Look Up! International Observe the Moon Night Rises Tonight

The moon will take center stage for stargazers in the around the world tonight (Sept. 22) during International Observe the Moon Night to share the beauty of Earth's nearest neighbor with the public.

Many moon-watching events are planned around the world tonight, with NASA and Canadian astronomers aren't missing out. NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and Western University in Ontario, Canada, will hold special events to share methods on how to observe the moon with the public, as well as interesting moon facts and history.  

Tonight, the moon will appear half-full in what is known as the first quarter moon, making it a prime target for amateur astronomers and casual night sky observers.

"The first quarter moon rises around 2:25 p.m. and sets around 12:15 a.m." explained SPACE.com contributor Geoff Gaherty, an astronomer with Starry Night Software, which offers computer guides to the night sky. "It dominates the evening sky."

The full moon of September, which is also known as a Harvest Moon, will rise on Sept. 29.

At the Ames Research Center, astronomers with NASA's Lunar Science Institute will hold five 15-minute discussions and presentations on the moon at Shenandoah Plaza, while visiting amateur astronomers and astronomy clubs will set up telescopes for public viewing. The event runs from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. PDT.

"Through International Observe the Moon Night, we hope to instill in the public a sense of wonderment and curiosity about our moon," Ames center officials said in an announcement. [Amazing Blue Moon Photos for 2012]

You can learn more about how to participate in Ames' event here: http://lunarscience.nasa.gov/inomn/

At Western University, meanwhile, scientists with the school's Center for Planetary Science and Exploration will convene at the Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. local time to discuss moon observation, lunar science and other moon-oriented subjects.

"In addition to observing the Moon with Western's Perkin-Elmer refracting telescope (weather permitting), astronomers and planetary scientists will deliver talks, present lunar meteorites and lead a cell phone photo contest," Western University officials said in a statement.

More information on the Western University's event is here: http://cpsx.uwo.ca/outreach/event-news/inomn-2

The NASA Ames and Western University events are just two of countless public moon-watching programs scheduled around the world for the International Observe the Moon Night, which is now in its third year.

This year's event comes just weeks after the death of Neil Armstrong, the first person ever to walk on the moon. Armstrong, who commanded NASA's Apollo 11 moon landing mission, died on Aug. 25 at age 82 due to complications from recent heart surgery. He was buried at sea on Sept. 14.

To honor Armstrong's memory, his family has asked that the public take time to think of the pioneering astronaut when gazing at the moon.

" Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink," they said in a statement.

International Observe the Moon Night officials have set up a public Flickr webpage where amateur astronomers can post their "winks" at the moon for Armstrong here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/inomn2012/

For a complete list of International Observe the Moon Night webcasts and events, or to find an event near you, visit: http://observethemoonnight.org/

Editor's note: If you take an amazing photo of the moon that you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Warp Drive May Be More Feasible Than Thought, Scientists Say

HOUSTON — A warp drive to achieve faster-than-light travel — a concept popularized in television's Star Trek — may not be as unrealistic as once thought, scientists say.

A warp drive would manipulate space-time itself to move a starship, taking advantage of a loophole in the laws of physics that prevent anything from moving faster than light. A concept for a real-life warp drive was suggested in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, however subsequent calculations found that such a device would require prohibitive amounts of energy.

Now physicists say that adjustments can be made to the proposed warp drive that would enable it to run on significantly less energy, potentially brining the idea back from the realm of science fiction into science.

"There is hope," Harold "Sonny" White of NASA's Johnson Space Center said here Friday (Sept. 14) at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss the challenges of interstellar spaceflight.

Warping space-time

An Alcubierre warp drive would involve a football-shape spacecraft attached to a large ring encircling it. This ring, potentially made of exotic matter, would cause space-time to warp around the starship, creating a region of contracted space in front of it and expanded space behind. [Star Trek's Warp Drive: Are We There Yet? | Video]

Meanwhile, the starship itself would stay inside a bubble of flat space-time that wasn't being warped at all.

"Everything within space is restricted by the speed of light," explained Richard Obousy, president of Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit group of scientists and engineers devoted to pursuing interstellar spaceflight. "But the really cool thing is space-time, the fabric of space, is not limited by the speed of light."

With this concept, the spacecraft would be able to achieve an effective speed of about 10 times the speed of light, all without breaking the cosmic speed limit.

The only problem is, previous studies estimated the warp drive would require a minimum amount of energy about equal to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter.

But recently White calculated what would happen if the shape of the ring encircling the spacecraft was adjusted into more of a rounded donut, as opposed to a flat ring. He found in that case, the warp drive could be powered by a mass about the size of a spacecraft like the Voyager 1 probe NASA launched in 1977.

Furthermore, if the intensity of the space warps can be oscillated over time, the energy required is reduced even more, White found.

"The findings I presented today change it from impractical to plausible and worth further investigation," White told SPACE.com. "The additional energy reduction realized by oscillating the bubble intensity is an interesting conjecture that we will enjoy looking at in the lab."

Laboratory tests

White and his colleagues have begun experimenting with a mini version of the warp drive in their laboratory.

They set up what they call the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer at the Johnson Space Center, essentially creating a laser interferometer that instigates micro versions of space-time warps.

"We're trying to see if we can generate a very tiny instance of this in a tabletop experiment, to try to perturb space-time by one part in 10 million," White said.

He called the project a "humble experiment" compared to what would be needed for a real warp drive, but said it represents a promising first step.

And other scientists stressed that even outlandish-sounding ideas, such as the warp drive, need to be considered if humanity is serious about traveling to other stars.

"If we're ever going to become a true spacefaring civilization, we're going to have to think outside the box a little bit, were going to have to be a little bit audacious," Obousy said.

You can follow SPACE.com assistant managing editor Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz. Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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US Scientists to Use Chinese Moon Lander for Space Research

A cooperative deal has been inked between a U.S. group and China to use that country's moon lander to conduct astronomical imaging from the lunar surface.

The International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA) of Kamuela, Hawaii has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Beijing-based National Astronomical Observatories (NAOC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. A signing ceremony took place in Kamuela on Sept. 4.

The deal is the first such U.S.-China collaboration centered on using China's Chang'e-3 moon lander now being readied for launch next year.

Dedicated to astronomical research and public education, China's NAOC hosts the Lunar and Planetary Research Center and is the institute responsible for the ultraviolet lunar telescope to be carried onboard the Chang'e-3 lander. That instrument will be operated by the China National Space Administration's Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. [Gallery: China's Moon Photos by Chang'e 2 Lunar Probe]

The Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2 lunar orbiters were launched by China in 2007 and 2010, respectively. The most recent orbiter cranked out a detailed map of the moon's surface, including the landing zone picked for the rover-carrying Chang'e 3 lander — Sinus Iridium (Bay of Rainbows).

Natural progression

"I've been visiting China observatories and astronomy facilities like NAOC for about 15 years, so this memorandum of understanding has been a natural progression," Steve Durst, ILOA founding director, told SPACE.com.

This science collaboration will be part of a mission that will conduct the first soft controlled landing of any spacecraft on the moon in almost 40 years, Durst said in a press statement. It will be the first ever program to conduct astronomical imaging from the moon's landscape, he said.

The ILOA co-sponsors with its Space Age Publishing Company affiliate a number of educational initiatives, international forums to provide increased global awareness of space science, exploration and enterprise, Durst said.

Forums are held in Silicon Valley, Canada, China, India, Japan, Europe, Africa, Hawaii, Kansas and New York. Current plans, Durst said, are for expansion to South America, Southeast Asia, Mexico and Antarctica through 2014.

"We're optimistic that resulting Space Age USA-People's Republic of China -international interaction should be very productive for all," Durst said. The deal struck involved quite an effort, he said, calling it "hopefully quite significant and historic."

Google Lunar X Prize

Durst said that the exchange in kind calls for China's NAOC to receive observing time on the ILO-X and ILO-1 mission instruments — science gear that's part of the International Lunar Observatory Association's work with Moon Express, a Google Lunar X Prize enterprise based at NASA Research Park at Moffett Field, Calif. That prize has groups vying for a $30 million purse for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon.

The ILO-X is an optical telescope precursor instrument, part of a joint venture with Moon Express in a bid for the Google Lunar X-Prize.

In a July statement, Moon Express said it has designed and is building the ILO-X as the first independently developed astronomical telescope that will operate on the moon, looking out at the galaxy and heavens beyond and back at the Earth.

About the size of a shoe-box, the ILO-X will use leading-edge optical and imaging technology to deliver dramatic and inspiring deep sky pictures of galactic and extragalactic objects, according to Moon Express co-founder and CEO, Bob Richards.

ILO-1 is the primary ILOA mission under development by MDA Canada to land a multifunctional 2-meter dish at the moon's south pole to conduct astronomical observation and commercial communications activities.

Regarding the newly signed memorandum of understanding, Durst said: "Of course, I'm both amazed and sad that there's no American lander operating on the moon too…public, private, any kind," Durst said. He called the moon's south pole "the next new frontier."

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is a winner of last year's National Space Club Press Award and a past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines. He has written for SPACE.com since 1999.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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After victory lap, Endeavor rolls to retirement

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Space shuttle Endeavour rocketed beyond Earth orbit 25 times. Its 26th mission: A 12-mile commute through the streets of Los Angeles to its new retirement home in a museum.

With Endeavour permanently on the ground after a majestic aerial spin Friday around California, crews over the weekend will begin unbolting the shuttle from the 747 jumbo jet and putting it on a special flatbed trailer, a process that will take a few weeks.

The road trip in early October to the California Science Center has been billed as a parade, but some residents along the route have objected to the cutting down of some 400 trees to make room for the five-story-high shuttle with a 78-foot wingspan.

A crowd recently packed a public meeting where concerns were raised about the loss of shade and greenery in their neighborhoods. Museum officials have pledged to replant at least double the number of lost trees.

But Friday brought nothing but good feelings as the shuttle became California's biggest star, the people its paparazzi.

From the state Capitol to the Golden Gate Bridge to the Hollywood sign, massive crowds of spectators pointed their cellphones and cameras skyward as the shuttle, riding piggyback atop a 747 jumbo jet, buzzed past.

Peggy Burke was among the hordes of camera-toting tourists who jammed the waterfront along the San Francisco Bay, reflecting on the end of an era.

"It's just a shame that the program has to end, but I'm so glad they came to the Bay area especially over the Golden Gate Bridge," she said. "Onward to Mars."

At the Hollywood & Highland Center, a shopping complex with a view of the Hollywood sign, revelers yelled and screamed.

"It was like being in Times Square for the millennium," said Blue Fier, a college photography professor. "This is right up there. It was pretty cool."

Known as the baby shuttle, Endeavour replaced Challenger, which exploded during liftoff in 1986. Endeavour rolled off the assembly line in the Mojave Desert in 1991 and a year later, rocketed to space. It left Earth 25 times, logging 123 million miles.

Friday's high-flying tour was a homecoming of sorts.

After a nearly five-hour loop that took Endeavour over some of the state's most treasured landmarks, it turned for its final approach, coasting down the runway on the south side of the Los Angeles International Airport, where elected officials and VIPs gathered for an arrival ceremony.

As the jumbo jet taxied to the hangar, an American flag popped out of the jet's hatch. Endeavour will stay at the airport for several weeks as crew prepare it for its 12-mile trek through city streets to the California Science Center, its new permanent home, where it will go on display Oct. 30.

NASA retired the shuttle fleet last year to focus on destinations beyond low-Earth orbit. Before Endeavour was grounded for good, Californians were treated to an aerial farewell.

Endeavour took off from Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave desert Friday after an emotional cross-country ferry flight that made a special flyover of Tucson, Ariz., to honor its last commander, Mark Kelly, and his wife, former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

It circled the high desert that gave birth to the shuttle fleet before veering to Northern California. After looping twice around the state Capitol, it swung over to the San Francisco Bay area and Silicon Valley and then headed down the coast, entering the Los Angeles air space over the Santa Monica Pier. En route to LAX, it passed over a slew of tourist sites including Dodger Stadium, Disneyland and the Queen Mary.

The cost for shipping and handling Endeavour was estimated at $28 million, to be paid for by the science center. NASA officials have said there was no extra charge to fly over Tucson because it was on the way.

Endeavor's carefully choreographed victory lap was by far the most elaborate of the surviving shuttle fleet. Discovery is home at the Smithsonian Institution's hangar in Virginia after flying over the White House and National Mall. Atlantis will remain in Florida, where it will be towed a short distance to the Kennedy Space Center's visitor center in the fall.

Derek Reynolds, a patent attorney from a Sacramento suburb who saw the last shuttle launch last year, felt the flyover in Sacramento was a rare opportunity to share a firsthand experience of the space program with his 5-year-old son, Jack, who he pulled out of kindergarten for the day.

"I want him to experience it and give him the memory since it's the last one," Reynolds said.

As Endeavour approached LAX, other airplanes were forced to circle and wait. Passengers on an American Airlines flight from Miami snapped pictures and shot video out their windows as the shuttle arrived.

"This was a once-in-a-lifetime event," said pilot Doug Causey, who has been flying for 29 years. "That was a real treat to see something like that."

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press staff members Tom Verdin and Juliet Williams in Sacramento; Terry Chea and Marcio Sanchez in San Francisco; John Antczak in Pasadena; Jae Hong in Santa Monica; and Greg Risling, Martha Mendoza, Raquel Maria Dillon, Richard Vogel and Chris Carlson in Los Angeles.

___

Alicia Chang can be followed at http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

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Space Shuttle Endeavour Lands in L.A. for Display at California Science Center

LOS ANGELES — The last-ever space shuttle to take flight has made its final landing.

Space shuttle Endeavour, mounted atop NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), a modified Boeing 747 jumbo jet, touched down at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in California Friday (Sept. 21), after three day, cross-country trip from Florida.

The iconic black and white spacecraft, riding piggyback on the blue and white NASA aircraft, landed on the southern most runway at LAX at 12:51 p.m. PDT (3:51p.m. EDT; 1951 GMT). The early afternoon arrival marked the end of not only Endeavour's airborne journey, but the final ferry flight of the space shuttle program era.

Endeavour, which flew into space 25 times between 1992 and 2011, was delivered from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to L.A. for the California Science Center (CSC), which was awarded the shuttle by NASA last year. After a two-day planned road trip from the airport to the science center next month, the CSC will open its Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Display Pavilion on Oct. 30.

The CSC held a welcome ceremony for the arriving shuttle and SCA at the United Airlines' hangar where Endeavour will be hoisted off the aircraft and readied for its city street transport. State and local officials heralded the arrival as a homecoming — Endeavour and its sister ships were built and assembled in Southern California. [Photos: Shuttle Endeavour's California Sightseeing Tour]

State sightseeingEndeavour's transcontinental trip from the East to West Coast included two stopovers in Texas before landing in California on Thursday at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base. The overnight stay at Dryden preceded Endeavour's departure on a state-wide tour Friday morning before touching down at LAX.

Taking off at 8:15 a.m. PDT (11:15 a.m. EDT; 1515 GMT), the carrier aircraft flew Endeavour over its birthplace, the city of Palmdale where it was assembled, as well as the surrounding towns of Lancaster, Rosamond and Mojave, before heading north to Sacramento for a flyover salute of the state capital. [Shuttle Endeavour Soars Into Calif. Skies (Video)]

The flight was delayed getting started by an hour to allow the fog to rise by the time the air- and- spacecraft reached San Francisco Bay for a scenic overflight of the Golden Gate bridge. The SCA and shuttle then flew a low pass by NASA's Ames Research Center and, further south, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Circling over Los Angeles, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of residents had the chance to spot the shuttle flying over numerous landmarks and area attractions. The SCA took Endeavour over Disneyland, the Getty Museum, Griffith Observatory and by the Hollywood sign, the Santa Monica Pier and Universal Studios. Other flybys included the facilities for two of NASA's contractors, Boeing in Seal Beach and SpaceX in Hawthorne.

Endeavour also flew over its soon to be permanent home, the California Science Center at Exposition Park.

Trading wings to wheels

Now on the ground, Endeavour was set to be hoisted by two large cranes off the back of the SCA and lowered onto a wheeled overland transporter overnight Friday. A NASA team will then work with science center curators to ready the orbiter for its move to the museum.

The aerodynamic tail cone installed on Endeavour for the ferry flight for will be removed and a pair of thruster engine nozzles will be installed for the orbiter's display. NASA will also retrieve from inside the shuttle's crew compartment a package of embroidered patches that the CSC requested be flown with Endeavour on its westward journey.

Beginning Oct. 12, Endeavour will exit the airport on top of the modified NASA transporter using four self-propelled, computer-controlled vehicles. The 12-mile (19-kilometer) trip will take the shuttle through the streets of Inglewood and Los Angeles, where again thousands of residents and visitors are expected to get an up-close view of the orbiter on the move.

To facilitate the street parade, the CSC has been working to temporarily remove or raise traffic lights, power lines and other obstacles to the shuttle Endeavour's 78-foot (24-meter) wingspan and 58-foot-tall (18-m) tail. The center has also had to have removed nearly 400 trees in the way, but are investing $500,000 to replace each with as many as four in their place, a well as provide two years of tree maintenance.

Reaching the CSC by dusk on Oct. 13, Endeavour will be towed the final quarter of a mile (400 m) by a Toyota Tundra pickup truck as part of a partnership and promotion that could raise upwards of $500,000 towards the shuttle's final exhibit. The Oschin pavilion is a temporary home for Endeavour; by 2017, the CSC plans to open the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center to present the space shuttle vertically, as it was on its launch pad.

The California Science Center's Endeavour exhibit is one of only four displaying the retired shuttles. Discovery, the fleet leader, is now at the Smithsonian in northern Virginia. The prototype Enterprise is in New York City on board the converted aircraft carrier at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Atlantis, the last shuttle to fly in space during NASA's 135th mission, will be moved to NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in November.

See shuttles.collectspace.com for continuing coverage of the delivery and display of NASA's retired space shuttles.

Follow collectSPACE on Facebook and Twitter @collectSPACE and editor Robert Pearlman @robertpearlman. Copyright 2012 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Desalination no panacea for Calif. water woes

MARINA, Calif. (AP) — In the Central California coastal town of Marina, a $7 million desalination plant that can turn salty ocean waves into fresh drinking water sits idle behind rusty, locked doors, shuttered by water officials because rising energy costs made the plant too expensive.

Far to the north in well-heeled Marin County, plans were scrapped for a desalination facility despite two decades of planning and millions of dollars spent on a pilot plant.

Squeezing salt from the ocean to make clean drinking water is a worldwide phenomenon that has been embraced in thirsty California, with its cycles of drought and growing population. There are currently 17 desalination proposals in the state, concentrated along the Pacific where people are plentiful and fresh water is not.

But many projects have been stymied by skyrocketing construction costs, huge energy requirements for running plants, regulatory delays and legal challenges over environmental impacts on marine life. Only one small plant along Monterey Bay is pumping out any drinking water.

From Marin County to San Diego, some water districts are asking themselves: How much are we willing to pay for this new water?

"We found that our demand for water had dropped so much since the time we started exploring desalination, we didn't need the water," said Libby Pischel, a spokeswoman for the Marin Municipal Water District. "Right now, conservation costs less than desalination."

Desalination plants can take water from the ocean or drill down and grab the less salty, brackish water from seaside aquifers. Because of their potential impacts to marine life, the California Coastal Commission reviews each project case-by-case.

There was great fanfare in 2009 when the last regulatory hurdle was cleared to build the Western Hemisphere's largest desalination plant in Carlsbad, north of San Diego.

At the time, it was proposed that the $320 million project would suck in 100 million gallons of seawater and be capable of producing 50 million gallons of drinking water a day. It was expected to come online by this year.

Since then, the plant owner, Poseidon Resources LLC, has been negotiating a water purchase agreement and is close to clinching a 30-year deal with the San Diego County Water Authority, a wholesaler to cities and agencies that provide water to 3.1 million people.

The compact is essential for Poseidon to obtain financing to build what has become a $900 million project, which includes the seaside plant and a 10-mile pipeline. The San Diego agency hopes the plant opens in 2016 and anticipates desalination will account for 7 percent of the region's supply in 2020. It estimates the cost is comparable to other new, local sources of drinking water, such as treated toilet water or briny groundwater.

Interest is still high, but "people are realizing that desalination isn't a magic fix to the state's water issues," said coastal commission water expert Tom Luster.

Water can be de-salted in different ways. Poseidon's project will use reverse osmosis. Other plants shoot ocean or brackish water at high pressure through salt-removing membrane filters. Because pumps must be used constantly to move massive amounts of water through filters, these facilities are extremely energy intensive.

Also, in many cases, desalinated water is pricier than importing water the old-fashioned way — through pipes and tunnels. And it is cheaper to focus on conservation when possible: new technologies like low-flow toilets and stricter zoning laws that require less water-intensive landscaping have helped curb demand in communities throughout the state.

Desalination has been around for years in Saudi Arabia, other Arab Gulf states and Israel, which last year approved the construction of a fifth desalination plant. The hope is that the five plants together will supply 75 percent of the country's drinking water by 2013.

The process also has helped ease thirst in places such as Australia, Spain and Singapore. Experts say it has been slower to catch on in the United States, mainly because companies face tougher rules on where they can build plants and must endure longer environmental reviews. Poseidon, for example, is facing opposition by environmental groups over its proposed plans to build another facility in Huntington Beach. The company has received several permits for the Orange County project, but still needs approval from the coastal commission.

About six miles south of the ghost desalination plant in Marina, the mechanical whir coming from a nondescript cinderblock building in a Sand City industrial park is the only evidence that the state's sole operating municipal desalination plant is at work.

The $14 million facility has the ability to produce up to 600,000 gallons a day of drinkable water for the town of about 340 people. Sand City's plant now produces half that amount each day; a third is used by the city with the rest sent elsewhere in Monterey County.

City leaders hoped to develop the former military town into an artsy, Bohemian beachside destination. With no other possible water options, they turned to desalination. "We're just like Saudi Arabia. There's nowhere else to get water and we want to develop," said Richard Simonitch, the city's civil engineer.

It's not that easy in Monterey Peninsula, where regional water use from development has exceeded its yearly rainfall replenishment and desalination is one of the only options available.

Proposals have been fraught with mistakes, political infighting and scandal, and have cost Monterey area ratepayers tens of millions of dollars.

Earlier this year, state utilities regulators rejected Monterey County's desalination plan, citing problems with environmental review. The plan was also mired in alleged corruption by a county water official, who now faces criminal charges.

Still, desalination will be an important part of the Central Coast's future: the state ordered water suppliers to stop drawing from the Carmel River, its main source of the precious resource, starting in 2017. Even officials in Marina, with its shuttered plant, see a future in which demand will require their current desalination plant to resume operation and are planning another, larger plant to help make up for the expected water loss.

"Water politics in Monterey County is a blood sport," said Jim Heitzman, general manager of the Marina Coast Water District.

_____

Chang reported from Los Angeles; Elliott Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report. Jason Dearen can be reached on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/JHDearen.

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Blowhard silencer, dead-fish brain science win spoof Nobel prizes

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Psychologists who discovered that leaning to the left makes the Eiffel Tower seem smaller, neuroscientists who found brain activity in a dead salmon, and designers of a device that can silence blowhards are among the winners of Ig Nobel prizes for the oddest and silliest real discoveries.

The annual prizes are awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research as a whimsical counterpart to the Nobel prizes, which will be announced early next month.

Former winners of the real Nobels hand out the Ig Nobel awards at a ceremony held at Harvard University in Massachusetts.

Ig Nobels for 2012 also went to U.S. researchers who discovered that chimps can recognize other chimps by looking at snapshots of their backsides, and to a Swedish researcher for solving the puzzle of why people's hair turned green while living in certain houses in the town of Anderslöv, Sweden. (The culprit was a combination of copper pipes and hot showers.)

Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals and architect of the Ig Nobels who announced the winners on Thursday, said one of his personal favorites was this year's Acoustics Prize.

Japanese researchers Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada created the SpeechJammer, a machine that disrupts a person's speech by playing it back with a very slight delay.

"It's a small thing you aim at someone who is droning on and on," Abrahams said. "What the person hears is just off enough that it completely disconcerts and discombobulates them, and they stop talking. It has thousands of potential good uses."

Abrahams' panel of experts also cited the work of Dutch psychologists Anita Eerland, Rolf Zwaan and PhD student Tulio Guadalupe for their study, "Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller."

The work explored how posture influences estimations of size: with leaning to the left correlating with lower estimates, and leaning to the right correlating with higher estimates.

The team tested this by placing 33 undergraduates on a Wii Balance Board, which tilted slightly to the left or the right while they were asked to guess the size of objects, including the height of the Eiffel Tower.

As expected, those who leaned left had lower guesses than those who leaned to the right or stood up straight.

DEAD SALMON 'THINK'

One of the more infamous studies winning an Ig Nobel was for research detecting meaningful brain activity in a dead salmon.

It started as a lark, explains Craig Bennett of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studies adolescent brain development using functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI, a technique for measuring brain activity.

Before starting tests on people, scientists first check their equipment using a phantom object, typically a sphere filled with mineral oil. But since any object will do, Bennett and colleagues had been trying out a variety of items, including a pumpkin, a Cornish game hen, and finally, an Atlantic salmon.

In the salmon test, the team showed photos to the dead fish and asked it to determine what emotion the person was feeling.

"By random chance and by simple noise, we saw small data points in the brain of the fish that were considered to be active," said Bennett. "It was a false positive. It's not really there."

The often-quoted study exposed the perils of fMRI science, which can be prone to false signals, and underscored the need to do statistical corrections to safeguard against such silly findings.

"It's a great teachable moment for how we should process the MRI data," he said.

OTHER WINNERS: - Physicists at Unilever led by Dr. Patrick Warren and at Stanford University led by Professor Joe Keller for their use of mathematics to explain why ponytails take on their distinctive "tail" shape. The Ig Nobel is Keller's second. - Igor Petrov and colleagues at the SKN Company in Russia for using technology to convert old Russian ammunition into new diamonds. - Rouslan Krechetnikov and Hans Mayer of the University of California, Santa Barbara, for illuminating why carrying a cup of coffee often ends up in a spill. - French researcher Emmanuel Ben-Soussan on how doctors performing colonoscopies can minimize the chance of igniting gasses that make their patients explode. - The U.S. Government General Accountability Office, for issuing a report recommending the preparation of a report to discuss the impact of reports about reports.

(Editing by Michele Gershberg and Richard Chang)

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