Cosmic 'jellyfish' object described
PASADENA, Calif., Nov. 17 (UPI) -- A NASA telescope has discovered a distant cosmic "jellyfish" surrounded by fluorescing gas and two very unusual rings, U.S. astronomers say.
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer shows the object, known as NGC 1514 or the "Crystal Ball" nebula, as belonging to a class of objects called planetary nebulae which form when dying stars toss off their outer layers of material, a space agency release said.
"I am reminded of the jellyfish exhibition at the Monterey Bay Aquarium -- beautiful things floating in water, except this one is in space," Edward (Ned) Wright, principal investigator of the WISE mission at UCLA, said.
Ultraviolet light from a central star, or in this case of NGC 1514 a pair of stars, causes the surrounding gas to fluoresce with colorful light.
The result is often beautiful -- planetary nebulae are sometimes called the butterflies of space.
Planetary nebulae with asymmetrical rings of nebulous gas are common but nothing like the symmetrical double rings around NGC 1514 had been seen before.
Astronomers say the rings are made of dust ejected by the dying pair of stars at the center of NGC 1514. This burst of dust, colliding with the walls of a cavity cleared out by stellar winds, forms the rings, NASA said.
WISE was able to spot the rings for the first time because their dust glows with the infrared light that WISE can detect. In visible-light images, the rings are hidden from view, overwhelmed by the brightly fluorescing clouds of gas.
"This object has been studied for more than 200 years, but WISE shows us it still has surprises," said Michael Ressler, a member of the WISE science team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
Study: Language molds likes, dislikes
CAMBIRDGE, Mass., Nov. 17 (UPI) -- The language we speak may influence not only our thoughts, but also our perceptions or preferences about other ethnic groups, U.S. researchers say.
Scientists at Harvard University say implicit attitudes people may be unaware they possess can predict behavior towards members of social groups and can be molded by the language they speak, ScienceDaily.com reported.
"Can we shift something as fundamental as what we like and dislike by changing the language in which our preferences are elicited?" Mahzarin R. Banaji, a professor of social ethics, asks.
"If the answer is yes, that gives more support to the idea that language is an important shaper of attitudes," he says.
The researchers administered a well-known test called the Implicit Association Test.
"The IAT bypasses a large part of conscious cognition and taps into something we're not aware of and can't easily control," Banaji says.
The researchers administered the IAT in two different settings: once in Morocco, with bilinguals in Arabic and French, and again in the United States with Latinos who speak both English and Spanish.
In Morocco, participants who took the IAT in Arabic showed greater preference for other Moroccans. When they took the test in French, that difference disappeared.
Similarly, in the United States, participants who took the test in Spanish showed a greater preference for other Hispanics. But again, in English, that preference disappeared.
"It was quite shocking to see that a person could take the same test, within a brief period of time, and show such different results," Harvard graduate student Oludamini Ogunnaike says.
"It's like asking your friend if he likes ice cream in English, and then turning around and asking him again in French and getting a different answer."
"These results challenge our views of attitudes as stable," Banaji says. "There still remain big questions about just how fixed or flexible they are, and language may provide a window through which we will learn about their nature."
Endangered status urged for Hawaiian whale
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- The dwindling population of a whale in Hawaiian waters has led the Obama administration to propose classifying the species as endangered, environmentalists say.
The Hawaiian false killer whale has a small and ecologically important population that has suffered a significant decline over the last 25 years and only 150 of the animals may be left, a Natural Resources Defense Council release said Wednesday.
"The whales are losing their food, getting hooked on fishing lines and accumulating toxins at a rate that threatens their survival," Michael Jasny of the NRDC's Marine Mammal Project said.
"Protecting them will go a long way towards protecting the extraordinary marine environment of the Hawaiian Islands," he said.
Hawaiian false killer whales are large members of the dolphin family that can weigh up to 1,500 pounds.
Females can grow up to 15 feet and males can reach 20 feet.
The administration's decision comes one year after NRDC submitted a formal scientific petition to list the population.
If approved, the Hawaiian false killer whale would become only the fourth U.S. whale or dolphin population to be placed on the endangered species list since 1970.
Listing the whales as an endangered species would require the government to identify critical habitat for the population, ensure activities do not jeopardize its survival, and prepare a "recovery plan" to bring it back from endangered status, the NRDC said.
'Explosive' double-star systems seen
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 17 (UPI) -- U.S. astronomers say they've discovered a number of previously unobserved double-star systems, some of them heading toward a spectacularly explosive fate.
The newly identified binary star systems all consist of two white dwarf stars that are on a collision course with each other, SPACE.com reported Wednesday.
A white dwarf is the hot, incredibly dense dead core that remains after a sun-like star blows off its outer layers as it dies.
"These are weird systems -- objects the size of the Earth orbiting each other at a distance less than the radius of the sun," says astronomer Warren Brown of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
Astronomers have found 12 such binary white dwarf systems, about half of which will probably see their stars merge together in a catastrophic explosion, they say.
Not that it's going to happen anytime soon; the tightest binary system, with two stars circling each other once every hour, will merge in about 100 million years, the scientists estimated.
