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Comet 2

Spacerock crashing into Jupiter registered by Juno's instruments

Andy Tomaswick
Universe Today
Wed, 17 Feb 2021 12:00 UTC
jupiter
Timing is extraordinarily important in many aspects of astronomy. If an astronomer or their instrument is looking the wrong way at the wrong time they could miss something spectacular. Alternatively, there are moments when our instruments capture something unexpected in regions of space that we were searching for something else. That is exactly what happened recently when a team of scientists, led by Rohini Giles at the Southwest Research Institute, saw an image of what is likely a meteor impacting Jupiter's atmosphere.

The team collects data from the UVS, one of the instruments on Juno, NASA's mission tasked with studying the largest solar system planet up close. UVS is Juno's ultraviolet spectrograph, which collects data in the ultraviolet spectra from 68-210 nm. It's primary mission is to study Jupiter's atmosphere and watch for its breathtaking auroras.

Comment: It's possible that, like on Earth, Jupiter is encountering many more spacerocks at the moment: See also:

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Info

Mutated gene provides superior resilience to cold says study


Karolinska Institutet
Wed, 17 Feb 2021 17:00 UTC
Cold Adaptation
© Getty Images
Almost one in five people lacks the protein α-actinin-3 in their muscle fibre. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet now show that more of the skeletal muscle of these individuals comprises slow-twitch muscle fibres, which are more durable and energy-efficient and provide better tolerance to low temperatures than fast-twitch muscle fibres. The results are published in The American Journal of Human Genetics.

Skeletal muscle comprises fast-twitch (white) fibres that fatigue quickly and slow-twitch (red) fibres that are more resistant to fatigue. The protein α-actinin-3, which is found only in fast-twitch fibres, is absent in almost 20 per cent of people - almost 1.5 billion individuals - due to a mutation in the gene that codes for it. In evolutionary terms, the presence of the mutated gene increased when humans migrated from Africa to the colder climates of central and northern Europe.
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Blue Planet

Million-year-old mammoth genomes shatter record for oldest ancient DNA, new species identified

Ewen Callaway
Nature
Wed, 17 Feb 2021 12:00 UTC
mammoth
© Beth Zaiken/Centre for Palaeogenetics
Ancient DNA retrieved from different mammoth species is illuminating a complex evolutionary picture.
The million-year-old genome is here. Mammoth teeth preserved in eastern Siberian permafrost have produced the oldest ancient DNA on record, pushing the technology close to — but perhaps not past — its limits.

Genomic DNA extracted from a trio of tooth specimens excavated in the 1970s has identified a new kind of mammoth that gave rise to a later North American species. The findings were published in Nature on 17 February1.

"I love the paper. I've been waiting for that paper for, what, eight years now," says Ludovic Orlando, an ancient-DNA specialist at the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse in France, who co-led a 2013 effort that sequenced the previous oldest ancient DNA — a genome from a 560,000-to-780,000-year-old horse leg bone2. "I'm pleased to lose this record, because it was a heavy one," he says.

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

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Einstein

Vindicated but not cited: Paper in Nature Heredity supports Michael Behe's devolution hypothesis

Casey Luskin
Evolution News
Tue, 16 Feb 2021 06:32 UTC
Michael Behe

Michael Behe
Last year I wrote an article here at Evolution News titled "Harvard Molecular Geneticist Vindicates Michael Behe's Main Argument in Darwin Devolves." I discussed a 2020 paper by Andrew Murray in the journal Current Biology. That paper stated:
In laboratory-based experimental evolution of novel phenotypes and the human domestication of crops, the majority of the mutations that lead to adaptation are loss-of-function mutations that impair or eliminate the function of genes rather than gain-of-function mutations that increase or qualitatively alter the function of proteins.
Murray's paper vindicated Behe's thesis which also argued that "random mutation and natural selection are in fact fiercely devolutionary." That is since "mutation easily breaks or degrades genes, which, counterintuitively, can sometimes help an organism to survive, so the damaged genes are hastily spread by natural selection." (Darwin Devolves, p. 10) He continues:

Comment: Michael Behe has been bravely and successfully challenging the underpinnings of Darwinism and neo-Darwinsim for decades:

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Microscope 1

Russian scientists probe prehistoric viruses dug from permafrost


Phys.org
Tue, 16 Feb 2021 12:00 UTC
mammoth

The remains of prehistoric creatures like mammoths are found in the melting permafrost of Russia's Yakutsk region
Russian state laboratory Vektor on Tuesday announced it was launching research into prehistoric viruses by analysing the remains of animals recovered from melted permafrost.

The Siberia-based lab said in a statement that the aim of the project was to identify paleoviruses and conduct advanced research into virus evolution.

The research in collaboration with the University of Yakutsk began with analysis of tissues extracted from a prehistoric horse believed to be at least 4,500 years old.

Comment: See also:

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Snowflake

Researchers rethink life in a cold climate after Antarctic find

Ian Sample
The Guardian
Mon, 15 Feb 2021 00:00 UTC
evidence of life
© Huw Griffiths/UKRI BAS.jpg
Antarctic researchers found life deep under the sea.
The accidental discovery of marine organisms on a boulder on the sea floor beneath 900 metres (3,000 ft) of Antarctic ice shelf has led scientists to rethink the limits of life on Earth.

Researchers stumbled on the life-bearing rock after sinking a borehole through nearly a kilometre of the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf on the south-eastern Weddell Sea to obtain a sediment core from the seabed. While the boulder scuppered their chances of obtaining the core, footage from a video camera sent down the hole captured the first images of organisms stuck to a rock far beneath an ice shelf.

"It's slightly bonkers," said Dr Huw Griffiths, a marine biogeographer at the British Antarctic Survey. "Never in a million years would we have thought about looking for this kind of life, because we didn't think it would be there."

Ice shelves form when frozen water from the continent's interior flows to the coast and floats on to the surrounding sea. As the ice flows over the land, it can pick up boulders that become embedded in the base of the ice shelf before dropping out on to the sea floor.
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Info

First Australian evidence of a major shift in Earth's magnetic poles discovered

Agathe Lise-Pronovost
The Conversation
Mon, 15 Feb 2021 16:55 UTC
Solar Wind and Earth's magnetosphere
© NASA Goddard / Bailee DesRocher
The Sun expels a constant outflow of particles and magnetic fields known as the solar wind and vast clouds of hot plasma and radiation called coronal mass ejections. This solar material streams across space and strikes Earth’s magnetosphere, the space occupied by Earth’s magnetic field, which acts like a protective shield around the planet.
About 41,000 years ago, something remarkable happened: Earth's magnetic field flipped and, for a temporary period, magnetic north was south and magnetic south was north.

Palaeomagnetists refer to this as a geomagnetic excursion. This event, which is different to a complete magnetic pole reversal, occurs irregularly through time and reflects the dynamics of Earth's molten outer core.

The strength of Earth's magnetic field would have almost vanished during the event, called the Laschamp excursion, which lasted a few thousand years.

Earth's magnetic field acts as a shield against high-energy particles from the Sun and outside the solar system. Without it the planet would be bombarded by these charged particles.

We don't know when the next geomagnetic excursion will happen. But if it happened today, it would be crippling.

Satellites and navigation apps would be rendered useless — and power distribution systems would be disrupted at a cost of between US$7 billion and US$48 billion each day in the United States alone.

Obviously, satellites and electric grids didn't exist 41,000 years ago. But the Laschamp excursion — named after the lava flows in France where it was first recognised — still left its mark.

We recently detected its signature in Australia for the first time, in a 5.5 metre-long sediment core taken from the bottom of Lake Selina, Tasmania.

Within these grains lay 270,000 years of history, which we unpack in our paper published in the journal Quaternary Geochronology.
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Comet 2

Long-period comet breakup is the origin of the dinosaur extinction says study

Becky Ferreira
The New York Times
Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:00 UTC
A new study blames a comet fragment for the death of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. But most experts maintain that an asteroid caused this cataclysmic event.
Impact Event
© Roger Harris/Science Source
An artist’s rendering of the impact event 66 million years ago that ended the reign of dinosaurs.
In one searing apocalyptic moment 66 million years ago, Earth was transformed from a lush haven into a nightmare world with a fiery wound that bled soot into the skies. The extraterrestrial object that slammed into our planet spelled doom for dinosaurs and countless other species, even as its fallout opened new niches to our mammal ancestors.

For decades, scientists have debated the identity of the impactor that struck our planet that fateful day, leaving a 90-mile scar called the Chicxulub crater under what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.

Although an asteroid remains the leading candidate, a team based at the Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, Mass., has proposed that the culprit may have been an icy comet that flew too close to the sun.

When long-period comets from the outer reaches of the solar system approach the sun, they can be torn asunder by the star's immense tidal forces. The resulting shards may have been catapulted across Earth's orbit, providing "a satisfactory explanation for the origin of the impactor" that killed the dinosaurs, according to a study published on Monday in Scientific Reports.

"To this day, the origin of the Chicxulub impactor remains an open question," said Amir Siraj, an undergraduate studying astrophysics at Harvard who led the research. His model, he said, examines "this special population of comets" that could have produced enough shards — of the right size, at the right rate and on the right trajectories — to threaten Earth "in a way that's consistent with current observational constraints."
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Display

Researcher hacks over 35 tech firms in novel supply chain attack

Ax Sharma
Bleeping Computer
Tue, 09 Feb 2021 18:04 UTC
supply chain
A researcher managed to breach over 35 major companies' internal systems, including Microsoft, Apple, PayPal, Shopify, Netflix, Yelp, Tesla, and Uber, in a novel software supply chain attack.

The attack comprised uploading malware to open source repositories including PyPI, npm, and RubyGems, which then got distributed downstream automatically into the company's internal applications.

Unlike traditional typosquatting attacks that rely on social engineering tactics or the victim misspelling a package name, this particular supply chain attack is more sophisticated as it needed no action by the victim, who automatically received the malicious packages.

This is because the attack leveraged a unique design flaw of the open-source ecosystems called dependency confusion.

For his ethical research efforts, the researcher has earned well over $130,000 in bug bounties.
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Cloud Grey

Deforestation in US can lead to cooler planet, NASA funded study finds

Clark University
Phys.org
Fri, 12 Feb 2021 12:00 UTC
forest map us
© Clark University Professor Christopher A. Williams
Forest conversion from 1986 to 2000. Percentage of forest pixels converted, mapped at a 990 m x 990 m resolution. All cities with a population greater than 250,000 are displayed as black dots.
New research by Christopher A. Williams, an environmental scientist and professor in Clark University's Graduate School of Geography, reveals that deforestation in the U.S. does not always cause planetary warming, as is commonly assumed; instead, in some places, it actually cools the planet. A peer-reviewed study by Williams and his team, "Climate Impacts of U.S. Forest Loss Span Net Warming to Net Cooling," published today (Feb. 12) in Science Advances. The team's discovery has important implications for policy and management efforts that are turning to forests to mitigate climate change.

It is well established that forests soak up carbon dioxide from the air and store it in wood and soils, slowing the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; however, that is not their only effect on climate. Forests also tend to be darker than other surfaces, said Professor Williams, causing them to absorb more sunlight and retain heat, a process known as "the albedo effect."

Comment: It would appear that solar activity has a much greater impact on global climate than deforestation and CO2:

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