Saturn's Glorious Rings Dazzle in NASA Photo

NASA's Cassini spacecraft snapped this angled shot of Saturn, showing the southern reaches of the planet with the rings on a dramatic diagonal. Saturn's icy moon Enceladus is visible as a tiny white speck in the lower lefthand corner. Space.com

Ancient Water Streambed Discovered On Mars

A NASA rover's discovery of an ancient streambed on Mars is exciting, but it’s far from the first solid evidence that the Red Planet was once a warmer and wetter place. On Thursday (Sept. 27), scientists announced that the Curiosity rover had found rocky outcrops containing large and rounded stones cemented in a conglomerate matrix. The discovery suggests that water had flowed fast and relatively deep — perhaps hip-deep, in fact — through the area billions of years ago.

But Curiosity's find didn't exactly surprise mission scientists. They chose to set the $2.5 billion robot down in the Red Planet's huge Gale Crater, after all, because Mars-orbiting spacecraft have spotted signs there of long-ago water activity — from channels and alluvial fans to minerals that form in the presence of liquid water.And these more recent observations build on evidence for a wet ancient Mars that goes back four decades and has been accumulating ever since. 

Curiosity's mission may also shed light on when and why Mars dried out long ago. Scientists plan to drive the 1-ton robot partway up Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the Red Planet sky from Gale's center. They're keen to explore Mount Sharp's base, which harbors clays and sulfates, orbital observations have shown. About 2,300 feet (700 meters) up, however, these deposits peter out. If Curiosity climbs high enough to cross this threshold, it could help scientists piece together a history of wet Mars, dry Mars and the transition between the two, researchers have said. Space.com

MARS Curiosity rover's landing footage

The shot above is the first high(ish) resolution photo shown to the public from its cameras, depicting a shadow of its top, a peculiar Martian landscape and the three-mile Mount Sharp. Just beyond the break, you'll find video footage of the intense descent onto Mars' surface. MadOne

8 Ingredients You Never Want to See on Your Nutrition Label

BHA

This preservative is used to prevent rancidity in foods that contain oils. Unfortunately, BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) has been shown to cause cancer in rats, mice, and hamsters. The reason the FDA hasn’t banned it is largely technical—the cancers all occurred in the rodents’ forestomachs, an organ that humans don’t have. Nevertheless, the study, published in the Japanese Journal of Cancer Research, concluded that BHA was “reasonably anticipated to be a carcinogen,” and as far as I’m concerned, that’s reason enough to eliminate it from your diet. You’ll find it in: Fruity Pebbles, Cocoa Pebbles

Parabens

 These synthetic preservatives are used to inhibit mold and yeast in food. The problem is parabens may also disrupt your body’s hormonal balance. A study in Food Chemical Toxicology found that daily ingestion decreased sperm and testosterone production in rats, and parabens have been found present in breast cancer tissues.
You’ll find it in: Baskin-Robbins sundaes

Partially Hydrogenated Oil

 I’ve harped on this before, but it bears repeating: Don’t confuse “0 g trans fat” with being trans fat-free. The FDA allows products to claim zero grams of trans fat as long as they have less than half a gram per serving. That means they can have 0.49 grams per serving and still be labeled a no-trans-fat food. Considering that two grams is the absolute most you ought to consume in a day, those fractions can quickly add up. The telltale sign that your snack is soiled with the stuff? Look for partially hydrogenated oil on the ingredient statement. If it’s anywhere on there, then you’re ingesting artery-clogging trans fat. You’ll find it in: Long John Silver’s Popcorn Shrimp, Celeste frozen pizzas

Sodium Nitrite

 Nitrites and nitrates are used to inhibit botulism-causing bacteria and to maintain processed meats’ pink hues, which is why the FDA allows their use. Unfortunately, once ingested, nitrite can fuse with amino acids (of which meat is a prime source) to form nitrosamines, powerful carcinogenic compounds. Ascorbic and erythorbic acids—essentially vitamin C—have been shown to decrease the risk, and most manufacturers now add one or both to their products, which has helped. Still, the best way to reduce risk is to limit your intake. You’ll find it in: Oscar Mayer hot dogs, Hormel bacon

Caramel Coloring

This additive wouldn't be dangerous if you made it the old-fashioned way—with water and sugar, on top of a stove. But the food industry follows a different recipe: They treat sugar with ammonia, which can produce some nasty carcinogens. How carcinogenic are these compounds? A Center for Science in the Public Interest report asserted that the high levels of caramel color found in soda account for roughly 15,000 cancers in the U.S. annually. Another good reason to scrap soft drinks? They’re among The 20 Worst Drinks in America.
You’ll find it in: Coke/Diet Coke, Pepsi/Diet Pepsi

Castoreum

 Castoreum is one of the many nebulous “natural ingredients” used to flavor food. Though it isn’t harmful, it is unsettling. Castoreum is a substance made from beavers’ castor sacs, or anal scent glands. These glands produce potent secretions that help the animals mark their territory in the wild. In the food industry, however, 1,000 pounds of the unsavory ingredient are used annually to imbue foods—usually vanilla or raspberry flavored—with a distinctive, musky flavor.  You’ll find it in: Potentially any food containing “natural ingredients”

Food Dyes

Plenty of fruit-flavored candies and sugary cereals don’t contain a single gram of produce, but instead rely on artificial dyes and flavorings to suggest a relationship with nature. Not only do these dyes allow manufacturers to mask the drab colors of heavily processed foods, but certain hues have been linked to more serious ailments. A Journal of Pediatrics study linked Yellow 5 to hyperactivity in children, Canadian researchers found Yellow 6 and Red 40 to be contaminated with known carcinogens, and Red 3 is known to cause tumors. The bottom line? Avoid artificial dyes as much as possible. You’ll find it in: Lucky Charms, Skittles, Jell-O

THE DOMINO EFFECT: Sugar doesn’t just come in the form of cookies and candy. Discover the insidious ways it can creep into your diet with 9 Sneaky Sources of Sugar.

Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein

 Hydrolyzed vegetable protein, used as a flavor enhancer, is plant protein that has been chemically broken down into amino acids. One of these acids, glutamic acid, can release free glutamate. When this glutamate joins with free sodium in your body, they form monosodium glutamate (MSG), an additive known to cause adverse reactions—headaches, nausea, and weakness, among others—in sensitive individuals. When MSG is added to products directly, the FDA requires manufacturers to disclose its inclusion on the ingredient statement. But when it occurs as a byproduct of hydrolyzed protein, the FDA allows it to go unrecognized. You’ll find it in: Knorr Noodle Sides, Funyuns

FIGHT FAT EVERY DAY: Knowledge is your best defense in the battle against flab.

Rising sea level puts US Atlantic coast at risk

The sea level on a stretch of the US Atlantic coast that features the cities of New York, Norfolk and Boston is rising up to four times faster than the global average, a report said Sunday. This increases the flood risk for one of the world's most densely-populated coastal areas and threatens wetland habitats, said a study reported in the journal Nature Climate Change. Since about 1990, the sea level along the 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) "hotspot" zone has risen by two to 3.7 millimetres (0.08 to 0.15 inches) per year. The global rise over the same period was between 0.6 and one millimetre per year, said the study by the US Geological Survey (USGS).

If global temperatures continue to rise, the sea level on this portion of the coast by 2100 could rise up to 30 centimetres over and above the one-metre global surge projected by scientists, it added. The localised acceleration is thought to be caused by a disruption of Atlantic current circulation. The hotspot stretches from Cape Hatteras, Northern Carolina to north of Boston, Massachusetts and also includes other big cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore. Another study has shown a one-metre sea level rise to increase New York's severe flooding risk from one incident every century to one every three years. It might be a good idea to move inland from the coast. I would also advise more of my readers to keep an close eye on the climate over the remainder of the year. AFP / MadOne

Parts of Mars Interior as Wet as Earth's

The interior of Mars holds vast reservoirs of water, with some spots apparently as wet as Earth's innards, scientists say. The finding upends previous studies, which had estimated that the Red Planet's internal water stores were scanty at best — something of a surprise, given that liquid water apparently flowed on the Martian surface long ago. The scientists examined two Martian meteorites that formed in the planet's mantle, the layer under the crust. These rocks landed on Earth about 2.5 million years ago, after being blasted off the Red Planet by a violent impact. Using a technique called secondary ion mass spectrometry, the team determined that the mantle from which the meteorites derived contained between 70 and 300 parts per million (ppm) of water. Earth's mantle, for comparison, holds roughly 50-300 ppm water, researchers said.

"The results suggest that water was incorporated during the formation of Mars and that the planet was able to store water in its interior during the planet’s differentiation."  Some of this water apparently made its made to the surface in the ancient past. NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed on the Red Planet in 2004, have found plenty of evidence that Mars was far warmer and wetter billions of years ago than it is today. The two golf-cart-size robots have even spotted signs of ancient hydrothermal systems, suggesting that some places on the Red Planet once had both water and an energy source — two key ingredients for the existence of life as we know it.

While the new results should help scientists better understand Mars and its history, they could also shed light on the evolution of large, rocky bodies in a more general sense, researchers said.

"Not only does this study explain how Mars got its water, it provides a mechanism for hydrogen storage in all the terrestrial planets at the time of their formation," lead author Francis McCubbin, of the University of New Mexico, said in a statement. Space.com / MadOne

DNA Inside Cells Can Serve As Rewritable Data Storage

DNA is the blueprint for life, and now it can serve as a computer to monitor life’s processes. Bioengineers transformed DNA into a one-bit memory system that can record, store and erase data within living cells. A future DNA memory device could be used to track cell division and differentiation in cancer patients, perhaps, or to monitor what happens as cells get sick or age. We’ve seen plenty of body-monitoring computer systems, from chips that can swim through the bloodstream to nanowires that can tap the heart or other muscle. But so far, these systems are limited to a few processes. This system could work like rewritable memory in your computer, recording and erasing information again and again. 


The system flips DNA sequences back and forth between two states, basically the genetic equivalent of a binary switch. One DNA orientation equates to “one,” and the other equates to “zero.” The process uses an enzyme taken from bacteriophages to cut and recombine the DNA. The recombinase enzyme moves to a particular swath of DNA and flips it around so its base pairs basically read backward, and a second signal flips it back.

Stanford researchers Jerome Bonnet and Drew Endy call it a “recombinase addressable data” module, or RAD. The team worked for three years to find the right balance of proteins that would reliably flip the DNA sequences back and forth without degrading. To test whether it worked, the team modified E. coli bacteria to fluoresce in different colors depending on the state of the DNA bit. In lab tests so far, it’s been able to monitor the activity of E. coli as they double more than 100 times. The team’s goal is to produce a byte, combining 8 of these RAD bits to build a larger memory system. Popsci

Saturn's Two Largest Moons Line Up

 
Saturn's two biggest moons hang together in a stunning new photo from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The image shows the heavily cratered Rhea in the foreground, while the hazy orb of the huge moon Titan looms in the distance. Cassini snapped the shot in visible green light on Dec. 10, 2011, and it was released to the public on Monday (Feb. 13). Cassini was about 808,000 miles (1.3 million kilometers) from Rhea and 1.2 million miles (2 million km) from Titan when it took the picture, researchers said. Titan is the largest of Saturn's many satellites; at 3,200 miles (5,150 km) wide, it's nearly 1.5 times bigger than Earth's moon. The only moon in our solar system larger than Titan is Ganymede, which orbits Jupiter. 

 
Titan has a thick, nitrogen-rich atmosphere that shrouds the frigid body in a soupy brown shroud. Complex organic molecules — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it — swirl about in this atmosphere. The huge moon also has a hydrocarbon-based weather system, with methane rain falling from the sky and pooling in liquid-methane lakes. Astrobiologists speculate that Titan may be one of the best places in the solar system to search for life beyond Earth.

Rhea is Saturn's second-largest moon, but it's a shrimp compared to Titan, measuring just 949 miles (1528 km) across. As the new photo shows, Rhea's icy surface is battered and pocked with many craters. Like Titan, Rhea has an atmosphere. But Rhea's is very different; it's much wispier and composed primarily of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Researchers think the oxygen comes from Rhea's surface ice, liberated from water molecules that get blasted apart by charged particles streaming from Saturn's magnetosphere. The source of the carbon dioxide, however, is more mysterious. Space.com

NASA's Kepler confirms 26 new planets

The US space agency said Thursday its Kepler space telescope mission has confirmed 26 new planets outside our solar system, all of them orbiting too close to their host stars to sustain life. Scattered across 11 planetary systems, their temperatures would be too hot for survival, as they all circle their stars closer than Venus, the second planet from the Sun, which has a surface temperature of 464 Celsius (867 F). But NASA scientists were still pleased with the findings, which nearly double the number of confirmed planets that Kepler has found since 2009.

"Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates," he added. "This tells us that our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits." 

In December last year, NASA announced Kepler had confirmed its first-ever planet in a habitable zone outside our solar system, Kepler 22b, though it remained unclear whether the surface was rocky or gaseous. Such planets have the right distance from their star to support water, plus a suitable temperature and atmosphere to support life. Spinning around its star some 600 light years away, Kepler 22b is 2.4 times the size of the Earth and orbits its Sun-like star every 290 days. The 26 planets that Kepler confirmed on Thursday orbit their stars between every six and 143 days. AP

NASA Telescope Confirms Alien Planet in Habitable Zone

This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star.
CREDIT: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft has confirmed the discovery of its first alien world in its host star's habitable zone — that just-right range of distances that could allow liquid water to exist — and found more than 1,000 new explanet candidates, researchers announced today (Dec. 5). The new finds bring the Kepler space telescope's total haul to 2,326 potential planets in its first 16 months of operation.These discoveries, if confirmed, would quadruple the current tally of worlds known to exist beyond our solar system, which recently topped 700. The potentially habitable alien world, a first for Kepler, orbits a star very much like our own sun. The discovery brings scientists one step closer to finding a planet like our own — one which could conceivably harbor life, scientists said. 

The newfound planet in the habitable zone is called Kepler-22b. It is located about 600 light-years away, orbiting a sun-like star. Kepler-22b's radius is 2.4 times that of Earth, and the two planets have roughly similar temperatures. If the greenhouse effect operates there similarly to how it does on Earth, the average surface temperature on Kepler-22b would be 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius).

This diagram compares our own solar system to Kepler-22, a star system containing the first "habitable zone" planet discovered by NASA's Kepler mission.
CREDIT: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

Of the total 2,326 candidate planets that Kepler has found to date, 207 are approximately Earth-size. More of them, 680, are a bit larger than our planet, falling into the "super-Earth" category. The total number of candidate planets in the habitable zones of their stars is now 48. To date, just over two dozen of these potential exoplanets have been confirmed, but Kepler scientists have estimated that at least 80 percent of the instrument's discoveries should end up being the real deal. Space.com

The Real Crystal Skulls

The Anna Mitchell-Hedges Skull
was discovered in British Honduras in 1927

Skulls are humanity's foremost symbol of death, and a powerful icon in the visual vocabularies of cultures all over the globe. Thirteen crystal skulls of apparently ancient origin have been found in parts of Mexico, Central America and South America, comprising one of the most fascinating subjects of 20th Century archaeology.

The British Crystal Skull.  It is currently residing in the British Museum of Man in London, England, and has been there since 1898. It is a one piece clear quartz full size quartz crystal skull.

The British Crystal Skull.  It is currently residing in the British Museum of Man in London, England, and has been there since 1898. It is a one piece clear quartz full size quartz crystal skull.

These skulls, found near the ancient ruins of Mayan and Aztec civilizations (with some evidence linking the skulls with past civilization in Peru) are a mystery as profound as the Pyramids of Egypt, the Nazca Lines of Peru, or Stonehenge. Some of the skulls are believed to be between 5,000 and 36,000 years old.

Many indigenous people speak of their remarkable magical and healing properties, but nobody really knows where they came from or what they were used for. 

The Paris Crystal Skull It  is currently residing in the Trocadero Museum in Paris, France.
You may notice a slight indentation on the top, which is a hole that was cut into the skull purported to hold a cross.

The Amethyst Skull is made of purple quartz and the Mayan skull is clear, but the two are otherwise very alike. Like the Mitchell-Hedges skull, both of them were studied at Hewlett-Packard, and they too were found to be inexplicably cut against the axis of the crystal.

Were they left behind after the destruction of a previous world, such as Atlantis? Are they simply ingenious modern fakes or can they really enable us to see deeply into the past and predict the future? Much research is currently being done on the skulls. However, their origin is still a baffling mystery. They seem to defy logic. Everything that is known about lapidary work indicates that the skulls should have been shattered fractured, or fallen apart when carved. Remember the last Indiana Jones movie was about a crystal skull. There is some truth to some of the stories in Hollywood scripts. Look deeper and you might find something like the above. MadOne 

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

 

New Finding Ups the Chances of Life on Jupiter's Moon Europa

Europa, as viewed from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft. Visible are plains of bright ice, cracks that run to the horizon, and dark patches that likely contain both ice and dirt.

 
Europa, Jupiter's icy moon, meets not one but two of the critical requirements for life, scientists say. For decades, experts have known about the moon's vast underground ocean — a possible home for living organisms — and now a study shows that the ocean regularly receives influxes of the energy required for life via chaotic processes near the moon's surface. Lead author Britney Schmidt, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin, explained that her team studied ice shelves and underground volcanoes on Earth in order to model the formation of odd features called "chaos terrains" that appear all over Europa. The researchers determined that it was heat rising from the moon's deep subterranean ocean and melting ice near the surface, creating briny lakes inside the moon's thick ice shell, that may have caused the collapse of these roughly circular structures above them. These dynamic lakes, which melt and refreeze over the course of hundreds of thousands or millions of years, lie beneath as much as 50 percent of Europa's surface, the scientists said. 

Europa's liquid water ocean "meets one of the critical requirements for life," Hoehler said, noting that its ocean chemistry is believed to be suitable for sustaining living things. "And what you're hearing about today from Britney bears on a second crucial requirement, and that is the requirement for energy." Cut off from the sun, Europa's subterranean ocean would need some other energy source to sustain life. Hoehler said spacecraft observations show that there is a huge amount of stored energy in Europa's mineral-rich crust, but it is separated from the liquid ocean below by at least 6 miles (10 km) of ice. Like the two terminals of a battery, energy can flow from the surface material to the ocean only if the two are somehow connected, he said. Europan life isn't a done deal just yet, though. Water and energy aren't the only ingredients on the checklist for life, and scientists aren't sure whether Europa has the others, such as the necessary organic chemicals. SPACE.COM

Is the New Physics Here?

This giant magnetic is part of the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland.

Atom Smashers Get an Antimatter Surprise
The world's largest atom smasher, designed as a portal to a new view of physics, has produced its first peek at the unexpected: bits of matter that don't mirror the behavior of their antimatter counterparts. The discovery, if confirmed, could rewrite the known laws of particle physics and help explain why our universe is made mostly of matter and not antimatter.

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider, the 17-mile (27 km) circular particle accelerator underground near Geneva, Switzerland, have been colliding protons at high speeds to create explosions of energy. From this energy many subatomic particles are produced. Now researchers at the accelerator's LHCb experiment are reporting that some matter particles produced inside the machine appear to be behaving differently from their antimatter counterparts, which might provide a partial explanation to the mystery of antimatter. Space.com

Newly found 'super-Earth' could potentially support life

 

More than 50 new alien planets — including one so-called super-Earth that could potentially support life — have been discovered by an exoplanet-hunting telescope from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The newfound haul of alien planets includes 16 super-Earths, which are potentially rocky worlds that are more massive than our planet. One in particular - called HD 85512 b - has captured astronomers' attention because it orbits at the edge of its star's habitable zone, suggesting conditions could be ripe to support life. 

The potentially habitable super-Earth, officially called HD 85512 b, is estimated to be only 3.6 times more massive than Earth, and its parent star is located about 35 light-years away, making it relatively nearby. HD 85512 b was found to orbit at the edge of its star's habitable zone, which is a narrow region in which the distance is just right that liquid water could exist given the right conditions. Astronomers have previously discovered 564 confirmed alien planets, with roughly 1,200 additional candidate worlds under investigation based on data from the Kepler space observatory, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Space.com

 

Huge chunk of ice breaks off Greenland glacier

A block of ice four times the size of Manhattan has split off from a Greenland glacier and melted--an event so dramatic that it's shocked the scientists who study the area. Scientists now worry that another block of ice--about two times the size of Manhattan--is preparing to break off, according to the New York Times. Greenland's ice sheet may be melting at the rate of 400 billion tons per year. According to MSNBC, Greenland has lost "592.6 square miles of ice between 2000 and 2010." The break happened in 2010, but this is the first time photos have been available. MadOne

Potential Liquid Water On Mars 'A Big Deal

Picture of Martian Surface from NASA's Spirit Rover

 

Claims of water on Mars have been made before, but a new discovery of potential liquid water on the Red Planet's surface last week is still making waves in the science world. What differentiates the new find from previous discoveries is the fact that it's the strongest evidence yet for liquid water, as opposed to ice, and it's on the Martian surface, as opposed to miles underground where it would be difficult to verify its presence. The research is based on observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which observed seasonal changes in slopes carved into the planet's surface that appear most likely to have been formed by flowing salty, briny water. Scientists not involved with the project agree that the discovery could be big.

Not only does the new discovery rekindle hopes that Mars hosts life, but it offers the chance that finding it might not be as difficult as once thought. Until now, many searches for life have also focused on the Red Planet's potential for past habitability on the surface, when Mars was thought to be a much wetter world. "Identification of environments where life might be able to survive on present-day Mars could shift our focus from past to present-day habitability," Carr said. "The subsurface might be one good place to look, but areas with potential liquid brines at the surface are much more accessible." 

But before we start counting our Martians before they hatch, all the scientists advised caution until more data is available to prove that the slopes are actually caused by water. Space.com

Scientists Find Way To Genetically Alter DNA

What if scientists could genetically alter cells to produce substances not found in nature? No, this isn’t the plot of that sci-fi flick you watched last night; it’s a remarkable scientific achievement by a group of researchers from Harvard and MIT. The new technology allows scientists to engineer large-scale changes within the genetic code of a living cell by replacing specific DNA sequences. "We're essentially programming the cell to do our bidding," said Harris Wang, one of the lead researchers on the project. "[This technology] enables us to manipulate the genome as if it’s a scaffold, and build upon it." 

The innovation, Carr said, "opens up the opportunity to program new things into the genetic code," allowing scientists to create "new building blocks for the machines of life." One possible application would be to alter the genes of certain crops — such as potatoes, for instance — to make them invulnerable to viruses. Technews Daily

NASA's Next Mars Rover to Land at Huge Gale Crater

 

WASHINGTON — It's official: NASA's next Mars rover has a landing site, and it's a giant crater called Gale. NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission is slated to launch in late November, and will drop a car-size rover named Curiosity at the Gale crater. Gale crater is about 96 miles (154 kilometers) wide and has a mountain at its center that rises higher, from the crater floor up, than Mount Rainer near Seattle. The crater, which is named after Australian astronomer Walter F. Gale, is so large that the U.S. states of Connecticut and Rhode Island could fit inside it, NASA officials said. 

Gale crater is also thought to harbor clues of ancient water activity on the Martian surface, and one of Curiosity's primary tasks will be to root around for evidence that Mars is, or was, capable of supporting microbial life. 

The agency revealed the landing site (July 22) in a briefing hosted by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington. The announcement coincides with the museum's celebration of Mars Day, which commemorates the 35th anniversary of NASA's Viking 1 Mars landing on July 20, 1976. Space.com

NASA Spacecraft Arrives at Asteroid Next Week

NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image on its approach to the protoplanet Vesta, the second-most massive object in the main asteroid belt. The image was obtained on June 20, 2011.

 
A NASA spacecraft is just 11 days away from a historic rendezvous with an asteroid the size of Arizona. NASA's Dawn probe should enter into orbit around Vesta on July 16, becoming the first spacecraft to visit the 330-mile-wide (530-kilometer) space rock — the second-largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Dawn is expected to spend a year studying the space rock from above, marking the first time a spacecraft has ever made an extended visit to a large asteroid.

Vesta is so large that many scientists classify it as a protoplanet. The object was well on its way to becoming a full-fledged rocky planet long ago, scientists said, but circumstances intervened. So Vesta is a sort of time capsule, preserving some record of how the solar system came together 4.5 billion years ago.

Scientists hope Dawn's mission will help them learn about the early days of the solar system and the processes that formed and shaped rocky planets like Earth and Mars. 

Brain Implant Lets Thoughts Control Prosthetic Limbs

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a noninvasive, low-power brain implant that could lead to several new technologies in the future, including the neural manipulation of prosthetic limbs. This could allow amputees and paralysis victims to move plastic or metal arms and legs with their minds. 

The implant, titled BioBolt after its boltlike shape, can be inserted directly into the skull without penetrating the brain's cortex. Unlike other neural implants, which typically require a patient's skull to remain open during use, the BioBolt is designed for realistic applications – the implant fits above the skull and is completely covered by a layer of skin, keeping it completely unobtrusive and practical for everyday use. In addition to allowing people to move prosthetic or plastic arms using their brains, the BioBolt could help doctors diagnose diseases such as epilepsy, according to Euisik Yoon, a Michigan professor and the principal investigator on this project. Because the procedure it uses is minimally invasive, Yoon says the BioBolt will be far safer and more efficient than other technologies that are currently available.


Still, Yoon admits the BioBolt is still in its infancy stages. The team still has a lot of testing ahead of them before they start using the device for practical purposes. Yoon said the team plans to experiment with BioBolt on primates in the near future. Technews Daily/ MadOne