Science & TechnologyS


Attention

3 new sources of tremors identified at Kīlauea correlated with disappearance of lava lake during massive 2018 eruption

Kate Wheeling, American Geophysical Union
Phys.org
Tue, 03 Aug 2021 12:00 UTC
Kīlauea
© USGSA view of Kīlauea’s summit lava lake. The lava lake is contained within a crater, which is set within the larger Halema‘uma‘u Crater. New research aims to understand the activity that led to the eruption in 2018 in Kīlauea’s lower East Rift Zone.
Kīlauea in Hawaii is the best-monitored volcano in the world. The 2018 eruption was the largest in some 200 years, providing researchers with a plethora of new data to understand the volcano's plumbing and behavior. Two new studies dig into data on volcanic tremor and deformation to better characterize the events leading up to and following the 2018 eruption.

In one study, Soubestre et al. used data from a permanent seismic network and tiltmeter located at Kīlauea's summit and derived models of tremor source processes to examine how volcanic tremors related to the disappearance of a lava lake and subsidence in Halema'uma'u Crater at the beginning and throughout the 2018 eruption. Here the authors used a seismic network covariance matrix approach to enhance coherent signals and cut out noise to detect and locate the volcanic tremor sources.

Comment: Kīlauea's historic eruption is just one example of a variety of extreme natural phenomena to have happened in recent years, and, taken together, signals an overall uptick occurring on our planet:

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Info

Exercise improves health through changes in DNA


University of Copenhagen
Mon, 26 Jul 2021 16:03 UTC
Six weeks of physical exercise led to changes in the epigenetic information of skeletal muscle cells in young men. These changes took place in areas of the genome that have been linked to disease. Scientists at the University of Copenhagen say their research shows, for the first time, how exercise remodels DNA in skeletal muscle, so that new signals are established to keep the body healthy.
Regular Exercises
© University of Copenhagen
While it is widely known that regular physical exercise decreases the risk of virtually all chronic illnesses, the mechanisms at play are not fully known. Now scientists at the University of Copenhagen have discovered that the beneficial effects of physical exercise may in part result from changes to the structure of our DNA. These changes are referred as 'epigenetic'.

DNA is the molecular instruction manual found in all our cells. Some sections of our DNA are genes, which are instructions for building proteins - the body's building blocks - while other sections are called enhancers that regulate which genes are switched on or off, when, and in which tissue. The scientists found, for the first time, that exercise rewires the enhancers in regions of our DNA that are known to be associated with the risk to develop disease.

"Our findings provide a mechanism for the known beneficial effects of exercise. By connecting each enhancer with a gene, we further provide a list of direct targets that could mediate this effect," says Professor Romain Barrès from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, the senior author of the research, which was published in Molecular Metabolism.
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Solar Flares

Solar max might come a year early


Spaceweather.com
Wed, 04 Aug 2021 03:11 UTC
Sunspot counts
Solar Cycle 25 is heating up faster than expected. The latest sign may be found in sunspot counts from July 2021. Continuing a trend that started last year, they overperform the official forecast.

Issued by the NOAA/NASA Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel in 2019, the official forecast calls for Solar Cycle 25 to peak in July 2025. However, a better fit to current data shows Solar Cycle 25 peaking in October 2024. This is just outside the 8-month error bars of the Panel's forecast.

July 2021 was a remarkable month. Solar Cycle 25 crossed multiple thresholds, including its first X-flare and, at one point, 6 sunspots on the solar disk. The last time so many sunspots were seen at the same time was Sept. 2017 (SWx archive). One farside CME in July was so strong it affected Earth despite being on the "wrong" side of the sun. A handful of other CMEs narrowly missed our planet.

If solar activity increases apace, some of those blows will soon begin to land.

Comment: Solar Cycle 25: Is a Termination Event imminent?

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Butterfly

Common insecticide is harmful to bees in 'any amount' - study

Jules Bernstein, University of California - Riverside
Phys.org
Mon, 02 Aug 2021 23:57 UTC
leafcutter bee
© David Rankin/UCRAn alfalfa leafcutter bee, the type used by UC Riverside scientists to study the effects of pesticide and water levels.
A new UC Riverside study shows that a type of insecticide made for commercial plant nurseries is harmful to a typical bee even when applied well below the label rate.

The study was published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Chemically similar to nicotine, neonicotinoids are insecticides that protect against plant-consuming insects like aphids, but seriously harm beneficial insects, like bees. They are widely used by commercial growers.


Comment: Fortunately for humans, nicotine delivered via tobacco smoking can actually be extremely beneficial.


Comment: Mainstream agricultural practices destroy soil health and in turn the ability that plants have to fight off predators. That we have to use pesticides at all shows how little we know about life on our planet and our inability to produce and manage abundance:

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Info

Giraffes have complex social systems says study


University of Bristol,
Tue, 03 Aug 2021 22:11 UTC
Scientists at the University of Bristol have discovered evidence that giraffes are a highly socially complex species.
Giraffes
© Zoe MullerA mother Rothschild's giraffe tending to her baby. The photo was taken in Soysambu Conservancy, in the Rift Valley region of Kenya. Giraffes are attentive mothers to their offspring, and all female adults in a group are invested in each others' offspring.
Traditionally, giraffes were thought to have little or no social structure, and only fleeting, weak relationships. However in the last ten years, research has shown that giraffe social organisation is much more advanced than once thought.

In a paper published in today in the journal Mammal Review, Zoe Muller, of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, has demonstrated that giraffes spend up to 30% of their lives in a post-reproductive state. This is comparable to other species with highly complex social structures and cooperative care, such as elephants and killer-whales which spend 23% and 35% of their lives in a post-reproductive state respectively. In these species, it has been demonstrated that the presence of post-menopausal females offers survival benefits for related offspring. In mammals - and -ncluding humans - this is known as the 'Grandmother hypothesis' which suggests that females live long past menopause so that they can help raise successive generations of offspring, thereby ensuring the preservation of their genes. Researchers propose that the presence of post-reproductive adult female giraffes could also function in the same way, and supports the author's assertion that giraffes are likely to engage in cooperative parenting, along matrilines, and contribute to the shared parental care of related kin.
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Better Earth

Sudden ocean oxygen spike coincided with Permian extinction, anoxia then followed

Florida State University
Phys.org
Mon, 02 Aug 2021 12:00 UTC
samples
© Stephen Bilenky / National High Magnetic Field LaboratoryRock samples are purified to test for thallium isotopes at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory.
Two hundred fifty-two million years ago, much of life on planet Earth was dying.

In an event that marked the end of the Permian period, more than 96 percent of the planet's marine species and 70 percent of its terrestrial life suddenly went extinct. It was the largest extinction in Earth's history.

Now Florida State University researchers have found that the extinction coincided with a sudden spike and subsequent drop in the ocean's oxygen content. Their findings were published in Nature Geoscience.

Comment: See also:

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Comet 2

Why is this weird, metallic, flashing star hurtling out of the Milky Way?

Boston University
Phys.org
Mon, 02 Aug 2021 12:00 UTC
cassiopea nova
© Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
About 2,000 light-years away from Earth, there is a star catapulting toward the edge of the Milky Way. This particular star, known as LP 40−365, is one of a unique breed of fast-moving stars — remnant pieces of massive white dwarf stars — that have survived in chunks after a gigantic stellar explosion.

"This star is moving so fast that it's almost certainly leaving the galaxy...[it's] moving almost two million miles an hour," says JJ Hermes, Boston University College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of astronomy. But why is this flying object speeding out of the Milky Way? Because it's a piece of shrapnel from a past explosion — a cosmic event known as a supernova — that's still being propelled forward.

"To have gone through partial detonation and still survive is very cool and unique, and it's only in the last few years that we've started to think this kind of star could exist," says Odelia Putterman, a former BU student who has worked in Hermes' lab.

Comment: Note that Plasma scientists conclude that our Sun is no a 'nuclear reactor' and instead, as Pierre Lescaudron explains in his book Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection:
From the observations listed above, it seems that celestial bodies are electrically powered by external electric sources in a cascading fashion. The intergalactic void powers the galaxies, aligns them and makes them spin. In turn, the galaxies align the stars, power them and make them spin. Finally the stars power the planets and make them spin.

If this hypothesis is correct, it means that stars - including our sun - do not 'run out of fuel' in the way that the mainstream solar hypotheses suggest.

So for our solar system, the Sun powers the planets - including Earth - and makes them spin. Notice also that all planets are located on the same plane (the plane of the ecliptic) in the same way most stars are located on the galactic plane.

In sum, the very same process seems to repeat at all different scales, like a fractal. A greater entity electrically powers a smaller one, while the latter powers an even smaller one. At every scale, we notice the presence of Birkeland currents crossing the space plasma, surrounding celestial bodies (galaxies, stars, and planets) and directing this aligning, orbiting and spinning cosmic ballet.
Star LP 40-365 is not the only space object observed to be periodically dimming and brightening recently, although the reasons for those linked below may, or may not, be the same:

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Chalkboard

Eternal change for no energy: A time crystal is finally made real

Natalie Wolchover
Quanta Magazine
Fri, 30 Jul 2021 20:41 UTC
google time crystal
© GoogleThe cryostat used to hold Google’s quantum processors.
Like a perpetual motion machine, a time crystal forever cycles between states without consuming energy. Physicists claim to have built this new phase of matter inside a quantum computer.

In a preprint posted online Thursday night, researchers at Google in collaboration with physicists at Stanford, Princeton and other universities say that they have used Google's quantum computer to demonstrate a genuine "time crystal." In addition, a separate research group claimed earlier this month to have created a time crystal in a diamond.

A novel phase of matter that physicists have strived to realize for many years, a time crystal is an object whose parts move in a regular, repeating cycle, sustaining this constant change without burning any energy.

Comment: SlashGear features a simpler, entertaining explanation for time crystals, while damping down some of the hype engendered by the name:



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Comet 2

New Comet C/2021 O3 (PANSTARRS)

Ernesto Guido
Remanzacco Blogspot
Mon, 02 Aug 2021 19:13 UTC
CBET xxxx & MPEC 2021-P05, issued on 2021, August 01, announce the discovery of a new comet (magnitude ~20) on CCD images taken on July 26.5 UT with the Pan-STARRS1 1.8-m Ritchey-Chretien reflector at Haleakala. The new comet has been designated C/2021 O3 (PANSTARRS).

Stacking of 15 unfiltered exposures, 240 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2021, July 30.3 from X02 (Telescope Live, Chile) through a 0.61-m f/6.5 astrograph + CCD, shows that this object is a comet with a compact coma about 8" arcsecond in diameter (Observers E. Guido, M. Rocchetto, E. Bryssinck, M. Fulle, G. Milani, C. Nassef, G. Savini, A. Valvasori).

Our confirmation image (click on the images for a bigger version; made with TYCHO software by D. Parrott)

Comet C/2021 O3 (PANSTARRS)
© Remanzacco Blogspot
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Mars

Strange intersecting sand dunes pictured on Mars

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Thu, 29 Jul 2021 12:00 UTC
mars dune polygon
In our exploration of Mars, we've seen some strange but naturally occurring shapes. Polygons - a shape with at least three straight sides and angles, typically with five or more - have been seen in several different Martian landscapes, and scientists say these shapes are of great interest because they often indicate the presence of shallow ice, or that water formerly was present in these areas.

For example, the Phoenix lander saw polygon shapes on the ground in the Mars arctic region, and these shapes were produced by seasonal expansion and contraction of ground ice. The HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has found large polygon-shaped ridges, and networks of giant polygonal troughs created by ancient lakes that have evaporated.

But HiRISE (the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) has also seen these odd shapes within dry, dusty sand dunes. In our lead image, these polygon-shaped sand dunes have an almost honeycomb-like appearance.

Comment: See also:

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