The Seedy, Scandalous History of Valentine's Day

Forget roses, chocolate boxes, and candlelight dinners. On Valentine's Day, this is rather boring stuff - at least according to ancient Roman standards.

Imagine half naked men running through the streets, whipping young women with bloodied thongs made from freshly cut goat skins. Although it might sound like some sort of perverted sado-masochist practice, this is what the Romans did until 496 A.D.

Indeed, mid-February was Lupercalia (Wolf Festival) time. Celebrated on February 15 at the foot of the Palatine Hill beside the cave where according to tradition the she-wolf had suckled Romulus and Remus, the festival was essentially a purification and fertility rite.

Directed by the Luperci, or "brothers of the wolf," the festival began with the sacrifice of two male goats and a dog, their blood smeared on the faces of Luperci initiates and then wiped off with wool dipped in milk.

As thongs were cut from the sacrificed goats, the initiates would run around in the streets flagellating women to promote fertility.

BLOG: Just an Old Jurassic Love Song

Finally, in 496 Pope Gelasius I banned the wild feast and declared Feb. 14 as St. Valentine's Day.

But who was St. Valentine? Mystery surrounds the identity of the patron saint of lovers.

Indeed, such was the confusion that the Vatican dropped St. Valentine's Day from the Catholic Church calendar of saints in the 1960s.

There were at least three men by the name Valentine in the A.D. 200s and all died of a horrible death.

One was a priest in the Roman Empire who helped persecuted Christians during the reign of Claudius II. As he was imprisoned, he restored the sight of a blind girl, who fell in love with him. He was beheaded on Feb. 14.

Another was the pious bishop of Terni, also torturted and beheaded during Claudius II's reign.

BLOG: Love Pipe Unearthed in Israel

A third Valentine would have secretly married couples, ignoring Claudius II's ban of marriage. When the priest of love was eventually arrested, legend has it that he fell deeply in love with his jailer's daughter.

Before his death by beating and decapitation, he signed a farewell note to her: “From your Valentine.”

Apart from legend, the first connection between romance and February 14 goes back to Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?-1400), the English poet and author of The Canterbury Tales.

In his poem Parliament of Fowls (1382) Chaucer suggested that St. Valentine's Day was the time on which birds chose their mates.

"For this was Seynt Valentyne's Day. When every foul cometh ther to choose his mate," he wrote.

NEWS: The Science of 'I Love You'

Some 33 years later, Duke Charles of Orleans wrote what is considered the oldest known valentine in existence.

Imprisoned in the Tower of London after being captured by the English, in 1415 Charles wrote his wife Bonne d’Armagnac a rhyming love letter, which is now part of the manuscript collection in the British Library in London.

The first two lines of the poem were:

"Je suis desja d'amour tanné. Ma tres doulce Valentinée." [I am already sick of love, My very gentle Valentine].

It was an intense but unfortunate love: Bonne d’Armagnac may never have seen him again. She died before Charles's return to France in 1440.

Image: St. Valentine's Day. John Callcott Horsley (1817–1903). Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

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NASA's 2013 Budget Sees Mars Mission Cuts

NASA funding will remain relatively flat through 2013, but funds will be cut from the Mars program. Planetary science funding expected to be slashed by 20 percent, whereas Earth science and tech development will see increases. The James Webb Space Telescope's ballooning costs will likely be covered by the planetary sciences cuts.

The proposed 2013 federal budget unveiled by President Barack Obama on Monday (Feb. 13) keeps NASA funding relatively flat next year, but bites deep into the agency's robotic Mars mission coffers while shifting new funds to human exploration and space technology.

According to the White House's 2013 budget request, NASA would receive about $17.7 billion for next year -- $59 million less than the space agency received for 2012.

However, NASA's planetary science efforts would suffer a 20 percent cut next year, with the president allocating just $1.2 billion for unmanned missions to Mars and other solar system bodies. Meanwhile, funding for human exploration and commercial spaceflight would rise nearly 6 percent, to $3.93 billion, and space technology would get a 22 percent bump, to $699 million.

ANALYSIS: Has NASA Scuppered Europe-led ExoMars Mission?

Experts say the reduction in planetary science funding will probably compel NASA to drop out of the European Space Agency-led ExoMars missions, which aim to launch an orbiter and a drill-toting rover to the Red Planet in 2016 and 2018, respectively. NASA was due to provide rockets for both missions, as well as various instrumentation.

These two missions are viewed as key steps along the path toward a Mars sample-return mission, which many researchers regard as the best way to search for signs of life on the Red Planet.

"Underpinning this is not committing to a long-term Mars program ending in a multibillion-dollar sample-return mission," said space policy expert John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. "They don't want to head down that road."

NASA's Budget Basics

The White House's proposed allocation for NASA in fiscal 2013 represents less than 0.5 percent of the overall federal budget request, which is $3.8 trillion.

Other NASA programs fare better than planetary science in the request for fiscal year 2013, which runs from Oct. 1, 2012, through Sept. 30, 2013. The space agency's Earth sciences program, for example, would receive $1.78 billion, slightly more than the president allocated in his fiscal 2012 budget request.

ANALYSIS: Eroding NASA Science: Space Telescope Scrapped?

The White House also prioritizes space technology, as evidenced by the 22 percent increase requested in the 2013 budget proposal.

"The Administration's commitment to enhance NASA's role in aerospace technology development aims to create the innovations necessary to keep the aerospace industry -- one of the largest net export industries in the United States -- on the cutting edge for years to come," the White House wrote in a summary outlining the budget request.

Obama's proposal also allocates about $2.9 billion for NASA's next-generation manned transportation system, which consists of a heavy-lift rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) and a capsule called the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.

The SLS and Orion, which are designed to carry astronauts to destinations in deep space such as asteroids or Mars, received $3 billion in fiscal 2012. NASA hopes the combo is operational by 2021.

Commercial space transportation gets a vote of confidence in the 2013 budget request. The president slotted $830 million for NASA's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, NASA's effort to encourage American private spaceflight companies to start ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

Since the space shuttle retired in July 2011, NASA has been completely dependent on Russian Soyuz vehicles to perform this taxi service. The agency wants several different private spaceships to be up and running by 2017 or so.

NEWS: NASA Lacks Budget for Next Generation Rockets

Last year, the White House allocated $850 million for CCDev activities in fiscal 2012, though Congress ended up granting only $406 million. Obama requested a total of $18.7 billion for NASA last year, but Congress eventually approved just $17.8 billion.

Next-Gen Telescope Eats Up NASA Funds

NASA's planetary science funding is likely being slashed in part to help pay for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a huge instrument that NASA bills as the successor to its Hubble Space Telescope.

JWST has suffered numerous cost overruns and delays over the years. Back in 2001, the National Academy of Sciences pegged the telescope's price tag at $1 billion. NASA's first official appraisal, performed in 2008, estimated a cost of $5 billion, with a launch coming in 2014.

The telescope is now slated to cost $8.8 billion, and to launch in 2018 at the earliest. The White House proposes giving JWST $628 million in fiscal 2013, compared to $519 million in the current year.

"Finishing Webb is being given a higher priority than starting or committing to new Mars missions," Logsdon told SPACE.com.

ANALYSIS: US Pulls Out of LISA, the Gravitational Wave Hunter

NASA officials stress that the agency is still committed to exploring Mars, both for scientific purposes and to enable future manned missions to the Red Planet. NASA has had a string of successes with robotic Mars missions recently, and its 1-ton Curiosity rover is slated to touch down on the Red Planet this August to assess whether the world can, or ever could, host life as we know it.

"Consistent with the tough choices being made across the federal government to reduce spending and live within our means, NASA is reassessing its current Mars exploration initiatives to maximize what can be achieved scientifically, technologically and in support of our future human missions," NASA spokesman David Weaver told SPACE.com in an email.

"But it is important to remember that America is the only nation that has successfully landed missions on the Martian surface -- and of course the only nation with a car-sized rover on its way right now to explore the Red Planet in unprecedented detail," Weaver added.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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'Woolly Mammoth' Video a Hoax

The video became an Internet sensation around the world. The man who made the film of the river said his video had been on YouTube since July, 2011.

Last week, a new video surfaced claiming to show a live woolly mammoth — an animal scientists think has been extinct for at least four millennia — crossing a river in Russia. The suspiciously blurry footage was allegedly "caught by a government-employed engineer last summer in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug region of Siberia," according to a story in The Sun newspaper.

PHOTOS: Six Mysterious Cryptids

The video became an Internet sensation, making headlines around the world. Some Bigfoot believers and Loch Ness Monster lovers murmured their tentative approval, hoping it proved that large unknown (or assumed extinct) animals still exist in Earth's remote wilds.

While most people didn't believe that the animal in the video was really a woolly mammoth as claimed, viewers were sharply divided about what exactly it was.

Some suspected the video is an outright hoax — a computer-generated mammoth digitally inserted into a real river scene. Many others, however, were convinced that the animal was real: not a mammoth, but instead a bear with a large fish hanging from its mouth. That would explain its relatively small size, the shape of the "trunk" on its head, and the color. Experts cast doubts on the video's authenticity; Derek Serra, a Hollywood video effects artist, concluded that it "appears to have been intentionally blurred."

Serra isn't the only expert who can shed some light on this mystery: another person is Ludovic Petho. His name may not be familiar to most people, but his work has been seen by millions; he filmed the mammoth footage at the Kitoy River in Siberia's Sayan Mountains in the summer of 2011.

He's not an anonymous government engineer, but instead a writer and videographer. Petho filmed the river scene during a 10-day solo hike in the mountains as part of a video project he's working on about his grandfather's escape from a Siberian POW camp in 1915 and his walk across Siberia to Budapest, Hungary. The footage may end up being used in a documentary film — but there's one big difference between the video he shot and the woolly mammoth video.

NEWS: Woolly Mammoth to be Cloned

"I don't recall seeing a mammoth; there were bears, deer and sable," he said in an interview with Life's Little Mysteries. "But no woolly mammoths. I had no idea my footage was used to make this fake sighting." Petho noted that his original video had been available on YouTube since July 2011, depicting an exactly identical scene — minus the faked woolly mammoth, of course.

More Stories From Life's Little Mysteries

Copyright 2012 Lifes Little Mysteries, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Concordia Wreck at Risk of Collapse, Spilling

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Transparent Phone Screen: Avoid Walking Into Walls

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Twin Cyclones Pummel Coral Sea Islands

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Salvage Workers Begin Pumping Fuel from Italian Shipwreck

The operation to extract 2,400 tonnes of fuel from 15 tanks is expected to take 28 days, weather permitting. It may then take seven to 10 months to refloat the vessel.

Salvage workers Sunday began pumping fuel from the shipwrecked Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia, a day ahead of schedule, officials said.

Operations began at around 5:00 pm (1600 GMT) on the wreck off the Tuscan island of Giglio to remove fuel from seven of the massive ship's tanks, with conditions calm.

VIDEO ANALYSIS: Concordia Captain: 'OK, Whatever' as Ship Teeters

The Costa Concordia ran aground on January 13 with a total of 4,229 people on board, an accident that cost the lives of 32 people. The bodies of 15 of those lost have still to be recovered.

Civil protection officials had said earlier they would start the pumping operations on Monday, after severe cold weather required them to revise their schedule, but final preparations were completed over the weekend.

Dutch company Smit, working with the Italian firm Neri, is handling the operation, which will involve extracting 2,400 tonnes of fuel still inside the vessel to avoid what officials say would be an environmental disaster if it leaked into the sea.

NEWS: Concordia Wreck at Risk of Collapse, Spilling

They plan to complete the operation in 28 days, working around the clock to empty a total of 15 tanks, so long as weather conditions permit, the civil protection authority said.

Only once that operation is completed can work begin to refloat the vessel, an operation that experts say will take at least seven months and possibly as many as 10.

The Costa Concordia ran aground just a few dozen meters (yards) from the port of the island of Giglio, which lies off Italy's Tuscan coast and from where ferries run to the mainland.

Pierluigi Foschi, the chief executive of Costa Crociere, owners of the cruise liner, visited the tiny island of Giglio, which has 800 inhabitants, on Thursday.

He told local people they would have a concrete plan by the middle of March on getting the vessel out of their waters and promised to everything he could to minimize the impact on the local tourist industry.

PHOTOS: The Concordia: Recounting a Disaster

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Elephant Seals Swimming Deeper as Waters Warm

Elephant seals are in it deep due to climate change ... deep in the ocean, that is. Elephant seals from Marion Island in the southwest Indian Ocean are swimming farther beneath the surface as their prey also moves into cooler, deeper waters.

"This prey is moving down to greater depths, presumably due to the increasing water temperatures, and this is forcing the seals to follow them," explained Horst Bornemann from the Alfred Wegener Institute, in a press release.

Bornemann and colleagues from the Mammal Research Institute fit more than 30 southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) with satellite transmitters. The transmitters are glued like beanies to the seals' heads. They measure dive depth, water temperature, and salinity on every dive, then beam that information to the marine biologists via satellite.

The results show that the seals dive deeper in warmer water.

"We therefore assume that the animals will find less prey in warmer water masses," explained Joachim Plötz, another biologist from the Alfred Wegener Institute involved in the study, in a press release.

Diving deeper means the seals have less time to feed, since they can only hold their breath for so long.

BLOG: Elephant Seals Moved Fast With Climate Change

The next step of the study will be to prove that the seals are indeed feeding at greater depths. A follow-up study will fit the seals with a sensor that will record when they open their mouths.

The biologists noted that the Marion Island seals already live near the northern end of southern elephant seal territory. Further warming could put their survival on the island in jeopardy, though the massive marine mammals are listed as of Least Concern to the IUCN.

BLOG: Feminist Elephant Seals Take to the Water

Male elephant seals are up to six times larger than females and rule over large harems of females. But some females have found a way to strike a blow for aquatic feminists by mating out at sea, where the sexes are on more equal terms, reported Discovery News.

IMAGES:

Southern Elephant Seal on Macquarie Island. (Credit: Mbz1, Wikimedia Commons).

An elephant seal with a sensor on its head. (Credit: Joachim Plötz, Alfred Wegener Institute).

After placing the sensor on the animal's head, the biologists measure its body size. (Credit: Joachim Plötz, Alfred Wegener Institute).

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Why Can't Women Serve at the Front?

The military still excludes women from 238,000 positions. Many barriers remain to women in the military, including traditional attitudes about women fighting and dying at war. Even though female soldiers are supposed to be excluded from combat, many women report engaging in combat-like activities.

The Defense Department recently announced new policies that ease restrictions on jobs women can do in the military, opening up more than 14,000 positions to women and allowing them closer than ever to the front lines.

But embedded in that news was a long list of positions that are still closed to women, including infantry branch officers and members of special operation missions. That has caused some people to wonder: What's holding the government back from offering true equality to women in the armed forces?

The official reason for sustained gender roles is that "there are practical barriers," said DOD spokeswoman Eillen Lainez, "which if not approached in a deliberate manner, could adversely impact the health of our service members and degrade mission accomplishment."

PHOTOS: Women Leaders From Cleopatra to Merkel

History, too, may play a role, say researchers who cite conservative views that date back to the Revolutionary War. Traditional attitudes make many people both uncomfortable with the idea of women fighting and unable to handle the image of mothers coming home in body bags.

There are also concerns that women will interfere with group bonding and cohesion – the same arguments that long interfered with the integration of African Americans and gay people into the military.

But on the ground, according to anecdotal reports, women at war are already doing many more combat-like activities than their job descriptions imply, making it hard for them to get the recognition they deserve or to advance to top-level positions. As women continue to push for more equality (as they have been for more than a century), it may be only a matter of time before they are officially allowed to do everything that male soldiers do – and finally get acknowledged for it.

"I would say there are fewer and fewer areas in which women are not participating," said Laura Browder, professor of American Studies at the University of Richmond in Virginia, and author of "When Janey Comes Marching Home: Stories of American Women at War." "Congress is full of conservatives who don't like the idea of women in combat, but I do think that sooner or later the laws are going to catch up to reality. And the reality is that women are in combat."

Early in our nation's history, women participated in war officially only as nurses. Then came World War II, said historian Kara Dixon Vuic, author of "Officer, Nurse, Woman: the Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War." With the nation's great need for bodies to help, women served for the first time as soldiers. They didn't fight, but they fixed trucks and tanks, ferried planes and performed all sorts of other important jobs that had been previously closed off to them.

When the war ended, though, most of the women who had served were cast out of the armed forces by the DOD, which set 3 percent as the maximum percentage of women allowed in the military. That rule held until the end of the Vietnam war, when the draft ended and an all-volunteer army took over.

In the late 70s and early 80s, the U.S. military began to make an active effort to recruit women and open more positions to them. Today, the proportion of women in military branches ranges from fewer than 7 percent in the Marine Corps to 13 percent in the active Army and 24 percent in the Army reserves. As many as 14 percent of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have been female, Browder said.

Over the years, women have taken on new roles and responsibilities. But there have always been restrictions and gender-specific treatment. During World War II, Vuic said, female soldiers were taught to wear girdles, high heels and makeup that matched their uniforms. Since the 1990s, policies have focused more on prohibiting women from positions that involve direct ground combat, physically demanding tasks and lack of privacy.

NEWS: Women Feel More Pain

Since the nature of war has grown far more complex than the old-fashioned battlefield structure, the government has decided to allow women to belong to units that are engaging in direct ground combat. With the new rules, women can now be artillery mechanics, intelligence officers, field surgeons and more. Still, when it comes to fighting up-close in major battles, women are left out.

Even though the government is emphasizing the 14,000 new jobs that are opening up, Major General Gary Patton, principal director for military personnel policy, said in a press conference this week that there are still about 238,000 positions that exclude women across all armed forces. The list includes artillerymen, cavalry, tank crewmen, special forces, submarine and special warfare positions. 

Those remaining barriers may be doing female soldiers a major disservice, Browder said. For her most recent book, she interviewed more than 50 women who had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many reported having experiences that could easily be considered combat.

Browder interviewed a number of women who were blown up by IEDs, for example. She met one female soldier who worked as an explosive-sniffing dog handler and found out months into her deployment that she was pregnant. And she talked extensively with a sergeant named Paigh Bumgarner, who was in a convoy that got ambushed by an explosive-filled vehicle. Bumgarner ordered that the vehicle be taken out and saved the lives of many of her friends.

"You can't tell me that's not combat," Browder said.

Bumgarner originally contacted Browder after the sergeant saw the historian mentioned in a newspaper article, which also quoted someone else saying that women don't belong in combat.

"She was so angry," Browder said, "saying that other person was dead wrong and that women need to be acknowledged as being in combat because they're out there putting their lives on the line."

"Women are getting recognized more in terms of winning medals," she added. "But women really need to have the fact that they are engaging in combat acknowledged so they can keep moving up the ladder."

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Ice-Breakers Battle Europe's Big Chill

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EU Airlines Carbon Tax Stirs Resentment

Airlines flying into Europe must pay for 15 percent of the polluting rights accorded to them in 2012. Countries can avoid the tax by developing plans to reduce harmful emissions. Cathay Pacific CEO and Singapore Airlines CEO criticized the plan at the Singapore Airshow, one of Asia's largest aviation trade fairs.

World aviation bosses warned on Monday of a potential trade war over a carbon tax imposed by the European Union, which expressed readiness to compromise while insisting on its environmental agenda.

In a conference on the eve of the Singapore Airshow, one of Asia's largest aviation trade fairs, representatives of the airline and plane manufacturing sectors expressed concern over a potential political and economic standoff.

ANALYSIS: Controversy Over EU Airport Carbon Credits

"I have to say I'm really worried, also as a manufacturer, about the consequences," said Airbus Chief Executive Thomas Enders.

"I have seen the position in China, in Russia, in the US, in India, and what started as a scheme to present a solution for the environment has become a source of potential trade conflict," he added.

The EU imposed its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) on airlines flying into the continent on January 1 despite opposition from over two dozen countries including India, Russia, China and the United States.

The EU says the scheme was designed to reduce carbon emissions blamed for climate change, and will help the 27-nation bloc achieve its goal of cutting emissions by 20 percent by 2020.

PHOTOS: Eruption of Iceland's Grimsvotn Volcano

China, the world's fastest-growing aviation market, has barred its airlines from complying with the requirement.

EU transport commissioner Siim Kallas, who also spoke at the Singapore conference, said Europe was committed to reducing carbon emissions.

"We don't have enough reasons or ground to suspend the legislation," he said at the forum.

But he added that Europe was "sincere" in expressing readiness to achieve a "multilateral solution" through the UN airline watchdog, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).

Speaking later to reporters, Kallas said it was difficult to predict the likely fallout if China and other countries refused to comply with the ETS.

"We don't know what exactly are they concretely planning to do," he said.

"I think that to avoid trade war is really very important for us, we are ready to compromise but the question is to which extent."

Tony Tyler, director-general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents airlines, warned the Singapore forum that "aviation can ill-afford to be caught in an escalating political or trade conflict over the EU-ETS."

ANALYSIS: France to Boast World's Biggest Tidal Energy Farm

While Europe deserves credit for being at the forefront of efforts to reduce emissions, Tyler said "non-European governments see this extra-territorial tax collection as an attack on their sovereignty, and they are taking action."

Singapore Airlines CEO Goh Choon Phong said that "we are objecting to the principle of how it is being applied, that it is applied to flights outside of Europe, to airspace outside Europe."

John Slosar, CEO of Cathay Pacific of Hong Kong, said that "when people go it alone whether for good reasons or bad, troubles come and difficulties arise."

Airlines opposed to the system say it would cost the industry 17.5 billion euros ($23.2 billion) over eight years.

But the head of the European Low Fares Airline Association said last week that the United States and other opponents should work harder to develop their own plans to reduce harmful emissions to gain exemptions from the tax.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, argues that the cost for airlines is manageable, estimating that the scheme could prompt carriers to add between four and 24 euros ($5 to $32) to the price of a round-trip long-haul flight.

Some 655 million people flew within Europe last year.

The EU launched the ETS in 2005 in a bid to reduce carbon emissions of power stations and industrial plants.

It decided to include airlines, held responsible for three percent of global emissions, in the absence of a global agreement to cap aviation emissions.

Under the EU scheme, airlines will have to pay for 15 percent of the polluting rights accorded to them in 2012, the figure then rising to 18 percent between 2013 and 2020.

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On the Hunt for Black Holes

The NuSTAR X-ray telescope is scheduled to launch on March 14. The telescope will look at X-rays coming from black holes, supernova and other high-energy objects. The telescope complements existing telescopes that image lower energy X-rays.

A new X-ray telescope being prepared for launch will be able to ferret out hiding places of black holes by peering into the dusty centers of distant galaxies.

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, is the first space observatory to focus on what is known as "hard X-rays" -- the type used in dental X-rays to see inside teeth.

Objects that give off this type of radiation are among the most active and violent in the universe, including galaxy clusters, supernova explosions, high-temperature gas and regions where particles are being accelerated close to the speed of light.

NEWS: Black Holes May Turboboost Super-Civilizations

"There's a whole variety of phenomenon from very extreme neutron stars to remnants of old stellar explosions we haven't discovered yet," lead scientist Fiona Harrison, with the California Institute of Technology, told Discovery News.

One of the telescope's first jobs will be to conduct a sky survey, which will give astronomers an idea about how galaxies formed. They are also eager to study supernova -- the exploded remains of giant stars -- to look for the telltale chemical fingerprints of radioactive titanium.

"Different models of how a supernova explosion happens imply very different observables of how the titanium would be distributed, both spatially and in velocity. With these observations we'll get a better idea of the physics of supernova explosions," NuSTAR project scientist Daniel Stern, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told Discovery News.

Supernovas are an important measuring stick for determining the universe's rate of expansion. Because astronomers believe they give off basically the same amount of light, measuring their brightness has been used to determine how distant they are, much like how a standard 100-watt light bulb appears dimmer if it is farther away.

"Cosmologically, we'd like to understand supernova a little bit better since we're giving Nobel Prizes using them as cosmologically probes," Stern said.

Studying high-energy X rays, which can pass through obscuring gas and dust, also should reveal the locations of black holes.

"We're pretty sure that every big galaxy has a super-massive black hole in its center and the models predict that most of the ones that are actively accreting material and get very bright are being hidden by gas and dust around them," Stern said.

NEWS: Hungry Black Hole Snacking on Asteroids?

NuSTAR will be able to pin down how many black holes are hidden, how big they are and where they are located.

Another target of study is the sun. Hard X-rays coming from micro-flares could help resolve a long-standing mystery of how the sun's corona gets heated to 1 million degrees.

NuSTAR complements NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory and Europe's XMM-Newton telescope, both of which image the X-ray sky in lower energy wavelengths.

"There won't be these beautiful pictures like what Hubble takes, but for an X-ray astronomers they will be because they'll be much sharper than anyone has ever done before," Stern said.

NuSTAR will be put into a low-Earth, near-equatorial orbit by an air-launched Pegasus rocket flying from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Launch is targeted for March 14.

The telescope consists of two sets of 133 concentric shells of mirrors, made from flexible glass, such as what is used in laptop computer screens. Because X-rays need a large area to focus, NuSTAR has a 33-foot mast that will unfold after launch.

The mission is expected to last at least two years.

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Estrogen Turns Male Snakes into Same-Sex Charmers

Estrogen is key to a female's release of pheromones and thus, reproduction. After one year of estrogen supplements, male snakes started secreting a pheromone that seemed to cause other males to swarm to them. The finding has implications for the possible effects of some chemicals and pesticides that mimic the effects of estrogen.

Give a male garter snake a taste of estrogen and watch out, as the hormone turns these lads into the sexiest thing on the block, attracting dozens of other males eager to mate.

The finding, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, has implications for understanding the environmental impact of compounds that mimic the effect of estrogen, found in some chemicals and pesticides.

NEWS: Snakes Methodically Kill Prey

Estrogen, the researchers found, is key to a female's release of pheromones and thus, reproduction.

Here's how it works: For the red-sided garter snake, picking up a mate takes but a second and a flick of the tongue. When a male detects a possible mate nearby, he licks the female with a quick flick of his tongue. The chemical cues, called pheromones, exuded by the females are so strong it takes but an instant, the researchers say, for the male to determine the other snake's species, sex, population, reproduction condition, size and age. In fact, the males are totally dependent on these pheromones for snake reproduction.

Every spring, tens of thousands of these garter snakes emerge from their limestone caves north of Manitoba, Canada, for mating. Intense competition ensues, as males swarm (and tongue) female snakes in an effort to be the first to mate with her. The frenzy appears as twisting balls of snakes called mating balls.

NEWS: Giant Snake Preyed on Baby Dinosaurs

The males tend to choose the larger, more mature gals, because these females can produce more babies; they also have a slightly different chemical signature in their pheromones. While young, small females do get action, they aren't the preferred mates.

Once they mate, the females emit a different pheromone, confirming "no more sex," causing other males to lose interest and leave the area.

In the new study, the researchers implanted male garter snakes in their natural environment, each with a capsule that raised their estrogen levels to approximately match those of female snakes. After one year of these estrogen supplements, the male snakes started secreting a pheromone that seemed to cause other males to swarm to them, forming clumps of writhing snakes tangled together. Apparently, the estrogen caused the males to secrete "female" pheromones.

"We thought this might work, but we were surprised the results were so compelling," study researcher Robert Mason, a professor of zoology at Oregon State University, said in a statement. "The amount of estrogen the male snakes received was nothing unusual, just about what a normal female would produce."

The other males, in fact, preferred the male snakes with boosted estrogen levels to the small female snakes, the researchers found.

When the researchers stopped giving the males estrogen, they reverted back to their normal behaviors.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Video Service Streams Live Reports From Syria

We've seen how new technology has helped reporters get stories out of the Middle East before – Alex Crawford was able to set up a mobile satellite unit with a laptop and the power from a car's cigarette lighter.

Now the same thing is happening in Syria, though in this case it's many ordinary people uploading cell phone video.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Life Inside Damascus, Fear, Shame and Normalcy

Ustream, a video sharing site, has a channel called the Occupy Network (which also has its own site here). It isn't clear if it has any relation to the Occupy Movement that took over Zucotti Park in New York for two months (though that movement also has made use of mobile technologies and social networks). The channel has a number of videos from Syria, showing in one case, what looks like a street in Homs, Syria and a scene of injured people being carried away after an attack by the military.

Syria is in the middle of what amounts to a low-level civil war, with the military attacking protesters in several cities, and facing a "Free Syrian Army." The government has mounted military attacks in several cities around the country over the last several months, including Homs and Hama, and there have been bombings in other cities such as Aleppo.  

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Unlike Youtube, Ustream focuses on live content – much of it is streaming in real time, though that can vary according to the way users set up their channels.

The videos from Syria look like they might be from a smartphone or small camera. The videos' captions say they are from Homs, but it isn't clear from the images.

Suzanne Tran, head of marketing, confirmed that much of the video from Syria is coming from mobile devices, and that it is possible for the technical staff to confirm where they are coming from by their IP addresses, though they had not done so yet. That said, one of the things that Ustream has is an easy interface for uploading video quickly, and that makes it a natural home for people who want to get images out as fast as possible – and in places where it is important to bypass local governments.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

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Challenger Deep Bridges and New Depth Record

The deepest place on Earth is the next holy grail for the deep-sea exploration community. Only two humans have ever been down to the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean off the coast of Guam, and that was well over 50 years ago.

Now a recent University of New Hampshire survey of the area shows that Challenger Deep, the deepest point on the planet, is actually even deeper than was previously thought. Earlier measurements had marked Challenger Deep between 10,902 and 10,916 meters (about 35,767 to 35,813 feet). The new depth reading shows Challenger Deep to be closer to 10,994 meters (36,069 feet), plus or minus 40 meters (131 feet).

Four bridge-like features spanning the massive trench were also discovered, each rising more than 8,000 feet above the seafloor. These bridges were likely formed from seamounts compacted when the older Pacific crust got pushed below the Philippine tectonic plate.

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UNH marine geologist James Gardner told the Daily Mail that there might even be life on these bridges that's adapted to the harsh, cold, and high-pressure environment.

The UNH team used multibeam echo sounders mounted underneath a hydrographic U.S. Navy ship, the USNS Sumner. The instruments send out sound waves and record depth based on the echo bounced off the seafloor, the university reported. The mission was led by Gardner and affiliate ocean engineering professor Andrew Armstrong at UNH’s Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/UNH-NOAA Joint Hydrographic Center.

In a process oceanographers call "mowing the lawn," the ship made overlapping passes over the trench while the instruments sent out their dolphin-like signals to map the seafloor. The topographic perspective built with the multibeam echo sounders provided a 3-D model of the trench's terrain at one pixel for every 100 meters -- a far higher resolution than systems used in the past.

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The UNH team used thousands of readings to correct for the way the water column can alter echo sounding signals.

Meanwhile, several teams worldwide are still developing underwater vessels in a bid to return to the depths of the Mariana Trench. Now the pressure is even greater to reach this goal.

Submarine Tech Reaches for Ocean Record

Image: A new map of the Mariana Trench with an arrow showing the deepest echo sounding there in meters. Credit: University of New Hampshire Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping Joint Hydrographic Center.

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January 2012 Physics Books

Every month, I get physics books from all over the place. I only get an opportunity to review a fraction of these books, though I feel bad about each one that I have to pass up. Plus, it's kind of hard to remember which books came out in a given year when I'm working on my "Best of the year" posts in December.

To help streamline things, I will now offer a monthly post that lists the upcoming physics books I feel are the most relevant to readers of this blog. I've posted my first one, collecting a list of the major physics books for January 2012. Don't worry, reviews will still come ... but this post will include books that I know won't get a full review but are still worth getting out there.

Leave a comment if you know of any upcoming books that I've missed!

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More Big Bang Theory Science!

First, I have posted an article about the most recent season 5 episode, "The Speckerman Recurrence," which features Sheldon watching the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics awards streaming live online. This episode, therefore, took place on December 10, 2011.

Also, I've posted three more "classics" from season one into our episode archives:

It's definitely fun to catch up on some of these earlier episodes. While the dynamic has certainly changed over the years, specifically with the integration of Amy & Bernadette as regular female characters, the show's done a very good job of maintaining itself. Here's hoping that there are many more seasons of science-filled mirth in store for us!

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Think Marriage Will Make You Happier? Maybe Not

Planning to pop the marriage question on Valentine's Day? A study in the February issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family may make you reconsider.

While married couples enjoy some health advantages (likely because of shared health care plans), the study found that unmarried couples who live together are generally happier and have better self-esteem.

Overall, the authors were struck most with the similarities between marriage and cohabitation: both improved psychological well-being but reduced contact with parents and friends.

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“We found that differences between marriage and cohabitation tend to be small and dissipate after a honeymoon period," said study coauthor Kelly Musick, associate professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell’s College of Human Ecology. "For some, cohabitation may come with fewer unwanted obligations than marriage and allow for more flexibility, autonomy and personal growth.”

The researchers looked at data from 2,737 single men and women, 896 of whom married or moved in with a partner over the course of six years, focusing on happiness, levels of depression, health and social ties. It's believed to be the first study that compares partners as they either get married or move in together, and the differences that persist in their lives afterward.

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“In recent decades western societies have experienced increases in cohabitation, before or instead of marriage, and increases in children born outside of marriage,” said Musick. “These changes have blurred the boundaries of marriage, leading to questions about what difference marriage makes in comparison to alternatives ... our research shows that marriage is by no means unique in promoting well-being and that other forms of romantic relationships can provide many of the same benefits [as marriage].”

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X-Ray Laser Fires Most Powerful Beam Ever

Lasers fire beams of light that can cut through steel or etch microchip patterns, depending on the power and wavelength. Now one team of scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif., led by Nina Rohringer, has created an X-ray laser that fires more energy, with a more precise wavelength, than any previous model. The results are being published in the journal Nature.

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X-ray lasers are already used in spectroscopy, as a way to look into the depths of molecules like DNA. Back in the 1980s the “Star Wars” missile defense program even floated the idea of X-ray lasers as weapons, powered by nuclear bombs. (The idea was never implemented.) This laser will let scientists see things smaller than ever before.

A laser works by exciting atoms in a crystal, gas or liquid, pushing the electrons nearest to the nucleus into higher energy levels -- a process called “pumping.” When the electrons return to their ground states, neighboring atoms stimulate each other and they emit light of a specific wavelength -- ultimately the laser.

Most lasers, like the ones in CD players and laser pointers, use visible light or electricity to excite the atoms.

But getting a laser beam to work in the X-ray part of the spectrum requires tons of energy. Scientists use particle accelerators to push electrons to near the speed of light and then send them through a set of magnets. The electrons emit laser light in the X-ray spectrum.

But Rohringer’s team at SLAC wanted an even more powerful laser than that, so they used the first laser to pump atoms of neon. Hitting the neon with the beam pushed the electrons closest to the nuclei of the atoms into a high-energy state, and generated a beam with a shorter and more precise wavelength. To get an idea, a visible light laser (like a laser pointer) has a wavelength of a few hundred nanometers. The laser beam in Rohringer's experiment had a wavelength of 1.5 nanometers.

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Laser energies are sometimes measured in electron volts, and this one has a range of 1 eV. Previous X-ray lasers had a range of 8-15 eV. That's important when you want to see what atoms are doing, since the smallest object one can see is limited by the wavelength of the light you use to see it. To look at anything smaller than a few nanometers requires a light beam (a laser in this case) with a wavelength that size, and to get a sharp picture, you also need a well-defined wavelength. Previous X-ray lasers had too much “spread.” The neon laser gets past that limitation, allowing for pictures of smaller and faster phenomena.

Images: Greg Stewart, SLAC (top); SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (bottom)

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World's First Magnetic Soap Invented

Watch out, Mr. Clean. Scientists in the United Kingdom have just created the world's first magnetic soap, and they're saying it could revolutionize the way we take on mega-cleanups.

Chemists have long wanted to achieve magnetic soap that works on an industrial level because it would give environmental remediation experts the ability to precisely control a cleanup using magnetic force. But scientists assumed that mixing metal into detergents wasn't the answer since the metal particles would likely be so isolated within the mixture they wouldn't respond well to a magnet.

Recently, however, several University of Bristol scientists led by chemistry professor Julian Eastoe successfully created working magnetic soap.

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They did it by dissolving iron in a bunch of inert materials similar to those usually found in fabric softener. Adding iron created metallic centers in the soap particles, so that the soap clung to a magnet when it was placed in solution.

Using a magnet, the scientists were able to change characteristics of the soap such as its electrical conductivity and melting point. That responsiveness could be extremely useful for environmental remediation or industrial waste cleanup because the cleaner would only work when needed.

The soap's magnetic properties also make the substance easy to collect and remove once it's been used, according to the scientists. Imagine putting a bunch of this soap on an oil spill and then being able to almost reel it in.

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Eastoe and his colleagues were initially so surprised by the way their soap behaved that they took it to a special research lab in France and put it under a "neutron microscope." Indeed, the iron particles were pulling together. The group published the details of their creation in the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie (abstract).

Although the magnetic soap is unlikely to be turned into a household cleaner in the near future, Eastoe said in a statement that just proving the soap can be made means potential for commercially available industrial cleaners. For now, the scientists are continuing to work on the soap in the lab. Let's hope they perfect it soon. The list of EPA Superfund sites is still long.

Photo: Unlike normal soaps, the newly created magnetic one on the right sticks to a magnet. Credit: University of Bristol.

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