This image shows the intricate structure of part of the Seagull Nebula, known more formally as IC 2177. These wisps of gas and dust are known as Sharpless 2-296 (officially Sh 2-296) and form part of the “wings” of the celestial bird. This region of the sky is a fascinating muddle of intriguing astronomical objects — a mix of dark and glowing red clouds, weaving amongst bright stars. This new view was captured by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.
Eighteen months after the phrase first entered the collective public consciousness, the plight of the 99 percent is coming to mainstream superhero comics — via a new series from the second biggest publisher in the American comic industry, which just happens to be a subsidiary of a multi-national corporation that makes around $12 billion a year. Irony, anybody?
In May, DC Comics will launch two new series taking place in their mainstream superhero universe that offer different insights into the class struggle in a world filled with superheroes, alien races and inexplicable events. The Green Team, written by Tiny Titans and Superman Family Adventures creators Art Baltazar and Franco, with art by Ig Guara, revives an obscure 1975 concept about teenage rich kids who try to make the world a better place with their outrageous wealth. In an interview promoting the series, Franco promised that it would address questions like “Can money make you happy?” and “If you had unlimited wealth, could you use that to make the lives of people better?”
Obviously, this is one of the more fanciful series DC will be publishing.
But while DC is promoting The Green Team series as the adventures of the “1%,” its companion title, The Movement, is teased as a chance for us to “Meet the 99%… They were the super-powered disenfranchised — now they’re the voice of the people!”
“It’s a book about power,” explained The Movement writer Gail Simone. “Who owns it, who uses it, who suffers from its abuse. As we increasingly move to an age where information is currency, you get these situations where a single viral video can cost a previously unassailable corporation billions, or can upset the power balance of entire governments. And because the sources of that information are so dispersed and nameless, it’s nearly impossible to shut it all down.”
“The thing I find fascinating and a little bit worrisome is, what happens when a hacktivist group whose politics you find completely repulsive has this same kind of power and influence,” she elaborated in an interview at Big Shiny Robot. “What if a racist or homophobic group rises up and organizes in the same manner?”
While the concept is ambitious, the idea that a comic capable of living up to the book’s populist inspiration could come from DC Entertainment still strikes some as unlikely. Matt Pizzolo, the editor of the Occupy Comics anthology, told Wired that “though DC Comics did help launch Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s seminal anarchist epic V For Vendetta over two decades ago, it’s unlikely they would do so today. Between dismantling Vertigo and frankensteining Watchmen, the past year has demonstrated DC isn’t a safe place for bold creators who want to tell the kinds of stories that would inspire things like Occupy, rather than just cash in on them.”
Still, Simone says that the use of the iconography and language of a real-world populist movement is deliberate, promising that the book will reflect today’s decentralized political world and offer ”a slice of rarity that we’re unlikely to see in most superhero books.”
This wouldn’t the first time that DC has attempted to offer pre-packaged populist rebellion, of course; in addition to the aforementioned publication of the anti-establishment V For Vendetta, the company’s Vertigo imprint also published Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, a series centering around an international organization struggling against forces of authority and repression that included anti-corporate themes.
Only time will tell whether The Movement will live up to the subversive examples of these earlier books, or just end up a well-intentioned piece of topical super heroics that trades on, and commodifies, a real political movement.
The Movement #1 will be available in both print and digital formats on May 1, while The Green Team #1 will be released on May 22.
The gigantic snowstorm headed for New England is predicted to be a mean one that will dump feet of snow on an area from New York to Maine. But the ominous picture the National Weather Service is painting isn’t as frightening as the view from space.
The massive storm can be seen taking shape in this image, taken by NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite today at 9:01 ET, as a western front that stretches from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico prepares to merge with a curling low-pressure system over the Atlantic Ocean off the shore of Virginia.
From the chaotic aftermath of a massive asteroid impact sprang the mother of all placental mammals — the most recent common ancestor of everything from monkeys to whales to sloths. Not until at least 200,000 years after a giant space rock smashed into the Yucatan and obliterated the dinosaurs was the small, furry critter scurrying around, eating insects and birthing hairless young. This timing, based on a large study of mammalian physical characteristics and reported today in Science, suggests that the placental tree of life began sprouting its many branches about 36 million years later than genomic clocks indicate.
Scientists reached this conclusion after making 4,541 measurements of characteristics such a hair type, wings, and brain structures in 86 species, living and extinct. Combining those observations with molecular data helped the team reconstruct a mammalian tree pointing toward the last common ancestor of all mammals. Then they generated an image of what such an animal might have looked like, based on comparisons of characteristics shared by closely related species. The result critter is a long-tailed, rat-size furball that resembles both a mouse and a shrew — and perhaps luckily for it, it didn’t have to contend with too many giant reptiles.
LAS VEGAS — Valve, the game developer behind Half-Life and Portal, and J.J. Abrams’ production studio Bad Robot will work together to produce games and movies, the heads of the two studios said at the DICE Summit on Wednesday.
“There’s an idea we have for a game that we’d like to work with Valve on,” said Abrams while sharing the stage with Valve head Gabe Newell.
“We’re going to figure out if we can make a Portal movie or Half-Life movie together,” Newell said.
The surprise announcement came at the close of a brief joint keynote by Abrams and Newell, titled “Storytelling Across Platforms: Who Benefits Most, the Audience or the Player?” The opening presentation at the game industry’s annual high-level business summit featured two creative minds at the top of their respective mediums of choice: Lost creator Abrams was recently tapped to direct Star Wars: Episode VII, and Newell’s company Valve is redefining how games are made and sold with its Steam service, which it intends to push into the living room this year with an entry into the hardware market.
Abrams and Newell made the surprise, succinct announcement at the end of their keynote speech, which took the form of a carefully rehearsed discussion between the two creatives about the strengths and weaknesses of games and movies as storytelling mediums.
“Players are often asked to imprint themselves or relate to insanely mute empty vessels,” Abrams said, playing a clip from Valve’s Half-Life that showed its mute protagonist Gordon Freeman.
Newell pointed out that it can be frustrating for a viewer to not have agency while watching a movie, pointing to Abrams’ film Cloverfield as an example — why, he said, doesn’t the character just drop the camera and run away from the danger? The “self-paced” nature of games, he said, can create a more optimal experience.
“Movies let you experience moments that you might not think are the point, but really are everything,” Abrams said, pointing to the early introduction of compressed air canisters in the opening scenes of the movie Jaws, which initially seem unimportant but prove consequential to the film’s ending. Newell pointed out that the “take your child to work” scene in Portal 2 accomplished the same thing, setting up important plot points in a way that made them initially seem like humorous throwaways.
This seems to have been exactly what Abrams and Newell were doing with their DICE Summit keynote: Setting up the audience with what seemed to be a lighthearted, friendly discussion about games and movies, then surprising them with the revelation that they weren’t just going to chat about it at a conference but actively working together to create movies and games that learn from one another.
Ouya, the $99, Android-powered game console, set Kickstarter records last August when it raised nearly $8.6 million in crowdfunding. It will soon be sold at major retailers including GameStop, Best Buy, Amazon.com and Target, Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman announced to project backers on Tuesday.
The tiny game machine, about the size of a Rubik’s Cube, will begin showing up in big-box stores in June. Those who supported the project on Kickstarter will begin receiving their Ouyas in March.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Uhrman said that extra controller accessories will also be sold in stores for $49.99.
Ouya sold 68,000 units through its Kickstarter campaign alone, and the company has continued to offer pre-orders of the unit on its website.
2013 is expected to be the year of new game consoles from Microsoft and Sony, and Nintendo has just recently released the Wii U, but that doesn’t worry Uhrman: “We don’t need to beat Xbox or Sony or any console that enters the marketplace,” she told the Journal. “We need to carve out our own niche.”
There may be competition in that niche, too. Ouya isn’t the only Kickstarted Android-powered TV games console, and competitors like the GameStick have hinted that they too will be showing up on the shelves of major retailers.
Brace yourselves: The console wars are coming, maybe not in the way you expected.
The Super Bowl is over and the Baltimore Ravens won, bringing the NFL season to a close. And now you, a diehard, hardcore fan who loves football more than anything, are feeling withdrawn and down, unable to see any reason to get out of bed and face the world. Do not fear. You are suffering from football withdrawal. And a Loyola University psychiatrist is here to help.
Football withdrawal is not uncommon among the game’s most passionate NFL football fans, the kind of people who have NFL RedZone on their phones and ESPN Game Plan on their TVs. The excitement these fans feel through the season, particularly during exciting games, creates a high not unlike what runners or swimmers feel after an epic workout. And when it’s gone, they crash.
“Fans identify with the game and feel like they are in there,” said Dr. Angelos Halaris, a Loyola University Health System psychiatrist. “When we engage in a fun activity, dopamine is increased in the brain, making us feel a sense of pleasure. This doesn’t last forever.”
That extra dopamine is released when people really get into a game. The more intense the experience — and Baltimore’s 34-31 win over the San Francisco 49ers was one of the wildest, most intense games in recent memory — the more dopamine the brain releases and the “higher” we get. Eventually the dopamine level reverts to normal and we feel deprived. Halaris likens this feeling to the “post-holiday blues.” That’s why you woke up this morning feeling down, uninterested in life or generally out of sorts. Do not be alarmed. It isn’t serious and you needn’t seek professional help unless you’re predisposed to depression.
So, blue football fan, what can you do to ease your symptoms? Especially if you’re a Niners fan.
“Try, for the next few weeks, to recapture some elements that contributed to the sense of enjoyment you felt during the sporting season,” Halaris said. “If you were watching games with friends, get together, talk about it, reminisce, or replay games so you can go back and relive the experience until the withdrawal fades away.”
Do not go cold-turkey. Instead, wean yourself. Watch highlights or entire games on YouTube or your DVR, tapering off until you’re feeling better. Share your thoughts and feelings with fellow fans. Play a little Madden 13. And remember, this too shall pass. The 2013 season begins in just 10 months. Chin up, sport.
“You’re just going to have to basically tough it out until football starts up again,” Halaris said.
Magellan radar image of Wheatley crater on Venus. This 72 km diameter crater shows a radar bright ejecta pattern and a generally flat floor with some rough raised areas and faulting. The crater is located in Asteria Regio at 16.6N,267E.
It’s simple, but lovely. Web designer Franck Ernewein‘s real-time Twitter visualization, Tweetping, drops a bright pixel at the location of every tweet in the world, starting as soon as you open the page.
The result is a constantly changing image that grows to look like a nighttime satellite shot, bright spots swarming over the most developed areas. But Ernewein has packaged it all in a subtly interactive visualization that avoids distracting the viewer while still imparting a great amount of information.
Meanwhile, a selection of tweets are projected, along with latest hashtags and mentions, all while tracking total tweets, words, and characters. The length of the two gray lines on the display represent the number of characters and words in each tweet.
Though it’s one of the most beautiful, Tweetping is far from the first to display geotagged tweet information; coders have built sites to display election tweets, adjustable parameter maps, and even 3-D visualizations.
Tweetping even represents Antarctica, but not the ISS. And there’s no pause button; like Twitter itself, Tweetping’s data accrues incessantly; there’s no off switch but the back button.
Nathan Hurst is learning how to make some things, knows how to fix some others, and is already pretty good at breaking everything else. He has written for Outside and Wired, traveled in Africa, and tweets as @NathanBHurst.
Studying the links between brain and behavior may have just gotten easier. For the first time, neuroscientists have found a way to watch neurons fire in an independently moving animal. Though the study was done in fish, it may hold clues to how the human brain works.
“This technique will really help us understand how we make sense of the world and why we behave the way we do,” says Martin Meyer, a neuroscientist at King’s College London who was not involved in the work.
The study was carried out in zebrafish, a popular animal model because they’re small and easy to breed. More important, zebrafish larvae are transparent, which gives scientists an advantage in identifying the neural circuits that make them tick. Yet, under a typical optical microscope, neurons that are active and firing look much the same as their quieter counterparts. To see what neurons are active and when, neuroscientists have therefore developed a variety of indicators and dyes. For example, when a neuron fires, it is flooded with calcium ions, which can cause some of the dyes to light up.
Still, the approach has limitations. Traditionally, Meyer explains, researchers would immobilize the head or entire body of a zebrafish larvae so that they could get a clearer picture of what was happening inside the brain. Even so, it was difficult to interpret neural activity for just a few neurons and over a short period of time. Researchers needed a better way to study the zebrafish brain in real time.
Enter Junichi Nakai of Saitama University’s Brain Science Institute in Japan. He and colleagues selected a glowing marker known as green fluorescent protein (GFP) and linked it to a compound that would light up in the presence of large amounts of calcium. The researchers then inserted the DNA that codes for this marker into the zebrafish genome, tying it to a specific protein only found in neurons. This means that only actively firing neurons would fluoresce, and scientists could track neural activity without applying dye. Because the signal was stronger and clearer, researchers didn’t have to immobilize the larvae.
To test the setup, Nakai and colleagues sent the genetically engineered zebrafish larvae hunting for food. When the larvae see a swimming single-celled animal called a paramecium, they engage in what animal behaviorists call a prey capture response: They turn their heads toward the paramecium, swim at it, and finally eat it.
Using their newly developed imaging system, Nakai and colleagues associated the sight of moving paramecium and prey capture behavior with the activation of a group of neurons in the optic tectum, the visual center of the zebrafish brain. The neurons pulsed in tandem with the movements of the paramecium—a sudden dart of the one-celled organism caused a bright flash of neural activity in the zebrafish tectum (see videos). The tectum went silent if the paramecium stilled. Only moving prey interested the larvae, the team reports today in Current Biology. These particular neurons, Nakai proposes, are part of a specific visual-motor pathway that links the sight of moving prey with swimming behavior.
“It’s a good proof of principle study,” Meyer says. “The most important thing is that they showed [the technique worked] on freely behaving fish.”
All animals, from zebrafish to humans, contain an optic tectum, which coordinates eye movement and the organism’s response to objects in their visual field. In humans, for example, the tectum helps us track a buzzing mosquito so that we can take a swat at it. This means that the tectal activity in these transparent larvae could have direct correlates in the brains of humans and other mammals, Nakai says. Scientists can also watch these responses over time and compare brain activity with different stimuli.
The neurons in the larvae continuously make new GFP, which allows ongoing detection of neural activity. “It means we can take the same measurements today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow,” Nakai says. “This technique makes long-term measurement possible.” He hopes the approach will allow scientists to associate a variety of specific behavior patterns with specific neural circuits. That, in turn, could improve the development of psychiatric drugs, as scientists will more easily be able to tell if a particular drug has the desired effects on the brain.
This story provided by ScienceNOW, the daily online news service of the journal Science.
Beautiful, ominous, and surprising, these are the winners of the 2012 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. For 10 years, the competition -- sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the journal Science -- has celebrated the creators of visually striking, informative, and original art. The 2012 winners were announced today. From glowing corals to spiky seeds to neural networks on a chip, these images speak more clearly -- and louder -- than any report ever could.
Above:
First Place and People's Choice (Video)
This visceral, 3-d simulation of a beating heart grabbed first place in its category. A team at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center produced the contracting digital organ using a combination of data from magnetic resonance images, observations of cardiac muscle contractions and electrical signals, and input from physicians and bioengineers. Reproducing a single heartbeat takes 100 minutes of computing time, so the team distributed calculations among the facility's 10,000 processors. The result is a beautifully simulated, seemingly tangible, spasming organ.
Credit: Guillermo Marin, Fernando Cucchietti, Mariano Vazquez, Carlos Tripiana; Barcelona
Supercomputing Center
Should Chuck Hagel become the next U.S. secretary of defense, one of his priorities will be ensuring France’s 3-week-old campaign in Mali doesn’t become the next American shadow war.
In prepared questions to the Senate Armed Services Committee ahead of his Thursday morning confirmation hearing, the former Nebraska Republican senator said he’d back the French campaign against Islamist forces in the Malian north “without deploying U.S. combat forces on the ground.” Hagel backs training a United Nations-authorized African force to take over from the French, but the U.S. military is staying out of that effort, currently overseen by the State Department.
Outside of propping up the African forces, Hagel told the panel he supports “assisting the movement of French and African forces [and] providing intelligence and planning support” to the French. Midair refueling, something the French have sought and which a U.S. KC-135 tanker began providing on Sunday, wasn’t part of Hagel’s list.
Hagel also sounded a more sanguine note about the threat to the U.S. posed by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the al-Qaida affiliate in north Africa and the Sahel, than some in the Obama administration and the military have been willing to go. While he told the panel AQIM poses a “growing threat” to U.S. interests in the region and wants to deny the group a safe haven in Mali, “My understanding is that at this time, there is no credible evidence that AQIM is a direct threat to the U.S. homeland,” Hagel said. (.pdf)
That’s a position supported by some who follow AQIM and the region closely. AQIM appears flush with cash from its drug-smuggling and kidnapping operations. And defense observers have wondered if AQIM has a bull’s-eye on its back in the U.S.’ proliferating campaign of drone-and-commando-heavy shadow wars.
But unlike al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the group’s branch in Yemen, AQIM has not prioritized the U.S. as a target. “I see no evidence they have the expeditionary capabilities to stage attacks on the United States or have ever tried to develop that capability,” says Andrew Lebovich, a politics and security researcher with the Open Society Institute in Senegal.
Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rudy Atallah, the Pentagon’s former top Africa counterterrorism officer, adds that while AQIM has been willing to hit U.S. targets of opportunity in north Africa — as with its suspected role in the Algerian oil field attack earlier this month — it cares more about spreading extremist Islam and attacking the Algerian and French governments than it does assaulting U.S. interests. “The short answer is they are regionally focused for now,” Atallah says.
Asked about the threat from AQIM to the U.S. homeland at a Tuesday Pentagon briefing, spokesman George Little said, “I’m unaware of any specific or credible information at this time that points to an AQIM threat against the homeland, but, again, I’m not ruling it out.”
France itself is trying to scale back its Mali commitment, for fear of getting sucked into a quagmire. And while Hagel is no peacenik, his reluctance to draw the U.S. deeper in Mali matches his broader advocacy of “think[ing] very carefully before we commit our Armed Forces to battlefields abroad,” which he cited to the panel as a principle lesson of the Iraq war. Hagel says he doubts “providing lethal support to the armed opposition at this time will alleviate the horrible situation we see in Syria,” and committed himself to “steady” troop reductions from Afghanistan.
Hagel’s comments about Iran and Israel are going to get all the attention during the Thursday hearing. But he said nothing controversial in his advanced questions on either subject: “all options are on the table” against the Iranian nuclear program, and pledged to “maintain our unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.” Hagel appears more willing to halt the post-9/11 drift to military intervention on the margins of U.S. national security.
Disney will close Junction Point, the Austin, Texas, game development studio responsible for the Epic Mickey series, it said on Tuesday.
“It was with much sadness that we informed our teams today of changes to our Games organization, which include the closure of Junction Point Studios,” a Disney spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “These changes are part of our ongoing effort to address the fast-evolving gaming platforms and marketplace and to align resources against our key priorities. We’re extremely grateful to Warren Spector and the Junction Point team for their creative contributions to Disney with Disney Epic Mickey and Disney Epic Mickey 2.”
A Disney representative confirmed to Wired that vice president and studio head Warren Spector will not be staying on with Disney following the studio closure. Spector and Art Min founded the studio in 2004 after the closure of Ion Storm, where he created the Deus Ex series. Disney acquired Junction Point in 2007, before it had released any titles.
Sales of last year’s Epic Mickey 2 may be partially to blame. Although sales data has not been made public, the Los Angeles Times reported that the multi-platform action game only sold a total of 270,000 copies in 2012. Disney recently announced a major new game series called Infinity, developed by another in-house unit, Avalanche Studios.
Today’s news comes as a surprise considering that Spector, a lifelong Disney fan with an innate passion for its history, had seemed a perfect fit for the company.
Spector is currently scheduled to speak at the upcoming DICE Summit on Feb. 7, with a session titled “Hey, You kids! Get Outta My Yard! or The Graying of Gaming.”
The Chinese military’s first homegrown long-range transport plane has flown for the first time, extending Beijing’s impressive record of new warplane development.
But the Xian Y-20 (“Y” for Yun, meaning “transport”), roughly in the same class as the U.S. C-17 or the Russian Il-76, is probably still a long way from being fully operational — to say nothing of it being militarily effective. A lack of custom engines limits the new plane’s potential.
State-owned China Central Television depicted the four-engine jet transport taking off from what was probably the military airfield in Yanliang, central China, home of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force testing establishment. The Y-20, still wearing only its yellow primer paint, flew what appeared to be a short test flight and landed in front of a crowd waving Chinese flags. It seems the transport’s landing gear stayed down for the entire sortie — a standard precaution in early tests of new planes.
“The successful maiden flight of Yun-20 is significant in promoting China’s economic and national defense buildup as well as bettering its emergency handling such as disaster relief and humanitarian aid,” the government-run Xinhua news service announced Saturday.
Development of the new transport began no later than 2005, and was possibly spurred in part by the massive earthquake that killed tens of thousands in Sichuan in 2008. In the disaster’s aftermath, the PLAAF — which has long favored jet fighters over more mundane support aircraft — was able to deploy only a handful of small cargo planes carrying relief supplies. The U.S., by contrast, sent in two Boeing C-17s — welcome assistance but also embarrassing for the Chinese Communist Party.
The Y-20 is the latest in a chain of new Chinese airplanes. Since late 2010 Beijing has debuted two stealth fighter prototypes; a new carrier-based naval fighter; plus radar and patrol planes, two gunship helicopters and, now, a heavyweight cargo plane at least as capacious as Russia’s workhorse Il-76, which China also possesses and which seems to provide the basis of the Y-20′s design. Beijing may also have acquired some of the C-17′s blueprints from a spy working at Boeing.
The Y-20 first appeared in blurry snapshots posted to Party-friendly Chinese Internet forums in December — Beijing’s standard procedure for rolling out major new prototype weapons. A series of overhead images provided by U.S. commercial satellite operator GeoEye in early January provided more detail. In contrast to the high degree of official secrecy surrounding other new warplanes, Beijing promptly announced the Y-20′s existence — a move that trade magazine Flightglobal called “remarkable.”
As with China’s other new warplanes, the Y-20 prototype is apparently fitted with older, Russian-made engines rather than purpose-designed motors. A lack of suitable powerplants has slowed progress on many of the new planes. The Y-20′s current D-30 engines are low-bypass models better suited for supersonic fighters than an efficient, slow-flying cargo hauler. Beijing has poured billions of dollars into developing new engines but so far has little to show for it.
“The giant aircraft will continue to undergo experiments and test flights as scheduled,” Xinhua said of the Y-20. But that doesn’t mean the new transport is close to being ready for frontline use.
Hitting the streets to get fit by spring? We review four new specialty sneakers for runners.
Adidas' Adizero Feather 2.0 runners are so light (barely 7 ounces) and so responsive, running in them feels more like bouncing on fluffy clouds than pounding on pavement. OK, I'm exaggerating, but I was really blown away by the light weight when I took them out on long-distance runs. So effective was the feather-weight design on a 5-mile outing, I could actually notice the reduced effort in my legs.
The shoe is topped with a barely-there breathable mesh that runs from the toes all the way back to the heel. Ventilation is therefore excellent, with a constant flow of cool air delivered directly to your piggies. And, unlike most shoes that make use of fancy, lightweight materials, they're actually quite sturdy.
These sneaks are compatible with Adidas' miCoach data reporting system and its companion apps. So if you already have a miCoach Speed_Cell sensor, just lift up the shoe's insert and pop it in (You can also attach the sensor to your laces). The sensor can be synced with your iPhone to track your speed, acceleration, distance, and pace during runs.
The only problem is that the miCoach system needs some work, including the inconsistent syncing and the iPhone app's interface. If you're used to the Nike+ app, you'll be struggling to work your way through using Adidas' lesser creation. That said, it's an add-on to the shoe and not a primary feature, so miCoach's shortcomings don't detract from the sneaker's quality.
WIRED Obscenely light at only 7 ounces. Flexible mesh upper keeps your tootsies cool and dry. Durable, despite the lightweight design. miCoach-compatible for tracking your runs. Great styling. Affordable at $115. Men's and women's versions.
TIRED If you're not into light shoes, these aren't for you. The miCoach system needs a lot of work -- it's adequate, but could be so much better.
Scientists have modeled the internal workings of lightning-filled “rocket dust storms” on Mars that rise at speeds 100 times faster than ordinary storms and inject dust high into the Martian atmosphere.
The Red Planet is a very dry and dusty place, with global storms that sometimes obscure the entire surface. Satellites orbiting Mars have seen persistent dust layers reaching very high altitudes, as much as 30 to 50 km above the ground, though scientists are at a loss to explain exactly how the dust got there.
Using a high-resolution model, researchers have shown that a thick blob-like dust pocket inside a storm may become heated by the sun, causing the surrounding atmosphere to warm quickly. Because hot air rises, these areas will shoot skyward super fast, much like a rocket launching into space, hence “rocket dust storms.”
“The vertical transport was so strong we want to come up with a kind of spectacular name, to give an idea of the very powerful rise,” said planetary scientist Aymeric Spiga from the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in Paris, France, who is lead author on a paper describing the phenomena in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets on Jan. 14.
These speedily rising dust blobs can soar from near the surface to 30 or 40 km into the atmosphere in a matter of hours at speeds in excess of 10 meters per second (22 mph). This is far faster than the typical convection speeds in a dust storm of 0.1 meters per second (0.2 mph). Since the dust particles rub up against one another and create friction, the rocket dust storms may become charged with electrostatic forces, which could which could trigger fantastic lightning bolts.
Spiga and his team used detailed models of winds and dust on Mars to determine exactly how these rocket dust storms behave. Most previous models of Mars’ climate simulate large-scale global dust storms with fairly coarse resolution and so have not noticed the rocket storms. The team seeded their model with data from a dust storm observed by the OMEGA instrument aboard ESA’s Mars Express orbiting satellite and watched the rise of rocket storms.
Similar dust storms can’t happen on Earth. This is mainly because Mars’ atmosphere is about 100 times thinner than our own, meaning that it gets quickly and efficiently heated when dust particles absorb sunlight and then emit thermal radiation.
But a comparable phenomenon occurs in grey cumulonimbus thunderstorm clouds on Earth. The large accumulations of water particles in such clouds release latent heat, causing strong vertical motions and an extensive tall structure. Spiga’s team has used this Earthly analogy in the rocket dust storm’s more technical name, conio-cumulonimbus, from the Greek conious, which means dust.
“But I prefer to call them rocket dust storms,” Spiga said. “Then everyone knows what I’m talking about.”
Other researchers are impressed with the physical modeling done in the work. “I was a little surprised that such a small dust disturbance could remain intact over such long distances,” said planetary atmospheres scientist Scot Rafkin from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. The mechanism could help explain how long-lasting layers of dust climb so high in the Martian atmosphere, he says.
Because they appear to be relatively rare, it may take a while to track down more rocket dust storms. But Spiga is hopeful they will be found by orbiting satellites, which may even image the lightning flashes inside them.
Video: Spiga, Aymeric, et al. “Rocket dust storms and detached dust layers in the Martian atmosphere,” JGR:Planets, DOI: 10.1002/jgre.20046
Cowboys wait their turn during the slalom competition at the 39th Annual Bud Light Cowboy Downhill, a mashup of rodeo and skiing that drew 90 people from as far away as Australia.
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colorado — Ski rodeo is a perfect weird sport for Colorado, a place with a long history of ranching, a deep love of skiing and people only too happy to combine the two.
Downhill cowboys, and cowgirls, have been hitting the slopes here for the better part of four decades, and 90 of them came from as far away as France and Australia for the 39th annual Bud Light Cowboy Downhill.
The rules are, as in most weird sports, simple: the first one down Mt. Werner wins. Ingenious. This being a weird sport, however, there’s something you must do before crossing the finish line. Namely, lasso a cowgirl and saddle a horse, of course. There was a time when competitors also would pound a beer, but this was never officially sanctioned and has since been outlawed.
There are two geniuses behind this race. Billy Kidd is a former alpine skiing world champ and Olympic medalist who is the director of skiing at Steamboat. Larry Mahan is a six-time all-around world champion cowboy. Four decades ago, they invited a posse of pro rodeo stars, who’d come to Denver for the annual National Western Stock Show and Rodeo, to try their hand on the slopes. They’ve been doing it ever since. And some of these cowboys have actually skied. Once or twice, anyway.
Blake Knowles, a steer wrestler from Oregon, took first place in the dual slalom event on Monday. His time was 22.17 seconds, a number that means nothing beyond this weird sport. Better to say he finished 3.5 seconds ahead of the guy in second place.
Visually, the grand finale was the wildest part of the day. Everyone took to the slopes for what could only be called a stampede. Frenchman Evan Jayne was first across the finish line in an event that was not without drama. Kobyn Williams, 25, who’d ventured westward from Louisiana, broke his collarbone. He’ll miss about six weeks on the rodeo circuit because of it.
“I was rolling and tumbling,” he said. “When I got up, I kinda felt my shoulder fall on me. I knew it was broke before I got up.”
Williams was among the more loquacious competitors. I tried chatting up a cowboy by the name of Randy T. Mason, who told me, “I’m not one of the better guys to ask” and walked away.
“He’s shy, like most cowboys,” explained Joel Bob Carlson, a Southern California rancher who seemed to be the exception to that rule. Maybe the beer sitting nearby had loosened him up. Carlson was never a professional cowboy, but he did rodeo in high school and college. “Then the girls took over,” he said with a sly smile. He considers the Cowboy Downhill a “crackup.”
I told him what happened to Williams. Carlson was surprised to learn bull riders were competing on the downhill slalom.
“Bull riders typically don’t do this shit,” he said.
Maybe not, I replied. But then again, cowboys are pretty crazy.
NASA’s Curiosity rover is working late into the night, shining white and ultraviolet light on rocks similar to the ones it hopes to drill into in the coming weeks.
Unlike its solar-powered siblings, Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity has a nuclear battery that lets it run at any time of day. The rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera is fitted with four white and two ultraviolet LEDs to help it explore once the sun goes down. In addition to throwing killer Martian raves, the ultraviolet flashlight allowed the rover to look for fluorescent minerals in a rock nicknamed “Sayunei” (above).
Very little is currently known about the fluorescent properties of Martian soil and the UV LEDs are mostly being used for exploratory purposes for the time being. Tests conducted on Earth (.pdf) using Martian meteorites showed that phosphate minerals such as whitlockite glowed under UV illumination. If the science team sees anything shining green, yellow, orange, or red under the UV lights, it could indicate interesting mineralogy that might go undetected using normal white lights or sunlight.
Curiosity’s MAHLI camera also used its white light LEDs to take a closer look at “Sayunei” (below). The rover scuffed the rock with its wheel to clear it of dust and then examined it up close. The information may come in handy when Curiosity drills.
Images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Adam is a Wired reporter and freelance journalist. He lives in Oakland, Ca near a lake and enjoys space, physics, and other sciency things.
As the U.S. tries to hand over responsibility for the Afghan war to the new Afghan military it’s built, some very old weapons systems are poised to become crucial: the mortar and the howitzer.
The plan for 2013 is for the 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to draw down to an as-yet-undecided size at an as-yet-undecided pace. Those that remain will take a back seat to Afghans by the spring, as the Afghans plan and execute their own operations, a subtle shift from the “partnered” patrols the U.S. emphasized in 2012. Only the Afghans don’t yet have some of the crucial equipment, particularly fighter aircraft and attack helicopters, to help units that come under fire.
With the Afghans’ relative absence of close air support, “what we must do, then, is bring the surface fire capability to fruition, and that’s the indirect fire, observed indirect fire,” Army Lt. Gen. James L. Terry, the day-to-day commander of the war, told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday. Chief among them: the D-30 howitzer, a Russian-built 12 mm gun, and 60 mm mortars.
“So now instead of calling back up into the air, they have those organic capabilities inside those formations,” Terry said.
Pentagon officials cautioned that that doesn’t mean the U.S. air war is going to come to an end in 2013. But it’s on a downward trajectory. According to U.S. Air Force statistics, in 2012, U.S. warplanes fired their weapons 4,095 times, the lowest level recorded since 2009′s pre-surge 4,165 weapons releases. Close air support sorties in total were down to 28,471 last year — higher than in 2009, but still lower than their 2010 and 2011 levels.
But the whole idea is to shift the burden of the war onto the nascent Afghan forces. And with Afghan air power running behind Afghan ground forces, protecting Afghan forces under attack is going to be largely a ground responsibility. Terry praised “Afghan solutions” like the rise of a “mobile strike force, an armored wheeled-based platform” that seven Afghan battalions will use. As of now, it’s unarmed, so its purpose is to help Afghan troops survive an attack rather than repel one, but “potentially we’ll look at if we need to put a gun system on one of those platforms.”
Less clear is what the smaller complement of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2013 will do in their forthcoming “security force assistance” formations, of which there will be over 400. Their mission will be to train, advise and assist the Afghans as the Afghan troops plan and execute their own fights. But Terry signaled that U.S. forces won’t just be sitting on their bases and advising headquarters staffs.
“This is not simply about doing less,” Terry said, but rather about giving the “right resources” to the Afghans, at the battalion-level and above, so they can hold territory from insurgents.
“Those [U.S.] organizations are not purely headquarters focused, but they are focused, then, on increasing the capability with the Afghans. It doesn’t mean they won’t be going out on patrol with them, either,” Terry said, adding that “some of this training will obviously have to be done in contact” with insurgents — especially providing some of the “enabling capabilities,” like the air support that only the U.S. can provide for now.
Until the Afghans build up their own air force and air-attack specialties, Afghanistan’s soldiers are about to launch a lot more artillery strikes.
Square changed the game for small businesses by letting anyone easily take credit cards. Now PayNearMe founder and CEO Danny Shader says he’s doing the same for cash. Wait, what?
The whole point of cash is that it’s the raw unit of legal tender. There’s no mediating, no processing. Cash would seem the form of payment least in need of technological intervention. Cash in hand equals money in your pocket.
Yet in a 21st-century U.S. economy driven by digital transactions, relying on cash alone cuts you out of the mainstream. According to a federal survey released last fall, more than 8 percent of U.S. households qualify as unbanked. That means 17 million adults without checking or savings accounts. For them, the cash economy is the economy. Another 24 million households qualified as underbanked, meaning someone in the house had a bank account but within the past year had also used non-bank “alternative financial services” such as payday loans or check-cashing services.
But cash doesn’t work well for many kinds of payments, Shader says. Rent. Loan payments. Online purchases. Basically money destined for anyone you can’t just walk down the street and hand it to. Shader says his company bridges that physical divide by making paying anyone with cash as easy as going to 7-Eleven.
Here’s how it works: Say you’re a tenant in an apartment complex run by a property management company based in another city or another state. Handing over a wad of bills isn’t an option. If that property manager is signed up, you can go to the PayNearMe website, find yourself in the tenant database, and get a barcode (printed on paper or sent to your smartphone). Take that barcode to 7-Eleven, get it scanned and pay the cashier your rent in cash. You’re done.
“The transaction runs at the speed of buying a Slurpee,” Shader says.
A veteran tech entrepreneur who has sold companies to Amazon and Motorola, Shader started working on PayNearMe just under four years ago. Until now, PayNearMe has worked directly with larger businesses, including Greyhound and Amazon. (In California, you can also apparently use PayNearMe to fund your account with Xpressbet, a site that lets you wager on horse-racing online.)
Starting today, small and medium-sized businesses can set up an account directly through the PayNearMe website to start taking remote cash payments themselves. The account costs $199, and consumers pay $3.99 per payment.
PayNearMe’s backers clearly see the cash economy as a moneymaking opportunity. The company just booked $10 million in its latest round of financing, led by August Capital. Shader pitches the service as a boon to the unbanked and underbanked, a major chunk of the U.S. population on the financial margins. But he also says the ability to take cash without the headaches of physically handling it has advantages for those on the receiving end: “Cash,” Shader says, “doesn’t bounce.”