Huge Mars Region Shaped by Water, Rover Mission Finds

Ker ThanNational Geographic News
May 21, 2009
Shifting sand dunes on ancient Mars once concealed a network of underground water spread across an area the size of Oklahoma, according to new findings from NASA's Mars rover Opportunity.
In 2004 Opportunity had spotted minerals and blueberry-shaped rocks indicative of ancient groundwater in the Martian crater Endurance.

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The robotic explorer has now found similar signs of past water in Victoria, a crater some 3.5 miles (6 kilometers) away.
Opportunity also spotted unique rock layers in the sides of Victoria Crater, which are likely the petrified remnants of ancient sand dunes.
The new findings confirm suspicions that water once shaped the Martian landscape on a regional scale instead of forming isolated oases, said rover project leader Steven Squyres of Cornell University in New York State.
"Given that we've seen the same stuff at places that are miles apart, it is a reasonable conjecture that those processes operated over most of this region," Squyres said.
Many scientists consider water to be a vital ingredient for life, Squyres noted.
Got the Job Done
The decision to send Opportunity down into Victoria Crater was one the rover team wrestled with for a long time in 2006.
Rough terrain leading into the crater could have damaged the aging probe's steering system or broken its wheels.
At the time, mission managers were worried that any damage would mean Opportunity would never make it back out of Victoria Crater.
But the risky maneuver has proved well worth it, Squyres said. Opportunity clambered safely out of the crater last August and is now trekking to Endeavor, an even larger crater some 8 miles (13.5 kilometers) away.
"There was no way we could've known [about the scale of the water network] without going to Victoria and taking a look," Squyres said.
"We got in, we got out, and we got the job done."

'Black box' could hold answer to plane crash mystery

(CNN) -- The "black box" is actually an orange cylinder -- about 13 pounds of metal wrapped around a stack of memory chips and designed to withstand the force of being slammed high-speed into a brick wall.

Recovery efforts have found several items confirmed to have come from Air France Flight 447.

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One such device -- possibly sitting more than two miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean -- is the object of a massive international search and could hold the answer to why Air France Flight 447 mysteriously plunged into the sea off the coast of Brazil last week with 228 people on board.
"These record many, many parameters of the flight -- the aircraft, its altitude, even the amount of force that one of the pilots might put on a pedal," John Perry Fish, an underwater recovery expert, told CNN. "It's very important to find these in order to find out what happened to the flight."
In the wake of nearly every air disaster, search and rescue efforts immediately segue into quests for the boxes, which have been in wide use on commercial flights since shortly after World War II.
Actually a pair of devices -- the flight data recorder and a voice and audio recorder -- the equipment records virtually everything about how an airplane is working.
The time of day, air pressure, the plane's speed and altitude, how much fuel a plane has and whether that fuel is flowing properly -- all are recorded by sensors throughout the plane. Functions that can change quickly, such as the position of rudders and flight stabilizers, are checked as often as eight times per second, said Chris Benich, director of aerospace regulatory affairs with Honeywell, the company that made the recorders aboard the Air France flight. See a timeline of the Air France flight »
Microphones in the cockpit record not just conversations between the pilot and other crew members, but can pick up anything from a loud bang to the sound of a switch being flicked on or off.
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"When you put all that together, you can start to back it up to a point where you can see the triggering event, or events, that caused a chain of things to happen," Benich said.
Made of several layers of aluminum, insulation and stainless steel, the devices are designed to survive high temperatures, strong impact and tons of pressure -- like what would be experienced at the bottom of the ocean. There's nothing magical that keeps them together when an entire aircraft has been destroyed, according to Benich.
"It's not as much about the materials as it is about the design," he said.
The exact origin of the term "black box" is unclear -- with some sources citing descriptions of early flight-data recorders and others saying it stems from a generic reference to electronic equipment.
The French nuclear submarine and other vessels now searching for the recorders are focusing on its underwater locator beacon -- a device that sends acoustic pulses, or "pings," to searchers.
The U.S. Navy is contributing two high-tech acoustic devices -- known as "towed pinger locators" -- that will be attached to French tug boats and can search to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet.
The wreckage is believed to be about 15,000 feet deep, amid underwater mountains and mixed in with tons of sea trash. By comparison, the wreckage of the space shuttle Challenger was found in about 1,000 feet of water.
Still, experts like Fish say they're confident the box can be found.
"The pressure is high, but instruments are produced and designed and developed and we currently use them that work at those depths ... ," said Fish, vice-president of American Underwater Search and Survey in Cataument, Massachusetts. "I do think it's possible to find. It's just going to take a little longer and require a greater effort working in this deep water."
The batteries that power the locator beacon are designed to last for about 30 days. But the box is designed to keep its contents safe for much longer.

Full text of Obama's speech to Congress

Barack Obama acknowledges applause as he arrives to address Congress. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Madame Speaker, Mr Vice-President, members of Congress and the first lady of the united states :
I've come here tonight not only to address the distinguished men and women in this great chamber, but to speak frankly and directly to the men and women who sent us here.
I know that for many Americans watching right now, the state of our economy is a concern that rises above all others. And rightly so. If you haven't been personally affected by this recession, you probably know someone who has - a friend; a neighbor; a member of your family. You don't need to hear another list of statistics to know that our economy is in crisis, because you live it every day. It's the worry you wake up with and the source of sleepless nights. It's the job you thought you'd retire from but now have lost; the business you built your dreams upon that's now hanging by a thread; the college acceptance letter your child had to put back in the envelope. The impact of this recession is real, and it is everywhere.
But while our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this:
We will rebuild, we will recover and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.
The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. The answers to our problems don't lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure. What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face and take responsibility for our future once more.
Now, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that for too long, we have not always met these responsibilities - as a government or as a people. I say this not to lay blame or look backwards, but because it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament.
The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank. We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before. The cost of healthcare eats up more and more of our savings each year, yet we keep delaying reform. Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too many of our schools do not prepare them for. And though all these challenges went unsolved, we still managed to spend more money and pile up more debt, both as individuals and through our government, than ever before.
In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.
Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.
Now is the time to act boldly and wisely - to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jump-start job creation, re-start lending and invest in areas like energy, healthcare and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that's what I'd like to talk to you about tonight.
It's an agenda that begins with jobs.
As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President's Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets. Not because I believe in bigger government - I don't. Not because I'm not mindful of the massive debt we've inherited - I am. I called for action because the failure to do so would have cost more jobs and caused more hardships. In fact, a failure to act would have worsened our long-term deficit by assuring weak economic growth for years. That's why I pushed for quick action. And tonight, I am grateful that this Congress delivered, and pleased to say that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is now law.
Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5m jobs. More than 90% of these jobs will be in the private sector - jobs rebuilding our roads and bridges; constructing wind turbines and solar panels; laying broadband and expanding mass transit.
Because of this plan, there are teachers who can now keep their jobs and educate our kids. Healthcare professionals can continue caring for our sick. There are 57 police officers who are still on the streets of Minneapolis tonight because this plan prevented the layoffs their department was about to make.
Because of this plan, 95% of the working households in America will receive a tax cut – a tax cut that you will see in your paychecks beginning on April 1st.
Because of this plan, families who are struggling to pay tuition costs will receive a $2,500 tax credit for all four years of college. And Americans who have lost their jobs in this recession will be able to receive extended unemployment benefits and continued healthcare coverage to help them weather this storm.
I know there are some in this chamber and watching at home who are sceptical of whether this plan will work. I understand that scepticism. Here in Washington, we've all seen how quickly good intentions can turn into broken promises and wasteful spending. And with a plan of this scale comes enormous responsibility to get it right.
That is why I have asked Vice-President Biden to lead a tough, unprecedented oversight effort - because nobody messes with Joe. I have told each member of my cabinet as well as mayors and governors across the country that they will be held accountable by me and the American people for every dollar they spend. I have appointed a proven and aggressive inspector-general to ferret out any and all cases of waste and fraud. And we have created a new website called recovery.gov so that every American can find out how and where their money is being spent.
So the recovery plan we passed is the first step in getting our economy back on track. But it is just the first step. Because even if we manage this plan flawlessly, there will be no real recovery unless we clean up the credit crisis that has severely weakened our financial system.
I want to speak plainly and candidly about this issue tonight, because every American should know that it directly affects you and your family's well-being. You should also know that the money you've deposited in banks across the country is safe; your insurance is secure; and you can rely on the continued operation of our financial system. That is not the source of concern.
The concern is that if we do not re-start lending in this country, our recovery will be choked off before it even begins.
You see, the flow of credit is the lifeblood of our economy. The ability to get a loan is how you finance the purchase of everything from a home to a car to a college education; how stores stock their shelves, farms buy equipment, and businesses make payroll.
But credit has stopped flowing the way it should. Too many bad loans from the housing crisis have made their way onto the books of too many banks. With so much debt and so little confidence, these banks are now fearful of lending out any more money to households, to businesses, or to each other. When there is no lending, families can't afford to buy homes or cars. So businesses are forced to make layoffs. Our economy suffers even more, and credit dries up even further.
That is why this administration is moving swiftly and aggressively to break this destructive cycle, restore confidence and re-start lending.
We will do so in several ways. First, we are creating a new lending fund that represents the largest effort ever to help provide auto loans, college loans and small business loans to the consumers and entrepreneurs who keep this economy running.
Second, we have launched a housing plan that will help responsible families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and re-finance their mortgages. It's a plan that won't help speculators or that neighbour down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford, but it will help millions of Americans who are struggling with declining home values - Americans who will now be able to take advantage of the lower interest rates that this plan has already helped bring about. In fact, the average family who re-finances today can save nearly $2,000 per year on their mortgage

Willem Schulte says we have enough oil, for now

Today, fossil fuels still supply most of the world’s energy needs. Energy demand by people around the world is growing as the global population increases. It’s logical to ask if the world is running out of oil.
Willem Schulte: The world is not running out of oil, not at the moment.
That is Dr. Willem Schulte, Chief Scientist for Reservoir Engineering for Shell. He says that while there is a lot of oil and natural gas remaining, its getting harder to recover.
Willem Schulte: For the medium term, we have enough hydrocarbons to supply to the world. In the past, we have produced one trillion barrels of liquid oil. There are still two trillion barrels, or twice as much, to be gained from those same reservoirs. We probably can add three to four trillion barrels of oil from unconventional, more complicated methodologies to recover oil, which we considered unrecoverable so far.
Getting to oil that once seemed unrecoverable is Schulte’s job.
Willem Schulte: If you look at the situation 30 years ago, oil recovery in an average oil field, we could get about 25 percent out of that oil field for various technical reasons. In the last 30 years, we’ve already moved on by better technology making that number rise to 35 percent.
He added that, in the end, oil is a finite resource.
Willem Schulte: People should also really focus their attention to sustainable energy and other energy resources.
According to a report presented by the World Energy Council, the world’s energy demand will double by 2050 and there are enough fossil fuel sources to satisfy energy needs up until the first half of this century, but not beyond, especially if demand doubles as experts have predicted.
One often hears the term ‘peak oil’ to describe the point in time when the maximum rate of global oil extraction is reached. Experts from around the world often place the time of peak oil extraction around the years 2040 to 2050, although some believe the oil industry could continue to produce at a peak rate for a decade or so after that.
Experts do not agree on when oil production will be in a phase of terminal decline, but it’s generally assumed that it may be around the years 2050 to 2070.
The projected times are uncertain because they depend on much energy the world will use over the coming decades – what other sources of energy might become available – and also the extent to which technological advances will enable the oil industry to recover hard-to-get oil.

Network creates virtual super-telescope

Vast quantities of data are transferred in real time from telescopes around the world to a supercomputer in the Netherlands, where European researchers combine the information to create high-resolution images of distant objects in space.


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By pointing up to 16 from six continents at one source in space and combining the observation signals from the telescopes via a high-speed network, European astronomers have created a ‘virtual telescope’ that delivers better resolution than any single telescope on earth.
The high-speed network also makes it easier for astronomers to react to so-called Targets of Opportunity - transient events such as supernova explosions and gamma-ray bursts in space.
“In November last year, astronomers noticed flaring activity from SS433 and alerted other observatories,” says Kristine Yun, public outreach officer for ExPReS (Express Production Real-time e-VLBI Service), the project behind this intercontinental astronomical instrument.
SS433 is one of the most spectacular and intensely studied locations in the Milky Way. It comprises two objects orbiting each other. Huge quantities of hydrogen are transferred from one star to its orbiting partner - a black hole or neutron star inside a dense, gas cloud. The flow of gas is so overwhelming that part of it is re-ejected by the neutron star in a pair of high-speed jets.
Within days, telescopes of the European VLBI Network (EVN) were turned towards SS433. Its activity was monitored in real time during three sessions and the data were made available within hours of the observations.

Mystery of "Dark" Star Explosions Solved?

Ker Than in Pasadena, Californiafor National Geographic News
June 8, 2009
Cosmic "dust bunnies" hiding in corners of distant galaxies are taking the dazzle out of some of the universe's brightest explosions, new research suggests.
Gamma ray bursts are brilliant flashes of light thought to happen when very massive stars explode. Each blast normally sends out beams of invisible gamma rays and x-rays followed by an hours-long afterglow of visible light.

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(See a picture of a gamma ray burst that was visible to the naked eye.)
But for years astronomers have puzzled over so-called dark gamma ray bursts—those that send out plenty of gamma rays and x-rays but have little to no afterglow.
One popular theory has been that dark gamma ray bursts happen so far away that the expansion of the universe has stretched the wavelengths of visible light into the invisible infrared part of the spectrum.
Another idea is that dust around the explosion is absorbing visible light but letting other kinds of radiation through.
"Whatever the cause, it was like hearing the foghorn without seeing the lighthouse," study co-author Joshua Bloom, of the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.
Dark, Dusty Corners
To test the two theories, Bloom and colleagues used NASA's Swift satellite and telescopes at California's Palomar Observatory to seek out galaxies where dark gamma ray bursts occur.
The team reasoned that if dark gamma ray bursts happen very far away, visible light from their host galaxies should also be redshifted and therefore invisible to optical sensors.
But after examining 14 dark gamma ray bursts, the researchers noted that they could see visible light from stars in 11 of the host galaxies.
"We think we've solved most of the mystery of what makes [dark gamma ray bursts] dark," study co-author Daniel Perley, also of UC Berkeley, said today at a press conference.
"We conclude that a large majority of dark bursts are the result of dust obscuring the optical light."
Closer looks at the hosts themselves, though, revealed that the galaxies do not appear to be unusually dusty. This means that the dark bursts must be hidden within otherwise undetectable dust clouds.
The finding supports theories that very massive stars form in dusty places, and it suggests that dark, dusty corners of the universe have been concealing previously unknown numbers of star births and deaths.
Findings presented today at the 214th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California.

New services promise online life after death

CNN) -- Your husband, an avid gamer and techie, dies of a heart attack, leaving his vast online life ­-- one you don't know much about ­-- in limbo.

Eternal Space lets loved ones create customized online gravesites and memorial pages.

His accounts, to which you don't know the passwords, go idle. His e-mails go unanswered, his online multiplayer games go on without him and bidders on his eBay items don't know why they can't get an answer from the seller.
Web site domains that he has purchased, some of which are now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,­ will expire, and you may never know.
It's a scenario that's becoming more likely as we spend more of our lives online. And it's raising more questions about what happens to our online lives after we log off for the final time.
The answer, until recently, was nothing.
But now, as online usage increases and social-media sites soar in popularity, more companies are popping up to try and fill that void created in your digital life after death.
Jeremy Toeman, founder of the site Legacy Locker, recognized that when he was on a plane and wondered what would happen to his online life if it crashed. While his will leaves everything to his wife, including all of his digital assets, Toeman realized how difficult it would be for her to access his accounts.
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"My GoDaddy account would belong to her, but it doesn't solve the practical reality of how she would get access to it," he said. He experienced a similar scenario after his grandmother died, and he tried to get the password for her e-mail account -- only to give up because of the hassle.
So Toeman built his company to change all that. Legacy Locker allows users to set up a kind of online will, with beneficiaries that would receive the customer's account information and passwords after they die.
"We know it's a hard thing to think about -- to get people to face mortality. We know it's kind of morbid, but for those who live their entire lives online, it's also very real."
A Legacy Locker account costs $29.99 a year. Users can set up their accounts at http://www.legacylocker.com/ to specify who gets access to their posthumous online information, along with "legacy letters," or messages, that can be sent to loved ones.
If someone contacts Legacy Locker to report a client's death, the service will send the customer four e-mails in 48 hours. If there's no response, Legacy Locker will then contact the people the client listed as verifiers in the event of his or her death. Even then, the service would not release digital assets without examining a copy of the customer's death certificate, Toeman said.
Eddie Lopez is the kind of tech-savvy guy for which a service such as Legacy Locker was made. The St. Paul, Minnesota, man has three online banking accounts, a PayPal account, domain names, Web-hosting accounts, multiple e-mail addresses and many social-networking accounts.
"I do think this is something people should be really considering these days," Lopez told CNN when asked about services such as Legacy Locker. He wants to hire a service to handle his digital assets but is concerned about privacy.
"Although I'm glad there's people breaking ground in this area, I don't think I would jump at the first opportunity to sign up," Lopez said. "My concerns are turning over such an exhaustive list of user names and passwords to a single business. That's one-stop shopping for any hacker to get access to just about every detail of my life."