Challenges of Getting to Mars: Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=Ki_Af_o9Q9s&NR=1

Delayed umbilical cord clambing has many benefits

NYT: Delay in Clamping Umbilical Co

Albert Einstein's theory goes wrong

Albert Einstein's theory goes wrong as neutrinos, the subatomic particles exceeded the speed of light inside Large Hadron Collider!
read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484

Chinese Scientists Plan to Pull an Asteroid into Orbit Around Earth

The idea isn’t simply to flirt with cataclysmic danger, but to bring a small object (they suggest a 10-meter object called 2008EA9 that will pass nearby in 2049) into a loop around the Earth so we can study it closely for a few years. If we can get the art of capturing asteroids orbitally down to a science, we could use it to temporarily make asteroids into Earth-bound satellites (orbiting at about twice the distance of the moon), mine them for minerals, and then send them on their ways.

Astronomers discover planet made of DIAMONDS

Scientists at the University of Manchester think they have unearthed a once-massive star in the Milky Way that has been transformed into a small planet made of the precious rock.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2030138/Is-biggest-rock-Astronomers-believe-entire-planet-diamonds.html#ixzz1W5CBN1Ns

Planets take shape in embryonic gas clouds

A radical new theory that planets are born within a massive veil of gas may help explain how recently discovered extrasolar planets developed their stunning diversity of sizes and locations.
In the theory, planets are born under wraps, hidden at the centers of giant gas clouds far from their parent stars. A star’s gravity then reels in the planetary cloud, stripping away some or all of the gas to reveal the planet inside.
Read more : http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/71776/title/Planets_take_shape_in_embryonic_gas_clouds

Bottoms up Antarctic ice growth discovered

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
AP SCIENCE WRITER

This undated handout photo provided by the journal Science shows a view of ice surface looking towards Gamburtsev Mountains and Dome A. The intense blue sky reflects the high altitude and thin atmosphere of the polar plateau. When it comes to ice, scientists are giving a whole new meaning to the phrase "bottoms up." Those massive ice sheets in Antarctica don't just grow from the bottom up, according to new research published Thursday. (AP Photo/Robin E. Bell--Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, New York)

WASHINGTON -- When it comes to ice, scientists are giving a whole new meaning to the phrase "bottoms up." Those massive ice sheets in Antarctica don't just grow on top when snow falls, they also grow from the bottom up, according to new research published Thursday.

Ice melts at the bottom of ice sheets, and the water helps the sheets slide across the ground below. But the water can refreeze to the bottom of the sheets and push them up, the researchers report in the online edition of the journal Science.

The base of a massive ice plateau on the East Antarctic ice sheet called Dome A is about 24 percent refrozen water, according to the team headed by Robin Bell, a geophysicist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

"The ice sheets are not simple layer cake structures. Water moves around underneath the ice sheet and deforms" it, Bell explained.

Fausto Ferraccioli, a scientist with the British Antarctic Survey and co-author of the report, added that knowing how the ice is formed is critical in the search for the oldest ice and also in understanding how the ice moves.

Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, called the finding "totally new, at least at this scale."

"This is orders of magnitude larger than refreezing was imagined to be, and the concept that it could uplift the ice cap is completely new," said Scambos, who was not part of the research project.

In the past, deposits of refrozen water were only seen where there are lakes under the ice, said glacier researcher Sasha Carter of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

"Now it appears they are widespread in the East Antarctic interior," said Carter, who was not part of the research team.

The researchers discovered the refrozen ice during field work in 2008 and 2009, using radar that can see through the ice.

At first, "we thought they looked like beehives and were worried they were an error in the data," Bell said. But as they found more and more of the refrozen ice pieces it became clear that they were real.

Because the ice moves, it is essential to understand changes to the base, especially in response to climate changes, researchers say. The world's climate has been warming over the last century or so and the impacts are being first noted at the poles. Ice cores, long sections of ice drilled from glaciers, are often used to study past climates.

Bell suggested that the refreezing process "may push really old ice closer to the surface and make it easier to find."

However, Jeff Severinghaus, a geologist at Scripps Institution who was not involved in the study, said it could either mean older ice is better preserved or, it could make it harder to interpret the record, "if it's shuffled like a deck of cards."

Source: http://www.seattlepi.com/national/1501ap_us_sci_bottoms_up_ice.html?source=rss