Astronomy: Black hole found in globular cluster

Summaries of newsworthy papers from Nature include Palaeoclimate: Tropical connections and Planetary science: Lakes on Titan after all

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VOL.445 NO.7123 DATED 04 JANUARY 2007

This press release contains:

· Summaries of newsworthy papers:

- Astronomy: Black hole found in globular cluster

- Palaeoclimate: Tropical connections

- Planetary science: Lakes on Titan after all

· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo

· Geographical listing of authors

Editorial contacts: While the best contacts for stories will always be the authors themselves, in some cases the Nature editor who handled the paper will be available for comment if an author is unobtainable. Editors are contactable via Ruth Francis on +44 20 7843 4562. Feel free to get in touch with Nature's press contacts in London, Washington and Tokyo (as listed at the end of this release) with any general editorial inquiry.

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[1] Astronomy: Black hole found in globular cluster (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature05434

A black hole has been found inside a spherical cluster of densely packed stars known as a globular cluster.

Online this week in Nature, Thomas J. Maccarone and colleagues describe the discovery of a small black hole, probably only a few times the mass of our Sun, inside a globular cluster in the Virgo Cluster giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4472.

Their find is of interest because astronomers have debated whether black holes can exist inside globular clusters at all — many believe that they would simply be ejected as a result of gravitational interactions.

CONTACT:

Thomas J. Maccarone (University of Southampton, UK)
Tel: +44 23 8059 7584; E-mail: [email protected]

[2] Palaeoclimate: Tropical connections (pp 74-77)

A see-saw between the strength of the summer and winter monsoons in China over the past 16,000 years suggests shifts in the tropical rain bands in line with climate variability in the North Atlantic region, Haug and colleagues write in Nature this week.

At least for one instance, between ad 700 and 900, parallel changes in the position of the tropical rains were documented for Central America, with detrimental consequences for the civilization of the Classic Maya. Gerald Haug and colleagues suggest that the shifts in the tropical rain belt at the time could have been global.

The researchers also note the decline of the Chinese Tang dynasty at around the same time, when the winter monsoon was strong and the climate in China was dry.

CONTACT:

Gerald Haug (GFZ - Geoforschungzentrum Potsdam, Germany)
Tel: +49 331 288 1330; E-mail: [email protected]

[3] Planetary science: Lakes on Titan after all (pp 61-64; N&V)

Lakes of methane and probably ethane have been discovered in the northern hemisphere of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. Ellen Stofan and colleagues report the findings from the Cassini Radar mission in this week’s issue of Nature.

Titan is the only moon in the Solar System to have a dense atmosphere — similar to that of the primordial Earth — with thin layers of methane and nitrogen clouds. It has long been believed that lakes or even seas of methane might exist on the surface but until now definitive evidence has been lacking.

On 22 July 2006 the Cassini spacecraft's radar imaged the northern latitudes of Titan — during its long winter — and revealed a number of large, dark patches around the surface of the pole, ranging in diameter from 3 to 70 km. The low radar reflectivity of these patches indicate a smooth surface which contrasts with the surrounding terrain, suggesting they are made up of liquid, rock or ice. Several of the patches have radar-dark sinuous features leading into them that resemble fluvial channels, and other patches seem to be contained in rimmed circular depressions — similar to crater lakes or volcanic calderas found on Earth.

The combined radiometric evidence and morphological features of the patches and their location in these topographic depressions led the researchers to conclude that they are bodies of liquid hydrocarbons — methane lakes — existing on the surface of Titan today. They propose that Titan is the only other body besides Earth in the Solar System where evidence of an active condensable hydrologic cycle has been found: as the seasons progress the lakes in the winter hemisphere should expand by methane precipitation while the summer hemisphere lakes shrink or dry up entirely.

CONTACT:

Ellen Stofan (Proxemy Research, VA, USA and University College London, UK)
Tel: +1 540 364 3469 (before 1 January) and +44 207 937 0692 (from 2 January)
E-mail: [email protected]

Christophe Sotin (Université de Nantes, France)
Tel +33 2 5112 5267; E-mail: [email protected]

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…

[4] Light in tiny holes (pp 39-46)

[5] Pulsar spins from an instability in the accretion shock of supernovae (pp 58-60)

[6] High-speed linear optics quantum computing using active feed-forward (pp 65-69)

[7] Dilatant shear bands in solidifying metals (pp 70-73; N&V)

[8] Direct estimation of per nucleotide and genomic deleterious mutation rates in Drosophila (pp 82-85)

[9] The cellular machinery of Ferroplasma acidiphilum is iron-protein-dominated (pp 91-94)

GEOGRAPHICAL LISTING OF AUTHORS…

The following list of places refers to the whereabouts of authors on the papers numbered in this release. For example, London: 4 - this means that on paper number four, there will be at least one author affiliated to an institute or company in London. The listing may be for an author's main affiliation, or for a place where they are working temporarily. Please see the PDF of the paper for full details.

AUSTRALIA

Brisbane: 7

Melbourne: 8

AUSTRIA

Vienna: 6

CHINA

Beijing: 2

FRANCE

Floirac: 3

Meudon: 3

Strasbourg: 4

GERMANY

Braunschweig: 9

Munich: 6

Potsdam: 2

ITALY

Naples: 3

Rome: 3

SPAIN

Madrid: 9

Santiago de Compostela: 8

UNITED KINGDOM

Colchester: 9

Edinburgh: 8

London: 3

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Arizona

Flagstaff: 3

Tuscon: 3

California

Pasadena: 3

Stanford: 3

Florida

Miami: 2

Maryland

Laurel: 3

Massachusetts

Cambridge: 6

New Jersey

Princeton: 2

New York

New York: 3

North Carolina

Raleigh: 5

Tennessee

Oak Ridge: 5

Virginia

Rectortown: 3

PRESS CONTACTS…

For North America and Canada

Katie McGoldrick, Nature Washington

Tel: +1 202 737 2355; E-mail: [email protected]

From Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and Taiwan

For Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and Taiwan

Mika Nakano, Nature Tokyo

Tel: +81 3 3267 8751; E-mail: [email protected]

For the UK/Europe/other countries not listed above

Katherine Anderson, Nature London

Tel: +44 20 7843 4502; E-mail [email protected]

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Published: 03 Jan 2007

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