Radio astronomy gets grant boost

Jodrell Bank in Cheshire is home to the Lovell Telescope

Scientists from the University of Manchester are to benefit from a ten million euro grant designed to support radio astronomy across Europe.

The university's Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics co-ordinates RadioNet - a network of the major radio astronomy observatories across Europe.

The money will support research into multi-pixel radio cameras and analysing signals received by radio telescopes.

The project will also organise workshops and schools for students.

"Over the past five years, RadioNet has transformed radio astronomy in Europe," said Professor Phil Diamond, director of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics.

"It is now natural for radio astronomers to think in terms of European collaboration as the way to proceed."

RadioNet funding will also support operations of the e-Merlin telescope array, via Trans-National Access, enabling others across Europe to make best use of this major new facility.

eMerlin is the upgrade to a network of seven radio astronomy stations - from Jodrell and its 76m Lovell Telescope in the North West, to Lords Bridge, just outside Cambridge in East Anglia.

By linking the stations together using optic-fibre cables, eMerlin can mimic a single super-sensitive radio-telescope spanning 217 km.

It has been described as the radio astronomy equivalent of the Hubble Space Telescope - a 'radio camera'

RadioNet involves 26 partners from 13 different countries.

'Crunch year' for world's forests

By Mark Kinver Science and environment reporter, BBC News

Whether protecting rainforests will give nations a pot of gold remains to be seen

Efforts to mitigate climate change could be hampered if nations do not agree to protect the world's forests by the end of the year, warn researchers.

Earthwatch says it is vital for leaders attending a key UN summit in December to find a way to halt deforestation.

Deforestation accounts for about 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities, UN data shows.

The environmental charity will outline its concerns during a public lecture in central London on Thursday evening.

"This year is the crunch time for forests and climate change," Earthwatch's head of climate change research Dan Bebber told BBC News.

"We are hoping for big things from the Copenhagen climate summit at the end of 2009," he added, referring to a much anticipated UN gathering.

"Unless we tackle the question of forests as a mitigation method for climate change, then we will really have lost the battle to keep greenhouse gas concentrations below levels that many people would consider to be dangerous."

Raising awareness

Despite the measures introduced by the UN's Kyoto Protocol on climate change, global emissions of CO2 have continued to rise as a result of increasing energy consumption and the loss of forest cover.

Until now, rainforests have been worth more dead than alive

The reason why deforestation accounts for about 20% of CO2 emissions from human activities is primarily a result of old growth tropical forests being felled or burned in order to convert the fertile land into farmland.

The issue is one of the key topics on the agenda at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, which will consider how the global climate strategy will look when Kyoto expires in 2012.

"This year is going to be critical and we feel we need to raise public awareness about this issue as much as possible," Dr Bebber said.

"There have been some very strong pressures to use forests in an unsustainable way, particularly in the tropics.

"You could probably make a thousand times more money by converting tropical forests to agricultural land to grow, for example, soya beans than you could managing it in a sustainable way.

"It is this imbalance that needs to be addressed at a global level."

Growing money on trees

Gro Harlem Brundtland, the UN secretary general's climate change envoy, said that emissions from deforestation were comparable to total annual CO2 emissions of the US or China.

Forests 'facing a testing time'

"Deforestation therefore has to be included in the new climate change agreement," she told delegates at a UN Committee on Forestry meeting in Rome earlier this month.

"While forests were left out of the Kyoto Protocol, it must now find its place within the broader solution."

In order to tackle deforestation effectively, Dr Brundtland said it was necessary to develop a regime that "creates the necessary incentives for developing countries to act in the broader interest of... the planet".

In October 2008, the Eliasch Review - commissioned by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown - concluded that an international deal to protect forests would reduce the cost of tackling climate change by up to 50% in 2030.

The report by Swedish businessman Johan Eliasch said cash put aside for carbon saving in rich countries could be transferred to nations with rainforests in need of protection.

Such a scheme could reduce deforestation rates by up to 75% in 2030, Mr Eliasch concluded.

The leading contender to cut the loss of tree cover is a scheme called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).

Forest plan may 'fuel corruption'

It first came to light during negotiations at the 2007 UN climate summit, hosted by the Indonesian island of Bali.

The resulting "Bali Action Plan" called for "policy approaches and positive incentives on issues relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries".

This led to the formation of REDD, which states that nations "willing and able to reduce emissions from deforestation should be financially compensated for doing so".

Supporters of the scheme say it will offer the necessary financial incentive to halt large areas of tropical forests being felled.

However, critics of the scheme are sceptical about how the system of carbon credits will be regulated.

Whatever scheme is favoured, Dr Bebber, who will be one of the speakers at the Earthwatch Lecture on Thursday evening, says it is vital that delegates at the Copenhagen climate summit reach an agreement on a way to curb deforestation.

He warned: "If these types of schemes do not get up and running shortly, then we will have really missed the boat."

80-ton asteroid's impact recorded

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The scientists produced a 3D visualisation as part of the study.

Scientists from Queen's University in Belfast have become the first to study an asteroid before it impacts with Earth.

The asteroid in question, 2008 TC3, weighed 80 tonnes and had a diameter of four metres.

It landed in the Nubian Desert in Sudan last October, where it scattered after exploding at an altitude of 37km.

Astronomers from Queen's Astrophysics Research Centre observed the asteroid as it hurtled toward Earth and captured the only spectrum of it before it exploded in our atmosphere.

"This was the first ever predicted impact of an asteroid with the Earth and the very first time an asteroid of any size has been studied before impact," said Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, from Queen's.

"The faint observed brightness implied a small size, which in turn meant there was little advance warning.

"It was important to try and figure out what type of asteroid it was before impact in order to give us a better idea of its size and where it came from."

The scientists were only able to track the 2008 TC3 thanks to a lucky coincidence which saw astronomers from two institutions in Northern Ireland at the William Herschel Telescope on La Palma at the same time.

They were Sam Duddy and Dr Henry Hsieh from Queen's and Dr Gavin Ramsay from The Armagh Observatory.

"Dr Gavin Ramsay from the Armagh Observatory was scheduled to use the telescope that night," said Sam.

"When we realised this was an unusual event, Dr Ramsay agreed to help us observe it.

"It was an exciting couple of hours, planning the details of the observations. Performing the observations of an object that was certain to impact the atmosphere was a great but challenging experience."

Dr Ramsay added: "These observations were technically quite difficult. The William Herschel Telescope really rose to the challenge, demonstrating what a versatile telescope it is. There was a great sense of excitement in the control room."

Larger impacts with asteroids and comets the size of mountains occur every few tens of millions of years Professor Richard Crowther

Some small fragments survived the high-altitude explosion that vaporised most of the delicate asteroid.

Dr Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute in California, teamed up with Dr Muawia Shaddad and 45 students of the University of Khartoum to search the Nubian Desert.

Fifteen meteorites were recovered over an area 29km-long along the calculated approach path of the asteroid.

According to Dr Jenniskens: "The recovered meteorites were unlike anything in our meteorite collections up to that point. The asteroid has been confirmed as a rare type called F-class, corresponding to dark ureilite achondrite meteorites with a texture and composition unlike any other ureilite meteorites found on earth before."

The spectrum gathered by the astronomers allowed them to establish the first direct link between an asteroid and the individual meteorites produced as it breaks up in our atmosphere.

The 2008 TC3 weighed 80 tonnes and had a diameter of four metres

Comparing the asteroid and meteorite data tells us that 2008 TC3 may have only spent a few million years existing in the inner Solar system before it hit our planet.

Professor Richard Crowther of the Science and Technology Facilities Council and chair of the UN working group that deals with Near Earth Object (NEO) threats said: "The search for and study of asteroids is extremely important as not all impacts are as harmless as this small one in October.

"Larger impacts of the size associated with the Tunguska event of 1908 occur every few hundred years and even larger impacts with asteroids and comets the size of mountains occur every few tens of millions of years.

"Any extra knowledge we can gain about asteroids will help us mitigate the potential effects of such impacts in the future."

'Too popular' green scheme closed

By Sarah Mukherjee Environment correspondent, BBC News

Environmental campaigners say they are astonished at the government's decision to suspend a scheme which gave grants to schools, hospitals and other public buildings to switch to renewable energy.

The Low Carbon Buildings Programme has apparently been too popular - particularly with those hoping to install solar panels.

"Is it working?"

"Yes - I think so - the yellow one is."

Two young children pore over a rather unseasonal little cardboard Christmas tree, as the LED lights that adorn it glow rather dully under cloudy skies.

The flickering glow that the lights emit is coming not from a plug, but from the sky - in the shape of a small, palm-sized solar photovoltaic (PV) panel, held towards the lowering clouds.

And this might be as close as the Eco-club pupils of Great Missenden School in Buckinghamshire get to seeing solar PV in action.

Staff had hoped that their application for a grant to put up solar PV panels would be considered, but now they've been told they've missed out.

"They've run out of money - it's been very popular," says Margaret Dixon, the school's librarian, who's been heading up the application.

The government appears to be taking the renewables industry apart Ed Matthew Friends of the Earth

"It would obviously be lovely if we could get some money because it's such a wonderful technology and such an example to the local community to have it happening here at the school.

"We were also hoping for solar panels on the church as well, which would have been great for Great Missenden as a whole."

The school is hoping it might get some funding from the National Lottery, but, like many others, it now finds itself having to look for other forms of cash for its solar plans.

Those within the renewable energy industry say this state of affairs is no surprise.

The Renewable Energy Association says it warned the government in February that the money within the scheme was going to run out for PV.

They say cash allocated for other renewable technologies is likely to remain unspent, because nobody has applied for it.

But the government has not re-allocated this cash to the ultra-popular solar PV, so, the association says, it is likely that about

Briny pools 'may exist on Mars'

By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News, The Woodlands, Texas

The probe had surpassed its expected lifetime by more than two months

Pools of salty water might be able to exist just below the surface of Mars, planetary scientists believe.

Researchers previously thought water existed largely as ice or as vapour on Mars, because of the low temperatures and atmospheric pressure.

But Nasa's Phoenix lander has shown the presence in Martian soil of perchlorate salts, which can keep water liquid at temperatures of minus 70C.

Pockets of brine might form when soil interacted with ice.

Researchers have been discussing the idea at the 40th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), here in The Woodlands, Texas.

They were presenting some of the first scientific results from Phoenix, which touched down on Mars's northern plains on 25 May 2008.

"I do think those pools might exist. But there's still more to know about the properties of these perchlorate solutions, such as what their vapour pressure is," Dr Mike Hecht, from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, explained.

Soil dampness

Phoenix used thrusters to slow its descent to the surface. And these blew away topsoil, exposing water-ice just centimetres beneath.

Dr Hecht said: "Here are all these perchlorate salts right under them, by a few centimetres, is a slab of [water ice]. It doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to say that those two materials will interact.

One of Phoenix's great achievements was to "touch" the water-ice

"And once you get dampness, the perchlorate is very soluble and it will become mobile."

On Earth, perchlorates - salts derived from perchloric acid - are used in solid rocket fuel, fireworks and airbags. Scientists are just starting to understand the important roles they may play on Mars.

Dr Hecht said that forming pockets of liquid on Mars would require just the right concentrations of perchlorate salts. He commented: "In this case we have very little perchlorate and vast slabs of ice, so I can imagine we have an excess of water. This means you would form a pool of low temperature brine if the two ever interacted."

Other researchers cautioned that the concentrations of these salts found at the Phoenix landing site remained a small component of the overall soil chemistry, and that more had to be done to test the idea.

Nevertheless, Dr Hecht said the discovery of these compounds made the Red Planet seem more Earth-like in several respects.

Big tilt

Perchlorates might be controlling the amount of water vapour in the midday atmosphere, according to separate evidence presented by Dr Troy Hudson of JPL.

And their presence might also explain why neither Phoenix nor the 1970s Viking landers found no firm evidence for "organics" - molecular compounds which contain carbon (though excluding carbonates for historic reasons).

These molecules are a crucial component in the search for possible biology on the Red Planet.

"The perchlorates, as you heat them in the oven (onboard Phoenix), release their oxygen and combust the organics," Peter Smith, the mission's chief scientist, told the conference.

"It's ironic: the two compete as you heat them. We did see CO2 release, but we're not sure whether that was from organics or not."

Professor Smith said several lines of evidence pointed to the past action of liquid water on the northern plains. These included the presence of aqueous minerals, cloddy, cemented soil and the discovery that some of the ice was "segregated", as if it had melted.

"It's probable that in a warmer, wetter climate, as when the obliquity (the extent to which Mars is tilted on its axis) changes, this could be a place where liquid water is found. That doesn't mean it's a lake. It just means that the soil is wet," Professor Smith, from the University of Arizona, explained.

Dr Nilton Renno thinks he has seen evidence of salty liquid-water droplets

The discovery of calcium carbonate in the soil is also suggestive of the past action of liquid water. The substance is found in rocks all over Earth and is the main component in limescale.

Peter Smith said it occurred at levels of 3-5% at the Phoenix landing site, probably forming as carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere dissolved into liquid water, forming a weak acid which leached calcium out of the soil.

But Dr Nilton Renno, from the University of Michigan, US, presented evidence that droplets of liquid water could actually be seen in photographs of a strut of the spacecraft's landing leg.

"The (spheroids) move, drip and merge," Dr Renno explained.

But Mike Hecht and Dr Tom Pike, from Imperial College London, UK, believe the droplets are more likely to be frost.

"The photographs are clipped from the corners of relatively low resolution images, so the number of pixels across those droplets is very small. Trying to ascribe shapes to them, to say they are spheres - which are characteristic of liquid - is going beyond the quality of the images," said Mike Hecht.

Secondly, he thought the thermodynamics of the Martian environment were not consistent with the relatively large changes in the sizes of droplets seen in the images.

Eventual demise

Dr Renno told the conference that ice particles were usually not just spheroidal, and did not move in the way the droplets did.

Mike Hecht said frost was able to move more readily in the Martian environment than it did on Earth because of the thin air.

However, the JPL scientist emphasised his agreement with Dr Renno on most areas concerning the properties of perchlorates at the Phoenix landing site.

Launched from Earth in August 2007, Phoenix landed further north than any previous mission to the Martian surface.

It conducted science operations for more than five months before succumbing to the cold and dark of the Martian winter. The robot dug, scooped, baked, sniffed and tasted the Martian soil to test whether it has ever been capable of supporting life.

It became the first mission to Mars to sample the water-ice it found just centimetres below the topsoil. Chunks of ice were seen to vaporise before the lander's cameras.

Phoenix landed further north than previous missions

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

UK ships super-telescope's 'ears'

The Alma satellite array will probe the earliest, most distant galaxies

The first European-built receiver for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (Alma) is due to leave the UK for its permanent home in Chile.

Alma will be the largest radio telescope array to be built, comprising 66 12m-wide antenna dishes.

The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (Ral) in Oxfordshire will assemble and test 26 of the receivers that detect the faint signals from the antennas.

The first receiver is expected to arrive at the Alma site on Saturday.

The array will look in the sub-millimetre wavelength range to learn more about the formation of stars and galaxies.

"Observing sub-millimetre waves allows you to see parts of the universe that are obscured by dust," says Mark Harman, technical manager for the receiver project at Ral.

"The Hubble telescope obviously has an impressive resolution, but it can't see the sub-millimetre radiation from behind these dust clouds."

'Exciting'

The Alma site sits atop a plateau 5,100m high in the Andes

Alma is a one billion euro international collaboration, employing expertise from North America, East Asia, and Europe - where the project is being overseen by the European Southern Observatory.

Saturday will mark the arrival of the first significant European-built technology; two receivers and two antennas from North America and Asia are already on the site.

Each super-precise antenna dish forms the "outer ear" of the telescopes in the array, collecting and focusing the faintest signals from some of the oldest galaxies in the Universe.

But it is the three-quarter tonne receivers that will act as the high-sensitivity "eardrums" that will measure the signals. The superconducting receivers are cooled to -269C (-452F) to increase their sensitivity.

"This is a major step forward for the Alma project," said Gie Han Tan, who is a project manager for the European contingent of Alma receivers.

"It's a collaboration between three continents from more than 10 sites, and this is the first one from Europe that will go into a full production run.

"This is really exciting for us."

Heavy lifting

Alma will get its unprecedented resolution by carefully mixing the signals from each telescope in the 66-strong array in an approach called interferometry.

See the antenna transporter in action

The 100-tonne antennas will be individually moved by truck a few times a year, depending on whether observations require a wide field of view or super-high resolution.

One integrated antenna/receiver system is currently being assembled at the observatory's Operations Support Facility - a base camp at an altitude of 2,900 metres (9,500 feet).

The first single system will be transported by truck up to the array's site at an altitude of 5,000 metres, with the first measurements to begin in June.

The third receiver that will begin its journey on Wednesday, in conjunction with a third antenna which will arrive soon from the US, will allow the Alma team to integrate three of the systems and begin interferometry tests in September.

As one of the three "central engineering control points" for the Alma receivers, Ral sources the component parts from the UK, mainland Europe and North America, assembling and rigorously testing the final product before its journey to Chile.

The comparison of signals arriving at different times depends crucially on precisely timing each one, and Ral will also be producing the laser-based timing systems for the interferometry.

Balancing the global need for meat

VIEWPOINT Carlos Sere

While meat is all too abundant in the rich North, it is very often a life-saving source of protein in the developing South, says Carlos Sere. In this week's Green Room, he says backing a worldwide curb on meat consumption is likely to do more harm than good.

Livestock production remains an essential pathway out of poverty in many poor countries

Daisy the cow, the emblem of healthy wholesome living, is under attack in rich countries.

She is deemed to be destroying the environment by emitting tonnes of greenhouse gases and contributing to an upsurge of obesity and heart disease.

But Daisy, and her farmyard cousins Billy the goat and Porky the pig, are treasured in poor countries.

These animals provide protein, nourishment, and a livelihood to more than a billion poor people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Rich and poor worlds are colliding when it comes to the value of livestock production and consumption.

In this case, both points are understandable - for their own worlds. The rich world may need to cut back on livestock consumption and production, but the poor world cannot afford to do so.

'Factory farming'

According to a recent report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, livestock production, dominated in the West by large-scale factory farming, is responsible for 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions; a bigger share than all of the world's transport.

Livestock producers in rich countries practice factory farming, which can treat animals inhumanely and depends on vast amounts of resources

But as the world moves to address climate change and reduce emissions, we must make sure that the push to reduce the environmental impact of livestock production in rich countries does not hurt the availability of milk, meat, eggs, and other products in developing countries.

While people in rich nations are harming their health by eating too much fatty red meat and cheese, many people in the cities and rural areas of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, particularly children and women in their child-bearing years, are malnourished because they are not consuming enough eggs, meat, and milk.

Research shows that very modest amounts of animal-sourced foods in the diets of the poor can have tremendous health benefits.

Milk and meat enhance the growth and cognitive development of children subsisting largely on starchy diets.

Livestock producers in rich countries practice factory farming, which can treat animals inhumanely and depends on vast amounts of resources, particularly in the forms of water, cereals, and energy.

However, most livestock producers in poor countries operate small family farms with just a few animals that, while producing methane gas, roam free and eat grass and other wastes rather than grain.

Meeting needs

Concern for the environment is legitimate, but it should not override concern for the livelihoods of 1.2 billion poor people.

Policymakers and aid agencies need to use different strategies for different regions and populations

Science can serve as an honest broker in the complex and often controversial debate over livestock and environmental issues.

Our role may be inconvenient to some, but empirical evidence is needed in this discussion.

The global agricultural research community is working to develop a more comprehensive, integrated agenda that should provide crucial, objective evidence on the trade-offs between food security, livelihoods and the environment.

Our research tells us that we can often protect the livestock livelihoods of poor people while also conserving environmental resources.

Among the ideas being discussed in rich countries to reduce consumption of livestock foods are a "methane tax" on large feeding operations.

It is based on emission measurements and encouraging a "locavore" movement, creating demand for local livestock products not produced by large-scale, factory farm operations.

Such ideas are worth considering, but they will need research analyses and political debate, and eventual buy-in, to take hold.

Livestock production remains an essential pathway out of poverty in many poor countries, where increasing consumption of animal products also helps reduce malnutrition among the poorest communities.

When allocating resources for agricultural development, which is a long-neglected sector, policymakers and aid agencies need to use different strategies for different regions and populations.

Now we need both worlds to understand one another.

The view from the North and the South - from the feedlots of Chicago and the semi-desert scrublands of Somalia and Ethiopia, from those who eat too much protein and those who eat too little - is very different.

When advocating policies that affect the developing world, we must respect all ways of life, including those born of necessities now remote in the developed world.

If you are asking people in New York, London or Tokyo to reduce their meat consumption for the good of their health and the environment, that is reasonable.

But asking a family on the edge of the Sahara Desert or the outskirts of the packed slums of Mumbai to give up protein from animal foods, particularly milk, is a quite different request.

As a proverb in the Horn of Africa goes: if the herds die, then the people will die too.

Dr Carlos Sere is executive director of the International Livestock Research Institute

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website

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Do you agree with Dr Carlos Sere? Are calls to cut meat consumption failing to take into account the needs of the world's poorest communities? Are intensive farming methods wasteful and exacerbating the environmental impacts of the global livestock sector? Or are there more environmentally benign ways for people to get their vital intake of protein?

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Arctic trek team pushes forward

The team has travelled just over 60km in three weeks

The British team trying to measure the thickness of Arctic sea-ice as it treks to the North Pole believes the weather is finally turning in its favour.

Pen Hadow, Martin Hartley and Ann Daniels have experienced torrid conditions since being dropped on to the ice three weeks ago.

Temperatures have been down to -40C with wind chill, and the drifting ice has blunted their progress.

But the trio say they are now covering more than 10km (six miles) a day.

The Catlin Arctic Survey team is using a novel mobile radar dragged behind one of its sledge to record the thickness of the sea ice.

Vital re-supply flights eventually got through to the team

The data will be used to calibrate satellite observations of the Arctic ice, and to constrain the computer models that are used to forecast its likely response to climate change.

The endeavour came very close to a premature end last week when re-supply flights were grounded and the team got down to its last 12,000 calories of rations.

Pen Hadow - the first person to walk solo, unsupported to the North Pole - said the conditions faced by the team at the beginning of the trek were among the worst he had ever seen in the region.

Weather reports suggest more favourable winds in the days ahead, allowing the trio to make more rapid progress towards their goal.

The team has not been able to transmit its radar data direct from the Arctic, as was hoped. Instead, the information gathered so far has been put on to a digital card and handed to a returning re-supply flight.

Call to 'shut down' Street View

Images of 25 cities are viewable via Google Street View

A formal complaint about Google's Street View has been sent to the Information Commissioner (ICO).

Drawn up by privacy campaigners, it cites more than 200 reports from members of the public identifiable via the service.

Privacy International wants the ICO to look again at how Street View works.

"The ICO has repeatedly made clear that it believes that in Street View the necessary safeguards are in place to protect people's privacy," said Google.

Privacy International (PI) director Simon Davies said his organisation had filed the complaint given the "clear embarrassment and damage" Street View had caused to many Britons.

He said Street View fell short of the assurances given to the ICO that enabled the system to launch.

"We're asking for the system to be switched off while an investigation is completed," said Mr Davies.

"The Information Commissioner never grasped the gravity of how a benign piece of legislation could affect ordinary lives," he added.

Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt: "We get sued every day"

In July 2008, the ICO gave permission for Street View to launch partly because of assurances Google gave about the way it would blur faces and registration plates.

Since Street View launched in the UK on 19 March, PI has been contacted by many people identifiable via the service.

Among them were a woman who had moved house to escape a violent partner but who was recognisable outside her new home on Street View.

Also complaining were two colleagues pictured in an apparently compromising position who suffered embarrassment when the image was circulated at their workplace.

The ICO said it had received the complaint from PI and would respond "shortly".

It added: "It is Google's responsibility to ensure all vehicle registration marks and faces are satisfactorily blurred.

"Individuals who feel that an image does identify them (and are unhappy with this) should contact Google direct to get the image removed," it added.

Google has removed some images following complaints

"Individuals who have raised concerns with Google about their image being included - and who do not think they have received a satisfactory response - can complain to the ICO."

"Data protection is a question of taking reasonable steps," said Nick Lockett, an IT lawyer with DL Legal.

"If Street View is infringing privacy then almost anything you can do with data is going to be infringing privacy," he added.

Struan Robertson, a legal director at Pinsent Masons, said he did not think the turning on of Street View would result in court action against Google for breaching privacy.

"That's largely because we have got rulings from the courts on when a photograph risks privacy rights and when it does not," he said.

Recent cases in the courts have revolved around whether the focus of a camera was on an individual. Google's Street View, which snaps the whole scene, would seem to pass that test, he said.

Responding to the filing of the complaint, Google said: "Before launching Street View we sought the guidance and approval of the independent and impartial Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

In a statement Google said the ICO had re-iterated its confidence that Street View did enough to protect privacy.

"The fact that some people have used the tools in place to remove images shows that the tools work effectively," it added.

"Of course, if anyone has concerns about the product or its images they can contact us and we look forward to hearing from them," it said.

Mr Davies said the ICO should take another look at Street View because of the promises Google gave about the efficacy of its face-blurring system.

In its complaint, PI said Google's assertion that its face blurring system would result in a "few" misses was a "gross underestimation".

This meant, said the complaint, that the data used for Street View came under Data Protection legislation which requires that subjects give permission before information is gathered.

"The promised privacy safeguards do not provide adequate protection to shield Street View from the general requirement of notice and consent," said the complaint.