- Email: [email protected]
NASA scales back hunt for life on Mars
For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
ESA
Governments? Pah!
60 Seconds
Algae vs evolution
FORGET about governments fixing ecosystems and climate, a panel of leading environmental scientists declared last week. “The political system is broken,”
“We have wasted the past 20 years. The world is still warming and governments are largely to blame”
“Quote to go in here over four lines range left like this Quote to go in her like this xxxxx”
Graham Turner/Guardian News & Media Ltd
said Bob Watson, chief environmental science adviser to the UK government. The panel, all winners of the Blue Planet prize, often seen as the environmental-science Nobel, were meeting in London to Retreat from Mars prepare a statement for the 2012 IS THERE life on Mars? We might Earth Summit, to be held in June not know for some time. NASA in Rio de Janeiro – 20 years after has cancelled plans for ambitious the original Earth Summit there. They said the world had wasted new missions to the Red Planet. NASA and the European the intervening years. Ecosystems Space Agency (ESA) were planning are disappearing ever faster, the a pair of joint missions to Mars world is still warming, and two that could have made important treaties, on climate change and species loss, have failed to achieve strides in the search for past or present life. The ExoMars Trace their aims. Gas Orbiter, which was to launch Governments, they said, were in 2016, would have followed up largely to blame. “Last time in on hints of methane discovered Rio we had an unreasonable faith in governments,” said Camilla “The ExoMars rover might Toulmin of the International have dug up complex Institute for Environment and carbon molecules while Development. “Since then we’ve drilling into Martian soil” lost our innocence.” The group said leadership was most likely by previous missions. The to come from local government, ExoMars rover, slated for launch NGOs and corporations. in 2018, might have dug up complex carbon-based molecules while drilling into Martian soil. Now, in the wake of NASA’s proposed 2013 budget, announced by the White House on 13 February, the agency has told ESA that it can no longer afford the missions. They may end up being cancelled, or at least drastically scaled back, although ESA may try to bring the Russian space agency on board instead. If approved by Congress, the budget will give NASA $17.7 billion in 2013, about the same as it got in –Not nearly enough– 2012, but around $1 billion less
When the going gets tough, species start merging. Whitefish species in 17 Swiss lakes began interbreeding in the mid-20th century, destroying biodiversity. The trigger was pollution, which led to algal blooms that sucked oxygen out of the deep water, forcing species to live at close quarters near the surface (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature10824).
Cells for broken hearts
–ExoMars rover is NASA’s no longer–
than it had projected. NASA’s contribution to ExoMars was the main casualty. NASA still hopes to mount a less expensive orbiter mission to Mars in 2018. Exactly where it would go is unknown, but orbiters tend to be less costly. NASA also revealed that it plans to continue the James Webb Space Telescope, and payments to private companies for space taxis.
New LHC power EVEN the world’s largest particle smasher needs an energy boost. Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider, near Geneva, Switzerland, announced on 13 February that they will turn up the energy of its proton-onproton collisions from 7 teraelectronvolts (TeV) to 8. Greg Landsberg, who works on CMS, one of the LHC’s two main detectors, reckons the boost should shorten the odds of glimpsing the elusive Higgs particle, hints of which were seen last year, by 30 to 40 per cent. The energy boost should also increase the chance that signs of supersymmetry will emerge. This theory posits the existence of a heavy partner for each subatomic particle already known. The move to 8 TeV collisions could boost the chances of spotting these “superpartners” by a factor of four, says Landsberg.
The volume of scar tissue on the hearts of 17 people who had heart attacks halved six months after they were treated with injections of their own cardiac stem cells. Samples of each person’s heart muscle were taken a month after the heart attack, from which the cardiac stem cells were isolated (The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60195-0).
Tiny traveller A small songbird weighing just 25 grams makes a 14,500-kilometre journey twice a year. Northern wheatears (Oenanthe oenanthe) fly from Alaska, across Asia to subSaharan Africa, one of the longest migrations on record (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.1223).
Little launcher The European Space Agency launched its first Vega rocket on Monday from Kourou, French Guiana. Carrying a bowling-ballsized probe to test general relativity, the rocket is the smallest to launch from the South American spaceport, which also hosts the medium-sized Soyuz and powerful Ariane rockets.
Flu meeting Bird flu researchers, journal editors and representatives from the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity meet this week at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, to decide whether to publish in full or in part studies that detail how to mutate H5N1 bird flu viruses into a form that could cause a deadly human pandemic.
18 February 2012 | NewScientist | 5
ESA
Governments? Pah!
60 Seconds
Algae vs evolution
FORGET about governments fixing ecosystems and climate, a panel of leading environmental scientists declared last week. “The political system is broken,”
“We have wasted the past 20 years. The world is still warming and governments are largely to blame”
“Quote to go in here over four lines range left like this Quote to go in her like this xxxxx”
Graham Turner/Guardian News & Media Ltd
said Bob Watson, chief environmental science adviser to the UK government. The panel, all winners of the Blue Planet prize, often seen as the environmental-science Nobel, were meeting in London to Retreat from Mars prepare a statement for the 2012 IS THERE life on Mars? We might Earth Summit, to be held in June not know for some time. NASA in Rio de Janeiro – 20 years after has cancelled plans for ambitious the original Earth Summit there. They said the world had wasted new missions to the Red Planet. NASA and the European the intervening years. Ecosystems Space Agency (ESA) were planning are disappearing ever faster, the a pair of joint missions to Mars world is still warming, and two that could have made important treaties, on climate change and species loss, have failed to achieve strides in the search for past or present life. The ExoMars Trace their aims. Gas Orbiter, which was to launch Governments, they said, were in 2016, would have followed up largely to blame. “Last time in on hints of methane discovered Rio we had an unreasonable faith in governments,” said Camilla “The ExoMars rover might Toulmin of the International have dug up complex Institute for Environment and carbon molecules while Development. “Since then we’ve drilling into Martian soil” lost our innocence.” The group said leadership was most likely by previous missions. The to come from local government, ExoMars rover, slated for launch NGOs and corporations. in 2018, might have dug up complex carbon-based molecules while drilling into Martian soil. Now, in the wake of NASA’s proposed 2013 budget, announced by the White House on 13 February, the agency has told ESA that it can no longer afford the missions. They may end up being cancelled, or at least drastically scaled back, although ESA may try to bring the Russian space agency on board instead. If approved by Congress, the budget will give NASA $17.7 billion in 2013, about the same as it got in –Not nearly enough– 2012, but around $1 billion less
When the going gets tough, species start merging. Whitefish species in 17 Swiss lakes began interbreeding in the mid-20th century, destroying biodiversity. The trigger was pollution, which led to algal blooms that sucked oxygen out of the deep water, forcing species to live at close quarters near the surface (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature10824).
Cells for broken hearts
–ExoMars rover is NASA’s no longer–
than it had projected. NASA’s contribution to ExoMars was the main casualty. NASA still hopes to mount a less expensive orbiter mission to Mars in 2018. Exactly where it would go is unknown, but orbiters tend to be less costly. NASA also revealed that it plans to continue the James Webb Space Telescope, and payments to private companies for space taxis.
New LHC power EVEN the world’s largest particle smasher needs an energy boost. Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider, near Geneva, Switzerland, announced on 13 February that they will turn up the energy of its proton-onproton collisions from 7 teraelectronvolts (TeV) to 8. Greg Landsberg, who works on CMS, one of the LHC’s two main detectors, reckons the boost should shorten the odds of glimpsing the elusive Higgs particle, hints of which were seen last year, by 30 to 40 per cent. The energy boost should also increase the chance that signs of supersymmetry will emerge. This theory posits the existence of a heavy partner for each subatomic particle already known. The move to 8 TeV collisions could boost the chances of spotting these “superpartners” by a factor of four, says Landsberg.
The volume of scar tissue on the hearts of 17 people who had heart attacks halved six months after they were treated with injections of their own cardiac stem cells. Samples of each person’s heart muscle were taken a month after the heart attack, from which the cardiac stem cells were isolated (The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60195-0).
Tiny traveller A small songbird weighing just 25 grams makes a 14,500-kilometre journey twice a year. Northern wheatears (Oenanthe oenanthe) fly from Alaska, across Asia to subSaharan Africa, one of the longest migrations on record (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.1223).
Little launcher The European Space Agency launched its first Vega rocket on Monday from Kourou, French Guiana. Carrying a bowling-ballsized probe to test general relativity, the rocket is the smallest to launch from the South American spaceport, which also hosts the medium-sized Soyuz and powerful Ariane rockets.
Flu meeting Bird flu researchers, journal editors and representatives from the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity meet this week at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, to decide whether to publish in full or in part studies that detail how to mutate H5N1 bird flu viruses into a form that could cause a deadly human pandemic.
18 February 2012 | NewScientist | 5