Dark matter may have killed the dinosaurs, claims scientist

Dark matter may have been responsible for the comet strike which killed the dinosaurs, a scientist has suggested.

Earth, as well as spinning around the Sun, is also moving around our own galaxy, the Milky Way,

Biology Professor Michael Rampino, of New York University, believes that at certain periods Earth passes through areas of concentrated dark matter, and that has a huge impact on our planet's geology and biology.

Although dark matter has never been seen, scientists believe it must exist to account for huge gravitational effects in the universe. There simply isn’t enough visible matter to keep the planets, stars and other bodies in place, so some large invisible force must be also having an impact.

Prof Rampino believes that dark matter changes the orbits of comets and leads to additional heating of the Earth’s core which can trigger volcanoes, mountain building and mass extinction events.

Earth moves around the ‘galactic disc’ – a region of the Milky Way where our solar system resides - once every 250 million years but its orbit takes it nearer to the crowded centre of the disc every 30 million years, where there should be, theoretically, more dark matter.

Prof Rampino discovered that those 30 million year periods correlate to times of comet impacts and mass extinctions.

The comet strike 66 million ago that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs is just one example.

"We are fortunate enough to live on a planet that is ideal for the development of complex life," Rampino says.

"But the history of the Earth is punctuated by large scale extinction events, some of which we struggle to explain. It may be that dark matter - the nature of which is still unclear but which makes up around a quarter of the universe - holds the answer.

“As well as being important on the largest scales, dark matter may have a direct influence on life on Earth."

Because there is more dark matter in the crowded central part of the galactic disc, it can disturb paths of comets, sending them on a collision course with Earth.

And with each dip into the disc, the dark matter can accumulate within the Earth's core, producing considerable heat. The heat created could trigger events such as volcanic eruptions, mountain building, magnetic field reversals, and changes in sea level, which also show peaks every 30 million years.

Prof Rampino believes his model of dark matter interactions could change our understanding of the geological and biological development of Earth, as well as other planets within the Galaxy and explain some of the most cataclysmic events that have taken place.

HERPES VAX SHOWS PROMISE.

Electron micrograph of herpes simplex virusFLICKR, NIAIDResearchers have traditionally designed vaccines against herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) to elicit antibodies that targeted the viral surface protein called glycoprotein D (gD-2), which the virus uses to enter host cells. But by deleting gD-2 from the viral genome, William Jacobs of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and his colleagues not only rendered the virus unable to infect cells, they were able to develop a vaccine that forced the murine immune system to produce antibodies that recognize different viral targets.

“We had a hunch that gD-2 might be masking other viral antigens, and that by removing this dominant protein we would expose those previously masked antigens to the immune system,” Jacobs said in astatement.

Using the gD-2–lacking virus to immunize mice, the researchers elicited complete protection against wild-type HSV-2, both when the animals were challenged intravaginally or through the skin. Importantly, the researchers, who published their results this week (March 10) in eLife, found no evidence of latent HSV-2 lingering in the vaccinated mice.

“A dominant protein like that is like a loud person in a room; other people speaking can’t be heard,” coauthor Betsy Herold, a pediatric infectious disease doctor at Einstein, told Science News, drawing the analogy to gD-2 and other viral antigens.

“Our findings challenge the existing dogma that says an effective herpes vaccine must stimulate neutralizing antibodies against gD-2,” Jacobs said in the statement. “It’s almost as if the virus evolved gD-2 specifically to hide the other antigens; gD-2 turns out to be a Trojan horse that misleads the immune system.”

TAKEN FROM- THE SCIENTIST

Nazca Lines

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coordinates: 14°43′00″S 75°08′00″W

UNESCO World Heritage Site

Lines and Geoglyphs of Nazca and Pampas de Jumana
Name as inscribed on the World Heritage List
Type	Cultural
Criteria	i, iii, iv
Reference	700
UNESCO region	Latin America and the Caribbean
Inscription history
Inscription	Unknown (18th Session)

The Nazca Lines /ˈnæzkə/ are a series of ancient geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The high, arid plateau stretches more than 80 km (50 mi) between the towns of Nazcaand Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana about 400 km south of Lima. Although some local geoglyphs resemble Paracas motifs, scholars believe the Nazca Lines were created by the Nazca culture between 400 and 650 AD.^[1] The hundreds of individual figures range in complexity from simple lines to stylized hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks, orcas, and lizards.

The designs are shallow lines made in the ground by removing the reddish pebbles and uncovering the whitish/grayish ground beneath. Hundreds are simple lines or geometric shapes; more than 70 are zoomorphic designs of animals such as birds, fish, llamas, jaguars, monkeys, or human figures. Other designs include phytomorphic shapes such as trees and flowers. The largest figures are over 200 m (660 ft) across. Scholars differ in interpreting the purpose of the designs, but in general, they ascribe religious significance to them.

Due to the dry, windless, and stable climate of the plateau and its isolation, for the most part, the lines have been preserved. Extremely rare changes in weather may temporarily alter the general designs. As of recent years, the lines have been 

What is a Particle Accelerator?

WHAT IS A PARTICLE ACCELERATOR?
A particle accelerator is a machine that accelerates elementary particles, such as electrons or protons, to very high energies. On a basic level, particle accelerators produce beams of charged particles that can be used for a variety of research purposes. There are two basic types of particle accelerators: linear accelerators and circular accelerators. Linear accelerators propel particles along a linear, or straight, beam line. Circular accelerators propel particles around a circular track. Linear accelerators are used for fixed-target experiments, whereas circular accelerators can be used for both colliding beam and fixed target experiments.

HOW DOES A PARTICLE ACCELERATOR WORK?
Particle accelerators use electric fields to speed up and increase the energy of a beam of particles, which are steered and focused by magnetic fields. The particle source provides the particles, such as protons or electrons, that are to be accelerated. The beam of particles travels inside a vacuum in

Multiple Star Birth

STARSTRUCK

Multiple-Star Birth Revealed in Stellar Nursery

Quadruple-star system will emerge in 40,000 years.

Astronomers have have gotten their first good look at the beginnings of a quadruple-star system.

The discovery could LEAD to a better understanding of why some stars, such as our sun, are loners, while many others are born into systems with two, three, or more stars.

Using the combined power of two of the largest radio telescopes in the world—the Very Large Array (VLA) radio observatory in Socorro, New Mexico, and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia—along with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii, a team of international scientists have observed the earliest stages of formation of the future four-star system.

The study, published February 11 in Nature, describes a cloud of gas called Barnard 5, or B5, located some 800 light-years from Earth in the constellation Perseus. Nestled within the stellar nursery, a core of gas, scientists found one young protostar and three dense pockets of matter that they believe will collapse into stars in about 40,000 years—a blink of an eye in astronomical terms.

                                                                                                                 - Source http://news.nationalgeographic.com/