Announcement – “How to Feed the World in 2050?” – Online Discussion on the FSN Forum from 16 September 2009
By Jay Pearlman, posted on August 26th, 2009 in Agriculture, Announcements, Health
How can we ensure that enough food is available for and accessible to a growing world population?
The Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum) invites interested parties to discuss these and other questions related to the future of agriculture.
To join the discussion, please register online at http://km.fao.org/fsn/fsn-regform/ or participate by requesting a temporary subscription at fsn-moderator@fao.org. Contributions can be made in English, French or Spanish.
Results of the debate will help prepare the High-Level Expert Forum on “How to Feed the World in 2050″, scheduled to take place at FAO headquarters in Rome on 12-13 October 2009. For more information on this event, please consult http://www.fao.org/wsfs/forum2050. Specifically, a summary of the online discussion will be presented to attendants of the meeting while their reactions will be posted on the FSN website for additional feedback.
For further information on the FSN Forum, please contact: fsn-moderator@fao.org
NASA Daily Image
Remnant of a Supernova
Vital clues about the devastating ends to the lives of massive stars can be found by studying the aftermath of their explosions. In its more than twelve years of science operations, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has studied many of these supernova remnants sprinkled across the galaxy. The latest example of this important investigation is Chandra's new image of the supernova remnant known as G350.1-0.3. This stellar debris field is located some 14,700 light years from the Earth toward the center of the Milky Way. Evidence from Chandra and from ESA's XMM-Newton telescope suggest that a compact object within G350.1+0.3 may be the dense core of the star that exploded. The position of this likely neutron star, seen by the arrow pointing to "neutron star" in the inset image, is well away from the center of the X-ray emission. If the supernova explosion occurred near the center of the X-ray emission then the neutron star must have received a powerful kick in the supernova explosion. Data suggest this supernova remnant, as it appears in the image, is 600 and 1,200 years old. If the estimated location of the explosion is correct, this means the neutron star has been moving at a speed of at least 3 million miles per hour since the explosion. Another intriguing aspect of G350.1-0.3 is its unusual shape. Many supernova remnants are nearly circular, but G350.1-0.3 is strikingly asymmetrical as seen in the Chandra data in this image (gold). Infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (light blue) also trace the morphology found by Chandra. Astronomers think that this bizarre shape is due to stellar debris field expanding into a nearby cloud of cold molecular gas. The age of 600-1,200 years puts the explosion that created G350.1-0.3 in the same time frame as other famous supernovas that formed the Crab and SN 1006 supernova remnants. However, it is unlikely that anyone on Earth would have seen the explosion because of the obscuring gas and dust that lies along our line of sight to the remnant. These results appeared in the April 10, 2011 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/I. Lovchinsky et al; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech