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'Dance of roots' reveal by time-lapse footage

Robin A.Smith, Veronique Koch
Duke University
Fri, 19 Feb 2021 16:29 UTC
Roots of a Tree
© The Tree Center
Durham, N.C. -- Duke researchers have been studying something that happens too slowly for our eyes to see. A team in biologist Philip Benfey's lab wanted to see how plant roots burrow into the soil. So they set up a camera on rice seeds sprouting in clear gel, taking a new picture every 15 minutes for several days after germination.

When they played their footage back at 15 frames per second, compressing 100 hours of growth into less than a minute, they saw that rice roots use a trick to gain their first foothold in the soil: their growing tips make corkscrew-like motions, waggling and winding in a helical path.

By using their time-lapse footage, along with a root-like robot to test ideas, the researchers gained new insights into how and why plant root tips twirl as they grow.

The first clue came from something else the team noticed: some roots can't do the corkscrew dance. The culprit, they found, is a mutation in a gene called HK1 that makes them grow straight down, instead of circling and meandering like other roots do.

The team also noted that the mutant roots grew twice as deep as normal ones. Which raised a question: "What does the more typical spiraling tip growth do for the plant?" said Isaiah Taylor, a postdoctoral associate in Benfey's lab at Duke.
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Camera

Wildlife photographer captures 'never before seen' yellow penguin

Michael Zhang
PetaPixel
Thu, 18 Feb 2021 00:00 UTC
Yellow penguin
© Yves Adams/Kennedy NewsFirst ever seen yellow penguin
A wildlife photographer has shared a once-in-a-lifetime photo of what he believes is a "never before seen" yellow penguin.

Belgian landscape and wildlife photographer Yves Adams was leading a two-month photo exhibition in the South Atlantic in December 2019 when the group made a stop on an island in South Georgia to photograph a colony of over 120,000 king penguins. While unloading some safety equipment and food onto Salisbury Plain, Adams noticed an unusual sight he had never seen before: a penguin with bright yellow plumage.

"I'd never seen or heard of a yellow penguin before," the photographer tells Kennedy News. "There were 120,000 birds on that beach and this was the only yellow one there."
Yellow and regular penguin
© Yves Adams/Kennedy NewsRare yellow penguin stands next to a 'normal' black king penguin.
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Meteor

NASA warns of stadium-sized asteroid headed towards Earth


RT
Sun, 21 Feb 2021 17:25 UTC
Asteroid illustration
© UKT2 from PixabayIllustration
The US space agency is warning of a salvo of space rocks headed for Earth, ranging in size from a paltry 10 meters in diameter all the way up to a positively petrifying 213.

When not keeping a close eye on its Perseverance rover, which touched down on Mars this week, NASA is busy monitoring the sky for potential threats to life on Earth - namely asteroids. And this week is no exception, as five such space rocks are due to buzz the planet we call home.

On Sunday, the 10-meter asteroid 2021 DD1 and the 61-meter asteroid 2021 DK1 will shoot past Earth at a safe distance of 1.6 million kilometers and six million kilometers, respectively.

However, they are just the warm-up act for what NASA describes as the "stadium-sized" asteroid 2020 XU6, which measures some 213 meters in diameter. To put that into perspective, it's twice as tall as London's Big Ben and two and a half times as tall as the Statue of Liberty.
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Galaxy

First black hole ever detected is 50% more massive than we thought

International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research
Phys.org
Thu, 18 Feb 2021 12:00 UTC
Cygnus
© International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research.An artist's impression of the Cygnus X-1 system. A stellar-mass black hole orbits with a companion star located 7,200 light years from Earth.
New observations of the first black hole ever detected have led astronomers to question what they know about the Universe's most mysterious objects.

Published today in the journal Science, the research shows the system known as Cygnus X-1 contains the most massive stellar-mass black hole ever detected without the use of gravitational waves.

Cygnus X-1 is one of the closest black holes to Earth. It was discovered in 1964 when a pair of Geiger counters were carried on board a sub-orbital rocket launched from New Mexico.

Comment: Notably, it was also recently discovered that Betelgeuse, the tenth-brightest star in the night sky, is neither as far nor as large as was once thought.

See also:

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Better Earth

End of Neanderthals linked to flip of Earth's magnetic poles, study suggests

Nicola Davis
The Guardian
Thu, 18 Feb 2021 14:00 UTC
Magnetic field changes
© Elen11/Getty Images
The flipping of the Earth's magnetic poles together with a drop in solar activity 42,000 years ago could have generated an apocalyptic environment that may have played a role in a major events ranging from the extinction of megafauna to the end of the Neanderthals, researchers say.

The Earth's magnetic field acts as a protective shield against damaging cosmic radiation, but when the poles switch, as has occurred many times in the past, the protective shield weakens dramatically and leaves the planet exposed to high energy particles.

One temporary flip of the poles, known as the Laschamps excursion, happened 42,000 years ago and lasted for about 1,000 years. Previous work found little evidence that the event had a profound impact on the planet, possibly because the focus had not been on the period during which the poles were actually shifting, researchers say.

Now scientists say the flip, together with a period of low solar activity, could have been behind a vast array of climatic and environmental phenomena with dramatic ramifications. "It probably would have seemed like the end of days," said Prof Chris Turney of the University of New South Wales and co-author of the study.


Comment: See also:

First Australian evidence of a major shift in Earth's magnetic poles discovered

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Bulb

Adapt 2030: Questions they don't want you to ask about the global power outages


Adapt 2030
Thu, 18 Feb 2021 22:15 UTC
Tesla towers
© YouTube/Adapt 2030 (screen capture)
The conversation rages on about renewables vs fossil fuels during power outages in both the E.U and the USA. That's the distraction, that's where powers that be want the conversation to stay, not magnetic motors and decentralized electrical production with no power provider to pay monthly. Tesla Towers, Tesla Oscillators and Magnetic Motors are never discussed as solutions for indoor agriculture, until now. Lets talk.


Comment: See also:

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Bizarro Earth

Implications of an unusual Ocean anomaly being detected in the Gulf Stream, and weakening of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

Andrej Flis
Severe Weather Europe
Sun, 14 Feb 2021 00:01 UTC
Gulf stream winter
Areas of the global oceans warm and cool constantly. But recently, an unusually strong anomaly developed in the Gulf Stream. Weather in the United States and Europe depends a lot on this ocean current, so it's important we understand the full story and meaning of this strong anomaly.

Oceans have a crucial role in the weather and climate of the world, so every unusual anomaly is taken seriously. As you will soon learn, the Gulf Stream is a part of something much bigger and more powerful, so an anomaly in the Gulf Stream can be (and likely is) a sign of something much larger in the works.

WHAT IS THE GULF STREAM?

But first, we of course need to quickly recap what exactly is the Gulf Stream and where can we find it?

The Gulf Stream is a strong ocean current that brings warmer water up from the Gulf of Mexico into the Atlantic Ocean. It extends all the way up the eastern coast of the United States, where it starts to turn towards northwest Europe.

The image below shows a rough outline of the Gulf stream and where it flows across the North Atlantic. In reality, it does not flow in a straight line, but as you will see, it is very complex and full of swirls.

Gulf Stream

Comment: We've been observing and publishing analysis of changes in the Gulf Stream for years - precisely because of some its possible dramatactic knock-on effects, as described in the article above. Is a 'tipping point' of sorts imminent?

See also:

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Comet 2

Spacerock crashing into Jupiter registered by Juno's instruments

Andy Tomaswick
Universe Today
Wed, 17 Feb 2021 12:00 UTC
jupiter
Timing is extraordinarily important in many aspects of astronomy. If an astronomer or their instrument is looking the wrong way at the wrong time they could miss something spectacular. Alternatively, there are moments when our instruments capture something unexpected in regions of space that we were searching for something else. That is exactly what happened recently when a team of scientists, led by Rohini Giles at the Southwest Research Institute, saw an image of what is likely a meteor impacting Jupiter's atmosphere.

The team collects data from the UVS, one of the instruments on Juno, NASA's mission tasked with studying the largest solar system planet up close. UVS is Juno's ultraviolet spectrograph, which collects data in the ultraviolet spectra from 68-210 nm. It's primary mission is to study Jupiter's atmosphere and watch for its breathtaking auroras.

Comment: It's possible that, like on Earth, Jupiter is encountering many more spacerocks at the moment: See also:

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Info

Mutated gene provides superior resilience to cold says study


Karolinska Institutet
Wed, 17 Feb 2021 17:00 UTC
Cold Adaptation
© Getty Images
Almost one in five people lacks the protein α-actinin-3 in their muscle fibre. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet now show that more of the skeletal muscle of these individuals comprises slow-twitch muscle fibres, which are more durable and energy-efficient and provide better tolerance to low temperatures than fast-twitch muscle fibres. The results are published in The American Journal of Human Genetics.

Skeletal muscle comprises fast-twitch (white) fibres that fatigue quickly and slow-twitch (red) fibres that are more resistant to fatigue. The protein α-actinin-3, which is found only in fast-twitch fibres, is absent in almost 20 per cent of people - almost 1.5 billion individuals - due to a mutation in the gene that codes for it. In evolutionary terms, the presence of the mutated gene increased when humans migrated from Africa to the colder climates of central and northern Europe.
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Blue Planet

Million-year-old mammoth genomes shatter record for oldest ancient DNA, new species identified

Ewen Callaway
Nature
Wed, 17 Feb 2021 12:00 UTC
mammoth
© Beth Zaiken/Centre for PalaeogeneticsAncient DNA retrieved from different mammoth species is illuminating a complex evolutionary picture.
The million-year-old genome is here. Mammoth teeth preserved in eastern Siberian permafrost have produced the oldest ancient DNA on record, pushing the technology close to — but perhaps not past — its limits.

Genomic DNA extracted from a trio of tooth specimens excavated in the 1970s has identified a new kind of mammoth that gave rise to a later North American species. The findings were published in Nature on 17 February1.

"I love the paper. I've been waiting for that paper for, what, eight years now," says Ludovic Orlando, an ancient-DNA specialist at the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse in France, who co-led a 2013 effort that sequenced the previous oldest ancient DNA — a genome from a 560,000-to-780,000-year-old horse leg bone2. "I'm pleased to lose this record, because it was a heavy one," he says.

Comment: See also: Also check out SOTT radio's:

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