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Here is your customized Phys.org Newsletter for week 32:
NASA rover lands on Mars (Update 4)
NASA has successfully landed its $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity rover on the surface of the Red Planet, breaking new ground in US-led exploration of an alien world.
Curiosity's mysterious Mars photo stirs speculation
Did Curiosity capture the galactic equivalent of the Zapruder film when it landed on Mars?
Plenty of dark matter near the Sun
(Phys.org) -- Astronomers at the University of Zürich, the ETH Zurich, the University of Leicester and NAOC Beijing have found large amounts of invisible "dark matter" near the Sun. Their results are consistent with the theory that the Milky Way Galaxy is surrounded by a massive "halo" of dark matter, but this is the first study of its kind to use a method rigorously tested against mock data from high quality simulations. The authors also find tantalising hints of a new dark matter component in our Galaxy. The team's results will be published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
New brain research refutes results of earlier studies that cast doubts on free will
(Medical Xpress) -- When people find themselves having to make a decision, the assumption is that the thoughts, or voice that is the conscious mind at work, deliberate, come to a decision, and then act. This is because for most people, that’s how the whole process feels. But back in the early 1980’s, an experiment conducted by Benjamin Libet, a neuroscientist with the University of California, cast doubt on this idea.
Image: Mars Curiosity rover caught in the act of landing by HiRISE
(Phys.org) -- An image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the Curiosity rover still connected to its 51-foot-wide (almost 16 meter) parachute as it descended towards its landing site at Gale Crater.
First color image of Mars returned from Curiosity
(Phys.org) -- This view of the landscape to the north of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity was acquired by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the afternoon of the first day after landing. (The team calls this day Sol 1, which is the first Martian day of operations; Sol 1 began on Aug. 6, 2012.)
Extreme plasma theories put to the test
The first controlled studies of extremely hot, dense matter have overthrown the widely accepted 50-year old model used to explain how ions influence each other's behavior in a dense plasma. The results should benefit a wide range of fields, from research aimed at tapping nuclear fusion as an energy source to understanding the inner workings of stars.
Taking some guesswork out of high-energy physics
(Phys.org) -- SLAC theorist Stan Brodsky and his collaborator Xing-Gang Wu of Chongqing University have just made the lives of high-energy particle theorists the world over a bit easier. They've demonstrated a way to literally take some of the guesswork out of predictions from quantum chromodynamics (QCD). QCD is the theory explaining the behavior of quarks, which in groups of three form protons and neutrons, and gluons, which carry the strong force that "glues" the quarks together.
Graphene coating transforms fragile aerogels into superelastic materials
(Phys.org) -- Like donning a Superman’s cape, fragile carbon nanotube (CNT) aerogels that are covered by a graphene coating can be transformed from a material that easily collapses under compression to one that can resist large amounts of compression and completely recover its original shape after removal of the load. The superelasticity and fatigue resistance provided by the graphene coating could make CNT aerogels useful in a variety of areas, including as electrodes, artificial muscles, and other mechanical structures.
July in US was hottest ever in history books (Update)
(AP) — U.S. scientists say July was the hottest month ever recorded in the Lower 48 states, breaking a record set during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. They say climate change is a factor.
Research links extreme summer heat events to global warming
(Phys.org) -- A new statistical analysis by NASA scientists has found that Earth's land areas have become much more likely to experience an extreme summer heat wave than they were in the middle of the 20th century. The research was published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Armageddon looming? Bruce Willis couldn't save us from asteroid doom (Update)
(Phys.org) -- According to the internet hysteria surrounding the ancient Mayan calendar, an asteroid could be on its way to wipe out the world on December 21, 2012.
Astronomers crack mystery of the 'monster stars'
(Phys.org) -- In 2010 scientists discovered four 'monster' sized stars, with the heaviest more than 300 times as massive as our Sun. Despite their incredible luminosity, these exotic objects, located in the giant star cluster R136 in the nearby galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud; have oddly so far been found nowhere else. Now a group of astronomers at the University of Bonn have a new explanation: the ultramassive stars were created from the merger of lighter stars in tight binary systems. The team present their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Deep sea temperature reconstruction reveals 1.5 million years of global ice volume history
1.5 million years of climate history revealed after scientists solve mystery of the deep Study successfully reconstructed temperature from the deep sea to reveal how global ice volume has varied over the glacial-interglacial cycles of the past 1.5 million years
Evidence further suggests extra-terrestrial origin of quasicrystals
(Phys.org) -- Results from an expedition to far eastern Russia that set out to find the origin of naturally occurring quasicrystals have provided convincing evidence that they arrived on Earth from outer space.
Discord strikes the right quantum note
(Phys.org) -- Scientists have taken a quantum leap forward towards future computing after discovering that ‘background interference’ in quantum-level measurements, may be the very thing they need to unlock the potential of quantum computing.
Mars rover Curiosity beams back images showing its descent
(Phys.org) -- Earlier today, just hours after NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars, a select group of images taken by the onboard Mars Descent Imager, or MARDI, were beamed back to Earth. The 297 color, low-resolution images, provide a glimpse of the rover's descent into Gale Crater. They are a preview of the approximately 1,504 images of descent currently held in the rover's onboard memory. When put together in highest resolution, the resulting video is expected to depict the rover's descent from the moment the entry system's heat shield is released through touchdown.
GM may have electric car breakthrough (Update)
A small battery company backed by General Motors is working on breakthrough technology that could power an electric car 100 (160 kilometers) or even 200 miles (320 kilometers) on a single charge in the next two-to-four years, GM's CEO said Thursday.
Rock varnish may hold clues to life on Mars
(Phys.org) -- As NASA’s Curiosity rover prepares to search for signs that Mars may once have supported life, a team of researchers analyzing rocks in New York may have found a clue telling the rover where to look. By gazing through high-powered microscopes, the researchers discovered that the dark brownish/blackish coating on some rocks, called rock varnish, probably stems from large numbers of microorganisms that died on the rocks. Later, manganese in the microbes would have mixed with tiny clay minerals to adhere to the surface of the rocks and form the several-micrometers-thick layer of manganese-rich varnish.
An effect occurring for rotating objects at the speed of light has surprising relevance to everyday applications
It is tempting to believe that effects arising from Einstein’s theory of relativity, where objects move at speeds close to the speed of light, arise mainly at very large length scales, for example the movement of planets and stars. However, as Konstantin Bliokh and Franco Nori from the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute have demonstrated, this is not necessarily so. The researchers have shown that a combination of relativistic motions and rotation effects can lead to a rather general phenomenon that occurs for a range of objects, from black holes to small beams of light or electrons.
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