Science & TechnologyS


Hourglass

Grand Solar Minimum: The future looks cold

Cap Allon
Electroverse
Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00 UTC
the sun
[This is an updated version of an article originally published on electroverse.net. I'm currently travelling from Portugal to the UK, and will be back to it with new posts on Monday, September 11]

In recent years, the Sun has been at its weakest state in more than a century, with the two most recent solar cycles (24 and 25) on course to be the weakest pair in more than 200 years, since the Dalton Minimum.

This is revealed by the sunspot count (shown below) — a great barometer for solar activity:

Sunspot count, SC5 to SC25 [SWPC/NOAA].
Sunspot count, SC5 to SC25 [SWPC/NOAA].
The Sun's output ebbs and flows on a roughly 11-year cycle.

As visualized above, the most recently completed solar cycle (24) finished up closely matching those of 'The Centennial Minimum' (≈1880-1914) — the previous multi-cycle period of low output, aka a 'Grand Solar Minimum' (GSM).

Grand Solar Minimums themselves can also range in depth and length, and, crucially for all of inhabitants of Earth, these factors determine the severity of the accompanying 'global cooling'.
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Brain

The sense of order that distinguishes humans from other animals


PhysOrg
Wed, 06 Sep 2023 21:11 UTC
chimpanzees grooming
© Pixabay/CC0 Public DomainResearch at Stockholm University has suggested that only humans have the ability to recognize and remember so-called sequential information.
Remembering the order of information is central for a person when participating in conversations, planning everyday life, or undergoing an education. A new study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, shows that this ability is probably human unique. Even the closest relatives of humans, such as bonobos, do not learn order in the same way.

"The study contributes another piece of the puzzle to the question of how the mental abilities of humans and other animals differ, and why only humans speak languages, plan space travel, and have learned to exploit the earth so efficiently that we now pose a serious threat to countless other life forms," says Johan Lind, associate professor in ethology and deputy director at the Center for Cultural Evolution, Stockholm University.

Earlier research at Stockholm University has suggested that only humans have the ability to recognize and remember so-called sequential information, and that this ability is a fundamental building block underlying unique human cultural abilities. But previously, this sequence memory-hypothesis has not been tested in humans' closest relatives, the great apes. The new experiments show that bonobos, one of the great apes, struggle to learn the order of stimuli.
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Seismograph

India's lunar lander detects 'movement' on the moon - scientists ask whether it's seismic activity or a space rock impact

Michelle Star
Science Alert
Thu, 07 Sep 2023 14:56 UTC
indische sonde
© Aijaz Rahi / APFILE PHOTO: Chandrayaan-3
India's Chandrayaan-3 mission may have just recorded the first seismic data on the Moon since the 1970s.

If confirmed to be natural seismic data, it could finally help scientists understand how the Moon's insides are arranged.

The rumblings were recorded by the Vikram lander's onboard Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA).

It's the first Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology-based instrument on the Moon and it was was able to record the seismic rumbles of the mission's Pragyan rover moving around on the surface.

Comment: See also:

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2 + 2 = 4

Scientists discover 'pure math' is written into evolutionary genetics


Science Alert
Tue, 05 Sep 2023 10:04 UTC
amino acid sequence
© Christoph Burgstedt/Getty Images
Mathematicians delight in the beauty of math that so many of us don't see. But nature is a wonderful realm in which to observe beauty born out of mathematical relationships.

The natural world provides seemingly endless patterns underpinned by numbers - if we can recognize them.

Luckily for us, a motley team of researchers has just uncovered another striking connection between math and nature; between one of the purest forms of mathematics, number theory, and the mechanisms governing the evolution of life on molecular scales, genetics.

Comment: See also:

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Cassiopaea

Best of the Web: Possibility of hidden planet '9' in the Kuiper Belt revealed in new research by Japanese physicists

Bob Yirka
Phys.org
Fri, 01 Sep 2023 10:01 UTC
planet x nemesis
© The Astronomical Journal (2023). DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/aceaf0Final orbital structure after evolving the primordial scattering population over 4.5 Gyr under the gravitational influence of the four giant planets and a KBP with m = 1.5 M⊕, a = 250 au, q = 195 au, and i = 30°. The results obtained for the control model and this model are represented by black and red symbols, respectively. Blue asterisks represent the extreme TNOs. The KBP's orbit is indicated by the green square.
A pair of astrophysicists, one with Kindai University, the other the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, both in Japan, have found possible evidence of an Earth-like planet residing in the Kuiper Belt. In their paper published in The Astronomical Journal, Patryk Sofia Lykawka and Takashi Ito describe properties of the Kuiper Belt that they believe are consistent with the existence of a planet not much bigger than Earth.

Over the past decade, several studies have led credence to theories regarding the possible existence of a planet in the far outer edges of the solar system, which has come to be known theoretically as Planet Nine. In this new effort, the researchers suggest it is possible that there is a planet much closer — in the Kuiper Belt.

Comment: A hidden planet? Or is this potentially evidence of the effects of 'planet' X/9, also known as Nemesis, but which is believed by some researchers to actually be our Sun's binary star?

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Family

Nearly a million years ago humans faced a 'close call with extinction'


Live Science
Thu, 31 Aug 2023 21:23 UTC
human extinction bottleneck equation rock art
© Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, CASRock art on a cliff illustrates how our human ancestors survived in the face of unknown danger. Next to it is the core forumula used by researchers to infer the bottleneck that occured close to 1 million years ago.
The human population may have lingered at about 1,300 for more than 100,000 years, and that population bottleneck could have fueled the divergence between modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Humans might have almost gone extinct nearly 1 million years ago, with the world population hovering at only about 1,300 for more than 100,000 years, a new study finds.

This close call with extinction may have played a major role in the evolution of modern humans and their closest known extinct relatives, the thick-browed Neanderthals and the mysterious Denisovans, researchers added.

Previous research suggested that modern humans originated about 300,000 years ago in Africa. With so few fossils from around that time, much remains uncertain about how the human lineage evolved before modern humans emerged.
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Document

Shock retraction of climate science paper showing no climate emergency draws comparisons with climategate scandal

Chris Morrison
The Daily Sceptic
Sat, 26 Aug 2023 07:00 UTC
man and stick
© UnknownProfessor Michael Mann, University of Pennsylvania, and hockey stick
Shocking details of corruption and suppression in the world of peer-reviewed climate science have come to light with a recent leak of emails. They show how a determined group of activist scientists and journalists combined to secure the retraction of a paper that said a climate emergency was not supported by the available data. Science writer and economist Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. has published the startling emails and concludes:
"Shenanigans continue in climate science, with influential scientists teaming up with journalists to corrupt peer review."
The offending paper was published in January 2022 in a Springer Nature journal and at first attracted little attention. But on September 14th the Daily Sceptic covered its main conclusions and as a result it went viral on social media with around 9,000 Twitter retweets. The story was then covered by both the Australian and Sky News Australia. The Guardian activist Graham Readfearn, along with state-owned Agence France-Presse (AFP), then launched counterattacks. AFP 'Herald of the Anthropocene' Marlowe Hood said the data were "grossly manipulated" and "fundamentally flawed".

After nearly a year of lobbying, Springer Nature has retracted the popular article. In the light of concerns, the Editor-in-Chief is said to no longer have confidence in the results and conclusion reported in the paper. The authors were invited to submit an addendum but this was "not considered suitable for publication". The leaked emails show that the addendum was sent for review to four people, and only one objected to publication.

What is shocking about this censorship is that the paper was produced by four distinguished scientists, including three professors of physics, and was heavily based on data used by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
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UFO

Silent, disk-shaped UFO seen by 12 United Airlines staff over Chicago airport may hold key to interstellar space travel

Matthew Phelan
The Daily Mail
Thu, 31 Aug 2023 21:30 UTC
ufo chicago airport ohare 2006
© UFO CasebookAt about 4:14 PM on November 7, 2006, a ramp employee at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago spotted a metallic, saucer-shaped craft hovering in the sky. Pictured: An image of the UFO believed to be taken on an airport employee's phone
Group of 30 physicists say spacecraft powered by an 'Alcubierre warp drive,' would 'benefit' from a classic flying saucer shape, similar to the 2006 Chicago O'Hare UFO

An international think-tank of physicists believes a famous UFO sighting in Chicago may hold clues about 'faster than light' space travel.

At about 4:14 PM on November 7, 2006, a ramp employee at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport spotted a metallic, saucer-shaped craft hovering in the sky.

The sighting, which lasted for five minutes and was witnessed by at least 12 United Airlines staffers, made international headlines thanks to a tape of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) radio communications released via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Although the FAA attributed the incident to a 'hole-punch cloud' and astronomer Mark Hammergren, then with Chicago's Adler Planetarium, agreed, the case has remained unresolved — and tantalizing to UFO researchers ever since.

Comment: More contemporary reports. Unfortunately, due to their age, some video clips are missing. Still worth to read for the tenor of the times. The media would (hopefully) be all over such an incident today. Also, The Debrief article is worth reading in full.

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Jupiter

Amateur astronomers spot new impact on Jupiter

Andrew Jones
Space.com
Thu, 31 Aug 2023 16:09 UTC
This gas giant regularly absorbs hits from comets and asteroids, protecting inner solar system worlds.
Jupiter
© NASA
Jupiter just got smacked by a small celestial body, according to amateur astronomers.

The impact occurred at 1:45 a.m. Japan Standard Time on Aug. 29 (1645 GMT on Aug. 28). An account affiliated with the Organized Autotelescopes for Serendipitous Event Survey (OASES) project and Planetary Observation Camera for Optical Transient Surveys (PONCOTS) system posted about the event on X, formerly known as Twitter, alerting of a flash observed in Jupiter's atmosphere. The post also called on observers to check their own footage.

MASA Planetary Log later shared footage showing a brief burst of light coming from Jupiter that was associated with an apparent comet or asteroid impact. Another independent observation was made by a Chinese amateur astronomer in the city of Zhengzhou, Henan province, showing a flash in the same spot on Jupiter's dense, turbulent atmosphere.

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Info

Exploring light neutron-rich nuclei: First observation of Oxygen-28


Tokyo Institute of Technology
Thu, 31 Aug 2023 17:46 UTC
The neutron-rich oxygen isotopes oxygen-27 and oxygen-28 exist as very short-lived resonances, report scientists from Tokyo Tech based on the first observation of their decay into oxygen-24 and three and four neutrons, respectively. Notably, the oxygen-28 nucleus is found not to be "doubly magic" as expected in the standard shell-model picture. This study provides valuable insights into the nuclear structure.

Oxygen 28
© Nature
The study of physical systems under extreme conditions offers valuable insights into their organization and structure. In nuclear physics, neutron-rich isotopes, especially the light ones with neutron-to-proton ratio significantly different from that of stable nuclei, provide stringent tests of modern nuclear structure theories. These isotopes exist as very short-lived resonances, decaying through spontaneous neutron emission.

Now, in a new study published in available in Nature, an international collaboration of researchers led by Yosuke Kondo, an Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics at Tokyo Institute of Technology, reports the first observation of two such isotopes — oxygen-28 (28O) and oxygen-27 (27O) — through their decay into oxygen-24 with four and three neutrons, respectively. The nucleus 28O, which consists of 8 protons and 20 neutrons (N), is of significant interest as it is expected to be one of the few 'doubly magic' nuclei in the standard shell-model picture of nuclear structure.
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