August 17, 2011

Good Morning,

Scientists trace back the history of oxygen on Earth and
make an interesting find. Research suggests that oxygen was around on this planet long before it could have been found in our atmosphere. Find out how and where these oxygen outlets appeared in the second article.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Robot meant to aid in mine rescues

ALBUQUERQUE - U.S. researchers say they're developing a rescue robot that could reach trapped miners while dealing with obstacles such as rubble piles and flooded chambers. In a mine rescue attempt, humans face dangers like poisonous gases, flooded tunnels, explosive vapors and unstable walls and roofs that can slow rescue efforts to a frustrating pace, scientists at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque say. Sandia's Gemini-Scout Mine Rescue Robot can navigate through 18 inches of water, crawl over boulders and rubble piles and search ahead of rescuers to evaluate precarious environments and help plan operations, a release said Tuesday. "We have designed this robot to go in ahead of its handlers, to assess the situation and potential hazards and allow operations to move more quickly," Jon Salton, a Sandia engineer and the project manager, said. "The robot is guided by remote control and is equipped with gas sensors, a thermal camera to locate survivors and another pan-and-tilt camera mounted several feet up to see the obstacles we're facing." The 4-foot long robotic scout can also haul food, air packs and medicine to those trapped underground, the researchers said.


Study: Oxygen appeared earlier on Earth

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - New research suggests oxygen was being produced on Earth hundreds of millions of years before any traces of it appeared in our atmosphere, U.S. scientists say. Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology indicate that early oxygen kept a low profile in "oxygen oases" in the oceans where tiny aerobic organisms may have evolved to survive on extremely low levels of the gas in these undersea pockets. It wasn't until the "Great Oxidation Event" nearly 2.3 billion years ago that oxygen appeared in any measurable quantity in the atmosphere, stimulating the evolution of air-breathing organisms and, ultimately, the complex life of the Earth today, an MIT release said Tuesday. "The time at which oxygen became an integral factor in cellular metabolism was a pivotal point in Earth history," MIT geobiology professor Roger Summons says. "The fact that you could have oxygen-dependent biosynthesis very early on in the Earth's history has significant implications." The research suggests oxygen may have been present on Earth 300 million years before it appeared in the atmosphere, just at extremely low concentrations that wouldn't have left much of a trace in the rock or fossil record.


Unusual form of carbon seen in space

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA says its Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted the signature of a form of carbon called graphene in space, the first-ever cosmic detection of the material. Graphene, which is arranged like chicken wire in flat sheets that are one atom thick, was first synthesized in a lab in 2004, and a Nobel prize was awarded for subsequent research on its unique properties. Graphene is as strong as it is thin, conducts electricity as well as copper and is considered by many the "material of the future" with applications in computers, electrical devices, solar panels and more, a NASA release said Tuesday. Researchers say they are interested in learning about how it is created, since understanding chemical reactions involving carbon in space may hold clues to how carbon-based life on earth, including ourselves, developed. The Spitzer telescope identified signs of graphene in two small galaxies outside of our own, called the Magellanic Clouds, in the material shed by dying stars.


Scientists say Earth not getting fatter

PASADENA, Calif. - A NASA-led research team says it's laid to rest a recurrent rumor that Earth has a weight problem, reporting that the planet is not getting fatter after all. Scientists have long speculated that the solid Earth might be expanding or contracting, proposing various theories to back up their contention about one or the other. A NASA study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, has essentially settled the argument. Using a battery of space measurement tools and a new data calculation technique, researchers detected no statistically significant expansion of the solid Earth, a release by the space agency said Tuesday. An international group of scientists led by Xiaoping Wu of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.-- and including participants from the Institut Geographique National, Champs-sur-Marne in France, and Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands -- set out to evaluate the accuracy of the measurements. After analysis, they estimated the average change in Earth's radius to be 0.004 inches per year, or about the thickness of a human hair, a rate considered statistically insignificant. "Our study provides an independent confirmation that the solid Earth is not getting larger at present, within current measurement uncertainties," Wu said.

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