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China may establish Earth-Moon economic zone for space travel and lunar experiments

Cao Siqi
Global Times
Fri, 01 Nov 2019 22:08 UTC
China robotic lunar probe Chang'e-4

A model of China's robotic lunar probe Chang'e-4 is displayed during the 12th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, also known as Airshow China 2018, in Zhuhai city, South China's Guangdong Province.
China is mulling of establishing an Earth-moon space economic zone by 2050, with insiders expecting the zone to generate $10 trillion a year.

Bao Weimin, director of the Science and Technology Commission of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, revealed the ambitious plan at a seminar on space economy on Wednesday, media reported Friday.

In a report on developing earth and moon space, Bao shared his thoughts on the huge economic potential in this field and pledged that the country would study its reliability, cost and flight-style transportation system between the Earth and moon, The Science and Technology Daily reported Friday

He pledged to complete basic research and make a breakthrough on key technologies before 2030 and establish the transportation system by 2040. By 2050, China could successfully establish an earth-moon space economic zone, he said.

Many netizens were thrilled by the news, with some saying that "if I can catch a flight to the moon during the rest of my life, I would die without any regrets."

Comment: See also:

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Bizarro Earth

Dead Zone? Area with no life found on Earth


Sputnik
Mon, 04 Nov 2019 13:52 UTC
Dallol

Dallol geothermal complex, Ethiopia
Researchers explored a wide range of samples taken from four zones within the Dallol geothermal complex in Ethiopia between 2016 and 2018.

A group of French scientists say that they had discovered a place on Earth where no life can exist despite the presence of water in the area.

In their findings published by the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, the Diversity, Ecology and Evolution of Microbes (DEEM) team of biologists from French national research agency CNRS and the University of Paris-Sud said they made the discovery while visiting the "inhospitable" Dallol hydrothermal pools of northern Ethiopia, near the Eritrean border.

"We identify two major physicochemical barriers that prevent life from thriving in the presence of liquid water on Earth and, potentially, elsewhere, despite the presence of liquid water at the surface of a planet being a widely accepted criterion for habitability," the researchers claimed.

Comment: Signs of life have been found in our stratosphere and near volcanic vents which makes this finding, if true, surprising:

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Attention

Toronto of the future: Google-affiliated Sidewalk Labs leaked document reveals company's early vision for data collection, tax powers, criminal justice

Tom Cardoso and Josh O'Kane
The Globe and Mail
Wed, 30 Oct 2019 00:01 UTC
Toronto Sidewalk Labs model
© Fred Lum
The Sidewalk Labs office in Toronto includes models of the proposed Quayside project. An internal document from 2016 shows Sidewalk's early plans for data collection and taxation powers.
A confidential Sidewalk Labs document from 2016 lays out the founding vision of the Google-affiliated development company, which included having the power to levy its own property taxes, track and predict people's movements and control some public services.

The document, which The Globe and Mail has seen, also describes how people living in a Sidewalk community would interact with and have access to the space around them - an experience based, in part, on how much data they're willing to share, and which could ultimately be used to reward people for "good behaviour."

Known internally as the "yellow book," the document was designed as a pitch book for the company, and predates Sidewalk's relationship and formal agreements with Toronto by more than a year. Peppered with references to Disney theme parks and noted futurist Buckminster Fuller, it says Sidewalk intended to "overcome cynicism about the future."

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Butterfly

Richard Dawkins and Half a Wing

Mandatory Intellectomy
Sott.net
Sun, 03 Nov 2019 18:23 UTC
Dawkins evolution

Evolution in progress. You are now obsolete and awaiting removal by natural selection.
What good is half a wing? That is the question. If wings evolved step by step on some wingless species, there had to be half a wing at some point, so we might ask this question. In fact, we might ask lots of questions, because nothing about Darwinian evolution really makes sense, but this one is traditional. So let's ask, what good is half a wing? And who could enlighten us better than Richard Dawkins, the king of evolutionary explanations. He spoke thus in his highly delusional book The God Delusion:
"Half a wing is indeed not as good as a whole wing, but it is certainly better than no wing at all. Half a wing could save your life by easing your fall from a tree of a certain height. And 51 per cent of a wing could save you if you fall from a slightly taller tree. Whatever fraction of a wing you have, there is a fall from which it will save your life where a slightly smaller winglet would not. The thought experiment of trees of different height, from which one might fall, is just one way to see, in theory, that there must be a smooth gradient of advantage all the way from 1 per cent of a wing to 100 per cent."
If Richard Dawkins had 1% of a wing, he'd be really happy to have such a magnificent evolutionary advantage. He could fall from 1cm higher than you without dying. His offspring would fill the earth, and we would all die out. Natural selection would somehow make sure of that. 1,000 generations later, somebody would evolve 2% of a wing, and the one-percenters would die out because there's no way they could compete with 2% of a wing. This has to happen very slowly and gradually but never leave any incriminating evidence in the fossil record. It's evolution, baby!

Comment: This article is the sixth in a series. For part 7, go here:

How the Incoherent Theory of Evolution Distorts Our Thinking

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Galaxy

Worldwide observations confirm nearby 'lensing' exoplanet

National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
Phys.org
Fri, 01 Nov 2019 15:04 UTC
microlensing
© The University of Tokyo
Diagram illustrating the microlensing event studied in this research. Red dots indicate previous exoplanet systems discovered by microlensing. Inset: Artist's conception of the exoplanet and its host star.
Researchers using telescopes around the world confirmed and characterized an exoplanet orbiting a nearby star through a rare phenomenon known as gravitational microlensing. The exoplanet has a mass similar to Neptune, but it orbits a star lighter (cooler) than the Sun at an orbital radius similar to Earth's orbital radius. Around cool stars, this orbital region is thought to be the birth place of gas-giant planets. The results of this research suggest that Neptune-sized planets could be common around this orbital region. Because the exoplanet discovered this time is closer than other exoplanets discovered by the same method, it is a good target for follow-up observations by world-class telescopes like the Subaru Telescope.

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

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Galaxy

Russia considers joining China's hunt for gravitational waves in space

Tim Korso
Sputnik
Wed, 30 Oct 2019 14:15 UTC
gravity waves
© NASA . Ames Research Center/C. Henze
Although the existence of gravitational waves was predicted long ago in Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, the phenomenon was first physically detected in 2015 by twin observatories in the US and Italy.

Russian scientists could potentially join the Chinese TianQin project aimed at detecting the phenomenon of gravitational waves in space, member of the Sternberg Astronomical Institute (GAISh) Vadim Milyukov announced. According to him, the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and the Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities have decided that a meeting with their Chinese colleagues should be organised in order to discuss the possibility of collaboration on the TianQin project.

"After such a meeting, where, as I hope, [Russia and China] will find common ground, this project can be put up for a discussion in the RAS council on space", Milyukov said.

Comment: See also:

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Galaxy

NASA supercomputer creates millions of 'Universes' to reveal mystery of cosmos

Tom Fish
Daily Express
Tue, 29 Oct 2019 06:01 UTC
Universe
© SRIPFOTO/SHUTTERSTOCK
Astronomers have historically turned to two disparate methods to understand the Universe. Telescopes have traditionally been used to observe galaxies, while scientists have recently attempted to simulate them on large computers. Now a theoretical astrophysicist has revealed the early results of "a third way" - a novel method offering new insights into galaxy formation and the role dark matter plays in it.

Professor Peter Behroozi of Arizona University is leading a team harnessing NASA's Pleiades supercomputer to generate millions of Universe simulations, each following a different theory of galaxy formation.

He told Express.co.uk: "Telescopes can see lots of galaxies in exquisite detail but they are only tiny snapshots of their histories.
"Galaxies take hundreds of millions of years to evolve and of course, during a human lifetime, we can't even see a tiny fraction of that, so can't tell how does they evolved with observations alone.

"Simulators are inputting all the physics they knew into very big computers still experience issues, because even computers for the next few hundred years will be insufficient to simulate a galaxy down to its individual components."
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Info

Neanderthals' genes were regulated differently

Diana Gitig
Ars Technica
Fri, 01 Nov 2019 17:33 UTC
A modern human and Neanderthal skull
© hairymuseummatt / DrMikeBaxter / via Wikimedia Commons
A modern human and Neanderthal skull face off.
John Capra, a research scientist at Vanderbilt University, wants to know how evolution has shaped our genomes and how differences in genetics can account for differences in species. In his latest work, he tries to get a better sense of what ancient humans — Neanderthals and Denisovans — may have been like. This has been difficult because there is only so much that scientists can glean about biological traits from fossils and DNA. And it's not much.

Capra's new study takes advantage of the fact that Neanderthals interbred with modern humans (yes, Jean Auel was a prescient genius). Collectively, we have about a third of the Neanderthal genome scattered across our cells' nuclei, or at least Eurasian populations do. Most of this Neanderthal DNA is in regions that don't encode proteins, a category that includes gene regulatory regions that dictate where, when, and how much a gene is expressed.
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Info

New class of black holes discovered by scientist

Laura Arenschield
Ohio State University
Thu, 31 Oct 2019 17:27 UTC
Black Hole
© Ohio State image by Jason Shults
An artist's rendering of the black hole astrophysicists identified in this study. The black hole (bottom left) is seen near a red giant star. The discovery shows there may be an entire class of black holes astronomers did not know existed.
Black holes are an important part of how astrophysicists make sense of the universe - so important that scientists have been trying to build a census of all the black holes in the Milky Way galaxy.

But new research shows that their search might have been missing an entire class of black holes that they didn't know existed.

In a study published today in the journal Science, astronomers offer a new way to search for black holes, and show that it is possible there is a class of black holes smaller than the smallest known black holes in the universe.

"We're showing this hint that there is another population out there that we have yet to really probe in the search for black holes," said Todd Thompson, a professor of astronomy at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study.

"People are trying to understand supernova explosions, how supermassive black stars explode, how the elements were formed in supermassive stars. So if we could reveal a new population of black holes, it would tell us more about which stars explode, which don't, which form black holes, which form neutron stars. It opens up a new area of study."
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Microscope 2

Devolution: Red algae thrive despite ancestor's massive loss of genes


Science Daily
Tue, 29 Oct 2019 00:00 UTC
Red algae

An ancestor of red algae lost about a quarter of its genes roughly one billion years ago, but the algae still became dominant in near-shore coastal areas around the world.
You'd think that losing 25 percent of your genes would be a big problem for survival. But not for red algae, including the seaweed used to wrap sushi.

An ancestor of red algae lost about a quarter of its genes roughly one billion years ago, but the algae still became dominant in near-shore coastal areas around the world, according to Rutgers University-New Brunswick Professor Debashish Bhattacharya, who co-authored a study in the journal Nature Communications.

The research may assist in the creation of genetically altered seaweeds that could be used as crops, help to predict the spread of seaweed pests and -- as the climate warms and pollution possibly increases -- control invasive seaweeds that blanket shorelines.

Comment: Is the loss of so many genes, evolution, or devolution?
Mathematician Granville Sewell: Devolution is natural, evolution is not

While every other natural process tends to turn order into disorder, Darwinists have always believed that natural selection is the one unintelligent process in the universe that can create spectacular order out of disorder. So I feel vindicated by Michael Behe's new book, Darwin Devolves, which disputes this belief, and argues that despite all the claims about the creative powers of natural selection, it has never actually been observed to produce anything new and complex, only "devolution":
Darwinian evolution proceeds mainly by damaging or breaking genes, which, counterintuitively, sometimes helps survival. In other words, the mechanism is powerfully devolutionary. It promotes the rapid loss of genetic information. Laboratory experiments, field research, and theoretical studies all forcefully indicate that, as a result, random mutation and natural selection make evolution self-limiting....Darwin's mechanism works chiefly by squandering genetic information for short-term gain.
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