Science & TechnologyS


Attention

Billionaires invest in artificial milk

Carla Times
Science Times
Sat, 20 Jun 2020 10:16 UTC
BioMilq
© RNZ
A new and better breast milk alternative has arrived, and it claims to be helpful for the environment as well. The U.S. firm, BIOMILQ, is artificially producing human breast milk from cultured human mammary epithelial cells to be commercially available to consumers.

The start-up company has received $3.5 million from an investment fund that is co-founded by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Mark Zuckerberg. The fund was established to help prevent the ill effects of climate change brought about by carbon emissions.

A Greener Infant Milk Alternative

Additionally, BIOMILQ aims to provide a greener alternative for formula milk as an estimated ten percent of the global dairy industry, which is a significant source of greenhouse gases, is used in manufacturing baby formula.

The firm claims to have developed a milk form that is easier for babies to digest than formula. Most importantly, it emits a smaller carbon footprint, which will help the environment.

It is unclear when BIOMILQ's artificial breast milk might become commercially available, but representatives from the firm say it would likely depend on the approval of regulatory bodies such as the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.
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Fireball 5

Impact of meteorites led to life-giving amino acids on Earth

Tetsuya Ishikura
The Asahi Shimbun
Thu, 25 Jun 2020 10:58 UTC
Meteorite Impact
© Provided byTohoku University associate professor Yoshihiro FurukawaAn illustration of how a meteorite struck Earth 4 billion years ago.
A simulation of how substances essential for living creatures were formed on Earth reinforces the theory that life started after meteorites rained down on the planet.

Living organisms are said to have emerged on Earth 4 billion years ago. A large number of meteorites are believed to have bombarded the planet 200 million years before and after the birth of life.

"Materials needed for the start of life may have been generated over long periods, offering a chance for life to appear," said Yoshihiro Furukawa, an associate professor of geochemistry at Tohoku University.

Furukawa and his colleagues primarily from the university put carbon dioxide, nitrogen, water and iron in a container to reproduce conditions of primordial times. The vessel was then struck with a piece of metal to simulate the impact from a meteorite.
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Better Earth

How water in the deep Earth triggers earthquakes and tsunamis


University of Bristol
Wed, 24 Jun 2020 12:00 UTC
Earthquake
© Reuters / Ismail CoskunRescuers work on collapsed buildings after an earthquake in Elazig, Turkey, January 25, 2020.
In a new study, published in the journal Nature, an international team of scientists provide the first conclusive evidence directly linking deep Earth's water cycle with magmatic productivity and earthquake activity.

Water (H2O) and other volatiles (e.g. CO2 and sulphur) that are cycled through the deep Earth have played a key role in the evolution of our planet, including in the formation of continents, the onset of life, the concentration of mineral resources, and the distribution of volcanoes and earthquakes.

Subduction zones, where tectonic plates converge and one plate sinks beneath another, are the most important parts of the cycle - with large volumes of water going in and coming out, mainly through volcanic eruptions. Yet, just how (and how much) water is transported via subduction, and its effect on natural hazards and the formation of natural resources, has historically been poorly understood.

Comment: See also:

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Jupiter

Heat gave Jupiter's icy moon Europa layers - may be good news in search for life

Doris Elin Urrutia
Space
Wed, 24 Jun 2020 17:12 UTC
Jupiter's moon, Europa
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute
Jupiter's icy moon Europa experienced enough heat to produce a layered interior and subsurface ocean, scientists say. The finding could help researchers learn about the potential for life on other worlds.

Mohit Melwani Daswani, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, led a team that analyzed data gathered by the Galileo mission. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Galileo studied Jupiter and its moons for about eight years and discovered that a global ocean of liquid water likely exists under the icy surface of Europa.

Daswani's team found that a layer-creating phenomenon called differentiation may be the reason Europa has its ocean. Daswani announced his findings Wednesday (June 24) during a presentation at the virtual Goldschmidt conference, an annual conference on geochemistry and related fields. The work has yet to be peer reviewed.
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Dig

Fossils of gigantic wolverines and otters the size of wolves offer fresh insights into the past


The Conversation
Wed, 24 Jun 2020 19:18 UTC
giant wolverine
What South Africa’s West Coast might have looked like 5 million years ago. In the foreground, a giant wolverine feeds on a pig while chasing away a primitive hyena. Maggie Newman, Geological Society of South Africa and the University of the Witwatersrand
About 120 km north of Cape Town and less than 2° north of the southern tip of Africa lies a quarry that, to the untrained eye, has nothing interesting to offer.

In reality, Langebaanweg 'E' Quarry is a palaeontological wonderland dating back 5 million years. It has yielded one of the richest and best-preserved vertebrate fossils of the Neogene (a geological era dating from 23 million to 2.5 million years ago) to be found anywhere in Africa.

Back then, the weather was about 2-3 degrees warmer and the sea level was 30m higher. An array of terrestrial and marine wildlife occupied different ecosystems: riverine forests, open grasslands and tidal zones. Primitive fauna were transitioning into more modern animals we'd recognise today: there were hyenas; sabretooth cats; small felines; Agriotherium, a giant relative of bears; giant civets; small mongoose; three different relatives of elephants including the earliest Mammoth; rhinoceroses and hippopotamus.

There were also 90 bird species ranging from penguins to parrots; reptiles, frogs, a variety of sharks, seals, whales and dolphins.

Comment: See also: We still don't know why the reign of the dinosaurs ended

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Eye 1

How do our eyes move in perfect synchrony?

Benjamin Plackett
Live Science
Wed, 24 Jun 2020 17:48 UTC
blue eyes
Humans, like most animals, have two eyes.

And that's for two very good reasons.

"You have a spare one in case you have an accident, and the second reason is depth perception, which we evolved to help us hunt," said Dr. David Guyton, professor of ophthalmology at The Johns Hopkins University. But having two eyes would lead to double vision if they didn't move together in perfect synchrony. So how does the body ensure our eyes always work together?


Comment: "Evolved." Just ignore that bit of offhand scientist mumbo jumbo.


To prevent double vision, the brain exploits a feedback system, which it uses to finely tune the lengths of the muscles controlling the eyes. This produces phenomenally precise eye movements, Guyton said.

Each eye has six muscles regulating its movement in different directions, and each one of those muscles must be triggered simultaneously in both eyes for them to move in unison, according to a 2005 review in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. "It's actually quite amazing when you think about it," Guyton told Live Science. "The brain has a neurological system that is fantastically organized because the brain learns over time how much stimulation to send to each of the 12 muscles for every desired direction of gaze."


Comment: Fantastically organized systems do not result from "evolution" - they arise from intelligence.


This isn't innate, it's an acquired ability. "Babies master it usually within three to four months of life," said Guyton. "Most people keep it well into their 80s, but age makes us slowly lose the ability over time."
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Info

LIGO-Virgo discovers mystery object in "mass gap"


California Institute of Technology
Tue, 23 Jun 2020 04:16 UTC
Merger of Black Hole anbd Mystery Object
© LIGO/Caltech/MIT/R. Hurt (IPAC)In August of 2019, the LIGO-Virgo gravitational-wave network witnessed the merger of a black hole with 23 times the mass of our sun and a mystery object 2.6 times the mass of the sun. Scientists do not know if the mystery object was a neutron star or black hole, but either way it set a record as being either the heaviest known neutron star or the lightest known black hole.
When the most massive stars die, they collapse under their own gravity and leave behind black holes; when stars that are a bit less massive die, they explode in a supernova and leave behind dense, dead remnants of stars called neutron stars. For decades, astronomers have been puzzled by a gap that lies between neutron stars and black holes: the heaviest known neutron star is no more than 2.5 times the mass of our sun, or 2.5 solar masses, and the lightest known black hole is about 5 solar masses. The question remained: does anything lie in this so-called mass gap?

Now, in a new study from the National Science Foundation's Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo detector in Europe, scientists have announced the discovery of an object of 2.6 solar masses, placing it firmly in the mass gap. The object was found on August 14, 2019, as it merged with a black hole of 23 solar masses, generating a splash of gravitational waves detected back on Earth by LIGO and Virgo. A paper about the detection has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"We've been waiting decades to solve this mystery," says co-author Vicky Kalogera, a professor at Northwestern University. "We don't know if this object is the heaviest known neutron star, or the lightest known black hole, but either way it breaks a record."

"This is going to change how scientists talk about neutron stars and black holes," says co-author Patrick Brady, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration spokesperson. "The mass gap may in fact not exist at all but may have been due to limitations in observational capabilities. Time and more observations will tell."
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Star

Collision between black hole and 'mysterious object' puzzles astronomers

Jackson Ryan
CNET
Tue, 23 Jun 2020 22:16 UTC
A black hole and a neutron star collision
© Carl Knox/OzGrav ARC Centre of ExcellenceGW190814: A black hole and a neutron star colliding, or something even more unusual
On Aug. 14, 2019, a gravitational wave -- a massive ripple through the fabric of space-time -- washed over the Earth. The wave was detected by sophisticated, fine-tuned lasers in the US and Italy. And it was astonishing. While the lasers had previously picked up black hole collisions and neutron star collisions, they were now suggesting something unprecedented: a black hole smashing into a neutron star.

The signal was one of the strongest ever seen by the gravitational wave scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory and Italy's Virgo observatory. After an alert was sent out moments after detection, teams of astronomers across the world turned their telescopes to the point in space that the wave emanated from.
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Telescope

Understanding how Pluto can have liquid oceans so far from the sun

Michelle Starr
Science Alert
Mon, 22 Jun 2020 00:00 UTC
Pluto
© NASA/JHUAPL/SwRIPluto
It's only been in recent years - since the historic flyby of the New Horizons probe in 2015 - that we've been able to understand Pluto with any great depth or detail. We've learnt a lot about our Solar System's tiny outlier, but one of the biggest surprises was a number of hints that liquid oceans still slosh beneath Pluto's icy surface.

At an average distance of 5.9 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles) from the Sun, in the frigid reaches of the Kuiper Belt, scientists had thought the dwarf planet must have been frozen solid - and exactly how liquid water could exist on such a cold object was a mystery.

Now astronomers have come up with a new scenario, detailed in a new paper - if Pluto formed quickly, the heat generated by this process could have been sufficient to keep subsurface oceans liquid for billions of years.
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Galaxy

The singularity at the center of a black hole is as inescapable as expected

Steve Nadis
Quanta Magazine
Mon, 02 Dec 2019 19:02 UTC
Black Hole
© Alain RSimulation of the distortions in space time caused by a black hole.
For the first time, physicists have calculated exactly what kind of singularity lies at the center of a realistic black hole.

In January 1916, Karl Schwarzschild, a German physicist who was stationed as a soldier on the eastern front, produced the first exact solution to the equations of general relativity, Albert Einstein's radical, two-month-old theory of gravity. General relativity portrayed gravity not as an attractive force, as it had long been understood, but rather as the effect of curved space and time. Schwarzschild's solution revealed the curvature of space-time around a stationary ball of matter.

Curiously, Schwarzschild noticed that if this matter were confined within a small enough radius, there would be a point of infinite curvature and density — a "singularity" — at the center.
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