NEUTRON SPECTROMETER TO TEST MARS
A neutron spectrometer designed and built at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory is closing in on Mars aboard NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey. The 2001 Mars Odyssey mission is designed to map the mineral and chemical make-up of the Martian surface and the location of water and shallow buried ice. For the first time, the planet's radiation environment will be to gauged for risk to future astronauts. The neutron spectrometer will map the water table in the upper meter of the Martian soil, helping scientists understand the climatic history of the planet. It will also provide information on the location and quantity of water available for future exploration and possible colonization. The neutron spectrometer will also map the basaltic lava cover, measure the variation of dry ice snowfall at the poles and help convert gamma ray data that will determine the quantity and composition of various elements on the planet. Mars Odyssey, after a six and one-half month, 286 million-mile journey, is scheduled to enter into orbit around the red planet at 8:30 p.m. Mountain Time on Tuesday.
PHYSICISTS COUNT SUN'S SUBATOMIC PARTICLES
The sun not only radiates light, but it also emits millions of tiny invisible particles called neutrinos and Texas A&M University physicists have achieved precise results about the number of solar neutrinos, the journal Physical Review C reports. "The main puzzle about solar neutrinos is that their measured number has always been lower than expected," says Carl A. Gagliardi. "Though the main explanation is now that neutrinos have mass -- which was not originally predicted -- details about how they are produced in the sun still need to be investigated." Gagliardi studied in the laboratory the reaction for which most of the solar neutrinos are produced, called "proton capture reaction," by measuring a related process, called the "proton transfer reaction." The scientists used a device called the Momentum Achromat Recoil Spectrometer in which a beam of beryllium 7 nuclei coming from Texas A&M's cyclotron are projected onto a target of nitrogen 14 nuclei. After the collision, a proton escapes from a nitrogen 14 nucleus and binds to a beryllium 7 nucleus to make a boron 8 nucleus. In the sun, when a proton and a beryllium 7 nucleus collide, they can make a boron 8 nucleus, which in turn decays into a beryllium 8 and a neutrino. "The consensus is now that less boron 8 is produced from the sun, which in turn reduces the number of solar neutrinos by around 20 percent compared to previous calculations," Gagliardi says.
MORE SPACE TOURISTS IN THE FUTURE?
Millionaire Dennis Tito, who earlier this year flew to the International Space Station, remains head over heels about his trek but he thinks it'll take a while before others will be able to do the same, Space.com reports. Tito recapped his voyage before the Space Frontier Foundation's 10th annual symposium: In Search of 2001. "If we're really going to see significant advances in the next 100 years in human spaceflight, I think it's going to happen from the private sector," Tito said. "People who love space as much as I do will make this happen, if there's demand there will be money from the private sector to make it happen." According to Tito, the first step in getting more tourists into space has already been taken when he paid $20 million to Russians to become the first space tourist. "NASA is now supporting the Russians in flying civilians on their taxi flights, those that can afford the trip and qualify to fly," he said. "As we get more and more of that, that will demonstrate that there really is a market." It's only through the commercialization of space, and by bringing the private sector in to lower the cost of putting people in space, that we will really see an expansion of space travel, he said. "I don't see the government doing it," said Tito. "They have some kind of number like $14 billion and they can't seem to get beyond that."
IRAQI ARCHEOLOGISTS FIND TEMPLE TO ISHTAR
Iraqi archaeologists have uncovered a temple dedicated to the goddess Ishtar at the ancient city of Babylon, 90 kilometers south of Baghdad, the newspaper Tikrit reports, according tot he Australian Broadcasting Company."Cuneiform inscriptions on the 25 artifacts found at the temple indicate that the building dates back to the old Babylonian era, and to the reign of King Hammurabi (179-1750 BC) in particular," Tikrit writes, quoting a source at the Antiquities and Heritage Department. Ishtar was the goddess of love in Babylonia and Assyria. Under various names, the cult of the mother goddess was universal in the ancient Near East. Tikrit reports that excavation teams had also discovered a house with an open courtyard, a number of rooms and graves inside the house in the temple area. "Artifacts included a relief on a clay tablet of a woman breast-feeding her child; the first ever to be found," the newspaper says.
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