Science & TechnologyS


Microscope 1

Research finds starfish are 'all head and no butt'

Nervous system in older Patiria starfish anatomy
© Laurent Formery/Evident Image of the Year AwardNervous system in older Patiria starfish
Scientists have long been perplexed by the anatomical arrangement of sea stars. Many experts assumed that sea stars didn't have heads because of their remarkable five-armed symmetry and the lack of a prominent head or tail.

However, it turns out that a starfish's entire body serves as a head.

This startling revelation comes from a recent study by researchers at Stanford University and UC Berkeley.

They uncovered gene signatures associated with head development in young sea stars after conducting a thorough gene analysis of the starfish's body. The expression of genes responsible for an animal's torso and tail portions, on the other hand, was noticeably lacking.

"It's as if the sea star is completely missing a trunk and is best described as just a head crawling along the seafloor. It's not at all what scientists have assumed about these animals," said Laurent Formery, lead author of the new study, in an official release.

Satellite

NASA's Kepler telescope reveals 7 new planets orbiting distant star "hotter than the sun"

Kepler space telescope new planets system
© NASA/Daniel RutterArtist's concept of Kepler-385, the seven-planet system revealed in a new catalog of planet candidates discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope.
A system of seven sweltering planets has been revealed by continued study of data from NASA's retired Kepler space telescope: Each one is bathed in more radiant heat from their host star per area than any planet in our solar system. Also unlike any of our immediate neighbors, all seven planets in this system, named Kepler-385, are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. It is one of only a few planetary systems known to contain more than six verified planets or planet candidates. The Kepler-385 system is among the highlights of a new Kepler catalog that contains almost 4,400 planet candidates, including more than 700 multi-planet systems.

"We've assembled the most accurate list of Kepler planet candidates and their properties to date," said Jack Lissauer, a research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley and lead author on the paper presenting the new catalog. "NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the majority of known exoplanets, and this new catalog will enable astronomers to learn more about their characteristics."

Comment: Listen to a sonification of the orbit data of the seven planets in the Kepler-385 system:




Water

In a surprising finding, light can make water evaporate without heat

A newly identified process could explain a variety of natural phenomena and enable new approaches to desalination.
Water droplets on Leaf
© Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Evaporation is happening all around us all the time, from the sweat cooling our bodies to the dew burning off in the morning sun. But science's understanding of this ubiquitous process may have been missing a piece all this time.

In recent years, some researchers have been puzzled upon finding that water in their experiments, which was held in a sponge-like material known as a hydrogel, was evaporating at a higher rate than could be explained by the amount of heat, or thermal energy, that the water was receiving. And the excess has been significant — a doubling, or even a tripling or more, of the theoretical maximum rate.

After carrying out a series of new experiments and simulations, and reexamining some of the results from various groups that claimed to have exceeded the thermal limit, a team of researchers at MIT has reached a startling conclusion: Under certain conditions, at the interface where water meets air, light can directly bring about evaporation without the need for heat, and it actually does so even more efficiently than heat. In these experiments, the water was held in a hydrogel material, but the researchers suggest that the phenomenon may occur under other conditions as well.

The findings are published this week in a paper in PNAS, by MIT postdoc Yaodong Tu, professor of mechanical engineering Gang Chen, and four others.

The phenomenon might play a role in the formation and evolution of fog and clouds, and thus would be important to incorporate into climate models to improve their accuracy, the researchers say. And it might play an important part in many industrial processes such as solar-powered desalination of water, perhaps enabling alternatives to the step of converting sunlight to heat first.

The new findings come as a surprise because water itself does not absorb light to any significant degree. That's why you can see clearly through many feet of clean water to the surface below. So, when the team initially began exploring the process of solar evaporation for desalination, they first put particles of a black, light-absorbing material in a container of water to help convert the sunlight to heat.

Info

HAARP artificial airglow may be widely visible in Alaska

HAARP in Alaska
© UAF/GI photo by JR AnchetaHAARP's Ionospheric Research Instrument is a phased array of 180 high-frequency antennas spread across 33 acres.
Alaskans and visitors may be able to see an artificial airglow in the sky created by the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program during a four-day research campaign that starts Saturday.

Scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Cornell University, University of Colorado Denver, University of Florida and Georgia Institute of Technology will conduct a variety of experiments at the UAF-operated research site.

The experiments will focus on the ionosphere, the region of the atmosphere between about 30 and 350 miles above the Earth's surface.

Scientists will investigate ionosphere mechanisms that cause optical emissions. They'll also try to understand whether certain plasma waves — gas so hot that electrons get knocked off atoms — amplify other very low frequency waves. And they'll investigate how satellites can use plasma waves in the ionosphere for collision detection and avoidance.

Each day, the airglow could be visible up to 300 hundred miles from the HAARP facility in Gakona. The site lies about 200 miles northeast of Anchorage and 230 miles southeast of Fairbanks, or about 300 to 350 kilometers.

HAARP creates airglow by exciting electrons in Earth's ionosphere, similar to how solar energy creates natural aurora, with on and off pulses of high-frequency radio transmissions. HAARP's Ionospheric Research Instrument, a phased array of 180 high-frequency antennas spread across 33 acres, can radiate 3.6 megawatts into the upper atmosphere and ionosphere.

The airglow, if visible, will appear as a faint red or possibly green patch. Because of the way the human eye operates, the airglow might be easier to see when looking just to the side.

Comment: Very interesting timing for this experiment. See also:

HAARP and The Canary in the Mine

Mind Control and HAARP


Cassiopaea

Best of the Web: Quantum breakthrough reveals reality shaped by context, measurement, system - scientists forced to rethink nature of reality

Quantum physics
Quantum physicists from Hiroshima University have revealed that the results of quantum measurements are fundamentally tied to the interaction dynamics between the measuring device and the system, challenging traditional views of fixed physical properties and suggesting that reality is shaped by the context of these interactions. Their findings point to a need to rethink the interpretation of quantum experimental data.
Quantum physicists from Hiroshima University have revealed that the results of quantum measurements are fundamentally tied to the interaction dynamics between the measuring device and the system, challenging traditional views of fixed physical properties and suggesting that reality is shaped by the context of these interactions. Their findings point to a need to rethink the interpretation of quantum experimental data.

Whenever measurement precision nears the uncertainty limit set by quantum mechanics, the results become dependent on the interaction dynamics between the measuring device and the system. This finding may explain why quantum experiments often produce conflicting results and may contradict basic assumptions regarding physical reality.

Research Analysis and Findings

Two quantum physicists from Hiroshima University recently analyzed the dynamics of a measurement interaction, where the value of a physical property is identified with a quantitative change in the meter state. This is a difficult problem, because quantum theory does not identify the value of a physical property unless the system is in a so-called "eigenstate" of that physical property, a very small set of special quantum states for which the physical property has a fixed value.

Comment: Consider what implications this has for our planet, whereby billions of people perceive and assess the world through the lies of the mainstream media; what impact must it have on them, as well reality itself?

However, it also seems that many of those same people are fast becoming wise to the deceptions, and are beginning to view reality with more accuracy, and one wonders what impact, if any, this will have on them as people, as well as the reality that is being observed?


Question

Is the jet stream changing?

Researchers at Mainz University are investigating the jet stream to assess how its decadal variations could affect the occurrence of weather extremes in Europe.
Jet Stream
© Georgios FragkoulidisWind velocity and streamlines at an altitude of about 10 kilometers above the Earth's surface on the onset of a Western Europe heat wave (23 August 2016).
Heavy precipitation, wind storms, heat waves — when severe weather events such as these occur they are frequently attributed to a wavy jet stream. The jet stream is a powerful air current in the upper troposphere that balances the pressure gradient and Coriolis forces. It is still not known whether the jet stream is really undergoing changes at decadal timescales and, if so, to what extent.

"There are various theories as to what we can expect from the jet stream in future. However, these are all based on highly idealized assumptions," said Dr. Georgios Fragkoulidis of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). "Although it is quite clear that carbon dioxide emissions make a direct contribution to the global mean temperature, changes in the atmospheric circulation are highly uncertain due to the chaotic processes that govern its evolution."

Sun

Mechanism for how sunflowers follow the sun discovered

Plant biologist Stacey Harmer sunflowers lab
© Sasha Bakhter, UC Davis College of Biological SciencesPlant biologist Stacey Harmer studies how sunflowers are able to follow the sun. Her new research shows that sunflowers respond to the sun through a previously unknown mechanism.
Sunflowers famously turn their faces to follow the sun as it crosses the sky. But how do sunflowers "see" the sun to follow it? New work from plant biologists at the University of California, Davis, published Oct. 31 in PLOS Biology, shows that they use a different, novel mechanism from that previously thought.

"This was a total surprise for us," said Stacey Harmer, professor of plant biology at UC Davis and senior author on the paper.

Most plants show phototropism — the ability to grow toward a light source. Plant scientists had assumed that sunflowers' heliotropism, the ability to follow the sun, would be based on the same basic mechanism, which is governed by a molecule called phototropin and responds to light at the blue end of the spectrum.

Sunflowers swing their heads by growing a little more on the east side of the stem — pushing the head west — during the day and a little more on the west side at night, so the head swings back toward the east. Harmer's lab at the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences has previously shown how sunflowers use their internal circadian clock to anticipate the sunrise, and to coordinate the opening of florets with the appearance of pollinating insects in the morning.

Blue Planet

Video shows 'uncontacted' Indonesia tribe confront 'green energy' nickel mine bulldozer

Uncontacted Tribe Hongana Manyawa
© Survival InternationalThe video was recently filmed near a nickel mine in Halmahera, according to Survival International.
New footage shows members of the uncontacted Hongana Manyawa tribe in Indonesia watching as a digger noisily tears up their forest. The "shocking" video provides a snapshot of what some campaigners are calling a "genocidal" mistreatment of this land and the Indigenous people who call it home.

As shown by the new video (below), logging and mining operations on the Indonesian island are now penetrating the rainforest of uncontacted Hongana Manyawa people.

The footage was recently shot by a worker who was part of a team logging the land ahead of it being mined for nickel. Two Hongana Manyawa men cautiously approach the digger from afar, waving their weapons to express that their presence is not welcome. In response, the bulldozer drivers rev up their engines, causing the men to flee.

Comment: See also:


Galaxy

Massive anomaly within Earth's mantle may be remnant of collision that formed moon

moon impact
© Deng Hongping and Hangzhou Sphere StudioThe large low velocity provinces (LLVPs) in the deep Earth mantle may be relics of Theian mantle materials.
An interdisciplinary international research team has recently discovered that a massive anomaly deep within the Earth's interior may be a remnant of the collision about 4.5 billion years ago that formed the moon.

This research offers important new insights not only into Earth's internal structure but also its long-term evolution and the formation of the inner solar system.

The study, which relied on computational fluid dynamics methods pioneered by Prof. Deng Hongping of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was published as a featured cover in Nature on Nov. 2.

The formation of the moon has been a persistent enigma for several generations of scientists. Prevailing theory has suggested that, during the late stages of Earth's growth approximately 4.5 billion years ago, a massive collision — known as the "giant impact" — occurred between primordial Earth (Gaia) and a Mars-sized proto-planet known as Theia. The moon is believed to have formed from the debris generated by this collision.

Comment: See also:


Broom

Asteroid dust caused 15-year winter that killed dinosaurs: Study

dinosaur
© Unknown"From dust to dust..."
Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid bigger than Mount Everest smashed into Earth, killing off three quarters of all life on the planet — including the dinosaurs. This much we know. But exactly how the impact of the asteroid Chicxulub caused all those animals to go extinct has remained a matter of debate.

The leading theory recently has been that sulfur from the asteroid's impact — or soot from global wildfires it sparked — blocked out the sky and plunged the world into a long, dark winter, killing all but the lucky few.

However research published Monday based on particles found at a key fossil site reasserted an earlier hypothesis: that the impact winter was caused by dust kicked up by the asteroid. Fine silicate dust from pulverized rock would have stayed in the atmosphere for 15 years, dropping global temperatures by up to 15 degrees Celsius, researchers said in a study in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Back in 1980, father-and-son scientists Luis and Walter Alvarez first proposed that the dinosaurs were killed off by an asteroid strike that shrouded the world in dust. Their claim was initially met with some skepticism — until a decade later when the massive crater of Chicxulub was found in what is now the Yucatan Peninsula on the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, scientists largely agree that Chicxulub was to blame.