Science & TechnologyS


Seismograph

Will the Turkish earthquake free science from the shackles of the statisticians?

Matthew Ehret
The Last American Vagabond
Sat, 11 Feb 2023 00:09 UTC
Turkey has been hit by a second huge earthquake
The Turkish city of Hatay is seen after Monday morning's quake, February 6, 2023, levelled buildings across the region
"Can we forecast earthquakes? No. Neither the United States Geology Survey (USGS) nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake. We do not know how, and we do not expect to know how any time in the foreseeable future."

— United States Geology Survey website
On the morning of February 6, 2023 the people of Turkey and Syria were struck by a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake, followed by a 6.7 aftershock and then a final (we hope) 7.5 M quake in the late afternoon. The effects of the three-fold quake struck deep into Syria and as of this writing, over 20,000 deaths have been counted in Turkey and Syria, along with tens of thousands of injuries and incredible destruction to infrastructure.

Were it not for the political obfuscation that has derailed all fields of science over the past decades, then this tragic loss of life would have been entirely preventable.

How?

Because despite the clamorings of the priests of standard model geology managing the US Geological Survey, the fact is that earthquakes are completely forecastable.
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Arrow Down

Two top climate scientists find further evidence that global warming has been exaggerated

Chris Morrison
The Daily Sceptic
Sun, 12 Feb 2023 18:35 UTC
pinnochio liars
Up to one fifth of all warming reported across the planet by around 20,000 weather stations is invalid due to corruption from non-climatic data. This finding is the latest revelation from two atmospheric scientists seeking to measure the effect of human-caused urban heat on global surface temperature measurements. The news is sensational because it depresses further the major slowdown in warming observed since around 1998. With the global temperature warming by little more than 0.1°C over the last two decades, it makes claims of 4°C warming by the end of the century seem even more implausible.

The latest finding arises from the ongoing work of Dr. Roy Spencer and Professor John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The two scientists looked at the 19,885 temperature stations in the Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) distributed around the world from latitudes 20N to 82.5N. They found that over the last 40 years, virtually all of them had experienced growth associated with human settlement. The global work is said to be at an early stage, but "very preliminary calculations" are said to suggest that urban heat averaged across all stations is about 10-20% of GHCN trends.
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Satellite

Experts believe Chinese satellite fired green lasers over Hawaii

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Fri, 10 Feb 2023 03:35 UTC
lasers
© Subaru-Asahi Star CameraGreen Lasers over Hawaii
Late last month, mysterious green laser beams were spotted from Hawaii's tallest peak. Experts initially said the burst of laser beams was emitted by a NASA spacecraft though that was proven incorrect this week -- with evidence pointing to a Chinese satellite.

Space experts at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) initially tweeted on Jan. 30 that the Subaru-Asahi Star Camera "captured green laser lights in the cloudy sky over Maunakea, Hawai'i. The lights are thought to be from a remote-sensing altimeter satellite ICESAT-2/43613."

But on Feb. 6, one week later, NAOJ issued a correction on YouTube that specified the laser beams weren't from a US spacecraft but the "most likely candidate" was a "Chinese Daqi-1/AEMS satellite."

Here's the video of the Chinese satellite firing bursts of lasers toward Earth:


Comment: China describes Daqi-1 and its intended activities:
China's Daqi-1 satellite was launched in April last year and similar to ICESat-2, it's an atmospheric environment monitoring satellite. That means it's in orbit around Earth in order to monitor global carbon levels, as well as atmospheric pollution.

Daqi-1 contains five instruments to help it do this, including ACDL, which stands for Aerosol and Carbon dioxide Detection Lidar. Lidar is an acronym for laser imaging, detection, and ranging, and it works a little like sonar. But instead of sending out sound waves to map an area, it sends out laser beams.

And it's these lasers that are believed to have lit up the sky over Hawaii at the end of January.

In the case of ACDL, it can send out dual-wavelength lasers at specific wavelengths in order to detect various molecules in Earth's atmosphere.

The time it takes for these laser beams to bounce back provides information on the composition of the atmosphere and ground below.

For example: ACDL can work out how much CO2 is in Earth's atmosphere by emitting two alternating lasers around the 1572 nanometer wavelength range.

"Daqi-1 can monitor fine particle pollution like PM2.5, pollutant gasses including nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and ozone, as well as carbon dioxide concentration," a March 2021 press release from the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, which developed Daqi-1, explained.

It's early days for Daqi-1 so we're still waiting for results from its scans. But if all goes to plan, the satellite is just the start of China's plans to keep tabs on air pollution.
"China will produce a series of Daqi satellites in the future, which will be used to monitor atmospheric pollution, provide remote sensing data support for environment authorities, and also support scientific research into global climate change."

"Daqi-1 will be networked with other satellites, including Daqi-2, to realize greenhouse gas monitoring and help China achieve reduction of carbon emissions."
It's yet to be seen whether these green atmospheric detecting lasers may become more common as China achieves this goal.


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Info

Fossil discovery reveals complex ecosystems existed on Earth much earlier than previously thought


McGill University
Thu, 09 Feb 2023 18:14 UTC
Discovery challenges understanding of how quickly life recovered from the greatest mass extinction in Earth's history.
Watsonulus fish fossil
© Xu DaiField photo of a Watsonulus fish fossil from the Gaopo section. / Photo de terrain d'un fossile de poisson Watsonulus (section de Gaopo).
About 250 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic mass extinction killed over 80 per cent of the planet's species. In the aftermath, scientists believe that life on earth was dominated by simple species for up to 10 million years before more complex ecosystems could evolve. Now this longstanding theory is being challenged by a team of international researchers - including scientists from McGill University and Université du Québec à Montréal.

A fossilized ocean ecosystem

Until now, scientists have long theorized that scorching hot ocean conditions resulting from catastrophic climate change prevented the development of complex life after the mass extinction. This idea is based on geochemical evidence of ocean conditions at the time. Now the discovery of fossils dating back 250.8 million years near the Guizhou region of China suggests that complex ecosystems were present on Earth just one million years after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, which is much earlier than previously thought.

"The fossils of the Guizhou region reveal an ocean ecosystem with diverse species making up a complex food chain that includes plant life, boney fish, ray-finned fish, crabs, lobsters, shrimp, and molluscs. In all, our team discovered 12 classes of organisms and even found fossilised faeces, revealing clues about the diets of these ancient animals," says Morgann Perrot, a former postdoctoral researcher at McGill University, now at Université du Québec à Montréal.
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HAL9000

The nine shocking replies that highlight 'woke' ChatGPT's inherent bias

Rob Waugh
Daily Mail
Sun, 12 Feb 2023 05:17 UTC
chatgpt
ChatGPT has become a global obsession in recent weeks, with experts warning its eerily human replies will put white-collar jobs at risk in years to come.

But questions are being asked about whether the $10 billion artificial intelligence has a woke bias. This week, several observers noted that the chatbot spits out answers which seem to indicate a distinctly liberal viewpoint.

Elon Musk described it as 'concerning' when the program suggested it would prefer to detonate a nuclear weapon, killing millions, rather than use a racial slur.
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Arrow Down

Latest suggestion for cooling the planet involves blasting the moon

Mike McRae
Science Alert
Thu, 09 Feb 2023 05:15 UTC
Blast the Moon
© 0fjd125gk87/Pixabay
With each passing year, the effects of rising global temperatures become even more obvious, while the chances of avoiding greater catastrophes in the future retreat like every melting glacier.

Desperate to avoid worst-case scenarios, researchers have proposed various measures that could, at the very least, buy us the time we might need to mature as a society and work to undo the damage.

Blasting a steady stream of dust from the surface of the Moon is the latest suggestion to get a solid scientific appraisal, with University of Utah computational astrophysicist Ben Bromley and computer scientist Sameer Khan and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory astrophysicist Scott Kenyon giving the idea a tentative thumbs up.

This isn't to say it falls into the 'good idea' category. Not yet, at least. But as far as extreme measures go, it's a plan that could come with far fewer risks and potentially lower costs than many other strategies being entertained for emergency options.

Thanks to historic levels of carbon dioxide lingering in our atmosphere, every joule of solar radiation that warms the planet has a slightly lower chance of returning to space.

The logical thing to do would be to work together to kick our nasty habit of smoking fossil fuels. Shocking as it seems, it could be faster and easier to engage in mammoth-scaled engineering projects that literally reflect a proportion of sunlight before it hits Earth and is converted into a form that's likely to stick around as heat.
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Sun

Solar vortex? Strange phenomenon observed on the sun

Brooke Kato
New York Post
Fri, 10 Feb 2023 12:04 UTC
sun prominence 1
© Twitter / @TamithaSkovThe unusual activity was captured by NASA with the James Webb Space Telescope and tweeted by Dr. Tamitha Skov, a space weather forecaster.
Scientists were left baffled after material broke off of the sun's surface and created a tornado-like swirl around its northern pole.

The remarkable phenomenon was caught by NASA on the James Webb Space Telescope and tweeted by Dr. Tamitha Skov, a space weather forecaster.

"Talk about Polar Vortex!" she wrote last week. "Material from a northern prominence just broke away from the main filament & is now circulating in a massive polar vortex around the north pole of our Star. Implications for understanding the Sun's atmospheric dynamics above 55° here cannot be overstated!"

Unusual activity typically occurs at the sun's 55 degree latitudes once every 11-year solar cycle, according to experts, but this incident is stumping researchers.

A prominence is a large, bright feature that extends outward from the sun's surface. Other filament tear-aways have been observed in the past — not like this, though.
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Sherlock

Geneticists puzzled by octopus's unique genes: Seem to have appeared out of nowhere

David Coppedge
Evolution News & Science Today
Wed, 08 Feb 2023 20:43 UTC
maldive octopus
Maldive octopus
Cephalopods, from the Latin for "head-foot," are among the strangest creatures in the ocean. Though classified in phylum Mollusca, they seem vastly different from snails or clams. They are among the smartest and most functionally diverse animals on the planet: flexible, adaptable, and well-equipped for rapid motion, effective hunting, and quick camouflage.

Their numbers include the giant squid, cuttlefish, and the beautifully coiled shelled nautilus. Now that the first octopus genome has been sequenced, scientists are beginning to learn about the complex genetic information behind their capabilities.

Nature published the first genome of a cephalopod, the California two-spot octopus, Octopus bimaculoides. It was a massive undertaking. The octopus genome is comparable to the human genome in size and complexity. In fact, it has "a greater number of protein-coding genes — some 33,000, compared with fewer than 25,000 in Homo sapiens," says Alison Abbott in the same issue of Nature.
This excess results mostly from the expansion of a few specific gene families, Ragsdale says. One of the most remarkable gene groups is the protocadherins, which regulate the development of neurons and the short-range interactions between them. The octopus has 168 of these genes — more than twice as many as mammals. This resonates with the creature's unusually large brain and the organ's even-stranger anatomy. Of the octopus's half a billion neurons — six times the number in a mouse — two-thirds spill out from its head through its arms, without the involvement of long-range fibres such as those in vertebrate spinal cords. The independent computing power of the arms, which can execute cognitive tasks even when dismembered, have made octopuses an object of study for neurobiologists such as Hochner and for roboticists who are collaborating on the development of soft, flexible robots.

A gene family that is involved in development, the zinc-finger transcription factors, is also highly expanded in octopuses. At around 1,800 genes, it is the second-largest gene family to be discovered in an animal, after the elephant's 2,000 olfactory-receptor genes. [Emphasis added.]
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Snowflake

Scientists discover strange new form of ice that could change how we think about water

Sam Tonkin
The Daily Mail
Fri, 03 Feb 2023 16:49 UTC
ice steel balls experiment
© Christoph SalzmannNormal ice was crushed with steel balls in an ultracold jar.
The man-made substance looks more like a liquid than a frozen solid

Scientists have created an entirely new type of ice that neither floats nor sinks — and more closely resembles a liquid than frozen water.

It could even hold clues to life beyond Earth by offering an insight into the processes that shape the oceans of Saturn and Jupiter's moons, where some scientists believe extra-terrestrial organisms may exist.

The new form of ice is amorphous, which means that unlike ordinary crystalline ice - in which the molecules arrange themselves in a regular pattern - its molecules are in a disorganised form and resemble a liquid.

Comment:

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Info

Scientists detect molten rock layer hidden under Earth's tectonic plates


University of Texas at Austin
Mon, 06 Feb 2023 15:43 UTC
Earth with the upper mantle revealed
© Leonello Calvetti/DreamstimeThe Earth with the upper mantle revealed. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered a previously unknown layer of partly molten rock in a key region just below the tectonic plates.
Scientists have discovered a new layer of partly molten rock under the Earth's crust that might help settle a long-standing debate about how tectonic plates move.

Researchers had previously identified patches of melt at a similar depth. But a new study led by The University of Texas at Austin revealed for the first time the layer's global extent and its part in plate tectonics.

The research was published Feb. 6, 2023, in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The molten layer is located about 100 miles from the surface and is part of the asthenosphere, which sits under the Earth's tectonic plates in the upper mantle. The asthenosphere is important for plate tectonics because it forms a relatively soft boundary that lets tectonic plates move through the mantle.

The reasons why it is soft, however, are not well understood. Scientists previously thought that molten rocks might be a factor. But this study shows that melt, in fact, does not appear to notably influence the flow of mantle rocks.

"When we think about something melting, we intuitively think that the melt must play a big role in the material's viscosity," said Junlin Hua, a postdoctoral fellow at UT's Jackson School of Geosciences who led the research. "But what we found is that even where the melt fraction is quite high, its effect on mantle flow is very minor."
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