Science news of the day thread.

[FBM]

You'll get it in a few weeks...

Too late by then.

You're missing the point. It's too late now...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You'll get it in a few weeks...

Too late by then.

You're missing the point. It's too late now...

Not for some batshit crazy rioting it's not.

[FBM]

Good point...

[pErvinalia]

I'm gunna go and loot me some tvs and electrical goods.

[FBM]

Don't forget guns and ammo.

[laklak]

Enough guns and ammo and we don't need no stinking riot. We gots us our own muthafucking riot, homes.

[Blind groper]

No laklak
With enough guns and ammo, you just got yourself dead.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

A partial lunar eclipse will be visible from Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia during the night of 2013 APR 25-26. Based on the French model, the umbral magnitude will be 0.013, meaning that at best only 1.3% of the Moon’s diameter will be covered by the dark portion of the Earth’s shadow.

I’ve created a panorama of five phases of the eclipse as viewed from London. Although position angles would be different for other locations, the event timings will be the same if adjusted to local time zones. It can be seen at http://www.CurtRenz.com/moon

Descriptions and photos of the eclipse would be welcome additions to this thread.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Power behind primordial soup discovered

Published Thursday 4th April 13

Researchers at the University of Leeds may have solved a key puzzle about how objects from space could have kindled life on Earth.

While it is generally accepted that some important ingredients for life came from meteorites bombarding the early Earth, scientists have not been able to explain how that inanimate rock transformed into the building blocks of life.

This new study shows how a chemical, similar to one now found in all living cells and vital for generating the energy that makes something alive, could have been created when meteorites containing phosphorus minerals landed in hot, acidic pools of liquids around volcanoes, which were likely to have been common across the early Earth.

“The mystery of how living organisms sprung out of lifeless rock has long puzzled scientists, but we think that the unusual phosphorus chemicals we found could be a precursor to the batteries that now power all life on Earth. But the fact that it developed simply, in conditions similar to the early Earth, suggests this could be the missing link between geology and biology,” said Dr Terry Kee, from the University’s School of Chemistry, who led the research.

All life on Earth is powered by a process called chemiosmosis, where the chemical adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the rechargeable chemical ‘battery’ for life, is both broken down and re-formed during respiration to release energy used to drive the reactions of life, or metabolism. The complex enzymes required for both the creation and break down of ATP are unlikely to have existed on the Earth during the period when life first developed. This led scientists to look for a more basic chemical with similar properties to ATP, but that does not require enzymes to transfer energy.

Phosphorus is the key element in ATP, and other fundamental building blocks of life like DNA, but the form it commonly takes on Earth, phosphorus (V), is largely insoluble in water and has a low chemical reactivity. The early Earth, however, was regularly bombarded by meteorites and interstellar dust rich in exotic minerals, including the far more reactive form of phosphorus, the iron-nickel-phosphorus mineral schreibersite.

The scientists simulated the impact of such a meteorite with the hot, volcanically-active, early Earth by placing samples of the Sikhote-Alin meteorite, an iron meteorite which fell in Siberia in 1947, in acid taken from the Hveradalur geothermal area in Iceland. The rock was left to react with the acidic fluid in test tubes incubated by the surrounding hot spring for four days, followed by a further 30 days at room temperature.
....

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/338 ... discovered

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The SpaceX Grasshopper rocket has now set a new record of 250 m (820 ft) in the air before reversing for a landing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoxiK7K2 ... e=youtu.be

[FBM]

The SpaceX Grasshopper rocket has now set a new record of 250 m (820 ft) in the air before reversing for a landing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoxiK7K2 ... e=youtu.be

Oh! An intentional reversal and controlled landing! Well, then, yes. Bravo that!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The SpaceX Grasshopper rocket has now set a new record of 250 m (820 ft) in the air before reversing for a landing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoxiK7K2 ... e=youtu.be

Oh! An intentional reversal and controlled landing! Well, then, yes. Bravo that!

Unlike the first few Vanguard missile launches.

[Calilasseia]

Power behind primordial soup discovered

Published Thursday 4th April 13

Researchers at the University of Leeds may have solved a key puzzle about how objects from space could have kindled life on Earth.

While it is generally accepted that some important ingredients for life came from meteorites bombarding the early Earth, scientists have not been able to explain how that inanimate rock transformed into the building blocks of life.

This new study shows how a chemical, similar to one now found in all living cells and vital for generating the energy that makes something alive, could have been created when meteorites containing phosphorus minerals landed in hot, acidic pools of liquids around volcanoes, which were likely to have been common across the early Earth.

“The mystery of how living organisms sprung out of lifeless rock has long puzzled scientists, but we think that the unusual phosphorus chemicals we found could be a precursor to the batteries that now power all life on Earth. But the fact that it developed simply, in conditions similar to the early Earth, suggests this could be the missing link between geology and biology,” said Dr Terry Kee, from the University’s School of Chemistry, who led the research.

All life on Earth is powered by a process called chemiosmosis, where the chemical adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the rechargeable chemical ‘battery’ for life, is both broken down and re-formed during respiration to release energy used to drive the reactions of life, or metabolism. The complex enzymes required for both the creation and break down of ATP are unlikely to have existed on the Earth during the period when life first developed. This led scientists to look for a more basic chemical with similar properties to ATP, but that does not require enzymes to transfer energy.

Phosphorus is the key element in ATP, and other fundamental building blocks of life like DNA, but the form it commonly takes on Earth, phosphorus (V), is largely insoluble in water and has a low chemical reactivity. The early Earth, however, was regularly bombarded by meteorites and interstellar dust rich in exotic minerals, including the far more reactive form of phosphorus, the iron-nickel-phosphorus mineral schreibersite.

The scientists simulated the impact of such a meteorite with the hot, volcanically-active, early Earth by placing samples of the Sikhote-Alin meteorite, an iron meteorite which fell in Siberia in 1947, in acid taken from the Hveradalur geothermal area in Iceland. The rock was left to react with the acidic fluid in test tubes incubated by the surrounding hot spring for four days, followed by a further 30 days at room temperature.
....

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/338 ... discovered

Sadly, the paper, A Plausibly Prebiotic Route To Activated Phosphorus On The Early Earth, appears to be stuck behind a paywall.

EDIT: Abstract here.

[Azathoth]

Seems to be the full paper now.

[Calilasseia]

But oddly enough you can't download the PDF. Not without paying around $28 for it.