Sun Unleashes Biggest Solar Flare of the Year Yet

http://www.livescience.com/28662-sun-biggest-solar-flare-2013.html

      In the article Sun Unleashes Biggest Solar Flare of the Year Yet by Tariq Malik, the article describes the impact of the recent solar flare and how it effected humanity. The article explained that at around 3:16 a.m., radio connection was lost in many places of the world and was registered as a 6.5 sun storm. The article then went into detail on how an even greater storm might affect earth and how we can stay prepared. The number of the storms are ramping up and this is what studies have found, "Increased numbers of flares are quite common at the moment, since the sun's normal 11-year cycle is ramping up toward solar maximum, which is expected in late 2013." We will never know when a storm may occur however, we will always be ready.

            This article is significant to our everyday lives 

because we will not know when the next solar storm may be. We 

must stay prepared and stay out of harms way for solar storms 

could be deadly. This incident could happen any day to anyone

and it is very serious.

            There are very few critiques I have on this article. 

The one area where the author could have changed is how we as 

citizens can be prepared and alert. I wish that he gave us a few 

sentences that we could use to help us in this situation. Other 

than that, the article was interesting, educating, and important.

posted for J. McCann

Origin of Life: Power Behind Primordial Soup Discovered

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130404122234.htm

           

           In the article “Origin of Life: Power Behind Primordial Soup Discovered” researchers at the University of Leeds believe they have solved a key puzzle about how objects from space may have kindled life on Earth. While many believe that during the meteorite bombarding of the early Earth important ingredients for life came about. Before this discovery scientists have not been able to explain how living organisms sprung out of life less rocks. The new study shows how a chemical, similar to one now found in all living cells and vital for generating the energy to live. Scientists believe this chemical could have been created when meteorites containing phosphorus minerals landed in hot, acidic pools of liquids around volcanoes, which were common across the early Earth. All life on Earth use a process called chemiosmosis to create its energy to live. The chemical called ATP key for chemiosmosis to work is broken down and is changed during respiration to release energy used to drive the reactions of life. Due to the complex enzymes required for both the creation and break down of ATP are unlikely to have existed on Earth when it was bombarded. This made scientists look for a simpler chemical with similar properties to ATP, but that does not require enzymes to transfer energy. The scientists simulated the impact of a meteorite with the hot, volcanically active during early Earth. They placed samples of the Sikhote-Alin meteorite, an iron meteorite that fell in Siberia in 1947 and placed it in acid that was retrieved from the Hveradalur geothermal area in Iceland. The rock was left in the acid for over 30 days and observations were made. After the scientists found the compound pyrophosphate, the part of ATP responsible for energy transfer. The scientists concluded this compound could have acted as an earlier form of ATP.

            With the new idea that pyrophosphate acted as ATP in the early stages of the Earth and help living organisms spring out of life less rocks gives scientist a stronger grasp on what earth and its surroundings were like before life. As scientists learn more about the Earth it will give them a better idea of how humans came to be and evolved over time. Also pyrophosphates are now being found of different planets, such as Mars. The Curiosity rover on Mars recently reported the presence of phosphorus on the Planet. One of scients part of this experiment was found saying "If Curiosity has found phosphorus in one of the forms we produced in Iceland, this may indicate that conditions on Mars were at one point suitable for the development of life in much the same way we now believe it developed on Earth," added Dr Kee. With this new develop this could prove that Earth is not only planet that has living organisms.

            Even though I found the article to be good I found it to be boring and some parts. Also, I found the peace to be hard to follow at points; you had to have some scientific back round to understand what the author was talking about. Overall I found the peace to have an interesting topic. 

posted for L. Lynch

Blacks Have Same Gene Changes as Whites, Alzheimer Study Finds

          I read the article “Blacks Have Same Gene Changes as Whites, Alzheimer Study Finds”, written by Gina Kolata. This article is based on a research that was able to prove that African Americans have a higher risk of obtaining Alzheimer than a European. They tested some older people and found that African Americans with Alzheimer’s were more likely to have the gene ABCA₇ that is actually thought to cause this disease. Another gene APoE₄ also causes the disease but it is equally found in African Americans as whites. They tell us more about the experimenting. They say that they used “6,000 African-Americans who were over age 60 and had participated in studies at 18 medical centers.” They were able to prove that the gene ABCA₇ increased the risk for African Americans by 80% and for Europeans only 10-20%. Some scientists or doctors argue that the relationship between these studies is not really significant. Dr. Hardy explained that there could have been a slight variation in the gene of African Americans and there is no historical reason as to why this gene gives them Alzheimer.

           I think that this study is important to humanity and making further conclusions in science. There was another study that because African Americans were slaves, if an African American and a white where raised exactly the same, the white would have a better IQ. This led to the belief that African Americans fell behind on education because of their slavery. These experiments on a population basis are important to understanding our world and the effects that different factors can have. Understanding these genes and how they work will only help in the long run whether a way is find to fix it so that it doesn’t cause the Alzheimer disease.

            I really enjoyed the article. I wish there was more of an explanation on why African Americans have the effect of having a higher risk of getting the disease because of the gene but was still interesting. The author did a good job of explaining the experimentation process and analyzing it. Many facts were also given about the topic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/health/african-americans-have-higher-risk-of-alzheimers-study-shows.html?ref=science&_r=0

posted for Y. Louka

Science Seminar April 3

Science Seminar Series

Presents

Naomi Schwartz

Doctoral student, Columbia University

Understanding the causes and effects

 of fire in the Peruvian Amazon

In recent years, wildfire activity has increased across the Amazon. In the past, fire was very rare there, so these changes could have big effects on biodiversity, ecosystems, and the carbon cycle. Most fires in the Amazon are started by people, either intentionally, through the use of fire for land management, or accidentally. Especially during drought years these fires can burn out of control into nearby forests. Naomi Schwartz is a Ph.D. student in ecology, evolution, and environmental biology at Columbia University. Her work uses a combination of ground and satellite measurements to understand the causes and effects of these fires in the Peruvian Amazon. She is especially interested in understanding the relationships between human activities and fire occurrence, and the effects of fire on secondary forests.

Wednesday, April 3

7 pm

Bronxville High School Auditorium

Closest Star System Found in a Century

                According to a paper that will be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, the third-closest star system to the Sun is discovered. The duo is the closest star system discovered since 1916. The discovery was made by Kevin Luhman, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University and a researcher in Penn State's Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds.  By combining the detections of the star system from the various surveys, Luhman was able to measure its distance via parallax, which is the apparent shift of a star in the sky due to Earth's orbit around the Sun. He then used the Gemini South telescope to obtain a spectrum of it, which demonstrated that it had a very cool temperature, and hence was a brown dwarf, which is star that are too small in mass to ever become hot enough to ignite hydrogen fusion. As a result, the newly discovered system is very cool and dim, resembling a giant planet like Jupiter more than a bright star like the Sun.


                The star system is named "WISE J104915.57-531906" because it was discovered in a map of the entire sky obtained by the NASA-funded Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite. It is only slightly farther away than the second-closest star, Barnard's star, which was discovered 6.0 light years from the Sun in 1916. The closest star system consists of Alpha Centauri, found to be a neighbor of the Sun in 1839 at 4.4 light years, and the fainter Proxima Centauri, discovered in 1917 at 4.2 light years. “The distance to this brown dwarf pair is 6.5 light years -- so close that Earth's television transmissions from 2006 are now arriving there,” Luhman said. “It will be an excellent hunting ground for planets because it is very close to Earth, which makes it a lot easier to see any planets orbiting either of the brown dwarfs. Since it is the third-closest star system, in the distant future it might be one of the first destinations for manned expeditions outside our solar system,” Luhman said.


                 I think it’s an excellent article about the new discovery of the new star system.  The author included a lot of quotes from professor Luhman, which made it well-informed while interesting.  There are also descriptions of how Luhman found out that it’s 6.5 light years from Sun— parallax, which is closely related to the topic we are studying now.  It increases my knowledge on the classification of dwarf stars.  Overall, I really enjoyed reading the article, and I hope there are further discoveries soon.

“Radiation ring around Earth mysteriously appears, then dissipates”

            This article was very interesting, and insightful. It talks about the rings of energetic charged particles that float high above the Earth’s surface. Normally there are two of these rings floating above Earth, and previous to last September, scientists did not know there could be a different number of rings. Normally, the inner-most ring in made mostly of protons and some electrons, and the outer zone is dominated by electrons. On August 30, NASA launched twin space probes to study the fine details of disruptions in these rings, and just days after the probes were launched, researchers led by Daniel Baker watched a third ring grow between the two existing ones. After a month, this ring disappeared, but so did the outer ring, and in the following months the outer ring returned.

            This discovery provides some very important, previously unknown information about these rings of high-energy particles.  In the words of Yuri Shprits of the University of California, “this most important region of space where most of the satellites operate presents us with new puzzles.” This discovery, and the monitoring of these rings by NASA’s space probes, provide some extremely important information that will prevent the loss of some satellites.

            I thought this article was very interesting, and was made pretty well. One thing that I wish was done differently was that I would have liked there to be some more information about the composition of the rings, and possibly a little more information about the new ring that appeared. Overall, I liked how the information in this article was presented, and I thought it was very informative.

Solar System Planet Projects

This quarter's project assignment for the Core Earth Science students was to prepare a PowerPoint Presentation on a planet or heavenly body within our solar system.

Alberghine Frayne Venus by Charles Ippolito

Connor Elder Uranus by Charles Ippolito

Drygulski Neptune Presentation by Charles Ippolito

Giangola Mroz Mercury by Charles Ippolito

Grant Huang Io by Charles Ippolito

Huncke SUN by Charles Ippolito

Louka Owen Jupiter by Charles Ippolito

Lynch Shultz Earth Ppt by Charles Ippolito

McCann Walsh Mars by Charles Ippolito

Minoli Redpath Saturn by Charles Ippolito

Chrappa Gay Mars by Charles Ippolito