Science & TechnologyS


Seismograph

Tree ring tales: A massive, two-fault earthquake may have struck the Pacific Northwest 1,100 years ago

Will Sullivan
Smithsonian Magazine
Tue, 03 Oct 2023 15:19 UTC
seattle skyline mt ranier
© Donald Miralle / Getty ImagesResearchers studied tree rings to determine that a single earthquake along two fault zones may have occured near Seattle around 1,100 years ago.
Using tree ring dating, scientists have revealed a massive earthquake — or two in succession — struck the Puget Sound region in the Pacific Northwest almost exactly 1,100 years ago.

The destructive event demonstrates that the area — which contains Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia, Washington — could be susceptible to more extreme earthquakes than previous research had indicated.

Scientists already knew that multiple quakes shook the region between 780 and 1070 C.E., but they could not precisely date each one — for some, they could pinpoint only a wide window of more than 100 years. The new study, published last week in the journal Science Advances, gets much more specific: Researchers say two fault zones near Seattle ruptured within a six-month period between 923 and 924 C.E. Whether these faults ruptured at the same time, or spread a couple of months apart, the resulting quakes would each have been more than magnitude 7.3, per the paper.
Read More...
Rose

Are plants cognitive, intelligent beings?

Denyse O'Leary
Evolution News
Tue, 03 Oct 2023 15:03 UTC
Venus flytrap
As panpsychism (the idea that all life forms are conscious to some extent) takes hold in science, it ruffles some fields more than others. Think of what it is doing to botany...

Well, we don't have to imagine. The University of Heidelberg warned this week that the belief that plants do things we commonly associate with animals is straying beyond the science:
Plants are often attributed with abilities similar to those known in the animal or human world. Trees are said to have feelings and can purportedly care for their offspring, like mothers. In an article in the review journal Trends in Plant Science, 32 international plant and forest researchers followed up on such assertions.

Led by Prof. David G. Robinson, professor emeritus for cell biology at the Center for Organismal Studies (COS) of Heidelberg University, the researchers analyzed the claims in two popular publications on forests and reached the conclusion that conjecture is equated with fact. They warn against "anthropomorphizing" plants.

Heidelbert University, "'Do not anthropromorphize plants,' say plant and forest researchers,"
— September 30, 2023, PhysOrg.
(The paper "Mother trees, altruistic fungi, and the perils of plant personification," requires a subscription)
Read More...
Telescope

Major asteroid sample brought to Earth in NASA first


Daily Mail
Sat, 23 Sep 2023 21:09 UTC
Osiris Rex capsule
A seven-year space voyage came to its climactic end Sunday when a NASA capsule landed in the desert in the US state of Utah, carrying to Earth the largest asteroid samples ever collected.

Scientists have high hopes for the sample, saying it will provide a better understanding of the formation of our solar system and how Earth became habitable.

When they learned that the capsule's main parachute had deployed, "I literally broke into tears," the Osiris-Rex mission's principal investigator Dante Lauretta told a press conference. "That was the moment I knew we made it home... For me the real science is just beginning."

The 3.86-billion-mile (6.21-billion-kilometer) journey marked the United States' first sample return mission of its kind, the US space agency said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

NASA chief Bill Nelson hailed the mission and said the asteroid dust "will give scientists an extraordinary glimpse into the beginnings of our solar system."
Read More...
Einstein

Antimatter responds to gravity like Einstein predicted, major CERN experiment confirms

Sharmila Kuthunur
Space.com
Wed, 27 Sep 2023 00:00 UTC
blue balls tube
© Keyi "Onyx" Li/U.S. National Science Foundation
On Wednesday (Sept. 27) morning, an international team of physicists reported a major finding about an elusive form of matter known as antimatter. It appears that antimatter responds to gravity the same way regular matter does.

This result marks the first-ever direct observation of free-falling antimatter, in which atoms are made of antiprotons instead of protons and antielectrons (positrons) instead of electrons. Antiprotons are basically negatively charged protons (protons are positive in normal matter atoms) and positrons are positively charged electrons (electrons are negative in normal matter atoms). Yeah, it's weird.

More specifically to the recent story, the team's feat ultimately proved that atomic antihydrogen in particular — made up of one antiproton in the center with a positively charged positron orbiting around it — is pulled downward due to gravity instead of upward like you might expect with a form of matter that presents as the "opposite" of normal matter, which, as we know, falls downward with gravity as well.

Furthermore, close to three decades after antihydrogen was first created in a lab, today's scientific triumph is yet another confirmation of Einstein's general theory of relativity, which predicts that all masses, irrespective of differences in their internal structures, react to gravity in a similar manner.

Jonathan Wurtele, a physics professor at the University of California at Berkeley who first proposed the experiment over a decade ago and a co-author of the new study, said in a statement:
"If you walk down the halls of this department and ask the physicists, they would all say that this result is not the least bit surprising. That's the reality. But most of them will also say that the experiment had to be done because you never can be sure."
Read More...
Books

Peer review rejects claims that Homo naledi buried dead, used fire, and scrawled on cave wall

Casey Luskin
Evolution News
Tue, 26 Sep 2023 20:50 UTC
Homo naledi Skeleton
© Berger et al. eLife 2015;4:e09560. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.09560, Creative CommonsResearchers unearthed fossils from at least 15 individuals belonging to the newfound species, Homo naledi, in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa.
In June I wrote about three new preprint papers posted at bioRxiv from the paleoanthropology team that discovered Homo naledi. They claim that the small-brained species had high intelligence — burying its dead, using fire, and even scrawling on a cave wall. At that time the papers had not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, yet the team promoted these claims to the media with the punchline that this evidence, as ABC News interpreted it, "erases the idea of human exceptionalism." Now the papers have been published as reviewed preprints in the journal eLife (see here, here, and here) — alongside peer review. These reviews are extremely doubtful about the papers' claims, and multiple voices in the scientific community have been harshly critical.

"Incomplete and Inadequate"

Nature covered the debate in an article titled "Sharp criticism of controversial ancient-human claims tests eLife's revamped peer-review model." According to the subtitle, "High-profile researchers say the small-brained Homo naledi exhibited advanced behaviours such as burials, but peer reviewers say there's no evidence." The article quotes a paleoarchaeologist who reviewed one of the eLife papers, stating: "there just wasn't any science in the paper ultimately." The Nature article further states:
Read More...
Fish

Training your jellyfish: Brainless box jellies shown to learn from experience

Dyani Lweis
Nature
Sat, 23 Sep 2023 18:15 UTC
box jellyfish no brain
© Jan BieleckiCaribbean box jellyfish (Tripedalia cystophora) can learn to associate a particular visual cue with a bumping sensation.
Researchers have shown that the creatures can learn to avoid obstacles using visual and mechanical cues, despite not having a brain.

A tiny jellyfish has, for the first time, demonstrated a mighty cognitive capacity — the ability to learn by association. Although it has no central brain, the finger-tip-sized Caribbean box jellyfish (Tripedalia cystophora) can be trained to associate the sensation of bumping into something with a visual cue, and to use the information to avoid future collisions.

The experiment shows a type of learning called associative learning — made famous by neurologist Ivan Pavlov's experiments with dogs in the late-nineteenth century — in which an animal learns to associate one stimulus with another through training. "Associative learning is now considered solid evidence of cognitive capacity," says Ken Cheng, an animal behaviour researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Many other animals — from humans to birds, octopuses and even insects — have the ability to learn by association.

"The box jellyfish finding is very important because it shows that a centralized nervous system, or brain, is not necessary for associative learning," says Pamela Lyon, a cognitive biologist at the University of Adelaide, Australia.
Read More...
Arrow Up

NASA predicts large asteroid impact could be in Earth's future

Bill Shannon
KTLA
Wed, 20 Sep 2023 07:13 UTC
Asteroid Bennu
© NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/CSA/York/MDA via APThis undated image made available by NASA shows the asteroid Bennu from the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. On Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2021, scientists said they have a better handle on asteroid Bennu’s whereabouts for the next 200 years. The bad news is that the space rock has a slightly greater chance of clobbering Earth than previously thought. But don’t be alarmed: Scientists reported that the odds are still quite low that Bennu will hit us in the next century.
NASA scientists are predicting a chance that asteroid Bennu will strike Earth in the future, potentially affecting an area the size of Texas.

Bennu is a Near-Earth Object (NEO) that passes by the planet roughly every six years, and experts have been watching it since it was discovered in September 1999.

According to scientists, Bennu has a chance to pass through what they call a "gravity keyhole," which would send it on a collision course with Earth in the year 2182.

A new paper from the OSIRIS-REx science team predicts Bennu has a 0.037% chance (1 in 2,700) of hitting Earth; this will largely depend on another flyby. In 2135, Bennu will zoom past Earth just close enough that our planet's gravitational pull could affect it in just the right way to put it on a path to hit us on Sept. 24, 2182 — almost 159 years to the day from this writing.
Read More...
Beaker

Negative friction sees sand flowing uphill

Evrim Yazgin
Cosmos
Thu, 21 Sep 2023 15:18 UTC
flowing sand
© Dmytro Skrypnykov / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Sand that seemingly defies gravity by flowing uphill, has been created by researchers at Lehigh University in the US.

They believe the discovery could be useful in applications from healthcare to material transport and agriculture. The team's findings are published in Nature Communications.

The bizarre motion was discovered accidentally when Dr Samuel Wilson-Whitford was researching microencapsulation - a process with gives tiny particles or droplets useful properties by coating them in other materials.

Polymer granules coated in iron oxide did something unexpected when a magnet beneath them was rotated. They began to heap uphill.

When not activated by the magnet, the "microrollers" acted as expected and rolled downhill.
Read More...
Fireball 5

'Lightning' on Venus is actually meteors burning up in planet's atmosphere, study says

Sharmila Kuthunur
Space.com
Thu, 14 Sep 2023 19:01 UTC
But future missions, scientists say, are safe from both rare lightning strikes and meteors known to burn up high above the planet's clouds.
Venus
© FutureVenus as clicked by the Akatsuki orbiter in March 2018.
The thick, acid-rich clouds of Venus continue to shroud the planet next door in mystery.

Scientists have long-debated whether intriguing light flashes recorded by previous Venus missions are evidence of lightning strikes on the planet. If those flashes really represent lightning, future missions to the windy planet need to be designed such that they are strong enough to survive the bolts, which are known to damage electronics here on Earth.

Moreover, lightning on Venus means Earth's cosmic neighbor would join the rare planetary club whose current members — Earth, Jupiter and Saturn — host lightning bolts in their clouds. Such flickers of light would also be unique on the world in that they'd exist despite Venus' clouds lacking water, a substance considered key in creating electrical charges.

So, scientists are excited by the possibility of lightning on Venus — but the evidence so far has been circumstantial at best.

And now, a new study suggests lightning might be extremely rare on the planet. Instead, it offers the possibility that meteors burning up high in Venus' atmosphere are very likely responsible for the detected light flashes.
Read More...
Fireball

Astronomer captures bright flash in Jupiter's atmosphere

Anjali Thakur
NDTV
Sun, 17 Sep 2023 18:08 UTC
This flash one of the brightest ever recorded on the giant gas planet, was observed last month.
Fireball on Jupiter
© Tweeted by @theshantanumumFlashes like these are caused by asteroids or comets.
An amateur Japanese astronomer Tadao Ohsugi spotted a bright flash in Jupiter's atmosphere. This flash one of the brightest ever recorded on the giant gas planet, was observed last month.

According to a New York Times report, the astronomer sent an email to Dr. Ko Arimatsu, an astronomer at Kyoto University. Upon receiving the email, Dr. Arimatsu put a call out for more information. The media report said that flashes like these are caused by asteroids or comets from the edges of our solar system that impact Jupiter's atmosphere.

Dr. Arimatsu received six more reports of the August 28 flash. Dr. Arimatsu told NYT, "Direct observation of these bodies is virtually impossible, even with advanced telescopes," Dr. Arimatsu wrote in an email. But Jupiter's gravity lures in these objects, which eventually slam into the planet, "making it a unique and invaluable tool for studying them directly."
Read More...