The Bunsen Burner

Google Pulls an April Fools Joke with Traffic from the International Space Station

Staff — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:42:01 +0000

After checking some stats from Google Analytics we saw that we were receiving some traffic from the International Space Station. Seemed very odd and have never seen anything like it. Then we found out it was an April Fools joke. For a minute we actually thought it was legit. Good joke Google!

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Cats Kill

Staff — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 09:07:28 +0000

It is cute, furry, and it meows so sweetly, but your perfectly sweet feline friend may be high on a list of prolific killers.

Some may not believe that their cute and cuddly pet cat can stray away from home when not being watched and go kill. Cats, like lions and tigers, use two hunting strategies. They will either stalk their prey or wait to ambush the prey when it gets close enough.

According to a report in the journal Nature Communications domestic cats kill between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion birds and up to 20 billion small rodents each year. Researchers found that cats, and in particular stray and free ranging cat are, “likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for U.S. birds and mammals.”

Dr. Peter Marra, research scientist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and co-author of the study, told ABC News that, “We think there are 15 to 20 billion adult land birds in the U.S. If we are suggesting 2.3 billion are killed annually, that means 1 in 10 birds are taken by cats every year.”

Cats are living a second life and they are the cutest serial killer, so next time you want to name your cat fluffy you may have to reconsider that.

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Biggest Flu Outbreak in Years

Staff — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 02:22:44 +0000

Public Health officials are urging people to go out and get their flu vaccine. The United States is going through a deadly influenza outbreak that has hit harder and earlier than in previous years, and has the lives of a total of 20 children this season. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Friday that the country is facing a particularly bad flu season — one that struck early and is “likely to last for several more weeks,” according to CDC director Dr. Tom Friedman. The disease is now widespread in 47 states, up from 41 last week.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases says, “It looks like the worst year we’ve had since 2003-2004,” The epidemic, which broke out in early December, has caused some 2,200 hospitalizations across the United States, federal health officials said. Boston in particularly has had a hard hit where officials have declared a public health emergency. They are urging people to stay home because they don’t want any more spreading.

It seems that this year it is stronger because predominant in the air this year is a H3N2 virus. Lyn Finelli, chief of surveillance and outbreak response for the CDC’s influenza division stated that, “that virus is always associated with high numbers of hospitalizations and deaths,” and “It hasn’t circulated in recent years, so there are a lot of susceptible. It has the opportunity to make a lot of people sick.”

Thus, beware go get your flu shot stay home if you are sick, and constantly wash your hands.

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Cash for Snake Removal in Florida

Staff — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 07:26:15 +0000

More than 550 hunters from 30 states have signed up for a contest called the “Python Challenge,” which begins Jan. 12 and ends Feb.10; Offering $5,000 in prize money for those who slay the longest and largest number of the invasive snakes. They’ll travel 1.3 million acres (526,091 hectares), including part of the Everglades National Park, looking for snakes that the state says threaten the ecosystem and native wildlife.

According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service; Federal, state and local governments have spent more than $6 million in Florida since 2005 trying to control pythons and other invasive constrictor snakes. Therefore, this new contest sounds like a cheaper solution to their problem. Hunters can have a good time and the state can spend less money on trying to control the snake problem.

This solution may sound a bit cruel, but there are an estimated 30,000 pythons in the Florida Everglades, according the National Park Service website. Also, since 1995 the numbers have “increased dramatically,” according to the park service.

Whether one may agree with it or not in the end what they want is to lower the snake population, but also when the contest ends scientist at the State Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission hope that they can gather some useful information that may provide useful data that can show where the snakes are living and what they’re eating. This information can then help with future removal programs.

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Study: Astronauts, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Radiation?

Staff — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 08:45:08 +0000

Space is filled with radiation that can harm people. Once astronauts are out in space they are exposed by a shower of dangerous particles that are known as cosmic rays, which can ultimately harm their brains and accelerate the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

This was revealed in a new study that was done on mice. Kerry O’ Banion- author of the study and neuroscientist at the University of Rochester stated, “ that this study shows for the first time that the exposure to radiation levels equivalent to a mission to Mars could produce cognitive problems and speed up changes in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease.”

This is of concern to NASA because for over 25 years they have funded studies to understand the potential dangers of space travel. Their past research analyzed the potential impact of cosmic rays on the risk for cancer and potential problems with the cardiovascular or musculoskeletal systems.

Today, NASA studied the effects of space radiation on the biological processes in the brain linked with the development of Alzheimer’s disease. The study looked at one particular kind of space radiation known as high-mass, high-charged (HZE) particles. According to the scientist this kind of radiation travels through space at high speeds,that is likely the result of exploding stars and other catastrophes in space. HZE particles have a mass and speed so strong that they can go through solid objects. This is bad news because these particles can ultimately travel through a spacecraft, or any astronaut for that matter. O’Banion even said that, “one would have to essentially wrap a spacecraft in a 6-foot (2 meters) block of lead or concrete.”

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The biggest star of 2013!

Staff — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 07:35:46 +0000

At the moment it is a faint object, visible only in sophisticated telescopes as a point of light moving slowly against the background stars. It doesn’t seem much – a frozen chunk of rock and ice – one of many moving in the depths of space. But this one is being tracked with eager anticipation by astronomers from around the world, and in a year everyone could know its name.

Comet Ison could draw millions out into the dark to witness what could be the brightest comet seen in many generations – brighter even than the full Moon.

It was found as a blur on an electronic image of the night sky taken through a telescope at the Kislovodsk Observatory in Russia as part of a project to survey the sky looking for comets and asteroids – chunks of rock and ice that litter space. Astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok were expecting to use the International Scientific Optical Network’s (Ison) 40cm telescope on the night of 20 September but clouds halted their plans.

It was a frustrating night but about half an hour prior to the beginning of morning twilight, they noticed the sky was clearing and got the telescope and camera up and running to obtain some survey images in the constellations of Gemini and Cancer.

When the images were obtained Nevski loaded them into a computer program designed to detect asteroids and comets moving between images. He noticed a rather bright object with unusually slow movement, which he thought could only mean it was situated way beyond the orbit of Jupiter. But he couldn’t tell if the object was a comet, so Novichonok booked time on a larger telescope to take another look. Less than a day later the new images revealed that Nevski and Novichonok had discovered a comet, which was named Comet Ison. A database search showed it has been seen in images taken by other telescopes earlier that year and in late 2011. These observations allowed its orbit to be calculated, and when astronomers did that they let out a collective “wow.”

Comet Ison has taken millions of years to reach us travelling from the so-called Oort cloud – a reservoir of trillions and trillions of chunks of rock and ice, leftovers from the birth of the planets. It reaches out more than a light-year – a quarter of the way to the nearest star. In the Oort cloud the Sun is but a distant point of light whose feeble gravity is just enough to hold onto the cloud. Every once in a while a tiny tug of gravity, perhaps from a nearby star or wandering object, disturbs the cloud sending some of its comets out into interstellar space to be lost forever and a few are scattered sunward. Comet Ison is making its first, and perhaps only visit to us. Its life has been cold, frozen hard and unchanging, but it is moving closer to the Sun, and getting warmer.

Ison’s surface is very dark – darker than asphalt – pockmarked and dusty with ice beneath the surface. It’s a small body, a few tens of miles across, with a tiny pull of gravity. If you stood upon it you could leap 20 miles into space taking over a week to come down again, watching as the comet rotated beneath you. You could walk to the equator, kneel down and gather up handfuls of comet material to make snowballs, throw them in a direction against the comet’s spin and watch them hang motionless in front of you. But it will not remain quiet on Comet Ison for the Sun’s heat will bring it to life.

By the end of summer it will become visible in small telescopes and binoculars. By October it will pass close to Mars and things will begin to stir. The surface will shift as the ice responds to the thermal shock, cracks will appear in the crust, tiny puffs of gas will rise from it as it is warmed. The comet’s tail is forming.

Slowly at first but with increasing vigour, as it passes the orbit of Earth, the gas and dust geysers will gather force. The space around the comet becomes brilliant as the ice below the surface turns into gas and erupts, reflecting the light of the Sun. Now Ison is surrounded by a cloud of gas called the coma, hundreds of thousands of miles from side to side. The comet’s rotation curves these jets into space as they trail into spirals behind it. As they move out the gas trails are stopped and blown backwards by the Solar Wind.

By late November it will be visible to the unaided eye just after dark in the same direction as the setting Sun. Its tail could stretch like a searchlight into the sky above the horizon. Then it will swing rapidly around the Sun, passing within two million miles of it, far closer than any planet ever does, to emerge visible in the evening sky heading northward towards the pole star. It could be an “unaided eye” object for months. When it is close in its approach to the Sun it could become intensely brilliant but at that stage it would be difficult and dangerous to see without special instrumentation as it would be only a degree from the sun.

Remarkably Ison might not be the only spectacular comet visible next year. Another comet, called 2014 L4 (PanSTARRS), was discovered last year and in March and April it could also be a magnificent object in the evening sky. 2013 could be the year of the great comets.

As Comet Ison heads back to deep space in 2014 the sky above it would begin to clear as the dust and gas geysers loose their energy. Returning to the place where the Sun is a distant point of light, Comet Ison may never return. Its tail points outward now as the solar wind is at its back, and it fades and the comet falls quiet once more, this time forever.

Dr David Whitehouse is an author and astronomer

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Human Activity Affecting Our Earth, What’s New?

Staff — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 09:10:30 +0000

A group from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA. and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories concluded that climate change has altered the chemistry of our Earth’s oceans. It seems that water with higher salt content is getting saltier and fresh water is becoming fresher; there is no balance. What is causing this? Well researchers are trying to solve this mystery.

By using models covering 11,000 years and data from 50 modern years, they have concluded that these salinization and temperature changes are caused by human activity. Their study looked at information gathered from 1955-2004. According to insidescience.org, ultimately what the researchers found was that “changes were consistent with those expected from human effects on the climate, which arise primarily from anthropogenically induced changes in greenhouse gases and aerosols.”

Not only that, they also found that the intensity of storms was also affected due to human activity. “Warm air holds more water, and that provides the fuel for storms,” said Ray Schmitt, an oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. In the end this will produce more intense hurricanes and tornadoes, while bringing drought to other parts of the world.

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Earth-like planet discovery

Staff — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 19:32:35 +0000

Well, new discoveries of a habitable planet have been discussed in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. By using the radial velocity method scientists were able to make about 6,000 observations that enabled them to find new planets. These planets circle Tau Ceti, which is a star that is 12 light years away; this star is closely related to our Sun. The planets that surround Tau Ceti are possibly two to six times bigger than Earth. Interestingly enough only one of them is known to be five times Earth’s mass and is in Tau Ceti’s habital zone, this zone is the ‘Goldilocks zone’. Goldilocks zone is not too hot or too cold, allowing for potential life.

This new study is extremely important because it allows us to see how almost every star has planets. According to one of the authors of the study, Steve Vogt, “this discovery is in keeping with our emerging view that virtually every star has planets, and that the galaxy must have many such potentially habitable Earth-sized planets.” So if the world was to really end, there is still hope that we can go live light years away and still be able to survive.

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Ancient Sea Monster Found

Staff — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 05:40:22 +0000

New fossils have been found in the waste of a coal mine in Hungary. These fossils belong to an 84 million year old freshwater sea monster. This sea creature called Pannoniasaurus apparently belongs to a family of aquatic reptiles: mosasaurs, which look like a crocodile and a whale mixed together.

This sea monster apparently acted like a croc, instead of using large flippers like the mosasaurs their limbs resembled legs, which may have been used to climb onto rocks to go to the land. It is suggested that they spent a lot of time in the water, but probably could have crawled out going from river to river when water dried up, etc.

National Geographic reports that, when the Hungarian fossils were first announced, many paleontologists thought they belonged to a large land lizard, similar to a Komodo dragon, until evidence for their aquatic origin soon became overwhelming.

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Soyuz Spacecraft Launched

Staff — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 05:30:58 +0000

On December 19,2012 The Soyuz TMA-07M rocket was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakstan. On board are: Tom Marshburn of the U.S., Chris Hadfield from Canada, and Roman Romanenko of Russia. These three men will first travel for two days in the capsule, and then on Friday they are scheduled to dock with the ISS, and will be welcomed by Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin and NASA’s Kevin Ford, who were launched to the ISS on Oct 23.

This trip will last four months. During that time it is expected that many experiments will take place, including two spacewalks. Crewmembers also intended to devote their spare time to music, in particular. Hadfield is going to record several songs performed in orbit.

Marshburn even told media earlier that he was looking forward to celebrating Christmas in space. “There are some decorations and ornaments, and we will have a little celebration while we are up there,” he said.

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