Neanderthals Ate Dolphins, Seals, Cave Remains Suggest

Neanderthals living in a pair of caves on the Mediterranean Sea regularly feasted on mussels, fish, and other types of marine life, according to a new study. The finding suggests that Neanderthals actively foraged for seafood just like early modern humans, according to Clive Finlayson, an anthropologist at the Gibraltar Museum. Neanderthals and modern humans are distinct species that split from a common ancestor several hundred thousand years ago. Why modern humans thrived and Neanderthals ultimately failed has long been a topic of scientific intrigue, and previous research had suggested that the ability to exploit marine resources was one of the defining characteristics for the success of modern humans. But the new research may eliminate sophisticated foraging skills from the list of potential advantages unique to humans. "I don't think that the success of one or the other had to do with subsistence, with the way they hunted or fed," Finlayson said. "There may be other factors coming into this, or it may just have been a question of luck."

Seafood Feasts

The new theory is based on excavations of two caves on the western edge of Gibraltar, a British territory at the southern tip of Spain. Previous studies showed Neanderthals periodically occupied the caves as recently as 28,000 years ago. Inside the caves Finlayson and his colleagues found mussel shells and the bones of seals, dolphins, and fish mixed in with the remains of deer and other land mammals. Many of the bones show signs of being cooked over a fire, and some have marks left by stone tools used to cleave off chunks of flesh. Seafood remains are found throughout various layers in the caves, indicating that Neanderthals regularly exploited marine resources for tens of thousands of years. "It seems to suggest that this wasn't a one-off, but that these guys were doing it on a regular basis," Finlayson said.He and colleagues describe the findings online today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Systematic Foraging?

Curtis Marean is an anthropologist at Arizona State University in Tempe who has found evidence that prehistoric humans were feasting on seafood in South Africa 165,000 years ago. Marean said the new study clearly shows that Neanderthals occasionally ate seafood. But he is not convinced their exploitation of seafood was on par with that of early modern humans in Africa. "I don't think there's enough evidence here to indicate that they are systematically being a coastal forager in the sense that we think of coastal foragers," he said. In South Africa, Marean noted, scientists have found waste piles called shell middens that date back nearly a hundred thousand years. These piles contain several thousand pieces of shellfish discarded by humans. By contrast, the Gibraltar caves yielded just 149 pieces of shellfish. Those pieces could be from a handful of mussels, Marean noted. The differences in abundance could stem from different availabilities of seafood at the two sites, or in the abilities of the two species to actively forage for ocean food, he added. To resolve the issue, Marean recommends a systematic comparison of Neanderthal and human seafood collection at sites with similar availability. "Were Neanderthals like we expect they would if they were modern? And if they weren't, then the question is: Why?" he said. "We could be getting into something interesting there, for sure."

"Jet Man" to Cross English Channel Like a Human Rocket

After two weather-related delays, Swiss pilot Yves Rossy, aka the Jet Man, is slated to attempt to rocket into the history books Friday by becoming the first person to fly across the English Channel using a single, jet-propelled wing attached to his back.

On live television, Rossy will jump from a plane about 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) above Calais, France, unfold his wing, fire up the jets, and attempt to cross the 20 miles (32 kilometers) over water to Dover, England. The machine should propel him at about 118 miles (190 kilometers) an hour, making it a 12- to 15-minute trip. Failure is not an option, as the Channel is one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, and Rossy's jet pack is not designed for landing on water. "He will be wearing a fireproof flight suit [and] 120 pounds [54 kilograms] of wings, fuel, engines, and parachutes, so staying afloat for any length of time could be difficult," said Tom Benson, an aeronautical engineer at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Rossy's support team is confident that he can carry out his Channel-hopping feat—but that likely won't stop them from biting their fingernails when he sets off. "The first five seconds will probably define whether he is going to make it or not," said Markus Zipperer, an engineer with the German company JetCat, which helped build the machine. "The biggest challenge for him is to get into a stable flying configuration once he has left the plane."

Fly Like a Bird

Like many other aviation enthusiasts before him, Rossy wanted to find a way for people to get as close as possible to flying like birds. He started working on the project about 15 years ago, building prototypes in his garage. He first created an inflatable wing that enabled him to glide, but Rossy was really after powered flight. With the help of JetCat and Swiss firm ACT Composites, Rossy built a prototype and began improving upon his jet-wing design. A few weeks ago he carried out his longest flight yet, covering 22 miles (35 kilometers) in 12 minutes, but Friday's scheduled event will be the first time he will try to cross a major body of water. The 49-year-old Swiss pilot will be following the route taken by Louis Blériot 99 years ago, when he became the first person to fly an airplane across the English Channel. Although Blériot's route is the shortest, Rossy could be hampered by winds blowing from England toward France. "With a trailing wind, he can fly farther across the surface than with no wind using the same amount of fuel," said NASA's Benson, who is not involved in the attempt. "With a headwind, he will fly a shorter distance across the surface before exhausting his fuel. With a crosswind, he could be pushed off course, again making the crossing distance longer." Already the weather has forced Rossy to delay his flight twice—the original date was Wednesday. The team has an additional two-day window of opportunity if unfavorable conditions persist "The best conditions are likely to be a calm, cold day when the air density is high. This will assist the wing and the jets to produce more thrust," said Glenn Martin, a jet-pack inventor from Christchurch, New Zealand. When the attempt happens, it will air live on the National Geographic Channel Web site. (The National Geographic Channel is part owned by the National Geographic Society, which owns National Geographic News.)

Composite Craft

In the version of the craft Rossy will use for the Channel crossing, the wing has four jet engines linked by digital processing equipment. "If one engine fails, the digital signal ensures that its opposite pair is shut down in half a millisecond," said JetCat's Zipperer. "Otherwise his wing would go into a flat spin." At 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) across, his turbines are much smaller than conventional jet engines, although they use the same type of fuel. "We use very fast motors and have developed special parts to ensure that the jet fuel is vaporized and burned completely," Zipperer said. The craft is constructed from three main materials: carbon fiber to provide a lightweight but strong wing, glass fiber to mold it into an aerodynamic shape, and Kevlar to protect Rossy should an engine explode. "The turbines run at a very high revolution per minute. If there was a fracture, there is a danger that metal parts would leave the engine and hit Rossy," Zipperer said. "The Kevlar encases the engines and acts like a bulletproof vest." In flight, Rossy uses his shoulders, head, and arms to steer the wing. To land, he has to deploy a series of parachutes while at a height of at least 1,800 feet (550 meters). The first parachute is a small one that reduces his speed. The next is a large one that stops him going forward and enables him and his wing to float safely to the ground. This dual parachute system prevents a sudden halt. "On one of the previous prototypes Rossy used only one parachute," noted Alain Ray of ACT Composites. "Afterward he said, Never again." In addition to good winds, Rossy needs ground visibility from 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) for the flight to be cleared. He and his team are keeping a careful eye on the weather, and the flight will only go ahead if the winds and visibility requirements are suitable.

Sun's Power Hits New Low, May Endanger Earth?

Even the sun appears headed for a recession.

The Ulysses space probe has detected fewer sunspots, decreased solar winds, and a weakening magnetic field—the lowest solar activity observed in 50 years, NASA scientists said yesterday.

That translates into a shrinking of the heliosphere, the invisible "bubble" of solar wind that extends beyond Pluto and guards the planets—ours included—from bombardment by cosmic rays. Speaking yesterday at a NASA teleconference, scientists refused to draw conclusions from their observations, especially with respect to whether the changes are influencing Earth's climate. "That area of science is in the realm of speculation at this point," said Nancy Crooker, a researcher at Boston University. But David J. McComas of the Southwest Research Institute, who leads one of the experiments onboard Ulysses, called the changes "significant." "This is a whole-sun phenomenon. The entire sun is blowing significantly less hard than it was 10 to 15 years ago," he said. "Over the entire record of sun observations, this is the longest prolonged low pressure that we've observed."

Variable Star

Some variance in solar activity is normal for the sun, which has a 22-year magnetic cycle and an 11-year sunspot cycle. But McComas said in a statement that researchers have been "surprised to find that the solar wind is much less powerful than it had been in the previous solar minimum." Despite its name, solar wind is actually a stream of charged particles that expands out from the sun. Scientists noted that while solar activity is low compared to the past 50 years of data, the sun's output has dipped before. In the early 1600s Galileo and other astronomers observed only about 50 sunspots over a 30-year period. Normally, the early scientists would have witnessed closer to 50,000. Scientists have also speculated for centuries about an intuitive link between the sun's intensity and Earth's climate. There is evidence of the sun causing short-term impacts on Earth's weather. The so-called Maunder Minimum, a time of low solar activity, lasted from about 1645 to 1715. During this time, access to Greenland was largely cut off by ice, and canals in Holland routinely froze solid, according to NASA. Glaciers advanced in the Alps, and sea ice increased so much that no open water flowed around Iceland in the year 1695. The latest observations show that the sun is even more mercurial than previous research could have found. "The sun is a variable star after all," Crooker said. Less protection from the sun's heliosphere may also make space exploration more dangerous, according to Crooker. Astronauts could encounter more lethal cosmic rays without the sun's protection, for example. Most of the effects of a shrinking heliosphere, however, will be felt billions of miles beyond Pluto, at the edges of the sun's influence. If the solar wind stays weak, NASA's Voyager 1—launched in 1977 and now headed beyond our solar system—should reach the edge of the heliosphere earlier than expected, becoming the first craft to enter interstellar space.

Mission Sunset

Launched in 1990, the joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission has lasted four times longer than expected. The probe, which is slowly freezing to death and is expected to shut down within months, observed a dramatic slowdown in solar activity during its third and final orbit around the sun last year. While the demise of Ulysses is imminent, NASA will soon develop the Solar Probe mission, which will fly close to the sun to determine what heats its corona—the outer layer—and accelerates solar wind.

Oldest Ice in North America Hints at Hardy Tundra

The oldest ice ever found in North America shows that ancient permafrost withstood periods of warming, a new study says. Scientists fear that modern permafrost—soil that remains frozen in the polar regions—may melt and release potentially huge reservoirs of carbon that would speed global warming, scientists say.
But the new study suggests that such a thaw could take much longer than previously believed, according to study leader Duane Froese, a geology professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Estimated to be at least 740,000 years old, the wedges of Canadian ice illustrate the longevity and resiliency of deeper permafrost during warmer climates of the past, they say. The findings counter previously held theories that permafrost in Alaska and in Canada's central Yukon Territory thawed about 120,000 years ago, during a period warmer than today.

The study appears in the journal Science.

Ash and Ice

Ice wedges are formed in frigid dry areas when temperatures get so cold that the ground cracks open. Water runoff from spring thaws fills the vertical cracks in the earth and then freezes, creating a vein of ice that builds outward with each passing year. The ancient ice wedge studied by Froese and his team was found buried under layers of volcanic ash and sediment in a mining area in Canada's central Yukon Territory. When gold miners exposed the ancient ice vein, they also uncovered a layer of volcanic ash immediately covering the ice wedge, the researcher explained. "What was unique about this situation is we had volcanic ash we could date," Froese said. Volcanic ash can help scientists determine the age of ice that is older than the range of radiocarbon dating, which spans about 50,000 years, Froese explained. It's a strategy often used in volcanic regions, such as New Zealand, Alaska, and Iceland, he added. The team recovered 740,000-year-old ash from the 4-inch (10-centimeter) thick layer covering the ice wedge over a 160-foot (50-meter) area. The layer of ash was made up of small glass grains that the team then dated used a radiometric technique. "We cannot directly determine the age of the ground ice, but we can determine the age of the overlying volcanic ash, providing a minimum age for the ground ice," said John Westgate, a geologist at the University of Toronto and co-author of the study. Froese said this means the permafrost under the ash has not disappeared since at least that time. "What it tells us is that the deeper part of permafrost has been stable for a long time," he said. It's not surprising that permafrost dating back more than 700,000 years has been found, said Larry Hinzman, director of the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. "It has been assumed there was very old, ancient permafrost. This is the first evidence," Hinzman said.

Deep Freeze

Ice-rich permafrost holds together Arctic ground that would turn to "soup" if thawed. That melting threatens basic infrastructure in inhabited polar regions, such as pipelines, roads, and airport runways. Lead study author Froese emphasized that the study's findings do not suggest permafrost melting is not occurring. But the thaw may take much longer than in other areas of the Arctic that are rapidly crumbling, such as glaciers and sea ice. Although deep permafrost may thaw slowly, shallow layers is "where the action will take place" by melting faster and releasing large stores of carbon trapped in the ice, Froese said.

Red Glowing Fish Discovered

Enneapterygius pusillus has found a creative way to communicate with other fish in a world dominated by blues and greens: The fish literally glows red. At least 32 species of reef fish that live at depths below 33 feet (10 meters) possess this unique method of signaling, researchers said in a September 2008 study. Because the color red has a longer wavelength and fish are better attuned to seeing colors with shorter wavelengths (such as green and blue), scientists had thought red was irrelevant to fish. "Marine fish are generally assumed not to see or use red light, with the exception of some deep-sea fish," lead researcher Nico Michiels of the University of Tuebingen in Germany said in an email. "Our discovery shows that there is a lot of red fluorescence that is very indicative of an active role of red in fish communication."


The study appeared recently in the journal BMC Ecology.

--Kimberly Johnson
—Photographs by Michiels et al./BMC Ecology 2008

Rare Albino Alligators Stolen in Brazil

Seven rare albino alligators recently disappeared from a Brazilian university zoo, and authorities suspect animal smugglers stole them.The apparent theft at the Federal University of Mato Grosso was carried out between last Monday, when the alligators were last fed, and last Wednesday morning, when a zookeeper noticed their disappearance, zoo director Itamar Assumpção told the Associated Press. There were no signs of a break-in, he added. "We believe they may have been stolen to be sold abroad or to animal smugglers here in Brazil," said a Brazilian police official, who asked not to be identified because of departmental regulations. Brazil accounts for about 15 percent of the world's illegal animal trading, which is worth 10 billion to 20 billion U.S. dollars annually, according to Renctas, a Brazilian non-governmental organization that combats animal trafficking. These alligators are extremely rare and are worth about 9,700 U.S. dollars apiece, zoo Director Assumpção said. "We know of no albino alligator born in the wild, probably because it would be impossible for it to survive," he said. "The lack of coloring would make it difficult if not impossible for them to hide from predators." The albino alligators, born around 2005, are the result of ten years of inbreeding that began shortly after a breeder sent the zoo a male and female alligator that were much lighter than normal. The suspected thieves left behind one alligator, which belonged to the same brood as those stolen. Another two are currently at the São Paulo Aquarium, Assumpção said.

World's oldest ice skates was made by Finns

Ice-skating—the oldest human-powered means of transportation—was invented in Finland not for fun but for survival, according to a new study. Skates made from animal bones have been found throughout Scandinavia and Russia, including some that date back to around 3000 B.C. The wide dispersal of the ancient artifacts has made it difficult for archaeologists to pin down exactly when and where ice-skating first developed. Now scientists from Italy and the United Kingdom have calculated that people living in what is now southern Finland would have benefited the most from skating on the crude blades. The researchers showed that people traveling across the region's frozen lakes reduced their physical energy cost by 10 percent. By contrast, skaters in other northern European countries would have had only a one percent energy reduction.

"People developed this ingenious locomotion tool in order to travel more quickly and by using not as much energy as if they had walked around all the lakes," said study co-author Federico Formenti of the University of Oxford in England. The study appears in this month's issue of the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society of London.

Leather Straps

Southern Finland has more lakes within 40 square miles (about 100 square kilometers) than any other region in the world. "I think ice-skating happened in [this] area because of the several long and thin lakes that people had to cross in order to get around, hunting for food or for any daily activity," Formenti said. "Those lakes froze during the long winters, when sunlight was there only for a few hours per day."

The earliest skates were made mostly of horse bones, but other bones were also used depending on the animals available, Formenti said. Holes carved in the ends of the bones were likely strung with leather straps tied around the skaters' feet. Woodcuts from the 1500s show bone skates being used together with a stick, which was pushed between the legs to help the user pick up speed. To study the energy efficiency of this early ice-skating, Formenti's team tested replicas of bone skates at an ice rink in the Italian Alps. The researchers measured five skaters' heart rates, oxygen intake, and speed while maneuvering on the blades. The skates took some time to get used to, Formenti said, but "once you get the movement pattern, they glide really well."

"The oily external surface of the animal bones makes a natural wax which limits resistance to motion."

The team then constructed mathematical models and computer simulations of energy use for 240 6-mile (10-kilometer) skating trips across different parts of northern Europe. "This research suggests that ancient Finland would have been the most practical birthplace of the now popular winter sport," the authors write in their paper. Other studies by the same scientists have shown how fast and how far people could skate at various times in history, as bone blades gave way to iron and then to steel. The earliest skaters were probably not fast. The people testing the bone skates for the latest study reached an average speed of about 5 miles (8 kilometers) an hour. Modern speed skaters, on the other hand, can reach speeds of up to 37 miles (60 kilometers) an hour.

Skates and Skis

Steven Vogel is a biology professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who was not involved in the study. The skating research is "especially important, because just about no one else does this kind of thing—showing how biomechanical work can reveal things about history, prehistory, and anthropology," Vogel said. Like with ice skates, other modes of transportation probably developed as people searched for more efficient ways of getting around, Formenti added. "Cross-country skis … seem to have developed in Scandinavia at about the same time as bone skates," he said. "In Scandinavia there were heavy snowfalls, and skis allowed people to move around the woods without sinking in the snow with bare feet." Long, flat skis redistribute the wearer's weight, lessening the depth of each step, while heat from friction melts a thin layer of snow underneath, allowing the wearer to glide over the terrain. "The origins of skis and skates as passive tools enhancing human-powered locomotion share common roots, probably small wooden plates," Formenti said. "These became longer and wider skis on snow or shorter and thinner plates—and, for sure, animal bones—used to glide on ice."

Elite graves found in Mexico City

A structure believed to be an 800-year-old Aztec pyramid has been discovered in central Mexico City and could drastically revise the early history of the ancient empire, officials announced. The structure was found inside a larger pyramid known as the Grand Temple at the site of the Aztec city of Tlatelolco.

If the age of the edifice is confirmed, the discovery could push back the age of Tlatelolco—as well as that of its nearby "twin city" Tenochtitlán—by a century or more, said Salvador Guilliem of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History. Guilliem, who is leading an archaeological effort to study Tlatelolco, said the structure's construction suggests it could have been built as early as A.D. 1100 or 1200, at least a century earlier than historical accounts suggest the city was founded. While Guilliem's team continues to work on determining the new pyramid's age, the researchers have already uncovered new insights into the Grand Temple.

"Until now we thought Tlatelolco's Grand Temple had seven phases of construction," Guilliem told National Geographic News. "Now we know that there are eight." The team also used ground-penetrating radar to locate a series of other structures near the Grand Temple containing human remains and grave offerings. "We dug 2 meters [6.5 feet] and found an offering of green stones and five skulls," Guilliem said. The remains—belonging to four adults and a child—appear to have been positioned with heads turned toward the north and bodies to the south, he added. "We will explore more next season, but we think this building corresponds to the military elite," he said. Modern interpretations of Aztec legends say Tlatelolco was built around A.D. 1358, the same year as Tenochtitlán, although archaeological evidence has cast doubt on that date in recent years, experts say.

"If true, the date of this pyramid fits with many other archaeological finds that reveal evidence of Aztec occupation earlier than the traditional dates," said Susan Gillespie, a University of Florida anthropologist. The find could also shed light on the poorly understood early relationship between Tlatelolco—a massive market province—and Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital and one of Mesoamerica's largest cities. "The nature of Tlatelolco and Tenochtitlán's entwined origins and histories remains one of the underexplored mysteries of the Aztec era," Gillespie said. The new discovery could challenge the notion that Tenochtitlán was the dominant twin during the early, entangled development of the two Aztec provinces, said Michael Smith, an Aztec expert at Arizona State University.

"There are vague traces in the historical sources that Tlatelolco may have been more powerful than Tenochtitlán in its early decades," he said. "If there was indeed a large pyramid in Tlatelolco in the Early Aztec period, given that no such find exists in Tenochtitlán, it may suggest that Tlatelolco was indeed the dominant city in their early years. That would be significant."

What's Inside the Pyramid?

Guilliem and his colleagues believe that an offering to Tezcatlipoca Black, the Aztec god of commerce, will be found inside the newly discovered pyramid. Guilliem theorizes that workers intentionally broke into the smaller pyramid in 1368 while building a subsequent phase. "When they broke it, it is very probable that they deposited a deity that's likely to be Tezcatlipoca," he said. "They most likely deposited an offering to the deity [Tezcatlipoca Black], conducted a ceremony, [and] then closed it again." The team also wants to determine if the Grand Temple at Tenochtitlán has a similar stage of construction—a key to untangling the early power balance between the two city-states, Guilliem said Gillespie, the University of Florida anthropologist, said such a comparison could yield crucial clues to the dynamics of the ancient Aztec cities. "The great temple at Tenochtitlán similarly had many cached offerings as part of the different building phases," Gillespie said. "It will be interesting to see how the Tlatelolcan corpus of offerings compares to that of Tenochtitlán."

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Alaskas sea drlling will harm animals

Environmental groups are condemning a government plan to open sea floor off the northwest coast of Alaska to petroleum leases, saying the decision was based on incomplete information and seriously threatens already burdened arctic species.

The U.S. Minerals Management Agency planned the sale in the Chukchi Sea without taking into account changes in the Arctic brought on by global warming, and the agency proposed insufficient protections for polar bears, walrus, whales, and other species that could be harmed by drilling rigs or spills, according to the groups. The lease sale in an area nearly 46,000 square miles (120,000 square kilometers) big—slightly smaller than the state of Pennsylvania—was planned without information as basic as the polar bear and walrus populations, said Pamela A. Miller, Arctic coordinator with Northern Alaska Environmental Center.

The lease sale is among the largest acreage offered in the Alaska region.

"The Minerals Management Service is required to have preleasing baseline data sufficient to determine the post-leasing impacts of the oil and gas activities that will occur," Miller said. "They simply do not have that." The MMS announced it would hold a lease sale on February 6 in Anchorage for the ocean floor on the outer continental shelf of the Chukchi Sea, the body of water that begins north of the Bering Strait and stretches between northwest Alaska and the northern coast of the Russian Far East. The MMS is a branch of the Interior Department. Among its stated aims is the management of ocean energy and mineral resources on the outer continental shelf.

The Hypersonic Age is Near

Recent breakthroughs in scramjet engines could mean two-hour flights from New York to Tokyo. They could also mean missiles capable of striking any continent in a moment's notice. No wonder the race to develop them is as fierce as ever.

Last March, engineers from Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) gathered in the control room of a high-temperature tunnel at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. After a countdown, a jet of blue flame fueled by methane gas roared down the 12-foot length of the tunnel. A low rumble crept into the control room. It sounded like a rocket firing, which actually wasn't far from the truth.

"Okay to inject," a test director announced when the flame had reached full force. An angular pedestal covered in bolted copper plates rose from the floor of the chamber, placing an experimental scramjet engine called the X-1 into the inferno. "AOA modulating," called the test director as the engine tilted slightly. "Model on centerline." Then, "We are in ignition." And with that, an exhaust flame even hotter than the 2,000°F-plus methane jet around it began to dance behind the activated engine, growing brighter as it ramped up to full thrust. After one minute, the engine shut down and descended through the floor.

The test was part of the X-51A Flight Test Program, a research project funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the Pentagon's research arm. The X-51A project is, in turn, one piece of a global effort—part collaboration, part race—to build jet-powered aircraft that fly as fast as rocket ships. And the technology that will make this breakthrough possible is the scramjet, an engine that inhales air at tremendous speeds, squeezes the air until it's thousands of degrees hot, and then mixes that air with fuel to generate massive thrust at higher speeds than any other jet-engine design.

The X-1 scramjet engine, which will eventually power the X-51A aircraft, is the most advanced scramjet engine ever built. The blowtorch blasting through the chamber was meant to simulate the extreme heat generated by flying faster than Mach 6. In all, the team at Langley would repeat this test 44 times. "We tested it at Mach 4.6, 5.0 and 6.5," says Curtis Berger, the X-51A program manager at PWR. "The amount of time that this thing was actually running and creating thrust was just about 17.8 minutes." He pauses to let that sink in. "Over 17 minutes of time on this engine. That's a lot of time for a scramjet engine."

To put things in context, the world's fastest jet, the Air Force's SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, set a speed record of Mach 3.3 in 1990 when it flew from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., in just over an hour. That's about the limit for jet engines; the fastest fighter planes barely crack Mach 1.6. Scramjets, on the other hand, can theoretically fly as fast as Mach 15—nearly 10,000 mph.

This could mean two-hour flights from New York to Sydney. It could also mean missiles capable of hitting targets on another continent at a moment's notice, and when you put it that way, it's not surprising that militaries around the world—the U.S., Australia, China and perhaps others—are trying to build them. After decades on the drawing board, it seems scramjet technology is finally about to arrive.

Squirrels use ''snake perfume'' to fool predators

To mask their odor from rattlesnakes, California ground squirrels and rock squirrels chew on sloughed-off snake skin and smear it on their fur, according to a new study.

The act most likely persuades the predators that another snake, not a squirrel, is in the area.

"To our knowledge this is the first case where has been tested systematically and shown to have an anti-predator function—protecting the squirrel from rattlesnake predation," said study lead author Barbara Clucas. Clucas, a graduate student in animal behavior at the University of California, Davis, said she first noted this behavior in 2002. She saw rock squirrels at Caballo Lake State Park in New Mexico licking themselves to apply chewed snake skin to their flanks, tails, and rear ends, which gave them the pungent, musky scent of a rattlesnake. In 2003 she saw California ground squirrels at Lake Solano County Park in California doing the same thing. Her team's study of the squirrels appeared in the November issue of the journal Animal Behaviour.

Asteroid could hit Mars

A newly discovered hunk of space rock has a 1 in 75 chance of slamming into the Red Planet on January 30, scientists said Thursday.

(Click picture to enlarge)

"These odds are extremely unusual," said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We frequently work with really long odds when we track ... threatening asteroids."

The Odds

The asteroid, known as 2007 WD5, was discovered in late November and is similar in size to an object that hit remote central Siberia in 1908, unleashing energy equivalent to a 15-megaton nuclear bomb and wiping out 60 million trees.

Scientists tracking the asteroid, currently halfway between Earth and Mars, initially put the odds of impact at 1 in 350 but increased the chances this week. Scientists expect the odds to diminish again early next month after getting new observations of the asteroid's orbit, Chesley said.
"We know that it's going to fly by Mars and most likely going to miss, but there's a possibility of an impact," he said.

Excited, Not Afraid

If the asteroid does smash into Mars, it will probably hit near the planet's equator, close to where the rover Opportunity has been exploring the Martian plains since 2004. The robot is not in danger because it lies outside the impact zone. With the space rock moving at a speed of 8 miles (13 kilometers) a second, a collision would carve a hole into Mars the size of the famed Meteor Crater in Arizona. In 1994, fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked into Jupiter, creating a series of overlapping fireballs in space. Astronomers have yet to witness an asteroid impact with another planet.

"Unlike an Earth impact, we're not afraid, but we're excited," Chesley said.

The worlds largest telescope

About half the size of a football field and 21 stories tall, the largest optical telescope ever constructed will use almost 1,000 mirrors to hunt for exoplanets—and maybe even unlock the secrets of spacetime.

How to Capture the Cosmos

(Click picture to enlarge)

1. Collect the Light

Starlight hits the 138-foot-wide parabolic PRIMARY MIRROR(view picture above)—an array of 984 hexagonal panels, each one 330 pounds, 4.8 feet in diameter and two inches thick. The panels are so heavy that gravity actually causes them to shift very slightly as the scope moves, so three actuators under each panel flex 10 times per second to keep the mirror properly aligned. The light bounces up to the 20-foot-wide MIRROR A.

2. Reflect It

MIRROR A reflects and inverts light through a hole in MIRROR C onto the 13.8-foot MIRROR B, which directs light up to the reflective surface of MIRROR C.

3. Sharpen It

MIRROR C is a thin two-millimeter glass shell stretched over 5,000 actuators that push or pull to reshape the mirror's surface 1,000 times per second. This rapid action performs so-called adaptive optics—realigning light distorted by the atmosphere into a sharp image. Astronomers calculate the correct setting for this mirror using bright reference stars [see "Calibrating a Giant Scope," below].

4. Send It to a Sensor

Once corrected by the adaptive optics system, the light hits MIRROR D, 8.9 feet in diameter, which moves up to 20 times per second to keep the reference star aligned against vibrations from wind hitting the structure. This mirror reflects the starlight to a DETECTOR, which houses a camera that captures images, and to instruments that astronomers use to measure such phenomena as the speed at which the universe is expanding.

Calibrating a Giant Scope

Atmospheric turbulence and airborne particles scatter starlight as it heads toward ground-based telescopes, so astronomers calibrate the European Extremely Large Telescope's optics using bright reference stars in the same field of view as the target object. The rippled light wave hits each pixel on MIRROR C at slightly different times. The adaptive optics system morphs the mirror's surface so that the light hits each pixel at the same time, creating a clear image. But if an object has no nearby stars, astronomers make their own reference stars: Five or six lasers, known as a laser guide-star system, excite sodium ions 56 miles up in the atmosphere to create artificial beacons.

How Do You Clean This Thing?

The E-ELT will collect nearly as much dust as it does starlight, but simply washing the mirror with water isn't an option because the cracks between each panel could allow moisture into the electronics. Instead, telescope cleaners will spray ultrapure, cooled carbon dioxide "snow" over the primary mirror. The CO2 binds to the dust particles as it falls onto the mirror's surface and, as it evaporates, takes most of the dust with it. With normal wear and tear, the mirrors will need a fresh coating of reflective material, most likely aluminum, every few years.