Physics in Sweden and the Institute for Astrophysics on the Canary Islands reports something strange in the current issue of The Astronomical Journal. They compared star maps from the 1950s with recent surveys, and discovered that 100 previously catalogued stars cannot be found anymore.

The group's project, called Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) has been comparing mapped stars listed in the U.S. Naval Observatory Catalogue (USNO) B 1.0, dating from the 1950s, with those in another, more recent sky catalog, the Pan-STARRS Data Release (DR1). A total of 150,000 objects were found in the older catalogue (which lists 600 million stars) that did not have a readily identifiable counterpart in the new star survey, even though the Pan-STARRS Data Release includes stars that are five times less bright than the faintest light sources included in USNO. Of these 150,000 anomalies, the authors visually inspected 24,000 candidates and discovered that 100 of these point sources of light appear only in the older star survey. And since then, apparently, they've vanished.

Certainly, the most parsimonious explanation for the missing stars is that they are natural phenomena such as extremely flaring dwarf planets, failed supernova, or stars that might directly collapse into a black hole. But there seem to me too many anomalies to explain all the vanished stars as known natural phenomena. In their current paper, the authors themselves discuss the possibility that they're seeing unknown phenomena, or that the vanished "stars" could be relics of technologically advanced civilizations, particularly the theoretical mega-engineering projects known as Dyson spheres.

The impact of an asteroid or comet is acknowledged as the principal cause of the mass extinction that killed off most dinosaurs and about three-quarters of the planet's plant and animal species 66 million years ago.

But massive volcanic eruptions in India may also have contributed to the extinctions. Scientists have long debated the significance of the Deccan Traps eruptions, which began before the impact and lasted, on and off, for nearly a million years, punctuated by the impact event.

Now, a University of Michigan-led geochemical analysis of fossil marine mollusk shells from around the globe is providing new insights into both the climate response and environmental mercury contamination at the time of the Deccan Traps volcanism.

Ethicists warn that there is no international framework regulating research into gene-editing technology, and that it could be used for military purposes.


There are concerns in the scientific community over the threat that rogue or amateur scientists messing with DNA might pose to humanity.

Professor Christiane Woopen, executive director of the Cologne Centre for Ethics, Rights, Economics and Social Sciences of Health (CERES), has said:

"You only have to think about those sci-fi scenarios where embryos are edited to become very powerful soldiers who don't need sleep, don't feel pain and go into battle very effectively."

"Even if such a scenario is biologically unrealistic, there is a risk that people try to do something like this. We are talking about powerful technology that can be significantly harmful to our health and life when it gets into the wrong hands."

Earlier this year, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Geological Survey (BGS) were forced to update the World Magnetic Model a year ahead of schedule due to the speed with which the magnetic north pole is shifting out of the Canadian Arctic and toward Russia's Siberia.

The BGS and the US National Centers for Environmental Information has released a new update to the World Magnetic Model this week, confirming that the magnetic north pole, whose coordinates are crucial for the navigation systems used by governments, militaries and a slew of civilian applications, is continuing its push toward Siberia.

"The WMM2020 forecasts that the northern magnetic pole will continue drifting toward Russia, although at a slowly decreasing speed -down to about 40 km per year compared to the average speed of 55 km over the past twenty years," the US agency said in a press statement.

The data confirmed that this year, the magnetic north pole passed to within 390 km of the geographic North Pole, and crossed the Greenwich (prime) meridian. Compilers also confirmed that the Earth's magnetic field is continuing to weaken, at a rate of about 5 percent every 100 years.

An insidious kind of brainwashing goes on without your awareness. It continues surreptitiously every hour of the day and night. But not to worry; this brainwashing is intelligently designed, and it's good for you. In fact, you couldn't live without it!

Sleep on It

In November 2019, neuroscientists at Boston University observed a slow electrical wave pattern in healthy brains during sleep that coincided with ebbs and flows of blood and cerebrospinal fluid. They published their findings in Science, concluding that sleep cleanses the brain of toxic waste products of metabolism accumulated during the day. This helps answer the question of why sleep is necessary, and why sleep deprivation leads to so many known physical problems. Without this daily rinse cycle, waste products could build up, leading to neurodegenerative diseases and other health issues. New Scientist commented on the discovery:

They found that, during sleep, large waves of cerebrospinal fluid flow into and out of the brain every 20 seconds, a process thought to remove waste. The inward flow was preceded by patterns of slow waves of electrical activity, called delta waves.

These brainwaves are also known to play a role in consolidating memories while we sleep. The researchers found that the waves coincided with blood flowing out of the brain, which they say helps balance the total volume of fluid around the brain.

People with neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's have fewer and weaker slow brainwaves, says Lewis. "So we might expect that there are also fewer and smaller waves of cerebrospinal fluid in those disorders, and that might have an impact on how waste products are cleared." [Emphasis added.]

The heart of the Milky Way is a pretty quiet place, with a not-so active black hole, and few star births. But that wasn't always the case. Around 1 billion years ago, the joint was rockin' with a furious round of starburst activity, new observations have revealed.

It was, astronomers say, one of the most boisterous parties the Milky Way has ever put on, and it could contradict our previous ideas about the star formation rate in our home galaxy.

The galactic centre is a star-dense region measuring around 150 parsecs across (490 light-years) in the middle of the Milky Way, around a supermassive black hole (you may have heard of it, it's called Sagittarius A*).

A newly published study, to be presented Dec. 12 at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting, reveals that a type of Martian aurora originally detected by NASA's MAVEN spacecraft is in fact the most common aurora on the Red Planet, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University researchers said.

The study, co-authored by scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and funded by the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) mission, also suggests a way to track water loss and better understand how the Martian climate has changed over time, the team reported.

Unlike the brilliantly colored auroras that dance across the night sky near the Earth's polar regions, the most common aurora on Mars is a dayside phenomenon called a proton aurora, explained Embry-Riddle Ph.D. candidate Andréa Hughes, lead author of a paper scheduled to be published Dec. 12 in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Space Physics.

Moon's southern pole will be a good spot for an observatory that together with space-based telescopes help find dangerous asteroids. Russia plans to build one as part of an ambitious lunar base project.

Conquering the moon is on the Russian space agency's to-do list for the not-so-distant future. Roscosmos is currently working on a comprehensive plan that the Russian government wants to see before allocating any money for it. Part of a permanent Russian base envisioned on the Moon will be given to an observatory that will serve as part of a "global system for tracking asteroid and comet threats," a senior Roscosmos official said in a recent interview.

"The location selected for the base is southern pole of the moon. It has favorable relief and conditions: enough light for solar panels, constantly shadowed craters with ice reserves for fuel and raw material," Aleksandr Bloshenko explained.

Cancer development is associated with the gradual accumulation of DNA defects over time. Thus, cancer is considered an age-related disease. But why do children develop cancer? An international team of researchers, led by Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, now reveal that mysterious rings of DNA known as extrachromosomal circular DNA can contribute to cancer development in children. Producing the first detailed map of circular DNA, the scientists have shed new unanticipated insights on long standing questions in the field of cancer genetics. The work has been published in Nature Genetics*.

Every year, nearly half a million people in Germany develop cancer. Approximately 2,100 cancer patients are children under the age of 18. The fact that the majority of cancers develop in old adults is due to the mechanisms contributing to cancer development. A range of exogenous factors, including tobacco smoke and radiation, can cause damage to cellular DNA. If this type of DNA damage is left to accumulate over many years, affected cells may lose control over cell division and growth. This results in cancer development. Children, however, are not old enough to be affected by this mechanism of cancer development. What, then, is the reason for childhood cancers? A team of researchers, led by Dr. Anton Henssen of Charité's Department of Pediatrics, Division of Oncology and Hematology and the Experimental and Clinical Research Center (ECRC,) an institution jointly operated by Charité and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC), are a large step closer to finding an answer. Working alongside a team of scientists led by Dr. Richard Koche from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and other international partners, the groups of researchers were able to show that rings of DNA can cause disruption of our cells' genetic information, which can contribute to cancer development.

A Dartmouth study finds that the conscious perception of visual location occurs in the frontal lobes of the brain, rather than in the visual system in the back of the brain. The findings are published in Current Biology.

The results are significant given the ongoing debate among neuroscientists on what consciousness is and where it happens in the brain.

"Our study provides clear evidence that the visual system is not representing what we see but is representing the physical world," said lead author, Sirui Liu, a graduate student of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth. "What we see emerges later in the processing hierarchy, in the frontal areas of the brain that are not usually associated with visual processing."