User:Iron Chef/The Weekly Update Ep2

The Weekly Update
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Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Hey, it's your host, Iron Chef: The Sexy King Of Cooking! Well, thats how I like to think of myself. Now that we've done a format demo, lets get to it!

Ancient Star Nearly as Old as the Universe
By Ker Than Staff Writer SPACE.com Fri May 11, 6:15 AM ET

Long before our solar system formed and even before the Milky Way assumed its final spiral shape, a star slightly smaller than the Sun blazed into life in our galaxy, formed from the newly scattered remains of the first stars in the universe.

Employing techniques similar to those used to date archeological remains here on Earth, scientists have learned that a metal-poor star in our Milky Way called HE 1523 is 13.2 billion years old-just slightly younger than 13.7 billion year age of the universe. Our solar system is estimated to be only about 4.6 billion years old.

The findings are detailed in the May 10 issue of Astrophysical Journal.

Chemical dating

Like other early stars, HE 1523 contains very few elements heavier than hydrogen or helium. But it does have some. In particular, it contains radioactive metals such as uranium and thorium, both of which have extremely long half-lives.

A radioactive element's half life is the time it takes for one half of the original sample to decay.

If scientists know an element's half life and the amount of the original sample, they can estimate an object's age based on how much of the element is left. Uranium and thorium have half-lives of 4.7 billion years and 14 billion years, respectively.

"If you know how much there was in the first place-and I'm getting these numbers from theorists-then you take your measurements and off you go," explained study leader Anna Frebel of the University of Texas.

This same technique is used with a radioactive form of carbon, called carbon-14, to date fossils rocks and archeological remains.

The uranium and thorium in HE 1523 were probably leftover elements from first generation stars that exploded as supernovas and scattered their atomic ashes through space. Second generation stars like HE 1523 formed from those strewn elements.

The researchers obtained a high quality light signature of the star by observing it with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) for 7.5 hours. From the star's spectrum, the researchers calculated the amount of uranium and thorium it still contained.

Because the uranium and thorium were formed during the supernova explosion of another star, what the researchers really dated was the age of the supernova. But, as Frebel notes, "the time between the supernova and [the birth of HE 1523] is relatively short compared to the age of the star."

Not the oldest

Scientists are not sure how far away HE 1523 is located, but the star can be seen with the aid of a telescope from the Southern Hemisphere, Frebel said. It is currently a bloated red giant star, and nearing the end of its life, but should still be around for quite a while, she added.

While HE 1523 certainly ranks among the oldest stars in the Milky Way, it probably is not the oldest. "This star has a certain metallicity by which we measure its chemical primitiveness, but there are other stars out there that are even more primitive in their nature," Frebel told SPACE.com.

Scientists think the first stars in the universe formed between 30 and 150 million years after the Big Bang and were massive behemoths, with masses up to 200 times that of our Sun. Scientists think those stellar first born burned brightly and quickly, lasting only a few hundred million years before exhausting their fuels and winking out as black holes or exploding as supernovas.

"Massive stars have a much shorter life time than low mass stars," Frebel said. HE 1523 "is probably a 0.8 solar mass star, and that's why it can still survive until today."

Recent observations of a supernova 240 million-light years away suggests the explosive star deaths of early stars were fundamentally different from the supernovas of later stars, and that they lasted longer, burned brighter and were fueled by an exotic antimatter engine.

Attack kills 5 troops in Iraq; 3 missing
By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD - Seven U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi army interpreter came under attack Saturday morning during a patrol in a Sunni insurgent stronghold south of Baghdad, leaving five dead and three missing, the military said.

Troops were searching for the three missing, using drone planes, jets and checkpoints throughout the area, according to the statement. Soldiers were also asking local leaders for information.

After the pre-dawn attack near Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad in a Sunni insurgent stronghold dubbed the Triangle of Death, nearby units heard explosions and a drone plane later observed two burning vehicles, the statement said.

Troops who arrived later found five of the soldiers dead. The other three members of the patrol were gone, according to the statement, from Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the chief U.S. military spokesman in       Iraq.

The military refused to specify whether the Iraqi interpreter was among those killed or among the missing, citing security.

"Make no mistake: We will never stop looking for our soldiers until their status is definitively determined, and we continue to pray for their safe return," Caldwell said.

An Iraqi army officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information, also said joint U.S.-Iraqi forces were conducting house-to-house searches in the area and all roads had been closed to Mahmoudiya.

Five U.S. soldiers have been charged in the rape of a 14-year-old Mahmoudiya girl and the killing of her and her entire family, and three have pleaded guilty in the March 12, 2006, attack, which was initially blamed on insurgents.

On June 16, 2006, two American soldiers who went missing in the same area were later found dead, tied together with a bomb between one victim's legs.

Two other U.S. soldiers remain missing in action, including Sgt. Matt Maupin, of Batavia, Ohio, missing since April 2004; and Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie, a 41-year-old Iraqi-born reserve soldier from Ann Arbor, Mich., who was abducted while visiting his Iraqi wife on Oct. 23 in Baghdad. Capt. Michael Speicher, a Navy pilot, also has been missing since the 1991 Persian       Gulf War.

The military on Saturday also announced the death of an American soldier mortally wounded in a bomb attack Friday near Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad.

In the Iraqi capital, police on Saturday closely guarded two bridges damaged by suicide car bombers in what appears to be a new strategy by suspected Sunni insurgents of targeting crossovers in the capital.

Friday's attacks in predominantly Shiite areas of the city brought to five the number of bridges that have been targeted by large explosions in Baghdad since March 21.

It remains unclear whether the main goal of Iraqi insurgents is to spark sectarian violence by targeting bridges that unite predominantly Shiite and Sunni areas of the city, or to knock out vital supply and transportation links in the capital.

Friday's suicide car bombers attacked two bridges that cross the Diyala River, a tributary of the Tigris, and are located about 2 1/2 miles apart in southeastern Baghdad.

The two attacks, within moments of each other, killed at least 23 Iraqis and wounded 57, including police at checkpoints and civilians driving or walking across the bridges, police said.

On Saturday, the old Diyala bridge, which American forces had rebuilt after destroying it at the start of the Iraq war, had one of its two lanes open to traffic and pedestrians. Police kept everyone away from a large hole blown through the concrete span over the Diyala River. Blood stains from the bombing could still be seen at some points on the bridge.

Nearby, on the two-lane new Diyala bridge, remnants of the truck that a suicide attacker apparently used were located near a large hole in the concrete crossover, exposing large rods of steel. The hole in the low-lying bridge was filled with water.

In another development, The New York Times reported Saturday that a draft of a new American government report says that between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels of Iraq's declared oil production of 2 million barrels a day over the past four years is unaccounted for and could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling. Using an average of $50 a barrel, the report says the discrepancy was valued at $5 million to $15 million daily, the paper said.

The U.S. and Iraqi governments are under pressure to show progress in Iraq by raising oil production, which has been well below the U.S. goal of 3 million barrels a day. Virtually the entire economy of oil-rich Iraq is dependent on oil revenues.

The New York Times said the draft U.S. government report it obtained was prepared by the U.S.       Government Accountability Office with the help of government energy analysts. The paper says the report is expected to be released within the next week.

It does not conclude what happened to the missing fraction of the roughly 2 million barrels pumped by Iraq each day, but its findings are expected to reinforce long-standing suspicions that smugglers, insurgents and corrupt officials control significant parts of the country's oil industry, the paper said.

It said the draft report also covered alternative explanations for the billions of dollars worth of discrepancies, including the possibility that Iraq has been overstating its oil production.

Dozens of people, meanwhile, took to the streets in the Diyala provincial capital of Baqouba to demand the release of four women they said were detained Friday by U.S. troops. The U.S. military had no immediate comment on the protest.

The Hindenburg has just crashed!
Oh the humanity! The worlds largest Zepelin has just crashed to the ground in a fiery explosion!

Here is a picture:



We brought it to you as fast as we could, we just found out when we visited the musuem and picked up a copy of the newspaper. For some reason, it was in really crappy condition, oh, and another thing, that stupid newspaper said the wrong date, now how could the guys in the editing department make a mistake like "June 5th, 1932"? Idiots! Anyway, thats the scoop, and we got it to you as fast as we could.

-Signing Off, Iron Chef.

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