Our Universe in a Black Hole Within a Larger Universe?

Einstein-Rosen Bridges like the one visualized 

Could our universe be located within the interior of a wormhole which itself is part of a black hole that lies within a much larger universe?

Such a scenario in which the universe is born from inside a wormhole (also called an Einstein-Rosen Bridge) is suggested in a paper from Indiana University theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski in Physics Letters B. The final version of the paper was available online March 29 and will be published in the journal edition April 12.

Poplawski takes advantage of the Euclidean-based coordinate system called isotropic coordinates to describe the gravitational field of a black hole and to model the radial geodesic motion of a massive particle into a black hole.

In studying the radial motion through the event horizon (a black hole’s boundary) of two different types of black holes — Schwarzschild and Einstein-Rosen, both of which are mathematically legitimate solutions of general relativity — Poplawski admits that only experiment or observation can reveal the motion of a particle falling into an actual black hole. But he also notes that since observers can only see the outside of the black hole, the interior cannot be observed unless an observer enters or resides within.

“This condition would be satisfied if our universe were the interior of a black hole existing in a bigger universe,” he said. “Because Einstein’s general theory of relativity does not choose a time orientation, if a black hole can form from the gravitational collapse of matter through an event horizon in the future then the reverse process is also possible. Such a process would describe an exploding white hole: matter emerging from an event horizon in the past, like the expanding universe.”

A white hole is connected to a black hole by an Einstein-Rosen bridge (wormhole) and is hypothetically the time reversal of a black hole. Poplawski’s paper suggests that all astrophysical black holes, not just Schwarzschild and Einstein-Rosen black holes, may have Einstein-Rosen bridges, each with a new universe inside that formed simultaneously with the black hole.

“From that it follows that our universe could have itself formed from inside a black hole existing inside another universe,” he said.

By continuing to study the gravitational collapse of a sphere of dust in isotropic coordinates, and by applying the current research to other types of black holes, views where the universe is born from the interior of an Einstein-Rosen black hole could avoid problems seen by scientists with the Big Bang theory and the black hole information loss problem which claims all information about matter is lost as it goes over the event horizon (in turn defying the laws of quantum physics).

This model in isotropic coordinates of the universe as a black hole could explain the origin of cosmic inflation, Poplawski theorizes.

Poplawski is a research associate in the IU Department of Physics. He holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in physics from Indiana University and a M.S. in astronomy from the University of Warsaw, Poland.

Future spaceships powered by black holes and dark matter

The radical proposals, put forward by physicists in two American universities, are hoped to make visits to other stars in our galaxy plausible.

At the moment, the fastest-moving spacecraft mankind has made is Voyager 1, which is just leaving the solar system at an impressive 17km (10.6 miles) a second. However, even at that dizzying – to us – speed, it would take it another 74,000 years to reach even our nearest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri, 4.2 light years away.
Chemical rockets are not suitable for travelling these sort of distances, as they only convert 0.000000001 per cent of their mass into energy. They would require billions of tons of fuel to get up to the required speed. Even nuclear fusion reactors would be less than 1 per cent efficient.
Other suggestions have included using vast sails to collect light energy, either from stars or from laser beams, or using antimatter reactions. But both of these have practicality problems: sails need a nearby power source, while antimatter is hugely difficult to make and equally difficult to store.
But a New York University physicist, Jia Liu, has suggested using a dark matter “jet engine” to power spacecraft, while two mathematicians at Kansas State University, Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland, have claimed that using an artificial black hole as a power source is feasible.
Surprisingly, there seems to be nothing in the present understanding of physics that would rule these proposals out, 

according to New Scientist.
The black hole proposal would involve building a spaceship with a large parabolic reflector behind it, and then putting a small (at a mere million tons) black hole in its focus. The “Hawking radiation” given off by the black hole as it slowly converts its mass into energy (or “evaporates”) would push the spacecraft to near light speed within a few decades, bringing Proxima Centauri into a more reasonable reach.
More than that, at the relativistic near-light-speed velocities, the travellers’ experience of time would slow down, making them age slower than those left on Earth. At very high speeds, says Mr Crane, "it might be possible to reach the Andromeda galaxy 2.5 million light years away within a human lifetime."
Mr Liu’s idea is more speculative, relying on one possible theory of what dark matter really is. He suggests building a spacecraft with a large intake at the front which would scoop up dark matter particles. If, as is theorised, those particles are “neutralinos”, which annihilate each other on contact, they could be forced into a box at the back of the craft which would fire the energy rearwards like a jet engine.
The faster the spacecraft travelled, the more neutralinos it would pick up, and the faster it would accelerate. If his calculations are correct, Mr Liu suggests that the ship could reach near-light speed in just days.
However, even if dark matter does consist of neutralinos, there are other problems. First, to work well, it would need densely concentrated dark matter, and as far as we know the nearest dense area is 26,000 light years away in the centre of the Milky Way. Second, neutralinos barely interact with ordinary matter. To make a “box” to keep it in would require some new, unknown material. As Mr Crane says, “this is the idea’s Achilles heel.”

Planning for Mars sample return starts here

I think we were all inspired by the Japanese adventure in bringing samples of asteroid Itokawa back to Earth. The Hayabusa capsule which landed in Australia is now safely installed in the Sagamihara curation facility in Kanagawa.
We await news of the opening of the canister and confirmation that asteroid dust is inside.
Of course, the really big prize would be to return samples of surface material from mars, a planet where microbial life may once have thrived (and may still in some corner).
And I've had an opportunity in recent days to discuss the topic with top Nasa officials who've been on a tour of Europe to review progress on the European Space Agency's (Esa)  ExoMars rover.
As previously mentioned in this blog, all US and European activity at the Red Planet will become a combined effort from mid-decade onwards.
This joint initiative will start in 2016 with an orbiting spacecraft that will investigate trace gases such as methane in the Martian atmosphere, and then progress on to a double rover mission that will launch in 2018.

The Americans plan on using a "skycrane" to land both the ExoMars vehicle and a robotic rover of their own design.
This will be an extraordinary sight - if only you could be on Mars to see it!
The skycrane is a kind of rocket-powered cradle. The crane will lower a pallet containing the two rovers on to the surface before moving itself clear and dropping to the ground at a safe distance.
We'll be able to assess how well this technology works in 2012 because the exact same system is being used to land the next US rover, MSL-Curiosity.

 

The one big difference is that MSL will be put down directly on to its wheels; there will be no pallet involved.

The crane should be capable of landing a tonne or so, which means ExoMars and its co-passenger American vehicle will be allocated 300kg each.
But what will the US robot actually do? I've written a lot about ExoMars and how it will drill below the surface looking for extinct or extant life, but I must confess I've been a little vague on the American side of things.
Their vehicle will be what's termed a caching rover. Its working name is Max-C Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher. It will seek out interesting rocks on the surface of the planet, study them with a suite of instruments and then bag samples. Charles Whetsel, a spacecraft systems engineer at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, described the US rover's mission to me this way:

"The concept right now is that it will have a coring tool able to go about five centimetres in, about a centimetre in diameter. It will be able to go up to the rocks we find most interesting and take a 'biopsy', if you will, to lift the core out and start building up a library onboard the rover. If we can do one of those every week or so, and we plan on being there for the better part of a year, at the end of that year we could have a little 'backpack' of about 30 samples."

Nasa now says these cores gathered by Max-C will be the same ones that a later mission, perhaps in the 2020s, will attempt to retrieve and bring back to Earth. Doug McCuistion, the director of the Mars Exploration Program at Nasa Headquarters in Washington DC, told me:

"Our expectation is that these samples will be acquired with the intention to go get them, unless something significant occurs that prevents us from doing that."

So, the Mars sample return project starts in earnest with the launch of ExoMars and Max-C in 2018. This makes it a hugely significant venture.

 It raises some interesting questions, too, which Nasa and Esa planners have really only just started to grapple with [PDF].
Can a landing location be identified that is optimal for both drilling into the sub-surface and for finding the right type of rocks you might want to bring back to Earth?
Also, when the two rovers drive off their pallet, do they go in the same direction or do they stick close together? Charles Whetsel:

"We're still talking about that. For us, getting those 30 cores is going to involve some hoping about on our part, whereas ExoMars's theme will be about getting below the surface and exploring Mars with vertical mobility instead of horizontal mobility. That means ExoMars will tend to go to a relatively small number of sites and camp out. The science community has started thinking about how you might reconcile those different modes of operation. One possibility is that you could use the rock-hopping approach of the American rover to scout out locations for ExoMars."

One question that comes into my mind: is there any possibility that ExoMars could pass some of the material it has drilled from two metres below the surface over to Max-C? After all, we know the ultraviolet conditions on the surface today would make it a tough environment for any Martian microbes. There's more chance of them existing deeper in the dirt.

Well, the engineers are apparently considering this one, too.
Max-C's backpack will need to be easily accessible to the later retrieval mission. One idea is that the rover simply dumps a canister on the ground that can be picked up and then blasted into orbit for capture and boosting back to Earth.
But we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves here. First, ExoMars and Max-C have got to be made to work before we can start dreaming of what might be in the 2020s.
I tell you what I am looking forward to, though - seeing the pictures the rovers take of each other.
The static Mars Pathfinder lander imaged the little Sojourner rover on the Red Planet in 1997, but this would be something different altogether - an album of snaps from a fly-drive excursion on another planet.
Watch this space.

Sun Eruption That May Have Spawned Zombie Satellite Identified

Scientists have identified a massive eruption from the sun in April that reached all the way to Earth and may be responsible for knocking out a satellite, creating a so-called "zombie satellite."

The huge explosion of plasma and magnetic energy, called as a coronal mass ejection (CME), occurred on April 3 and was observed by NASA's sun-watching STEREO spacecraft, according to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). The laboratory released new images of the solar storm last week.

The solar storm appears to have disabled the Intelsat communications satellite Galaxy 15, NRL officials said. Galaxy 15 lost contact with its ground controllers on April 5 and has been drifting around Earth ever since.

Solar storms are known to put satellites at risk. The charged particles in a storm can short out electrical equipment.

The observations suggest the coronal mass ejection flung material away from the sun at a phenomenal 1,000 kilometers per second. The solar eruption was moving at 2.2 million mph (3.6 million kph) while it was still close to the sun on April 3. It then slowed down to about 700 kilometers per second (1.5 million mph or 2.5 million kph) when it reached Earth on April 5.

There is an odd twist to the Galaxy 15 satellite failure. While the satellite has stopped communicating with its ground control center, its C-band telecommunications payload (which provided broadcast services to customers) is stuck on, earning it the "zombie satellite" nickname.

"Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are powerful eruptions of plasma and magnetic energy from the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona," NRL officials wrote in the July 7 statement. "When these sudden outbursts are directed toward Earth, they can have both breathtakingly beautiful and potentially damaging effects." [Amazing new sun photos.]

The study of the April 3 coronal mass ejection event was performed using NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), a set of twin spacecraft on opposite sides of Earth that continuously watch the sun in what produces a stereo view, due to the wide separate of the probes in space.

The unique lateral views provided by STEREO were ideal for studying the kinematics and morphology of the developing event, said Russell Howard, the STEREO mission's principal investigator at the Naval Research Laboratory.

Three-dimensional reconstruction of the evolving cloud of electrified gas showed its form to be a crescent-shaped "flux rope" with a shock wave driven in front.

Prior awareness that the coronal mass ejection was headed straight for Earth came from the NRL-developed coronagraph aboard the SOHO solar observatory, which is located at a spot between the Earth and sun. That Large Angle Coronograph-Spectrograph (LASCO) instrument on SOHO observed a "halo" around the sun formed by the expanding and approaching solar eruption, NRL officials said.

Meanwhile, the now-aimless electronic signal from Galaxy 15 has forced other communications satellites to conduct evasive maneuvers from time to time to avoid signal interference. But the chances of the Galaxy 15 spacecraft hitting another satellite are so remote, they are non-existent, Intelsat officials have said. This month, Galaxy 15 will be flying near two other Intelsat satellites (Galaxy 13 and Galaxy 14).

4-time Texas lotto winner rich with money, mystery

The odds that Joan Ginther would hit four Texas Lottery jackpots for a combined nearly $21 million are astronomical. Mathematicians say the chances are as slim as 1 in 18 septillion — that's 18 and 24 zeros.

Just as unlikely? Getting to know one of the luckiest women in the world.

"She wants her privacy," friend Cris Carmona said.

On a $50 scratch-off ticket bought in this rural farming community, Ginther won $10 million last month in her biggest windfall yet. But it was the fourth winning ticket in Texas for the 63-year-old former college professor since 1993, when Ginther split an $11 million jackpot and became the most famous native in Bishop history.

But she's a celebrity who few in this town of 3,300 people can say much about.

"That lady is pretty much scarce to everybody," said Lucas Ray Cruz, Ginther's former neighbor. "That's just the way she is."

At the Times Market where Ginther bought her last two winning tickets, the highway gas station is fast becoming a pilgrimage for unlucky lottery losers. Lines stretch deep past a $5.98 bin of Mexican movie DVDs, and a woman from Rhode Island called last week asking to buy tickets from the charmed store through the mail.

She was told that was illegal. The woman called back to plead again anyway.

The Texas Lottery Commission has seen repeat winners before, but none on the scale of Ginther. Spokesman Bobby Heith said the agency has never investigated Ginther's winnings — three scratch-off tickets and one lottery draw — for possible fraud but described the verification system as thorough. Her other winnings — both from scratch-off tickets — were $2 million in 2006 and $3 million in 2008.

So how did Ginther do it, then?

Good luck pinning her down to ask.

Ginther has never spoken publicly about her lotto winnings and could not be found for comment. She now lives in Las Vegas after moving away from Bishop, and an answering machine message for a telephone number listed at her address says not to leave a message.

She asked the few people who've exchanged more than brief pleasantries with her not to grant interviews and sneaked into lottery headquarters in Austin to collect her winnings with the least publicity the state offers jackpot winners.

But spend a few hours in her hometown — and equal time scouring public records — and a contrasting profile emerges.

Her home address in Las Vegas is on a street called Paradise Drive. When USA Today asked readers in 2000 to sound off on airline service, Ginther groaned over a flight attendant who carted away her cheese and crackers and a sundae too soon. Two years later, she grumbled to the Las Vegas Review-Journal about a proposed monorail running through her exclusive condominium towers.

"I moved here because I wanted to have a beautiful home with a great view and that's what I have. I didn't expect to have a monorail come down here with thousands of tourists every day," Ginther told the newspaper, in what might have been the only time she was directly quoted in the media.

Nitpicking first-class service, and mad the view in her luxury home might be spoiled?

Bishop residents may not know much about Ginther — but they know that's not her.

Here around the cotton farms and boarded-up downtown, Ginther, who over the years regularly visited the town to see her father who died in 2007, is called benevolent as much as she's called lucky. They say she bought the church a van. Gave money to the family that runs the Days Inn off the highway. When she moved, she donated her home to charity.

Sun Bae, who owns the Time Market and sold Ginther her last two winning tickets, said she drives around in a bland Nissan sedan but once bought a nicer car for someone down on their luck. Bae said Ginther doesn't even own a cell phone.

"She is a very generous woman. She's helped so many people," Bae said.

Calculating the actual odds of Ginther hitting four multimillion-dollar lottery jackpots is tricky. If Ginther's winning tickets were the only four she ever bought, the odds would be one in 18 septillion, according to Sandy Norman and Eduardo Duenez, math professors at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Exactly how often Ginther plays is unknown. But Norman and Duenez said that a habitual player winning four times over a 17-year span is much less far-fetched.

At the Times Market, Bae and store regular Gloria Gonzalez said they've certainly watched Ginther buy her share of tickets over the years. And not just for her.

Gonzalez said when her elderly father would sit at the store's window booth and scrub through dollar scratch-offs, Ginther would surprise him with a $50 ream of tickets.

"Win, win, win," Ginther would chant, rooting him on.

After all, the only way to win is to keep playing. Ginther is smart enough to know that's how you beat the odds: she earned her doctorate from Stanford University in 1976, then spent a decade on faculty at several colleges in California.

In New Contests, NASA Invites Citizens To Design Robots and Satellites

NASA on Tuesday announced three new multimillion-dollar contests to build smart robots and launch tiny satellites as part of a program to develop innovations of benefit not only to the U.S. space agency but to the nation at large.

The contests are NASA's newest Centennial Challenges, which offer cash prizes for technological achievements by teams who work without government funding. A combined prize incentive of $5 million will be split among the three competitions.

The competitions call on teams to repeatedly launch miniature satellites into orbit, develop a solar-powered rover that can run at night on stored energy, or build a sample-return robot that can navigate over varied terrain and retrieve an identifiable object.

"NASA sponsors prize competitions because the agency believes student teams, private companies of all sizes and citizen-inventors can provide creative solutions to problems of interest to NASA and the nation," said Robert Braun, NASA's chief technologist. "Prize competitions are a proven way to foster technological competitiveness, new industries and innovation across America."

The contests were announced here at the Space Technology Industry Forum, hosted by NASA's  Office of the Chief Technologist. The OCT is responsible for direct management of the space agency's space technology programs, and for coordinating and tracking all technology investments across the agency.

Night rovers and nanosatellites

Centennial Challenges are open to individuals, groups and companies working outside of the traditional aerospace industry. Monetary awards are made after solutions are successfully demonstrated; the participants maintain ownership of their intellectual properties.

Since 2005, NASA has conducted 19 competitions in six challenge areas and has awarded $4.5 million to 13 different teams.

The objective of one of the new competitions, the Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge, is to place a small satellite into Earth orbit twice in one week. The purposes behind this challenge are to stimulate innovation in low-cost launch technology and encourage creation of commercial nano-satellite delivery services. The challenge carries a potential prize of $2 million.

The Night Rover Challenge has a prize purse of $1.5 million. The objective is to support innovations in energy-storage technologies that could prove valuable in extreme space environments, such as on the surface of the moon.

Technological advances in this area also could have applications on Earth for electric vehicles and renewable energy systems, NASA officials said.

"With a lot of these things, there could be tremendous spin-offs in other fields," said Andrew Petro, Centennial Challenges program executive.

The third contest, with $1.5 million in prize money, is  the Sample Return Robot Challenge. It calls for teams to build and demonstrate a robot that can locate and retrieve geological samples from wide and varied terrain without human control. The challenge focuses on innovations in automatic navigation and robotic manipulator technologies.

"The Centennial Challenges have been recognized by the White House and the administration as an innovative approach to doing business," Braun said. "It's an approach in which we engage a wide variety of innovators across the nation. Through the space technology program, we hope to take that innovation and shine it like a laser on our space program and change the way we do business in the future."

Pushing space technology forward

The program initiatives under the space technology program – including the Centennial Challenges – are subject to Congressional approval. The OCT has requested $10 million in federal funding each year through 2015 as part of the expansion of the Centennial Challenges.

While the future of the program is contingent upon the allocation of funds in the budgets of fiscal 2011 and beyond, officials at the Office of the Chief Technologist are confident that NASA's revised space technology program can help restore the space agency's cutting-edge technological prowess.

"There has been significant debate in Congress already for the need for a program just like this," Braun said. "We've taken all the external input, all the criticisms from NASA's past, and from that we have shaped the space technology program."

Meanwhile, three other Centennial Challenges are scheduled over the next year:

• The Strong Tether Challenge: Teams must demonstrate a material that is at least 50 percent stronger than the strongest commercially available. The challenge is scheduled for Aug. 13 in Seattle.
• The Power Beaming Challenge: Using laser beams, teams must transmit enough power to a device for it to climb more than half a mile of vertical cable. The challenge is planned for the fall of 2010.
• The Green Flight Challenge: Teams will try to design and fly aircraft 200 miles in less than two hours using the energy equivalent of less than one gallon of gasoline per occupant. The challenge will be held in July 2011. It is expected to attract electric, hybrid and bio-fueled aircraft.

NASA is currently soliciting proposals from nonprofit organizations looking to manage each of the three new Centennial Challenges competitions.

After these partner organizations are signed, they will work in conjunction with NASA to determine the rules and details of the challenges, which are expected to be announced later this year.

Earth younger than previously thought, say scientists

A new geological study has set a more accurate age for planet Earth, according to scientists.

Researchers say their investigation shows the Earth is 70 million years younger than the 4.537 billion-year-old planet "we had previously imagined".

To confirm Earth's age, the team compared elements in its mantle to those in meteorites that are the same age as the Solar System.

The group reports its findings in the journal Nature Geosciences.

The crux of its conclusion was that the formation of the planet took much longer than previously thought.

The scientists studied this timescale by looking at how long Earth took to "accrete", or grow, as smaller "planetary embryos" smashed together to form it.

"The collisions caused part of the planet to melt, and allow metal to segregate to the centre of the Earth to form the core," explained Dr John Rudge, from Cambridge University, UK, who led the research.

"So [during this process], the planet differentiated into its molten metal core and outer-lying mantle."

The longer this process took, the later the Earth was "born" in its current size and geological form.

Planetary clock

To shed light on this, the scientists looked at two "isotopes" - chemical elements in the Earth's mantle called 182-hafnium and 182-tungsten. Over a set period of several million years, hafnium decays to become tungsten. And tungsten "loves" metal, so while the planet's core was still forming, it became incorporated into that.

This left a "signature" in the mantle that revealed how long the Earth took to differentiate.

By comparing the amount of 182-tungsten in the mantle to the amount found in meteorites, the researchers could work out how long it took for Earth to fully differentiate into mantle and core.

The team compared the results from this technique with a similar method using two different isotopes. And instead of assuming that one method was more accurate than the other, and that the Earth formed at a steady rate, they modelled all of the different ways that the process could have happened.

Dr Rudge explained that, for these two methods to agree, the formation of the Earth would have had to have been "rapid early on, then there was some hiatus and more gradual accretion".

This meant, he said, that instead of Earth forming over 30 million years, it took closer to 100 million years.

He explained that the end of the "hiatus" could have been the giant impact that is believed to have formed the Moon.

"If correct, that would mean the Earth was about 100 million years in the making altogether," Dr. Rudge said. "We estimate that makes it about 4.467 billion years old - a mere youngster compared with the 4.537 billion-year-old planet we had previously imagined."

EU member states agree on Iter funding shortfall

Additional funds needed to construct the Iter fusion reactor will have to come from within the EU's budget, member states have said.

The French-based machine will prove the concept of harvesting energy from the fusion of hydrogen nuclei - the same process at the heart of the Sun.

Iter has seen its baseline price tag rise dramatically since a consortium of nations green lit the project in 2006.

The extra 1.4bn euros will cover a shortfall in building costs in 2012-13.

After months of protracted negotiations, member states finally made their position clear at an Agriculture and Fish Council meeting on 12 July.

They want the funds to come from a variety of sources within the existing Brussels budget, including from its research budget (the Framework Programme 7).

The EU's executive body, the Commission, had asked member states to inject fresh funds into the project. The Commission and the European Parliament will have further input before the matter is finally resolved.

Iter itself is holding a special Council meeting on 27-28 July. This will define the latest scope and schedule for the project.

Iter is a collaboration between the EU, the US, Russia, Japan, China, India and South Korea. It is the culmination of decades of research.

Its fusion reactions will take place inside a 100-million-degree gas (plasma) suspended in an intense doughnut-shaped magnetic field.

The reactor is designed to produce 500MW of fusion power during pulses of at least 400 seconds. Critically, Iter is expected to demonstrate the principle that it possible to get far more energy out of the process than is used to initiate it.

The original plan was to build the experiment within 10 years for a budget of 5bn euros. But a range of issues, from technical to personnel matters, have conspired to inflate Iter's final price.

Many now expect it to be in the region of 15bn euros; and the total cost of construction for the EU - a major partner in Iter - is put at no less than 7.2bn euros.

EU ministers had tried - and failed - to resolve arguments over where the extra immediate funds should come from at their 26 May Competitiveness Council.

A task force was then established to find a solution to the issue.

Draft conclusions were agreed at a 30 June meeting of a senior EU body known as Coreper, and these were subsequently adopted as an "A point" at the Agriculture and Fish Council meeting this week.

The member states propose that the additional 1.4bn euros required for 2012-2013 should now be taken from a mix of sources within the current EU budget, including from the Framework Programme.

Many scientists have expressed the fear that raiding the 53bn-euro FP7 pot could damage other projects.

At the European Science Open Forum last week in Turin, Italy, Prof Helga Nowotny, the new president of the European Research Council, again voiced her concern at the impact rising Iter costs could have on other types of European scientific activity.

A spokesperson for the UK government told BBC News: "We are pleased to note the conclusions call for important improvements to the financial management and oversight of the project.

"We agree with the view expressed in the conclusions that the additional financial commitments for Iter for 2012 and 2013 should come from a mix of sources within the current EU budget 2007-2013."

Japanese Kaguya probe saw deep Moon rock

Rocks that may have originated deep within the Moon were spied on its surface by a Japanese probe.

The Kaguya (Selene) mission surveyed Earth's satellite until a year ago.
Scientists report in Nature Geoscience that it saw exposures of rocks rich in the mineral olivine in concentric rings around craters.
They suggest that large impacts could have penetrated the Moon's outer crust, bringing into view the mantle olivine stored just below the surface.
The observations are said to fit well with ideas about how the Moon formed.
Current theory holds that Earth was hit by a Mars-sized body early in the evolution of the Solar System, and that the debris thrown into space by this impact coalesced into the Moon.
The sequence of mineral crystallisation in this ball of molten rock would have seen olivine (a magnesium iron silicate) produced before more dense materials, causing it to sink deep into the interior.
But this then led to a gravitationally unstable body with those more dense materials eventually displacing the olivine. As a consequence, the Moon's mantle, it is hypothesised, underwent an "overturning", in which the olivine was transferred to just below the crust.
That being the case, one might expect to see olivine in places where a thin crust has been broken - such as at impact craters - say Satoru Yamamoto, of the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, and colleagues.
"These craters with olivine-rich sites are very large, with diameters of several 100km to a 1,000km," Dr Yamamoto told BBC News.
"In this case, the excavation depth during the formation of these craters is about 100km. Thus, we propose that olivine-rich sites found here originate from deep-seated lunar mantle (as deep as 100km), which were excavated by gigantic impacts of huge meteoroids."
In the journal, Dr Yamamoto's team reports Kaguya's observations of strong olivine signals at 34 sites, including three previously reported. The sites include the South Pole-Aitken, Imbrium and Moscoviense impact basins.
Dr Yamamoto added: "I think that our new data give us an important piece of knowledge on the inside development of the Moon's mantle. Although there is a lot of information on the surface of the Moon, little is known about below the crust.
"Therefore, the structure and origin of the Moon's mantle have been debated for a long time. On the other hand, our new data provide important constraints on any models that try to show how the early crust and mantle of Moon-like bodies form and evolve."
The Japanese space agency (Jaxa) probe was launched in 2007. It orbited the Moon for one year and eight months, and famously returned the first high-definition movies of the lunar surface.
It was intentionally crashed into the Moon on 10 June last year.

Astronauts Ready for Shuttle Launch Amid NASA Uncertainty

WASHINGTON – Six NASA astronauts are ready to rocket into space on the shuttle Endeavour in just over a week as questions swirl over the impact of the space agency’s upcoming budget request.

Endeavour commander George Zamka said Friday that he and his crew are completely focused on the planned Feb. 7 launch to the International Space Station. Their mission: to deliver a new room to the $100 billion orbiting lab that will leave it nearly complete.

The shuttle is scheduled to blast off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., before dawn on Feb. 7 at 4:39 a.m. EST (0939 GMT), making it the last planned night launch of Endeavour or any other orbiter. The launch will come six days after NASA rolls out its new spending goals for the next fiscal year – a plan that may depart substantially from the agency’s earlier human spaceflight goals.

But Endeavour’s astronauts have had no time to dwell on the agency’s long-range plan. Not with blastoff less than 10 days away.

“There’s a space shuttle with 4 million pounds of propellant and an international payload strapped to it, and thousands of bits of hardware to handle, all with our name on it at Pad 39A at the Cape,” Zamka told reporters in a briefing. “We’ve been preparing ourselves for this mission for a year, and arguably we’ve been preparing for it for most of our lives. And we get one chance to get it right.”

Zamka’s five-man, one-woman crew is about to embark on the first of NASA’s five final shuttle missions before the agency retires its three-orbiter fleet later this year. The planned 13-day mission will deliver a brand-new room – the Tranquility module – and a long-awaited observation portal for the International Space Station.

Named after the first moon base established by Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969, Tranquility is the last large piece of NASA’s section of the space station to fly. Its arrival will leave the outpost 90 percent complete after more than 11 years of space construction.

“We’ve got a great mission in front of us and we’re very anxious to get started,” Zamka said. Three spacewalks are planned for the spaceflight.

Zamka said he and his crew have heard in vague terms the issues surrounding announcement of NASA’s fiscal year 2011 budget request, which is due to be rolled out at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Monday. Early reports suggest that President Barack Obama’s budget request for NASA would boost the agency’s budget by $6 billion over the next five years, but also scrap the agency’s current effort to send astronauts on new moon landing missions by 2020.

NASA plans to replace Endeavour and its sister ships Discovery and Atlantis with new Orion crew capsules designed to launch atop new Ares rockets as part of its Constellation program. The Obama budget request would direct NASA to invest heavily into American commercial spacecraft development to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station after the shuttle fleet retires, according to the early reports.

NASA has been flying space shuttle missions since April 1981. Endeavour's flight will be the 130th shuttle mission when it launches.

While Endeavour astronauts were hesitant to comment on the changes ahead for NASA, they did say that they have been contemplating the shuttle’s looming retirement this year.

Veteran astronaut Stephen Robinson, who will make his fourth trip to space on the upcoming mission, said that while the shuttle era is ending, it is leaving a giant, gleaming space laboratory behind as its legacy.

“How could you feel anything but thrilled and very proud to have done something like that,” Robinson said.