Within two months, a new record for most distant galaxy: Nasa

Subodh Varma, TNN Nov 16, 2012, 02.49PM IST

NEW DELHI: The record for the most distant galaxy from Earth has been broken just two months after it was set. What appeared as a tiny blob to Nasa scientists turned out to be a small infant galaxy 13.3 billion light years away, Nasa said in a statement yesterday. Since the Universe itself is 13.7 billion years old, this means that the newly discovered galaxy was just 420 million years old when the light that scientists saw, left it. So, it also becomes the oldest known galaxy. Currently, it is known as MACS0647-JD.

The previous record was set in September this year when the same team discovered a galaxy 13.2 billion light years away. It was 490 million old.

Scientists are now able to discover these uber-distant objects by combining the power of Nasa's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes and one of nature's own natural "zoom lenses" in space. Light from very distant objects gets magnified by the gravity of massive galaxies that happen to be in its way. This effect is called "gravitational lensing".

This find is the latest discovery from a program called Cluster Lensing And Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH), an international group led by Marc Postman of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

Along the way, 8 billion years into its journey, light from MACS0647-JD took a detour along multiple paths around the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0647+7015. Without the cluster's magnification powers, astronomers would not have seen this remote galaxy. Because of gravitational lensing, the CLASH research team was able to observe three magnified images of MACS0647-JD with the Hubble telescope.

"This cluster does what no man-made telescope can do," said Postman. "Without the magnification, it would require a Herculean effort to observe this galaxy."

The newly discovered most distant galaxy is so small it may be in the first steps of forming a larger galaxy, Nasa said. Analysis shows the galaxy is less than 600 light-years wide. Based on observations of somewhat closer galaxies, astronomers estimate that a typical galaxy of a similar age should be about 2,000 light-years wide. For comparison, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy companion to the Milky Way, is 14,000 light-years wide. Our Milky Way is 150,000 light-years across.

"This object may be one of many building blocks of a galaxy," said the study's lead author, Dan Coe of the Space Telescope Science Institute. "Over the next 13 billion years, it may have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of merging events with other galaxies and galaxy fragments."

Coe and his collaborators spent months systematically ruling out these other alternative explanations for the object's identity, including red stars, brown dwarfs and red (old or dusty) galaxies at intermediate distances from Earth. They concluded that a very distant galaxy was the correct explanation.

The new galaxy may be too far away for any current telescope to confirm the distance based on spectroscopy, which spreads out an object's light into thousands of colors, Nasa said. Nevertheless, Coe is confident the fledgling galaxy is the new distance champion based on its unique colors and the research team's extensive analysis.

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Man began spear-hunting 200,000 years earlier than believed

PTI Nov 16, 2012, 08.57PM IST

(This undated image provided…)

LONDON: Man began hunting with stone-tipped spears half a million years ago â€" 200,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study.

Scientists have discovered our ancestors began hunting with stone-tipped spears 500,000 years ago â€" with the help of a special crossbow and a dead springbok, the Daily Mail reported.

Until recently, it was thought attaching a stone tip to a spear â€" known as 'hafting' â€" started about 300,000 years ago.

However, by comparing the wear visible on 500,000-year-old stone points found in South Africa with modern experimental points fired by a specially calibrated crossbow at a springbok carcass, scientists proved they had been used as spear tips for hunting.

'Hafting' was an important technological advance that made it possible to handle or throw sharp points with much more power and control.

Lead author Jayne Wilkins from the department of anthropology at the University of Toronto in Canada, said the research suggested stone-tipped spears could have been in use before the divergence of early humans and Neanderthals.

"This changes the way we think about early human adaptations and capacities before the origin of our own species," she said.

"Although both Neanderthals and humans used stone-tipped spears, this is the first evidence that the technology originated prior to or near the divergence of these two species," she added.

Attaching stone points to spears was an important advance in hunting weaponry for early humans. Hafted tools require more effort and planning to manufacture, but a sharp stone point on the end of a spear can increase its killing power.

The new study â€" which examined stone points from the South African archaeological site of Kathu Pan 1 â€" shows that they were also used in the early middle pleistocene, a period associated with Homo heidelbergensis, the last common ancestor of Neanderthals, and modern humans.

Wilkins and colleagues from Arizona State University and the University of Cape Town, compared the ancient stone points to experimental points which they hafted to wooden dowels using Acacia resin and sinew before thrusting them into a springbok with a mounted crossbow.

The stone points exhibit certain types of breaks that occur more commonly when they are used to tip spears compared to other uses.

"The archaeological points have damage that is very similar to replica spear points used in our spearing experiment," Wilkins said.

This type of damage is not easily created through other processes, she added.

The findings were published in the journal Science.

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After a month, Curiosity set to hit the road again

Agencies Nov 17, 2012, 06.37AM IST

LOS ANGELES: After playing in the sand, the Curiosity rover is poised to trek across the Martian landscape in search of a rock to drill into , scientists reported.
The six-wheel rover has been parked for more than a month at a sand dune where it has been busy scooping up soil, sniffing the atmosphere and measuring radiation levels on the surface. Its next task is to zero in on a rock and that requires driving to a new location.

Mission deputy scientist Ashwin Vasavada expected Curiosity to be on the move in the "next few days" . "It's the bedrock which really gives you the story of ancient Mars," said Vasavada of the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $2.5 billion mission. "The soil is a little harder to interpret because we don't know how old it is or where it came from."

The car-size rover touched down in Gale Crater, an ancient depression near the Martian equator, in August on a two-year mission to probe whether the landing site once had conditions capable of supporting microbial life. Armed with a high-tech suite of instruments, it's the most sophisticated spacecraft to ever land on the red planet.

During the first three months, a weather station aboard Curiosity detected brief drops in air pressure , a sign of whirlwinds in the region. "These events are starting to occur more and more often," said Manuel de la Torre Juarez of Nasa JPL. "We expect to see more in the future."

Previous rovers have spotted and even recorded dust devils dancing across the Martian terrain , but scientists said Curiosity has not yet seen evidence that the swirling winds have lifted dust.

Curiosity's ultimate destination is a 5km-high mountain rising from the center of the crater floor that's rich in mineral deposits. Scientists had hoped to drive to the base before the end of the year, but that doesn't look likely after the extended stay at its current spot.

Google has updated its coverage of Mars with high resolution images from a Nasa satellite orbiting the planet, as part of their freely downloadable Google Earth app. The Google Earth app has showed Mars since 2009, but up until now most areas of the red planet could only be seen in low-resolution .

Google Mars updated large amounts of the planet's surface with images from the Context Camera (CTX) on Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, with a resolution of around 20ft per pixel, the Daily Mail reported.

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Within two months, a new record for most distant galaxy: Nasa

Subodh Varma, TNN Nov 16, 2012, 02.49PM IST

NEW DELHI: The record for the most distant galaxy from Earth has been broken just two months after it was set. What appeared as a tiny blob to Nasa scientists turned out to be a small infant galaxy 13.3 billion light years away, Nasa said in a statement yesterday. Since the Universe itself is 13.7 billion years old, this means that the newly discovered galaxy was just 420 million years old when the light that scientists saw, left it. So, it also becomes the oldest known galaxy. Currently, it is known as MACS0647-JD.

The previous record was set in September this year when the same team discovered a galaxy 13.2 billion light years away. It was 490 million old.

Scientists are now able to discover these uber-distant objects by combining the power of Nasa's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes and one of nature's own natural "zoom lenses" in space. Light from very distant objects gets magnified by the gravity of massive galaxies that happen to be in its way. This effect is called "gravitational lensing".

This find is the latest discovery from a program called Cluster Lensing And Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH), an international group led by Marc Postman of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

Along the way, 8 billion years into its journey, light from MACS0647-JD took a detour along multiple paths around the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0647+7015. Without the cluster's magnification powers, astronomers would not have seen this remote galaxy. Because of gravitational lensing, the CLASH research team was able to observe three magnified images of MACS0647-JD with the Hubble telescope.

"This cluster does what no man-made telescope can do," said Postman. "Without the magnification, it would require a Herculean effort to observe this galaxy."

The newly discovered most distant galaxy is so small it may be in the first steps of forming a larger galaxy, Nasa said. Analysis shows the galaxy is less than 600 light-years wide. Based on observations of somewhat closer galaxies, astronomers estimate that a typical galaxy of a similar age should be about 2,000 light-years wide. For comparison, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy companion to the Milky Way, is 14,000 light-years wide. Our Milky Way is 150,000 light-years across.

"This object may be one of many building blocks of a galaxy," said the study's lead author, Dan Coe of the Space Telescope Science Institute. "Over the next 13 billion years, it may have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of merging events with other galaxies and galaxy fragments."

Coe and his collaborators spent months systematically ruling out these other alternative explanations for the object's identity, including red stars, brown dwarfs and red (old or dusty) galaxies at intermediate distances from Earth. They concluded that a very distant galaxy was the correct explanation.

The new galaxy may be too far away for any current telescope to confirm the distance based on spectroscopy, which spreads out an object's light into thousands of colors, Nasa said. Nevertheless, Coe is confident the fledgling galaxy is the new distance champion based on its unique colors and the research team's extensive analysis.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Man began spear-hunting 200,000 years earlier than believed

PTI Nov 16, 2012, 08.57PM IST

(This undated image provided…)

LONDON: Man began hunting with stone-tipped spears half a million years ago â€" 200,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study.

Scientists have discovered our ancestors began hunting with stone-tipped spears 500,000 years ago â€" with the help of a special crossbow and a dead springbok, the Daily Mail reported.

Until recently, it was thought attaching a stone tip to a spear â€" known as 'hafting' â€" started about 300,000 years ago.

However, by comparing the wear visible on 500,000-year-old stone points found in South Africa with modern experimental points fired by a specially calibrated crossbow at a springbok carcass, scientists proved they had been used as spear tips for hunting.

'Hafting' was an important technological advance that made it possible to handle or throw sharp points with much more power and control.

Lead author Jayne Wilkins from the department of anthropology at the University of Toronto in Canada, said the research suggested stone-tipped spears could have been in use before the divergence of early humans and Neanderthals.

"This changes the way we think about early human adaptations and capacities before the origin of our own species," she said.

"Although both Neanderthals and humans used stone-tipped spears, this is the first evidence that the technology originated prior to or near the divergence of these two species," she added.

Attaching stone points to spears was an important advance in hunting weaponry for early humans. Hafted tools require more effort and planning to manufacture, but a sharp stone point on the end of a spear can increase its killing power.

The new study â€" which examined stone points from the South African archaeological site of Kathu Pan 1 â€" shows that they were also used in the early middle pleistocene, a period associated with Homo heidelbergensis, the last common ancestor of Neanderthals, and modern humans.

Wilkins and colleagues from Arizona State University and the University of Cape Town, compared the ancient stone points to experimental points which they hafted to wooden dowels using Acacia resin and sinew before thrusting them into a springbok with a mounted crossbow.

The stone points exhibit certain types of breaks that occur more commonly when they are used to tip spears compared to other uses.

"The archaeological points have damage that is very similar to replica spear points used in our spearing experiment," Wilkins said.

This type of damage is not easily created through other processes, she added.

The findings were published in the journal Science.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

After a month, Curiosity set to hit the road again

Agencies Nov 17, 2012, 06.37AM IST

LOS ANGELES: After playing in the sand, the Curiosity rover is poised to trek across the Martian landscape in search of a rock to drill into , scientists reported.
The six-wheel rover has been parked for more than a month at a sand dune where it has been busy scooping up soil, sniffing the atmosphere and measuring radiation levels on the surface. Its next task is to zero in on a rock and that requires driving to a new location.

Mission deputy scientist Ashwin Vasavada expected Curiosity to be on the move in the "next few days" . "It's the bedrock which really gives you the story of ancient Mars," said Vasavada of the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $2.5 billion mission. "The soil is a little harder to interpret because we don't know how old it is or where it came from."

The car-size rover touched down in Gale Crater, an ancient depression near the Martian equator, in August on a two-year mission to probe whether the landing site once had conditions capable of supporting microbial life. Armed with a high-tech suite of instruments, it's the most sophisticated spacecraft to ever land on the red planet.

During the first three months, a weather station aboard Curiosity detected brief drops in air pressure , a sign of whirlwinds in the region. "These events are starting to occur more and more often," said Manuel de la Torre Juarez of Nasa JPL. "We expect to see more in the future."

Previous rovers have spotted and even recorded dust devils dancing across the Martian terrain , but scientists said Curiosity has not yet seen evidence that the swirling winds have lifted dust.

Curiosity's ultimate destination is a 5km-high mountain rising from the center of the crater floor that's rich in mineral deposits. Scientists had hoped to drive to the base before the end of the year, but that doesn't look likely after the extended stay at its current spot.

Google has updated its coverage of Mars with high resolution images from a Nasa satellite orbiting the planet, as part of their freely downloadable Google Earth app. The Google Earth app has showed Mars since 2009, but up until now most areas of the red planet could only be seen in low-resolution .

Google Mars updated large amounts of the planet's surface with images from the Context Camera (CTX) on Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, with a resolution of around 20ft per pixel, the Daily Mail reported.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Within two months, a new record for most distant galaxy: Nasa

Subodh Varma, TNN Nov 16, 2012, 02.49PM IST

NEW DELHI: The record for the most distant galaxy from Earth has been broken just two months after it was set. What appeared as a tiny blob to Nasa scientists turned out to be a small infant galaxy 13.3 billion light years away, Nasa said in a statement yesterday. Since the Universe itself is 13.7 billion years old, this means that the newly discovered galaxy was just 420 million years old when the light that scientists saw, left it. So, it also becomes the oldest known galaxy. Currently, it is known as MACS0647-JD.

The previous record was set in September this year when the same team discovered a galaxy 13.2 billion light years away. It was 490 million old.

Scientists are now able to discover these uber-distant objects by combining the power of Nasa's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes and one of nature's own natural "zoom lenses" in space. Light from very distant objects gets magnified by the gravity of massive galaxies that happen to be in its way. This effect is called "gravitational lensing".

This find is the latest discovery from a program called Cluster Lensing And Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH), an international group led by Marc Postman of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

Along the way, 8 billion years into its journey, light from MACS0647-JD took a detour along multiple paths around the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0647+7015. Without the cluster's magnification powers, astronomers would not have seen this remote galaxy. Because of gravitational lensing, the CLASH research team was able to observe three magnified images of MACS0647-JD with the Hubble telescope.

"This cluster does what no man-made telescope can do," said Postman. "Without the magnification, it would require a Herculean effort to observe this galaxy."

The newly discovered most distant galaxy is so small it may be in the first steps of forming a larger galaxy, Nasa said. Analysis shows the galaxy is less than 600 light-years wide. Based on observations of somewhat closer galaxies, astronomers estimate that a typical galaxy of a similar age should be about 2,000 light-years wide. For comparison, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy companion to the Milky Way, is 14,000 light-years wide. Our Milky Way is 150,000 light-years across.

"This object may be one of many building blocks of a galaxy," said the study's lead author, Dan Coe of the Space Telescope Science Institute. "Over the next 13 billion years, it may have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of merging events with other galaxies and galaxy fragments."

Coe and his collaborators spent months systematically ruling out these other alternative explanations for the object's identity, including red stars, brown dwarfs and red (old or dusty) galaxies at intermediate distances from Earth. They concluded that a very distant galaxy was the correct explanation.

The new galaxy may be too far away for any current telescope to confirm the distance based on spectroscopy, which spreads out an object's light into thousands of colors, Nasa said. Nevertheless, Coe is confident the fledgling galaxy is the new distance champion based on its unique colors and the research team's extensive analysis.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Man began spear-hunting 200,000 years earlier than believed

PTI Nov 16, 2012, 08.57PM IST

(This undated image provided…)

LONDON: Man began hunting with stone-tipped spears half a million years ago â€" 200,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study.

Scientists have discovered our ancestors began hunting with stone-tipped spears 500,000 years ago â€" with the help of a special crossbow and a dead springbok, the Daily Mail reported.

Until recently, it was thought attaching a stone tip to a spear â€" known as 'hafting' â€" started about 300,000 years ago.

However, by comparing the wear visible on 500,000-year-old stone points found in South Africa with modern experimental points fired by a specially calibrated crossbow at a springbok carcass, scientists proved they had been used as spear tips for hunting.

'Hafting' was an important technological advance that made it possible to handle or throw sharp points with much more power and control.

Lead author Jayne Wilkins from the department of anthropology at the University of Toronto in Canada, said the research suggested stone-tipped spears could have been in use before the divergence of early humans and Neanderthals.

"This changes the way we think about early human adaptations and capacities before the origin of our own species," she said.

"Although both Neanderthals and humans used stone-tipped spears, this is the first evidence that the technology originated prior to or near the divergence of these two species," she added.

Attaching stone points to spears was an important advance in hunting weaponry for early humans. Hafted tools require more effort and planning to manufacture, but a sharp stone point on the end of a spear can increase its killing power.

The new study â€" which examined stone points from the South African archaeological site of Kathu Pan 1 â€" shows that they were also used in the early middle pleistocene, a period associated with Homo heidelbergensis, the last common ancestor of Neanderthals, and modern humans.

Wilkins and colleagues from Arizona State University and the University of Cape Town, compared the ancient stone points to experimental points which they hafted to wooden dowels using Acacia resin and sinew before thrusting them into a springbok with a mounted crossbow.

The stone points exhibit certain types of breaks that occur more commonly when they are used to tip spears compared to other uses.

"The archaeological points have damage that is very similar to replica spear points used in our spearing experiment," Wilkins said.

This type of damage is not easily created through other processes, she added.

The findings were published in the journal Science.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

After a month, Curiosity set to hit the road again

Agencies Nov 17, 2012, 06.37AM IST

LOS ANGELES: After playing in the sand, the Curiosity rover is poised to trek across the Martian landscape in search of a rock to drill into , scientists reported.
The six-wheel rover has been parked for more than a month at a sand dune where it has been busy scooping up soil, sniffing the atmosphere and measuring radiation levels on the surface. Its next task is to zero in on a rock and that requires driving to a new location.

Mission deputy scientist Ashwin Vasavada expected Curiosity to be on the move in the "next few days" . "It's the bedrock which really gives you the story of ancient Mars," said Vasavada of the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $2.5 billion mission. "The soil is a little harder to interpret because we don't know how old it is or where it came from."

The car-size rover touched down in Gale Crater, an ancient depression near the Martian equator, in August on a two-year mission to probe whether the landing site once had conditions capable of supporting microbial life. Armed with a high-tech suite of instruments, it's the most sophisticated spacecraft to ever land on the red planet.

During the first three months, a weather station aboard Curiosity detected brief drops in air pressure , a sign of whirlwinds in the region. "These events are starting to occur more and more often," said Manuel de la Torre Juarez of Nasa JPL. "We expect to see more in the future."

Previous rovers have spotted and even recorded dust devils dancing across the Martian terrain , but scientists said Curiosity has not yet seen evidence that the swirling winds have lifted dust.

Curiosity's ultimate destination is a 5km-high mountain rising from the center of the crater floor that's rich in mineral deposits. Scientists had hoped to drive to the base before the end of the year, but that doesn't look likely after the extended stay at its current spot.

Google has updated its coverage of Mars with high resolution images from a Nasa satellite orbiting the planet, as part of their freely downloadable Google Earth app. The Google Earth app has showed Mars since 2009, but up until now most areas of the red planet could only be seen in low-resolution .

Google Mars updated large amounts of the planet's surface with images from the Context Camera (CTX) on Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, with a resolution of around 20ft per pixel, the Daily Mail reported.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Within two months, a new record for most distant galaxy: Nasa

Subodh Varma, TNN Nov 16, 2012, 02.49PM IST

NEW DELHI: The record for the most distant galaxy from Earth has been broken just two months after it was set. What appeared as a tiny blob to Nasa scientists turned out to be a small infant galaxy 13.3 billion light years away, Nasa said in a statement yesterday. Since the Universe itself is 13.7 billion years old, this means that the newly discovered galaxy was just 420 million years old when the light that scientists saw, left it. So, it also becomes the oldest known galaxy. Currently, it is known as MACS0647-JD.

The previous record was set in September this year when the same team discovered a galaxy 13.2 billion light years away. It was 490 million old.

Scientists are now able to discover these uber-distant objects by combining the power of Nasa's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes and one of nature's own natural "zoom lenses" in space. Light from very distant objects gets magnified by the gravity of massive galaxies that happen to be in its way. This effect is called "gravitational lensing".

This find is the latest discovery from a program called Cluster Lensing And Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH), an international group led by Marc Postman of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

Along the way, 8 billion years into its journey, light from MACS0647-JD took a detour along multiple paths around the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0647+7015. Without the cluster's magnification powers, astronomers would not have seen this remote galaxy. Because of gravitational lensing, the CLASH research team was able to observe three magnified images of MACS0647-JD with the Hubble telescope.

"This cluster does what no man-made telescope can do," said Postman. "Without the magnification, it would require a Herculean effort to observe this galaxy."

The newly discovered most distant galaxy is so small it may be in the first steps of forming a larger galaxy, Nasa said. Analysis shows the galaxy is less than 600 light-years wide. Based on observations of somewhat closer galaxies, astronomers estimate that a typical galaxy of a similar age should be about 2,000 light-years wide. For comparison, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy companion to the Milky Way, is 14,000 light-years wide. Our Milky Way is 150,000 light-years across.

"This object may be one of many building blocks of a galaxy," said the study's lead author, Dan Coe of the Space Telescope Science Institute. "Over the next 13 billion years, it may have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of merging events with other galaxies and galaxy fragments."

Coe and his collaborators spent months systematically ruling out these other alternative explanations for the object's identity, including red stars, brown dwarfs and red (old or dusty) galaxies at intermediate distances from Earth. They concluded that a very distant galaxy was the correct explanation.

The new galaxy may be too far away for any current telescope to confirm the distance based on spectroscopy, which spreads out an object's light into thousands of colors, Nasa said. Nevertheless, Coe is confident the fledgling galaxy is the new distance champion based on its unique colors and the research team's extensive analysis.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More