Geophysics yesterday and today

To celebrate the 2011 December AGU meeting, Rachel Berkowitz takes a look at the first paper published in Journal of Geophysical Research.

December 15, 2011

Published: December 15, 2011December 2011

By Rachel Berkowitz

Last week San Francisco hosted the 2011 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). It is natural to expect that many of the 20 000 scientists from around the world who attended will submit their findings to AGU’s Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR). But who submitted the first JGR article ever published

 

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NASA's Kepler Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.

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Quantum physics to encrypt clouds of the future - boffins

Boffins looking for the perfect alliance between science and technology have married quantum computing to the future of IT - the cloud.

The researchers have used quantum mechanics to encrypt heavy-duty number-crunching computing, thereby removing a major obstacle in the adoption of the cloud for many enterprises ؟- how safe is my data when it's hosted on someone else's computers

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First Habitable planet Discovered

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.

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Are pulsars giant 'neutromagnets'

Pulsars are created when a star collapses to form a neutron star in which the magnetic moments of the neutrons are frozen in a particular direction – much like the atomic moments in a permanent magnetic. That is the claim of two physicists in Sweden, who believe that their theory can account for many of the unexplained properties of these astronomical oddities.

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Galileo Thermometers

Every substance has the property of 'mass', which is the basic physical presence of matter. Matter occupies space. A physical mass contained within a physical space produces the physical property of 'density'. For practical purposes, we define density as the mass of material contained within a specific unitary volume, usually as grams per cubic centimeter. The density of a material is a reflection of the energy contained by the molecules that compose the material. Molecular energy is exhibited in molecules by various vibrational motions. The more energy the molecules contain, the more they vibrate. The higher the temperature, the more the molecules vibrate and bump into each other. This tends to push teh molecules apart so that fewer of them occupy the same volume of space as the temperature increases.

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New Research Could Lead to Enhanced MRI Scans

ScienceDaily (Dec. 15, 2011) — New research from the University of Southampton could lead to enhanced MRI scans, producing brighter and more precise images, and potentially allowing the detection of cancerous cells before they cause health problems.

Professor Malcolm Levitt of the University of Southampton, and co-workers, have been awarded a grant from the European Research Council of 2.8 million euros to support research into enhanced nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). NMR is the physical principle underlying MRI scanning, which is used routinely to detect abnormalities such as tumours. The long term aim is that this research will lead to a range of clinical applications, including the early detection of cancer.

 

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