(Press-News.org) Water ice on asteroids may be more common than expected, according to a new study that will be presented today at the world's largest gathering of planetary scientists.
Two teams of researchers who made national headlines in April for showing the first evidence of water ice and organic molecules on an asteroid have now discovered that asteroid 65 Cybele contains the same material.
"This discovery suggests that this region of our solar system contains more water ice than anticipated," said University of Central Florida Professor Humberto Campins. "And it supports the theory that asteroids may have hit Earth and brought our planet its water and the building blocks for life to form and evolve here."
Campins will present the teams' findings during the 42nd-annual Division of Planetary Sciences Conference (http://dps.aas.org/meetings/2010) in Pasadena, Calif., which concludes Oct. 8.
Asteroid 65 Cybele is somewhat larger than asteroid 24 Themis – the subject of the teams' first paper. Cybele has a diameter of 290 km (180 miles). Themis has a diameter of 200 km (124 miles). Both are in the same region of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The academic article reporting this new finding has been accepted for publication in the European Journal "Astronomy and Astrophysics."
Campins is an expert on asteroids and comets. He received national attention for an article published in Nature showing the first evidence of water ice and organic molecules on asteroid 24 Themis. He's also worked on several science missions with NASA and the European Space Agency.
Campins holds degrees from the University of Kansas and the University of Arizona. He joined UCF in 2002 as the Provost Research Professor of Physics and Astronomy and head of the Planetary and Space Science Group.
INFORMATION:
UCF Stands For Opportunity --The University of Central Florida is a metropolitan research university that ranks as the 3rd largest in the nation with more than 56,000 students. UCF's first classes were offered in 1968. The university offers impressive academic and research environments that power the region's economic development. UCF's culture of opportunity is driven by our diversity, Orlando environment, history of entrepreneurship and our youth, relevance and energy. For more information visit http://news.ucf.edu
Water discovered on second asteroid, may be even more common
2010-10-08
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Childhood adversity may lead to unhealthy stress response in adult life
2010-10-08
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Seemingly healthy adults, if they were abused or neglected during childhood, may suffer physiological consequences decades later. In research published online last week by the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, a team led by psychiatrists at Brown University and Butler Hospital found that healthy adults who reported being mistreated as kids appear to have an elevated inflammatory response to stress compared to adults who had happier childhoods.
Lead author Linda Carpenter, associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior, said that ...
New study shows benefits of Bt corn to farmers
2010-10-08
A group of agricultural scientists reported in today's issue of the journal Science that corn that has been genetically engineered to produce insect-killing proteins isolated from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) provides significant economic benefits even to neighboring farmers who grow non-transgenic varieties of corn.
"Modern agricultural science is playing a critical role in addressing many of the toughest issues facing American agriculture today, including pest management and productivity," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "This study provides ...
Stem cells shape up to their surroundings
2010-10-08
London, UK (October, 07, 2010) –Many scientists aspire to take control over the stem cell differentiation process, so that we can grow organs and implants perfectly matched to each patient in the future. Now research in the Journal of Tissue Engineering, published by SAGE-Hindawi, explains how engineering the topography on which stem cells grow, and the mechanical forces working on them, can be as powerful an agent for change as their chemical environment.
Stem cells respond to the stiffness, chemistry and topography of the environments they find themselves in – and scientists ...
Election forecasts favor Republican gains in midterm
2010-10-08
WASHINGTON, DC-In the weeks leading up to the 2010 midterm elections, five forecasters or teams of forecasters offer models and predictions for the House in the most recent issue (October 2010) of PS: Political Science and Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association. The models offer a broad consensus that the Republicans will make substantial gains in the House, although there is not a consensus over how large those gains will be. A 30-seat spread between the low and high end of the seat change forecast range exists, with two forecasters giving an ...
Structure of plastic solar cells impedes their efficiency
2010-10-08
A team of researchers from North Carolina State University and the U.K. has found that the low rate of energy conversion in all-polymer solar-cell technology is caused by the structure of the solar cells themselves. They hope that their findings will lead to the creation of more efficient solar cells.
Polymeric solar cells are made of thin layers of interpenetrating structures from two different conducting plastics and are increasingly popular because they are both potentially cheaper to make than those currently in use and can be "painted" or printed onto a variety ...
Stanford-led study disproves link between genetic variant, risk of coronary artery disease
2010-10-08
STANFORD, Calif. — A genetic marker touted as a predictor of coronary artery disease is no such thing, according to a study led by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
The massive international study, published online Oct. 7 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, assessed the predictive value of a leading genetic assay for risk of atherosclerosis.
The study analyzed the data from more than 17,000 patients with cardiovascular disease and 40,000 others to assess whether carrying a particular variant of the KIF6 gene indicated a greater ...
New tool in the fight against tuberculosis
2010-10-08
Researchers at the Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois have developed a way to harness the prodigious quantities of both genomic and metabolic data being generated with high-throughput genomics and other techniques. They have developed an algorithm that automatically integrates both data sets. The model, called probabilistic regulation of metabolism (PROM), enables researchers to perturb a given regulatory gene or metabolic process and see how that affects the entire network.
"PROM provides a platform for studying the behavior of networks in a ...
Thoughts about time inspire people to socialize
2010-10-08
Does thinking about time or money make you happier? A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people who are made to think about time plan to spend more of their time with the people in their lives while people who think about money fill their schedules with work, work, and—you guessed it—more work.
To find out how thinking about time or money makes people feel, Cassie Mogilner of the University of Pennsylvania designed an experiment, carried out online with adults from all over the United States, ...
Brown University chemists simplify biodiesel conversion
2010-10-08
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — As the United States seeks to lessen its reliance on foreign oil, biodiesel is expected to play a role. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a branch of the Department of Energy, biodiesel "represents a significant energy resource and could someday supply 3 percent to 5 percent of the distillate fuel market."
One major obstacle to achieving that goal is figuring how to efficiently convert the abundant stocks of waste vegetable oil (oil used after cooking French fries, for example) into biodiesel fuel. Current techniques ...
Melanoma uses body's immune system to spread to lungs
2010-10-08
The way melanoma cells use the immune system to spread and develop into lung tumors may lead to a therapy to decrease development of these tumors, according to Penn State researchers.
"Melanoma is the most aggressive and metastatic form of skin cancer," said Gavin Robertson, professor of pharmacology, pathology, dermatology and surgery in the Penn State College of Medicine. "Therefore, identifying proteins and molecular mechanisms that regulate metastasis is important for developing drugs to treat this disease."
Metastasis is a complex process in which cancer cells ...