Gizmorama
November 24, 2010
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Good Morning,
A really neat article at the end of this issue outlines a
study that traces the origins and survival of orangutans back
many centuries. Also, a couple of craters on the surface of
Mars have been named after NASA spacecrafts; details in the
second article.
Until Next Time,
Erin
Questions? Comments? Email me at: mailto:gizmo@gophercentral.com
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500th 'extrasolar' planet discovered
PARIS - Astronomers have discovered the 500th exoplanet out-
side our solar system, a database maintained by a French
astronomer says. Astrobiologist Jean Schneider of the Paris-
Meudon Observatory, who compiles the Extrasolar Planets
Encyclopedia, says less than 20 years after the discovery of
the first exoplanet he has logged No. 500, discovered Nov.
19, SPACE.com reported. The 500th extrasolar planet was re-
ported in the midst of the announcement of the discovery of
several others, including a planet tagged HIP 13044b astron-
omers say was born in another galaxy before being captured
by our own Milky Way galaxy. Less than two months ago
astronomers announced a watershed moment, the discovery of
the first potentially habitable exoplanet. Meanwhile, data
is pouring in from planet-hunting instruments like NASA's
Kepler space observatory. Kepler has already identified more
than 700 "candidate" stars worthy of further observation and
confirmation, and a high percentage of those will probably be
found to have planets, says Jon Jenkins of the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute. Jenkins is the lead
analyst for the Kepler mission.
Martian craters named for Apollo 12 craft
PASADENA, Calif. - Two craters on Mars have been given new
names to honor the Apollo spacecraft that carried the second
crew of American astronauts to the moon, NASA said. The
craters, photographed by NASA's Opportunity rover, have been
named "Yankee Clipper" and "Intrepid" for the November 1969
Apollo 12 mission command module and lunar lander, SPACE.com
reported Monday. Astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean touched
down on the moon in the Intrepid lander on Nov. 19, 1969,
while crewmate Dick Gordon remained in lunar orbit aboard the
command module Yankee Clipper. Bean, now 78, said in a mes-
sage to the Mars rover team it was a "wonderful honor" to
have Mars craters named after the Apollo 12 spacecraft. The
idea to name the craters came from rover science team member
James Rice, NASA officials said. "The Apollo missions were so
inspiring when I was young, I remember all the dates," Rice
said. "When we were approaching these craters, I realized we
were getting close to the Nov. 19 anniversary for Apollo 12."
Opportunity drove past the crater Yankee Clipper on Nov. 4
and arrived at the Intrepid crater on Nov. 9. The Yankee
Clipper crater is about 33 feet wide, while the Intrepid
crater is twice that size.
Study: Winter sunlight hours affects us
EDINBURGH, Scotland - Scottish researchers say seeing how
biological clocks adjust to fewer hours of sunlight in winter
could help us understand the impact of jet lag and shift
work. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh studying the
daily activity cycle in plants, known as circadian rhythms,
have discovered a finely tuned process that enables the
plants' genes to respond to the times of dawn and dusk each
day, as well as the length of daylight in between, a univer-
sity release said. This allows the plant to reset its inter-
nal clock every day in response to seasonal changes in day-
light, which helps the plant control the timing of key
activities such as growth and flowering. The findings shed
light on how all living things, including people, respond to
patterns of daylight, and why our bodies respond the way they
do when our daily rhythms are interrupted by global travel
or "unnatural" working hours. Circadian rhythms control or
influence many biological functions that vary throughout the
day. In people, these can include sleepiness, body temper-
ature, blood pressure and physical strength, researchers
say. "Our results give us valuable information on how plants
-- and people -- respond to changing lengths of day," says
Andrew Millar of the University of Edinburgh's School of
Biological Sciences. "It could give a new way to understand
how to cope when our daily rhythms of light and dark are
interrupted," he says.
Study: Orangutans survived 'squeeze' event
ZURICH, Switzerland - Orangutans in Borneo are descended
from a small number of ancestors who survived a population
"bottleneck" about 176,000 years ago, Swiss researchers say.
Scientists at the University of Zurich say a genetic analysis
of the species suggests a global cooling trend could have
created the bottleneck, defined as a period in which animal
numbers shrink but eventually expand again when conditions
improve, ScienceNews.org reported Monday. The Earth experi-
enced a serious period of cooling about 190,000 to 130,000
years ago, anthropological geneticist Natasha Arora says,
and while Borneo itself wasn't iced over, rain forests where
orangutans live might have shrunk during this time, threat-
ening the orangutan population within it. Orangutans today
live only on Borneo and Sumatra in two distinct species,
both of which show a genetic suggestion of a bottleneck
event. "Something really important happened" roughly 170,000
years ago, Lounes Chikhi, a population geneticist in Toulouse,
France says. At least one other primate may have had a simi-
lar history to Borneo's orangutans, species Pongo pygmaeus,
he says. "There is a strange parallel with human evolution,"
Chikhi says. Geneticists say that for modern humans, the time
to a most recent common ancestor is 170,000 years ago. "What
happened between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago that influ-
enced both Homo sapiens and Pongo pygmaeus?" Chikhi asks.
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