Science & Technology

New detections suggests Jupiter could have 600 moons

Govert Schilling
Sky & Telescope
Tue, 08 Sep 2020 16:20 UTC

New detections of candidate moons suggest that the king of planets could have hundreds of smaller satellites.

© Damian Peach
Ganymede and Europa, the largest and smallest of Jupiter's four Galilean moons, cast their shadows on Jupiter. The newly discovered detections reported here are evidence of much smaller moons in farther-out orbits.

Jupiter could have some 600 moons measuring at least 800 meters (2,600 feet) in diameter, according to a team of Canadian astronomers. They will present their findings on September 25th at the virtual Europlanet Science Congress 2020. Most of the moons are in wide, irregular, and retrograde orbits.

Over the past 20 years, astronomers have found dozens of small Jovian moons thanks to the advance of large digital cameras. Back in 2003, Scott Sheppard (Carnegie Institution of Science) already estimated that the number of irregular moons larger than a kilometer would probably be around one hundred.

Now, Edward Ashton, Matthew Beaudoin, and Brett Gladman (University of British Columbia, Vancouver) have detected about four dozen possible new Jovian moons that are even smaller. Extrapolating from the sky area they have searched (about one square degree), they conclude that there could be some 600 of these tiny objects orbiting the giant planet.

The team studied 60 archival 140-second exposures of a field close to Jupiter, all of them taken within a 3-hour period on September 8, 2010, with the 340-megapixel MegaPrime camera at the Canada-France-Hawai'i Telescope on Mauna Kea. The astronomers digitally combined the images in 126 different ways, one for every possible combination of speed and direction at which a potential Jovian moon might move across the sky.

NASA's Hubble captures stunning image of Veil Nebula supernova blast wave

Ryan Morrison
The Daily Mail
Wed, 02 Sep 2020 21:25 UTC

© NASA/ESA
Appearing like a light veil across the sky, it is actually the outer edge of a supernova remnant from an explosion that blasted apart a dying star up to 20,000 years ago

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures a stunning image of powerful blast wave from a dying star 2,400 light-years from Earth

An image of a 'delicate supernova blast wave' seen draped across the sky 2,400 light years from Earth, has been captured by the NASA Hubble Space Telescope.

Appearing like a light veil across the sky, it is actually the outer edge of a supernova remnant from an explosion that blasted apart a dying star up to 20,000 years ago.

The European Space Agency (ESA), a partner in the Hubble telescope, said the exploding star would have been about 20 times more massive than our Sun.

Invisible quantum tattoo in vaccines for storing vaccination history developed by scientist

Great Game India
Mon, 07 Sep 2020 21:28 UTC

A project funded by Bill Gates aims to deliver an invisible quantum tattoo hidden in the coronavirus vaccine for storing your vaccination history. The researchers showed that their new dye, which consists of nanocrystals called quantum dots, can remain for at least five years under the skin, where it emits near-infrared light that can be detected by a specially equipped smartphone.

Funded by Bill Gates, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed a clandestine way to record your vaccination history: storing the data in a pattern of dye or tattoo ink, invisible to the naked eye, that is slipped under the skin hidden in your vaccine.

"This technology could enable the rapid and anonymous detection of patient vaccination history to ensure that every child is vaccinated," says Kevin McHugh, a former MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University.

The researchers showed that their new dye, which consists of nanocrystals called quantum dots, can remain for at least five years under the skin, where it emits near-infrared light that can be detected by a specially equipped smartphone.

McHugh and former visiting scientist Lihong Jing are the lead authors of the study, which appears today in Science Translational Medicine. Ana Jaklenec, a research scientist at MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT, are the senior authors of the paper.

Ten years on: Darfield earthquake's shaky legacy -15,830 aftershocks and counting

New Zealand Herald
Fri, 04 Sep 2020 20:13 UTC

© Mark Mitchell
Peter Fitzgerald, left, and his brother Rex, stand in cracks where Highfield Rd was lifted and wrenched sideways by the earthquake, 15km east of Darfield, on September 4, 2010.

It erupted before dawn, with a strange lightning show and a cacophony some Canterbury residents likened to a battle tank rolling down a street.

Ten years and some 15,830 aftershocks later, the magnitude 7.1 Darfield jolt is still offering new lessons to scientists about New Zealand's ever-present earthquake risk.

And they say its legacy could rumble on, pointing to one historic quake that was linked to activity more than 60 years afterward.

A decade ago today, at 4.35am on September 4, 2010, Canterbury residents were shaken awake by a violent, 40-second earthquake accompanied by the bizarre spectacle of lightning streaming not from the sky, but into it from the ground.

Seawater chemistry varies throughout ocean, overturning 130 year old theory

Harrison Tasoff
Phys.org
Fri, 04 Sep 2020 20:45 UTC

Seawater composition in the open ocean is well-studied, yet this research finds larger variability than expected, which questions many other results based on the assumption of constant seawater composition.

There's more to seawater than salt. Ocean chemistry is a complex mixture of particles, ions and nutrients. And for over a century, scientists believed that certain ion ratios held relatively constant over space and time.

But now, following a decade of research, a multinational study has refuted this assumption. Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez, professor and vice chair of UC Santa Barbara's Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, and her colleagues discovered that the seawater ratios of three key elements vary across the ocean, which means scientists will have to re-examine many of their hypotheses and models. The results appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Comment: See also:

6 months in space increased dexterity but impaired vision, study on 8 Russian cosmonauts shows

Aria Bendix
Business Insider
Sat, 05 Sep 2020 22:22 UTC

© Sergei Ilnitsky/AFP/Getty Images
US astronaut Jack Fischer smiles as a NASA medical staff member wipes his face shortly after he landed back on Earth in a Russian Soyuz capsule in Kazakhstan, September 3, 2017.

Imagine you could throw the perfect bullseye, but you'd have to wear glasses to do it. That's a trade-off some space travelers may unwittingly make when they venture off the planet.

A study published Friday examined the brains of eight male Russian cosmonauts roughly seven months after they returned from lengthy missions to the International Space Station. The researchers discovered minor changes in the cosmonauts' brains that suggested the men were more dexterous but had slightly weaker vision.

"They actually acquired some kind of new motor skill, like riding a bike," Steven Jillings, the study's lead author, told Business Insider.

Scientists designing experiments to use plants to reveal the location of dead bodies

Cosmos Magazine
Sat, 05 Sep 2020 18:58 UTC

This is still quite a way from reality, but the whole idea is too intriguing to ignore.

A collaborative team of forensic botanists, anthropologists and soil scientists in the US is designing its first set of plant-cadaver experiments to see whether it's feasible for the former to help find the latter.

Search teams looking for human remains, whether on foot or from the air, are often hampered by forest cover. The picture would change, however, in they could use changes in the plants' chemistry as signals of nearby human remains.

The impact of human decomposition on plants has not yet been thoroughly explored but, in a paper in the journal Trends in Plant Science, researchers from the University of Tennessee have set out the steps needed to make body recovery using vegetation a reality.

The research will take place at the university's Anthropology Research Facility, where scientists examine the process of human body decay under different conditions.

Math of the penguins

Susan D'Agostino
Quanta Magazine
Mon, 17 Aug 2020 00:00 UTC

© Fred Olivier/Nature Picture Library/Science Photo Library
Emperor penguins huddle together for warmth with mathematical rigor.

Animals have evolved to protect against the cold in myriad ways. Whales insulate with blubber. Bison congregate near geothermal springs. Black bears shelter in caves. And emperor penguins, facing Antarctica's subzero temperatures and gale-force winds, huddle.

"A penguin huddle looks like organized chaos," said François Blanchette, a mathematician at the University of California, Merced. "Every penguin acts individually, but the end result is an equitable heat distribution for the whole community."

It turns out that penguins execute their huddles with a high degree of mathematical efficiency, as Blanchette and his team discovered. More recently, Daniel Zitterbart, a physicist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, helped develop and install high-resolution cameras to observe undisturbed huddling behavior. Zitterbart's team recently discovered which conditions cause penguins to huddle, and they are investigating the possibility that the penguins' mathematical behavior may reveal secrets about colony health over time.

Interaction of deep underground forces help explain quakes on San Andreas Fault

PhysOrg
Fri, 04 Sep 2020 16:53 UTC

A portion of California's San Andreas Fault

Rock-melting forces occurring much deeper in the Earth than previously understood appear to drive tremors along a notorious segment of California's San Andreas Fault, according to new USC research that helps explain how quakes happen.

The study from the emergent field of earthquake physics looks at temblor mechanics from the bottom up, rather than from the top down, with a focus on underground rocks, friction and fluids. On the segment of the San Andreas Fault near Parkfield, Calif., underground excitations — beyond the depths where quakes are typically monitored — lead to instability that ruptures in a quake.

"Most of California seismicity originates from the first 10 miles of the crust, but some tremors on the San Andreas Fault take place much deeper," said Sylvain Barbot, assistant professor of Earth sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "Why and how this happens is largely unknown. We show that a deep section of the San Andreas Fault breaks frequently and melts the host rocks, generating these anomalous seismic waves."The newly published study appears in Science Advances. Barbot, the corresponding author, collaborated with Lifeng Wang of the China Earthquake Administration in China.

The moon is rusting and scientists are trying to figure out why

NASA
Wed, 02 Sep 2020 12:00 UTC

© NASA
This image of the moon is from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 mission. It is a three-color composite of reflected near-infrared radiation from the sun.

This image of the moon is from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 mission. It is a three-color composite of reflected near-infrared radiation from the sun, and illustrates the extent to which different materials are mapped across the side of the moon that faces Earth.

Small amounts of water and hydroxyl (blue) were detected on the surface of the moon at various locations. This image illustrates their distribution at high latitudes toward the poles.

Blue shows the signature of water and hydroxyl molecules as seen by a highly diagnostic absorption of infrared light with a wavelength of three micrometers. Green shows the brightness of the surface as measured by reflected infrared radiation from the sun with a wavelength of 2.4 micrometers, and red shows an iron-bearing mineral called pyroxene, detected by absorption of 2.0-micrometer infrared light.

Mars has long been known for its rust. Iron on its surface, combined with water and oxygen from the ancient past, give the Red Planet its hue. But scientists were recently surprised to find evidence that our airless Moon has rust on it as well.

Comment: See also:

And check out SOTT radio's:

Quote of the Day

State power has its own limits defined by the fact that it is authority that reaches people from outside. State power cannot oversee and dictate the creative states of the soul and mind, the inner states of love, freedom and goodwill. The state cannot demand from its citizens faith, prayer, love, goodness and conviction. It cannot regulate scientific, religious and artistic creation. It should not intervene in moral, family and daily private life, and only when extremely necessary should it impinge on people's economic initiative and creativity.

- Ivan Ilyin

RT = CNN So this piece is likely agitprop. "The beatings will continue until morale improves." Please, just follow the $cience.

DeliciousTears

Whats a Lizzo? Is that like a Lesbo? Asking for a friend....

Bezel Bub

New York hospitals prepare for staffing crisis as vaccination mandate forces mass firings [Link]

Serig

I think we need to start a GoFundMe so we can air drop AK-47's into Australia....

Bezel Bub

slime biden exacts no consequences for murdering 10 afghans, but punishes cowboys for riding horses

smertzasmert

Science & Technology

New detections suggests Jupiter could have 600 moons

NASA's Hubble captures stunning image of Veil Nebula supernova blast wave

Invisible quantum tattoo in vaccines for storing vaccination history developed by scientist

Ten years on: Darfield earthquake's shaky legacy -15,830 aftershocks and counting

Seawater chemistry varies throughout ocean, overturning 130 year old theory

6 months in space increased dexterity but impaired vision, study on 8 Russian cosmonauts shows

Scientists designing experiments to use plants to reveal the location of dead bodies

Math of the penguins

Interaction of deep underground forces help explain quakes on San Andreas Fault

The moon is rusting and scientists are trying to figure out why

Latest News

Picture of the Day

Quote of the Day

Recent Comments

Quantum Quirk

Contact Us