New Species!!!

Lost world: More than 1,000 species discovered in a decade in diverse Mekong

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:44 AM on 15th December 2008

• Comments (4)
• Add to My Stories

More than a thousand new species have been discovered in the Greater Mekong Region of Southeast Asia in the last decade, according to a new report from WWF.

Among the 1,068 new species discovered between 1997 and 2007 were the world’s largest huntsman spider, with a leg span of 30 centimetres, and the hot pink cyanide-producing 'dragon millipede'.

Most species were discovered in the largely unexplored jungles and wetlands. However, the Laotian rock rat, thought to be extinct 11 million years ago, was first encountered by scientists in a local food market.

The 'dragon millipede' (left) can produce cyanide to protect itself. The aggressive Heteropoda dagmarae (right) was found in Laos

Enlarge

A Theloderma licin frog was found in Thailand

The Siamese Peninsula pitviper was found slithering through the rafters of a restaurant in Khao Yai National Park in Thailand.

'This region is like what I read about as a child in the stories of Charles Darwin,' said Dr Thomas Ziegler, Curator at the Cologne Zoo.

'It is a great feeling being in an unexplored area and to document its biodiversity for the first time… both enigmatic and beautiful,' he said.

The findings, highlighted in First Contact in the Greater Mekong report, include 519 plants, 279 fish, 88 frogs, 88 spiders, 46 lizards, 22 snakes, 15 mammals, 4 birds, 4 turtles, 2 salamanders and a toad.

Enlarge

Scientists have found 22 species of snake including this green pitviper

The region comprises the six countries through which the Mekong River flows including Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the southern Chinese province of Yunnan.

It is estimated thousands of new invertebrate species were also discovered during this period, further highlighting the region’s immense biodiversity.

'It doesn’t get any better than this,' said Stuart Chapman, Director of WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme.

'We thought discoveries of this scale were confined to the history books. This reaffirms the Greater Mekong’s place on the world map of conservation priorities.'

The report stresses economic development and environmental protection must go hand-in-hand to ensure the survival of the Greater Mekong's astonishing array of species and natural habitats.

The Laotian rock rat was thought to be extinct but was found in a local food market

'This poorly understood biodiversity is facing unprecedented pressure… for scientists, this means that almost every field survey yields new diversity, but documenting it is a race against time,' said Raoul Bain, Biodiversity Specialist from the American Museum of Natural History.

The report recommends what is urgently needed to protect the biodiversity of the region is a formal, cross-border agreement by the governments of the Greater Mekong.

'Who knows what else is out there waiting to be discovered, but what is clear is that there is plenty more where this came from,' said Chapman.

New Discovered Species!!!

Lost world: More than 1,000 species discovered in a decade in diverse Mekong

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:44 AM on 15th December 2008

• Comments (4)
• Add to My Stories

More than a thousand new species have been discovered in the Greater Mekong Region of Southeast Asia in the last decade, according to a new report from WWF.

Among the 1,068 new species discovered between 1997 and 2007 were the world’s largest huntsman spider, with a leg span of 30 centimetres, and the hot pink cyanide-producing 'dragon millipede'.

Most species were discovered in the largely unexplored jungles and wetlands. However, the Laotian rock rat, thought to be extinct 11 million years ago, was first encountered by scientists in a local food market.

The 'dragon millipede' (left) can produce cyanide to protect itself. The aggressive Heteropoda dagmarae (right) was found in Laos

Enlarge

A Theloderma licin frog was found in Thailand

The Siamese Peninsula pitviper was found slithering through the rafters of a restaurant in Khao Yai National Park in Thailand.

'This region is like what I read about as a child in the stories of Charles Darwin,' said Dr Thomas Ziegler, Curator at the Cologne Zoo.

'It is a great feeling being in an unexplored area and to document its biodiversity for the first time… both enigmatic and beautiful,' he said.

The findings, highlighted in First Contact in the Greater Mekong report, include 519 plants, 279 fish, 88 frogs, 88 spiders, 46 lizards, 22 snakes, 15 mammals, 4 birds, 4 turtles, 2 salamanders and a toad.

Enlarge

Scientists have found 22 species of snake including this green pitviper

The region comprises the six countries through which the Mekong River flows including Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the southern Chinese province of Yunnan.

It is estimated thousands of new invertebrate species were also discovered during this period, further highlighting the region’s immense biodiversity.

'It doesn’t get any better than this,' said Stuart Chapman, Director of WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme.

'We thought discoveries of this scale were confined to the history books. This reaffirms the Greater Mekong’s place on the world map of conservation priorities.'

The report stresses economic development and environmental protection must go hand-in-hand to ensure the survival of the Greater Mekong's astonishing array of species and natural habitats.

The Laotian rock rat was thought to be extinct but was found in a local food market

'This poorly understood biodiversity is facing unprecedented pressure… for scientists, this means that almost every field survey yields new diversity, but documenting it is a race against time,' said Raoul Bain, Biodiversity Specialist from the American Museum of Natural History.

The report recommends what is urgently needed to protect the biodiversity of the region is a formal, cross-border agreement by the governments of the Greater Mekong.

'Who knows what else is out there waiting to be discovered, but what is clear is that there is plenty more where this came from,' said Chapman.

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When Worlds Converge

Worlds are converging in the evening twilight. Venus and Jupiter now appear close together, and this past weekend the Moon began to join them, as a thin crescent below the bright pair of planets. This was the scene Sunday evening, the night before the conjunction of these three worlds reaches it peak on Monday night, described in my November 28 blog. It was a little cloudy but there's the waxing crescent Moon below the Venus-Jupiter pair.

It was a good weekend around here for viewing bright “double stars” in the twilight. Not only were Venus and Jupiter putting on a show, but the Space Shuttle and Space Station were also making some excellent passes across the sky. On Saturday, the night before the Shuttle landed, I caught it coming over in the evening sky, followed two minutes later by the Space Station. The two had undocked the day before, so on Saturday they appeared as two stars chasing each other, with the Shuttle leading the ISS.

In the time-lapse movie, the Shuttle and ISS appear as streaks due to the long exposures of each frame that make up the movie. The twin bright objects in the lower left, in the southwest, are Venus and Jupiter. Be sure to look Monday night when you’ll see the Moon close to the two planets, forming a triangle of the night sky’s three brightest objects.

Did you see the great conjunction?

It was a marvelous sight on Monday, witnessed around the world — the close conjunction of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter. I hope you had a chance to see it, wherever you were. For me, it turned out to be a great and memorable event.

I was at the local University of Calgary observatory, helping out with a public viewing session our Calgary astronomy community had organized. The evening started out clear and mild, and we had about 100 people show up, at dinner time on a Monday night, to take in the show. And the sky came through.

Not only did we have the Moon and planets performing, but as the sky was getting dark, and right on cue, we had a brilliant Iridium satellite flare appear just to the left of the planets. For a few seconds another bright “star” exploded into view in the sky, outshining even Venus and Jupiter. That prompted a spontaneous round of applause from the crowd.

Then, not two minutes later, the Space Station rose into the west and made a pass straight overhead, like a blazing star traveling across the sky. Well, people loved that! Great cheers went up from kids and adults alike, as we all waved to the astronauts. A crowd-pleaser for sure.

Then, as my time-lapse video shows, the clouds began to thicken, ending the sky show. No matter — we’d seen what we came for. In another hour snow was beginning to fall. We’d gone from autumn to winter in a few hours.

So what did you see? What was your experience? Send us your story by clicking the Comments link below. Or better yet, send us your photos at this link.

If you’d like to see some samples of what other people around the world saw and experienced, do head over to one of my favorite sites, Spaceweather.com. Curator Tony Phillips does a great job compiling galleries of celestial images from around the world.

But this time, Tony comments, “In the 10-year history of Spaceweather.com, no single event has generated more photos than this one. Submissions have poured in from six continents, dozens of countries, kingdoms, democracies, theocracies, ships, planes, cars, and even from a military aircraft refueling 35,000 feet over Iraq.”

That’s a telling statement. This truly was a great conjunction — and a worldwide event. It was a wonderful example of how astronomy and the sky know no borders. As the group Astronomers Without Borders points out, “Boundaries vanish when we look skyward. We all share the same sky.”

You’ll see abundant evidence for that in the Conjunction galleries you’ll see posted in the next few days at Spaceweather.com. All over the planet we all saw the same event. Yet, due to differences in our latitude and longitude, we all saw it a little differently — the position of the Moon, the angle of the planets, the landscape below.

But we all experienced the same wonder. One photographer in Pakistan said, “It was like a great face in the sky. People in Pakistan had never seen anything like this before.” From Iran, in broken English, came this comment, “The sky, another time, show his kindness to us.” Please be sure to look at the images from Iranian photographers — they are taking some of the most evocative images of the night sky I’ve ever seen.

So here was an event that mirrored what should be our global experience — yes, we all see things a little differently, but those differences are what make all our experiences interesting and worth sharing. And yet, at heart, our experiences evoke the same emotional response in us all. We all share those same feelings, just like we all share the same sky.

Organic Planet

There is a planet only 63 light-years away where I’d say devils fear to tread, much less any starship crew.

The planet in question is so close to its star it completes an orbit in just over two days. Peeking through the cloud tops, the reddish star would be an overwhelming large ball of flames 40 times the angular diameter of the full moon. Temperatures at noon would be a seething temperature of 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

The gas giant planet whirls around the obscure red dwarf star HD 189733, tucked away in the obscure southern constellation Vulpecula. The planet is simply called HD 189733 b, though you think by now it would deserve something more imaginative like Abydos, Bedrosia, Mongo, or Zetar.

So why are two of our most powerful space telescopes - Hubble and Spitzer - trained on this foreboding world? Well it has become, in amazingly short order, sort of an interplanetary drugstore to go sniffing around for chemicals relate to life, as we know it. Nothing imaginable lives on this planet, but the atmosphere is laced with the fundamental chemistry used by carbon-based life. So, maybe it should be called Organia.

Astronomers are cutting their teeth on practicing how to isolate and measure the chemical fingerprints in a planet’s atmosphere in preparation for the day organic compounds and other chemistry considered biotracers, can be seen on earthlike exoplanets. Some astronomers thought that such an observational feat was 50 years away, but it’s happening now.

Just yesterday a team of astronomers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported finding carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in the atmosphere of HD 189733 b. Seemingly inhospitable worlds like Mars and Venus have predominantly carbon dioxide atmospheres too. But on Earth, plants use carbon dioxide during photosynthesis to make sugars. So carbon dioxide’s presence, in balance with other biotracers, could be telltale evidence for life on another planet.

Earlier this year Hubble astronomers announced finding methane on HD 189733 b. When in the right mix with other biochemistry, this could someday reveal planets with creatures resembling flatulent cows. Add to that mix water vapor, which was found on the planet last year by the Spitzer Space Telescope, and later confirmed by Hubble.

So why is HD 189733 b such a special target? Its orbit is tilted edge-on to Earth so the planet can routinely be seen passing in front of its star (transiting) and passing behind the star (in eclipse). This endless game of peek-a-book allows for unique experiments with modest-sized telescopes, which are not now possible for non-transiting exoplanets.

When HD 189733 b passes in front of its star, Hubble can measure how light passing through the thin sliver of atmosphere on the plant’s limb is filtered by molecules in the atmosphere. Hubble can do this to exquisite precision because it is located in space.

When the planet passes behind its star both Hubble and Spitzer can make infrared measurements. Observations made just before eclipse contain the infrared glow of the planet and star. When the planet ducks behind the star only the infrared glow of the star remains. Subtract the star’s signature are you are left with information about the IR light coming from the planet.

These observations are a dress rehearsal for the day, perhaps not too far in the future, when we find an earthlike planet and want to look for telltale byproducts of life manifest in atmospheric compositon. In all likelihood the first such candidate will be orbiting a red dwarf star, and the planet itself with be a super-Earth, several items the mass of Earth. If we really get lucky the planet will lie in the star’s habitable zone where moderate temperatures allow for a liquid water ocean to exist.

It’s unlikely that the very first super-Earth will be a biochemical clone of our planet. But if the atmosphere has unusual chemical abundances there will be a spirited debate if these are the byproduct of living organisms.

I've gotten some e-mails critical of calling HD 189733 b incapable of life. I almost always use the qualifier "life as we know it" or perhaps better yet, "life as we could recognize it." It's fair to say that life is a condition of the universe. It is the favored form of self expression of matter, and therefore probably manifests itself in ways we can barely imagine. So in looking for extraterrestrial life, we have to begin with what we know.

Red Dwarf Planets, No Place to Call Home?

In several blogs, as well as in an upcoming article in Astronomy Magazine, I have been bubblingly optimistic about the potential abundance of habitable planets around red stars that are smaller and cooler than our sun.

For starters they are the most numerous stars in our Milky Way galaxy. For every star like our sun there are as many as ten red dwarfs. Red dwarf stars burn for many billions of years longer than our sun, and so they provide all the time in the universe for life to evolve into complex organisms.

One qualifier is that for a planet to be in a dwarf’s habitable zone, where liquid water could remain stable on the surface, it would likely be so close to the star to be tide-locked. The gravitational pull of the parent star would keep one hemisphere of the planet permanently aimed at the star, just as the moon keeps one hemisphere facing Earth.

In a previous blog I dismissed this situation as being tolerable if a planet had a thick atmosphere capable of moderating temperatures between the permanently day and night sides. But now I’m a bit more chagrin after reading a recently published study by J.M. Griebmeier of the Observatory of Paris, and colleagues, who conclude that life is very tough on earthlike planets orbiting red dwarfs stars. Many may not be habitable at all.

A tide-locked planet would slowly rotate because its spin would be synchronized to its orbital period. The consequence is that it would have a very weak magnetic field because the metallic dynamo core would slowly spin too, at least according to some models. Reduce this magnetic shielding and the planet is irradiated with galactic cosmic rays and charged particles from the star. The right dose of cosmic rays can accelerate the rate of biological mutations and give evolution a kick in the pants. But too high a flux of cosmic rays squelches evolution with a hammer blow.

Whatever weak magnetic field exists on the planet would be pounded and squashed like a windsock in a hurricane by a dense stellar wind from the close by red dwarf. Add to that titanic coronal mass ejections where a star explosively belches out a dense cloud of subatomic particles. These would erode the planet’s atmosphere and perhaps even dry up nascent oceans. On an Earth-mass planet or larger, plate tectonics (considered a driving force for biological evolution) could grind to a halt without the cooling effects and lubrication of an ocean.

However, there may be hope for a massive super-Earth (five to ten times Earth’s mass) that manages to retain a deep global ocean. It would have a very thick and moist cloudy atmosphere that would absorb the shower of secondary particle from cosmic ray strikes in the upper atmosphere.

Several super-Earths have already been found around red dwarfs. Two were discovered only 20 light-years away around the star Gliese 581. They are only five and seven times Earth’s mass. The smaller planet lies in the red dwarf’s habitable zone.

Astronomers are looking forward to using advanced space telescopes, like the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, to look for biomarkers – the chemical byproducts of life such as oxygen and methane -on a super-Earth near a red dwarf.

But the atmospheric chemistry could be confusing and complicated given the high radiation environment. Cosmic rays would break apart nitrogen molecules and form nitrous oxides (which are also biomarkers under the right circumstances). So life on the planet could die laughing. But this will be no laughing matter for astrobiologists who will try to deduce whether the exotic atmospheres on these tortured worlds are modified by life.

Mars Phoenix's Twitter Proves a Huge Success

Dec. 5, 2008 -- If the Phoenix Lander comes back to life on Mars, Twitter users could be among the first to know.

NASA gave the historic Space Age mission an Internet Age spin by adding a Twitter page, enabling the robotic interplanetary explorer to answer the hot micro-blogging Web site's trademark query: "What are you doing?"

Twitter rocketed to popularity with technology that lets people use mobile telephones or personal computers to continually keep friends updated on their activities with "tweets," text messages of no more than 140 characters.

When NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory News Services manager Veronica McGregor was tasked with delivering word of the agency's first-ever robotic landing on Mars during a holiday weekend, she turned to the social-networking Web site.

"Readership and viewership in traditional news media usually goes down over a three-day weekend," said McGregor, a former CNN correspondent.

"The fact that Twitter could send messages right to people's cell phones -- it seemed like a good idea to let people know about the landing."

NASA Space Probe to Track CO2 on Earth

Dec. 5, 2008 -- The occasionally acrimonious debate about the planet's climate has been missing a key component: accurate measurements of how much carbon dioxide is in the air and how it is being recycled by Earth.

That is the heart of a new NASA mission called the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, which is set to launch early next year.

"We will uncover all kinds of patterns and cycles in carbon dioxide that people never thought existed. It'll be just like when the first ozone measurements were made," said project scientist Chip Miller, with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"We get at the question of the sources of carbon dioxide and see how much is pulled out (of the atmosphere) by land and how much by seas," he said.

Many scientists consider carbon dioxide to be the telltale gas of global warming. Once it is released into the air, there is little chemistry to remove it. Its presence traps reflected sunlight. Plants, soils and the oceans of Earth reabsorb the gas, but that takes a while. Miller says that the average lifetime for carbon dioxide is about 300 years. About 20 percent of atmospheric carbon dioxide, however, lasts for 10,000 years or longer.

Asteroid Impacts Gave Crucial Spark to Early Life

Dec. 9, 2008 -- The search for life beyond Earth doesn't always require rovers on Mars, radio scans of nearby stars or telescopes powerful enough to image Earth-like planets. For some astronomers, learning about whether life exists elsewhere in the universe is a matter of molecules.

Maria Beltran, with the University of Barcelona's Department of Astronomy, and several European colleagues found a fairly simple molecule known as glycolaldehyde, an eight-atomed entity -- two carbon, two oxygen, four hydrogen -- more commonly known as sugar.

What's interesting about glycolaldehyde is how easily it combines with a three-carbon sugar to produce ribose, the building blocks of DNA and RNA, which carry genetic information for living things.

"Glycolaldehyde is...directly linked to the origin of life," writes Beltran, lead author of a paper accepted for publication by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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Found: Milky Way's Sweet Spot

Dec. 9, 2008 -- The search for life beyond Earth doesn't always require rovers on Mars, radio scans of nearby stars or telescopes powerful enough to image Earth-like planets. For some astronomers, learning about whether life exists elsewhere in the universe is a matter of molecules.

Maria Beltran, with the University of Barcelona's Department of Astronomy, and several European colleagues found a fairly simple molecule known as glycolaldehyde, an eight-atomed entity -- two carbon, two oxygen, four hydrogen -- more commonly known as sugar.

What's interesting about glycolaldehyde is how easily it combines with a three-carbon sugar to produce ribose, the building blocks of DNA and RNA, which carry genetic information for living things.

"Glycolaldehyde is...directly linked to the origin of life," writes Beltran, lead author of a paper accepted for publication by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Swan Lake -- The Celestial Version

Stellar winds are so stiff in the Swan nebula -- scientists estimate the speed at 4.5 million mph -- that its clouds of dust are being swept away -- literally. This new image from the infrared-sensitive Spitzer Space Telescope shows what happens when ripples of gas, which are streaming from a collection of massive stars at the center of the nebula, crash into star-forming regions.

The force of the winds, as well as the radiation, are creating a cavity in the nebula, which is located about 6,000 light years away in the constellation Sagittarius. The winds come from massive stars, some of which are more than 40 times bigger than our sun.

"The gas being lit up in these star-forming regions looks very wispy and fragile, but looks can be deceiving," astronomer Robert Benjamin of the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, said in a press release.

Colleague and lead researcher Matt Povich, with University of Wisconsin, Madison, adds, " The growth of this cavity pushes gas up against winds from other massive stars, causing 'smiley-faced' bow shocks -- three of which can be seen in the new picture.

"The direction of the bow shocks tells researchers exactly which way the 'wind is blowing,' " added Povich, the lead author of a paper about the discovery appearing in this week's Astrophysical Journal.

The picture is one of the first examples of multiple bow shocks around massive stars in a star-forming region.

"These bow shocks serve as a reminder that stars aren't born in quiet nurseries, but in violent regions buffeted by winds more powerful than anything we see on Earth," Benjamin said.

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