The Missing link?: Scientists unveil lemur-like fossil at New York’s American Museum of Natural History
Say hello to "Aunt Ida"- you’ll find her 47million years back on your family tree.
The lemur-like fossil, thought to be a missing link between today’s primates and distant relatives, is on show at New York’s American Museum of Natural History after being launched amid great fanfare by the city’s mayor.
The skeleton is so good that it still has an outline of fur and there are traces of its last meal.
The female animal lived during the Eocene Period, when early primates developed.
Scientists Mull Future After Carbon Satellite Crash
Nine years of work disappeared in five minutes yesterday when a NASA satellite crashed into the icy waters near Antarctica. Now climate scientists who worked on the ambitious effort to map the world’s carbon dioxide are trying to figure out what comes next.
The $278 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory was designed to monitor how CO2 enters and exits the Earth’s atmosphere — hoping to yield a picture of a rhythm that is much like taking a breath. Forests and oceans absorb the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, while burning fossil fuels and decaying plant and animal life send more back.
There is a delicate balance between the two processes that shifts with seasons and weather patterns — plants, for example, pull in more CO2 in spring than in winter, when many lose their leaves.
Doomsday lawsuit dismissed
A federal judge in Hawaii today dismissed a lawsuit raising fears about Europe’s Large Hadron Collider, on the grounds that she had no jurisdiction over the multibillion-dollar project.
In a 26-page ruling, District Judge Helen Gillmor said that the world’s largest particle-smasher was not subject to U.S. environmental regulations because the federal government didn’t contribute enough money or play enough of a role in controlling the experiment.
After years of construction, the LHC was started up at low energy on Sept. 10, sending beams of protons around a 17-mile-round (27-kilometer-round) ring of tunnels beneath the French-Swiss border. On the day after the startup, however, the machine suffered a magnet malfunction, and more serious problems cropped up a week later.
Miracle airship tech sustained by DARPA pork trickle • The Register
A Ukrainian airship visionary based in California has won further US military funding to develop his miraculous “Aeroscraft” sky-leviathan design. However, some question marks remain over the craft’s unique – almost miraculous – buoyancy-control technology.
Aeros Aeronautical Systems Corp announced last week that it had been awarded a contract to demonstrate its lightweight rigid aerostructure technology. The money was awarded by DARPA*, the famous Pentagon wackboffinry bureau known for its defiant reliance on the appliance of science to all military problems.
‘Human jet’ try due over English Channel
LONDON, England (AP) — Swiss pilot Yves Rossy is set to cross the English Channel strapped to a homemade jet-propelled wing, organizers said Thursday.
Weather permitting, Rossy will leap from a plane more than 2,500 meters (2,700 yards) off the ground, fire up his jets and try to make the 35-kilometer (22-mile) from Calais in France to Dover in England in about 12 minutes, according to a statement put out by his organizers.
In his first public demonstration of the device in May, Rossy turned figure-eights high above the Alps, performing fluid loops from one side of the Rhone valley to the other.
Small accidents mean big trouble for supercollider
GENEVA (AP) — Scientists expect startup glitches in the massive, complex machines they use to smash atoms.
But the unique qualities of the world’s largest particle collider mean that the meltdown of a small electrical connection could delay its groundbreaking research until next year, scientists said Sunday.
Because the Large Hadron Collider operates at near absolute zero — colder than outer space — the damaged area must be warmed to a temperature where humans can work. That takes about a month. Then it has to be re-chilled for another month.
Hadron Collider halted for months
The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be out of action for at least two months, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) says.
Part of the giant physics experiment was turned off for the weekend while engineers probed a magnet failure.
But a Cern spokesman said damage to the £3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator was worse than anticipated.
The LHC is built to smash protons together at huge speeds, recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang.
Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.