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First results from Fermilab's Muon g-2 experiment strengthen evidence of new physics


Brookhaven National Laboratory
Wed, 07 Apr 2021 00:01 UTC
muon g-2 ring
© Reidar Hahn, Fermilab
The Muon g-2 ring sits in its detector hall amidst electronics racks, the muon beamline, and other equipment. This impressive experiment operates at negative 450 degrees Fahrenheit and studies the precession (or wobble) of muons as they travel through the magnetic field.
Combined results from Fermilab and Brookhaven show strong evidence that our best theoretical model of the subatomic world is incomplete.

The long-awaited first results from the Muon g-2 experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory show fundamental particles called muons behaving in a way that is not predicted by scientists' best theory, the Standard Model of particle physics. This landmark result, made with unprecedented precision, confirms a discrepancy that has been gnawing at researchers for decades.

The strong evidence that muons deviate from the Standard Model calculation might hint at exciting new physics. Muons act as a window into the subatomic world and could be interacting with yet undiscovered particles or forces.

Comment: See also:

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Comet 2

New Comet C/2019 U5 (PANSTARRS)

Ernesto Guido
Remanzacco Blogspot
Wed, 07 Apr 2021 23:09 UTC
CBET 4953 & MPEC 2021-G80, issued on 2021, April 07, announce that an apparently asteroidal object (magnitude ~21.0) discovered on CCD images obtained with the F51 Pan-STARRS 1 survey's 1.8m Ritchey-Chretien on 2019, October 22.22 and designated A/2019 U5 (cf. MPEC 2019-V10) has been found to show cometary appearance by other CCD observers over the past half year. The new comet has been designated C/2019 U5 (PANSTARRS).

Stacking of 20 unfiltered exposures, 120 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2021, April 02.1 from Z08 (Telescope Live, Oria) through a 0.7 m f/8 Ritchey Chretien + CCD, shows that this object is a comet with a compact coma about 15" arcsec in diameter (Observers E. Guido, M. Rocchetto, E. Bryssinck, M. Fulle, G. Milani, C. Nassef, G. Savini, A. Valvasori).

Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version; made with TYCHO software by D. Parrott)

Comet C/2019 U5 (PANSTARRS)
© Remanzacco Blogspot
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Attention

Possible nova detected in Sagittarius

Ernesto Guido, Adriano Valvasori, Marco Rocchetto
Remanzacco Blogspot
Wed, 07 Apr 2021 22:53 UTC
Following the posting on the Central Bureau's Transient Object Confirmation Page about a possible Nova in Sgr (TOCP Designation: PNV J17581670-2914490) we performed some follow-up of this object through a TEL 0.6-m f/6.5 astrograph + CCD located in the El Sauce Observatory in Chile and operated by Telescope Live network (MPC Code X02).

This transient has been discovered by Andrew Pearce at 8.4 mag (unfiltered) on 2021-04-04.825 UT using a Canon 1100D DSLR camera with a 100mm f/2.8 lens. Total exposure time was 20 seconds (2 x 10s images stacked). Rob McNaught reported non-detection on 2021-04-02.776 UT (unfiltered limiting mag 11.0).

On images taken on April 06.40, 2021 we can confirm the presence of an optical counterpart with B-filtered CCD magnitude +8.955 (R-filtered & V-filtered images were saturated in 5-second exposures) at coordinates:

R.A. = 17 58 16.08, Decl.= -29 14 56.4

(equinox 2000.0; Gaia DR2 catalogue reference stars for the astrometry).

Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version):
NOVA SAGITTARII 2021 No. 2
© Remanzacco Blogspot
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Microscope 1

Genome analysis reveals unknown ancient human migration into Europe


The Guardian
Wed, 07 Apr 2021 20:59 UTC
bacho kiro cave excavation neanderthals
© Nikolay Doychinov/AFP via Getty Images
The Bacho Kiro cave in Bulgaria. The research is based on analysis of several ancient human remains – including a whole tooth and bone fragments – found in a cave in Bulgaria last year.
Genetic sequencing of human remains dating back 45,000 years has revealed a previously unknown migration into Europe and showed intermixing with Neanderthals in that period was more common than previously thought.

The research is based on analysis of several ancient human remains - including a whole tooth and bone fragments - found in a cave in Bulgaria last year.

Genetic sequencing found the remains came from individuals who were more closely linked to present-day populations in east Asia and the Americas than populations in Europe.

Comment: Bacho Kiro has proved to be a treasure chest of prehistoric information:

Humans were in Europe earlier and had cultural interactions with Neanderthals, new fossil finds in Bulgaria reveal

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Microscope 2

Researchers can now collect and sequence DNA from the air

Ashley P. Taylor
Live Science
Mon, 05 Apr 2021 20:27 UTC
dna strand
© Shutterstock
We leave DNA all over the place, including in the air, and for the first time, researchers have collected animal DNA from mere air samples, according to a new study.

The DNA that living things, human and otherwise, shed into the environment is called environmental DNA (eDNA). Collecting eDNA from water to learn about the species living there has become fairly common, but until now, no one had attempted to collect animal eDNA from the air.

"What we wanted to know was whether we could filter eDNA from the air to track the presence of terrestrial animals," study author Elizabeth Clare, an ecologist at Queen Mary University of London, said in a video abstract for the study, published Mar. 31 in the journal PeerJ. "We were interested in whether we could use this 'airDNA' as a way to assess what species were present in a burrow or a cave where we could not easily see or capture them," she added.

As a proof-of-concept experiment, Clare and her colleagues tried collecting DNA from the air in an animal facility housing a model organism, the naked mole rat. The researchers detected both human and mole rat DNA in air from both the mole rat enclosures and the room where the enclosures are housed.
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Info

High-energy particle accelerators within our galaxy discovered

Govert Schilling
Sky & Telescope
Fri, 02 Apr 2021 17:48 UTC
Move over, CERN. Unknown sources in the Milky Way dubbed "PeVatrons" accelerate protons to energies of a few peta-electronvolts - dozens of times higher than the yield of the Large Hadron Collider. Now, new data from a high-altitude experiment in Tibet confirm that such very-high-energy cosmic rays are indeed produced in our own galaxy.
Ultra high-energy rays
© APS; Background (atomic hydrogen distribution): HEASARC / LAMBDA / NASA / GFSC
Ultra high-energy diffuse gamma rays (yellow points) are distributed along the Milky Way Galaxy. The gray shaded area indicates the area outside the detectors' field of view.
"The results paint a much fuller picture of the PeVatron population in the Milky Way," says Pat Harding (Los Alamos National Laboratory), who was not involved in the study.

The distribution of cosmic rays by energy suggests these particles come in two varieties. The most extreme ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are believed to come from remote galaxies (see the May 2021 issue of Sky & Telescope to learn more about these harbingers). But the majority of cosmic rays, with energies below 4 PeV, are thought to originate in the Milky Way. However, the true nature of the PeVatron particle accelerators has remained unknown, largely because the paths of cosmic rays are bent by galactic magnetic fields, so they do not "point back" to their origin.

A large team of Chinese and Japanese scientists known as the Tibet ASγ Collaboration has now detected a few dozen very-high-energy (VHE) gamma rays from the Milky Way that aren't associated with known sources. These gamma rays, collected between 2014 and 2017, are thought to be produced when cosmic rays slam into atomic nuclei in the interstellar medium. Theory says they carry about 10% of the original cosmic-ray energy. The most energetic one detected by the Tibet ASγ team packs a punch of 0.957 PeV - an all-time record.
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Rose

Fungi manipulate bacteria to enrich soil with nutrients

Boyce Thompson Institute
Phys.org
Fri, 02 Apr 2021 12:00 UTC
hyphae
© Maria Harrison
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi extend long filament-like structures called hyphae far out into the soil. The hyphae, which are smaller than a human hair, cultivate their own microbiome.
A team of researchers from the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) has discovered a distinct group of bacteria that may help fungi and plants acquire soil nutrients. The findings could point the way to cost-effective and eco-friendly methods of enriching soil and improving crop yields, reducing farmers' reliance on conventional fertilizers.

Researchers know that arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi establish symbiotic relationships with the roots of 70% of all land plants. In this relationship, plants trade fatty acids for the fungi's nitrogen and phosphorus. However, AM fungi lack the enzymes needed to free nitrogen and phosphorus from complex organic molecules.

A trio of BTI scientists led by Maria Harrison, the William H. Crocker Professor at BTI, wondered whether other soil microbes might help the fungi access those nutrients. In a first step towards examining that possibility, the team investigated whether AM fungi associate with a specific community of bacteria. The research was described in a paper published in The ISME Journal on March 1.

Comment: Research is also revealing that conventional agriculture destroys these symbiotic relationships:

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Blue Planet

Dinosaur-killing asteroid strike gave rise to Amazon rainforest


BBC
Mon, 05 Apr 2021 11:43 UTC
asteroid
© SPL
The asteroid impact 66 million years ago led not just to the extinction of dinosaurs, but other forms of life
The asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs gave birth to our planet's tropical rainforests, a study suggests.

Researchers used fossil pollen and leaves from Colombia to investigate how the impact changed South American tropical forests.

After the 12km-wide space rock struck Earth 66 million years ago, the type of vegetation that made up these forests changed drastically.

The team has outlined its findings in the prestigious journal Science.

Comment: As Pierre Lescaudron concludes in his article The Seven Destructive Earth Passes of Comet Venus, it would appear that extinction level events are followed by an explosion of life on our planet:
Despite their apparent remoteness, cometary events are very real and might actually be one of the main punctuators of life and death on Earth. Most mass extinctions were triggered by cometary events and, interestingly, they were followed by the appearance of more complex forms of life.

We can witness this phenomenon, for example, at the Eoceone-Oligocene (E-O) boundary where numerous Eocene species went extinct and were "replaced" by the more complex Oligocene fauna:
Even more open landscapes allowed animals to grow to larger sizes than they had earlier in the Paleocene epoch 30 million years earlier. Marine faunas became fairly modern, as did terrestrial vertebrate fauna on the northern continents. This was probably more as a result of older forms dying out than as a result of more modern forms evolving.
Source
There is a similar pattern at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pt) boundary (attributed to the Chicxulub impact) where numerous Cretaceous species went extinct and were 'replaced' by the more complex Paleogene fauna:
The Paleogene is most notable for being the time during which mammals diversified from relatively small, simple forms into a large group of diverse animals in the wake of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that ended the preceding Cretaceous Period.
Source
If major cometary impacts trigger jumps in the complexity of life on our planet, the question is: how? One possible mechanism is via cometary-borne viruses. The presence of organic material in comets is now hypothesized by mainstream science. And we know that viruses can transfer DNA to their hosts.

So, are major cometary events the window of opportunity that 'intelligent design' uses to remove obsolete life forms (mass extinction) and to introduce more elaborate life-forms (life explosion) via the new DNA codes carried by the accompanying viruses?

That will be the topic of a future article.
See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Cow Skull

'Power cascade': Universal rule of how animals grow their pointy body parts revealed


Monash University
Mon, 29 Mar 2021 12:00 UTC
ram horn
© Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
An interdisciplinary team at Monash University discovered a new universal rule of biological growth that explains surprising similarities in the shapes of sharp structures across the tree of life, including teeth, horns, claws, beaks, animal shells, and even the thorns and prickles of plants.

Animals and plants often grow in specific patterns, like logarithmic spirals following the golden ratio. There are very simple processes that generate these patterns — a logarithmic spiral is produced when one side of a structure grows faster than another at a constant ratio. We can call these 'rules of growth', and they help us understand why organisms are certain shapes.

In the new study published today in BMC Biology, the research team demonstrates a new rule called the 'power cascade' based on how the shape 'cascades' down a tooth following a power law.

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

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Mars

Mysterious 'Marsquakes' detected by Nasa's Insight lander in area of Red Planet where volcanic activity and landslides have been spotted

Bevan Hurley
Daily Mail
Sun, 04 Apr 2021 02:48 UTC
Mars surface
© NASA / JPL-CALTECH
Mysterious rumblings known as 'Marsquakes' have been detected by Nasa's InSight lander, offering further clues about volcanic activity beneath the surface of the Red Planet.

The tremors originated in a region called Cerberus Fossae - an area where Nasa scientists have picked up significant seismical activity and even landslides in the past.

They believe the tremors were likely caused by a sudden release of energy beneath the surface of the planet, but as Mars doesn't have tectonic plates like Earth, the precise cause and origins of the rumblings remain unknown.

The quakes were picked up by InSight's seismometer, an onboard device specially built to capture Marsquakes.

Using its robotic arm, InSight has partially buried the seismometer to protect it from strong seasonal winds and allow for more accurate readings.

Comment: Cosmic climate change: Earthquake detected on Mars! 'Marsquake' observed on Red Planet for very first time

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