August 10, 2011
Good Morning,
A new type of microscope gets a closer look at micro-objects than ever thought possible, and without a lens. Check out the last article to find out how this amazing piece of technology works.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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Life 'building blocks' seen in meteoritesWASHINGTON - U.S. researchers say building blocks of genetic material reach Earth from extraterrestrial sources, and in greater quantity than previously thought. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution say chemicals that existed in the early solar system, and may have been a pivotal source of organic compounds that gave rise to life on Earth, have arrived on our world in a type of organic-rich meteorite called carbonaceous chondrites. The researchers used advanced spectroscopy techniques to purify and analyze samples from 11 different carbonaceous chondrites, an institution release said Monday. They found a diverse array of nucleobases and compounds that are very rare in terrestrial biology and were not found in soil and ice samples from the areas near where the meteorites were collected. "Finding nucleobase compounds not typically found in Earth's biochemistry strongly supports an extraterrestrial origin," Jim Cleaves of Carnegie's Geophysical Laboratory said. The findings suggest the earliest forms of life on Earth may have been assembled from materials delivered to Earth by meteorites, the researchers said. "This shows us that meteorites may have been molecular tool kits, which provided the essential building blocks for life on Earth," Cleaves said.
Mars rover in final approach to goal PASADENA, Calif. - NASA says its Mars rover Opportunity has gained a view of the Endeavour crater, the mission's long-term goal since mid-2008, from just a short distance away. As it approaches the 14-mile wide crater, scientists hope to gather data from exposed rock on the crater's western rim far older than any Opportunity has seen so far, a NASA release said. The rover was slowly making its way to the southern end of the outcropping, dubbed "Spirit point" in honor of Opportunity's companion rover, which concluded its mission in May 2011 when it failed to re-establish contact after the harsh Martian winter. Both rovers had completed the initial three-month prime missions in April 2004 but continued for years of extended bonus missions. Both rovers have secured valuable data about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life.
Antimatter found in bands around EarthLONDON - A thin belt of antimatter particles surrounding Earth has been detected for the first time, an article in a British astrophysical journal reports. The published findings in Astrophysical Journal Letters confirm previous theoretical work that predicted antimatter, in the form of anti-protons, could be trapped by Earth's magnetic field. A small number of anti-protons lie between the Van Allen belts of magnetically trapped "normal" matter, scientist say. The anti-protons were detected by a satellite launched in 2006 to study the nature of cosmic rays, high-energy particles arriving at Earth from both the sun and from beyond the solar system. The band is "the most abundant source of anti-protons near Earth", study co-author Alessandro Bruno of the University of Bari in Italy told BBC news. The magnetic field holds the anti-protons in place until they encounter particles of normal matter in Earth's atmosphere, when they are annihilated in a flash of light, the scientists said.
Microscope sees smaller without lensesSAN DIEGO - U.S. researchers say a new X-ray microscope can penetrate deep into materials and see details at the scale of a single nanometer, or one billionth of a meter. Physicists at the University of California, San Diego, say the microscope doesn't use lenses but rather a powerful computer program to create its images. The program, or algorithm, is able to convert the diffraction patterns resulting in the X-rays bouncing off the nanoscale structures of material into resolvable images, a UCSD release said Monday. "The mathematics behind this is somewhat complicated," physics Professor Oleg Shpyrko, who headed the research team, said. "But what we did is to show that for the first time that we can image magnetic domains with nanometer precision. In other words, we can see magnetic structure at the nanoscale level without using any lenses." An immediate application of the new is the development of smaller storage devices for computers that can hold more data. "This will aid research in hard disk drives where the magnetic bits of data on the surface of the disk are currently only 15 nanometers in size," researcher Eric Fullerton said. "This new ability to directly image the bits will be invaluable as we push to store even more data in the future."
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