Month: April 2016

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Alaska Air closes in on Virgin America deal

Image: Alaska Airlines jet
A smiling Eskimo graces the tail of an Alaska Airlines jet. (Credit: Alaska Air)

Seattle-based Alaska Air Group is close to a $2 billion deal to purchase Virgin America, beating out a rival bid from Jet Blue Airways, The Wall Street Journal reported April 2.

The Journal’s report was based on information from unnamed sources said to be familiar with the matter. Those sources stressed that there was no guarantee Alaska would clinch the deal. An announcement could come as early as April 4, they told the Journal.

U.S.-based Virgin America is separate from Virgin Atlantic, a larger airline owned by British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. Branson’s holding company owns less than 25 percent of Virgin America, in accordance with federal law. Cyrus Aviation Holdings is the largest investor with about 28 percent of the voting stock.

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Jeff Bezos live-tweets Blue Origin spaceship test

Image: New Shepard landing
Blue Origin’s New Shepard fires its BE-4 rocket engine for a vertical landing. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos served as launch commentator for a risky but successful third flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket ship to space and back on April 2. He even worked in a reference to his lucky cowboy boots.

The 11-minute-long suborbital mission not only featured the first ride for university research payloads, but also a quick restart of the propulsion module’s hydrogen-fueled BE-3 rocket engine, just seconds before what would have been a crash.

That maneuver was aimed at “pushing the envelope” for the uncrewed New Shepard’s performance, Bezos said on the eve of the flight. Blue Origin reported that the restart was executed successfully at an altitude of 3,635 feet, as planned.

The running commentary on Twitter marked yet another role for the 52-year-old Bezos, who founded Blue Origin back in 2000 to follow through on his childhood dream of spaceflight. New Shepard is named after Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, who became the first American in outer space three years before Bezos was born.

Bezos traced the preparation of the crew capsule (CC) for launch from Blue Origin’s test facility in West Texas, then the liftoff, then the status of the propulsion booster and crew capsule after the two parts of the spacecraft separated on cue.

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Paul Allen boosts bioscience in Science

Image: Jones and Allen
Paul Allen, at right, looks over a slice of brain tissue with Allan Jones, CEO of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. (Credit: Vulcan)

Seattle billionaire Paul Allen is making a pitch for out-of-the-box bioscience from one of the scientific community’s most respected soapboxes: the editorial section of the journal Science.

In a guest editorial, Allen argues that biological science could blossom as much in the years ahead as computer science did when he and Bill Gates founded Microsoft:

“In 1975, when relatively powerful microprocessors first became available, many young entrepreneurs — including myself — were inspired to create companies, platforms, and programming tools that helped make computing available to everyone. This in turn helped spark the information revolution. Today, thanks to the increasing sophistication, speed, and power of computer modeling and other new tools such as optogenetics and multiple forms of microscopy, we are on the brink of another revolution — this time in bioscience.”

Allen himself is putting hundreds of millions of dollars toward furthering the field, through investments in the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Allen Institute for Cell Science, the newly announced Frontiers Group and other efforts.

But the revolution is not assured, Allen goes on to say.

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Scientists take gorilla genome to next level

Image: Susie the gorilla
Researchers sequenced and assembled an updated gorilla genome using a DNA sample from a gorilla named Susie. (Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo)

A team led by University of Washington researchers has taken a second turn at sequencing the gorilla genome, putting together puzzle pieces that didn’t match up the first time around.

The results are likely to bring about revisions in the evolutionary tale of the western lowland gorilla, and where it fits in the primate family tree that includes us humans.

“I believe there is far more genetic variation than we had previously thought. The first step is finding it,” UW geneticist Evan Eichler, the senior author of a research paper on the project published by the journal Science, said in a news release.

One of the co-authors from UW, Christopher Hill, told GeekWire in an email that the new research is part of an effort to create a comprehensive catalog of the genetic differences between humans and other great apes.

“The differences between species may aid researchers in identifying regions of the human genome that are associated with cognition, behavior and neurological diseases,” Hill said. “Having complete and accurate reference genomes to compare allows researchers to uncover these differences.”

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Jeff Bezos counts down to Blue Origin launch

Image: New Shepard preparations
Workers prepare Blue Origin’s rocket ship for a test flight. (Credit: Jeff Bezos via Twitter)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos says his Blue Origin rocket venture will put its New Shepard suborbital spaceship to its sternest test to date: a flight that involves a quick restart of the craft’s rocket engine just six seconds before projected impact.

If the restart doesn’t work on April 2, the third flight of the reusable New Shepard will end with a fiery splat.

The mere fact of Bezos’ announcement is almost as remarkable as the flight plan.

Previously, he might have said in advance that a flight would happen “very soon,” or the timing could have been figured out by checking the required notice from the Federal Aviation Administration. But the April 1 tweets represent the first time Bezos has publicly specified the date of a Blue Origin test flight in advance. (No fooling!)

Bezos is promising that there’ll be drone footage of the test. And two research experiments will be packed aboard for the trip to outer space. That marks another first for Blue Origin’s suborbital space effort.

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Five science tales that aren’t April Fool’s jokes

Image: Elasmotherium
A painting by Heinrich Harder (circa 1920) provides a view of Elasmotherium, a horned animal that went extinct tens of thousands of years ago. (Credit: Heinrich Harder via Wikipedia)

Unicorns are real! Scientists propose cloaking device to protect Earth from aliens! Glow-in-the-dark skin grown in lab! Those may sound like April Fool’s headlines, but they’re actually amped-up twists on real-life science. Check out five recent scientific revelations that take a walk on the weird side.

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