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Odd Spot Science - Vyoos

Today's news: woman fails to save the Earth

March 10th 2010 06:18

The Large Hadron Collider

A woman in Europe has failed to save the world after a court in Germany yesterday dismissed her claim that Earth is likely to be sucked into a black hole if scientists resume testing at the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest atom smasher.

The woman, who has not been named, was convinced a resumption of scientific work at the collider, which has had a checkered and controversial history, posed a serious threat to the planet. She was so worried, she took her case to the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe.

The Large Hadron Collider is a high-energy particle collider. Built in a 27-kilometre tunnel under the border between Switzerland and France, it was designed primarily to simulate the conditions prevalent during the Big Bang, and thus help scientists explain the origins of the universe.

The facility was opened, with great fanfare, in September 2008, only to break down after nine days. It stayed broken down for 14 months, opening again briefly in December last year before shutting down again, this time to get it ready for collisions at new "unfathomed" levels. It was these tests, which began last month, that the unidentified woman believed placed the world in danger of being sucked into a black hole.

It is thought she feared that scientists would find the answer to the biggest question of all — how do particles acquire mass? This is the holy grail of the scientists at work at the Large Hadron Collider. They are looking specifically for a surmised entity known as the Higgs Boson which could provide the answer. The Higgs Boson is more commonly referred to as the God Particle.

This is not to be confused with another theoretical particle called a strangelet which earlier opponents of the Large Hadron Collider said posed a great danger. If a strangelet was released, they claimed, it would turn the Earth to goo.

The German Constitutional Court, in its ruling on the latest protest against the collider, said: "The overwhelming scientific opinion is that the experiments carried out at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) present no dangers."

They then said the woman who feared we were all destined to become dinner for a black hole was "unable to give a coherent account of how her fears would come about".
Agence France Presse

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Europe, Odd Spot, Science

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Water bears conquer space

October 24th 2008 17:23

There are creatures indigenous to this planet called tardigrades and they are in the news because it has just been discovered that they can live in space. Outer space. Vacuum territory. The place where, it has previously been believed, the only things that can survive are some of the hardier forms of cosmic dust.

Tardigrades are more commonly known as water bears. They are, on average, about the size which requires a microscope to see. But this is not recommended for the squeamish or weak of heart because tardigrades are seriously scary looking critters. Seen under a microscope, they look like a cross between a louse and an angry armadillo with acne.

Their bodies are short and plump and contain four pairs of limbs. Each limb terminates in four to eight claws or discs. They wander about in a slow bear-like gait over sand grains or pieces of plant material.

Water bears already had minor celebrity status because they have shown they can live in some of Earth's most inhospitable places: at the bottom of the ocean, at the top of mountains, and in temperatures ranging from minus 272C to plus 51C. They are resistant to radiation and, bizarrely, to drying out - they can be brought back to life after years of dryness.

But space was a new frontier even for the hardy tardigrades.

They were taken into space aboard the FOTON-M3, a European Space Agency craft launched in September, by scientists who exposed dried-up water bears to open space conditions - vacuum, ultra-violet radiation from the sun and cosmic radiation. Back home, with a drop of water, most of them revived.

Some survived exposure to solar ultra-violet radiation more than 1,000 times higher than ultra-violet radiation on the Earth's surface. Some, scientists said, were able to reproduce after their space trip.

The scientists reported on the venture in this month's edition of the US journal Current Biology.

"How these animals were capable of reviving their body after receiving a dose of UV radiation ... under space vacuum conditions remains a mystery," the report said. "It is conceivable that the same cellular adaptations that let them survive drying out might also account for their overall hardiness."

There are about 600 species of tardigrades on Earth. They were first described by Johann August Ephraim Goeze in 1773, and he gave them the name "little water bear". The name Tardigrada, which means "slow walker", was coined in 1777.

They have been found in the Himalayas above 6,000 metres, in the ocean below 4,000 metres, from the polar regions to the equator, on beaches, in soil and in marine or freshwater sediment. Mostly, though, they like to hang out on the nearest cosy lichen or moss.

Or in space.

theregister.co.uk, www.ieu.edu, wikipedia.org. Image: www.core-orsten-research.de

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Animals, Odd Spot, Science

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Miracle shark pregnancy, again

October 11th 2008 06:07

Scientists have used DNA testing to confirm that a female Atlantic shark named Tidbit has become pregnant without any contact with a male shark.

This is exciting news because it is the first time in the history of oceanography that scientists have named a shark "Tidbit".

It is not, however, the first time that scientists have witnessed a virgin pregnancy by a shark. Genetic testing was used to show that a hammerhead shark gave birth in 2002 without the, umm, normal preliminaries. We have no record of the hammerhead's name.

The technical name for virgin birth is parthenogenesis and this latest instance of it occurred at an aquarium in Virginia, US. The 1.5-metre long Tidbit was herself born in the wild eight years ago, but was brought to the aquarium soon after birth. She has lived her whole life with no contact with males of the same species.

She died after being removed from her tank for a veterinary inspection. A subsequent autopsy revealed she was carrying a fully developed pup ready to be born.

Shark scientist Demian Chapman performed DNA testing that showed the pup had no father. "It's a finding that kind of rewrites the textbooks a little," he understated. Parthenogenesis also has been documented in Komodo dragons, snakes, birds, fish and amphibians, Chapman said.

His findings, which appear in the Journal of Fish Biology, the official publication of the Fisheries Society of the British Isles, fail to answer one important question: who chose the name Tidbit?

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Odd Spot, Science

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