Science Special News

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Back to school for ghost lessons

Apparitions, banshees and incubuses. Don't know the difference? Now anyone can learn the types of ghosts during the Ghosts and Hauntings 101 class sponsored by the Hanover Borough Leisure Council. "It's not intended to scare you," said class instructor Becky Baugher of Littlestown. "It's meant to open your eyes to see what is on the other side." From 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Sept. 12 to Oct. 3 at the Hanover public library, Baugher will be teaching people about the "Ghost Energy Theory," different ways to experience a ghost and the different types of ghosts. "I think it is interesting because a lot of people wonder what happens to you after death," Baugher said. "A ghost is validity that life goes on after death." In addition to learning the basics about ghosts, Baugher plans to tell some local ghost stories and relay her own paranormal experiences. "I've actually had some ghosts touch me," Baugher said.

"I know it sounds kind of freaky, but it is kind of cool, too." Although not as steeped in ghost stories as Gettysburg, Baugher said Hanover has some of its own stories to tell. "There is some (stories) around here such as with the Hanover Shoe Farm Bridge and the Conewago Chapel," she said. "Anywhere you have dirt on the earth you have something tied to it, some kind of energy." To culminate the learning experience, Baugher will take her class on a ghost walk in Gettysburg. Baugher said she has been on all the ghost tours in Gettysburg and is even studying to become a storyteller. Baugher said she has also taken numerous paranormal classes taught by Judith Pellegrino, a Gettysburg hypnotherapist and psychic.

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Developing invisibility

After years of work, David Schurig and David R. Smith at Duke University will finish their research and have absolutely nothing to show for it: They're making a cloak of invisibility.Really. So unusual is this undertaking for a serious academic electrical engineering team that Smith has created an elaborate Web site discussing the dream of invisibility as viewed in science fiction--Harry Potter and the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft are mentioned--and relating such ideas to scientific fact.In theory, Smith said, it's possible to make light follow curved lines that s***t an object rather than illuminate it. Light "circulates around the void--like water flowing past a rock in a stream," Smith explained.This would create a void in space--a place that is invisible.It's an interesting theory cooked up by Smith and Sir John Pendry at the Imperial College in London. Even more interesting will be to see if the theory will produce invisibility.Equations describing the properties of electromagnetic fields were derived in the 19th Century by James Clerk Maxwell, and they can be used to envision how substances would deflect light, said Schurig.

Natural materials would not do the trick, but Duke researchers are designing artificial substances, called metamaterials, that are engineered to be invisible. They use technology for making circuit boards and computer chips to create metamaterials."We're building stuff in the microwave range, using fairly standard lithography," said Schurig.The metamaterials under construction should render an object invisible to radar, although people could still see it, said Schurig. The Duke team's goal is to have a working example sometime next year. It would demonstrate that invisibility cloaks can work.The project has evoked interest from military people who like the idea of cloaking spy satellites so they are invisible to radar, among other things. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is financing the research.

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New mass extinction crater found

What appears to be a 480km-wide (300 miles) crater has been detected under the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The scientists behind the discovery say it could have been made by a massive meteorite strike 250 million years ago. The feature at Wilkes Land was found by Nasa satellites that are mapping subtle differences in the Earth's gravity. "This Wilkes Land impact is much bigger than the impact that killed the dinosaurs," said Prof Ralph von Frese, from Ohio State University, in the US. If the crater really was formed at the time von Frese and colleagues believe, it will raise interest as a possible cause of the "great dying" - the biggest of all the Earth's mass extinctions when 95% of all marine life and 70% of all land species disappeared. Some scientists have long suspected that the extinction at the boundary of the Permian and Triassic (PT) Periods could have occurred quite abruptly - the result of environmental changes brought on by the impact of a giant space rock. It is a similar argument to the one put forward to explain the demise of the dinosaurs at the much later date of 65 million years ago.

A geological structure, known as the Bedout High, in the seabed off what is now Australia, has also been suggested as the possible crater remains from the PT impactor. But the impact explanation for the great dying is an argument that has struggled to find favour. The prevailing theory is that several factors - including supervolcanism and extensive climate warming - combined over thousands of years to strangle the planet's biodiversity.

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Peru bans flights over Inca ruins

The Peruvian government has reversed a decision to allow flights over the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu after an outcry from environmental groups. Peru's Transport and Communications ministry has declared the area around the site a no-fly zone. Environmentalists said a number of rare animals and plants would have been severely affected by the low-flying helicopter tours. Machu Picchu, a world heritage site, is Peru's biggest tourist attraction. Little more than a week after a licence was granted for helicopter tours over South America's most famous ruin, it was taken away again. The Transport and Communications Ministry was forced to reverse its decision after complaints from environmentalists and archaeologists. After a short meeting with Peru's departments of Culture and Natural Resources, the ministry declared a flight restriction in the whole area surrounding Machu Picchu. Several leading environmentalists said the flights would have caused irreparable damage to the ruins and rare wildlife, such as spectacled bears and vicunas, would have been scared away.

Such flights had been allowed during the 1990s but were banned shortly afterwards. Peru's Institute of Natural Resources said those flights led to the disappearance of a rare species of orchid and the Andean Condor from the area. Machu Picchu is one of the best-preserved pre-Columbian ruins on the continent. But experts say the Unesco World Heritage Site is being slowly damaged by the hordes of tourists which visit it every year.

[Rasputin]

Silicon-based life forms a reality ?

In the classic Star Trek episode The Devil in the Dark, first broadcast in 1967, miners on Janus VI encounter an entity that destroys mining machinery deep in the planet. It turns out that the problem is an animal - the Horta is a creature whose metabolism is based on silicon - living rock. Just more of the usual sf nonsense? Dr. Tom Gold, emeritus professor of astronomy at Cornell University, believes that organisms based on silicon may live far below the surface of the Earth. Dr. Gold, a member of the Royal Society, is known as an iconoclastic scientist. He previously predicted that vast amounts of more conventional bacteria live miles down within the Earth's crust. Mainstream scientists were skeptical, but many now agree with him. All known organisms, from bacteria to human beings, are based on carbon; it is an important component of DNA, the basis of life as we know it.

Silicon has properties that are similar to carbon; it is in the same group in the Periodic Table. However, silicon atoms are much larger and have difficulty forming double or triple covalent bonds, which are important for biochemical systems.

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"Ogopogo" skull found in Mexico ?

A Penticton man thinks pictures he took of a giant skull in a small-town museum in Mexico may solve a small part of the mystery surrounding Ogopogo. Warren Linklater retired in 1970 and toured North America with his wife Lorna in a motorhome they called the Happy Bus. During a trip around the Gulf of Mexico in 1970, the couple was planning to cross a river near Veracruz when they discovered the ferry they hoped to take had sunk in the middle of the river. This forced the couple to divert to the small town of Tecohitla, about 240 kilometres north of Veracruz. The tiny fishing village had a museum, which contained one very interesting item. "It had a head of a thing that they didn't know what it was," said Linklater. People at the museum told Linklater that the two-metre high skull had been cut off a 12-metre long body with a chain saw. The body was allowed to drift out to sea. Linklater said he believes the skull, with eye sockets about half a metre in diameter and a big snout, may have been from an animal that is somehow related to the creature known locally as the Ogopogo.

Ellen Pedersen, chair of biology department at Okanagan College, said the more likely explanation is that the skull is that of a whale, possibly a humpback whale. Pedersen, who has a master's degree in marine biology from Dalhousie University pointed to the condyle - a large bony bump on the back of the skull - as typical of mammalian skulls. The long snout is also similar to that found in whales. The lack of any obvious nostril along the front of the skull argue against it being reptilian, she said. While the 12-metre length reported for the body would be on the large side for a whale, it isn't unheard of.

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Decoded: the genius of Leonardo da Vinci

They are the thinking of a genius, the 500-year-old notes and drawings that reveal the extraordinary creative imagination of Leonardo da Vinci. But these are not preparatory works for his famous paintings such as the Mona Lisa or the Last Supper.They are the notebooks that demonstrate the great Renaissance master's other life as an inventor, engineer and scientist centuries ahead of his time.A new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London, is to show more than 60 precious leaves of da Vinci drawings, including works from the British Library, the Royal Collection and the V&A itself. Visitors to the show will be able to puzzle over sheets so fragile they rarely see the light of day.Martin Kemp, a professor of the history of art at Oxford University who has curated the exhibition, admitted many were "difficult" in comparison with da Vinci's better known works. But if the artist's explorations in geometry, anatomy and engineering prove daunting, highlights have been brought to life with animations commissioned from Cosgrove Hall, the company better known for creating Dangermouse.

Professor Kemp hopes the combination will explain elements of his work that are often overlooked. "Most people have some sense that he was a universal man, but I think these should give reality to the idea," he said. "I'm confident that people will go away and think, 'Wow, there's even more to this person than I thought.'"

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Probe to study mighty explosions

Scientists have been giving details of a new mission to explore the Sun. Solar-B is a Japanese spacecraft which will have three telescopes to study solar flares, the huge bursts of energy which erupt from the Sun's surface. Flares can hurl particles and radiation at the Earth, disrupting communications and posing a hazard to astronauts. The probe, which should launch in two weeks' time, has US and UK support, with Britain providing an instrument to investigate extreme ultraviolet light. Whilst scientists understand the flaring process very well, they cannot predict when one of these enormous explosions will occur. The Solar-B mission will try to gain new insights into the flares' so called "trigger phase". "Solar flares are fast and furious - they can cause communication black-outs at Earth within 30 minutes of a flare erupting on the Sun's surface," explained Professor Louise Harra, the UK Solar-B project scientist based at University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory.

"It's imperative that we understand what triggers these events with the ultimate aim of being able to predict them with greater accuracy." And she told the BBC: "There is a big push to go back to the Moon and on to Mars, especially in the US. Even back in the Apollo days, they were very reliant on predictions that were as accurate as possible, because a huge flare would cause serious trouble for the astronaut, if not death." Professor Harra was giving details of the mission to the British Association's Science Festival.

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UFO sighting puzzles residents

In a scene reminiscent of the X Files, a couple have been left scratching their heads after a UFO sighting in their garden. Helen Hanreck, 49, was looking for her cats in the garden when she noticed a bright light in the sky.Miss Hanreck, of Longwalk, Istead Rise, claims she saw more than six red lights moving silently across the night sky.She claims the lights were moving slowly in an inverted V shape with a long tail.The insurance manager called to her partner, Nick Claydon, to have a look at the spectacle on September 8 at 9.45pm.Miss Hanreck says she hoped he would give her a rational explanation to the unexplained lights.She said: "I thought it was flying too close to other aircraft and I did think It's a terrorist attack heading for London'."But then I realised it was going the other way and heading south east. I called to Nick as I thought he would know what the lights were as he has a pilot's licence."But when he came into the garden we were both lost for words. We watched the lights for 10 to 15 minutes and it was like watching Chinese lanterns being dragged silently through the sky."She added: "I am not a believer in spaceships and aliens but I called the police to report it."They told me a taxi driver had already phoned in about it, so I was relieved it was not just us."Mr Claydon, who also saw the UFOs, insists he and his partner are not "nutters".

The 49-year-old said: "We are not flying saucer nutters. We are just normal people, although we did go to Roswell in America to see where a spaceship was supposed to crash."I have always wanted to see something like this as other people go on about it."When we saw it I raced for my camera but I had it on the wrong setting so nothing came out."Miss Hanreck says there may be a perfectly logical explanation although she can't think of one.She added: "I would be interested to hear whether anyone else saw anything."We are so mystified by the whole thing. It's definitely a story we will be able to tell at dinner parties."

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Seeking the round table at Windsor Castle

Evidence of a building linked to the myth of King Arthur and the knights of the round table has been found at Windsor Castle. The circular structure was built by Edward III in the 14th century to house the round table intended to seat the original 300 Knights of the Garter. Archaeological proof of the building was uncovered by members of Channel 4's Time Team in the castle's quadrangle.Although the stones have been removed, rubble in-fill where they were originally located remained in place. The show's presenter, Tony Robinson, said the discovery could help settle years of debate among historians over the existence of the building. "The round table building is one of our most significant ever archaeological finds. It is something that helped to establish Arthurian legends of the knights of the round table.

"We set out to uncover the walls of the building, and they are just where we hoped. Experts have speculated about the structure for centuries, but they have never been able to find the actual building."

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Humans strange, Neanderthals normal ?

Neanderthals are often thought of as the stray branch in the human family tree, but research now suggests the modern human is likely the odd man out. "What people tend to do is draw a line from our ancestors straight to ourselves, and any group that doesn't seem to fit on that line is divergent, distinct, unusual, strange," researcher Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told LiveScience today. "But in terms of evolution of our family tree, the genus Homo, we're the outliers and the Neanderthals are more toward the core."Humans are not at the inevitable end of a sequence, Trinkaus said. "It just happens that we happen to be alive today and Neanderthals are not."Trinkaus spent decades examining fossil skeletons and over time realized that maybe researchers looked at Neanderthals the wrong way. Over the last two years, he systematically combed through fossils, comparing Neanderthal and modern human skull, jaw, tooth, arm, leg traits with those of the earliest members of the genus Homo in terms of their shape. "I wanted to see to what extent Neanderthals are derived, that is distinct, from the ancestral form. I also wanted to see the extent to which modern humans are derived relative to the ancestral form," Trinkaus said.

Trinkaus focused on skeletal features that seemed most strongly linked to genetics, as opposed to any traits that might get influenced by lifestyle, environment or wear and tear. When compared with our common ancestors, Trinkaus discovered modern humans have roughly twice as many uniquely distinct traits as Neanderthals. In other words, Neanderthals are more like the other members of our family tree than modern humans are."In the broader sweep of human evolution, the more unusual group is not Neanderthals, whom we tend to look at as strange, weird and unusual, but it's us, modern humans," Trinkaus said.

[Rasputin]

Astral travel: In your body or out of it?

Ken Korczak: Few phenomenons hold greater fascination for me than out-of-body travel, or astral travel, as some call it. Though I consider myself a scientific-minded person, sometimes you don’t have that simple luxury of being a hard-nosed skeptic. That’s because when I was 10 years old, I was nearly killed after being shot through the stomach with a hunting rifle. It was a bitter cold January day in northern Minnesota -- about 15-below zero (Fahrenheit). As I lay crumpled and bleeding on a frozen farm field crusted with icy snow, I suddenly lifted out of my body like a hand slipping out of a glove. Floating free like a duplicate ghost of myself, I felt a wondrous blissful calm -- a dynamic stillness that was yet electrifying and dazzling. On the ground I was dying, but floating above, I was hyper-alive! I was razor aware! I felt fantastically expanded! Also, to be suddenly released from the stunning, exploding pain which had shattered my being just seconds before was like the relief of salvation itself! But most of all, to find myself so obviously and clearly detached from the body which I previously thought was “all of me” was an astounding experience which changed my life forever.

My near death experience is long story, and perhaps I’ll tell it fully another day. Suffice it to say, however, that once you have had the experience of leaving your physical body behind with some other aspect of who or what you are, simply brushing that experience aside and dismissing it is not easily done. Thus, I was launched on a life-long journey to understand what happened to me that day. I wanted to know if what I experienced was a kind of elaborate illusion produced by those natural defense mechanisms which protect the human body from severe trauma -- or if it was something more, such as evidence that we possess a soul, an astral body -- or some kind of electromagnetic version of ourselves that can exist independently of the physical form.After all these years, and more than two decades of intense experimentation with out-of-body travel, I am still undecided if the OBE is literal, objective soul travel, or something than can be explained in more scientific terms. Let me just say, I now believe that absolutely anyone, with some effort, can induce and experience an OBE. Many good methods exists. There are even tools on the market that can help you achieve “astral travel.” Some of the best tools are provided by the Monroe Institute, founded by famed OBE advocate Robert Monroe, author of “Journeys Out of Body.” Monroe developed an elaborate series of audio technologies called “Hemi-Sync” which purportedly forces the two halves of the brain to work together in greater synchronization, providing greater power of focus, and thus making it easier for you to project yourself out-of-body. I’ve experimented with Hemi-Sync extensively and my conclusion is that it works fantastically! (And I’m not saying that because I’m on their payroll).Other avenues to the OBE exist as well. One excellent way to trigger an OBE is by way of the lucid dream -- a dream in which you know you are dreaming. Here again there is technology to help. The Lucidity Institute based at Stanford University has developed a series of ‘dream masks” which you wear to bed at night, and which will send light and sound signals to you into the dream state, prompting you to “come awake” in your dreams. Once you achieve a lucid dream, it is a short step from there to launch yourself into a full-blown out-of-body experience.

I have experimented extensively with the “NovaDreamer” model, and am delighted by how well it works.But I achieved my own first consciously-directed OBE without using any of these kinds of technologies. Rather, I experimented with methods that have been handed down through the centuries by dream yogis, Sufi masters, shamans of many cultures, and other more recent practitioners of the OBE, such as author Rick Stack and most notably, Jane Roberts, writer of the famous Seth books. It was my feeling that if I could trigger an OBE in a safe and conscious way -- without having to nearly suffer a near-death trauma -- then the issue would be finally resolved in my mind. I thought: “If I can have a bona fide OBE, I will have then determined if there is something more than just the physical body, that there is life after death, and that our physical existence is not all that there is.”Well, I was not only able to trigger an OBE in a comfortable and directed way, but I also developed the ability to do it again and again, almost at will -- but the result did not bring be the final resolution I had hoped for. Indeed, my experiences with OBEs only created more questions than answers, although the journey has been fun, fascinating, mind blowing and mind expanding along the way!Why did my OBE experiences produce more questions than answers? Here's the thing: If one is going to approach this in an objective and scientific way, the many alternate explanations that exist for what we are experiencing in the out-of-body state must be considered. Even though the astral travel experience seems extremely real -- that it seems like we are literally floating around above our beds looking down upon our sleeping bodies -- a strong case can be made that we are not actually, objectively “out-of-body.” Instead, we may be experiencing an extremely vivid lucid dream, or an event that is entirely rooted within the brain. Sleep researcher Dr. Stephen LaBerge, author of “Exploring the World of Lucid dreaming,” offers a very good explanation of the OBE phenomenon.

LaBerge puts it this way in his book:“Out-of-body experiences often give us the compelling impression that we have two distinct and separate bodies: the physical, earthly body and the more ethereal, astral one. In fact, a person experiences only one body, the body image -- the brain’s representation of the physical body. The body image is what we experience anytime we feel embodied, whether in our physical, dream or astral out-of-bodies.”Of course, the folks at the Monroe Institute and others strongly dispute this, and point to experiments in which subjects, via their astral bodies, have been able to identify targets placed in other rooms. Yet, as far as I know, these kind of target identification experiments are shaky and inconclusive best, and no one has never been able to consistently demonstrate the ability to “remote view” objects, people or places by way of astral projection. Again, Monroe researchers and others dispute this, and I will say, some of their research and results are compelling.As for myself, I remain on the cusp. I tend to tilt toward the LaBerge explanation of what is going on when we experience OBEs -- an yet -- and yet -- there have been so many times when I have been in the out-of-body state, and the experience can be so real, so amazing, so exotic, so unexpected, so solid -- it just seems there is no way that what I experience could be a “brain only event.” A case in point is something I have come to call “The Starry Tunnel Ride.” Very often when I induce an OBE, I float out of my body, only to be sucked into a vast, whirling vortex, very much like the “worm holes” encountered by the Star Ship Enterprise on Star Trek. I find myself blasting along a seeming whorling rend in the very fabric of space, stars zipping by, a whining buzz engulfing my senses. And where do the tunnels lead? Sometimes to amazing places -- alternate dimensions, strange planets, ancient castles, exotic forests, different time periods -- but other times, I pop out right back in my room! The whole Tunnel ride seems to have been for nothing. Why? It’s all so weird, and yet so tantalizing! The Starry Tunnel Ride never fails to be an unpredictable cosmic crap shoot!I’ll put more of my OBE adventures on my blog, including a deeper description of the Starry Tunnel and where it leads, but let me conclude here for now by saying that my experiments continue. And at this point in my study of the OBE, I'll say this: On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I am convinced that astral travel is just that -- real soul travel. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, I’m convinced astral travel can be explained in more mundane and scientific terms. On Sundays, I rest.

[Rasputin]

Thousands flock to Malaysian 'ghost tree'

Thousands of people have been flocking to a small and hitherto unremarkable village in northern Malaysia to see what is being called the "ghost-tree" - a tree on which what appears to be a grotesque human face has appeared. It is a betel nut tree, a type of palm that is as common and everyday a sight in the tropics as an oak tree in rural Britain. But etched on one of the fronds of this particular tree is something that looks like a monstrous face, its teeth bared in a snarl and its eyes lost in shadow.It may sound like the plot of a Scooby-Doo cartoon, but people in rural Malaysia are taking it very seriously. Village elders have warned the thousands coming to see the face just to look and not to make any comments, for fear of arousing the wrath of the ghost.You could be forgiven for suspecting the locals have been indulging a little too much in chewing the betel nuts, the mildly intoxicating fruit of the tree, which are popular in many parts of Asia.

Sceptics have pointed out that the face appears to have changed dramatically since the first pictures of it emerged a few days ago, and become considerably larger, more distinct, and scarier and suggested that enterprising locals may have decided to give the thousands flocking to the site more to look at.Villagers have, after all, been selling photographs of the apparition to visitors for 2 ringgits (30p) apiece. But the credulous insisted the changing shape of the face over the days was just further evidence of its ghostly nature.

[Rasputin]

Madonna sparks controversy on the cross

Madonna has played her first ever concert in Russia, singing suspended from a cross in a segment the Orthodox Church said was blasphemous. The singer performed in Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium, marking the end of the Europe leg of her Confessions tour. About 7,000 police joined tens of thousands of fans in the stadium. The show passed off without incident, but some protestors were detained outside. Madonna, 48, has kept a low profile since arriving in Moscow on Monday. Her gig was delayed to avoid a clash with 11 September anniversary events. The venue was also switched at the last minute because of security fears. Tuesday's concert began with the singer descending from the roof in riding gear singing Future Lovers - a song from her recent Confessions On A Dancefloor album. "Hello Russia! Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for coming," she shouted to the crowd.

The show was unchanged from earlier European dates, including the controversial segment where Madonna sings Live To Tell while suspended from a mirrored cross. During the song, Madonna wears a crimson blouse and a crown of thorns. The singer says the performance is part of an appeal for Aids charities. The chairman of the Russian public committee for moral revival of the homeland, Aleksandr Shargunov, described the concert as a "satanic orgy".

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Alien "ID chart" to aid search for life

The search for planets with extraterrestrial life has gotten a new tool: an "ID chart" that scientists will use to compare alien worlds with Earth as it has appeared over the eons. Many astronomers say they expect to find Earthlike planets soon, when better technology enables them to spot small, distant worlds. "We believe that within 10 or 15 years we'll find the first planet that's Earthlike," said Lisa Kaltenegger, an astrophysicist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "Then the question will be, Is this a habitable planet?" To answer that question Kaltenegger and colleagues have created a historical model of the only planet known to have intelligent life—Earth. "We created a fingerprint for the Earth throughout its evolution so that we can compare it to any planet that we find and, we think, say if there is life on it," Kaltenegger explained.

The gases in a planet's atmosphere provide the unique fingerprint for such a comparison. Scientists examine atmospheric conditions on worlds too distant to visit by using visible and infrared light. The mix of gases in a planet's atmosphere creates a unique spectrum—a colorful fingerprint—that reveals conditions on the planet's surface.