Apple’s ‘Ping’ Social Network Is Already Too Big to Fail

Apple audaciously seems to think the world actually needs another social network — one that you even need special software to be part of, to boot. With the introduction Wednesday of ‘Ping,” a music-centered community that exists only within iTunes, they are probably right — and then some.
Ping could easily be the opening gambit in a bid to create a wider network around the other premium creative content available through iTunes — movies, TV shows, books and other print media.

At Apple’s annual music event in San Francisco CEO Steve Jobs described “Ping,” part of the iTunes 10 upgrade coming soon, as “sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes.”

Even the occasionally hyperbolic Jobs may be selling it short. Sight unseen, we’d say Ping — a computer term for making contact — will be more like “Twitter meets Facebook at Last.fm’s and Rdio’s shared apartment to plan MySpace’s funeral.”

Jobs is correct to compare Ping to Facebook and Twitter, because its settings for deciding who can follow you borrow from both of those well-established networks. You can choose to approve followers and post listening habits to a limited “circle of friends,” the way Facebook lets you, or you can permit anyone at all to follow you, as in Twitter.

But unlike the wide-open spaces of Facebook and Twitter, Ping’s single-minded purpose is to create conversations (and commerce) around music. It watches what you play within iTunes or on your iPhone/iPod Touch, the better to create a profile of your tastes — precisely as Last.fm has done for years with its audioscrobbler plug-in. And in addition to offering customized social music charts that show each user what their friends are listening to (and buying the most) Ping presents that activity to others in a news stream — exactly as Rdio does for music.

If Ping tells you that all your friends are buying and listening to the new Ceelo single (NSFW audio, text), you might be more likely to snap it up yourself. And when you do, you’ll probably use iTunes’ 1-click purchasing feature, because you already have the program open — and it likely already has your credit card billing information, due to a previous purchase.

As for the MySpace part of our equation? That site is still quite useful for listening to obscure bands but has been largely been replaced by Twitter as a tool for artists to communicate with their fans — something Jobs hopes they will start doing with Ping. They will, if they know what’s good for their pocketbooks: Anywhere a track is mentioned, there is a way to buy it from iTunes. If the main conversation between artist and fan takes place within the iTunes store, a lot more music will probably be discovered and sold in what amounts to a gigantic point-of-sale emporium.

MySpace has been on life support for years, and Ping could finally deliver the coup de grace.

At the outset, Ping will lack a location component — currently the hot topic in social networking because it lets friends track each other in real space and helps advertisers target them more specifically. But location could be coming to Ping, which also runs on the location-aware iPhone. In addition, iTunes 10 alerts you when the artists you listen to the most are set to play a concert in your area. And as NYU’s Dave Winer pointed out, it’s likely that Apple Stores will have Ping profiles, so that you can follow them the way you would Lady Gaga, forming another cornerstone of an eventual Ping location feature.

Ping has significant advantages against other music-oriented social networks, such as Rdio and Blip.fm, which must fight desperately to make an impression on users who already have Facebook and Twitter accounts. And because iTunes is already built around commerce, Ping launches with access to the 160 million-plus credit card numbers already stored there from people who have already bought something — something that Twitter and Facebook lack.

Ping could easily be the opening gambit in a bid to create a wider network around the other premium creative content available through iTunes — movies, TV shows, books and other print media. After all, the iPod started out music-only as well, and now its high-end model does almost everything an iPhone does.

What is the potential upside? Apple recently counted over 150 million active customers of its iTunes store, which Jobs said Wednesday has sold downloaded 11.7 billion songs, 450 million television shows, 100 million movies, and 35 million books. So far.

5 Reasons Why Apple TV Is (Still) Boring

We know — the new Apple TV is really small, and it finally focuses on renting rather than purchasing television shows, integrates iOS devices as remote controls, has an optical audio output for surround sound, and costs just a hundred bones.
That’s all good, but Apple TV has yet to knock our socks off despite being the ripest area for expansion by a company that has already firmly established itself on the computer, phone, portable media player and tablet.

Let’s just get right down to it. Here are five reasons Apple TV is still boring — even after today’s improvements:
1. Paltry Selection of TV Shows

The biggest promise of devices such as Apple TV, from the consumer’s point of view, is that they might — at long last — allow them to “cut the cord,” replacing their cable or satellite connections with an internet-connected set-top box, the same way many have replaced their landlines with cellphones.

But with only two networks — ABC and Fox — included in Apple’s new television rental program, the only way a television viewer with normal viewing habits would be able to cut the cord using the new Apple TV would be to wait a day and download unsupported new shows from BitTorrent (more on that below), while relying on Netflix for older shows.

“To get the 88 percent of the U.S. market that doesn’t know what Apple TV is to pay attention, Apple has to offer more of what people want in the living room: more TV shows,” said Forrester analyst James McQuivey after Wednesday’s announcement. “Yet only ABC and Fox have agreed to let Apple rent their TV shows. Meanwhile the Apple TV becomes merely one of dozens of devices — some even cheaper than $99 — that can stream Netflix videos to the living room.”

He’s right. This relative lack of television content appears to weaken the “TV” part of the “Apple TV” proposition more than any other factor. And the fact that one of only two launch partners Apple could secure is ABC — owned by Disney, of which Jobs is the largest shareholder — is not exactly a hopeful sign that the networks will be climbing aboard anytime soon.

2. No iOS

Apple’s iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) relies on a touchscreen, and a television — by its nature of being 10 or more feet away — does not. But Apple allows developers to simulate iOS devices on a computer that lacks such a touchscreen, so it’s possible to represent touch with a pointer. Similar technology — perhaps utilizing a Wii-style control wand, a gyroscopic mouse or even another iOS device — could solve that problem.

As Brian X. Chen wrote back in July — after both Engadget and The New York Times reported that Apple would include iOS in the next Apple TV overhaul — an iOS-based Apple TV would have led to the connected living room, an expanded iOS user base, TV apps, motion-based gaming, and a stronger alternative to cable or satellite.

Instead, Apple TV is more “Airport Express for television” than “iPhone for television.” Apple created (or helped create) custom Apple TV apps for Flickr, MobileMe, Netflix and YouTube in advance of this announcement. Why reinvent the wheel like that when Apple already has a thriving iOS app store?

Hopefully, for Apple’s sake and that of its customers, the next Apple TV will run iOS. If so, competing television networks would have less reason to balk, because they could create their own apps (see Hulu), which would go a long way towards solving our No. 1 objection, above.

As things stand now, the door is wide open for Google Android to take over the set-top boxes with a device that truly runs apps, essentially scaling the Boxee model out to hordes of Android users — and maybe even former iOS users.

3. No HD Antenna

It’s a real shame that more people don’t pull down HD broadcast signals to their television sets. Not only do those signals look better than the more-compressed signals on cable and satellite, but they’re free — just like the standard-definition signals most of us started ignoring when we switched to pay TV.

Apple’s point here is to encourage users to buy television shows from iTunes, and not to help them watch for free, and the $99, loss-leading price point of this hardware backs up that argument. But since some of the networks refuse to cooperate, an antenna would be a nice kluge for getting that content onto Apple TV — bonus points for linking it to a TiVo-like hard drive or streaming it to a computer, so that users could record (or at least watch) video from local HD broadcasters in addition to paying for it in the cloud.

4. No 1080p

To put it bluntly, this is 2010. Huge televisions cost next to nothing compared to just a few years ago. People want real high-definition signals from their “HD” equipment, not this watered-down 720p signal.
5. No replacement for BitTorrent

The dearth of content on Apple TV means it is no true replacement for cable and satellite, or for people who unabashedly run file sharing software such as BitTorrent to get their TV fix. This device doesn’t stop you from paying for cable or satellite as mentioned above, in which case it becomes little more than a streaming add-on to your traditional TV setup. But that add-on is not nearly powerful enough to offer a plausible alternative to BitTorrent or other file sharing networks.

Of course, BitTorrent users can just keep downloading videos to their main computers and streaming them from there — something the Apple TV does allow (so long as the files are in the H.264, MPEG-4 or M-JPEG formats, which could require some conversion).

Adam Philbin, in a widely echoed tweet offering speculation about this device’s target market, put it like this: “Apple TV … it’s like a shit, single-purpose Mac Mini for people who don’t know what BitTorrent is.”

Ouch.

Silicon Oxide Circuits Break Barrier: Nanocrystal Conductors Could Lead to Massive, Robust 3-D Storage

Rice University scientists have created the first two-terminal memory chips that use only silicon, one of the most common substances on the planet, in a way that should be easily adaptable to nanoelectronic manufacturing techniques and promises to extend the limits of miniaturization subject to Moore's Law.

Last year, researchers in the lab of Rice Professor James Tour showed how electrical current could repeatedly break and reconnect 10-nanometer strips of graphite, a form of carbon, to create a robust, reliable memory "bit." At the time, they didn't fully understand why it worked so well.

Now, they do. A new collaboration by the Rice labs of professors Tour, Douglas Natelson and Lin Zhong proved the circuit doesn't need the carbon at all.

Jun Yao, a graduate student in Tour's lab and primary author of the paper to appear in the online edition of Nano Letters, confirmed his breakthrough idea when he sandwiched a layer of silicon oxide, an insulator, between semiconducting sheets of polycrystalline silicon that served as the top and bottom electrodes.

Applying a charge to the electrodes created a conductive pathway by stripping oxygen atoms from the silicon oxide and forming a chain of nano-sized silicon crystals. Once formed, the chain can be repeatedly broken and reconnected by applying a pulse of varying voltage.

The nanocrystal wires are as small as 5 nanometers (billionths of a meter) wide, far smaller than circuitry in even the most advanced computers and electronic devices.

"The beauty of it is its simplicity," said Tour, Rice's T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science. That, he said, will be key to the technology's scalability. Silicon oxide switches or memory locations require only two terminals, not three (as in flash memory), because the physical process doesn't require the device to hold a charge.

It also means layers of silicon-oxide memory can be stacked in tiny but capacious three-dimensional arrays. "I've been told by industry that if you're not in the 3-D memory business in four years, you're not going to be in the memory business. This is perfectly suited for that," Tour said.

Silicon-oxide memories are compatible with conventional transistor manufacturing technology, said Tour, who recently attended a workshop by the National Science Foundation and IBM on breaking the barriers to Moore's Law, which states the number of devices on a circuit doubles every 18 to 24 months.

"Manufacturers feel they can get pathways down to 10 nanometers. Flash memory is going to hit a brick wall at about 20 nanometers. But how do we get beyond that? Well, our technique is perfectly suited for sub-10-nanometer circuits," he said.

Austin tech design company PrivaTran is already bench testing a silicon-oxide chip with 1,000 memory elements built in collaboration with the Tour lab. "We're real excited about where the data is going here," said PrivaTran CEO Glenn Mortland, who is using the technology in several projects supported by the Army Research Office, National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer programs.

"Our original customer funding was geared toward more high-density memories," Mortland said. "That's where most of the paying customers see this going. I think, along the way, there will be side applications in various nonvolatile configurations."

Yao had a hard time convincing his colleagues that silicon oxide alone could make a circuit. "Other group members didn't believe him," said Tour, who added that nobody recognized silicon oxide's potential, even though it's "the most-studied material in human history."

"Most people, when they saw this effect, would say, 'Oh, we had silicon-oxide breakdown,' and they throw it out," he said. "It was just sitting there waiting to be exploited."

In other words, what used to be a bug turned out to be a feature.

Yao went to the mat for his idea. He first substituted a variety of materials for graphite and found none of them changed the circuit's performance. Then he dropped the carbon and metal entirely and sandwiched silicon oxide between silicon terminals. It worked.

"It was a really difficult time for me, because people didn't believe it," Yao said. Finally, as a proof of concept, he cut a carbon nanotube to localize the switching site, sliced out a very thin piece of silicon oxide by focused ion beam and identified a nanoscale silicon pathway under a transmission electron microscope.

"This is research," Yao said. "If you do something and everyone nods their heads, then it's probably not that big. But if you do something and everyone shakes their heads, then you prove it, it could be big.

"It doesn't matter how many people don't believe it. What matters is whether it's true or not."

Silicon-oxide circuits carry all the benefits of the previously reported graphite device. They feature high on-off ratios, excellent endurance and fast switching (below 100 nanoseconds).

They will also be resistant to radiation, which should make them suitable for military and NASA applications. "It's clear there are lots of radiation-hardened uses for this technology," Mortland said.

Silicon oxide also works in reprogrammable gate arrays being built by NuPGA, a company formed last year through collaborative patents with Rice University. NuPGA's devices will assist in the design of computer circuitry based on vertical arrays of silicon oxide embedded in "vias," the holes in integrated circuits that connect layers of circuitry. Such rewritable gate arrays could drastically cut the cost of designing complex electronic devices.

Zhengzong Sun, a graduate student in Tour's lab, was co-author of the paper with Yao; Tour; Natelson, a Rice professor of physics and astronomy; and Zhong, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.

The David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the Texas Instruments Leadership University Fund, the National Science Foundation, PrivaTran and the Army Research Office SBIR supported the research.

Astronomers Find Potassium in Giant Planet's Atmosphere

Any driver who's seen deer silhouetted by the headlights of an oncoming car knows that vital information can be conveyed by the outlines of objects.
Building on this concept, University of Florida astronomers have analyzed light passing through the upper atmosphere of the giant planet HD 80606 b, about 190 light years from Earth, and determined that its atmosphere contains the element potassium.

"It's wonderful that this method works so well for Jupiter-sized planets," said Knicole Colón, a UF astronomy doctoral student. "Now, we're working to apply this technique to observe smaller planets in an effort to pinpoint the components of their atmospheres."

Coincidentally, another team led by David Sing at the University of Exeter, in Devon, U.K., has just used the same technique to detect potassium in the atmosphere of XO-2b, another huge planet about 485 light years from Earth.

Both planets, known as gas giants, have extremely high temperatures by earthly standards -- HD 80606 b reaches about 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit and XO-2b is about 1,700 degrees. That's hot enough to vaporize potassium.

Together, these observations support previous computer models that predicted what the atmospheres of such planets would be like. The findings also demonstrate the value of a new observational technique that could one day aid in the characterization of planets that might support life. The two groups' findings are available online at the arXiv preprint server, http://arxiv.org, and have been submitted to the journals Astronomy & Astrophysics and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Colón and Sing will present their findings at the ExoClimes 2010 conference to be held at the University of Exeter, Sept. 7-10.

The observational technique is called narrow-band transit spectrophotometry, and it can measure the light absorbed by the atoms and molecules in a planet's atmosphere, said Eric Ford, a UF astronomy associate professor and Colón's adviser.

"This new technique only works for planets that pass in front of their parent stars as viewed from Earth. Most of the nearly 500 known planets do not, and even fewer orbit stars that are bright enough for such precise observations," Ford said. "Another challenge is that observations must be carefully timed, in order to see the planets in silhouette against the backlighting of their parent star."

Transit spectrophotometry works like this: While the planet is backlit, astronomers measure the light that passed through its atmosphere. Atoms and molecules absorb specific wavelengths (colors) of light, providing a chemical signature that scientists can recognize. By analyzing the amount of absorption by the planet's atmosphere at specific wavelengths, astronomers can detect the presence of a particular atom or molecule -- in this case, potassium.

The UF team -- Colón and Ford, along with colleagues from the University of California, Santa Cruz, Penn State University, Wesleyan University and the Universidad de La Laguna in Tenerife, Spain -- had help from another technological breakthrough.

These researchers, as well as the Exeter team, used one of the world's most powerful telescopes, the Gran Telescopio Canarias. The observatory includes a mirror almost 35 feet wide and is situated at one of the world's best locations for star-gazing, in the Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa. UF is a 5 percent partner in the enormous telescope, that captures enough light to make transit spectrophotometry possible, Colón said.

Sing says he's excited about future prospects for transit spectrophotometry.

"The initial results from both teams have been very encouraging," Sing said. "We still haven't explored the full capabilities or ultimate limitations of the instrument yet."

In 2002, the Hubble Space Telescope detected a similar element, sodium, in the atmosphere of the gas giant planet HD 209458 b. Since then, astronomers have detected sodium in only one other planet. Colón plans to search for potassium in the atmospheres of additional giant planets to learn about the diversity of planetary atmospheres. She hopes that planet searches such as NASA's Kepler Mission will identify many more planets that cross the faces of their parent stars.

"The Kepler Mission has the precision to find even more planets, including some as small as the Earth," she said. Ultimately, Ford and Colón want to examine smaller, Earth-like planets for molecules such as methane gas and water vapor, as both are intimately linked to life on Earth.

'Charitable' Behavior Found in Bacteria

Researchers at Boston University and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard have discovered that charitable behavior exists in one of the most microscopic forms of life -- bacteria. Their findings appear in the Sept. 2 issue of Nature.

In studying the development of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, the researchers found that the populations most adept at withstanding doses of antibiotics are those in which a few highly resistant isolates sacrifice their own well being to improve the group's overall chance of survival.

This bacterial altruism results when the most resistant isolates produce a small molecule called indole.

Indole acts as something of a steroid, helping the strain's more vulnerable members bulk up enough to fight off the antibiotic onslaught. But while indole may save the group, its production takes a toll on the fitness level of the individual isolates that produce it.

"We weren't expecting to find this," said lead investigator James J. Collins, Ph.D., professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University and a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute. "Typically, you would expect only the resistant strains to survive, with the susceptible ones dying off in the face of antibiotic stress. We were quite surprised to find the weak strains not only surviving, but thriving."

The findings also shed new light on the level of complexity and heterogeneity within bacterial strains. Until now, it was assumed that the overall resistance level of any given population was reflected in each of its isolates. Instead, Collins and his team found that dramatic differences can exist within a single population with some bacteria showing exceptional resistance and some almost none, not unlike cancer cells in humans.

The fact that the full complexity of bacteria strains can now be more accurately understood has significant ramifications for the medical community. "Now, when we measure the resistance in a population, we'll know that it may be tricking us," said Collins. "We'll know that even an isolate that shows no resistance can put up a stronger battle against antibiotics thanks to its buddies."

Collins is a founder of the field of synthetic biology, an area of research that combines science and engineering to construct new biological circuits that can reprogram organisms, particularly bacteria, to perform desired tasks, much like we program computers now.

His research at Boston University has also led to the development of a new class of medical devices being developed at the Wyss Institute, including vibrating insoles that help reduce falls among elderly users and normalize the gait of children with cerebral palsy.

"The Wyss Institute was founded on the premise that by breaking down institutional barriers and bringing together some of the world's top minds in science and engineering, we could accelerate transformative discovery," said Donald E. Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., Founding Director of the Wyss Institute. "I'm proud to say that the research being done by Dr. Collins is a great example of how this vision is beginning to play out."

Metal-Mining Bacteria Are Green Chemists

Microbes could soon be used to convert metallic wastes into high-value catalysts for generating clean energy, say scientists writing in the September issue of Microbiology.
Researchers from the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham have discovered the mechanisms that allow the common soil bacterium Desulfovibrio desulfuricans to recover the precious metal palladium from industrial waste sources.

Palladium is one of the platinum group metals (PGMs) which are among the most precious resources on earth. They possess a wide variety of applications, due to their exceptional chemical properties. PGMs are routinely used in many catalytic systems and are the active elements of autocatalytic converters that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr Kevin Deplanche who led the study explained why new ways of recovering PGMs are needed. "These metals are a finite resource and this is reflected in their high market value," he said. "Over the last 10 years, demand has consistently outstripped supply and so research into alternative ways of recovering palladium from secondary sources is paramount to ensuring future availability of this resource."

Previous work in the team's lab showed that Desulfovibrio desulfuricans was able to reduce palladium in industrial wastes into metallic nanoparticles with biocatalytic activity. Now, the precise molecules involved in the reduction process have been identified. Hydrogenase enzymes located on the surface membrane of the bacterium carry out the reduction of palladium, which results in the accumulation of catalytic nanoparticles. The bacterial cells coated with palladium nanoparticles are known as 'BioPd."

The group believes that BioPd has great potential to be used for generating clean energy. "Research in our group has shown that BioPd is an excellent catalyst for the treatment of persistent pollutants, such as chromium, that is used in the paint industry. BioPd could even be used in a proton exchange fuel cell to make clean electricity from hydrogen," said Dr Deplanche. "Our ultimate aim is to develop a one-step technology that allows for the conversion of metallic wastes into high value catalysts for green chemistry and clean energy generation," he said.

Commercial Organic Farms Have Better Fruit and Soil, Lower Environmental Impact, Study Finds

Side-by-side comparisons of organic and conventional strawberry farms and their fruit found the organic farms produced more flavorful and nutritious berries while leaving the soil healthier and more genetically diverse.

"Our findings have global implications and advance what we know about the sustainability benefits of organic farming systems," said John Reganold, Washington State University Regents professor of soil science and lead author of a paper published in the peer-reviewed online journal, PLoS ONE. "We also show you can have high quality, healthy produce without resorting to an arsenal of pesticides."

The study is among the most comprehensive of its kind, analyzing 31 chemical and biological soil properties, soil DNA, and the taste, nutrition and quality of three strawberry varieties on more than two dozen commercial fields -- 13 conventional and 13 organic.

"There is no paper in the literature that comprehensively and quantitatively compares so many indices of both food and soil quality at multiple sampling times on so many commercial farms," said Reganold. Previous Reganold studies of "sustainability indicators" on farms in the Pacific Northwest, California, British Columbia, Australia, and New Zealand have appeared in the journals Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

All the farms in the current study were in California, home to 90 percent of the nation's strawberries and the center of an ongoing debate about the use of soil fumigants. Conventional farms in the study used the ozone-depleting methyl bromide, which is slated to be replaced by the highly toxic methyl iodide over the protests of health advocates and more than 50 Nobel laureates and members of the National Academy of Sciences. In July, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked the EPA to reconsider its approval of methyl iodide.

Reganold's study team included Preston Andrews, a WSU associate professor of horticulture, and seven other experts, mostly from WSU, to form a multidisciplinary team spanning agroecology, soil science, microbial ecology, genetics, pomology, food science, sensory science, and statistics. On almost every major indicator, they found the organic fields and fruit were equal to or better than their conventional counterparts.

Among their findings:
* The organic strawberries had significantly higher antioxidant activity and concentrations of ascorbic acid and phenolic compounds.
* The organic strawberries had longer shelf life.
* The organic strawberries had more dry matter, or, "more strawberry in the strawberry."
* Anonymous testers, working at times under red light so the fruit color would not bias them, found one variety of organic strawberries was sweeter, had better flavor, and once a white light was turned on, appearance. The testers judged the other two varieties to be similar.

The researchers also found the organic soils excelled in a variety of key chemical and biological properties, including carbon sequestration, nitrogen, microbial biomass, enzyme activities, and micronutrients.

DNA analysis found the organically managed soils had dramatically more total and unique genes and greater genetic diversity, important measures of the soil's resilience to stress and ability to carry out essential processes.

What Killed the Dinosaurs?

Seems like an easy one to answer: an asteroid around six miles wide slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula. Continent-wide firestorms, planet-enshrouding dust cloud, massive plant death, toxic ozone, carbon monoxide poisoning ... and that's it: one resounding mass extinction all wrapped up in a pretty, hellish package and explained by a big hole in southeastern Mexico, right?

Explore the asteroid scenario by watching "Last Day of the Dinosaurs" on Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on the Discovery Channel.

Well, the more scientists look, the more complicated the answer becomes. For starters, there were a series of truly enormous volcanic eruptions in what is now western India around the same time. Collectively, the Deccan Traps spewed enough noxious gas that some say it was the cause of the extinction.

Then there's a weird crater-looking structure right next door to the Deccan Traps. If that turns out to be from an asteroid impact, it would be the largest crater found on Earth. Ever. And just this week, a study in the journal Geology reported there may have been yet another impact, in the Ukraine.

For those keeping track at home, that's three possible asteroid impacts and one long-lived supervolcano all clustered around roughly the same moment in geologic history.

On its own, the newly discovered Boltysh crater in central Ukraine isn't much to write home about -- measuring just 24 kilometers (15 miles) in diameter, it isn't enough to ruin dinosaurs' day throughout Europe, let alone around the globe.

What it does do is make the case that Earth was hit by an asteroid shower around 65 million years ago, rather than a single space rock. On average, a crater the size of Boltysh or bigger should hit Earth once every million years or so. But according to David Jolley of King's College in Abaerdeen, U.K. and a team of researchers, Bolytsh slammed into the planet less than 5,000 years before the giant Chicxulub impact in Mexico.

The odds of the two rocks being part of a binary system is small -- if they were, they should have hit simultaneously. But they're still suspiciously close together, suggesting that perhaps some great collision in the solar system sent a scatter-shot of space rocks headed our way.

Meanwhile, we still have to contend with the Shiva structure, a 500 km-wide gouge in the planet off India that could be the scar left by an asteroid several times bigger than the one that caused the Chicxulub crater.

But some crucial evidence is still missing. For one thing, such a large impact should have thrown out huge quantities of superhot ejecta. Near the Mexican crater, the pile of melted material is several feet thick. But nothing like that has been found in India.

Then there are the Deccan Traps. For several hundred thousand years, western India was home to volcanic eruptions far larger than anything that has occurred in human history. These epic floods of molten rock are thought to have spanned 200,000 square miles (the size of California, New Mexico, Arizona, And Colorado combines), and in some places they are close to two miles thick.

One theory suggests the Deccan lavas spewed immense amounts of poisonous sulfur dioxide gas into the atmosphere. The gas would have the dual effect of choking air-breathing animals and preventing sunlight from reaching Earth's surface. What dinosaurs didn't succumb directly to the gas would've surely perished in the long winter that followed.



It's even been suggested that the Chicxulub impact caused the Deccan Traps to erupt, by way of a huge earthquake that rippled through the planet.

Such ideas may sound a little ludicrous, but that doesn't mean they're wrong. Life is, generally speaking, very resilient, and dinosaurs were no exception. It would have taken a huge cataclysm -- maybe even several in quick succession -- to end their over 150-million-year reign on Earth.

Amateurs Aim to Rocket Themselves Into Space

* Amateur rocket builders plan to test their human space launch vehicle as early as this week from the Baltic Sea.
* A crash dummy will ride aboard the rocket during the test flights.
* The group figures they can develop the system for about the price of a family car ($64,000).

Copenhagen Suborbitals' suborbital rocket may have its first test flight this week. Click to enlarge this image.

Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen of Denmark don't have a death wish, or even a mid-life crisis. Yet they're the first to admit that their efforts to put themselves in space on home-built rockets certainly begs the question.

"This project might be daring or extreme but we're never going to be foolish. We're not going to say something like, 'This might work, let's try it,' but obviously we set our own standards," said von Bengtson, 36, an architect who specializes in human spacecraft design.

"We're not going to kill ourselves," he told Discovery News.

Von Bengtson has worked with U.S. government space contractors before, an experience he enjoyed but one that left him unfulfilled. "At NASA, you work on interesting projects, but they're not used for 20 or 30 years, or they may get canceled," he said.

Working on his own launch system was mostly a dream until early 2008 when he met Madsen, a fellow space enthusiast and rocket expert who shared the dream. They formed a nonprofit organization called Copenhagen Suborbitals and, with corporate donations and volunteer labor, started designing and building their own human space launch vehicle.

A major milestone is set for as early as this week when the men launch for the first time their suborbital rocket, a solid-propellant, liquid oxidizer affair called HEAT-1X Tycho Brahe (named after a 16th century Danish discoverer of a supernova).

Von Bengtson says he won't be disappointed if the rocket fails. "There's a good chance of that," he said. "Basically we're just going to go out there and push the button and build a new rocket -- no matter what happens."

Additional test flights will follow over the next three to 10 years, von Bengtson says, before he and Madsen, 39, take turns trapping themselves inside the one-person capsule and blasting off for a suborbital ride to space.

A crash dummy will be the occupant for the rocket's debut flight, which will take place from a platform in the Baltic Sea. (In testament to the duo's technical expertise, they also built the mini-submarine that will haul the platform out into the ocean.)

The main advantage of launching at sea, says von Bengtson, is the lack of government regulations.

"It's very difficult for us who are building rockets to find places to launch them. If you go into international waters, you only have to cooperate with those few authorities that are left," he said.

Those regulatory loopholes don't apply to companies and groups operating from the United States, added John Gedmark, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an advocacy group.

"The agreement between nations is that nations are fully responsible, fully liable for any and all damages for a rocket launching under their flag, no matter where they're launched from anywhere in the world," Gedmark told Discovery News.

"Obviously, the requirement that you have to meet in terms of safety and collateral damage to the uninvolved public is a lot easier to meet if you're out in the middle of nowhere," he said.

The project apparently has the blessing of the Danish government, which is lending Copenhagen Suborbitals a National Guard ship and crew to try to retrieve their rocket and capsule after the flight, according to von Bengtson.

The exact launch date will depend on the weather, which is notoriously fickle this time of year. Von Bengtson and Madsen plan to remotely launch the rocket from aboard a ship about two miles away.

While the ultimate outcome of the project will be to fly themselves and eventually others in space, von Bengtson said he's happy just to be working on a rapid-development human space flight program. "Being able to do this every day is what I want," he said. "It's more of a process rather than an actual goal."

Another World's Tiniest Frog?

Freshly transformed from a tadpole, a young Microhyla nepenthicola frog faces off with Abraham Lincoln on a U.S. penny.

An adult male of the new species is about the size of a pea. Their size makes them hard to spot, but fortunately for scientists, these mini-frogs have a loud croak.

"You often get tiny frogs making quite a noise," said Robin Moore, a herpetologist who was not involved in the discovery.

Moore is heading a Conservation International project to rediscover a hundred species of "lost" amphibians that have been declared extinct within the past decade.
Das, the co-discoverer of the new Bornean micro-frog, will join Moore in Indonesia in September to search for the Sambas stream toad (picture), last seen in the 1950s.

Danger Room What's Next in National Security Previous post U.S. Escalates Air War Over Afghanistan

There may not be quite as many bombs falling from the sky. But don’t let that fool you. The United States has dramatically escalated its air war over Afghanistan.

Spy plane flights have nearly tripled in the past year; supply drops, too. There are even more planes buzzing over the heads of troops caught in firefights (.pdf), according to statistics provided to Danger Room by the Air Force (.pdf).

The increased numbers show how the American military has retooled its most potent technological advantage — dominance of the skies — for the Afghanistan campaign. But so far, at least, the boost in air power doesn’t seem to have shifted the war’s momentum back to the American-led coalition.

An influx of Reaper drones and executive-jets-turned-spy-planes allowed U.S. forces to fly 9,700 surveillance sorties over Afghanistan in the first seven months of 2010. Last year, American planes conducted 3,645 of the flights during a similar period.

The United States may not have reconnaissance flights “blotting out the sun,” as one senior defense official predicted. But there are many more than before — mostly providing overhead footage of the battlefield to troops on the ground. In addition, more than 30 million pounds of gear was airdropped from January through July 2010 — compared to 11 million through July 2009.

Also, 398,000 people were transported into, out of and inside the Afghan theater. In the first seven months of 2009, that number was 212,000.

It wasn’t long ago that Defense Secretary Robert Gates was in an all-but-open war with the U.S. Air Force, when the service didn’t seem to be moving fast enough to meet commanders’ needs in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force had fewer than a dozen unmanned air patrols over the war zones in 2007. Today, there are more than 40. The battles between Gates and the air generals have largely subsided.

“Today, unlike the contests of the past, our joint forces go into combat with more information about the threat they face, provided in near real-time. And they get that information … from air and space,” e-mails retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, who stepped down this month as the Air Force’s intelligence chief. “Today, unlike the past, our joint task forces are able to operate with much smaller numbers, across great distances and inhospitable terrain because they can be sustained over the long-haul … by air.”

When Gen. Stanley McChrystal imposed strict new guidelines on airstrikes, the number of attacks from the sky immediately dropped in half. Many pilots weren’t sure exactly why they were flying. Some troops complained that they couldn’t fight the Taliban effectively.

But during the last few months of McChrystal’s tenure, those airstrike numbers had stabilized, and began to move ahead of their mid-2009 lows. In June and July of 2010, the Air Force flew 5,500 “close air support” sorties — missions over ground troops locked in active combat. On 900 of those flights, the planes fired weapons. The previous year, those figures were 4,600 and 809, respectively.

The unanswered question, of course, is whether all this extra air power will have much of an effect. Right now, NATO has more troops going into more places and encountering more resistance than at any point in the war.

Violence is way up. And it’s not clear if additional eyes in the sky or warplanes buzzing overhead will alter that lethal equation.

Shrinking Atmospheric Layer Linked to Low Levels of Solar Radiation

Large changes in the sun's energy output may drive unexpectedly dramatic fluctuations in Earth's outer atmosphere.
Results of a new study link a recent, temporary shrinking of a high atmospheric layer with a sharp drop in the sun's ultraviolet radiation levels.

The research, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., and the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU), indicates that the sun's magnetic cycle, which produces differing numbers of sunspots over an approximately 11-year cycle, may vary more than previously thought.

The results, published in the American Geophysical Union journal Geophysical Research Letters, are funded by NASA and by the National Science Foundation (NSF), NCAR's sponsor.

"This research makes a compelling case for the need to study the coupled sun-Earth system," says Farzad Kamalabadi, program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, "and to illustrate the importance of solar influences on our terrestrial environment with both fundamental scientific implications and societal consequences."

The findings may have implications for orbiting satellites, as well as for the International Space Station.

"Our work demonstrates that the solar cycle not only varies on the typical 11-year time scale, but also can vary from one solar minimum to another," says lead author Stanley Solomon, a scientist at NCAR's High Altitude Observatory. "All solar minima are not equal."

The fact that the layer in the upper atmosphere known as the thermosphere is shrunken and dense means that satellites can more easily maintain their orbits.

But it also indicates that space debris and other objects that pose hazards may persist longer in the thermosphere.

"With lower thermospheric density, our satellites will have a longer life in orbit," says CU professor Thomas Woods, a co-author.

"This is good news for those satellites that are actually operating, but it is also bad because of the thousands of non-operating objects remaining in space that could potentially have collisions with our working satellites."

The sun's energy output declined to unusually low levels from 2007 to 2009, a particularly prolonged solar minimum during which there were virtually no sunspots or solar storms.

During that same period of low solar activity, Earth's thermosphere shrank more than at any time in the 43-year era of space exploration.

The thermosphere, which ranges in altitude from about 55 to more than 300 miles (90 to 500 kilometers), is a rarified layer of gas at the edge of space where the sun's radiation first makes contact with Earth's atmosphere.

It typically cools and becomes less dense during low solar activity.

But the magnitude of the density change during the recent solar minimum appeared to be about 30 percent greater than would have been expected by low solar activity.

The study team used computer modeling to analyze two possible factors implicated in the mystery of the shrinking thermosphere.

They simulated both the impacts of solar output and the role of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas that, according to past estimates, is reducing the density of the outer atmosphere by about 2 percent to 5 percent per decade.

Their work built on several recent studies.

Earlier this year, a team of scientists from the Naval Research Laboratory and George Mason University, measuring changes in satellite drag, estimated that the density of the thermosphere declined in 2007-09 to about 30 percent less than during the previous solar minimum in 1996.

Other studies by scientists at the University of Southern California and CU, using measurements from sub-orbital rocket flights and space-based instruments, have estimated that levels of extreme-ultraviolet radiation-a class of photons with extremely short wavelengths-dropped about 15 percent during the same period.

However, scientists remained uncertain whether the decline in extreme-ultraviolet radiation would be sufficient to have such a dramatic impact on the thermosphere, even when combined with the effects of carbon dioxide.

To answer this question, Solomon and his colleagues turned to an NCAR computer tool, known as the Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Electrodynamics General Circulation Model.

They used the model to simulate how the sun's output during 1996 and 2008 would affect the temperature and density of the thermosphere.

They also created two simulations of thermospheric conditions in 2008-one with a level that approximated actual carbon dioxide emissions and one with a fixed, lower level.

The results showed the thermosphere cooling in 2008 by 41 kelvins, or K (about 74 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to 1996, with just 2 K attributable to the carbon dioxide increase.

The results also showed the thermosphere's density decreasing by 31 percent, with just 3 percent attributable to carbon dioxide, and closely approximated the 30 percent reduction in density indicated by measurements of satellite drag.

"It is now clear that the record low temperature and density were primarily caused by unusually low levels of solar radiation at the extreme-ultraviolet level," Solomon says.

Woods says the research indicates that the sun could be going through a period of relatively low activity, similar to periods in the early 19th and 20th centuries.

This could mean that solar output may remain at a low level for the near future.

"If it is indeed similar to certain patterns in the past, then we expect to have low solar cycles for the next 10 to 30 years," Woods says.

Distant Star's Sound Waves Reveal Cycle Similar to the Sun's

In a bid to unlock longstanding mysteries of the Sun, including the impacts on Earth of its 11-year cycle, an international team of scientists has successfully probed a distant star. By monitoring the star's sound waves, the team has observed a magnetic cycle analogous to the Sun's solar cycle.
The study, conducted by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and colleagues in France and Spain, is being published in Science.

The scientists studied a star known as HD49933, which is located 100 light years from Earth in the constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn, just east of Orion. The team examined the star's acoustic fluctuations, using a technique called "stellar seismology." They detected the signature of "starspots," areas of intense magnetic activity on the surface that are similar to sunspots. While scientists have previously observed these magnetic cycles in other stars, this was the first time they have discovered such a cycle using stellar seismology.

"Essentially, the star is ringing like a bell," says NCAR scientist Travis Metcalfe, a co-author of the new study. "As it moves through its starspot cycle, the tone and volume of the ringing changes in a very specific pattern, moving to higher tones with lower volume at the peak of its magnetic cycle."

"We've discovered a magnetic activity cycle in this star, similar to what we see with the Sun," says co-author and NCAR scientist Savita Mathur. "This technique of listening to the stars will allow us to examine potentially hundreds of stars."

The team hopes to assess the potential for other stars in our galaxy to host planets, including some perhaps capable of sustaining life.

"Understanding the activity of stars harboring planets is necessary because magnetic conditions on the star's surface could influence the habitable zone, where life could develop," says CEA-Saclay scientist Rafael Garcia, the study's lead author.

Studying many stars with stellar seismology could help scientists better understand how magnetic activity cycles can differ from star to star, as well as the processes behind such cycles. The work could especially shed light on the magnetic processes that go on within the Sun, furthering our understanding of its influence on Earth's climate. It may also lead to better predictions of the solar cycle and resulting geomagnetic storms that can cause major disruption to power grids and communication networks.

In addition to NCAR, the team's scientists are from France's Center for Nuclear Studies of Saclay (CEA-Saclay), Paris/Meudon Observatory (OPM), the University of Toulouse, and Spain's Institute of Astrophysics of the Canaries (IAC). The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, which is NCAR's sponsor, the CEA, the French Stellar Physics National Research Plan, and the Spanish National Research Plan.

Classifying stars

The scientists examined 187 days of data captured by the international Convection Rotation and Planetary Transits (CoRoT) space mission.

Launched on December 27, 2006, CoRoT was developed and is operated by the French National Center for Space Studies (CNES) with contributions from Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Spain, and the European Space Agency. CoRoT is equipped with a 27-centimeter (11-inch) diameter telescope and a 4-CCD (charge-coupled device) camera sensitive to tiny variations in the light intensity from stars.

The study authors found that HD49933 is much bigger and hotter than the Sun, and its magnetic cycle is much shorter. Whereas past surveys of stars have found cycles similar to the 11-year cycle of the Sun, this star has a cycle of less than a year.

This short cycle is important to scientists because it may enable them to observe an entire cycle more quickly, thereby gleaning more information about magnetic patterns than if they could only observe part of a longer cycle.

The scientists plan to expand their observations by using other stars observed by CoRoT as well as data from NASA's Kepler mission, launched in March 2009. Kepler is seeking Earth-sized planets to survey. The mission will provide continuous data over three to five years from hundreds of stars that could be hosting planets.

"If it turns out that a short magnetic cycle is common in stars, then we will potentially observe a large number of full cycles during Kepler's mission," says Metcalfe. "The more stars and complete magnetic cycles we have to observe, the more we can place the Sun into context and explore the impacts of magnetic activity on possible planets hosted by these stars."

The team has spent the past six months exploring the structure and dynamics of HD49933 and classifying its size. They will next verify their observations using ground-based telescopes to confirm the magnetic activity of the star. When the star reemerges from behind the Sun in September, they hope to measure the full length of the cycle. The CoRoT mission was designed to collect up to 150 days of continuous data at a time, which was not enough to determine the exact length of the star's cycle.

Secrets of the Gecko Foot Help Robot Climb

A Stanford mechanical engineer is using the biology of a gecko's sticky foot to create a robot that climbs. In the same way the small reptile can scale a wall of slick glass, the Stickybot can climb smooth surfaces with feet modeled on the intricate design of gecko toes.
Mark Cutkosky, the lead designer of the Stickybot, a professor of mechanical engineering and co-director of the Center for Design Research, has been collaborating with scientists around the nation for the last five years to build climbing robots.

After designing a robot that could conquer rough vertical surfaces such as brick walls and concrete, Cutkosky moved on to smooth surfaces such as glass and metal. He turned to the gecko for ideas.

"Unless you use suction cups, which are kind of slow and inefficient, the other solution out there is to use dry adhesion, which is the technique the gecko uses," Cutkosky said.

Wonders of the gecko toe

The toe of a gecko's foot contains hundreds of flap-like ridges called lamellae. On each ridge are millions of hairs called setae, which are 10 times thinner than a human's. Under a microscope, you can see that each hair divides into smaller strands called spatulae, making it look like a bundle of split ends. These split ends are so tiny (a few hundred nanometers) that they interact with the molecules of the climbing surface.

The interaction between the molecules of gecko toe hair and the wall is a molecular attraction called van der Waals force. A gecko can hang and support its whole weight on one toe by placing it on the glass and then pulling it back. It only sticks when you pull in one direction -- their toes are a kind of one-way adhesive, Cutkosky said.

"It's very different from Scotch tape or duct tape, where, if you press it on, you then have to peel it off. You can lightly brush a directional adhesive against the surface and then pull in a certain direction, and it sticks itself. But if you pull in a different direction, it comes right off without any effort," he said.

Robots with gecko feet

One-way adhesive is important for climbing because it requires little effort to attach and detach a robot's foot.

"Other adhesives are sort of like walking around with chewing gum on your feet: You have to press it into the surface and then you have to work to pull it off. But with directional adhesion, it's almost like you can sort of hook and unhook yourself from the surface," Cutkosky said.

After the breakthrough insight that direction matters, Cutkosky and his team began asking how to build artificial materials for robots that create the same effect. They came up with a rubber-like material with tiny polymer hairs made from a micro-scale mold.

The designers attach a layer of adhesive cut to the shape of Stickybot's four feet, which are about the size of a child's hand. As it steadily moves up the wall, the robot peels and sticks its feet to the surface with ease, resembling a mechanical lizard.

The newest versions of the adhesive, developed in 2009, have a two-layer system, similar to the gecko's lamellae and setae. The "hairs" are even smaller than the ones on the first version -- about 20 micrometers wide, which is five times thinner than a human hair. These versions support higher loads and allow Stickybot to climb surfaces such as wood paneling, painted metal and glass.

The material is strong and reusable, and leaves behind no residue or damage. Robots that scale vertical walls could be useful for accessing dangerous or hard to reach places.

Next steps

The team's new project involves scaling up the material for humans. A technology called Z-Man, which would allow humans to climb with gecko adhesive, is in the works.

Cutkosky and his team are also working on a Stickybot successor: one that turns in the middle of a climb. Because the adhesive only sticks in one direction, turning requires rotating the foot.

"The new Stickybot that we're working on right now has rotating ankles, which is also what geckos have," he said.

"Next time you see a gecko upside down or walking down a wall head first, look carefully at the back feet, they'll be turned around backward. They have to be; otherwise they'll fall."

Cutkosky has collaborated with scientists from Lewis & Clark College, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon University and a robot-building company called Boston Dynamics. His project is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

New View of Tectonic Plates: Computer Modeling of Earth's Mantle Flow, Plate Motions, and Fault Zones

ScienceDaily (Aug. 30, 2010) — Computational scientists and geophysicists at the University of Texas at Austin and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed new computer algorithms that for the first time allow for the simultaneous modeling of Earth's mantle flow, large-scale tectonic plate motions, and the behavior of individual fault zones, to produce an unprecedented view of plate tectonics and the forces that drive it.

A paper describing the whole-earth model and its underlying algorithms will be published in the August 27 issue of the journal Science and also featured on the cover.

The work "illustrates the interplay between making important advances in science and pushing the envelope of computational science," says Michael Gurnis, the John E. and Hazel S. Smits Professor of Geophysics, director of the Caltech Seismological Laboratory, and a coauthor of the Science paper.

To create the new model, computational scientists at Texas's Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) -- a team that included Omar Ghattas, the John A. and Katherine G. Jackson Chair in Computational Geosciences and professor of geological sciences and mechanical engineering, and research associates Georg Stadler and Carsten Burstedde -- pushed the envelope of a computational technique known as Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR).

Partial differential equations such as those describing mantle flow are solved by subdividing the region of interest (such as the mantle) into a computational grid. Ordinarily, the resolution is kept the same throughout the grid. However, many problems feature small-scale dynamics that are found only in limited regions. "AMR methods adaptively create finer resolution only where it's needed," explains Ghattas. "This leads to huge reductions in the number of grid points, making possible simulations that were previously out of reach."

"The complexity of managing adaptivity among thousands of processors, however, has meant that current AMR algorithms have not scaled well on modern petascale supercomputers," he adds. Petascale computers are capable of one million billion operations per second. To overcome this long-standing problem, the group developed new algorithms that, Burstedde says, "allows for adaptivity in a way that scales to the hundreds of thousands of processor cores of the largest supercomputers available today."

With the new algorithms, the scientists were able to simulate global mantle flow and how it manifests as plate tectonics and the motion of individual faults. According to Stadler, the AMR algorithms reduced the size of the simulations by a factor of 5,000, permitting them to fit on fewer than 10,000 processors and run overnight on the Ranger supercomputer at the National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported Texas Advanced Computing Center.

A key to the model was the incorporation of data on a multitude of scales. "Many natural processes display a multitude of phenomena on a wide range of scales, from small to large," Gurnis explains. For example, at the largest scale -- that of the whole earth -- the movement of the surface tectonic plates is a manifestation of a giant heat engine, driven by the convection of the mantle below. The boundaries between the plates, however, are composed of many hundreds to thousands of individual faults, which together constitute active fault zones. "The individual fault zones play a critical role in how the whole planet works," he says, "and if you can't simulate the fault zones, you can't simulate plate movement" -- and, in turn, you can't simulate the dynamics of the whole planet.

In the new model, the researchers were able to resolve the largest fault zones, creating a mesh with a resolution of about one kilometer near the plate boundaries. Included in the simulation were seismological data as well as data pertaining to the temperature of the rocks, their density, and their viscosity -- or how strong or weak the rocks are, which affects how easily they deform. That deformation is nonlinear -- with simple changes producing unexpected and complex effects.

"Normally, when you hit a baseball with a bat, the properties of the bat don't change -- it won't turn to Silly Putty. In the earth, the properties do change, which creates an exciting computational problem," says Gurnis. "If the system is too nonlinear, the earth becomes too mushy; if it's not nonlinear enough, plates won't move. We need to hit the 'sweet spot.'"

After crunching through the data for 100,000 hours of processing time per run, the model returned an estimate of the motion of both large tectonic plates and smaller microplates -- including their speed and direction. The results were remarkably close to observed plate movements.

In fact, the investigators discovered that anomalous rapid motion of microplates emerged from the global simulations. "In the western Pacific," Gurnis says, "we have some of the most rapid tectonic motions seen anywhere on Earth, in a process called 'trench rollback.' For the first time, we found that these small-scale tectonic motions emerged from the global models, opening a new frontier in geophysics."

One surprising result from the model relates to the energy released from plates in earthquake zones. "It had been thought that the majority of energy associated with plate tectonics is released when plates bend, but it turns out that's much less important than previously thought," Gurnis says. "Instead, we found that much of the energy dissipation occurs in the earth's deep interior. We never saw this when we looked on smaller scales."