The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of instruments, prior to its installation on Curiosity. (NASA)

The first scoop of Martian soil analyzed by Curiosity Rover’s built-in laboratory has revealed a high amount of water in the soil, according to NASA.

“One of the most exciting results from this very first solid sample ingested by Curiosity is the high percentage of water in the soil,” said Curiosity researcher Laurie Leshin, of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “About 2 percent of the soil on the surface of Mars is made up of water, which is a great resource, and interesting scientifically.”

Researchers made their findings using Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) unit, which includes three sophisticated instruments: a gas chromotograph, mass spectrometer, and tunable laser spectrometer.

SAM allowed the scientists to identify a wide range of chemical compounds and to calculate the ratios of different isotopes of the sample’s key elements.

The same soil sample, when heated to 835 degrees Celsius, showed significant amounts of carbon dioxide, oxygen and various sulfur compounds.

The heated collection of Martian dust, dirt and fine soil, gathered by the rover’s scoop at a location called Rocknest, also revealed a compound containing chlorine and oxygen, which the scientists think is likely chlorate or perchlorate.

Some of the trenches Curiosity’s scoop dug in Mars’ surface, Oct. 2012. (NASA)

Up until this finding, the scientists had thought those materials only existed in the high-latitude areas of Mars. By finding them at Curiosity’s current location near the equator of Mars, the researchers say that perhaps they could be found all over the planet.

Since they are formed in the presence of water, the carbonate materials that were found in their tested sample, according to the researchers, also provided clues to Martian water.

According to Leshin, the results of her team’s research shed light on the composition of the planet’s surface, while offering direction for future research.

“We now know there should be abundant, easily accessible water on Mars,” said Leshin. “When we send people, they could scoop up the soil anywhere on the surface, heat it just a bit, and obtain water.”

Computer animation showing the formation of the third Van Allen radiation belt. Green bar indicates time/day from 9/2/12 to 9/8/12 (UCLA)

New research provides insight into the mysterious Van Allen radiation belts.

There are normally two of these giant bands of high-energy radiation encircling the Earth. However, researchers discovered a third and previously unknown radiation ring that only lasted for about a month back in September 2012.

Writing in a recent edition of Nature Physics, scientists from UCLA College of Letters and Science  found the third ring was composed of extremely energetic particles, known as ultra-relativistic electrons, which can move at speeds close to the speed of light.

“The Van Allen Probes observations challenged our current views on the physics of the radiation belts,” said study co-author Yuri Shprits, a space scientist at UCLA. “In the past, we made estimates and thought they looked reasonable. Now we know we need to understand each storm in much more detail, creating global models that can reconstruct what’s happening at every level.”

Armed with data from the Van Allen Probes, two robotic spacecraft that are on two-year mission to study radiation belts, the researchers were able to create new computer models which help explain the extraordinary behavior of that transient third ring.

“The ultra-relativistic electrons of the third ring have so much energy that they are driven by very different physical processes,” said Shprits. “Incorporating that information not only explains the unusual observation of the long-lived narrow middle ring, it opens up a new area of research for the ultra-relativistic particles.”

Artist rendering of the twin Van Allen Probes in Earth orbit (NASA)

The Van Allen belts were the first major discovery of the Space Age when they were first observed by NASA’s Explorer One spacecraft in 1958.

Scientists were able to determine that the belts, which receive their high-energy particles from solar wind and from cosmic rays, expand and contract, as well as change shape, as solar disturbances make their way toward Earth.

These bands of highly-charged energy are kept in place some 1,600 to 60,000 kilometers above the Earth’s surface by our planet’s magnetic fields.

The researchers said better understanding of the radiation belts surrounding Earth might someday help scientists better predict space weather that impacts our planet. Flare ups in space weather can cause problems with orbiting satellites, which in turn could impact communications and GPS systems.

Fossil of a Trilobite – Cheirurus ingricus – from the early Cambrian period (Tim Evanson/Creative Commons via Flickr)

Last week we told you about an Australian study that suggested that the evolution of life during the Cambrian Explosion took place at five times the rate it occurs today.

Now, another group of scientists from Britain, in their newly published study, weigh in on the “Big Bang of Life.”  They propose that the explosion of animal life on Earth that took place some 520 to 540 million years ago was not the result of just one single principal cause, but rather from a combination of interwoven factors.

The Cambrian Explosion, the researchers said, was a major evolutionary event that led to a wide range of biological innovation, which included the beginning of modern ecosystems, a rapid increase in animal diversity, the origin of skeletal creatures and the first appearance of specialist modes of life such as burrowing and swimming.

Animals that made their first appearances on Earth during the Cambrian explosion, according to the researchers, included vertebrates such as the distant ancestors of modern fish, reptiles, birds and mammals.

The British researchers suggested that in order to determine the reasons behind the Cambrian Explosion, scientists need to take a more ‘holistic approach’ that encompass a range of factors.

A number of odd looking lifeforms, like the Anomalocaris, pictured in this model, came out of the Cambrian explosion. Model on display at the National Dinosaur Museum, Canberra, Australia. (Phonart via Wikimedia Commons)

“This is a period of time that has attracted a lot of attention because it is when animals appear very abruptly in the fossil record, and in great diversity. Out of this event came nearly all of the major groups of animals that we recognize today,” said Paul Smith, lead author of the study and director of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

“Because it is such a major biological event, it has attracted much opinion and speculation about its cause,” Smith said.

Over the years there have been a number of theories about the Cambrian Explosion.  The researchers said that those concepts, which fall into three main categories – geological, geochemical and biological — are separate and exclusive processes that also suggest a single cause of the explosion.

The researchers said that they consider the Big Bang of Life was the result of a “cascade of events,” more of a complex interaction of those biological, geochemical and geological processes that were suggested in those individual theories.

“It would be naive to think that any one cause ignited this phenomenal explosion of animal life. Rather, a chain reaction involving a number of biological and geological drivers kicked into gear, escalating the planet’s diversity during a relatively short interval of deep time,” said David Harper, co-author of the study and a professor of paleontology at Durham University.

Some consider the long extinct Haikouichthys (artist rendering), that emerged from the Cambrian explosion, one of the earliest fishes on Earth (Talifero via Wikimedia Commons)

The British researchers propose that the causes behind the explosion of animal life probably began with an early Cambrian rise in sea level.

This sea level rise, they said, generated a large increase in the area of habitable seafloor, which in turn drove an increase in animal diversity.

The team of scientists, led by Smith and Harper, wrote their study after working for four years from data that was gathered from a site that faced the Arctic Ocean in northernmost Greenland.

The team was attracted to the site, which they said was difficult to reach, because of the high quality of its fossil material and the insights it provided.

The research team’s findings can be found in the latest edition of the journal Science.

(Port of San Diego/Creative Commons via Flickr)

People who’ve got rhythm might have an edge when it comes to language and reading skills.

A new study in “The Journal of Neuroscience” shows the brains of people who can move to a musical beat react to speech on a more consistent basis than those who don’t, a finding that implies musical training could sharpen the brain’s response to language.

The researchers say their findings provide the first biological link between the capabilities of keeping a beat and how the brain responds to speech, something that can have substantial implications for reading ability.

To make their findings the research team recruited more than 100 teenagers who lived in the Chicago, Illinois, area.

(Kris Krug/Creative Commons via Flickr)

The teens were given two tests.  First, they were instructed to listen to and tap their fingers along to the beat of a metronome.  The researchers calculated how accurately their young volunteers were able to tap along to the musical timekeeper.

For the second test, the teen subjects were hooked up to an electroencephalography (EEG) device,which measures electrical activity in the brain.

The EEG device was focused on an area of the brain that not only processes sound, but is also connected to parts of the brain responsible for motor-movement. The scientists recorded the brainwaves as their teen subjects listened to the synthesized speech sound da, which was repeated at intervals over a half-hour period.

The researchers were able to determine how the nerve cells in that particular region of the brain responded every time the da sound was played.

“Across this population of adolescents, the more accurate they were at tapping along to the beat, the more consistent their brains’ response to the da syllable was,” said Nina Kraus, the director of Northwestern University’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory and co-author of the study.

(Eunice-Sleepyneko/Creative Commons via Flickr)

While past studies have demonstrated the relation between reading prowess and a person’s ability to keep a beat, the researchers said their new findings show hearing is what provides a common basis for those links.

“Rhythm is inherently a part of music and language,” Kraus said. “It may be that musical training, with an emphasis on rhythmic skills, exercises the auditory-system, leading to strong sound-to-meaning associations that are so essential in learning to read.”

The researchers are already expanding their studies with a multi-year project involving children who are being musically trained. They’ll assess the effect musical training has on beat synchronization, brain response consistency, and reading skills.

Marine life during the Cambrian explosion 520 million years ago.  (Katrina Kenny & Nobumichi Tamura)

Evolution during the “Big Bang of Evolution,” also known as the Cambrian Explosion, happened at five times the rate it occurs today, according to a new study, a finding that is consistent with Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The Australian researchers said  they’ve been able to estimate, for the first time, just how fast life evolved during an incredibly productive period in Earth’s history some 520 to 540 million years ago.  It was during this Cambrian explosion when most modern animal groups first appeared on Earth.

The research group’s findings,  published in  Current Biology, also provide an answer to Darwin’s dilemma.

In his classic book “On the Origins of the Species,” where he lays out his theory of evolution, 19^th century scientist Charles Darwin pointed out a potential problem with his theory.

While there was a rich fossil record of creatures dating from the beginning of the Cambrian Period, Darwin thought a lack of fossils from the years prior to that geologic time period might present a contradiction to his evolution theory.

“The abrupt appearance of dozens of animal groups during this time is arguably the most important evolutionary event after the origin of life,” says lead author and associate professor Michael Lee of the University of Adelaide in South Australia.

Critics of Darwin’s theory of evolution have pointed  to the nearly impossibly fast rates of evolution  to discredit Darwin’s work.

Up until this new research, no one has been able to accurately measure the rates of evolution during this prolific period  because of the “notorious imperfection” of the ancient fossil record.

A living arthropod, centipede Cormocephalus crawls over a fossil of its 515-million-year-old relative, trilobite Estaingia, which lived during the Cambrian explosion. (University of Adelaide)

In this new study, the researchers said that they were able to estimate that rates of both structural and genetic evolution of creatures that took place during the Cambrian explosion were five times faster than they are today.  The scientists say these changes are also consistent with Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The researchers focused their work on invertebrate animals called arthropods because they considered them to be the most diverse animal group that existed both back during the Cambrian period as well as today.  This group of animals includes insects, crustaceans and arachnids.

“It was during this Cambrian period that many of the most familiar traits associated with this group of animals evolved, like a hard exoskeleton, jointed legs and compound (multi-faceted) eyes that are shared by all arthropods. We even find the first appearance in the fossil record of the antenna that insects, millipedes and lobsters all have, and the earliest biting jaws,” said co-author Dr. Greg Edgecombe of London’s Natural History Museum.

A 3D rendering of Tamu Massif (IODP/Texas A&M University)

Researchers have identified the largest volcano ever documented on the planet. It’s even bigger than Hawaii’s legendary Mauna Loa, which remains the biggest active volcano on our planet.

Called Tamu Massif, this enormous dormant or inactive volcano is located within the huge underwater mountain range called Shatsky Rise formation about 1609 kilometers east of Japan. It covers an area of about 311,000 square kilometers of ocean bottom some 1981 meters to 6.5 kilometers below the water’s surface.

Tamu Massif covers an area that’s roughly equivalent to the size of the British Isles or the U.S. state of New Mexico and it is among the most massive volcanoes found so far in the solar system.

Research leader Will Sager (white polo shirt) waits with technicians to inspect a core sample drilled from the Shatsky Rise Formation. (IODProgram/USIO)

Right now, Mount Olympus on Mars takes the top spot for biggest volcano in the solar system, according to the researchers.

“Tamu Massif is the biggest single shield volcano ever discovered on Earth,” said the University of Houston’s William Sager, who led the research. “There may be larger volcanoes, because there are bigger igneous features out there such as the Ontong Java Plateau, but we don’t know if these features are one volcano or complexes of volcanoes.”

Tamil Massif has been known to exist for some time but what wasn’t clear was whether it was a single volcano or a collection of multiple eruption points.

Data collected aboard the science research ship, JOIDES Resolution, helped researchers determine Tamu Massif did erupt from one single source located near its center.

Tamu Massif is the largest feature of the Shatsky Rise, which was created by the eruption of several underwater volcanoes 130 to 145 million years ago.  The giant volcano, according to the researchers, may have become inactive a few million years after it was formed.

The volcano is unique, compared to other underwater volcanoes, not just because if its huge size, but because of how it’s shaped. It is low and wide, which means when it erupted, its lava probably flowed longer distances than other volcanoes on Earth.

Tamu Masiff is part of the Shatsky Rise formation. (Wikipedia Commons)

“It’s not high, but very wide, so the flank slopes are very gradual,” Sager said. “In fact, if you were standing on its flank, you would have trouble telling which way is downhill. We know that it is a single immense volcano constructed from massive lava flows that emanated from the center of the volcano to form a broad, shield-like shape. Before now, we didn’t know this because oceanic plateaus are huge features hidden beneath the sea. They have found a good place to hide.”

Since Sager began studying the underwater volcano about 20 years ago while at Texas A&M, he decided to name it after the university.  Tamu Massif is a combination of an abbreviation of Texas A&M University and the French word for massive, which is also a geological term for large mountain mass.

Artist rendering of an asteroid impacting Earth (NASA)

Scientists say they may have found a link between a dramatic climate shift nearly 13,000 years ago and an asteroid or comet that struck the Canadian province of Quebec.

Researchers at Dartmouth College say the comet/asteroid strike took place at the beginning of a global cooling event known as the Younger Dryas stadial or the Big Freeze.

It was an abrupt, geologically brief period of colder and dryer climatic conditions that lasted about 1,300 years, and had far-reaching effects on both humans and animals.

Big animals, such as mastodons, camels, giant ground sloths, and saber-toothed cats all vanished from North America during this cool period.

The humans who lived in North America at the time, known as Clovis people, normally hunted the large animals, but after this  extinction they set aside their heavy hunting weapons and adopt a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, living off  a diet of roots, berries, and smaller game.

Paleo-Indians (includes Clovis People), shown hunting a glyptodont (armadillo ancestor ), were the first humans to enter and inhabit the Americas.(Heinrich Harder via Wikimedia Commons)

“The Younger Dryas cooling is a very intriguing event that impacted human history in a profound manner,” said Mukul Sharma, one of the study authors and a professor in Dartmouth’s Department of Earth Sciences. “Environmental stresses may also have caused Natufians (a culture that existed between 13,000 and 9,000 BC) in the Near East to settle down for the first time and pursue agriculture.”

While the  environmental changes brought on by the Younger Dryas haven’t been disputed, the causes of it have been.

Scientists have long thought the Younger Dryas period was caused by a surge of meltwater from the North American ice sheet from the last glacial period.

According to this theory,  a great amount of fresh water from melted ice collected behind an ice dam, which suddenly burst, dumping  huge quantities of freshwater into the Atlantic Ocean. The sudden water surge was thought to have shut down the ocean currents that usually move ocean water from the tropics northward.  The lack of the usual northbound stream of warmer water then left the climate cold and dry throughout the Younger Dryas period.

Sharma said that while his team’s research shows conclusive proof that an asteroid/comet impacted over the North American Ice Sheet around the beginning of the Younger Dryas period, further investigation will need to determine whether the cosmic event is linked to the Big Freeze.

The researchers  found evidence of a connection in droplets of solidified molten rock  thrown off from a celestial object during impact. The spherules were collected from boundary layers of sediment from the beginning of the Big Freeze at sites in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The high temperatures of the meteorite impact 12,900 years ago produced mm-sized spherules of melted glass with the mullite and corundum crystal structure shown here. (Mukul Sharma)

There is a 4-kilometer-wide impact crater in Quebec, known as the Corossol crater, where researchers believe a meteor or comet hit. The New Jersey and Pennsylvania spherules are identical to rock found in southern Quebec, but geochemical and mineralogical research indicates they are not a perfect match.

“What is exciting in our paper is that we have for the first time narrowed down the region where a Younger Dryas impact did take place, even though we have not yet found its crater,” Sharma said in a press release.

Sharma also pointed out that the extensive environmental changes of the Younger Dryas might be the result of not just one but multiple concurrent asteroid/comet impacts.

The study, funded by the National Science Foundation, will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).