Science & TechnologyS


Galaxy

Earth's outer shell ballooned during massive growth spurt 3 billion years ago

Harry Baker
Live Science
Fri, 22 Jan 2021 12:24 UTC
Earth core
© ShutterstockThe Earth's crust, mantle, outer core and inner core
Around 3 billion years ago, Earth's crust ballooned during a massive growth spurt, geoscientists have found.

At that time, just 1.5 billion years after Earth formed, the mantle — the layer of silicate rock between the crust and the outer core that was more active in the past — heated up, causing magma from that layer to ooze into fragments of older crust above it. Those fragments acted as "seeds" for the growth of modern-day continents.

The researchers found evidence for this growth spurt hiding in ancient zircon crystals in stream sediments in Greenland. These extremely durable crystals — made up of zirconium silicate — formed during the growth spurt around 3 billion years ago.

"There have probably been multiple crust-forming events in the Earth's history," lead researcher Chris Kirkland, a professor of geoscience at Curtin University in Australia, told Live Science. "But this global injection event 3 billion years ago is definitely one of the biggest."

Comment: See also:

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Info

Saturn's tilt angle is changing due to its moons

Stephen Luntz
IFL Science
Thu, 21 Jan 2021 17:54 UTC
Saturn and Aurora
© NASA, ESA, J.Clark (Boston University) and Z. Levay (STSCI)FILE PHOTO: Saturn's increasing obliquity means we are sometimes getting a better view of both the rings and the auroras at it's pole than we would if it were more upright.
You know that feeling where your balance isn't quite right and you find yourself falling over very slowly, but with seemingly no power to stop? Saturn knows it too - or would if only it was a sentient being. Saturn's fall from uprightness is taking hundreds of millions of years, some scientists conclude, laying the blame on its moons.

The gas from which the planets formed swirled in the plane of their orbits. Without anything to change them, each should point straight up at right angles to their path around the Sun. The reality is messier. The angle between a planet's equator and its orbital plane is called its obliquity. Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter behave as expected, with obliquity values of just a few degrees, making their seasons almost undetectable. Mars and Neptune have values a little greater than the Earth's 23.4º, while Uranus has flopped over entirely and is rotating sideways, and a little backward, its obliquity an improbable 98 degrees.

The reasons for each tilt are as individual as the planets themselves, and sometimes all is not as it seems. Saturn's obliquity of 26.7º - neatly fitting between Mars and Neptune - isn't unusual, but still requires an explanation. Most astronomers believe the cause lies more than four billion years ago when the Solar System was young and resonance with Neptune's orbit tilted Saturn over. Dr Melaine Saillenfest of Sorbonne Université has challenged that, arguing it's actually happening before our eyes.
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Rose

Honeybee microbes shape colony's social behaviour

Max Kozlov
The Scientist
Fri, 01 Jan 2021 12:00 UTC
bee hive
© YEHUDA BEN-SHAHARRecent research shows that the insect’s microbial community is central to protecting the hive from invaders—both big and small.
As summer fades to fall, flowers wilt and forager honeybees scouring for nectar may find their sweet snack to be scarce. Typically, foragers continue to search around for some last drops of nectar before winter, but if a ravenous colony is desperate enough, it may resolve to a more dire tactic — to storm a foreign beehive and rob it of its honey.

For the targeted hive, the attack can spell disaster — bees may be killed trying to defend the colony's food, while the honey theft leaves the colony at risk of starvation over the winter. Colonies try to prevent these invasions by stationing guard bees outside the hive to monitor the thousands of bees entering and exiting the hive. Guard bees use the smell of other bees' cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs), compounds that form a waxy, water-resistant layer coating diverse insect species, to identify individuals that try to infiltrate from different colonies. Differences in CHC composition were thought to depend on genetics, but researchers have shown that day-old bees can be integrated into a foreign hive with few cases of rejection.

Comment: Studies of the human microbiome are revealing similar findings: For more fascinating finds on bees:

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Meteor

Statue of Liberty-sized space rock among six asteroids set to make 'close approach' to Earth on Biden's inauguration day


RT
Tue, 19 Jan 2021 11:05 UTC
Six asteroids will greet Joe Biden taking the oath of office
© Marcelo Celo/ Pixabay; inset: Reuters/ Joshua RobertsSix asteroids will greet Joe Biden taking the oath of office.
Joe Biden's reign as US president is due to get off to a rocky start - a barrage of asteroids are set to make "close approaches" to our planet as the Democrat takes the oath of office on Wednesday.

NASA has identified six asteroids that will blaze past Earth on inauguration day. The space agency labelled the plethora of space rocks as Near Earth Objects (NEOs), meaning they warrant close scrutiny.

"NEOs are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth's neighbourhood," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says.

The tightest shave will see an asteroid come significantly closer to Earth than the Moon, the largest passing visitor measuring up to 305 feet (93 meters) in width. In a weird inauguration-day quirk of fate, the Statue of Liberty in New York is also 93 meters tall.
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Comet 2

Newly found Comet Leonard might become 2021's brightest

Jamie Carter
Forbes
Wed, 13 Jan 2021 11:03 UTC
Comet Leonard
© Filipp RomanovThis is what a comet looks like – just a dot to our eyes – when it’s far from the sun. Astronomers spotted Comet Leonard (inside the tick marks) in early January 2021, a year before its closest sweep past our sun. The comet might be visible to the unaided eye by the end of this year.
Hot on the heels of last summer's Comet NEOWISE it's looking like the northern hemisphere might just get another bright comet in 2021.

Discovered last week, new images of Comet Leonard appear to show the dusty visitor to the Solar System already has a bright nucleus and a tail.

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HAL9000

No stopping AI? Scientists conclude there would be no way to control super-intelligent machines

Chris Melore
Study Finds
Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:00 UTC
artificial intelligence
© Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
From self-driving cars to computers that can win game shows, humans have a natural curiosity and interest in artificial intelligence (AI). As scientists continue making machines smarter and smarter however, some are asking "what happens when computers get too smart for their own good?" From "The Matrix" to "The Terminator," the entertainment industry has already started pondering if future robots will one day threaten the human race. Now, a new study concludes there may be no way to stop the rise of machines. An international team says humans would not be able to prevent super artificial intelligence from doing whatever it wanted to.

Scientists from the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute have started to picture what such a machine would look like. Imagine an AI program with an intelligence far superior to humans. So much so that it could learn on its own without new programming. If it was connected to the internet, researchers say the AI would have access to all of humanity's data and could even take control of other machines around the globe.

Study authors ask what would such an intelligence do with all that power? Would it work to make all of our lives better? Would it devote its processing power to fixing issues like climate change? Or, would the machine look to take over the lives of its human neighbors?
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Network

The quantum leap forward: On birthing the world's fastest, most advanced internet network, China claims supremacy over the US

Brian McGleenon,
RT
Thu, 14 Jan 2021 00:00 UTC
High Speed Internet network
© Pixabay
Beijing's new quantum computer can solve mathematical problems in 200 seconds that it would take current supercomputers millions of years to solve - and the network around it will revolutionise how we live and work.

China achieved "quantum supremacy" with the development of its Jiuzhang quantum computer, which last month surpassed Google's Sycamore quantum device with its ability to calculate 100 trillion times faster than the fastest classical supercomputer.

The development sent shock waves around the world. But before this news could be fully digested by rival players in the quantum race, Beijing announced it had also built the world's first fully integrated quantum network. Earlier this month, a network of satellite relays and fiber optic cables between Shanghai and Beijing was able to "teleport" huge amounts of data.

Comment: See also:

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Network

Shocking discovery: Electric eels hunt in packs in Amazon rivers

Sofia Moutinho
Science Magazine
Thu, 14 Jan 2021 12:00 UTC
Electric eel
© YoutubeElectric eel

When darkness comes, electric eels emerge from South American river bottoms to attack their prey with up to 860 volts of electricity — enough to kill a person. Now, scientists have revealed the snakelike fish don't always go it alone: They hunt in packs, similar to wolves, orcas, and some species of tuna. The finding, a first among electric fishes, may open the way for new studies to investigate when social predation evolved among fishes.

"I was shocked," says Douglas Bastos, a biologist at the National Institute of Amazonian Research who first saw a group attack in 2012. Usually the eels, which can grow as long as a broomstick and weigh up to 20 kilograms, prey alone at night, targeting single resting fishes, he notes. "This behavior is unprecedented for electrical eels and also rare among freshwater fishes."

Comment: In recent years science has come to discover that there is cross-species hunting cooperation, so, whilst this is an interesting find, some of the comments in the article above also reveal just how limiting the scientific perspective can be sometimes; and particularly that shaped by Darwinian theory: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Sherlock

NASA fails test of mega Moon rocket, unknown issue causes engines to shut down prematurely


Phys.org
Sun, 17 Jan 2021 12:00 UTC
Artemis
NASA said the 'hot-fire' test of the RS-25 engines that will power the Artemis lunar missions shut down prematurely
NASA said the 'hot-fire' test of the RS-25 engines that will power the Artemis lunar missions shut down prematurely

NASA conducted a test firing of the engines for its giant Space Launch System (SLS) lunar rocket on Saturday but they shut down earlier than planned, the space agency said.

The "hot-fire" test at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi was supposed to last a little over eight minutes — the time the engines would burn in flight — but they shut down just over a minute into the burn.

Comment: See also:

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Galaxy

Energy from solar wind favors the north, surprising scientists


The European Space Agency
Tue, 12 Jan 2021 12:00 UTC
satellite aurora
© SwarmSwarm is ESA’s first constellation of Earth observation satellites designed to measure the magnetic signals from Earth’s core, mantle, crust, oceans, ionosphere and magnetosphere, providing data that will allow scientists to study the complexities of our protective magnetic field.
Using information from ESA's Swarm satellite constellation, scientists have made a discovery about how energy generated by electrically-charged particles in the solar wind flows into Earth's atmosphere - surprisingly, more of it heads towards the magnetic north pole than towards the magnetic south pole.

The Sun bathes our planet with the light and heat to sustain life, but it also bombards us with dangerous charged particles in the solar wind. These charged particles have the potential to damage communication networks, navigations systems such as GPS and satellites. Severe solar storms can even cause power outages, such as the major blackout that Quebec in Canada suffered in 1989.

Our magnetic field largely shields us from this onslaught.


Comment: As we enter solar minimum, Earth's magnetic field is weakening, so we can expect any solar storms to have much more of an impact. And research suggests that they may be more common than is often believed: A warning from history: The Carrington event was not unique


Comment: Clues for why this occurs may be found in electric universe theory: And check out SOTT radio's:

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