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Potential Dark Matter Discovery a Win for Space Station Science April 04, 2013; 7:56 AM If nature is kind, the first detection of dark matter might be credited to the International Space Station soon. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment hangs on the side of the International Space Station, July 12, 2011. CREDIT: NASAToday (April 3), researchers announced the first science results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a $2 billion cosmic-ray particle detector mounted on the exterior of the football-field-size International Space Station. The instrument has observed a striking pattern of antimatter particles called positrons that may turn out to...

"The Earth destroys its fools, but the intelligent destroy the Earth."-Khalid ibn al-Walid Usually, when we talk about terraforming, we think about taking a presently uninhabitable planet and making it suitable for terrestrial life. This means taking a world without an oxygen-rich atmosphere, with watery oceans, and without the means to sustain them, and to transform it into an Earth-like world. The obvious choice, when it comes to our Solar System, is Mars. (Image credit: Daein Ballard.) The red planet, after all, is not a total stranger to these conditions. On the contrary, for the first billion-and-a-half years of our...

An international team of scientists has demonstrated a revolutionary new way of magnetic recording which will allow information to be processed hundreds of times faster than by current hard drive technology. The researchers found they could record information using only heat - a previously unimaginable scenario. They believe this discovery will not only make future magnetic recording devices faster, but more energy-efficient too. The results of the research, which was led by the University of York's Department of Physics, are reported in the February edition of Nature Communications. York physicist Thomas Ostler said: "Instead of using a magnetic field to...

Researchers have successfully stored a single data bit in only 12 atoms. Currently it takes about a million atoms to store a bit on a modern hard-disk, the researchers from IBM say. They believe this is the world's smallest magnetic memory bit. According to the researchers, the technique opens up the possibility of producing much denser forms of magnetic computer memory than today's hard disk drives and solid state memory chips. "Roughly every two years hard drives become denser," research lead author Sebastian Loth told the BBC. "The obvious question to ask is how long can we keep going. And...

It must be global warming climate change. New York City is expecting its earliest snow storm since the Civil War.

Mercury's Fading Magnetic Field Fits Creation Model by Brian Thomas, M.S. | Oct. 26, 2011 Planets, including the earth, generate magnetic fields that encompass the space around them. Observations have shown that, like earth's, the planet Mercury's magnetic field is rapidly breaking down, and NASA's Messenger spacecraft confirmed that again earlier this year. If the planets in the solar system are billions of years old, why do these magnetic fields still exist? In 1974 and 1975, the Mariner 10 spacecraft measured Mercury's magnetic field strength with its onboard magnetometer and sent the data to earth. The astronomers analyzing the data...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A pair of NASA probes wandering in deep space discovered that the outer edge of the solar system contains curious magnetic bubbles and is not smooth as previously thought, astronomers said Thursday. The NASA Voyager twin spacecraft, which launched in 1977, are currently exploring the furthest outlays of the heliosphere, where solar wind is slowed and warped by pressure from other forces in the galaxy, the US space agency said. "Because the sun spins, its magnetic field becomes twisted and wrinkled, a bit like a ballerina's skirt," said astronomer Merav Opher of Boston University. "Far, far away...

If a person's blood becomes too thick it can damage blood vessels and increase the risk of heart attacks. But a Temple University physicist has discovered that he can thin the human blood by subjecting it to a magnetic field. [snip] Because red blood cells contain iron, Tao has been able to reduce a person's blood viscosity by 20-30 percent by subjecting it to a magnetic field of 1.3 Telsa (about the same as an MRI) for about one minute. Tao and his collaborator tested numerous blood samples in a Temple lab and found that the magnetic field polarizes the...

Professor Raymond Wheeler, from the University of Kansas, at first almost stumbled into the frightening data. The connection was initially discovered by noted Russian scientist Alexander Chizhevsky during 1915: solar storms trigger conflict, wars and death. A vortex of death. Chizhevsky found after intense research that the rise and fall of solar activity—interacting with the earth's magnetic field—causes mass changes in human's perspective's, moods, emotions and behavioral patterns. All are affected by sunspots and solar flares. Building upon the Russian scholar's research, Wheeler applied a numerically weighted ranking system during the 1930s to separate wars and even individual battles assessing...

A theory of what might be happening The working theory in all this, at least for the birds, is that deadly space clouds are reaching into the lower atmosphere and killing these birds in flight, after which the birds fall to the ground. The reports of the birds experiencing "blunt trauma" are likely from the birds hitting the ground. What, exactly, would be found in these deadly space clouds that might be killing the birds? One possibility is that these clouds might be moving along with gaps in the magnetosphere that would invite deadly radiation to "fry" the birds in...

Forget the "top hat," the "junk shot," the diamond saws and the "top kill" — one Florida scientist says he's developed a simple solution to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico: a set of bone-crushingly powerful magnets.

During the time it takes you to read this article, something will happen high overhead that until recently many scientists didn't believe in. A magnetic portal will open, linking Earth to the sun 93 million miles away. Tons of high-energy particles may flow through the opening before it closes again, around the time you reach the end of the page. "It's called a flux transfer event or 'FTE,'" says space physicist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Ten years ago I was pretty sure they didn't exist, but now the evidence is incontrovertible." Indeed, today Sibeck is telling...

This Magnetic Air Car appears to be an absolute miracle of engineering. We’re talking a vehicle that will travel at 100 mph plus for ‘an unlimited driving range’ without needing to refuel. Oh yes folks, you read that right. The technology seems to involve something called an air-bearing turbocharger which uses a $70 battery to run a magnetic motor to compress, use and re-compress air in the onboard storage tanks. The secret sauce as they call it is their new Air Cycle Machine, which apparently stirs up air through convection. Confused? Yep, same here. See if this magazine article helps. Oh and...

Have you ever noticed that herds of grazing animals all face the same way?Images from Google Earth have confirmed that cattle tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction. Wild deer also display this behaviour - a phenomenon that has apparently gone unnoticed by herdsmen and hunters for thousands of years.

Rapid changes in the churning movement of Earth's liquid outer core are weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet's surface, a new study says. "What is so surprising is that rapid, almost sudden, changes take place in the Earth's magnetic field," said study co-author Nils Olsen, a geophysicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen. The findings suggest similarly quick changes are simultaneously occurring in the liquid metal, 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) below the surface, he said. The swirling flow of molten iron and nickel around Earth's solid center triggers an electrical current, which generates the...

Magnetic fields used to date Indian artifacts June 22, 2008 REPUBLIC COUNTY - You might be surprised what you can learn from a campfire. A campfire that has been cold for, say, 300 years. Stacey Lengyel hopes she can tell, within 30 years or so, when it was used. Lengyel, a research associate in anthropology at the Illinois State Museum, is the country's leading authority on archeomagnetic dating, a process built around two phenomena: when heated, magnetic particles reorient themselves to magnetic north; and over time, magnetic north is, literally, all over the map. "They call it a 'drunken wander,'...

SYDNEY: A reversal of the Earth's magnetic poles could happen sooner than we think, according to Dutch scientists who report that the planet's magnetic field is becoming gradually less stable. A reversal could affect everything from navigation and communications equipment to the composition of the atmosphere, say experts. The report, published today in the U.K. journal Nature Geoscience, found that reversals have been far more common in the last 200 million years than they were deep in the planet's history. Wandering polesResearchers, led by Andrew Biggin of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, made the discovery by analysing rocks...

Birds can 'see' the Earth's magnetic field 18:00 30 April 2008 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic It has been debated for nearly four decades but no one has yet been able to prove it is chemically possible. Now good evidence suggests that birds can actually "see" the lines of the Earth's magnetic field. Klaus Schulten of the University of Illinois, proposed forty years ago that some animals – including migratory birds – must have molecules in their eyes or brains which respond to magnetism. The problem has been that no one has been able to find a chemical sensitive enough...

Does the Earth's magnetic field cause suicides? 13:39 24 April 2008 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic Many animals can sense the Earth's magnetic field, so why not people, asks Oleg Shumilov of the Institute of North Industrial Ecology Problems in Russia. Shumilov looked at activity in the Earth's geomagnetic field from 1948 to 1997 and found that it grouped into three seasonal peaks every year: one from March to May, another in July and the last in October. Surprisingly, he also found that the geomagnetism peaks matched up with peaks in the number of suicides in the northern Russian city...

North by NorthwestThe planet's wandering magnetic poles help reveal history of Earth and humans Sid Perkins Hikers in the wilderness often place their faith in a trusty compass. But any navigator worth his salt knows that compasses can't truly be trusted: Only along certain longitudes in the Northern Hemisphere does a compass needle point due north. MOVED BY MAGNETISM. Explorers first found the north magnetic pole at Canada's Cape Adelaide in 1831. Blue dots (direct surface observations) and red dots (models using satellite data) denote the pole's movement since then. Green dots indicate the pole's future location if its current...