Gizmorama

May 16, 2011
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Good Morning,

All life originates with carbon, but where does carbon
originate? An article in this issue describes a recent
simulation that investigates how stars create the element
most essential to life. Read all the details in the first
article.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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How stars make carbon described

RALEIGH, N.C. - A U.S. researcher has helped create a super-
computer simulation that demonstrates how carbon, the basis
of all life forms, is produced inside stars. Astronomer
Fred Hoyle said more than 50 years ago when three helium
nuclei come together inside the core of a star, they have
difficulty combining to form carbon-12, the stuff we're made
of. He predicted a new state of carbon-12, with energy tuned
just right to make the formation of carbon possible in stars,
a state now known as the Hoyle state. While later experimen-
tation suggested the theory was correct, no one had ever been
able to reproduce the Hoyle state from scratch, starting from
the known interactions of protons and neutrons, so Hoyle's
theory remained unproven. North Carolina State University
physicist Dean Lee, with German colleagues, had previously
developed a method for describing all the possible ways that
protons and neutrons can bind with one another inside nuclei,
an N.C. State release said Wednesday. When the researchers
put six protons and six neutrons in their "effective field
theory" simulation, the Hoyle state appeared together with
other observed states of carbon-12, proving the theory cor-
rect. "Our method places the particles into a simulation with
certain space and time parameters, then allows them to do
what they want to do," Lee said. "Within those simulations,
the Hoyle state shows up."


Earth study to offer clues to alien life

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - U.S. scientists say they'll study methane
production by cold-weather microbes on Earth to help NASA
search for evidence of similar microbes elsewhere. In a
3-year, $2.4 million project funded by NASA's Astrobiology
Science and Technology for Exploring Planets program, Indiana
University Bloomington scientists will study methane release
near the receding edge of Arctic ice sheets for clues of how
life might exist at the edge of extraterrestrial ice sheets,
an IUB release reported Wednesday. "In order to be prepared
for robotic or human exploration of other habitable worlds,
scientists and engineers need to thoroughly test instruments
and exploration concepts in extreme environments on Earth,"
IUB biogeochemist Lisa Pratt said. "These environments mimic,
in some ways, the places we expect to explore for evidence of
extraterrestrial life." Conditions that support life on Earth
are the only point of reference for what's possible on Mars,
Jupiter's moon Europa, and Saturn's moon Enceladus, the three
bodies currently deemed most likely to harbor, or to have once
harbored, life, the researchers said.


Chemical levels high in dolphins, whales

CHARLESTON, S.C. - U.S. researchers studying dolphins and
beluga whales say the animals accumulate more chemical pol-
lutants when they live and feed in waters near urbanized
areas. Scientists at the Hollings Marine Laboratory in
Charleston, S.C., looked at the levels of persistent organic
pollutants, or POPs, found in male dolphins along the U.S.
East and Gulf of Mexico coasts, and also examined the levels
of perfluorinated compounds, or PFCs, in beluga whales at two
Alaskan locations, a release from the National Institute of
Standards and Technology Wednesday said. When analyzing
concentration levels of POPs across 14 sampling locations,
the levels were statistically higher in the bodies of dolph-
ins living and feeding in waters near more urban and indus-
trialized areas, the researchers said. Samples from beluga
whales were taken in two locations, Cook Inlet in the urban
southern part of Alaska and the Chukchi Sea in the remote
northern part. All but one of the PFC concentrations measured
were significantly higher in the Cook Inlet belugas, an expec-
ted result given the urban nature of the area, the research-
ers said. The two marine species accumulate high levels of
the chemicals because each is at or near the top of their
respective food webs, researchers said.


Icebergs help oceans take up carbon

MONTERY, Calif. - Antarctic icebergs are "fertilizing" algae
that take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and transfer
carbon into the deep sea, researchers say. As global climate
change releases thousands of free-drifting icebergs that are
carried by currents into the Southern Ocean, they carry iron-
rich sediment from the land out into the ocean. Scientists
from the Montery Bay Aquarium Research Institute studied
these icebergs and found as they melt and drift across the
ocean, some of the iron dissolves in the seawater, creating
a trail of iron-rich melt water up to 12 miles long that
helps fertilize the growth of microscopic algae, an institute
release reported Wednesday. Icebergs both large and small are
playing an important role in controlling how much carbon from
the atmosphere was taken up by algae and ultimately trans-
ported into the deep sea, the researchers said. "The role of
icebergs in removing carbon from the atmosphere may have
implications for global climate models that need to be fur-
ther studied," institute biologist Ken Smith said.

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