Science & TechnologyS


Microscope 1

Using dust to bust crime scene DNA forensics

Flinders University
Phys.org
Wed, 15 Nov 2023 08:09 UTC
crime scene tape
An airborne fraction of soil, or dust, contains biological and chemical "signatures" that act as a fingerprint to a specific location. Australian forensic science experts, led by Flinders University, have highlighted the usefulness of the latest technology by testing a series of field sites in South Australia for their unique chemical and biological profiles.

This work is strong evidence for including dust as a medium in forensic intelligence gathering to incorporate as a standard tool in future forensic casework, the scientists say in a new study published in Forensic Science International: Genetics.

Previous research, that including experts at the Forensic DNA Laboratory at Flinders University, has established the viability of testing even the smallest trace of dust, down to only 3 mg, as potential evidence of the location or source of material, personal effect or an object.

"Dust is found everywhere. It stays on clothing and items after you have traveled and leaves a trace for where you have been," says Flinders University forensic science researcher Dr. Nicole Foster, who currently is a researcher at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Institute in the U.S.

"Armed with this knowledge, we undertook a field experiment, leaving items at various locations in South Australia to collect dust and observe whether these chemical and biological (bacteria and fungi) signatures were distinct between sites.
Read More...
Blue Planet

Finding Argoland: How a lost continent resurfaced


PhysOrg
Tue, 14 Nov 2023 15:33 UTC
argoland australia lost continent geology
© Utrecht UniversityWhat happened to Argoland, the continent that broke off western Australia 155 million years ago? Geologists at Utrecht University have now managed to reconstruct the history of the lost continent.
Geologists have long known that around 155 million years ago, a 5,000 km long piece of continent broke off western Australia and drifted away. They can see that by the 'void' it left behind: a basin hidden deep below the ocean known as the Argo Abyssal Plain. The underwater feature also lends its name to the newly formed continent: Argoland. The structure of the seafloor shows that this continent must have drifted off to the northwest, and must have ended up where the islands of Southeast Asia are located today.

But surprisingly, there is no large continent hidden beneath those islands, only the remnants of small continental fragments that are also surrounded by much older oceanic basins. So what happened to Argoland? Geologists at Utrecht University have now managed to reconstruct the history of the lost continent. As it turns out, Argoland is in fragments, but is still there. "Otherwise, we would have been faced with a major scientific problem." The work is published in the journal Gondwana Research.
Read More...
Arrow Up

An amateur astronomer discovered one-of-a-kind supernova remnant in Cassiopeia

Jon Voisey
Universe Today
Tue, 14 Nov 2023 16:33 UTC
PA 30 Images
© Fesen et al. 2023PA 30 imaged in O III by KPNO (left) and in S II by Fesen et al. 2023.
In 2023, amateur astronomer Dana Patchick was looking through images from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer archive and discovered a diffuse, circular object in the constellation of Cassiopeia. He found this apparent nebula was interesting because it was bright in the infrared portion of the spectrum, but virtually invisible in the colors of light visible to our eyes. Dana added this item to the database of the Deep Sky Hunters amateur astronomers group, believing it was a planetary nebula - the quiet remnant of stars in mass similar to the sun. He named it PA 30.

However, professional astronomers who picked it up from there realized that this object is far more than it first seemed. It is, they now believe, the remnant of a lost supernova observed in 1181. And an extremely rare type at that.

The Guest Star

In early August of 1181 CE, a "guest star" appeared in the constellation we now know as Cassiopeia. To the Chinese astronomers of the time, it was known as Chuanshe. They, and Japanese astronomers recorded the appearance of the star and state that it remained visible for 185 days, unmoving with respect to other stars.

In 1971, astronomers first realized that this "guest star" was almost certainly a supernova due to how long it remained visible in the night sky. This made the initial observation an extremely rare reporting of a historical supernova.

Supernovae are believed to occur, on average, about once per century in galaxies like the Milky Way but, because they may be obscured if they are on the far side of the galaxy and obscured by the heavy dust lanes, not all will be visible to us. Ultimately, this made SN 1181 one of less than a dozen suspected supernovae in recorded history prior to the rise of modern astronomy. And of those, only four had been conclusively tied to an observational remnant. While astronomers are confident that these historical supernovae were indeed supernovae, without having an identified remnant, it is impossible to determine the type of supernovae.

Previously, SN 1181 had been potentially associated with a pulsar known as 3C 58, but attempts at determining the age of this object suggested it was far too old to be associated with the Chinese records.
Read More...
Info

New study reveals evidence of recurring ancient supereruption

Tatyana Woodall
The Ohio State University
Tue, 14 Nov 2023 16:24 UTC
The Marsili Basin
© Geology (2023). DOI: 10.1130/G51198.1(A) The Marsili Basin lies in ~3000 m water depth in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Ocean Drilling Program Leg 107 Sites 650 and 651 marked as red circles. Red box shows map in (B). Campi Flegrei (CF) fields (source of 39.8 ka Campanian Ignimbrite and 14.9 ka Neapolitan Yellow Tuff) shown with nearby submarine canyons (Dohrm [DC] and Magnaghi [MC]) as yellow lines. Ve—Vesuvius; SC—Stromboli Canyon. (B) CHIRP subbottom profiles shown as white dashed lines. Continuous white lines involved the acquisition of additional airgun seismic data. Bathymetry is a merged dataset of a 40-m grid CHIANTI multibeam bathymetry together with EMODNET bathymetry. Contour interval is 1000 meters.
Researchers have discovered a series of large undersea sediment deposits in a region near Italy that were likely formed by an ancient volcanic supereruption.

These deposits, known as megabeds, were found in the western Marsili Basin, an area at the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea that surrounds the Marsili Seamount, a large undersea volcano.

By combining geophysical data acquired from a Spanish research project and data from sediment cores collected from a nearby Ocean Drilling program site, scientists were able to show that three deposits are made up of alternating beds of volcaniclastic sand and mud, while the fourth is a volcaniclastic debris flow, a more dense mixture of volcanic sediment and water.

The study's findings, published in the Journal Geology, suggest that these structures were deposited during a volatile time when the Campi Flegrei caldera and the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff supereruption were active.

The new study suggests that these megabeds originated not from nearby volcanoes, but from a volcanic province to the north. That province, researchers think, was an area once near the Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) supereruption of Campi Flegrei, the largest one of its volcanic eruptions since the caldera's formation nearly 50,000 years ago.

This still volcanically active region could pose immense danger in the future, said Derek Sawyer, lead author of the study and an associate professor of earth sciences at The Ohio State University. The discovery of these previously unknown megabeds is pivotal for understanding and measuring the impact of such recurring geohazards over time.
Read More...
Comet 2

The Oort Cloud might be more active than we thought

Brian Koberlein
Universe Today
Mon, 13 Nov 2023 22:09 UTC
Comets Inbound
© NAOJThe paths of hyperbolic-orbit comets.
Every now and then a comet or asteroid comes to our solar system from interstellar space. We have observed two interstellar objects in recent years, Oumuamua in 2017, and Borisov in 2019. One would assume then that in the past at least some interstellar objects have struck Earth. But we've never found an interstellar meteorite. A new study argues that this is because the Oort cloud is much more active than we thought.

The Oort cloud is a halo of icy material on the outermost edge of the solar system, where the Sun's gravity is barely strong enough to hold them in a stellar orbit. When another star passes somewhat near the Sun, members of the Oort cloud can be nudged toward the inner solar system, where they can become long-period comets. We have never observed the Oort cloud, but we know it's there because comets can approach the Sun from every direction, not just the orbital plane of the planets.

Astronomers can distinguish between Oort cloud objects and interstellar objects by their orbits. Interstellar objects have a hyperbolic orbit, meaning that if you traced their path purely under the gravitational influence of the Sun, it would continue on to interstellar space, never to return. Oort cloud objects, on the other hand, have an orbital path that is closed. They may travel to the most distant region of space, but they are gravitationally bound to the Sun.

Comment: See also: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Read More...
Info

Scientists uncover aurora-like radio emission above a sunspot

Jesse Jenkins
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Mon, 13 Nov 2023 22:02 UTC
radio emissions above a sunspot
© Sijie YuScientists uncover prolonged radio emissions above a sunspot, akin to those previously seen in the polar regions of planets and certain stars, which may reshape our understanding of intense stellar radio bursts.
In a study published in Nature Astronomy, astronomers from New Jersey Institute of Technology's Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research (NJIT-CSTR) have detailed radio observations of an extraordinary aurora-like display — occurring 40,000 km above a relatively dark and cold patch on the Sun, known as a sunspot.

Researchers say the novel radio emission shares characteristics with the auroral radio emissions commonly seen in planetary magnetospheres such as those around Earth, Jupiter and Saturn, as well as certain low-mass stars.

The discovery offers new insights into the origin of such intense solar radio bursts and potentially opens new avenues for understanding similar phenomena in distant stars with large starspots, according to the study's lead author and NJIT-CSTR scientist, Sijie Yu.

"We've detected a peculiar type of long-lasting polarized radio bursts emanating from a sunspot, persisting for over a week," said Yu. "This is quite unlike the typical, transient solar radio bursts typically lasting minutes or hours. It's an exciting discovery that has the potential to alter our comprehension of stellar magnetic processes."

Famous auroral light shows that are visible across the sky of Earth's polar regions, like the Aurora Borealis or Aurora Australis, occur as solar activities disturb Earth's magnetosphere, which facilitates the precipitation of charged particles to the Earth's polar region where the magnetic field converges, and interacts with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the high atmosphere. Accelerating toward the north and south poles, such electrons can generate intense radio emissions at frequencies around a few hundred kHz.
Read More...
Galaxy

NASA spacecraft discovers asteroid sporting tiny moon

Marcia Dunn
Associated Press
Mon, 13 Nov 2023 18:39 UTC
asteroid dinkinesh tiny moon
© NASA via APThis photo provided by NASA shows a photo taken by the Lucy spacecraft during Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023 flyby of asteroid Dinkinesh, 300 million miles from Earth.
The little asteroid visited by NASA's Lucy spacecraft this week had a big surprise for scientists.

It turns out that the asteroid Dinkinesh has a dinky sidekick — a mini moon.

The discovery was made during Wednesday's flyby of Dinkinesh, 300 million miles (480 million kilometers) away in the main asteroid belt beyond Mars. The spacecraft snapped a picture of the pair when it was about 270 miles out (435 kilometers).
Read More...
Light Saber

New report demolishes the claimed '99% consensus' on climate change

Chris Morrison
The Daily Sceptic
Thu, 09 Nov 2023 16:21 UTC
Yonatan Dubi climate change Ben Gurion University,
© Two Nice Jewish Boys PodcastYonatan Dubi, Professor of Chemistry and Physics at Ben Gurion University
The invented political notion that 99% of climate scientists believe humans have caused all or most recent global warming has been dealt another significant blow. A group of Israeli scientists has examined the widely-publicised claim by the climate activist Mark Lynas that there is a 99% 'consensus' that humans cause most warming. Led by Yonatan Dubi, Professor of Chemistry and Physics at Ben Gurion University, the scientists found that massive flaws and biases riddled the Lynas work, implying the conclusions of the study do not follow from the data.

This work matters. The claims of a 99% consensus, along with an earlier 97% figure, are widely used in political and media circles to shut down debate over anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Sceptical scientists - even those as distinguished as last year's Nobel Physics Prize winner Dr. John Clauser - can be dismissed as cranks and deniers. Of course consensus is not proof, which is notably lacking in the model-driven climate science field. However the Israeli authors observe a consensus claim is "influential in bolstering the reception of a particular thesis within the broader public sphere". This leads to "less quantifiable statements", such as humanity is facing an imminent climate crisis, and is followed by global calls for action. Not to put too fine a point on it, the collectivist Net Zero project relies on a fake scientific consensus that crumbles when exposed to the most basic scrutiny.

Comment: More on Lynas: Have you heard about the famous anti-GMO scientist who switched sides and is now pro?

Read More...
Galaxy

Astronomers use Webb data to measure rapid increase in oxygen in the early universe


PhysOrg
Thu, 09 Nov 2023 20:43 UTC
oxygen in early universe life chemicals
© NASA, ESA, CSA, K. Nakajima et alJWST infrared images of six galaxies from 500–700 million years after the birth of the universe. All six have low oxygen abundances compared to modern galaxies.
Using new data from the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have measured the abundance of oxygen in the early universe. The findings, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series and posted to the arXiv preprint server, show that the amount of oxygen in galaxies increased rapidly within 500-700 million years after the birth of the universe, and has remained as abundant as observed in modern galaxies since then. This early appearance of oxygen indicates that the elements necessary for life were present earlier than expected.

In the early universe, shortly after the Big Bang, only light elements such as hydrogen, helium, and lithium existed. Heavier elements like oxygen were subsequently formed through nuclear fusion reactions within stars and dispersed into galaxies, primarily through events like supernova explosions. This ongoing process of element synthesis, unfolding over the vast expanse of cosmic history, created the diverse elements that constitute the world and living organisms around us.

Comment: Oxygen gas filaments identified as the universe's missing matter

Read More...
Car Black

New cars will soon have technology to prevent drunk driving

Kevin Drum
jabberwocking
Tue, 07 Nov 2023 10:52 UTC
car meter
© UnknownHypothetical toxication meter
The nanny state is at it again:

This tweet generated a ton of responses from conservative followers who were outraged at the idea that the government is going to monitor your driving and activate a "kill switch" if it doesn't approve. But that isn't what's really happening. Here's the skinny:
  • This is solely about reducing drunk driving. It was part of the 2021 infrastructure bill.
  • Cars will be fitted with devices that (a) detect alcohol in the air via sensors in the door and (b) measure blood alcohol levels via infrared lights in the ignition button.
  • If you are over the legal limit, your car will start but it won't move.
  • This is entirely in-car tech. Neither the police nor anyone else has access to it.
  • The IIHS estimates it will save 9,000 lives per year.
You can decide for yourself what you think of this. But you should at least know what's really going on.

Comment: DUI-free future? Some questions remain:
Technology is constantly evolving, and methods aimed at bettering life are always being introduced, created and updated. This is never more true than right now, when technologies aimed at eliminating drunk driving are right on the horizon. But is everyone excited about this new step towards a DUI-free future? And is there a chance it may be less than ideal?

The system, called Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS), uses dual sensors located inside the vehicle to detect a person's blood alcohol count.

One sensor - the breath-based sensor, detects the alcohol molecules present in the driver's breath. The second sensor, which is the touch-based sensor, uses infrared tissue spectroscopy which measures the intensity of the light particles absorbed by alcohol. Together they work to narrow down the driver's blood alcohol content. If the driver's BAC exceeds the limit prescribed by the law, the car will automatically shut down.

Features that the inventors behind this tech plan to include would be a programmable "zero tolerance" setting for teen drivers. This would make it impossible for the car to start if there is even a trace of alcohol in the driver's system. This way, parents can feel safe when handing their keys to their teenage son or daughter. Currently, human subject testing is underway at McLean Hospital Behavioral Psychopharmacology Research Laboratory.

Would a "smart car" help us save lives and eliminate DUI arrests?

According to the NHTSA, about 28 people die every single day around the country as a result of drunk driving. That amounts to a staggering 10,000 or more people every year. Could this new technology stop these tragic deaths? Perhaps reduce the number of drunk driving accidents in our future? Save lives in Michigan and elsewhere? Possibly.

However, while many people, including the NHTSA, the U.S. Department of Transportation and members of Congress, are excited about this development, some people are unsure. Will already expensive newer cars be even pricier with this new technology? What happens if the technology malfunctions and sober drivers are stuck with cars that don't start every time? How much will this tech inside new vehicles change the cost of basic maintenance?

Those aren't the only questions. What about designated driver situations? Does the presence of a non-driving drunk person in the vehicle, whose breath could be detected by the sensor, increase the risk of the vehicle refusing to start for a sober designated driver? Only time will tell whether or not this technology is as accurate, and as ethical, as early reports are claiming.


Read More...