Science & TechnologyS


Nebula

Webb finds evidence for neutron star at heart of young supernova remnant

SN 1987A.
© NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Claes Fransson (Stockholm University), Mikako Matsuura (Cardiff University), M. Barlow (UCL), Patrick Kavanagh (Maynooth University), Josefin Larsson (KTH)The James Webb Space Telescope has observed the best evidence yet for emission from a neutron star at the site of a well-known and recently-observed supernova known as SN 1987A. At left is a NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) image released in 2023. The image at top right shows light from singly ionized argon (Argon II) captured by the Medium Resolution Spectrograph (MRS) mode of MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). The image at bottom right shows light from multiply ionized argon captured by the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph). Both instruments show a strong signal from the center of the supernova remnant. This indicated to the science team that there is a source of high-energy radiation there, most likely a neutron star.
Astronomers detect long-sought compact object within the remnant of Supernova 1987A.

In February 1987, the closest supernova to earth in almost 400 years exploded onto the scene. Designated Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A), it resulted from the death of a massive star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy 160,000 light-years away. In the decades since, its remnant has been studied by telescopes at all wavelengths of light from X-rays to radio. Yet despite all the scrutiny, one mystery has remained.

Theory predicted that the stellar explosion should have produced either a neutron star or a black hole. Evidence for such a compact object has long been sought, without success. Now, new observations by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have provided the first direct evidence of what is likely a neutron star, revealed by the effects of its high-energy emission.

Camera

Magnificent yellow-crested bird photographed for the first time

The first-ever photograph of the yellow-crested helmetshrike
© Matt Brady/The University of Texas at El PasoThe first-ever photograph of the yellow-crested helmetshrike
The yellow-crested helmetshrike was considered lost after going unseen for nearly 20 years - now an expedition has rediscovered what appears to be a healthy population in central Africa

A rare bird with a stunning yellow crest has been photographed for the first time in the tropical mountains of the Democratic Republic of the Congo - almost two decades after its last confirmed sighting.

The yellow-crested helmetshrike (Prionops alberti), also known as King Albert's helmetshrike, is a small bird that lives in the humid forests of the Albertine Rift mountains in central Africa. Adults are covered in glossy black plumage with a splendid crown of bright, golden feathers on their heads. Their eyes are surrounded by distinctive orange tissue called a wattle.

Propaganda

"Diversity Madness": Google (Kinda) apologizes after Woke AI Gemini exposed as Anti-White Racist

Update (1645ET): Having been busted on some very clear race bias in the image generation segment of their new AI, Gemini Experiences Senior Director of Product Management Jack Krawczyk addressed the responses from the AI that had led social media users to voice concern.

Jack Krawczyk

Comment: See also:


Cassiopaea

Mysterious wave-like structure in our galaxy found to be slowly rippling

wave structure galaxy
© Ralf Konietzka, Alyssa Goodman, and WorldWide TelescopeA diagram illustrating the Radcliffe Wave. The white line represents its current position, with blue blobs representing star clusters. The green and purple lines indicate future positions. The yellow dot is the Sun. 
Gazing out upon the apparently unchanging sea of stars around us, it's tempting to think of the Milky Way galaxy as static and everything within it as fixed and immutable.

While the timescales on which our galaxy moves often defies human experience, move it does indeed.

Not all of these dynamic processes are easy to see. Just a few years ago, scientists discovered a huge, wave-shaped structure extending some 9,000 light-years in length snaking along a spiral arm of the Milky Way, just 500 light-years from the Solar System at its closest point.

Comment: One wonders whether there's an energy coursing through the region causing the wave to move like that:


Microchip

Elon Musk says first Neuralink patient can control a computer mouse through thinking

neuralink elon
© Jonathan Raa/ Nurphoto/ Getty Images
A patient implanted with Neuralink's brain technology can now control a computer mouse just by thinking, the company's founder Elon Musk said.

″[The] patient seems to have made a full recovery with no ill effects that we are aware of and is able to control the mouse, move the mouse around the screen just by thinking," Musk said in a Spaces session on social media platform X.

Neuralink is the billionaire's startup, which says it has developed a brain implant designed to help humans use their neural signals to control external technologies. The company aims to restore lost capabilities such as vision, motor function and speech.

Cassiopaea

Best of the Web: Earth's glaciation periods may be triggered by large asteroid impacts - Yale

ice age earth glaciation
© NASA
A Yale-led research team has picked a side in the "Snowball Earth" debate over the possible cause of planet-wide deep freeze events that occurred in the distant past.

According to a new study, these so-called "Snowball" Earth periods, in which the planet's surface was covered in ice for thousands or even millions of years, could have been triggered abruptly by large asteroids that slammed into the Earth.

The findings, detailed in the journal Science Advances, may answer a question that has stumped scientists for decades about some of the most dramatic known climate shifts in Earth's history. In addition to Yale, the study included researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of Vienna.

Comment: As is increasingly the case, mainstream science is finally coming to conclusions that have long been put forth by authors and articles here on SOTT, but their finding has much more profound implications than they have yet to acknowledge: Also check out SOTT radio's:



Magnify

For Darwin Day, Robert Shedinger calls Darwin's bluff

bird finch missing link chain graphic weak
© Evolution News
It's Darwin Day 2024, the birthday of Charles Darwin, and Discovery Institute Press has a new truth bomb for the occasion — Darwin's Bluff: The Mystery of the Book Darwin Never Finished. The book, by Robert Shedinger, Professor of Religion at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, drags from Charles Darwin's closet a long overlooked skeleton devastating to the Darwinian mythology.

Tucked away in Darwin's surviving papers is a lengthy manuscript he never finished, The Origin of Species' oft-promised sequel on speciation he said would finally supply solid empirical evidence for the creative power of natural selection. He admitted such evidence was largely absent from the Origin, a work he repeatedly described as a "mere abstract." And yet Darwin soon abandoned his sequel, and without ever revealing this decision to his reading public.

Galaxy

The brightest quasar ever seen is powered by black hole that eats a 'sun a day'

quasar
© ESO/M. KornmesserAn illustration of the recording-breaker quasar J059-4351, the bright core of a distant galaxy that is powered by a greedy supermassive black hole.
The quasar, as bright as 500 trillion suns, has evaded astronomers for over 40 years because of its incredible luminosity.

A newly discovered quasar is a real record-breaker. Not only is it the brightest quasar ever seen, but it's also the brightest astronomical object in general ever seen. It's also powered by the hungriest and fastest-growing black hole ever seen — one that consumes the equivalent of over one sun's mass a day.

The quasar, J0529-4351, is located so far from Earth that its light has taken 12 billion years to reach us, meaning it is seen as it was when the 13.8 billion-year-old universe was just under 2 billion years old.

The supermassive black hole at the heart of the quasar is estimated to be between 17 billion and 19 billion times the mass of the sun; each year, it eats, or "accretes" the gas and dust equivalent to 370 solar masses. This makes J0529-4351 so luminous that if it were placed next to the sun, it would be 500 trillion times brighter than our brilliant star.

People 2

Best of the Web: Distinctly different brain organization patterns in women and men - Stanford Medicine

spain lockdown party
© Reuters / Nacho DoceFILE:
A new study by Stanford Medicine investigators unveils a new artificial intelligence model that was more than 90% successful at determining whether scans of brain activity came from a woman or a man.

The findings, to be published Feb. 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, help resolve a long-term controversy about whether reliable sex differences exist in the human brain and suggest that understanding these differences may be critical to addressing neuropsychiatric conditions that affect women and men differently.

"A key motivation for this study is that sex plays a crucial role in human brain development, in aging, and in the manifestation of psychiatric and neurological disorders," said Vinod Menon, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of the Stanford Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience Laboratory. "Identifying consistent and replicable sex differences in the healthy adult brain is a critical step toward a deeper understanding of sex-specific vulnerabilities in psychiatric and neurological disorders."

Comment: Other research has shown that understanding the differences between the sexes, as well as between races, is crucial in order to be able to provide the best possible healthcare.

And research highlighting these differences isn't new, as this 2018 article notes: How genetics is proving that race is not necessarily a social construct:
The differences between the sexes are far more profound than those that exist among human populations, reflecting more than 100 million years of evolution and adaptation. Males and females differ by huge tracts of genetic material - a Y chromosome that males have and that females don't, and a second X chromosome that females have and males don't.

Most everyone accepts that the biological differences between males and females are profound. In addition to anatomical differences, men and women exhibit average differences in size and physical strength. (There are also average differences in temperament and behavior, though there are important unresolved questions about the extent to which these differences are influenced by social expectations and upbringing.)



Info

The regular 'Atlantic Circulation Collapse' story

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Atlantic Ocean
© tallbloke.wordpress.com
One of the many regular climate scare stories you can rely on is the one about failing currents in the Atlantic Ocean bringing cold climate chaos to Europe. It's one of the most favourite doomsday speculations, based on computer models pushed to the edge - but who cares, it's a good shock-horror story and it pops up regularly.

Actually we should care because it's well known that most people only register the top line of any news story — especially a climate disaster prediction - while they don't take-in or even read up on the context and the qualifications. That's when the headline becomes accepted as fact and takes its place as an undisputed example of the looming climate catastrophe.

For example see the tweets by Roger Hallam and John Simpson.

Roger Hallam on X
© NetZero Watch
If some of the headlines in recent days are to be believed we are headed for a global climate disaster because of a slowdown in the circulation of the northern Atlantic Ocean predicted by computer models. But are we? No.