Science & TechnologyS


Nebula

JWST confirms there is something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe

Illustration of the expansion of the Universe big bang
© Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library via Getty ImagesIllustration of the expansion of the Universe.
Depending on where we look, the universe is expanding at different rates. Now, scientists using the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes have confirmed that the observation is not down to a measurement error.

Astronomers have used the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes to confirm one of the most troubling conundrums in all of physics — that the universe appears to be expanding at bafflingly different speeds depending on where we look.

This problem, known as the Hubble Tension, has the potential to alter or even upend cosmology altogether. In 2019, measurements by the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed the puzzle was real; in 2023, even more precise measurements from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cemented the discrepancy.

Now, a triple-check by both telescopes working together appears to have put the possibility of any measurement error to bed for good. The study, published February 6 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggests that there may be something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe.

Info

'New star' as bright as the North Star will ignite in the sky this year

A nova outburst visible to the naked eye is expected to decorate the night sky this year with a "new star" that will briefly become as bright as the North Star, offering a once-in-a-lifetime stargazing opportunity.

C-shaped Corona Borealis constellation
© NASAHow to find the C-shaped Corona Borealis constellation, located between Boötes and Hercules.
A nova outburst visible to the naked eye is expected to decorate the night sky this year, offering a rare skywatching opportunity.

The star system offering us this opportunity is known as T Coronae Borealis (T CrB). It's located some 3,000 light-years away from Earth and consists of a red giant star and a white dwarf that orbit each other. When the white dwarf steals enough stellar material from its red giant companion, it ignites a brief flash of nuclear fusion on its surface, triggering what is known as a nova outburst.

The outburst will be visible in the constellation Corona Borealis, also known as the Northern Crown, which forms a semicircle of stars. The outburst is expected to occur between February and September 2024 and appear as bright as the North Star in our night sky for no longer than a week before fading again, NASA officials said in a statement.

"This could be a once-in-a-lifetime viewing opportunity as the nova outburst only occurs about every 80 years," NASA officials said in the statement.

This recurrent nova, which last exploded in 1946, is just one of five observed within the Milky Way galaxy. To spot the outburst, viewers should point their gaze to Corona Borealis, which lies between the constellations Boötes and Hercules. The outburst will appear as a bright "new" star in the night sky.

Microscope 2

The process of cellular self-destruction may be ancient. But why?

cell death
© Allison Li for Quanta MagazineApoptosis is inherently self-destructive, and yet it’s an essential and productive process in complex organisms. Recent research traces its genetic origins to single-celled bacteria.
How did cells evolve a process to end their own lives? Recent research suggests that apoptosis, a form of programmed cell death, first arose billions of years ago in bacteria with a primitive sociality.

It can be hard to tell, at first, when a cell is on the verge of self-destruction.

It appears to be going about its usual business, transcribing genes and making proteins. The powerhouse organelles called mitochondria are dutifully churning out energy. But then a mitochondrion receives a signal, and its typically placid proteins join forces to form a death machine.

They slice through the cell with breathtaking thoroughness. In a matter of hours, all that the cell had built lies in ruins. A few bubbles of membrane are all that remains.

"It's really amazing how fast, how organized it is," said Aurora Nedelcu, an evolutionary biologist at the University of New Brunswick who has studied the process in algae.

Comment:


Info

Icy impactor might explain the formation of Mar's moons

In a new study, scientists suggest an impact with a giant icy object could explain the sizes and orbits of Mars's moons, Phobos and Deimos.

Mar's Impact
© Université Paris Diderot / Labex UnivEarthSAnrtist's rendering shows the giant collision on Mars that might have led to the formation of its moons, Phobos and Deimos. New simulations suggest the impactor may have been icy. At the time, Mars was young, and might have had a thicker atmosphere and liquid water on its surface.
The origin of Mars's two enigmatic moons, Phobos and Deimos, is a mystery. Their irregular shapes, dark surfaces, and peculiar orbits have fueled two main theories: They might be asteroids that strayed too close to Mars and were captured. Or perhaps the moons instead coalesced from debris launched to orbit after giant impactor struck the Red Planet.

New research presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, adds a cool twist to the latter idea by suggesting that the impactor was made mostly of water ice. The idea, presented by Courteney Monchinski (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan), eliminates some of the problems that have plagued the giant-impact scenario.

Telescope

Astronomers spot oldest 'dead' galaxy yet observed

'Dead' galaxy Jades-GS-z7-01-QU
© Tobias J Looser et al.'Dead' galaxy Jades-GS-z7-01-QU
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge have spotted a 'dead' galaxy when the universe was just 700 million years old, the oldest such galaxy ever observed.

This galaxy appears to have lived fast and died young: star formation happened quickly and stopped almost as quickly, which is unexpected for so early in the universe's evolution. However, it is unclear whether this galaxy's 'quenched' state is temporary or permanent, and what caused it to stop forming new stars.

The results, reported in the journal Nature, could be important to help astronomers understand how and why galaxies stop forming new stars, and whether the factors affecting star formation have changed over billions of years.

Galaxy

Best of the Web: Earth's interactions with Mars may drive deep-sea circulation, 'surprising' new study suggests

mars earth rock
© The University of SydneyLead author Dr. Adriana Dutkiewicz from the EarthByte Group in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney.
Scientists from the Universities of Sydney and Sorbonne University have used the geological record of the deep sea to discover a connection between the orbits of Earth and Mars, past global warming patterns and the speeding up of deep ocean circulation.

They discovered a surprising 2.4-million-year cycle where deep currents wax and wane, which in turn is linked to periods of increased solar energy and a warmer climate.

The study, published in Nature Communications, tackles the questions of how geological-timescale climate change affects ocean circulation and how this could help scientists model future climate outcomes. The researchers sought to find whether ocean-bottom currents become more vigorous or more sluggish in a warmer climate.

Comment: And so the scientists admit that these processes could have a significant impact on our climate; aren't they essentially admitting that the (readily debunked) models much touted by global warmists are missing a significant piece of data?

Could it be that it's not Mars that's impacting the deep-ocean dynamics and, instead, it's that both Mars and the Earth are being impacted by the same, greater force? Such as the influence of the Sun?

Either way, it's a timely, and fascinating, finding: Also check out SOTT radio's:





NPC

AI's Fatal Flaw

AI's fatal flaw: people!
AI is all the rage.

But with the recent Gemini disaster along with a lack of truly killer applications using AI, it doesn't seem like AI is really going anywhere.

So, is it all just hype, or what?

Join me for a look at the real danger presented by AI.

Hint: It ain't SkyNet you need to be worried about!

Comet 2

The comet strike theory that just won't die

Mainstream science has done its best to debunk the notion, but a belief in a world-changing series of prehistoric impacts continues to gain momentum.
Comet Impact
© Photo illustration by Ricardo Tomás
In 2007, a group of researchers, led by a nuclear physicist named Richard Firestone, announced an astonishing discovery. They had uncovered evidence, they said, that 12,900 years ago, a comet — or possibly a whole fleet of comets — struck Earth and changed the course of history. For the preceding two and a half million years, through the Pleistocene Epoch, the planet's climate fluctuated between frozen stretches, called glacials, and warm interglacials. At that time, Earth was warming again, and the ice sheets that covered much of North America, Europe and Asia were in retreat. Mammoths, steppe bison, wild horses and other enormous mammals still wandered the Americas, pursued by bands of humans wielding spears with fluted stone blades. Suddenly, somewhere over the Upper Midwest — an explosion.

Presenting their claim in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a top scientific journal, the researchers took the sober tone characteristic of such publications. But in The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes, a book published around the same time, two of the researchers described the scene more vividly. The impact caused the ground to shake and the sky to glow, they wrote. A hail of tiny molten particles sank into flesh and set forests ablaze. Soot blotted out the sun. Earth's magnetic field wavered, and living things were bombarded by cosmic rays, confounding the navigational senses of turtles and porpoises, which beached themselves en masse. Addled birds plummeted from the sky.

Most disastrous of all, the impact shattered the ice dam holding back Lake Agassiz, a vast expanse of glacial meltwater that stretched across Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The lake cascaded into the Atlantic Ocean, where the freshwater pooled over the denser seawater, disrupting the convection current carrying warm water north from the tropics. The Northern Hemisphere plunged back into full-glacial cold.

For decades, scientists had puzzled over the cause of this rapid climatic reversal, which they marked by, among other things, the reappearance in southerly fossil deposits of tundra plants. These included the wildflower Dryas integrifolia, which gives the 1,200-year time span its name: the Younger Dryas. Here was an explanation: The impact caused the sudden cooling, the Firestone team argued, and contributed to the demise of the mammoths, steppe bison and other large Pleistocene mammals, along with the people who pursued them.

Better Earth

39-million-year-old extinct whale may have been 'a physical impossibility'

P. colossus
© Alberto GennariAn artist's impression of P. colossus.
Last year, paleontologists discovered the fossil of a 39-million-year-old extinct whale in Peru that appeared to defy the limits of vertebrate size.

The team behind the lucky find estimated Perucetus colossus' body mass to be somewhere between 85 and 340 tonnes. But at 17 to 20 meters in length (around 56 to 65 feet), this would have made the animal impossibly dense, argue paleontologists Ryosuke Motani and Nicholas Pyenson, who were not involved in the initial discovery.

"It would have been a job for the whale to stay at the surface, or even to leave the sea bottom - it would have required continuous swimming against gravity to do anything in the water," says Motani from the University of California Davis.

Comment: This find may shed further light on the theory that a variety of physical constants of our own time were perhaps different in the distant past; and even in more 'recent' times, such as in just the last few millenia:


Nuke

Scientists discover Chernobyl 'super worms'

nematodes worms chernobyl radiation dna damage
© NYU/Sophia TintoriNematode worms collected in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, seen under a microscope.
Nematodes found in the highly radioactive zone showed no signs of DNA damage

A team of American researchers has found that the DNA of a common worm species appears to be immune to damage from chronic radiation in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The area has been off-limits to humans since the 1986 nuclear power plant meltdown.

New York University (NYU) biology Professor Matthew Rockman and postdoctoral associate Sophia Tintori visited the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) in 2019 and gathered samples of a nematode worm species called Oscheius tipulae.

"These worms live everywhere, and they live quickly, so they go through dozens of generations of evolution while a typical vertebrate is still putting on its shoes," Rockman said in the press release announcing the results of the study this week.