Science & TechnologyS


Comet 2

Astronomers capture images of fragmenting Comet ATLAS Y4


Spaceweather.com
Tue, 14 Apr 2020 03:16 UTC
A zoomed-in view of the disintegrated comet ATLAS
© The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0/Gianluca MasiA zoomed-in view of the disintegrated comet.
There's no longer any doubt. Comet ATLAS (C/2019 Y4) is falling apart. Around the world, amateur astronomers are beginning to witness the breakup, even imaging individual fragments. Jose de Queiroz photographed 3 pieces on April 11th:

Comet ATLAS fragmenting

Comment: Comet ATLAS Y4 is breaking up
"The comet's orbit is now being influenced by 'non-gravitational' forces. These forces are the result of gases lifting off the comet nucleus and causing the nucleus to move very slightly in the opposite direction-sort of like a jet engine. Most active comets experience this to some degree, but ATLAS's non-gravitational forces have kicked in very abruptly and are quite strong. This supports a narrative of a small nucleus being pushed very strongly by extreme outgassing, possibly along with fragmentation."
Earlier this month Comet C2I Borisov also began 'falling apart'. The 'fragmentation' and 'observed outbursts' of comets such as Borisov and ATLAS Y4 are likely due to their changing electric discharge. An important note on comets as detailed by Pierre Lescaudron in Earth Changes and The Human cosmic Connection:
Comets or Asteroids

The fundamental difference between asteroids and comets is not their chemical composition, i.e. dirty, fluffy icy comets vs. rocky asteroids. Rather, as has long been put forward by plasma theorists, what differentiates 'comets' from 'asteroids' is their electric activity.

When the electric potential difference between an asteroid and the surrounding plasma is not too high, the asteroid exhibits a dark discharge mode or no discharge at all. But when the potential difference is high enough, the asteroid switches to a glowing discharge mode. At this point the asteroid is a comet. From this perspective, a comet is simply a glowing asteroid and an asteroid is a non-glowing comet. Thus the very same body can, successively, be a comet, then an asteroid, then a comet, etc., depending on variations in the ambient electric field it is subjected to.
See also: And check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?

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Microscope 2

Pseudogenes are going the way of Darwin's 'rudimentary organs'


Evolution News
Mon, 13 Apr 2020 10:05 UTC
Charles Darwin
© Maull and Polyblank, Literary and Scientific Portrait ClubCharles Darwin in 1855
Long described as useless leftovers of evolution, pseudogenes are rising from the junk pile as functional entities — so much so, that scientists think a change in terminology is needed.

Wikipedia can be counted on to parrot the Darwinian view. Here's what they say about pseudogenes:
Gene duplication generates functional redundancy and it is not normally advantageous to carry two identical genes. Mutations that disrupt either the structure or the function of either of the two genes are not deleterious and will not be removed through the selection process. As a result, the gene that has been mutated gradually becomes a pseudogene and will be either unexpressed or functionless. This kind of evolutionary fate is shown by population genetic modeling and also by genome analysis. According to evolutionary context, these pseudogenes will either be deleted or become so distinct from the parental genes so that they will no longer be identifiable. Relatively young pseudogenes can be recognized due to their sequence similarity. [Emphasis added.]
It's safe to say that many Darwin skeptics have felt intimidated by this apparent genetic evidence for evolution, not sure what to make of it or how to fit it into their own perspective. Prominent Darwin defenders like Kenneth Miller, meanwhile, trumpeted pseudogenes as prima facie evidence against intelligent design. "The human genome is littered with pseudogenes," he wrote in 1994. Pointless junk like this "cannot be attributed to anything that resembles intelligent design." He even characterized ID as a "retreat back to into an unknowledge of biology that is unworthy of the scientific spirit of this century" (Life's Grand Design).

Comment:

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Comet 2

New Comet C/2020 F8 (SWAN)

Ernesto Guido, Marco Rocchetto & Adriano Valvasori
Remanzacco Blogspot
Mon, 13 Apr 2020 19:22 UTC
CBET 4750 & 4752 & MPEC 2020-G94, issued on 2020, April 13, announce the discovery of a comet (total magnitude ~8.5) by M. Mattiazzo in the low-resolution public website hydrogen Lyman-alpha images obtained with the Solar Wind Anisotropies (SWAN) camera on the Solar and Heliospheric Observer (SOHO) spacecraft. The new comet has been designated C/2020 F8 (SWAN).

We performed follow-up measurements of this object while it was still on the PCCP webpage through the Telescope Live network.

Stacking of 3 unfiltered exposures, 30 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2020, April 11.4 from X02 (Telescope Live, Chile) through a 0.6-m f/6.5 astrograph + CCD, shows that this object is a comet with a compact coma about 5' in diameter and a tail 6' long in PA 220. Total magnitude 8.4.
Stacking of 3 unfiltered exposures, 120 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2020, April 11.7 from Q56 (Telescope Live, Australia) through a 0.1-m f/3.6 astrograph + CCD, shows that this object is a comet with a compact coma about 8' in diameter and a tail 25' long in PA 220.

Our confirmation images (click on it for a bigger version):

Comet C/2020 F8 Swan
© Remanzacco Blogspot
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Magic Hat

Neo-Darwinism and the 'Big Bang' of man's origin

Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig
Evolution News
Tue, 25 Feb 2020 14:27 UTC
Australopithecus afarensis evolution Darwin
© reconstrucSmithsonian National Museum of Natural History; reconstruction by John Gurche; photographed by Tim Evanson / CC BY-SA.tion by John Gurche;Tim Evanson / CC BY-SA.An artist imagines Australopithecus afarensis
When law professor Phillip E. Johnson1 was asked whether he wouldn't be "a bit out of [his] element" writing about evolution, neo-Darwinism,2 and intelligent design, he gave the following intriguing answer. It is acutely relevant for all readers and researchers who are interested in the origin of man but who are not paleoanthropologists:
Well, if I am out of my element then Charles Darwin must also have been out of his element because his training was in medicine and theology3 although he was, in fact, a very good scientist, self-taught, a gentlemen amateur like others of his time. Charles Lyell, the father of modern geology, was a lawyer. But you know, the thing about Darwinian evolution today is that it is a general philosophical concept that connects many disparate fields of science. So that you see, a molecular biologist [is] relying on fossil experts, paleontologists, and vice versa. And they are all relying on geneticists and each one of these groups of scientists outside their own element is just a generalist, is just a layman like anyone else. So there aren't really any specialists in evolution. It's a generalist's country.
He could have mentioned as well the Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel4, often called "the father of genetics," and many others in biology up to the present5. A further statement by Johnson is all the more relevant for the general reader, as well as for any philosopher, scientist, or other researcher:
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Biohazard

Best of the Web: Engineering Contagion: Amerithrax, Coronavirus and the Rise of the Biotech-Industrial Complex - Pt. 1 Dark Winter

Whitney Webb & Raul Diego
The Last Vagabond
Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00 UTC
Dark Winter
The leaders of two controversial pandemic simulations that took place just months before the Coronavirus crisis - Event 201 and Crimson Contagion - share a common history, the 2001 biowarfare simulation Dark Winter. Dark Winter not only predicted the 2001 anthrax attacks, but some of its participants had clear foreknowledge of those attacks.

During the presidency of George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s, something disturbing unfolded at the U.S.' top biological warfare research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Specimens of highly contagious and deadly pathogens - anthrax and ebola among them - had disappeared from the lab, at a time when lab workers and rival scientists had been accused of targeted sexual and ethnic harassment and several disgruntled researchers had left as a result.

In addition to missing samples of anthrax, ebola, hanta virus and a variant of AIDS, two of the missing specimens had been labeled "unknown" - "an Army euphemism for classified research whose subject was secret," according to reports. The vast majority of the specimens lost were never found and an Army spokesperson would later claim that it was "likely some were simply thrown out with the trash."

An internal Army inquiry in 1992 would reveal that one employee, Lt. Col. Philip Zack, had been caught on camera secretly entering the lab to conduct "unauthorized research, apparently involving anthrax," the Hartford Courant would later report. Despite this, Zack would continue to do infectious disease research for pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and would collaborate with the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) throughout the 1990s.


Comment: The same governmental organization that Bill Gates-lackey Dr. Anthony Fauci now heads, incidentally.

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Info

Design redundancy is in our DNA


University of Southern California
Thu, 09 Apr 2020 21:29 UTC
PRC2 and cPRC1
© University of Southern California
Design redundancy is not only an invention of engineers for building machines, but also a principle of nature for designing organisms. This principle is at play in the regulation of the genes responsible for directing stem cells to multiply themselves in the developing mouse embryo, as described in a new study in Science Advances.

In the study, scientists Oliver Bell, Jorge Zepeda-Martinez, and their collaborators from the Vienna BioCenter and USC studied the "silencing" of key genes that direct stem cells to differentiate into specific cell types or lineages. When these lineage-specific genes are silenced, the stem cells produce more stem cells, enabling the normal embryonic development of a mouse.

Silencing these genes involves a group of proteins called Polycomb repressive complexes, or PRCs. The PRCs make what are known as epigenetic changes, which reduce the activity of the lineage-specific genes that would commit a stem cell to becoming a more specialized cell type.

The redundancy is that there are two separate groups of PRCs, and both groups independently and simultaneously work to silence the same lineage-specific genes. If PRC group one stops working, then group two can handle the job. If PRC group two fails, then group one is a capable backup.
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Microscope 2

Ancestral type of COVID-19 virus mainly found in the US: study

Gao Lei and Liu Caiyu
Global Times
Sat, 11 Apr 2020 18:37 UTC
covid 119
Recent research conducted into the genetic network analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic, done jointly by British and German experts, testified the variant of novel coronavirus that is closest to that discovered in bats was actually found mainly among cases from the US, rather than in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province.

To explain the pandemic origins, experts from the University of Cambridge and their peers from Germany analyzed 160 virus genomes that were extracted from human patients around the world and they found the coronavirus mutated into three distinct strains.

They found that most cases carried type A virus - the ancestral type of virus, which is bat coronavirus, with 96 percent sequence similarity to the human virus - were largely seen in patients from the US and Australia.
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Fire

Krakatoa's 1883 eruption produced a sound so loud it circled the Earth four times

Aatish Bhatia
Nautilus
Mon, 29 Sep 2014 16:29 UTC
krakatoa lithograph
© Parker & Coward; via Wikipedia.A lithograph (c. 1888) of the massive 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. From The eruption of Krakatoa, and subsequent phenomena.
On 27 August 1883, the Earth let out a noise louder than any it has made since.

It was 10:02 a.m. local time when the sound emerged from the island of Krakatoa, which sits between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. It was heard 1,300 miles away in the Andaman and Nicobar islands ("extraordinary sounds were heard, as of guns firing"); 2,000 miles away in New Guinea and Western Australia ("a series of loud reports, resembling those of artillery in a north-westerly direction"); and even 3,000 miles away in the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues, near Mauritius* ("coming from the eastward, like the distant roar of heavy guns."[1]) In all, it was heard by people in over 50 different geographical locations, together spanning an area covering a thirteenth of the globe.

Think, for a moment, just how crazy this is. If you're in Boston and someone tells you that they heard a sound coming from New York City, you're probably going to give them a funny look. But Boston is a mere 200 miles from New York. What we're talking about here is like being in Boston and clearly hearing a noise coming from Dublin, Ireland. Travelling at the speed of sound (766 miles or 1,233 kilometers per hour), it takes a noise about 4 hours to cover that distance. This is the most distant sound that has ever been heard in recorded history.
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Snowflake Cold

Mussels that hitched a ride to Antarctica didn't survive brutal winter conditions

Katherine Kornei
New York Times
Thu, 09 Apr 2020 12:00 UTC
Antarctic
© Center for Dynamic Research of High Latitude Marine EcosystemsScientists suspect invasive mussels are hitching rides on ships to waters around the Antarctic.
Given its geographic isolation and bone-chilling temperatures, Antarctica has long held up a "no soliciting" sign when it comes to invasive species. But now the first successful marine invaders have breached the White Continent's door.

Scientists found a colony of mussels, most likely transported from Patagonia via ship, near the largest of the South Shetland Islands some 75 miles north of the Antarctic Peninsula. This discovery, published last month in Scientific Reports, is a harbinger of future invasions, the researchers suggest, particularly as climate change afflicts the Southern Ocean and ship traffic in the region increases.

Paulina Bruning, a marine biologist at Laval University in Québec City, never set out to find mussels in Antarctica. When Ms. Bruning dove in the 36-degree water of Fildes Bay on King George Island, she was focused on collecting native coral and sea sponges.

Comment: The researchers seem a little disappointed, probably because this puts a damper on the baseless claims that Antarctica is experiencing record warming:

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Chalkboard

COVID-19: genetic network analysis provides 'snapshot' of pandemic origins


University of Cambridge
Thu, 09 Apr 2020 00:01 UTC
coronavirus origins chart genetic
Study charts the "incipient supernova" of COVID-19 through genetic mutations as it spread from China and Asia to Australia, Europe and North America. Researchers say their methods could be used to help identify undocumented infection sources.

Researchers from Cambridge, UK, and Germany have reconstructed the early "evolutionary paths" of COVID-19 in humans - as infection spread from Wuhan out to Europe and North America - using genetic network techniques.

By analysing the first 160 complete virus genomes to be sequenced from human patients, the scientists have mapped some of the original spread of the new coronavirus through its mutations, which creates different viral lineages.

Comment: The study is available here. Notice how this research only covers COVID-19 samples from December 2019 until March 2020 from a very specific database. If more and earlier samples are examined, they could better track patient zero phylogenetically.

If variant 'A' is "the root of the outbreak", it will be interesting to further study why such a large number of A-type viruses were found in patients from the US and Australia.

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