Indonesian Earthquake Shook Planet
The great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake that generated a devastating tsunami in December was so powerful that the ground shook everywhere on Earth's surface and weeks later the planet still trembled.
"No point on Earth remained undisturbed," said Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado.
Ground movement of at least four-tenths of an inch occurred everywhere as a result of the strongest quake in more than 40 years, though the sensation was not noticed in many areas.
The quake resulted from the longest fault rupture ever observed -- 720 miles to 780 miles, which spread for 10 minutes. A typical earthquake lasts 30 seconds.
The quake was the first of its size to be measured and studied by the new worldwide array of digital seismic instruments. A special section of a half-dozen research papers on the quake appeared in today's issue of the journal Science.
The quake caused the planet to oscillate like a bell, at periods of about 17 minutes, which scientists were able to detect for weeks.
Remains of Giant Armadillo Found
Builders in southern Peru have found the fossil of a giant armadillo -- which lived as many as 2 million years ago and would have been the size of a Volkswagen Beetle -- an archaeologist said yesterday.
"They were carrying out work inside a private home and stumbled upon this surprise during the digging," said Pedro Luna of the National Institute of Culture in Cuzco.
He said the fossil was "almost complete" and was 6 1/2 feet long including the tail, 3 1/2 feet wide and with an average height of three feet. The glyptodont -- which means "carved tooth" -- had short legs with clawed toes, rings of bony armor on its tail and armor on its head.
NASA Contest Might Aid Manned Trips
NASA will award $250,000 to the first organization that can develop ways to extract breathable oxygen from simulated lunar soil, a procedure that may aid the U.S. space agency in launching manned trips to Mars and other parts of the solar system.
The Moon Regolith Oxygen challenge, or MoonROx, will give the award to the first team that develops hardware that can get five kilograms of oxygen from a simulated soil made of volcanic ash within eight hours, NASA said in a statement. The contest deadline is June 1, 2008.
President Bush's $12 billion plan for the U.S. space program calls for launching manned missions to the moon by 2015 as a prelude to voyages to Mars and deeper parts of the solar system. NASA officials are seeking to mine lunar resources to provide oxygen, fuel and other supplies for those trips.
"There are a number of chemical processes that you can use to extract oxygen from lunar soil," said Brant Sponberg, manager of NASA's Centennial Challenges program. "The question is one of efficiency, how much oxygen can you get out of the soil and how quickly."
The contest is the third in the agency's Centennial Challenges program, a series of prizes established to encourage technology development.
-- From News Services
