J-20 Round Up: What's New Since My Last Post

There has been a big gap since I posted about the J-20. A lot of things have happened and some new info and some new blog posts are out and about. I thought I'd work up a put up a links post for those that read the blog and are interested in the more recent thoughts since what I'd put up.

First up, some purty pix:

Bottom views from left to right of the J-20, T-50 and F-22.

Note: not properly scaled.

The J-20 looks similar to the original planform of the JSF entry by Lockheed.

Note: no accusation they copied the early JSF entry, more like parallel evolution

An attempt at figuring out the actual length of the J-20 vs the F-22.

Did China Steal US Stealth Tech?

Offiziere.ch offers up an opinion on whether or not the F-117 shootdown on March 27, 1999 in the Kosovo War provided China with their materials tech to produce their own native stealth. The China Military Report rebutted that China doesn't need 30+ year old tech to do the above. If the F-117 contributed anything to the J-20 - I honestly don't know - then it would have been used as a starting place rather than a blatant cut and paste of technology. The CMR is correct that it is VERY outdated material science, but given that the information would be examined by individuals with lots of experience with composite technologies and whatnot that have been developed since, they could come up with similar and improved materials based on the observed characteristics of the F-117 samples. There are reasons why I watch my own composite samples very, very closely when dealing with others.

J-20 DID take to the Skies.

Nice photos from China Defense Blog.

Nice photos via the China Military Report here and here.

Another set of photos via Avweek: they have a youtube video, too.

Notice the size difference between the J-10 fighter (an very, very rough analog of the F-16) and the J-20. The J-20 is a BIG beast, relatively speaking.

Bill Sweetman with his opinions on the flight ought to be viewed here.

The Pooh-Pooh Brigade:

No sooner than the world reacted strongly to the J-20 than out came those that puh-puhed the development of the J-20. It's not THAT big a deal they stated. Don't overreact. Here are some of their commentaries.

David Axe argues that American drones are far more important the the rise of the J-20 in the grand scheme of things. He also argues about what the real cost of the J-20 will be and that buying it will weaken the Chinese military somewhere else.

The Avweek crew argue that the J-20 is vulnerable to a host of sensors that the US is deploying now because tech has marched on in the sensor world since the 1990s. In many ways, this sounds like the arguments that were trotted out against the American stealthy aircraft in the 1990s though.

In the Speculation Department:

The Dew Line wonders if the J-20 is meant to be another tool to try to push the USN away from the Chinese coasts. In that vein, the USNI blog comments on how the differences between the US view of Chinese capabilities and the Chinese goals. The perception is pretty significant.

War Is Boring puts up another post similar to what I wrote about the coming manned 5th generation fighters as a contrast to the J-20, but with more detail. It also notes that the US is starting to define its 5.5 gen or 6th gen fighter requirements even before the J-20 was unveiled.

David Fulghum at Avweek speculates that there are more stealth designs coming from the Chinese in the near future.

In the Recap Department:

The Dew Line brings up a video from Singapore about the J-20 activities.

And I seem to have misplaced the last post I planned on including. ah well.

Dear Readers: What Do You Want To See First?

I accomplished some major milestones last week and this cleared off my plate some serious stress and time consumption. It will be replaced with more in the very near future. However, I have a window of time that I can work on other things. I have promised that I would return to doing some paleo posts here.

I have a number of half or three quarters finished posts. I'm considering which ones to finish up and bring online. I'd like to get some feedback from my readers to see what they would like to have first. IDK if I will get to two posts, but I will try. Here are the lists of the ones that are in production that you all can vote on:

1. Not Your Father's Archean: This is about the new research that indicates that the archaen was not what we had thought it was.

2. A Fully Functional Mass Extinction: Talks about the definitions of a mass extinction, its misuse, how they 'work' and some annoying things that scientists and nonscientists ought to avoid when discussing them.

3. The Great Harrowing: The Sixth Mass Extinction: Talking about the mass extinction(s) that are combined into what is being called the Sixth. This clarifies the extinctions that took place at the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary, the Pleistocene-Holocene, and the ongoing one.

4. An unnamed therocephalian post: This would return to talking about the nonmammalian therapsids like I did with the gorgonopsids and the dicynodonts.

5. An unnamed Xenopermian post: This talks about the environments of the places that we will be highlighting in the ongoing xenopermian alternate paleohistory project.

Pick two please.

One for your first choice that I will get done.

A second for what you'd like me to get to after if I have time.

oy, the embarassment

My IT guy decided to be obnoxious and detail what happened. It became a post on tuaw. Looking at the comments though this one stood out and I could NOT stop laughing so hard that people swarmed my office.

As a former owner of a PT Cruiser, I can safely say the iPad probably did more damage to the car than the other way around.

Soooooooo fscking true. My hat's off, FearlessFreep. You have spoken so much truth.

Chitin Remnants in Paleozoic Fossils

Surprising new research shows that, contrary to conventional belief, remains of chitin-protein complex—structural materials containing protein and polysaccharide—are present in abundance in fossils of arthropods from the Paleozoic era. Previously the oldest molecular signature of chitin-protein complex was discovered in 25 million year old Cenozoic fossils and remnants of structural protein have also been discovered in 80 million-year-old Mesozoic fossils. Carnegie's George Cody and an international team of scientists discovered relicts of protein-chitin complex in fossils of arthropods from the Paleozoic era. Their findings, published online by Geology, could have major implications for our understanding of the organic fossil record.

Among other common features, arthropods have exoskeletons, or cuticles. The outer portions of these cuticles are made up of a composite of chitin fibers, which are embedded in a matrix of protein. It is well known that chitin and structural protein are easily degraded by microorganisms and it has long been believed that chitin and structural proteins would not be present in fossils of moderate age, let alone in fossils dating back to the early Paleozoic.

Cody and his team studied fossil remains of a 310-million-year-old scorpion cuticle from northern Illinois and a 417-million-year-old eurypterid—an extinct scorpion-like arthropod, possibly related to horseshoe crabs—from Ontario, Canada. Using sophisticated analytical instrument at the Advanced Light Source facility, the research team measured the absorption spectra of low-energy X-rays by carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in the fossils. These measurements were taken at a resolution on the order of 25 nanometers. The researchers showed that the majority of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen found in these fossils from the Paleozoic era were derived from a protein-chitin complex. Not surprisingly, the protein-chitin material was somewhat degraded, either by chemical processes or partial bacterial degradation.

They used the day job's Advanced Light Source for their work. Awesome. :)

To China, with love, signed, USN

Deep Breath

ok. Sorta back. Will start spinning things up again.

Oh, and folks, scarlet fever has made an appearance in NorCal. The hospital was surprised since they've not seen it before. So was my daughter.

blah.

As if Strep wasn't bad enough!

I am going to be getting back on my feet, blogwise and lifewise. We had two major milestones accomplished in the past month, too. A lot more soon.

IPad: Its not a Timex...or Maybe It Is.

The touch screen even works too...after a PT Cruiser has run it down.

Whoa.

Just need some gloves for the glass.

IPad: Its not a Timex

It's works. I borrowed it to try to code a monitoring app to help out our operators. I just got it yesterday and *crunch*. geez. Just when I thought the Dr Pepper incident was finally forgotten.

Hopefully, its only a pound of flesh that they want.

Update. We got it to boot. And the damned thing works. Whoa.

J-20/J-XX Takes to the Air?

And here, too.

Seems to be a hoax.

J-20/J-XX High Speed Taxi Tests

The J-20/J-XX: The Sino Surprise

For all intents and purposes, the People Liberation Army Air Force gave the J-20/J-XX as a Christmas present to the whole of the aviation enthusiast community. In fact, the whole year has been rather exciting for the stealth aircraft fanbase. Not only did we get the last second Chinese stealth fighter, we also had the Russian T-50 as well. The Japanese began work on their own three years ago. Interesting in its absence is that of a European equivalent.

I am writing the article today, because when the first rumors of the J-20/J-XX came out, with some CGI pix, I called the pix and existence of the J-20 a fan wank. The pix themselves turned out to be completely fanwank and had only a little more to do with the J-20 as did the Testor F-19 model did with the F-117A Nighthawk back in the day. However, the second half of my statement, that the J-20 didn't exist was completely wrong. Completely and utterly wrong! It is much to my delight (fanboy here, I used to run a website back in the 90s for stealth aircraft. One of the VERY few back when) and horror (American nationalist here, too!) that the Chinese have taken a big step forward in air combat tech.

The whole unveiling is also to my amusement since I was against the F-22 getting cut short on production. I was not convinced of Gates' statement that there would be no possible stealth aircraft in production elsewhere by 2020, when we'd be looking at replacing the F-22. Um. oops? *snork*

Now, honestly, we do not know if this is a tech demo prototype that the Chinese are testing or if this is an aircraft that is a prototype for a soon to be production run. We also do not know what what he development cycle for the Chinese is at this point. The number of purely internally developed fighters by the Chinese in the recent past is not very high, so it is hard to extrapolate how long it will take for them to introduce this fighter to the inventory. It ought to be noted that the time it took the Chinese to go from first flight of the J-10 to IOC was seven years though. If that holds true here, we are looking at J-20s around 2017/2018.

There are a lot of links out there and some very good analyses. I am late to the game and I am pressed for time to write this. In fact, I ought not to be with all that I need to get done, but I felt that I owed the blogosphere a post based on the fact that I was, well, wrong. I am going to very simply put the known stats of the F-22, F-35, PAK-FA, and J-20 in a table for comparison. I'm also going to be putting up some photos of each. Then I will make a basic commentary and a wrap up.

Stats Table:

Stats:        F-22         F-35         PAK-FA       J-20
Length:       62 ft 1 in   51 ft 5 in   65 ft 9 in   69 ft 3 in  (75+ ft: Sweetman)
Wing Span:    44 ft 6 in   35 ft        46 ft 7 in   ????????  (45+ ft: Sweetman)
Height:       16 ft 8 in   4 ft 3 in    19 ft 10 in  ????????
Weight (e):   43,430 lbs   29,300 lbs   40,785 lbs   ????????
Weight (l):   64,460 lbs   49,950 lbs   57,320 lbs   ~80,000 lbs (Sweetman)
T:W Ratio:    1.08         .86          1.19         .8 (?)

Engines

A lot, as you can see, is very unknown at this point. The key one is the thrust to weight ratio. This determines acceleration and maneuverability. The best ratio, if accurate, is the PAK-FA, followed by the F-22. The worst may be the J-20, but that's very much in the air.: there's no accurate weight or thrust figures here. It depends on what engine is being used and how much the actual weight is.. The Russian saturn series, then they are likely to have a better thrust ratio than other potential engines.

Stealth Aspects



Looking at the aircraft from the stealthiness point of view, the F-22 still reigns in a big way. The designers went for an all aspect stealth. We pay for it, too. The F-35 is the F-16 to the F-22's F-15, so it should not be expected that the stealth will be up to the same level despite several more years of technology development.


Russian T-50/PAK-FA


The Russian T-50, I hope, is only an airframe prototype rather than an all around just before production prototype. The reason being that there are a huge number of aspects of it that are very, very unstealthy. If you watch the video of the pilot climbing out, you can see rivets, for example. You can also see a huge number of probes on the nose of the aircraft as well. These are very, very unstealthy.

J-20/J-XX

The J-20 looks a lot stealthier than the T-50. In the frontal aspect, it may be in league with the F-22, base don shaping. However, a lot depends on the material science. There are rumors that the Chinese are having problems with the advanced composites. Its really hard to tell really. MatSci is really hard, especially military grade materials that can be fabbed in a consistent manner. That said, even if the matsci is up to USAF specs, the rear aspect of the J-20 is less than stealthy, to put it mildly. This jet is intending on penetrating and killing, but not operating over an unfriendly country, ie scenarios where being detected from behind is just as likely. Think of this as more a defensive interceptor at this point. It may have more in common, role wise, with the MiG-31 than the F-22's intended role.



Avionics:

This is the huge and terrible IDK of all the analysts. The US has probably the most advanced avionics, but the F-22 has had a long development cycle. Yet, the architecture on the F-22 is likely more advanced than the Chinese one, but we cannot say that for sure. Sadly, honestly, it will be more advanced than the Russian one. With the fact that data sharing and fusion from multiple sensors and sources is very important going forward, this is really a critical aspect for all the fighters.

A very FAST Wrap-up:

The J-20 is problematic for the US, Russia, Japan, and India. For rather different reasons, though.

The US just canceled building further F-22A's. The JSF is late and overbudget nearing the cost of the F-22A. it also has inferior stealth and air to air capabilities. Depending on the details of when the J-20 is going into service, this could tip the balance in several ways. We had been counting on the idea that the F-22 would mow through the Chinese air force if it ever came to a boxing matching killing off the Su-30 and derivs with our high end monster, the Raptor. Then the F-35s would be more than a match for what followed. The problem now is that there is a fighter that while it might not match the F-22, will at least have a strong chance of eating lower end F-35s. Along with the fact that the refitted Varyag has had smoke in her stack again and the Chinese are now working on (or may have deployed) a anticarrier ballistic missile, the balance of power is shifting in a big way in East Asia.

For the Russians, the Chinese have probably leapfrogged them. The Russians have been idle for a variety of reasons for the past 20 years. Mostly economic, actually. However, the MiG I.44 (here too), Berkut, and, now, the T-50 are just too little too late with not enough technology behind them. The very critical avionics package is just something that the Russians don't have at all. To make matters worse, others are going to question why to buy the T-50 now, which Russia had hoped to export. The tier one (F-22) is impossible to buy and the J-20 can (probably) kill the PAK-FA.

Incidentally, this is equally a problem for the Europeans, since the EuroFighter and Rafale are not going to be up to the J-20 standard either. None of the Europeans are working on a 5th generation fighter either. They are doing drone work, like the US is though. However, should the Chinese offer the J-20 for sale...

For the Indians, now they are between a rock and a hard place. They can either continue with the Russians and try to provide their avionics expertise or they can go it alone with the MCA project. Given the problems that they have been facing with the Tejas development, this may not be the best option whatsoever.

Then there's Japan. Oy. They wanted and begged for the F-22. The F-22 is banned for export though and so they started working on their own stealth fighter project. Given their experiences with the F-2, they may be wary of taking on the task though. As for what they can do? IDK.

(aside: Supposedly the Koreans along with other countries are working on a fighter.)

The J-20 is a great treasure for those of us that are stealthy aircraft fans. However, for the US and others, its a huge headache. It remains to be seen how fast it gets introduced. However, it'll be too soon for the US, no matter when.

Small update (1/10/11): The J-20 seems to have taken its first flight.

Links:

Air Power Australia: Chengdu J-XX [J-20] Stealth Fighter Prototype: A Preliminary Assessment.

Aviation Week: China's Stealth Striker, J-20: Denial is not an Option, Everyday its getting closer, Fog Lifts at Chengdu, and China's Stealth Fighter in Taxi Tests.

China Defense Blog: Chinese Stealth in Plain Sight, Early Eclipse, Possible Cockpit Photos, and A series of photos of J-20 taxi and take-off.

Defense Tech: J-20 vs F-35

War is Boring: China's Stealth Fighter: Russia's View

Skyline: Best Part of The Movie?

Some day, somebody has GOT to sit down and plan a military strike by military folks given the resources at hand for an alien invasion movie.

The drones, kewl. No problem. The way they were used. erm. Looks kewl, but soooo inaccurate.

Oh well.

No, not seen the movie. However, someone flagged me to look at this youtube clip of it.

Cretaceous Atmosphere Was 35% O2?

Ages of ice samples found on the Earth cover a span approaching 200,000 years. Gas bubbles trapped in that ice can be used to learn about the composition of Earth's atmosphere at the time they were trapped in the ice. But how can we tell what the Earth's atmosphere was like before that?

Recently, USGS scientists have used a gas QMS to determine the oxygen level of ancient samples of Earth's atmosphere from a most unlikely place - amber. The fossilized resin of conifer trees, amber is interesting to scientists as a medium that traps insects, small animals, and plants, preserving them through geologic time for future study.

The recent extraction by scientists, of ancient DNA from organisms entombed in amber much like in the science-fiction novel and movie, Jurassic Park is an example of why scientists are intensely interested in amber. Minute bubbles of ancient air trapped by successive flows of tree resin during the life of the tree are preserved in the amber.

Analyses of the gases in these bubbles show that the Earth's atmosphere, 67 million years ago, contained nearly 35 percent oxygen compared to present levels of 21 percent. Results are based upon more than 300 analyses by USGS scientists of Cretaceous, Tertiary, and recent-age amber from 16 world sites.* The oldest amber in this study is about 130 million years old.

Whoa.

I wonder how well this will stand up.

They SOOOOO need to find samples from the Jurassic.

C4 Grasses Evolution Timing Now Divorced From CO2 Drop

A new analysis of fossilized grass-pollen grains deposited on ancient European lake and sea bottoms 16-35 million years ago reveals that C4 grasses evolved earlier than previously thought. This new evidence casts doubt on the widely-held belief that the rise of this incredibly productive group of plants was driven by a large drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations during the Oligocene epoch.

The research team, led by University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Appalachian Laboratory researcher Dr. David Nelson and University of Illinois Professor Feng Sheng Hu, examined the carbon isotope signatures of hundreds of grass-pollen grains and found that C4 grasses were already present on the landscape during the early part of the Oligocene, some 14 million years earlier than previously thought from geological evidence. Their findings are now published online in the journal Geology and will shortly appear in the print edition.

"The idea that C4 grasses originated prior to global decreases in carbon dioxide levels requires us to reevaluate the way we think about the evolution of C4 photosynthesis," said Dr. Nelson. "This new information should encourage the examination of alternate evolutionary selection pressures, such as warm temperatures or dry climates."

C4 plants compose only 3 percent of flowering plant species, yet account for about 25 percent global terrestrial productivity. About 60% of C4 species are grasses, and they dominate the world's grassland and savanna biomes, particularly those in warmer, lower latitude areas. Their ecological success results from the way these species concentrate and then fix carbon dioxide in order to power photosynthesis. While the most well known C4 plants are maize and sugar cane, both of which are critical to human consumption, there is a growing interest in their use as biofuels in order to capture carbon from the atmosphere to mitigate increasing global carbon dioxide levels.

The team used an innovative technique pioneered by Dr. Nelson earlier in his career - the Single Pollen Isotope Ratio Analysis or SPIRAL – to analyze the samples. The scientists first extracted grains of grass pollen from sedimentary rocks using a micromanipulator; then analyzed the tiny samples using a microcombustion device interfaced with an isotope ratio mass spectrometer in Ann Pearson's laboratory at Harvard University, which houses one of only a handful of these devices in the world. Through this analysis, they were able to detect the signature of C4 species from their more common C3 counterparts, because C4 and C3 plants take up different ratios of carbon isotopes during photosynthesis.

"SPIRAL enables us to detect C4 grasses at much lower abundances in geological records than previous approaches, which is helping to revolutionize our ability to study their ecology and evolution," said Dr. Hu. University of Illinois graduate student Michael Urban, lead author of the paper, continues to analyze samples from other parts of the world to look at variation in C4-grass abundance in relation to past changes in atmospheric CO2 and climate.

Not very Medean. ;)

New Top 500 Supercomputers List (11/10)

From the top 10% (50) systems:

China holds #1, #3, #28, #35
America holds #2, #5, #7, #8, #10 - 16, #18, #21, #26, #30-32, 40, 41, #43-46, and #48-50.
Japan holds #4, #33, and #42.
France holds #6, #27, #36, and #37.
Germany holds #9, #22, and #23.
Russia holds #17.
South Korea holds #18, #19, #24, and #25.
Brazil holds #29.
Saudi Arabia holds #34.
Switzerland holds #38.
Canada holds #39.
India holds #47.

The list by country is here and pie chart is here. Over all the US holds 54.8 % of all HPC systems on the Top 500 list. China has 8.2%. Japan has 5.2%. France has 5.2% and Germany has 5.2%. UK has 5%.

A personal note: the day job holds #5! And #26 in the top 50.

Antihydrogen Trapped for the First Time

Physicists working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, have succeeded in trapping antihydrogen – the antimatter equivalent of the hydrogen atom – a milestone that could soon lead to experiments on a form of matter that disappeared mysteriously shortly after the birth of the universe 14 billion years ago.

The first artificially produced low energy antihydrogen atoms – consisting of a positron, or antimatter electron, orbiting an antiproton nucleus – were created at CERN in 2002, but until now the atoms have struck normal matter and annihilated in a flash of gamma-rays within microseconds of creation.

The ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser PHysics Apparatus) experiment, an international collaboration that includes physicists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), has now trapped 38 antihydrogen atoms, each for more than one-tenth of a second.

While the number and lifetime are insufficient to threaten the Vatican – in the 2000 novel and 2009 movie "Angels & Demons," a hidden vat of potentially explosive antihydrogen was buried under St. Peter's Basilica in Rome – it is a starting point for learning new physics, the researchers said.

"We are getting close to the point at which we can do some classes of experiments on the properties of antihydrogen," said Joel Fajans, UC Berkeley professor of physics, LBNL faculty scientist and ALPHA team member. "Initially, these will be crude experiments to test CPT symmetry, but since no one has been able to make these types of measurements on antimatter atoms at all, it's a good start."

CPT (charge-parity-time) symmetry is the hypothesis that physical interactions look the same if you flip the charge of all particles, change their parity – that is, invert their coordinates in space – and reverse time. Any differences between antihydrogen and hydrogen, such as differences in their atomic spectrum, automatically violate CPT, overthrow today's "standard model" of particles and their interactions, and may explain why antimatter, created in equal amounts during the universe's birth, is largely absent today.

The team's results will be published online Nov. 17 in advance of its print appearance in the British journal Nature.

AWESOME!

Climate Change Can Crunch China's Agriculture

Climate change could trigger a 10 percent drop in China's grain harvest over the next 20 years, threatening the country's food security, a leading agriculture expert warned in comments published Friday.

Tang Huajun, deputy dean of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, warned crop production could fall by five to 10 percent by 2030 if climate change continues unchecked, in an interview with the official China Daily.

"The output of the country's three main foods -- rice, wheat and corn -- may suffer a 37 percent decline in the latter part of this century if the government fails to take effective measures to address the impact of climate change," Tang was quoted as saying.

[...]

Tang is the chief scientist for a government project launched in September to study the impact of climate change on China's grain production over the past 20 years at 11 research stations in the north and south of the country.

"Agriculture has been the worst hit by climate change and some negative effects have become more obvious due to rising temperatures and water shortages over the past 10 years," Tang said.

Drought is the biggest threat to China's grain harvest, causing an annual average loss of 15 to 25 million tonnes from 1995 to 2005, or four to eight percent of the country's annual output, Tang said.

Noel. I am going to get to that 'How Bad Can It Get' post relatively soon. Maybe over Tday weekend. That said, I suspect 10% may be a little too conservative. Reason being that precipitation change is poorly predicted at this point, but is wildly different depending on the temperature range in models and almost always more negative for Australia, Central Asia and Africa.

The Proposed Unmanned NASA Unmanned Probes for the Next Decade

The total proposed tab without cost overruns is $40.2 bilion FY15 $. Given the issues of plutonium production alone there is going to be a massive pruning of this list. Nevermind regular funding...

First European Farmers: The Out of Turkey Hypothesis?

A team of international researchers led by ancient DNA experts from the University of Adelaide has resolved the longstanding issue of the origins of the people who introduced farming to Europe some 8000 years ago.

A detailed genetic study of one of the first farming communities in Europe, from central Germany, reveals marked similarities with populations living in the Ancient Near East (modern-day Turkey, Iraq and other countries) rather than those from Europe.

Project leader Professor Alan Cooper, Director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) at the University of Adelaide, says: "This overturns current thinking, which accepts that the first European farming populations were constructed largely from existing populations of hunter-gatherers, who had either rapidly learned to farm or interbred with the invaders."

The results of the study have been published today in the online peer-reviewed science journal PLoS Biology.

"We have finally resolved the question of who the first farmers in Europe were – invaders with revolutionary new ideas, rather than populations of Stone Age hunter-gatherers who already existed in the area," says lead author Dr Wolfgang Haak, Senior Research Associate with ACAD at the University of Adelaide.

"We've been able to apply new, high-precision ancient DNA methods to create a detailed genetic picture of this ancient farming population, and reveal that it was radically different to the nomadic populations already present in Europe.

"We have also been able to use genetic signatures to identify a potential route from the Near East and Anatolia, where farming evolved around 11,000 years ago, via south-eastern Europe and the Carpathian Basin (today's Hungary) into Central Europe," Dr Haak says.

[...]

The ancient DNA used in this study comes from a complete graveyard of Early Neolithic farmers unearthed at the town of Derenburg in Saxony-Anhalt, central Germany.

No time. Seriously no time. Just trying to get back to doing this some.

Baby Apatosaurus Run Bipedally?

A baby dinosaur approximately the size of a pug dog scurried alongside what may have been its mom or dad some 148 million years ago in what is now foothills near Denver, scientists reported today (Nov. 1) at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver.

They caught the paleo-action in the footprints left behind there near the town of Morrison, Colo. The scientists think the dinosaur prints, a set of infant prints next to partial prints from an adult, belonged to Apatosaurus, a sauropod - giant, long-necked dinosaurs that preferred veggies - and once known as Brontosaurus.

As an adult, Apatosaurus is the largest dinosaur found in the Denver metro area, the researchers say, spanning a length of three school buses and weighing as much as eight Asian elephants.

The prints likely made by the infant Apatosaurus were tiny - if you were to place a mug over one, it would completely eclipse the print, according to one of the discoverers, Matthew Mossbrucker, director of the Morrison Natural History Museum in Boulder, Colo.

"The distance between each step is two times wider than what we observe in walking tracks, indicating the animal was at a low-speed run," Mossbrucker said. "I am not aware of any running sauropod tracks anywhere."

The trackway of running prints show only the hind paws, suggesting either that while the baby dinosaur was running, its hind paws eclipsed and removed the front paw track, or that the animal was running only on its hind paws. The tracks made by the adult in a walking mode did show a front paw print.

"We've been arguing for more than a century as to whether or not sauropods could stand up on their back paws," Mossbrucker told LiveScience. "Apparently they can, and the young can even run."

Mossbrucker notes that under the scientific definition of running, this little guy may not have met the criteria. But "if you were to see this animal scurry and scamper in front of you, you would say it's running," he said.

"In the end, we might have a baby sauropod that is running like a Basilisk lizard, a modern lizard that is mostly a quadroped, but when spooked it runs on its hindlegs," Mossbrucker said.

no time.

That Chinese Supercomputer, Tianhe-1A (Milky Way)

China has officially built the world's faster computer. This is impressive. Most people have been saying that its all built from US parts. There is some truth to that. The CPUs and whatnot are nvidia GPUs and CPUs (AMD?) are US $tech.

However, the ever important interconnect is NOT American. This is homegrown and that is really impressive. Interconnects are hard. its also rumored to be twice as fast as QDR infiniband and laid out as a fat tree. its also rumored to use around 14 MW. That's excellent.

This has been compared to what the Japanese did with the Earth Simulator. That claimed the top spot for some time because it was around 4x+ faster than the US counterparts. The difference here between Tinhe-1A and the US counterparts is not that much, in comparison: 50%. I would expect this machine to be overtaken in a year at most. Possibly by June.

Congratulations to the Chinese. I wish I were going to SC10 now. Its sure to be an exciting event now. we'll see if the US can pull out any surprise benchmarks now. Never know. I doubt it though.

Raising Insects in Multiple Atmosperhic Oxygen Levels

The giant dragonflies of ancient Earth with wingspans of up to 70 centimeters (28 inches) are generally attributed to higher oxygen atmospheric levels in the atmosphere in the past. New experiments in raising modern insects in various oxygen-enriched atmospheres have confirmed that dragonflies grow bigger with more oxygen, or hyperoxia.

However, not all insects were larger when oxygen was higher in the past. For instance, the largest cockroaches ever are skittering around today. The question becomes how and why do different groups respond to changes in atmospheric oxygen.

The secrets to why these changes happened may be in the hollow tracheal tubes insects use to breathe. Getting a better handle on those changes in modern insects could make it possible to use fossilized insects as proxies for ancient oxygen levels.

"Our main interest is in how paleo-oxygen levels would have influenced the evolution of insects," said John VandenBrooks of Arizona State University in Tempe. To do that they decided to look at the plasticity of modern insects raised in different oxygen concentrations. The team raised cockroaches, dragonflies, grasshoppers, meal worms, beetles and other insects in atmospheres containing different amounts of oxygen to see if there were any effects.

One result was that dragonflies grew faster into bigger adults in hyperoxia. However, cockroaches grew slower and did not become larger adults. In all, ten out of twelve kinds of insects studied decreased in size in lower oxygen atmospheres. But there were varied responses when they were placed into an enriched oxygen atmosphere. VandenBrooks will be presenting the results of the work on Monday, Nov. 1 at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver.

"The dragonflies were the most challenging of the insects to raise," said VandenBrooks because, among other things, there is no such thing as dragonfly chow. As juveniles they need to hunt live prey and in fact undergraduate students Elyse Muñoz and Michael Weed working with Dr. VandenBrooks had to resort to hand feeding the dragonflies daily.

"Dragonflies are notoriously difficult to rear," said VandenBrooks. "We are one of the only groups to successfully rear them to adulthood under laboratory conditions."

Once they had worked that out, however, they raised three sets of 75 dragonflies in atmospheres containing 12 percent (the lowest oxygen has been in the past), 21 percent (like modern Earth's atmosphere) and 31 percent oxygen (the highest oxygen has been).

Cockroaches, as anyone who has fought them at home knows, are much easier to rear. That enabled the researchers to raise seven groups of 100 roaches in seven different atmospheres ranging from 12 percent to 40 percent oxygen mimicking the range of paleo-oxygen levels. Cockroaches took about twice as long to develop in high oxygen levels.

"It is the exact opposite of what we expected," said VandenBrooks. One possibility is that the hyperoxic reared roaches stayed in their larval stage longer, perhaps waiting for their environment to change to a lower, maybe less stressful oxygen level.

This surprising result prompted the researchers to take a closer look at the breathing apparatus of roaches – their tracheal tubes. These are essentially hollow tubes in an insect's body that allow gaseous oxygen to enter directly into the insect tissues.

VandenBrooks and his team took their hyperoxic reared roaches to Argonne National Lab's x-ray synchrontron imaging facility to get a closer look at the tracheal tubes. The x-ray synchrontron is particularly good at resolving the edges where things of different phases meet – like solids on liquids or gas on solids. That's just what the inside of a tracheal tube is.

What they found was that the tracheal tubes of hyperoxic reared roaches were smaller than those in lower oxygen atmospheres. That decrease in tube size with no increase in the overall body size would allow the roaches to possibly invest more in tissues used for other vital functions other than breathing – like eating or reproducing. The roaches reared in hypoxia (lower oxygen) would have to trade off their investment in these other tissues in order to breathe.

The next step, said VandenBrooks, will be to look closely at the tracheal tubes of insects fossilized in amber to see what they might say about oxygen levels at various times in the past. These might possibly serve as a proxy for paleo-oxygen levels.

Abstract: ATMOSPHERIC OXYGEN AND THE EVOLUTION OF INSECT GIGANTISM.

How much bigger were the hyperoxic raised dragonflies?

Cell Phone in 1928 Chaplin Film?

Good for a giggle. There's a youtube video on the UT site too.

I have to wonder if this was a case of someone with TEH AWESOME photoshop powers striking.

Did Cyanobacteria Produce Oxygen Oceanic Oases?

More than two and a half billion years ago, Earth differed greatly from our modern environment, specifically in respect to the composition of gases in the atmosphere and the nature of the life forms inhabiting its surface. While today's atmosphere consists of about 21 percent oxygen, the ancient atmosphere contained almost no oxygen. Life was limited to unicellular organisms. The complex eukaryotic life we are familiar with – animals, including humans – was not possible in an environment devoid of oxygen.

The life-supporting atmosphere Earth's inhabitants currently enjoy did not develop overnight. On the most basic level, biological activity in the ocean has shaped the oxygen concentrations in the atmosphere over the last few billion years. In a paper published today by Nature Geoscience online, Arizona State University researchers Brian Kendall and Ariel Anbar, together with colleagues at other institutions, show that "oxygen oases" in the surface ocean were sites of significant oxygen production long before the breathing gas began to accumulate in the atmosphere.

By the close of this period, Earth witnessed the emergence of microbes known as cyanobacteria. These organisms captured sunlight to produce energy. In the process, they altered Earth's atmosphere through the production of oxygen – a waste product to them, but essential to later life. This oxygen entered into the seawater, and from there some of it escaped into the atmosphere.

"Our research shows that oxygen accumulation on Earth first began to occur in surface ocean regions near the continents where the nutrient supply would have been the highest," explains Kendall, a postdoctoral research associate at the School of Earth and Space Exploration in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "The evidence suggests that oxygen production in the oceans was vigorous in some locations at least 100 million years before it accumulated in the atmosphere. Photosynthetic production of oxygen by cyanobacteria is the simplest explanation."

The idea of "oxygen oases," or regions of initial oxygen accumulation in the surface ocean, was hypothesized decades ago. However, it is only in the past few years that compelling geochemical evidence has been presented for the presence of dissolved oxygen in the surface ocean 2.5 billion years ago, prior to the first major accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere (known as the Great Oxidation Event).

Kendall's work is the latest in a series of recent studies by a collaborative team of researchers from ASU; University of California, Riverside; and University of Maryland that point to the early rise of oxygen in the oceans. Together with colleagues from University of Washington and University of Alberta, this team first presented evidence for the presence of dissolved oxygen in these oceans in a series of four Science papers over the past few years. These papers focused on a geologic formation called the Mt. McRae Shale from Western Australia. One of these papers, led by the ASU team, presented geochemical profiles that showed an abundance of two redox-sensitive elements – rhenium (Re) and molybdenum (Mo) – implying that small amounts of oxygen mobilized these metals from the crust on land or in the ocean, and transport them through an oxic surface ocean to deeper anoxic waters where the metals were hidden into organic-rich sediments. Kendall participated in this research while a postdoctoral student at the University of Alberta.

Kendall's goal in the new project was to look for evidence of dissolved oxygen in another location. He wanted to see if the geochemical evidence from the Mt. McRae Shale in Western Australia would be found in similarly-aged rocks from South Africa. Those rocks were obtained in a project supported by the Agouron Institute. Kendall's research was supported by grants from NASA and the National Science Foundation.

What Kendall discovered was a unique relationship of high rhenium and low molybdenum enrichments in the samples from South Africa, pointing to the presence of dissolved oxygen on the seafloor itself.

"In South Africa, samples from the continental slope beneath the shallower platform were thought to be deposited at water depths too deep for photosynthesis. So it was a big surprise that we found evidence of dissolved oxygen on the seafloor at these depths. This discovery suggests that oxygen was produced at the surface in large enough quantities that some oxygen survived as it was mixed to greater depths. That implies a significantly larger amount of oxygen production and accumulation in 'oxygen oases' than was previously realized."

A key contribution to this study came from Christopher Reinhard and Timothy Lyons, collaborators at the University of California, Riverside, and Simon Poulton at Newcastle University, who found that the chemistry of iron (Fe) in the same shales is also consistent with the presence of dissolved oxygen.

"It was especially satisfying to see two different geochemical methods – rhenium and molybdenum abundances and Fe chemistry – independently tell the same story," Kendall noted.

Evidence that the atmosphere contained at most minute amounts of oxygen came from measurements of the relative abundances of sulfur (S) isotopes. These measurements were performed by Alan Kaufman, a collaborator at the University of Maryland.

no time.

Autism: An X Chromosome Linked Trait?

New research from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), both in Toronto, Canada provides further clues as to why Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) affects four times more males than females. The scientists discovered that males who carry specific alterations of DNA on the sole X-chromosome they carry are at high risk of developing ASD. The research is published in the September 15 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

ASD is a neurological disorder that affects brain functioning, resulting in challenges with communication and social interaction, unusual patterns of behaviour, and often, intellectual deficits. ASD affects one in every 120 children and a startling one in 70 boys. Though all of the causes of ASD are not yet known, research has increasingly pointed towards genetic factors,. In recent years, several genes involved in ASD have successfully been identified.

The research team was led by Dr. John B. Vincent, Senior Scientist and head of CAMH's Molecular Neuropsychiatry and Development Laboratory and Dr. Stephen Scherer, Senior Scientist and Director of The Centre for Applied Genomics at SickKids, and Director of the McLaughlin Centre at the University of Toronto. The scientists analyzed the gene sequences of 2,000 individuals with ASD, along with others with an intellectual disability, and compared the results to thousands of population controls. They found that about one per cent of boys with ASD had mutations in the PTCHD1 gene on the X-chromosome. Similar mutations were not found in thousands of male controls. Also, sisters carrying the same mutation are seemingly unaffected.

"We believe that the PTCHD1 gene has a role in a neurobiological pathway that delivers information to cells during brain development – this specific mutation may disrupt crucial developmental processes, contributing to the onset of autism." said Dr. Vincent. "Our discovery will facilitate early detection, which will, in turn, increase the likelihood of successful interventions."

"The male gender bias in autism has intrigued us for years and now we have an indicator that starts to explain why this may be," says Dr. Scherer. "Boys are boys because they inherit one X-chromosome from their mother and one Y-chromosome from their father. If a boy's X-chromosome is missing the PTCHD1 gene or other nearby DNA sequences, they will be at high risk of developing ASD or intellectual disability. Girls are different in that, even if they are missing one PTCHD1 gene, by nature they always carry a second X-chromosome, shielding them from ASD." Scherer adds, "While these women are protected, autism could appear in future generations of boys in their families."

There was a relatively recent study that found that autism was more common in affluent caucasian families with older parents. It went rather contrary to the environmental causes hypothesis. If I have time (HA!) I'll find and put a link to that one.

It makes me wonder if this can be directly linked to postponing having kids: we already know of increased rates of other issues such as down's and whatnot. Perhaps the damage is being caused by meiosis potentially going slightly off tracks in (some) older women. As more women postpone their fertility, the number of autistic children rises and will continue to do for generations afterwards because their daughters might be carriers of the damaged regions on their inherited X chromosomes.

I can't imagine that this will be a popular study result or my hypothesis either.

Habitability of the Gliese 581 System

High Marine Phosphorus Followed Snowball Earth Episodes

A team of scientists, led by biogeochemists at the University of California, Riverside, has found new evidence linking "Snowball Earth" glacial events to the rise of early animals.

The controversial Snowball Earth hypothesis posits that the Earth was covered from pole to pole by a thick sheet of ice lasting, on several occasions, for millions of years. These glaciations, the most severe in Earth history, occurred from 750 to 580 million years ago. The researchers argue that the oceans in the aftermath of these events were rich in phosphorus, a nutrient that controls the abundance of life in the oceans.

The UC Riverside team and colleagues tracked phosphorus concentrations through Earth's history by analyzing the composition of iron-rich chemical precipitates that accumulated on the seafloor and scavenged phosphorus from seawater. Their analyses revealed that there was a pronounced spike in marine phosphorus levels in the mid-Neoproterozoic (from ~750 to ~635 million years ago).

To explain these anomalously high concentrations, the researchers argue that the increase in erosion and chemical weathering on land that accompanied Snowball Earth glacial events led to the high amounts phosphorus in the ocean. The abundance of this nutrient, which is essential for life, in turn, led to a spike in oxygen production via photosynthesis and its accumulation in the atmosphere, facilitating the emergence of complex life on Earth.

Study results appear in the Oct. 28 issue of Nature.

"In the geological record, we found a signature for high marine phosphorus concentrations appearing in the immediate aftermath of the Snowball Earth glacial events," said Noah Planavsky, the first author of the research paper and a graduate student in the Department of Earth Sciences. "Phosphorus ultimately limits net primary productivity on geological timescales. Therefore, high marine phosphorus levels would have facilitated a shift to a more oxygen-rich ocean-atmosphere system. This shift could have paved the way for the rise of animals and their ecological diversification. Our work provides a mechanistic link between extensive Neoproterozoic glaciations and early animal evolution."

Planavsky explained the link between marine phosphorus concentrations and the levels of oxygen in the atmosphere.

"High phosphorus levels would have increased biological productivity in the ocean and the associated production of oxygen by photosynthesis," he said. "Much of this organic matter is consumed, in turn, as a result of respiration reactions that also consume oxygen. However, the burial of some proportion of the organic matter results in a net increase of oxygen levels in the atmosphere."

Until now, scientists believed that geochemical conditions in the iron-rich ocean would have led to low phosphorus concentrations. The UC Riverside researchers found no evidence of a phosphorus crisis after Snowball Earth glacial events, however, finding instead indications of an abundance of phosphorus.

no time.

Complete Remains of an Early Jurassic/Late Triassic Sauropod

Scientists have discovered in China the first complete skeleton of a pivotal ancestor of Earth's largest land animals – the sauropod dinosaurs. The new species, tentatively dubbed Yizhousaurus sunae, lived on the flood plains around Lufeng in the Yunnan Province of South China about 200 million years ago. The species helps explain how the iconic four-footed, long-necked sauropod dinosaurs evolved.

Unlike the 120-foot-long, 100-ton sauropod giants that came later, Yizhousaurus was about 30 feet in length, but it shows all of the hallmarks of later sauropods: the beginning of a long neck, a robust skeleton and four-legged posture. It also comes with an intact fossilized skull – which is very rare and crucial for understanding its place in the evolution of sauropods.

"Sauropods have these big bones but their skulls are very lightly constructed and also very small," said paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University. Chatterjee presents the discovery on Sunday, Oct. 31 at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver.

Yizhousaurus's skull is broad, high and domed, less than a foot long with a short snout, eye sockets on the sides for scanning enemies. It has an unusually wide and U-shaped jaw, in top view, like that seen in later Camarasaurus, said Chatterjee. Numerous serrated and spoon-shaped teeth of the upper and lower jaws would shear and slide past each other for cutting plant material during feeding. The sturdy teeth and raised neck let the animal very easily nip small branches from treetops and then chew the plant material.

Abstract here.

So is this Hettangian or Rhaetian/Norian?

Dinosaurs Ancestors Evolved Right After the Permian Extinction

The oldest evidence of the dinosaur lineage—fossilized tracks—is described this week in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Just one or two million years after the massive Permian-Triassic extinction, an animal smaller than a house cat walked across fine mud in what is now Poland. This fossilized trackway places the very closest relatives of dinosaurs on Earth about 250 million years ago—5 to 9 million years earlier than previously described fossilized skeletal material has indicated. The paper also described the 246-million-year-old Sphingopus footprints, the oldest evidence of a bipedal and large-bodied dinosaur.

"We see the closest dinosaur cousins immediately after the worst mass extinction," says Stephen Brusatte, a graduate student affiliated with the Division of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History. "The biggest crisis in the history of life also created one of the greatest opportunities in the history of life by emptying the landscape and making it possible for dinosaurs to evolve."

The new paper analyzes three sets of footprints from three different sites in the Holy Cross Mountains of central Poland. The sites, all quarries within a 25-mile radius of each other, are windows into three ecosystems because they represent different times periods. The Stryczowice trackway is the oldest at 250 million years. The Baranów trackway is the most recent at 246 million years of age while the Wióry trackway is sandwiched in time between the others.

Because footprints are only an imprint of a small part of the skeleton, identification of trackmakers is often tricky. Luckily, dinosaurs have a very distinctive gait, especially when compared to their diapsid relatives (the evolutionary group that includes birds, reptiles, and extinct lineages) like crocodiles and lizards. While lizards and crocodiles have a splayed walking style, dinosaurs place their two feet closer together. The footprints at all three Polish sites show this feature as well as indisputable dinosaur-like features, including three prominent central toes and reduced outer two toes, a parallel alignment of these three digits (a bunched foot), and a straight back edge of footprints, additional evidence of a dinosaur-like simple hinged ankle.

Because all of these features are seen in footprints at the oldest site, Brusatte and colleagues conclude that the Stryczowice prints—which are only a few centimeters in length—are the oldest evidence of the dinosaur lineage. These dinosaurs, though, are considered "stem dinosaurs," or the immediate relatives of dinosaurs not part of the slightly more derived clade that technically defines dinosaurs. Also, this animal did walk on all four limbs, an abnormal posture for early dinosaurs and their close relatives, although it appears that its forelimbs were already being reduced to more dinosaur-like proportions since the footprints overstep handprints.

The Baranów and Wióry trackways show changes early in the evolutionary history of dinosaurs. Wióry at 248 million years ago shows slight diversification in the types of tracks, but all tracks remain quadrupedal. Footprints from Baranów at 246 million years ago, however, may be the earliest evidence of moderately large-bodied and bipedal true dinosaurs. These tracks, which are called Sphingopus, are 15 centimeters long.

Less than no time.

Things on My Mind

James did that. Glad he's able to with all the crap going down for me. oy.

Something Very Depressing

Ceratopsian Year Continues

See Zach. Or the original paper.

haha

I am so fscking tired.

The San Bruno Blast: Before and After

Quasimodosaurus

The Cretaceous period's carnivorous answer to a camel has been unearthed in Europe after 130 million years, a new study say.

The new, hunchbacked species of dinosaur sprouted spiky, featherlike shafts on its arms; was probably a powerful runner; and likely ate small dinosaurs, crocodiles, and early mammals, researchers say.

Discovered via a finely preserved, nearly complete skeleton found in central Spain, the 20-foot-long (6-meter-long) Concavenator corcovatus—"the hunchback hunter from Cuenca"—had two raised backbones, each 1.3 feet (40 centimeters) taller than the dinosaurs' other vertebrae.

C. corcovatus's hump possibly supported a mound of fleshy tissue storing fat, as on a camel, according to the study team, led by paleontologist Francisco Ortega of the Universidad Nacional de Educacíon a Distancia in Madrid.

Alternatively, the hump might have had a display role—for example, attracting a mate or intimidating rivals—or may have helped diffuse heat and regulate body temperature, Ortega said.

I refuse to call it a camelsaur.

So, being a carcharodontosaurid spread to likely point that quills if not feathers evolved, right?

A Xenopermian Teaser

Name the critters. :D

New Plate Tectonics Simulation

Computational scientists and geophysicists at the University of Texas at Austin and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed new computer algorithms that for the first time allow for the simultaneous modeling of the earth's mantle flow, large-scale tectonic plate motions, and the behavior of individual fault zones, to produce an unprecedented view of plate tectonics and the forces that drive it.

A paper describing the whole-earth model and its underlying algorithms will be published in the August 27 issue of the journal Science and also featured on the cover.

The work "illustrates the interplay between making important advances in science and pushing the envelope of computational science," says Michael Gurnis, the John E. and Hazel S. Smits Professor of Geophysics, director of the Caltech Seismological Laboratory, and a coauthor of the Science paper.

To create the new model, computational scientists at Texas's Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES)—a team that included Omar Ghattas, the John A. and Katherine G. Jackson Chair in Computational Geosciences and professor of geological sciences and mechanical engineering, and research associates Georg Stadler and Carsten Burstedde—pushed the envelope of a computational technique known as Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR).

Partial differential equations such as those describing mantle flow are solved by subdividing the region of interest (such as the mantle) into a computational grid. Ordinarily, the resolution is kept the same throughout the grid. However, many problems feature small-scale dynamics that are found only in limited regions. "AMR methods adaptively create finer resolution only where it's needed," explains Ghattas. "This leads to huge reductions in the number of grid points, making possible simulations that were previously out of reach.”

"The complexity of managing adaptivity among thousands of processors, however, has meant that current AMR algorithms have not scaled well on modern petascale supercomputers," he adds. Petascale computers are capable of one million billion operations per second. To overcome this long-standing problem, the group developed new algorithms that, Burstedde says, "allows for adaptivity in a way that scales to the hundreds of thousands of processor cores of the largest supercomputers available today."

With the new algorithms, the scientists were able to simulate global mantle flow and how it manifests as plate tectonics and the motion of individual faults. According to Stadler, the AMR algorithms reduced the size of the simulations by a factor of 5,000, permitting them to fit on fewer than 10,000 processors and run overnight on the Ranger supercomputer at the National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported Texas Advanced Computing Center.

A key to the model was the incorporation of data on a multitude of scales. "Many natural processes display a multitude of phenomena on a wide range of scales, from small to large," Gurnis explains. For example, at the largest scale—that of the whole earth—the movement of the surface tectonic plates is a manifestation of a giant heat engine, driven by the convection of the mantle below. The boundaries between the plates, however, are composed of many hundreds to thousands of individual faults, which together constitute active fault zones. "The individual fault zones play a critical role in how the whole planet works," he says, "and if you can't simulate the fault zones, you can't simulate plate movement"—and, in turn, you can't simulate the dynamics of the whole planet.

In the new model, the researchers were able to resolve the largest fault zones, creating a mesh with a resolution of about one kilometer near the plate boundaries. Included in the simulation were seismological data as well as data pertaining to the temperature of the rocks, their density, and their viscosity—or how strong or weak the rocks are, which affects how easily they deform. That deformation is nonlinear—with simple changes producing unexpected and complex effects.

"Normally, when you hit a baseball with a bat, the properties of the bat don't change—it won't turn to Silly Putty. In the earth, the properties do change, which creates an exciting computational problem," says Gurnis. "If the system is too nonlinear, the earth becomes too mushy; if it's not nonlinear enough, plates won't move. We need to hit the 'sweet spot.'"

After crunching through the data for 100,000 hours of processing time per run, the model returned an estimate of the motion of both large tectonic plates and smaller microplates—including their speed and direction. The results were remarkably close to observed plate movements.

Paper here, I believe.

Boeing Continues Commercial Space Capsule Work

With the impending retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet, aerospace juggernaut Boeing is hard at work developing a new capsule-based spaceship that could be ready for its first commercial spaceflight by 2015.

Boeing's new Crew Space Transportation-100 spacecraft is designed to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS), as well as future private space stations.

Keith Reiley, Boeing's commercial crew development program manager, will be presenting updates on the Commercial Crew Transportation System at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautic Space 2010 Conference and Exposition next week in Anaheim, Calif.

As one of the leading suppliers of human space systems and services, Boeing already has a strong heritage in the industry. [Video: Boeing's New Spacecraft]

"It was an enormous advantage," Reiley told SPACE.com. "A lot of the equipment we're looking at has ISS heritage. About half of our team were designers that came from ISS and had experience with the flight hardware. The other half were space shuttle designers."

To help reach its goal, the company looked to existing facilities, launchers and proven processes to ensure safety, lower development costs and reduce overall risk.

Boeing's CST-100 spacecraft is approximately 15 feet (4.5 meters) wide and can carry up to seven people. The cone-shaped capsule will look similar to NASA's Apollo and Orion spacecraft.

Boeing settled on the cone-shaped design because it was thought to be the safest and most inexpensive of the vehicle concepts that were considered, Reiley said.

The spacecraft is being designed for compatibility with a variety of rockets, including United Launch Alliance's Atlas and Delta boosters and SpaceX's Falcon rockets. This will give Boeing the flexibility to select an appropriate rocket later in the development process.

The spacecraft will also be equipped with a unique pusher abort system in case the crew encounters an emergency during launch.

"This is the first time anyone has proposed or succeeded with a pusher design," Reiley said. "The pusher appears, to us, to be simpler, less expensive and just as safe."

If necessary, the launch abort system would fire pressurized propellant for three seconds to quickly push the vehicle away from the rocket. A parachute would then be deployed to assist with the landing.

One of the advantages of the pusher design is that in the event of a smooth launch, the same propellant can also be used on orbit, either in guiding the CST-100 to dock with a space station, or to boost stations themselves, whose orbits slowly decay over time.

"You get the ability to use the propellant to re-boost our customer stations or simply for orbital maneuvering to get there," Reiley said. "In order to catch up with the station you're trying to rendezvous with, you have to boost yourself up to the station's orbit, and all that takes a certain amount of fuel."

For Boeing, one of their main challenges in expanding their branch of commercial spaceflight is in designing a relatively inexpensive option.

The company has set a design requirement that the CST-100 be reusable up to 10 times. The exact number of times the capsule is reused, however, will depend upon inspection after touchdown.

No time.