NASA Mars Rover Finds Mineral Vein Deposited by Water

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has found bright veins of a mineral, apparently gypsum, deposited by water. Analysis of the vein will help improve understanding of the history of wet environments on Mars.
"This tells a slam-dunk story that water flowed through underground fractures in the rock," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for Opportunity. "This stuff is a fairly pure chemical deposit that formed in place right where we see it. That can't be said for other gypsum seen on Mars or for other water-related minerals Opportunity has found. It's not uncommon on Earth, but on Mars, it's the kind of thing that makes geologists jump out of their chairs."
The latest findings by Opportunity were presented Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union's conference in San Francisco..
Last month, researchers used the Microscopic Imager and Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer on the rover's arm and multiple filters of the Panoramic Camera on the rover's mast to examine the vein, which is informally named "Homestake." The spectrometer identified plentiful calcium and sulfur, in a ratio pointing to relatively pure calcium sulfate.
Calcium sulfate can exist in many forms, varying by how much water is bound into the minerals' crystalline structure. The multi-filter data from the camera suggest gypsum, a hydrated calcium sulfate. On Earth, gypsum is used for making drywall and plaster of Paris. Observations from orbit had detected gypsum on Mars previously. A dune field of windblown gypsum on far northern Mars resembles the glistening gypsum dunes in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.
Throughout Opportunity's long traverse across Mars' Meridiani plain, the rover has driven over bedrock composed of magnesium, iron and calcium sulfate minerals that also indicate a wet environment billions of years ago. The highly concentrated calcium sulfate at Homestake could have been produced in conditions more neutral than the harshly acidic conditions indicated by the other sulfate deposits observed by Opportunity.
Homestake and similar-looking veins appear in a zone where the sulfate-rich sedimentary bedrock of the plains meets older, volcanic bedrock exposed at the rim of Endeavour. That location may offer a clue about their origin.
                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                      source:NASA

Use of microalgae helps in controlling pollution

Tiny organisms known as microalgae could hold answers to some intractable problems. That includes curbing carbon dioxide emissions that are contributing to global warming and reducing the burden of industrial effluents.Microalgae, like plants, are capable of photosynthesis, using the energy from sunlight to turn carbon dioxide and water into sugar.In a talk at the International Conference on New Horizons in Biotechnology held in Thiruvananthapuram recently, Prof. Yang spoke of his team's efforts at treating municipal wastewater using the single-celled green alga, Chlorella vulgaris.

Wastewater contained plenty of organic compounds and nutrients to sustain the organism. The oils that then accumulated in the cells could be harvested and turned into biodiesel.

It was found that untreated wastewater gave the best algal growth. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria found in the wastewater could be acting as growth enhancers, he noted.

The Secret of Regeneration Revealed

Regeneration is an art practiced by several animals that have left scientists clueless. It was known that animals used certain acids re-grow parts of their bodies but no one was sure on the exact processes involved. Zebrafish-The master of regenerationNow, a team of researchers from University of Konstanz have discovered that it is retinoic acid that allows zebrafish to regrow fins and even heart muscles. Once a zebrafish's fin is cut off, the wound gets covered by multiple layers of tissue. The cells under this stump lose their identity and forms a blastema. The zebrafish uses a ... more »

NEW EARTH LIKE PLANT FOUND

                                                                  

NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets. The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don't yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets. Previous research hinted at the existence of near-Earth-size planets in habitable zones, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Two other small planets orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our sun recently were confirmed on the very edges of the habitable zone, with orbits more closely resembling those of Venus and Mars. "This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Kepler's results continue to demonstrate the importance of NASA's science missions, which aim to answer some of the biggest questions about our place in the universe." Kepler discovers planets and planet candidates by measuring dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars to search for planets that cross in front, or "transit," the stars. Kepler requires at least three transits to verify a signal as a planet.Kepler-22b is located 600 light-years away. While the planet is larger than Earth, its orbit of 290 days around a sun-like star resembles that of our world. The planet's host star belongs to the same class as our sun, called G-type, although it is slightly smaller and cooler.
                                                                                                                   source:NASA

Technology to Turn Brown Eyes Blue

Blue eyes have always been considered pretty and a lot ofpeople use contact lenses to give their eyes the blue color. Dr.Gregg Homer, a California doctor has developed a lasertreatment which gives a permanent blue color to your eyes. The laser treatmenttakes only around 20 minutes. The treatment involves removal of the brownpigment from the iris using a laser thereby revealing the blue pigment underneath.The brown pigment will be expelled naturally by the body exposing the blue eyesin about 2-3 weeks. Dr. Homer’s tests have so far shown no sign of tissuedamage but research on the ... more »

Manmohan to Jayalalithaa: Mullaperiyar issue should be resolved through dialogue

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday wrote to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa saying nothing should be said or done to create “undue alarm” and hoped Mullaperiyar Dam issue would be sorted out amicably through dialogue.Replying to letters written by Ms. Jayalalithaa, Dr. Singh said he had asked the Water Resources Ministry to arrange an early meeting between officials of Tamil Nadu and Kerala to “sort out outstanding issues and allay genuine concerns”.

He sought Ms. Jayalalithaa’s cooperation on the issue.

Strategic Forces Command test fires Agni

The Strategic Forces Command (SFC) of the Army successfully fired an Agni-I missile from the Wheeler Island, off Odisha on Thursday) to test the Command’s readiness to launch ballistic missiles carrying nuclear warheads. The Agni-I rose from a road-mobile launcher, a specially designed truck, at 9.30 a.m. and covered its targeted range in 600 seconds of flight. The missile accurately reached its targeted area in the Bay of Bengal.

The Agni-I, indigenously developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), is already in the Army’s arsenal.This was the fifth success in a row when a series of missiles were launched from September from the Wheeler Island. The flights included Shourya, Prithvi-II and Agni-II missiles in the last week of September and Agni-IV on November 15. The DRDO developed all these missiles.

Manned spacecraft docks to the space station

A spacecraft carrying an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts on Wednesday successfully docked to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz TMA-22 with NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin onboard docked to the orbiting station several minutes ahead of schedule Moscow time. The three blasted off from the Russia-leased cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday.

The 39-year-old Shkaplerov and 42-year-old Ivanishin are making their first flights into space. Burbank, 50, who will take over command of the space station, is a veteran of 12-day shuttle missions in 2000 and 2006. The three men are to remain aboard the space station until March.

The mission’s launch had been delayed for two months because of the crash of an unmanned Progress cargo ship in August. That failed launch raised doubts about future missions to the station, because the rocket the crashed ship used had the same upper stage as the booster rockets carrying Soyuz ships to orbit. The delay cut the mission onboard to three people.

American Michael Fossum, Russian Sergey Volkov and Japanese Satoshi Furukawa have been onboard since June and are due to return to Earth next week. Another launch next month will take the station back to its normal six-person crew mode.

William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said in a televised news briefing shortly after the docking that “the Russian team did the tremendous job of getting the launch and the docking ready.”

The three men are expected to move from their ship to the space station about two hours after the docking.

                                                                                                                                  Source:The Hindu

Stonehenge may have been a worship site

 

Stonehenge may have been a place of worship some 500 years before the first stone was erected, a research has claimed.

Archaeologists from the universities of Birmingham, Bradford and Vienna claim that the sanctity of Stonehenge’s location may have determined the layout of key aspects of the surrounding sacred landscape.

The research increases the likelihood that the site was originally and primarily associated with sun worship.

The research has also enabled the archaeologists to reconstruct the detailed route of a possible religious congregation or other ritual event which they suspect may have taken place annually to the north of Stonehenge.

In their research, the archaeologists discovered two great pits, one towards the enclosure’s eastern end and the other nearer its western end.

When they modelled the relationship between these newly discovered Cursus pits and Stonehenge on their computer system, they realised that, viewed from the so-called “Heel Stone” at Stonehenge, the pits were aligned with sunrise and sunset on the longest day of the year.

The chances of those two alignments being purely coincidental are extremely low.

The archaeologists then began to speculate as to what sort of ritual or ceremonial activity might have been carried out at and between the two pits. In many areas of the world, ancient religious and other ceremonies sometimes involved ceremonially processing round the perimeters of monuments.

They therefore thought it possible that the prehistoric celebrants at the Cursus might have perambulated between the two pits by processing around the perimeter of the Cursus.

The “eureka moment” came when the computer calculations revealed that the midway point (the noon point) on the route aligned directly with the centre of Stonehenge, which was precisely due south.

This realisation that the sun hovering over the site of Stonehenge at its highest point in the year appears to have been of great importance to prehistoric people, is itself of potential significance.

For it suggests that the site’s association with the veneration of the sun was perhaps even greater than previously realised.

However, the implication of the new evidence is that in a sense, the story may have been the other way round, that the site of Stonehenge was sacred before the Cursus was built, says lead archaeologist Dr. Henry Chapman, who has been modelling the alignments on the computerised reconstructions of the Stonehenge landscape.             

                                                                                                                                  source:The Hindu