First Mercury images in orbit show lots of craters (AP)

NEW YORK – The first batch of hundreds of photos taken in orbit of Mercury show numerous battle scars on the tiny planet. They are from space rocks regularly pelting Mercury at high speeds, scientists said.

NASA's Messenger spacecraft, the first to orbit Mercury, reveals a pock-marked planet full of craters from pieces of asteroids and comets. Mission chief scientist Sean Solomon said that what is surprising to scientists so far is that there are more secondary craters than expected. Those are craters created by the falling soil kicked up from space rock collisions.

Solomon said the craters look different from those on the moon because the space rocks are moving faster and hit Mercury harder.

___ Online:

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/

Reuters correspondent and photographer missing in Syria (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – Two Reuters journalists are missing in Syria.

Diplomatic sources said on Wednesday that correspondent Suleiman al-Khalidi, a Jordanian national based in Amman, had been detained by the Syrian authorities in Damascus on Tuesday.

Photographer Khaled al-Hariri, a Syrian based in Damascus, has not been in contact with colleagues since Monday.

A Syrian official said authorities were working to establish what had happened to the two men.

"Thomson Reuters is deeply concerned about the whereabouts of our colleagues Khaled al-Hariri and Suleiman al-Khalidi," Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen Adler said.

"We call upon the Syrian authorities to help us urgently in ensuring their safe and timely release. Reuters remains committed to reporting from the Middle East and we are working round the clock to protect our staff in these challenging times."

Khalidi, who has worked for Reuters for more than 20 years in Jordan, Kuwait, Syria and Iraq, was last seen in the old city of Damascus on Tuesday. He has not answered his mobile telephone since shortly after 2 p.m. (1200 GMT) on Tuesday.

Hariri, who has also worked for Reuters for more than 20 years, was last seen arriving at the Reuters bureau in Damascus on Monday morning. He has not been in touch since then and has not answered his mobile telephone.

Their disappearance follows the detention in Syria of two Reuters television journalists, producer Ayat Basma and cameraman Ezzat Baltaji. They were held incommunicado for two days before being released by Syrian authorities on Monday.

Both Lebanese, they were expelled to Lebanon. They had been working in Syria since the previous week.

Reuters correspondent Khaled Yacoub Oweis, a Jordanian who had been based in Damascus, was expelled from Syria on Friday for what a Syrian Information Ministry official described as his "unprofessional and false" coverage of events.

Reuters said it stood by its coverage from Syria, where nearly two weeks of protests have posed the biggest challenge to President Bashar al-Assad's 11-year rule.

Also on Wednesday, the Libyan government expelled a Reuters correspondent from Tripoli. Two weeks ago, Saudi Arabia expelled the Reuters foreign correspondent from Riyadh.

(Reporting by Dominic Evans, editing by Alastair Macdonald.)

Veto of GOP-drafted aviation bill is threatened

WASHINGTON ? �The White House warned House Republicans on Wednesday that a bill to provide long-term authority for aviation programs faces a possible veto if lawmakers persist in proposed funding cuts or include a provision strongly opposed by labor unions.

The bill, which would reduce Federal Aviation Administration funding about $4 billion through 2014, is tentatively scheduled to be debated on the House floor on Thursday.

If approved, the funding reductions come at time when the agency had anticipated a larger, not smaller, budget. FAA is ramping up its program to move from an air traffic control system based on World War II radar technology to one based on GPS technology.

The program is expected to cost the government as much as $20 billion over the next decade and industry another $22 billion. Much of the rest of the world is either using satellite-based air navigation and air traffic control or is in the process of upgrading to GPS technology.

FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt has already warned lawmakers that he won't make cuts in areas critical to safety. That means implementation of a new air traffic system could be delayed.

"If funding were appropriated at the levels proposed in the bill, the safe and efficient movement of air traffic in the air and on the ground would be degraded ? today and in the future," the White House said in a statement.

Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which drafted the bill, was almost apologetic about the measure's funding levels in comments to an aviation industry luncheon on Wednesday.

The bill's funding cuts are "within the bounds of what I have to achieve to have it pass on the floor," Mica said.

Alluding to the determination of House Republican to cut federal spending, Mica said: "I venture to say even a Mother's Day resolution that had appropriations tied to it would be defeated."

The bill also contains a provision that would overturn a new rule that makes it easier for unions to organize airline and railroad workers. The rule, approved last year by the National Mediation Board, allows employees to form a union by a simple majority of those voting. Under the old rule, workers who didn't vote were treated as "no" votes.

Republicans complain that the new rule reverses 75 years of precedent to favor labor unions. Democrats and union officials say the change puts airline and railroad elections under the same democratic rules required for unionizing all other companies.

___

Associated Press writer Sam Hananel contributed to this report.

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Terror suspect in Bali bombings caught in Pakistan (AP)

WASHINGTON – A senior Indonesian al-Qaida operative wanted in the 2002 Bali bombings has been arrested in Pakistan, a rare high-profile capture in the war on terror that could provide valuable intelligence about the organization and possible future plots.

Umar Patek, a suspected member of the al-Qaida-linked militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, was arrested earlier this year in Pakistan, foreign intelligence sources said Tuesday.

It's not clear if Pakistan stumbled on Patek or his capture was the result of an intelligence tip. Details about what he was doing in Pakistan also remain murky, raising questions about whether he was there to plan an attack with al-Qaida's top operational leaders as the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks looms over the U.S.

Patek, 40, a Javanese Arabic man, is well-known to intelligence agencies across the world. He's believed to have served as the group's deputy field commander in the nightclub bombings that left 202 people dead, many of them foreigners.

The U.S. was offering a $1 million reward for the arrest of the slight Patek — who's known as the "little Arab " — in the attack that killed seven Americans.

News of his arrest came from two intelligence officials in Indonesia and Philippines. Patek's exact whereabouts were not immediately known. Both spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the information.

The question of what to do with him could become a key indicator of how President Barack Obama will handle major terrorist suspects captured abroad. However, American officials declined to comment on the case.

Under former President George W. Bush, he likely would have been moved into the CIA's network of secret prisons. For instance, one of Patek's accused co-conspirators in the nightclub bombing, Hambali, spent years in the prison system and is now being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But the CIA's secret prisons are closed and Obama is trying to empty Guantanamo, not add new inmates.

Patek is believed to have been among a group of Indonesians, Malaysians and Filipinos who traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan during the 1980s and 1990s for training and fighting.

On their return to Southeast Asia, they formed Jemaah Islamiyah, blamed for a string of suicide bombings targeting nightclubs, restaurants, hotels, and a Western embassy in Indonesia. Together more than 260 people have died.

Patek fled to the southern Philippines after the Bali bombings, seeking refuge and training with both the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the largest Muslim separatist group, and later, the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf, security experts have said.

But he is believed to have remained heavily engaged in Jemaah Islamiyah operations at home. His arrest in Pakistan is likely to raise questions over how such a high-profile terrorist can travel across international borders. There are also likely to be competing interests among intelligence agencies as each jockey for control over Patek.

In March 2010, Patek was believed to be in the Sulu province in the far southern Philippines. According to the Jamestown Foundation, a national security policy institute in Washington, Patek was one of the "last senior JI (Jemaah Islamiyah) commanders with significant experience" in the original Afghan al-Qaida camps and longstanding ties to the international jihadist network and its donors.

___

Associated Press writers Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines; Chris Brummitt in Islamabad, Pakisan; and Matt Apuzzo in Washington D.C. contributed to this report.

Dark Matter Heat Could Make Planets Habitable

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Dark Matter Heat Could Make Exoplanets Habitable

• By Lisa Grossman
• March 30, 2011  | 
• 12:39 pm  | 
• Categories: Space

Dark matter collecting inside exoplanets could heat some cold worlds enough to support life, even without the warm glow of starlight.

Alien-hunting astronomers generally search for planets that lie just far enough from their stars to keep from boiling off or freezing any liquid water, which is thought to be a prerequisite for carbon-based life. But other heat sources could potentially warm up a chilly planet that is outside this habitable zone.

One possibility is radioactive elements decaying inside rocks, which already give the Earth about 0.025 percent of its geothermal energy. Another is a thick atmosphere to drive a greenhouse effect, which renders Venus an inhospitable hot house. Some have even suggested that planets that have been kicked out of their solar systems could still support life beneath a thick atmosphere or a shell of ice.

In a new paper posted on arXiv.org and submitted to the Astrophysical Journal, physicists Dan Hooper and Jason Steffen of Fermilab in Illinois suggest an exotic internal radiator for cold, rocky planets: dark matter. In certain parts of the galaxy, they say, dark matter could effectively outshine the sun.

“It?s not something that?s likely to produce a lot of habitable planets,” Hooper said. “But in very special places and in very special models, it could do the trick.”

Dark matter is the name given to the mysterious stuff that makes up about 83 percent of the matter in the universe, but generally ignores regular matter. No one knows exactly what dark matter is, but one of the most popular theories says it’s made of hypothetical particles called WIMPs — weakly interacting massive particles — that interact with regular matter only through the weak nuclear force and gravity. WIMPs are also their own antiparticles: Whenever one WIMP meets another, they annihilate each other in a burst of energy.

If those explosions happen inside a planet, they could warm the world enough to melt ice, Hooper and Steffen suggest.

Physicists are still waiting for WIMPs to show themselves by colliding with detectors in deep underground mines. But the fact that the detectors haven’t seen anything conclusive yet puts limits on how heavy and large the particles can be. If WIMPs were bigger or heavier than a certain theoretical limit, physicists reason, the particles would have shown up by now.

Hooper and Steffen considered two possible model WIMPs that interact as often as they possibly can while still being consistent with the experiments, one particle that’s 300 times heavier than a proton and one that’s just 7 times the proton’s mass. Then they calculated how much energy the explosions from colliding these hypothetical dark matter particles would contribute to the planet’s overall warmth.

On Earth, they found, dark matter doesn’t make a difference. Earth lies in a part of the Milky Way where dark matter is relatively thin, so it contributes at most one megawatt of energy to Earth’s internal thermostat. By contrast, the Earth absorbs about 100 petawatts, or 100 quadrillion watts, from the sun.

But in the dark matter-rich centers of galaxies, WIMPs could be a contender. The researchers considered rocky planets that lie within 30 light-years of the galactic center, and found that planets with masses 10 times greater than Earth’s could scoop up enough dark matter to generate 100 petawatts of energy. That could be enough energy to keep liquid water on their surfaces, even without the aid of a nearby star.

“This is a fascinating, and highly original idea,” said exoplanet expert Sara Seager of MIT, who was not involved in the new study. “Original ideas are becoming more and more rare in exoplanet theory.”

She points out that the idea is limited to WIMPs, though — if dark matter turns out to be something else, it won’t work. She also notes that these planets would be too far away for followup observations, a point on which Hooper agrees.

“I don?t foresee any way of detecting such planets any time in the near future,” he said.

If dark matter-heated planets exist, it’s not clear that they would resemble Earth at all. They may not have solid, rocky surfaces for liquid water to pool on, or a molten mantle to drive plate tectonics.

“It?s very possible that this would look like a very different type of planet than the ones we?re used to,” Hooper said.

But dark matter-heated planets have one advantage over planets that are tied to a star. Halos of dark matter can sit undisturbed at the centers of galaxies almost indefinitely, much longer than the lifetimes of individual stars.

“You can imagine planets being heated in this sort of way for literally trillions of years,” Hooper said. “In the far future when all the stars have burnt out in our galaxy, all the surviving civilizations may find themselves migrating to these sorts of planets. They’ll be the ultimate bastion of civilization.”

Image: An artist’s rendition of the planetary system around the star 55 Cancri. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

See Also:

• Dark Matter May Be Building Up Inside the Sun
• Signs of Destroyed Dark Matter Found in Milky Way’s Core
• Rogue Planets Could Harbor Life
• The Difference Between ‘Habitable’ and ‘Habitable Zone’
• A Habitable Exoplanet ? for Real This Time
• New Study Finds No Sign of ‘First Habitable Exoplanet’

Lisa is a Wired Science contributor based loosely in Seattle, Washington.
Follow @astrolisa and @wiredscience on Twitter.

Tags: bullshit artist rendering, dark matter, exoplanets, fermilab

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Cavaliers top LeBron, Heat 102-90 (AP)

CLEVELAND – In an unbearable season of losses, Cleveland got the win it wanted most.

The Cavaliers took down LeBron James.

Despite blowing a 23-point lead, the Cavs battled back and beat the Miami Heat 102-90 on Tuesday night, getting a dose of revenge against James, who was making his second homecoming visit to Cleveland since leaving last summer.

J.J. Hickson scored 21 and Anthony Parker scored 20 for the Cavs, who were embarrassed by James and the Heat 118-90 on Dec. 2 — a night when Cleveland fans unleashed their hatred on the superstar.

This time, James left the floor hanging his head. He finished with 27 points, 12 assists and 10 rebounds.

In the closing seconds, a sellout crowd of 20,562 cut loose at a victory even the most loyal Cleveland fan couldn't have imagined. Cavs owner Dan Gilbert, who accused James of quitting in last year's playoffs after the two-time MVP announced he was joining Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in a poorly conceived TV special, high-fived anyone within reach.

On the floor afterward, Parker, whose last 3-pointer with 2:47 left capped a 12-0 run and put the Heat away, addressed Cavs fans.

"You guys deserve it," he said.

The Cavaliers were a different team — literally — from the one that laid down against the Heat here in December. Injuries and trades have reduced Cleveland's roster to a shell of the one James played with and helped win 60 games last season.

The Heat nearly rallied from 23 down, and tied it at 83-all on Mike Bibby's seventh 3-pointer with 7:03 left. But Miami, which wasted a chance to move into second place in the Eastern Conference standings, went scoreless for 4:24, allowed the Cavs to get their 15th win and post their most lopsided win this season.

Wade added 24 for the Heat, who had their winning streak stopped at five.

Cleveland shot 56 percent from the field, a number that Heat coach Erik Spoelstra will certainly use to motivate his team to play better defense as it gets ready for the postseason.

Baron Davis made his first start since coming to Cleveland in a trade, and the veteran scored 10 points and provided leadership. The Cavs also got a big lift from center Ryan Hollins, who had 13 points, three blocks and played physically — something none of Cleveland's players did in December.

There wasn't the same venom and hatred that shrouded James' first visit four months ago. The crowd was energetic but not as outwardly angry toward James, who was booed every time he touched the ball. Security was extremely high, but there were no reported incidents.

The teams took turns going on extended runs in a wild, back-and-forth third quarter.

Cleveland scored 18 straight points and opened a 71-48 lead, sending their fans into a frenzy and putting the Heat in a deep hole. But Miami was a long way from done as Wade hit a pair of 3-pointers and scored 10 points in a 19-1 spurt that pulled the Heat within 72-67 on James' jumper.

Christian Eyenga's 3-pointer with 2 seconds left put the Cavs ahead 75-67. James flung a 3-pointer from a few steps beyond halfcourt to end the quarter, a shot that was initially ruled no good but changed after the officials reviewed TV replays between periods and determined there was a clock malfunction.

James arrived at the arena that was his pro basketball home for seven seasons at 5:12 p.m. Wearing headphones and a shirt with the inscription: "Long Live The King," James went through security and waved to a few guards before ducking into the visitor's locker room for the second time.

James wasn't sure what he would be facing, but he was confident things would not be nearly as hostile as his previous visit.

"I expect the worst," he said. "But worse than last time, Dec. 2? No."

James dodged the first barrage of boos by staying in the locker room during player introductions. He entered the arena under the cover of darkness while the Cavs were being introduced.

After James' return in December, the Cavs were criticized by their fans for the way they acted around their former teammate. Fans felt there was far too much joking around, and they thought someone needed to step up to James and deliver a hard foul.

Hollins took it upon himself to get physical, hitting with Wade with a forearm. Moments later, the two had words and were both assessed technicals.

Hickson knocked James on his rear in the lane later in the first quarter, but James made the shot as he fell to the floor and completed the three-point play. He finished the quarter with 13 points, but didn't score in the second when the Cavs built a 16-point lead.

Miami cut it in half with an 8-0 run, but Davis knocked down a 3-pointer at the horn to give the Cavs a 53-42 halftime lead.

Notes: Heat F Mike Miller sat out with a bruised knee that Spoelstra described as "slightly sprained." Miller will be re-evaluated when his knee "calms down," Spoelstra said. ... During a timeout in the second quarter, a fan made a 3-pointer and won $10,000.