Science & TechnologyS


Mars

Rogue planets that float in space without orbiting a sun could outnumber the stars


SciTechDaily
Fri, 21 Aug 2020 17:35 UTC
planet
© Chuck Carter, NRAO/AUI/NSFArtist’s conception of SIMP J01365663+0933473, a planetary-mass object beyond our Solar System. The object, about a dozen times more massive than Jupiter is traveling through space unaccompanied by any parent star.
An upcoming NASA mission could find that there are more rogue planets — planets that float in space without orbiting a sun — than there are stars in the Milky Way, a new study theorizes.

"This gives us a window into these worlds that we would otherwise not have," said Samson Johnson, an astronomy graduate student at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study. "Imagine our little rocky planet just floating freely in space — that's what this mission will help us find."

The study was published today in the Astronomical Journal.

The study calculated that NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could find hundreds of rogue planets in the Milky Way. Identifying those planets, Johnson said, will help scientists infer the total number of rogue planets in our galaxy. Rogue, or free-floating, planets are isolated objects that have masses similar to that of planets. The origin of such objects is unknown, but one possibility is they were previously bound to a host star.

"The universe could be teeming with rogue planets and we wouldn't even know it," said Scott Gaudi, a professor of astronomy and distinguished university scholar at Ohio State and a co-author of the paper. "We would never find out without undertaking a thorough, space-based microlensing survey like Roman is going to do."

Comment: We wonder if such rogue planets might sometimes wander into existing solar systems, too? Does our solar system contain any ex-rogues?

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Meteor

Newly-detected asteroid put on Risk List as calculations predict it could hit Earth


RT
Fri, 21 Aug 2020 17:05 UTC
Earth asteroid
© Illustration/ Getty Images/Science Photo Library/Andrzej Wojcicki
A freshly detected asteroid has been put straight onto the European Space Agency's 'risk list' as calculations forecast that it could smash into Earth in 10 years.

The agency detected the space rock this week and immediately added it to the list of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects, as calculations predict that it may hit our planet on August 31, 2029.

The data indicates that the object, known as 2020 PG6, will be traveling at an average speed of over 46,000kph as it races towards Earth. Thankfully, if the asteroid does stray into Earth's path, it's unlikely to cause a significant amount of damage as it only measures about 14 meters in diameter.

However, the object is a similar size to the Chelyabinsk meteor which exploded above Russia in February 2013. The comet was just 18 meters in diameter, but was still sizable enough to cause significant localized damage to thousands of buildings in the area. Scientific investigations into the dramatic explosion found that the energy released by the blast was equivalent to about 30 atomic bombs.
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Solar Flares

New scientific study finds we could be entering the next Grand Solar Minimum

Cap Allon
Electroverse
Fri, 21 Aug 2020 07:46 UTC
Grand Solar Minimum

"Galactic Cosmic Radiation in Interplanetary Space Through a Modern Secular Minimum" is a new paper just published in the journal Space Weather.

The paper's abstract opens with: "Recent solar conditions indicate a persistent decline in solar activity‐‐‐possibly similar to the past solar grand minima. During such periods of low solar activity, the fluxes of galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) increase remarkably..." From here, the researchers' primary focus is on the impact low solar activity and increasing GCRs have on interplanetary space missions (well how else would it have gotten published), however, they do leave a number of GSM truth-bombs along the way, and their conclusion is an admissible one: "GCRs are bad-and they're only going to get worse".

"During the next solar cycle, we could see cosmic ray dose rates increase by as much as 75%," says lead author Fatemeh Rahmanifard of the University of New Hampshire's Space Science Center. This spells bad news for astronauts, limiting the time they can work safely in interplanetary space (from 1000 days back in the 1990s to just 290 days for men and 204 days for women).

Why are cosmic rays growing stronger? "Blame the sun," writes Dr Tony Phillips in his excellent article over at the always excellent spaceweather.com.

The sun's magnetic field wraps the entire solar system in a protective bubble, normally shielding us from cosmic rays. In recent decades, however, that shield has been growing weaker-a result of the sputtering solar cycle.

Comment: See also:

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Microscope 1

Mitochondria: One of the keys to anxiety and mental health?

Elizabeth Landau
Quanta Magazine
Mon, 10 Aug 2020 19:39 UTC
lockdown stress
Feelings of stress and anxiety may depend not just on the neurons in our brains but the mitochondria inside our cells.

Carmen Sandi recalls the skepticism she faced at first. A behavioral neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, she had followed a hunch that something going on inside critical neural circuits could explain anxious behavior, something beyond brain cells and the synaptic connections between them. The experiments she began in 2013 showed that neurons involved in anxiety-related behaviors showed abnormalities: Their mitochondria, the organelles often described as cellular power plants, didn't work well — they produced curiously low levels of energy.

Those results suggested that mitochondria might be involved in stress-related symptoms in the animals. But that idea ran contrary to the "synapto-centric" vision of the brain held by many neuroscientists at the time. Her colleagues found it hard to believe Sandi's evidence that in anxious individuals — at least in rats — mitochondria inside key neurons might be important.

"Whenever I presented the data, they told me, 'It's very interesting, but you got it wrong,'" Sandi said.

Comment: More on this fascinating part of human physiology:

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Fireball 2

Flashback Best of the Web: Active presidential level national near-earth object preparedness strategy and action plan revealed

Shepard Ambellas
IntelliHub
Fri, 21 Aug 2020 18:26 UTC
Artist concept of asteroid impact.
© Shuttertstock / solarsevenArtist concept of asteroid impact.
Department of Defense to use kinetic weapons to defeat and or mitigate incoming city, continent killer, asteroids

The National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan obtained by Intellihub reveals that a presidential level interagency working group for detecting and mitigating the impact of earthbound near-earth objects has been activated and is currently working to detect and mitigate asteroids or comets from striking our planet.

The official National Science Council plan named DAMIEN which stands for "Detecting and Mitigating the Impact of Earth-bound Near-Earth Objects" authored in June of 2018 reveals how the U.S. government has been improving "our Nation's preparedness to address the hazard of NEO impacts by leveraging and enhancing existing national and international assets and adding important capabilities across government."

The plan comprised by the National Science and Technology Council, the Committee on Homeland and National Security, and the Interagency Working Group for Detecting and Mitigating Impacts of Earth-Bound Near-Earth Objects (DAMIEN) (IWG) "builds on efforts by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Department of Energy (DOE) to detect and characterize the NEO population and to prevent and respond to NEO impacts on Earth" and has been activated through the Stafford Act which was invoked by President Donald Trump several weeks ago in order to help fight the coronavirus.

Comment: Of course, no asteroid hit Earth in April, 2020 when this was published. But such an ONGOING threat may well factor into the clearly coordinated lockdown mania around the world. Remember the words of British astronomer Victor Clube, author of The Cosmic Serpent and The Cosmic Winter, in a report commissioned by the U.S. Air Force:
"We do not need the celestial threat to disguise Cold War intentions; rather we need the Cold War to disguise celestial intentions!"
Or perhaps a "pamdemic" might do just as well?

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Info

Humans are hardwired to work together

Steve Taylor
The Conversation
Thu, 20 Aug 2020 08:22 UTC
Many People
© Franzi/Shutterstock
There has long been a general assumption that human beings are essentially selfish. We're apparently ruthless, with strong impulses to compete against each other for resources and to accumulate power and possessions.

If we are kind to one another, it's usually because we have ulterior motives. If we are good, it's only because we have managed to control and transcend our innate selfishness and brutality.

This bleak view of human nature is closely associated with the science writer Richard Dawkins, whose book The Selfish Gene became popular because it fitted so well with (and helped to justify) the competitive and individualistic ethos of late 20th-century societies.

Like many others, Dawkins justifies his views with reference to the field of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology theorises that present-day human traits developed in prehistoric times, during what is termed the "environment of evolutionary adaptedness".

This is usually seen as a period of intense competition, when life was a kind of Roman gladiatorial battle in which only the traits that gave people a survival advantage were selected and all others fell by the wayside. And because people's survival depended on access to resources - think rivers, forests and animals - there was bound to be competition and conflict between rival groups, which led to the development of traits like racism and warfare.

This seems logical. But in fact the assumption it's based on — that prehistoric life was a desperate struggle for survival — is false.
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Calculator

Machine-learning model finds SARS-COV-2 growing more infectious

Adrian De Novato
Phys.org
Fri, 21 Aug 2020 14:35 UTC
analyze genome dna
© CC0 Public Domain
A novel machine learning model developed by researchers at Michigan State University suggests that mutations to the SARS-CoV-2 genome have made the virus more infectious.

The model, developed by lead researcher Guowei Wei, professor in the departments of Mathematics and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, analyzed SARS-CoV-2 genotyping from more than 20,000 viral genome samples. The researchers analyzed mutations to the spike protein — a protein primarily responsible for facilitating infection — and found that five of the six known virus subtypes are now more infectious.

As with any virus, many mutations are ultimately benign, posing little to no risk to infected patients. Some mutations even reduce infectiousness. But some mutations lead to a more infectious virus.


Comment: Moreover it may be actually beneficial for it to be more virulent while continuing to be relatively harmless because then herd immunity will be achieved - although in some areas it apparently already has.


Wei and his team have studied and analyzed mutation patterns and locations for months, tracking changes against the official viral genome sample captured in January.

Comment: See also: Also check out SOTT radio's:

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Satellite

NASA investigating small air leak on International Space Station

Elizabeth Howell
Space.com
Thu, 20 Aug 2020 21:59 UTC
International Space Station
© NASAThe International Space Station, as seen in October 2018.
NASA is tracking down the source of a minor air leak on the International Space Station.

Crewmembers of the station's current Expedition 63 are in no immediate danger and will spend the weekend in the orbiting laboratory's Russian segment, inside the Zvezda service module, NASA officials said in an update today (Aug. 20).

Astronauts can work in a shirtsleeve environment inside the station, but the orbiting lab is never completely airtight; a little bit of air always leaks over time, requiring routine repressurization from nitrogen tanks that are sent up during cargo missions, NASA added in the update. (Space.com has reached out to NASA for comment and will update this story if and when the agency responds.)

This leak was first spotted in September 2019, when there were "indications of a slight increase above the standard air leak rate," NASA said in the statement. "Because of routine station operations like spacewalks and spacecraft arrivals and departures, it took time to gather enough data to characterize those measurements. That rate has slightly increased, so the teams are working a plan to isolate, identify and potentially repair the source."

Comment: See also:

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Cell Phone

Lower student grades due to smartphone usage says study

Megan Schumann
Rutgers University
Mon, 17 Aug 2020 22:42 UTC
Smartphone User
© Rutgers UniversityA new Rutgers study suggests that more students are adopting a strategy for doing homework that is negatively impacting long-term retention and exam grades.
The ease of finding information on the internet is hurting students' long-term retention and resulting in lower grades on exams, according to a Rutgers University-New Brunswick study.

The study, published in the journal Educational Psychology, found that smartphones seem to be the culprit. Students who received higher homework but lower exam scores -- a half to a full letter grade lower on exams -- were more likely to get their homework answers from the internet or another source rather than coming up with the answer themselves.

"When a student does homework by looking up the answers, they usually find the correct answer, resulting in a high score on the assignment," said lead author Arnold Glass, a professor of psychology at Rutgers-New Brunswick's School of Arts and Sciences. "However, when students do that, they rapidly forget both the question and answer. Consequently, they transform homework from what has been, until now, a useful exercise into a meaningless ritual that does not help in preparing for exams."

The research also found that while 14 percent of students scored lower on exams than homework in 2008, that number jumped to 55 percent in 2017 as the use of smartphones for homework has become more common.
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Comet 2

Space rock turning into a comet observed for the first time

Lisa Goodman
Science News
Wed, 19 Aug 2020 18:25 UTC
Space Rock Turning into Comet
© HEATHER ROPER/UNIV. OF ARIZONASpace rocks called centaurs could someday become brilliant comets, like the one shown in this artist’s illustration. Astronomers have spotted a centaur that is expected to become a comet in about four decades.
Like the mythical half-human, half-horse creatures, centaurs in the solar system are hybrids between asteroids and comets. Now, astronomers have caught one morphing from one type of space rock to the other, potentially giving scientists an unprecedented chance to watch a comet form in real time in the decades to come.

"We have an opportunity here to see the birth of a comet as it starts to become active," says planetary scientist Kat Volk of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
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