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Bulging disk in neck forces Woods to quit Players Championship

May 10, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Ponte Vedra Beach (Florida), May 10 (ANI): Ace golfer Tiger Woods” had to quit The Players Championship being held here when he pulled up with a bulging disk in his neck.

The Los Angeles Times and The Independent reported that Woods’ will be undergoing an MRI to confirm the injury and its gravity.

“I”ve been playing through it. I can”t play through it anymore,” he said, visibly upset at his locker.

He added: “I”m having a hard time playing with the pain. There”s tingling down my fingers.”

Woods visited the PGA Tour fitness trailer for 37 minutes after being driven off the golf course. When he emerged, he walked stiffly down some stairs and into a waiting black SUV that whisked him away to an uncertain future.

He was 2-over par through six holes and trailing by 10 shots when he hit a drive 270 yards into the pine straw. After hitting out to 50 feet short of the green, he shook hands with playing partner Jason Bohn and told him he was quitting.

It”s conceivable the neck was originally injured when he crashed his SUV into a fire hydrant Thanksgiving night, touching off an unprecedented sex scandal that forced him into a five-month layoff. (ANI)

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China punishment revives age rule debate

May 3, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

In a sport where most athletes are past their prime by the time they turn 20, the minimum age rule has once again split the gymnastics community after China were stripped of their 2000 Olympics bronze medal.

An International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) probe found that Dong Fangxiao falsified her birthdate for the 2000 Games, and was hence younger than the minimum permitted age of 16, after registering different ages at Sydney and at the Beijing Games eight years later.

While the United States, who were named as the bronze medallists in the 2000 women’s team competition this week after China were disqualified, were delighted with the FIG’s decision, others believe the Asian nation should not have been punished and that the minimum age rule should be scrapped.

“I am very sorry for the Chinese team who have to support such a strict penalty. I think the gymnasts are not guilty at all,” Romanian coach Nicolae Forminte told reporters at the European championships in Birmingham, England, which ended on Sunday.

“In my opinion it should be some other person who has to pay.”

Glancing at one of his senior charges, who sat next to him with her legs swinging and feet failing to touch the floor from the height of her chair, he added: “For me the age is not a problem, that will be decided by FIG and I will conform with this if it is 16, 17, 19.

“I don’t think there is a big difference between a 15-year-old gymnast and a 20-year-old. What matters is the quality of the gymnast. But I don’t think in the future there will be many gymnasts older than 20 because gymnastics is very hard at this age.”

At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, 14-year-old Nadia Comaneci wowed the world with her gravity-defying tricks to become the first gymnast to earn perfect 10s but the FIG subsequently raised the minimum age to 16 to protect the health of athletes.

UNDER PRESSURE

With gymnasts having a very short shelf life at the top and with many reaching their prime by their mid-teens, some coaches feel that individual athletes and their minders should have a right to decide when they are ready to compete at the major events.

“It is better to start at 14. It is really hard to stay under pressure so long,” Russian national coach Alexander Alexandrov said.

“At the end they have to think about their future, about education, so perhaps it is better for them to do it earlier rather than later.”

Suspicions of age-faking have dogged Chinese sport for years.

Dong registered a Jan. 20, 1983 birthdate in Sydney, but when accredited to act as an official in the vault at the 2008 Beijing Games, she declared her birthdate as Jan. 23, 1986.

That would have made her 14 and ineligible to compete in Sydney.

During the 2008 Olympics, the FIG was ordered by the IOC to investigate the age of China’s He Kexin, the women’s team and asymmetric bars gold medallist, and several team mates, who were all declared eligible.

PASSPORT SYSTEM

Following that controversy, the FIG introduced a system where all gymnasts taking part in any major event must apply for a licence and where gymnasts must register their birthdate at the start of their junior career.

However, not everyone thinks the “gymnastics passport” will be foolproof.

“I think if your passport is false you can get a false licence too, so I don’t know if that is the solution,” Dutch gymnast Mayra Kroonen said.

Russia’s Alexandrov added: “I believe it will be very difficult to control the Chinese gymnasts in the system.”

At 21, Kroonen is almost viewed as a pensioner in the sport but put her retirement on hold to compete in Birmingham. She felt the minimum age should be raised to 17 or 18 as fans needed to see “real women and not girls” compete in gymnastics.

Laura Mitchell, a 15-year-old Briton, competing as a junior at the Europeans is thankful there is an age limit.

“The limit is quite fair. I’m not that disappointed (about not competing with the seniors) because I still got a chance to compete in this big arena and it gave me a taste of what’s to come,” she told Reuters after watching the senior women’s team final.

(Editing by Pritha Sarkar; To query or comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: 2000 Olympics, asian nation, BEIJING, Birmingham England, Bronze Medal, Bronze Medallists, Chinese Team, CoA, gravity, gymnast, Gymnasts, International Gymnastics Federation, Life At The Top, mid teens, Montreal Olympics, Nadia Comaneci, Olympics, Perfect 10s, shelf life, team competition

Green takes away hole-in-one memory

April 13, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

A hole-in-one provided a late highlight in an otherwise disappointing Masters debut for Australian Nathan Green.

Newcastle’s Green was planning to hit a seven-iron from 161 metres at the par-three 16th, but he switched to a six-iron after watching fellow competitor Chad Campbell come up a little short at Augusta National.

Green landed his shot above the pin, which was in its traditional final round position bottom left, and used the slope perfectly as gravity did the rest.

“It’s all luck,” said the modest Green, who nonetheless admitted it had been a huge thrill.

“To do it on this stage in front of a good crowd at the Masters is something you’ll take with you forever.”

It was the 12th hole-in-one at the 16th hole at the Masters and Green said it was his fifth in competition, but not quite as memorable as the ace he made in the 2001 Australian Masters, which earned him $500,000, bankrolling an overseas career that eventually led to the lucrative US PGA Tour.

By comparison, he will receive some crystal for the hole-in-one along with American Ryan Moore who also achieved the feat at the same hole.

Despite the ace, Green could only card 75 to finish at 14-over-par 302.

He blamed poor driving and poor putting for his mediocre total.

“Hopefully I can get back here and give it a better shake next time,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter how big the event is, if you’re playing bad it’s not much fun.”

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: ace, augusta national, Australian Masters, crowd, debut, Fellow Competitor, gravity, green card, highlight, Hole In One, memory, newcastle, overseas career, Ryan Moore, S Green, Seven Iron, slope

Gingin Gravity Centre at risk

April 10, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

A science discovery centre in the Wheatbelt will close down from July if the State Government cuts its funding.

The Gingin Gravity Centre was established about 10 years ago as a tourist attraction and education and research facility.

The centre’s Chairman, John de Laeter, says the centre needs about $250,000 to operate each year, and three quarters of that funding comes from the State Government.

However, Professor de Laeter says he has been told that government funding will not be available next financial year.

“We were informed by the government late in December that the money would be cut off at the end of this financial year and asked us to explore alternative arrangements.

“We’ve started an endowment fund which has something like $37,000 in it but we need about $2 million.”

The Treasurer Troy Buswell has made no apologies for his government’s decision to cut the centre’s funding.

“I think they need to do some more work in terms of looking at alternate management models and alternate funding models so that they can move forward.

“There’s no guarantee that a reduction in government funding will mean the centre will close its doors.”

Phil Gardiner from the Nationals has criticised Mr Buswell’s decision.

“It’s the wrong decision, it’s a very short sighted decision,” he said.

The centre is looking at other sources of funding including the Royalties for Regions scheme.

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Newly discovered exoplanet may have water

March 19, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, March 19 (ANI): Scientists have suggested that the newly discovered planet Corot-9b is temperate enough to allow the presence of liquid water.

Corot-9b was found on 16 May 2008 and orbits its star every 95.274 days, a little longer than Mercury takes to go round the Sun.

It is the first transiting planet to have both a longer period and a near-circular orbit.

A transit is a kind of eclipse and occurs when a celestial body passes in front of its host star and blocks some but not all of the star’s light.

Corot-9b’s orbit is slightly elliptical but at closest approach to its parent star it reaches a distance of 54 million kilometers.

Although that is only about the distance of Mercury in our Solar System, it is by far the largest orbit of any transiting planet found so far.

Because it orbits a star cooler than our Sun, calculations estimate that Corot-9b’s temperature could lie somewhere between -23 degrees C and 157 degrees C.

Corot-9b has a radius around 1.05 times that of Jupiter but only 84 percent of the mass. This leads to a density of 0.90 g/cc, or 68 percent that of Jupiter.

“Corot-9b is the first exoplanet that is definitely similar to a planet in our Solar System,” said Hans Deeg, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias.

The similarity is caused by the fact that Corot-9b is sufficiently far from its star to prevent tidal forces from heating its interior.

Tidal forces are created by the strength of gravity weakening from the front to back of the celestial body.

When the difference between the near side and the far side is great, the tidal force can prevent the planet from spinning quickly, forcing it to only show one face to the star.

It can also provide heat to the interior of the planet, changing its physical condition.

Based on calculations, neither of these is possible in this case.

“Although we don’t know, because we can’t see the planet directly, there is reason to believe that this planet has a normal day-night cycle,” said Malcolm Fridlund, ESA Project Scientist for Corot.

It means that lacking a tidal heat source, Corot-9b’s interior is likely to have remained similar to the gas giants in our Solar System. (ANI)

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Invading black holes cause ‘cosmic flashes’

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 19 (ANI): Mathematicians at the University of Leeds, UK, have determined that cosmic flashes, known as gamma ray bursts, are produced by jets of plasma that originate from invading black holes.

Gamma ray bursts are beams of high-energy radiation that are similar to the radiation emitted by explosions of nuclear weapons.

The orthodox model for this cosmic jet engine involves plasma being heated by neutrinos in a disk of matter that forms around a black hole, which is created when a star collapses.

But, mathematicians at the University of Leeds, have come up with a different explanation: the jets come directly from black holes, which can dive into nearby massive stars and devour them.

Their theory is based on recent observations by the Swift satellite, which indicates that the central jet engine operates for up to 10,000 seconds – much longer than the neutrino model can explain.

Mathematicians believe that this is evidence for an electromagnetic origin of the jets, that is, that the jets come directly from a rotating black hole, and that it is the magnetic stresses caused by the rotation that focus and accelerate the jet’s flow.

For the mechanism to operate, the collapsing star has to be rotating extremely rapidly.

This increases the duration of the star’s collapse as the gravity is opposed by strong centrifugal forces.

One particularly peculiar way of creating the right conditions involves not a collapsing star, but a star invaded by its black hole companion in a binary system.

The black hole acts like a parasite, diving into the normal star, spinning it with gravitational forces on its way to the star’s centre, and finally eating it from the inside.

“The neutrino model cannot explain very long gamma ray bursts and the Swift observations, as the rate at which the black hole swallows the star becomes rather low quite quickly, rendering the neutrino mechanism inefficient, but the magnetic mechanism can,” said Professor Komissarov from the School of Mathematics at the University of Leeds.

“Our knowledge of the amount of the matter that collects around the black hole and the rotation speed of the star allow us to calculate how long these long flashes will be – and the results correlate very well with observations from satellites,” he added. (ANI)

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MJ’s new signature dance move, Penguin, set to sweep fans

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 19 (ANI): Michael Jackson’s completely new signature dance move in a new footage while rehearsing for his comeback concerts may soon become a rage amongst his fans.

The King of Pop, in the move, being called as the Penguin, was seen flapping his right arm up and down very quickly as his body shimmied while standing on the spot.

Jackson was spotted doing the hilarious Penguin in the video, thought to be from the This Is It movie rehearsal footage, as renowned choreographer Kenny Ortega coached and watched him over, reports the Sun.

The move was due to expand his signature repertoire of dance steps including the legendary Moonwalk, Anti-Gravity Lean, and Crotch Grab.

It would be no surprise if kids and adults tried to ape the Jackson Penguin, which West End star Ricko Baird said was not easy to imitate.

He said: “Michael was just so talented and he made it all look so easy. Some of his moves like the Moonwalk – and now the Penguin – are actually very difficult and need a lot of practice.”

Business analyst Christian Severina, 35, London, said: “I love Michael Jackson and I love his dancing. But this was really tricky to do it with the same grace and speed he does it. I ended up looking like I was having a fit.”

Hannah Turner, 16, of Essex, added: “Oh my god I look like such a wally. Only Michael Jackson can make that look cool.” (ANI)

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‘Embarrassed’ Musharraf’s close aides shying away from commenting on his misdeeds

September 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Islamabad, Sep.16 (ANI) : Close aides of former Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf are too embarrassed and are shying away from responding to the former general’s claims that he had taken the November 3, 2007 actions only after consulting various top officials, including the then Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and the current Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Kayani.

Musharraf’s erstwhile close associates find the topic as ‘too dirty’ to speak about and have been avoiding any queries regarding that by simply saying ‘no comments’.

A former spokesman of the Shaukat Aziz government, however, denied that the cabinet had prior knowledge of Musharraf’s plan of imposing the emergency.

When asked about the issue, Lieutenant General (retired) Ali Jan Orakzai said: “It’s such a dirty subject that leaving it untouched would be a better option.”

Orakzai said he is waiting for the apt time to speak on Musharraf’s claims.

“Let’s see the gravity of the subject. I would record my statement before the court in case summoned on this issue,” The News quoted Orakzai, as saying.

When informed about Shaukat Aziz’s statement that he was not consulted on the November 3 actions, Orakzai said issuing such statements from abroad is easier.

“Shaukat Aziz can do this as he is living in London. I can’t do so,” he said.

Former Punjab Governor Lieutenant General (retired) Khalid Maqbool said he has decided not to enter into any controversy related to the past events that occurred during his stint. (ANI)

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Mayer ‘begs’ Aniston for another chance

September 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Sept 16 (ANI): John Mayer desperately wants to get back with Jennifer Aniston, it has emerged.

The ‘Gravity’ singer reportedly telephoned ex-girlfriend in tears, begging her to take him back, reports Contactmusic.

Mayer dumped the Hollywood actress in March this year.

A source said: “John asked Jen if they could go back to seeing each other exclusively. The call came as a massive surprise and of course Jen is delighted with John’s announcement – who wouldn’t be?”

The 31-year-old star has reportedly promised to give the relationship his “best shot” if she agrees to take him back.

The source explained to Britain’s Look magazine: “John suggested that if all is going well with them in six months, then they can begin discussing marriage and building a life together. Jen was floored! John always seemed so anti-commitment before. But now he’s begging Jen for another chance and he’s promising to give the relationship his best shot.

“Despite his big plans, John suggested they don’t rush into moving in together. She’ll keep her house in Beverly Hills, while John will continue to live in Pacific Palisades. I think it’s just because he wants to move slowly and avoid mistakes they made previously.”

Aniston was most recently linked to Gerard Butler, who she stars alongside in The Bounty, and Bradley Cooper. (ANI)

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Jupiter made comet its temporary moon for 12 years in mid-20th century

September 14, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 14 (ANI): An international team of astronomers has discovered that Jupiter had captured the comet 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu as its temporary moon in the mid-20th century, in an irregular orbit for about twelve years.

There are only a handful of known comets where this phenomenon of temporary satellite capture has occurred and the capture duration in the case of Kushida-Muramatsu, which orbited Jupiter between 1949 and 1961, is the third longest.

The phenomenon was detected by an international team led by Dr. Katsuhito Ohtsuka that modeled the trajectories of 18 “quasi-Hilda comets”, objects with the potential to go through a temporary satellite capture by Jupiter that results in them either leaving or joining the “Hilda” group of objects in the asteroid belt.

Most of the cases of temporary capture were flybys, where the comets did not complete a full orbit.

However, Dr. Ohtsuka’s team used recent observations tracking Kushida-Muramatsu over nine years to calculate hundreds of possible orbital paths for the comet over the previous century.

In all scenarios, Kushida-Muramatsu completed two full revolutions of Jupiter, making it only the fifth captured orbiter to be identified.

According to Dr. David Asher, “Our results demonstrate some of the routes taken by cometary bodies through interplanetary space that can allow them either to enter or to escape situations where they are in orbit around the planet Jupiter.”

Asteroids and comets can sometimes be distorted or fragmented by tidal effects induced by the gravitational field of a capturing planet, or may even impact with the planet.

The most famous victim of both these effects was comet D/1993 F2 (Shoemaker-Levy 9), which was torn apart on passing close to Jupiter and whose fragments then collided with that planet in 1994.

Previous computational studies have shown that Shoemaker-Levy 9 may well have been a quasi-Hilda comet before its capture by Jupiter.

“Fortunately for us Jupiter, as the most massive planet with the greatest gravity, sucks objects towards it more readily than other planets and we expect to observe large impacts there more often than on Earth,” said Dr. Asher.

“Comet Kushida-Muramatsu has escaped from the giant planet and will avoid the fate of Shoemaker-Levy 9 for the foreseeable future”, he added. (ANI)

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Scientists design “gravity tractor” to save earth from asteroids

August 30, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Aug 30 (ANI): British space scientists have designed a special spacecraft that can save the earth from a catastrophic asteroid collision.

The 10 tonne spacecraft named “gravity tractor” would be deployed to intercept an asteroid en route to the earth and has the ability to fly 160 ft alongside it.

Once near an asteroid the craft will use gravitational force to pull the rock towards itself.

Gradually the gravity tractor will be able to change the asteroids path and thus make sure it misses the earth.

According to rough estimates of the American space agency NASA, there are more than 100,000 asteroids orbiting near the Earth and have the capacity to destroy cities.

The engineers of space company EADS Astrium, which designs crafts for NASA and the European Space Agency, have made the gravity tractor.

The team believes the craft could successfully divert the course of asteroids up to 430 yards across, which can release 100,000 times more than the Hiroshima bomb.

The Telegraph quoted Dr Ralph Cordey, science and exploration business development manager at Astrium as saying: “Anything bigger than 30m (32 yards) across is a real threat to the Earth.

“Unfortunately it is a matter of when rather than if one of them hits us.

“The gravity tractor exploits the principals of very basic physics – every object with a mass has its own gravity that affects objects around it. It can move fairly large objects 300 metres (984ft) to 400 metres (1,312ft) across.

“These asteroids are hurtling around our solar system at 10km per second, so when you scale that up, you just need a tiny nudge to send it off course.” (ANI)

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Image of different regions of Trifid Nebula captured by European Southern Observatory

August 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Munich, August 27 (ANI): A new image by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has captured the different regions of the Trifid Nebula, which is a rare combination of three nebula types, as seen in visible light.

This massive star factory is so named for the dark dust bands that trisect its glowing heart, revealing the fury of freshly formed stars and presaging more star birth.

Smoldering several thousand light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer), the Trifid Nebula presents a compelling portrait of the early stages of a star’s life, from gestation to first light.

The heat and “winds” of newly ignited, volatile stars stir the Trifid’s gas and dust-filled cauldron.

In time, the dark tendrils of matter strewn throughout the area will themselves collapse and form new stars.

The French astronomer Charles Messier first observed the Trifid Nebula in June 1764, recording the hazy, glowing object as entry number 20 in his renowned catalogue.

Observations made about 60 years later by John Herschel of the dust lanes that appear to divide the cosmic cloud into three lobes inspired the English astronomer to coin the name “Trifid”.

Made with the Wide-Field Imager camera attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in northern Chile, the new image prominently displays the different regions of the Trifid Nebula as seen in visible light.

In the bluish patch to the upper left of the image, called a reflection nebula, gas scatters the light from nearby, Trifid-born stars.

The largest of these stars shines most brightly in the hot, blue portion of the visible spectrum.

This, along with the fact that dust grains and molecules scatter blue light more efficiently than red light, imbues this portion of the Trifid Nebula with an azure hue.

Below, in the round, pink-reddish area typical of an emission nebula, the gas at the Trifid’s core is heated by hundreds of scorching young stars until it emits the red signature light of hydrogen, the major component of the gas, just as hot neon gas glows red-orange in illuminated signs all over the world.

The gases and dust that crisscross the Trifid Nebula make up the third kind of nebula in this cosmic cloud, known as dark nebulae, courtesy of their light-obscuring effects.

Within these dark lanes, the remnants of previous star birth episodes continue to coalesce under gravity’s inexorable attraction.

The rising density, pressure and temperature inside these gaseous blobs will eventually trigger nuclear fusion, and yet more stars will form. (ANI)

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“Mars spectacular” event on August 27 a hoax, say astronomers

August 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 27 (ANI): Astronomers have confirmed that an email promising a “Mars spectacular” event on August 27, when the Red Planet will look as large as the full moon, is nothing but a hoax.

According to a report in National Geographic News, the anonymous message from an unknown part of the globe says that the red planet “will look as large as the full moon” in the night sky, and that “no one alive today will ever see this again.”

The claim has been bombarding people’s inboxes worldwide every summer for five years.

Today, the Mars hoax has grown into a kind of cyber legend-one that astronomers are still struggling to debunk.

“The possibility of seeing Mars as large as the moon strikes the imagination,” said Marc Jobin, staff astronomer at the Montreal Planetarium in Quebec.

“The sad reality is that a lot of people have little comprehension of astronomy and are unable to call the hoax,” he added.

But, there is a thread of truth that inspired the prank several years ago.

Planets are not on perfectly circular orbits, and during their elliptical paths around the sun, planets can vary in their exact distances to each other over time.

On August 27, 2003, Mars made a historically tight approach to Earth, coming about 56 million kilometers away.

Such a near pass hadn’t happened in nearly 60,000 years, and it won’t happen again until August 28, 2287.

In 2003, planetariums had sent out notices alerting stargazers of the real astronomical event.

“At the time, through the telescope, Mars looked as large as the full moon would with the naked eye,” explained Geza Gyuk, astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois.

Through a backyard telescope with a high-power eyepiece, viewers could even make out many surface features on Mars’s disk.

With the naked eye, Mars still appeared as nothing more than a brilliant orange-colored star in the sky.

Still, an email hoax was born.

If the red planet actually did appear as huge as purported in the Mars hoax email, the planet would be just 750,000 kilometers from Earth, or about twice as far away as the moon.

According to Jobin, at that distance, life on Earth would likely be doomed.

Given the interplay of gravity between the planets and the sun, a much closer Mars “would have extreme consequences on the shape of the Earth’s orbit, with our planet swinging much closer and much farther away from the sun,” he said. (ANI)

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New model of quantum gravity may rewrite Einstein’s theory of general relativity

August 25, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 25 (ANI): Scientists at Texas A and M University in the US have developed a controversial new model of quantum gravity, which might reproduce Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

The theory, which Einstein developed in the early 20th century, says that matter curves spacetime, and it is this curvature which deflects massive bodies – an effect that we interpret as the influence of gravity.

The theory has been tested to extremely high accuracy and without it, our satellite global positioning system would be off by about 10 km per day.

Despite the success of general relativity, one of the most important problems in modern physics is finding a theory of quantum gravity that reconciles the continuous nature of gravitational fields with the inherent ‘graininess’ of quantum mechanics.

Recently, Petr Horava at Lawrence Berkeley Lab proposed such a model for quantum gravity that has received widespread interest, in no small part because it is one of the few models that could be experimentally tested.

In Horava’s model, Lorentz symmetry, which says that physics is the same regardless of the reference frame, is violated at small distance scales, but remerges over longer distance scales

The team at Texas A and M, which includes Hong Lu, Jianwei Mei and Christopher Pope, report their investigations into how the modifications proposed in Horava’s theory will broadly affect the solutions of general relativity.

Lu and his team’s calculations suggest that Horava’s model only reproduces general relativity on unobservable scales, “larger than the size of the Universe”.

The research team’s paper is an important contribution to testing the Horava model and shows that a good deal of work remains to understand its full implications. (ANI)

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Most scientifically accurate and advanced planetarium show on display in US

August 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 21 (ANI): High-performance computing systems, visualization resources, and software tools provided by the National Science Foundation TeraGrid helped make the Hayden Planetarium’s new space show the most scientifically accurate and advanced planetarium show ever produced.

The Hayden Planetarium is a public planetarium located on Central Park West, New York City, next to and organizationally part of the American Museum of Natural History.

“Journey to the Stars,” which debuted this summer at the American Museum of Natural History, is being hailed as the most beautiful planetarium show to date.

Narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, the 25-minute presentation takes viewers on a journey through the universe.

The space show projects cutting-edge visualizations of the universe onto the 87-foot, seven-million-pixel dome of the museum’s Hayden Sphere at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City.

Piecing together a new narrative of life’s origins, the space show explains how dark matter’s gravity gathered the primordial gas in the universe to form the first stars, and how these massive stars exploded, seeding the galaxy with new stars and the chemical elements that made life possible.

The centerpiece of the show, and the most difficult sequence to depict scientifically, is a flight into the center of the Sun.

The visuals of the Sun were produced using supercomputing resources provided by the NSF TeraGrid, a national cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research.

According to Ro Kinzler, the show’s producer, “We wanted to treat the Sun in a terrific and powerful way to [not just] reveal the surface, but to take our audience into the Sun, through the convective layer and into the core.”

“The results are beautiful. No one has seen the Sun in this way, and the software from NCAR and computational resources from TACC made it possible,” he said.

The visual sequences are based on the research of Juri Toomre, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and run on TACC’s Ranger supercomputer.

“It’s not enough to know what comes out of the surface,” Toomre said.

“We would like to understand how the magnetic engine of a star works, how it churns away and how it builds orderly fields. This is one of the top 10 questions in physics,” Toomre added.

“A very dramatic moment in the show is when we actually peel away the surface of the Sun, revealing the dynamic convective motion below,” Kinzler said. “We take the audience through the convective region and into the Sun’s core,” he added. (ANI)

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ISAF troops in Afghanistan need to get rid of their seige mentality

August 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Kabul, Aug.13 (ANI): For the vast majority of troops at the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters, Afghanistan remains an enigma, a threatening land lying beyond the concertina wire of the base.

When ISAF troops venture out from their base into the “red zone” (i.e. the comparatively safe streets of Kabul) they are prepared for combat.

Barreling through the crowded streets of a city that has been called a comparative “safety zone” by those fighting in the south, they jam the phone signals of average Afghans with their ECMs (electronic counter measures) and jam the roads with their convoys.

Defeat takes the form of thousands of casualty-phobic troops ensconced behind the walls, sand bags, and blast barriers of a well-protected safety bubble.

One would think that the coalition vehicles driving around Kabul in combat posture and menacingly waving 50 caliber machine guns at Afghans were storming a Taliban sangar (trench) in Helmand, not competing with rush hour traffic.

The only Afghan most ever meet is the Hazara carpet seller on base who serves authentic Afghan food once a month. And the only coalition soldiers most Afghans meet are encased in armor-plated vehicles or flak jackets.

Only a small percentage of “fobbits” (those who live in forward operating bases or FOBs) actually interact with average Afghans due to hyper-protective S.O.P. (standard operating procedures) meant to lessen their risks from interaction with Afghans.

ISAF troops suffer from a siege mentality that led the United States dangerously close to losing the war in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. U.S. forces in Iraq were more concerned with force protection than protecting the center of gravity in Iraq, the Iraqi people.

It was only when Generals Petraeus and Odierno pushed their troops out of the bases and into the streets of Iraq that they began to make headway in the counterinsurgency.

This meant more meetings with Iraqi people, who began to feel that the Americans were protecting them.

For the most part, the coalition has ceded the countryside of the south and parts of the east to the enemy, who took advantage of the vacuum left by enemy troops in 2003 when the U.S. was focused elsewhere.

The White House’s fear of engaging in grassroots nation building allowed the Taliban to fill the void. Pro-government khans and mullahs were executed, villagers cowed into submission, and “vanguard” groups sent onto the next province to lay mines and kill “infidel collaborators.” With no visible coalition presence outside of the provincial capitals, the Taliban swarmed the countryside.

Much the same thing happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s under the Soviets, who controlled the major roads and cities and remained safe in their bases for fear of sustaining casualties.

The U.S. Marines’ recent efforts to clear and hold territory in Helmand Province represent a welcome break from this barracked mentality.

It is only by establishing a reliable coalition presence in contested places like Helmand that the coalition can show the Afghans that they are there to stay and protect them. (ANI)

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Radiation from massive stars may trigger many more stars than previously thought

August 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 13 (ANI): A new study from two of NASA’s Great Observatories has shown that radiation from massive stars may trigger the formation of many more stars than previously thought.

While astronomers have long understood that stars and planets form from the collapse of a cloud of gas, the question of the main causes of this process has remained open.

One option is that the cloud cools, gravity gets the upper hand, and the cloud falls in on itself.

The other possibility is that a “trigger” from some external source – like radiation from a massive star or a shock from a supernova – initiates the collapse.

Some previous studies have noted a combination of triggering mechanisms in effect.

By combining observations of Cepheus B from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope, researchers have taken an important step in addressing this question.

Cepheus B is a cloud of mainly cool molecular hydrogen located about 2,400 light years from the Earth.

There are hundreds of very young stars inside and around the cloud – ranging from a few millions years old outside the cloud to less than a million in the interior – making it an important testing ground for star formation.

“Astronomers have generally believed that it’s somewhat rare for stars and planets to be triggered into formation by radiation from massive stars,” said Konstantin Getman of Penn State University, and lead author of the study. “Our new result shows this belief is likely to be wrong,” he added.

This particular type of triggered star formation had previously been seen in small populations of a few dozen stars, but the latest result is the first time it has been clearly observed in a rich population of several hundred stars.

The new study suggests that star formation in Cepheus B is mainly triggered by radiation from one bright, massive star outside the molecular cloud.

According to theoretical models, radiation from this star would drive a compression wave into the cloud triggering star formation in the interior, while evaporating the cloud’s outer layers.

The Chandra-Spitzer analysis revealed slightly older stars outside the cloud while the youngest stars with the most protoplanetary disks congregate in the cloud interior – exactly what is predicted from the triggered star formation scenario.

“We essentially see a wave of star and planet formation that is rippling through this cloud,” said co-author Eric Feigelson, also of Penn State. “Outside the cloud, the stars probably have newly born planets while inside the cloud the planets are still gestating,” he added. (ANI)

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World’s largest and most technologically advanced telescope to debut on July 24

July 14, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 14 (ANI): The world’s largest, most technologically advanced telescope is all set to make its formal debut on July 24 in Spain’s Canary Islands.

Known as the Gran Telescopio Canarias, the telescope has a 10.4-meter diameter mirror, and has more light-collecting area than any other telescope.

Perched 7,874 feet above sea level on a mountain on the island of La Palma, the GTC has 6 square meters more light collecting area than any of the roughly one dozen 8- to 10-meter telescopes worldwide.

With a mirror composed of 36 hexagonal segments thought to have the smoothest surfaces ever made, it is also the world’s most technologically advanced optical telescope.

Sensors keep the mirrors aligned to counteract the force of gravity, with the result that they act as a single surface, even as the telescope is rotated and aligned in place.

According to Stan Dermott, chairman of UF’s (University of Florida’s) astronomy department, the GTC’s size and technical attributes enable it not only to gather more light than any other telescope, but also resolve the light into sharper and clearer focus.

“For astronomers, those capabilities make it a powerful tool to study cosmic origins – the early days of the universe and the very early moments in the mysterious births of stars, planets and galaxies,” he said.

“The interpretation of the structure of the disks where new planets form is highly dependent on the quality of the image,” he said, adding that the GTC also will enable the discoveries of new planets, possibly including the first habitable planet.

At the inauguration of the telescope, officials and astronomers from the University of Florida, the only US institution that is part of the project, will join more than 500 astronomers, journalists and celebrities in a ceremony presided over by Spain’s King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia. (ANI)

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Bath time injuries rising among kids

July 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 13 (ANI): Bathtubs and showers are associated with nearly half of the injuries in kids, and the rate is still increasing drastically, according to a new study.

“Unfortunately, adult supervision isn’t enough to prevent these injuries, they happen so quickly that a parent simply can’t react quickly enough to prevent them,” said Dr. Gary Smith, with Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Centre for Injury Research and Policy.

According to the new study, more than 43,000 children in the US, 18 years and younger, are treated in hospital emergency departments annually for injuries occurring in a bathtub or shower.

Smith recommends installing support bars so that kids can hold onto them when getting in and out of the tub and shower.

Smith further advises parents to ensure that there are no sharp edges that children can fall against.

The falls can also be prevented by using a slip resistant mat inside and outside the bath and shower.

The researchers said that most injuries occur to children under age 4, and most often to the face.

The most common injuries were laceration (60 percent), with the face being the most frequently injured body region (48 percent), followed by the head and neck (15 percent).

“That is because young children, the ones typically injured in bathtubs and showers, they tend topple forward, they have a high centre of gravity, and they tend to strike their head and their face, and that ends up with injures such as lacerations,” Smith added.

After the study, experts are calling on manufacturers to use more slip-resistant materials when making bathtubs and showers, so that the number of injuries can be significantly reduced.

The study has been published in the journal Pediatrics. (ANI)

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Earliest stars in Universe may have been twins

July 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 10 (ANI): Astrophysicists, using extremely detailed computer simulations, have determined that the earliest stars in the universe formed not only as individuals, but sometimes also as twins.

The robust simulations of the early universe were created by astrophysicists Matthew Turk and Tom Abel of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, and Brian O’Shea of Michigan State University.

“We used to think that these stars formed by themselves, but now we see from our computer simulations that sometimes they have siblings,” said Turk.

“These stars provide the seeds of next generation star formation, so by understanding them we can better understand how other stars and galaxies formed,” he added.

To make this discovery, the researchers created an extremely detailed computer simulation of early star formation.

Into this virtual universe, they sprinkled primordial gas and dark matter as it existed soon after the Big Bang, data they obtained from observations of the cosmic microwave background.

This mostly uniform radiation – a faint glow of radio waves spread across the entire sky – contains subtle variations that reflect the beginning of all structure in the universe.

The simulations focused on the first Population III stars: massive, hot stars thought to have formed a mere several hundred million years after the Big Bang.

As the researchers watched their simulated universe evolve, waves of gas and dark matter swirled through the hot, dense universe.

As the universe cooled, gravity began to draw the matter together into clumps. In areas rich with matter, stars began to form.

In one out of the researchers’ five simulations, a single cloud of dust and dark matter formed into “twin” stars: one with a mass equivalent to about 10 suns, and one with a mass equivalent to about 6.3 suns.

Both of them were still growing at the end of the calculation and will likely grow to many times that mass.

“We ran five of these calculations starting from the beginning of the universe, and to our surprise one of them was special,” said Abel.

“This opens a whole new realm of research possibilities. These stars could evolve into two black holes, which could have created gravitational waves we could detect with an instrument like the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory,” he added.

“This will help us fine-tune our models for how structure in the universe formed and evolved. Understanding the very early stars helps us understand what we see today,” Turk said. (ANI)

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