Gizmorama
September 29, 2010
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Good Morning,
Believe it or not, the U.N. is in the process of establishing
an ambassador for space alien relations. I suppose it may be
a proactive decision, but it sound like something out of a
Heinlein novel. Read all the details on this process, inclu-
ding the prime candidate, in the second article.
Until Next Time,
Erin
Questions? Comments? Email me at: mailto:gizmo@gophercentral.com
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Study zeroes in on likely eruptions
LEEDS, England - A study of recent volcanic activity in
Africa has revealed a method to pinpoint where volcanic
eruptions are likely to occur, British researchers say. Sci-
entists from the universities of Leeds along with U.S. and
African researchers studied volcanic activity in the remote
Afar desert of Northern Ethiopia from 2005 to 2009, a release
said. Looking at a sequence of magmatic events, where molten
rock flowed into a crack between the African and Arabian
tectonic plates, they found the location of each event in the
sequence was not random. Instead they were linked, because
each event changed the amount of tension in the earth's
crust, the researchers said. By monitoring levels of tension
in the ground near where each event occurred they found sub-
sequent eruptions were more likely in places where the
tension increased. One researcher compared the linkage to
that observed for earthquakes. "It's been known for some
time that a large earthquake has a role to play in triggering
subsequent earthquakes, but until now, our knowledge of vol-
canic events has been based on isolated cases," Ian Hamling
at the University of Leeds said. "We have demonstrated that
volcanic eruptions can influence each other. "Knowing the
state of stress in this way won't tell you when an eruption
will happen, but it will give a better idea of where it is
most likely to occur," Hamling said.
U.N. set to name 'ambassador' to aliens
UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. - The United Nations is set to appoint
the world's first ambassador to greet any aliens trying to
contact Earth, authorities said. Malaysian astrophysicist
Mazlan Othman, 58, would be responsible for co-coordinating
humanity's response if and when extraterrestrials make con-
tact, Britain Daily Telegraph reported Sunday. Othman will
discuss the details of her proposed new role at a Royal
Society conference in England this week, the newspaper
said. She is currently head of the little-known U.N. Office
for Outer Space Affairs. "Othman is absolutely the nearest
thing we have to a 'take me to your leader' person," Pro-
fessor Richard Crowther, an expert in space law at the
U.K. space agency, said. The plan to make the Office for
Outer Space Affairs the co-coordinating body for dealing
with alien encounters will be debated by U.N. scientific
advisory committees and should eventually reach the body's
general assembly, the Daily Telegraph said. "The continued
search for extraterrestrial communication, by several ent-
ities, sustains the hope that some day human kind will
received signals from extraterrestrials," Othman says.
"When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response
that takes into account all the sensitivities related to
the subject," she says. "The United Nations is a ready-made
mechanism for such coordination."
Telescope spots its first asteroid target
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - An asteroid-hunting telescope in Hawaii
has discovered its first potentially-hazardous asteroid,
scientists say. The Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid
Response System instrument on the summit of Haleakala on
Maui, Hawaii, has discovered an asteroid that will come
within 4 million miles of Earth in mid-October, a release
by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said.
The asteroid is about 150 feet in diameter and was photo-
graphed Sept. 16 when it was about 20 million miles away,
the release said. It is the first "potentially hazardous
object" (PHO) to be discovered by the Pan-STARRS survey
and has been given the designation "2010 ST3." "Although
this particular object won't hit Earth in the immediate
future, its discovery shows that Pan-STARRS is now the
most sensitive system dedicated to discovering potentially
dangerous asteroids," Robert Jedicke of the University of
Hawaii said. "This object was discovered when it was too
far away to be detected by other asteroid surveys." Although
most of the largest PHOs have already been catalogued, sci-
entists suspect there are many more under a mile across that
have not yet been discovered, and that could cause deva-
station on a regional scale if they ever hit our planet.
Such impacts are estimated to occur once every few thousand
years, scientists say.
Electron 'reader' step to new computers
SYDNEY - Australian researchers say they've made a major
step toward a working quantum computer by developing a single-
electron "reader." Quantum computers promise huge increases
in processing speed over today's computers by using the
"spin", or magnetic orientation, of individual electrons to
represent data in their calculations. In order to employ
electron spin, the quantum computer needs both a way of
changing the spin state -- to "write"-- and of measuring
that change -- to "read" -- to form a qubit, the equivalent
of the bits in a conventional computer. University of New
South Wales scientists have, for the first time, measured
the spin of one electron in silicon in an experiment, a
university release said. "Our device detects the spin
state of a single electron in a single phosphorus atom
implanted in a block of silicon. The spin state of the
electron controls the flow of electrons in a nearby circuit,"
Andrea Morello of the School of Electrical Engineering and
Telecommunications at UNSW said. "Until this experiment,
no-one had actually measured the spin of a single electron
in silicon." Now that they've created a single electron
reader, the researchers say, they are working to complete a
single electron writer and combine the two. Then they will
combine pairs of these devices to create a 2-bit logic gate
-- the basic processing unit of a quantum computer.
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