Science & TechnologyS


Brain

Neurons help flush waste out of brain during sleep

brain graphic blue waves
© Getty
Findings could lead to new approaches for Alzheimer's, other neurological conditions

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that brain cell activity during sleep is responsible for propelling fluid into, through and out of the brain, cleaning it of debris.

There lies a paradox in sleep. Its apparent tranquility juxtaposes with the brain's bustling activity. The night is still, but the brain is far from dormant. During sleep, brain cells produce bursts of electrical pulses that cumulate into rhythmic waves - a sign of heightened brain cell function.

But why is the brain active when we are resting?

Galaxy

A nova in the making: Will T Coronae Borealis pop in 2024?

A recurrent nova in action.
© NASAA recurrent nova in action.
If predictions are correct, a key outburst star could put on a show in early 2024.

If astronomers are correct, a familiar northern constellation could briefly take on a different appearance in 2024, as a nova once again blazes into prominence. The star in question is T Coronae Borealis, also referred to as the 'Blaze Star' or T CrB. Located in the corner of the constellation Corona Borealis or the Northern Crown, T CrB is generally at a quiescent +10th magnitude, barely discernible with binoculars... but once every 60 years, the star has flared briefly into naked eye visibility at around +2nd magnitude.
Finding T CrB in the sky.

Recycle

Recycling doesn't work—and the plastics industry knew it

plastic recycling
A Chinese laborer sorts plastic bottles in a village on the outskirts of Beijing in 2015.
The industry knew decades ago that recycling was never viable in the long term, and now we're all being poisoned by its product.

Hardly any plastics can be recycled. You'd be forgiven for not knowing that, given how much messaging Americans receive about the convenience of recycling old bottles and food containers — from the weekly curbside collections to the "chasing arrows" markings on food and beverage packaging. But here's the reality: Between 1990 and 2015, some 90 percent of plastics either ended up in a landfill, were burned, or leaked into the environment. Another recent study estimates that just 5 to 6 percent are successfully recycled.

While those numbers may surprise you, these sorts of statistics aren't news to the companies that produce plastics. For more than 30 years, the industry knew precisely how impractical it is to recycle them, according to a new report from the Center for Climate Integrity. A trade association called the Vinyl Institute concluded in a 1986 report that "recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution" to plastics, as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of." Still, facing public backlash over the growing amount of plastics being incinerated and piling up in landfills, manufacturers and their lobbyists sold recycling as an easy solution, warding off potential legislation to ban or limit plastics.

Comment: Has there ever been a 'green' initiative that didn't turn out to be a scam?

See also:


Info

Record-smashing Chinese maglev hyperloop train hits 387 mph and could someday outpace a plane

The T-Flight is a maglev train that hit a record-breaking speed of 387 mph on a short test track — but engineers want to double that rate so the train can carry passengers at speeds faster than if they were traveling by plane.
T-Flight Maglev
© CASICChina claims its T-Flight vacuum-tube maglev train has set a world speed record in prototype testing. It's eventually targeting at least 1,000 km/h, significantly quicker than an airliner.
China says its maglev hyperloop train has broken the world speed record in a test run, reaching a blistering 387 mph (623 km/h). Ultimately, its makers want to build a train more than three times as fast that will break the sound barrier and outpace airplanes.

The maglev train, dubbed the T-Flight, was built by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), New Atlas reported. Hyperloop trains work by pushing magnetically levitating pods through tunnels with very little air resistance.

The previous record holder for the fastest maglev train is the L0 Series SCMaglev in Japan, according to JRPass, which can hit a top speed of 375 mph (630 km/h).

To test the new train, CASIC built a track roughly 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) long in a low-pressure vacuum tube.

Moon

Upside-down Japanese 'Slim' lunar lander 'wakes up' , surviving freezing Moon night

moon lander slim japan upside down
© AXA/TAKARA TOMY/Sony Group/Doshisha University/ReutersAn apparent thruster failure had the Japanese moon probe 'Slim' land safely but upside down on the lunar surface.
It seems to be the season of crazy - but ultimately successful - moon landings.

A couple of days ago, American Nova-C 'Odysseus' managed a historical moon landing for a private company - but ended up lying on its side.

Now, the original space oddity, the upside-down Japanese SLIM lander, has 'woken up' from its formant stage during a second freezing lunar night, to the surprise and delight of mission controllers on Earth.

Japan's first moon lander has responded to a signal from Earth in what has been hailed as a "miracle" by the country's space agency.

Comment: Yahoo News adds:
Dr Barber said that future landers will need so-called 'active' thermal control - that is the ability to dissipate heat generated on board during the daytime, and then to change into a heat-conserving mode at night to prevent things getting too cold.

"The fact that Slim survived without such a complex design might give us clues as to how electronics really behaves on the Moon," he said. "Plus, we can look forward to more science from Slim!"

The landing in January made Jaxa only the fifth national space agency to achieve a soft touchdown on the Moon - after the US, the former Soviet Union, China and India.

Also in a post on X, Jaxa congratulated the team behind a US spacecraft, the Odysseus Moon lander, for making history on Thursday by becoming the first ever privately built and operated robot to complete a soft lunar touchdown.

Like Slim, it also landed awkwardly. Controllers at the operating company, Intuitive Machines, think their robot tipped on to its side at the moment of touchdown. Odysseus does, however, appear still to be functional and is communicating with Earth.

No pictures from the Odysseus mission at the surface have yet been released.



Info

3 new moons discovered around Uranus and Neptune

The International Astronomical Union has confirmed the existence of three currently unnamed moons — one around Uranus and two orbiting Neptune.
New Moons
© Getty ImagesNeptune (right) and Uranus (bottom left) have both gained at least one extra moon.
The solar system just got three new official residents — a trio of tiny moons, one of which orbits Uranus and two more that circle Neptune.

The three moons were all spotted several years ago but were recently confirmed by the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) Minor Planet Center — the organization responsible for naming new solar system objects such as moons, asteroids and comets. The new trio, which have been given numerical designations, will be given formal, literature and mythology-inspired names in the coming years.

Uranus' new moon, S/2023 U1, is only around 5 miles (8 kilometers) across, making it one of the smallest known moons around any of the eight planets in the solar system, alongside Mars' minute companion Deimos. The diminutive moon, which takes around 680 days to orbit around Uranus, brings the planet's total moon count to 28. Like the other Uranian moons, S/2023 U1 will eventually be named after a character from the plays of William Shakespeare, joining the likes of previously discovered moons such as Titania, Oberon and Puck.

Neptune's new satellites, S/2002 N5 and S/2021 N1, are around 14.3 miles (23 km) and 8.7 miles (14 km) wide respectively. S/2021 N1 takes around 9 years to orbit Neptune, while S/2002 N5 takes almost 27 years to orbit the furthest planet from the sun, which now has 16 known moons. Like other Neptunian moons, the newly recognized bodies will be named after the Nereids — the daughters of the sea god Nereus from Greek mythology.

The new moons were each spotted using ground-based telescopes, which is no mean feat considering their diminutive size and distance from our planet.

Attention

Forty years of trust in science drops after pandemic

The brand-name of science is being trashed

Trust in science continues to fall. The disillusionment with the Covid response has spread to science in general. Anthony Fauci said "trust the science" then showed us how untrustworthy science was. SARS-2 definitely wasn't a lab-leak, except it probably was; the vaccine was 95% effective, except everyone caught covid, and the data was world's best practice but the FDA fought tooth and nail to stop us seeing it until 2076.

These results are terrible: despite respondents being surrounded by hi-tech cars, phones, food and gadgets which were all impossible without science, only 57% of people now think science has has a "mostly positive" effect. That's 43% of the population who now think science hurts us as much as it helps (or is even worse).

The good name of science, created by two generations with antibiotics, satellites, and the moon-landing, has been exploited by name-calling parasites.

Pew research released this in November, calling it just "a decline":

Trust in Science
© Pew Research
What Pew didn't say was that these sort of surveys have been going on for years and this was the biggest fall in forty years.

A similar survey set by the National Science Foundation has been running since 1979, and year after year, found that between 68% and 79% of Americans used to think the benefits of science outweighed the negatives.

It's been remarkably consistent for four decades but we're in new territory now.

Display

'Quantum memory breakthrough' may lead to a quantum internet

A new technique in quantum storage that operates at room temperature could pave the way for a quantum internet.

quantum computer
© PM Images via Getty ImagesAs well as being faster, quantum communications are inherently secure — while classical communications can be intercepted or manipulated.
We're now one step closer to a "quantum internet" — an interconnected web of quantum computers — after scientists built a network of "quantum memories" at room temperature for the first time.

In their experiments, the scientists stored and retrieved two photonic qubits — qubits made from photons (or light particles) — at the quantum level, according to their paper published on Jan. 15 in the Nature journal, Quantum Information.

The breakthrough is significant because quantum memory is a foundational technology that will be a precursor to a quantum internet - the next generation of the World Wide Web.

Quantum memory is the quantum version of binary computing memory. While data in classical computing is encoded in binary states of 1 or 0, quantum memory stores data as a quantum bit, or qubit, which can also be a superposition of 1 and 0. If observed, the superposition collapses and the qubit is as useful as a conventional bit.

Quantum computers with millions of qubits are expected to be vastly more powerful than today's fastest supercomputers — because entangled qubits (intrinsically linked over space and time) can make many more calculations simultaneously.

Fireball 5

Astronomers discover a new meteor shower - The Source is Comet 46P/Wirtanen

Comet Wirtanen
© Stub MandrelComet Wirtanen imaged using a 130P-DS Newtonian telescope on a guided HEQ5 mount and an astro modified and cooled Canon 450D. 45 two-minute images stacked using deep sky stacked to stack comet and stars separately before recombination topo remove blurring.
Like many of you, I love a good meteor shower. I have fond memories of the Leonid meteor storm back in 1999 when several hundred per hour were seen at peak. Sadly meteor storms are not that common unlike meteor showers of which, there are about 20 major showers per year. Wait, there's another one and this time it comes from the debris left behind from Comet 46P/Wirtanen with an expected peak on December 12. Last year, 23 meteors were seen on that night that matched the location of the comets trail.

Comets (and some asteroids) leave a trail of debris behind them like a trail of celestial breadcrumbs. If the orbit of a comet crosses the orbit of the Earth then the particles from the debris (that are often no larger than grains of sand) collide with our atmosphere. At the immense speeds (of the order of 60 km per second, the particles falling through the atmosphere cause the gas to glow giving rise to the classic shooting star we see in the sky. Because the orbits of Earth and comets are relatively fixed, this process repeats itself every time we go through the same part of the orbit giving us the familiar annual meteor showers.

One such comet that it seems may become host to a new annual shower is Comet 46P/Wirtanen (46P). It nearly hit the headlines previously when it had been initially selected as the target for the Rosetta mission which, as you may recall, visited 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko instead. 46P is known as a short period comet taking 5.4 years to complete one orbit of the Sun. It is among the family of comets known as a Jupiter comet which has a most distant point from the Sun of between 5 and 6 astronomical units (1 AU is the average distance between the Sun and Earth). Observations have suggested it has a diameter of about 1.4km.

People 2

Isolated for six months, scientists in Antarctica began developing their own accent

Rothera Research Station antarctica
© British Antarctic SurveyAlthough the snow and sea can disappear during the summer months at Rothera Research Station, in winter it becomes effectively cut off
Antarctica is a bleak, remote and dark place during the winter, but a handful of people each year brave the conditions to live in almost totally cut off from the rest of the world. The experience can change how they speak.

It was a suitably icy farewell salute: a handful of snowballs arcing through the sky towards RSS Ernest Shackleton as the ship slipped away from the wharf. The vessel was setting out across the stormy Southern Ocean, leaving 26 hardy souls behind on a snowbound island at the frozen tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Those waving goodbye from the shore were watching their last tangible link to the rest of the world glide off through the bitterly cold water. Ahead of them lay six months of winter, effectively marooned, in the coldest continent on the planet.

"They say it is quicker to get to someone on the International Space Station than it is to medically evacuate someone from Antarctica in the winter," says Marlon Clark, one of those 26 international researchers and support staff left behind at the British Antarctic Survey's Rothera Research Station on Adelaide Island, just to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula in March 2018. Antarctica is the least-inhabited continent on the planet - it has no permanent human population - with just a handful of research stations and bases scattered across the 5.4 million sq mile (14 million sq km) frozen landscape. "So, you're isolated," says Clark. "There's a lot of mystery and lore about 'a winter in Antarctica'. Anticipation was the strongest feeling as well as realising, 'OK, this is real, I'm going to be here for a long, long time'."