Rosetta To Finish 12-Yr Probe With Comet Crash-Land

After 12 years chasing a comet across 6 billion km in space, European scientists will end the historic Rosetta mission by crash landing the spacecraft on the surface of the dusty, icy body at the end of the month. Data collected by Rosetta and its Lander Philae has helped scientists better understand how the Earth and other planets were formed. The Spacecraft has managed several historic firsts, including the first time a spacecraft has orbited a comet rather than just whizzing past to snap fly by pictures, and the first time a probe has landed on a comet’s surface. It was also the first mission to venture beyond the main asteroid belt relying solely on solar cells for power.

After two years of circling comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, collecting a treasure trove of data that will keep scientists busy for years to come, the comet’s distance from the sun is nearing the point where solar power will become too weak to operate the spacecraft. In the final hours of its controlled descent on September 30, Rosetta will be able to take close-up pictures of the comet and collect data on gases closer to the surface before joining Philae and shutting down forever.

Scientists said the spacecraft by far exceeded their expectations by surviving the trip for as long as it did. It successfully sent its 100 kg washing machine sixed Lander down to the surface in November 2014 in what was considered as remarkable feat of precision space travel, even if the Lander ended up bouncing and coming to rest in the shade where it could not be recharged. Rosetta has detected key organic compounds in the comet, bolstering the motion that comets delivered the chemical building blocks for life long ago to Earth and throughout the solar system.

Not Just Birds, Fish Sing Dawn & Dusk Choruses Too

Fish sing dawn choruses in the ocean just as birds do on land. Seven fish choruses have been identified by researchers which varied from “foghorn” cries to “grunting” noises. Using a pair of sea-noise loggers positioned at different points in the coastal waters of port Headland in Western Australia, scientists monitored the ocean continually for 18 months and recoded distinct choruses occurring at different times of the day, particularly at dawn and at dusk, with songs predominantly heard between early spring and late summer. The study found the majority of this submarine soundscape was emitted through repetitive solo calls from fish; however these sounds also overlapped creating the choruses. You get the dusk and dawn choruses like you would with the bird in the forest. Sound provides information about the behavioral functions of fish, such as spawning, feeding, territorial disputed or distress and studying fish noises may help provide valuable ecological knowledge.

How Tech Unlocked Secrets of Ancient Biblical Scroll

Nearly half a century ago, archaeologists found a charred ancient scroll in the ark of a synagogue on the western shore of the Dead Sea. The lump of carbonized parchment could not be opened or read. Its curators did nothing but conserve it, hoping that new technology might one day emerge to make the scroll legible. Just such a technology has bow been perfected by computer scientists with biblical scholars in Jerusalem, they have used a computer to unfurl a digital image of the scroll. It turns out to hold a fragment identical to the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible and at nearly 2,000 years old, is the earliest instance of the text.

The writing retrieved by the computer from the digital image of the unopened scroll is amazingly clear and legible, in contrast to the scroll’s blackened and beaten up exterior. The scroll’s content, the first two chapters of the Book of Leviticus, has consonants – early Hebrew texts didn’t specify vowels – that are identical to those of the Masoretic text, the authoritative version of the Hebrew Bible and the one often used as the bases for translations of the Old Testament in Protestant Bibles. The Dead Sea scroll contain versions quite similar to the Masoretic text but with many small differences. The text in the scroll found that the En-Gedi excavation site in Israel decades ago has none. This is the earliest evidence of the exact form of the medieval text.

Secret To Long Life In Tibet: Low Oxygen

Low-oxygen environment in Tibet may be promoting longevity among the local people, according to a study. The research shows elderly people from the Tibetan Plateau have a longer lifespan than their counterparts in China. By examining 2010 census data, researchers found that the proportion of the Tibetan population over 60 years of age was significantly lower than that of the Han population. However, among Tibetans there was dramatic rise in ration of proportion of people aged 90 and above. The proportion of individuals older than 100 years of age was also higher for male (but not female) Tibetans than for Han Chinese. According to findings, published in Cell Research on September 9, elderly Tibetans tend to have a longer lifespan than those living at lower altitudes, suggesting an association between hypoxia and longevity. Low-oxygen environments can accelerate evolution of aging associated genes, which might offset the effect of aging.