Was Peter Gleick inspired by secret agent masterpieces?

Last week, several documents that purportedly came from the Heartland Institute appeared on the Web, laying out the organization’s financial efforts to undercut the mainstream understanding of climate science. Although the Heartland admitted that most of the materials were genuine, it claims they had been obtained via deception, and that one of the documents (the most inflammatory) was a fake. Now, a prominent environmental researcher has admitted that he impersonated a Heartland board member in order to obtain the documents, but claims they are all genuine.

Peter Gleick is the founder and current president of the Pacific Institute, where he specializes in research on the water cycle. His research can be provocative—some of it suggested that the US has already passed peak water—but has been considered important enough to get him elected to the National Academies of Science.

If he was known to the public, however, it was probably due to his writing at Forbes, where he aggressively defended the scientific consensus on climate change and pr……………. continues on Ars Technica

Scientists have measured the fastest winds yet observed from a stellar-mass black hole, shedding light on the behavior of these curious cosmic objects.

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The winds, clocked by astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, are racing through space at 20 million mph (32 million kph), or about 3 percent the speed of light. That’s nearly 10 times faster than had ever been seen from a stellar-mass black hole, researchers said.

“This is like the cosmic equivalent of winds from a Category 5 hurricane,” study lead author Ashley King, of the University of Michigan, said in a statement. “We weren’t expecting to see such……………. continues on Christian Science Monitor

Scientists have discovered a new type of alien planet — a steamy waterworld that is larger than Earth but smaller than Uranus.

The standard-bearer for this new class of exoplanet is called GJ 1214b, which astronomers first discovered in December 2009. New observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope suggest that GJ 1214b is a watery world enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere.

“GJ 1214b is like no planet we know of,” study lead author Zachory Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., said in a statement. “A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water.”

Adding to the diversity
To date, astronomers have discovered more than 700 planets beyond our solar system, with about 2,300 more “candidates” awaiting confirmation by follow-up observations.

These alien planets are a diverse bunch. Astronomers have found one planet as light and airy as Styrofoam, for example, and another as dense as iron. They’ve discovered several alien worlds that orbit two suns, like Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine in the “Star Wars” films.

But GJ 1214b, which is located 40 light-years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer), is something new altogether, researchers said.

<……………. continues on msnbc.com

Theft, deceit and outright lies: How ugly can climate science get?

Prominent climate scientist Peter H. Gleick relied on deceit and subterfuge to solicit a cache of sensitive internal documents from conservative think tank The Heartland Institute before leaking them to the press — a fresh scandal that further darkens the highly charged debate on planetary climate change.

Gleick — an internationally recognized hydroclimatologist and author of the respected annual report “The World’s Water” — said he received an anonymous document in the mail that tipped him off to what he described as Heartland’s efforts to muddy public understanding of climate science and policy. He released the documents to expose their work “to cast doubt on climate science.”

In his blog on the Huffington Post, Gleick publicly confessed to deceitful tactics that he described as a serious ethical slip.

“In a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else’s name,” Gleick wrote. “My judgment was blinded by my fr……………. continues on Fox News

COLUMBUS, Ohio — NASA surprised John Glenn with the kind of anniversary gift only a space agency can give, enabling him to speak live with the International Space Station on Monday as he marked 50 years since his historic spaceflight.

The former astronaut and senator from Ohio, now 90, became the first American to orbit the Earth on Feb. 20, 1962, circling it three times in five hours and helping to lead the nation into space. He celebrated the anniversary at Ohio State University by kicking off a forum about NASA’s future.

Sitting on stage with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, he chatted with three space station crew members about space research and NASA’s future. Commander Don Burbank appeared by video link, flanked by two flight engineers floating in the zero-gravity environment, and said the crew was delighted to help commemorate Glenn’s momentous trip.

Glenn was among the top military test pilots presented in 1959 as the Mercury Seven. The only other surviving Mercury astronaut is Scott Carpenter, who called out the memorable line “Godspeed John Glenn” moments before the rocket ignited for Glenn’s spaceflight.

“Fifty years ago today, Friendship 7 was orbiting planet Earth, and that helped in a very big way, paved the way for America to become a space power, and to go to the moon, and to do the things that we’re doing right now on the International Space Station,” Burbank said. “And we hope this also can help set the stag……………. continues on Washington Post

Physicists at Purdue University and the University of New South Wales have built a transistor from a single atom of phosphorous precisely placed on a bed of silicon, taking another step towards the holy grail of tech research: the quantum computer.

Revealed on Sunday in the academic journal Nature Nanotechnology, the research is part of a decade-long effort at the University of New South Wales to deliver a quantum computer — a machine that would use the seemingly magical properties of very small particles to instantly perform calculations beyond the scope of today’s classical computers.

Just last month, the New South Wales team — lead by professor Michelle Simmons — advanced the cause by demonstrating that Ohm’s Law of electrical resistivity extends to the world of very small particles, and now, together with Gerhard Klimeck and his team at Purdue, they’ve made a more significant breakthrough by placing a single-atom transistor exactly where they want to place it.</……………. continues on Wired News

Of the 370 moon rocks collected during two missions in 1969 and 1972, 184 are missing – and Joseph Gutheinz Jr. is looking for them.

The Texas-based lawyer and former NASA agent is known as the “moon rock hunter,” the BBC reports.

After astronauts returned from the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 missions, 270 of the rocks were given to countries around the world and another 100 given to the 50 states, according to the BBC.

But over the years, dozens of them – 160 overseas and 24 in the United States – vanished, including rock fragments that were gifted to Romania and Libya, the BBC reports.

Since 1998, when he was still at NASA, Gutheinz has made it his mission to try to find the precious rock pieces. He set up an undercover sting operation known as Operation Lunar Eclipse and even placed an ad reading “Moon Rocks Wanted” in USA TODAY. That effort yielded a response from someone claiming to have the Honduras moon rock who asked for $ 5 million.

Gutheinz didn’t pay it, but he believes that rock was the real thing.

Gutheinz believes the rock bequeathed to late Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was sold after his execution. He offered $ 10,000 for the rock gifted to Malta, but that transaction never went through. After a fire at a……………. continues on USA TODAY

A test of man and machine

Fifty years ago, American scientists and engineers couldn’t know for sure what effect an orbital spaceflight would have on American astronaut Col. John H. Glenn. The Soviets already had orbited two men, but they weren’t about to let us in on the details. In the end, Glenn’s resourcefulness, skill and cool head did come in handy. But most of the problems he overcame were ones he’d brought with him.

Balky booster

The Soviets had made it to orbit using a booster rocket that was bigger and more powerful than anything the U.S. had. If Americans were going to match that feat, their only hope lay with the finicky, experimental, but enormously powerful Atlas-D missile.
The Atlas was built so light that it required pressurized fuel in its tanks to keep it from collapsing under its own weight — essentially, a giant balloon filled with explosive rocket fuel. And this balloon had a tendency to pop: Many unmanned test flights had ended in huge explosions just after liftoff.

Thruster malfunction

Friendship 7’s automat……………. continues on Plain Dealer

The most obvious sign that there is a lot of junk in space is how much of it has been falling out of the sky lately: a defunct NASA satellite last year, a failed Russian space probe this year.

While the odds are tiny that anyone on Earth will be hit, the chances that all this orbiting litter will interfere with working satellites or the International Space Station are getting higher, according to a recent report by the National Research Council.

The nonprofit group, which dispenses advice on scientific matters, concluded that the problem of extraterrestrial clutter had reached a point where, if nothing was done, a cascade of collisions would eventually make low-Earth orbit unusable.

“NASA is taking it very seriously,” said Mason A. Peck, chief technologist for the National Aeronautics and Space Ad……………. continues on New York Times

NASA

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -

John Glenn fever gripped Cape Canaveral this weekend, just as it did half a century ago when America was on the verge of launching its first man into orbit.

Hundreds of NASA workers jammed a space center auditorium, three days before the 50th anniversary of Glenn’s historic flight, to see and hear the first American to circle the Earth. Then journalists got a crack at Glenn, ever patient at describing his momentous flight aboard Friendship 7 and the decades since.

The 90-year-old Glenn was joined at both events by Scott Carpenter, 86, the only other survivor of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, as the weekend of anniversary festivities……………. continues on Local 10

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Baby goats learn to bleat just like the kids they hang out with. Christopher Intagliata reports

February 15, 2012

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In the wilds of Tasmania and in labs in England, researchers are making some encouraging advances in their attempt to decode what may be a ticking bomb: an ugly, lethal cancer — a contagious one, a potential nightmare — that has been spreading among Tasmanian devils. As Ewen Callaway reports  today at Nature:

The first cases of devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) were detected in the mid-1990s, when people noticed the disfigured faces of devils in northeast Tasmania. These tumour cells pass from devil to devil when the aggressive marsupials mate and fight for food.

Once seeded, the cancer cells divide swiftly to form large malignant growths, and most infected devils die from starvation or metastases to vital organs within months. DFTD has marched steadily across Tasmania, and now a pocket in the northwest part of the island is the only place home to whole populations of uninfected devils. In the hardest-hit areas, more than half of devils are infected and many die as they hit their reproductive prime.

WASHINGTON—

Leaked documents from a prominent conservative think tank show how it sought to teach schoolchildren skepticism about global warming and planned other behind-the-scenes tactics using millions of dollars in donations from big corporate names.

More than $ 14 million of the money used by the Chicago-based Heartland Institute would come from one anonymous man, according to the leaked documents prepared for a meeting of the group’s board.

Heartland is one of the loudest voices denying man-made global warming, hosting the largest international scientific conference of skeptics on climate change. Several of its documents were leaked this week to the news media, showing the planning and money behind its efforts. Heartland said some of the documents weren’t accurate, but declined to be more specific.

As detailed in the papers, Heartland’s plans for this year included paying an Energy Department consultant $ 100,000 to design a curriculum to teach school children that mainstream global warming science is in dispute, even though it’s a fact accepted by the federal government and nearly every scientific professional organization. It also pays prominent global warming skeptics more than $ 300,000 a year and plans to raise $ 88,000 to help a former television weatherman set up a new temperature records website.

“The stolen documents appear to have been written by Heartland’s president for a board meeting that took place on Jan…………….. continues on Chicago Tribune

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Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope to confirm X-ray observations first published in 2009 have turned up the first observational evidence of mid-sized black holes.

That’s not as straightforward as it sounds. As Sydney University-based astronomer Dr Sean Farrell explained to The Register, the midrange black hole has been elusive.

“In the large galaxies, we see evidence of supermassive black holes in every one of them. And there are plenty of observations of stellar-sized black holes”.

The intermediate black hole, Dr Farrell said, has been predicted for a long time but not observed. Since the scale of the supermassive black hole scales nicely in relation to the scale of the galaxies they inhabit, it wasn’t hard to believe that a dwarf galaxy would have a suitably-sized black hole at its centre.

That’s what Dr Farrell believes his team has confirmed, in visible and infrared images of a galaxy called ESO 243-49, about 290 light-years distant. Out towards the edge of the galaxy is a cluster of young blue stars which he argues is a dwarf galaxy, designated HLX-1*, that’s been ripped apart in a collision with ESO 243-49 – exposing the intermediate black hole at its centre.

(*HLX-1 – Hyper-Luminous X-Ray source 1. Not so many astronomers get to be the ones to attached the number 1 after a new designation.)

The black hole, he says, is estimated to be around 20,000 times the mass of our sun, and its remnant……………. continues on Register

A PROMINENT Australian scientist has rejected as offensive any suggestion he is doing the bidding of a US climate-sceptic think tank that is paying him a monthly fee.

Confidential documents leaked from inside The Heartland Institute, a wealthy think tank based in Chicago and Washington, detail strategy and funding for an array of activities designed to spread doubt about climate change science, paid for by companies that have a financial interest in continuing to release greenhouse gases without government interference.

Among the recipients of funding is Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University, a geologist and marine researcher who spoke at the ”convoys of no confidence” protests against the carbon price last year alongside the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, and writes columns for News Ltd newspapers.

The documents show Professor Carter receives a ”monthly payment” of $ US1667 ($ 1550) as part of a program to pay ”high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist [anthropogenic global warming] message”.

Professor Carter did not deny he was being paid by The Heartland Institute, but……………. continues on Sydney Morning Herald

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland, are preparing for a record-setting smashing of atoms, which could lead to the existence of the Higgs Boson particle.

Scientists announced Tuesday that the proton beams’ energies will be increased by 14%, for a total collision energy of 8 trillion electron volts — the largest amount of energy ever produced to smash atoms.

“When we started operating the LHC for physics in 2010, we chose the lowest safe beam energy consistent with the physics we wanted to do,” said Steve Myers, director for accelerators and technology at Cern, the laboratory that operates the LHC.

Scientists say the latest project by the world’s largest atom smasher will collect data until November, after which it will be upgraded during a shutdown period that will last 20 months. The team of scientists noted that they expect to see similar results to an experiment conducted in late 2011, which hinted at the existence of the Higgs Boson. In announcements made in December 2011, teams from the two major detectors at the facility announced they had seen hints of the particle, stopping short of claiming they had discovered the elusive particle.

The existence of the Higgs boson is predicted by the Standard Model to explain how spontaneous breaking of electroweak symmetry, also known as the Higgs mechanism, takes place in nature, which in turn explains why other elementary particles have mass. Its d……………. continues on The State Column

This artist’s concept shows NASA’s giant rocket, the Space Launch System, soaring off a launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rocket is NASA’s new booster for deep space missions to an asteroid and ultimately Mars. CREDIT: NASA

President Barack Obama unveiled his proposed federal budget for 2013 today (Feb. 13), which includes $ 17.7 billion for NASA and requires painful cuts to the agency’s Mars exploration plans that are already drawing criticism from astronomers.

NASA’s portion of the proposed 2013 budget would include a 20 percent cut on planetary science missions, while including some funding boosts for space technology and human exploration.

According NASA chief Charles Bolden, the drop in planetary science funding for 2013 means NASA will not participate in two European-led missions to Mars, one in 2016 and another in 2018. The space agency is ai……………. continues on Space.com

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The president’s 2013 budget, released today, asks for modest increases for some federal science agencies but trims funding to NASA. The request takes a deep bite out of Mars and outer-planet science exploration in particular.

NASA’s funding would fall to the lowest level in four years, with a total budget of $ 17.71 billion. The president’s request projects a flat budget through 2017, with no growth to even account for inflation.

“We are having to make tough decisions because these are tough economic times,” said NASA administrator Charles Bolden during a press conference Feb. 13.

As expected, planetary science — in particular Mars exploration and outer-planets missions — is the biggest loser, getting a $ 309 million decrease compared to last year. This means NASA will not be able to maintain previous commitments to the European Space Agenc……………. continues on Wired News

Last week, a new video surfaced claiming to show a live woolly mammoth — an animal scientists think has been extinct for at least four millennia — crossing a river in Russia. The suspiciously blurry footage was allegedly “caught by a government-employed engineer last summer in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug region of Siberia,” according to a story in The Sun newspaper.

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The video became an Internet sensation, making headlines around the world. Some Bigfoot believers and Loch Ness Monster lovers murmured their tentative approval, hoping it proved that large unknown (or assumed extinct) animals still exist in Earth’s remote wilds.

While most people didn’t believe that the animal in the video was really a woolly mammo……………. continues on Christian Science Monitor