Chemistry depends on heat.

Atoms or molecules bounce around randomly, collide, and form other molecules. At higher temperatures, atoms collide more and the rate at which atoms become molecules increases. Below a certain temperature, the reaction won't happen at all.

But something very weird happens at the lowest temperatures. In this extreme cold, there is essentially no heat energy, yet chemical reactions happen faster than they do at high temperatures.

The phenomenon is called quantum superchemistry. And it was finally demonstrated last year, more than 20 years after physicists first proposed it.

A paper published in March of 2021 in the journal Science Advances reports on the discovery of evidence for a large airburst type impact within the SØr Rondane Mountains, Queen Maud Land, East Antarctica. The report bears the names of a 15-member international team that did the research. The lead author was M. Van Ginneken with the Belgian Geological Survey. In the first sentence of the abstract to the article the authors support something I have been saying for literally decades: "Large airbursts, the most frequent hazardous impact events, are estimated to occur orders of magnitude more frequently than crater-forming impacts."

This fact is confirmed simply because airbursts don't leave impact craters. In this case the fingerprints of the event took the form of condensation spherules resulting from "a touchdown event, in which a projectile vapor jet interacts with the Antarctic ice sheet." The authors go on to explain that "Finding evidence of these low-altitude meteoritic events thus remains critical to understanding the impact history of Earth and estimating hazardous effects of asteroid impacts." They further report that "In recent years, meteoritic ablation debris resulting from airburst events have been found in three different locations of Antarctica. The material . . . all appears to have been produced during a Tunguska-like airburst event 480 thousand years (ka) ago."

With respect to their research, they say: "Here, we present the discovery of extraterrestrial particles formed during a significantly larger event recovered on . . . Queen Maud Land, East Antarctica. The characteristic features of the recovered particles attest to an unusual type of touchdown event, intermediate between an airburst and a crater-forming impact, during which the high-velocity vapor jet produced by the total disruption of an asteroid reached the Antarctic ice sheet." This event was estimated by the team to have occurred about 430 thousand years ago.

The authors provide some critical perspective on the effects of these type of impacts:

"The impact hazards resulting form the atmospheric entry of an asteroid that are currently being addressed by impact mitigation programs depend mainly on whether the impactor reaches the ground or is entirely disrupted in the atmosphere (i.e., airburst). For small-to medium-sized impactors (50- to 150-m diameter) producing airbursts, the main hazard is limited to blast effects resulting in strong overpressures over areas of up to 100,000 km2 wide. [38,600 sq miles] Thermal radiation may also result in fires over an area of 10 to 1000 km2 wide. . . . in addition to shockwaves and thermal radiation covering the aforementioned areas, these events are potentially destructive over a large area, corresponding to the area of interaction between the hot jet and the ground. The authors point out that such an event over Antarctica would inject ice crystals and impact dust into the upper atmosphere but would not directly affect human activity. However, they explain that "if a touchdown impact event takes place above a densely populated area, this would result in millions of casualties and severe damages over distances of up to hundreds of kilometers."

Now comes a new report in Earth and Planetary Science Letters on the discovery of evidence for yet another airburst event over Antarctica. The 11-member team responsible for the report is comprised of geologists, astrophysicists, and archaeologists from the U.S., the United Kingdom, Belgium, Russia, Japan, France and Italy.

Transhumanism may lead to super-human capabilities for some & mind control for others: perspective

The Internet of Bodies ecosystem may lead to the Internet of Brains sometime between 2035 and 2050, according to a UK Defence-commissioned RAND report.

"An 'internet of bodies' may also ultimately lead to an 'internet of brains', i.e. human brains connected to the internet to facilitate direct brain-to-brain communication and enable access to online data networks"

RAND Corporation, March 2024

Commissioned by the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and conducted by RAND Europe and Frazer Nash Consulting, the study "Cultural and technological change in the future information environment" looks at six technologies and information environments and their implications for British defense.

Suddenly, amateur astronomers are seeing a naked-eye comet in the evening sky. It's Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, also known as the 'devil comet'. Waiting for next Monday's solar eclipse in Mexico, Petr Horálek photographed the comet last night and found it much brighter than the last time he saw it:

"I assume an outburst is in progress," says Horálek. "My estimate of the comet's magnitude is +3.5. Definitely worth taking a look in the next hours and days."

Indeed, now is a good time to look. After sunset, the comet emerges in the western sky not far from the planet Jupiter. Naked-eye observers will see a dim fuzzball. Cameras and small telescopes reveal the comet's magnificent tail.

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of our Milky Way black hole released in 2022, has captured a new view of the massive object at the center of our Galaxy: how it looks in polarized light. This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure polarization, a signature of magnetic fields, this close to the edge of Sagittarius A*. This image shows the polarized view of the Milky Way black hole. The lines mark the orientation of polarization, which is related to the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole. Credit: EHT Collaboration

A new image from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration — which includes scientists from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) — has uncovered strong and organized magnetic fields spiraling from the edge of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*).

Seen in polarized light for the first time, this new view of the monster lurking at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy has revealed a magnetic field structure strikingly similar to that of the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, suggesting that strong magnetic fields may be common to all black holes. This similarity also hints toward a hidden jet in Sgr A*.

Using a blink-and-you'll-miss-it experiment, researchers from Trinity College Dublin have discovered that individuals differ widely in the rate at which they perceive visual signals. Some people perceive a rapidly changing visual cue at frequencies that others cannot, which means some access more visual information per timeframe than others.

This discovery suggests some people have an innate advantage in certain settings where response time is crucial, such as in ball sports, or in competitive gaming.

The rate with which we perceive the world is known as our "temporal resolution," and in many ways it is similar to the refresh rate of a computer monitor.

Some physicists have long suspected that mysterious 'ghost' particles in the world around us could greatly advance our understanding of the true nature of the Universe.

Now scientists think they've found a way to prove whether or not they exist.

Europe's centre for particle research, Cern, has approved an experiment designed to find evidence for them.

The new instrument will be a thousand times more sensitive to such particles than previous devices.

It will smash particles into a hard surface to detect them instead of against each other like Cern's main device the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

NASA has announced it will fire three scientific sounding rockets into the moon's shadow on Monday, April 8 during a partial solar eclipse across North America.

In what will be a total solar eclipse for a 115 miles-wide path through parts of Mexico, 15 U.S. states and Canada and a partial solar eclipse for the entire Americas, the event will see a sudden drop in sunlight.

Serpent Deity

The space agency's project, Atmospheric Perturbations Around The Eclipse Path, will investigate how that drop in sunlight and temperature affects Earth's upper atmosphere. APEP is named after the serpent deity from ancient Egyptian mythology, nemesis of the sun deity Ra, according to NASA.

NASA's suborbital rockets won't launch into totality. Instead they'll go from Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia, from where 81% of the sun will be blocked by the moon. That moment will happen at 15:33 EST, though the eclipse will take part between 14:06 and 16:33.

A small-bird species, the Japanese tit (Parus minor), uses wing movements as a gesture to convey the message "after you," according to new research at the University of Tokyo. When a mating pair arrives at their nest box with food, they will wait outside on perches. One will then often flutter its wings toward the other, apparently indicating for the latter to enter first. The researchers say that this discovery challenges the previous belief that gestural communication is prominent only in humans and great apes, significantly advancing our understanding of visual communication in birds.

A thumbs up, waving goodbye or pointing out a book on a shelf. These gestures and many more are an integral part of how we communicate. Such gestures were once thought to be used exclusively by humans, until closer observations of great apes, such as chimpanzees and bonobos, revealed that they too move their bodies to communicate nonverbally. In more recent years, studies on other animals, such as ravens and fish, have shown that they also use some simple gestures to, for example, point out objects or show something of interest, called deictic gesturing. However, symbolic gestures, such as showing an open hand to signal "after you," require complex cognitive skills, and there was no conclusive evidence supporting the existence of such abilities in animals other than humans.

The size of the human brain may be gradually increasing over time, and that could reduce the risk of dementia in younger generations, according to new research.

The study imaged the brains of more than 3,000 Americans, between the ages of 55 and 65, and found that those born in the 1970s have a 6.6 percent greater overall brain volume than those born in the 1930s.

Members of Generation X also had a nearly 8 percent greater volume of white matter and an almost 15 percent greater volume of gray matter surface area than the members of the Silent Generation.

One specific part of the brain, called the hippocampus, which plays a major role in memory and learning, expanded by 5.7 percent in volume over the successive generations studied.