One-of-a-kind triple star system may offer clue to true nature of gravity

The system offers the scientists the best-yet opportunity to discover a violation of a concept called the Equivalence Principle.
Science Recorder | Jonathan Marker | Monday, January 06, 2014

According to a January 5 news release from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory , a team of astronomers using the NSF’s Green Bank Telescope has discovered a one-of-a-kind triple star system consisting of two white dwarf stars and a super-dense neutron star.  Intriguingly, all three of these stars occupy an orbit smaller than that of Earth’s.  This unique placement of three stars has permitted scientists to make the most accurate measurements yet of the intricate gravitational interactions in this type of star system.  Eventually, the detailed analysis of this system may offer a major clue for understanding the true nature of gravity.

“This triple system gives us a natural cosmic laboratory far better than anything found before for learning exactly how such three-body systems work and potentially for detecting problems with General Relativity that physicists expect to see under extreme conditions,” said Scott Ransom, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.  “This is the first millisecond pulsar found in such a system, and we immediately recognized that it provides us a tremendous opportunity to study the effects and nature of gravity.”

The astronomers embarked on an exhaustive observational program using the Green Bank Telescope, the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, and the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands.  In addition, they observed the system using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the GALEX satellite, the WIYN telescope on Kitt Peak, Arizona, and the Spitzer Space Telescope.
“The gravitational perturbations imposed on each member of this system by the others are incredibly pure and strong,” Ransom said. “The millisecond pulsar serves as an extremely powerful tool for measuring those perturbations incredibly well.”

By accurately recording the time of appearance of the pulsar’s pulses, the scientists calculated the geometry of the system and the masses of the stars with unequaled precision.

“We have made some of the most accurate measurements of masses in astrophysics,” said Anne Archibald, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy.  ”Some of our measurements of the relative positions of the stars in the system are accurate to hundreds of meters.”
The system offers the scientists the best-yet opportunity to discover a violation of a concept called the Equivalence Principle.  According to this principle, the effect of gravity on a body does not depend on the nature or internal structure of that body.

“While Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity has so far been confirmed by every experiment, it is not compatible with quantum theory. Because of that, physicists expect that it will break down under extreme conditions,” Ransom said.  ”This triple system of compact stars gives us a great opportunity to look for a violation of a specific form of the equivalence principle called the Strong Equivalence Principle.”

The complete research findings appear online January 5 in the journal Nature.

Read more: http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/one-of-a-kind-triple-star-system-may-offer-clue-to-true-nature-of-gravity/#ixzz2pfWkay2E

Scientists split water into hydrogen, oxygen utilizing light, nanoparticles

The experiments used different sources of light, ranging from a laser to white light simulating the solar spectrum. 

Science Recorder | Jonathan Marker | Monday, December 16, 2013

According to a December 15 news release from the University of Houston (UH), researchers there have discovered a catalyst that can rapidly separate hydrogen and oxygen from water using the sun’s rays and cobalt oxide nanoparticles.

Technology potentially could create a clean, renewable source of energy

Researchers from the University of Houston have found a catalyst that can quickly generate hydrogen from water using sunlight, potentially creating a clean and renewable source of energy.

Their research, published online Sunday in Nature Nanotechnology, involved the use of cobalt oxide nanoparticles to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Jiming Bao, lead author of the paper and an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering at UH, said the research discovered a new photocatalyst and demonstrated the potential of nanotechnology in engineering a material's property, although more work remains to be done.

Bao said photocatalytic water-splitting experiments have been tried since the 1970s, but this was the first to use cobalt oxide and the first to use neutral water under visible light at a high energy conversion efficiency without co-catalysts or sacrificial chemicals. The project involved researchers from UH, along with those from Sam Houston State University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Texas State University, Carl Zeiss Microscopy LLC, and Sichuan University.

Researchers prepared the nanoparticles in two ways, using femtosecond laser ablation and through mechanical ball milling. Despite some differences, Bao said both worked equally well.

Different sources of light were used, ranging from a laser to white light simulating the solar spectrum. He said he would expect the reaction to work equally well using natural sunlight.

Once the nanoparticles are added and light applied, the water separates into hydrogen and oxygen almost immediately, producing twice as much hydrogen as oxygen, as expected from the 2:1 hydrogen to oxygen ratio in H2O water molecules, Bao said.

The experiment has potential as a source of renewable fuel, but at a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency rate of around 5 percent, the conversion rate is still too low to be commercially viable. Bao suggested a more feasible efficiency rate would be about 10 percent, meaning that 10 percent of the incident solar energy will be converted to hydrogen chemical energy by the process.

Other issues remain to be resolved, as well, including reducing costs and extending the lifespan of cobalt oxide nanoparticles, which the researchers found became deactivated after about an hour of reaction.

"It degrades too quickly," said Bao, who also has appointments in materials engineering and the Department of Chemistry.

The work, supported by the Welch Foundation, will lead to future research, he said, including the question of why cobalt oxide nanoparticles have such a short lifespan, and questions involving chemical and electronic properties of the material.

Extinct ancient ape did not walk like a human, study shows

Jul 25, 2013 
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-07-extinct-ancient-ape-human.html#jCp

    
According to a new study, led by University of Texas at Austin anthropologists Gabrielle A. Russo and Liza Shapiro, the 9- to 7-million-year-old ape from Italy did not, in fact, walk habitually on two legs.

The findings refute a long body of evidence, suggesting that Oreopithecus had the capabilities for bipedal (moving on two legs) walking.

The study, published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, confirms that anatomical features related to habitual upright, two-legged walking remain exclusively associated with humans and their fossil ancestors.

"Our findings offer new insight into the Oreopithecus locomotor debate," says Russo, who is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Northeast Ohio Medical University. "While it's certainly possible that Oreopithecus walked on two legs to some extent, as apes are known to employ short bouts of this activity, an increasing amount of anatomical evidence clearly demonstrates that it didn't do so habitually."

As part of the study, the researchers analyzed the fossil ape to see whether it possessed lower spine anatomy consistent with bipedal walking. They compared measurements of its lumbar vertebrae (lower back) and sacrum (a triangular bone at the base of the spine) to those of modern humans, fossil hominins (extinct bipedal human ancestors), and a sample of mammals that commonly move around in trees, including apes, sloths and an extinct lemur.

The lower spine serves as a good basis for testing the habitual bipedal locomotion hypothesis because human lumbar vertebrae and sacra exhibit distinct features that facilitate the transmission of body weight for habitual bipedalism, says Russo.

According to the findings, the anatomy of Oreopithecus lumbar vertebrae and sacrum is unlike that of humans, and more similar to apes, indicating that it is incompatible with the functional demands of walking upright as a human does.

"The lower spine of humans is highly specialized for habitual bipedalism, and is therefore a key region for assessing whether this uniquely human form of locomotion was present in Oreopithecus," says Shapiro, a professor of anthropology. "Previous debate on the locomotor behavior of Oreopithecus had focused on the anatomy of the limbs and pelvis, but no one had reassessed the controversial claim that its lower back was human-like."
 

'Ardi' skull reveals links to human lineage -- did our pre-chimp ancestors walk upright?

 Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-01-ardi-skull-reveals-links-human.html#jCp

Enlarge        

This is the 4.4 million-year-old cranial base of Ardipithecus ramidus from Aramis, Middle Awash research area, Ethiopia. Credit: Tim White.

One of the most hotly debated issues in current human origins research focuses on how the 4.4 million-year-old African species Ardipithecus ramidus is related to the human lineage. "Ardi" was an unusual primate. Though it possessed a tiny brain and a grasping big toe used for clambering in the trees, it had small, humanlike canine teeth and an upper pelvis modified for bipedal walking on the ground.
 

Scientists disagree about where this mixture of features positions Ardipithecus ramidus on the tree of human and ape relationships. Was Ardi an ape with a few humanlike features retained from an ancestor near in time (6 and 8 million years ago, according to DNA evidence) to the split between the chimpanzee and human lines? Or was it a true relative of the human line that had yet to shed many signs of its remote tree-dwelling ancestry?

New research led by ASU paleoanthropologist William Kimbel confirms Ardi's close evolutionary relationship to humans. Kimbel and his collaborators turned to the underside (or base) of a beautifully preserved partial cranium of Ardi. Their study revealed a pattern of similarity that links Ardi to Australopithecus and modern humans and but not to apes.

The research appears in the January 6, 2014, online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Kimbel is director of the ASU Institute of Human Origins, a research center of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change. Joining ASU's Kimbel as co-authors are Gen Suwa (University of Tokyo Museum), Berhane Asfaw (Rift Valley Research Service, Addis Ababa), Yoel Rak (Tel Aviv University), and Tim White (University of California at Berkeley).

White's field-research team has been recovering fossil remains of Ardipithecus ramidus in the Middle Awash Research area, Ethiopia, since the 1990s. The most recent study of the Ardi skull, led by Suwa, was published in Science in 2009, whose work (with the Middle Awash team) first revealed humanlike aspects of its base. Kimbel co-leads the team that recovered the earliest known Australopithecus skulls from the Hadar site, home of the "Lucy" skeleton, in Ethiopia.
"Given the very tiny size of the Ardi skull, the similarity of its cranial base to a human's is astonishing," says Kimbel.

The cranial base is a valuable resource for studying phylogenetic, or natural evolutionary relationships, because its anatomical complexity and association with the brain, posture, and chewing system have provided numerous opportunities for adaptive evolution over time. The human cranial base, accordingly, differs profoundly from that of apes and other primates.

In humans, the structures marking the articulation of the spine with the skull are more forwardly located than in apes, the base is shorter from front to back, and the openings on each side for passage of blood vessels and nerves are more widely separated.

These shape differences affect the way the bones are arranged on the skull base such that it is fairly easy to tell apart even isolated fragments of ape and human basicrania.
Ardi's cranial base shows the distinguishing features that separate humans and Australopithecus from the apes. Kimbel's earlier research (with collaborator Rak) had shown that these human peculiarities were present in the earliest known Australopithecus skulls by 3.4 million years ago.
The new work expands the catalogue of anatomical similarities linking humans, Australopithecus, and Ardipithecus on the tree of life and shows that the human cranial base pattern is at least a million years older than Lucy's species, A. afarensis.

Paleoanthropologists generally fall into one of two camps on the cause of evolutionary changes in the human cranial base. Was it the adoption of upright posture and bipedality causing a shift in the poise of the head on the vertebral column? If so, does the humanlike cranial base of Ar. ramidus confirm postcranial evidence for partial bipedality in this species? Or, do the changes tell us about the shape of the brain (and of the base on which it sits), perhaps an early sign of brain reorganization in the human lineage? Both alternatives will need to be re-evaluated in light of the finding that Ardi does indeed appear to be more closely related to humans than to chimpanzees.

"The Ardi cranial base fills some important gaps in our understanding of human evolution above the neck," adds Kimbel. "But it opens up a host of new questions…just as it should!" 

Anthropologists confirm link between cranial anatomy and two-legged walking

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-anthropologists-link-cranial-anatomy-two-legged.html#jCp
Sep 27, 2013

Comparison of the skeletons of three bipedal mammals: an Egyptian jerboa, an eastern gray kangaroo and a human.

Anthropology researchers from The University of Texas at Austin have confirmed a direct link between upright two-legged (bipedal) walking and the position of the foramen magnum, a hole in the base of the skull that transmits the spinal cord.

The study, published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, confirms a controversial finding made by anatomist Raymond Dart, who discovered the first known two-legged walking (bipedal) human ancestor, Australopithecus africanus. Since Dart's discovery in 1925, physical anthropologists have continued to debate whether this feature of the cranial base can serve as a direct link to bipedal fossil species.

Chris Kirk, associate professor of anthropology and co-author of the study, says the findings validate foramen magnum position as a diagnostic tool for fossil research and sheds further insight into human evolution.

"Now that we know that a forward-shifted foramen magnum is characteristic of bipedal mammals generally, we can be more confident that fossil species showing this feature were also habitual bipeds," Kirk says. "Our methods can be applied to fossil material belonging to some of the earliest potential human ancestors."

The foramen magnum in humans is centrally positioned under the braincase because the head sits atop the upright spine in bipedal postures. In contrast, the foramen magnum is located further toward the back of the skull in chimpanzees and most other mammals, as the spine is positioned more behind the head in four-legged postures.

As part of the study, the researchers measured the position of the foramen magnum in 71 species from three mammalian groups: marsupials, rodents and primates. By comparing foramen magnum position broadly across mammals, the researchers were able to rule out other potential explanations for a forward-shifted foramen magnum, such as differences in brain size.

According to the findings, a foramen magnum positioned toward the base of the skull is found not only in humans, but in other habitually bipedal mammals as well. Kangaroos, kangaroo rats and jerboas all have a more forward-shifted foramen magnum compared with their quadrupedal (four-legged walking) close relatives.

These particular mammals evolved bipedal locomotion and anteriorly positioned foramina magna independently, or as a result of convergent evolution, says Gabrielle Russo, who is a postdoctoral research fellow at Northeast Ohio Medical University and lead researcher of the study.

"As one of the few cranial features directly linked to locomotion, the position of the foramen magnum is an important feature for the study of human evolution," Russo says. "This is the case for early hominin species such as Sahelanthropus tchadensis, which shows a forward shift of the foramen magnum but has aroused some controversy as to whether it is more closely related to humans or African apes."

The current, and very disturbing long term trend is clear?

The current, and very disturbing long term trend is clear. As noted above by Composer, since 2004 the 1998 (& 2002)record has fallen. It should be noted that that record was also exceeded in 2007 and 2009, although those were not record years because lower than the 2005 (and 2010) record. (Data) None of those records are certain because they all lie within error of each other, but all clearly exceed any record prior to 1998.

Note:  the admitted uncertainty of historical data, if  "they lie within error of each other" means that the Medieval Warm Period could be around current temperatures.  More accurate readings are needed.

A graph of modern temperatures from 1880 -- 2012 is shown below.  (The black lines are mine.)

 

Besides the obvious warming trend, other interesting features stand here, which my lines attempt to demonstrate more clearly.  Notice the warming follows a step pattern, and a highly repetitive one, with periods of longer warming back to back with shorter cooling.  The line is of course rough, but I think the pattern comes out pretty clear. 

 



 

Perhaps better than straight lines is a sine wave fit (sorry for the difficulty reading this).  I prefer this because it is a more natural model of temperature change, the fit is still good, and the last ~decade of temperature stabilizing (or even decreasing) is explained in a straightforward way.

 

For reasons that aren't reasonably clear to me, the warming-catastrophe clique objects to these lines and curves, regarding them as statistical chicanery.  For example, I happened on the chart below:

 

 

This, it claims, is how believers think skeptics view the data.  In this case, I agree; it's too short a time period with too much random noise.  You can also fit noise to some pattern, if you're determined to.

 

Having said this, however, believers then produce this graph:

 

The lower chart, which has been adopted by the catastrophist community without a quibble, uses decades (of course we all know that nature follows human conventions) to create decade by decade average bars.  Why?  Because, quite suddenly the stabilization or even slight cooling 2005 - 2013 instantly disappears.  No other logic than to blind us to what any open-eyed/mind can see is plainly obvious.  Hypocrisy knows no shame.

 

Well, enough for a while.  What have we found?  Some time back I reposted an article showing that much of published, even peer-reviewed, science is simply wrong.  I recently found a similar post showing the same is true of medical science.  Combine that with our ideological, political, cultural, religious, and other biases, not to mention group-think, it is no wonder there is so much confusion and contradiction on this subject.

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Study: Most Scientists Have Serious Doubts About The Claimed Extent Of Man-Made Global Warming

Study: Most Scientists Have Serious Doubts About The Claimed Extent Of Man-Made Global Warming

By P Gosselin on 16. Februar 2013 Reader Aetheress left a comment, which I’ve upgraded to a post.

Here it is: Post by Aetheress: I’ll try to keep this short - While all of the following scientists believe the globe is warming, the vast majority of them do NOT believe in the theory of “Anthropegenic” GW. Survey: “Peer-Reviewed Survey Finds Majority Of Scientists Skeptical Of Global Warming Crisis” 02-13-2013

Highlights:

'We find that virtually all respondents (99.4%) agree that the climate is changing. However, there is considerable disagreement as to cause, consequences, and lines of action (as outlined in Figure 2). On this basis, we find five different frames, each of them summarized in Table 3. Eight percent of respondents did not provide enough information regarding their framing of climate change to be categorized.’

‘The largest group of APEGA respondents (36%) draws on a frame that we label ‘comply with Kyoto’. In their diagnostic framing, they express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause.’

‘The second largest group (24%) express a ‘nature is overwhelming’ frame. In their diagnostic framing, they believe that changes to the climate are natural, normal cycles of the Earth. Their focus is on the past: ‘If you think about it, global warming is what brought us out of the Ice Age.’ Humans are too insignificant to have an impact on nature.’

”Fatalists’, a surprisingly large group (17%), diagnose climate change as both human- and naturally caused. ‘Fatalists’ consider climate change to be a smaller public risk with little impact on their personal life. They are sceptical that the scientific debate is settled regarding the IPCC modeling: ‘The number of variables and their interrelationships are almost unlimited – if anyone thinks they have all the answers, they have failed to ask all of the questions.’’

‘Ten percent of respondents draw on an ‘economic responsibility’ frame. They diagnose climate change as being natural or human caused. More than any other group, they underscore that the ‘real’ cause of climate change is unknown as nature is forever changing and uncontrollable.’

‘The last group (5%) expresses a frame we call ‘regulation activists’. This frame has the smallest number of adherents, expresses the most paradoxical framing, and yet is more agentic than ‘comply with Kyoto’. Advocates of this frame diagnose climate change as being both human and naturally caused, posing a moderate public risk, with only slight impact on their personal life.’

 99.4% say that the climate is changing. No ‘climate change’ deniers here. NONE.

There IS NO CONSENSUS.

2010 ‘Only one in four American Meteorological Society broadcast meteorologists agrees with United Nations’ claims that humans are primarily responsible for recent global warming, a survey published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society reports. The survey results contradict the oft-repeated assertion that a consensus of scientists believes humans are causing a global warming crisis.’

‘The survey was conducted by the congressionally funded National Environmental Education Foundation and vetted by an advisory board of climate experts from groups such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service, and Pew Center for Global Climate Change.’

‘Joe D’Aleo, executive director of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project and first director of meteorology at the Weather Channel, is not surprised by the survey results.’

‘AMS has tried very hard to brainwash broadcast meteorologists by forcing them to attend conferences and teleconferences with one-sided presentations where global warming evangelism is preached,’ D’Aleo said. ‘Broadcasters send me notifications they get from AMS telling them they must attend these conferences where only the alarmist point of view is preached. This survey shows that broadcast meteorologists are not swayed by these one-sided presentations.’

Now in 2013- ‘In an AMS survey, where all respondents are AMS meteorologists, a majority have Ph.D.s and fully 80% have a Ph.D. or Masters Degree, position statements by organizational bureaucracies carry little scientific weight.’

www.climatechangecommunication.org/report preliminary-findings-February

‘According to American Meteorological Society (AMS) data, 89% of AMS meteorologists believe global warming is happening, but only a minority (30%) is very worried about global warming.’

‘This sharp contrast between the large majority of meteorologists who believe global warming is happening and the modest minority who are nevertheless very worried about it is consistent with other scientist surveys. This contrast exposes global warming alarmists who assert that 97% of the world’s scientists agree humans are causing a global warming crisis simply because these scientists believe global warming is occurring. However, as this and other scientist surveys show, believing that some warming is occurring is not the same as believing humans are causing a worrisome crisis.’

‘Other questions solidified the meteorologists’ skepticism about humans creating a global warming crisis. For example, among those meteorologists who believe global warming is happening, only a modest majority (59%) believe humans are the primary cause. More importantly, only 38% of respondents who believe global warming is occurring say it will be very harmful during the next 100 years.’