Science & TechnologyS


Galaxy

Fifty new planets confirmed in machine learning first


Science Daily
Tue, 25 Aug 2020 00:01 UTC
planets
© Getty
Fifty potential planets have had their existence confirmed by a new machine learning algorithm developed by University of Warwick scientists.

For the first time, astronomers have used a process based on machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to analyse a sample of potential planets and determine which ones are real and which are 'fakes', or false positives, calculating the probability of each candidate to be a true planet.

Their results are reported in a new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, where they also perform the first large scale comparison of such planet validation techniques. Their conclusions make the case for using multiple validation techniques, including their machine learning algorithm, when statistically confirming future exoplanet discoveries.

Comment: See also:

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Beaker

Russian scientists invent efficient method to synthesise superhard materials


Sputnik
Wed, 26 Aug 2020 08:43 UTC
superhard materials
© Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU)
Scientists at Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) have developed a unique method to produce tungsten carbide and other superhard materials without using a vacuum. According to the authors of the study, the method is much simpler and more reliable than its analogues, and also allows using waste containing similar materials as raw materials.

Tungsten carbide is a super hard material widely used to make drilling tools and other wear-resistant parts.

According to TPU scientists, the possibilities of using tungsten carbide as a catalyst to produce hydrogen from water have been actively studied in recent years.

Platinum, palladium and a number of other expensive metals are still considered the best catalysts, but, according to scientists, they can be replaced by relatively inexpensive tungsten carbide nanopowder.

TPU scientists have managed to create a new electric arc method to synthesise tungsten carbide nanopowder. According to the authors of the study, the method can significantly improve the production technology: the new system is simpler, cheaper and more compact, as well as more economical and more reliable than its analogues.
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Cassiopaea

Inexplicable spiral nightglow spotted on Mars, Solar Minimum conditions in effect


SpaceWeather.com
Tue, 25 Aug 2020 12:00 UTC
Mars spiral night glow
Shown in false-color (green), UV light is spiraling around Mars' South Pole.
NASA's MAVEN spacecraft has discovered something unexpected on Mars--and researchers are struggling to explain it.

"There is a vast spiral of ultraviolet light over Mars' South Pole," says Nick Schneider of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. "We understand the origin of the light, but its shape is a mystery."

The light is "nightglow." We have it here on Earth, too, where it's called "airglow." During the day, ultraviolet radiation from the sun breaks apart compounds in the upper atmosphere. At night, the atoms reassemble, glowing as they put themselves back together again. On Earth, airglow looks like the aurora borealis; people can actually see it. On Mars, the emission is ultraviolet, invisible to the human eye.

Comment: Could an explanation for the spiral be found in Electric Universe theory?

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Info

Earth seems to be traveling through the debris of ancient supernovae

Michelle Starr
Science Alert
Mon, 24 Aug 2020 09:19 UTC
Supernova
© ESA/Hubble & NASA
Radioactive dust deep beneath the ocean waves suggest that Earth is moving through a massive cloud left behind by an exploded star.

Continuously, for the last 33,000 years, space has been seeding Earth with a rare isotope of iron forged in supernovae.

It's not the first time that the isotope, known as iron-60, has dusted our planet. But it does contribute to a growing body of evidence that such dusting is ongoing - that we are still moving through an interstellar cloud of dust that could have originated from a supernova millions of years ago.

Iron-60 has been the focus of several studies over the years. It has a half-life of 2.6 million years, which means it completely decays after 15 million years - so any samples found here on Earth must have been deposited from elsewhere, since there's no way any iron-60 could have survived from the formation of the planet 4.6 billion years ago.

And deposits have been found. Nuclear physicist Anton Wallner of the Australian National University previously dated seabed deposits back to 2.6 million and 6 million years ago, suggesting that debris from supernovae had rained down on our planet at these times.

But there's more recent evidence of this stardust - much more recent.

It's been found in the Antarctic snow; according to the evidence, it had to have fallen in the last 20 years.
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Fireball

Three near fly-by asteroids expected this week, only spotted this month - NASA


RT
Mon, 24 Aug 2020 13:58 UTC
asteroids earth artist conception
© GETTY IMAGES / CHRISTOPH BURGSTEDT / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
The near-constant bombardment of space rocks buzzing our planet continues, with planetary defenses alerted to a trio of asteroids measuring over 25 meters in diameter en route to Earth's backyard this week.

To kick things off on Monday, not one but two space rocks over 25 meters (82 feet) in diameter will fly past, both of which were detected just this month, leaving little time and space for error in calculating their trajectories.

Asteroid 2020 PP3, 34 meters wide, will pass us by at a distance of 6.1 million kilometers (3.7 million miles), having only been spotted 13 days ago. It will be followed shortly afterwards by 2020 PJ6, 26 meters wide, at a distance of 5.3 million kilometers, which was spotted four days later on August 15.

Comment: See also: Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls

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Info

Gut has a viral 'fingerprint' unique to each human

Emily Caldwell
The Ohio State University
Mon, 24 Aug 2020 18:52 UTC
Gut Virome Database
© ShutterstockThe Gut Virome Database developed by Ohio State scientists identifies 33,242 unique viral populations that are present in the human gut.
Each person's gut virus composition is as unique as a fingerprint, according to the first study to assemble a comprehensive database of viral populations in the human digestive system.

An analysis of viruses in the guts of healthy Westerners also showed that dips and peaks in the diversity of virus types between childhood and old age mirror bacterial changes over the course of the lifespan.

The Gut Virome Database developed by Ohio State University scientists identifies 33,242 unique viral populations that are present in the human gut. (A collection of viruses like those in the human gut is called a virome.) This is not cause for alarm: Most viruses don't cause disease.

In fact, the more scientists learn about viruses, the more they see them as part of the human ecosystem - suggesting viruses have potential to represent a new class of drugs that could fight disease-causing bacteria, especially those resistant to antibiotics. Better knowledge of viruses in the gut environment could even improve understanding of the gastrointestinal symptoms experienced by some of the sickest COVID-19 patients.

The researchers plan to update the open-access database on a regular basis.

"We've established a robust starting point to see what the virome looks like in humans," said study co-author Olivier Zablocki, a postdoctoral researcher in microbiology at Ohio State. "If we can characterize the viruses that are keeping us healthy, we might be able to harness that information to design future therapeutics for pathogens that can't otherwise be treated with drugs."

The study is published today (Aug. 24) in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.
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Galaxy

A mysterious radio burst that keeps repeating just woke up, right on schedule

Michelle Starr
Science Alert
Mon, 24 Aug 2020 00:00 UTC
FRB 121102
© Rogelio Bernal Andreo/DeepSkyColors.comGreen circle marks the source of FRB 121102
Earlier this year, astronomers announced a dazzling discovery. A fast radio burst called FRB 121102 wasn't just repeating - it was repeating on a discernible cycle. For around 67 days, the source is silent. Then, for around 90 days, it wakes up again, spitting out repeated millisecond radio flares before falling silent, and the whole 157-day cycle repeats.

However, fast radio bursts are extremely mysterious, and there was no guarantee that the cycle would continue. So it's pretty exciting that the source has flared up again, right on cue - consistent with predictions of its activity cycle. This suggests that there's significant value in monitoring known fast radio burst sources - but also in continuing to watch FRB 121102 to try to understand what could be causing the phenomenon.

A quick refresher: fast radio bursts are, as the name suggests, bursts of radio waves that are very fast, just a few milliseconds long, coming from galaxies millions to billions of light-years away. But they're also extremely powerful; within those milliseconds, they can discharge as much power as hundreds of millions of Suns.
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Info

The siamese twins of Technocracy and Transhumanism

Patrick Wood
Technocracy News and Trends
Wed, 19 Aug 2020 00:00 UTC
NBIC
Technocracy and Transhumanism have always been joined at the hip. Technocracy uses its "science of social engineering" to merge technology and society. Transhumanism uses its field of NBIC to merge technology directly into humans.

To put it another way, Technocracy is to society what Transhumanism is to the humans that live in it.

Transhumanism as a philosophy has been growing for centuries, but only in the metaphysical realm. Its ultimate goal is for humans to escape death and live forever in a state of immortality. With the advancement of science in the last 30 years, Transhumans naturally migrated from the metaphysical to the physical in order to convert their beliefs into reality.

Crackpot, you say? Be careful what you ridicule because both Technocracy and Transhumanism are in control of the course of human history at this very moment. As I have written extensively about both for many years, this has been brewing for a very long time.

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Bulb

'Electric mud' teems with new, mysterious bacteria that may rewrite textbooks

Elizabeth Pennisi
ScienceMag.org
Wed, 19 Aug 2020 15:15 UTC
mud science
© Volker Steger/Science SourceBacteria in mud samples fashioned into microbial fuel cells generate enough electricity to power a toy car.
For Lars Peter Nielsen, it all began with the mysterious disappearance of hydrogen sulfide. The microbiologist had collected black, stinky mud from the bottom of Aarhus Harbor in Denmark, dropped it into big glass beakers, and inserted custom microsensors that detected changes in the mud's chemistry. At the start of the experiment, the muck was saturated with hydrogen sulfide — the source of the sediment's stink and color. But 30 days later, one band of mud had become paler, suggesting some hydrogen sulphide had gone missing. Eventually, the microsensors indicated that all of the compound had disappeared. Given what scientists knew about the biogeochemistry of mud, recalls Nielsen, who works at Aarhus University, "This didn't make sense at all."

The first explanation, he says, was that the sensors were wrong. But the cause turned out to be far stranger: bacteria that join cells end to end to build electrical cables able to carry current up to 5 centimeters through mud. The adaptation, never seen before in a microbe, allows these so-called cable bacteria to overcome a major challenge facing many organisms that live in mud: a lack of oxygen. Its absence would normally keep bacteria from metabolizing compounds, such as hydrogen sulfide, as food. But the cables, by linking the microbes to sediments richer in oxygen, allow them to carry out the reaction long distance.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: The Truth Perspective: Are Cells the Intelligent Designers? Why Creationists and Darwinists Are Both Wrong

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Cassiopaea

Small black hole is stripping and rhythmically lighting up its binary star, and scientists don't know how


RT
Tue, 18 Aug 2020 17:23 UTC
Microquasar SS 433
© DESYScreenshot of an animation of Microquasar SS 433
A surprisingly small active black hole located 15,000 light-years away is lighting up a neighboring gas cloud to a specific, shared rhythm, in a strange but fascinating phenomenon.

The black hole system in question is called SS 433 and is considered a Microquasar: the black hole measures between 10 and 20 solar masses while its binary companion star is 30 times the mass of our sun.

The pair orbit each other at a distance of roughly 100 light-years every 13 days, with the gas cloud pulsating in time with the underlying rhythm of the black hole.

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