WASHINGTON, Nov 16: NASA has renewed its search for Antarctic meteorites to help learn more about the primitive building blocks of the solar system and answer questions about Earth’s neighbours like the Moon and Mars.
NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Smithsonian Institution (SI) recently renewed their agreement to search for, collect and curate Antarctic meteorites in a partnership known as Antarctic Search for Meteorites Programme (ANSMET).
The signing of this new joint agreement advances the programme for an additional decade, replacing an earlier agreement signed in 1980, NASA said.
“Antarctic meteorites are posing new questions about the formation and early history of our solar system. Some of these questions are spurring new exploration of the solar system by NASA missions,” Smithsonian meteorite scientist Tim McCoy said.
Since the US began searching for meteorites in Antarctica in 1976, the ANSMET programme has collected more than 23,000 specimens, dramatically increasing the number of samples available for study from the Moon, Mars and asteroids.
Among them are the first meteorites discovered to come from the Moon and Mars, and the well-known ALH 84001 Martian meteorite, which helped renew interest in Mars exploration in the 1990s.
Meteorites are natural objects that fall to Earth from space and survive intact so they can be collected on the ground, or – in this case – on ice.
Antarctica provides a unique environment for the collection of meteorites, because the cold desert climate preserves meteorites for long periods of time, NASA said.
Movements of the ice sheets can concentrate meteorites in certain locations, making them relatively easy for scientists to find.
To search for meteorites, ANSMET deploys small field parties during the Antarctic summer (winter in the northern hemisphere). Even in summer conditions are harsh, with temperatures dropping to well below minus 18 degrees Celsius.
The ANSMET teams are flown to remote areas, where they live in tents on the ice and search for meteorites using snowmobiles or on foot.
Meteorites come from a variety of places in the solar system. Most meteorites originated on asteroids, which are remnants of the materials from which the planets formed.
Impacts of asteroids on the ancient Earth and other bodies in the solar system also may have played a significant role in the delivery of volatiles (like water) and organic molecules (such as amino acids) to planetary bodies, which, in turn, could have been important to the development of life.
A few meteorites originated on the Moon and Mars – blasted off the surfaces by large asteroid impacts and later falling to Earth.
The lunar meteorites may come from parts of the Moon not visited by astronauts in the 20th century, and they extend our knowledge of Earth’s companion and how it formed.
Martian meteorites are humankind’s only specimens of rocks known to be from another planet. (AGENCIES)
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CHINA-SUPERCOMPUTER
China wins supercomputer
crown for eighth time
BEIJING, Nov 16:
For the eight consecutive year, China has retained the top spot in the list of the world’s fastest supercomputers for its ‘Sunway TaihuLight’ which can perform 93 million billion calculations per second, media report said today.
TaihuLight, the massive supercomputer, built entirely using processors designed and made in China has been crowned as the world’s fastest, state-run Xinhua news agency quoted the latest edition of the semiannual Top500 list of supercomputers released on Monday.
TaihuLight made its appearance in June, replacing the former champion, Tianhe-2, also a Chinese system but built based on Intel chips. TaihuLight is capable of performing 93 million billion calculations per second (petaflop/s).
That is almost three times as fast as Tianhe-2, which had claimed No 1 spot in the Top500 list for the past three years.
That means a Chinese supercomputer has topped the rankings for eight times in a row, indicating the rise of China in the high performance computing (HPC) field, the report said.
In the previous list released in June, China overtook the US in the number of total supercomputers installed. That was the first time that the US has not dominated this category since the list was started 23 years ago.
This time, the number of systems installed in China increased to 171 from 168 on the last list.
“The 48th edition of the Top500 list saw China and the US pacing each other for supercomputing supremacy,” Top500 editors said in a statement released at an HPC conference in Salt Lake City.
In addition, China and the US are “neck-and-neck in the performance category” with the latter holding 33.9 per cent of the overall installed performance while the former is second with 33.3 per cent of the overall installed performance, said the statement.
In the latest rankings, Titan and Sequoia, two systems from the US, remained No 3 and No 4 positions. The Cori supercomputer, a new system installed at the US Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, slipped into the fifth slot with a performance of 14.0 petaflop/s, the report said.
When it comes to companies making these systems, the America-based Hewlett-Packard Enterprise has the lead with 112 supercomputers, which is followed by China’s Lenovo with 92 systems.
There are three other Chinese companies in the vendor list: Sugon (No 4 with 47 systems), Inspur (No 8 with 18 systems) and Huawei (No 9 with 16 systems).
The Top500 list is considered one of the most authoritative rankings of the world’s supercomputers. (AGENCIES)
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CINEMA-FESTIVAL
Cairo Film Fest pays
tribute to Bollywood stars
CAIRO, Nov 16:
The 38th Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) kicked off on Tuesday at the Cairo Opera House with an opening show which paid a special tribute to Bollywood celebrities, who enjoy great fan following in the country.
The show, which was directed by Egyptian theater director Khaled Galal, featured Egyptian singer Nesma Mahgoub, who sang a number in which she mentioned the names of international celebrities.
“Bollywood celebrities are my love since very long,” sang Nesma during the show.
The photographs of Bollywood celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan, director Farah Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Rishi Kapoor, Salman Khan were shown in a video made specially for the event.
Three films from India are participating at this year’s Cairo International Film Festival, which runs until 24 November.
Indian movie “The Narrow Path” by Satish Babusenan and Santosh Babusenan will be screened in the International competition, while “Half Ticket” by Samit Kakkad will be screened in the International panorama category.
The third movie is “Lipstick Under My Burkha” by Alankrita Shrivastava and it will be shown during the Festival of Festivals competition.
This year, the festival features 204 films in all categories.
The Cairo International Film Festival is one of the 14 most important film festivals in the world, and the only one in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, to be accorded category “A” status by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF). (AGENCIES)
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US-SARNA
New Indian ambassador to US
Navtej Sarna assumes charge
WASHINGTON, Nov 16:
India’s new ambassador to the US Navtej Sarna, who arrived in the city a few days before the general elections, has kicked off his engagements with a meeting with powerful Democratic Senator Jack Reed.
“Enjoyed meeting with Ambassador Navtej Sarna to discuss the strong relationship between US and India,” Reed, Ranking Member of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a tweet after meeting the top Indian diplomat at the Capitol Hill yesterday.
A 1980 batch foreign service official, Sarna also met Ami Bera, the only Indian-American in the current Congress, who is also co-Chair of the powerful House India Caucus.
Sarna presented his credentials to Peter Selfridge, Chief of Protocol, State Department on November 9.
He is expected to present his formal diplomatic credentials to outgoing US President Barack Obama later.
Spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs until 2008, Sarna has previously been India’s ambassador to Israel and the Indian High Commissioner to the UK. (AGENCIES)
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