Science & TechnologyS


Blue Planet

Mother Nature's on top of climate change: Polar bears are mating with grizzlies to produce 'Pizzly Bears'

Ben Cost
New York Post
Wed, 14 Apr 2021 17:29 UTC
Pizzly Bear polar grizzly
© Arterra/Universal Images Group vUnlike its arctic relative, the Pizzly Bear is equipped to survive in a wider range of temperatures.
The Prius isn't the only environmentally conscious hybrid out there.

With climate change pushing polar bears toward the brink, nature has devised a new animal to help preserve the species — the Pizzly Bear.

First seen in the wild in 2006, this polar bear-grizzly hybrid "is more resilient to climate change and better suited for warmer temperatures," according to paleontologist Larisa DeSantis of Tennessee's Vanderbilt University. The carnivore tooth expert co-authored a study in how the diet of polar bears differed in a warming world.

Comment: OH, PUL-EEEZE! Can we just put the whole "polar bears on the brink" nonsense to bed?? The WWF has been making bank on that canard for far too long. Whatever is driving the hybridization of the two species, no doubt there's a good reason, if only opportunity. But it is arrogance in the extreme for humans to definitively pronounce on it. Mother Nature does know best.

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Cassiopaea

New Nova in Scorpius

Bob King
Sky & Telescope
Thu, 15 Apr 2021 19:17 UTC
With the recent discovery of Nova Scorpii 2021, three bright stellar explosions are now visible in small telescopes from dusk till dawn.

V1710 Scorpii
© Rob KaufmanThe new bright nova, V1710 Scorpii, glows conspicuously red in this photo taken on April 14, 2021. It's the third nova discovered in recent weeks that has reached 9th magnitude or brighter.
Wait a minute. Am I going to have to set the alarm and get up at 4 a.m.? Absolutely. And I'll do it without complaint. Not only are the recent novae in Cassiopeia and Sagittarius still bright at magnitudes at 8.1 and 9.9, respectively, but a brand new nova in Scorpius has just joined the scene. Add in Comet ATLAS (C/2020 R4), now at magnitude 9.5, and you know in your heart a dawn observing session is in your future.

Amateur astronomer Paul Camilleri of Northern Territory, Australia and the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) independently discovered the new object early on April 12th at visual magnitude 9.5. Formally named V1710 Scorpii, it brightened quickly to 8.5 before fading slightly, now simmering around 9.5 as of early April 15th. Oscillations like these are common, so the nova might continue to fade or re-brighten just as suddenly.

In an email, Camilleri shared a happy coincidence: "Interestingly, this discovery is my 10th nova, and it was found 30 years to the day of my first discovery in April 1991 and a few days short of my last discovery (April 14, 1993) some 28 years ago."
Nova Scorpii 2021
© Paul CamillariThis is Paul Camilleri's discovery image taken on April 12.7625 UT with a Nikon D3200 DSLR and 85mm f/2 lens. The exposure was five seconds at ISO 6400. Since it was made on a tripod without a tracking mount, the stars are slightly trailed.
He noted that the nova had an orange color on his photos, likely caused by emission from ionized hydrogen in the thin, expanding shell of gases ejected during the explosion. Spectra indicate that the object is a classical nova, meaning this is its first recorded eruption, and it belongs to the Fe II class, where prominent emission lines of ionized iron stand out in its spectrum.
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Meteor

A small asteroid just gave Earth and some satellites a very close pass

Eric Mack
CNET
Mon, 12 Apr 2021 23:55 UTC
astéroide
A small space rock about the size of a car or truck made a slightly intrusive but not very intimidating flyby on Monday.

Asteroid 2021 GW4 came within 12,324 miles (19,833 kilometers) of the surface of Earth at its closest point of approach Monday morning Pacific time, according to Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell.

That puts the asteroid well inside the ring where many large artificial satellites orbit Earth at an altitude of 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers).

"Fortunately space is still rather empty at these altitudes," McDowell wrote on Twitter.

He estimated that the nearest functioning satellite to the asteroid's path was a military GPS satellite about 1,243 miles (2,000 kilometers) away.

NASA estimates the asteroid's diameter at between 11 and 25 feet (3.5 and 7.7 meters). That's small enough that the entire thing would likely burn up if it collided with our atmosphere.

Comment: Record number of asteroids observed flying past Earth in 2020 - Despite lockdowns interrupting surveys

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Comet 2

Ancient impactor that created the Moon may still be inside Earth

Anna Funk
Astronomy
Wed, 14 Apr 2021 19:02 UTC
Theia
© Jurik Peter/Shutterstock
Researchers are fairly certain that we gained our favorite satellite, the Moon, after a planet, Theia, collided with the proto-Earth 4.5 billion years ago. What's not certain are the details surrounding Theia's fate. Was it a hit-and-run, or did the mantles of the two planets merge?

Qian Yuan, Earth scientist at Arizona State University, and his colleagues recently suggested a new line of evidence to support the latter hypothesis, suggesting that Theia not only merged with Earth, but we might know right where the remnants of its mantle reside in Earth.

Giant impact hypothesis

"Compared to the Moon, there is much less [known] about Theia," says Yuan. "The Moon is there. You have samples. People have been there ... few people care too much about the impactor."

A lot of the work around the giant impact hypothesis involves comparing isotopes found on the Moon with those found on Earth. Their similarities in composition suggest that the Moon is made of a hunk of ancient Earth, meaning something like a giant impact knocked it off our Pale Blue Dot.

Original models estimated that the impactor, Theia, was about the size of Mars (half the size of Earth today). Though, some recent studies suggest it might've been more like four times the size of Mars, or roughly the size of the proto-Earth. Either way, most researchers agree that the core — the densest part — of Theia merged with the core of Earth incredibly quickly after the impact, in a matter of hours.
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Info

Researchers want to talk to spiders

Isaac Schultz
Gizmodo
Tue, 13 Apr 2021 19:20 UTC
Spider Web
© UWE ZUCCHI/DPA/AFP via Getty Images (Getty Images)Spiders read their environment by sensing vibrations with their hairy legs.
If you think working from home is hard, consider the spider, who lives at work in a house it built. Arachnids use their intricate webs to trap meals, navigating across the structure using the vibrations it senses through the hairs on its legs.

Today, a team of researchers at MIT report that they've translated those vibrations into musical tones. What's more, they raise the prospect of someday communicating with spiders, using their vibrational world as a medium for language.

The team presented their research today during the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society. To figure out the sounds of a spider web, they hosted a spider in their lab and laser-scanned the web it constructed in two-dimensional cross-sections.

"Spiders live in this vibrational universe... they live in this world of vibrations and frequencies, which we can now access," said paper co-author Markus Buehler, a materials scientist at MIT, in a phone call. "One of the things we can do with this instrument with this approach is we can, for the first time, begin to feel a little bit like a spider or experience the world like the spider does."
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Mars

NASA releases stunningly enhanced image of Mars

NASA
SciTechDaily
Mon, 12 Apr 2021 00:00 UTC
Mars surface dunes
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASUImage shows Mars' northern polar cap
A sea of dark dunes, sculpted by the wind into long lines, surrounds Mars' northern polar cap and covers an area as big as Texas. In this false-color image, areas with cooler temperatures are recorded in bluer tints, while warmer features are depicted in yellows and oranges. Thus, the dark, sun-warmed dunes glow with a golden color. This image covers an area 19 miles (30 kilometers) wide.

This scene combines images taken during the period from December 2002 to November 2004 by the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on the Mars Odyssey orbiter. It is part of a special set of images marking the 20th anniversary of Odyssey, the longest-working Mars spacecraft in history. The pictured location on Mars is 80.3 degrees north latitude, 172.1 degrees east longitude.
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Bug

Billions of Cicadas to invade District of Columbia after 17 years underground

Michelle Stoddart
ABC News
Mon, 12 Apr 2021 14:44 UTC
cicada
© STOCK IMAGE/Joseph Squillante/Getty ImagesA cicada climbs on a tree trunk in an undated stock image.
Entomologist Eric Day says the insects could create a "substantial noise issue" in some communities.

In April 2004, "Mean Girls" was playing in theaters and "Yeah!" by Usher was topping the Billboard music charts.

At the same time, around the mid-Atlantic region, small holes in the ground were opening up from which billions of bulky, red-eyed, winged insects would emerge, readying for a bacchanal of singing and mating -- and reminding humans of a horror movie.

Comment: See also:

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Info

Living fossil discovered below Earth's surface say researchers

Lauren Fuge
Cosmos Magazine
Mon, 12 Apr 2021 02:13 UTC
Death Valley Drilling
© Duane Moser, Desert Research InstituteEquipment for subsurface sampling of microbes in Death Valley, California. New research led by Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences has revealed that a group of microbes, Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator, have been at an evolutionary standstill for millions of years.
A microbe that feeds on radioactivity has been at an evolutionary standstill for up to 175 million years, researchers say.

First discovered three kilometres down a South African gold mine, the microbe (Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator) lives in water-filled pockets inside rocks far below the surface, feeding off the energy created in chemical reactions caused by natural radioactivity in minerals.

The research team, led by the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in the US, set out to understand how this microbe evolves in isolation. They discovered other populations in Siberia and California: two very different environments that the team expected would lead to clear differences between the populations as they adapted to their surroundings.

"We thought of the microbes as though they were inhabitants of isolated islands, like the finches that Darwin studied in the Galapagos," says co-author Ramunas Stepanauskas from Bigelow.

But when they examined the genomes of 126 microbes from three different continents, they were almost identical.

The researcher ruled out cross-contamination, and found no evidence that the microbes could have travelled long distances, seeing as they are unlikely to last in the presence of oxygen or survive on the surface.
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People 2

Male animal brains show a chaotic aging process compared to females

Sophie Putka
Inverse
Thu, 08 Apr 2021 23:00 UTC
male female
© Getty / VICTOR HABBICK VISIONS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
New images of tangled, twisty blood vessels in the brains of elderly mice move us one step closer to unraveling the mysteries of the brain.

Front-and-center are two major questions: What happens to the brain when it ages? And do male and female brains age differently?

A study released Thursday in Stem Cell Reports focused on the brains of aging male and female mice. Blood vessels in male mouse brains, as opposed to female ones, showed more detrimental changes. The female brains seemed to have comparative protection.

These changes in brain blood vessels suggest potential differences in the way human male and female human brains age. Men, the study suggests, might have it worse.

Comment: Despite the ongoing corruption of the sciences by woke ideologies, studies continue to reveal how understanding the differences between the two genders can be of critical importance:

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Bullseye

Current climate model simulations are overestimating future sea-level rise


PhysOrg
Sun, 11 Apr 2021 18:24 UTC
oceani
© Morgan RavenThe research team lowers a particle collection device into waters off the coast of Manzanillo, Mexico.
The melting rate of the Antarctic ice sheet is mainly controlled by the increase of ocean temperatures surrounding Antarctica. Using a new, higher-resolution climate model simulation, scientists from Utrecht University found a much slower ocean temperature increase compared to current simulations with a coarser resolution. Consequently, the projected sea-level rise in 100 years is about 25% lower than expected from the current simulations. These results are published today in the journal Science Advances.

Estimates for future sea-level rise are based on a large ensemble of climate model simulations. The output from these simulations helps to understand future climate change and its effects on the sea level. Climate researchers continually aim to improve these models, for example by using a much higher spatial resolution that takes more details into account. "High-resolution simulations can determine the ocean circulation much more accurately," says Prof. Henk Dijkstra. Together with his Ph.D. candidate René van Westen, he has been studying ocean currents in high-resolution climate model simulations over the past few years.

Comment: They are only confirming what researchers on the margins have been saying for years.

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