webhealthblog.net

NASA’s Swift satellite recently discovered the most distant object in the Universe. The object is the afterglow of a self-destructing star located 13.1 billion light years from Earth.

NASA’s Swift satellite and an international team of astronomers have found a gamma-ray burst from a star that died when the universe was only 630 million years old, or less than five percent of its present age. The event, dubbed GRB 090423, is the most distant cosmic explosion ever seen.



“Swift was designed to catch these very distant bursts,” said Swift lead scientist Neil Gehrels at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “The incredible distance to this burst exceeded our greatest expectations — it was a true blast from the past.”



At 3:55 a.m. EDT on April 23, Swift detected a ten-second-long gamma-ray burst of modest brightness. It quickly pivoted to bring its ultraviolet/optical and X-ray telescopes to observe the burst location. Swift saw a fading X-ray afterglow but none in visible light.



“The burst most likely arose from the explosion of a massive star,” said Derek Fox at Pennsylvania State University. “We’re seeing the demise of a star — and probably the birth of a black hole — in one of the universe’s earliest stellar generations.”

Here’s a video that shows a computer graphic animation of the distant object.






Posted in Space



Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds

These sites were nominated for a Webby award in the science category.

• Cassini Mission Website
  
• Evidence: How Do We Know What We Know?
  
• Nature.com
  
• Scientific American
  
• Wired Science
  

Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds

There are over 1,000 cases of Swine Flu in Mexico and over sixty people have died. The Mexican government is taking action by shutting down schools and public events. There have been more alarming news today with reports of a couple Swine Flu cases in Kansas and possibly hundreds of cases at at a private school in New York City. The Guardian is reporting that a member of the cabin crew of a British Airways flight was taken to the hospital with flu-like symptoms. The flight was going from Mexico City to Heathrow airport in London.

A member of cabin crew was taken to hospital with “flu-like symptoms” today after falling ill on a British Airways flight from Mexico City to Heathrow.



The World Health Organisation has warned countries to be on alert for any unusual flu outbreaks after a swine flu virus was implicated in possibly dozens of human deaths in Mexico.



The BA employee, who has not been named, has been taken to Northwick Park hospital in Harrow, a hospital spokesman said.



He added: “He has flu-like symptoms and is responding well to treatment. The patient was admitted directly to a side room and the hospital is scrupulously following infection control procedures to ensure there is no risk to any other individual in the hospital.”



The man was taken from flight BA242 which landed at 2pm today, a BA spokesman said.

Air travel is obviously the quickest way for this new strain of flu - comprised of swine, avian and human flu - to spread around the globe. The one bright spot so far is that most of the cases in the United States have been mild. It’s possible that there is something else in Mexico causing the cases to be more deadly or that the U.S. just has not experience any of the more severe cases so far.



You can find CDC, WHO and local state Swine Flu resources here on Health News Blog.



Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds

Jose Luis Ortiz strapped a video camera to his pet eagle. The video gives you an idea of what it is like to soar like an eagle. Nature also has a video here, where a video camera was strapped to a Peregrine falcon.

(via OhGizmo)



Posted in Animals



Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds

This cute bird that likes to have its head scratched does have some Furby characteristics ike BuzzFeed and other blogs are suggesting. The bird in the video is likely a Malaysian Eagle Owl. The one in this video does not appear to be afraid of people.

Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds

CBS News reports that a school of battery-powered robotic fish will monitor pollution in the Spanish harbor of Gijon. The robotic fish contain special sensors to help them avoid rocks, ships and other objects so they won’t need to be remotely monitored or remote controlled.

The robotic fish will patrol the harbor of Gijon, in northern Spain under a $3.6 million grant from the European Union. Hu said Gijon was chosen because port authorities there had expressed an interest in the technology.



The plan might seem “like something straight out of science fiction,” said Rory Doyle, a researcher working on the project, but he explained that there was a very simple reason for choosing fishlike machines to monitor the harbor’s environmental health.



“The design of fish which nature has produced is a very energy-efficient one,” Doyle said. “The fish’s efficiency is created by hundreds of millions of years’ of evolution. Submarines come nowhere near it.”



Information gathered from the robo-fish would be transmitted to the port’s control center using a wireless Internet signal when the devices surfaced. The data gathered would be used to create a three-dimensional pollution map of the harbor’s area.

Here’s a video (no sound) that shows the robotic fish in action. (via Daily Mail, Ecofriend.org)







Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds

A NASA-funded study suggests that conditions for the tornado that whipped through downtown Atlanta a year ago were created by heat and energy generated from the urban landscape. The Wall Street Journal reports that NASA’s study suggests that tornadoes are likely to become more common. NASA also has a specific report about the Atlanta tornado here.

Posted in Weather



Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds

Mother monkeys in Thailand are apparently teaching their infants how to clean their teeth by flossing with human hair. The monkeys must have read about the health benefits of flossing. Take a look:

Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds

Histiophryne psychedelica is new species of fish that appears to bounce on the ocean floor like a rubber ball. Live Science says the carnivorous frogfish has eyes like ours as well as a fleshy chin and cheeks. More articles about the fish can be found at The Guardian, Science Daily, USA Today and Seattle Times.

Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds

Bonnie, an orangutan at the National Zoo, has learned how to whistle. She is the first orangutan ever to be documented making the sound. You can read more about Bonnie here.

Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds