Wormholes Are Our Best Bet For Time Travel, Says Astrophysicist

Time machines - what havoc we could wreak with one of those babies. While the often used staple of sci-fi flicks isn't going to happen anytime soon (or at all), astrophysicist Eric W. Davies says that we need to look to wormholes for our era-hopping antics.

While physicists have proven that particles like muons can be sent forwards in time by manipulating their gravity, the notion of going backwards in time encounters a heap of problems. 

Davies, who works at EarthTech International Institute for Advanced Studies in Austin, says that a wormhole could open up a passage in space-time that could send you back in time.

Celebrate Richard Feynman's birthday with this beautiful video

Today is the birthday of Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, an incredible individual who expanded our understanding of quantum electrodynamics, played an important role in the investigation of the Challenger disaster, and was part of the Manhattan Project team.

Google launches Google Keep, so you won't forget anything again

Google has launched a new product for Android and the web that lets you save notes on the fly, meaning you will never have to remember anything again. Well, maybe not.

5 signs that a cyberpunk future is closer than we think

When you think cyberpunk, you think gargantuan cities made up of towering skyscrapers and peppered with buzzing neon, huge adverts flashing across the sky. You also think human augmentation - adding technology to our bodies in order to make life easier for us. This all might sound like science fiction, but we're actually not too far from a cyberpunk future, and here's why.

You can now watch It's Okay To Be Smart on Youtube

Here at The Trollish Delver we adore science and we love other people who have the same passion for it was we do. One such dude is Joe Hanson, writer of the awesome science tumblr It's Okay to be Smart.

Well, it looks like the guys at PBS also have a soft spot for quirky science because they've hired Jon to make Youtube videos based on his successful blog, and you're in for a treat.

Speaking on his tumblr, Hanson said:

"I can't tell you how excited I am to be doing this, or that I get to work with PBS. I grew up with PBS and their programming is a large part of what made me realize the value of combining education with creativity. I feel like me and Big Bird are basically co-workers now. We'll be posting a new episode every other week on our YouTube page, and I'll still be maintaining this blog like always. You'll even get added bonus material to go along with each episode and expand your knowledge that much more."

No doubt I'll be featuring some of his videos in the near future.

How to make mind-blowing paper snowflakes with maths

Vi Hart is a Youtuber who dedicates her time to blowing minds. The crafty maths whiz has created a video showing you how to make some amazing paper snowflakes using mathematical theory, and they're insanely good. So get out your scissors and paper and prepare to spend the rest of the day snipping Christmas decorations. 

RIP Sir Patrick Moore, master of the stars

It's a sad day for both science and broadcasting as it was announced earlier that Sir Patrick Moore, presenter of The Sky at Night and renowned amateur astronomer, has died.

Moore was known for his eccentric persona, his monocle and most of all his fiery enthusiasm for astronomy. He holds the record for the world's longest presenter of a television show, having started as the face of The Sky at Night on the BBC in 1957 and carried on working on the show up until his death.

He was responsible for making the public excited about the universe and was a well-respected and much loved British institution.

Moore is a personal hero of mine and I know we will never have anyone else like him. He was a true fountain of knowledge and someone I could listen to for hours. He will be missed greatly.

(Pac)Man on the moon

Ok, so it's not our moon... and there's been two 'men' found, on separate moons. This is still a really interesting finding, though. It would seem that the rotation and orbit of two of Saturn's moons, coupled with the impact of high energy electrons on their surfaces, have contrived to produce a striking image of 80's arcade game character 'Pacman' on both Mimas and Tethys when thermally imaged during the day.

So, how is this all happening? Well, it’s all rather complicated but to break it down; it appears that high energy electrons found within either moon’s ‘magnetosphere’ are flowing retrograde to the spin of each celestial body. It’s thought that this is causing to impact the surface of the moons leading hemisphere and somehow increase thermal inertia at lower latitudes. An increase in thermal inertia simply means that the lower latitudes of Mimas and Tethys are less prone to change in temperature in either direction. So how does this lead to the moons looking like Pacman under  thermal imaging?

Look specifically at the image at the top right hand corner of the figure above (taken from Howett et al, 2012). You can clearly see that the temperature near the equator of Tethys is cooler than that further away and that this difference disappears the further away you look from the leading hemisphere… creating what can only be described as Pacman.

I fully expect a report claiming the existence of multi-coloured ghosts on Mimas and Tethys to be published within the next couple of years!

Genome sequencing: the next steps.

The majority of people with access to any kind of mass media will have heard of the human genome project and be aware of genome sequencing, even if they don't know the ins and outs of it. A lot of those people will know about the 1000 genome project, the results of which were published in Nature last month, and plenty of people will know that the genomes of all of our main model organisms, such as Arabidopsis thaliana, Mus musculus, Danio rerio, Drosophila melanogaster, Saccharomyces cerevisae and (of course, the laboratory workhorse) Escherichia coli (That's Thale Cress, Mice, Zebrafish, Fruit Flies, Brewer's Yeast and E. coli, respectively). Advances in genome sequencing, particularly in pyrosequencing, mean that sequencing the genome of a whole organism is no longer a major issue. The time consumed by the process, as well as the cost, is coming down rapidly in some kind of Biological version of Moore's Law. So now that we're edging ever closer to the ability to personalise human medicine based on our own individual DNA sequence, and we can be sure that the big commercial sequencing companies will keep chipping away at the both the cost and time issues, which direction will basic research be taking from now on?

One avenue being pursued is that of 'metagenomics', or the sequencing of genetic material isolated from whole environments or ecosystems. The main interest in metagenomics stems from the fact that a technique called 'massive parallel pyrosequencing', a technique based on sequencing between one and one hundred million short DNA sequences in parallel, allows an unprecedented snapshot into the diversity of bacteria present in a given environment.

The process involves the extraction of DNA from environmental samples before cloning into a bacterially derived artifical chromosome capable of accommodating up to 350kilobases of DNA. The DNA is then amplified via the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and sequenced. In the past, this would have meant the Sanger chain-termination method of sequencing, which was quite low throughput. Now, pyrosequencing is used, which involves building a strand of DNA based on an immobilised template strand. Each letter of the genetic code (A, T, G and C) is added sequentially to the reaction. As one of the letters is incorporated into the growing strand a fluorescent signal is emitted. Because only one letter is present in the reaction mixture at a given point in time, it's easy to figure out which letter is being added when the fluorescent signal appears. This gives you a heck of a lot of sequence data but leaves you with a big, big problem... you could be working with approximately 10,000 different species and dealing with an impossibly large number of sequence reads, most of which will be code that has been read several times in the same experiment,  so how do you even begin to make sense of this information overload? In short, the answer is 'with great difficulty'. Bioinformaticians have developed programmes which should, in principle, assemple the sequences into genomes accurately. However, most of these programmes are optimised for single organism assemblies, not for metagenomic studies. The use of a 'reference' sequence improves accuracy immensely but there are relatively few bacterial genomes available outside of the main species used in the laboratory, which makes it quite clear that sequencing the genomes of single organisms is far from flogging a dead horse.

So, what's the point of all this? Well, it's a pretty big deal. One of the major metagnomics projects is the study of the human microbiome, particularly the gastro-intestinal tract microbiome. Human associated bacterial cells outnumber your own body cells ten to one and species diversity exceeds 10,000, we simply have to accept that the influence they have over us is enormous. There's even one school of thought, albeit a hotly constested one, that the unit of natural selection in evolutionary terms is not the gene, or the organism, but the organism and all of the associations it forms with microbes. The idea states that an organism is capable of utilising the genome of the microbes it hosts (humans, as an example, use gut bacteria to aid food metabolism) and that the microbial genome evolves at a faster rate than the host genome. This gives us what is called a 'hologenome' and the hologenome's propensity for rapid evolution allows a far greater level of adaptive potential than would be possible when considering the host genome alone.

Quite simply: an understanding of the microbial communities we host will allow us a better picture of who we are and where we came from, as well as opening the door to a new generation of medicine, acting in concert with personalised medicine stemming from the sequencing of individual human genomes.

Russia to the rescue in mission to the Red Planet

Last year it looked like a joint ESA-NASA programme to launch a satellite, followed by a rover to Mars was destined to failure as NASA revealed that it would not be putting up its side of the funds for the venture.  Luckily, following talks this year, the project is back on track after Russia was ‘invited’ to join the mission.

The partnership got off to a rocky start; when talks began between the ESA and Roscosmos it was pretty one sided… the ESA got two Russian built proton rockets and Russia got, well, nothing. 

Unsurprisingly, Russia said no.  Proton rockets are particularly expensive and Russia would get no tangible benefit from the project. Despite all this, Russia’s scientists continued their interest in the joint mission and, thankfully, have more or less reached an agreement which will see them provide the rockets needed to launch the satellite and rover in exchange for space on both launches for their own equipment and places for their scientists on the ESA research groups.

It’s hoped that the satellite will launch in 2016 and look for possible points of origin for Methane on Mars, which will inform a 2018 rover launch, which will look for signs of life, past or present, on the surface and up to 2m into the surface. However, these dates could be pushed back further… the agreement between the two space agencies hasn’t been signed and sealed yet! Although work as begun and most of the £1.2 billion required is in place.

Oh, and the Americans haven’t quite gone away; a smaller rover built by NASA will be accompanying the European rover in 2018.

- Ben Hall

Follow @benkhall on Twitter

Hard science: the future of crop protection

Food security, whilst something of a buzzword, is one of the great challenges facing this generation and every generation for the foreseeable future. A major threat to global security is pestilence. Total yield lost to pathogens and pests is an immensely difficult thing to quantify. It’s subject to a whole host of variables but a decent estimate would be something in the region of 25% globally. Gone are the days when crops could be liberally doused with chemicals designed to kill the disease causing agent as standard procedure, largely because these chemicals have an annoying tendency to kill things we’d really rather keep alive! Not to mention the remarkable speed at which populations of pathogens resistant to our chemical warfare emerge. In the future, a smarter approach is required, one which will probably involve genetic engineering. Those best placed to provide the solutions are molecular biologists working at the interface between pathogens and their hosts.

In the contemporary plant pathology scene, the major paradigm is the study of so-called ‘effectors’. An effector is a small molecule, often a protein, which is secreted into the plant cell by microorganisms with the aim of eliciting some kind of response in the host which will benefit the pathogen. However, the pathogen certainly doesn’t get it all its own way. Plants, unlike animals, don’t have an army of motile immune cells capable of rushing to infected tissue to repel invasion. Plant cells, as a rule, don’t move. Sure, they possess a fully functioning vascular system roughly analogous to an animal circulatory system, which transports water, sugars, hormones and other signalling molecules but it most certainly does not transport immune cells. What they do have is a very efficient surveillance system capable of recognising signals associated with pathogens and then producing an immune response.

The first layer of resistance recognises microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs for short), which are patterns which microorganisms produce on account of being microorganisms. A good example is flagellin, a protein involved in cell motility. MAMP recognition triggers a weak immune response. Why bother with a weak immune response though? If you know you’re under attack surely it’s better to hit the attacker with everything you’ve got? Well, not necessarily. The fact is that all microbes produce MAMPs but not all microbes produce disease. As a ‘strong’ plant immune response tends to involve localised cell death, killing your own cells every time you recognise a microbe would be a terrible strategy in terms of evolutionary fitness. This is where the second layer of resistance comes in, a resistance which concerns the effector proteins I mentioned earlier. One major function of effectors is the subversion of MAMP triggered immunity in order to facilitate infection. However, as well as recognising MAMPs, plants are also capable of recognising effector proteins through the production of recognition proteins from genomic regions termed ‘resistance (R) genes’. Pathogens produce a diverse array of effectors and plants possess an equally diverse set of R genes, the system is a classic example of an evolutionary ‘arms race’, a race which the pathogens most definitely seem to be winning! Recognition of an effector by the product of an R gene often leads to a robust immunity in the form of the hypersensitive response, a localised cell death signal which restricts the growth of pathogens that require living tissue to complete their life cycles. Unfortunately, many effector proteins are not recognised by R gene products and are free to exert their effects on the host.  In order to develop resistance to important crop pathogens we need to fully understand how effectors produce their effects in the host cell and how effectors and R proteins interact. Knowledge of these processes remains thin on the ground so current research is very much focused in their direction.

One fruitful avenue of research is the structural characterisation of the key players involved in this system. It’s parsimonious, then, that the 1000^th crystal structure determined at the Diamond Light Source, Oxford, happened to be that of an effector protein secreted by the tomato pathogen Pseudomonas syringae, which was published in the journal PNAS last month. Scientists from the John Innes Centre, using the x-ray diffraction facility at Diamond, were able to figure out the structure of the protein, known as AvrRPS4, by inference from the electron density pattern it produces when x-rays are directed at the protein and diffracted. This structural information was then used to inform the generation of mutant effector proteins which were no longer recognised by the associated R protein and of mutants which were able to interact with the R protein whilst still inducing resistance but without any associated cell death.

The Diamond Light Source, Oxfordshire

                                            
The implications of this are pretty cool. Firstly, it tells us which parts of the effector are needed for recognition by the host. Secondly, and more importantly, it adds to an emerging body of evidence suggesting that cell death is not a requirement for resistance. This is a big deal! Resistance without cell death is extremely desirable in terms of food production and this research represents a massive step toward developing it and, ultimately, deploying it in real crop production situations.

As an aside, structural study of effector proteins also allows an incredible snapshot of how protein structure underpins the incredible rate at which these ‘molecular weapons’ evolve. And, trust me, they evolve extremely quickly!

For those interested who have access to PNAS, the reference for the full study is as follows:

Sohn KS, Hughes RK, Piquerez SJ, Jones JDG, Banfield MJ. (2012) Distinct regions of the Psuedomonas syringae coiled-coil effector AvrRps4 are required for activation of immunity. PNAS. 109(40): 16371-16376.

- Ben Hall

Follow Ben on Twitter @benkhall

Milky Way black hole shoots brightest ever flare

One of the best parts of studying space is all the weird puzzles that it throws at scientists on a seemingly constant basis. Well now we have another one as vexed astronomers have observed the brightest X-ray flare ever emitted from the black hole in the centre of the Milky Way.

Once a day the black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, shoots out an x-ray flare that scientists measure using instruments like the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. But back in February, Chandra detected a flare unlike any other. It was 150 times brighter that the usual flares, leading experts to wonder what the hell was going on.

However, they may have an answer. The intense flare could have been the result of an asteroid or planet being 'swallowed up' by Sagittarius A* before spewing out the energy in the form of x-rays.

"Suddenly, for whatever reason, Sagittarius A* is eating a lot more," said Michael Nowak, a research scientist at MIT Kavli and co-author of a new paper in the Astrophysical Journal. "One theory is that every so often, an asteroid gets close to the black hole, the black hole stretches and rips it to pieces, and eats the material and turns it into radiation, so you see these big flares."

As black holes age they slow down, 'eating' planets and stars at a slower rate, therefore giving off a steadier pattern of flares, but Sagittarius A* doesn't seem to be slowing down.

Weirdly, the black hole should actually be a million times brighter than it is because of the amount of gas in its surroundings. But it looks like it's spewing out most of the matter it would actually consume, which shouldn't happen.

[Via iO9]

Neil deGrasse Tyson finds Superman's home planet

This is just too cool. Astrophysicist and public science proponent Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked by DC to find exactly where Superman's home planet of Krypton is in real life.

“As a native of Metropolis, I was delighted to help Superman, who has done so much for my city over all these years,” said Tyson. “And it’s clear that if he weren’t a superhero he would have made quite an astrophysicist.”

Appearing in Action Comics #14, Tyson talks to Superman about the whereabouts of Krypton, which automatically makes him one of the coolest scientists ever.

“This is a major milestone in the Superman mythos that gives our Super Hero a place in the universe,” said DC Entertainment co-publisher, Dan DiDio. “Having Neil deGrasse Tyson in the book was one thing, but by applying real world science to this story he has forever changed Superman’s place in history. Now fans will be able to look up at the night’s sky and say – ‘that’s where Superman was born’."

Tyson concludes that Krypton would likely orbit red dwarf star LHS 2520. Amateur astronomers can find it here:

J2000

Right Ascension: 12 hours 10 minutes 5.77 seconds

Declination:  -15 degrees 4 minutes 17.9 seconds

Proper Motion: 0.76 arcseconds per year, along 172.94 degrees from due north

LHS 2520 is cooler than the Sun, with a red and highly turbulent surface, lying 27.1 light years from Earth. It's here that Tyson thinks Krypton would orbit. 

[Via Comic Book.com]

Cookies and quantum mechanics, a delicious combination

Quantum physics deals with the very, very, very tiny world that's all around us and, indeed, makes us. It's both an immensely mind-blowing area of science and a very difficult one to comprehend because quantum physics works differently to classical Newtonian physics. Hell, even Einstein had problems with quantum physics because it was so crazy. 

MinutePhysics have released a new video looking at the birth of quantum theory, which was founded by Max Planck a Nobel Prize-winning German physicist, who discovered that light doesn't work exactly as we used to think. Check out the video above and fill your mind with awesome knowledge.

[MinutePhysics via io9]

What has Curiosity found on Mars?

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Images have come through of Curiosity finding some strange little object on the surface of Mars, but it is not yet known what it is.

There is speculation that it could be a tiny shard of the MSL descent mechanisms that chipped off as it came to land on the red planet. But what if it's something that was already there?

Right now until researchers have looked into it further we can only speculate as to what this strange little Martian object could be.

NASA states on the mission page: "Curiosity’s first scooping activity appeared to go well on Oct. 7. Subsequently, the rover team decided to refrain from using the rover’s robotic arm on Oct. 8 due to the detection of a bright object on the ground that might be a piece from the rover. Instead of arm activities during the 62nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission, Curiosity is acquiring additional imaging of the object to aid the team in identifying the object and assessing possible impact, if any, to sampling activities."

Bits of Curiosity, or something else entirely? We'll have to wait and see.

Via [Universe Today]

Atomospheric cold layer found on hottest planet

Venus is a pretty amazing and mysterious planet, but new findings suggest that Earth's evil twin has just become even more enigmatic.

A layer of cold may have been found in the planet's atmosphere 125 kilometres above its surface, so cold that it freezes carbon dioxide, turning it into snow or falling ice.

The orbiting Venus Express spacecraft has been sending images and data back to scientists for the past six years, whose analysis has hinted at the planet's new frosty layer, measuring around -175 degrees Celsius.

Bizarrely, the cold part is sandwiched in between two warmer layers of atmosphere. But even weirder is that it's colder than any part of Earth's of atmosphere despite being 40 million kilometres closer to the Sun.

However, researchers are being cautious about the anomaly, stating that, while the bright patches shown in images could indicate falling snow or ice, there could be another explanation for the phenomenon.

The results will be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Curiosity confirms running water on Mars

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA is reporting that the Mars Curiosity rover has made the significant discovery of a streambed that provides evidence that there was once running water on the planet's surface.

While satellite images have always indicated that there may have been water at some point, Curiosity has now confirmed that this is true with images of a dried up stream in the Gale Crater. Not only would this have been a channel for flowing water, but it would have also been relatively deep, about hip height.

"From the size of gravels it carried, we can interpret the water was moving about 3 feet per second, with a depth somewhere between ankle and hip deep," said Curiosity science co-investigator William Dietrich of the University of California, Berkeley. "Plenty of papers have been written about channels on Mars with many different hypotheses about the flows in them. This is the first time we're actually seeing water-transported gravel on Mars. This is a transition from speculation about the size of streambed material to direct observation of it."

The discovery was made with the analysis of two outcrops, "Hottah" and "Link", which contain rounded and angular gravel. The nature of the gravel led scientists to suspect that it must have been transported from one location to another, but not by wind. Because it was most likely water, and the region contains clay and sulfate minerals, there's a good chance that the planet once harboured organic life.

"A long-flowing stream can be a habitable environment," said Grotzinger. "It is not our top choice as an environment for preservation of organics, though. We're still going to Mount Sharp, but this is insurance that we have already found our first potentially habitable environment."

In the future, the little Mars robot that could will examine the environment around the Gale Crater to find out whether this could have been a place where life once flourished.

Via [NASA JPL Blog]

Why you should absolutely be watching The Flog

Like a lot people who identify as a geek (and damned proud of it) I'm a big fan of Felicia Day's work. She's a smart and talented actress/businesswoman who can never seem to sit still, which is fantastic for us. 

Day and her nerdy pals are involved in the Geek and Sundry website, a repository for videos, podcasts and more. One of those video series is The Flog, a weekly magazine show where Day introduces viewers to new geeky delights, be it videogames, science or just a cool website. She also teams up with a guest star, like she did this week with The Guild co-star Robin Thorsen.

Aside from being light and funny entertainment, The Flog is a fantastic way to discover new cool things/obsessions and it's very accessible to the wider public. One episode you could be learning archery and the other you're being shown how to make piggy snacks for an oriental festival. 

In fact, Day and the gang are a huge inspiration for my new direction with The Trollish Delver, making content more inclusive, engaging and entertaining. Everyone on Geek and Sundry does a stellar job and all its content is well worth your time. If you want to broaden your boardgame horizons, then Wil Wheaton hosts a hilarious show called Tabletop where each week him and a group of friends get together and slog out a new game. Sword and Laser is a podcast about speculative fiction, featuring interviews with authors like George R.R. Martin. And we can't forget the fantastic MMO comedy webseries, The Guild, which is coming back for a new season. 

There are other shows too, so I'd advise you hop on over there and get yourself entertained. 

Starry Night Painting Recreated with Real Galaxies

Holy awesomeballs, this is amazing! Harvard astronomer, Alex Harrison Parker has recreated Vincent Van Gogh's famous Starry Night using images of real galaxies.

He created the image from photographs captured by the Hubble space telescope and put them together into this amazing mosaic.

Here's a closer look:

Wowzer!

[Discovery] via [io9]

Violent Videogames Turn You Into Kick-Ass (Sort Of)

In the comic book Kick-Ass, the adolescent protagonist has his nerves shot, allowing him to take a pummelling without registering pain. According to new research, violent videogames could have the ability to do something similar: desensitising players to pain.

Now, you're not going to become bulletproof from a 12 hour session of Madworld, but researchers at Keele University have found that violent games give a higher level of pain tolerance than non-violent games. The study took 40 participants and had them play and FPS for 10 minutes and then a golf game for 10 more minutes, placing a hand in icy water after each game to stimulate pain. When participants were playing the violent game, they were able to keep their hand in the water for 65% more time than after the non-violent game, concluding that their pain tolerance had increased after the FPS.

The researchers also noted that players were more aggressive, which was the reason they felt less pain. Dr Richard Stephens, the leader of the study, said that this "was a test of that assumption in which we set out to try and raise participants' aggression levels by having them play a violent video game. We then tested the effect on pain tolerance. The results confirm our predictions that playing the video game increased both feelings of aggression and pain tolerance."

So if you've broken your leg, don't crack out LittleBigPlanet - settle down with a good game of Gears of War 3.

Via [Kotaku]