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Theorists calculate an upper limit for possible quantization of time

Bob Yirka
Phys.org
Fri, 26 Jun 2020 00:00 UTC
Hour Glass
© Pixabay/CC0
A trio of theoretical physicists at the Pennsylvania State University has calculated the upper limit for the possible quantization of time — they suggest 10−33 seconds as the upper limit for the period of a universal oscillator. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, Garrett Wendel, Luis Martínez and Martin Bojowald outline their theory and suggest a possible way to prove it.

For many years, theoretical physicists have been trying to explain a major problem — the general theory of relativity suggests that time is a continuous quantity, one that can move slower or faster depending on acceleration and gravity conditions. But quantum mechanics theories suggest that time ticks away at a steady pace, like the frames of a movie being played out. In this scenario, time must be universal. For both theories to be right, this contradiction must be explained in a rational way.
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Books

Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis receives support in new book by eminent geologist - Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock
GrahamHancock.com
Wed, 24 Jun 2020 11:00 UTC
Magnetic microspherule
© Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesMagnetic microspherule found in the Younger Dryas boundary
Did impacts and airbursts from multiple fragments of a disintegrating comet cause the onset of the Younger Dryas global cataclysm 12,800 years ago? After more than a decade of acrimonious scientific controversy around the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH), an important new book by eminent geologist Dr James L. Powell answers this question in great depth and sets the record straight with a resounding YES.

Titled "Deadly Voyager: The Ancient Comet Strike That Changed Earth and Human History" (http://deadlyvoyager.net/), this thoroughly researched and eminently readable study systematically demolishes all the criticisms of the YDIH that have been made over the years by scientific opponents.

Of particular note is Powell's careful dismembering of several studies which claimed that the evidence on which the YDIH is built is "irreproducible" - a damning criticism in science and one that opponents of the YDIH often gleefully repeat as though the claim is an established and unquestionable fact that "debunks" the hypothesis.

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

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Beaker

Evolutionary theorizing depends on magic words


Evolution News
Fri, 26 Jun 2020 21:22 UTC
Magic Carpet
© Lambert/Getty Images
Here is a quick tale about the evolution of the automobile.
  1. Billions of years ago, a chassis appeared.
  2. The chassis acquired an engine.
  3. The crankshaft found a side gig as a steering wheel.
  4. The steering wheel linked up with the brake pedal to form a universal joint.
  5. Seats developed. They probably arose when the first hood evolved.
Now consider leading journals publishing this account after it has whisked through peer review. Is this not exactly what goes on in evolutionary theorizing? Darwinians have mastered the use of magic words that replace rigor with imagination. And they get away with it; nobody ever blows the whistle on what should be tagged a major scientific foul.

New Findings About Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetases

Here is an example in The Scientist, a news magazine for working scientists who should know better. In the article, "Protein Synthesis Enzymes Have Evolved Additional Jobs," writer Amber Dance explains new findings about aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, abbreviated AARS, the enzymes that attach amino acids to transfer RNAs. This important family of 20 enzymes stands between the DNA code, written in triplet nucleotide codons, and the protein code, written in amino acids. Ms. Dance recounts new findings that show several of these enzymes "moonlight" as workers with other functions.
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Info

Pendulum may reveal gravity's secrets

Chris Lee
Ars Technica
Sat, 27 Jun 2020 20:08 UTC
Pendulum
© Getty Images/Christoph Burgstedt/Science Photo Library
Gravity is, at heart, a mystery. Yes, we can talk about curvature of space-time and perhaps make analogies with stretched rubber sheets. But we don't know why mass causes space-time to curve.

To put it another way, in our theory of gravity, matter is the scenery and space-time is both cast and stage crew. But matter's behavior is described by quantum mechanics, which takes space and time as a given. For quantum mechanics, space and time are the stage in which matter puts on the best show ever. How do we get these two theories to put on just one play?

Perhaps this is why the two theories simply do not get on — no show can have two lead actors, right? We may finally get to find out thanks to a new experimental device that may make it possible for both gravity and quantum mechanics to play lead roles.
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Galaxy

Deep space: Black hole merger suggests darkest components can create light


RT
Fri, 26 Jun 2020 15:54 UTC
Black holes and light
© File illustration M. Weiss/Chandra X -ray Center/GlobalLookPress
Analysis of a collision between two black holes in a distant region of space has revealed the existence of light, the first time such an association has been made with the phenomenon.

The merging of the two cosmic beasts was reported after a gravitational wave dubbed S190521g was detected in May 2019 by the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) facilities in the US and the Virgo observatory in Italy.

Gravitational waves are caused by objects moving at very high speeds, such as when two black holes orbit and then merge with one another. Significant gravitational waves signal a curvature in space-time.

Remarkably, the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) at the Palomar Observatory in California, had its telescope focused on the same region of space at the same time - and detected an explosive flare in the vicinity. The research, published in astrophysics journal Physical Review Letters on Thursday, is the first record of light being associated with the collision of black holes.

The revelation could help prove the existing theory that black hole mergers occur regularly in regions of material known as 'accretion disks' surrounding supermassive black holes. Prior to the discovery, black holes were thought to merge in stellar graveyards, where there is little gas or dust that can heat up and glow.
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Info

Mysterious repeating FRB discovered coming from another galaxy

Meaghan MacSween
University of Toronto
Mon, 22 Jun 2020 05:14 UTC
CHIME and FRBs
© Photo courtesy CHIMEThe findings, described by U of T researcher Dongzi Li as "unexpected," are the first to demonstrate that repeating FRBs can burst predictably.
A Canadian-led team of astronomers, including researchers from the University of Toronto's Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, has discovered that a repeating fast radio burst (FRB) originating from a nearby galaxy pulses at regular intervals.

Researchers with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Fast Radio Burst Collaboration used the CHIME telescope in British Columbia to show that the repeating radio source known as FRB 180916.J0158+65 - first discovered in 2018 by the same group - pulsates every 16.35 days.

The findings, described in a study published recently in Nature, are the first to demonstrate that repeating FRBs can burst predictably.

The finding was unexpected. "We were surprised by the fact that the FRB has regular activity on the time scale of weeks," said Dongzi Li, a PhD student at Dunlap and corresponding author of the paper. "Most people would expect it to be at much shorter time scales, like seconds or even milliseconds, from rotation of a compact star. Any explanation for a 16-day cycle is likely very different."
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Hearts

Humans and dogs have been sledding together for nearly 10,000 years

Jason Bittel
National Geographic
Thu, 25 Jun 2020 12:00 UTC
husky
© Katie Orlinsky, Nat Geo Image CollectionA team of sled dogs race on the Herbert Glacier, near Juneau, Alaska. This group of dog breeds has not interbred with wolves, a surprising discovery.
Greenland sled dogs, a fluffy, curly-tailed canine native to the harsh Arctic tundra, could be the oldest dog breed, according to the first study to take a deep dive into the animals' genetic history. The sled dog branch of the family tree, which includes various types of huskies and malamutes, broke off from the rest of the dogs around 9,500 years ago, versus something like a labradoodle, which only became a breed in 1989.

Scientists know that dogs likely evolved from Eurasian wolves, but exactly when or where that transformation took place is a matter of great mystery. To better understand the genetics of sled dogs and their place in the world, scientists sequenced the genome of a dog from Siberia's Zhokhov archaeological site, dating to around 9,500 years ago.

"I was actually anticipating that we would find some sort of precursor of domestic dogs," says lead author Mikkel-Holger Sinding, a paleogeneticist and Ph.D. student at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Comment: See also:

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Gear

Motions in the sun reveal inner workings of sunspot cycle

Max Planck Society
Phys.org
Thu, 25 Jun 2020 12:00 UTC
Helioseismology
© MPS (Z.-C. Liang)Helioseismology was used to measure the Sun's meridional flow (in miles per hour). This flow controls the evolution of the global magnetic field and the number of sunspots.
The sun's magnetic activity follows an 11-year cycle. Over the course of a solar cycle, the sun's magnetic activity comes and goes. During solar maximum, large sunspots and active regions appear on the sun's surface. Spectacular loops of hot plasma stretch throughout the sun's atmosphere and eruptions of particles and radiation shoot into interplanetary space. During solar minimum, the sun calms down considerably. A striking regularity appears in the so-called butterfly diagram, which describes the position of sunspots in a time-latitude plot. At the beginning of a solar cycle, sunspots emerge at mid-latitudes. As the cycle progresses, they emerge closer and closer to the equator. To explain this "butterfly diagram," solar physicists suspect that the deep magnetic field is carried toward the equator by a large-scale flow.

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

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Snowflake Cold

Antarctica's Adélie penguins happier with less sea ice, research shows ice is growing

Research Organization of Information and Systems
Sci Tech Daily
Wed, 24 Jun 2020 12:00 UTC
penguins
© Yuuki Watanabe (National Institute of Polar Research, Japan)Adélie penguins in Lützow-Holm Bay, Antarctica, enjoy easy access to food and increase body weight and breeding success in ice-free summer.
Researchers have been surprised to find that Adélie penguins in Antarctica prefer reduced sea-ice conditions, not just a little bit, but a lot. As climate models project rapid reduction of the continent's sea ice over the rest of the century, this iconic polar predator could be a rare global warming winner. Their research findings are published today (June 24, 2020) in Science Advances.

In recent decades, Antarctica has experienced a steady increase in the extent of its sea ice — frozen seawater — even as its polar twin, the Arctic, has suffered through a marked decrease. But this is not expected to last for much longer as the climate changes, with Antarctica also projected to see a decline in its sea ice, with all the consequences of such changes to the maritime habitat for the organisms that live there.


Comment: Relentless and baseless claims of global warming are debunked every year as the world, overall, gets cooler: Global cooling: Second largest 2-month temperature drop in history recorded by NOAA satellite


Comment: See also:

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Magnet

A global magnetic anomaly


Spaceweather.com
Fri, 26 Jun 2020 02:27 UTC
magnetic field graph
Lately, Earth's magnetic field has been quiet. Very quiet. The sun is in the pits of what may turn out to be the deepest Solar Minimum in a century. Geomagnetic storms just aren't happening.

"That's why I was so surprised on June 23rd when my instruments picked up a magnetic anomaly," reports Stuart Green, who operates a research-grade magnetometer in his backyard in Preston UK. "For more than 30 minutes, the local magnetic field oscillated like a sine wave."

Green quickly checked solar wind data from NOAA's DSCOVR satellite. "There was nothing-no uptick in the solar wind speed or other factors that might explain the disturbance," he says.

He wasn't the only one who noticed. In the Lofoten islands of Norway, Rob Stammes detected a similar anomaly on his magnetometer. "It was remarkable," says Stammes. "Our magnetic field swung back and forth by about 1/3rd of a degree. I also detected ground currents with the same 10 minute period."

What happened? Space physicists call this phenomenon a "pulsation continuous" or "Pc" for short. Imagine blowing across a piece of paper, making it flutter with your breath. Solar wind can have a similar effect on magnetic fields. Pc waves are essentially flutters propagating down the flanks of Earth's magnetosphere excited by the breath of the sun. During more active phases of the solar cycle, these flutters are easily lost in the noise of rambunctious geomagnetic activity. But during the extreme quiet of Solar Minimum, such waves can make themselves "heard" like a pin dropping in an silent room.

Comment: Earth's magnetic field is weakening for unexplained reason says ESA

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