LONDON, England (CNN) — A new space race is officially under way, and this one should have the sci-fi geeks salivating.

The project is a “space elevator,” and some experts now believe that the concept is well within the bounds of possibility — maybe even within our lifetimes.

A conference discussing developments in space elevator concepts is being held in Japan in November, and hundreds of engineers and scientists from Asia, Europe and the Americas are working to design the only lift that will take you directly to the one hundred-thousandth floor.

Despite these developments, you could be excused for thinking it all sounds a little far-fetched.

Indeed, if successfully built, the space elevator would be an unprecedented feat of human engineering.

A cable anchored to the Earth’s surface, reaching tens of thousands of kilometers into space, balanced with a counterweight attached at the other end is the basic design for the elevator.

It is thought that inertia — the physics theory stating that matter retains its velocity along a straight line so long as it is not acted upon by an external force — will cause the cable to stay stretched taut, allowing the elevator to sit in geostationary orbit.

The cable would extend into the sky, eventually reaching a satellite docking station orbiting in space.

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written by Andrew

PORTLAND, Maine - A ferocious-looking denizen of the deep that can gobble up whole urchins and crabs in a few swift chomps needs protection, according to a petition filed with the federal government.

The Conservation Law Foundation asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday to list the Atlantic wolffish — a species with large protruding teeth and a face that’s downright ugly — as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

The fish, also called an ocean catfish, is under pressure from commercial and recreational fishermen and could be wiped out if nothing is done, the Boston-based conservation group said.

"The fishing pressure is going to continue to haunt this fish right down to extinction unless something is done," said Peter Shelley, the foundation’s vice president.

The slow-growing, late-maturing wolffish lives along the rocky ocean bottom in 250- to 400-foot waters off New England. They can grow up to 5 feet long and weigh up to 40 pounds. Their powerful jaws and teeth can crush lobsters, urchins, clams, scallops and crabs.

Although the fish aren’t targeted by commercial fishermen, fishing nets and dredges that are dragged along the ocean bottom have destroyed much of the fish’s habitat, diminishing both their numbers and range, according to the conservation group.

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written by Andrew

LOS ANGELES - NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft has discovered evidence of past water at its Martian landing site and spotted falling snow for the first time, scientists reported Monday. Soil experiments revealed the presence of two minerals known to be formed in liquid water. Scientists identified the minerals as calcium carbonate, found in limestone and chalk, and sheet silicate.

But exactly how that happened remains a mystery.

"It’s really kind of all up in the air," said William Boynton, a mission scientist at the University of Arizona at Tucson.

A laser aboard the Phoenix recently detected snow falling from clouds more than two miles above its home in the northern arctic plains. The snow disappeared before reaching the ground.

Phoenix landed in the Martian arctic plains in May on a three-month mission to study whether the environment could be friendly to microbial life. One of its biggest discoveries so far is confirming the presence of ice on the planet.

Scientists long suspected frozen water was buried in the northern plains based on measurements from an orbiting spacecraft. The lander also found that the soil was slightly alkaline and contained important nutrients and minerals.

Scientists think there could have been standing water at the site in the past or the ice could have melted and interacted with the minerals.

"Is this a habitable zone on Mars? I think we’re approaching that hypothesis," said chief scientist Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. "We understand, though, that Mars has many surprises for us and we have not finished our investigation."

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written by Andrew

GENEVA - Scientists expect startup glitches in the massive, complex machines they use to smash atoms.

But the unique qualities of the world’s largest particle collider mean that the meltdown of a small electrical connection could delay its groundbreaking research until next year, scientists said Sunday.

Because the Large Hadron Collider operates at near absolute zero — colder than outer space — the damaged area must be warmed to a temperature where humans can work. That takes about a month. Then it has to be re-chilled for another month.

As a result, the equipment may not be running again before the planned shutdown of the equipment for the winter to reduce electricity costs. That means Friday’s meltdown could end up putting off high-energy collisions of particles — the machine’s ultimate objective — until 2009.

"Hopefully we’ll come online and go quickly to full energy a few months into 2009 so in the long term, this may not end up being such a large delay in the physics program," Seth Zenz, a graduate student from the University of California, wrote on the site of the U.S. physicists working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN.

"It’s obviously a short-term disappointment, though, and a lost opportunity," he wrote.

CERN spokesman James Gillies said the repair operation will last until close to the usual winter shutdown time at the end of November. There has been some discussion that the new equipment could operate through the winter, but no decision has been made, he said.

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written by Andrew

Cancer researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered a promising new chemotherapy target for a deadly form of leukemia. Their discovery hinges on a novel “double agent” role for a molecular signal that regulates cell growth.

The rogue signal, glycogen synthase kinase 3, was previously found to halt uncontrolled cell growth, preventing several forms of cancer. It also keeps growth of healthy cells in check. But new data show that GSK3 fuels a deadly form of white blood cell cancer, which accounts for five to 10 percent of child and adult leukemias and more than three-quarters of leukemias diagnosed in infants.

The rogue signal, glycogen synthase kinase 3, was previously found to halt uncontrolled cell growth, preventing several forms of cancer. It also keeps growth of healthy cells in check. But new data show that GSK3 fuels a deadly form of white blood cell cancer, which accounts for five to 10 percent of child and adult leukemias and more than three-quarters of leukemias diagnosed in infants.

“This finding was quite unexpected,” said Michael Cleary, MD, senior author of a paper describing the discovery. “GSK3 has never been implicated in promoting cancer.” Cleary is a professor of pathology and of pediatrics and a member of the Stanford Cancer Center. The research will appear online in Nature on Sept. 17.

Cleary’s team discovered that inhibiting GSK3 combats leukemias caused by mutated MLL genes. MLL, an acronym for “mixed-lineage leukemia,” refers to an unusual feature of these deadly cancers. Most leukemias begin in just one of the body’s two white blood cell factories, either the lymph nodes or the bone marrow. But in mixed-lineage leukemias, the bad cells can show markers from both kinds of tissue.

Newly diagnosed leukemia patients have their cancer cells tested to see which genes are driving the cancer. Mutated MLL genes are viewed as a bad prognostic marker, Cleary said.

“There is intense interest in coming up with better ways to treat these patients,” he said. Cleary’s findings indicate GSK3 may be an effective target for future leukemia drugs.

The first hint of GSK3’s role came from petri-dish tests on cancer cells. Postdoctoral scholar Zhong Wang, PhD, treated dishes of different kinds of cancer cells with a battery of chemicals that inhibit various cell signals. When a GSK3 inhibitor clobbered cells with mutant MLL genes, Wang realized his work was cut out for him.

Read more: sciencedaily

written by Flory

Astronomers have taken what may the first picture of a planet orbiting a star similar to the sun.

This distant world is giant (about eight times the mass of Jupiter) and lies far out from its star (about 330 times the Earth-Sun distance). But for all the planet’s strangeness, its star is quite like our own sun.

Previously, the only photographed extrasolar planets have belonged to tiny, dim stars known as brown dwarfs. And while hundreds of exoplanets have been detected by noting their gravitational tug on their parent stars, it is rare to find one large enough to image directly.

“This is the first time we have directly seen a planetary mass object in a likely orbit around a star like our sun,” said David Lafreni�re, an astronomer at the University of Toronto who led the team that discovered the star. “If we confirm that this object is indeed gravitationally tied to the star, it will be a major step forward.”

Further study will be needed to prove that the planet is in fact orbiting around the star, as opposed to the possibility, however unlikely, that the two objects just happen to lie in the same area of the sky at roughly the same distance from us.

“Of course it would be premature to say that the object is definitely orbiting this star, but the evidence is extremely compelling,” Lafreni�re said. “This will be a very intensely studied object for the next few years!”

The researchers used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to glimpse the planet and its star, 1RXS J160929.1-210524, which lies about 500 light-years from Earth. Though the star has about 85 percent the mass of the sun, it is younger than our star. In order to image the far-flung system, the team utilized adaptive optics technology, which uses flexible mirrors to offset the distortion light suffers as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere.

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written by Andrew

Hurricane Ike’s gargantuan size — not its strength — will likely push an extra large storm surge inland in a region already prone to it, experts said Thursday.

Ike’s giant girth means more water piling up on Texas and Louisiana coastal areas for a longer time, topped with bigger waves. So storm surge — the prime killer in hurricanes — will be far worse than a typical storm of Ike’s strength, the National Hurricane Center said.

And because coastal waters in Texas and Louisiana are so shallow, storm surge is usually larger there than in other regions, according to storm experts. A 1900 hurricane following a similar track to Ike inundated Galveston Island, killing at least 8,000 people — America’s deadliest storm.

“It’s a good recipe for surge,” said Benton McGee, supervisory hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s storm surge center in Ruston, La. “We’re already seeing water being piled up in the Gulf. On top of that you’re going to have water forced into the bays along the coast.”

The National Hurricane Center is forecasting a 20-foot surge — a rapid rising of water inundating areas and moving inland — for a large swath of Texas and the Louisiana coasts. Above that, the center predicts “large and dangerous battering waves.” Waves could be 50 feet tall, said hurricane center spokesman and meteorologist Dennis Feltgen.

Some computer models have waves topping out at 70 feet, but the waves usually break well before hitting shore, so the maximum usually doesn’t get quite that high.

“It’s going to do tremendous damage over a large area even if its doesn’t strengthen anymore,” predicted former hurricane center director Max Mayfield.

That’s directly due to Ike’s size. Experts are trying to figure out when they’ve seen a storm this wide. Ike’s tropical storm force winds stretch for 510 miles, and weather radar from Galveston to Key West can see its outer bands. That’s about 70 percent larger than an average hurricane.

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written by Andrew

GENEVA - A small blip on a computer screen sent champagne corks popping among physicists in Switzerland. Near Chicago, researchers at a “pajama party” who watched via satellite let out an early morning cheer.

The blip was literally of cosmic proportions, representing a new tool to probe the birth of the universe.

The world’s largest atom smasher passed its first test Wednesday as scientists said their powerful tool is almost ready to reveal how the tiniest particles were first created after the “big bang,” which many theorize was the massive explosion that formed the stars, planets and everything.

Rivals and friends turned out in the wee hours at Fermilab in Batavia, Ill., in pajamas to watch the event by a special satellite connection. Joining in from around the world were other physicists — many of whom may one day work on the new Large Hadron Collider.

Tension mounted in the five control rooms at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, as scientists huddled around computer screens. After a few trial runs, they fired a beam of protons clockwise around the 17-mile tunnel of the collider deep under the rolling fields along the Swiss-French border. Then they succeeded in sending another beam in the opposite, counterclockwise direction.

The physicists celebrated with champagne when the white dots flashed on the blue screens of the control room, showing a successful crossing of the finish line on the $10 billion machine under planning since 1984.

“The first technical challenge has been met,” said a jubilant Robert Aymar, director-general of CERN. “What you have just seen is the result of 20 years of effort. It all went like clockwork. Now it’s for the physicists to show us what they can do.

“They are ready to go for discoveries,” Aymar said. “Man has always shown he wants to know where he comes from and where he will go, where the universe comes from and where it will go. So here we’re looking at essential questions for mankind.”

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written by Andrew

GENEVA - Scientists will launch an experiment in a tunnel deep beneath the French-Swiss border Wednesday, hoping to find evidence of extra dimensions, invisible “dark matter,” and an elusive particle called the “Higgs boson.”

And although leading physicists such as Stephen Hawking say the atom-smashing experiment will be absolutely safe, some skeptics fear the proton collisions could unleash microscopic black holes that would eventually doom the Earth.

The most powerful atom-smasher ever built will produce collisions of protons traveling at nearly the speed of light in the circular tunnel, giving off showers of particles that will provide more clues as to how everything in the universe is made.

In the $10 billion project — the most extensive physics experiment in history — the Large Hadron Collider will come ever closer to re-enacting the “big bang,” the theory that a colossal explosion created the cosmos.

The project, organized by the 20 member nations of the European Organization for Nuclear Research — known by its French initials CERN — has attracted researchers of 80 nationalities. Some 1,200 are from the United States, an observer country that contributed $531 million.

The collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, moving around the 17-mile tunnel at 11,000 times a second at full power. Ramping up to full power is probably a year away.

Smaller colliders have been used for decades to study the atom. Scientists once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of an atom’s nucleus, but experiments have shown they were made of still smaller quarks and gluons, and that there were other forces and particles.

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written by Andrew

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Next month’s shuttle flight to the Hubble Space Telescope faces an increased risk from orbiting debris.

The shuttle Atlantis will be flying in a higher altitude where there’s more space junk. Managers at NASA’s highest levels will need to sign off on the mission because of the higher risk.

New numbers put the odds of a catastrophic strike by a micrometeorite at about 1-in-185. Shuttle program director John Shannon said Monday that compares to 1-in-300 odds for a shuttle flight to the international space station.

Hubble is at a considerably higher and dirtier orbit than the space station — 350 miles versus just over 200 miles. Seven astronauts will be aboard the spaceship. It is now scheduled for launch on Oct. 10.

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written by Andrew