Science & TechnologyS


Moon

Scientists discover mysterious 'mass of material' buried under Moon's South Pole-Aitken basin

Andrew Griffin
The Independent
Wed, 12 Jun 2019 15:10 UTC
Moon
© Sputnik / Vladimir Sergeev
A huge, mysterious "mass of material" has been spotted underneath the Moon.

The vast chunk is sitting underneath the biggest crater in the entire solar system, known as the South Pole-Aitken basin.

And it may be part of the material that smashed into our neighbour and formed the planet, according to the researchers who discovered it. But that is just one theory on where it may have come from, and scientists stress that it is still unknown what the material is and where it might have come from.
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Cloud Lightning

Ball lightning phenomenon theorized to be 'photon bubble' by Russian scientist

Mike McRae
Science Alert
Sun, 30 Jun 2019 12:00 UTC
Ball lightning in Maastricht, Netherlands
© Joe ThomissenA smaller 'ball of fire' than this one - shot in Maastricht in the Netherlands - was seen in Great Wakering.
As far as mysteries of nature go, ball lightning is one of the more perplexing. It seems there are as many potential explanations as there are sightings, but in spite of decades of intense interest, none stand out as a clear winner.

One of the weirder hypotheses claims these glowing balls are nothing more than light trapped inside a sphere of thin air. A new paper has added fresh details to the proposal, setting physical parameters on what such a light bubble might be like.

For centuries, people have recorded accounts of grape-fruit-sized orbs of light moving slowly a short distance above the ground, often in the middle of an electrical storm, persisting for maybe 10 seconds or so before silently winking out of existence.

Comment: It remains to be seen whether this theory will stand the test of time:

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Cardboard Box

Genetic discovery surprises support the validity of Intelligent Design


Evolution News
Tue, 11 Jun 2019 04:16 UTC
Mitochondria
© Terrence G. Frey [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.Mitochondria, showing inner and outer membranes
Several news items reinforce ideas advanced by ID advocates regarding junk DNA, irreducible complexity, and human uniqueness.

Junk DNA

ID scientists have been disputing "junk DNA" claims for many years now. Another supportive case came to light recently. The Simons Foundation found that mutations in non-coding DNA (once considered evolutionary leftovers, or junk) can be implicated in the development of autism. While a diagnosis of autism can be devastating for a family, the important point is that transcripts of non-coding DNA, even if they do not yield proteins, still influence the health of the individual. The Simons Foundation calls this discovery a first.
Leveraging artificial intelligence techniques, researchers have demonstrated that mutations in so-called 'junk' DNA can cause autism. The study, published May 27 in Nature Genetics, is the first to functionally link such mutations to the neurodevelopmental condition. [Emphasis added.]
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Cell Phone

Huawei to develop own OS to rival Android according to 'secret' plan

Yingzhi Yang and Li Tao
South China Morning Post
Tue, 11 Jun 2019 19:18 UTC
Huawei
© REUTERS / Aly Song
Seven years ago, in a villa facing a lake in Shenzhen, a small group of top Huawei Technologies executives headed by founder Ren Zhengfei held a closed-door meeting that lasted for several days.

Their mission was to brainstorm ideas on how Huawei should respond to the rising success of Google's Android smartphone operating system (OS) around the world - software that it used on its own handsets. The underlying concern was that dependence on Android could render the company vulnerable to a US ban in the future.

The group agreed that Huawei should build a proprietary OS as a potential alternative to Android, according to people familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified because the information is private.

This meeting was later called the "lakeside talks" internally and access to documents relating to the gathering became highly restricted last year, the sources said.

Following the talks and direction from senior management, a specialist OS team led by executives including Eric Xu Zhijun, currently one of the three rotating chairmen for Huawei, was established and began to work on an OS under conditions of tight secrecy.

A specialised zone was created inside Huawei to house the OS team, with guards on the door. Only employees on the OS team had access to the specialist area, which was accessed with registered staff cards. Personal mobile phones were not allowed and had to be kept in an outside locker.

Comment: Aside from its own OS, it looks like Huawei is considering a Russian tech solution, too:
The Chinese corporation is negotiating a replacement for Android with the Aurora operating system, currently being developed by Moscow-based firm Russian Mobile Platform, Russian news outlet the Bell reports, citing an official familiar with the issue.

Huawei Chairman Guo Ping reportedly discussed the possible deal with the Russian minister of digital development and communications, Konstantin Noskov, ahead of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

"China is already testing devices with the Aurora pre-installed," the official said.

Moreover, the subject was addressed during an official meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with Chinese leader Xi Jinping the day before the business event. The two presidents reportedly discussed both an opportunity of installing the Aurora operating system on Huawei smartphones and localization of some of Huawei's production facilities in Russia.

Aurora is a mobile operating system that is being developed on the basis of Sailfish OS, designed by Finnish technology company Jolla. In 2014, Russian entrepreneur Grigory Berezkin became a co-owner of Jolla. Since 2016, the Open Mobile Platform company, associated with the businessman, has been developing a Russian version of the system. Last year, a 75-percent share in the Open Mobile Platform was purchased by Russia's state telecommunications company, Rostelecom.


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Cell Phone

Google confirms some Android smartphones had pre-installed backdoors right out of the box


Sputnik
Mon, 10 Jun 2019 15:14 UTC
Smartphone
© Reuters/Marko Djurica
The malware was detected three years ago but was later found to have evolved. Hackers began to embed it in the firmware of low-priced Android smartphones, which were primarily sold in China.

Google has confirmed that some Android devices had come with pre-installed backdoors right out of the box.

As first reported by the Russia-based cybersecurity provider Kaspersky Lab back in 2016, the malware, called Triada, was initially a Trojan that would obtain root privileges and display intrusive ads on a user's phone.

Google virus analysts managed to wipe it out from all Android devices, but in the summer of 2017 it became clear that Triada had evolved from a rooting Trojan into a pre-installed Android framework backdoor.
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Telescope

First known 'intergalactic bridge' discovered 10 million light-years away


RT
Tue, 11 Jun 2019 14:54 UTC
spiral galaxy
© NASA
A so-called 'intergalactic bridge' that stretches between two galaxies has been spotted 10 million light-years away by scientists who are hailing it the first discovery of its kind.

The mysterious trail of magnetic fields and electrons connects two clusters of galaxies named Abell 0399 and Abell 0401. The find offers astronomers new insight into the "cosmic web" of filamentary structures that connect distant objects in the universe.

"Until today, a magnetic field had never been observed in the filaments that connect the clusters between them. The filaments of this web are in fact extremely rarefied and difficult to observe," read the statement announcing the findings.
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Clock

Too fast for slo-mo: Hairy frogfish and trap-jaw ants' bites are incredibly quick


Uncommon Descent
Mon, 10 Jun 2019 17:05 UTC
hairy frogfish
© Dimpy Jacobs / Lembeh Resort
It takes roughly 1/6000 of a second.
The speed of a hairy frogfish's bite is the result of a vacuum in its mouth that can suck in its prey in just 1/6000th of a second. It's so fast that even slow-motion video struggles to capture it.

In 2006, researchers also noted a swift predatory ant:
Biologists clocked the speed at which the trap-jaw ant, Odontomachus bauri, closes its mandibles at 35 to 64 meters per second, or 78 to 145 miles per hour - an action they say is the fastest self-powered predatory strike in the animal kingdom. The average duration of a strike was a mere 0.13 milliseconds, or 2,300 times faster than the blink of an eye. "Trap-jaw ants have fastest recorded strike in animal kingdom" at UCal Berkeley
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Brain

How simulation neurons help us understand the minds of others

Karen Foster
Prevent Disease
Tue, 04 Jun 2019 12:02 UTC
brainwaves
Psychologists and philosophers have long suggested that simulation is the mechanism whereby humans understand the minds of others. However, the neural basis of this complex process had not been identified until a group of researchers identified a type of neuron that had not previously been described that actively and spontaneously learns from decision-making by other individuals and simulates their mental processes.

It was not known whether specific neurons contributed to advanced social knowledge, such as simulating the decisions of other individuals. The dysfunction of these simulation neurons might be involved in the restriction of social knowledge, one of the symptoms of autism and, through hyperactivity, may give an exaggerated version of others and play an important role in social anxiety, the authors speculate.

The study, published in Cell, one of the journals with the highest impact factor, is the result of research led by Wolfram Schultz, a scientist at the University of Cambridge (UK) involving Gustavo Deco, ICREA research professor with the Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC) and director of the Center for Brain and Cognition (CBC) at UPF.
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Fireball 5

Site of biggest ever meteorite collision in the UK discovered

University of Oxford
Phys.org
Mon, 10 Jun 2019 10:10 UTC
meteor cgi
© CC0 Public Domain
Evidence for the ancient, 1.2 billion years old, meteorite strike, was first discovered in 2008 near Ullapool, NW Scotland by scientists from Oxford and Aberdeen Universities. The thickness and extent of the debris deposit they found suggested the impact crater-made by a meteorite estimated at 1km wide-was close to the coast, but its precise location remained a mystery.

In a paper published today in Journal of the Geological Society, a team led by Dr. Ken Amor from the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford University, show how they have identified the crater location 15-20km west of a remote part of the Scottish coastline. It is buried beneath both water and younger rocks in the Minch Basin.

Dr. Ken Amor said: 'The material excavated during a giant meteorite impact is rarely preserved on Earth, because it is rapidly eroded, so this is a really exciting discovery. It was purely by chance this one landed in an ancient rift valley where fresh sediment quickly covered the debris to preserve it.

Comment: See also:

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Fireball 5

Beta Taurid meteor shower may pack an unexpected punch

Scott Sutherland
The Weather Network
Wed, 05 Jun 2019 14:30 UTC
Meteor over Schliengen, Germany (stock)
© Stephanie Vetter (2018)
There is an annual meteor shower in June that hardly anyone has ever seen, but it may be responsible for one of the biggest modern asteroid impacts on record.

Starting on June 5 and running until July 18 of each year, Earth passes through a stream of meteoroids in space - bits of rock and ice left behind by a comet known as 2P/Encke as it travels around the Sun. As these bits of comet debris are swept up by the planet's atmosphere, they produce bright flashes of light across the sky. This is the Beta Taurid meteor shower, which reaches peak activity on June 28-29.

While Comet Encke is also responsible for the Southern and Northern Taurid meteor showers, which send streaks of light across the night skies in October and November, respectively, there's a catch to the June Beta Taurids.

Hardly anyone has seen a Beta Taurid meteor. Unlike most meteor showers, this one occurs during the day, because the meteoroids in this part of the stream are coming at Earth from the direction of the Sun.

Comment: See also:

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