Science & Technology

Coma sighted on megacomet situated beyond Saturn

Elizabeth Howell
Space
Thu, 15 Jul 2021 12:00 UTC

© LOOK/LCO
Comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), as seen in a synthetic color composite image made with the Las Cumbres Observatory 1-meter telescope at Sutherland, South Africa, on 22 June 2021. The diffuse cloud is the comet's coma.

Spotting the first signs of activity on a record-setting comet of gargantuan size came down to a time-zone advantage.

Astronomers in New Zealand were the first to spot a coma, or zone of gas and dust, spreading around the megacomet C/2014 UN271, also known as Bernardinelli-Bernstein, which may be 1,000 times more massive than a typical comet. It could be the most massive comet ever found in all of recorded history.

The team that monitors images captured by the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) is spread around the world, and images from one of LCO's 1-meter telescopes hosted at the South African Astronomical Observatory were available on June 23 at midnight EDT (0400 GMT). That happens to be afternoon in New Zealand.

Comment: See also:

And check out SOTT radio's:

Chicxulub impact event left evidence of giant ripples under Louisiana

Erik Klemetti
Astronomy
Mon, 19 Jul 2021 19:21 UTC

When the Chicxulub impact blasted into the Yucatan Peninsula, it generated massive tsunamis that left their signature thousands of miles away.

Over 800 miles from the impact site, massive ripples buried deep underground record the devastation wrought by an asteroid. The Chicxulub impact, the likely smoking gun for the extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous, sent tsunamis tearing across the Gulf of Mexico. These giant waves left ripples in the undersea sediments as they passed and a new study has found what might be the largest "megaripples" on the planet.

The darkest dayLet's step back a moment. It has been around 40 years since the Chicxulub impact, located on the northern shores of the Yucatan Peninsula, was identified as the potential cause of the famed Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction (a.k.a., the K-t boundary). Since then, signs of this massive collision have been found across the planet. These include a layer of iridium from the asteroid, droplets of molten rock that rained down after the impact, wave deposits as far away as North Dakota and the charred remains of forest burned by the heat of the blast.

Russia to build $50 million high-tech ultraviolet telescope to be launched into space in October 2025

Jonny Tickle
RT
Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:08 UTC

Russia has allocated around 3.7 billion rubles ($50 million) to build a state-of-the-art space telescope with the ability to observe in ultraviolet, designed to see parts of the cosmos inaccessible to ground-based equipment.

According to RIA Novosti, Russia's space agency Roscosmos and its subsidiary Lavochkin signed a contract to build the Spektr-UV, with work scheduled to be completed by the end of 2025.

The telescope is designed to use ultraviolet observe parts of space inaccessible to ground-based telescopes. It will be launched into space, in a similar way to the US' Hubble, and will allow researchers to study stars, galaxies, and black holes, as well as the atmosphere of planets and exoplanets, and comets.

Comment: See also:

And check out SOTT radio's:

The sun fires off its third 'halo CME' in as many days

Cap Allon
Electroverse
Sat, 17 Jul 2021 06:42 UTC

On July 16, a powerful 'halo CME' escaped from the farside of the sun — the third such explosion in the last three days.

Imagine an explosion on the farside of the sun so powerful, we could feel it here on Earth, writes Dr Tony Philips over at spaceweather.com. Well, it just happened — for the third time in as many days.

The debris emerged in a circular cloud known as a 'halo CME':

Comment: See also:

MIT predicted in 1972 that society will collapse this century. New research shows we're on schedule.

Nafeez Ahmed
Vice
Wed, 14 Jul 2021 20:00 UTC

A remarkable new study by a director at one of the largest accounting firms in the world has found that a famous, decades-old warning from MIT about the risk of industrial civilization collapsing appears to be accurate based on new empirical data.

As the world looks forward to a rebound in economic growth following the devastation wrought by the pandemic, the research raises urgent questions about the risks of attempting to simply return to the pre-pandemic 'normal.'

In 1972, a team of MIT scientists got together to study the risks of civilizational collapse. Their system dynamics model published by the Club of Rome identified impending 'limits to growth' (LtG) that meant industrial civilization was on track to collapse sometime within the 21st century, due to overexploitation of planetary resources.

The controversial MIT analysis generated heated debate, and was widely derided at the time by pundits who misrepresented its findings and methods. But the analysis has now received stunning vindication from a study written by a senior director at professional services giant KPMG, one of the 'Big Four' accounting firms as measured by global revenue.

Comment: The language Herrington uses to describe the 'solution' to the predicted decline sounds like a page right out of the WEF's plans for a Great Reset.

Speaking in tongues: Russia's tech giant Yandex working on AI video translator to allow viewers to watch anything with voiceover

RT
Sat, 17 Jul 2021 21:29 UTC

What do you want to watch? Well, if the answer is a foreign-language film or TV show, and there's no translated version available, you might be out of luck. Now one of Russia's biggest tech firms is working on a solution.

In a statement released last week, digital services giant Yandex revealed it has been working on a software prototype that would allow users to watch videos in their browser in another language. The program is capable of simultaneously translating the content, and dubbing it with a computer-generated voiceover.

Just 7% of our DNA is unique to modern humans, study shows

Christina Larson
Phys.org
Fri, 16 Jul 2021 00:00 UTC

What makes humans unique? Scientists have taken another step toward solving an enduring mystery with a new tool that may allow for more precise comparisons between the DNA of modern humans and that of our extinct ancestors.

Just 7% of our genome is uniquely shared with other humans, and not shared by other early ancestors, according to a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances.

Nathan Schaefer, a University of California computational biologist and co-author of the new paper, said:

"That's a pretty small percentage. This kind of finding is why scientists are turning away from thinking that we humans are so vastly different from Neanderthals."

The research draws upon DNA extracted from fossil remains of now-extinct Neanderthals and Denisovans dating back to around 40,000 or 50,000 years ago, as well as from 279 modern people from around the world.

Massive DNA 'Borg' structures perplex scientists

Amber Dance
Nature
Fri, 16 Jul 2021 08:45 UTC

© Eye of Science/SPL
Borgs seem to be associated with single-celled microorganisms known as archaea, shown in this scanning-electron microscopy image.

The Borg have landed — or, at least, researchers have discovered their counterparts here on Earth. Scientists analysing samples from muddy sites in the western United States have found novel DNA structures that seem to scavenge and 'assimilate' genes from microorganisms in their environment, much like the fictional Star Trek 'Borg' aliens who assimilate the knowledge and technology of other species.

These extra-long DNA strands, which the scientists named in honour of the aliens, join a diverse collection of genetic structures — circular plasmids, for example — known as extrachromosomal elements (ECEs). Most microbes have one or two chromosomes that encode their primary genetic blueprint. But they can host, and often share between them, many distinct ECEs. These carry non-essential but useful genes, such as those for antibiotic resistance.

Borgs are a previously unknown, unique and "absolutely fascinating" type of ECE, says Jill Banfield, a geomicrobiologist at the University of California, Berkeley. She and her colleagues describe their discovery of the structures in a preprint posted to the server bioRxiv¹. The work is yet to be peer-reviewed.

'Moon wobble' cycle & sea level rise will cause surge in coastal flooding starting in 2030s, NASA claims

Carol Rasmussen, NASA
Phys.org
Fri, 16 Jul 2021 12:00 UTC

In the mid-2030s, every U.S. coast will experience rapidly increasing high-tide floods, when a lunar cycle will amplify rising sea levels caused by climate change.

High-tide floods — also called nuisance floods or sunny day floods — are already a familiar problem in many cities on the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported a total of more than 600 such floods in 2019. Starting in the mid-2030s, however, the alignment of rising sea levels with a lunar cycle will cause coastal cities all around the U.S. to begin a decade of dramatic increases in flood numbers, according to the first study that takes into account all known oceanic and astronomical causes for floods.

Comment: Except there doesn't appear to be any solid evidence sea levels are rising: Kiribati and China to develop farm land in Fiji, land had been predicted to 'disappear under a rising ocean'

Led by the members of the NASA Sea Level Change Science Team from the University of Hawaii, the new study shows that high tides will exceed known flooding thresholds around the country more often. What's more, the floods will sometimes occur in clusters lasting a month or longer, depending on the positions of the Moon, Earth, and the Sun. When the Moon and Earth line up in specific ways with each other and the Sun, the resulting gravitational pull and the ocean's corresponding response may leave city dwellers coping with floods every day or two.

Comment: Our planet does appear to be experiencing an increase in various kinds of extreme flooding events, but for rather different reasons than those claimed above:

Also check out SOTT radio's:

As well as SOTTs monthly SOTT Earth Changes Summary: June 2021: Extreme Weather, Planetary Upheaval, Meteor Fireballs

No ovaries required: viable eggs grown in a dish

Dr.Deborah Devis
Cosmos Magazine
Fri, 16 Jul 2021 17:05 UTC

Ova created from mice stem cells, that become fully formed creatures - all in the lab.

Scientists have successfully coaxed mouse stem cells to develop into functional eggs in a dish - that then grew into baby mice, according to a study published in Developmental Biology.

This has wide implications for assisted reproductive technologies in the future, because it may provide an alternative to egg donors.

A team of researchers, led by Takashi Yoshino of Kyushu University, Japan, developed culture conditions in a petri dish that imitated ovarian follicles to recreate the process that stem cells normally take to turn into eggs, which resulted in viable eggs. They called the lab-grown cells 'reconstituted Ovarioids' (rOvarioids).

Pluripotent stem cells are immature but have the potential to become almost any type of cell under the right conditions. In the ovary, these cells can become oocytes, which eventually turn in to eggs.

Normally, oocytes are encapsulated by ovarian cells in a fluid-filled follicle structure that help the oocyte undergo a round of meiosis (a type of cell division) and become an ovum (an egg that can be fertilised).

Previously, it was hard to grow the oocytes and ova in a petri dish because the ovarian follicles are essential in the process, so the team developed a culture as an "incubator" for the eggs to grow in, outside of the ovary.

THY LORD, THY COMPUTER The 'Lord' giveth. The 'Lord' taketh. Damn. ned. out

nedlud

SOUVENIRS @Agnosco: The map is not the territory. How can it be? But what do you 'do', if you claim to be 'human' but without a map? Hoof it and...

nedlud

Could correlation be pointing in the direction of causation Maybe, but not directly. My state, Queensland in Australia is covid free. Zero cases....

struzball

tigster has one big ego, at least from the comments impression.

Levi

The cause is the 13 American soldiers They weren't soldiers pal, they were Marines and their corpsman.

bj0311

Science & Technology

Coma sighted on megacomet situated beyond Saturn

Chicxulub impact event left evidence of giant ripples under Louisiana

Russia to build $50 million high-tech ultraviolet telescope to be launched into space in October 2025

The sun fires off its third 'halo CME' in as many days

MIT predicted in 1972 that society will collapse this century. New research shows we're on schedule.

Speaking in tongues: Russia's tech giant Yandex working on AI video translator to allow viewers to watch anything with voiceover

Just 7% of our DNA is unique to modern humans, study shows

Massive DNA 'Borg' structures perplex scientists

'Moon wobble' cycle & sea level rise will cause surge in coastal flooding starting in 2030s, NASA claims

No ovaries required: viable eggs grown in a dish

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