On the radar

News from the world of science

Mars walk is simulated

Humans walked on Mars this week – well, not really. But it might have felt that way to volunteers participating in a simulated trip to the red planet. The Mars500 mission at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow has seen six men isolated in a container for eight months on a mock journey to the red planet.

On Monday, two of the crew got to step onto the simulated planet’s terrain, according to the European Space Agency.

“Today, looking at this red landscape, I can feel how inspiring it will be to look through the eyes of the first human to step foot on Mars,” said Diego Urbina at the start of a “Marswalk” with colleague Alexandr Smoleevskiy.

Sunflowers losing lustre?

Why have yellow hues in some of Van Gogh’s creations faded so quickly? To find out, a team at the European Synchotron Facility used UV light to artificially age historical samples of lead-chromate yellow paint from leftover tubes, one of which turned brown.

They used X-rays to examine the sample as well as analysing flecks from affected areas of Van Goghs Bank of the Seine (1887) and View of Arles with Irises (1888). In both cases the darkening of the chrome yellow was linked to the chromium being reduced.

Most scientific disciplines are finding the data deluge to be extremely challenging: tremendous opportunities can be realised if we can better organise and access the data

From the introduction to a special online collection, 'Dealing with Data', published byScience