The mysterious Martian mountain that beckons NASA's Curiosity rover was likely built primarily by wind rather than water, as previously believed, a new study suggests.
Many scientists suspect that the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) Mount Sharp formed primarily from layers of lakebed silt, which is one of the main reasons that the mountain was selected as Curiosity's ultimate destination. But the new study holds that wind probably did most of the heavy lifting.
"Our work doesn't preclude the existence of lakes in Gale Crater, but suggests that the bulk of the material in Mount Sharp was deposited largely by the wind," study co-author Kevin Lewis, of Princeton University, said in a statement. [Latest Mars Photos from Curiosity]
A mysterious mountain
The Curiosity rover landed inside 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater last August, kicking off a two-year surface mission to investigate Mars' past and present potential to host microbial life.
The 1-ton robot has already checked off its main goal, finding that a spot near its landing site called Yellowknife Bay was once capable of supporting life billions of years ago. But the mission team is still gearing up to send Curiosity on a 6-mile (10 km) trek to the base of Mount Sharp, which was identified before launch as the rover's main science target.
Observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) suggest that Mount Sharp's foothills were exposed to liquid water long ago. And as Curiosity climbs up through the mound's many layers, the rover will be able to read the Red Planet's environmental history like a book, mission scientists reasoned.
In the new study, researchers used other MRO observations to devise a new theory of Mount Sharp's formation. The team determined that the mound's layers aren't flat-lying stacks, as would be expected in lakebed deposits. Rather, they fan outward in an odd radial pattern from Mount Sharp's center, researchers said.
This finding is consistent with results from the team's computer model, which suggested that wind blowing down Gale's slopes could build a mound in the crater's center while leaving areas near the rim relatively bare.
So Mount Sharp may not be the eroded remnant of an even bigger mound that once filled Gale from rim to rim.
"Every day and night you have these strong winds that flow up and down the steep topographic slopes. It turns out that a mound like this would be a natural thing to form in a crater like Gale," said Lewis, who is a participating scientist on Curiosity's mission. "Contrary to our expectations, Mount Sharp could have essentially formed as a free-standing pile of sediment that never filled the crater."
Testing the theory
Curiosity team member Dawn Sumner, who was not involved in the new study, said it presented interesting ideas that the rover should be able to test out in the future.
"This paper provides a new model for Mount Sharp that makes specific predictions about the characteristics of the rocks within the mountain," Sumner, a geology professor at the University of California-Davis, said in a statement. "Observations by Curiosity at the base of Mount Sharp can test the model by looking for evidence of wind deposition of sediment."
However Mount Sharp formed, the huge Mars mountain should be a productive hunting ground for Curiosity, Lewis said.
"One way or another, we're going to get an incredible history book of all the events going on while that sediment was being deposited," he said. "I think Mount Sharp will still provide an incredible story to read. It just might not have been a lake."
The new study was published in the May issue of the journal Geology.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter?@michaeldwall?and?Google+.?Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookor Google+. Originally published on?SPACE.com.
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MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) ? Seven people were killed Sunday morning when a suicide bomber attempted to ram a car laden with explosives into a military convoy escorting a four-member Qatari delegation, an official said.
Gen. Garad Nor Abdulle, a senior police official said the members of the Qatari delegation who were being escorted in the interior minister's convey were unharmed and safely reached their hotel.
Abdulle said the interior minister was not in the convoy.
Mohamed Abdi, an officer at the scene of the blast, said four civilians and a soldier died in the attack.
Two people died in hospital and 18 were being treated of wounds from the blast said, Dr. Duniya Mohamed Ali at the Medina hospital.
The Qatari delegates are undertaking development projects in Mogadishu, Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said.
Mohamud blamed al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group al-Shabab for the attack.
He said "suspects" have been arrested.
Soldiers fired in the air to disperse crowds that had gathered at the blast site at the busy KM4 junction.
The Somali government reopened key roads in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, four days ago which had been closed for security reasons. The roads were closed after the government received intelligence that militants were planning attacks, officials said.
KM4 is among the busiest roads in Mogadishu, largely used by government officials and African Union forces. It connects the presidential compound and other government offices to the airport.
The car bombing falls into a pattern of attacks blamed on the Islamic extremist group al-Shabab, which has been pushed out of much of the areas it occupied in South and Central Somalia by African Union troops.
Al-Shabab once controlled almost all of Mogadishu. African Union and Somali forces pushed the radical rebels out of the city in 2011, but the fighters have continued to carry out bomb attacks.
Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for an attack on Somali's Supreme Court last month that killed 35, including nine attackers.
Somalia's prime minister said that several experienced foreign fighters took part in attack on the Supreme Court, the most serious Islamic extremist attack on Mogadishu in years, while other officials indicated the explosive devices were more advanced than normal, a possible indication of greater involvement by al-Qaida. The attack included six suicide bombings and two car bombs.
Al-Shabab boasts several hundred foreign fighters, including some from the Middle East with experience in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Al-Shabab also recruits fighters from Somali communities in the United States and Europe.
In March, an explosives-filled car targeting a truck of government officials hit a civilian car and exploded, setting a mini-bus on fire and killing at least seven.
This spring the massive "Brood II" batch of 17-year cicadas is expected to emerge from the ground in backyards and parks all along the Eastern U.S. The insects will mate, lay eggs, and start the cycle all over again. Cicada expert John Cooley explains the unusual biology and evolution of periodical cicadas.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) ? Obie the formerly obese dachshund is recovering after surgery at an Oregon veterinary clinic that removed 2 1/2 pounds of loose skin.
Owner Nora Vanatta told KGW (http://bit.ly/YdQvgy ) the surgery this week at the Emergency Veterinary Clinic of Tualatin went well.
The loose skin was dragging after the dog lost 40 pounds in eight months on a diet. Obie had weighed 77 pounds. He was down to 37 before the surgery. He now weighs about 35 pounds and Vanatta wants him to lose about 5 more.
Obie fans have been following his weight loss on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/BiggestLoserDoxieEdition .
Use of laser light yields versatile manipulation of a quantum bitPublic release date: 1-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sonia Fernandez sonia.fernandez@ia.ucsb.edu 805-893-4765 University of California - Santa Barbara
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) By using light, researchers at UC Santa Barbara have manipulated the quantum state of a single atomic-sized defect in diamond the nitrogen-vacancy center in a method that not only allows for more unified control than conventional processes, but is more versatile, and opens up the possibility of exploring new solid-state quantum systems. Their results are published in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.
"In contrast to conventional electronics, we developed an all-optical scheme for controlling individual quantum bits in semiconductors using pulses of light," said David Awschalom, director of UCSB's Center for Spintronics & Quantum Computation, professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering, and the Peter J. Clarke director of the California NanoSystems Institute. "This finding offers an intriguing opportunity for processing and communicating quantum information with photonic chips."
The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center is a defect in the atomic structure of a diamond where one carbon atom in the diamond lattice is replaced by a nitrogen atom, and an adjacent site in the lattice is vacant. The resulting electronic spin around the defect forms a quantum bit "qubit" which is the basic unit of a quantum computer. Current processes require this qubit be initialized into a well-defined energy state before interfacing with it. Unlike classical computers, where the basic unit of information, the bit, is either 0 or 1, qubits can be 0, 1, or any mathematical superposition of both, allowing for more complex operations.
"The initial problem we were trying to solve was to figure out a way that we could place our qubit into any possible superposition of its state in a single step," said the paper's first author, physics graduate student Christopher Yale. "It turns out that in addition to being able to do that just by adjusting the laser light interacting with our spin, we discovered that we could generate coherent rotations of that spin state and read out its state relative to any other state of our choosing using only optical processes."
The all-optical control allows for greater versatility in manipulating the NV center over disparate conventional methods that use microwave fields and exploit defect-specific properties. While the NV center in diamond is a promising qubit that has been studied extensively for the past decade, diamonds are challenging to engineer and grow. This all-optical methodology, say the researchers, may allow for the exploration of quantum systems in other materials that are more technologically mature. "Compared to how the NV center is usually studied, these techniques in some ways are more general and could potentially enable the study of unexplored quantum systems," said UCSB physics graduate student Bob Buckley.
Additionally, the all-optical method also has the potential to be more scalable, noted physics graduate student David Christle. "If you have an array of these qubits in order, and if you're applying conventional microwave fields, it becomes difficult to talk to one of them without talking to the others. In principle, with our technique in an idealized optical system, you would be able focus the light down onto a single qubit and only talk to it."
While practical quantum computers are still years and years away, the research opens up new paths toward their eventual creation. According to the group, these devices would be capable of performing certain sophisticated calculations and functions far more efficiently than today's computers can leading to advances in fields as diverse as encryption and quantum simulation.
UCSB electrical and computer engineering graduate student F. Joseph Heremans and postdoctoral researcher Lee Bassett also contributed to this study. Additional theoretical work and insight was provided by Guido Burkard, professor of physics at the University of Konstanz, Germany.
###
Visit: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/04/18/1305920110 to access the full paper.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Use of laser light yields versatile manipulation of a quantum bitPublic release date: 1-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sonia Fernandez sonia.fernandez@ia.ucsb.edu 805-893-4765 University of California - Santa Barbara
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) By using light, researchers at UC Santa Barbara have manipulated the quantum state of a single atomic-sized defect in diamond the nitrogen-vacancy center in a method that not only allows for more unified control than conventional processes, but is more versatile, and opens up the possibility of exploring new solid-state quantum systems. Their results are published in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.
"In contrast to conventional electronics, we developed an all-optical scheme for controlling individual quantum bits in semiconductors using pulses of light," said David Awschalom, director of UCSB's Center for Spintronics & Quantum Computation, professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering, and the Peter J. Clarke director of the California NanoSystems Institute. "This finding offers an intriguing opportunity for processing and communicating quantum information with photonic chips."
The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center is a defect in the atomic structure of a diamond where one carbon atom in the diamond lattice is replaced by a nitrogen atom, and an adjacent site in the lattice is vacant. The resulting electronic spin around the defect forms a quantum bit "qubit" which is the basic unit of a quantum computer. Current processes require this qubit be initialized into a well-defined energy state before interfacing with it. Unlike classical computers, where the basic unit of information, the bit, is either 0 or 1, qubits can be 0, 1, or any mathematical superposition of both, allowing for more complex operations.
"The initial problem we were trying to solve was to figure out a way that we could place our qubit into any possible superposition of its state in a single step," said the paper's first author, physics graduate student Christopher Yale. "It turns out that in addition to being able to do that just by adjusting the laser light interacting with our spin, we discovered that we could generate coherent rotations of that spin state and read out its state relative to any other state of our choosing using only optical processes."
The all-optical control allows for greater versatility in manipulating the NV center over disparate conventional methods that use microwave fields and exploit defect-specific properties. While the NV center in diamond is a promising qubit that has been studied extensively for the past decade, diamonds are challenging to engineer and grow. This all-optical methodology, say the researchers, may allow for the exploration of quantum systems in other materials that are more technologically mature. "Compared to how the NV center is usually studied, these techniques in some ways are more general and could potentially enable the study of unexplored quantum systems," said UCSB physics graduate student Bob Buckley.
Additionally, the all-optical method also has the potential to be more scalable, noted physics graduate student David Christle. "If you have an array of these qubits in order, and if you're applying conventional microwave fields, it becomes difficult to talk to one of them without talking to the others. In principle, with our technique in an idealized optical system, you would be able focus the light down onto a single qubit and only talk to it."
While practical quantum computers are still years and years away, the research opens up new paths toward their eventual creation. According to the group, these devices would be capable of performing certain sophisticated calculations and functions far more efficiently than today's computers can leading to advances in fields as diverse as encryption and quantum simulation.
UCSB electrical and computer engineering graduate student F. Joseph Heremans and postdoctoral researcher Lee Bassett also contributed to this study. Additional theoretical work and insight was provided by Guido Burkard, professor of physics at the University of Konstanz, Germany.
###
Visit: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/04/18/1305920110 to access the full paper.
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?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
One evening in 1930, as he was struggling to recapture the feverish spirit that had fueled his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe decided to give up on an uninspired hour of work and get undressed for bed. But, standing naked at his hotel room window, Wolfe found that his weariness had suddenly evaporated and that he was eager to write again. Returning to the table, he wrote until dawn with, he recalled, ?amazing speed, ease, and sureness.?
Looking back, Wolfe tried to figure out what had prompted the sudden change?and realized that, at the window, he had been unconsciously fondling his genitals, a habit from childhood that, while not exactly sexual (his ?penis remained limp and unaroused,? he noted in a letter to his editor), fostered such a ?good male feeling? that it had stoked his creative energies. From then on, Wolfe regularly used this method to inspire his writing sessions, dreamily exploring his ?male configurations? until ?the sensuous elements in every domain of life became more immediate, real, and beautiful.?
Wolfe wasn?t the only novelist to stick his hand down his pants while working?or to overshare about this habit with others. Flaubert renounced masturbation in 1844, when he was 22, but apparently the ban didn?t last long. Four years later, while struggling with the novel The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Flaubert wrote to a close friend, ?There are moments when my head bursts with the bloody pains I?m taking over this. Out of sheer frustration I jerked off yesterday, feeling the same bleakness that drove me to masturbate at school, when I sat in detention.? If Flaubert was driven to masturbation by boredom and despair, Balzac used it to further intensify his coffee-fueled writing binges. According to a 2010 Harper?s article (subscription required), the novelist would ?masturbate to the very edge of orgasm, but not over, and that state?agitated, excited to the point of near madness?was Balzac's sweet spot, in terms of composing. ?
Balzac also didn?t let himself go beyond this ?sweet spot? because he thought that each orgasm depleted his creative energy (a sentiment memorably paraphrased by Woody Allen?s Alvy Singer in Annie Hall). D.H. Lawrence agreed with this notion, at least when it came to self-gratification. He wrote, ?In masturbation there is nothing but loss. There is no reciprocity. There is merely the spending away of a certain force, and no return. The body remains, in a sense, a corpse, after the act of self-abuse. There is no change, only deadening. ?
Other writers took the exact opposite point of view. John Cheever, for instance, placed a high value on the salutary effects of erotic release. He thought that his constitution required at least ?two or three orgasms a week,? and he believed that sexual stimulation improved his concentration and even his eyesight: ?With a stiff prick I can read the small print in prayer books but with a limp prick I can barely read newspaper headlines.?
The Belgian novelist Georges Simenon needed much more than two or three orgasms a week. His astonishing literary productivity?he published more than 400 books in his career?was matched, or even surpassed, by his sexual appetite. ?Most people work every day and enjoy sex periodically,? Patrick Marnham writes. ?Simenon had sex every day and every few months indulged in a frenzied orgy of work.? When living in Paris, Simenon frequently slept with four different women in the same day. He estimated that he bedded 10,000 women in his life. (His second wife disagreed, putting the total closer to 1,200.)
Simenon explained his sexual hunger as the result of ?extreme curiosity? about the opposite sex, and said that these dalliances actually had a concrete benefit on his fiction: ?Women have always been exceptional people for me whom I have vainly tried to understand. It has been a lifelong, ceaseless quest. And how could I have created dozens, perhaps hundreds, of female characters in my novels if I had not experienced those adventures which lasted for two hours or ten minutes??
And what about female artists? Earlier in this series, I mentioned that George Sand used to slip out a sleeping lover?s bed to write in the middle of the night, but that is a pretty tenuous (and tame) example. My Daily Rituals research did not turn up many female artists who drew an explicit connection between their sex lives and their working habits?although whether this is because the connection isn?t there, or because women just aren?t as boastful about their erotic activities, is anyone?s guess.
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Public release date: 1-May-2013
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