Science & TechnologyS


Butterfly

Collective sensing may enable electric fish to sense beyond their own perceptual reach - first time documented in biology

electric fish Gnathonemus petersii
© Sawtell labWeakly electric fish like these, Gnathonemus petersii, may be tapping into sensory information garnered by nearby fish.
It would be a game-changer if all members of a basketball team could see out of each other's eyes in addition to their own. A research duo at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute has found evidence that this kind of collective sensing occurs in close-knit groups of African weakly electric fish, also known as elephantnose fish. This instantaneous sharing of sensory intelligence could help the fish locate food, friends and foes.

"In engineering it is common that groups of emitters and receivers work together to improve sensing, for example in sonar and radar. We showed that something similar may be happening in groups of fish that sense their environment using electrical pulses. These fish seem to 'see' much better in small groups," said Nathaniel Sawtell, PhD, a principal investigator at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute and a professor of neuroscience at Columbia's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Comment: See also:


Network

Russia & China plan to build nuclear power plant on moon

putin xi china russia
© Sputnik / Pavel Byrkin
A number of countries have been jostling to return humans to the Moon, with Moscow and Beijing teaming up in 2022 to sign a memorandum of understanding on joint exploration of the celestial body. The sides also pledged to work together to build a base there by the 2030s.

Russia and China are mulling jointly building a lunar nuclear power plant, Yuri Borisov, the head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, said on Tuesday.

"Today we are seriously considering a project ... somewhere at the turn of 2033-2035 ... to deliver and install a power unit on the lunar surface together with our Chinese colleagues," Borisov said during a lecture at the World Youth Festival.

Comment: See also:


SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: MindMatters: It's Full of Life: Philosophy of ET with Andrew Davis

andrew davis
Astrophilosophy. Exotheology. Whitehead.

Andrew Davis is the program director for the Center for Process Studies. A philosopher and theologian, his latest work is on the metaphysics of exo-life. Today on MindMatters we discuss his work on science, religion, and what the impact of the discovery of ET life would mean for philosophy, and a general philosophical framework that would make sense of it.

We also discuss the opening up of public and academic interest in the topic of UFOs and non-human intelligences, David Ray Griffin's work and parapsychology, humans as an exemplification of what the universe does, the morphological and ontological templates that life may take elsewhere, the ontology of possibilities, shared commonalities that might allow for communication with ET forms of life, the mind of God, and more.


Running Time: 01:18:49

Download: MP3 — 108 MB



Whistle

From Nature, a devastating critique of origin-of-life research

cell thing
© IllustraOriginCell Blueprint
It's been over 153 years since Darwin's "warm little pond" letter to Joseph Hooker, his tentative hope to close the final gap in his naturalistic origins story. Despite numerous well-funded approaches by leading teams around the world, propped up by media hype, none have shown real progress. After coacervates, spark-discharge tubes, proteinoid microspheres, the RNA world, hydrothermal vents, astrobiology programs, and the rest of the circus, research into the origin of life by unguided natural processes seems further behind than it did in Darwin's day. The time has come for a confession, a reassessment, an overhaul, a paradigm shift, humility, and a collective restart.

Where is this stated? Not just in the ID literature, nor in a lecture by James Tour — although of course they both do say it. But in Nature. Are you listening, "Professor Dave"?

Yes, Nature, that magazine started by Norman Lockyer in 1869 to promote Darwin's naturalistic views, has had to face judgment day. Researchers have learned a lot of facts about molecules, but "Findings can be true but irrelevant," the authors warn.

Car Black

Electric cars release more toxic emissions than petrol-powered vehicles and are worse for the environment

warning
© Electric Car Right Edition
Electric vehicles may release more pollution than petrol-powered vehicles, according to a report that has recently resurfaced.

The study, which was published in 2022 but has begun circulating again after being cited in a WSJ op-ed, found that brakes and tires release 1,850 times more particulate matter compared to modern exhaust pipes which have filters that reduce emissions.

It found that EVs are 30 percent heavier on average than petrol-powered vehicles, which causes the brakes and tire treads to wear out faster than standard cars and releases tiny, often toxic particles into the atmosphere.

Hesham Rakha, a professor at Virginia Tech told Dailymail.com that the study is only 'partially correct' because even though EVs are heavier, their tires will emit more microplastics into the air, but this could also be true for sedans versus SUVs.

Rakha said it is very challenging to determine the difference between the amount of microplastics emitted from EV tire treads and petrol-powered vehicles because you have to separate the microplastics that are already in the air from other sources with what's coming off the tires.

Rakha and his team at Virginia Tech are in the process of conducting field tests to determine how much microplastics are emitting from EV and petrol cars by using traffic simulators that will mimic an urban setting.

Fireball

Best of the Web: 'Strange' connection between plagues and changes in Earth's atmosphere discovered

Antarctic ice
© Thomas BauskaAir bubbles in Antarctic ice, akin to ice cores.
Scientists have discovered in Antarctic ice a strange link between past levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and centuries-long global pandemics, reminding us of just how easily humans - or the lack thereof - can shape planet Earth.

Bubbles of air encased in ancient ice are like teensy time capsules, trapping tiny samples of gases from atmospheres thousands or even millions of years ago.

The best records for the past 2,000 years come from just two ice cores that have greatly influenced modeling studies of climate and carbon cycles in the Common Era: the Law Dome, an Antarctic ice 'hill'; and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide ice cores.

Comment: It seems likely that the drivers of this 'feedback' are the solar cycle, as well as increased cometary and fireball activity, both of which have been shown to cause significant shifts to Earth's climate, and correlate with the deadliest outbreaks of plague; and which are of particular note in our own time, considering how we appear to be at a similar point on the cycle:


Microscope 2

Oldest known animal sex chromosome appeared in octopuses 380 million years ago

california two spot octopus
© Norbert Wu/MindenThe California two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides) has one or two copies of chromosome 17, depending on its sex.
Result reveals for the first time how some cephalopods determine sex.

Researchers have found the oldest known sex chromosome in animals — the octopus Z chromosome — which first evolved in an ancient ancestor of octopuses around 380 million years ago. The findings1 answer a long-standing question about how sexual development is directed in the group of sea creatures that includes octopuses and squid.

"We stumbled upon probably the oldest animal sex chromosome known to date," says evolutionary geneticist Andrew Kern at the University of Oregon in Eugene. "Sex determination in cephalopods, such as squids and octopi, was a mystery — we found the first evidence that genes are in any way involved."

Attention

Large ingenous events, cosmic impacts and crises in the history of life

Impact
© Randall Carlson Newsletter - March 2024
Last month, in the February 2024 issue of the Kosmographia Newsletter I reported on new research correlating a series of large-scale igneous events which produced the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) and the Siberian Traps with mass extinction episodes. On February 8 another paper was published in the journal Global and Planetary Change which further supports correlations between mass extinction episodes with gigantic volcanic eruptions and catastrophic cosmic impacts. The lead author of the paper is Michael Rampino, who has for decades been in the forefront of researching catastrophic events in Earth history. I have been following his work since the early 1980s and hold him in high regard as a scientist who is willing to think outside established paradigms of Earth history. The abstract to the paper begins:

"We find that Large Igneous Province (LIP) volcanism, mostly continental flood basalts (CFBs), along with the largest extraterrestrial impacts show significant correlations with mass-extinction events in the Phanerozoic geologic record. The ages of the 6 major marine mass extinctions (≥ 40% extinction of genera) of the last 541 MY ̶ the end-Ordovician (~444 Ma), late Devonian (~ 372 Ma), end-Guadalupian (~259 Ma), end-Permian (~ 252 Ma), end-Triassic (~201 Ma), and end-Cretaceous (66 Ma) extinctions are significantly correlated with high-quality U — Pb zircon and 40Ar/39Ar ages of 6 continental flood basalts (CFBs) ̶ the Cape St. Mary's, Viluy, Emeishan, Siberian, CAMP, and the Deccan Basalts.

U — Pb zircon dating (Uranium-lead) is a widely used method for dating metamorphic rocks typically employing a thermal ionization mass spectrometer. Zircon is used because it includes uranium and thorium atoms in its crystalline structure when forming but rejects lead, so any lead found in a zircon crystal is radiogenic, meaning it results from radioactive decay. Argon dating can measure Argon isotopes from a single mineral grain. The ratio of Argon 40 to Argon 39 yields the age of the sample.

The extinctions listed above are considered to be major events in the history of life on Earth. A number of less severe extinctions have taken place, although these events are somewhat more difficult to discern in the geologic/palaeontologic record. Nevertheless, a correlation can be discerned between these extinctions and both volcanic eruptions and cosmic impact.

Magnify

Rare eleventh-century astrolabe discovery reveals Islamic-Jewish scientific exchange

astrolabe islamic hebrew 11th century spain
© Federica GiganteThe Verona astrolabe.
The identification of an eleventh-century Islamic astrolabe bearing both Arabic and Hebrew inscriptions makes it one of the oldest examples ever discovered and one of only a handful known in the world. The astronomical instrument was adapted, translated, and corrected for centuries by Muslim, Jewish, and Christian users in Spain, North Africa, and Italy.

Dr. Federica Gigante, from Cambridge University's History Faculty, made the discoveries in a museum in Verona, Italy, and published them today in the journal Nuncius.

Dr. Gigante first came across a newly uploaded image of the astrolabe by chance on the website of the Fondazione Museo Miniscalchi-Erizzo. Intrigued, she asked them about it.

"The museum didn't know what it was and thought it might actually be fake," Dr. Gigante said. "It's now the single most important object in their collection."

Galaxy

Our solar system map may need an update — the Kuiper belt could be way bigger

Kuiper Belt
© NASA/SOFIA/Lynette CookAn illustration of the Kuiper Belt.
NASA's New Horizons mission, which encountered Pluto in 2015 is now riding through the deepest depths of the Kuiper Belt, is encountering a cosmic dust storm that hints there may be more going on in the outermost reaches of the solar system than we imagine.

Space is filled with dust formed of tiny particles just microns — millionths of a meter — in size. Much of the dust in our solar system is leftover residue from the formation of the planets, which was a violent affair that saw a multitude of objects smash into one another. Today, this ancient dust is also joined by fresh dust sputtered off the surfaces of asteroids and comets by micrometeorite impacts. This dust content, both fresh and ancient, gives rise to the enigmatic "Zodiacal light." The dust extends into the farthest reaches of the solar system. Astronomers still are not entirely sure of the make-up of this final frontier.

The Kuiper Belt (or the Kuiper-Edgeworth Belt, named after astronomers Gerard Kuiper and Kenneth Edgeworth, who independently proposed its existence) is so far away, and its icy inhabitants are so small and faint, that it wasn't until 1992 that the first Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) beyond Pluto was discovered. That discovery was made by University of Hawaii astronomers Dave Jewitt and Jane Luu. But since then, thousands of KBOs have been spotted, and astronomers have tentatively been able to begin mapping the outer solar system.