First Ever STEREO Images of the Entire Sun

NASA has released the first complete view of the sun's entire surface and atmosphere.
Seeing the whole sun front and back simultaneously will enable significant advances in space weather forecasting for Earth, and improve planning for future robotic or crewed spacecraft missions throughout the solar system.

These views are the result of observations by NASA's two Solar TErrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft. The duo are on diametrically opposite sides of the sun, 180 degrees apart. One is ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind.

Launched in October 2006, STEREO traces the flow of energy and matter from the sun to Earth. It also provides unique and revolutionary views of the sun-Earth system. The mission observed the sun in 3-D for the first time in 2007. In 2009, the twin spacecraft revealed the 3-D structure of coronal mass ejections which are violent eruptions of matter from the sun that can disrupt communications, navigation, satellites and power grids on Earth.

STEREO is the third mission in NASA's Solar Terrestrial Probes program within the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the mission, instruments and science center.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., designed and built the spacecraft and is responsible for mission operations.

The STEREO imaging and particle detecting instruments were designed and built by scientific institutions in the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Switzerland.

To view the image with supporting visuals and information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/stereo

Was Mona Lisa a Dude?

* Researchers believe they've identified da Vinci's inspiration for Mona Lisa -- * Salai, an effeminate young artist who worked with da Vinci for 25 years, is thought to have served as a model for several of his paintings.
* The claim was immediately disputed by experts at the Louvre in Paris, where the painting is on display.

Comparisons between the facial characteristics of figures from several of da Vinci's works reveal striking similarities with the Mona Lisa's nose and mouth. Click to

The woman behind one of the world's most famous paintings was born in a humble house
Italian researchers who specialize in resolving art mysteries said Wednesday they have discovered the disputed identity of the model for Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa -- and claimed he was a man.

Silvano Vinceti, chairman of the Italian national committee for cultural heritage, said the Florence-born Renaissance artist's male apprentice and possible lover Salai was the main inspiration for the picture.

However his claim was immediately disputed by experts at the Louvre in Paris, where the painting is on display.

Salai, real name Gian Giacomo Caprotti, an effeminate young artist who worked with da Vinci for 25 years, is thought to have served as a model and muse for several of his paintings. The pair had an "ambiguous" relationship and were probably lovers, Vinceti said.

Comparisons between the facial characteristics of figures from several of da Vinci's works -- such as "St. John the Baptist" and the "Angel Incarnate" -- reveal striking similarities with the Mona Lisa's nose and mouth, he said.

"There are remarkable similarities," Vinceti told reporters.

What is more, Vinceti said da Vinci had left clues to the model's identity in tiny letters L and S which he and his team found painted into the eyes of the Mona Lisa.

"Close examination of a high-quality digital copy of the portrait had revealed an L for Leonardo and an S for Salai," he said.

But Vinceti's claims have been disputed by the Louvre museum.

The museum said it had carried out "every possible laboratory test possible" on the picture in 2004 and then again in 2009, and insisted that "no inscriptions, letters or numbers, were discovered during the tests."

"The aging of the painting on wood has caused a great number of cracks to appear in the paint, which have caused a number of shapes to appear that have often been subject to over-interpretation," the Louvre told AFP.

The museum also said Vinceti's had made his claims without having had access to the painting itself.

The Italian aficionado, whose team gained notoriety with their claims surrounding the death of Caravaggio last year, said he felt sorry for the embarrassment the museum must feel on having missed the clues all these years.

"I can understand their incredulity and amazement -- after all this must be the most studied picture on earth," he told AFP, but added "they're really blind."

"They have to be serious and accept that they didn't see what was right in front of their eyes," he said.

In order to clear up any lingering doubt over his theory -- worthy of Dan Brown's 2003 bestseller the "Da Vinci Code" -- Vinceti said he would be willing to take his team to France and collaborate on further tests with the Louvre.

"We're ready to go to Paris and extract a tiny bit of paint from the numbers and see whether they match the rest of the painting, to see if they were done at the same time or are marks that have appeared over time," he said.

Whether the prestigious art museum will take Vinceti up on his offer is yet to be seen.

Oil Markets Churn Over Egypt’s Potential as Gateway for Revolt

A tanker carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) passes through Egypt's Suez Canal in 2007. The man-made waterway is an important fuel conduit, but energy analysts think the world system can cope with lost or delayed supply. The spread of revolt is seen as a bigger threat.

Photograph by Dana Smillie, Bloomberg/Getty Images

Marianne Lavelle

For N G N

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

World oil prices were trading at their highest level in three years this week amid the revolt in Egypt, which for decades served as a major petroleum transit route. But energy analysts believe the real risk is not a closure of the desert conduits—the Suez Canal and the Sumed Pipeline—but that the unrest gripping Cairo will spread to neighboring nations.

"The whole Arab world is watching what is happening in Egypt," said James Burkhard, managing director of the global energy consulting firm, IHS CERA. "It is adding a new layer of anxiety about the Middle East, which is the most important oil-producing region in the world."

The price of oil reached more than $100 a barrel this week for the first time since 2008, based on the benchmark Brent contract, which is widely used in Europe and Asia. In the United States, the benchmark price stayed lower, about $92 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and was falling off slightly from last week.

Each dollar increase in the price of oil translates to roughly a 2.4-cent-per-gallon (0.6-cent-per-liter) hike in the price of fuel, although many other market conditions affect the actual price that consumers pay at the pump. Bloggers and some analysts have focused on the risk of oil shock posed by a potential closure of Egypt's Suez Canal, the 142-year-old man-made waterway linking the Mediterranean and the Red seas. But energy experts say the oil market is concerned about Egypt not as a commodity route, but as a gateway to further political instability.

Historic Highway of Oil

Egypt itself is not a world oil supplier; its 80 million people consume roughly all of the oil the nation produces. But its 120-mile (193-kilometer) Suez Canal for years served as a vitally important passageway for oil.

Of course, that was not the case in its early history, when the canal linked Britain and France with their far-flung empires; the canal opened in 1869 when ships still made their way through the passage by sail.

But in 1948, just as India won its independence from Great Britain, the canal gained a new role, "not as a highway of empire, but of oil," recounts Daniel Yergin, co-founder and chairman of IHS CERA, in his Pulitzer-Prize winning history of the industry, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power. By 1955, Yergin writes, oil accounted for two-thirds of all canal traffic and two-thirds of Europe's oil passed through it. Its strategic importance kicked off the Suez Crisis—an attack on Egypt by Great Britain, France, and Israel—after Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the waterway in 1956.

That crisis was resolved in part due to pressure from the United States, which opposed the attack, and deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping force. But the impact on the petroleum markets reverberated.

Over the years, the market moved to larger and larger oil tankers; although they could not make it through the canal and had to make the 6,000-mile (9,700-kilometer) trip around the tip of Africa to markets of the West, they could make up for lost time by moving bigger shipments of cargo.

The Suez Canal closed for eight years after the Six Day War between Israel and the Arab states in 1967—costing the world an estimated $12 billion in higher shipping costs, or $49 billion in today's dollars. As the canal was set to reopen in June 1975, National Geographic recounted how "the waterway had become a giant slag heap of war—blocked by scuttled and sunken ships, strewn with unexploded ammunition, abandoned by more than a million Egyptians who had fled their homes along its banks and occupied on either side by mortal enemies."

In addition to sweeping the canal for explosives, a dangerous endeavor in which at least 100 lives were lost, Egyptian officials worked to deepen and widen the canal to reclaim lost traffic. They noted at the time that tankers had grown so large that only one in four could make it through the Suez.

Today, only 16 percent of the cargo that passes through the canal is oil. Analysts estimate that between 600,000 barrels and 1 million barrels per day flow north through the canal. The Sumed Pipeline, which runs parallel to the Suez, carries a greater volume from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean—between 1 million and 2 million barrels per day.

In recent years, the Suez Canal has also become an important transitway for shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG), but global supplies are considered to be strong enough to handle any hold-ups or stoppage in shipping.

As for oil, Burkhard of IHS CERA notes that the world has 5 million barrels per day of spare oil production capacity. Saudi Arabia alone, with 3.5 million to 4 million barrels per day of spare capacity, can ramp up to replace all of the oil shipped through the Suez and Sumed together, should either conduit face a disruption.

And in any case, Egypt serves as a passage for just a fraction of the 15 million to 17 million barrels per day of oil shipped out of the Persian Gulf. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) notes that volumes in both the canal and the pipeline have been declining. Piracy and security concerns around the Horn of Africa where cargo ships must travel to reach the Suez Canal have led some exporters to travel the extra distance around South Africa to reach western markets, EIA notes. And many shipments also are headed in the other direction to the Far East.

Does Oil Wealth Immunize?

The greater concern is the risk of "contagion," said Kevin Book of Clearview Energy Partners LLC in Washington, D.C., who sees certain Arab countries at great risk of upheaval: those with high unemployment, low per-capita GDP, a low median age and a relatively low level of active military troops. Book said Yemen stands out among Egypt's neighbors as a nation at risk for spread of revolt, with a per capita GDP of $2,600—far lower than Egypt's $6,200—and an unemployment rate of about 35 percent (compared to Egypt's stated rate of 10 percent).

Although Yemen produces even less oil than Egypt, it also is considered a potential choke point for oil transit, at the Strait of Bab al Mandab where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden. Book said that any constraint on traffic there wouldn't mean a "supply meltdown," but higher prices for oil products.

But it is an open question whether revolt will spread to the monarchies and emirates that make up the large oil-producing nexus of the Persian Gulf. The biggest producer, Saudi Arabia, has a slightly higher unemployment rate than Egypt—at 11 percent. But the Kingdom's GDP per capita is about 4 times higher ($24,200). Paul Tossetti, senior energy adviser at the consulting firm PFC Energy, says oil wealth creates a fundamentally different picture for people living in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait.

"They have so much money they have been able to give their populations a bit more of a future than the highly populated countries that have very little in the way of oil," like Egypt, he says. He says PFC Energy views a spread of unrest to the Middle East oil kingdoms unlikely, "but that doesn't mean you won't see a demonstration here and there."

Ancient Egyptian Artifacts Damaged in Looting

Shattered

Photograph from AP

Two ancient mummified heads, as yet unidentified, lie on the floor of the Egyptian Museum on Monday after the weekend attack by looters. (Related: "Plundering of Tombs, Museums, Antiquities Widespread, Egyptian Official Reports" on our News Watch blog.)



Before the Break-in

Photograph by Roger Wood, Corbis

Pictured in 1963, a 14th-century B.C. statuette from King Tut's tomb shows the young pharaoh balanced on the back of a leopard. One of a matched pair, the sculpture was reportedly damaged in the weekend attack on the Egyptian Museum.



Guarding the Past

Photograph by Tara Todras-Whitehill, AP

In a gallery displaying King Tut's 3,300-year-old chariots, a member of the Egyptian special forces stands guard near a case allegedly smashed by looters this past weekend. Pieces of the pharaoh's damaged ceremonial fan of gold lie on top of the glass.


Line of Fire

Photograph by Kenneth Garrett, National Geographic

Looters in the Egyptian Museum reportedly damaged 4,000-year-old models that represent an army of Nubian archers (shown intact in a file picture). Standing about 21 inches (53 centimeters) tall, the statues were discovered in 1894 in the tomb of a prince in the town of Assiut.



City of the Dead

Photograph by Werner Forman, Corbis

In the region around this 4,500-year-old tomb of an official at Abusir (pictured in an undated photo), looters allegedly broke into excavation warehouses filled with artifacts this past weekend.

Egypt's museums are so full of ancient treasures that many excavated objects are stored near the sites where they were found. In peaceful times a padlocked door, lead seals marked with an inspector's stamp, and a guard are enough to keep them safe.

"Uncontacted" Tribe

Famously photographed aiming arrows at a passing aircraft two years ago, an "uncontacted" tribe in Brazil's Acre state (map) appears thriving and healthy in new pictures—the most detailed yet of the Amazon group—experts say.

Though referred to as uncontacted, the Indians—pictured by a palm-leaf hut—are thought to have had limited interaction with outsiders but prefer to remain isolated, according to José Carlos Meirelles, the Indian-affairs specialist who led the team that took the new pictures in April 2010. (See "'Uncontacted' Tribe Actually Known for Decades.")

Released this week by the international indigenous-rights group Survival International, the images were captured from about three-quarters of a mile (1.2 kilometers) away during an annual monitoring flight organized by the Brazilian government.

In keeping with federal policy, the team did not make direct contact, for fear of introducing diseases or harming the tribe's environment and culture.

"They always get scared when they see an aircraft, but this tribe is used to seeing commercial flights—Boeings and local jets—flying over the region," said the newly retired Meirelles, who for 40 years worked for FUNAI, Brazil's indigenous-rights agency.

"I prefer to get them scared once a year—and make sure they are healthy, growing in number, and protected from loggers and miners—rather than leave them without any supervision."

The isolated tribe's land, especially on the other side of the nearby Peruvian border, is much sought after for its lumber, oil, minerals, natural gas, and hydroelectric and farming potential.

In the face of increasing illegal logging, pictures like these are vital to safeguarding indigenous land rights, Meirelles said, given that politicians in both Brazil and Peru have disputed that such isolated tribes even exist.

Ancient Bog Girl's Face Reconstructed

"Moora" stares across millennia, thanks to a digital reconstruction based on the Iron Age girl's fragmented skull—one of several interpretations released January 20.

Along with the nearly complete corpse of the teenager, peat bog workers found her 2,600-year-old skull bones—mangled by peat-harvesting machinery—in Germany's Lower Saxony state (map) in 2000.

At first, "the police thought it was a criminal case"—perhaps the remains of Elke Kerll, a young woman who disappeared in 1969—said Andreas Bauerochse, a paleoecologist with the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage.

But the DNA of the corpse and Kerll's living mother didn't match, and the identity of Moora—nicknamed after Uchter Moor, where the remains had been found—remained a mystery until 2005.

That year, peat workers found a hand at the same spot where the bog body had been found and scientists including Bauerochse were called in.

The hand was physically a good fit for the body, they found. What's more, by radiocarbon-dating the peat on the hand, the pair determined that Moora died about 650 B.C.


Brainteaser

Photograph courtesy Andreas Bauerochse

Fractured by modern peat-harvesting machinery, Moora's skull also bears ancient fractures caused by blunt-force trauma, the scientists concluded.

Other evidence of a hard life include signs of chronic malnutrition—probably due to yearly winter food shortages—and a curved spine. None of these health problems were fatal, however, and the cause of Moora's death is still unknown.

No signs of clothing were found along with her body, but "if she wore clothes made of cotton or something similar, it would have been destroyed by the bog acid," Bauerochse said.

The team doesn't think Moora was purposely buried in the bog, because no jewelry or other artifacts were found and because Iron Age cultures typically cremated their dead.



Watery Grave

Photograph from Creasource/Photolibrary

By studying plant and pollen material preserved in the German peat bog where Moora was found (pictured), scientists have been able to partially piece together what the area was like when she lived 2,600 years ago.

Back then, the peat bogs were more numerous and included many waterways, which flowed around shrubby miniature soil "islands." On land around the bogs, Moora's people—perhaps an agrarian group called the Nienburg—likely planted cereal crops, the experts say.

Peat is accumulated dead plant matter, often harvested for use in farming or for burning in power plants or fireplaces. The bogs' lack of oxygen makes them inhospitable to fungi and bacteria that would otherwise degrade corpses.

How to Hack an ATM?

By Nick Veronin

Turning automated teller machines into your personal piggy bank is easy—alarmingly easy. That’s the message of Barnaby Jack, a software-cracking whiz turned digital-security researcher. He has demonstrated his hacking prowess at events like DefCon, coaxing ATMs into spitting out wads of cash in less than a minute using scripting know-how, a few simple tools, and some Googling. Here’s his method.

1. Scout a Target

You want locales without video surveillance—think bars, not banks. Once you know the machine’s make and model, a quick web search can readily yield hardware specs, operators’ manuals … sometimes even online access.

2. Craft Your Code

This is the tricky bit. You’ll need to roll your own malware to override the manufacturer’s firmware. But buck up—online user guides explain the ATM’s OS, which is often primitive. “It’s 1999-level technology,” Jack says.

3. Break In

When no one’s looking, pop open the control-panel hatch with a paper clip or bobby pin. “The locks on ATMs are the same types that protect toilet paper in a public lavatory,” Jack says. (Master keys can also be purchased online.)

4. Upload the Malware

Insert a thumb drive or SD card into the ATM’s main board. It will assume it’s getting a system upgrade. And voilá—pwnd. Set up your own key sequence that gives you access (and cash) whenever you want.

Water-Powered Jetpack Runs Two Hours on Single Tank

magine a fire hose in full, glass-smashing flow. Now imagine that it has gotten loose, and is whipping and snapping like a spastic cobra, at such terrifying speed that it is almost impossible to see its flailing tip.

Now imagine that you are strapped to the end. Congratulations. You are riding the JetLev Flyer.

Unlike “ordinary” jetpacks, the JetLev is actually two vehicles, tethered by a hose the thickness of your thigh. On the water is a small speedboat-like unit which contains a 250 horsepower motor and a pump. This is connected to the pack — into which you strap your frail body –- by the 10-meter [33-foot] hose. The water is pumped from the sea or lake below, up to the nozzles on the jetpack, giving a 1,900-Newton [430-pounds-of-force] thrust, enough to lift even a fat human of up to 150 kilos [330 pounds]Because of that hose, you are effectively tethered to the water, meaning your maximum altitude tops out at 8.5 meters [28 feet]. Your horizontal distance is only limited by flight time, however, and you can scoot around at 35 mph for up to two hours. Control is fly-by-wire, so the thrust handles are easy to twist, kept away from the intense pressure of the water.

I love it. All the fun of a jetpack with almost none of the dangers. Falling 30 feet onto water might not be pleasant, but neither is is going kill you. And two hours of flight time is way more than what you’ll get from a “traditional” jetpack.

The rub is that this costs $100,000 to buy. At this price, it is aimed more at water-sports–rental businesses than at the private user, although I’m sure plenty of luxury yachts will be adding them as essential equipment. Expect to see this in a James Bond movie soon.

Russia Working on Mysterious Space Plane of Its Own

It’s official: the space race is on again.

54 years after the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik I satellite, sparking the original space race — and 20 years after the USSR’s collapse left America as the sole space superpower — the Russians are back on track. The Kremlin’s military space chief Oleg Ostapenko just announced that Russia is developing a small, maneuverable, reusable space plane to match the U.S. Air Force’s mysterious X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle.

Russian industry has already outlined the craft’s design, Ostapenko said. “As to whether we will use it, only time will tell,” he added coyly.

But it seems unlikely Russia would forgo the opportunity to match the U.S. Air Force’s accomplishment with the X-37B. That craft, a quarter-scale unmanned Space Shuttle first launched in April last year, represents one of the biggest leaps forward in space since, well, Sputnik.

The X-37 can carry anything that will fit in its pickup-truck-bed-size bay. “You can put sensors in there, satellites in there,” said Eric Sterner, from The Marshall Institute. “You could stick munitions in there, provided they exist.” The X-37 can also help repair U.S. satellites or sneak up on and disable enemy sats. Plus, it can stay in orbit for nine months, land like an airplane, then return to orbit just a few weeks later.

The initial X-37 test flight ended in December, flawlessly except for a blown tire. While “OTV 1″ is being prepped for its second flight late in 2011, its twin “OTV 2″ will boost into orbit on March 4, atop a rocket launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.

It should come as no surprise that Russia wants its own “X-37ski.” With Sputnik, Moscow beat America into space. But with every major space capability since in recent decades, Washington has led its eastern rival. The U.S. fielded the manned Space Shuttle in 1981. Russia built its own, similar space vehicle, the Buran, but it flew only once, in 1988.

A decade later, America built the Global Positioning Satellite system, allowing precise navigation on Earth. Today, Russia is still struggling to construct its own version of GPS, the so-called “GLONASS.” The last attempt to reinforce the GLONASS constellation failed, when a rocket failed on launch in December, destroying three of the pricey satellites.

Not coincidentally, an X-37ski could help Russia put satellites like the GLONASS craft into orbit more reliably.

It’ll probably be a few years before the Russian X-37 clone takes flight. After all, this is super-cutting-edge technology. By then, the race for nimble military spacecraft could be a three-way competition. Just last week, there were rumors — highly, highly questionable ones — that China is working on an X-37-type vehicle, too.

Human Genome's Breaking Points: Genetic Sequence of Large-Scale Differences Between Human Genomes

A detailed analysis of data from 185 human genomes sequenced in the course of the 1000 Genomes Project, by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, in collaboration with researchers at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, as well as the University of Washington and Harvard Medical School, both in the USA, has identified the genetic sequence of an unprecedented 28 000 structural variants (SVs) -- large portions of the human genome which differ from one person to another.
The work, published in Nature, could help find the genetic causes of some diseases and also begins to explain why certain parts of the human genome change more than others.

The international team of scientists identified over a thousand SVs that disrupt the sequence of one or more genes. These gene-altering mutations may be linked to diseases, so knowing the exact genetic sequence of these variations will help clinical geneticists to narrow down their searches for disease-causing mutations.

"Knowing the exact genetic sequence of SVs and their context in the genome could help find the genetic causes for as-yet unexplained diseases," says Jan Korbel, who led the research at EMBL: "this may help us understand why some people remain healthy until old age whereas others develop diseases early in their lives."

This unprecedented catalogue of large-scale genetic variants also sheds light on why some parts of the genome mutate more frequently than others. The scientists found that deletions, where genetic material is lost, and insertions, where it is gained, tend to happen in different places in the genome and through different molecular processes. For instance, large-scale deletions are more likely to occur in regions where DNA often breaks and has to be put back together, as 'chunks' of genetic material can be lost in the process.

"We found 51 hotspots where certain SVs, such as large deletions, appear to occur particularly often" Korbel says: "Six of those hotspots are in regions known to be related to genetic conditions such as Miller-Dieker syndrome, a congenital brain disease that can lead to infant death."

Previous research had already linked SVs -- also called copy-number variants -- to many genetic conditions, such as colour-blindness, schizophrenia, and certain forms of cancer. However, because of their large size and complex DNA sequence, SVs were difficult to identify. In this study, the researchers overcame these difficulties, developing novel computational approaches that allowed them to pinpoint the exact locations of these large-scale variations in the genome, broadening the potential scope of future disease studies.

"There are many structural variants in everyone's genomes and they are increasingly being associated with various aspects of human health" says Charles Lee, a clinical cytogeneticist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, and joint leader of the study: "It is important to be able to identify and comprehensively characterize these genetic variants using state-of-the-art DNA sequencing technologies."

Data from this study is being made publicly available to the scientific community through the 1000 Genomes Project, an international public-private consortium to build the most detailed map of human genetic variation to date. The 1000 Genomes Project aims to sequence 2500 whole genomes by the end of 2012, resulting, by far, in the largest collection of human genomes to date.

NASA Finds Earth-Size Planet Candidates in Habitable Zone, Six Planet System

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Five of the potential planets are near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of smaller, cooler stars than our sun.
Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets. Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system.

"In one generation we have gone from extraterrestrial planets being a mainstay of science fiction, to the present, where Kepler has helped turn science fiction into today's reality," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "These discoveries underscore the importance of NASA's science missions, which consistently increase understanding of our place in the cosmos."

The discoveries are part of several hundred new planet candidates identified in new Kepler mission science data, released on Feb. 1. The findings increase the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler to-date to 1,235. Of these, 68 are approximately Earth-size; 288 are super-Earth-size; 662 are Neptune-size; 165 are the size of Jupiter and 19 are larger than Jupiter.

Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are near Earth-sized. The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range from super-Earth size -- up to twice the size of Earth -- to larger than Jupiter.

The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12 to Sept. 17, 2009, of more than 156,000 stars in Kepler's field of view, which covers approximately 1/400 of the sky.

"The fact that we've found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy," said William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the mission's science principal investigator. "We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone, some of which could have moons with liquid water."

Among the stars with planetary candidates, 170 show evidence of multiple planetary candidates. Kepler-11, located approximately 2,000 light years from Earth, is the most tightly packed planetary system yet discovered. All six of its confirmed planets have orbits smaller than Venus, and five of the six have orbits smaller than Mercury's. The only other star with more than one confirmed transiting planet is Kepler-9, which has three. The Kepler-11 findings will be published in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Nature.

"Kepler-11 is a remarkable system whose architecture and dynamics provide clues about its formation," said Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist and Kepler science team member at Ames. "These six planets are mixtures of rock and gases, possibly including water. The rocky material accounts for most of the planets' mass, while the gas takes up most of their volume. By measuring the sizes and masses of the five inner planets, we determined they are among the lowest mass confirmed planets beyond our solar system."

All of the planets orbiting Kepler-11 are larger than Earth, with the largest ones being comparable in size to Uranus and Neptune. The innermost planet, Kepler-11b, is ten times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. Moving outward, the other planets are Kepler-11c, Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e, Kepler-11f, and the outermost planet, Kepler-11g, which is half as far from its star as Earth is from the sun.

The planets Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e and Kepler-11f have a significant amount of light gas, which indicates that they formed within a few million years of the system's formation.

"The historic milestones Kepler makes with each new discovery will determine the course of every exoplanet mission to follow," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Kepler, a space telescope, looks for planet signatures by measuring tiny decreases in the brightness of stars caused by planets crossing in front of them. This is known as a transit.

Since transits of planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars occur about once a year and require three transits for verification, it is expected to take three years to locate and verify Earth-size planets orbiting sun-like stars.

The Kepler science team uses ground-based telescopes and the Spitzer Space Telescope to review observations on planetary candidates and other objects of interest the spacecraft finds.

The star field that Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra can only be seen from ground-based observatories in spring through early fall. The data from these other observations help determine which candidates can be validated as planets.

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

Anthropologists Discover Earliest Cemetery in Middle East

Anthropologists at the University of Toronto and the University of Cambridge have discovered the oldest cemetery in the Middle East at a site in northern Jordan. The cemetery includes graves containing human remains buried alongside those of a red fox, suggesting that the animal was possibly kept as a pet by humans long before dogs ever were.
The 16,500-year-old site at 'Uyun al-Hammam was discovered in 2000 by an expedition led by University of Toronto professor Edward (Ted) Banning and Lisa Maher, an assistant professor of anthropology at U of T and research associate at the University of Cambridge. "Recent archaeological excavations have uncovered the remains of at least 11 individuals -- more than known from all other sites of this kind combined," says Banning, of U of T's Department of Anthropology.

Previous research had identified the earliest cemeteries in the region in a somewhat later period (the Natufian, ca. 15,000-12,000 years ago). These were notable for instances of burials of humans with dogs. One such case involved a woman buried with her hand on a puppy, while another included three humans buried with two dogs along with tortoise shells. However, this new research shows that some of these practices occurred earlier.

Most of the individuals buried at the Jordan site were found with what are known as "grave goods," such as stone tools, a bone spoon, animal parts, and red ochre (an iron mineral). One grave contained the skull and right upper arm bone of a red fox, with red ochre adhered to the skull, along with bones of deer, gazelle and wild cattle. Another nearby grave contained the nearly complete skeleton of a red fox, missing its skull and right upper arm bone, suggesting that portions of a single fox had been moved from one grave to another in prehistoric times.

"What we appear to have found is a case where a fox was killed and buried with its owner," says Maher, who directs excavations at the site. "Later, the grave was reopened for some reason and the human's body was moved. But because the link between the fox and the human had been significant, the fox was moved as well."

The researchers say that it could suggest that foxes were at one time treated in much the same way as dogs, in that there could have been early attempts to tame foxes, but no successful domestication. Studies have shown that foxes can be brought under human control but is not easily done given their skittish and timid nature, which may explain why dogs ultimately achieved "man's best friend" status instead.

"However, it is also noteworthy that the graves contain other animal remains, so we can only take the fox-dog analogy so far," says Banning. "We should remember that some more recent hunter-gatherers consider themselves to have social relationships with a wide range of wild animals, including ones they hunt, and that this sometimes led to prescribed ways to treat the remains of animals, as well as to represent relationships between particular humans and particular animals." Banning says that the "pet" hypothesis is only one among several, which happens to fit with modern preconceptions about human-dog relationships.

Either way, because the same grave that held the fox remains also contained other bones, Banning says that the find holds important clues about burial methods of civilizations past.

"These were unusually dense and diverse concentrations of bones, and indicate very early mortuary practices that involved interring selected animal remains with humans," says Banning. "The site has implications both for our understanding of the development of ideas about death and mortuary practice, and for our understanding of the beginnings of domestication of dog-like animals."

Details of the find appear in the online journal PLoS ONE, published by the Public Library of Science. Fieldwork and research by Banning, Maher and colleagues was partly funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and a National Geographic Research Exploration Grant.

Exploring an 'Island of Inversion,' Physicists Find New Clues to Element Synthesis in Supernovae

Elements heavier than iron come into being only in powerful stellar explosions, supernovae. During nuclear reactions all kinds of short-lived atomic nuclei are formed, including more stable combinations -- the so-called magic numbers -- predicted by theory. Yet here, too, there are exceptions: the islands of inversion. Headed by physicists from the Excellence Cluster Universe at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), an international team of scientists has now taken a closer look at the island that was first discovered.
They have now published their results in Physical Review Letters.

All chemical elements known on earth come from space. The most common elements in the universe, hydrogen and helium, were created shortly after the Big Bang. Other elements, such as carbon and oxygen, came into existence later, through the fusion of atomic nuclei inside stars. Elements heavier than iron owe their emergence to gigantic stellar explosions, known as supernovae. These include, for instance, the precious metals gold and silver or the radioactive uranium.

The cauldron of a supernova gives birth to a whole array of high-mass atomic nuclei, which decay to stable elements via different short-lived intermediate stages. Analogous to the shell model for electrons, nuclear physicists developed a model that predicts particularly high stability for specific combinations in the number of neutrons and protons. These are the "magic numbers": the shells are full and the nuclei nearly spherical.

However, there are "magic" nuclei that deviate from the expected shell structure. An international collaboration under the direction of physicists from the Cluster of Excellence Origin and Structure of the Universe at the TUM took a closer look at the nuclei in a domain with the magic neutron number 20, also known as the "island of inversion." Their measurements with REX-ISOLDE, an accelerator for radioactive ion beams at CERN, led to surprising results.

In their experiment the scientists studied the neutron-rich isotope magnesium-32 by shooting a magnesium-30 beam at a titanium film loaded with tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. In a so-called pair transfer reaction, two neutrons are knocked off the tritium and transferred to the magnesium nucleus, thus turning it into magnesium-32.

The neutron-rich isotope magnesium-32, whose nucleus has 20 neutrons and 12 protons, is supposed to be magic and, as such, should have a spherical shape. However, the lowest energy state in magnesium-32 is not spherical, but deformed. The nucleus is reminiscent of an egg-shaped American football. The spherical configuration was not supposed to ensue until higher states of energy were reached.

For the first time ever, the scientists succeeded in confirming the existence of the spherical magnesium-32 nucleus. What's more, the spherical magnesium-32 nucleus was generated at a much lower energy level than theoretically predicted. This result has yet again put a question mark on the theoretical models describing changes in shell structure in this and other regions of the table of nuclides.

"We were overjoyed to have finally succeeded in confirming the existence of the spherical magnesium-32 nucleus," says Professor Kruecken, Chair of Hadrons and Nuclear Physics at the TU Muenchen. "But these insights present new challenges to us physicists. In order to be able to predict the exact course of element synthesis in stellar explosions, we need to better understand the mechanism that causes the changes in shell structure." The scientists assume it will need a series of further experiments before they can give an unambiguous description of the processes related to the mysterious islands of inversion and new magic numbers.

This work was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) under contracts 06MT238, 06MT9156, 06KY9136I, 06DA9036I06DA9041I, by the German Research Foundation (DFG) via the Cluster of Excellence Origin and Structure of the Universe, by the European Comission within the FP6 through I3-EURONS (contract no. RII3-CT-2004- 506065), by the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen (FWO), GOA/2004/03 and IAP P6/23 (Belgium), by the Helmholtz International Center for FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) and the US-Department of Energy under contract number DE-AC02-05CH11231.

Small Snack for Milky Way: Astrophysicists Find New Remnants of Neighboring Galaxy in Our Own

An international team of astronomers led by Mary Williams from the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam (AIP) has discovered a new stream of stars in our Milky Way: the "Aquarius Stream," named after the constellation of Aquarius. The stream of stars is a remnant of a smaller galaxy in our cosmic neighbourhood, which has been pulled apart by the gravitational pull of the Milky Way about 700 million years ago. The discovery is a result of the measurement of the velocities of 250,000 stars with the RAVE Survey based at the Australian Astronomical Observatory's UK Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, NSW, Australia.
"I have a stream": with these words the 33-year old scientist from New Zealand enthusiastically presented her discovery to the audience of an international conference. The Aquarius stream was indeed hard to find. Contrary to practically all known streams of stars it is located within the galactic disk. Within the disk, the high concentration of stars of the Milky Way are blocking our way and the stream is indistinguishable from the rest of the stars in its shape. "It was right on our doorstep" Williams says, "but we just couldn't see it."

Using RAVE data, the astronomer has now measured the radial velocity of 12,000 stars in that region for the first time. In this way she found that 15 stars show a different velocity pattern than the others, moving at relative speeds of up to 15,000 km/h through the rotating disk of the Milky Way. The comparison of the star parameters with simulations showed that those stars form part of a larger stream of stars originating from a smaller neighbouring galaxy which was attracted by the Milky Way. This galaxy finally met the Milky Way and was pulled apart by it about 700 million of years ago, when the stream of stars formed dynamically. This makes the Aquarius stream a special and exceptionally young stream. Other known streams of stars are billions of years old and they are located in the outskirts of our galaxy.

Considering the special method of the RAVE survey which has led to the discovery of this stream, astronomers are optimistic to see many more discoveries of this kind in the future. RAVE is planned to measure the characteristics of up to a million of stars of our Milky Way until 2012. Williams has been part of the project from the very start and is managing the data processing at AIP since 2007.

"With RAVE, we want to understand the formation history of our Milky Way," Matthias Steinmetz, project leader of the multinational RAVE collaboration at the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam explains. "We want to find out how frequent those merging events with neighbouring galaxies have happened in the past and how many we are to expect in the future."

What is certain: in about three billion years the Milky Way will see its next huge collision with the Andromeda galaxy -- if none of the dwarf galaxies which have been discovered during the past years in our direct cosmic neighbourhood arrives first.

Secrets in Stone: Rare Archaeological Find in Norway

It looked to be a routine excavation of what was thought to be a burial mound. But beneath the mound, archaeologists from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Museum of Natural History and Archaeology found something more: unusual Bronze Age petroglyphs. "We believe these are very special in a Norwegian context," says museum researcher and project manager Anne Haug.
The excavation in Stjørdal, just north of Trondheim, was necessitated by the expansion of a gravel pit. Given that project archaeologists didn't anticipate that the dig would be very complicated, the museum researchers dedicated just three weeks to the effort.

Petroglyphs under a cremation site

Then came the surprises. First, it turned out that mound builders had used an existing hill as a starting point -- which of course saved them time and effort. The hill itself made the burial mound even larger and more monumental than it might have otherwise been.

But researchers suspected there might be another reason for the choice of the hilltop when they uncovered the remains of two cremations, or rather a fire layer that also contained bits of bone. Underneath they found many petroglyphs, including eight drawings showing the soles of feet, with cross hatching. There were also five shallow depressions, Haug says.

Two boat drawings and several other drawings of feet soles with toes were also found just south of the burial mound.

LInk between burial mound and drawings unclear

"This is a very special discovery, and we are not aware of other similar findings from Trøndelag County," she says. "The tomb might have been deliberately constructed over the petroglyphs, probably as part of funeral ritual. Based on the type of characters and especially the drawings of the foot soles, we have dated the artwork to the Bronze Age, about 1800 -- 500 BC."

"Why there are foot sole drawings beneath the tomb is a puzzle. But if we interpret the find in terms of a fertility cult, it may be that the soles represent God and life-giving power. That means that you can have both life and death represented in one place," she says.

Unique in a Norwegian context

Haug says that there was a similar discovery in Østlandet County, an area called Jong in Bærum, where petroglyphs illustrating foot soles were found under a tomb that dates back to the Bronze Age. In a Nordic context, this phenomenon is more common, and there are several examples where burials were combined with rock art, particularly petroglyphs of foot soles from Bohuslän, a World Heritage site in Sweden.

It's not yet clear if the grave was put in place the same time as the petroglyphs, Haug says. The dig began in September, 2010 and extended through the end of October, but the analysis is ongoing.

The scientists have found about 900 grams of burned bone, probably from one or more individuals; they hope to be able to carry out C-14 dating of the material and conduct more analyses so they can determine more about the gender and the age of the individuals in the grave.

"Currently, we have found several human teeth, as well as what may be remains of human ribs. We also found an animal tooth that suggests that one or more animals may have been laid in the tomb along with whoever is buried there," she says. There were very few objects found in the tomb, but a flat corroded metal object was found in the burnt layer. It's hard to say what this was, but the object will be X-rayed for analysis.

Remains of a larger burial ground?

It is unclear whether the original burial site contained two grave mounds, or whether there was just one large burial area.

A burial ground in the area was first described in 1818 by Lorentz D. Klüwer, and archaeologist Karl Rygh also described the site in 1879. It is likely that the graves that have been excavated in the most recent dig are the last remains of this burial ground.

The rock art found at the site is a type called South Scandinadivan agriculture carving and is dated to the Bronze Age, from 1800 -- 500 BC. The tomb probably dates to the transition between the Bronze Age and Iron Age, from 500 BC up to the year 1.