greater

in a child's room or if several bulbs were to break at once

perhaps at a recycling location

Alex Jones: They're Censoring your reality

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 01:50:39 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: A lot of people criticize Alex Jones, because he has found evidence that shoots down the official line. I clipped one comment because it because it Summarized the video in a Sentence.

Everything in the darkness will be brought out into the light.
Vampires hate sunlight.

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

YOU GOTTA BE FUCKIN KIDDING ME, 15 PAGES OF COMMENTS AND ONLY 229 VIEWS??????????????? RIIIIGHT (smh).....

Amateur spies gassy 'cosmic ghost'

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:10:35 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Some people get to name an object. Even fewer get to name a new class of object. Now we'll have people scanning the skies for Voorwerps. One day we might even discover what they are. I wonder if they come in different colours?

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

A Dutch primary school teacher has discovered what some are calling a 'cosmic ghost', a strange, gaseous object with a hole in the middle that may represent a new class of astronomical object.

The green blob of gas, now known as Hanny's Voorwerp, is believed to be a 'light echo' from the bright, stormy centre of a distant galaxy that has now gone dim

Amateur astronomer Hanny van Arkel discovered the object while volunteering in the Galaxy Zoo project, which enlists the help of members of the public to classify galaxies online.

"At first, we had no idea what it was. It could have been in our solar system, or at the edge of the universe," says Galaxy Zoo co-founder and Yale University astrophysicist Dr Kevin Schawinski.

"What we saw was really a mystery

The Voorwerp didn't contain any stars."

Made entirely of very hot gas, the eerie green object is illuminated by remnant light from the nearby galaxy IC 2497.

Researchers will soon use the Hubble Space Telescope to get a closer look.

Surfing faster than the speed of light

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 05:06:23 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: I wonder how easy it will be to navigate with these drives. Will the passage of a vehicle through space-time in a bubble leave an imprint?
they could start some rifts around bottlenecks like docking stations.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Eric Bland

Future generations could be travelling across the universe faster than the speed of light, without breaking any astronomical road rules, by manipulating extra dimensions of space and time, according to two US physicists.

"We think we can create an effective warp drive, based on general relatively and string theory," says Dr Gerald Cleaver from Baylor University in the US, a coauthor of a paper that recently appeared on ArXiv.org.

The warp engine is based on a design first proposed in 1994 by Dr Michael Alcubierre.

The Alcubierre drive, as it's known, involves expanding the fabric of space behind a ship into a bubble and shrinking space-time in front of the ship. The ship would rest in between the expanding and shrinking space-time, essentially surfing down the side of the bubble.

The tricky part is that the ship wouldn't actually move; space itself would move underneath the stationary spacecraft.

The fabric of space has moved faster than light before

right after the Big Bang

Australians set shining standard

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:47:02 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: They originally described the candela as the amount of light emitted by the average? candle. Since the definition has become more precise, but measurement is still improving. Here's the exact definition (for anyone that cares-don't ask me what a steradian is) from wikki:
Since the 16th General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) in 1979, the candela has been defined as:
The luminous intensity, in a given direction, of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540×1012 hertz and that has a radiant intensity in that direction of 1/683 watt per steradian.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Errol Atkinson and colleagues from the National Measurement Institute have refined the measurement of the candela, the basic unit of brightness, to eliminate all but 0.1% of uncertainty.

They set the standard by measuring the light from a mercury-xenon lamp shone through a set of filters, and finally through a small 5 millimetre aperture in a piece of metal.

"These light sources have a very consistent light output," says Atkinson. It was using them that allowed the institute to reduce the potential error in its standards to 0.1%.

The candela plays an important role in defining international lighting standards, and is used for a wide range of applications from household light bulbs, through to techniques to identify faults in the manufacture of jet engine components.

Atkinson says that because the amount of light coming out of a substance is also closely linked to its temperature, the advance could lead to a change in the way the SI standard for temperature is defined.

Study puts urine in the spotlight

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:17:21 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: A light that can show signs of urinary tract infections These infections are easily treated, but first must be detected. This light can be part of an instant or even home analysis kit without the need to wait 24hours (usually in a queue) and two visits to the doctor or hospital. Of course if they are expensive, they can become part of the 'Neighborhood Watch' program, but how much can it cost to switch on a light globe?
Every chemical has a unique signature. It is also hoped this technique can be used to detect other diseases , such as cancer, each of which have flags in the urine, due to the kidneys ability, and tendency to eliminate toxins from the system.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Dani Cooper

Australian researchers are developing a simple fluorescent light test that could provide an almost instantaneous diagnosis for urinary tract infections.

The Macquarie University researchers presented their preliminary findings at the recent 21st Congress of the International Commission for Optics held in Sydney.

Researcher Professor Ewa Goldys, of the university's Department of Physics, says the research could lead to a home diagnosis kit that uses simple technology now available.

And they say the fluorescence test may also help provide early detection for the other disorders and diseases including cancer.

UTIs are the cause of about 60 in 1000 patient consultations annually and are estimated to account for 30% to 40% of all hospital-acquired infections.

She says although urinary tract infections can be easily treated with antibiotics it is important to have a rapid and inexpensive form of diagnosis to stop any worsening of the condition.

Atom laser to keep spacecraft on track.

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:39:33 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Models predict that the atom laser will be 11 orders of magnitude more sensitive than light laser gyroscopes, offering measurements that could be 100 billion times more precise.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Anna Salleh

A laser beam that emits a continuous stream of atoms may one day help ultra-precise navigation of space craft, say Australian experts.

Travelling far from Earth, a space craft needs an independent way of knowing its location

Physicists Dr Nick Robins and colleagues from the Australian National University in Canberra report their progress on developing the first gyroscope of its kind, in the journal Nature Physics.

While atom lasers have been made before, research team member Associate Professor John Closesays the team has overcome a major barrier to developing a laser that pumps atoms continuously.

"It carries the promise of measuring at enormously increased precision," he says.

He says one application for this could be in a space craft that is too far away from earth to use a global positioning system.

Current gyroscopes often use light lasers to precisely measure rotation.

But Close says that atom lasers could provide much more accurate measurements by using "matter waves".

Orion twins show not all are identical

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:46:33 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: The fact that the twins are different means the study of their eclipses, can shed more light on the formation of stars, and they are one of the yardsticks astronomers can use to test their theories on star formation. The information gained can help revise some theories that exist at the moment, including the ages of star types.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Irene Klotz

A pair of stars in the Orion nebula have shown astronomers that stars born at the same time, in the same parent cloud, don't necessarily have the same physical attributes.

The twins, known as Par 1802, reveal one is developmentally delayed compared to its partner

Par 1802 provides direct evidence that birth order in 'identical twin' stars can manifest itself as observable physical difference

says Vanderbilt University

Professor Keivan Stassun in the journal Nature

The discovery is more than a curiosity: Par 1802 is an eclipsing binary star system, meaning the twins periodically orbit in front of one another, relative to earth, temporarily and regularly blocking its partner's light.

Such phenomena are yardsticks for measuring stars' basic physical properties and for testing theories about stellar evolution.

The finding may mean that thousands of young stars may need to have their ages readjusted by as much as 20% for average-sized stars and 50% for low-mass stars like brown dwarfs.

Experimenting in a galaxy far far away

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:49:52 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: While the readings confirm the laws of physics apply across the known universe,
if it had been any other way, it would not only have been a surprise, but physics textbooks would have to be rewritten.
Of course, the search has only just begun. The Radio Telescope is only a recent development, and much of what we know about the Universe, has been learned since the Hubble telescope became operational.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Stephen Pincock

Light from a distant galaxy is helping scientists confirm that the laws of physics here on earth also hold true in the far reaches of time and space.

Astrophysicist Dr Michael Murphy from Swinburne University in Melbourne, along with colleagues in Sydney, Taiwan and Germany, made their finding using radio-waves emitted by a quasar some 7.5 billion light years away.

Their results appear in the latest issue of the journal Science.

Quasars are thought to be super-massive black holes at the centres of some galaxies.

On its long journey to earth, the radiation from the quasar B0218+357 passes through a galaxy approximately 6 billion light years away, where it was partially absorbed by a cloud of ammonia.

The ammonia absorbs the radiation at very specific wavelengths

researchers used the measured radiation to

determine the molecule's unique 'bar code'.

"If the proton-electron mass ratio were different in the distant galaxy then we would see that in the bar-code."

New Research On Octopuses Sheds Light On Memory

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:39:13 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: It is not completely understood how these two systems are interconnected, if at all. However, the organization in the octopus demonstrates a sophistication that was not described yet in other animals. In the octopus, the short-term and long-term systems are working in parallel, but not independently. This is so because the long-term memory area -- in addition to its capacity to store long-term memories -- also regulates the rate at which the short-term memory system acquires short-term memories. This regulatory mechanism is probably useful in cases where faster learning is significant for the octopus' survival in emergency or risky situations.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Research on octopuses has shed new light on how our brains store and recall memory,

Why octopuses?

Octopuses and other related creatures, known as cephalopods, are considered to be the most intelligent invertebrates because they have relatively large brains and they can be trained for various learning and memory tasks, says Dr. Hochner.

Their behavior repertoire and learning and memory abilities are even comparable in their complexity to those of advanced vertebrates. However, they are still invertebrate mollusks with brains that contain a much fewer number of nerve cells and much simpler anatomical organization than that of vertebrate brains. This unique constellation was utilized to tackle one of the most interesting questions in modern neuroscience, which is how the brain stores and recalls memories

Tags: octopuse, memory

Gene therapy helps blind see the light

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:59:45 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Deena Beasley and Ben Hirschler

Gene therapy for a rare type of inherited blindness has improved the vision of four patients, boosting hopes for the troubled field of gene repair technology, scientists say.

Gene therapy in preliminary, short-term trials has improved the vision of a handful of people with a rare but serious form of blindness. But much work is needed before this approach becomes routine

Two separate teams of doctors report successes in using gene therapy to treat Leber's congenital amaurosis, or LCA.

LCA damages light receptors in the retina. It usually begins affecting sight in early childhood and causes total blindness by the age of 30. There is no treatment.

Both teams used a common cold virus to deliver a normal version of one damaged gene that causes the disease, called RPE65, directly into patients' eyes.

"This result is important for the entire field of gene therapy," says High, a former president of the American Society of Gene Therapy.

If Advertising Were True

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:27:12 GMT

clipped by: Sheroug

Clip Source: thepandapage.com

#60: If Advertising Were True: 5 Popular Products

1. Bud Light

in reality, Bud Light’s the sauce of choice for people looking to buy a neutral beer for large quantities of people. It’s not the cheapest, nor the best. Which makes it perfect for someone who doesn’t care about life. The real demographic.

2. Colt 45

3. Marlboro

4. Haagen Dasz

The reality is the ice cream’s a brown, indiscernible mush. And its demographic are former smokers, depressed teenagers, and the recently broken-hearted.

5. The Office

The Office is NBC’s smash hit sitcom that’s marketed to attractive and witty 18-34 year-olds, but more relatable to the 25-34 range.

In reality, the demographic is more like 28-45, because it’s slowly replacing Dilbert comics and hunky firemen calendars as watercooler conversation.

Honorable Mention: GAP

M i l k y S e a s f r o m S p a c e

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:24:04 GMT

clipped by: michellezm

Clip Source: www.lifesci.ucsb.edu

Milky seas are unusual phenomena which have been noticed by mariners for centuries, but which remain unexplained by scientists. These events are when the surface of the ocean, often from horizon to horizon, glows with a continuous uniform milky light. Although the origins of this light are not well investigated, the most plausible explanation is that it is caused by blooms of bioluminescent bacteria. Dinoflagellates, which cause red tides, flashing waves, and sparkling wakes behind boats, need to be physically stimulated to produce their brief bright flashes. This type of display does not match the kind of display seen in milky seas. Bacteria, on the other hand, will glow with a continuous light, under the right conditions.

The light from a milky sea is sometimes described as white, but it is actually blue. It may appear white when detected by human night-time vision, using rod photoreceptors that do not distinguish colors.

Glasses don't make you a nerd

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 23:14:51 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Or geek - There's more to it...
There was another article a few months ago that studied myopia amongst Asian students, due to rates that are seen as high. It was suggested there that myopia, rather than being inherited, was a result of lack of exposure to light. Students with myopia didn't tend to get out as much. Science can have have trouble qualifying things that are a result of more than one reason. experiments that support or prove theories, are better if only one thing can change. They are missing the point. The reason geeks, and nerds don't 'socialize', or 'get enough light' isn't because they are unsociable, but perhaps because they 'travel' in a different social circle, which is cyber, and global, through the internet. Perhaps they can develop terminal screens that emit the wavelengths of solar radiation so chronic computer users avoid developing myopia.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Claudine Ryan

It's official. Wearing glasses doesn't mean you're a nerd but it could be a sign that you're more intelligent, new research shows.

The study, from the University of Melbourne's Centre for Eye Research Australia, shows there are no links between myopia or short-sightedness and introversion or conscientiousness, the socially withdrawn and hardworking personality traits often associated with nerds.

The study's lead author Associate Professor Paul Baird says this research, which has been investigating a number of factors linked to myopia including personality, puts to rest a popular stereotype in the scientific community as well as the general population.

"I was reading a text book a couple of nights ago and it said 'we have to conclude that people who are introverted have an association with myopia' and this was written 10 years ago," says Baird.

"I found it very perplexing that people would go along with this view without having done the study."