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An experiment which could confirm the fifth state of matter in the universe - and change physics as we know it - has been published in a new paper from the University of Portsmouth.
Physicist Dr Melvin Vopson has already published research suggesting that information has mass and that all elementary particles, the smallest known building blocks of the universe, store information about themselves, similar to the way humans have DNA.
Now he has designed an experiment - which if proved correct - means he will have discovered that information is the fifth form of matter, alongside solid, liquid, gas and plasma.
© ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Ke Wang et al. 2015/Stephens et al. 2021The magnetic field lines of G47.
That bone is a long, dense filament of cold gas in the densest part of one of the galaxy's spiral arms. It measures around 195 light-years in length; the map, acquired using the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) plane, gives us the first complete picture of the magnetic fields therein.
The result defies expectations. Rather than aligned along the length of the bone, the magnetic fields are more higgledy-piggledy, and the average magnetic field is neither parallel nor perpendicular to the bone. This, the researchers said, can help us to better understand not just the structures of spiral galaxies, but their star formation.
Comment: It's not the first time that results like these 'defy expectations' and this seems to be because mainstream science is missing a rather significant piece of the puzzle: Why the sun's atmosphere is hundreds of times hotter than its surface
Comment: Terms like 'random' and 'messy' seem to be used when researchers aren't sure why these regions behave the way they do:
- Massive, mysterious filament structure extending around the Milky Way's edge discovered
- Electromagnetic 'tug-of-war' lights up Jupiter's upper atmosphere
- Cosmic climate change: 'Space plasma hurricane' observed in ionosphere above North Pole!
- Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Interview with Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Pierre Lescaudron
- Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?
- MindMatters: The Lighter Side of Space Rocks - The Holy Grail, Directed Panspermia and the Origin of Life
© ShutterstockResearchers have discovered a new never-before-seen cell in the human lungs, which plays a vital role in the functioning of the respiratory system.
Scientists have discovered a brand-new type of cell hiding inside the delicate, branching passageways of human lungs. The newfound cells play a vital role in keeping the respiratory system functioning properly and could even inspire new treatments to reverse the effects of certain smoking-related diseases, according to a new study.
The cells, known as respiratory airway secretory (RAS) cells, are found in tiny, branching passages known as bronchioles, which are tipped with alveoli, the teensy air sacs that exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide with the bloodstream. The new RAS cells are similar to stem cells — "blank canvas" cells that can differentiate into any other type of cell in the body — and are capable of repairing damaged alveoli cells and transforming into new ones.
The Government of Canada's think-tank, Policy Horizons Canada, published a report titled Exploring Biodigital Convergence looking at transhumanism.
Biodigital convergence can be defined as the intersection and synthesis of biological systems with digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), biometrics and genetic engineering. In the human realm, this field is called transhumanism.
The report examines the implications of the assimilation of digital technologies with biological entities that, in essence, would fundamentally re-imagine life on an individual, environmental, and societal level. More concisely, the reconfiguration — if realized — would radically redefine what it means to be human.
Transhumanism is no longer a concept confined to a generation of cheesy Hollywood B-movies — the technology exists right here, right now.
Policy Horizons Canada is a federal government organization conducting policy research into potential future scenarios for Canadian society and its economic and industrial future. Its mandate is to help the Canadian government create future-oriented policies and frameworks that anticipate emerging challenges in near and distant time frames.
Comment: In her closing remarks, the author seems to err in her definition of vitalism. If she defined vitalism correctly it would make much more sense - and we'd be in agreement - since transhumanism is one of the most soulless, nihilistic and pathologizing developments to be witnessed currently in Western civilization.
From Wikipedia we get this:
Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things."[1][a] Where vitalism explicitly invokes a vital principle, that element is often referred to as the "vital spark," "energy," or "élan vital," which some equate with the soul. In the 18th and 19th centuries vitalism was discussed among biologists, between those who felt that the known mechanics of physics would eventually explain the difference between life and non-life and vitalists who argued that the processes of life could not be reduced to a mechanistic process. Some[citation needed][who?] vitalist biologists proposed testable hypotheses meant to show inadequacies with mechanistic explanations, but these experiments failed to provide support for vitalism. Biologists now consider vitalism in this sense to have been refuted by empirical evidence, and hence regard it either as a superseded scientific theory,[4] or, since the mid-20th century, as a pseudoscience.[5][6]
Vitalism has a long history in medical philosophies: many traditional healing practices posited that disease results from some imbalance in vital forces.
© Adobe Stock
Panpsychism, the view that all nature participates in consciousness, has been growing under the radar for some time in science. But it is now coming into plainer view. New Scientist is one of the last places one might have expected to find a serious, long-form account of panpsychism — one that, in the context, amounts to a defense.
Yet that's just what science writer and filmmaker Thomas Lewton has been permitted by the editors to do. He tells us about his own journey at his site: "Studying physics, I thought telescopes and particle colliders would offer firm answers, but instead they raised more questions."
And at New Scientist, he tells us why:
It can seem as if there is an insurmountable gap between our subjective experience of the world and our attempts to objectively describe it. And yet our brains are made of matter - so, you might think, the states of mind they generate must be explicable in terms of states of matter. The question is: how? And if we can't explain consciousness in physical terms, how do we find a place for it in an all-embracing view of the universe?
Thomas Lewton, "A new place for consciousness in our understanding of the universe" at New Scientist (March 30, 2022)
Comment:
- Panpsychism is starting to push out naturalism as a scientific world view
- Clash of perspectives on panpsychism: What it does — and does not — explain about consciousness
- Panpsychism: The idea that everything from spoons to stones are conscious is gaining academic credibility
- Is everything conscious to some degree? More scientists endorsing panpsychism over materialism
- Quantum machine appears to defy the push to disorder - remembers its ordered state
© ShutterstockAn illustration of a DNA molecule.
Though the Human Genome Project was hailed worldwide when it was completed in 2003, at the time, many sections of the genome still couldn't be placed. The new work — achieved by a consortium of scientists led by the National Human Genome Research Institute, the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of Washington in Seattle — finally fills in the last 8% of DNA letters, or base pairs, that had no home in the sequence before.
The new genome paves the way to a better understanding of how people's DNA can differ and how genetic mutations can contribute to disease. The scientists published their findings March 31 in the journal Science.
In 2003, scientists at the Human Genome Project and the biotech company Celera Genomics solved the biggest chunk of the puzzle. But technological limitations meant that they couldn't fit 15% of the human DNA sequence into the picture. Most of the unmapped regions were concentrated around telomeres (the caps on the ends of chromosomes) and centromeres (the chromosomes' densely packed middle sections). In 2013, researchers narrowed this gap to just 8%, but they still couldn't place 200 million base pairs — the equivalent of an entire chromosome.
© NASA/ESA, B. Welch, D. CoeThe Sunrise Arc, and Earendel
The far-away star system takes the official name WHL0137-LS, but the astronomers who found it nicknamed it "Earendel" from the Old English word meaning "morning star" or "rising light."
Earendel system as we're seeing it today was shining within just 900 million years of the Big Bang, according to the authors of a new paper in the journal Nature describing the discovery. Fully 12.8 billion years passed before that light reached the Hubble Space Telescope, magnified by a lucky trick of gravity to appear as a tiny smudge of photons on Hubble's image sensor. Earendel is 8.2 billion years older than the Sun and Earth and 12.1 billion years older than our planet's first animals.
© NOAANOAA's G GOES-16 satellite captured the eruption, the white area near the top and center of the image, that occurred around 7:29 a.m. EDT on March 28.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned that two coronal mass ejections (CMEs), spat out from the overactive sunspot AR2975, on Monday (March 28), are heading toward our planet and might trigger a geomagnetic storm rated as G3 on NOAA's five-point scale.
CMEs are huge expulsions of magnetized particles released from the sun's upper atmosphere, the corona. If those charged clouds hit Earth, they can wreak havoc with the planet's magnetic field, causing disruptions to satellites, electric grids and telecommunication networks.
A G3-level solar storm, NOAA said in a statement, is unlikely to have serious impacts on infrastructure. However, it might trigger stunning aurora displays that could be visible from locations more distant from the poles than regions where auroras are usually seen.
"Auroras for this storm may be visible, if the weather conditions are favorable, as far south as Pennsylvania to Iowa to Oregon and points north," NOAA said in the statement.
© Leijnse et al., Nature Communications, 2022Two timelapse stills of filopodia movement. ()
These tentacle-like protrusions are called filopodia, and a new study has given us more insight into how they allow our cells to move about, by twisting the skeleton-like inner scaffolding.
"These structures play a pivotal role in .. allowing cells to explore their environment, generate mechanical forces, perform chemical signaling, or convey signals via intercellular tunneling nano-bridges," the researchers write in their paper.
"The dynamics of filopodia appear quite complex as they exhibit a rich behavior of buckling, pulling, length and shape changes. Here, we show that filopodia additionally explore their 3D extracellular space by combining growth and shrinking with axial twisting and buckling of their actin rich core."
Comment: Others are following the same track: