NEW YORK ? Sprint Nextel Corp. said Friday that it will stop selling phones and other devices compatible with Clearwire Corp.'s current network at the end of next year, after it switches on its own higher-speed, fourth-generation data network.
Sprint is Clearwire's largest customer and majority owner, but doesn't control it. Phones labeled "Sprint 4G" use Clearwire's network today.
Clearwire's stock fell 65 cents, or 32 percent, to $1.40 in afternoon trading Friday. Earlier in the day, the shares revisited an all-time low of $1.32 hit in August.
Sprint's stock also fell, but for different reasons. The company held an event for investors and analysts in New York on Friday, but it didn't say how it expects the iPhone to affect its results, now that it's able to sell the coveted smartphone. It also said it will need to raise more money to finance the construction of its new network.
Sprint, which is based in Overland Park, Kan., started taking pre-orders for the iPhone 4S on Friday and hopes that the phone will help the company recruit and keep customers in competition with AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless. But Sprint will pay Apple dearly for the privilege of selling the phone.
An iPhone that Sprint sells for $200 with a two-year contract costs $600 or so wholesale from Apple. Like other carriers, Sprint has to count on making up the difference over time through service fees. Analysts were looking for some clarity on Sprint's math here, and were frustrated.
CEO Dan Hesse said the iPhone would over time "be one of our most profitable devices" but did not elaborate.
Sprint's stock was down 42 cents, or 14 percent, at $2.60.
Analysts were also perplexed that Sprint isn't including Clearwire in its network revamp project. Sprint's president of network operations, Steve Elfman, said that the company is already building its own fourth-generation, or 4G, data network and will inaugurate it next summer. By the end of 2012, it will cover as many people as Clearwire's network does today, and a year later, it will be far larger.
Sprint is using a 4G technology known as LTE, for Long-Term Evolution. Rivals AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless are using the same technology. Clearwire, on the other hand, uses an earlier technology called WiMax. That means today's "Sprint 4G" devices will need to be replaced to use the new LTE network.
Clearwire, which is based in Kirkland, Wash., has said that it plans to build an LTE network in parallel with WiMax, and Sprint's Hesse left the door open to having Sprint buy access to that network after 2012. However, Clearwire's finances are weak, and it would need additional funding to build out LTE.
"I don't think anything fundamentally changed for us after today," Clearwire CEO Erik Prusch said in an interview. "Sprint is still dependent on us for their network."
Sprint, like other carriers, need additional spectrum to keep up with the long-term growth in wireless data use, and Clearwire has that spectrum, he said.
In a testy exchange with Sprint executives, a member of the audience at the investor meeting questioned why Sprint would risk forcing Clearwire to seek bankruptcy protection when it owns 54 percent of the company, and could lose its share of Clearwire's spectrum in a bankruptcy case.
Sprint executives didn't directly address that possibility, but Hesse noted that no bankruptcy case involving a wireless company has resulted in a disruption of service.
Sprint's network revamp will help the company support its iPhone users with wireless data, Sprint executives said. However, today's iPhones can use neither Clearwire's 4G network nor Sprint's coming one.
The radio spectrum that Sprint is using for 4G is being freed up by the shutdown of the Nextel network, a process that's set to be completed by the end of next year.
Sprint bought Nextel in 2005, an acquisition that soon turned disastrous. Nextel subscribers started leaving, and Sprint was saddled with the cost of running two incompatible networks. That has contributed to the company's constant quarterly financial losses since 2007.
"Overall, Sprint appears to be doing the best it can to chart a course forward, but it is starting out significantly hamstrung by decisions made in the past," Ovum analyst Jan Dawson said.
FWIW, both the US military and the US intelligence community have, in official reports, identified climate change as one of the biggest threats to national security that the US will have to deal with this century.
What is going to be bad, IMO, is that the shift in temperature zones is gong to turn some of the agricultural "haves" into "have nots", and vice versa. Some people are going to fight that change - with guns.
On a side note, the latest Scientific American has an article about the discovery of large
THURSDAY, Oct. 6 (HealthDay News) -- New research suggests certain long-term psychotherapies may do a better job than an antidepressant in preventing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following a traumatic event.
The Israeli research team also found that delaying treatment for PTSD didn't seem to boost a person's risk of chronic symptoms. "A delayed intervention is an acceptable option when early clinical interventions cannot be provided," as might be the case during wars or disasters, the study authors wrote.
The researchers, from Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem, added that shorter-term treatment approaches that do not first include patient assessment or diagnosis have not been shown to prevent PTSD.
In the study, the team recruited 242 patients who had suffered from a recent traumatic event (an average of about 10 days prior) and then had experienced subsequent acute stress. The participants received one of four treatments.
One group received prolonged exposure therapy, which involved breath control training as they imagined the trauma they had experienced. Another group went through cognitive training designed to teach them how to reduce negative thoughts. A third group only went through prolonged exposure therapy if they still showed signs of stress disorder problems after five months. Two more groups took either a placebo medication or the antidepressant Lexapro.
The researchers found that after nine months of follow-up, between 21 percent and 23 percent of the participants in the groups that got psychotherapy developed PTSD, while 42 percent and 47 percent of those who took the drug or placebo, respectively, developed symptoms.
Keith A. Young, director of the Neuropsychiatry Research Program at the Texas A&M Health Science Center, said in an interview that he was surprised by the lack of response to Lexapro, although he believes that may have something to do with doses that he considered too low. More evidence is needed before mental health workers should stop prescribing certain kinds of antidepressants early after traumatic incidents, he said.
Young added that treatments such as prolonged exposure therapy or cognitive training should be offered to as many people as possible.
"In the end, it is likely that we will find that a combination of drugs and exposure therapies may be a good option for preventing PTSD," he said.
The study appeared online Oct. 3 in the Archives of General Psychiatry. It received funding Lundbeck Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of Lexapro, the U.S. National Institute of Health and other sources.
More information
There's more on PTSD at the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
Keeping safe in the office or factory has never been of more importance. The simple truth is that Whilst the workforce could be in danger of of injury, companies are susceptible to being reported to industrial tribunals, specifically when considering the rising number of personal injury solicitors. According to reports from the Rspoa (the royal society for the prevention of accidents) close to 1.6 million company injuries happen in england every 12 months, nonetheless in so many cases these injuries may well have been avoided quite easily.
There is no doubt that a less risky working environment is good for everybody. By taking up a few basic procedures it?s straightforward for both staff and businesses to improve safety in the workplace.
Understand your local health and safety regulations
For a few specific types of industries, such as those involved in the production of volatile chemicals, keeping aware of complex safety legislation is of utmost importance. Nevertheless safety legislation of some form is binding on most businesses. The best step for any business is to check with the Health and Safety Executive. They are answerable for improving awareness of the range of health and safety legislation that applies to workplaces in Great britain.
Slips and falls
These are commonly occuring in any place of work derive pleasure typical office to heavy industry. Look out for damaged flooring surfaces, steps, dangerous holes, trailing electric cables; the list is never-ending. Try to ensure that you do away with risks wherever it is possible. Have in mind the importance of warning signs, a dripping floor may look shiny but it is extremely dangerous. In addition why not consider suitable lighting to keep the area well illuminated, as inadequate lighting can cause a hazard being overlooked.
]]>
Don?t forget ergonomics
You will always consider your work environment from an ergonomic viewpoint. If we take an typical office setting for instance ? make sure that office desks are at the appropriate height, computer screens are not too close and chairs provide satisfactory lower back support.
Be careful moving equipment
It is extremely important to estimate the extent of the task, load and situation before moving any object or equipment great or small, light or weighty. A massive number of injuries take place each year as a result of physical handling. Your individual capabilities and limitations will dictate comfort zones for lifting objects. Don?t forget to adopt the correct posture, don?t strain too hard and request help to lift a heavy or bulky object.
Stress reduction
Stress is amongst the most common occurances occupational risks, it represents almost a fifth of all reported occupational health issues. Good mental health is just as important as good physical health. Look after the ?whole person?, not just the body, perhaps acquire some relaxation techniques. If you feel you have too much on your plate, you are absolutely within your rights to ask your superiors assistance. Don?t forget, it won?t hurt you to be a few hours late.
Conduct risk assessments
Risk Assessments are a marvellous method of preventing accidents before they happen. One top technique is to undertake cross-departmental risk assessments, where employees from different departments in an organisation audit one another. A fresh pair of eyes may often see things another way, furthermore it gets people from different departments working in concert.
Get organised
Spending a little time organising your workload can be really useful, yet it is easily forgotten, particularly during hectic periods of time when it is more important than ever! On a daily basis try and plan what you want to finish. Try to keep it reachable though ? have the targets too high and you will merely add to your problems.
Vary tasks
This is especially vital for someone performing repetitive tasks over sustained periods of time, such as working on assembly lines or data entry, as it avoids Repetitive strain injuries. See if there is an alternative job which might be done instead, remember, variety is the spice of life.
By following these simple bits of advice, you can keep both staff and businesses safe, in good health and efficient.
Roger Wakefield is a staff writer at: Reagent Lab Chemicals, (http://www.reagent.co.uk), a manufacturer of laboratory chemicals and reagents.
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The office of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who has called off his South Africa visit after being denied a visa, said Tuesday South Africa has succumbed to Chinese pressure.
Fellow Nobel laureate and former South African leader F.W. De Klerk also condemned the visa denial and said it did not befit an open society.
?It?s unfortunate that His Holiness Dalai Lama, who was visiting on the personal invitation of fellow Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu and long-time friend, was not granted a visa," Thubten Samphel, a spokesman for the Tibetan government-in-exile, told IANS.
"It?s very clear that South Africa, known as a sovereign nation, has succumbed to Chinese pressure,? he added.
Two years back, too, the elderly monk was denied a visa by the South Africa government as it had close ties with China. He was to attend a peace conference there.
The Dalai Lama was to depart for South Africa Oct 6.
The Dalai Lama?s office said he was invited to South Africa by a number of universities and organisations, including Stellenbosch University, the Tutu Centre and the Mahatma Gandhi Trust, to give public talks.
He was also to deliver Bishop Tutu?s 80th birth anniversary inaugural lecture and to receive the Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Peace and Reconciliation.
?The visa applications for the Dalai Lama and the entourage members were submitted to the South African high commission in New Delhi at the end of August and original passports were submitted Sep 20,? said the statement.
It said the Dalai Lama had cancelled his visit because he ?does not want to create any inconvenience to anyone, individuals or governments? in his work, but he ?regrets the inconvenience caused to his hosts and the large number of South African public?.
Former South African president F.W. De Klerk also spoke in support of extending a visa to the Dalai Lama.
?South Africa must decide on two things, is it an open society and, secondly, does it really respect religious figures?? media reports quoted De Klerk as saying in Johannesburg Sep 16. "In an open society, he should be allowed to come."
He said the Dalai Lama was a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and there was no justification for not granting him a visa.
Even Tutu has warned that the government would ?shoot itself in the foot? by again refusing his fellow Nobel Peace laureate entry into South Africa.
The Dalai Lama has lived in exile in India since he fled Tibet during a failed uprising in 1959. He favours ?greater autonomy? for Tibetans rather than complete independence.
Chinese leaders have, however, called him a separatist who wants Tibet to secede from China.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) ? Shares of Eastman Kodak rose 65% Monday, recovering all of the losses sustained on Friday, after the camera maker denied that is planning to file for bankruptcy.
The Wall Street Journal said Friday that Kodak had hired law firm Jones Day to explore a restructuring. Bloomberg said the company hasn?t officially hired a firm yet, but that bankruptcy is among the options being considered.
The rumors came just days after Kodak was forced to draw from its credit line, had its credit rating downgraded by two major agencies, and received harsh words from a stockholder.
Kodak (EK, Fortune 500) shares plunged 54% Friday on the news to a mere 78 cents. But after the close of trade on Friday, Kodak released a statement denying the rumors and saying the company ?has no intention of filing for bankruptcy.?
Investors cheered the move when they had a chance to start trading on Monday. Shares more than doubled in morning trading before easing back by midday to show an increase of rising 65% to $1.31.
Kodak did confirm on Friday that it hired Jones Day: ?It is not unusual for a company in transformation to explore all options ? including financial and legal advisers. Jones Day is one of a number of advisers that Kodak is working with in that regard.?
The year hasn?t been kind to Kodak, which has suffered massively from photography?s transition from film to digital, and this week was especially tough. Late last week, Kodak disclosed that it needed to tap $160 million from a pre-existing $400 million credit line.
On Tuesday, rating agency Moody?s downgraded several Kodak debt securities. That pushed Kodak even deeper into ?junk? status. Fitch followed up with its own downgrade on Wednesday.
Thursday?s helping of bad news came in the form of a scathing letter from Investment Partners Asset Management, a Metuchen, N.J.-based firm that owns Kodak stock and convertible bonds. IPAM owned about 50,000 common shares of Kodak as of mid-year, according to FactSet Research.
IPAM said in its letter to Kodak?s board that the company?s ?long-term performance is simply unacceptable, and as such it has not earned the right to remain an independent company.? It urged Kodak to find a buyer that ?has resources to commercialize the company?s intellectual property more efficiently.?
Kodak has been increasingly relying on licensing for revenue. In July, The company also announced it?s exploring the sale of more than 1,100 patents tied to digital imaging. Analysts say that deal could generate as much as $3 billion.
Kodak confirmed in its statement Friday that it continues to pursue paths toward monetizing those patents.?
ALMA opens its eyesPublic release date: 3-Oct-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Douglas Pierce-Price dpiercep@eso.org 49-893-200-6759 ESO
The most powerful millimeter/submillimeter-wavelength telescope in the world opens for business and reveals its first image
At present, around a third of ALMA's eventual 66 radio antennas, with separations up to only 125 metres rather than the maximum 16 kilometres, make up the growing array on the Chajnantor plateau in northern Chile, at an elevation of 5000 metres. And yet, even under construction, ALMA has become the best telescope of its kind as reflected by the extraordinary number of astronomers who requested time to observe with ALMA.
"Even in this very early phase ALMA already outperforms all other submillimetre arrays. Reaching this milestone is a tribute to the impressive efforts of the many scientists and engineers in the ALMA partner regions around the world who made it possible," said Tim de Zeeuw, Director General of ESO, the European partner in ALMA.
ALMA observes the Universe in light with millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths, roughly one thousand times longer than visible-light wavelengths. Using these longer wavelengths allows astronomers to study extremely cold objects in space such as the dense clouds of cosmic dust and gas from which stars and planets form as well as very distant objects in the early Universe.
ALMA is radically different from visible-light and infrared telescopes. It is an array of linked antennas acting as a single giant telescope, and it detects much longer wavelengths than those of visible light. Its images therefore look quite unlike more familiar pictures of the cosmos.
The ALMA team has been busy testing the observatory's systems over the past few months, in preparation for the first round of scientific observations, known as Early Science. One outcome of their tests is the first image published from ALMA, albeit from what is still very much a growing telescope. Most of the observations used to create this image of the Antennae Galaxies were made using only twelve antennas working together far fewer than will be used for the first science observations and with the antennas much closer together as well. Both of these factors make the new image just a taster of what is to come. As the observatory grows, the sharpness, efficiency, and quality of its observations will increase dramatically as more antennas become available and the array grows in size [1].
The Antennae Galaxies are a pair of colliding galaxies with dramatically distorted shapes. While visible light shows us the stars in the galaxies, ALMA's view reveals something that cannot be seen in visible light: the clouds of dense cold gas from which new stars form [2]. This is the best submillimetre-wavelength image ever made of the Antennae Galaxies.
Massive concentrations of gas are found not only in the hearts of the two galaxies but also in the chaotic region where they are colliding. Here, the total amount of gas is billions of times the mass of our Sun a rich reservoir of material for future generations of stars. Observations like these open a new window on the submillimetre Universe and will be vital in helping us understand how galaxy collisions can trigger the birth of new stars. This is just one example of how ALMA reveals parts of the Universe that cannot be seen with visible-light and infrared telescopes.
ALMA could accept only about a hundred or so projects for this first nine-month phase of Early Science. Nevertheless, over the last few months, keen astronomers from around the world have submitted over 900 proposals (http://www.eso.org/public/announcements/ann11046/) for observations. This ninefold level of oversubscription is a record for a telescope. The successful projects were chosen based on their scientific merit, their regional diversity, and also their relevance to ALMA's major science goals.
"We are living in a historic moment for science and particularly for astronomy, and perhaps also for the evolution of humanity, because we start to use the greatest observatory under construction at the moment," said Thijs de Graauw, Director of ALMA.
One of the projects chosen for ALMA Early Science observations was that of David Wilner from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Wilner said, "My team hunts for the building blocks of solar systems, and ALMA is uniquely equipped to spot them."
His team's target is AU Microscopii, a star 33 light-years away that is only 1% of the age of our Sun. "We will use ALMA to image the 'birth ring' of planetesimals that we believe orbits this young star. Only with ALMA, however, can we hope to discover clumps in these dusty asteroid belts, which can be the markers of unseen planets." Wilner and his team will share their data with a European team who also requested ALMA observations of this nearby, dust-ringed star.
Any hunt for habitable planets around other stars often begins with a hunt for water in those distant solar systems. Debris discs, the swarms of dust, gas, and rocks around stars, are suspected also to contain craggy ice chunks filled with frozen water, gas, and possibly even organic molecules the astrochemistry of life.
Simon Casassus, from the University of Chile, and his team will use ALMA to observe the gas and dust disc around HD142527, a young star that is 400 light-years away. "The dusty disc around this star has a very large gap, which may have been carved by the formation of giant planets," said Casassus. "Outside the gap, this disc contains enough gas to make about a dozen Jupiter-sized planets. Inside the gap, a young gaseous giant planet could still be forming, if there is gaseous material available." Their ALMA observations will measure the mass and physical conditions of gas interior to the gap. "Thus, ALMA gives us a chance to observe planet formation, or its most recent wake," said Casassus.
Further away, 26 000 light-years from us in the centre of our galaxy, sits Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole four million times the mass of our Sun. Gas and dust between it and us hide it from our optical telescopes. However, ALMA is tuned to see through the galactic murk and give us tantalising views of Sagittarius A*.
Heino Falcke, an astronomer at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, said "ALMA will let us watch flares of light coming from around this supermassive black hole, and make images of the gas clouds caught by its immense pull. This will let us study this monster's messy feeding habits. We think that some of the gas may be escaping its grip, at close to the speed of light."
Like the black outlines in a child's colouring book, cosmic dust and cold gas trace out structures inside galaxies, even if we can't see those galaxies clearly. At the outer fringes of our visible Universe lie the mysterious starburst galaxies, bright islands in an otherwise calm, dark cosmos. ALMA will hunt for cold gas and dust tracers here, as far back as a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, at a time astronomers call "cosmic dawn".
Masami Ouchi of the University of Tokyo in Japan will use ALMA to observe Himiko, a very distant galaxy churning out at least 100 Suns' worth of stars every year and surrounded by a giant, bright nebula. "Other telescopes cannot show us why Himiko is so bright and how it has developed such a huge, hot nebula when the ancient Universe all around it is so calm and dark," said Ouchi. "ALMA can show us the cold gas deep in Himiko's star-forming nebula, tracing the movements and activities inside, and we will finally see how galaxies started forming at the cosmic dawn."
During its Early Science observations, ALMA will continue its construction phase in the Chilean Andes, high on the remote Chajnantor Plain in the harsh Atacama Desert. Each new, climate-armoured antenna will join the array and be linked via fibre optic cabling. The views from each distant antenna are assembled into one large view by one of the world's fastest special-purpose supercomputers, the ALMA correlator, which can perform 17 quadrillion [3] operations per second.
By 2013, ALMA will be an up to 16-km wide array of 66 ultra-precision millimetre/submillimetre wave radio antennas working together as one telescope and built by ALMA's multinational partners in Europe, North America and East Asia.
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
###
Notes
[1] The quality of images from an interferometric telescope like ALMA depends on both the separations and the number of the antennas. Larger separations mean that sharper images can be created and if more antennas are working together more detailed images can be produced. More information about ALMA and interferometry can be found at: http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/alma/interferometry.html.
[2] The observations were made at specific wavelengths of millimetre and submillimetre light, tuned to detect carbon monoxide molecules in the otherwise invisible hydrogen clouds, where new stars are forming.
[3] 1.7x10^16 operations per second.
More information
ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world's most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world's largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning a 40-metre-class European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become "the world's biggest eye on the sky".
Links
ESO ALMA pages: http://www.eso.org/alma
Pictures of ALMA: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/alma/
JAO's ALMA web pages: http://www.almaobservatory.org/
NRAO's ALMA web pages: http://www.nrao.edu/index.php/about/facilities/alma
NAOJ's ALMA web pages: http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/e/
List of the 112 highest priority projects selected for ALMA Early Science, including titles, investigators, and short descriptions (PDF): http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1137/eso1137.pdf
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ALMA opens its eyesPublic release date: 3-Oct-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Douglas Pierce-Price dpiercep@eso.org 49-893-200-6759 ESO
The most powerful millimeter/submillimeter-wavelength telescope in the world opens for business and reveals its first image
At present, around a third of ALMA's eventual 66 radio antennas, with separations up to only 125 metres rather than the maximum 16 kilometres, make up the growing array on the Chajnantor plateau in northern Chile, at an elevation of 5000 metres. And yet, even under construction, ALMA has become the best telescope of its kind as reflected by the extraordinary number of astronomers who requested time to observe with ALMA.
"Even in this very early phase ALMA already outperforms all other submillimetre arrays. Reaching this milestone is a tribute to the impressive efforts of the many scientists and engineers in the ALMA partner regions around the world who made it possible," said Tim de Zeeuw, Director General of ESO, the European partner in ALMA.
ALMA observes the Universe in light with millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths, roughly one thousand times longer than visible-light wavelengths. Using these longer wavelengths allows astronomers to study extremely cold objects in space such as the dense clouds of cosmic dust and gas from which stars and planets form as well as very distant objects in the early Universe.
ALMA is radically different from visible-light and infrared telescopes. It is an array of linked antennas acting as a single giant telescope, and it detects much longer wavelengths than those of visible light. Its images therefore look quite unlike more familiar pictures of the cosmos.
The ALMA team has been busy testing the observatory's systems over the past few months, in preparation for the first round of scientific observations, known as Early Science. One outcome of their tests is the first image published from ALMA, albeit from what is still very much a growing telescope. Most of the observations used to create this image of the Antennae Galaxies were made using only twelve antennas working together far fewer than will be used for the first science observations and with the antennas much closer together as well. Both of these factors make the new image just a taster of what is to come. As the observatory grows, the sharpness, efficiency, and quality of its observations will increase dramatically as more antennas become available and the array grows in size [1].
The Antennae Galaxies are a pair of colliding galaxies with dramatically distorted shapes. While visible light shows us the stars in the galaxies, ALMA's view reveals something that cannot be seen in visible light: the clouds of dense cold gas from which new stars form [2]. This is the best submillimetre-wavelength image ever made of the Antennae Galaxies.
Massive concentrations of gas are found not only in the hearts of the two galaxies but also in the chaotic region where they are colliding. Here, the total amount of gas is billions of times the mass of our Sun a rich reservoir of material for future generations of stars. Observations like these open a new window on the submillimetre Universe and will be vital in helping us understand how galaxy collisions can trigger the birth of new stars. This is just one example of how ALMA reveals parts of the Universe that cannot be seen with visible-light and infrared telescopes.
ALMA could accept only about a hundred or so projects for this first nine-month phase of Early Science. Nevertheless, over the last few months, keen astronomers from around the world have submitted over 900 proposals (http://www.eso.org/public/announcements/ann11046/) for observations. This ninefold level of oversubscription is a record for a telescope. The successful projects were chosen based on their scientific merit, their regional diversity, and also their relevance to ALMA's major science goals.
"We are living in a historic moment for science and particularly for astronomy, and perhaps also for the evolution of humanity, because we start to use the greatest observatory under construction at the moment," said Thijs de Graauw, Director of ALMA.
One of the projects chosen for ALMA Early Science observations was that of David Wilner from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Wilner said, "My team hunts for the building blocks of solar systems, and ALMA is uniquely equipped to spot them."
His team's target is AU Microscopii, a star 33 light-years away that is only 1% of the age of our Sun. "We will use ALMA to image the 'birth ring' of planetesimals that we believe orbits this young star. Only with ALMA, however, can we hope to discover clumps in these dusty asteroid belts, which can be the markers of unseen planets." Wilner and his team will share their data with a European team who also requested ALMA observations of this nearby, dust-ringed star.
Any hunt for habitable planets around other stars often begins with a hunt for water in those distant solar systems. Debris discs, the swarms of dust, gas, and rocks around stars, are suspected also to contain craggy ice chunks filled with frozen water, gas, and possibly even organic molecules the astrochemistry of life.
Simon Casassus, from the University of Chile, and his team will use ALMA to observe the gas and dust disc around HD142527, a young star that is 400 light-years away. "The dusty disc around this star has a very large gap, which may have been carved by the formation of giant planets," said Casassus. "Outside the gap, this disc contains enough gas to make about a dozen Jupiter-sized planets. Inside the gap, a young gaseous giant planet could still be forming, if there is gaseous material available." Their ALMA observations will measure the mass and physical conditions of gas interior to the gap. "Thus, ALMA gives us a chance to observe planet formation, or its most recent wake," said Casassus.
Further away, 26 000 light-years from us in the centre of our galaxy, sits Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole four million times the mass of our Sun. Gas and dust between it and us hide it from our optical telescopes. However, ALMA is tuned to see through the galactic murk and give us tantalising views of Sagittarius A*.
Heino Falcke, an astronomer at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, said "ALMA will let us watch flares of light coming from around this supermassive black hole, and make images of the gas clouds caught by its immense pull. This will let us study this monster's messy feeding habits. We think that some of the gas may be escaping its grip, at close to the speed of light."
Like the black outlines in a child's colouring book, cosmic dust and cold gas trace out structures inside galaxies, even if we can't see those galaxies clearly. At the outer fringes of our visible Universe lie the mysterious starburst galaxies, bright islands in an otherwise calm, dark cosmos. ALMA will hunt for cold gas and dust tracers here, as far back as a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, at a time astronomers call "cosmic dawn".
Masami Ouchi of the University of Tokyo in Japan will use ALMA to observe Himiko, a very distant galaxy churning out at least 100 Suns' worth of stars every year and surrounded by a giant, bright nebula. "Other telescopes cannot show us why Himiko is so bright and how it has developed such a huge, hot nebula when the ancient Universe all around it is so calm and dark," said Ouchi. "ALMA can show us the cold gas deep in Himiko's star-forming nebula, tracing the movements and activities inside, and we will finally see how galaxies started forming at the cosmic dawn."
During its Early Science observations, ALMA will continue its construction phase in the Chilean Andes, high on the remote Chajnantor Plain in the harsh Atacama Desert. Each new, climate-armoured antenna will join the array and be linked via fibre optic cabling. The views from each distant antenna are assembled into one large view by one of the world's fastest special-purpose supercomputers, the ALMA correlator, which can perform 17 quadrillion [3] operations per second.
By 2013, ALMA will be an up to 16-km wide array of 66 ultra-precision millimetre/submillimetre wave radio antennas working together as one telescope and built by ALMA's multinational partners in Europe, North America and East Asia.
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
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Notes
[1] The quality of images from an interferometric telescope like ALMA depends on both the separations and the number of the antennas. Larger separations mean that sharper images can be created and if more antennas are working together more detailed images can be produced. More information about ALMA and interferometry can be found at: http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/alma/interferometry.html.
[2] The observations were made at specific wavelengths of millimetre and submillimetre light, tuned to detect carbon monoxide molecules in the otherwise invisible hydrogen clouds, where new stars are forming.
[3] 1.7x10^16 operations per second.
More information
ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world's most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world's largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning a 40-metre-class European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become "the world's biggest eye on the sky".
Links
ESO ALMA pages: http://www.eso.org/alma
Pictures of ALMA: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/alma/
JAO's ALMA web pages: http://www.almaobservatory.org/
NRAO's ALMA web pages: http://www.nrao.edu/index.php/about/facilities/alma
NAOJ's ALMA web pages: http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/e/
List of the 112 highest priority projects selected for ALMA Early Science, including titles, investigators, and short descriptions (PDF): http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1137/eso1137.pdf
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Public release date: 3-Oct-2011
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