Gizmorama - February 24, 2014

Good Morning,

Australian astronomers have reported the discovery of what is believed to be the oldest known star in the universe. How old is it? Try 13.7 billion years old. Now that's old!

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Astronomers discover oldest star yet found in the universe --*
ACTON, Australia - A team led by Australian astronomers reports it found the oldest known star in the universe, which formed shortly after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. The discovery has allowed the first opportunity to study the chemistry of the first stars, giving scientists a clearer idea of what the universe was like in its infancy, the Australian National University reported Sunday. The star, 6,000 light years from Earth, was discovered using the university's SkyMapper telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory, searching for ancient stars as part of a five-year project to produce the first digital map the southern sky. "This is the first time that we've been able to unambiguously say that we've found the chemical fingerprint of a first star," lead researcher Stefan Keller of the university's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics said. "This is one of the first steps in understanding what those first stars were like," he said. "What this star has enabled us to do is record the fingerprint of those first stars." The composition of the newly discovered star shows it formed in the wake of a primordial star, which had a mass 60 times that of our sun, Keller said. "To make a star like our sun, you take the basic ingredients of hydrogen and helium from the Big Bang and add an enormous amount of iron -- the equivalent of about 1,000 times the Earth's mass," he said. "To make this ancient star, you need no more than an Australia-sized asteroid of iron and lots of carbon. It's a very different recipe that tells us a lot about the nature of the first stars and how they died."


*-- Researchers use nanomotors to probe insides of living cells --*
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Tiny synthetic motors for the first time have been placed into live human cells, propelled with ultrasonic waves and steered magnetically, U.S. scientists say. As the nanomotors, which are rocket-shaped metal particles, move around inside the cells, they spin and batter against the cell membrane, a research team at Penn State University reported Monday. "As these nanomotors move around and bump into structures inside the cells, the live cells show internal mechanical responses that no one has seen before," material chemistry and physics Professor Tom Mallouk said. "This research is a vivid demonstration that it may be possible to use synthetic nanomotors to study cell biology in new ways." The ability of nanomotors to affect living cells holds promise for medicine, he said. "We might be able to use nanomotors to treat cancer and other diseases by mechanically manipulating cells from the inside," he said. "Nanomotors could perform intracellular surgery and deliver drugs non-invasively to living tissues." For their experiments, the team used HeLa cells, a line of human cervical cancer cells typically used in research studies. At low ultrasonic power, Mallouk explained, the nanomotors had little effect on the cells. But when the power was increased, the nanomotors began moving around and bumping into organelles -- structures within a cell that perform specific functions. "One dream application of ours is Fantastic Voyage-style medicine, where nanomotors would cruise around inside the body, communicating with each other and performing various kinds of diagnoses and therapy," he said.

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