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NASA's NICER delivers precise pulsar measurements and first surface map


NASA
Thu, 12 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
NICER
© NASA
NASA’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer is an X-ray payload aboard the International Space Station.
Astrophysicists are redrawing the textbook image of pulsars, the dense, whirling remains of exploded stars, thanks to NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), an X-ray telescope aboard the International Space Station. Using NICER data, scientists have obtained the first precise and dependable measurements of both a pulsar's size and its mass, as well as the first-ever map of hot spots on its surface.

The pulsar in question, J0030+0451 (J0030 for short), lies in an isolated region of space 1,100 light-years away in the constellation Pisces. While measuring the pulsar's heft and proportions, NICER revealed that the shapes and locations of million-degree "hot spots" on the pulsar's surface are much stranger than generally thought.

"From its perch on the space station, NICER is revolutionizing our understanding of pulsars," said Paul Hertz, astrophysics division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Pulsars were discovered more than 50 years ago as beacons of stars that have collapsed into dense cores, behaving unlike anything we see on Earth. With NICER we can probe the nature of these dense remnants in ways that seemed impossible until now."


Watch how NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) has expanded our understanding of pulsars, the dense, spinning corpses of exploded stars. Pulsar J0030+0451, located 1,100 light-years away in the constellation Pisces, now has the most precise and reliable size measurements of any pulsar to date. The shapes and locations of its hot spots challenge textbook depictions of these incredible objects. Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Download this video in HD formats from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio
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SOTT Logo Radio

MindMatters: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

Corey Schink, Elan Martin, Harrison Koehli
Sott.net
Sat, 14 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
antifragile
Fragile things hate chaos, volatility and randomness. The slightest jolt can break them. But what is the opposite of fragility? Not resilience or robustness. Resilient things are neutral to stressors. They take a beating, but remain unchanged. So what likes from disorder? Our languages don't have a word for such a property, or at least they didn't, until Nassim Taleb came around.

Antifragile is the property of things that gain from disorder: like muscle, economies, creativity, and character. And today on MindMatters we delve into Taleb's book on the subject. Insightful, down to earth, witty and practical, Taleb's writing is one of a kind. Just like the man himself.


Running Time: 01:17:14

Download: MP3 — 70.7 MB

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Sun

Revealing the physics of the Sun with NASA's Parker Solar Probe

Sarah Frazier, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Phys.org
Wed, 11 Dec 2019 12:00 UTC
sun parker probe
© NASA/STEREO/Angelos Vourlidas
Nearly a year and a half into its mission, Parker Solar Probe has returned gigabytes of data on the Sun and its atmosphere. Following the release of the very first science from the mission, five researchers presented additional new findings from Parker Solar Probe at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union on Dec. 11, 2019. Research from these teams hints at the processes behind both the Sun's continual outflow of material — the solar wind — and more infrequent solar storms that can disrupt technology and endanger astronauts, along with new insight into space dust that creates the Geminids meteor shower.

The young solar wind

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?

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Jupiter

NASA spacecraft spies huge new storm on Jupiter

Mike Wall
Space.com
Fri, 13 Dec 2019 12:43 UTC
A new, smaller cyclone can be seen at the lower right of this infrared image of Jupiter's south pole
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM
A new, smaller cyclone can be seen at the lower right of this infrared image of Jupiter's south pole taken on Nov. 4, 2019, during the 23rd science pass of the planet by NASA's Juno spacecraft.
NASA's Juno probe discovered a giant new storm swirling near Jupiter's south pole last month, a few weeks after pulling off a dramatic death-dodging maneuver.

Juno spied the newfound maelstrom, which is about as wide as Texas, on Nov. 3, during its most recent close flyby of Jupiter. The storm joins a family of six other cyclones in Jupiter's south polar region, which Juno had spotted on previous passes by the gas giant. (Those encounters also revealed nine cyclones near Jupiter's north pole, by the way.)

The southern tempests are arrayed in a strikingly regular fashion. Previously, five of them had formed a pentagon around a central storm, which is as wide as the continental United States. With the new addition, that girdling structure is now a hexagon.

"These cyclones are new weather phenomena that have not been seen or predicted before," Cheng Li, a Juno scientist from the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement yesterday (Dec. 12).

"Nature is revealing new physics regarding fluid motions and how giant planet atmospheres work," he added. "We are beginning to grasp it through observations and computer simulations. Future Juno flybys will help us further refine our understanding by revealing how the cyclones evolve over time."

Comment: See also:

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Comet 2

Hubble Space Telescope records the best view of the first observed interstellar comet, Borisov

Gege Li
New Scientist
Fri, 13 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
Borisov
© NASA, ESA/D. Jewitt (UCLA)
Best view yet of interstellar comet Borisov
This image, captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows the first observed interstellar comet to enter the solar system as it speeds past the sun at 160,000 kilometres per hour. It is the closest comet 2I/Borisov has come to the sun since Hubble started tracking it in October.

The latest image from the telescope shows that Borisov is currently about 300 million kilometres away from Earth. It will approach slightly closer to our planet in late December, getting within about 290 million kilometres.
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Microscope 1

A 'beautiful' dinosaur tail found preserved in amber

Paul Rincon
BBC News
Thu, 08 Dec 2016 00:00 UTC
Tail amber
© Current Biology
Feathered tail preserved in amber from North-Eastern Myanmar
The tail of a feathered dinosaur has been found perfectly preserved in amber from Myanmar. The one-of-a-kind discovery helps put flesh on the bones of these extinct creatures, opening a new window on the biology of a group that dominated Earth for more than 160 million years.

Examination of the specimen suggests the tail was chestnut brown on top and white on its underside. The tail is described in the journal Current Biology.

"This is the first time we've found dinosaur material preserved in amber," co-author Ryan McKellar, of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Canada, told the BBC News website.

The study's first author, Lida Xing from the China University of Geosciences in Beijing, discovered the remarkable fossil at an amber market in Myitkina, Myanmar.

The 99-million-year-old amber had already been polished for jewelry and the seller had thought it was plant material. On closer inspection, however, it turned out to be the tail of a feathered dinosaur about the size of a sparrow.
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Better Earth

High-precision map reveals Antarctica's ice sheet bed topography

University of California, Irvine
Phys.org
Thu, 12 Dec 2019 12:00 UTC
Antarctic
© Mathieu Morlighem / UCI
"Ultimately, BedMachine Antarctica presents a mixed picture: Ice streams in some areas are relatively well-protected by their underlying ground features, while others on retrograde beds are shown to be more at risk from potential marine ice sheet instability," says Mathieu Morlighem, UCI associate professor of Earth system science and lead author of the paper describing the newly released Antarctica bed topography map.
A University of California, Irvine-led team of glaciologists has unveiled the most accurate portrait yet of the contours of the land beneath Antarctica's ice sheet — and, by doing so, has helped identify which regions of the continent are going to be more, or less, vulnerable to future climate warming.

Highly anticipated by the global cryosphere and environmental science communities, the newly released Antarctica topography map, BedMachine, and related findings were published today in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Among the most striking results of the BedMachine project are the discovery of stabilizing ridges that protect the ice flowing across the Transantarctic Mountains; a bed geometry that increases the risk of rapid ice melting in the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers sector of West Antarctica; a bed under the Recovery and Support Force glaciers that is hundreds of meters deeper than previously thought, making those ice sheets more susceptible to retreat; and the world's deepest land canyon below Denman Glacier in East Antarctica.

Comment: In Did Earth 'Steal' Martian Water?, Pierre Lescaudron's provides fascinating insight into Antarctica's unusual topography and ice cover:
Does the bedrock of Antarctica show any sign of positive electric scarring, i.e. a massive canyon-like geological feature? Indeed it does. As shown in the satellite picture above, Antarctica is considered to host the largest canyon on Earth, according to a 2016 geological survey:
[...] the largest unsurveyed region on the icy continent is a region called Princess Elizabeth Land. Now a team of geologists has scoured that area to reveal a massive subglacial lake and a series of canyons, one of which — more than twice as long as the Grand Canyon — could rank as Earth's largest.
[...]

The question then arises: why is there so much more ice in Antarctica compared to the Arctic? Why does Antarctica ice extend 2,500 meters below sea level and reach the bedrock, while Arctic ice is a mere 4 meter thick layer floating on the ocean?

[...]

In any case, no endogenous cause (snowfall difference, temperature difference) can explain the marked difference in depth and volume between the Antarctic ice sheet and the Arctic one. A massive and sudden inflow of exogenous water (in ice form) in Antarctica would, however, explain these discrepancies.
See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Better Earth

1,000 mile long "Dark River" may be flowing beneath Greenland's ice

Mindy Weisberger
Live Science
Thu, 12 Dec 2019 18:02 UTC
Greenland
© Chambers et al
The model on the right shows water flow in northern Greenland in the presence of a valley extending under glacial ice.
Far below the frozen cover of the Greenland ice sheet sprawls miles of bedrock — and extending through that bedrock for close to 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) is a valley that may contain a subterranean river, transporting water from central Greenland to the northern coast.

In the past, planes flying overhead had partially mapped a rocky, subsurface valley under the ice, but their radar coverage of the region left gaps, said Christopher Chambers, a researcher at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan.

To build a clearer picture of what lurks below Greenland's surface, Chambers and his colleagues created simulations to explore the valley at different depths and model how water might melt from the surface of a glacier to the depths below — perhaps creating a flowing river, Chambers told Live Science. He presented their findings on Dec. 9 here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

Comment: See also:

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Jupiter

NASA's Juno spacecraft captures stunning photos of newly discovered Jovian tempest


NASA
Thu, 12 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
Juno spacecraft Jupiter cyclone south pole
© Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM
A new, smaller cyclone can be seen at the lower right of this infrared image of Jupiter's south pole taken on Nov. 4, 2019, during the 23rd science pass of the planet by NASA's Juno spacecraft.
Jupiter's south pole has a new cyclone. The discovery of the massive Jovian tempest occurred on Nov. 3, 2019, during the most recent data-gathering flyby of Jupiter by NASA's Juno spacecraft. It was the 22nd flyby during which the solar-powered spacecraft collected science data on the gas giant, soaring only 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) above its cloud tops. The flyby also marked a victory for the mission team, whose innovative measures kept the solar-powered spacecraft clear of what could have been a mission-ending eclipse.

"The combination of creativity and analytical thinking has once again paid off big time for NASA," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "We realized that the orbit was going to carry Juno into Jupiter's shadow, which could have grave consequences because we're solar powered. No sunlight means no power, so there was real risk we might freeze to death. While the team was trying to figure out how to conserve energy and keep our core heated, the engineers came up with a completely new way out of the problem: Jump Jupiter's shadow. It was nothing less than a navigation stroke of genius. Lo and behold, first thing out of the gate on the other side, we make another fundamental discovery."

When Juno first arrived at Jupiter in July 2016, its infrared and visible-light cameras discovered giant cyclones encircling the planet's poles — nine in the north and six in the south. Were they, like their Earthly siblings, a transient phenomenon, taking only weeks to develop and then ebb? Or could these cyclones, each nearly as wide as the continental U.S., be more permanent fixtures?

Comment: Anomalous storms and turbulence have recently been reported on a number of planets:

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Info

Study suggests genetics can predict a species' maximum lifespan

Ian Connellan
Cosmos Magazine
Fri, 13 Dec 2019 16:48 UTC
Wolly Mammoth
© AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM
A new “genetic clock” can reveal the lifespans of extinct species such as woolly mammoths.
"Would you want to know when you'll die?" has always been a hypothetical question - until now.

A study published in the journal Scientific Reports reveals that researchers from Australia's CSIRO and the University of Western Australia have figured out a way to tell how long a species' life clock will keep ticking.

"Our method for estimating maximum natural lifespan is based on DNA," says Ben Mayne, a postdoctoral fellow with CSIRO. "If a species' genome sequence is known, we can estimate its lifespan."

The "lifespan clock" screens 42 selected genes from short pieces of DNA in 252 vertebrate species. The density of these genes is correlated with lifespan to predict how long members of a given vertebrate species may live.

The authors suggest that their findings may inform research into the ecology and evolution of living and extinct species, the protection of threatened species, and sustainable fishing.

"Until now it has been difficult to estimate lifespan for most wild animals, particularly long-living species of marine mammals and fish," Mayne says.

When studying extinct animals, researchers used a species' descendant as reference.
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