Sky survey yields new cosmic haul …including a new Inner Oort Cloud member – making two, the first being Sedna.
Solar plane makes record flight …stays aloft 3 days by recharging lithium-sulfur batteries via very light-weight solar cells. It cruised at 18 km up (temp -70 C, pressure 0.075) and is hoped to be a battle-theatre “Eye in the Sky” or a civilian comms-platform. The company is hoping for 5 year flight-times for a large version – carrying 450 kg versus the 2 kg payload on this bird.
An end to spaghetti power cables …MIT demos power transfer via magnetic induction resonance with 90% efficiency over 1 metre. Enough to get rid of cables in the home.
Stellar Still-births …brown dwarfs are aborted stars – low mass objects perturbed out of a trinary birth-nebula. Thus they’re a cosmic class of their own.
Genome of simplest animal reveals ancient lineage, confounding array of complex capabilities …placozoans, Trichoplax, share a lot of genes and introns with both cnidarians and bilaterians, even us humans. And there’s at least 13 species now distinguished by these researchers… something to update all the web-pedias which still say there’s just one, plus a maybe. Not so, and a quick Google reveals a few papers to that effect since 2003… come on people! Pick up your game!
Exploding Chromosomes …because DNA has one charge along its length it can’t be wound up tight without some help. In humans it’s histones, big molecules, but in dinoflagellates it’s just sodium and calcium ions. A neat trick with some lessons for the prehistory of genomes.
One Man’s Crater Quest …a New Jersey native, Daniel Connelly, is trying to interest professional geoscientists in a gigantic crater smack bang in the middle of Australia. Problem is it’s a bit hard to see. He’s been roving the Outback trying to gather evidence – he’s convinced and has convinced his wife, a physician, but the pros aren’t biting yet.