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How life might evolve with “exotic” biochemistry and solvents

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 18 (ANI): Scientists at a new interdisciplinary research group in Austria are working to uncover how life might evolve with “exotic” biochemistry and solvents, such as sulfuric acid instead of water.

The research group for Alternative Solvents as a Basis for Life Supporting Zones in (Exo-) Planetary Systems was established by the University of Vienna.

Traditionally, planets that might sustain life are looked for in the ‘habitable zone’, the region around a star in which Earth-like planets with carbon dioxide, water vapor and nitrogen atmospheres could maintain liquid water on their surfaces.

Consequently, scientists have been looking for biomarkers produced by extraterrestrial life with metabolisms resembling the terrestrial ones, where water is used as a solvent and the building blocks of life, amino acids, are based on carbon and oxygen.

However, these may not be the only conditions under which life could evolve.

“It is time to make a radical change in our present geocentric mindset for life as we know it on Earth,” said scientist Johannes Leitner.

“Even though this is the only kind of life we know, it cannot be ruled out that life forms have evolved somewhere that neither rely on water nor on a carbon and oxygen based metabolism,” he added.

One requirement for a life-supporting solvent is that it remains liquid over a large temperature range.

Water is liquid between 0 degree Celsius and 100 degrees C, but other solvents exist which are liquid over more than 200 degrees C.

Such a solvent would allow an ocean on a planet closer to the central star.

The reverse scenario is also possible. A liquid ocean of ammonia could exist much further from a star.

Furthermore, sulfuric acid can be found within the cloud layers of Venus and it is now known that lakes of methane/ethane cover parts of the surface of the Saturnian satellite Titan.

Consequently, the discussion on potential life and the best strategies for its detection is ongoing and not only limited to exoplanets and habitable zones.

The newly established research group at the University of Vienna, together with international collaborators, will investigate the properties of a range of solvents other than water, including their abundance in space, thermal and biochemical characteristics as well as their ability to support the origin and evolution of life supporting metabolisms. (ANI)

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Saturn’s moon Enceladus may host a salty ocean

June 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, June 25 (ANI): A new research by European scientists has provided evidence that an enormous plume of water spurts in giant jets from the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus is fed by a salty ocean, a discovery that may have implications for the search for extraterrestrial life.

The Cassini spacecraft made a surprising discovery about Saturn’s sixth largest moon, Enceladus, on its exploration of the giant ringed planet in 2005.

Enceladus ejects water vapor, gas and tiny grains of ice into space hundreds of kilometers above the moon’s surface.

Enceladus orbits in Saturn’s outermost “E” ring. It is one of only three outer solar system bodies that produce active eruptions of dust and vapor.

Moreover, aside from the Earth, Mars, and Jupiter’s moon Europa, it is one of the only places in the solar system for which astronomers have direct evidence of the presence of water.

New understanding of how this plume is produced was revealed in 2008 by Juergen Schmidt of the University of Potsdam, Germany, and Nikolai Brilliantov of the University of Leicester, and colleagues.

They explained how the water vapor jets are blasted out much faster than the dust particles. To work their theory required that Enceladus has an ocean of liquid water below its surface.

The same team, working with Frank Postberg of the University of Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, in Heidelberg, has now found the direct experimental evidence for the presence of this ocean, which was previously lacking.

Current theories of satellite formation suggest that should a moon have a deep liquid ocean in contact with the body’s rocky core, for many millions of years, then it should be a salty ocean.

The team now reports the detection of sodium salts among the dust ejected in the Enceladus plume.

Postberg and colleagues have studied data from the Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) onboard the Cassini spacecraft and have combined this data with laboratory experiments.

They have shown that the icy grains in the Enceladus plume contain substantial quantities of sodium salts, hinting at the salty ocean deep below.

The theory, proposed by Brilliantov and Schmidt, has allowed the team to relate the detected salt in the CDA with the likely concentration in the water vapor above the ocean, which proves the consistency of the experimental data.

The results of the study imply that the concentration of sodium chloride in the ocean can be as high as that of Earth’s oceans and is about 0.1-0.3 moles of salt per kilogram of water. (ANI)

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NASA’s Moon mission successfully completes lunar maneuver

June 25, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 24 (ANI): NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, successfully completed its most significant early mission milestone on June 23 with a lunar swingby and calibration of its science instruments.

The satellite will search for water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the moon’s south pole.

With the assist of the moon’s gravity, LCROSS and its attached Centaur booster rocket successfully entered into polar Earth orbit at 6:20 a.m. PDT on June 23.

The maneuver puts the spacecraft and Centaur on course for a pair of impacts near the moon’s south pole on October 9.

“The successful completion of the LCROSS swingby proves the science instruments are functioning as expected. It is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the entire team,” said Dan Andrews, LCROSS project manager at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California.

“We are elated at the results from the maneuver and eagerly anticipate the impacts in early October,” he added.

During its swing by the moon, the spacecraft’s instruments were turned on and calibrated by scanning three sites on the lunar surface.

These sites were the craters Mendeleev, Goddard C and Giordano Bruno. They were selected because they offer a variety of terrain types, compositions and illumination conditions.

The spacecraft also scanned the lunar horizon to confirm its instruments are aligned in preparation for observing the Centaur’s debris plume.

“Each instrument returned good data that the science team will spend the next few weeks analyzing,” said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist at Ames.

“These data will ensure we are as prepared as possible for monitoring and interpreting data we receive during impact,” he added.

LCROSS and its attached Centaur upper stage rocket are now in a long, looping polar orbit around Earth and the moon.

Each orbit will be roughly perpendicular to the moon’s orbit around Earth and take about 37 days to complete.

Before impact, the spacecraft and Centaur will make approximately three orbits.

LCROSS and the Centaur separately will collide with the moon at approximately 7:30 a.m. EDT on October 9, creating a pair of debris plumes that will be analyzed for the presence of water ice or water vapor, hydrocarbons and hydrated materials.

The spacecraft and Centaur are targeted to impact the moon’s south pole near the Cabeus region.

The exact target crater will be identified 30 days before impact, after considering information collected by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and observatories on Earth. (ANI)

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Cyclones can feed global warming by spurting ice into stratosphere

April 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 21 (ANI): Scientists at Harvard University, US, have found that tropical cyclones readily inject ice far into the stratosphere, possibly feeding global warming.

The finding provides more evidence of the intertwining of severe weather and global warming by demonstrating a mechanism by which storms could drive climate change.

Many scientists now believe that global warming, in turn, is likely to increase the severity of tropical cyclones.

“Since water vapor is an important greenhouse gas, an increase of water vapor in the stratosphere would warm the Earth’s surface,” said David M. Romps, a research associate in Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science.

“Our finding that tropical cyclones are responsible for many of the clouds in the stratosphere opens up the possibility that these storms could affect global climate, in addition to the oft-mentioned possibility of climate change affecting the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones,” he added.

Romps and co-author Zhiming Kuang, assistant professor of climate science in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, were intrigued by earlier data suggesting that the amount of water vapor in the stratosphere has grown by roughly 50 percent over the past 50 years.

Scientists are currently unsure why this increase has occurred.

The Harvard researchers sought to examine the possibility that tropical cyclones might have contributed by sending a large fraction of their clouds into the stratosphere.

Using infrared satellite data gathered from 1983 to 2006, Romps and Kuang analyzed towering cloud tops associated with thousands of tropical cyclones, many of them near the Philippines, Mexico, and Central America.

Their analysis demonstrated that in a cyclone, narrow plumes of miles-tall storm clouds can rise so explosively through the atmosphere that they often push into the stratosphere.

Romps and Kuang found that tropical cyclones are twice as likely as other storms to punch into the normally cloud-free stratosphere, and four times as likely to inject ice deep into the stratosphere.

According to the researchers, if very deep clouds, such as those in a tropical cyclone that can rise through the atmosphere at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour, can punch through the tropopause, they can deposit their ice in the warmer overlying stratosphere, where it then evaporates.

“This suggests that tropical cyclones could play an important role in setting the humidity of the stratosphere,” said Romps and Kuang. (ANI)

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Toxic substance found in five foreign hair-dye brands in China

March 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Beijing, Mar.17 (ANI): The potentially cancerous toxic chemical, Lentine, has been found in five brands of hair dye in China.

According to a China Daily report, local consumer authorities said in Guangzhou yesterday that while the link between hair dye and cancer is still unproved, the five well-known international brands found with the toxic substance included Revlon Color Silk, Ecosystem No 1 Hair Colorant, Sewame Eshine Colorants, Kangchen 3in1 and Ouwaiya hair dye (natural black).

All of them are produced in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.

The hazardous elements were detected after the Guangdong provincial consumer commission checked hair dye produced by 21 companies early this year.

“The presence of lentine, widely used as a highly toxic industrial dye, is banned in hair dye,” Guo Yuhua, spokesman of the Guangdong provincial food and drug administrative authority, was quoted, as saying.

Inhaling lentine vapor could cause respiratory diseases. If the skin absorbs the chemical, it may damage kidney and liver, Guo said.

The authority warned consumers to conduct an allergic test before using “any brands of hair dye”. (ANI)

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New sensor detects bombs by sniffing out explosive vapors

March 14, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 14 (ANI): A group of scientists have discovered a new way to sensitively detect explosives based on the physical properties of their vapors.

“Certain classes of explosives have unique thermal characteristics that help to identify explosive vapors in presence of other vapors,” said Thomas Thundat, a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the University of Tennessee, who conducted the research with his colleagues at ORNL and the Technical University of Denmark.

In their research, the scientists show that their technology is capable of trace detection of explosives.

They also show that it is capable of distinguishing between explosive and non-explosive chemicals and of differentiating between individual explosives, such as TNT, PETN, and RDX.

Typical sensors use ion mobility spectrometers, which ionize tiny amounts of chemicals and measure how fast they move through an electric field.

While these instruments are fast, sensitive, and reliable, they are also expensive and bulky, leading many researchers in the last few years to try to find a cheaper, more portable device for detecting explosives.

The new research focused on “micromechanical” devices, which are tiny sensors that have microscopic probes on which airborne chemical vapors deposit.

When the right chemicals find the surface of the sensors, they induce tiny mechanical motions, and those motions create electronic signals that can be measured.

These devices are relatively inexpensive to make and can sensitively detect explosives, but they often have the drawback that they cannot discriminate between similar chemicals – the dangerous and the benign.

Seeking to make a better micromechanical sensor, Thundat and his colleagues realized they could detect explosives selectively and with extremely high sensitivity by building sensors that probed the thermal signatures of chemical vapors.

They started with standard micromechanical sensors – devices with microscopic cantilevers beams supported at one end.

They modified the cantilevers so that they could be electronically heated by passing a current through them.

Next, they allowed air to flow over the sensors. If explosive vapors were present in the air, they could be detected when molecules in the vapor clung to the cantilevers.

Then, by heating the cantilevers in a fraction of a second, they could discriminate between explosives and non-explosives.

All the explosives they tested responded with unique and reproducible thermal response patterns within a split second of heating.

The researchers are now improving the sensitivity and making a prototype device, which they expect to be ready for field testing later this year. (ANI)

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Soon, breath and urine tests to detect cancer, asthma diabetes

March 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 11 (ANI): It may soon be possible to detect cancer or diabetes using breath or urine samples, says a University of Missouri researcher.

Xudong “Sherman” Fan, investigator in the Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center is developing a sensor device that will analyze breath or urine samples for volatile markers inside the body that indicate whether a patient has breast cancer, diabetes or asthma.

The volatile markers, such as alkanes, acetones or nitric oxide, give doctors clues about what is happening inside the body and can be used as a diagnostic tool.

“Little traces of certain gas molecules in the breath or urine tell us if anything unusual is going on in the body,” said Fan,

“Measuring these volatile markers would be a non-invasive way to determine if a disease is present without having to draw blood or complete a biopsy. In addition to the biomarkers already discovered, many more potential volatile markers are still under investigation,” he added.

The sensor device known as the opto-fluidic ring resonator (OFRR) is an optical gas sensor that consists of a polymer-lined glass tube that guides the flow of a gas vapor and a ring resonator that detects the molecules that pass through the glass tube.

As the gas vapor enters the device, molecules in the vapor separate and react to the polymer lining. Light makes thousands of loops around the gas or liquid sample.

The more the light loops around the sample, the more the light energy interacts with the gas vapor. These repetitive interactions enable the detection of vapor molecules down to a very small quantity.

The use of OFRR is not restricted to medical industry it can have even broader implications in the field of defence.

The device can improve the detection of explosives on the battlefield.

“We hope to design a vapor sensor that has ultra-high sensitivity, specific and rapid response to a certain molecule, as well as the ability of on-the-spot chemical analyses, which usually requires the sensor to be small, portable, reusable and have less power consumption,” said Fan.

“If the gas sensor is portable, military personnel can determine more quickly whether an area is dangerous,” he added. (ANI)

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Solar power may be used to turn CO2 to methane

March 7, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 6 (ANI): A new study by Penn State University researchers has determined that dual catalysts may be the key to efficiently turning carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor into methane and other hydrocarbons using titania nanotubes and solar power.

Burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal release large amounts of CO2, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

Rather than contribute to global climate change, producers could convert CO2 to a wide variety of hydrocarbons, but this makes sense to do only when using solar energy.

“Recycling of carbon dioxide via conversion into a high energy-content fuel, suitable for use in the existing hydrocarbon-based energy infrastructure, is an attractive option, however the process is energy intense and useful only if a renewable energy source can be used for the purpose,” according to the researchers.

Craig A. Grimes, professor of electrical engineering at Penn State, and his team, used titanium dioxide nanotubes doped with nitrogen and coated with a thin layer of both copper and platinum to convert a mixture of carbon dioxide and water vapor to methane.

Using outdoor, visible light, they reported a 20-times higher yield of methane than previously published attempts conducted in laboratory conditions using intense ultraviolet exposures.

“Converting carbon dioxide and water to methane using photocatalysis is an appealing idea, but historically, attempts have had very low conversion rates,” said Grimes.

“To get significant hydrocarbon reaction yields, requires an efficient photocatalyst that uses the maximum energy available in sunlight,” he added.

The team used natural sunlight to test their nanotubes in a chamber containing a mix of water vapor and CO2.

They exposed the co-catalyst sensitized nanotubes to sunlight for 2.5 to 3.5 hours when the sun produced between 102 and 75 milliwatts for each square centimeter exposed.

The researchers found that nanotubes annealed at 600 degrees Celsius and coated with copper yielded the highest amounts of hydrocarbons and that the same nanotubes coated with platinum actually yielded more hydrogen, while the copper coated nanotubes produced more carbon monoxide.

When the team used a nanotube array with about half the surface coated in copper and the other half in platinum, they enhanced the hydrocarbon production and eliminated carbon monoxide.

The yield for these dual catalyst nanotubes was 163 parts per million hydrocarbons an hour for each square centimeter.

The yield from titania nanotubes without either copper or platinum catalysts is only about 10 parts per million.

“If we uniformly coated the surface of the nanotube arrays with copper oxide, I think we could greatly improve the yield,” said Grimes. (ANI)

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Cracks in Earth may contribute to global warming

February 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 20 (ANI): A new study has found that the cracks in Earth’s surface exhale large quantities of gas, perhaps enough to contribute to global warming.

According to a report in Discovery News, Noam Weisbrod of Ben Gurion University of the Negev and a team of researchers monitored a crack about 2 meters long (6.5 feet) and 1 meter (3.3 feet) deep for two years in the Negev Desert in Israel.

Each night, they watched as warm air in the crack drew water vapor out of the surrounding rock, and lifted it into the cold evening air.

If air in the crack is just 7 degrees warmer than the ambient temperature, it is buoyant enough to rise out of any crack in the ground bigger than 1 centimeter (0.4 inch) across, bringing with it any gases that leak out of the surrounding soil or rock.

But, the team was surprised to find that the crack they studied gave off water vapor up to 200 times faster than areas without fractures.

“Sometimes we go for walks at night, and you put your face over the mouth of a cave and you can feel a warm wind coming out,” Weisbrod said. “Usually, it’s a nice hot wind in the cold air,” he added.

Like carbon dioxide, water vapor is a greenhouse gas that plays a crucial role in the way Earth’s atmosphere traps heat from the sun.

Though the team only measured water vapor, Weisbrod said that it’s likely that cracks also regularly emit elevated amounts of CO2 and nitrogen oxides.

This doesn’t only happen in extremely dry areas, he added.

The Negev is arid, but roughly equivalent in dryness to the area around Los Angeles, California, the American southwest, and many regions around the world.

Fractures are common in soils and rocks in wet regions as well, according to Dan Yakir of the Weizman Institute of Science.

Taken as a whole, emissions from fractures in the uppermost meter of the planet’s crust may make a significant contribution to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

“This has the potential to be important globally,” Yakir said.

“The biosphere soaks up 30 percent of the carbon, and soil respiration is a very large part of that. If cracks remove CO2 from soils much faster than usual, it’s important,” he added. (ANI)

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Moon went “missing” in 1761 due to major volcanic eruption

January 17, 2009 By Rajesh Leave a Comment

Washington, Jan 17 (ANI): New evidence has emerged which suggests that a major volcanic eruption in 1761 belched out enough dust and gas to completely blot out the moon, thus explaining the “missing” moon observed that year during a total lunar eclipse.

According to a report in National Geographic News, astronomer Kevin D. Pang collected evidence from the fields of geology, biology, and Chinese history to come up with the theory.

A total eclipse occurs when the moon enters completely into Earth’s shadow.

Lunar eclipses can vary in brightness and color based on the angle of the moon’s path and the composition of Earth’s atmosphere.

While no sunlight hits the moon directly, some gets filtered by Earth’s atmosphere and is bent toward the moon, causing it to shine in hues ranging from bright orange to blood red.

“But when there’s a large volcanic eruption, the moon can drop in brightness by a million times, or in some cases disappear altogether,” Pang said.

Heavy amounts of particles in the air could explain why, in May of 1761, astronomers reported that the moon appeared very dark or disappeared altogether, even with the aid of telescopes.

An atmosphere clogged by a powerful volcanic eruption would also lead to global cooling and trigger extended bouts of strange weather, experts said.

To test his theory, Pang searched the scientific literature about tree rings and ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland.

He found evidence of a “volcanic winter” around the same time as the dark eclipse.

For example, sulfur dioxide gas ejected during a volcanic eruption can react with water vapor in the air to form acid rain, which then leaves chemical fingerprints in polar ice.

Furthermore, bristlecone pine trees high in the Sierra Nevada mountains experienced stunted growth and frost damage in 1761, according to Pang.

The researcher also looked through old Chinese weather chronicles from the early 1760s.

Those records revealed that large parts of China experienced an unusually bitter winter and heavy snowfall in 1761 and 1762.

According to Richard Keen, a climatologist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, “Pang is absolutely correct in saying that volcanoes can darken a lunar eclipse.”

A good candidate for the cause of the 1761 events is the Makian volcano on the Indonesian island of Halmahera, according to Pang.

Records show that this volcano experienced a series of eruptions beginning in September of 1760 and lasting until spring of the following year. (ANI)

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