Science & TechnologyS


Archaeology

New dinosaur species from Chile had a unique slashing tail

Seth Borenstein
Phys.Org
Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00 UTC
Segouros
© Mauricio AlvarezSegouros illustration
Fossils found in Chile are from a strange-looking dog-sized dinosaur species that had a unique slashing tail weapon, scientists reported Wednesday.

Some dinosaurs had spiked tails they could use as stabbing weapons and others had tails with clubs. The new species, described in a study in the journal Nature, has something never seen before on any animal: seven pairs of "blades" laid out sideways like a slicing weapon used by ancient Aztec warriors, said lead author Alex Vargas.

"It's a really unusual weapon," said Vargas, a University of Chile paleontologist. "Books on prehistoric animals for kids need to update and put this weird tail in there. ... It just looks crazy."

The plant-eating critter had a combination of traits from different species that initially sent paleontologists down the wrong path. The back end, including its tail weapon, seemed similar to a stegosaurus, so the researchers named it stegouros elengassen.
Stegouros
© Lios Perez LopezStegouros illustration
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Arrow Down

Breakthrough infection study compares decline in COVID vaccine effectiveness: Pfizer vs Moderna vs J&J

Public Health Institute
SciTechDaily
Tue, 30 Nov 2021 00:00 UTC
3 vaccines
© Unknown
Study in Science of more than 780,000 Veterans is the first to compare waning protection rates across all three vaccine types available to most Americans and to directly report death rates after breakthrough infection.

As COVID-19 breakthrough infections continue to emerge in some vaccine recipients and health authorities are developing policies around booster vaccinations, national data on COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections is inadequate but urgently needed. Now a study from the Public Health Institute, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Texas Health Science Center published today in the journal Science analyzed COVID infection by vaccination status among 780,225 Veterans.

Researchers found that protection against any COVID-19 infection declined for all vaccine types, with overall vaccine protection declining from 87.9% in February to 48.1% by October 2021.
  • The decline was greatest for the Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) vaccine, with protection against infection declining from 86.4% in March to 13% in September
  • Declines for PfizerBioNTech were from 86.9% to 43.3%
  • Declines for Moderna were 89.2% to 58%.
Covid Breakthrough infections chart
© Public Health InstituteCOVID Breakthrough Infections

Comment: The results and validations in this study seem to be criteria-based on partial evidence versus detailed and complete analysis. It appears some crucial factors have been dismissed or ignored.

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Galaxy

Strong winds power electric fields in upper atmosphere, NASA's ICON finds

Lina Tran
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Wed, 01 Dec 2021 22:53 UTC
Spaceweather ionosphere
© NASA/YoutubeWhat happens on Earth doesn't stay on Earth.
Using observations from NASA's ICON mission, scientists presented the first direct measurements of Earth's long-theorized dynamo on the edge of space: a wind-driven electrical generator that spans the globe 60-plus miles above our heads. The dynamo churns in the ionosphere, the electrically charged boundary between Earth and space. It's powered by tidal winds in the upper atmosphere that are faster than most hurricanes and rise from the lower atmosphere, creating an electrical environment that can affect satellites and technology on Earth.

The new work, published today in Nature Geoscience, improves our understanding of the ionosphere, which helps scientists better predict space weather and protect our technology from its effects.

Comment: Again: one wonders just what accounts for the other half? Because, whilst they conclude that "much" of the effect observed is a result of activity closer to earth, it begs the question: since there's good reason to believe that solar cycles seem to drive climate on Earth, just what impact does a 'ripple' in Space Weather eventually have down here on Earth?

That question is ever more pressing because our planet has clearly entered a period of extreme weather, erratic seasons, unusual atmospheric and terrestrial phenomena, along with significant global cooling.

See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Attention

Research shows cold far more deadly than heat

P. Gosselin
No Tricks Zone
Wed, 01 Dec 2021 18:15 UTC
More warming would save lives. A new, comprehensive Lancet study shows that far more people are being killed globally by cold weather than by hot weather.
Death due Cold
© Burkart et al 2021, LancetAlmost 20 times more deaths were attributed to cold than to heat in South Africa.
Die kalte Sonne here looks at the impacts of temperature extremes on mortality. There's no doubt that extreme weather kills more people. But the question in these times of "global warming" is whether or not warming is going to lead to more deaths.

A new publication in the renowned journal Lancet, by Burkart et al studied 65 million deaths in 9 countries occurring between Jan 1, 1980, and Dec 31, 2016 in relation to temperature effects.

The researchers found that 17 of the 176 categories for the cause of death "showed J-shaped relationships with daily temperature, whereas the risk of external causes (eg, homicide, suicide, drowning, and related to disasters, mechanical, transport, and other unintentional injuries) increased monotonically with temperature."

The 17 causes of death with J-shaped curves (dependent of temperature) included heart disease, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, lower respiratory infection, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Using the data, the team of authors extrapolated the results to the entire global population and examined the year 2019.
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Chalkboard

Plato's revenge? Geometry is showing how the world is constructed from cubes

Joshua Soko
Quanta Magazine
Thu, 19 Nov 2020 19:16 UTC
sanskrit cubes
© WillRead8888/Imgur
An exercise in pure mathematics has led to a wide-ranging theory of how the world comes together.

On a mild autumn day in 2016, the Hungarian mathematician Gábor Domokos arrived on the geophysicist Douglas Jerolmack's doorstep in Philadelphia. Domokos carried with him his suitcases, a bad cold and a burning secret.

The two men walked across a gravel lot behind the house, where Jerolmack's wife ran a taco cart. Their feet crunched over crushed limestone. Domokos pointed down.

"How many facets do each of these gravel pieces have?" he said. Then he grinned. "What if I told you that the number was always somewhere around six?" Then he asked a bigger question, one that he hoped would worm its way into his colleague's brain. What if the world is made of cubes?
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Comet 2

New study shows the largest comet ever observed was active at near-record distance


University of Maryland
Tue, 30 Nov 2021 20:05 UTC
UMD astronomers discovered that comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is among the most distant active comets from the sun, providing key information about its composition.
comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein
© NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/SpaceengineThe Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein (BB), represented in this artist rendition as it might look in the outer Solar System, is estimated to be about 1000 times more massive than a typical comet. The largest comet discovered in modern times, it is among the most distant comets to be discovered with a coma, which means ice within the comet is vaporizing and forming an envelope of dust and vapor around the comet’s core.
A new study by University of Maryland astronomers shows that comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein (BB), the largest comet ever discovered, was active long before previously thought, meaning the ice within it is vaporizing and forming an envelope of dust and vapor known as a coma. Only one active comet has been observed farther from the sun, and it was much smaller than comet BB.

The finding will help astronomers determine what BB is made of and provide insight into conditions during the formation of our solar system. The finding was published in The Planetary Science Journal on November 29, 2021.

"These observations are pushing the distances for active comets dramatically farther than we have previously known," said Tony Farnham, a research scientist in the UMD Department of Astronomy and the lead author of the study.

Knowing when a comet becomes active is key to understanding what it's made of. Often called "dirty snowballs" or "icy dirtballs," comets are conglomerations of dust and ice left over from the formation of the solar system. As an orbiting comet approaches its closest point to the sun, it warms, and the ices begin to vaporize. How warm it must be to start vaporizing depends on what kind of ice it contains (e.g., water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide or some other frozen compound).
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Arrow Up

Meet the technology that's uncovering 2020's voter fraud

Jay Valentine
American Thinker
Mon, 29 Nov 2021 00:00 UTC
Phantom voter
© Croc AutoThe Phantom Voter
The search for phantom voters is over. Phantom voters are sitting next to you at the restaurant or standing next to you at the bank. They are your friend and neighbor. You may be a phantom and not know it.

Phantom voters, the definition, is morphing from fake voters hiding in UPS boxes to people who advanced computer models predict will not vote.

Don't get me wrong — there are thousands of phantom voters living in churches, R.V. parks, cemeteries, homeless shelters, hotels, and virtual mailboxes. It's just that there are as many, perhaps more, who live active, healthy, honest lives on voter rolls. They just don't know they voted.

You've heard the stories, denied by the mainstream press and almost every secretary of state: there is no significant voter fraud. Why not say that? There is no way you can check.

Now there is.
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Comet 2

Unexpected Andromedid meteor outburst, strongest ever detected by CMOR


Space Weather
Tue, 30 Nov 2021 15:50 UTC
Andromedid meteor outburst
This radar sky map shows a hot spot of meteor activity on Nov. 28th.
The Andromedids are back. Over the weekend astronomers reported an outburst of more than 100 faint meteors per hour. "[It was] the strongest outburst of Andromedid meteors ever detected by the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR)," says Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario.

The shower's not over yet. "The current outburst is ongoing and it may be another few days or even a week before the activity ramps down," says Brown. "These meteors are too faint to see with the naked eye, but they are easy targets for our radar."

Andromedids are debris from Biela's Comet, known to historians as "the comet that split in two." 3D/Biela started to fall apart not long after it was discovered in 1772. It was a double comet when it swung by Earth in 1852 and, after that, was never seen again. In 1872 and 1885, thousands of meteors shot out of the constellation Andromeda as Earth passed through Biela's remains. Chinese records described "stars that fell like rain."


Comment: For fascinating insight into Biela's comet, check out Laura Knight-Jadczyk's article Comet Biela and Mrs. O'Leary's Cow.


Comment: There appears to be a significant uptick of all kinds of Fire In The Sky activity: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Fireball

Large asteroid 2018 AH heading towards Earth late December, skimmed past 3 years ago unnoticed by scientists

Aaron Reich
The Jerusalem Post
Fri, 26 Nov 2021 15:20 UTC
Asteroid
© SHUTTERSTOCKAsteroid (illustrative)
A large asteroid the size of the Washington Monument is heading for Earth in late December that, if it impacts, would cause devastation far greater than an atomic bomb, according to NASA's asteroid tracker.

Known as 2018 AH, this asteroid is estimated to be about 190 meters wide and is set to pass by the Earth on December 27.

The asteroid is unlikely to hit the planet, however, expected to pass by at a distance of more than 4.5 million kilometers. For comparison, the distance between the Earth and the Moon is around 384,000 km. - about a twelfth of that.

Comment: Whilst this asteroid is unlikely to be 'the one' to shake things up on our planet, it's notable that The Jerusalem Post, along with a variety of other mainstream news outlets - and not just the sensationalist tabloids - as well as research institutions around the world are increasingly sounding the alarm of the very real possibility of a space rock paying us a visit: And check out SOTT radio's:

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X

Fake science, invalid data: There is no such thing as a "confirmed Covid-19 case". There is no pandemic

Professor Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
Fri, 26 Nov 2021 00:00 UTC
covid trends
© unknownCOVID Trends • October 2021
"The PCR is a Process. It does not tell you that you are sick".
-Dr. Kary Mullis, Nobel Laureate and Inventor of the RT-PCR, passed away in August 2019
"...All or a substantial part of these positives could be due to what's called false positives tests."
-Dr. Michael Yeadon, Former Vice President and Chief Science Officer for Pfizer
This misuse of the RT-PCR technique is applied as a relentless and intentional strategy by some governments to justify excessive measures such as the violation of a large number of constitutional rights, ... under the pretext of a pandemic based on a number of positive RT-PCR tests, and not on a real number of patients.
-Dr. Pascal Sacré, Belgian physician specialized in critical care and renowned public health analyst
Introduction

Media lies coupled with a systemic and carefully engineered fear campaign have sustained the image of a killer virus which is relentlessly spreading to all major regions of the World.

Several billion people in more than 190 countries have been tested (as well as retested) for Covid-19. At the time of writing, approximately 260 million people Worldwide have been categorized as "confirmed Covid-19 cases". The alleged pandemic is said to have resulted in more than 5 million Covid-19 related deaths. Both sets of figures: morbidity and mortality are fabricated.
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