The most devastating tornadoes are often preceded by a cloudy plume of ice and water vapor billowing above a severe thunderstorm. New research reveals the mechanism for these plumes could be tied to "hydraulic jumps" - a phenomenon Leonardo Da Vinci observed more than 500 years ago.
When a cloudy plume of ice and water vapor billows up above the top of a severe thunderstorm, there's a good chance a violent tornado, high winds or hailstones bigger than golf balls will soon pelt the Earth below.

A new Stanford University-led study, published Sept. 10 in Science, reveals the physical mechanism for these plumes, which form above most of the world's most damaging tornadoes.

Previous research has shown they're easy to spot in satellite imagery, often 30 minutes or more before severe weather reaches the ground. "The question is, why is this plume associated with the worst conditions, and how does it exist in the first place? That's the gap that we are starting to fill," said atmospheric scientist Morgan O'Neill, lead author of the new study.

The research comes just over a week after supercell thunderstorms and tornadoes spun up among the remnants of Hurricane Ida as they barreled into the U.S. Northeast, compounding devastation wrought across the region by record-breaking rainfall and flash floods.

Understanding how and why plumes take shape above powerful thunderstorms could help forecasters recognize similar impending dangers and issue more accurate warnings without relying on Doppler radar systems, which can be knocked out by wind and hail - and have blind spots even on good days. In many parts of the world, Doppler radar coverage is nonexistent.

"If there's going to be a terrible hurricane, we can see it from space. We can't see tornadoes because they're hidden below thunderstorm tops. We need to understand the tops better," said O'Neill, who is an assistant professor of Earth system science at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth).

Physicists sifting through old particle accelerator data have found evidence of a highly-elusive, never-before-seen process: a so-called triangle singularity.

First envisioned by Russian physicist Lev Landau in the 1950s, a triangle singularity refers to a rare subatomic process where particles exchange identities before flying away from each other. In this scenario, two particles — called kaons — form two corners of the triangle, while the particles they swap form the third point on the triangle.

"The particles involved exchanged quarks and changed their identities in the process," study co-author Bernhard Ketzer, of the Helmholtz Institute for Radiation and Nuclear Physics at the University of Bonn, said in a statement.

And it's called a singularity because the mathematical methods for describing subatomic particle interactions break down.

Computational neuroscientists taught an artificial neural network to imitate a biological neuron. The result offers a new way to think about the complexity of single brain cells.

Our mushy brains seem a far cry from the solid silicon chips in computer processors, but scientists have a long history of comparing the two. As Alan Turing put it in 1952: "We are not interested in the fact that the brain has the consistency of cold porridge." In other words, the medium doesn't matter, only the computational ability.

Today, the most powerful artificial intelligence systems employ a type of machine learning called deep learning. Their algorithms learn by processing massive amounts of data through hidden layers of interconnected nodes, referred to as deep neural networks. As their name suggests, deep neural networks were inspired by the real neural networks in the brain, with the nodes modeled after real neurons — or, at least, after what neuroscientists knew about neurons back in the 1950s, when an influential neuron model called the perceptron was born. Since then, our understanding of the computational complexity of single neurons has dramatically expanded, so biological neurons are known to be more complex than artificial ones. But by how much?

Migrating birds choose routes with the best wind and uplift conditions, helping them to fly nonstop for hundreds of kilometers over the sea.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and University of Konstanz in Germany have identified how large land birds fly nonstop for hundreds of kilometers over the open ocean — without taking a break for food or rest. Using GPS tracking technology, the team monitored the global migration of five species of large land birds that complete long sea crossings. They found that all birds exploited wind and uplift to reduce energy costs during flight — even adjusting their migratory routes to benefit from the best atmospheric conditions. This is the most wide-ranging study of sea-crossing behavior yet and reveals the important role of the atmosphere in facilitating migration over the open sea for many terrestrial birds.

Flying over the open sea can be dangerous for land birds. Unlike seabirds, land birds are not able to rest or feed on water, and so sea crossings must be conducted as nonstop flights. For centuries, bird-watchers assumed that large land birds only managed short sea crossings of less than 100 kilometers and completely avoided flying over the open ocean.

However, recent advances in GPS tracking technology have overturned that assumption. Data obtained by attaching small tracking devices on wild birds has shown that many land birds fly for hundreds or even thousands of kilometers over the open seas and oceans as a regular part of their migration.

But scientists are still unraveling how land birds are able to accomplish this. Flapping is an energetically costly activity, and trying to sustain nonstop flapping flight for hundreds of kilometers would not be possible for large, heavy land birds. Some studies have suggested that birds sustain such journeys using tailwind, a horizontal wind blowing in the bird's direction of flight, which helps them save energy. Most recently, a study revealed that a single species — the osprey — used rising air thermals known as "uplift" to soar over the open sea.

Social media giant Facebook is breathing new life into the cringiest accessory of the '00s - Google Glass - joining forces with sunglasses powerhouse Ray-Ban to unleash a pair of "smart" glasses that can record your every move.

The first product of a reported multi-year device partnership with Facebook, Ray-Ban 'Stories' sunglasses are almost indistinguishable from normal eyewear - except they sync up with a companion app called Facebook View on the user's phone and require a Facebook account to use, according to Alex Heath, who tested them for The Verge. As of Thursday, the $299 glasses will be ubiquitous, on sale at all sunglasses stores that stock Ray-Bans.

In addition to two forward-facing cameras for taking photos and video, the glasses contain dual Bluetooth speakers - all the better to record your phone calls with - and boast a six-hour battery life with a USB-C charger. According to Heath, the image quality pales in comparison to normal smartphones, making the glasses more useful for unobtrusive, spur-of-the-moment, or hands-free image capturing. The accompanying app allows basic editing of clips and photos, with the capability to share the content with other apps (apparently not just Facebook).

The fossilized web of a 385-million-year-old root network has scientists reimagining what the world's first forests might once have looked like.

The picture they have painted couldn't be more different to what now sits in its place. Near the small town of Cairo in upstate New York, under an old highway department quarry, scientists have reconstructed the remains of what was a mighty and mature old-growth forest - home to at least three of the world's earliest tree-like plants.

Some of these initial tree 'wannabes' (known as cladoxylopsids) would have looked like large stalks of celery, shooting 10 meters (32 feet) into the sky. Others resembled pine trees, but with hairy, fern-like fronds for leaves (Archaeopteris). The third long-lost plant would have taken after the palm tree, with a bulbous base and canopy of fern-like branches (Eospermatopteris).

Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi has insisted to MPs in the Commons that vaccine passports are necessary to end the pandemic. The evidence, however, suggests otherwise.

While the U.K. has seen a spike in reported 'cases' in recent days, much of it is driven by the increase in testing as schools have returned. The positive rate, by contrast, shows a gentle decline.

There's no sign here of vaccine passports being needed to prevent unmanageable spread.

China's National Space Science Center (CAS) has unveiled a newly developed helicopter which could be used in the country's exploration of the Red Planet. The new tool comes months after China landed a robotic rover on Mars. Chinese media released images online of the astronomical equipment.

China's state-affiliated media channel, the Global Times, said that researchers from CAS recently approved the Beijing Science & Technology Commission's examination of their Mars drone prototype.

Part 1:

Today, I would like to say a few words about the suppressed Pythagorean Tradition both as a celebration of a lost art of thinking that gave rise to the greatest revolutions in science and even moral philosophy but also as an antidote to the impotent cult of scientism which has permeated every branch of thought in presently beleaguered age. This cult of scientism masquerading behind peer reviews and a new technocratic priesthood of "experts" professes arrogantly to hold all the answers to the nature of the universe from the "start" of the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, the structure of atoms made up of quarks that have never been observed, fundamental "forces" that are presumed to exist as separate entities and mysterious stuff like "dark matter" mixed with "dark energy" that we are told makes up 95% of existence.

The Chang'e-5 orbiter module which facilitated China's complex lunar sample return last year is on its way to the moon following deep space tests.

The orbiter, one of four distinct Chang'e-5 mission spacecraft, delivered a return module containing 1.731 kilograms of lunar samples to Earth Dec. 16 before firing its engines to deep space for an extended mission.

The Chang'e-5 orbiter later successfully entered an intended orbit around Sun-Earth Lagrange point 1, roughly 1.5 million kilometers, in March. There it carried out tests related to orbit control and observations of the Earth and Sun.

New data from satellite trackers now suggests Chang'e-5 has left its orbit around Sun-Earth L1 and is destined for a lunar flyby early September 9 Eastern time.