Category: Science &Technology

{{North Korea said it successfully detonated a miniaturized nuclear device at a northeastern test site Tuesday, defying U.N. Security Council orders to shut down atomic activity or face more sanctions and international isolation.}}

The underground explosion could take North Korea a big step closer to its goal of building a nuclear warhead small enough to be mounted on a long-range missile that could threaten the United States.

It will also be seen as a direct message from young leader Kim Jong Un to the United States, Pyongyang’s former wartime enemy.

North Korea’s official state media said the test was conducted in a safe manner and is aimed at coping with “outrageous” U.S. hostility that “violently” undermines the North’s peaceful, sovereign right to launch satellites.

North Korea faced sanctions after a December launch of a rocket that the U.N. and Washington called a cover for a banned missile test. Pyongyang said it was a peaceful satellite launch.

The timing will be seen as significant. The test came hours before President Barack Obama was scheduled to give his State of the Union speech, a major, nationally televised address.

It’s also only days before the Saturday birthday of Kim Jong Un’s father, late leader Kim Jong Il, whose memory North Korean propaganda has repeatedly linked to the country’s nuclear ambitions.

This year also marks the 60th anniversary of the signing of the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

The North said it used a “lighter, miniaturized atomic bomb” that still has more explosive force than past tests.

North Korea is estimated to have enough weaponized plutonium for four to eight bombs, according to American nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker.

However, it is not known whether North Korean scientists have found a way to miniaturize warheads.

Earlier Tuesday, South Korean, U.S. and Japanese seismic monitoring agencies said they detected an earthquake in North Korea with a magnitude between 4.9 and 5.2.

The nuclear test is North Korea’s first since Kim Jong Un took power of a country long estranged from the West.

Experts say regular tests are needed to perfect North Korea’s goal of building nuclear warheads small enough to be placed on long-range missiles. This atomic test is North Korea’s third since 2006.

The test will likely be portrayed in North Korea as a strong move to defend the nation against foreign aggression, particularly from the U.S., North Korea’s longtime enemy.

North Korea’s rocket launches and nuclear tests largely are seen by analysts as threats designed to force the United States to confront the issue of military tensions between the foes 60 years after the end of the Korean War.

Following the announcement of the nuclear test, North Korean state television played a song with lyrics bragging that the country always carries out what it is determined to do.

In the background were scenes of a North Korean long-range rocket blasting off and short-range missiles being fired into the sky.

The United States and its allies have been on edge since North Korea announced last month that it would conduct a nuclear test to protest toughened sanctions over the December rocket launch.

In Washington, the White House had no immediate comment on Tuesday’s developments.

North Korea’s National Defense Commission said Jan. 23 that the United States was its prime target for a nuclear test and long-range rocket launches. North Korea accuses Washington of leading the push to punish Pyongyang for its December rocket launch.

Last October, a spokesman from the commission told state media that the country had built a missile capable of striking the United States, but did not provide further details.

The decision to push ahead with a test will be a challenge to the U.N. Security Council, which recently punished Pyongyang for launching the long-range rocket.

In condemning that launch and imposing more sanctions on Pyongyang, the council had demanded a stop to future launches and ordered North Korea to respect a ban on nuclear activity — or face “significant action” by the U.N.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon condemned Tuesday’s nuclear test in a statement.

The test will likely draw harsh censure and more sanctions from the United States and other countries at a time when North Korea is trying to rebuild its moribund economy and expand its engagement with the outside world.

North Korea cites the U.S. military threat in the region as a key reason behind its drive to build nuclear weapons.

The two countries fought on opposite sides of the Korean War, which ended after three years on July 27, 1953, with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The U.S.-led U.N. Command mans the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas, and Washington stations more than 28,000 troops in South Korea to protect the ally.

Agencies

{{US space agency NASA is gearing up for the Monday (Feb. 11) launch of an Earth-observation satellite that will continue a celebrated 40-year project to monitor our planet’s surface from space}}.

The Landsat Data Continuity Mission is slated to blast off Monday at 1:02 p.m. EST (1802 GMT/10:02 a.m. PST) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The LDCM satellite is the eighth overall in the Landsat program, which has been scrutinizing Earth from orbit continuously since Landsat 1 launched in 1972.

Mission team members call LDCM the most advanced and capable Landsat spacecraft ever built. It should help the United States and other nations around the world monitor environmental change and better manage their natural resources, they say.

“LDCM will continue to describe the human impact on Earth and the impact of Earth on humanity, which is vital for accommodating seven billion people on our planet,” LDCM project manager Ken Schwer, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told reporters today (Feb. 8) during a prelaunch press briefing. [Photos: The Next Landsat Earth-Observing Spacecraft]

The $855 million LDCM mission is a collaboration between NASA and the United States Geological Survey, which will take over operations after the spacecraft’s launch and initial checkouts. At that point, the satellite will be renamed Landsat 8.

Landsat 8 will zip around the Earth at an altitude of 438 miles (705 kilometers), using two sensors to study the planet’s surface in the visible and infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The SUV-size satellite will achieve full Earth coverage every 16 days, though its work will lower this to once per eight days for the program overall.

That’s because Landsat 8 will fly eight days behind Landsat 7, which launched in 1999 and recently became the only currently operational Landsat spacecraft. (Landsat 5 retired recently after 29 years of service).

Landsat 8’s observations will have a broad range of applications, from illuminating the impacts of climate change to monitoring agricultural output to helping authorities respond to natural disasters, scientists said.

“Landsat data is a global resource, empowering nations to individually monitor and report,” said Mike Wulder of the Canadian Forest Service in Victoria, British Columbia. “Further, Landsat data allows us to see what the world looks like, and how it has changed over time.”

The weather should be good at Vandenberg during Monday’s launch window, officials said, but it hasn’t been cooperating today. The mission team wanted to perform some ordnance connections on LDCM’s launch vehicle, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, earlier today but were unable to do so because of the threat of lightning.

“We’ve got to be able to get that work done,” said NASA launch director Omar Baez. “If we don’t, then we’ll have to reassess the schedule. But it’s too early to tell.”

{Agencies}

{{US media has reported that a computer hacker has stolen personal emails and photographs belonging to former US President George H W Bush and his family.}}

One photograph posted on the internet showed the 88-year-old Republican politician in bed in hospital, where he was recently treated for bronchitis.

The stolen emails are reported to include addresses and personal details of several members of the Bush family.

A spokesman for Mr Bush confirmed that an investigation was under way.

“We do not comment on matters under criminal investigation,” Jim McGrath told the Houston Chronicle.

The hacker broke into email accounts of several members of the Bush family, news website the Smoking Gun reported.

The hacked emails are reported to include messages expressing serious concern about the health of the former president, including a personal note sent by President Barack Obama through an aide.

Agencies

{{An initial chemical analysis on 14 Borneo pygmy elephants that died mysteriously could not conclusively determine if they were poisoned, and more tests will be conducted abroad, an official said Friday.}}

The endangered elephants were found dead last month in a protected forest in Sabah state on Borneo. Sabah is home to most of the remaining 1,200 Borneo pygmy elephants that exist worldwide.

The elephants are feared to have been poisoned because they encroached on Malaysian plantations.

Sabah Environment Minister Masidi Manjun said the state’s wildlife department would send samples to forensic testing facilities in Thailand and Australia for more comprehensive tests to determine the cause of the elephants’ deaths.

“To ensure greater transparency of the entire issue, my ministry will be seeking a second opinion from other laboratories,” he said in a statement.

Samples will be sent immediately to the Ramathibodi Poison Center at Thailand’s Mahidol University and the chemistry lab of the Queensland Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in Australia, he said.

Masidi said he had also directed the state’s chemistry department to expand its scope of tests on more possible chemical contaminants.

Department veterinarians have said the elephants suffered severe bleeding and gastrointestinal ulcers.

read more…………http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/malaysia-seeks-tests-dead-pygmy-elephants-18437196

{{Earth-like worlds may be closer and more plentiful than anyone imagined.

Astronomers reported Wednesday that the nearest Earth-like planet may be just 13 light-years away — or some 77 trillion miles. }}

That planet hasn’t been found yet, but should be there based on the team’s study of red dwarf stars.

Galactically speaking, that’s right next door.

If our Milky Way galaxy were shrunk to the size of the United States, the distance between Earth and its closest Earth-like neighbor would be the span of New York’s Central Park, said Harvard University graduate student Courtney Dressing, the study’s lead author.

“The nearest Earth-like planet is simply a stroll across the park away,” she said at a news conference in Cambridge, Mass.

Small, cool red dwarfs are the most common stars in our galaxy, numbering at least 75 billion.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics team estimates 6 percent of red dwarf stars have Earth-like planets.

To qualify, the planet must be roughly the size of Earth and get as much light from its star, as Earth does from the sun.

This high rate of occurrence should simplify the search for extraterrestrial life.

As the report’s co-author, David Charbonneau, noted, he’s an astronomer, but hopes to become a biologist if that search succeeds.

These planetary candidates are quite different than Earth because of the differences between their red dwarf stars and the sun, Charbonneau told reporters.

Because the red dwarfs are so much smaller, potentially habitable planets would need to orbit much closer than the Earth does to the sun.

They likely would be rocky, the astronomers said, but different types of atmospheres could lead to different types of life.

Red dwarf stars also can be old — far older than our sun — which means their planets could be much older than Earth and their potential life forms much more evolved.

Our solar system is 4.5 billion years old, for instance, while some red dwarf stars are 12 billion years old. One of these target planets could be 12 billion years old as well, the scientists said.

Future spacecraft should be able to locate these planets and provide environmental clues.

California Institute of Technology astronomer John Johnson, who was not involved in the study, called the proximity of the nearest Earth-like planet “extraordinarily exciting.”

“It’s right within reach,” Johnson said, and future efforts will put scientists “hot on the trail of finding life elsewhere in the galaxy.”

These newest findings are based on data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, launched in 2009. They will be published in “The Astrophysical Journal.”

Agencies