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Global update: Signature of first stars detected
The weak glimmer left behind by the first stars to colonize the early universe has been detected by astronomers. Using Nasa’s Spitzer space telescope and careful calculations, Alexander Kashlinsky, at the space agency’s Goddard space centre in Maryland, was able to pick out an infrared radiation pattern believed to be the remnant signature of energy from the universe’s first clusters of stars.
Unlike the stars we see today, the first stars are thought to have been lightweight, with no heavier elements such as carbon and oxygen. They were also gigantic: more than 100 times bigger than our sun. They were born when the universe was very young, a mere 100 million years old, and lived fast, burning brightly for just a few million years.
Now, more than 13bn years after the death of the stars, Dr Kashlinsky and his team think they have spotted the ancient flickering of these bodies. Using an infrared camera on board Spitzer they searched for electromagnetic ripples in the sky coming from stars that had long since burned out. Because the stars are so far away the light is still travelling towards us, appearing red due to the expansion of the cosmos.
To pick out the earliest stars the scientists painstakingly removed the signals coming from other stars and galaxies. What they were left with was a splotchy pattern of infrared radiation, which they believe represents the earliest clusters of stars in the universe. Their report appeared in the journal Nature recently.
Bird flu vaccine
Well-known pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline is developing a vaccine to combat an outbreak of bird flu in humans and increasing its production capabilities so it will be able to produce the huge quantities needed if there is a pandemic.
The company will start clinical trials of the vaccine at the start of next year and hopes to file for approval with the regulators by the end of 2006. Glaxo said that if necessary it could use its entire vaccine production line — in which it has invested heavily in recent years — to produce the treatment. No one knows whether this type of prototype vaccine for the avian flu virus — known as H5N1 — would match a humanized strain that could cause a pandemic. But such a vaccine might “prime” the immune system so that people would respond to a later, better-matched vaccine. — Dawn/The Guardian News Service
Robotic cars
The predictions of futurists have often fizzled on the subject of robots, which today can vacuum floors and play chess but not drive a car. However, an exciting demonstration several weeks ago in the Nevada desert suggests that technologists are getting closer than anybody realized to a robotic car.
Within about two years, the first car able to autonomously drive on freeways will be a reality, predicts Sebastian Thrun, Stanford University’s guru of robotic cars and the winner of the Pentagon’s Grand Challenge race in October.
The Grand Challenge, sponsored by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, pitted teams that had built cars able to autonomously navigate and drive an off-road course in the Nevada desert. The Stanford team won a $2-million prize for completing the course in the shortest time among a field of 23 finalists, five of which were able to cross the finish line. In a similar contest last year, not a single entry finished.
Thrun admits he is not much of an expert on cars, although he is director of one of a handful of artificial-intelligence laboratories nationwide that are directing serious attention to developing cars that can drive themselves. — Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times
Skyscrapers’ deadly faults
British scientists are completing a major study of the behaviour of World Trade Centre survivors in a bid to make Britain’s growing numbers of skyscrapers safer and easier to evacuate.
Key recommendations and suggestions include blaze-proof lifts, sky bridges linking high-rise buildings and curbs on mobile phones during evacuations. “It would add tragedy to tragedy if we did not learn from 9/11,” said the study’s leader, Prof Ed Galea of the University of Greenwich.
Galea and his team analysed the written accounts of 250 survivors of Sept 11, 2001, and found they show a startling variation in human behaviour. Almost half those working on floors below where the planes struck took more than five minutes to begin leaving the building. Incredibly, 5 per cent were still there more than an hour later.
“They sat at their computers while the building blazed,” he said. “It is astonishing. We also found most people had long mobile phone conversations to relatives during their evacuation. Such behaviour contrasts with the expectations of high-rise building designers. They assume people will exit in an orderly fashion in seconds of a fire alarm sounding.” — Dawn/The Guardian News Service (c) The Observer
Thirst in freshwater paradise
A shortage of water in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, one of the world’s largest sources of freshwater, might seem unconceivable, but it is real and should serve as a red alert to the irreversible tragedy that will unfold if deforestation is not curbed, warn experts consulted by Tierramérica.
Rivers and lakes nearly dry, hundreds of tons of dead fish, isolated villages supplied with food by helicopters, boats beached in the mud and people forced to walk kilometres to look for water are becoming a common sight in many parts of the southwest Brazilian Amazon.
Considered the worst in 50 years, the current drought has taken an especially heavy toll on the states of Acre and Amazonas. Local residents are still waiting for the emergency aid promised by the government, which has earmarked $14 million for this purpose.
In Acre, the four-month dry spell has left riverbeds without water, while fires are spreading uncontrollably through the forests because of the lack of moisture. —Dawn/The IPS News Service
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