Science & TechnologyS


Satellite

James Webb telescope keeps finding galaxies that shouldn't exist

Fiona Jackson
The Daily Mail
Mon, 17 Apr 2023 16:27 UTC
JWST six new galaxies
© NASA/ESA/I LabbeSix galaxies (pictured) spotted by JWST are far too massive to be the age their data suggests they are, which is between 500 and 700 million years old
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) keeps spotting galaxies that are too big to exist, scientists have claimed.

Six of these star clusters are far too massive to be the age their data suggests they are, which is between 500 and 700 million years old. This means that, unless the data has been analysed incorrectly, there is still something fundamental to learn about how galaxies formed after the Big Bang.

'If the masses are right, then we are in uncharted territory,' said the study's author, Dr Mike Boylan-Kolchin from the University of Texas at Austin.

One theory is that the universe expanded much more quickly after the Big Bang than is currently assumed.

Comment: The JWST goes from strength to strength. And to think Congress nearly killed the project. From PhysOrg:
Shining like a brilliant beacon amidst a sea of galaxies, Arp 220 lights up the night sky in this view from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. Actually two spiral galaxies in the process of merging, Arp 220 glows brightest in infrared light, making it an ideal target for Webb. It is an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) with a luminosity of more than a trillion suns. In comparison, our Milky Way galaxy has a much more modest luminosity of about ten billion suns.

Located 250 million light-years away in the constellation of Serpens, the Serpent, Arp 220 is the 220th object in Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. It is the nearest ULIRG and the brightest of the three galactic mergers closest to Earth.

The collision of the two spiral galaxies began about 700 million years ago. It sparked an enormous burst of star formation. About 200 huge star clusters reside in a packed, dusty region about 5,000 light-years across (about 5 percent of the Milky Way's diameter). The amount of gas in this tiny region is equal to all of the gas in the entire Milky Way galaxy.

Previous radio telescope observations revealed about 100 supernova remnants in an area of less than 500 light-years. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope uncovered the cores of the parent galaxies 1,200 light-years apart. Each of the cores has a rotating, star-forming ring blasting out the dazzling infrared light so apparent in this Webb view. This glaring light creates diffraction spikes — the starburst feature that dominates this image.
Arp 220 galaxy collision JWST
© NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI Image processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)Image of Arp 220 captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), with compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference. The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky.
The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped relative to direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above). The scale bar is labeled in light-years, which is the distance that light travels in one Earth-year. (It takes 18,000 years for light to travel a distance equal to the length of the bar.) One light-year is equal to about 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion kilometers. The field of view shown in this image is approximately 120,000 light-years across. This image shows invisible infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated into visible-light colors. The color key shows which filters were used when collecting the light. The color of each filter name is the visible-light color used to represent the infrared light that passes through that filter.

On the outskirts of this merger, Webb reveals faint tidal tails, or material drawn off the galaxies by gravity, represented in blue — evidence of the galactic dance that is occurring. Organic material represented in reddish-orange appears in streams and filaments across Arp 220.

Webb viewed Arp 220 with its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).


Read More...
Blue Planet

Flat Earther spends $20,000 on DIY experiment that accidentally proved the planet is round


Truth Press
Mon, 17 Apr 2023 04:57 UTC
Bob Knodel
A famous Flat Earther spent a staggering $20,000 on a DIY experiment that accidentally proved the planet is round.

Bob Knodel was in the middle of filming for a Netflix documentary titled Behind the Curve when he realised his pricy mistake.

Seeking to disprove the mass of research led by NASA experts, he explained the particulars of the DIY experiment using a laser gyroscope.

Comment: See also:

Read More...
Comet

Mercury's magnificent comet-like tail caught on camera


Space Weather
Fri, 14 Apr 2023 21:58 UTC
Astronomy used to be so simple. Comets had tails, and planets did not. Mercury is making things complicated. When Dr. Sebastian Voltmer of Spicheren, France, photographed the planet this week, it exhibited a magnificent plume of gas flowing behind it:
mercury
© Dr. Sebastian VoltmerMercury's Tail
Taken by Dr. Sebastian Voltmer on April 12, 2023 @ Spicheren, France
Details:
This is NOT a comet, not even a shooting-star, but the planet Mercury, which is currently visible just after sunset. The solar wind and micro-meteorites eject sodium atoms from Mercury’s surface. This creates a yellow-orange tail of sodium gas that is around 24 million kilometers long. I captured this stacked CCD image during the Yuri's Night 2023 from my backyard using a 135mm lens and a 589 nanometer filter tuned to the yellow glow of sodium.
Photographer's website:
https://www.instagram.com/sebastianvoltmer
"Mercury is NOT a comet, but it sure looks like one," says Voltmer. "Solar wind and micro-meteorites hitting the planet eject sodium atoms from Mercury's surface. This creates a yellow-orange tail of sodium gas that is around 24 million kilometers long."

First predicted in the 1980s, Mercury's tail was discovered in 2001. The gaseous plume is made of many elements from Mercury's rocky surface, not only sodium. Sodium, however, dominates the scattering of sunlight and gives the tail its striking yellow hue.

Comment: It's notable that the tail was only discovered in the last two decades, because there's a variety of Transient Luminous Events on Earth that have also only been discovered recently, and these appear to be increasing in frequency and intensity: And check out SOTT radio's:

Read More...
Info

Warm liquid spewing from Oregon seafloor comes from Cascadia fault, could offer clues to earthquake hazards

Hannah Hickey
University of Washington
Mon, 10 Apr 2023 19:03 UTC
Pythias Oasis
© Philip et al./Science AdvancesThis sonar image of the Pythias Oasis site shows bubbles rising from the seafloor about two-thirds of a mile deep and 50 miles off Newport, Oregon. These bubbles are a byproduct of a unique site where warm, chemically distinct fluid gushes from the seafloor. Researchers believe this fluid comes directly from the Cascadia megathrust zone, or plate boundary, and helps control stress buildup between the two plates.
The field of plate tectonics is not that old, and scientists continue to learn the details of earthquake-producing geologic faults. The Cascadia Subduction Zone — the eerily quiet offshore fault that threatens to unleash a magnitude-9 earthquake in the Pacific Northwest — still holds many mysteries.

A study led by the University of Washington discovered seeps of warm, chemically distinct liquid shooting up from the seafloor about 50 miles off Newport, Oregon. The paper, published Jan. 25 in Science Advances, describes the unique underwater spring the researchers named Pythia's Oasis. Observations suggest the spring is sourced from water 2.5 miles beneath the seafloor at the plate boundary, regulating stress on the offshore fault.

The team made the discovery during a weather-related delay for a cruise aboard the RV Thomas G. Thompson. The ship's sonar showed unexpected plumes of bubbles about three-quarters of a mile beneath the ocean's surface. Further exploration using an underwater robot revealed the bubbles were just a minor component of warm, chemically distinct fluid gushing from the seafloor sediment.

"They explored in that direction and what they saw was not just methane bubbles, but water coming out of the seafloor like a firehose. That's something that I've never seen, and to my knowledge has not been observed before," said co-author Evan Solomon, a UW associate professor of oceanography who studies seafloor geology.

The feature was discovered by first author Brendan Philip, who did the work as a UW graduate student and now works as a White House policy advisor.

Observations from later cruises show the fluid leaving the seafloor is 9 degrees Celsius (16 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the surrounding seawater. Calculations suggest the fluid is coming straight from the Cascadia megathrust, where temperatures are an estimated 150 to 250 degrees Celsius (300 to 500 degrees Fahrenheit).
Read More...
Bulb

African bird's intricate feather design inspires new ways to store water


PhysOrg
Tue, 11 Apr 2023 17:08 UTC
Namaqua sandgrouse feathers water storage
© SWNSThe Namaqua sandgrouse is a desert specialist whose breast feathers can soak up water like a sponge
With high resolution microscopes and 3D technology, researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology captured an unprecedented view of feathers from the desert-dwelling sandgrouse, showcasing the singular architecture of their feathers and revealing for the first time how they can hold so much water.

"It's super fascinating to see how nature managed to create structures so perfectly efficient to take in and hold water," said co-author Jochen Mueller, an assistant professor in Johns Hopkins' Department of Civil and Systems Engineering, who specializes in smart materials and design. "From an engineering perspective, we think the findings could lead to new bio-inspired creations."

The work is published today (April 11) in Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Read More...
Microscope 1

Scientists discover why hibernating bears don't get blood clots

Erin Garcia de Jesús
Science News
Thu, 13 Apr 2023 15:21 UTC
brown bear
Brown bears normally kick off their hibernation at the end of November and only emerge at the start of April
A key clotting protein decreases in the slumbering bears — and other immobile animals

When a brown bear settles down for hibernation, its body makes adjustments to prevent developing dangerous blood clots while immobile, a new study shows.

People stuck sitting in tight airplane seats for an entire long-haul flight are at risk of dangerous blood clots. But somehow immobile, hibernating bears are not. Now scientists know why.

Bears settled in for winterlong slumbers have low levels of a key protein that helps blood clots form, researchers report in the April 14 Science. Platelets lacking this protein don't easily stick together, protecting the animals from developing potentially dangerous blood clots. And low levels of the protein are not just found bears, the team writes. Mice, pigs and humans with a largely sedentary lifestyle because of long-term mobility problems have the same protection.
Read More...
Info

New type of superconductor discovered

Patricia Contreras Tejada
Advance Science News
Wed, 12 Apr 2023 17:06 UTC
For decades, it was thought that only two types of superconductors existed, but a new study has just uncovered a third.

Super Conductor
© US Department of Energy on Flickr
Wires don't usually like being the bearers of electric current. While we find them extremely useful to light our houses, charge our phones, and heat water for our tea, they routinely manifest their opposition to the flow of electricity by heating up. Because of this effect, called electrical resistance, the energy dissipated as heat is wasted, and the amount of electric current that a wire can carry before it melts is limited.

But a special kind of material is much happier to host electricity, so much so that under very low temperatures they do not exhibit any resistance. Superconductors, as they are known, don't heat up at all and can thus carry much larger electric currents, which in turn makes them behave as extremely strong magnets. These superconducting magnets are part of MRI scanners, particle accelerators such as the ones at CERN, and the ultra-fast magnetic levitation trains being constructed in Japan, to name a few examples.

Since superconductivity was comprehensively studied in the 1950s, it has been traditionally classified into two main types. But a new paper in Advanced Science puts forward a third type of superconductivity that was previously only thought to apply to extremely thin layers of materials.

In the study, researchers develop the mathematical equations that describe this new type of superconductivity in thick, three-dimensional materials, and observe their behavior in the laboratory. The authors suggest that this new mechanism could open a door towards developing room-temperature superconductivity — a "holy grail" in the field.
Read More...
Info

Double-slit experiment that proved the wave nature of light explored in time

Hayley Dunning
Imperial College London
Mon, 03 Apr 2023 18:54 UTC
Physics Experiment
© Thomas Angus / Imperial College London
Imperial physicists have recreated the famous double-slit experiment, which showed light behaving as particles and a wave, in time rather than space.

The experiment relies on materials that can change their optical properties in fractions of a second, which could be used in new technologies or to explore fundamental questions in physics.

The original double-slit experiment, performed in 1801 by Thomas Young at the Royal Institution, showed that light acts as a wave. Further experiments, however, showed that light actually behaves as both a wave and as particles - revealing its quantum nature.

These experiments had a profound impact on quantum physics, revealing the dual particle and wave nature of not just light, but other 'particles' including electrons, neutrons, and whole atoms.

Now, a team led by Imperial College London physicists has performed the experiment using 'slits' in time rather than space. They achieved this by firing light through a material that changes its properties in femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second), only allowing light to pass through at specific times in quick succession.

Lead researcher Professor Riccardo Sapienza, from the Department of Physics at Imperial, said: "Our experiment reveals more about the fundamental nature of light while serving as a stepping-stone to creating the ultimate materials that can minutely control light in both space and time."

Details of the experiment are published today in Nature Physics.
Read More...
Microscope 1

Even more mammoth devolution

Michael Behe
Evolution News
Tue, 11 Apr 2023 17:08 UTC
wooly mammoths
© Mauricio AntónThis image depicts a Pleistocene landscape in northern Spain with woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius), equids, a woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis), and European cave lions (Panthera leo spelaea) with a reindeer carcass.
Last year I reported1 on a paper2 that showed 87 genes were broken in genomes of recovered extinct woolly mammoth remains, compared to their modern elephant relatives. The authors of the paper noted previous research had shown that "gene losses ... can be adaptive" and thought that was the case for the mammoths they studied, too. I pointed out that, while such a process might indeed aid adaptation of a species to its changing environment, nonetheless it constitutes de-volution, not e-volution, in the sense that the species is losing genetic information, not gaining it.

A new paper strongly bolsters that conclusion.3 In "Genomics of adaptive evolution in the woolly mammoth" a large international team of researchers sequenced genomes from 23 woolly mammoth remains and examined genes for proteins that had the most "fixed" amino acid mutations (that is, mutations that occurred in all of the genomes that were sequenced, and so very probably were widely present in the mammoth population). They evaluated the mutations by something called an "aggregated SIFT score." SIFT stands for "Sorting Intolerant From Tolerant."4 In the paper, the higher the aggregated SIFT score, the more likely the amino acid mutations were to not be tolerated by the protein's structure — that is, to disrupt the protein's activity. Of the 31 most highly mutated genes (Table S5), the great majority had high aggregated SIFT scores for the number of mutations they carried, and 21 of the genes each contained one or more "high impact" mutations (very likely to disrupt structure). Only four genes had low aggregated SIFT scores. (Interestingly, one of those is the BRCA2 gene, whose mutation in humans can lead to breast cancer.)

Comment:

Read More...
Cassiopaea

Dazzlingly detailed photo of a record sized solar tornado '14 Earths tall'

Gege Li
New Scientist
Wed, 05 Apr 2023 12:00 UTC
sun photo
© Andrew McCarthy and Jason GuenzelFusion of Helios
NEVER has the sun been seen in quite this way. This dazzlingly detailed shot of our star was recently created in the aftermath of a solar tornado of record proportions that was whipping up the sun's atmosphere. Titled Fusion of Helios (pictured above), it is the result of a painstaking five-day collaboration between astrophotographers Jason Guenzel and Andrew McCarthy, who are "always looking for fresh and creative ways to present views of the universe", says Guenzel.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

Read More...