Tibetan Buddhists, Nazis, and Aliens - Oh my!

            In my head, I'm picturing Indiana Jones swooping down and stealing the subject of this post out from under the noses of the SS. Unfortunately, things don't work that way in real life, and on Wednesday, Nature magazine reported that a Buddhist statue taken by the Nazis in 1938-39 was actually carved out of a meteorite - specifically the Chinga meteorite.

TIBETAN BUDDHISTS

            The statue weighs in at 10 kg or around 22 pounds. It is 24 centimeters tall, and depicts the Buddhist god Vaisravana (also known as Kubera), the King of the North. This particular statue is known as the "Iron man." The exact origin of the statue is not known, but experts believe it to have been created by the indigenous Tibetan people, the Bon.

Picture from: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/09/buddhist-iron-man-found-by-nazis-is-from-space.html

NAZIS

            An expedition lead by Ernst Schäfer in 1938-39 into Tibet is believed to be the expedition during which the statue was found. The statue probably struck the Nazis' fancy due to the swastika found on it's abdomen. The original meaning of the swastika is far from the way the Nazis bastardized it. A swastika's literal meaning is "to be good". In Tibet specifically, it was a symbol known as "yung drung"and represents eternity. 

ALIENS

            No, not the little green men kind, but instead the giant, extraterrestrial rock kind. The image of the "iron man" as it is known, is carved into a large piece of extraterrestrial iron. The composition of the rock included an abnormally high content of nickel, and it was from this that it was determined to be a member of the rare ataxite meteorite class. It is believed that the meteorite fragment is a remnant of the Chinga meteorite that fell in the area that is now Russia, tens of thousands of years ago. According to Nature magazine, this is the only known figure of a human carved into a meteorite.

Original article from Nature magazine - here

Scientific American article - here

The journal abstract from Meteorites & Planetary Science can be found - here

Tell me again how science isn't awesome? 

Tantalum - Element of the week from 9/21-9/27

              Tantalum is a rare, hard transition metal that is dark blue-gray in appearance. It is very dense and is a good conductor of heat and electricity. It is unaffected by most acids - except hydrofluoric and hot sulfuric acid. It was discovered in Sweden in 1802 by Anders Ekeberg. Tantalum is naturally occurring, though in very small amounts - around 1-2 ppm of the Earth's crust.

             Tantalum's name comes from the Greek mythological character - Tantalus, who is best known for his punishment in the Underworld. The majority of the world's supply of Tantalum is mined in Australia.

            Some of the uses for Tantalum are: (as a metal powder) electronic components, especially capacitors and high-power resistors, (when alloyed with other metals) metalworking tools, and surgical implants [Tantalum can form direct bond to hard tissue] such as hip replacements, and it is used for some special high refractive glass for cameras. It is also used in some high-end watches, such as Omega.

            Recently, a tantalum carbide-graphite composite material was produced at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and is one of the hardest materials ever synthesized. Similarly, Korean researchers have developed a tantalum-tungsten-copper alloy that is more flexible and much stronger than traditional steel alloys.

The future is here... and I'm a little scared

            My dad has said for years - "I have seen the Borg, and they are Us." Now, this reference probably makes little sense to those of you that don't know Star Trek, but for me and any other Trekkies the statement is impactful. A humanoid alien that is fully integrated with technology. This sort of leads me to the article that really caught my attention this week.

            On Tuesday, BBC News reported on Baxter, a humanoid robot who is designed to work alongside factory workers. Baxter has designed by Rethink Robotics, and will cost around $22,000 when he/it goes on sale in October. This doesn't seem to out of the ordinary until you see that Baxter has a face! And you learn that he (it?) looks confused when it doesn't understand something? BBC News wrote,  "If the robot does not understand, it responds with a confused expression."

            Then you learn that Baxter uses common sense! I mean that - Baxter has a computer screen face, and the common sense stems from "knowing" he/it has to get another of something if he/it drops the first.  To teach Baxter something, one simply has to guide his arms through a task and press a button to program it in.

            The New York Times reports that he/it, "has an elaborate array of safety mechanisms and sensors to protect the human workers it assists." This sounds creepily like the first of the "Three laws of Robotics" that Issac Asimov wrote about in I, Robot. Get this - Baxter's face turned red when humans are around, to let them know that he/it is aware of them. Baxter is also equipped with an "e-stop" button that will cause him to immediately shut down. The manufacturers say it isn't necessary though.

The things that have me concerned about Baxter are:

*One - are there limitations to what you can program his arms to do or could you make him do I'm a little Teapot all day if you wanted to.

* Two - it sounds as if he is slower, but more personable (??) than traditional manufacturing robots. Is that going to be good for the manufacturing industry? Won't that just make things even more expensive?

            This is a huge advance in the field of Robotics, and while I joke about the impending fall of man to technology, I am interested to see where this technology takes the field and I don't think I'll start looking for Neo just yet.

Read the full articles here and here

Dubnium - Element of the week from 9/14-9/20

Dubnium is a chemical (synthetic) element that is named after the Russian town of Dubna, where it was produced originally at the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research. The element was synthesized in the 1960s in both California and Dubna, but Dubna was given priority in 1997 and the name became final. Some of the names considered for the element (and proposed by the teams who synthesized it) were nielsbohrium, after Niels Bohr, and Hahnium, after Otto Hahn. You can find the properties of Dubnium here! The history of the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research here. 

Welcome to Sci tidbits!

                Sci tidbits is a blog full of scientific tidbits - hopefully it's not boring and it's easily digestible by even those who don't consider themselves "science-minded." On this blog, I will be pulling scientific news articles from across the many fields of science and giving my thoughts on them. Also, every week, I will have a new periodic element that I highlight and give the history of. I want this blog to be a conversation about science and invite you to comment about what I post. I hope to bring new scientific discoveries to your attention using podcasts, news articles, photo albums, and videos from significant science news sources

            These articles may seem irrelevant to your life at first, but soon I hope you will start thinking about how those topics affect your life.

            To catch a glimpse of what’s happening in the science world each week and to learn about the element of the week, check out my blog every Friday at 8 p.m.

            As a little taste of what this blog will offer, enjoy this story from The Guardian about 10 new mammal species discovered in the past 10 years.

            Everything worth knowing in the vast field of science has been discovered. I think that in today's modern age, this is an assumption that many people make, and it could not be further from the truth. Within the last 10 years, at least 10 distinct mammal species have been isolated and identified, as The Guardian reported on September 13.  Four of these new species were types of monkeys, while two were rodentia. The one that I found most interesting is the new species of dolphin found in Australia. The new species, Tursiops Australis, was mistaken for a simple bottlenose dolphin until recently, and with a rather miniscule population - just 150 dolphins. The lesula, a new species of monkey discovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has strangely human characteristics. The facial strucure is similar to that of a human and their eyes are haunting - take a look at the photo of a lesula at the link above. While they were discovered by the scientific world this year, locals have known them for many years. This just reinforces in my mind the importance of speaking to local peoples and utilizing all resources to come to important scientific discoveries. Read the full article here.