Kepler Telescope Discovers 715 New Planets

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope may be down, but it’s not out, and its data collection is the gift that keeps giving.

Scientists on Wednesday announced the discovery of 715 new exoplanets. As the largest windfall of validated planets the space agency has ever revealed at one time, it doubles the number of planets known to humanity outside our solar system.

All of these planets exist within multi-planet systems similar to our own, and 95 percent are smaller than Neptune. Four are even within the habitable zone, which means they could theoretically support life-giving liquid water on their surfaces.

“We’ve been able to open the bottleneck to access the mother lode and deliver to you more than 20 times the planets than had ever been announced previously,” said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center.

Kepler’s latest delivery opens up fresh territory, allowing astronomers to study both individual planets and their configurations within planetary systems.

Since Kepler launched in March 2009, it has identified more than 3,600 possible exoplanets, but most have yet to be confirmed — a process that requires further observation of each candidate world. To this point, confirming planets has been a laborious, slow process. However, scientists used a new statistical technique to open the bottleneck and find hundreds of new planets with relative ease.

Kepler detects planetary candidates by measuring the brief dimming of a star’s brightness as an object passes in front of it, which is called the transit method. This scientific trick is more than 90 percent accurate, but non-planetary bodies can show up as false positives — like when one star crosses in front of another in a binary system.

The new technique, called verification by multiplicity, allowed scientists to weed out instances that couldn’t possibly have been caused by eclipsing stars, eliminating the false-positive problem.

The multiplicity method relies partly on the logic of probability. Distinguishing between a planet orbiting a star and a star orbiting  a star is difficult. But when a third body appears in a transit signal, the chance it is another star is less than 1 percent. A trio of orbiting stars likely wouldn’t line up the way Kepler likes, with two stars passing directly in front of the third, blocking its light and creating the dips that Kepler sees. So when astronomers see Keplerian evidence of a third body, they can be almost certain they’ve found more planets.

Kepler observed hundreds of stars with multiple planet candidates, and careful study of this sample allowed scientists to verify this next big batch of worlds.

“We built upon a lot of past work that has been vetted and reused by the community,” said Sara Seager, professor of Physics and Planetary Science at MIT. “It has a new aspect to it based on probability.”

The multiplicity technique will help scientists efficiently pore through the remaining two years of data from Kepler, which will likely yield hundreds more verified exoplanets.

Photo credit: Kepler Mission/NASA

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Arctic Air Spills South, Southern Air Spills North

Departure from average temperatures for Feb. 27, 2014, as forecast by the GFS model. (Source: Data/image obtained using Climate Reanalyzer™ http://cci-reanalyzer.org/, Climate Change Institute, University of Maine, USA.)

Baby, it’s cold outside — again, especially for residents of the Upper Midwest who’ve been beset with repeated Arctic blasts this winter.

But as in previous episodes, that’s only part of the story, as the graphic above illustrates. It shows the forecast departure from normal temperature over the Northern Hemisphere. Notice that while the eastern half of the United States is shivering, large parts of the higher latitudes are considerably warmer than normal.

Once again a loopy jet stream is to blame. Click on the thumbnail at right to see what it looks like.

The map shows the jet stream as forecast by the GFS model for today. A sharp trough of low pressure has dropped down across much of the eastern half of the United States, opening to door for Arctic air to spill south.

The latest Arctic blast comes on a day when the Royal Society and National Academy of Sciences have released an overview of climate change, written in non-scientific language and targeted at general audiences. I’m sure pundits will use the cold temperatures some people are experiencing in the United States to deride the report. But as the map above shows, they will be telling only part of the story.

The new report addresses the issue of cold snaps in a warming world. Here’s part of what it has to say:

Global warming is a long-term trend, but that does not mean that every year will be warmer than the previous one. Day to day and year to year changes in weather patterns will continue to produce some unusually cold days and nights, and winters and summers, even as the climate warms.

The report provides a clear, straightforward and relatively concise overview of the evidence for climate change, and what’s causing it. I recommend that you check it out, and also pass it along to anyone you know who is puzzled about the issue — including anyone shivering under the latest blanket of Arctic air and wondering what happened to global warming.

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Male Goats' Stench Activates Female Goats' Reproductive System

Male goats reek. Yet somehow, their mere presence can turn female goats on. Now scientists think they have figured out how this “male effect” works: They’ve discovered a citrus-scented chemical that males emit that speaks directly to females, activating their reproductive brain region and ramping up their sex hormones.

The study is the first to uncover a single molecule that could be activating the entire female reproductive center, according to the researchers.

Pheromones are chemicals released by the body to trigger particular reactions in members of the same species—in the case of sex pheromones, members of the opposite sex. All mammals have sex pheromones, and they come in two kinds: releaser and primer.

Releaser pheromones trigger behavioral responses in the brains of potential mates. The include things like attraction, for example, but the effects are pretty fleeting. Primer pheromones, on the other hand, have been much harder to pin down. They elicit actual physiological changes in the body that are much longer lasting—things like the release of reproductive hormones responsible for ovulation and menstruation.

But scientists hadn’t been able to isolate or identify these primer hormones in mammals until a team in Japan figured out how.

The researchers determined that the pheromones of interest were secreted from the skin on male goats’ heads. To capture these chemicals, the scientists fashioned custom-made caps for the goats that could adsorb (not absorb) them. Two groups of goats—one castrated and one not—donned the special hats for a week, allowing the researchers to collect and identify the chemicals coming from the goat noggins via gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The researchers found several chemical compounds coming from the uncastrated goats that were missing from the sterile males. Many of them had never been found in nature before.

Next up was determining if and how the females would react to these chemicals. The researchers used electrodes to monitor neural activity in conscious female goat brains. They looked specifically at the hypothalamus, the particular region of the brain controls hormones, among other things.

When the female goats whiffed some male goat hair in a plastic cup, the scent activated something called the gonadotrpin-releasing hormone pulse generator. That’s a fancy way of saying it activated the master switch for all reproductive hormones. But here’s the kicker: the females’ reproductive systems were also turned on by the chemical compounds isolated in the lab.

One particular compound called 4-ethyloctanal triggered a really strong response, enough so that the researchers are pretty convinced it is the elusive primer pheromone. As further proof, when the chemical is exposed to the atmosphere, it oxidizes to become 4-ethyloctanoic acid—the main ingredient in the stench for which male goats are famous. The researchers think their results, published in Current Biology, could explain the power of the “male effect” in goats and could help us better understand how pheromones regulate reproduction in other mammals, including humans.

Image credit: Dudarev Mikhail/Shutterstock

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Swirling Cyclone Bears Down on California

As I write this, California is being lashed by rain and wind from a storm bringing much needed moisture — but which also threatens to cause some havoc in the form of mudslides and flooding.

Here’s how the National Weather Service in Los Angeles described it in their forecast discussion this morning:

A VIGOROUS WINTER STORM WILL AFFECT THE AREA THROUGH SATURDAY. EXPECT RAIN...MOUNTAIN SNOW...GUSTY WINDS...POSSIBLE THUNDERSTORMS...WATERSPOUTS...URBAN FLOODING...AND MUD AND DEBRIS FLOWS NEAR RESENT BURN AREAS. RAINFALL WILL BE INTENSE AT TIMES. A CLEARING AND DRYING TREND WILL START SUNDAY AFTERNOON. CLEAR WITH A WARMING TREND FOR EARLY NEXT WEEK.

Waterspouts?!

In the gallery above, you won’t see any of those. These images are various satellite views of the swirling cyclone that is bringing both relief and risk to California today and through tomorrow.

The first is a visualization of the storm’s cyclonic winds, as forecast by supercomputers. I chose it to lead off the gallery because it really emphasizes the structure of this powerful storm.

The next three images come from the GOES-13 weather satellite. The first is a true-color image of the storm. Next is a picture that shows water vapor over the Pacific. And in the third, North American is seen in the infra-red portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. I included this one because it shows the broader geographic context — and just how huge the storm is.

After the GOES satellite imagery comes two images captured by NASA’s Aqua satellite on Thursday, February 27. The first is in natural color, and it too emphasizes the sheer size of the storm. But I’m also intrigued by the much smaller cyclone-like pattern of clouds to the east, closer to the West Coast.

The second Aqua image is in false-color. Based on light in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum and short-wave infrared, this color scheme is good for revealing snow and ice — including small ice crystals in high-level clouds, which appear reddish-orange or peach. (This is the 3-6-7 band combination of Aqua’s MODIS instrument. For more detailed information, go here.)

Lastly, an image showing total precipitable water over the Pacific. The colors give an indication of the amount of atmospheric water vapor from the top of the atmosphere to the surface. It really emphasizes the tropical source of the moisture now dumping on California.

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February's Sci-shimi: Chestnuts, Chloroplasts, and Conferences, Oh My!

Welcome to Sci-shimi, my monthly roundup of  great science online! Like a delicious, fresh platter of sashimi, these tasty links are meant to be shared —???????? ! 

This month’s mind-blowing science moment: Meet the woman who developed a way to run 30 blood tests with a single drop.

Best long-read: Resurrecting a forest, in which Carl Zimmer explains how genetic tinkering may help bring back the American chestnut, complete with a time-lapse video:

Best non-science long-read: The dark power of fraternities by Caitlin Flanagan (with the best opening paragraph of all time).

Extra-special shout out to Danielle Lee, butt-kicking science blogger, who was chosen this month as one of the White House’s Champions of Change. Danielle, you rock so hard it’s giving me whiplash!

“That in spite of what we have learned, we can persist in being knowingly and brutally cruel—as inhumane and unfeeling as we once regarded all other animals to be.” Powerful words from Virginia Morell on the Taiji dolphin slaughter.

Who is the best thrower in the animal kingdom? The why—not the who—might surprise you, says Jason Goldman.

Talk about changing for the one you love—lemurs in love smell alike.

Vultures don’t follow dead animals; they wait where animals die, explains Allie Wilkinson.

Stunning photos show the inner workings of fish.

What is a plant without its chloroplasts?

Tiny robots, based on insects, that ARE THE SIZE OF INSECTS.

What does lava look like before it erupts from a volcano? Erik Klemetti explains.

Fish that climb rocks with their mouths.

The real Batman—what a bat skeleton looks like in our size.

The most beautiful animal you’ve never seen, by Rebecca Helm.

Andrew Revkin sums up California’s water troubles, and what is in store for the thirsty state.

So much for The Secret—the powerlessness of positive thinking.

Ferris Jabr delves into the giant minds of elephants.

A golden eagle takes down a deer. Seriously.

Ed Yong explains the mystery behind a graveyard of ancient whales.

Super Mario = quantum physics!

“Suns and beaches doesn’t sound like the stuff of nightmares. But the patient said that these dreams were, in fact, unspeakably horrible.”

Feb was a month of conferences: AAAS, Ocean Sciences, and ScienceOnline Together. Be sure to catch up on the twitter hashtags by clicking the links!

*This* is why I love #scio14. Talk art to me, music, theoretical physics, fame. Tell me why all my assumptions are wrong, tell me. Thank you

— LizNeeley (@LizNeeley) February 28, 2014

Bored kids are turning to twitter to amuse themselves. What does this say about the state of our education system

Cane toads prove they can take the heat, or lack thereof.

Love and hate—kinda the same thing, really.

Kyle Hill explains why the Walking Dead zombies have venom, not a virus

Horrifying image of animal research circulates the interwebs—except that it’s not a picture of animal research at all.

What would Miley Cyrus do (if she was into marine science)? #OceanMiley

Turns out, it’s pretty easy to put Miley on most stock oceanographic photos. Here she is deploying a CTD. pic.twitter.com/hZiA0ispPn

— Kim Martini (@rejectedbanana) February 15, 2014

What is dark energy? Matthew Francis explains.

Flying snakes (minus the plane)

Waste heat is free energy—energy crisis solved?

Academic scandal: more than 120 computer-generated papers have made their way onto the pages of respected journals.

How accurate is the movie Pompeii? Actually, not as far-fetched as you’d think.

Plastic ingestion in sea birds is worse than we thought.

A map that shows how historical human populations mixed.

How do mole get around? They swim through the ground.

Have something to add? Tweet me link suggestions with the hashtag #scishimi!

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Crimea as Seen in Satellite Images

A Google Earth image of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula, home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. (Source: Google Earth)

As I’m putting this post together, Ukraine has put its military on high alert, and Russian troops along with other forces have surrounded a number of Ukrainian military bases on the Crimean Peninsula — home to Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet.

Just a week after the end of the Sochi Olympics, the Russians have invaded Ukraine, and so there is now a risk of war in Europe. Hard to believe.

This isn’t a typical kind of topic for ImaGeo, but I thought I’d approach it by providing some remote sensing imagery of the region, and particularly Sevastopol, which has obvious military importance to the Russians, who have a long-term lease from Ukraine on their naval base there.

In the image above, you can see multiple ships docked in the harbor — many of them Russian naval vessels. How strong is the force there?

Here’s how Mark Galeotti, author of “Russian Security and Paramilitary Forces Since 1991,” and a professor at New York University, answered this question in a Q&A with the Washington Post:

Q. How strong is Russia’s Black Sea Fleet?

A. As a war-fighting force, it’s not particularly impressive. Its main vessel was basically built to fight other ships and so is only useful in fighting a naval war. It’s got the Moskva, an aging guided-missile cruiser; a large anti-submarine warfare cruiser — very dated; a destroyer and two frigates, which are more versatile; landing ships; and a diesel attack submarine. It’s not a particularly powerful force. The Italian navy alone could easily destroy it.

The port city of Sevastopol is seen here in a photograph taken on Expedition 20 of the International Space Station in 2009. (Source: NASA)

The city of Sevastopol spreads out along the deep indentation on the Black Sea coast seen in this photograph shot by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station. From this perspective, its utility as a naval base seems pretty clear.

The entire Crimean Peninsula is seen in this image acquired by NASA’s Terra satellite on June 10, 2013. (Source: NASA)

This isn’t the first time that Crimea has been invaded by foreign forces. Far, far from it. It belonged to both the Greek and Roman empires many centuries ago. At that time it was known as Taurica.

And that’s just the start of it. As a good backgrounder in the Washington Post puts it:

These weren’t the only outside forces that dominated Crimea, and at other points in its past it has been invaded or ruled by Gothic tribes, the Kievan Rus’ state, the Byzantium empire and the Mongols, among many others. From the mid-1400s it existed as the Crimean Khanate, a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire, during which time it became the center of a roaring slave trade.

The Crimean War left the peninsula in control of Russia in the mid-1800s. After the Russian Revolution, it became an autonomous region of the Soviet Union (with a very brief interlude as an autonomous state). The Nazis occupied the peninsula during WWII, and Sevastopol was nearly destroyed during fighting there.

The Red Army pushed the Nazis out in 1944 — and the Soviets proceeded to deport the region’s Tartars to Central Asia. Many died along the way. The Tartars were allowed to return after the fall of the Soviet Union. Not surprisingly, there is no love lost between them and the ethnic Russians on the peninsula, who make up more than 50 percent of the population now.

A Google Earth view of Crimea’s broad geographical context. (Source: Google Earth)

Lastly, this broad view gives a sense of Crimea’s strategic importance. For the Russians, the base at Sevastopol is one of just three that provide access to the world’s oceans. The others are in the Murmansk region on the Barents Sea, and Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean.

Let’s hope the current situation doesn’t spin out of control. There’s been enough blood spilled in this part of the world.

Here are some other articles worth reading on this developing situation:

“Among More Signs of Russian Force in Crimea, Delight Mixes With Dismay,” New York Times.

“Putin’s Playbook: The Strategy Behind Russia’s Takeover of Crimea,” The Atlantic.

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Nerds and Words: Week 9

I have dug through the Internet this week and uncovered all this geeky goodness. You can find the thousands of links from previous weeks here.

I have marked my favorite links with a 8. Enjoy.

Science to Read, Watch

The blind have more nightmares, and it gets more interesting from there

8 A whale graveyard where dozens of ancient giants met their end by something almost microscopic

Sock for the heart, and you’re to blame. You give science a good name

The fruit fly’s refusal to be monogamous tells us something about how intelligence evolved

When your friend is down, lend a helping trunk, elephants do

Giant scary birds were giant, scary, but probably not mammal-munchers

8 A wasp with a zombifying stinger able to sense its way through a cockroach brain in under a minute

The jewel wasp is the preeminent cockraoch brain surgeon

What does Smaug have in common with a beetle? More than you may think

Robots of a rotor synchronize their motors

“We are simultaneously on the precipice of several different cliffs.”

8 What’s better than talking science? Talking science with geeky 11-year olds! Listen here

Spiders can hear human activity and learn to work around it

“When we look into the eyes of an elephant, we should recognize an intellectual equal”

8 We bleed 500,000 horseshoe crabs a year for medical services we absolutely cannot get anywhere else

Why we should eat more (delicious) bugs to save the world

Watch the world’s fastest wire-bending machine forever

We have found a bacterium that kills Zebra mussels

A simple task that shows how important the scientific method is: Can You Solve This?

I honestly didn’t know how LEDs worked until Minute Physics explained it with electron spas and parties

8 Could A Skyrim Shout Ever Knock Someone Over?

Arachnophobes imagine spiders as bigger and closer than they really are (but they really are everywhere)

The rock that hit the moon had more energy than is released in the fission of 1 gram of U-235

“The Secret” assumes an extreme emotion is always good. It’s wrong: The Powerlessness of Positive Thinking

8 Why don’t we get outraged over the nonsense sold at Whole Foods?

Alan Alda wants to make scientists better communicators by making them actors, but really just more “human”

Visualizing 100,000 asteroids at once is of course beautiful

Have you thought of the invasive species crawling around beneath your feet?

The natural selection of oblong egg shape in seabirds, in one GIF

The Cassini spacecraft crosses Saturn’s ring plane, inadvertently photographs the best scifi book cover ever

Extreme Nerdery

8 GLaDOS makes an appearance in a NASA science explainer video

If you make your golf ball-powered rocket just right, you can score ALL the hole-in-ones

A True Detective infographic that is obsessive, speculative, and awesome, just like the show

There is a protist in a termite gut that is named Cthulhu

8 If everyone in The Hobbit was a lady. Fantastic

Incoming transmission Captain…

Eventually, Godzilla will be so big that no kaiju could take it down

8 My new favorite instrument can play the Super Mario theme better than anything

Kramer was right about the Ukraine in Risk

It had to happen: A robot that could destroy your Flappy Bird high-score

Sciencey GIFs and Images

8 Still little more chilling than nuclear testing in black and white

Chinese pest eradication poster, Ding Hao (1958)

A murmation of beautiful murmation photos

Set alcohol vapors alight and you get a gorgeous cross between a brain and a developing blastula

You saw the Moon and Saturn together, now see the GIF of the Moon eating Saturn

8 Besides brilliant science communication and funny comics, xkcd also makes actually useful infographics

Following only what’s in the games…prepare yourself…people ARE Pokemon

You guys, 3D WELDING

A GIF from MARS

8 A moist owlet

Pop Culture Happenings

8 Finally, some footage of Li Hongbo’s amazing paper sculptures

It’s exactly what we were worried about: Bill Nye Debate Sparked Funding ‘Miracle’

A History of Clickbait: The First 100 Years

Hyping Your Conspiracy Theory In 5 Easy Steps

8 A ticker tape of real-time porn search terms (very NSFW, very interesting)

Huh. Those “Do Drugs” pencils were real, and only changed after a kid noticed

Who Said It: Ted Nugent or Eric Cartman?

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