French volunteers who lived in a cave with no phones, clocks, or sunlight for 40 days say it was 'great'
Julian Kossoff
Business Insider Sun, April 25, 2021, 10:40 AM
french cave volunteers
Volunteers leave the Lombrives cave after spending 40 days in the cave in Ussat-les-Bains, southern of France, on April 24, 2021. Fred Scheiber/AFP via Getty Images
French volunteers have emerged from a cave after spending 40 days with no clocks or phones.
They took part in the Deep Time project, which explored the limits of human isolation.
Two-thirds of the group say they wanted to stay in the cave for longer.
Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Fifteen volunteers have emerged from a cave in the southwest of France after spending 40 days without clocks, phones, or sunlight for a human isolation experiment.
The group of eight men and seven women lived in the Lombrives cave as part of a $1.4 million project called Deep Time, which set out to explore the limits of human adaptability to isolation. The project, led by the Human Adaption Institute, ended on Saturday after 40 days.
Social media footage from the day shows the smiling volunteers emerging from the cave to a round of applause while wearing special sunglasses to protect their eyes after so long in the dark.
Related: 22 inventions that could save the earth
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During their time in the cave, the volunteers slept in tents and made their own electricity with a pedal bike since there was no natural light. They also drew water from a well 146 ft below the earth.
Since there was no sunlight, the team had to follow their biological clocks to know when to sleep, eat, or do daily tasks.
To no one's surprise, they quickly lost their sense of time.
Project director Christian Clot, who was also part of the group, told reporters Saturday: "And here we are! We just left after 40 days … For us, it was a real surprise," according to the Guardian.
One volunteer said they thought he had been underground for 23 days.
The group had no communication with the outside world and was not able to use phones or other electronic devices.
One volunteer, math teacher Johan Francois, said he ran 6-mile circles in the cave to stay fit. He told reporters he had "visceral urges" to leave the cave, according to the BBC.
But other volunteers felt differently, with two-thirds saying they wanted to stay in the cave for longer.
"For once in our lives, it was as if we could press pause," Marina Lançon, one of seven women to take part in the experiment, said, according to the Guardian. "For once in our lives, we had time and could stop to live and do our tasks. It was great."
However, Lançon did admit to feeling happy to be outdoors and hear birdsong again.
French and Swiss scientists at the Human Adaption Institute monitored the volunteers closely during their time in the cave. They would regularly check the team's sleeping patterns, social interactions, and cognitive functions via sensors.
The volunteers' brain activity was also collected before and after they entered the cave.
The scientists behind the project say it will help them understand how people can adapt to extreme living conditions and being in complete isolation.
"Our future as humans on this planet will evolve," Clot said after emerging from the cave. "We must learn to better understand how our brains are capable of finding new solutions, whatever the situation."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/fr ... 53324.html
Articles of Interest in Science
New Renewable Fuel May be 3 Times More Powerful Than Gasoline
Editor OilPrice.com
Sun, June 6, 2021, 6:00 PM
The U.S. Department of Energy is now backing continued research of an incredible fuel that has up to three times the energy content of gasoline.
More importantly, it could be the only fuel on earth that produces zero emissions when burned.
Until recently, this remarkable fuel was considered too dangerous and expensive to be used commercially…
But a new technological breakthrough appears to have made the adoption of this super fuel much more likely.
And one little-known company – Headed by an ex NASA Engineer - AmmPower Corp. (CSE:AMMP; OTC: AMMPF) – appears to be miles ahead of the competition…
In a market that’s projected to grow to over $81 billion.
Not a bad position to be in when the DOE has expressed its commitment to continued research for the comprehensive development, demonstration, and commercialization of this energy source.
This up-and-coming energy source harnesses the second-most widely used inorganic chemical in the world…
So supply shouldn’t be an issue.
But getting your hands on the technology that makes this all possible… well we think that is no easy task.
HARNESSING A RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCE THAT MAY BE 3X MORE POWERFUL -- AND CLEANER -- THAN GASOLINE
Throughout the history of the energy industry, new--more powerful--sources of energy have started off small … and then come to dominate the industry for a time.
From coal ... to petroleum ... to natural gas... And now, renewables.
Each new energy source had a scientific problem to overcome before widespread adoption.
With coal, the advancement of the steam engine in the 19th century dramatically improved the efficiency of coal mining and transport during the Industrial Revolution.
With petroleum, the Scottish chemist James Young devised a method to refine paraffin from crude oil for easy transport.
With natural gas, it was being able to cool it to -160° C to form Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) so it could be used for profitable and safe transportation in ships.
For decades, scientists have been researching how to bring one new energy source – an energy source with nearly three times more energy than gasoline--online.
And now one unknown company (with a former NASA scientist at the helm) may have figured out the next stage of the renewable story…
In short: We think this company could become one of the biggest beneficiaries of a new market that might take over renewables...
A market that is projected to grow to $81 billion by 2025.
For decades, lithium had been thought to be the solution to the clean energy movement.
Unfortunately, it has been proven that lithium will not be able to provide enough power for long-range trucks... ocean-going freighters... military vehicles...trains… planes... jets, and more.
Why? The story of energy transitions through history has been a constant move toward fuels that are more energy-dense and convenient to use than the fuels they replaced.
Fossil fuels are the most energy-dense, making them hard to replace.
At 53.1 MJ/kg, natural gas boasts the highest energy density of any fossil fuel, followed by gasoline at 45.8MJ/kg, and coal at 30.2MJ/kg.
Lithium-ion batteries--one of the most effective ways to store renewable energy--can only afford an energy density of 0.504MJ/kg. That’s 91 times less energy density than gasoline!
So, while lithium could become the predominant energy carrier for small vehicles like cars and small vans...
It simply doesn't appear to have enough power density to become practical for HEAVY industries.
But now finally... scientists may be able to harness a NEW renewable replacement that CAN easily power heavy industry.
So, what has nearly 3X more energy than gasoline?
And is a widely used inorganic chemical?
HYDROGEN.
But, until now, the technology didn't exist to transport it safely and economically.
That's where AmmPower Corp. (CSE:AMMP; OTC: AMMPF) comes in...
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/finance ... 00038.html
Editor OilPrice.com
Sun, June 6, 2021, 6:00 PM
The U.S. Department of Energy is now backing continued research of an incredible fuel that has up to three times the energy content of gasoline.
More importantly, it could be the only fuel on earth that produces zero emissions when burned.
Until recently, this remarkable fuel was considered too dangerous and expensive to be used commercially…
But a new technological breakthrough appears to have made the adoption of this super fuel much more likely.
And one little-known company – Headed by an ex NASA Engineer - AmmPower Corp. (CSE:AMMP; OTC: AMMPF) – appears to be miles ahead of the competition…
In a market that’s projected to grow to over $81 billion.
Not a bad position to be in when the DOE has expressed its commitment to continued research for the comprehensive development, demonstration, and commercialization of this energy source.
This up-and-coming energy source harnesses the second-most widely used inorganic chemical in the world…
So supply shouldn’t be an issue.
But getting your hands on the technology that makes this all possible… well we think that is no easy task.
HARNESSING A RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCE THAT MAY BE 3X MORE POWERFUL -- AND CLEANER -- THAN GASOLINE
Throughout the history of the energy industry, new--more powerful--sources of energy have started off small … and then come to dominate the industry for a time.
From coal ... to petroleum ... to natural gas... And now, renewables.
Each new energy source had a scientific problem to overcome before widespread adoption.
With coal, the advancement of the steam engine in the 19th century dramatically improved the efficiency of coal mining and transport during the Industrial Revolution.
With petroleum, the Scottish chemist James Young devised a method to refine paraffin from crude oil for easy transport.
With natural gas, it was being able to cool it to -160° C to form Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) so it could be used for profitable and safe transportation in ships.
For decades, scientists have been researching how to bring one new energy source – an energy source with nearly three times more energy than gasoline--online.
And now one unknown company (with a former NASA scientist at the helm) may have figured out the next stage of the renewable story…
In short: We think this company could become one of the biggest beneficiaries of a new market that might take over renewables...
A market that is projected to grow to $81 billion by 2025.
For decades, lithium had been thought to be the solution to the clean energy movement.
Unfortunately, it has been proven that lithium will not be able to provide enough power for long-range trucks... ocean-going freighters... military vehicles...trains… planes... jets, and more.
Why? The story of energy transitions through history has been a constant move toward fuels that are more energy-dense and convenient to use than the fuels they replaced.
Fossil fuels are the most energy-dense, making them hard to replace.
At 53.1 MJ/kg, natural gas boasts the highest energy density of any fossil fuel, followed by gasoline at 45.8MJ/kg, and coal at 30.2MJ/kg.
Lithium-ion batteries--one of the most effective ways to store renewable energy--can only afford an energy density of 0.504MJ/kg. That’s 91 times less energy density than gasoline!
So, while lithium could become the predominant energy carrier for small vehicles like cars and small vans...
It simply doesn't appear to have enough power density to become practical for HEAVY industries.
But now finally... scientists may be able to harness a NEW renewable replacement that CAN easily power heavy industry.
So, what has nearly 3X more energy than gasoline?
And is a widely used inorganic chemical?
HYDROGEN.
But, until now, the technology didn't exist to transport it safely and economically.
That's where AmmPower Corp. (CSE:AMMP; OTC: AMMPF) comes in...
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/finance ... 00038.html
Scientists find hundreds of examples of mysterious radio blasts coming from deep in the universe
Andrew Griffin
Wed, June 9, 2021, 11:23 AM
Scientists say they have found hundreds more examples of mysterious blasts of radio energy coming from deep in the universe.
The number of the fast radio bursts catalogued has dramatically increased, after a Canadian telescope detected 535 new examples.
Fast radio bursts are intensely powerful, but extremely short, blasts of energy that reach us from unknown sources in the distant universe. Researchers have been looking for their source for years, since they were first discovered in 2007, with only 140 examples of them to go by.
Now, however, that number has quadrupled. Researchers using a Canadian telescope known as CHIME say they have found 535 examples in its first year of operation, between 2018 and 2019.
As well as vastly expanding the current catalogue of FRBs, it has led to the discovery of what appear to be specific kinds of them: some repeat, while others don’t. Of the sources, 18 seem to repeat and the rest do not – and those that repeat have different characteristics, lasting a little longer and emitting in more focused frequencies.
Researchers have assembled the findings into a new FRB catalogue, which they hope can be used to further understand where the blasts are coming from.
“Before CHIME, there were less than 100 total discovered FRBs; now, after one year of observation, we’ve discovered hundreds more,” said CHIME member Kaitlyn Shin, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Physics, in a statement.
“With all these sources, we can really start getting a picture of what FRBs look like as a whole, what astrophysics might be driving these events, and how they can be used to study the universe going forward.”
The researchers hope that the results can be used not only to study FRBs themselves, but to use them to measure other important characteristics of the universe. They may serve as a way to map how gas is distributed throughout the cosmos, for instance.
“Each FRB gives us some information of how far they’ve propagated and how much gas they’ve propagated through,” said Shin.
“With large numbers of FRBs, we can hopefully figure out how gas and matter are distributed on very large scales in the universe. So, alongside the mystery of what FRBs are themselves, there’s also the exciting potential for FRBs as powerful cosmological probes in the future.”
Researchers are still searching for whatever extreme and exotic conditions are able to throw out such energy for such a short period. While speculation has covered everything from black holes to extraterrestrial technology, the leading theory is that they are the result of outbursts from young magnetars, or neutron stars with very powerful magnetic fields.
That theory was boosted further last month by researchers who tracked the bursts down to their exact locations, finding that many of them were placed on the outstretched curvy tentacles of spiral galaxies.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/finance ... 00892.html
Andrew Griffin
Wed, June 9, 2021, 11:23 AM
Scientists say they have found hundreds more examples of mysterious blasts of radio energy coming from deep in the universe.
The number of the fast radio bursts catalogued has dramatically increased, after a Canadian telescope detected 535 new examples.
Fast radio bursts are intensely powerful, but extremely short, blasts of energy that reach us from unknown sources in the distant universe. Researchers have been looking for their source for years, since they were first discovered in 2007, with only 140 examples of them to go by.
Now, however, that number has quadrupled. Researchers using a Canadian telescope known as CHIME say they have found 535 examples in its first year of operation, between 2018 and 2019.
As well as vastly expanding the current catalogue of FRBs, it has led to the discovery of what appear to be specific kinds of them: some repeat, while others don’t. Of the sources, 18 seem to repeat and the rest do not – and those that repeat have different characteristics, lasting a little longer and emitting in more focused frequencies.
Researchers have assembled the findings into a new FRB catalogue, which they hope can be used to further understand where the blasts are coming from.
“Before CHIME, there were less than 100 total discovered FRBs; now, after one year of observation, we’ve discovered hundreds more,” said CHIME member Kaitlyn Shin, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Physics, in a statement.
“With all these sources, we can really start getting a picture of what FRBs look like as a whole, what astrophysics might be driving these events, and how they can be used to study the universe going forward.”
The researchers hope that the results can be used not only to study FRBs themselves, but to use them to measure other important characteristics of the universe. They may serve as a way to map how gas is distributed throughout the cosmos, for instance.
“Each FRB gives us some information of how far they’ve propagated and how much gas they’ve propagated through,” said Shin.
“With large numbers of FRBs, we can hopefully figure out how gas and matter are distributed on very large scales in the universe. So, alongside the mystery of what FRBs are themselves, there’s also the exciting potential for FRBs as powerful cosmological probes in the future.”
Researchers are still searching for whatever extreme and exotic conditions are able to throw out such energy for such a short period. While speculation has covered everything from black holes to extraterrestrial technology, the leading theory is that they are the result of outbursts from young magnetars, or neutron stars with very powerful magnetic fields.
That theory was boosted further last month by researchers who tracked the bursts down to their exact locations, finding that many of them were placed on the outstretched curvy tentacles of spiral galaxies.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/finance ... 00892.html
Scientists have solved the mystery behind India's devastating flood that killed 200 people in February
Aylin Woodward
Thu, June 10, 2021, 3:59 PM
chamoli disaster
The destroyed Tapovan Vishnugad hydroelectric plant after a devastating flood on February 7, 2021. Irfan Rashid/Department of Geoinformatics, University of Kashmir
A massive slab of ice and rock broke off a glacier in the mountains of northern India in February.
New research suggests the slab fell a mile down, resulting in a rare flood that killed 200 people.
A warming climate is linked to more glacier-related landslides, so experts expect to see more of such floods.
Imagine a wall of rock and ice 1,800 feet wide falling the length of four Empire State Buildings stacked end-to-end.
A slab that size is responsible for the disaster in northern India that killed more than 200 people and destroyed two power plants four months ago, according to a new study published Thursday.
Just before dawn on February 7, a massive chunk broke off a glacier on Ronti Peak in the Indian Himalayas. The slab dropped more than a mile into the valley below, from its position roughly 18,000 feet above ground, at almost 134 miles per hour.
As the chunk landed, the rock disintegrated and the ice melted, creating a wall of water and debris that swiftly funneled into the river valley below. From there, the mixture cascaded toward the Rishiganaga and Tapovan hydropower plants in India's Chamoli district. After a curve in the valley slowed the sludge down, it swept into tunnels underneath the plants at speeds of up to 56 miles per hour, trapping and killing many workers inside.
The severity of the event, known as the Chamoli disaster, initially stumped scientists. Typically, landslides in the region don't kickstart floods as rapid or lengthy as the one that occurred in February.
"A 'normal' dry rock avalanche would not have traveled as far as this one did - in other words, would not have reached either the Rishiganga or Tapovan hydroplants," Dan Shugar, a geoscientist at the University of Calgary and co-author of the new study, told Insider.
Shugar's team discovered key elements that could explain the disaster's severity: The initial avalanche's composition (about 20% ice and 80% rock), coupled with its mile-long fall, resulted in a hyper-mobile torrent of debris that doomed workers in the valley below.
The researchers calculated that the flood was 27 million cubic meters in volume - enough to cover more than 1,600 football fields in 10 feet of debris and still have some left over.
The flood climbed 722 feet up the valley walls
chamoli disaster
A computer model shows the path of the Chamoli rock and ice avalanche down Ronti Peak in February 2021. Ashim Sattar/University of Zurich
Flooding and landslides are not uncommon in Uttarakhand, the area of northern India where Chamoli is located. In 2013, heavy rainfall set off devastating floods in the area than killed up to 5,700 people.
After the February disaster, experts initially thought a lake near the top of Ronti Peak had burst after the chunks of glacier holding it together cracked or broke off. Some glacial lakes can hold hundreds of millions of cubic meters of water.
But satellite imagery showed there were no such lakes along the debris flow's path.
By analyzing maps of the valleys' terrain, video footage of the event, and earthquake data in the area, Shugar's team was able to reconstruct what happened.
The chunk of glacier that broke off Ronti Peak in the early morning was, on average, 262 feet thick. When it touched down at the mountain's base, the slab flattened a section of nearby forest, and threw a thick dust cloud into air. The impact with the valley floor was so violent that the rock and ice therein blended together to form a flood that climbed 722 feet up the valley walls.
It was "almost the 'optimal' combination" for melting glacier ice, Holger Frey, a glaciologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, told Insider. The massive flood, he added, "facilitated the large reach and destructive nature of this disastrous event."
chamoli
The damaged Dhauliganga hydropower project at Reni village in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, India after part of a glacier broke off on February 7, 2021. Associated Press
'It's only a matter of time' until a disaster like this happens again
The flood caught workers at the hydroplants in Chamoli by surprise.
But according to the study, an early warning system could have given workers six to 10 minutes of notice before the flood reached them. Seismic sensors - which monitor rumblings in the Earth for signs of earthquakes or shifting rock - can detect when an avalanche happens and let workers know if a flood is on its way.
Even if the Chamoli disaster couldn't have been prevented, Frey said, "a well-designed warning system should be able to warn workers at these plants and allow them to seek safe grounds."
After all, the conditions that led to the Chamoli disaster aren't going to disappear any time soon.
"I expect this would be similar in high mountain Asia," he said.
Rising air and surface temperatures are linked to more instability in glaciers and an increasing likelihood of landslides high in the mountains. The warmer the Earth becomes, the more glaciers shrink.
"It's only a matter of time before the next such massive event will happen somewhere in the Himalayas," Frey said in a press release.
Read the original article on Business Insider
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/sc ... 58151.html
Aylin Woodward
Thu, June 10, 2021, 3:59 PM
chamoli disaster
The destroyed Tapovan Vishnugad hydroelectric plant after a devastating flood on February 7, 2021. Irfan Rashid/Department of Geoinformatics, University of Kashmir
A massive slab of ice and rock broke off a glacier in the mountains of northern India in February.
New research suggests the slab fell a mile down, resulting in a rare flood that killed 200 people.
A warming climate is linked to more glacier-related landslides, so experts expect to see more of such floods.
Imagine a wall of rock and ice 1,800 feet wide falling the length of four Empire State Buildings stacked end-to-end.
A slab that size is responsible for the disaster in northern India that killed more than 200 people and destroyed two power plants four months ago, according to a new study published Thursday.
Just before dawn on February 7, a massive chunk broke off a glacier on Ronti Peak in the Indian Himalayas. The slab dropped more than a mile into the valley below, from its position roughly 18,000 feet above ground, at almost 134 miles per hour.
As the chunk landed, the rock disintegrated and the ice melted, creating a wall of water and debris that swiftly funneled into the river valley below. From there, the mixture cascaded toward the Rishiganaga and Tapovan hydropower plants in India's Chamoli district. After a curve in the valley slowed the sludge down, it swept into tunnels underneath the plants at speeds of up to 56 miles per hour, trapping and killing many workers inside.
The severity of the event, known as the Chamoli disaster, initially stumped scientists. Typically, landslides in the region don't kickstart floods as rapid or lengthy as the one that occurred in February.
"A 'normal' dry rock avalanche would not have traveled as far as this one did - in other words, would not have reached either the Rishiganga or Tapovan hydroplants," Dan Shugar, a geoscientist at the University of Calgary and co-author of the new study, told Insider.
Shugar's team discovered key elements that could explain the disaster's severity: The initial avalanche's composition (about 20% ice and 80% rock), coupled with its mile-long fall, resulted in a hyper-mobile torrent of debris that doomed workers in the valley below.
The researchers calculated that the flood was 27 million cubic meters in volume - enough to cover more than 1,600 football fields in 10 feet of debris and still have some left over.
The flood climbed 722 feet up the valley walls
chamoli disaster
A computer model shows the path of the Chamoli rock and ice avalanche down Ronti Peak in February 2021. Ashim Sattar/University of Zurich
Flooding and landslides are not uncommon in Uttarakhand, the area of northern India where Chamoli is located. In 2013, heavy rainfall set off devastating floods in the area than killed up to 5,700 people.
After the February disaster, experts initially thought a lake near the top of Ronti Peak had burst after the chunks of glacier holding it together cracked or broke off. Some glacial lakes can hold hundreds of millions of cubic meters of water.
But satellite imagery showed there were no such lakes along the debris flow's path.
By analyzing maps of the valleys' terrain, video footage of the event, and earthquake data in the area, Shugar's team was able to reconstruct what happened.
The chunk of glacier that broke off Ronti Peak in the early morning was, on average, 262 feet thick. When it touched down at the mountain's base, the slab flattened a section of nearby forest, and threw a thick dust cloud into air. The impact with the valley floor was so violent that the rock and ice therein blended together to form a flood that climbed 722 feet up the valley walls.
It was "almost the 'optimal' combination" for melting glacier ice, Holger Frey, a glaciologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, told Insider. The massive flood, he added, "facilitated the large reach and destructive nature of this disastrous event."
chamoli
The damaged Dhauliganga hydropower project at Reni village in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, India after part of a glacier broke off on February 7, 2021. Associated Press
'It's only a matter of time' until a disaster like this happens again
The flood caught workers at the hydroplants in Chamoli by surprise.
But according to the study, an early warning system could have given workers six to 10 minutes of notice before the flood reached them. Seismic sensors - which monitor rumblings in the Earth for signs of earthquakes or shifting rock - can detect when an avalanche happens and let workers know if a flood is on its way.
Even if the Chamoli disaster couldn't have been prevented, Frey said, "a well-designed warning system should be able to warn workers at these plants and allow them to seek safe grounds."
After all, the conditions that led to the Chamoli disaster aren't going to disappear any time soon.
"I expect this would be similar in high mountain Asia," he said.
Rising air and surface temperatures are linked to more instability in glaciers and an increasing likelihood of landslides high in the mountains. The warmer the Earth becomes, the more glaciers shrink.
"It's only a matter of time before the next such massive event will happen somewhere in the Himalayas," Frey said in a press release.
Read the original article on Business Insider
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/sc ... 58151.html
How to Make Sense of Contradictory Science Papers
Published research is less about conclusions than science at play.
The science you can come across today can often appear to be full of contradictory claims. One study tells you red wine is good for your heart; another tells you it is not. Over the past year, COVID-19 research has offered conflicting reports about the overall effectiveness of wearing a mask. As scientists debate what policy best suits the current moment, they will be drawing on hundreds of studies; some that say masks are effective1 and some that say masks alone are not enough.2
Naturally, given its outsized influence on society—especially during a pandemic—people tend to regard published science highly. This means that many of us expect scientists to be prudent in reporting their results. These ought to be true and justified by evidence, right? And surely, at a bare minimum, the researchers themselves ought to believe in what they are publishing, yes? Maybe not. The bar for publishing might, counter-intuitively, be lower than one might expect. “Scientific conclusions,” as we titled our recent paper,3 “need not be accurate, justified, or believed by their authors.”
We’re not saying scientists generally lie about their published results (this has nothing to do with misconduct). Rather, we argue that scientific papers fulfill a useful social role by doing more than merely reporting on true discoveries. It’s enough for them to draw attention to an idea that is worth pursuing further—and an idea need not be true, well-justified given all our evidence, nor even believed by the scientist in order to pass that test. The peer-review process is, in fact, designed, not to detect fraud or data manipulation, but to select for what is noteworthy.4 What is considered unexpected and thought-provoking will not always track our all-things-considered judgments of what is true, but local community standards of best scientific practice having to do with how to go about data gathering and statistical testing.
For scientists to collectively inquire effectively, they need to communicate interesting ideas to each other that are worth pursuing. Consider Avi Loeb, a theoretical astrophysicist who proposed the provocative hypothesis, not without some supporting data, that ‘Oumuamua wasn’t a comet but an alien light-sail. He, presumably, knew that more data would need to be gathered, and a more thorough study would need to be conducted, before the hypothesis could be justifiably believed.
Nonetheless, perhaps it was appropriate for Loeb to publish his data and his hypothesis. He himself might even be agnostic toward the truth of the hypothesis. He likely knew that most of his colleagues would dispute his interpretation of the data, and with good cause. In spite of all this, it was still valuable for him to publicly communicate the possibility of a new hypothesis, because it can—and maybe actually did—spur more research into, and garner attention for, astronomy. Publishing those findings was not about communicating the truth but about saying that there is something exciting and interesting that requires further inquiry.
More...
https://nautil.us/issue/100/outsiders/h ... nce-papers
Published research is less about conclusions than science at play.
The science you can come across today can often appear to be full of contradictory claims. One study tells you red wine is good for your heart; another tells you it is not. Over the past year, COVID-19 research has offered conflicting reports about the overall effectiveness of wearing a mask. As scientists debate what policy best suits the current moment, they will be drawing on hundreds of studies; some that say masks are effective1 and some that say masks alone are not enough.2
Naturally, given its outsized influence on society—especially during a pandemic—people tend to regard published science highly. This means that many of us expect scientists to be prudent in reporting their results. These ought to be true and justified by evidence, right? And surely, at a bare minimum, the researchers themselves ought to believe in what they are publishing, yes? Maybe not. The bar for publishing might, counter-intuitively, be lower than one might expect. “Scientific conclusions,” as we titled our recent paper,3 “need not be accurate, justified, or believed by their authors.”
We’re not saying scientists generally lie about their published results (this has nothing to do with misconduct). Rather, we argue that scientific papers fulfill a useful social role by doing more than merely reporting on true discoveries. It’s enough for them to draw attention to an idea that is worth pursuing further—and an idea need not be true, well-justified given all our evidence, nor even believed by the scientist in order to pass that test. The peer-review process is, in fact, designed, not to detect fraud or data manipulation, but to select for what is noteworthy.4 What is considered unexpected and thought-provoking will not always track our all-things-considered judgments of what is true, but local community standards of best scientific practice having to do with how to go about data gathering and statistical testing.
For scientists to collectively inquire effectively, they need to communicate interesting ideas to each other that are worth pursuing. Consider Avi Loeb, a theoretical astrophysicist who proposed the provocative hypothesis, not without some supporting data, that ‘Oumuamua wasn’t a comet but an alien light-sail. He, presumably, knew that more data would need to be gathered, and a more thorough study would need to be conducted, before the hypothesis could be justifiably believed.
Nonetheless, perhaps it was appropriate for Loeb to publish his data and his hypothesis. He himself might even be agnostic toward the truth of the hypothesis. He likely knew that most of his colleagues would dispute his interpretation of the data, and with good cause. In spite of all this, it was still valuable for him to publicly communicate the possibility of a new hypothesis, because it can—and maybe actually did—spur more research into, and garner attention for, astronomy. Publishing those findings was not about communicating the truth but about saying that there is something exciting and interesting that requires further inquiry.
More...
https://nautil.us/issue/100/outsiders/h ... nce-papers
Nasa's giant SLS rocket: a guide
Paul Rincon - Science editor, BBC News website
Sun, June 20, 2021, 7:31 AM
Nasa has been developing a huge rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) to launch astronauts to the Moon - and eventually Mars. Set to make its debut in late 2021, the SLS is the most powerful launch vehicle built since the 1960s.
Nasa has plans to send a man and woman to the lunar surface this decade, in what will be the first landing with humans since Apollo 17 in 1972.
In the last 20 years, astronauts have been making routine trips to and from the International Space Station (ISS).
But the Moon is nearly 1,000 times further than the ISS; getting astronauts there requires a monster rocket.
The SLS is the modern equivalent of the Saturn V, the huge launcher built during the Apollo era. Like the Saturn, it is split into segments, or stages, stacked on top of each other. But the rocket also incorporates technology from the space shuttle.
The first version of the SLS will be called Block 1. It will undergo a series of upgrades in coming years so that it can launch heavier payloads to destinations beyond low-Earth orbit.
The Block 1 SLS will tower 23 storeys above the launch pad - making it taller than the Statue of Liberty.
"It is truly an immense rocket. It is just jaw-droppingly big," said John Shannon, vice president and program manager for the SLS at Boeing, the rocket's prime contractor. He told BBC News in 2019: "When you see the SLS put together, you just haven't seen anything like it since the Saturn V."
The rocket will launch astronauts in Nasa's next-generation crew vehicle - Orion, boosting it to the speeds necessary to break out of low-Earth orbit and travel onwards to the Moon.
How the rocket works
The SLS consists of a giant core stage flanked by two solid rocket boosters (SRBs). The core houses two large storage tanks: one for liquid hydrogen, the fuel, and another for liquid oxygen, an "oxidiser", which makes the fuel burn.
At the base of the core stage are four RS-25 engines, the same ones that powered the spaceplane-like shuttle orbiter, retired in 2011.
Workers inside the SLS hydrogen tank use a technique called friction stir welding to plug holes
Workers inside the huge SLS hydrogen tank use a technique called friction stir welding to plug holes
When liquid hydrogen and oxygen are fed into the engine chambers and ignited with a spark, the chemical reaction produces vast amounts of energy and steam.
The steam exits engine nozzles at speeds of 16,000 km/h (10,000 mph) to generate thrust - the force that propels a rocket through the air.
The SRBs give the rocket extra power to escape gravity's clutches. These twin boosters stand more than 17 storeys tall and burn six tonnes of solid propellant each second. They provide 75% of total thrust during the first two minutes of flight.
The most powerful rocket ever?
If we use thrust as a measure, the SLS will be the most powerful rocket ever when it flies to space in 2021. The Block 1 SLS will generate 8.8 million pounds (39.1 Meganewtons) of thrust at launch, 15% more than the Saturn V.
In the 1960s, the Soviet Union built a rocket called the N1, in a bid to reach the Moon. Its first stage could produce 10.2 million pounds (45.4 Meganewtons) of thrust. But all four test flights ended in failure.
A future version of the SLS - called Block 2 cargo - should approach the N1's thrust levels. But a vehicle called Starship, being developed by Elon Musk's company SpaceX, should exceed both - producing as much as 15 million pounds (66.7 Meganewtons) of thrust. Starship is currently under development, although there is no firm date for its first flight.
The SLS in numbers
The rocket will stand 98m (322ft) tall in its initial, or Block 1, configuration
The Block 1 SLS can send more than 27 tonnes (59,500 pounds) to lunar orbits - the equivalent of 11 large sports utility vehicles (SUVs)
A future version of the SLS, called Block 2 Cargo, will launch 46 tonnes (101,400 pounds) to the Moon. That's 18 large SUVs.
The SLS will produce 8.8 million pounds (39.1 Meganewtons) of thrust in its Block 1 configuration
Four RS-25 engines sit at the base of the core stage; they're the same ones used in the space shuttle
How shuttle technology was re-used
The SLS core stage is based on the space shuttle's foam-covered external tank. This tank fed propellant to three RS-25 engines at the rear of the shuttle orbiter. The solid rocket boosters play much the same role in both vehicles.
But the SLS is a very different beast. A number of components and structures derived from the shuttle underwent significant design changes because of the different levels of stress placed on them by the SLS.
As an example of these different stresses, in the space shuttle, the RS-25 engines were canted up and away from the solid rocket boosters. Moving them next to the SRBs exposes them to more shaking. As a result, every system in the complex SLS engine section had to be rigorously tested to ensure it could withstand the vibrations.
Why the SLS was built
In February 2010, the Obama administration cancelled Constellation - George W Bush's troubled plan to return to the Moon by 2020. The news came as a devastating blow to workers in five southern states - Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas - where Nasa's human spaceflight programme funded tens of thousands of jobs.
Some Capitol Hill legislators were furious. At the time, Richard Shelby, a republican senator from Alabama, said Congress would not "sit back and watch the reckless abandonment of sound principles, a proven track record, a steady path to success, and the destruction of our human spaceflight programme".
As a compromise, lawmakers from affected states insisted on a single super heavy-lift rocket to replace the Constellation launchers cancelled by the White House.
The SLS design was unveiled in 2011. After work started, delays and cost overruns gave ammunition to critics, who thought Nasa should rely on rockets operated by commercial providers.
But without significant modifications, no existing boosters have sufficient power to send Orion, astronauts and large cargo to the Moon in one flight - as the SLS would have.
An estimated $18bn has been spent on the SLS since the beginning of the last decade.
But with the rocket's development phase over and its flight certification tests complete, the first SLS is now at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, being prepared for its maiden launch.
John Shannon, who has been in charge of the SLS at Boeing since 2015, explained: "I suspect that once SLS is in the national capability there won't be a need for another heavy-lift vehicle like it for many years. So this is really a once-in-a-generation opportunity."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/na ... 25865.html
Paul Rincon - Science editor, BBC News website
Sun, June 20, 2021, 7:31 AM
Nasa has been developing a huge rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) to launch astronauts to the Moon - and eventually Mars. Set to make its debut in late 2021, the SLS is the most powerful launch vehicle built since the 1960s.
Nasa has plans to send a man and woman to the lunar surface this decade, in what will be the first landing with humans since Apollo 17 in 1972.
In the last 20 years, astronauts have been making routine trips to and from the International Space Station (ISS).
But the Moon is nearly 1,000 times further than the ISS; getting astronauts there requires a monster rocket.
The SLS is the modern equivalent of the Saturn V, the huge launcher built during the Apollo era. Like the Saturn, it is split into segments, or stages, stacked on top of each other. But the rocket also incorporates technology from the space shuttle.
The first version of the SLS will be called Block 1. It will undergo a series of upgrades in coming years so that it can launch heavier payloads to destinations beyond low-Earth orbit.
The Block 1 SLS will tower 23 storeys above the launch pad - making it taller than the Statue of Liberty.
"It is truly an immense rocket. It is just jaw-droppingly big," said John Shannon, vice president and program manager for the SLS at Boeing, the rocket's prime contractor. He told BBC News in 2019: "When you see the SLS put together, you just haven't seen anything like it since the Saturn V."
The rocket will launch astronauts in Nasa's next-generation crew vehicle - Orion, boosting it to the speeds necessary to break out of low-Earth orbit and travel onwards to the Moon.
How the rocket works
The SLS consists of a giant core stage flanked by two solid rocket boosters (SRBs). The core houses two large storage tanks: one for liquid hydrogen, the fuel, and another for liquid oxygen, an "oxidiser", which makes the fuel burn.
At the base of the core stage are four RS-25 engines, the same ones that powered the spaceplane-like shuttle orbiter, retired in 2011.
Workers inside the SLS hydrogen tank use a technique called friction stir welding to plug holes
Workers inside the huge SLS hydrogen tank use a technique called friction stir welding to plug holes
When liquid hydrogen and oxygen are fed into the engine chambers and ignited with a spark, the chemical reaction produces vast amounts of energy and steam.
The steam exits engine nozzles at speeds of 16,000 km/h (10,000 mph) to generate thrust - the force that propels a rocket through the air.
The SRBs give the rocket extra power to escape gravity's clutches. These twin boosters stand more than 17 storeys tall and burn six tonnes of solid propellant each second. They provide 75% of total thrust during the first two minutes of flight.
The most powerful rocket ever?
If we use thrust as a measure, the SLS will be the most powerful rocket ever when it flies to space in 2021. The Block 1 SLS will generate 8.8 million pounds (39.1 Meganewtons) of thrust at launch, 15% more than the Saturn V.
In the 1960s, the Soviet Union built a rocket called the N1, in a bid to reach the Moon. Its first stage could produce 10.2 million pounds (45.4 Meganewtons) of thrust. But all four test flights ended in failure.
A future version of the SLS - called Block 2 cargo - should approach the N1's thrust levels. But a vehicle called Starship, being developed by Elon Musk's company SpaceX, should exceed both - producing as much as 15 million pounds (66.7 Meganewtons) of thrust. Starship is currently under development, although there is no firm date for its first flight.
The SLS in numbers
The rocket will stand 98m (322ft) tall in its initial, or Block 1, configuration
The Block 1 SLS can send more than 27 tonnes (59,500 pounds) to lunar orbits - the equivalent of 11 large sports utility vehicles (SUVs)
A future version of the SLS, called Block 2 Cargo, will launch 46 tonnes (101,400 pounds) to the Moon. That's 18 large SUVs.
The SLS will produce 8.8 million pounds (39.1 Meganewtons) of thrust in its Block 1 configuration
Four RS-25 engines sit at the base of the core stage; they're the same ones used in the space shuttle
How shuttle technology was re-used
The SLS core stage is based on the space shuttle's foam-covered external tank. This tank fed propellant to three RS-25 engines at the rear of the shuttle orbiter. The solid rocket boosters play much the same role in both vehicles.
But the SLS is a very different beast. A number of components and structures derived from the shuttle underwent significant design changes because of the different levels of stress placed on them by the SLS.
As an example of these different stresses, in the space shuttle, the RS-25 engines were canted up and away from the solid rocket boosters. Moving them next to the SRBs exposes them to more shaking. As a result, every system in the complex SLS engine section had to be rigorously tested to ensure it could withstand the vibrations.
Why the SLS was built
In February 2010, the Obama administration cancelled Constellation - George W Bush's troubled plan to return to the Moon by 2020. The news came as a devastating blow to workers in five southern states - Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas - where Nasa's human spaceflight programme funded tens of thousands of jobs.
Some Capitol Hill legislators were furious. At the time, Richard Shelby, a republican senator from Alabama, said Congress would not "sit back and watch the reckless abandonment of sound principles, a proven track record, a steady path to success, and the destruction of our human spaceflight programme".
As a compromise, lawmakers from affected states insisted on a single super heavy-lift rocket to replace the Constellation launchers cancelled by the White House.
The SLS design was unveiled in 2011. After work started, delays and cost overruns gave ammunition to critics, who thought Nasa should rely on rockets operated by commercial providers.
But without significant modifications, no existing boosters have sufficient power to send Orion, astronauts and large cargo to the Moon in one flight - as the SLS would have.
An estimated $18bn has been spent on the SLS since the beginning of the last decade.
But with the rocket's development phase over and its flight certification tests complete, the first SLS is now at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, being prepared for its maiden launch.
John Shannon, who has been in charge of the SLS at Boeing since 2015, explained: "I suspect that once SLS is in the national capability there won't be a need for another heavy-lift vehicle like it for many years. So this is really a once-in-a-generation opportunity."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/na ... 25865.html
NASA's Perseverance rover shot 62 images for its iconic selfie with Ingenuity
Igor Bonifacic· Contributing Writer
Fri, June 25, 2021, 2:51 PM
Back in April, NASA’s Ingenuity rover captured the imagination of the world when it sent back an epic selfie it took with Ingenuity on the surface of Mars. It turns out, capturing that photo wasn’t so easy as Perseverance posing, taking a single photo and calling it a day. According to a new video NASA released on Friday, what we got to see here on Earth was the result of 62 separate images the agency stitched together.
The way NASA tells it, the process was complicated and time-consuming. It involved about a dozen experts, including a variety of engineers, to pull everything off, and about a week to plot all the commands they had to send to Perseverance to make the final shot happen. The reason it took 62 images to produce the final photo was because NASA used Perseverance’s WATSON camera for the composition. The instrument was primarily designed to take close-up images of rocks, not expansive wide-angle shots. Since WATSON is mounted to Perseverance’s robotic arm, NASA also had to take care the appendage didn’t bump into the rover while positioning the camera.
To that end, NASA engineers developed software that allowed them to simulate each arm movement so that they could get it as close to the rover as possible without damaging it. They also ran simulations to figure out how to position Ingenuity in the composition. “The thing that took the most attention was getting Ingenuity into the right place in the selfie,” said Mike Ravine of Malin Space Science System (MSSS), which built the camera NASA used to capture the selfie. “Given how small it is, I thought we did a pretty good job.”
Once NASA had all the images it needed for the selfie, MSSS engineers went about cleaning up each individual one to remove any blemishes left by dust that had settled on WATSON’s light detector. They then stitched them together into a mosaic before cropping and warping that image into the one we all know and love today.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/finance ... 52269.html
Igor Bonifacic· Contributing Writer
Fri, June 25, 2021, 2:51 PM
Back in April, NASA’s Ingenuity rover captured the imagination of the world when it sent back an epic selfie it took with Ingenuity on the surface of Mars. It turns out, capturing that photo wasn’t so easy as Perseverance posing, taking a single photo and calling it a day. According to a new video NASA released on Friday, what we got to see here on Earth was the result of 62 separate images the agency stitched together.
The way NASA tells it, the process was complicated and time-consuming. It involved about a dozen experts, including a variety of engineers, to pull everything off, and about a week to plot all the commands they had to send to Perseverance to make the final shot happen. The reason it took 62 images to produce the final photo was because NASA used Perseverance’s WATSON camera for the composition. The instrument was primarily designed to take close-up images of rocks, not expansive wide-angle shots. Since WATSON is mounted to Perseverance’s robotic arm, NASA also had to take care the appendage didn’t bump into the rover while positioning the camera.
To that end, NASA engineers developed software that allowed them to simulate each arm movement so that they could get it as close to the rover as possible without damaging it. They also ran simulations to figure out how to position Ingenuity in the composition. “The thing that took the most attention was getting Ingenuity into the right place in the selfie,” said Mike Ravine of Malin Space Science System (MSSS), which built the camera NASA used to capture the selfie. “Given how small it is, I thought we did a pretty good job.”
Once NASA had all the images it needed for the selfie, MSSS engineers went about cleaning up each individual one to remove any blemishes left by dust that had settled on WATSON’s light detector. They then stitched them together into a mosaic before cropping and warping that image into the one we all know and love today.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/finance ... 52269.html
China wants to up the ante on the space race with a 'sky ladder' to Mars that can beam humans and cargo up in a capsule
Cheryl Teh
Fri, June 25, 2021, 3:37 AM
Mars
China is looking to put a crew on Mars by 2033, and part of the process of getting there might just involve a "sky ladder" made of carbon nanotubes. AP
China is turning up the heat on its space race with the US.
The head of the country's top rocket manufacturing company said China will send a crew to Mars by 2033.
Also in the works is a "sky ladder" that can shoot humans and cargo into space in a capsule.
Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
The space race between the US and China is heating up, and the Chinese are bringing something new to the table - a "sky ladder."
According to Chinese state-owned media Global Times, Wang Xiaojun, the head of the country's top rocket manufacturer, announced this week that China is not only looking to putting a man on Mars by 2033 - it's also working on the "sky ladder," a delivery system made of carbon nanotubes (strong, miniscule carbon atom filaments) that can beam humans and cargo up to space stations for what it claims will be just 4% of the current cost.
Wang, who leads the state-owned China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, did not elaborate on the specifics of how this "sky ladder" all the way to Mars will work, but noted that it would be a starting point for future space voyages and transport missions to the red planet.
Xinhua News posted a video earlier this year that modeled how the system could potentially function for journeys to the moon. In the video, a capsule is seen being propelled from Earth to a Chinese space station, then leapfrogging its way to another space station before reaching a lunar landing pad.
Chinese crewed missions to Mars will involve five expeditions in 2033, 2035, 2037, 2041, and 2043, per a report from Chinese media outlet Sina News. The announcement of these missions follows China's success with deploying a rover on Mars this year, and its launch this month of three taikonauts to its space station.
NASA is currently working on sending a crew to Mars in the 2030s.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ch ... 01342.html
Cheryl Teh
Fri, June 25, 2021, 3:37 AM
Mars
China is looking to put a crew on Mars by 2033, and part of the process of getting there might just involve a "sky ladder" made of carbon nanotubes. AP
China is turning up the heat on its space race with the US.
The head of the country's top rocket manufacturing company said China will send a crew to Mars by 2033.
Also in the works is a "sky ladder" that can shoot humans and cargo into space in a capsule.
Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
The space race between the US and China is heating up, and the Chinese are bringing something new to the table - a "sky ladder."
According to Chinese state-owned media Global Times, Wang Xiaojun, the head of the country's top rocket manufacturer, announced this week that China is not only looking to putting a man on Mars by 2033 - it's also working on the "sky ladder," a delivery system made of carbon nanotubes (strong, miniscule carbon atom filaments) that can beam humans and cargo up to space stations for what it claims will be just 4% of the current cost.
Wang, who leads the state-owned China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, did not elaborate on the specifics of how this "sky ladder" all the way to Mars will work, but noted that it would be a starting point for future space voyages and transport missions to the red planet.
Xinhua News posted a video earlier this year that modeled how the system could potentially function for journeys to the moon. In the video, a capsule is seen being propelled from Earth to a Chinese space station, then leapfrogging its way to another space station before reaching a lunar landing pad.
Chinese crewed missions to Mars will involve five expeditions in 2033, 2035, 2037, 2041, and 2043, per a report from Chinese media outlet Sina News. The announcement of these missions follows China's success with deploying a rover on Mars this year, and its launch this month of three taikonauts to its space station.
NASA is currently working on sending a crew to Mars in the 2030s.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ch ... 01342.html
The One Reason Bottled Water Is More Dangerous Than Tap Water
John Quinn
Mon, June 28, 2021, 9:48 AM
As summer progresses and the temperature rises, it's more important than ever to stay hydrated throughout the day. The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine estimate that men need around 3.7 liters of water each day, while women should be aiming for 2.7 liters. However, while experts agree that keeping your water supplies topped up is key, they also warn that the notion that the store-bought stuff is healthier or cleaner than tap water is misguided. To find out how bottled water is more dangerous than tap water, read on.
Tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); bottled water isn't.
In an article for CBS News, Peter H. Gleick, MD, president emeritus and co-founder of the Pacific Institute and author of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water, points out that while tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Safe Drinking Water Act, bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which allows for less frequent quality testing. He points out that the FDA doesn't monitor certain contaminants that may be in packaged water, and doesn't oblige producers to provide quality reports. "Our standards for protecting both ought to be stricter," says Gleick. "But tap water is better regulated."
On top of that, tap water is routinely treated with fluoride to aid dental health in a way that bottled water isn't, giving the old-fashioned option another edge.
Bottled and tap water may come from the same sources.
While bottled water brands often use extremely creative packaging to conjure up images of natural purity, in many cases, it is essentially the same water as you'd get from your kitchen faucet, just not as strictly regulated. "Sometimes the water you can buy in a bottle is simply public tap water that has been enhanced in some way, such as changing the mineral content," explains the Minnesota Department of Health. The exception is anything claiming to be spring water—if it says this on the label, then the water must actually come from a spring.
There have been several serious public health incidents linked to bottled water.
Despite the perception that bottled water is cleaner and safer for you, there have been multiple recent health threats linked to bottled water. Earlier this year, an outbreak of acute non-viral hepatitis illnesses was traced to Real Water brand alkaline water, leading to its shutdown; Peñafiel spring water was withdrawn due to the presence of arsenic in 2020; and Sweet Springs Valley Water was contaminated with E. coli in 2018.
Drinking water from a plastic bottle itself also comes with its own risks. Especially in the summer, plastic bottles exposed to heat for prolonged periods of time may cause the water inside to become contaminated. A 2014 study found antimony and bisphenol A (BPA), both presumed to be carcinogens, leached into water after being exposed to a temperature of 158 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Minnesota Department of Health notes that there are some specific cases where bottled water may serve you better. Any situation where you can't guarantee a safe drinking supply (for example, on a camping trip, or during a natural disaster) makes bottled water the best choice. Additionally, if tests have shown that your own water well has become contaminated and if authorities have notified you that contamination has occurred in your local public water supply, you should switch to bottled water.
"In these situations above, it is especially important to use bottled water for mixing infant formula or giving water to babies less than one year old," the Minnesota Department of Health advises. "Bottled water may also be the best choice if a person has a health condition requiring lower levels of some substance."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/cm/ ... -144807445
John Quinn
Mon, June 28, 2021, 9:48 AM
As summer progresses and the temperature rises, it's more important than ever to stay hydrated throughout the day. The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine estimate that men need around 3.7 liters of water each day, while women should be aiming for 2.7 liters. However, while experts agree that keeping your water supplies topped up is key, they also warn that the notion that the store-bought stuff is healthier or cleaner than tap water is misguided. To find out how bottled water is more dangerous than tap water, read on.
Tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); bottled water isn't.
In an article for CBS News, Peter H. Gleick, MD, president emeritus and co-founder of the Pacific Institute and author of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water, points out that while tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Safe Drinking Water Act, bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which allows for less frequent quality testing. He points out that the FDA doesn't monitor certain contaminants that may be in packaged water, and doesn't oblige producers to provide quality reports. "Our standards for protecting both ought to be stricter," says Gleick. "But tap water is better regulated."
On top of that, tap water is routinely treated with fluoride to aid dental health in a way that bottled water isn't, giving the old-fashioned option another edge.
Bottled and tap water may come from the same sources.
While bottled water brands often use extremely creative packaging to conjure up images of natural purity, in many cases, it is essentially the same water as you'd get from your kitchen faucet, just not as strictly regulated. "Sometimes the water you can buy in a bottle is simply public tap water that has been enhanced in some way, such as changing the mineral content," explains the Minnesota Department of Health. The exception is anything claiming to be spring water—if it says this on the label, then the water must actually come from a spring.
There have been several serious public health incidents linked to bottled water.
Despite the perception that bottled water is cleaner and safer for you, there have been multiple recent health threats linked to bottled water. Earlier this year, an outbreak of acute non-viral hepatitis illnesses was traced to Real Water brand alkaline water, leading to its shutdown; Peñafiel spring water was withdrawn due to the presence of arsenic in 2020; and Sweet Springs Valley Water was contaminated with E. coli in 2018.
Drinking water from a plastic bottle itself also comes with its own risks. Especially in the summer, plastic bottles exposed to heat for prolonged periods of time may cause the water inside to become contaminated. A 2014 study found antimony and bisphenol A (BPA), both presumed to be carcinogens, leached into water after being exposed to a temperature of 158 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Minnesota Department of Health notes that there are some specific cases where bottled water may serve you better. Any situation where you can't guarantee a safe drinking supply (for example, on a camping trip, or during a natural disaster) makes bottled water the best choice. Additionally, if tests have shown that your own water well has become contaminated and if authorities have notified you that contamination has occurred in your local public water supply, you should switch to bottled water.
"In these situations above, it is especially important to use bottled water for mixing infant formula or giving water to babies less than one year old," the Minnesota Department of Health advises. "Bottled water may also be the best choice if a person has a health condition requiring lower levels of some substance."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/cm/ ... -144807445
Earth Has a Heartbeat, but No One Really Knows Why
Caroline Delbert
Sun, July 4, 2021, 10:15 AM
Earth’s geological history shows pulse-like event clusters every 27.5 million years.
The analysis comes from statistical techniques, plus improved carbon dating.
The clusters show signs of causal links, like tectonic activity causing extinctions.
Just like you, our planet has a ticker that keeps time: Earth’s geological “heartbeat” goes off on a regular schedule, albeit with millions of years in between, says a new study in Geoscience Frontiers.
When scientists from New York University and the Carnegie Institution of Science in Washington D.C. analyzed 260 million years of geological feedback, they found “global geologic events are generally correlated,” and seemingly come in pulses every 27.5 million years.
Those events include everything from “times of marine and non-marine extinctions, major ocean-anoxic events, continental flood-basalt eruptions, sea-level fluctuations, global pulses of intraplate magmatism, and times of changes in seafloor-spreading rates and plate reorganizations,” the authors write. They considered a total of 89 such major events from the last 260 million years, from which the 27.5 million-year cycle emerged.
Scientists have long suspected a somewhat cyclical nature to events like these, dating back to at least the 1920s. But to really understand what’s happening, we must “extract potential signals from the noise” using statistical techniques, the study authors say. The right statistical analysis looks at a cloud of questionably related events and pulls likelihoods of certain outcomes based on the data points.
Something else had to fall into place, too. That’s the specificity and accuracy of carbon-dating techniques that are used to pair our knowledge of events with the true timeframe of when those events occurred.
Lead study author Michael Rampino, a geologist who teaches in the biology department at NYU, has been studying these periodic events since at least 1984. Back then, scientists believed the interval was more like 33 million years, and estimates for different kinds of events in research range from 26 to 36 million years apart.
How do these events end up clustering together around this newly emerged 27.5 million-year cycle? There’s probably some causal relationships between, say, volcanism that causes both seafloor spread changes and ocean anoxia, which is when the oxygen level falls precipitously and lead to extinctions. Everything ends up tied together when it comes to ecosystems and the planetary balance.
“We note that 7 out of the 12 marine-extinction events and 6 out of the 9 non-marine tetrapod extinction episodes in the last 260 [million years] are significantly correlated with the pulses of continental flood-basalt volcanism,” the scientists explain. So, the extinctions appear to be at least partly caused by the volcanism. “The potential cause-and-effect relationships between the geologic activity and biotic changes may be complex, but there are several apparent causal chains.”
Statistical analysis helped the scientists group 89 total “well-dated” global geological events into clusters that pop up with regularity roughly every 27.5 million years. “Whatever the origins of these cyclical episodes, our findings support the case for a largely periodic, coordinated, and intermittently catastrophic geologic record, which is a departure from the views held by many geologists,” Rampino said in a statement.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/lifesty ... 00362.html
Caroline Delbert
Sun, July 4, 2021, 10:15 AM
Earth’s geological history shows pulse-like event clusters every 27.5 million years.
The analysis comes from statistical techniques, plus improved carbon dating.
The clusters show signs of causal links, like tectonic activity causing extinctions.
Just like you, our planet has a ticker that keeps time: Earth’s geological “heartbeat” goes off on a regular schedule, albeit with millions of years in between, says a new study in Geoscience Frontiers.
When scientists from New York University and the Carnegie Institution of Science in Washington D.C. analyzed 260 million years of geological feedback, they found “global geologic events are generally correlated,” and seemingly come in pulses every 27.5 million years.
Those events include everything from “times of marine and non-marine extinctions, major ocean-anoxic events, continental flood-basalt eruptions, sea-level fluctuations, global pulses of intraplate magmatism, and times of changes in seafloor-spreading rates and plate reorganizations,” the authors write. They considered a total of 89 such major events from the last 260 million years, from which the 27.5 million-year cycle emerged.
Scientists have long suspected a somewhat cyclical nature to events like these, dating back to at least the 1920s. But to really understand what’s happening, we must “extract potential signals from the noise” using statistical techniques, the study authors say. The right statistical analysis looks at a cloud of questionably related events and pulls likelihoods of certain outcomes based on the data points.
Something else had to fall into place, too. That’s the specificity and accuracy of carbon-dating techniques that are used to pair our knowledge of events with the true timeframe of when those events occurred.
Lead study author Michael Rampino, a geologist who teaches in the biology department at NYU, has been studying these periodic events since at least 1984. Back then, scientists believed the interval was more like 33 million years, and estimates for different kinds of events in research range from 26 to 36 million years apart.
How do these events end up clustering together around this newly emerged 27.5 million-year cycle? There’s probably some causal relationships between, say, volcanism that causes both seafloor spread changes and ocean anoxia, which is when the oxygen level falls precipitously and lead to extinctions. Everything ends up tied together when it comes to ecosystems and the planetary balance.
“We note that 7 out of the 12 marine-extinction events and 6 out of the 9 non-marine tetrapod extinction episodes in the last 260 [million years] are significantly correlated with the pulses of continental flood-basalt volcanism,” the scientists explain. So, the extinctions appear to be at least partly caused by the volcanism. “The potential cause-and-effect relationships between the geologic activity and biotic changes may be complex, but there are several apparent causal chains.”
Statistical analysis helped the scientists group 89 total “well-dated” global geological events into clusters that pop up with regularity roughly every 27.5 million years. “Whatever the origins of these cyclical episodes, our findings support the case for a largely periodic, coordinated, and intermittently catastrophic geologic record, which is a departure from the views held by many geologists,” Rampino said in a statement.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/lifesty ... 00362.html
NASA's Perseverance rover is driving itself around Mars using an enhanced auto-navigation system
Zahra Tayeb
Sun, July 4, 2021, 4:44 AM
perseverance
Perseverance is continuing to roam the red planet. AP
NASA's Perseverance rover has taken its first autonomous drive on the red planet.
The rover's enhanced AutoNav technology lets it take charge of its adventures.
Perseverance is "thinking while driving" as its wheels are turning, the agency said.
See more stories on Insider's business page.
NASA's Perseverance rover has taken its first autonomous drive using a newly enhanced auto-navigation system, AutoNav, according to the agency.
The technology lets Perseverance take control of its wheels and drive by itself across the red planet, without the need to heavily rely on human drivers from Earth.
According to NASA, AutoNav is equipped with more powerful features than its predecessor, Curiosity. These include the ability to make 3D maps of the terrain ahead, identify hazards, and plan routes around obstacles. This means Perseverance will be able to drive more direct routes and travel at much faster speeds.
"We have a capability called 'thinking while driving,'" said Vandi Verma, a senior engineer, rover planner, and driver at NASA's Jet Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. "The rover is thinking about the autonomous drive while its wheels are turning."
The agency reported that Perseverance might be able to hit top speeds of 393 feet (120 meters) per hour. This is approximately six times faster than Curiosity, which was able to reach 66 feet per hour.
"We sped up AutoNav by four or five times," said Michael McHenry, the mobility domain lead and part of JPL's team of rover planners. "We're driving a lot farther in a lot less time than Curiosity demonstrated."
AutoNav will be a key feature in allowing the six-wheeled robot to complete its science campaign on the floor of Jezero Crater. This involves scanning and drilling Martian soil for signs of ancient microscopic life.
"Now we are able to drive through these more complex terrains instead of going around them: It's not something we've been able to do before," said Jennifer Trosper, Mars 2020 Perseverance rover's project manager.
The AutoNav system doesn't eliminate the need for human drivers entirely, it just increases the rover's autonomy where it can.
Team members said they look forward to letting AutoNav "take the wheel." But they'll also be prepared to intervene when the situation calls for it.
Using technologies like this, NASA eventually aims to fly humans to Mars and establish a settlement there.
Read the original article on Business Insider
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/na ... 36069.html
Zahra Tayeb
Sun, July 4, 2021, 4:44 AM
perseverance
Perseverance is continuing to roam the red planet. AP
NASA's Perseverance rover has taken its first autonomous drive on the red planet.
The rover's enhanced AutoNav technology lets it take charge of its adventures.
Perseverance is "thinking while driving" as its wheels are turning, the agency said.
See more stories on Insider's business page.
NASA's Perseverance rover has taken its first autonomous drive using a newly enhanced auto-navigation system, AutoNav, according to the agency.
The technology lets Perseverance take control of its wheels and drive by itself across the red planet, without the need to heavily rely on human drivers from Earth.
According to NASA, AutoNav is equipped with more powerful features than its predecessor, Curiosity. These include the ability to make 3D maps of the terrain ahead, identify hazards, and plan routes around obstacles. This means Perseverance will be able to drive more direct routes and travel at much faster speeds.
"We have a capability called 'thinking while driving,'" said Vandi Verma, a senior engineer, rover planner, and driver at NASA's Jet Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. "The rover is thinking about the autonomous drive while its wheels are turning."
The agency reported that Perseverance might be able to hit top speeds of 393 feet (120 meters) per hour. This is approximately six times faster than Curiosity, which was able to reach 66 feet per hour.
"We sped up AutoNav by four or five times," said Michael McHenry, the mobility domain lead and part of JPL's team of rover planners. "We're driving a lot farther in a lot less time than Curiosity demonstrated."
AutoNav will be a key feature in allowing the six-wheeled robot to complete its science campaign on the floor of Jezero Crater. This involves scanning and drilling Martian soil for signs of ancient microscopic life.
"Now we are able to drive through these more complex terrains instead of going around them: It's not something we've been able to do before," said Jennifer Trosper, Mars 2020 Perseverance rover's project manager.
The AutoNav system doesn't eliminate the need for human drivers entirely, it just increases the rover's autonomy where it can.
Team members said they look forward to letting AutoNav "take the wheel." But they'll also be prepared to intervene when the situation calls for it.
Using technologies like this, NASA eventually aims to fly humans to Mars and establish a settlement there.
Read the original article on Business Insider
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/na ... 36069.html
Virgin founder Richard Branson successfully lands after beating Jeff Bezos in billionaire space race
11 Jul, 2021 15:45 / Updated 8 hours ago
Virgin Galactic's passenger rocket plane VSS Unity, carrying billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson and his crew, descends after reaching the edge of space above Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, U.S., July 11, 2021. © Reuters / Joe Skipper
Billionaire Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson has made a successful landing following his trip to space on Sunday, narrowly beating Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos to travel away from Earth.
Branson made a trip to suborbital space on the Virgin Galactic Unity 22 spaceplane on Sunday, along with fellow passengers Sirisha Bandla, Colin Bennett, and Beth Moses, and pilots David Mackay and Michael Masucci – launching from Spaceport America, New Mexico.
The passengers experienced weightlessness as they reached space for several minutes before the craft returned to Earth.
Fellow billionaire space enthusiast Elon Musk wished Branson good luck on the morning of the flight and was pictured smiling with the Virgin Galactic founder.
Branson is notable for being the first of a group of space enthusiast billionaires to successfully fly to space on one of his company’s spacecraft, narrowly edging out Bezos, who is set to fly aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard on July 20 – where he will be joined by his brother Mark, aviator Wally Funk, and an unnamed wealthy passenger who paid $28 million for the privilege.
Bezos’ Blue Origin, however, has argued that Branson’s flight does not count as it failed to pass the Karman line, which at 100km above sea level is considered by many to be the true boundary of space.
Billionaires’ space race: Bezos’ Blue Origin dunks on Branson’s Virgin Galactic ahead of crewed flight, saying it doesn’t count
The Virgin Galactic founder’s test flight on Sunday is expected to be the first of many commercial flights by the company into space. Future tickets are expected to cost $250,000 per passenger, before eventually falling to around $40,000.
https://www.rt.com/news/528938-virgin-f ... cessfully/
11 Jul, 2021 15:45 / Updated 8 hours ago
Virgin Galactic's passenger rocket plane VSS Unity, carrying billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson and his crew, descends after reaching the edge of space above Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, U.S., July 11, 2021. © Reuters / Joe Skipper
Billionaire Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson has made a successful landing following his trip to space on Sunday, narrowly beating Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos to travel away from Earth.
Branson made a trip to suborbital space on the Virgin Galactic Unity 22 spaceplane on Sunday, along with fellow passengers Sirisha Bandla, Colin Bennett, and Beth Moses, and pilots David Mackay and Michael Masucci – launching from Spaceport America, New Mexico.
The passengers experienced weightlessness as they reached space for several minutes before the craft returned to Earth.
Fellow billionaire space enthusiast Elon Musk wished Branson good luck on the morning of the flight and was pictured smiling with the Virgin Galactic founder.
Branson is notable for being the first of a group of space enthusiast billionaires to successfully fly to space on one of his company’s spacecraft, narrowly edging out Bezos, who is set to fly aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard on July 20 – where he will be joined by his brother Mark, aviator Wally Funk, and an unnamed wealthy passenger who paid $28 million for the privilege.
Bezos’ Blue Origin, however, has argued that Branson’s flight does not count as it failed to pass the Karman line, which at 100km above sea level is considered by many to be the true boundary of space.
Billionaires’ space race: Bezos’ Blue Origin dunks on Branson’s Virgin Galactic ahead of crewed flight, saying it doesn’t count
The Virgin Galactic founder’s test flight on Sunday is expected to be the first of many commercial flights by the company into space. Future tickets are expected to cost $250,000 per passenger, before eventually falling to around $40,000.
https://www.rt.com/news/528938-virgin-f ... cessfully/
Popular Mechanics
Stephen Hawking Was Right: Black Holes Simply Can't Shrink
Caroline Delbert
Wed, July 21, 2021, 1:27 PM
Photo credit: Universal History Archive - Getty Images
Scientists have confirmed one of Stephen Hawking's famous theorems about black holes.
"Hawking's Area Theorem" states that a black hole's event horizon area can never shrink.
To prove the theorem true, the researchers measured gravitational waves both before and after two black holes merged.
Scientists have just confirmed a 50-year-old theorem about black holes, dreamt up by none other than Stephen Hawking. The astrophysics concept, codified as "Hawking's Area Theorem" in 1971, says a black hole's event horizon (the boundary beyond which nothing, probably not even you, could escape) can never shrink.
An object would need to travel faster than the speed of light in order to escape a black hole, according to the theorem, meaning the event horizon is essentially the point of no return for virtually every object you can imagine. Per Hawking's calculations, if a black hole changes in size, for example, it will "stretch" or constrict the event horizon along with its new size.
Up until now, scientists had only ever proven Hawking's Area Theorem through mathematics. For the first time, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), California Institute of Technology, Cornell University, and Stony Brook University have confirmed it observationally by studying two "inspiraling" black holes (meaning they're spiraling inward into one another) that created an altogether new black hole. They published their findings earlier this month in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Photo credit: Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) Project/Courtesy of LIGO
In the study, the researchers take a closer look at GW150914, the first gravitational wave signal detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2015. LIGO is a national facility with two locations (one in Hanford, Washington and the other in Livingston, Louisiana), constructed to detect cosmic gravitational waves.
The signal, they discovered, was the product of two merging black holes, along with a vast amount of energy that rippled across the space-time continuum. The idea in their paper is simple: If Hawking's theorem were to hold, they posited, then the event horizon area of the new black hole—created from the merger—should not be smaller than the total event horizon area of its parent black holes.
To prove it, they split up the gravitational wave data into "before" and "after" sections, then statistically analyzed both sections to see how their event horizon areas compare. They found that the two areas are statistically the same within a 95 percent confidence margin.
"The data show with overwhelming confidence that the horizon area increased after the merger, and that the area law is satisfied with very high probability," Maximiliano Isi—lead author of the paper, and a NASA Einstein Postdoctoral Fellow in MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research—said in a prepared statement. "It was a relief that our result does agree with the paradigm that we expect, and does confirm our understanding of these complicated black hole mergers."
This cool analysis doesn't just show an example of Hawking's theorem that underpins one of the central laws affecting black holes; it shows how analyzing gravitational wave patterns can bear out statistical findings. It also stands to reason the technology to measure gravitational waves will continue to improve, meaning even better datasets for scientists in the future.
Why does this theorem hold so much importance within the study of black holes? Well, it's a parallel, in some ways, to the laws of "regular" physics, like the law of conservation of mass. The ability to observe real life data that can back up the central laws governing black hole behavior can only advance the entire field, giving cosmologists concrete examples to point to as they continue to study these elusive and powerful phenomena.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/finance ... 00223.html
Stephen Hawking Was Right: Black Holes Simply Can't Shrink
Caroline Delbert
Wed, July 21, 2021, 1:27 PM
Photo credit: Universal History Archive - Getty Images
Scientists have confirmed one of Stephen Hawking's famous theorems about black holes.
"Hawking's Area Theorem" states that a black hole's event horizon area can never shrink.
To prove the theorem true, the researchers measured gravitational waves both before and after two black holes merged.
Scientists have just confirmed a 50-year-old theorem about black holes, dreamt up by none other than Stephen Hawking. The astrophysics concept, codified as "Hawking's Area Theorem" in 1971, says a black hole's event horizon (the boundary beyond which nothing, probably not even you, could escape) can never shrink.
An object would need to travel faster than the speed of light in order to escape a black hole, according to the theorem, meaning the event horizon is essentially the point of no return for virtually every object you can imagine. Per Hawking's calculations, if a black hole changes in size, for example, it will "stretch" or constrict the event horizon along with its new size.
Up until now, scientists had only ever proven Hawking's Area Theorem through mathematics. For the first time, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), California Institute of Technology, Cornell University, and Stony Brook University have confirmed it observationally by studying two "inspiraling" black holes (meaning they're spiraling inward into one another) that created an altogether new black hole. They published their findings earlier this month in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Photo credit: Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) Project/Courtesy of LIGO
In the study, the researchers take a closer look at GW150914, the first gravitational wave signal detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2015. LIGO is a national facility with two locations (one in Hanford, Washington and the other in Livingston, Louisiana), constructed to detect cosmic gravitational waves.
The signal, they discovered, was the product of two merging black holes, along with a vast amount of energy that rippled across the space-time continuum. The idea in their paper is simple: If Hawking's theorem were to hold, they posited, then the event horizon area of the new black hole—created from the merger—should not be smaller than the total event horizon area of its parent black holes.
To prove it, they split up the gravitational wave data into "before" and "after" sections, then statistically analyzed both sections to see how their event horizon areas compare. They found that the two areas are statistically the same within a 95 percent confidence margin.
"The data show with overwhelming confidence that the horizon area increased after the merger, and that the area law is satisfied with very high probability," Maximiliano Isi—lead author of the paper, and a NASA Einstein Postdoctoral Fellow in MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research—said in a prepared statement. "It was a relief that our result does agree with the paradigm that we expect, and does confirm our understanding of these complicated black hole mergers."
This cool analysis doesn't just show an example of Hawking's theorem that underpins one of the central laws affecting black holes; it shows how analyzing gravitational wave patterns can bear out statistical findings. It also stands to reason the technology to measure gravitational waves will continue to improve, meaning even better datasets for scientists in the future.
Why does this theorem hold so much importance within the study of black holes? Well, it's a parallel, in some ways, to the laws of "regular" physics, like the law of conservation of mass. The ability to observe real life data that can back up the central laws governing black hole behavior can only advance the entire field, giving cosmologists concrete examples to point to as they continue to study these elusive and powerful phenomena.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/finance ... 00223.html
Scientists Finish the Human Genome at Last
The complete genome uncovered more than 100 new genes that are probably functional, and many new variants that may be linked to diseases.
Two decades after the draft sequence of the human genome was unveiled to great fanfare, a team of 99 scientists has finally deciphered the entire thing. They have filled in vast gaps and corrected a long list of errors in previous versions, giving us a new view of our DNA.
The consortium has posted six papers online in recent weeks in which they describe the full genome. These hard-sought data, now under review by scientific journals, will give scientists a deeper understanding of how DNA influences risks of disease, the scientists say, and how cells keep it in neatly organized chromosomes instead of molecular tangles.
For example, the researchers have uncovered more than 100 new genes that may be functional, and have identified millions of genetic variations between people. Some of those differences probably play a role in diseases.
For Nicolas Altemose, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who worked on the team, the view of the complete human genome feels something like the close-up pictures of Pluto from the New Horizons space probe.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/23/scie ... iversified
The complete genome uncovered more than 100 new genes that are probably functional, and many new variants that may be linked to diseases.
Two decades after the draft sequence of the human genome was unveiled to great fanfare, a team of 99 scientists has finally deciphered the entire thing. They have filled in vast gaps and corrected a long list of errors in previous versions, giving us a new view of our DNA.
The consortium has posted six papers online in recent weeks in which they describe the full genome. These hard-sought data, now under review by scientific journals, will give scientists a deeper understanding of how DNA influences risks of disease, the scientists say, and how cells keep it in neatly organized chromosomes instead of molecular tangles.
For example, the researchers have uncovered more than 100 new genes that may be functional, and have identified millions of genetic variations between people. Some of those differences probably play a role in diseases.
For Nicolas Altemose, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who worked on the team, the view of the complete human genome feels something like the close-up pictures of Pluto from the New Horizons space probe.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/23/scie ... iversified
BBC
Mars rover: Nasa's Perseverance prepares to drill first rock sample
Jonathan Amos - BBC Science Correspondent
Thu, July 22, 2021, 2:47 AM
Perseverance looks back at its wheel tracks. The robot is a self-driving vehicle
The US space agency's Perseverance rover is getting ready to take its first sample of Mars rock.
The core, about the size of a finger, will be packaged in a sealed tube for eventual return to Earth.
Scientists say their best chance of determining whether Mars ever hosted life is to study its surface materials in sophisticated home laboratories.
Perseverance landed on the Red Planet in February, in a 45km-wide (30 miles) crater called Jezero.
China releases videos of its Zhurong Mars rover
Mars helicopter mission extended by Nasa
Remarkable photo of Mars rover during landing
Close-up of a rock target nicknamed “Foux”
A dust covering complicates the identification of rocks (image is about 3.5cm across)
Satellite images indicate this deep depression once held a lake, fed by a deltaic river.
As such, it is considered a great candidate for the preservation of ancient microbial organisms - if they ever existed.
The Nasa robot has driven about 1km (3,000ft) south from where it touched down in dramatic fashion five months ago.
It's now stopped at a location that's been dubbed the "Paver Stones", or "Fractured Rough".
An area on Mars nicknamed the “Cratered Floor Fractured Rough”
The first drill sample will be taken from these pale-coloured rocks
This is a collection of pale-coloured rocks that the mission team believes represents the base, or floor, of Jezero.
The scientists want to determine whether these Paver Stones are sedimentary or volcanic in origin. Either is interesting, but the special quality of volcanic rocks is that they can be dated with very high precision and accuracy in a lab, says chief scientist Ken Farley.
"That would really pin down the timing of many of the things we are looking at on Mars," he told reporters.
Perseverance will first abrade the surface of a chosen section of Paver Stone, to remove Mars' obscuring dust, and then examine the site with its powerful instruments.
A layered outcrop (just below centre of image) nicknamed “Artuby”
Telescopic view: The Artuby outcrop is about 600m from the rover's current position
Nasa rover in 'great shape' after Mars landing
Key questions about Nasa's Mars rover
How Perseverance will search for signs of life
These are held on the end of its robotic arm. They are capable of determining the chemical composition, the mineralogy and texture within a rock - to identify it definitively.
Finally, in early August, the robot will secure a drilled core.
The rover will be caching something like 40 of these small sample tubes over the course of its mission. Later projects from Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA) will arrive on Mars to take ownership and bring them home.
Prof Farley said he expected four unique samples to be cached in the area of the crater now being investigated. This includes an enticing outcrop of rock, called Artuby. This is some 600m away and looks to contain some very finely layered sediments, potentially deposited by the lake and river delta system that once occupied Jezero.
"This is exactly the kind of rock that we are most interested in investigating for looking for potential bio-signatures in this ancient rock record," the California Institute of Technology researcher said.
Nasa is delighted with the way Perseverance is performing.
A particular success has been its mode of driving, which now achieves a high level of autonomy.
Whereas past vehicles needed a lot of direction from controllers back on Earth, or could self-navigate only slowly, Perseverance can image the terrain ahead at speed and plot a route with great efficiency. The robot can do this for drives of 100m or more, dodging tricky obstacles, such as large boulders or fissures in the ground, along the way.
The rover is being helped by the reconnaissance conducted through the mini-helicopter it brought to Mars.
Called Ingenuity, this little chopper has been flying ahead of Perseverance to survey the terrain.
"We just completed flight nine (of Ingenuity)," said Nasa project manager Jennifer Trosper.
"It broke all of our records. The duration was two minutes and 46 seconds, the velocity was 5m/s, and we quadrupled the distance that we had ever flown, and we flew about 625m."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ma ... 22741.html
Mars rover: Nasa's Perseverance prepares to drill first rock sample
Jonathan Amos - BBC Science Correspondent
Thu, July 22, 2021, 2:47 AM
Perseverance looks back at its wheel tracks. The robot is a self-driving vehicle
The US space agency's Perseverance rover is getting ready to take its first sample of Mars rock.
The core, about the size of a finger, will be packaged in a sealed tube for eventual return to Earth.
Scientists say their best chance of determining whether Mars ever hosted life is to study its surface materials in sophisticated home laboratories.
Perseverance landed on the Red Planet in February, in a 45km-wide (30 miles) crater called Jezero.
China releases videos of its Zhurong Mars rover
Mars helicopter mission extended by Nasa
Remarkable photo of Mars rover during landing
Close-up of a rock target nicknamed “Foux”
A dust covering complicates the identification of rocks (image is about 3.5cm across)
Satellite images indicate this deep depression once held a lake, fed by a deltaic river.
As such, it is considered a great candidate for the preservation of ancient microbial organisms - if they ever existed.
The Nasa robot has driven about 1km (3,000ft) south from where it touched down in dramatic fashion five months ago.
It's now stopped at a location that's been dubbed the "Paver Stones", or "Fractured Rough".
An area on Mars nicknamed the “Cratered Floor Fractured Rough”
The first drill sample will be taken from these pale-coloured rocks
This is a collection of pale-coloured rocks that the mission team believes represents the base, or floor, of Jezero.
The scientists want to determine whether these Paver Stones are sedimentary or volcanic in origin. Either is interesting, but the special quality of volcanic rocks is that they can be dated with very high precision and accuracy in a lab, says chief scientist Ken Farley.
"That would really pin down the timing of many of the things we are looking at on Mars," he told reporters.
Perseverance will first abrade the surface of a chosen section of Paver Stone, to remove Mars' obscuring dust, and then examine the site with its powerful instruments.
A layered outcrop (just below centre of image) nicknamed “Artuby”
Telescopic view: The Artuby outcrop is about 600m from the rover's current position
Nasa rover in 'great shape' after Mars landing
Key questions about Nasa's Mars rover
How Perseverance will search for signs of life
These are held on the end of its robotic arm. They are capable of determining the chemical composition, the mineralogy and texture within a rock - to identify it definitively.
Finally, in early August, the robot will secure a drilled core.
The rover will be caching something like 40 of these small sample tubes over the course of its mission. Later projects from Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA) will arrive on Mars to take ownership and bring them home.
Prof Farley said he expected four unique samples to be cached in the area of the crater now being investigated. This includes an enticing outcrop of rock, called Artuby. This is some 600m away and looks to contain some very finely layered sediments, potentially deposited by the lake and river delta system that once occupied Jezero.
"This is exactly the kind of rock that we are most interested in investigating for looking for potential bio-signatures in this ancient rock record," the California Institute of Technology researcher said.
Nasa is delighted with the way Perseverance is performing.
A particular success has been its mode of driving, which now achieves a high level of autonomy.
Whereas past vehicles needed a lot of direction from controllers back on Earth, or could self-navigate only slowly, Perseverance can image the terrain ahead at speed and plot a route with great efficiency. The robot can do this for drives of 100m or more, dodging tricky obstacles, such as large boulders or fissures in the ground, along the way.
The rover is being helped by the reconnaissance conducted through the mini-helicopter it brought to Mars.
Called Ingenuity, this little chopper has been flying ahead of Perseverance to survey the terrain.
"We just completed flight nine (of Ingenuity)," said Nasa project manager Jennifer Trosper.
"It broke all of our records. The duration was two minutes and 46 seconds, the velocity was 5m/s, and we quadrupled the distance that we had ever flown, and we flew about 625m."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ma ... 22741.html
A YouTuber bet a physicist $10,000 that a wind-powered vehicle could travel twice as fast as the wind itself - and won
A YouTuber bet a physicist $10,000 that a wind-powered vehicle could travel twice as fast as the wind itself - and won
Aylin Woodward
Wed, July 28, 2021, 7:01 AM
A vehicle with large propeller blades riding on the sand.
The wind-powered Blackbird vehicle. Courtesy of Rick Cavallero
A popular YouTuber filmed himself driving a wind-powered vehicle downwind faster than the wind itself.
A UCLA professor bet $10,000 that the video was wrong, saying it broke the laws of physics.
Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson oversaw the bet. In the end, the professor conceded and paid up.
See more stories on Insider's business page.
When Derek Muller took an experimental land yacht for a spin this spring, he wasn't aiming to stir up scientific controversy. He certainly wasn't trying to win $10,000 in a bet.
Muller, the creator of the Veritasium YouTube channel, likes to break down funky science concepts for his 9.5 million subscribers. So in May, he published a video about a vehicle called Blackbird that runs on wind power.
Created by Rick Cavallaro, a former aerospace engineer, Blackbird is unique because it can move directly downwind faster than the wind itself for a sustained period. Any sailor worth their salt can tell you that a boat can travel faster than the wind by cutting zigzag patterns; that's called tacking. But the idea that a vehicle can beat the breeze traveling straight downwind, no tacking involved, is controversial.
"I knew this was a counterintuitive problem. To be perfectly honest with you, when I went out to pilot the craft, I didn't understand how it worked," Muller told Insider.
Blackbird is so counterintuitive, in fact, that less than a week after Muller released his video (below), Alexander Kusenko, a professor of physics at UCLA, emailed to inform him that it had to be wrong. A vehicle like that would break the laws of physics, Kusenko said.
"I said, 'Look, if you don't believe this, let's put some money on this,'" Muller said. He suggested a wager of $10,000, never imagining Kusenko would take it.
But Kusenko agreed, and in the weeks that followed, they exchanged data and argued about Blackbird. They even brought in several of science's biggest names, including Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson, to help decide who was right.
In the end, Muller emerged victorious.
'I never saw a way I could lose'
A rider in a white helmet in a vehicle with a tall pillar with propeller blades at the back. The pillar has Google and Joby decals.
A side view of Blackbird. Courtesy of Rick Cavallero
Days after Muller suggested the wager, Kusenko sent him a document with the bet's terms, Muller said.
"Everything was always super airtight, I never saw a way I could lose," Muller said.
But Kusenko was equally confident. "Thanks to the laws of physics, I am not risking anything," Kusenko told Vice last month. He did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
Kusenko gave Muller an hourlong presentation explaining why he was certain the YouTuber had been taken in by bad science. The professor said Blackbird was most likely taking advantage of intermittent wind gusts that helped the vehicle speed up. He outlined his objections on a page of his UCLA website, though it has since been taken down.
For his part, Muller sent Kusenko data from the driving test in his video, which was filmed in the El Mirage lake bed. During that drive, Blackbird accelerated over two minutes - a feat that would have been impossible if it had relied on sporadic gusts.
The vehicle reached a speed of 27.7 mph in a 10-mph tailwind.
Muller even contracted Xyla Foxlin, a fellow YouTuber, to build a model cart similar to Blackbird that could be tested on a treadmill. Indeed, Foxlin showed that her wind-powered model could go faster than the wind.
Muller documented this back-and-forth in a follow-up video (below) that he released in June.
"Kusenko was so sure he was right. He wanted to make it public," Muller said.
How Blackbird works
In 2010, Google and Joby Energy sponsored Cavallaro and a team of collaborators from San Jose State University to build Blackbird. The team demonstrated that the vehicle could travel downwind 2.8 times as fast as the wind, a record confirmed by the North American Land Sailing Association.
The secret to Blackbird, Cavallaro explained, is that once the wind gets the vehicle going, its wheels start to turn the propeller blades - they're connected to the blades by a chain. As the vehicle speeds up, its wheels turn the propeller faster and faster. The propeller blades, in turn, act as a fan, pushing more air behind the land yacht and thrusting it forward.
Rick Cavallero wearing a helmet with goggles pulled up and a glove on his left hand.
Rick Cavallaro, an engineer and builder, in the driver's seat of his wind-powered vehicle. Courtesy of Rick Cavallero
"I never even imagined a decade later that a physics professor would still be arguing how it's impossible," Cavallaro, a chief scientist at Sportvision, told Insider.
After three weeks of debate, Kusenko acknowledged that Blackbird could go slightly faster than the wind, but he maintained that it was for only short periods. If a gust of wind sped up the land yacht and then quickly died down, he said, it would appear that Blackbird was traveling faster than wind.
"The resolution of our bet was not as clean as I'd hoped," Muller said. "Kusenko coughed up the 10 grand, let's leave it at that."
A front view of the Blackbird vehicle and its tall column with propeller blades.
A front view of the Blackbird vehicle. Courtesy of Rick Cavallero
Cavallaro, too, wanted more acknowledgment of his vehicle's capabilities.
Kusenko "conceded on a technicality - that the vehicle moves marginally faster than the wind temporarily," Cavallaro said. "I offered him another $10,000 bet, because his technicality is entirely wrong, but I know I won't be hearing from him."
Muller's two videos have each garnered at least 6.8 million views and 41,000 comments, with many agreeing with Kusenko that it's impossible for Blackbird to go faster than the wind. Some viewers have even asked the YouTuber if he'd make follow-up wagers.
"It breaks a lot of people's brains," Muller said. "Clearly it got Kusenko too."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/yo ... 00405.html
A YouTuber bet a physicist $10,000 that a wind-powered vehicle could travel twice as fast as the wind itself - and won
Aylin Woodward
Wed, July 28, 2021, 7:01 AM
A vehicle with large propeller blades riding on the sand.
The wind-powered Blackbird vehicle. Courtesy of Rick Cavallero
A popular YouTuber filmed himself driving a wind-powered vehicle downwind faster than the wind itself.
A UCLA professor bet $10,000 that the video was wrong, saying it broke the laws of physics.
Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson oversaw the bet. In the end, the professor conceded and paid up.
See more stories on Insider's business page.
When Derek Muller took an experimental land yacht for a spin this spring, he wasn't aiming to stir up scientific controversy. He certainly wasn't trying to win $10,000 in a bet.
Muller, the creator of the Veritasium YouTube channel, likes to break down funky science concepts for his 9.5 million subscribers. So in May, he published a video about a vehicle called Blackbird that runs on wind power.
Created by Rick Cavallaro, a former aerospace engineer, Blackbird is unique because it can move directly downwind faster than the wind itself for a sustained period. Any sailor worth their salt can tell you that a boat can travel faster than the wind by cutting zigzag patterns; that's called tacking. But the idea that a vehicle can beat the breeze traveling straight downwind, no tacking involved, is controversial.
"I knew this was a counterintuitive problem. To be perfectly honest with you, when I went out to pilot the craft, I didn't understand how it worked," Muller told Insider.
Blackbird is so counterintuitive, in fact, that less than a week after Muller released his video (below), Alexander Kusenko, a professor of physics at UCLA, emailed to inform him that it had to be wrong. A vehicle like that would break the laws of physics, Kusenko said.
"I said, 'Look, if you don't believe this, let's put some money on this,'" Muller said. He suggested a wager of $10,000, never imagining Kusenko would take it.
But Kusenko agreed, and in the weeks that followed, they exchanged data and argued about Blackbird. They even brought in several of science's biggest names, including Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson, to help decide who was right.
In the end, Muller emerged victorious.
'I never saw a way I could lose'
A rider in a white helmet in a vehicle with a tall pillar with propeller blades at the back. The pillar has Google and Joby decals.
A side view of Blackbird. Courtesy of Rick Cavallero
Days after Muller suggested the wager, Kusenko sent him a document with the bet's terms, Muller said.
"Everything was always super airtight, I never saw a way I could lose," Muller said.
But Kusenko was equally confident. "Thanks to the laws of physics, I am not risking anything," Kusenko told Vice last month. He did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
Kusenko gave Muller an hourlong presentation explaining why he was certain the YouTuber had been taken in by bad science. The professor said Blackbird was most likely taking advantage of intermittent wind gusts that helped the vehicle speed up. He outlined his objections on a page of his UCLA website, though it has since been taken down.
For his part, Muller sent Kusenko data from the driving test in his video, which was filmed in the El Mirage lake bed. During that drive, Blackbird accelerated over two minutes - a feat that would have been impossible if it had relied on sporadic gusts.
The vehicle reached a speed of 27.7 mph in a 10-mph tailwind.
Muller even contracted Xyla Foxlin, a fellow YouTuber, to build a model cart similar to Blackbird that could be tested on a treadmill. Indeed, Foxlin showed that her wind-powered model could go faster than the wind.
Muller documented this back-and-forth in a follow-up video (below) that he released in June.
"Kusenko was so sure he was right. He wanted to make it public," Muller said.
How Blackbird works
In 2010, Google and Joby Energy sponsored Cavallaro and a team of collaborators from San Jose State University to build Blackbird. The team demonstrated that the vehicle could travel downwind 2.8 times as fast as the wind, a record confirmed by the North American Land Sailing Association.
The secret to Blackbird, Cavallaro explained, is that once the wind gets the vehicle going, its wheels start to turn the propeller blades - they're connected to the blades by a chain. As the vehicle speeds up, its wheels turn the propeller faster and faster. The propeller blades, in turn, act as a fan, pushing more air behind the land yacht and thrusting it forward.
Rick Cavallero wearing a helmet with goggles pulled up and a glove on his left hand.
Rick Cavallaro, an engineer and builder, in the driver's seat of his wind-powered vehicle. Courtesy of Rick Cavallero
"I never even imagined a decade later that a physics professor would still be arguing how it's impossible," Cavallaro, a chief scientist at Sportvision, told Insider.
After three weeks of debate, Kusenko acknowledged that Blackbird could go slightly faster than the wind, but he maintained that it was for only short periods. If a gust of wind sped up the land yacht and then quickly died down, he said, it would appear that Blackbird was traveling faster than wind.
"The resolution of our bet was not as clean as I'd hoped," Muller said. "Kusenko coughed up the 10 grand, let's leave it at that."
A front view of the Blackbird vehicle and its tall column with propeller blades.
A front view of the Blackbird vehicle. Courtesy of Rick Cavallero
Cavallaro, too, wanted more acknowledgment of his vehicle's capabilities.
Kusenko "conceded on a technicality - that the vehicle moves marginally faster than the wind temporarily," Cavallaro said. "I offered him another $10,000 bet, because his technicality is entirely wrong, but I know I won't be hearing from him."
Muller's two videos have each garnered at least 6.8 million views and 41,000 comments, with many agreeing with Kusenko that it's impossible for Blackbird to go faster than the wind. Some viewers have even asked the YouTuber if he'd make follow-up wagers.
"It breaks a lot of people's brains," Muller said. "Clearly it got Kusenko too."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/yo ... 00405.html
Rob Waugh· Contributor
Tue, August 10, 2021
EVIA, GREECE - AUGUST 10: Firefighters try to extinguish fire in the island of Evia, Greece on August 10, 2021. Wildfire has destroyed hundreds of homes, thousands of hectares of forests and forced hundreds of people to flee in eight days on the Greek island of Evia.
Firefighters try to extinguish fire on the island of Evia, Greece, on 10 August, 2021.
"Heat domes" have been in the news after Greece experienced heat of up to 47C this month and record temperatures swept North America earlier this year.
Both the American and European heatwaves have been attributed to the phenomenon, which sees heat getting trapped in an area for days or even weeks without being moved by wind.
In a heat dome, the heat is trapped by a "lid" of high-pressure air.
With the heat unable to escape an area, more warm air heats up and rises, becoming compressed and trapping even more heat.
The dome stretches high into the atmosphere and becomes "locked" over an area.
It also dries the ground and can create the perfect conditions for fires.
According to the US NOAA weather service, “vast areas of sweltering heat get trapped under the high-pressure ‘dome’.
‘High-pressure circulation in the atmosphere acts like a dome or cap, trapping heat at the surface and favouring the formation of a heat wave.”
When a record-breaking heatwave roasted Canada earlier this summer, Armel Castellan, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said: “We have experienced a ridge with low pressure sandwiched on either side.
"It’s really hard to move it. The jet stream isn’t moving it along. In that pattern we have essentially a heat dome.
"A pattern that is sticking to its guns where pollutants and heat keep adding to each other. It is compounding."
This month’s heatwave in Greece saw fires blocking out the sun and the hottest weather in 30 years.
The World Meteorological Association said climate change meant heatwaves were becoming both more frequent and more intense.
Extreme weather events that previously would have happened every 50 years could soon happen every four if temperatures rise 2C above pre-industrial levels, a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned this week.
The report is the first to quantify the likelihood of extreme events across a wide variety of scenarios.
Dr. Robert Rohde, lead scientist of Berkeley Earth, said: “What were once-in-50-year heat extremes are now occurring every 10 years.
“By a rise of 2C, those same extremes will occur every 3.5 years.”
The report found that (for example) once-in-a-decade heavy rain events are already 1.3 times more likely and 6.7% wetter, compared with the 50 years leading up to 1900 when human-driven warning began to occur.
Droughts that previously happened once a decade now happen every five or six years.
Xuebin Zhang, a climatologist with Environment Canada in Toronto, warned that as the world warms, such extreme weather events will not just become more frequent, they will become more severe.
Zhang said that the world should also expect more compound events, such as heatwaves and long-term droughts occurring simultaneously.
“We are not going to be hit just by one thing," Zhang said, "we are going to be hit by multiple things at the same time.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/what-is-heat ... 41697.html
Tue, August 10, 2021
EVIA, GREECE - AUGUST 10: Firefighters try to extinguish fire in the island of Evia, Greece on August 10, 2021. Wildfire has destroyed hundreds of homes, thousands of hectares of forests and forced hundreds of people to flee in eight days on the Greek island of Evia.
Firefighters try to extinguish fire on the island of Evia, Greece, on 10 August, 2021.
"Heat domes" have been in the news after Greece experienced heat of up to 47C this month and record temperatures swept North America earlier this year.
Both the American and European heatwaves have been attributed to the phenomenon, which sees heat getting trapped in an area for days or even weeks without being moved by wind.
In a heat dome, the heat is trapped by a "lid" of high-pressure air.
With the heat unable to escape an area, more warm air heats up and rises, becoming compressed and trapping even more heat.
The dome stretches high into the atmosphere and becomes "locked" over an area.
It also dries the ground and can create the perfect conditions for fires.
According to the US NOAA weather service, “vast areas of sweltering heat get trapped under the high-pressure ‘dome’.
‘High-pressure circulation in the atmosphere acts like a dome or cap, trapping heat at the surface and favouring the formation of a heat wave.”
When a record-breaking heatwave roasted Canada earlier this summer, Armel Castellan, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said: “We have experienced a ridge with low pressure sandwiched on either side.
"It’s really hard to move it. The jet stream isn’t moving it along. In that pattern we have essentially a heat dome.
"A pattern that is sticking to its guns where pollutants and heat keep adding to each other. It is compounding."
This month’s heatwave in Greece saw fires blocking out the sun and the hottest weather in 30 years.
The World Meteorological Association said climate change meant heatwaves were becoming both more frequent and more intense.
Extreme weather events that previously would have happened every 50 years could soon happen every four if temperatures rise 2C above pre-industrial levels, a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned this week.
The report is the first to quantify the likelihood of extreme events across a wide variety of scenarios.
Dr. Robert Rohde, lead scientist of Berkeley Earth, said: “What were once-in-50-year heat extremes are now occurring every 10 years.
“By a rise of 2C, those same extremes will occur every 3.5 years.”
The report found that (for example) once-in-a-decade heavy rain events are already 1.3 times more likely and 6.7% wetter, compared with the 50 years leading up to 1900 when human-driven warning began to occur.
Droughts that previously happened once a decade now happen every five or six years.
Xuebin Zhang, a climatologist with Environment Canada in Toronto, warned that as the world warms, such extreme weather events will not just become more frequent, they will become more severe.
Zhang said that the world should also expect more compound events, such as heatwaves and long-term droughts occurring simultaneously.
“We are not going to be hit just by one thing," Zhang said, "we are going to be hit by multiple things at the same time.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/what-is-heat ... 41697.html
NASA to Study a $700 Quintillion ‘Goldmine’ Asteroid
Matthew Hart
Wed, August 11, 2021, 1:30 PM
If The Beatles taught us one thing it’s that all we need is love. A pretty close second thing we need, however, is enough money to make everyone in the world a billionaire many times over. Incredibly, something exists that could actually make that a reality: Psyche 16, a totally metal asteroid that Bloomberg says is worth $700 quintillion. Or at least $140 quintillion, as scientists have now confirmed the asteroid’s at least 20% metal.
Design TAXI picked up on the new look at Psyche 16, which comes as one of the latest steps toward actually visiting the precious space rock. NASA plans to send a probe to the asteroid in 2022, which would arrive in 2026. That’s a surprisingly short period of time considering Psyche 16 is hundreds of millions of miles from Earth. Although it will get a “gravity assist” from Mars.
A crisp animation of the $700 quintillion grayish blue asteroid, Psyche 16.
NASA
To better understand Psyche 16’s size, spin, shape, reflectivity, and roughness, researchers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array telescope (or ALMA) in Chile to image the asteroid thermally. They also used ALMA to study any polarized light bouncing off its surface. (Polarized light waves have vibrating electric charges that occur on a single plane versus a variety of planes. More on that here.)
A series of thermal images of Psyche 16, an asteroid worth $700 quintillion.
Katherine de Kleer, et al.
In a study published in The Planetary Science Journal, the researchers say the data shows Psyche 16 is at least 20% metal. And it may even have a much higher metal content. However, paradoxically, the researchers found Psyche 16 doesn’t emit the kind of polarized light a highly metallic body should. The researchers now think this must mean that metal-rich asteroids produce less polarized emissions than metal-poor ones do. It’s a direct contradiction of what they would’ve expected.
That scientific conundrum aside, this discovery obviously helps bolster excitement for the mission. (An overview of which is in the above video.) Although we shouldn’t all start counting our billies quite yet. The NASA probe only aims to collect more data from the asteroid. That includes measurements of its gravity and potential electromagnetic fields, as well as if it is indeed the core of a planet-sized object.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/lifesty ... 07872.html
Matthew Hart
Wed, August 11, 2021, 1:30 PM
If The Beatles taught us one thing it’s that all we need is love. A pretty close second thing we need, however, is enough money to make everyone in the world a billionaire many times over. Incredibly, something exists that could actually make that a reality: Psyche 16, a totally metal asteroid that Bloomberg says is worth $700 quintillion. Or at least $140 quintillion, as scientists have now confirmed the asteroid’s at least 20% metal.
Design TAXI picked up on the new look at Psyche 16, which comes as one of the latest steps toward actually visiting the precious space rock. NASA plans to send a probe to the asteroid in 2022, which would arrive in 2026. That’s a surprisingly short period of time considering Psyche 16 is hundreds of millions of miles from Earth. Although it will get a “gravity assist” from Mars.
A crisp animation of the $700 quintillion grayish blue asteroid, Psyche 16.
NASA
To better understand Psyche 16’s size, spin, shape, reflectivity, and roughness, researchers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array telescope (or ALMA) in Chile to image the asteroid thermally. They also used ALMA to study any polarized light bouncing off its surface. (Polarized light waves have vibrating electric charges that occur on a single plane versus a variety of planes. More on that here.)
A series of thermal images of Psyche 16, an asteroid worth $700 quintillion.
Katherine de Kleer, et al.
In a study published in The Planetary Science Journal, the researchers say the data shows Psyche 16 is at least 20% metal. And it may even have a much higher metal content. However, paradoxically, the researchers found Psyche 16 doesn’t emit the kind of polarized light a highly metallic body should. The researchers now think this must mean that metal-rich asteroids produce less polarized emissions than metal-poor ones do. It’s a direct contradiction of what they would’ve expected.
That scientific conundrum aside, this discovery obviously helps bolster excitement for the mission. (An overview of which is in the above video.) Although we shouldn’t all start counting our billies quite yet. The NASA probe only aims to collect more data from the asteroid. That includes measurements of its gravity and potential electromagnetic fields, as well as if it is indeed the core of a planet-sized object.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/lifesty ... 07872.html
Melting snow in Himalayas drives growth of green sea slime visible from space
Rob Waugh
Rob Waugh·Contributor
May 5, 2020
Melting snow in the Himalayas has led to enormous growth of a ‘green slime’ in the Arabian sea, swirls of which are now visible from space.
Research published in Nature’s Scientific Reports used NASA satellite imagery to track the growth of the planktonic organism Noctiluca scintillans in the Arabian sea.
It was unheard of 20 years ago, but the huge blooms have grown to such an extent that it has disrupted the food chain and could threaten fisheries which sustain 150 million people.
The millimeter-size planktonic organism has forced out the photosynthesising plankton that used to support life in the area.
Read more: A 1988 warning about climate change was mostly right
Joaquim Goes, from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said: “This is probably one of the most dramatic changes that we have seen that’s related to climate change.”
“We are seeing Noctiluca in Southeast Asia, off the coasts of Thailand and Vietnam, and as far south as the Seychelles, and everywhere it blooms it is becoming a problem. It also harms water quality and causes a lot of fish mortality.”
Normally, cold winter monsoon winds blowing from the Himalayas cool the surface of the oceans.
But with the shrinking of glaciers and snow cover in the Himalayas, the monsoon winds blowing offshore from land are warmer and more moist, meaning that Noctiluca blooms have flourished.
Noctiluca (also known as sea sparkle) doesn’t rely only on sunlight and nutrients; it can also survive by eating other microorganisms.
This dual mode of energy acquisition gives it a tremendous advantage to flourish and disrupt the classic food chain of the Arabian Sea.
Noctiluca blooms first appeared in the late 1990s.
In Oman, desalination plants, oil refineries and natural gas plants are now forced to scale down operations because they are choked by Noctiluca blooms and the jellyfish that swarm to feed on them.
The resulting pressure on the marine food supply and economic security may also have fuelled the rise in piracy in countries like Yemen and Somalia.
The study provides compelling new evidence of the cascading impacts of global warming on the Indian monsoons, with socio-economic implications for large populations of the Indian sub-continent and the Middle East.
“Most studies related to climate change and ocean biology are focused on the polar and temperate waters, and changes in the tropics are going largely unnoticed,” said Goes
https://www.yahoo.com/news/climate-chan ... 58393.html
Rob Waugh
Rob Waugh·Contributor
May 5, 2020
Melting snow in the Himalayas has led to enormous growth of a ‘green slime’ in the Arabian sea, swirls of which are now visible from space.
Research published in Nature’s Scientific Reports used NASA satellite imagery to track the growth of the planktonic organism Noctiluca scintillans in the Arabian sea.
It was unheard of 20 years ago, but the huge blooms have grown to such an extent that it has disrupted the food chain and could threaten fisheries which sustain 150 million people.
The millimeter-size planktonic organism has forced out the photosynthesising plankton that used to support life in the area.
Read more: A 1988 warning about climate change was mostly right
Joaquim Goes, from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said: “This is probably one of the most dramatic changes that we have seen that’s related to climate change.”
“We are seeing Noctiluca in Southeast Asia, off the coasts of Thailand and Vietnam, and as far south as the Seychelles, and everywhere it blooms it is becoming a problem. It also harms water quality and causes a lot of fish mortality.”
Normally, cold winter monsoon winds blowing from the Himalayas cool the surface of the oceans.
But with the shrinking of glaciers and snow cover in the Himalayas, the monsoon winds blowing offshore from land are warmer and more moist, meaning that Noctiluca blooms have flourished.
Noctiluca (also known as sea sparkle) doesn’t rely only on sunlight and nutrients; it can also survive by eating other microorganisms.
This dual mode of energy acquisition gives it a tremendous advantage to flourish and disrupt the classic food chain of the Arabian Sea.
Noctiluca blooms first appeared in the late 1990s.
In Oman, desalination plants, oil refineries and natural gas plants are now forced to scale down operations because they are choked by Noctiluca blooms and the jellyfish that swarm to feed on them.
The resulting pressure on the marine food supply and economic security may also have fuelled the rise in piracy in countries like Yemen and Somalia.
The study provides compelling new evidence of the cascading impacts of global warming on the Indian monsoons, with socio-economic implications for large populations of the Indian sub-continent and the Middle East.
“Most studies related to climate change and ocean biology are focused on the polar and temperate waters, and changes in the tropics are going largely unnoticed,” said Goes
https://www.yahoo.com/news/climate-chan ... 58393.html
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swamidada786
- Posts: 65
- Joined: Tue Apr 29, 2025 8:56 pm
Re: Articles of Interest in Science
CNN
He injected himself with snake venom hundreds of times. His blood could ‘revolutionize’ snakebite treatment
Katie Hunt, CNN
Sat, May 3, 2025 at 8:49 AM CDT.
Tim Friede, a self-taught snake expert based in California, exposed himself to the venom of snakes over the course of nearly 18 years. Scientists used his blood to help create a new antivenom.
Immunologist Jacob Glanville came across media reports in 2017 of a man who had injected himself hundreds of times with the venom of some of the world’s deadliest snakes, including cobras, mambas and rattlesnakes — and allowed himself to be bitten.
“The news articles were kind of flashy. ‘Crazy guy gets bit by snakes,’” Glanville said. “But I looked, and I was like there’s a diamond in the rough here.”
Glanville’s diamond was Tim Friede, a self-taught snake expert based in California who exposed himself to the venom of snakes over the course of nearly 18 years, effectively gaining immunity to several neurotoxins.
“We had this conversation. And I said, I know it’s awkward, but I’m really interested in looking at some of your blood,” Glanville recalled. “And he said, ‘Finally, I’ve been waiting for this call.’”
The pair agreed to work together, and Friede donated a 40-milliliter blood sample to Glanville and his colleagues. Eight years later, Glanville and Peter Kwong, Richard J. Stock Professor of medical sciences at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, have published details of an antivenom that can protect against bites from 19 species of venomous snake — at least in mice — based on antibodies in Friede’s blood and a venom-blocking drug.
“Tim, to my knowledge, he has an unparalleled history. It was different, very diverse species from every continent that has snakes, and … he kept rotating between (the snake venoms) over a 17-year, nine-month history, and he took meticulous records the entire time,” Glanville said.
“However, we strongly discourage anyone from trying to do what Tim did,” Glanville added. “Snake venom is dangerous.”
Friede gave up immunizing himself with snake venom in 2018 after some close calls, and he is now employed by Glanville’s biotechnology company Centivax, Glanville said. Glanville is CEO and chairman of Centivax.
The research was published Friday in the scientific journal Cell. CNN contacted Friede, but he did not respond to an interview request.
The snakebite problem
If you’re unlucky enough to have a venomous snake sink its fangs into you, your best hope is an antivenom, which for the most part has been made in the same way since Victorian times.
Traditionally, the process involves milking snake venom by hand and injecting it into horses or other animals in small doses to evoke an immune response. The animal’s blood is drawn and purified to obtain antibodies that act against the venom.
Producing antivenom in this way can get messy, not to mention dangerous. The process is prone to errors and laborious, and the finished serum can result in serious side effects.
Experts have long called for better ways to treat snakebites, which kill some 200 people a day, mainly in the developing world, and leave 400,000 people a year with disabilities. The World Health Organization added snakebite to its list of neglected tropical diseases in 2017.
Glanville, who grew up in rural Guatemala, said he had long been aware of the health problems posed by snakebites and immediately recognized that Friede’s experience presented a unique opportunity.
Exposing himself to the venom of snakes for nearly two decades, by injecting venom and allowing himself to be bitten, Friede had generated antibodies that were effective against several snake neurotoxins at once.
‘Revolutionary’ potential
The researchers isolated antibodies from Friede’s blood that reacted with neurotoxins found within the 19 snake species tested in the study, which included coral snakes, mambas, cobras, taipans, kraits and others.
These antibodies were then tested one by one in mice poisoned by venom from each of the 19 species, allowing scientists to understand systematically the minimum number of components that would neutralize all the venoms.
The drug cocktail the team created ultimately included three things: two antibodies isolated from Friede and the small-molecule drug varespladib, which inhibits an enzyme that is present in 95% of all snakebites. The drug is currently in human clinical trials as a standalone treatment.
The addition of varespladib granted protection against an additional three species. Finally, researchers added a second antibody isolated from Friede’s blood, called SNX-B03, which extended protection across 19 species.
The antivenom offered the mice 100% protection against the venom for 13 species and partial protection (20% to 40%) for the remaining six, the researchers noted in the study.
Steven Hall, a snakebite pharmacologist at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, called it a “very clever and creative way” to develop an antivenom. Hall wasn’t involved in the research.
And while the cocktail has not been tested in humans, should it be approved for clinical use, Hall said the human origin of the antibodies would likely mean fewer side effects than antivenoms made the traditional way using horses or other animals, which can often result in allergic reactions.
“It’s impressive for the fact that this is done with one or two antibodies, plus a small-molecule drug, and that increases the number of species, versus a regular antidote. And I think it does a good job of highlighting the potential utility of combining a small-molecule drug with an antibody,” Hall added.
“If it makes it into clinic, makes it into people in the long run, it would be revolutionary. It actually would completely change the field in terms of snakebite (treatment),” he said.
Columbia’s Kwong said that the published research focused on a class of snakes known as elapids. It did not include viperids, the other major group of venomous snakes that includes rattlesnakes, saw-scaled vipers and additional species.
However, the team is investigating whether additional antibodies identified in Friede’s blood or other agents might offer protection against this viperid family of snakes.
“The final contemplated product would be a single, pan-antivenom cocktail or we potentially would make two: one that is for the elapids and another that is for the viperids because some areas of the world only have one or the other,” Kwong said.
The team also wants to start field research in Australia, where there are only elapid snakes, allowing vets to use the antivenom on dogs bitten by snakes.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ma ... 03014.html
He injected himself with snake venom hundreds of times. His blood could ‘revolutionize’ snakebite treatment
Katie Hunt, CNN
Sat, May 3, 2025 at 8:49 AM CDT.
Tim Friede, a self-taught snake expert based in California, exposed himself to the venom of snakes over the course of nearly 18 years. Scientists used his blood to help create a new antivenom.
Immunologist Jacob Glanville came across media reports in 2017 of a man who had injected himself hundreds of times with the venom of some of the world’s deadliest snakes, including cobras, mambas and rattlesnakes — and allowed himself to be bitten.
“The news articles were kind of flashy. ‘Crazy guy gets bit by snakes,’” Glanville said. “But I looked, and I was like there’s a diamond in the rough here.”
Glanville’s diamond was Tim Friede, a self-taught snake expert based in California who exposed himself to the venom of snakes over the course of nearly 18 years, effectively gaining immunity to several neurotoxins.
“We had this conversation. And I said, I know it’s awkward, but I’m really interested in looking at some of your blood,” Glanville recalled. “And he said, ‘Finally, I’ve been waiting for this call.’”
The pair agreed to work together, and Friede donated a 40-milliliter blood sample to Glanville and his colleagues. Eight years later, Glanville and Peter Kwong, Richard J. Stock Professor of medical sciences at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, have published details of an antivenom that can protect against bites from 19 species of venomous snake — at least in mice — based on antibodies in Friede’s blood and a venom-blocking drug.
“Tim, to my knowledge, he has an unparalleled history. It was different, very diverse species from every continent that has snakes, and … he kept rotating between (the snake venoms) over a 17-year, nine-month history, and he took meticulous records the entire time,” Glanville said.
“However, we strongly discourage anyone from trying to do what Tim did,” Glanville added. “Snake venom is dangerous.”
Friede gave up immunizing himself with snake venom in 2018 after some close calls, and he is now employed by Glanville’s biotechnology company Centivax, Glanville said. Glanville is CEO and chairman of Centivax.
The research was published Friday in the scientific journal Cell. CNN contacted Friede, but he did not respond to an interview request.
The snakebite problem
If you’re unlucky enough to have a venomous snake sink its fangs into you, your best hope is an antivenom, which for the most part has been made in the same way since Victorian times.
Traditionally, the process involves milking snake venom by hand and injecting it into horses or other animals in small doses to evoke an immune response. The animal’s blood is drawn and purified to obtain antibodies that act against the venom.
Producing antivenom in this way can get messy, not to mention dangerous. The process is prone to errors and laborious, and the finished serum can result in serious side effects.
Experts have long called for better ways to treat snakebites, which kill some 200 people a day, mainly in the developing world, and leave 400,000 people a year with disabilities. The World Health Organization added snakebite to its list of neglected tropical diseases in 2017.
Glanville, who grew up in rural Guatemala, said he had long been aware of the health problems posed by snakebites and immediately recognized that Friede’s experience presented a unique opportunity.
Exposing himself to the venom of snakes for nearly two decades, by injecting venom and allowing himself to be bitten, Friede had generated antibodies that were effective against several snake neurotoxins at once.
‘Revolutionary’ potential
The researchers isolated antibodies from Friede’s blood that reacted with neurotoxins found within the 19 snake species tested in the study, which included coral snakes, mambas, cobras, taipans, kraits and others.
These antibodies were then tested one by one in mice poisoned by venom from each of the 19 species, allowing scientists to understand systematically the minimum number of components that would neutralize all the venoms.
The drug cocktail the team created ultimately included three things: two antibodies isolated from Friede and the small-molecule drug varespladib, which inhibits an enzyme that is present in 95% of all snakebites. The drug is currently in human clinical trials as a standalone treatment.
The addition of varespladib granted protection against an additional three species. Finally, researchers added a second antibody isolated from Friede’s blood, called SNX-B03, which extended protection across 19 species.
The antivenom offered the mice 100% protection against the venom for 13 species and partial protection (20% to 40%) for the remaining six, the researchers noted in the study.
Steven Hall, a snakebite pharmacologist at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, called it a “very clever and creative way” to develop an antivenom. Hall wasn’t involved in the research.
And while the cocktail has not been tested in humans, should it be approved for clinical use, Hall said the human origin of the antibodies would likely mean fewer side effects than antivenoms made the traditional way using horses or other animals, which can often result in allergic reactions.
“It’s impressive for the fact that this is done with one or two antibodies, plus a small-molecule drug, and that increases the number of species, versus a regular antidote. And I think it does a good job of highlighting the potential utility of combining a small-molecule drug with an antibody,” Hall added.
“If it makes it into clinic, makes it into people in the long run, it would be revolutionary. It actually would completely change the field in terms of snakebite (treatment),” he said.
Columbia’s Kwong said that the published research focused on a class of snakes known as elapids. It did not include viperids, the other major group of venomous snakes that includes rattlesnakes, saw-scaled vipers and additional species.
However, the team is investigating whether additional antibodies identified in Friede’s blood or other agents might offer protection against this viperid family of snakes.
“The final contemplated product would be a single, pan-antivenom cocktail or we potentially would make two: one that is for the elapids and another that is for the viperids because some areas of the world only have one or the other,” Kwong said.
The team also wants to start field research in Australia, where there are only elapid snakes, allowing vets to use the antivenom on dogs bitten by snakes.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ma ... 03014.html
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Re: Articles of Interest in Science
Fox News
Shingles vaccine has unexpected effect on heart health
Melissa Rudy
Fri, May 9, 2025 at 2:39 PM CDT·
Shingles vaccine has unexpected effect on heart health
The list of potential benefits of the shingles vaccine continues to grow.
Beyond protecting against the viral infection and resulting painful rash, the shot has also been linked to a reduced risk of dementia, as Fox News Digital previously reported.
And now, a new study has found that the vaccine could lower the risk of heart disease for up to eight years.
Dementia Risk Could Dip With Common Vaccine, Study Suggests
In the long-running study, researchers analyzed up to 12 years of data for more than 1.2 million people aged 50 or older in South Korea, focusing on shingles vaccination rates and 18 different types of cardiovascular disease.
Vaccine in the arm
A new study has found that the shingles vaccine could lower the risk of heart disease for up to eight years.
They found that those who received the shingles vaccine had a 23% lower risk of heart issues, including stroke, heart failure and coronary artery disease.
The benefits were greater for people under 60 years old, likely because they have a better immune response, according to the researchers.
Blood Pressure And Dementia Risk Share Surprising Link, Study Suggests
The vaccine’s heart health benefits were also more prominent among men and those who have unhealthy behaviors, such as being sedentary, drinking alcohol and smoking.
Shingles dementia split
The shingles vaccine has also been linked to a reduced risk of dementia, as Fox News Digital previously reported.
The primary symptom of shingles is a painful rash that can lead to serious complications, particularly for older adults and those with weak immune systems, according to lead author Professor Dong Keon Yon from the Kyung Hee University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea.
Without vaccination, about 30% of people may develop shingles in their lifetime, Yon noted.
"In addition to the rash, shingles has been linked to a higher risk of heart problems, so we wanted to find out if getting vaccinated could lower this risk," he said in a press release.
"Our study suggests that the shingles vaccine may help lower the risk of heart disease, even in people without known risk factors. This means that vaccination could offer health benefits beyond preventing shingles."
Woman heart doctor
Those who received the shingles vaccine had a 23% lower risk of heart issues, including stroke, heart failure and coronary artery disease.
The researchers shared several possible reasons for the vaccine’s protective effect on heart health.
"A shingles infection can cause blood vessel damage, inflammation and clot formation that can lead to heart disease," Yon said. "By preventing shingles, vaccination may lower these risks."
Dr. Jasdeep Dalawari, a Virginia-based interventional cardiologist and regional chief medical officer at VitalSolution, an Ingenovis Health company, was not involved in the study but offered his comments on the findings.
"This result is notable but requires careful interpretation, especially for the U.S. population," he told Fox News Digital.
Shingles vaccine
Without vaccination, about 30% of people may develop shingles in their lifetime.
"The study used a live vaccine, whereas the U.S. uses Shingrix, a recombinant (non-live) vaccine," Dalawari noted. "It’s important to note that Shingrix is over 90% effective against shingles, compared to the live vaccine's 51%."
The cardiologist also pointed out that the observational study shows correlation, not causation, and that further research is needed.
"The study included 1.2 million individuals aged 50+, all from one ethnicity," he said. "Expanding the participant pool to include diverse ethnicities would be beneficial in our multi-ethnic society."
heart attack illustration
"A shingles infection can cause blood vessel damage, inflammation and clot formation that can lead to heart disease," the researcher said.
Although the study did consider other health conditions, lifestyle factors and socioeconomic status, the researchers agreed that it had some limitations.
"As this study is based on an Asian cohort, the results may not apply to all populations," Yon noted. "While we conducted rigorous analysis, this study does not establish a direct causal relationship, so potential bias from other underlying factors should be considered."
The team plans to conduct further research into the heart health benefits of the non-live, recombinant vaccine, which contains a protein from the virus.
Original article source: Shingles vaccine has unexpected effect on heart health
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/sh ... 43612.html
Shingles vaccine has unexpected effect on heart health
Melissa Rudy
Fri, May 9, 2025 at 2:39 PM CDT·
Shingles vaccine has unexpected effect on heart health
The list of potential benefits of the shingles vaccine continues to grow.
Beyond protecting against the viral infection and resulting painful rash, the shot has also been linked to a reduced risk of dementia, as Fox News Digital previously reported.
And now, a new study has found that the vaccine could lower the risk of heart disease for up to eight years.
Dementia Risk Could Dip With Common Vaccine, Study Suggests
In the long-running study, researchers analyzed up to 12 years of data for more than 1.2 million people aged 50 or older in South Korea, focusing on shingles vaccination rates and 18 different types of cardiovascular disease.
Vaccine in the arm
A new study has found that the shingles vaccine could lower the risk of heart disease for up to eight years.
They found that those who received the shingles vaccine had a 23% lower risk of heart issues, including stroke, heart failure and coronary artery disease.
The benefits were greater for people under 60 years old, likely because they have a better immune response, according to the researchers.
Blood Pressure And Dementia Risk Share Surprising Link, Study Suggests
The vaccine’s heart health benefits were also more prominent among men and those who have unhealthy behaviors, such as being sedentary, drinking alcohol and smoking.
Shingles dementia split
The shingles vaccine has also been linked to a reduced risk of dementia, as Fox News Digital previously reported.
The primary symptom of shingles is a painful rash that can lead to serious complications, particularly for older adults and those with weak immune systems, according to lead author Professor Dong Keon Yon from the Kyung Hee University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea.
Without vaccination, about 30% of people may develop shingles in their lifetime, Yon noted.
"In addition to the rash, shingles has been linked to a higher risk of heart problems, so we wanted to find out if getting vaccinated could lower this risk," he said in a press release.
"Our study suggests that the shingles vaccine may help lower the risk of heart disease, even in people without known risk factors. This means that vaccination could offer health benefits beyond preventing shingles."
Woman heart doctor
Those who received the shingles vaccine had a 23% lower risk of heart issues, including stroke, heart failure and coronary artery disease.
The researchers shared several possible reasons for the vaccine’s protective effect on heart health.
"A shingles infection can cause blood vessel damage, inflammation and clot formation that can lead to heart disease," Yon said. "By preventing shingles, vaccination may lower these risks."
Dr. Jasdeep Dalawari, a Virginia-based interventional cardiologist and regional chief medical officer at VitalSolution, an Ingenovis Health company, was not involved in the study but offered his comments on the findings.
"This result is notable but requires careful interpretation, especially for the U.S. population," he told Fox News Digital.
Shingles vaccine
Without vaccination, about 30% of people may develop shingles in their lifetime.
"The study used a live vaccine, whereas the U.S. uses Shingrix, a recombinant (non-live) vaccine," Dalawari noted. "It’s important to note that Shingrix is over 90% effective against shingles, compared to the live vaccine's 51%."
The cardiologist also pointed out that the observational study shows correlation, not causation, and that further research is needed.
"The study included 1.2 million individuals aged 50+, all from one ethnicity," he said. "Expanding the participant pool to include diverse ethnicities would be beneficial in our multi-ethnic society."
heart attack illustration
"A shingles infection can cause blood vessel damage, inflammation and clot formation that can lead to heart disease," the researcher said.
Although the study did consider other health conditions, lifestyle factors and socioeconomic status, the researchers agreed that it had some limitations.
"As this study is based on an Asian cohort, the results may not apply to all populations," Yon noted. "While we conducted rigorous analysis, this study does not establish a direct causal relationship, so potential bias from other underlying factors should be considered."
The team plans to conduct further research into the heart health benefits of the non-live, recombinant vaccine, which contains a protein from the virus.
Original article source: Shingles vaccine has unexpected effect on heart health
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/sh ... 43612.html
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swamidada786
- Posts: 65
- Joined: Tue Apr 29, 2025 8:56 pm
Re: Articles of Interest in Science
Fox News
Shingles vaccine has unexpected effect on heart health
Melissa Rudy
Fri, May 9, 2025 at 2:39 PM CDT·
Shingles vaccine has unexpected effect on heart health
The list of potential benefits of the shingles vaccine continues to grow.
Beyond protecting against the viral infection and resulting painful rash, the shot has also been linked to a reduced risk of dementia, as Fox News Digital previously reported.
And now, a new study has found that the vaccine could lower the risk of heart disease for up to eight years.
Dementia Risk Could Dip With Common Vaccine, Study Suggests
In the long-running study, researchers analyzed up to 12 years of data for more than 1.2 million people aged 50 or older in South Korea, focusing on shingles vaccination rates and 18 different types of cardiovascular disease.
Vaccine in the arm
A new study has found that the shingles vaccine could lower the risk of heart disease for up to eight years.
They found that those who received the shingles vaccine had a 23% lower risk of heart issues, including stroke, heart failure and coronary artery disease.
The benefits were greater for people under 60 years old, likely because they have a better immune response, according to the researchers.
Blood Pressure And Dementia Risk Share Surprising Link, Study Suggests
The vaccine’s heart health benefits were also more prominent among men and those who have unhealthy behaviors, such as being sedentary, drinking alcohol and smoking.
Shingles dementia split
The shingles vaccine has also been linked to a reduced risk of dementia, as Fox News Digital previously reported.
The primary symptom of shingles is a painful rash that can lead to serious complications, particularly for older adults and those with weak immune systems, according to lead author Professor Dong Keon Yon from the Kyung Hee University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea.
Without vaccination, about 30% of people may develop shingles in their lifetime, Yon noted.
"In addition to the rash, shingles has been linked to a higher risk of heart problems, so we wanted to find out if getting vaccinated could lower this risk," he said in a press release.
"Our study suggests that the shingles vaccine may help lower the risk of heart disease, even in people without known risk factors. This means that vaccination could offer health benefits beyond preventing shingles."
Woman heart doctor
Those who received the shingles vaccine had a 23% lower risk of heart issues, including stroke, heart failure and coronary artery disease.
The researchers shared several possible reasons for the vaccine’s protective effect on heart health.
"A shingles infection can cause blood vessel damage, inflammation and clot formation that can lead to heart disease," Yon said. "By preventing shingles, vaccination may lower these risks."
Dr. Jasdeep Dalawari, a Virginia-based interventional cardiologist and regional chief medical officer at VitalSolution, an Ingenovis Health company, was not involved in the study but offered his comments on the findings.
"This result is notable but requires careful interpretation, especially for the U.S. population," he told Fox News Digital.
Shingles vaccine
Without vaccination, about 30% of people may develop shingles in their lifetime.
"The study used a live vaccine, whereas the U.S. uses Shingrix, a recombinant (non-live) vaccine," Dalawari noted. "It’s important to note that Shingrix is over 90% effective against shingles, compared to the live vaccine's 51%."
The cardiologist also pointed out that the observational study shows correlation, not causation, and that further research is needed.
"The study included 1.2 million individuals aged 50+, all from one ethnicity," he said. "Expanding the participant pool to include diverse ethnicities would be beneficial in our multi-ethnic society."
heart attack illustration
"A shingles infection can cause blood vessel damage, inflammation and clot formation that can lead to heart disease," the researcher said.
Although the study did consider other health conditions, lifestyle factors and socioeconomic status, the researchers agreed that it had some limitations.
"As this study is based on an Asian cohort, the results may not apply to all populations," Yon noted. "While we conducted rigorous analysis, this study does not establish a direct causal relationship, so potential bias from other underlying factors should be considered."
The team plans to conduct further research into the heart health benefits of the non-live, recombinant vaccine, which contains a protein from the virus.
Original article source: Shingles vaccine has unexpected effect on heart health
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/sh ... 43612.html
Shingles vaccine has unexpected effect on heart health
Melissa Rudy
Fri, May 9, 2025 at 2:39 PM CDT·
Shingles vaccine has unexpected effect on heart health
The list of potential benefits of the shingles vaccine continues to grow.
Beyond protecting against the viral infection and resulting painful rash, the shot has also been linked to a reduced risk of dementia, as Fox News Digital previously reported.
And now, a new study has found that the vaccine could lower the risk of heart disease for up to eight years.
Dementia Risk Could Dip With Common Vaccine, Study Suggests
In the long-running study, researchers analyzed up to 12 years of data for more than 1.2 million people aged 50 or older in South Korea, focusing on shingles vaccination rates and 18 different types of cardiovascular disease.
Vaccine in the arm
A new study has found that the shingles vaccine could lower the risk of heart disease for up to eight years.
They found that those who received the shingles vaccine had a 23% lower risk of heart issues, including stroke, heart failure and coronary artery disease.
The benefits were greater for people under 60 years old, likely because they have a better immune response, according to the researchers.
Blood Pressure And Dementia Risk Share Surprising Link, Study Suggests
The vaccine’s heart health benefits were also more prominent among men and those who have unhealthy behaviors, such as being sedentary, drinking alcohol and smoking.
Shingles dementia split
The shingles vaccine has also been linked to a reduced risk of dementia, as Fox News Digital previously reported.
The primary symptom of shingles is a painful rash that can lead to serious complications, particularly for older adults and those with weak immune systems, according to lead author Professor Dong Keon Yon from the Kyung Hee University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea.
Without vaccination, about 30% of people may develop shingles in their lifetime, Yon noted.
"In addition to the rash, shingles has been linked to a higher risk of heart problems, so we wanted to find out if getting vaccinated could lower this risk," he said in a press release.
"Our study suggests that the shingles vaccine may help lower the risk of heart disease, even in people without known risk factors. This means that vaccination could offer health benefits beyond preventing shingles."
Woman heart doctor
Those who received the shingles vaccine had a 23% lower risk of heart issues, including stroke, heart failure and coronary artery disease.
The researchers shared several possible reasons for the vaccine’s protective effect on heart health.
"A shingles infection can cause blood vessel damage, inflammation and clot formation that can lead to heart disease," Yon said. "By preventing shingles, vaccination may lower these risks."
Dr. Jasdeep Dalawari, a Virginia-based interventional cardiologist and regional chief medical officer at VitalSolution, an Ingenovis Health company, was not involved in the study but offered his comments on the findings.
"This result is notable but requires careful interpretation, especially for the U.S. population," he told Fox News Digital.
Shingles vaccine
Without vaccination, about 30% of people may develop shingles in their lifetime.
"The study used a live vaccine, whereas the U.S. uses Shingrix, a recombinant (non-live) vaccine," Dalawari noted. "It’s important to note that Shingrix is over 90% effective against shingles, compared to the live vaccine's 51%."
The cardiologist also pointed out that the observational study shows correlation, not causation, and that further research is needed.
"The study included 1.2 million individuals aged 50+, all from one ethnicity," he said. "Expanding the participant pool to include diverse ethnicities would be beneficial in our multi-ethnic society."
heart attack illustration
"A shingles infection can cause blood vessel damage, inflammation and clot formation that can lead to heart disease," the researcher said.
Although the study did consider other health conditions, lifestyle factors and socioeconomic status, the researchers agreed that it had some limitations.
"As this study is based on an Asian cohort, the results may not apply to all populations," Yon noted. "While we conducted rigorous analysis, this study does not establish a direct causal relationship, so potential bias from other underlying factors should be considered."
The team plans to conduct further research into the heart health benefits of the non-live, recombinant vaccine, which contains a protein from the virus.
Original article source: Shingles vaccine has unexpected effect on heart health
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/sh ... 43612.html
Re: Articles of Interest in Science
Repeated post!swamidada786 wrote: Sun May 11, 2025 10:16 pm Fox News
Shingles vaccine has unexpected effect on heart health
Melissa Rudy
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swamidada786
- Posts: 65
- Joined: Tue Apr 29, 2025 8:56 pm
Re: Articles of Interest in Science
Space
These 5 particles are so strange, we're not sure they exist
Paul Sutter
December 24, 2024·
To start, there are the usual suspects, like electrons, protons, quarks and neutrinos. But if those particles aren't strange enough for you, I'm here to help.
There are other particles that are so rare, we're not even sure they exist. Here are five of the weirdest, rarest hypothetical particles in the universe.
Dark photon
Everybody loves the photon. It gets along with so many other particles. It has an infinite range. It makes flashlights work. But it may not be the only kind of photon out there. Enter the dark photon, which is like a regular photon but just … dark.
The motivation for the dark photon comes from the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter is some invisible form of matter that makes up most of the mass of almost every galaxy and, all told, accounts for roughly 25% of the universe's energy. Dark energy is responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe and makes up 70% of the contents of the cosmos.
Among the many questions facing cosmologists is just how simple or complicated these dark components are. We know that regular matter is fascinatingly complex, with a wide variety of particles and forces at play. Is the dark sector, as it's called, big, simple and dumb, or is it as rich and varied as the light side of the universe?
If the dark sector is complex, there may be additional forces of nature that operate only between dark matter and/or dark energy, and dark photons would be the carriers of those forces. No searches have discovered any evidence for dark photons yet, but we still have a lot to learn.
Related: Hypothetical 'dark photons' could shed light on mysterious dark matter
Curvaton
Let's go back to the earliest moments of the Big Bang. Cosmologists believe that our universe underwent a period of incredibly rapid expansion known as inflation. Powering this event was some mysterious substance in the universe, known as the "inflaton" (which was basically like dark energy on steroids).
Inflation is still hypothetical, but it does have one powerful prediction under its belt: cosmic structure. The statistical properties of structures in our universe match what we expect from cosmic inflation, so we believe this dramatic event laid the foundation for the stars, galaxies and clusters that would emerge later.
Despite this success, inflation has some thorny issues. For one, it's difficult to build models of inflation that are "natural" — in the sense that they start and end without any fine-tuning — and still generate the seeds of cosmic structure. To get around this, some theorists have proposed a companion to the inflaton, dubbed the curvaton.
The job of the curvaton is to sit around and wait while inflation does its thing. Then, the curvaton steps in and lays the groundwork for structure. The advantage of this approach is that inflation models can be more "natural," because we're not forcing one entity — the inflaton — to do all the work in the early universe.
The downside of this approach is that we're replacing one hypothetical entity with two, which doesn't exactly ease concerns that maybe we're getting the whole inflation picture wrong. But the curvaton is worth investigating anyway, because research in that direction might open up a promising avenue. Besides, it has a really cool name.
Glueball
The carrier of the strong force is a particle known as the gluon, of which there are nine varieties.
Here's the fun thing about gluons: They can feel the strong force, too. So our best models of the proton tell us that gluons are hot messes of strong force interactions. And they're not the only hot messes of strong force interactions. The protons and neutrons have three quarks (and gluons), and there's a whole family of particles called mesons, which contain two quarks (and gluons).
So we've got all these combinations of quarks and gluons held together with the strong nuclear force. But if gluons feel the strong nuclear force anyway, why don't we just skip the quark part? Why make it so complicated? Just keep it simple. And that's how we came up with the glueball, which is a hefty particle made of nothing more than a collection of gluons … glued together.
three points of light connected by rays of light inside of a transparent bubble
three points of light connected by rays of light inside of a transparent bubble
What makes the glueball so elusive is that it's incredibly ephemeral, with a lifetime of less than a microsecond. This isn't that surprising; every combination of quarks and gluons, except the proton, is also unstable in isolation. But the glueballs are expected to have exceptionally short lifetimes; otherwise, we would've seen them just floating around in our backyards by now.
But glueballs also have predicted masses in the range of just about every other composite particle. So we might be making it but not realizing it, because when we see a surprising new particle in a collider, we typically get to quantify only its mass. This means we have observed plenty of candidate glueballs going back to 2013, but what we saw could also be other particles that are much less exotic.
Nowadays, there are entire experiments, like GlueX, devoted to finding glueballs. It's the last major prediction of the Standard Model still standing, so it's worth searching for these odd particles.
X17
We've been trying to move past the Standard Model of particle physics pretty much since we invented it. And in 2015, physicists got a signal that something might be wrong,at ATOMKI, the Hungarian Institute for Nuclear Research.
The team had assembled an apparatus to search for dark photons. The setup involved firing protons at lithium-7, which then transformed into beryllium-8 nuclei, which then decayed and produced pairs of electrons and positrons. Those pairs flew off at various angles, and scientists used nuclear physics calculations to predict the spread of those angles. If they got more of those particles than they expected, it might have been because dark photons were getting involved.
And indeed, the Hungarian team found extra electrons and positrons. To recreate the signal, there had to be a new particle with a mass of 17 MeV (34 times the mass of the electron), so this mysterious new particle got a name: X17.
In the following years, the Hungarian team has built up an impressive list of accomplishments, all of which point to the reality of this new particle, including statistical significance of over 6 sigma, and work with collaborators to find similar signals.
Nonetheless, most of the mainstream physics community has doubts about X17. All of the "independent" confirmations have some sort of fingerprint from the original Hungarian team, and nobody outside that network has been able to reproduce the effect.
Also, there are some relatively plausible explanations for the anomaly that arise from the detector setup's geometry. Given that we don't see any new evidence for the particle, as much as I would like X17 to exist, I'm not going to get my hopes up yet.
You've got your elements, like helium and aluminum. They are made of fundamental particles, like the proton, neutron and electron. But those are made of even smaller things: quarks. So why stop there? Maybe what we call the fundamental particles of the universe are really composite structures of even smaller objects, the preons (as in "pre-quarks," not to be confused with prions.
Preons
One of the biggest motivations for preons is that many particles are extremely similar to each other but differ only in some small way. For example, the electron and positron differ only in charge, and the electron and the muon differ only in mass. We currently have no explanation for these nearly identical properties, so we suspect they may arise from some other interactions.
Preons have been proposed to explain … well, just about every outstanding problem in the Standard Model, from why there are only three generations to what dark matter is. But nothing ever seems to stick, and that's because no experiment has given any hint that quarks and leptons are composite particles. We try as hard as we can to smash them apart, but they just keep being themselves.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/5- ... 00577.html
These 5 particles are so strange, we're not sure they exist
Paul Sutter
December 24, 2024·
To start, there are the usual suspects, like electrons, protons, quarks and neutrinos. But if those particles aren't strange enough for you, I'm here to help.
There are other particles that are so rare, we're not even sure they exist. Here are five of the weirdest, rarest hypothetical particles in the universe.
Dark photon
Everybody loves the photon. It gets along with so many other particles. It has an infinite range. It makes flashlights work. But it may not be the only kind of photon out there. Enter the dark photon, which is like a regular photon but just … dark.
The motivation for the dark photon comes from the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter is some invisible form of matter that makes up most of the mass of almost every galaxy and, all told, accounts for roughly 25% of the universe's energy. Dark energy is responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe and makes up 70% of the contents of the cosmos.
Among the many questions facing cosmologists is just how simple or complicated these dark components are. We know that regular matter is fascinatingly complex, with a wide variety of particles and forces at play. Is the dark sector, as it's called, big, simple and dumb, or is it as rich and varied as the light side of the universe?
If the dark sector is complex, there may be additional forces of nature that operate only between dark matter and/or dark energy, and dark photons would be the carriers of those forces. No searches have discovered any evidence for dark photons yet, but we still have a lot to learn.
Related: Hypothetical 'dark photons' could shed light on mysterious dark matter
Curvaton
Let's go back to the earliest moments of the Big Bang. Cosmologists believe that our universe underwent a period of incredibly rapid expansion known as inflation. Powering this event was some mysterious substance in the universe, known as the "inflaton" (which was basically like dark energy on steroids).
Inflation is still hypothetical, but it does have one powerful prediction under its belt: cosmic structure. The statistical properties of structures in our universe match what we expect from cosmic inflation, so we believe this dramatic event laid the foundation for the stars, galaxies and clusters that would emerge later.
Despite this success, inflation has some thorny issues. For one, it's difficult to build models of inflation that are "natural" — in the sense that they start and end without any fine-tuning — and still generate the seeds of cosmic structure. To get around this, some theorists have proposed a companion to the inflaton, dubbed the curvaton.
The job of the curvaton is to sit around and wait while inflation does its thing. Then, the curvaton steps in and lays the groundwork for structure. The advantage of this approach is that inflation models can be more "natural," because we're not forcing one entity — the inflaton — to do all the work in the early universe.
The downside of this approach is that we're replacing one hypothetical entity with two, which doesn't exactly ease concerns that maybe we're getting the whole inflation picture wrong. But the curvaton is worth investigating anyway, because research in that direction might open up a promising avenue. Besides, it has a really cool name.
Glueball
The carrier of the strong force is a particle known as the gluon, of which there are nine varieties.
Here's the fun thing about gluons: They can feel the strong force, too. So our best models of the proton tell us that gluons are hot messes of strong force interactions. And they're not the only hot messes of strong force interactions. The protons and neutrons have three quarks (and gluons), and there's a whole family of particles called mesons, which contain two quarks (and gluons).
So we've got all these combinations of quarks and gluons held together with the strong nuclear force. But if gluons feel the strong nuclear force anyway, why don't we just skip the quark part? Why make it so complicated? Just keep it simple. And that's how we came up with the glueball, which is a hefty particle made of nothing more than a collection of gluons … glued together.
three points of light connected by rays of light inside of a transparent bubble
three points of light connected by rays of light inside of a transparent bubble
What makes the glueball so elusive is that it's incredibly ephemeral, with a lifetime of less than a microsecond. This isn't that surprising; every combination of quarks and gluons, except the proton, is also unstable in isolation. But the glueballs are expected to have exceptionally short lifetimes; otherwise, we would've seen them just floating around in our backyards by now.
But glueballs also have predicted masses in the range of just about every other composite particle. So we might be making it but not realizing it, because when we see a surprising new particle in a collider, we typically get to quantify only its mass. This means we have observed plenty of candidate glueballs going back to 2013, but what we saw could also be other particles that are much less exotic.
Nowadays, there are entire experiments, like GlueX, devoted to finding glueballs. It's the last major prediction of the Standard Model still standing, so it's worth searching for these odd particles.
X17
We've been trying to move past the Standard Model of particle physics pretty much since we invented it. And in 2015, physicists got a signal that something might be wrong,at ATOMKI, the Hungarian Institute for Nuclear Research.
The team had assembled an apparatus to search for dark photons. The setup involved firing protons at lithium-7, which then transformed into beryllium-8 nuclei, which then decayed and produced pairs of electrons and positrons. Those pairs flew off at various angles, and scientists used nuclear physics calculations to predict the spread of those angles. If they got more of those particles than they expected, it might have been because dark photons were getting involved.
And indeed, the Hungarian team found extra electrons and positrons. To recreate the signal, there had to be a new particle with a mass of 17 MeV (34 times the mass of the electron), so this mysterious new particle got a name: X17.
In the following years, the Hungarian team has built up an impressive list of accomplishments, all of which point to the reality of this new particle, including statistical significance of over 6 sigma, and work with collaborators to find similar signals.
Nonetheless, most of the mainstream physics community has doubts about X17. All of the "independent" confirmations have some sort of fingerprint from the original Hungarian team, and nobody outside that network has been able to reproduce the effect.
Also, there are some relatively plausible explanations for the anomaly that arise from the detector setup's geometry. Given that we don't see any new evidence for the particle, as much as I would like X17 to exist, I'm not going to get my hopes up yet.
You've got your elements, like helium and aluminum. They are made of fundamental particles, like the proton, neutron and electron. But those are made of even smaller things: quarks. So why stop there? Maybe what we call the fundamental particles of the universe are really composite structures of even smaller objects, the preons (as in "pre-quarks," not to be confused with prions.
Preons
One of the biggest motivations for preons is that many particles are extremely similar to each other but differ only in some small way. For example, the electron and positron differ only in charge, and the electron and the muon differ only in mass. We currently have no explanation for these nearly identical properties, so we suspect they may arise from some other interactions.
Preons have been proposed to explain … well, just about every outstanding problem in the Standard Model, from why there are only three generations to what dark matter is. But nothing ever seems to stick, and that's because no experiment has given any hint that quarks and leptons are composite particles. We try as hard as we can to smash them apart, but they just keep being themselves.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/5- ... 00577.html
Re: Articles of Interest in Science
“Scientists Confirm the Impossible”: Time Reflections Are Real, Shattering the Boundaries of Physics and Human Understanding
In a groundbreaking revelation poised to alter our understanding of physics, researchers at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center have confirmed the existence of time reflections, a phenomenon that challenges conventional concepts of space and time.
Illustration of the groundbreaking confirmation of time reflections by researchers at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center. Image generated by AI.
IN A NUTSHELL
- Researchers at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center have confirmed the existence of time reflections, a phenomenon long theorized in physics.
- Time reflection involves waves reversing their progression through time, altering their frequency and direction in unprecedented ways.
- This discovery opens the door to revolutionary applications in wireless communications, radar systems, and advanced imaging.
- The findings offer new perspectives on the symmetry between time and space, with potential implications for fields like thermodynamics and quantum mechanics.
Scientists have long theorized the existence of time reflections, a phenomenon as mind-bending as it sounds. Imagine a mirror that doesn’t reflect your face but your back. This concept, once confined to the realm of theoretical physics, has now been validated by researchers at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center in New York. This groundbreaking discovery challenges our understanding of electromagnetic waves and could pave the way for unprecedented technological applications. Let’s delve into the intricacies of this phenomenon and explore its potential impact on science and technology.
Understanding Time Reflection
To grasp the concept of time reflection, it helps to start with spatial reflection, something we’re all familiar with. Picture a ball bouncing off a wall; it changes direction but continues moving forward in time. Similarly, when light or sound waves hit a surface, like a mirror or wall, they bounce back, allowing us to see our reflection or hear an echo. This is the essence of spatial reflection.
Time reflection, however, operates differently. Instead of changing direction, the wave’s progression through time is altered. Imagine a wave traversing a material when suddenly the material’s properties change uniformly. This abrupt shift acts like a magical switch, forcing the wave to “reverse” in time. It’s akin to pressing the rewind button on a video: motions reverse, sounds distort, and everything seems to unfold backward.
This phenomenon also alters the wave’s frequency. For instance, red light could turn blue, or a low-pitched sound might become high-pitched. It’s reminiscent of listening to a cassette tape as it rewinds, where sounds are inverted and accelerated. Though long theorized, this extraordinary dance of waves had never been observed directly until now.
A Theory Confirmed After 50 Years
Despite being theorized since the 1970s, time reflection remained elusive due to the technical challenges it posed. Observing this phenomenon requires altering a material’s properties rapidly and uniformly enough to interact with a fast-moving wave. This demands a high level of precision and energy.
Researchers at the CUNY ASRC overcame these hurdles with an innovative approach. They employed a metal strip with highly responsive electronic switches linked to capacitors capable of storing and releasing energy swiftly. By synchronizing these switches, they doubled the strip’s electrical impedance almost instantaneously. This sudden change created the ideal conditions for time reflection.
During this transformation, part of the electromagnetic wave reflected not in space but in time. Measuring instruments captured an inverted signal, a temporally reversed copy of the original wave. This observation, achieved with unprecedented precision, marked the first experimental validation of a theory that had remained abstract for over half a century.
Revolutionary Applications
This discovery extends beyond theoretical achievement, opening the door to significant technological innovations. By manipulating electromagnetic waves with this technique, researchers foresee substantial advances in wireless communications, radar systems, and advanced imaging technologies. Time reflection could enable faster, more efficient signal transmission that is nearly impossible to intercept.
Metamaterials, artificial structures capable of unprecedented wave control, present another promising field. These materials could lead to futuristic devices such as invisibility cloaks or ultra-sensitive sensors.
On a fundamental level, this advancement offers a new perspective on the symmetry between time and space, with potential implications for thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. By exploring these new avenues, scientists could push the boundaries of our understanding of physical laws.
A Future Rich with Promise
The confirmation of time reflection marks a decisive turning point in scientific research. Once perceived as a theoretical curiosity, this phenomenon now stands as a tool with revolutionary practical applications.
Imagine ultra-secure communication systems, where signals reversed in time are nearly impossible to intercept. Next-generation radars could gain unmatched precision and range, detecting objects with clarity and at unprecedented distances. Metamaterials from this research could transform sectors like healthcare, defense, and telecommunications.
Ultimately, this discovery reminds us that the boldest ideas can lead to major breakthroughs. By mastering the time reflections of waves, we may be on the brink of a scientific and technological revolution with possibilities yet to be explored.
As we venture into this new frontier, one must wonder: What other mysteries of the universe are waiting to be unveiled through the lens of time reflection?
Our author used artificial intelligence to enhance this article.
https://www.sustainability-times.com/re ... rstanding/
In a groundbreaking revelation poised to alter our understanding of physics, researchers at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center have confirmed the existence of time reflections, a phenomenon that challenges conventional concepts of space and time.
Illustration of the groundbreaking confirmation of time reflections by researchers at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center. Image generated by AI.
IN A NUTSHELL
- Researchers at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center have confirmed the existence of time reflections, a phenomenon long theorized in physics.
- Time reflection involves waves reversing their progression through time, altering their frequency and direction in unprecedented ways.
- This discovery opens the door to revolutionary applications in wireless communications, radar systems, and advanced imaging.
- The findings offer new perspectives on the symmetry between time and space, with potential implications for fields like thermodynamics and quantum mechanics.Scientists have long theorized the existence of time reflections, a phenomenon as mind-bending as it sounds. Imagine a mirror that doesn’t reflect your face but your back. This concept, once confined to the realm of theoretical physics, has now been validated by researchers at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center in New York. This groundbreaking discovery challenges our understanding of electromagnetic waves and could pave the way for unprecedented technological applications. Let’s delve into the intricacies of this phenomenon and explore its potential impact on science and technology.
Understanding Time Reflection
To grasp the concept of time reflection, it helps to start with spatial reflection, something we’re all familiar with. Picture a ball bouncing off a wall; it changes direction but continues moving forward in time. Similarly, when light or sound waves hit a surface, like a mirror or wall, they bounce back, allowing us to see our reflection or hear an echo. This is the essence of spatial reflection.
Time reflection, however, operates differently. Instead of changing direction, the wave’s progression through time is altered. Imagine a wave traversing a material when suddenly the material’s properties change uniformly. This abrupt shift acts like a magical switch, forcing the wave to “reverse” in time. It’s akin to pressing the rewind button on a video: motions reverse, sounds distort, and everything seems to unfold backward.
This phenomenon also alters the wave’s frequency. For instance, red light could turn blue, or a low-pitched sound might become high-pitched. It’s reminiscent of listening to a cassette tape as it rewinds, where sounds are inverted and accelerated. Though long theorized, this extraordinary dance of waves had never been observed directly until now.
A Theory Confirmed After 50 Years
Despite being theorized since the 1970s, time reflection remained elusive due to the technical challenges it posed. Observing this phenomenon requires altering a material’s properties rapidly and uniformly enough to interact with a fast-moving wave. This demands a high level of precision and energy.
Researchers at the CUNY ASRC overcame these hurdles with an innovative approach. They employed a metal strip with highly responsive electronic switches linked to capacitors capable of storing and releasing energy swiftly. By synchronizing these switches, they doubled the strip’s electrical impedance almost instantaneously. This sudden change created the ideal conditions for time reflection.
During this transformation, part of the electromagnetic wave reflected not in space but in time. Measuring instruments captured an inverted signal, a temporally reversed copy of the original wave. This observation, achieved with unprecedented precision, marked the first experimental validation of a theory that had remained abstract for over half a century.
Revolutionary Applications
This discovery extends beyond theoretical achievement, opening the door to significant technological innovations. By manipulating electromagnetic waves with this technique, researchers foresee substantial advances in wireless communications, radar systems, and advanced imaging technologies. Time reflection could enable faster, more efficient signal transmission that is nearly impossible to intercept.
Metamaterials, artificial structures capable of unprecedented wave control, present another promising field. These materials could lead to futuristic devices such as invisibility cloaks or ultra-sensitive sensors.
On a fundamental level, this advancement offers a new perspective on the symmetry between time and space, with potential implications for thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. By exploring these new avenues, scientists could push the boundaries of our understanding of physical laws.
A Future Rich with Promise
The confirmation of time reflection marks a decisive turning point in scientific research. Once perceived as a theoretical curiosity, this phenomenon now stands as a tool with revolutionary practical applications.
Imagine ultra-secure communication systems, where signals reversed in time are nearly impossible to intercept. Next-generation radars could gain unmatched precision and range, detecting objects with clarity and at unprecedented distances. Metamaterials from this research could transform sectors like healthcare, defense, and telecommunications.
Ultimately, this discovery reminds us that the boldest ideas can lead to major breakthroughs. By mastering the time reflections of waves, we may be on the brink of a scientific and technological revolution with possibilities yet to be explored.
As we venture into this new frontier, one must wonder: What other mysteries of the universe are waiting to be unveiled through the lens of time reflection?
Our author used artificial intelligence to enhance this article.
https://www.sustainability-times.com/re ... rstanding/
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- Posts: 65
- Joined: Tue Apr 29, 2025 8:56 pm
Re: Articles of Interest in Science
Space
Scientists found a possible new dwarf planet — it could spell bad news for Planet 9 fans
Keith Cooper
Fri, May 30, 2025 at 8:00 AM CDT·
A potential new dwarf planet has been discovered in the outer reaches of the solar system, and its existence poses the greatest challenge yet to the hypothesis that a ninth planet lurks far from the sun.
"We were very excited to discover 2017 OF201 because it was not expected at all," study leader Sihao Cheng of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, told Space.com. "It's very rare to discover an object both large and with an exotic orbit."
"The object's aphelion — the farthest point on the orbit from the sun – is more than 1,600 times that of the Earth's orbit," Cheng explained in a statement. "Meanwhile its perihelion — the closest point on its orbit to the sun — is 44.5 times that of the Earth's orbit, similar to Pluto's orbit."
The outer solar system
We're learning more and more about the outer solar system. Beyond Neptune is the Kuiper Belt; a ring of icy cometary nuclei and planetesimals dominated by Pluto and Charon. The Kuiper Belt begins about 30 astronomical units (AU) from the sun (one AU is the distance of Earth from the sun), its inner edge guarded by Neptune, and extends out to 50 AU. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is currently exploring the Kuiper Belt.
Meanwhile, the twin Voyager spacecraft have already sped through the Kuiper Belt and have entered a realm called the Scattered Disk, which is thought to go all through way out to more than 1,000 AU and is home to icy bodies on highly elongated and highly inclined orbits. These objects were literally scattered in the region through gravitational interactions with Neptune, and have had their orbits further modified via torques induced by the gravity of passing stars, or the "galactic tide" (the overall gravitational field of the Milky Way galaxy). Beyond the Scattered Disk is the Oort Cloud, which is an immense volume of space that possibly stretches up to a light-year from the sun and is the source of long-period comets.
However, much about the Scattered Disk is still unknown, and besides those long-period comets that venture this way every now and then, no Oort Cloud object has ever been seen — they are too far away and too small. This is why every discovery of a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) on a greatly elongated orbit is vital for piecing together the mystery of the outer solar system.
A new dwarf planet
Around 5,000 TNOs have been discovered until now, but the latest discovery may be one of the most important. Known as 2017 OF201, it is currently 90.5 AU away from the sun, but its orbit brings it as close as 4.14 billion miles (6.66 billion kilometers) from our star and as far away as a whopping 157 billion miles (244 billion kilometers). from the sun. For the vast majority of its 24,256-year orbit, 2017 OF201 is too far away to be seen with current telescopes; it could only be discovered because its last perihelion came in 1930, and that it's still relatively close.
The object's last perihelion also came, coincidentally, during the same year that Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto with a 13-inch (330mm) telescope at Lowell Observatory in Arizona. Would it have been possible for Tombaugh to have also found 2017 OF201? Probably not — at magnitude +20.1, this object would have been four magnitudes fainter than Pluto, and it is even fainter today.
Fortunately, telescopic technology has come a long way in the past 95 years, with deep surveys that can capture the passage of a faint object. For example, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) has identified about 800 TNOs — and that's even though DES is ostensibly a cosmological survey. In the same vein, Cheng, along with Jiaxuan Li and Eritas Yang of Princeton University, have been scrutinizing observations made by the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS) on the Victor M. Blanco 13-foot (4-meter) telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. They discovered 2017 OF201 in archive data going back to 2017 from DECaLS, and also spotted it in old data dating from 2011–12 captured by the 11.7-foot) (3.58-meter) Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea.
Based on its brightness and its expected albedo of 0.15 (meaning it would reflect just 15% of the sunlight incident upon it), Cheng's team calculated that 2017 OF201 is probably about 435 miles (700 kilometers)) across. This would make it the second largest object found on such an elongated orbit. Although it is substantially smaller than Pluto, which is 1,477 miles (2,377 km) across, 2017 OF201 is nevertheless large enough to be classified as a dwarf planet.
Problems for Planet Nine
However, 2017 OF201's existence contradicts the Planet Nine hypothesis, based on our best guess as to Planet Nine's orbit. Planet Nine is a concept that was introduced in 2016 by Caltech astronomers Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin to explain a perceived clustering of the orbits of many extreme TNOs. The gravity of Planet Nine, which is speculated to be a super-Earth or modest ice giant, would be influencing the orbits of extreme TNOs — or so the hypothesis goes. Yet, the orbit of 2017 OF201 is not clustered with the others.
"Many extreme TNOs have orbits that appear to cluster in specific orientations, but 2017 OF201 deviates from this," Jiaxuan Li said in the statement.
In our e-mail interview with Cheng, he laid out the repercussions that this could have for the existence of Planet Nine's orbit.
"Planet Nine does allow for extreme TNOs to have unclustered orbits, but those orbits are not stable," he said.
The timescale in which Planet Nine would render 2017 OF201's orbit unstable, and kick it out of the solar system, is in the region of 100 million years. However, the process of placing 2017 OF201 in its current orbit, through gravitational interactions with Neptune that pushed 2017 OF201 out of the Kuiper Belt — followed by nudges from the galactic tide — takes billions of years. It's possible that 2017 OF201 has only recently arrived in its current orbit, which would mean Planet Nine might not have had time to disrupt its orbit yet.
"One important thing is to see if the orbit of our object is stable," Cheng said. "I think, based on analytical criteria, our object is at the boundary between stable and unstable, so further investigation with more comprehensive simulations is needed to definitively rule out the Planet Nine hypothesis."
Intriguingly, 2017 OF201 is probably not alone in the outer solar system. It's purely by chance that it happens to be close enough to be detectable — for 99% of its 24,256-year orbit it is too far away to be seen.
"2017 OF201 spends only 1% of its orbital time close enough to us to be detectable," said Cheng. "The presence of this single object suggests that there could be another hundred or so other objects with similar orbits and size; they are just too far away to be detectable now.
Just think of that: There could be hundreds of dwarf planets in the outermost reaches of the solar system.
"Even though advances in telescopes have enabled us to explore distant parts of the universe, there is still a great deal to discover about our own solar system," said Cheng.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/sc ... 00004.html
Scientists found a possible new dwarf planet — it could spell bad news for Planet 9 fans
Keith Cooper
Fri, May 30, 2025 at 8:00 AM CDT·
A potential new dwarf planet has been discovered in the outer reaches of the solar system, and its existence poses the greatest challenge yet to the hypothesis that a ninth planet lurks far from the sun.
"We were very excited to discover 2017 OF201 because it was not expected at all," study leader Sihao Cheng of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, told Space.com. "It's very rare to discover an object both large and with an exotic orbit."
"The object's aphelion — the farthest point on the orbit from the sun – is more than 1,600 times that of the Earth's orbit," Cheng explained in a statement. "Meanwhile its perihelion — the closest point on its orbit to the sun — is 44.5 times that of the Earth's orbit, similar to Pluto's orbit."
The outer solar system
We're learning more and more about the outer solar system. Beyond Neptune is the Kuiper Belt; a ring of icy cometary nuclei and planetesimals dominated by Pluto and Charon. The Kuiper Belt begins about 30 astronomical units (AU) from the sun (one AU is the distance of Earth from the sun), its inner edge guarded by Neptune, and extends out to 50 AU. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is currently exploring the Kuiper Belt.
Meanwhile, the twin Voyager spacecraft have already sped through the Kuiper Belt and have entered a realm called the Scattered Disk, which is thought to go all through way out to more than 1,000 AU and is home to icy bodies on highly elongated and highly inclined orbits. These objects were literally scattered in the region through gravitational interactions with Neptune, and have had their orbits further modified via torques induced by the gravity of passing stars, or the "galactic tide" (the overall gravitational field of the Milky Way galaxy). Beyond the Scattered Disk is the Oort Cloud, which is an immense volume of space that possibly stretches up to a light-year from the sun and is the source of long-period comets.
However, much about the Scattered Disk is still unknown, and besides those long-period comets that venture this way every now and then, no Oort Cloud object has ever been seen — they are too far away and too small. This is why every discovery of a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) on a greatly elongated orbit is vital for piecing together the mystery of the outer solar system.
A new dwarf planet
Around 5,000 TNOs have been discovered until now, but the latest discovery may be one of the most important. Known as 2017 OF201, it is currently 90.5 AU away from the sun, but its orbit brings it as close as 4.14 billion miles (6.66 billion kilometers) from our star and as far away as a whopping 157 billion miles (244 billion kilometers). from the sun. For the vast majority of its 24,256-year orbit, 2017 OF201 is too far away to be seen with current telescopes; it could only be discovered because its last perihelion came in 1930, and that it's still relatively close.
The object's last perihelion also came, coincidentally, during the same year that Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto with a 13-inch (330mm) telescope at Lowell Observatory in Arizona. Would it have been possible for Tombaugh to have also found 2017 OF201? Probably not — at magnitude +20.1, this object would have been four magnitudes fainter than Pluto, and it is even fainter today.
Fortunately, telescopic technology has come a long way in the past 95 years, with deep surveys that can capture the passage of a faint object. For example, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) has identified about 800 TNOs — and that's even though DES is ostensibly a cosmological survey. In the same vein, Cheng, along with Jiaxuan Li and Eritas Yang of Princeton University, have been scrutinizing observations made by the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS) on the Victor M. Blanco 13-foot (4-meter) telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. They discovered 2017 OF201 in archive data going back to 2017 from DECaLS, and also spotted it in old data dating from 2011–12 captured by the 11.7-foot) (3.58-meter) Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea.
Based on its brightness and its expected albedo of 0.15 (meaning it would reflect just 15% of the sunlight incident upon it), Cheng's team calculated that 2017 OF201 is probably about 435 miles (700 kilometers)) across. This would make it the second largest object found on such an elongated orbit. Although it is substantially smaller than Pluto, which is 1,477 miles (2,377 km) across, 2017 OF201 is nevertheless large enough to be classified as a dwarf planet.
Problems for Planet Nine
However, 2017 OF201's existence contradicts the Planet Nine hypothesis, based on our best guess as to Planet Nine's orbit. Planet Nine is a concept that was introduced in 2016 by Caltech astronomers Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin to explain a perceived clustering of the orbits of many extreme TNOs. The gravity of Planet Nine, which is speculated to be a super-Earth or modest ice giant, would be influencing the orbits of extreme TNOs — or so the hypothesis goes. Yet, the orbit of 2017 OF201 is not clustered with the others.
"Many extreme TNOs have orbits that appear to cluster in specific orientations, but 2017 OF201 deviates from this," Jiaxuan Li said in the statement.
In our e-mail interview with Cheng, he laid out the repercussions that this could have for the existence of Planet Nine's orbit.
"Planet Nine does allow for extreme TNOs to have unclustered orbits, but those orbits are not stable," he said.
The timescale in which Planet Nine would render 2017 OF201's orbit unstable, and kick it out of the solar system, is in the region of 100 million years. However, the process of placing 2017 OF201 in its current orbit, through gravitational interactions with Neptune that pushed 2017 OF201 out of the Kuiper Belt — followed by nudges from the galactic tide — takes billions of years. It's possible that 2017 OF201 has only recently arrived in its current orbit, which would mean Planet Nine might not have had time to disrupt its orbit yet.
"One important thing is to see if the orbit of our object is stable," Cheng said. "I think, based on analytical criteria, our object is at the boundary between stable and unstable, so further investigation with more comprehensive simulations is needed to definitively rule out the Planet Nine hypothesis."
Intriguingly, 2017 OF201 is probably not alone in the outer solar system. It's purely by chance that it happens to be close enough to be detectable — for 99% of its 24,256-year orbit it is too far away to be seen.
"2017 OF201 spends only 1% of its orbital time close enough to us to be detectable," said Cheng. "The presence of this single object suggests that there could be another hundred or so other objects with similar orbits and size; they are just too far away to be detectable now.
Just think of that: There could be hundreds of dwarf planets in the outermost reaches of the solar system.
"Even though advances in telescopes have enabled us to explore distant parts of the universe, there is still a great deal to discover about our own solar system," said Cheng.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/sc ... 00004.html