Science & TechnologyS

Meteor

Parting gift from 2020? NASA warns FIVE asteroids headed this way


RT
Wed, 16 Dec 2020 11:38 UTC
Asteroids approaching Earth
© Thomas Breher from PixabayIllustration
As the widely perceived terrible year of 2020 draws to a close, NASA has shared an alert about five asteroids due to shoot past the Earth on Wednesday and later this week, two of which will come closer to our planet than the Moon.

Some three space rocks, ranging in diameter from roughly a telephone pole size all the way up to two London buses end-to-end, will shoot past the Earth on Wednesday.

The 11-meter asteroid named 2020 XF4 will flyby at 343,000km (213,130 miles) followed by the 24-meter 2020 VY1 at five million kilometers, with 2020 XS5 bringing up the rear at an equally safe distance of three million km. For reference, the average distance between Earth and the Moon is roughly 385,000 kilometers (239,000 miles).

And right as the weekend is beginning for many, on Friday, the comparatively tiny 6.6-meter 2020 XX3 will scream past the Earth at a distance of 57,100km, followed shortly afterwards by the 30-meter space rock 2020 XF3 which will give the planet a much wider berth, passing at 6.9 million km.

Comment: Why are so many asteroids having close calls with Earth in 2020?

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Comet 2

Ryugu asteroid samples prove to be beyond Japan's scientists' expectations


RT
Tue, 15 Dec 2020 10:46 UTC
Ryugu
© AFP / JAXA / HandoutThis handout photograph released by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on December 15, 2020 shows samples of surface dust and pristine material collected from the asteroid Ryugu by the Hayabusa-2 space probe, at the JAXA Sagamihara Campus in Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture.
Japanese researchers were lost for words after asteroid samples that could shed light on the origin of life in the universe, retrieved from a space probe's six-year operation, proved even better than they had hoped for.

The Japan Space Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the probe, named Hayabusa2, on December 3, 2014. It was part of an 18-month mission to survey the asteroid Ryugu, 300 kilometers from Earth, and samples were returned to scientists earlier this month.

Researcher Hirotaka Sawada revealed that his colleagues had been hoping to secure 100mg or more of material. However, when they first opened the probe and saw the amount that had been collected in the sample, they were left speechless.

Comment: See also:

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Archaeology

Child's bones buried 40,000 years ago solve a longstanding Neanderthal mystery

Peter Dockrill
Science Alert
Thu, 10 Dec 2020 01:56 UTC
La Ferrassie
© Claude Valette/Flickr/CC BY-ND 2.0La Ferrassie
We don't know whether it was a boy or a girl. But this ancient child, a Neanderthal, only made it to about two years of age.

This short life, lived about 41,000 years ago, was uncovered at a famous archaeological site in southwestern France, called La Ferrassie. The remains of several Neanderthals have been found there, including the most recent discovery, the child, known only as La Ferrassie 8.

When the ancient remains were first found - most at various stages of the early 20th century - archaeologists had assumed the skeletons represented intentional burials, with Neanderthals laying their departed kin to rest under the earth.

Nonetheless, in contemporary archaeology, doubts now swirl around the question of whether Neanderthals did indeed bury their dead like that, or whether this particular aspect of funerary rites is a uniquely Homo sapien custom.
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Info

Humans may not be the only species to domesticate others

Natalie Parletta
Cosmos Magazine
Mon, 14 Dec 2020 21:08 UTC
Longfin damselfish
© Griffith University
Researchers have discovered that a species of coral fish uses shrimp to help fertilise its algae farms, which, they suggest, is the first evidence of a non-human animal domesticating another species.

Longfin damselfish (Stegastes diencaeus) are known to aggressively defend the farms they rely on for food - but not, it seems, against planktonic mysid shrimps (Mysidium integrum).

"We found that the damselfish keep swarms of mysid shrimps within their farms, providing them with a long-term safe haven from predators," says Rohan Booker from Australia's Deakin University, lead author of a paper in Nature Communications.

"The mysids, in return, swim over that farm all day and passively pump out waste material. All that extra waste acts as fertiliser, improving the farmed algae, and, in turn, the condition of the farmer, the damselfish."

This is known as a "domesticator-domestica relationship", a mutually beneficial arrangement where one species provides ongoing support to another in exchange for predictable benefits, such as cleaner fish picking parasites off other fish or insects pollinating flowers.

Humans have had such relationships with many different animals since domesticating dogs around 10,000 years ago, selectively breeding them for certain appealing characteristics such as tameness.

Other examples of non-human domestication are best known in insects that tame plants such as fungi-farming ants. This study shows non-human vertebrates also domesticate other animals and suggests it may be more commonly than previously known, says Booker.
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Nebula

Researchers synthesise a psychedelic that could treat depression without hallucinations

Tessa Koumoundouros
Science Alert
Sat, 12 Dec 2020 09:36 UTC
Branching nerve cells
© Lindsay Cameron/UC DavisBranching nerve cells.
Recently advances have shown that psychedelics like ketamine have powerful potential for treating mental health conditions such as addiction, anxiety, and depression. But psychedelics can come with serious side effects, like cardiac toxicity and their infamous hallucinations.

"Psychedelics are some of the most powerful drugs we know of that affect the brain," said chemist David Olson from University of California. "It's unbelievable how little we know about them."

So University of California neuroscientist Lindsay Cameron, Olsen and colleagues decided to take a closer look and see if they could mess with a psychedelic compound in a way that allows them to keep its useful features, but do away with the more dangerous parts.

Comment: It's interesting that these scientists are seeing beneficial results when the hallucinatory substances have been removed. Many people attribute the anti-depressive effects of psychedelics to the hallucinations themselves - almost as if they've been shown something that allows them to adopt a different perspective. It will be interesting to see how this research proceeds in humans.

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Fireball 2

Study finds mass extinctions of Earth's land animals follow a cycle

Doyle Rice
USA Today
Fri, 11 Dec 2020 19:41 UTC
Asteroid Impact
© NASA/Donald E. DavisAn artist's impression of a giant space rock slamming into Earth 65 million years ago near what is now Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. A consortium of scientists now says this was indeed what caused the end of the Age of Dinosaurs.
Asteroids aren't completely random?

Mass extinctions of life on Earth appear to follow a regular pattern, a new study suggests.

In fact, widespread die-offs of land-dwelling animals - which include amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds - follow a cycle of about 27 million years, the study reports. The study also said these mass extinctions coincide with major asteroid impacts and devastating volcanic outpourings of lava.

"The global mass extinctions were apparently caused by the largest cataclysmic impacts and massive volcanism, perhaps sometimes working in concert," said study lead author Michael Rampino of New York University, in a statement.
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Info

New super highway network discovered in the Solar System

Ioana Patringenaru
University of California - San Diego
Wed, 09 Dec 2020 16:45 UTC
Solar System
© NASA
Researchers have discovered a new superhighway network to travel through the Solar System much faster than was previously possible. Such routes can drive comets and asteroids near Jupiter to Neptune's distance in under a decade and to 100 astronomical units in less than a century. They could be used to send spacecraft to the far reaches of our planetary system relatively fast, and to monitor and understand near-Earth objects that might collide with our planet.

In their paper, published in the Nov. 25 issue of Science Advances, the researchers observed the dynamical structure of these routes, forming a connected series of arches inside what's known as space manifolds that extend from the asteroid belt to Uranus and beyond. This newly discovered "celestial autobahn," or celestial highway, acts over several decades, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands or millions of years that usually characterize Solar System dynamics.

The most conspicuous arch structures are linked to Jupiter and the strong gravitational forces it exerts. The population of Jupiter-family comets (comets having orbital periods of 20 years) as well as small-size solar system bodies known as Centaurs, are controlled by such manifolds on unprecedented time scales. Some of these bodies will end up colliding with Jupiter or being ejected from the Solar System.
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Better Earth

Evidence of Ice Age cycles found in tiny ocean fossils

Princeton University
Liz Fuller-Wright
Fri, 11 Dec 2020 09:41 UTC
diatom
© Philipp Assmy (Norwegian Polar Institute) and Marina Montresor (Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn)This diatom species, Fragilariopsis kerguelensis, is a floating algae that is abundant in the Antarctic Ocean and was the major species in the samples collected for the study by Princeton University and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. These microscopic organisms live near the sea surface, then die and sink to the sea floor. The nitrogen isotopes in their shells vary with the amount of unused nitrogen in the surface water. The researchers used that to trace nitrogen concentrations in Antarctic surface waters over the past 150,000 years, covering two ice ages and two warm interglacial periods.
The last million years of Earth history have been characterized by frequent "glacial-interglacial cycles," large swings in climate that are linked to the growing and shrinking of massive, continent-spanning ice sheets. These cycles are triggered by subtle oscillations in Earth's orbit and rotation, but the orbital oscillations are too subtle to explain the large changes in climate.

"The cause of the ice ages is one of the great unsolved problems in the geosciences," said Daniel Sigman, the Dusenbury Professor of Geological and Geophysical Sciences. "Explaining this dominant climate phenomenon will improve our ability to predict future climate change."

In the 1970s, scientists discovered that the concentration of the atmospheric greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) was about 30% lower during the ice ages. That prompted theories that the decrease in atmospheric CO2 levels is a key ingredient in the glacial cycles, but the causes of the CO2 change remained unknown. Some data suggested that, during ice ages, CO2 was trapped in the deep ocean, but the reason for this was debated.

Comment: It's possible that the obsession with CO2 has led researchers to confuse correlation with causation, because, while it does appear that the activities in our oceans can provide clues as to the changes that occur on our planet during an ice age, there are much greater drivers behind Earth's climate - and it's not just Earth that is seeing significant changes: Also check out SOTT radio's:

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Better Earth

New species of whale discovered off the coast of Mexico


Deutsche Welle
Fri, 11 Dec 2020 09:45 UTC
whales
Beaker whales tend to stick to remote areas to avoid detection from predators
Marine researchers searching for a rare type of whale off the coast of Mexico have instead discovered a new species. The crew were able to record the never before seen animal in its natural habitat.

Beaker whales tend to stick to remote areas to avoid detection from predators

Researchers who were looking for a rare whale instead came across what they believe to be a new species of beaked whale, the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA) reported on Wednesday.

The researchers didn't realize at first what they had found when they encountered a group of whales on November 17, just off the remote Mexican San Benito islands.

Comment: This and other discoveries should serve as a reminder that there's so much more we've yet to discover about our planet:

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X

Flawed paper behind Covid-19 testing faces being retracted, after scientists expose its ten fatal problems

Peter Andrews
RT
Wed, 09 Dec 2020 00:15 UTC
nurse performs a PCR test
© ReutersA nurse performs a PCR test at the Hospital de la Tour during the COVID-19 outbreak in Meyrin near Geneva, Switzerland
A publisher admitted it is urgently re-investigating research, following revelations that the PCR test it extols is defective, giving too many false-positives. The news comes as a new group plans a legal challenge over the checks.

Last week I reported on an astonishing review conducted by a group of senior scientists on a paper on which most Covid testing is based. It comprehensively debunked the science behind the Corman-Drosten paper, which described a protocol for using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique to detect Covid, finding 10 fatal flaws, including major failings in the operating procedure and potential conflicts of interest among its authors.

The team behind the review demanded that Eurosurveillance, the journal that published the original research, retract it at once, as in their view it clearly failed to meet proper standards. This is of vital importance because the Corman-Drosten paper laid the path for mass PCR testing as the main source of data on the coronavirus. Almost all case numbers, infection rates and even deaths attributed to Covid are based on PCR tests (and all the attendant lockdowns and restrictions on people), and a huge amount of them use the method set out in the Corman-Drosten paper.

But now, the organisation Retraction Watch have reported that Eurosurveillance is considering retracting the paper. In a statement, Eurosurveillance said that they were "seeking further expert advice and discussing the current correspondence in detail. We will, according to our existing procedures, evaluate the claims and make a decision as soon as we have investigated in full.'' So no retraction yet, but it would not be surprising if one came soon.

Comment: You NEVER see the MSM referencing false positives in any of its reports about "cases". Why is that?


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