A few days ago, as posted here, Virgin Atlantic and partners flew a Boeing jet from London to Amsterdam fueled in part with biofuels distilled from vegetable oils. The post here was not terribly impressed and the flight was dismissed by many as a mere stunt. (for one example of media analyses, check Russ Juskalian‘s takedown for The Observatory blog at the Columbia Journalism Review).

Well today there’s a two-edged account of it down under, and worth separate note, at The Australian by Scott McCartney. Notable are two things:

1) The stuntsmanship, it says here, had an element The Tracker had not seen before. Sir Richard actually DRANK a cup of the biofuel, just to show that it’s sort of ecofriendlier than kerosene. Yeck. This is funny. It wasn’t easy though. It tasted not good, it appears.

2) His piece then goes into enough detail on the flight itself, if not the potability of the fuel, to explain that behind the stunt may lie some thoughtful, sober intent. So, it’s a balanced piece – equal parts silliness and seriousness.

-CP

It’s just a little story on a small service, but Charles Q. Choi‘s piece over at Space.com shivers the spine a bit. Five spacecraft, according to a few people who watch their trajectories very, very closely, shifted around by a bit as though responding to forces other than standard gravity and the rustlings of the solar wind. For those familiar with these things it is, yes, another example of the “Pioneer anomaly” that, some say, mysteriously oonched those two interplanetary probes as they left the inner solar system some years back.

Giving the notion of a non-Newtonian gravity field a bit of extra plausibility is that the American Institute of Physics’s news office put out a guarded press release on it. Choi says it may have to do with “unbound orbits” – a term suitable for idle chatter late at night among sci-fi novelists looking for a new, plausible-sounding explanation for alien powers.
Pic source ;

-CP

The AP‘s Alicia Chang has an enterprising piece out with news of trouble for one of NASA’s most heralded upcoming missions to Mars. That’s the long-range, robotic rover dubbed the Mars Surface Laboratory. Like the two small rovers up there now, it would have six wheels but beyond that, it’s an all-new, drastically pumped-up machine. Abundant power would come from a radioisotope generator, sort of a plutonium-powered electrical pile, giving it longer range and freeing it from dependence on sunlight and season. It’s onboard diagnostics are to provide the best yet analysis of organic compounds and other constituents of the planet’s surface. Its operation could be vital to understanding its geologic and, one hopes, biological history.

But costs are rising, a heat shield redesign is slowing things down. Chang relays recent testimony by NASA administrator Michael Griffin that a delay in the scheduled 2009 launch looks possible. As it is, many Mars researchers have howled over deep cutbacks in longer range goals, such as a sample return mission now in limbo. Already, one camera for the science lab rover was, it says here, nearly canceled (put back after the contractor volunteered to finish it essentially for free).

See Also: Feb. 22 Aerospace Daily & Defense Report article by Jefferson Morris (via Aviation Week) on the science laboratory’s cost and development hurdles.

Related Mars Science Lab news: Space News‘s Brian Berger reported recently that a new, more efficient line of radioisotope generators is in the works and could be ready in time for use on the science lab rover. It’d use a Stirling-cycle heat motor to run the generator.

Grist for the Mill: NASA Mars Science Laboratory site.

Not so related Mars News: This is just breaking today, but Univ. of Arizona researchers are throwing cold dust on recent theories of running water carving gullies on Mars in just the past few years.

Stories: Space.com Dave Mosher ;

Grist for the Mill: U. Arizona Press Release (via EurekAlert) ;

Rover Image source ; Gully image source ;

-CP

The Tracker hasn’t much opportunity to look beyond the traditional daily press for the day’s haul, but attention was drawn recently to a leisurely, writerly, and vivid look at research underway in the waters between Alaska and Siberia. Lisa Drew, an ass’t prof. of journalism at NY’s Ithaca College, has it in the current edition of National Wildlife. The Tracker happens to have covered much of the same ground, or water, a few years ago up in the Chukchi Sea, but came nowhere near as close as Drew does to a full portrait of the changes underway and to the urgency and anxiety felt by researchers sampling those ever-less-frosty waters.

Actually, with all deference and apology to the professor, and I hesitate to say this out in public because this is such a fine job and she teaches journalism after all … but here goes: I ache to slightly adjust or tweak the lede. It isn’t quite working for me. (It’s still a better report than what I wrote / walrus sidebar).

The full flow of Drew’s piece and its completeness are superb.

-CP

A few days ago plenty of ink flowed upon the opening in Norway’s Svalbard arctic archipelago of the Global Seed Vault (earlier post here). But what looks like the definitive breaking-news story on the opening is out only today, by Elisabeth Rosenthal in the NYTimes. The photos, by a shooter for the the Times’s partner, the Int’l Herald Tribune, are stunning (hi res slide show incl. the one to the right, here ).

The story remains a news story in form, rather than a feature, but it’s rich with info beyond what was out on the first day, and in historic and technical context. Kudos.

-CP

A survey led by researchers at Louisiana State and Montana State universities, reports the Associated Press‘s Randolph E. Schmid, reveals that those pristine-looking snowflakes sifting from a wintry sky “may have a surprise inside”: a bacterium. Microbes are of course not the only reason that ice and rain nucleate in clouds and fall as precipitation (salt particles, smog and other aerosols come to mind), but it says here they are the most active. And among the most common microbes are some that spread diseases among important crop plants. Maybe, some surmise, the bacteria have evolved precisely to loft themselves into the sky and later hitch rides back down in rain or snow upon leaves of new hosts. The findings, based on samplings in Antarctica, France, Montana, and the Yukon, are in today’s Science magazine.

The sampling is broad, but spotty. To no surprise perhaps, Antarctica’s snow is the least likely to be bacteria-bred. But tops in the sampling is France. Next came Montana, with Yukon after that. Not sure what the means but perhaps the French will do a quickie survey to show they don’t really have the buggiest precip in the world. Gotta be worse in, oh, Poland or somewhere? The story is light, but not easily resistable, and gets several takers.

Other stories:

Gotta start with the best (or worst, but for sure the eye-catchingest) headline: “..Snowflakes could be bacteria bombs,” from James Schugel at Minneapolis TV station WCCO (the piece itself is fine) ;

PR Science Friday Ira Flatow plans to have one of the researchers on as his guest today – and the site includes links proving this news is not really new ; AFP ; Telegraph (UK) Roger Highfield says if it’s raining, blame bacteria – and weaves Gaia theory into it extensively ; Scientific American David Biello is among several who get in some caveats: it’s always possible that the rain or snow nucleated and then scavenged the microbes – and he mentions other research that found thousands of microbe species in the sky over Texas. ; LiveScience Andrea Thompson ;

Grist for the Mill: Montana St. Univ. Press Release ;

-CP

On Monday, as tracked here (see earlier post), AP and Reuters filed stories on the coming announcement that a map of the corn, or maize, genome is done and was about to be rolled out. Yesterday’s actual press conference in DC, at a conference on maize genetics, then came and went with hardly a ripple of response. The advance wire stories may have killed media appetite for any further info. More detail needs to be filled in, but given the importance of the crop worldwide, its genetic blueprint is a significant and potentially impactful achievement. Reporters covering biotech, one hopes, will in time weave the news on maize’s genetics into their stories on modern farming, pharming, biofuel-harvesting, and other pertinent matters.

The only outlet that seems to have covered this, but waited for the press conference for further info, is Environment News Service. Its account does fill in a few additional details.

Such a news fizzle may offer a lesson in the dynamics of the popular press. Washington University-St. Louis, whose researchers led the effort, put no embargo on its advance press release – but did include much of the meat of the story while announcing the upcoming press conference. As distorting and manipulative and perhaps as intellectually bankrupts as are most artificially-imposed embargoes and withholdings of info – when they are employed they do sharpen media attention.

Grist for the Mill: The maize genome project site.

-CP

The moon’s south pole is one rugged place and that’s plain enough in photos. But after bouncing radar waves from Earth off the region astronomers seem amazed at just how deep some of the craters are. The elevation data that NASA’s Mojave Desert (Calif) Goldstone receiver obtained revealed crater bottoms 20,000 feet or so deeper than surrounding plateaus – some reach depths that never see sunlight. Peaks, in turn, reach about the same height above the mean. Now that’s relief. Water or other volatiles may stay permanently frozen, troves for science and perhaps resources for moon colonists.

Context Note: back in Oct. of 2006 were reports of another, Arecibo radar survey of the same region. It saw no signs of water ice down in those canyons and crater floors. (Cornell press release here ). But NASA – see stories below – says it still thinks water is likely there. No such overt doubts are in the press release or in the ensuing coverage this week. A bit of broader reporting seems to be in order.

Stories:

Register (UK) Lester Haines notes that, dangerous as it looks, some NASA managers only want all the more to send astronauts there ; Houston Chronicle Mark Carreau says the wracked terrain may be ideal for a human outpost ; New Scientist David Shiga ; NYTimes Kenneth Chang helpfully relays word (it’s in the press release too) that the radar pings, in 2006, took advantage of a rare orbital alignment that gave Earth a slightly better than usual view of the lunar southern extremity. Perhaps it took this long to fully reduce and interpret the data ;

Grist for the Mill: NASA Press Release w/ video, graphics;

A few experts, fearing mankind is running out of time to escape climate catastrophe, are saying coal plants that don’t capture and sequester their carbon emissions ought to be banned, and soon. But as no plant that passes that test even exists yet, it’s a tall order. A bit of progress is reported today, however – a coal plant in Wisconsin, in partnership with the Electric Power Research Institute and the French energy firm Alstom, will soon capture a small portion of its CO2 with the help of chilled ammonia. If it works, the engineers hope to ramp up toward increasing rates of capture. In the meantime, with no place handy to store the captured carbon, they’ll just let it go into the sky.

It gets its biggest ride from USA Today‘s Paul Davidson and from Reuters.

The Milwaukee Journal Times David Steinkrauss reports the longer term goal is removal of 90 percent of the CO2 from the flue gas in the plant, operated by We Energies.

Grist for the Mill: Alstom Press Release ;

OTHER CARBON CAPTURE NEWS: In Canada, plans are afoot for a $1.4 billion (!) retrofit of a Saskatchewan coal plant to add carbon-capture gear. The capture CO2 will be pumped into the ground for a job that will probably undo any carbon footprint progress: to release oil from deep formations.

Stories:

Reuters Scott Haggett ; Toronto Globe and Mail Shawn McCarthy ;

-CP

For decades now textbooks have informed school kids that, sooner or later, the sun will go red giant and end life on Earth. Maybe our descendants will sit it out among the asteroids but oceans will steam and dry, the atmosphere turn to hot poison, and that’ll about do it.

Now, a team at the University of Sussex thinks it has the exact tale down pretty cold. Not only that, they believe they can answer an old question: will the swollen sun, its hydrogen fuel running low, actually engulf – and presumably vaporize – Earth? Yes, they say. In about 7.6 billion years. And any surviving global warming skeptics will cackle in their spacesuits See! We told you it was a natural cycle!

Not much pickup for this, but it does add a bit of precision to an old staple among cosmic prognostications.

Stories:

Space.com (via USA Today) Clara Moskowitz trots out Robert Frost – and notes that we’ve actually a lot less than 7.6 billion years to pack our bags- like maybe only another billion years. She does a nice job explaining what flaw in earlier calculated scenarios left a chance for Earth’s survival ; Register (UK) Lester Haines ; Calcutta Telegraph an unnamed correspondent has it a bit muddled but does provide these details: Earth’s demise will follow that of Venus by million years, and Mercury by 3.8 million years.

See Also: Earlier, related news Scientific American JR Minkel Sept. 12 (and pic source)

Grist for the Mill:

U. of Sussex Press Release ; Full paper (PDF) on arxiv / astro-ph), which includes an analysis of an asteroid gravity assist method – first proposed by others – that might, for affordable cost, move the Earth far enough way to avoid annihilation. There is, they add, “no immediate hurry to implement the scheme” – but it presumably may mean we can, on some far day away, save the planet and its biosphere instead of having to build interstellar life rafts.

-CP

The knock on solar panels as a serious ploy against power from fossil fuels always has been they are expensive. Never mind that homeowners (The Tracker is raising his hand) love having almost no electricity bill and, without waiting 15 years for payback will likely get it all back just by selling their houses. Economists keep saying they are a niche product at best.

A twin dose of such talk is in today’s San Francisco Chronicle from staffer Charles Burress. He reports from a public address on the UC Berkeley campus where members of the campus’s new Energy Biosciences Institute insisted that transforming biomass into energy make far more sense than direct conversion of sunlight into electricity. He skips over the details, but it looks as though speakers are talking about cellulosic ethanol and, perhaps, bio-engineered plants whose busy little chloroplasts might make plenty of fuel feedstocks.

And this comes, Burress reports, just a week after another campus experts released a report specifically on photovoltaic cells, saying their costs exceed their benefits. Sigh. I think I’ll go watch my digital utility meter running backwards (and it’s only 9 a.m. on a winter morning).

Grist for the Mill:

UC Berkeley/Haas School of Business solar cell Press Release ;  UC  Energy Institute paper on photovoltaic economics ;

-CP

Argentine ants, little brown things that seem to have taken over much of the US (The Tracker has them all over the place outside, and some of them inside), are not exactly breaking news. The usual story is that they all belong to one giant supercolony, are impoverishing US ant diversity, and aren’t particularly dangerous to people. No fire ants, these little guys.

In today’s San Diego Union Scott LaFee gets deep enough into the natural history of these creatures to move the ball forward a bit. For many readers, his story may be entirely new. For instance, it’s not a single supercolony spreading across the US, its members so similar they all get along chummily, but several. One stretches from Mexico into northern California. And they fight fiercely at their extended borders. A smaller colony based around Lake Hodges in San Diego county, it says here, warred with the bigger one – with at least 15 million fatalities on both sides. Kudos also for the Union’s layout and graphics crew – which decorates the copy (online, and presumably in the print issue) with little platoons of ants.

-CP