Hunting ET: Astrobiology and the quest for extraterrestrial life

The discovery of life elsewhere in the Solar System would 'profoundly change our understanding of where we came from and our place in the cosmos', astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell told Sam Wong ahead of his public lecture on the subject this week



Methane, a possible signature of life, has been detected in the atmosphere of Mars. Photograph: Nasa Planetary Photojournal/PA

Is there anybody out there? That's the big question scientists are asking in the emerging field ofastrobiology.Its practitioners bring together expertise from a variety of disciplines in their quest to determine whether there is life beyond our green and pleasant home planet......

Eyeless, Fanged Crustacean Found in ‘Tunnel to Atlantis’

A species of crustacean with no eyes and venom-injecting fangs has been discovered in an underwater volcanic cave in the Canary Islands off the coast of North Africa.
Researchers discovered the new animal during a diving expedition through the world’s longest submarine lava tube, called the Tunnel de la Atlantida, or “tunnel to Atlantis.” The divers were searching for specimens of a closely related crustacean species that they’d discovered 25 years ago in the same cave. But after capturing several of the sea creatures, the researchers noticed something peculiar.
“Some animals were much more active in swimming around than others in the small sample bottles,” said marine biologist Tom Iliffe of Texas A&M University at Galveston, who was part of the team that discovered the new species. “On closer examination, and subsequently with DNA testing, we confirmed that they were actually two different species.”
Their findings appear this month in a special edition of Marine Biodiversity. The new crustacean has been named Speleonectes atlantida, which means “cave swimmer of Atlantis.” It’s a very apt name, Iliffe said, because the creature is a very active swimmer, gliding through the water an undulating fashion...

Watching the start of World War II

Few survive to tell the tale of the German battleship, Schleswig-Holstein, unleashing a barrage of 280mm and 170mm shells at a Polish fort and shattering the dawn breaking over the Westerplatte peninsula in the free city of Danzig on 1 September 1939.
"I took the telescope and looked out at the channel, first right, then left and then at the cruiser which was moored in the bay," Ignacy Skowron remembered. "At that moment I saw a flash of red and the first shell hit the gate--,

Use Your iPhone to Help Scientists Track Crickets in NYC




f you have got a cellphone and a good pair of ears, you can help with the first-ever comprehensive cricket census of New York City.

On Sept. 11, biologists from the US Geological Survey are asking citizen scientists from the Big Apple to help them track the city’s cricket and katydid population. Participants in the NYC Cricket Crawl will go out between dusk and midnight to record cricket calls for one minute, and then immediately send their results and location to the scientists by cellphone.

The researchers are hoping to find evidence that the Common True Katydid, once plentiful in New York City but now rare, is still thriving in some regions of the city.....

Quantum computer slips onto chips

Chips like this one could form the basis for future optical computers



Researchers have devised a penny-sized silicon chip that uses photons to run Shor's algorithm - a well-known quantum approach - to solve a maths problem.
The algorithm computes the two numbers that multiply together to form a given figure, and has until now required laboratory-sized optical computers.
This kind of factoring is the basis for a wide variety of encryption schemes...