The amazing 'pixie dust' made from pigs bladder that regrew a severed finger in FOUR weeks
By FIONA MACRAE - More by this author » Last updated at 23:22pm on 30th April 2008
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Scientists are claiming an amazing breakthrough - regrowing a man's severed finger with the aid of an experimental powder.
Four weeks after Lee Spievack sliced almost half an inch off the top of one of his fingers, he said it had grown back to its original length.
Four months later it looked like any other finger, complete with "great feeling", a fingernail and fingerprint. After cutting off the tip, Lee Spievack's finger was back to normal in one month. The secret to the astonishing regrowth is said to be the powder described by Mr Spievack, a Cincinnati model shop salesman, as "pixie dust".
More properly known as extra-cellular matrix, it is bursting with collagen, the protein that gives skin its strength and elasticity, and is made from dried pig's bladder. It was developed to regenerate damaged ligaments in horses. "The second time I put it on I could already see growth," said Mr Spievack, 69. "Each day it was up further. "Finally it closed up and was a finger. It took about four weeks before it was sealed."
Pain plane: Lee Spievack's model aircraft which was responsible for his injury
Mr Spievack damaged his finger in the propeller of a model plane three years ago.
He turned down a skin graft in favour of the "pixie dust" recommended by his brother, a former surgeon and the founder of the firm that makes the powder.
While it is not entirely clear how the powder works, its developers believe it kick-starts the body's natural healing process by sending out signals that mobilise the body's own cells into repairing the damaged tissue.
Dr Stephen Badylak, of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, told the BBC: "There are all sorts of signals in the body.
"We have got signals that are good for forming scar tissue and others that are good for regenerating tissues. "One way to think about these matrices is that we've taken out many of the stimuli for scar tissue formation and left those signals which were always there for constructive remodelling."
In other words, the powder directs tissues to grow afresh rather than form scars.
He believes the powder also forms a microscopic scaffolding for the body's own cells to build round. "We're not smart enough to figure out how to regrow a finger," said Dr Badylak. "Maybe what we can do is bring all of the pieces of the puzzle to the right place and then let Mother Nature take its course. "There's a lot more than we don't know than we do know." Dr Badylak has both medical and veterinary degrees. He has had more than 180 scientific papers published and this year won a coveted Carnegie Science Centre Award for Excellence.
His work is driven by a successful heart operation he carried out on a dog in the 1980s, in which part of a pig intestine was used to fashion a makeshift aorta for its heart. Months later, an examination revealed that the transplanted intestine part had morphed into a vessel that looked much like an aorta. The "pixie dust" powder is made by scraping the cells from the lining of a pig's bladder. After these are discarded, the remaining tissue is "cleaned" in acid and dried out.
Its benefits may not be limited to finger tips, with the U.S. military poised to try it out on soldiers whose fingers have been amputated. The patients will have the end of the damaged finger or thumb reopened surgically, to allow the powder to be sprinkled on the raw flesh three times a week. The hope is they will have enough regrowth to allow them to perform the pinching motion needed to hold a toothbrush or do up a button. Burns victims could also benefit.
Dr Badylak, scientific adviser to the company making the powder, also intends to see if the technique will regrow oesophagus tissue removed in cancer patients. Even entire limbs might one day be conjured up by the "pixie dust", Dr Badylak believes.
He said: "I think that within ten years we will have strategies that will re-grow the bones and promote the growth of functional tissue around those bones. "And that is a major step towards eventually doing the entire limb. "Some animals can regenerate tissue without "pixie dust". For example, an adult salamander can regenerate a lost leg over and over again, regardless of how many times the part is amputated.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Is Latest Phoenix Mystery Solved?
Policy >>
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65
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Related Links
Check out the Photos
Video: Sky lanterns
Lights in the Sky Bring Back Memories of Phoenix Lights
Former Governor Says Yes, He Saw a UFO
Stories Change About Phoenix Lights
Phoenix Lights Discussed in Nation's Capital
Man claims responsibility for Phoenix mystery lights
April 23rd, 2008 @ 10:04am
by Hanna Scott/KTAR and KTAR Newsroom
A Phoenix man says he caused the red light display that mystified thousands of people as it floated across the north Phoenix sky Monday night.
Click here for photos of the lights over Phoenix
The man, who did not want to be identified, said he used fishing line to attach road flares to helium-filled balloons, then lit the flares and launched them a minute apart from his back yard. He said he believed turbulence created by a passing jet caused the balloons to move around.
Lino Mailo said he saw his next-door neighbor launch the balloons.
``I saw the guy releasing the balloons with the flares on them," Mailo said. ``There is no doubt that they came from here."
He added, ``I don't think it's a cool prank because it can panic people."
Phoenix Police helicopter pilot Bruce Bates, who saw the lights, said the balloons explanation makes sense.
``People say they saw different shapes -- a square, a diamond, an arrow, all these different shapes. Well, that's just the balloons moving around in the wind currents," he said.
Some people will always think the lights were UFOs, Bates said.
``I think people want to believe what they want to believe."
A sky lantern company's web site said skylanterns can last for up to 20 minutes, rise about a mile high and can travel for miles.
Click here to see if you think the lights were sky lanterns.
Valley astronomer Steve Kates, better known as Dr. Sky, believes there's a reasonable explanation for the lights, although he doesn't know what it is.
``I believe life abounds in the universe, but I just have a hard time accepting many of the things that I'm hearing, or seeing, that it has a direct relationship to people or creatures coming from another world. Why not land? Why not show yourself? And where's the evidence?" he said.
While the Air Force and other military agencies said the lights were not connected to any of their operations, Kates said, ``The Air force and every other government agency, of course, has the opportunity to deny that their aircraft or anything that they were doing was going on at the time that we saw something in the sky."
He said it's unlikely the lights were some kind of alien craft from outer space and said an explanation probably will surface after videos and pictures are analyzed.
The lights brought back memories of lights that hovered over the same area of Phoenix for about three hours on March 13, 1997.
Why does the Valley have strange light sightings?
``Clear skies, open spaces, wide skies to look at. That's probably one of the reasons why we're seeing it," Kates says.
He says it's really all kind of exciting, bringing special attention to the Valley.
``Maybe the governor will proclaim the state of Arizona ``the UFO-sighting state" or have a new license plate. Who knows?" he said.
Dozens of listeners called News/Talk 92-3 KTAR just after 8 p.m. Monday, reporting they were watching the four mystery lights.
``From my position, it looked like they were just hanging, not moving at all," said one man, who called 92-3's ``Gaydos After Dark." He said he ``absolutely" saw something.
A woman caller said, ``It looked like four red tower lights, but it was pretty high up in the air. I called my husband and he said, `Get home, what's wrong with you?'"
A man in north Phoenix told CBS-5: ``They were about 3,000 feet high, approximately. They looked as though they were kind of hovering or floating from west to east, very slowly. They were up there for 15 or 20 minutes."
Callers said the lights appeared at one point in a straight line, and also formed a square and then a triangle. They were visible for about 15 minutes around 8 p.m. before heading to the east and disappearing.
Deer Valley Airport, which was the closest air field to the lights, had no explanation for them. Neither did Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport or Luke Air Force Base, which said it had no jets flying at the time.
NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said its command center at Peterson Air Force Base and Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., had no information on the lights. It referred people to the American Meteor Society, Smithsonian Astrophysican Observatory and the Defense Department's Joint Space Operations Center.
Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said, ``A lot of people were reporting seeing some strange lights in the sky around Phoenix last night. Air traffic controllers at the control tower at Sky Harbor saw them. But, we have no idea what they were."
Gregor added, tongue-in-cheek, ``It could be aliens coming down to save us from ourselves, you never know. The only thing I do know is if they were coming down, they weren't talking to air traffic controllers."
On March 13, 1997, thousands of people reported seeing a v-shaped formation of lights over north Phoenix. They lasted about three hours. Some described them as forming a carpenter's square.
Among those who saw the lights in 1997 was former Gov. Fife Symington, who initially played down the episode. However, he said last year that he believes the lights came from ``crafts of unknown origin" and, ``It remains a great mystery."
Comment Board
65
Comments
Related Links
Check out the Photos
Video: Sky lanterns
Lights in the Sky Bring Back Memories of Phoenix Lights
Former Governor Says Yes, He Saw a UFO
Stories Change About Phoenix Lights
Phoenix Lights Discussed in Nation's Capital
Man claims responsibility for Phoenix mystery lights
April 23rd, 2008 @ 10:04am
by Hanna Scott/KTAR and KTAR Newsroom
A Phoenix man says he caused the red light display that mystified thousands of people as it floated across the north Phoenix sky Monday night.
Click here for photos of the lights over Phoenix
The man, who did not want to be identified, said he used fishing line to attach road flares to helium-filled balloons, then lit the flares and launched them a minute apart from his back yard. He said he believed turbulence created by a passing jet caused the balloons to move around.
Lino Mailo said he saw his next-door neighbor launch the balloons.
``I saw the guy releasing the balloons with the flares on them," Mailo said. ``There is no doubt that they came from here."
He added, ``I don't think it's a cool prank because it can panic people."
Phoenix Police helicopter pilot Bruce Bates, who saw the lights, said the balloons explanation makes sense.
``People say they saw different shapes -- a square, a diamond, an arrow, all these different shapes. Well, that's just the balloons moving around in the wind currents," he said.
Some people will always think the lights were UFOs, Bates said.
``I think people want to believe what they want to believe."
A sky lantern company's web site said skylanterns can last for up to 20 minutes, rise about a mile high and can travel for miles.
Click here to see if you think the lights were sky lanterns.
Valley astronomer Steve Kates, better known as Dr. Sky, believes there's a reasonable explanation for the lights, although he doesn't know what it is.
``I believe life abounds in the universe, but I just have a hard time accepting many of the things that I'm hearing, or seeing, that it has a direct relationship to people or creatures coming from another world. Why not land? Why not show yourself? And where's the evidence?" he said.
While the Air Force and other military agencies said the lights were not connected to any of their operations, Kates said, ``The Air force and every other government agency, of course, has the opportunity to deny that their aircraft or anything that they were doing was going on at the time that we saw something in the sky."
He said it's unlikely the lights were some kind of alien craft from outer space and said an explanation probably will surface after videos and pictures are analyzed.
The lights brought back memories of lights that hovered over the same area of Phoenix for about three hours on March 13, 1997.
Why does the Valley have strange light sightings?
``Clear skies, open spaces, wide skies to look at. That's probably one of the reasons why we're seeing it," Kates says.
He says it's really all kind of exciting, bringing special attention to the Valley.
``Maybe the governor will proclaim the state of Arizona ``the UFO-sighting state" or have a new license plate. Who knows?" he said.
Dozens of listeners called News/Talk 92-3 KTAR just after 8 p.m. Monday, reporting they were watching the four mystery lights.
``From my position, it looked like they were just hanging, not moving at all," said one man, who called 92-3's ``Gaydos After Dark." He said he ``absolutely" saw something.
A woman caller said, ``It looked like four red tower lights, but it was pretty high up in the air. I called my husband and he said, `Get home, what's wrong with you?'"
A man in north Phoenix told CBS-5: ``They were about 3,000 feet high, approximately. They looked as though they were kind of hovering or floating from west to east, very slowly. They were up there for 15 or 20 minutes."
Callers said the lights appeared at one point in a straight line, and also formed a square and then a triangle. They were visible for about 15 minutes around 8 p.m. before heading to the east and disappearing.
Deer Valley Airport, which was the closest air field to the lights, had no explanation for them. Neither did Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport or Luke Air Force Base, which said it had no jets flying at the time.
NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said its command center at Peterson Air Force Base and Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., had no information on the lights. It referred people to the American Meteor Society, Smithsonian Astrophysican Observatory and the Defense Department's Joint Space Operations Center.
Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said, ``A lot of people were reporting seeing some strange lights in the sky around Phoenix last night. Air traffic controllers at the control tower at Sky Harbor saw them. But, we have no idea what they were."
Gregor added, tongue-in-cheek, ``It could be aliens coming down to save us from ourselves, you never know. The only thing I do know is if they were coming down, they weren't talking to air traffic controllers."
On March 13, 1997, thousands of people reported seeing a v-shaped formation of lights over north Phoenix. They lasted about three hours. Some described them as forming a carpenter's square.
Among those who saw the lights in 1997 was former Gov. Fife Symington, who initially played down the episode. However, he said last year that he believes the lights came from ``crafts of unknown origin" and, ``It remains a great mystery."
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
New Lights Over Phoenix - April 08
Mysterious Lights Spotted Over Phoenix
Associated Press
April 22, 2008, 12:34 PM PDT
Mysterious Lights Spotted Over Phoenix Red colored lights that formed a square and then a triangle were seen floating over north Phoenix late Monday, a sight reminiscent of an unexplained 1997 sighting that has become part of the area's lore.
There was no immediate word where they came from.
The Air Force said the lights weren't from any of their flight operations and officials at Deer Valley airport and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport could not explain it.
The lights were visible for about 13 minutes around 8 p.m. Monday.
A Luke Air Force Base official said the base wasn't flying any aircraft in the sky Monday night and that the lights are not part of any Air Force activities.
KSAZ-TV in Phoenix, reported that officials from Phoenix Deer Valley Airport saw the lights approximately 4 miles south of the airport and that the lights were rising as they watched.
Airport officials said the lights were not from any aircraft at that airport.
Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said that air traffic controllers at Sky Harbor also witnessed the lights, but do not know the cause.
On March 13, 1997, thousands of residents reported seeing a mile-wide, v-shaped formation of lights over the Phoenix area. In that case, the lights appeared about 7:30 p.m. and lasted until 10:30 p.m.
---
Associated Press
April 22, 2008, 12:34 PM PDT
Mysterious Lights Spotted Over Phoenix Red colored lights that formed a square and then a triangle were seen floating over north Phoenix late Monday, a sight reminiscent of an unexplained 1997 sighting that has become part of the area's lore.
There was no immediate word where they came from.
The Air Force said the lights weren't from any of their flight operations and officials at Deer Valley airport and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport could not explain it.
The lights were visible for about 13 minutes around 8 p.m. Monday.
A Luke Air Force Base official said the base wasn't flying any aircraft in the sky Monday night and that the lights are not part of any Air Force activities.
KSAZ-TV in Phoenix, reported that officials from Phoenix Deer Valley Airport saw the lights approximately 4 miles south of the airport and that the lights were rising as they watched.
Airport officials said the lights were not from any aircraft at that airport.
Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said that air traffic controllers at Sky Harbor also witnessed the lights, but do not know the cause.
On March 13, 1997, thousands of residents reported seeing a mile-wide, v-shaped formation of lights over the Phoenix area. In that case, the lights appeared about 7:30 p.m. and lasted until 10:30 p.m.
---
Monday, April 14, 2008
New Cloning Technique Using Electrical Zap
Now we have the technology that can make a cloned child'
Independent.co.uk Web
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Monday, 14 April 2008
A new form of cloning has been developed that is easier to carry out than the technique used to create Dolly the sheep, raising fears that it may one day be used on human embryos to produce "designer" babies.
Scientists who used the procedure to create baby mice from the skin cells of adult animals have found it to be far more efficient than the Dolly technique, with fewer side effects, which makes it more acceptable for human use.
The mice were made by inserting skin cells of an adult animal into early embryos produced by in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). Some of the resulting offspring were partial clones but some were full clones – just like Dolly.
Unlike the Dolly technique, however, the procedure is so simple and efficient that it has raised fears that it will be seized on by IVF doctors to help infertile couples who are eager to have their own biological children.
One scientist said this weekend that a maverick attempt to perform the technique on humans is now too real to ignore. "It's unethical and unsafe, but someone may be doing it today," said Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of American biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology.
"Cloning isn't here now, but with this new technique we have the technology that can actually produce a child. If this was applied to humans it would be enormously important and troublesome," said Dr Lanza, whose company has pioneered developments in stem cells and cell reprogramming.
"It raises the same issues as reproductive cloning and although the technology for reproductive cloning in humans doesn't exist, with this breakthrough we now have a working technology whereby anyone, young or old, fertile or infertile, straight or gay can pass on their genes to a child by using just a few skin cells," he said.
The technique involves the genetic reprogramming of skin cells so they revert to an embryonic-like state. Last year, when the breakthrough was used on human skin cells for the first time, it was lauded by the Catholic Church and President George Bush as a morally acceptable way of producing embryonic stem cells without having to create or destroy human embryos.
However, the same technique has already been used in another way to reproduce offspring of laboratory mice that are either full clones or genetic "chimeras" of the adult mouse whose skin cells were reprogrammed.
The experiments on mice demonstrated that it is now possible in principle to take a human skin cell, reprogramme it back to its embryonic state and then insert it into an early human embryo. The resulting child would share some of the genes of the person who supplied the skin tissue, as well as the genes of the embryo's two parents.
These offspring are chimeras – a genetic mix of two or more individuals – because some of their cells derive from the embryo and some from the skin cell. Technically, such a child would have three biological parents. Human chimeras occur naturally when two embryos fuse in the womb and such people are often normal and healthy. Dr Lanza says there is no reason to believe that a human chimera created by the new technique would be unhealthy.
Furthermore, studies on mice have shown that it is possible to produce fully cloned offspring that are 100 per cent genetically identical to the adult. This was achieved by using a type of defective mouse embryo with four sets of chromosomes instead of the normal two.
This "tetraploid" embryo only developed into the placenta of the foetus and when it was injected with a reprogrammed skin cell, the rest of the foetus developed from this single cell to become a full clone of the adult animal whose skin was used.
None of the scientists working on cell reprogramming to produce induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells – as the embryonic cells are known – plan to use it for human reproductive medicine. Their main aim is to produce stem cells for the therapeutic treatment of conditions such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and stroke.
However, Dr Lanza said that the mouse experiments his company had done demonstrated how easily the technology could be used to produce cloned or chimeric babies by inserting iPS cells into early human embryos. This is not banned in many countries, where legislation has not kept pace with scientific developments.
In Britain, the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill going through Parliament does not mention the iPS technique, although experts believe that the new law should make it illegal because it involves genetic modification of cells that become part of the embryo.
"In addition to the great therapeutic promise demonstrated by this technology, the same technology opens a whole new can of worms," Dr Lanza said.
"At this point there are no laws or regulations for this kind of thing and the bizarre thing is that the Catholic Church and other traditional stem-cell opponents think this technology is great when in reality it could in the end become one of their biggest nightmares," he said. "It is quite possible that the real legacy of this whole new programming technology is that it will be introducing the era of designer babies.
"So for instance if we had a few skin cells from Albert Einstein, or anyone else in the world, you could have a child that is say 10 per cent or 70 per cent Albert Einstein by just injecting a few of their cells into an embryo," he said.
Independent.co.uk Web
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Monday, 14 April 2008
A new form of cloning has been developed that is easier to carry out than the technique used to create Dolly the sheep, raising fears that it may one day be used on human embryos to produce "designer" babies.
Scientists who used the procedure to create baby mice from the skin cells of adult animals have found it to be far more efficient than the Dolly technique, with fewer side effects, which makes it more acceptable for human use.
The mice were made by inserting skin cells of an adult animal into early embryos produced by in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). Some of the resulting offspring were partial clones but some were full clones – just like Dolly.
Unlike the Dolly technique, however, the procedure is so simple and efficient that it has raised fears that it will be seized on by IVF doctors to help infertile couples who are eager to have their own biological children.
One scientist said this weekend that a maverick attempt to perform the technique on humans is now too real to ignore. "It's unethical and unsafe, but someone may be doing it today," said Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of American biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology.
"Cloning isn't here now, but with this new technique we have the technology that can actually produce a child. If this was applied to humans it would be enormously important and troublesome," said Dr Lanza, whose company has pioneered developments in stem cells and cell reprogramming.
"It raises the same issues as reproductive cloning and although the technology for reproductive cloning in humans doesn't exist, with this breakthrough we now have a working technology whereby anyone, young or old, fertile or infertile, straight or gay can pass on their genes to a child by using just a few skin cells," he said.
The technique involves the genetic reprogramming of skin cells so they revert to an embryonic-like state. Last year, when the breakthrough was used on human skin cells for the first time, it was lauded by the Catholic Church and President George Bush as a morally acceptable way of producing embryonic stem cells without having to create or destroy human embryos.
However, the same technique has already been used in another way to reproduce offspring of laboratory mice that are either full clones or genetic "chimeras" of the adult mouse whose skin cells were reprogrammed.
The experiments on mice demonstrated that it is now possible in principle to take a human skin cell, reprogramme it back to its embryonic state and then insert it into an early human embryo. The resulting child would share some of the genes of the person who supplied the skin tissue, as well as the genes of the embryo's two parents.
These offspring are chimeras – a genetic mix of two or more individuals – because some of their cells derive from the embryo and some from the skin cell. Technically, such a child would have three biological parents. Human chimeras occur naturally when two embryos fuse in the womb and such people are often normal and healthy. Dr Lanza says there is no reason to believe that a human chimera created by the new technique would be unhealthy.
Furthermore, studies on mice have shown that it is possible to produce fully cloned offspring that are 100 per cent genetically identical to the adult. This was achieved by using a type of defective mouse embryo with four sets of chromosomes instead of the normal two.
This "tetraploid" embryo only developed into the placenta of the foetus and when it was injected with a reprogrammed skin cell, the rest of the foetus developed from this single cell to become a full clone of the adult animal whose skin was used.
None of the scientists working on cell reprogramming to produce induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells – as the embryonic cells are known – plan to use it for human reproductive medicine. Their main aim is to produce stem cells for the therapeutic treatment of conditions such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and stroke.
However, Dr Lanza said that the mouse experiments his company had done demonstrated how easily the technology could be used to produce cloned or chimeric babies by inserting iPS cells into early human embryos. This is not banned in many countries, where legislation has not kept pace with scientific developments.
In Britain, the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill going through Parliament does not mention the iPS technique, although experts believe that the new law should make it illegal because it involves genetic modification of cells that become part of the embryo.
"In addition to the great therapeutic promise demonstrated by this technology, the same technology opens a whole new can of worms," Dr Lanza said.
"At this point there are no laws or regulations for this kind of thing and the bizarre thing is that the Catholic Church and other traditional stem-cell opponents think this technology is great when in reality it could in the end become one of their biggest nightmares," he said. "It is quite possible that the real legacy of this whole new programming technology is that it will be introducing the era of designer babies.
"So for instance if we had a few skin cells from Albert Einstein, or anyone else in the world, you could have a child that is say 10 per cent or 70 per cent Albert Einstein by just injecting a few of their cells into an embryo," he said.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Distant Star's Explosion Shatters Record
Distant Star's Explosion Shatters Record
By SETH BORENSTEIN,AP
Posted: 2008-03-22 21:55:54
Filed Under: Science News
WASHINGTON (March 21) - The explosion of a star halfway across the universe was so huge it set a record for the most distant object that could be seen on Earth by the naked eye.
Photo Gallery
Stefan Immler, Swift / NASA Out-of-This-World
Space Photos1 of 28 The light from an exploding star 7.5 billion light years away set a record Wednesday for the most distant object ever seen with the naked eye. It's also the brightest gamma-ray burst afterglow ever seen, captured here on an X-ray telescope, left, and an optical-ultraviolet telescope, right.
The aging star, in a previously unknown galaxy, exploded in a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, its light finally reaching Earth early Wednesday.
The gamma rays were detected by NASA's Swift satellite at 2:12 a.m. "We'd never seen one before so bright and at such a distance," NASA's Neil Gehrels said. It was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.
However, NASA has no reports that any skywatchers spotted the burst, which lasted less than an hour. Telescopic measurements show that the burst - which occurred when the universe was about half its current age, before Earth was formed - was bright enough to be seen without a telescope.
"Someone would have had to run out and look at it with a naked eye, but didn't," said Gehrels, chief of NASA's astroparticles physics lab at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
The starburst would have appeared as bright as some of the stars in the handle of the Little Dipper constellation, said Penn State University astronomer David Burrows. How it looked wasn't remarkable, but the distance traveled was.
The 7.5 billion light years away far eclipses the previous naked eye record of 2.5 million light years. One light year is 5.9 trillion miles.
"This is roughly halfway to the edge of the universe," Burrows said.
Before it exploded, the star was about 40 times bigger than our sun. The explosion vaporized any planet nearby, Gehrels said.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2008-03-21 18:48:58
By SETH BORENSTEIN,AP
Posted: 2008-03-22 21:55:54
Filed Under: Science News
WASHINGTON (March 21) - The explosion of a star halfway across the universe was so huge it set a record for the most distant object that could be seen on Earth by the naked eye.
Photo Gallery
Stefan Immler, Swift / NASA Out-of-This-World
Space Photos1 of 28 The light from an exploding star 7.5 billion light years away set a record Wednesday for the most distant object ever seen with the naked eye. It's also the brightest gamma-ray burst afterglow ever seen, captured here on an X-ray telescope, left, and an optical-ultraviolet telescope, right.
The aging star, in a previously unknown galaxy, exploded in a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, its light finally reaching Earth early Wednesday.
The gamma rays were detected by NASA's Swift satellite at 2:12 a.m. "We'd never seen one before so bright and at such a distance," NASA's Neil Gehrels said. It was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.
However, NASA has no reports that any skywatchers spotted the burst, which lasted less than an hour. Telescopic measurements show that the burst - which occurred when the universe was about half its current age, before Earth was formed - was bright enough to be seen without a telescope.
"Someone would have had to run out and look at it with a naked eye, but didn't," said Gehrels, chief of NASA's astroparticles physics lab at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
The starburst would have appeared as bright as some of the stars in the handle of the Little Dipper constellation, said Penn State University astronomer David Burrows. How it looked wasn't remarkable, but the distance traveled was.
The 7.5 billion light years away far eclipses the previous naked eye record of 2.5 million light years. One light year is 5.9 trillion miles.
"This is roughly halfway to the edge of the universe," Burrows said.
Before it exploded, the star was about 40 times bigger than our sun. The explosion vaporized any planet nearby, Gehrels said.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2008-03-21 18:48:58
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
The Evolution of the Internet
From Times Online
Click here to find out more!
March 12, 2008
Google could be superseded, says web inventor
The next generation of web technology is likely to be far more powerful than the current crop, Tim Berners-Lee said
Ethernet cables going into a broadband router
Jonathan Richards
Google may eventually be displaced as the pre-eminent brand on the internet by a company that harnesses the power of next-generation web technology, the inventor of the World Wide Web has said.
The search giant had developed an extremely effective way of searching for pages on the internet, Tim Berners-Lee said, but that ability paled in comparison to what could be achieved on the "web of the future", which he said would allow any piece of information — such as a photo or a bank statement — to be linked to any other.
Mr Berners-Lee said that in the same way, the "current craze" for social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace would eventually be superseded by networks that connected all types of things — not just people — thanks to a ground-breaking technology known as the "semantic web".
The semantic web is the term used by the computer and internet industry to describe the next phase of the web's development, and essentially involves building web-based connectivity into any piece of data — not just a web page — so that it can "communicate" with other information.
Related Links
* E-mail inventor: I didn't foresee spam
* Web 3.0 and beyond: the internet's next 20 years
* Technology giants spark innovation free-for-all
Whereas the existing web is a collection of pages with links between them that Google and other search engines help the user to navigate, the "semantic web" will enable direct connectivity between much more low-level pieces of information — a written street address and a map, for instance — which in turn will give rise to new services.
"Using the semantic web, you can build applications that are much more powerful than anything on the regular web," Mr Berners-Lee said. "Imagine if two completely separate things — your bank statements and your calendar — spoke the same language and could share information with one another. You could drag one on top of the other and a whole bunch of dots would appear showing you when you spent your money.
"If you still weren't sure of where you were when you made a particular transaction, you could then drag your photo album on top of the calendar, and be reminded that you used your credit card at the same time you were taking pictures of your kids at a theme park. So you wouldd know not to claim it as a tax deduction.
"It's about creating a seamless web of all the data in your life."
One example frequently given is of typing a street address which, if it had "semantic data" built into it, would link directly to a map showing its location, dispensing with the need to go to a site like Google `maps, type in the address, get the link and paste it into a document or e-mail.
The challenge, experts say, is in finding a way to represent all data so that when it is connected to the web, links to other relevant information can be recognised and established — a bit like the process known as "tagging". One expected application is in the pharmaceutical industry, where previously unconnected pieces of research into a drug or disease, say, could be brought together and assimilated.
Mr Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while a fellow at CERN, the European Organsation for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, would not be drawn on the type of application that the "Google of the future" would develop, but said it would likely be a type of "mega-mash-up", where information is taken from one place and made useful in another context using the web.
Existing "mash-ups", such as progams that plotted the location of every Starbucks in a city using Google maps, were a start, he said in an interview with Times Online, but they were limited because a separate application had to be built each time a new service was imagined.
"In the semantic web, it's like every piece of data is given a longitude and latitute on a map, and anyone can 'mash' them together and use them for different things."
Mr Berners-Lee, who is now a director of the Web Science Research Initiative, a collaborative project between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Southampton, sought to put into context the rapid growth of social networking sites in recent years, saying that once the semantic web was rolled out they would be thought of as one of many types of network available.
"At the moment, people are very excited about all these connections being made between people — for obvious reasons, because people are important — but I think after a while people will realise that there are many other things you can connect to via the web."
He also spoke about what he described as one of the key challenges of the web today — confronting the security risks associated with large databases of information that were attractive to criminals and identity fraudsters.
"There are definitely better ways of managing that threat. I think we're soon going to see a new tipping point where different types of crimes become possible and lucrative, and it's something we constantly have to be aware of.
"One option is to build systems which more effectively track what information you've used to perform a particular task, and make sure people aren't using their authority to do things that they shouldn't be doing."
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March 12, 2008
Google could be superseded, says web inventor
The next generation of web technology is likely to be far more powerful than the current crop, Tim Berners-Lee said
Ethernet cables going into a broadband router
Jonathan Richards
Google may eventually be displaced as the pre-eminent brand on the internet by a company that harnesses the power of next-generation web technology, the inventor of the World Wide Web has said.
The search giant had developed an extremely effective way of searching for pages on the internet, Tim Berners-Lee said, but that ability paled in comparison to what could be achieved on the "web of the future", which he said would allow any piece of information — such as a photo or a bank statement — to be linked to any other.
Mr Berners-Lee said that in the same way, the "current craze" for social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace would eventually be superseded by networks that connected all types of things — not just people — thanks to a ground-breaking technology known as the "semantic web".
The semantic web is the term used by the computer and internet industry to describe the next phase of the web's development, and essentially involves building web-based connectivity into any piece of data — not just a web page — so that it can "communicate" with other information.
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* Technology giants spark innovation free-for-all
Whereas the existing web is a collection of pages with links between them that Google and other search engines help the user to navigate, the "semantic web" will enable direct connectivity between much more low-level pieces of information — a written street address and a map, for instance — which in turn will give rise to new services.
"Using the semantic web, you can build applications that are much more powerful than anything on the regular web," Mr Berners-Lee said. "Imagine if two completely separate things — your bank statements and your calendar — spoke the same language and could share information with one another. You could drag one on top of the other and a whole bunch of dots would appear showing you when you spent your money.
"If you still weren't sure of where you were when you made a particular transaction, you could then drag your photo album on top of the calendar, and be reminded that you used your credit card at the same time you were taking pictures of your kids at a theme park. So you wouldd know not to claim it as a tax deduction.
"It's about creating a seamless web of all the data in your life."
One example frequently given is of typing a street address which, if it had "semantic data" built into it, would link directly to a map showing its location, dispensing with the need to go to a site like Google `maps, type in the address, get the link and paste it into a document or e-mail.
The challenge, experts say, is in finding a way to represent all data so that when it is connected to the web, links to other relevant information can be recognised and established — a bit like the process known as "tagging". One expected application is in the pharmaceutical industry, where previously unconnected pieces of research into a drug or disease, say, could be brought together and assimilated.
Mr Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while a fellow at CERN, the European Organsation for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, would not be drawn on the type of application that the "Google of the future" would develop, but said it would likely be a type of "mega-mash-up", where information is taken from one place and made useful in another context using the web.
Existing "mash-ups", such as progams that plotted the location of every Starbucks in a city using Google maps, were a start, he said in an interview with Times Online, but they were limited because a separate application had to be built each time a new service was imagined.
"In the semantic web, it's like every piece of data is given a longitude and latitute on a map, and anyone can 'mash' them together and use them for different things."
Mr Berners-Lee, who is now a director of the Web Science Research Initiative, a collaborative project between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Southampton, sought to put into context the rapid growth of social networking sites in recent years, saying that once the semantic web was rolled out they would be thought of as one of many types of network available.
"At the moment, people are very excited about all these connections being made between people — for obvious reasons, because people are important — but I think after a while people will realise that there are many other things you can connect to via the web."
He also spoke about what he described as one of the key challenges of the web today — confronting the security risks associated with large databases of information that were attractive to criminals and identity fraudsters.
"There are definitely better ways of managing that threat. I think we're soon going to see a new tipping point where different types of crimes become possible and lucrative, and it's something we constantly have to be aware of.
"One option is to build systems which more effectively track what information you've used to perform a particular task, and make sure people aren't using their authority to do things that they shouldn't be doing."
Friday, February 15, 2008
Solar System Like Ours
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Astronomers and amateur stargazers have used an unusual technique to find a solar system that closely resembles our own and say it may be a new and more productive way to scour the universe for planets -- and life.
They said technique, called microlensing, shows promise for finding many more stars, perhaps with Earthlike planets orbiting them.
"We found a solar system that looks like a scaled-down analog of our solar system," Scott Gaudi of Ohio State University, who led the study, told reporters.
The new solar system, described in Friday's issue of the journal Science, has two planets of similar size and orbit to Jupiter and Saturn. It is the first time microlensing has been used to find two planets orbiting a single star.
The star is smaller, dimmer and fainter than our sun and the two planets are less massive than Jupiter and Saturn, but orbit at distances similar to the distances that Jupiter and Saturn orbit our own sun. "So it looks like a scale model of our solar system," Gaudi said.
The planets were detected orbiting a star, called OGLE-2006-BLG-109L, 5,000 light-years away from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles.
The team of astronomers from 11 countries used a technique called microlensing to spot the planets.
"Microlensing works by using the gravity of the star and the planet to bend and focus light rays from a star behind it," Gaudi said. "If you are looking at one star and another passes in the foreground (gravity from the front star) will focus and bend light rays. That causes the background star to be magnified," he added.
LITTLE BUMPS
Any planets orbiting the star cause "a little bump" in this magnification effect, Gaudi said. In this case, the light from the more distant star was magnified 500 times.
Most of the other 250 or so extrasolar planets that have been seen have been detected using radio velocity -- tiny shifts in radiation, including light, that are caused by the Doppler effect. Most planets detected this way are super-large, super gassy and orbit very close to their suns.
"Microlensing is more sensitive to these cold, distant planets than the radiovelocity method," Gaudi said.
The discovery suggests these planets are common, the researchers said.
"Is there an Earth there in this system? For all we know there could be rocky planets in there but we couldn't find them," Gaudi said. "This could be a true solar system analog."
The 80-odd members of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment worked frantically night after night during the 11-day period from late March through early April 2006 when the two stars were close enough to one another, as viewed from Earth, to cause the microlensing effect.
"We tried to get 24/7 coverage of the event," said Andrew Gould, professor of astronomy at Ohio State University. "It gets to be dawn in one place and we have to get somebody observing in another place."
They included professionals but also two amateurs -- one using a public telescope in Auckland, New Zealand, and Jenny McCormick, whose backyard telescope is listed as Farm Cove Observatory in Auckland, New Zealand, in the report.
"I work from home in our home-built observatory," McCormick told reporters. "It is quite useful. It is very easy to get on collecting data, cooking dinner and ironing clothes."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Astronomers and amateur stargazers have used an unusual technique to find a solar system that closely resembles our own and say it may be a new and more productive way to scour the universe for planets -- and life.
They said technique, called microlensing, shows promise for finding many more stars, perhaps with Earthlike planets orbiting them.
"We found a solar system that looks like a scaled-down analog of our solar system," Scott Gaudi of Ohio State University, who led the study, told reporters.
The new solar system, described in Friday's issue of the journal Science, has two planets of similar size and orbit to Jupiter and Saturn. It is the first time microlensing has been used to find two planets orbiting a single star.
The star is smaller, dimmer and fainter than our sun and the two planets are less massive than Jupiter and Saturn, but orbit at distances similar to the distances that Jupiter and Saturn orbit our own sun. "So it looks like a scale model of our solar system," Gaudi said.
The planets were detected orbiting a star, called OGLE-2006-BLG-109L, 5,000 light-years away from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles.
The team of astronomers from 11 countries used a technique called microlensing to spot the planets.
"Microlensing works by using the gravity of the star and the planet to bend and focus light rays from a star behind it," Gaudi said. "If you are looking at one star and another passes in the foreground (gravity from the front star) will focus and bend light rays. That causes the background star to be magnified," he added.
LITTLE BUMPS
Any planets orbiting the star cause "a little bump" in this magnification effect, Gaudi said. In this case, the light from the more distant star was magnified 500 times.
Most of the other 250 or so extrasolar planets that have been seen have been detected using radio velocity -- tiny shifts in radiation, including light, that are caused by the Doppler effect. Most planets detected this way are super-large, super gassy and orbit very close to their suns.
"Microlensing is more sensitive to these cold, distant planets than the radiovelocity method," Gaudi said.
The discovery suggests these planets are common, the researchers said.
"Is there an Earth there in this system? For all we know there could be rocky planets in there but we couldn't find them," Gaudi said. "This could be a true solar system analog."
The 80-odd members of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment worked frantically night after night during the 11-day period from late March through early April 2006 when the two stars were close enough to one another, as viewed from Earth, to cause the microlensing effect.
"We tried to get 24/7 coverage of the event," said Andrew Gould, professor of astronomy at Ohio State University. "It gets to be dawn in one place and we have to get somebody observing in another place."
They included professionals but also two amateurs -- one using a public telescope in Auckland, New Zealand, and Jenny McCormick, whose backyard telescope is listed as Farm Cove Observatory in Auckland, New Zealand, in the report.
"I work from home in our home-built observatory," McCormick told reporters. "It is quite useful. It is very easy to get on collecting data, cooking dinner and ironing clothes."
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