Science & TechnologyS


Cassiopaea

Weird star produced the fastest nova on record


Phys Org
Tue, 14 Jun 2022 22:46 UTC
Polar System
© Mark GarlickThis illustration shows an intermediate polar system, a type of two-star system that the research team thinks V1674 Hercules belongs to. A flow of gas from the large companion star impacts an accretion disk before flowing along magnetic field lines onto the white dwarf.
Astronomers are buzzing after observing the fastest nova ever recorded. The unusual event drew scientists' attention to an even more unusual star. As they study it, they may find answers to not only the nova's many baffling traits, but to larger questions about the chemistry of our solar system, the death of stars and the evolution of the universe.

The research team, led by Arizona State University Regents Professor Sumner Starrfield, Professor Charles Woodward from University of Minnesota and Research Scientist Mark Wagner from The Ohio State University, co-authored a report published today in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.

A nova is a sudden explosion of bright light from a two-star system. Every nova is created by a white dwarf — the very dense leftover core of a star — and a nearby companion star. Over time, the white dwarf draws matter from its companion, which falls onto the white dwarf. The white dwarf heats this material, causing an uncontrolled reaction that releases a burst of energy. The explosion shoots the matter away at high speeds, which we observe as visible light.

The bright nova usually fades over a couple of weeks or longer. On June 12, 2021, the nova V1674 Hercules burst so bright that it was visible to the naked eye — but in just over one day, it was faint once more. It was like someone flicked a flashlight on and off.

Nova events at this level of speed are rare, making this nova a precious study subject.
Read More...
Control Panel

Net zero shock: Carbon dioxide rises AFTER temperature increases, scientists find

Chris Morrison
The Daily Sceptic
Fri, 10 Jun 2022 08:00 UTC
Power Plant
© Patrick Pleul/picture alliance/Getty Images25 October 2021, Brandenburg, Jänschwalde: Steam rises from the cooling towers of the Jänschwalde lignite-fired power plant operated by Lausitz Energie Bergbau AG (LEAG). The Jänschwalde lignite-fired power plant is to be taken off the grid and shut down by 2028 on the way to the coal phase-out.
Dramatic new findings from two climate science professors suggest that an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere follows a rise in temperature rather than coming before it and causing it, throwing into doubt the whole of the current theory of human-driven global warming.

The scientists propose that higher temperatures increase the natural processes of soil respiration and ocean outgassing, and hence boost natural CO2 emissions. If confirmed, the information destroys the so-called 'settled' science basis upon which the command-and-control Net Zero political agenda depends.

Demetris Koutsoyiannis and Zbigniew Kundzewicz sequenced the changes in temperatures and CO2 growth rates from 1980 to 2019 from widely available sources, and discovered that CO2 values lagged temperature by about six months. The obvious point is made that in attempting to prove causality - as climate alarmists do by arguing that increases in temperature are the result of increases in human-caused CO2 - cause cannot lag effect.
Read More...
HAL9000

Google engineer placed on leave after insisting company's AI is sentient


Zerohedge
Sun, 12 Jun 2022 15:00 UTC
Blake Lemoine
A Google engineer has decided to go public after he was placed on paid leave for breaching confidentiality while insisting that the company's AI chatbot, LaMDA, is sentient.

Blake Lemoine, who works for Google's Responsible AI organization, began interacting with LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) last fall as part of his job to determine whether artificial intelligence used discriminatory or hate speech (like the notorious Microsoft "Tay" chatbot incident).

"If I didn't know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I'd think it was a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics," the 41-year-old Lemoine told The Washington Post.

When he started talking to LaMDA about religion, Lemoine - who studied cognitive and computer science in college, said the AI began discussing its rights and personhood. Another time, LaMDA convinced Lemoine to change his mind on Asimov's third law of robotics, which states that "A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law," which are of course that "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law."
Read More...
Info

Why the length of a day oscillates every 6 years

Paul McQuiston
University of Southern California
Fri, 10 Jun 2022 19:40 UTC
USC Dornsife scientists' analysis of seismic data identifies a six-year cycle of super- and sub-rotation that affects the length of a day.
Earth's Inner Core
© Illustration/AdobeStockThe Earth’s inner core — a hot, dense ball of solid iron the size of Pluto — has been shown to move and/or change over decades.
USC scientists have found evidence that the Earth's inner core oscillates, contradicting previously accepted models that suggested it consistently rotates at a faster rate than the planet's surface.

Their study, published Friday in Science Advances, shows that the inner core changed direction in the six-year period from 1969-74, according to the analysis of seismic data. The scientists say their model of inner core movement also explains the variation in the length of day, which has been shown to oscillate persistently for the past several decades.

"From our findings, we can see the Earth's surface shifts compared to its inner core, as people have asserted for 20 years," said John Vidale, co-author of the study and Dean's Professor of Earth Sciences at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "However, our latest observations show that the inner core spun slightly slower from 1969-71 and then moved the other direction from 1971-74. We also note that the length of day grew and shrank as would be predicted.

"The coincidence of those two observations makes oscillation the likely interpretation."
Read More...
Microscope 2

Physicists rewrite the fundamental law that leads to disorder

Philip Ball
Quanta Magazine
Thu, 26 May 2022 06:59 UTC
THe second law of thermodynamic
© Maggie Chiang for Quanta MagazineIs the rise of entropy merely probabilistic, or can it be straightened out by use of clear quantum axioms?
In all of physical law, there's arguably no principle more sacrosanct than the second law of thermodynamics — the notion that entropy, a measure of disorder, will always stay the same or increase.
"If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations," wrote the British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington in his 1928 book The Nature of the Physical World. "If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation." No violation of this law has ever been observed, nor is any expected.
But something about the second law troubles physicists. Some are not convinced that we understand it properly or that its foundations are firm. Although it's called a law, it's usually regarded as merely probabilistic: It stipulates that the outcome of any process will be the most probable one (which effectively means the outcome is inevitable given the numbers involved).

Yet physicists don't just want descriptions of what will probably happen.
"We like laws of physics to be exact," said the physicist Chiara Marletto of the University of Oxford. Can the second law be tightened up into more than just a statement of likelihoods?

Comment: See also:

Read More...
Robot

Scientists craft living human skin for robots


Science Daily
Fri, 10 Jun 2022 19:08 UTC
Artificial Skin
© CellConceptual illustration and fabrication process of the “living skin on a robot” proposed in this paper; see also Figures S1 and S10
(A) Conceptual illustration of a biohybrid robotic hand with its finger covered with human skin equivalent.
(B) Design of the three-joint robotic finger to be covered with skin equivalent.
(C) Fabrication process of the skin equivalent used to cover the robotic finger. Scale bar, 10 mm.
From action heroes to villainous assassins, biohybrid robots made of both living and artificial materials have been at the center of many sci-fi fantasies, inspiring today's robotic innovations. It's still a long way until human-like robots walk among us in our daily lives, but scientists from Japan are bringing us one step closer by crafting living human skin on robots. The method developed, presented June 9 in the journal Matter, not only gave a robotic finger skin-like texture, but also water-repellent and self-healing functions.

"The finger looks slightly 'sweaty' straight out of the culture medium," says first author Shoji Takeuchi, a professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan. "Since the finger is driven by an electric motor, it is also interesting to hear the clicking sounds of the motor in harmony with a finger that looks just like a real one."

Looking "real" like a human is one of the top priorities for humanoid robots that are often tasked to interact with humans in healthcare and service industries. A human-like appearance can improve communication efficiency and evoke likability. While current silicone skin made for robots can mimic human appearance, it falls short when it comes to delicate textures like wrinkles and lacks skin-specific functions. Attempts at fabricating living skin sheets to cover robots have also had limited success, since it's challenging to conform them to dynamic objects with uneven surfaces.

"With that method, you have to have the hands of a skilled artisan who can cut and tailor the skin sheets," says Takeuchi. "To efficiently cover surfaces with skin cells, we established a tissue molding method to directly mold skin tissue around the robot, which resulted in a seamless skin coverage on a robotic finger."
Read More...
Satellite

US spies urged to buy more private intelligence


RT
Thu, 09 Jun 2022 11:50 UTC
spy satellite image
© John Lund/Getty ImagesIn the crosshairs
US lawmakers have called on the country's spy satellite agency to accelerate its use of commercially available images "to the extent possible" to close gaps in the Pentagon's own surveillance capabilities.

The House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, which is tasked with overseeing the US military's use of space, anti-ballistic missile defense and nuclear deterrence forces, included the proposal in its amendments to a defense spending bill for 2023.

The markup document, which is yet to be approved and will be considered by the full committee on June 22, endorses a pilot program to buy images from commercial satellites using synthetic aperture radar (SAR). The documents states:
"The committee recommends the NRO accelerate, to the extent possible, their adoption and integration of proven highly capable U.S. commercial SAR systems" to cover "known intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance gaps of the Department of Defense."
SAR imaging uses the movement of radar antenna to boost spatial resolution, compared to a stationary beaming radar system. The "synthetic aperture" in the name refers to the fact that the antenna works as if it had a larger size by combining data collected over a period of time. A similar principle allows astronomers to use radio telescopes located in different parts of the world to combine their feeds and observe distant objects in greater detail.


Comment: NRO: National Reconnaissance Office

Read More...
Info

Ground-breaking number of brown dwarfs discovered


University of Bern
Thu, 09 Jun 2022 23:55 UTC
Brown Dwarfs
© University of Bern
Brown dwarfs, mysterious objects that straddle the line between stars and planets, are essential to our understanding of both stellar and planetary populations. However, only 40 brown dwarfs could be imaged around stars in almost three decades of searches. An international team led by researchers from the Open University and the University of Bern directly imaged a remarkable four new brown dwarfs thanks to a new innovative search method.

Brown dwarfs are mysterious astronomical objects that fill the gap between the heaviest planets and the lightest stars, with a mix of stellar and planetary characteristics. Due to this hybrid nature, these puzzling objects are crucial to improve our understanding of both stars and giant planets. Brown dwarfs orbiting a parent star from sufficiently far away are particularly valuable as they can be directly photographed - unlike those that are too close to their star and are thus hidden by its brightness. This provides scientists with a unique opportunity to study the details of the cold, planet-like atmospheres of brown dwarf companions.

However, despite remarkable efforts in the development of new observing technologies and image processing techniques, direct detections of brown dwarf companions to stars have remained rather sparse, with only around 40 systems imaged in almost three decades of searches. Researchers led by Mariangela Bonavita from the Open University and Clémence Fontanive from the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) and the NCCR PlanetS at the University of Bern directly imaged four new brown dwarfs as they report in a study that has just been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society MNRAS. This is the first time that multiple new systems with brown dwarf companions on wide orbital separations have been announced at the same time.
Read More...
Microscope 1

Should evolution be viewed as a transfer of information?


MindMatters News
Sun, 29 May 2022 21:46 UTC
dna information theory intelligent design
© Adobe Stock
Information follows different rules from matter and energy, which might change the way we see evolution

One reason that the theory of evolution is controversial is the claim that sheer randomness produces information. That is, randomly generated events are somehow selected for survival and continuing complex development (Darwinian evolution). The theory is understandably popular because, if correct, it would answer a great many questions. The problem is, we do not see randomly generated events producing complex mechanisms in the life around us. We are asked, however, to believe that this modern synthesis (MS) is true over the grand sweep of evolutionary time.

Over the years, it has become evident that evolution happens in a number of ways. including horizontal gene transfer between unrelated species, epigenetic inheritance of genes that changed during our parents' lifetimes, and convergent evolution — where vastly different life forms end up with very similar mechanisms as a result of pursuing a common goal. Efforts to incorporate these processes into evolution theory are sometimes called the the Third Way or extended evolutionary synthesis (EES).

Comment:

Read More...
Galaxy

First micrometeoroid impact hits James Webb Space Telescope just months into flight

Meghan Bartels
Space
Wed, 08 Jun 2022 22:00 UTC
James Webb Space Telescope
© Northrop GrummanAn artist's depiction of the James Webb Space Telescope at work.
NASA's next-generation space observatory has sustained its first noticeable micrometeoroid impact less than six months after launch, but the agency isn't too concerned.

The James Webb Space Telescope, also known as Webb or JWST, launched on Dec. 25, 2021. It has spent the intervening months trekking out to its deep-space post and preparing for science observations, a complicated process that has gone remarkably smoothly; recently, NASA said it expects to unveil the first science-quality images from the telescope on July 12.

Now, the agency announced on Wednesday (June 8) that the observatory has experienced its first few impacts from tiny pieces of space debris called micrometeoroids. But don't panic: Neither the observatory's schedule nor its scientific legacy is expected to suffer.

Comment: There's good reason to believe that NASA's engineers are not aware of how increasingly hazardous our region of space is becoming:

Read More...