What if the Earth stopped spinning? 3 Maser to predict Milky Way's fate 8 Will we ever glimpse the universe's first stars? 10 When is a group of stars not a galaxy? 12 Telltale chemistry could betray ET 14 Online games reveal players' personalities – to who? 16 Compact 'eyeball' camera stretches to zoom 18 PirateBox lets you share files with anyone close by 20 Spinning seeds inspire single-bladed helicopters 21 VW's diesel hybrid: most efficient car on the planet? 23 Parallel parking is better for pedestrians' health 25 Soft-centred fossils reveal dinosaurs' true colours 27 How the seahorse gained its shapely body 31 Mad cow disease is almost extinct globally 32 Transsexual differences caught on brain scan 35 Kids with low self-control are less successful adults 37 Royal rumpus over King Tutankhamun's ancestry 38 Stretchy DNA shows off its elastic qualities 40 Remember the lessons of past clinical trials abuses 42 Quantum reality: The many meanings of life 44 Ancient puzzle gets new lease of 'geomagical' life 49 Deep meaning in Ramanujan's 'simple' pattern 52 Cancer Drug Aids Regeneration of Spinal Cord After Injuries 54 Dinosaurs Survived Mass Extinction by 700,000 Years, Fossil Find Suggests 56 A Mix of Tiny Gold and Viral Particles, and the DNA Ties That Bind Them 58 How Bacteria Keep Ahead of Vaccines and Antibiotics 60 Warming North Atlantic Water Tied to Heating Arctic 63 Brain 'GPS' Illuminated in Migratory Monarch Butterflies 66 Mass Extinction Linked to Ancient Climate Change, New Details Reveal 68 Modern Humans Reached Arabia Earlier Than Thought, New Artifacts Suggest 71 Potential 'Cure' for Type 1 Diabetes? 73 Ancient Body Clock Discovered That Helps Keep All Living Things on Time 76 On the Hunt for Universal Intelligence 78 Unlocking the Secrets of DNA 80 Inventor of Plastic Solar Cells Sees Bright Future 82 Song Lyrics, Twitter Help Chart Public Mood 85 Pollinating Local Is the New Buzz 89 I Gave It a Nudge But It Won’t Budge 93 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila In India, a Busy Fair and a Spirited Art Scene 95 White Paint, Chocolate, and Postmodern Ghosts 98 Photography, in the Family Way 102 Artifacts of an Imagined Time 105 As China Evolves, So Does an Artist 107 Gehry Design Plays Fanfare for the Common Man 110 A Mind Where Picasso Meets Looney Tunes 113 Recovering Fingerprints on Fabrics Could Turn Clothes Into Silent Witnesses 116 Arctic Mercury Mystery: Meterological Conditions in the Spring and Summer to Blame? 118 Brain Evaluates Information Based on Future Expectations, Study Suggests 120 A1cteria in the Gut May Influence Brain Development 122 Cluster Encounters 'Natural Particle Accelerator' Above Earth's Atmosphere 124 Newly Discovered Dinosaur Likely Father of Triceratops 126 Argentine Ant Genome Sheds Light on a Successful Pest 128 Tracking the Origins of Speedy Space Particles 131 'Air Laser' May Sniff Bombs, Pollutants from a Distance 134 Computer-Assisted Diagnosis Tools to Aid Pathologists 136 Astrophysicists Find New Remnants of Neighboring Galaxy in Our Own 138 Cassini Sends Back Postcards of Saturn's Moons 140 Giant Radio Telescope Goes Multi-National: First Images from LOFAR 141 Inhalable Measles Vaccine Tested 143 Scientists Model Tiny Rotors, Key to Future Nanomachines 145 Clean Streets and Intact Road Surfaces Help to Keep the Air Clean 148 Metamaterials Approach Makes Better Satellite Antennas 150 Bugs Might Convert Biodiesel Waste Into New Fuel 152 Single Molecule Controlled at Room Temperature: Tiny Magnetic Switch Discovered 154 Naturally Occurring Microbes Break Down Chlorinated Solvents 156 Key Step in the Development of a Norovirus Treatment 158 New Model for Studying Parkinson's 160 Tuning Graphene Film So It Sheds Water 162 How Safe Is Nano? Nanotoxicology: An Interdisciplinary Challenge 164 An Ice-Bar Made from Pure Ice 166 Major Ecological Study on Borneo's Deforested Landscapes Launched 168 Basking in the Sun: How Large Mammals Survive Winter in the Mountains 170 Home and Away: How Do Invasive Plant Species Dominate Native Species? 172 New Appreciation of the Ecology-Evolution Dynamic 174 Secrets in Stone: Rare Archaeological Find in Norway 176 Plasma Stability Made to Measure 178 Deficiency of Dietary Omega-3 May Explain Depressive Behaviors 180 Challenge Classical World With Quantum-Mechanical Implementation of 'Shell Game' 182 Children's Genetic Potentials Are Subdued by Poverty: Effects Show by Age 2 184 Narcissus Regards a Book 186 Absent Students Want to Attend Traditional Classes via Webcam 190 The Human Causes of Unnatural Disaster 193 Can China Avoid Getting Stuck in Traffic? 196 A Hiding Place for Nuclear Waste 198 Science Leaches Out of Science Class 200 2 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 146 February 2011 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila What if the Earth stopped spinning? • 26 January 2011 by Hazel Muir • Magazine issue 2796. Alternate Earth (Image: Tim Gravestock) Or what if our home planet had two moons, or none, or was a moon itself? IN THE quirky H. G. Wells tale The Man Who Could Work Miracles, a character called George Fotheringay discovers that he has supernatural powers. Egged on by the local vicar, Fotheringay uses his gift to miraculously improve his village by night, mending buildings and reforming drunks. Then he realises there is a way to buy more time for good deeds before sunrise: simply order the Earth to stop spinning. The moment Fotheringay gives the command, all hell breaks loose. "When Mr Fotheringay had arrested the rotation of the solid globe, he had made no stipulation concerning the trifling movables upon its surface," Wells wrote. "Every human being, every living creature, every house and every tree - all the world as we know it - had been so jerked and smashed and utterly destroyed." Wells loved to play God with the planets in his fiction, but such fantasies are good for more than entertainment. Implausible scenarios of the sort Wells cooked up are worth exploring because they give 3 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 146 February 2011 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila clarity to what makes the real world tick, says Neil Comins, an astrophysicist at the University of Maine in Orono. In his new book What if the Earth Had Two Moons? Comins gives the Earth some other-worldly makeovers to see how different our environment could have been. "Thinking through what could happen or might have happened gives a much better perspective on how things actually are," he says. So what strange scenarios would drastically alter our world, and what would be the upshot? Toying with the moon is a good place to start. The moon has had an enormous influence on our planet, not least in the cataclysmic events that led to its formation. The consensus is that a Mars-sized body, often called Theia, slammed into the Earth around 4.5 billion years ago, spraying debris into orbit. This eventually clumped together to form the moon at about a tenth of its current distance, roughly the same altitude as most of today's communications satellites. Around this time, the Earth would have rotated on its axis once every 8 hours or so, but gravitational interactions between the Earth and moon, including effects to do with the tides, have since slowed that to the familiar 24-hour day. So what if the moon had not formed? The only significant tidal forces on Earth would come from the sun, which would have increased the length of a day from 8 to about 12 hours. You would weigh less too, since about 10 per cent of the mass of the Earth is thought to come from the remnants of Theia that it absorbed, so gravity would be that much weaker. Unique life forms Without the moon, life might not have taken hold as quickly as it did. The newborn moon was so close to the Earth that it would have raised tides 1000 times higher than today's. Those vast tides probably caused the oceans to scour the continents, enriching the sea with minerals and helping to create the "primordial soup" that gave rise to life. Comins suspects life would eventually have emerged even without the moon, but says there would not have been animals adapted to live in tidal pools, or to hunt or navigate by moonlight. What's more, with no lunar gravity to stabilise the Earth's rotation, our planet could have ended up spinning on its side, like Uranus. Over the course of a year, sunlight would drift from one pole to the other, then back again. "Virtually every living thing would have to migrate on such a world," says Comins. "Life would have to follow the sunlight." The impact of Theia could, in theory, have created more than one moon. Would that have made a difference? Probably not. Even if the debris had formed two lumps, gravitational effects would have made them collide long before complex life forms appeared on Earth some 600 million years ago. The only way the Earth could support a second moon today - let's call it Moon2 - would be if it had been captured recently from a pair of bodies that wandered into its vicinity. This encounter could have left Moon2 settled into a stable Earth orbit, as long as a large chunk of its kinetic energy was transferred to its companion, which would have zoomed off into space. The gravity of Moon2 and its companion would have caused havoc as they approached Earth, triggering mammoth tidal waves and volcanism. The skies would have been dark with dust, and there would almost certainly have been a mass extinction of life.