Science & TechnologyS


Shamrock

Beautiful new emerald-green mineral discovered in rock sample from mine in Cornwall

Josh Davis
Natural History Museum
Fri, 11 Dec 2020 12:00 UTC
kernowite
© The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, LondonThe new mineral has been named kernowite, after the Cornish word for Cornwall
Known from just a single location, a new species of mineral has been described from the UK.

A sample of rock that was collected from a mine in Cornwall some 220 years ago has turned out to be an entirely new species of mineral.

While most new minerals are so small that their colour isn't easy to appreciate, this latest addition forms large emerald-green crystals.

Mike Rumsey is the Principal Curator of Minerals at the Museum and is the one who initiated the investigation and subsequently discovered the new mineral with colleagues at the NHM and collaborators from Slovakia and the Diamond Lightsource in Harwell, Oxford.

'I was investigating a mineral called liroconite so we could curate it properly, but also because it's my favourite mineral!' explains Mike. 'Liroconite is this beautiful, gorgeous bright blue mineral that comes from Cornwall and I was trying to understand why its colour varies from bright teal-blue all the way to a dark emerald green.

Comment: See also:

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Comet 2

Samples of asteroid Ryugu 'chips like charcoal', Japanese mission finds

Mari Yamaguchi
Phys.org
Thu, 24 Dec 2020 12:00 UTC
ryugu
© JAXA via APThis photo provided Thursday, Dec. 24, 2020, by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), shows soil samples, seen inside the A compartment of the capsule brought back by Hayabusa2, in Sagamihara, near Tokyo. Japanese space officials said Thursday they found more asteroid soil samples collected and brought back from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft, in addition to black sandy granules they found last week, raising their hopes of finding clues to the origins of the solar system.
They resemble small fragments of charcoal, but the soil samples collected from an asteroid and returned to Earth by a Japanese spacecraft were hardly disappointing.

The samples Japanese space officials described Thursday are as big as 1 centimeter (0.4 inch) and rock hard, not breaking when picked up or poured into another container. Smaller black, sandy granules the spacecraft collected and returned separately were described last week.

The Hayabusa2 spacecraft got the two sets of samples last year from two locations on the asteroid Ryugu, more than 300 million kilometers (190 million miles) from Earth. It dropped them from space onto a target in the Australian Outback, and the samples were brought to Japan in early December.

Comment: See also:

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Blue Planet

New fossil suggests pythons originated in Europe 48 million years ago

Enrico de Lazaro
Sci News
Fri, 18 Dec 2020 12:00 UTC
Messelopython
© Senckenberg Research InstituteMesselopython freyi.
A new genus and species of medium-sized python that lived during the early-middle Eocene period has been identified from several nearly complete skeletons and partial skulls found in Germany.

The newly-identified python species lived in what is now Germany, approximately 47.6 million years ago (Eocene period).

Named Messelopython freyi, the ancient snake is the earliest-known member of the superfamily Pythonoidea.

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

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Meteor

Mysterious asteroid the size of a dwarf planet is lurking in our solar system

Rafi Letzter
Live Science
Sat, 26 Dec 2020 14:50 UTC
This false-color microscope image of a meteorite sample collected in Sudan
© NASA/USRA/Lunar and Planetary InstituteThis false-color microscope image of a meteorite sample collected in Sudan shows amphibole crystals, a unique feature, highlighted in orange.
There's a giant asteroid somewhere out in the solar system, and it hurled a big rock at Earth.

The evidence for this mystery space rock comes from a diamond-studded meteor that exploded over Sudan in 2008.

NASA had spotted the 9-ton (8,200 kilograms), 13-foot (4 meters) meteor heading toward the planet well before impact, and researchers showed up in the Sudanese desert to collect an unusually rich haul of remains. Now, a new study of one of those meteorites suggests that the meteor may have broken off of a giant asteroid — one more or less the size of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt.

Like about 4.6% of meteorites on Earth, this one — known as Almahata Sitta (AhS) — is made of a material known as carbonaceous chondrite. These black rocks contain organic compounds as well as a variety of minerals and water.

The mineral makeup of these space rocks offers clues about the "parent asteroid" that birthed a given meteor, researchers said in a statement.
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Blue Planet

NASA: Recent "Greening Earth" has had strong cooling effect on land

Kassie Perlongo
NASA
Sat, 26 Dec 2020 10:30 UTC
forest
A new study reports that increased vegetation growth during the recent decades, known as the "Greening Earth", has a strong cooling effect on the land due to increased efficiency of heat and water vapor transfer to the atmosphere.

A new study published in the journal Science Advances titled "Biophysical impacts of Earth greening largely controlled by aerodynamic resistance" reports that the entire land surface would have been much warmer without the cooling effect of increased green cover during the recent decades. The study used high-quality satellite data from NASA's MODIS sensors and NCAR's state-of-the-art numerical earth system model.

Comment: It is indeed a complex issue and, contrary to the articles claims of 'global warming, there is evidently more to Earth's overall climate than just an increase in vegetation, with one significant driver being solar activity.

In his book Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection, Pierre Lescaudron writes:
Climate change propaganda aside, it's clear that by the end of the 20th Century, the
'warming' data that global warming climatologists had been using to advance their
thesis had given way to lower average temperatures, and that this cooling (like the
warming that preceded it) is not of human but cosmic origin.

If, as claimed by proponents of anthropogenic global warming, human carbon dioxide emissions are the main cause of recent warming on Earth, how could that explain why other planets in our solar system
have been warming too? Over the last 50 years or so, Earth's average temperature has, by
some accounts, risen about one degree. During this same time period, global warming has
been observed on Mars, Neptune, and Pluto. Is this just coincidence?

[...]

For years now, the mainstream media has fiercely supported the man-made warming
dogma while clear evidence of global cooling has been piling up. Despite 10 years of
denial, independent scientists have persuaded many to acknowledge the global cooling
that began at the turn of the century. The Space and Science Research Center, an
independent US climate research company, forecasts a future climate scenario quite
different from that predicted by the IPCC:
The Space and Science Research Center (SSRC) announces today that the most
recent global temperature data through January 31, 2011 using NASA and NOAA
weather satellites supports the previous forecast from the SSRC that a historic
drop in global temperatures is under way and that the previously predicted
climate change to one of a long and deep global cooling era has begun.
SSRC Director John L. Casey explains, 'Based on the data from the AMSR-E
instrument on board the NASA Aqua satellite, sea surface temperatures just
posted this week showed their steepest decline since the satellite was made
operational in 2002.

This major drop from the warm temperature levels seen in
2010 is also echoed by a dramatic decline in atmospheric temperatures in the
lower troposphere, where we live, with the data coming from NOAA satellites. At
present rates of descent, both ocean and atmospheric temperatures are likely to
soon surpass the temperature lows set in the 2007-2008 period. Even with a small
correction that is usually seen after such a rapid drop, there is no doubt that the
Earth is entering a prolonged global cooling period and will soon set another
record drop in temperatures by the November-December 2012 time frame as
was forecast in the SSRC press release from May 10, 2010.' 401
Causes

As demonstrated above the Sun has been unusually quiet for several years. The Sun rises
every morning and, sure enough, every evening it sets. However, solar activity fluctuates
along with the temperature of our planet:

solar land temps
© NOAASunspot number vs. average temperature over a 10,000-year span.
The above only shows a correlation between solar activity (sunspot number) and Earth's
surface temperature. Further down, we will explain how reduced solar activity (and also
increase in atmospheric cometary dust) causes Earth's global cooling. [...]
And so it would appear that following a warming period, as has been the case throughout Earth's history, a significant cooling era has begun. See: Also check out SOTT radio's:

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Top Secret

Alien hunters discover mysterious signal from Proxima Centauri

Jonathan O'Callaghan and Lee Billings
Scientific American
Fri, 18 Dec 2020 22:02 UTC
Parkes Observatory
© Lisa Maree Williams/Getty ImagesSixty-four-meter radio telescope at Parkes Observatory in Australia, which detected potential signals from Proxima Centauri last year
It's never aliens — until it is. Today news leaked in the British newspaper the Guardian of a mysterious signal coming from the closest star to our own, Proxima Centauri, a star too dim to see from Earth with the naked eye that is nonetheless a cosmic stone's throw away at just 4.2 light-years. Found this autumn in archival data gathered last year, the signal appears to emanate from the direction of our neighboring star and cannot yet be dismissed as Earth-based interference, raising the very faint prospect that it is a transmission from some form of advanced extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) — a so-called "technosignature."

Now, speaking to Scientific American, the scientists behind the discovery caution there is still much work to be done, but admit the interest is justified. "It has some particular properties that caused it to pass many of our checks, and we cannot yet explain it," says Andrew Siemion from the University of California, Berkeley.

Most curiously, it occupies a very narrow band of the radio spectrum: 982 megahertz, specifically, which is a region typically bereft of transmissions from human-made satellites and spacecraft. "We don't know of any natural way to compress electromagnetic energy into a single bin in frequency" such as this one, Siemion says. Perhaps, he says, some as-yet-unknown exotic quirk of plasma physics could be a natural explanation for the tantalizingly concentrated radio waves. But "for the moment, the only source that we know of is technological."
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Bulb

Korean artificial sun sets new world record of 20-sec-long operation at 100 million degrees

National Research Council of Science & Technology
Phys.org
Thu, 24 Dec 2020 12:00 UTC
korea sun
National Research Council of Science & Technology
The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research(KSTAR), a superconducting fusion device also known as the Korean artificial sun, set the new world record as it succeeded in maintaining the high temperature plasma for 20 seconds with an ion temperature over 100 million degrees.

On November 24(Tuesday), the KSTAR Research Center at the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KEF) announced that in a joint research with the Seoul National University (SNU) and Columbia University of the United States, it succeeded in continuous operation of plasma for 20 seconds with an ion-temperature higher than 100 million degrees, which is one of the core conditions of nuclear fusion in the 2020 KSTAR Plasma Campaign

It is an achievement to extend the 8 second plasma operation time during the 2019 KSTAR Plasma Campaign by more than 2 times. In its 2018 experiment, the KSTAR reached the plasma ion temperature of 100 million degrees for the first time (retention time: about 1.5 seconds)
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Blue Planet

Key mechanism behind biggest earthquakes that can trigger mega-tsunamis discovered

David Nield
Science Alert
Thu, 24 Dec 2020 12:00 UTC
earthquake
© (PSU News)Map of the Cascadia subduction zone.
We're learning more about earthquake triggers all the time, but there's also plenty still to find out about how these seismic shifts work. Now, geologists think they've identified a key mechanism behind some of the biggest earthquakes on the planet.

Megathrust earthquakes happen at subduction zones, where one tectonic plate is being pushed under another. They're particularly common around the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and they can also lead to gigantic tsunamis.

A new study suggests that a gradual, slow-slip movement deep below the subduction zone could be key to understanding how megathrust earthquakes are triggered, and might potentially improve forecasting models to better predict them in the future.

Comment: See also:

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No Entry

More evidence lockdowns don't work

Toby Young
Lockdown Sceptics
Thu, 24 Dec 2020 19:24 UTC
lockdown uk sign
© REUTERS/Toby Melville(FILE PHOTO)
According to an end-of-year report by Neil Ferguson et al, introducing the first national lockdown a week earlier than March 23rd would have saved 21,000 lives. But would it? As we've documented many times on Lockdown Sceptics, the evidence that lockdowns significantly reduce virus transmission - or mortality - is threadbare at best. Which makes the Government's strategy of constantly ratcheting up restrictions rather nonsensical.

I'll give three examples to illustrate the point.

First, let's look at the rise and fall in daily cases in North and South Dakota. Both states have imposed some of the least severe restrictions in the US, according to the Blavatnik School of Government's stringency index. Yet in both states, daily cases have begun to decline organically as we head towards Christmas.
north dakota cases
south dakota cases
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Robot

France, China developing biologically engineered supersoldiers: report

Paula Froelich
NY Post
Sat, 19 Dec 2020 03:31 UTC
robot soldiers
© Shutterstock
Just two weeks after it was announced China was developing biologically enhanced super soldiers, France has joined the fray in creating terminator troops that can be "bred to kill" according to a new report.

Last week, France gave the go-ahead for augmented soldiers, and some fear the super troopers could be the new norm in the recent future.

The French seek to improve "physical, cognitive, perceptive and psychological capacities," and could allow for location tracking or connectivity with weapons systems and other soldiers. Among the ministry's research were drugs to keep troops awake for long periods of time and combat stress, and even surgery to improve hearing.

The new species of augmented soldiers, dubbed "homo robocopus" could also have altered DNA to give them enhanced speed and strength as well as robotics.
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