Science & TechnologyS


Saturn

First global map of Titan highlights oceans, plains, dunes and mountains

Michael Irving
New Atlas
Mon, 18 Nov 2019 00:01 UTC
titan saturn moon
© NASA/JPL-CaltechAstronomers have released a global map of Saturn's moon Titan.
In some ways, the most Earth-like world in our solar system (other than Earth, obviously) is Saturn's largest moon, Titan. And now, astronomers from NASA JPL and Arizona State University have used years of Cassini data to construct the first global map of Titan.

From space, Titan just looks like a featureless, orange-brown moon - but that's because of its thick atmosphere. The Cassini mission peered through the hazy clouds and revealed a fascinating surface of complex geology, carved from a hydrologic cycle much like Earth's. Titan is the only place besides our homeworld that's known to have lakes, rivers, oceans and rains - but rather than water, it's liquid methane and ethane.

"Titan has an active methane-based hydrologic cycle that has shaped a complex geologic landscape, making its surface one of most geologically diverse in the solar system," says Rosaly Lopes, lead author of the new research. "Despite the different materials, temperatures and gravity fields between Earth and Titan, many surface features are similar between the two worlds and can be interpreted as being products of the same geologic processes."

Comment: See also:

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Bizarro Earth

How is a massive "blob" of rock causing earthquakes in Central Asia?

Edsel Cook
Natural News
Wed, 20 Nov 2019 07:18 UTC
Hindu Kush
Far beneath the Hindu Kush mountains of Central Asia, a giant blob of continental rock is slowly dripping away from the lithosphere into the mantle below. A recent study attributed many of the deepest earthquakes in the region to the movements of this blob.

The Hindu Kush runs for hundreds of miles and straddles the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is one of the most seismically active areas in the world.

Every year, the mountain range gets rocked by more than 100 earthquakes that measure a magnitude of 4.0 or higher. It also experiences many intermediate-depth quakes that happen between 45 to 190 miles (70 to 300 kilometers) below the surface.

Until recently, experts didn't know why the Hindu Kush suffers so many earthquakes at intermediate depths. The mountain range doesn't sit on top of a significant fault line, which any California resident knows causes numerous earthquakes.

Further, the mountains are some distance away from the ongoing collision between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates. Therefore, the usual candidates for the cause behind constant earthquakes are absent from the area. (Related: Fracking-induced earthquakes in Central and Eastern America are on the rise, caution researchers.)

Comment: There are other important factors to consider when studying tectonic plate movements, to increase our understanding of the subsequent seismic and volcanic activity, and also the formation of sinkholes (all of which are increasing at an alarming rate!), such as:

1. The slowdown of the Earth's rotation - causing mechanical stress on the crust.
2. Crustal slippage - the difference in rotation between the crust and mantle.
3. Reduction of the surface/core electric field.
4. Electromagnetism.

These factors, the Electric Universe theory, and much more are fully explained in Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.

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Info

Scientists may have discovered the fifth force of nature

Stephen Johnson
Big Think
Thu, 21 Nov 2019 18:00 UTC
A new paper suggests that the mysterious X17 subatomic particle is indicative of a fifth force of nature.
Higgs-Boson
© Science & Society Picture Library / Getty
Physicists have long known of four fundamental forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force.

Now, they might have evidence of a fifth force.

The discovery of a fifth force of nature could help explain the mystery of dark matter, which is proposed to make up around 85 percent of the universe's mass. It could also pave the way for a unified fifth force theory, one that joins together electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces as "manifestations of one grander, more fundamental force," as theoretical physicist Jonathan Feng put it in 2016.

The new findings build upon a study published in 2016 that offered the first hint of a fifth force.

In 2015, a team of physicists at Hungary's Institute for Nuclear Research was looking for "dark photons," which are hypothetical particles believed to "carry" dark matter. To catch a glimpse of these strange forces at work, the team used a particle accelerator to shoot particles through a vacuum tube at high speeds. The goal was to observe the way isotopes decay after thrust into high-energy states — anomalies in the way particles behave could suggest the presence of unknown forces.

So, the team closely watched the radioactive decay of beryllium-8, an unstable isotope. When the particles from beryllium-8 decayed, the team observed unexpected light emissions: The electrons and positrons from the unstable isotope tended to burst away from each other at exactly 140 degrees. This shouldn't have happened, according to the law of conservation of energy. The results suggested that an unknown particle was created in the decay.
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Hearts

Bottlenose dolphin observed with adopted whale calf for 2 years

Jef Akst
The Scientist
Fri, 01 Nov 2019 12:00 UTC
dolphin adoption
DOLPHIN ADOPTION: A female bottlenose dolphin in the South Pacific has been sighted with both her own calf and another young cetacean identified as a melon-headed whale.Pamela Carzon, Marine Mammal Study Group of French Polynesia
From a small inflatable boat in the Rangiroa atoll in French Polynesia, Pamela Carzon got her first glimpse of the "strange" trio of marine mammals she'd been told about: a bottlenose dolphin mother (Tursiops truncatus), her seven-month-old calf, and another young cetacean that was slightly smaller and looked to be not a bottlenose dolphin at all, but a melon-headed whale (Peponocephala electra).

It was April 2015, and Carzon and a colleague at the Marine Mammal Study Group of French Polynesia, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to whale and dolphin conservation, were out for the NGO's annual photo-ID survey, very much hoping to find animals that a former collaborator had seen while diving in the region the previous November. "[T]he sea was very calm, and there were many dolphins around," Carzon, also a PhD student at the Center for Island Research and Environmental Observatory (CRIOBE) in French Polynesia and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, recalls in an email to The Scientist. "It took us maybe two minutes to spot them: the dark calf was easy to spot among the bottlenose dolphins."

Comment: See also:

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Attention

How attackers could hijack your android camera to spy on you

Erez Yalon
Checkmarx
Tue, 19 Nov 2019 20:45 UTC
phone hackers
In today's digitally-connected society, smartphones have become an extension of us. Advanced camera and video capabilities in particular are playing a massive role in this, as users are able to quickly take out their phones and capture any moment in real-time with the simple click of a button. However, this presents a double-edged sword as these mobile devices are constantly collecting, storing, and sharing various types of data - with and without our knowing - making our devices goldmines for attackers.

In order to better understand how smartphone cameras may be opening users up to privacy risks, the Checkmarx Security Research Team cracked into the applications themselves that control these cameras to identify potential abuse scenarios. Having a Google Pixel 2 XL and Pixel 3 on-hand, our team began researching the Google Camera app [1], ultimately finding multiple concerning vulnerabilities stemming from permission bypass issues. After further digging, we also found that these same vulnerabilities impact the camera apps of other smartphone vendors in the Android ecosystem - namely Samsung - presenting significant implications to hundreds-of-millions of smartphone users.
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Network

With Chinese firms barred, Trump asks Apple's Tim Cook to 'help with 5G'

Paul Conner
FOXBusiness
Thu, 21 Nov 2019 18:38 UTC
trump
President Trump asked Apple CEO Tim Cook about building 5G wireless networks in the U.S., he tweeted Thursday.

The pair toured an Apple facility in Austin, Texas, Wednesday, where the tech giant makes its Mac Pro computers.

"I asked Tim Cook to see if he could get Apple involved in building 5G in the U.S.," Trump wrote. "They have it all - Money, Technology, Vision & Cook!"

Wireless carriers say 5G will be one of the fastest wireless technologies ever created," connecting devices and powering the "internet of things" expansion.


Comment: To sweeten the pleading, Trump has said he is "considering exempting Apple from tariffs imposed on China."

The tariffs imposed on China primarily target Chinese tech firms.

Those Chinese tech firms were targeted because they are the most advanced in rolling out 5G infrastructure.

Trump, bless him, has just exposed the fact that the US lags behind China in 5G technology, and that the whole Huawei-sanctions-tariffs malarkey is really about giving US firms a 'hidden market force hand' so that they can catch up with China, so that China doesn't take its rightful place in the world.

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Info

Humans put into suspended animation for first time during surgery

Helen Thomson
New Scientist
Wed, 20 Nov 2019 17:24 UTC
Suspended Animation
© shapecharge/GettySuspended animation could save lives.
Doctors have placed humans in suspended animation for the first time, as part of a trial in the US that aims to make it possible to fix traumatic injuries that would otherwise cause death.

Samuel Tisherman, at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, told New Scientist that his team of medics had placed at least one patient in suspended animation, calling it "a little surreal" when they first did it. He wouldn't reveal how many people had survived as a result.

The technique, officially called emergency preservation and resuscitation (EPR), is being carried out on people who arrive at the University of Maryland Medical Centre in Baltimore with an acute trauma - such as a gunshot or stab wound - and have had a cardiac arrest. Their heart will have stopped beating and they will have lost more than half their blood. There are only minutes to operate, with a less than 5 per cent chance that they would normally survive.

EPR involves rapidly cooling a person to around 10 to 15°C by replacing all of their blood with ice-cold saline. The patient's brain activity almost completely stops. They are then disconnected from the cooling system and their body - which would otherwise be classified as dead - is moved to the operating theatre.
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Hiliter

Handwriting as detector: Scientists learn to evaluate the psyche with lasers


Sputnik
Thu, 21 Nov 2019 13:43 UTC
writing
© CC0
Scientists at the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI along with foreign colleagues have studied the biomechanics of hand movements when writing and drawing and developed a unique method to evaluate the individual properties of writing speed and pencil pressure. The research results were published in the journal Laser Physics Letters.

The researchers used a dynamic light scattering method. Passing through dense opaque matter (bio-tissues or paper), laser radiation scatters on their internal structural elements and decays into many subtle composite light rays. The scattered parts interfere, resulting in the formation of zones of positive and negative interference, called laser speckles.

If there is any movement in the medium, a tremor in the interference speckle pattern is observed. Analysing speckle tremors allows for a quantitative assessment of the structural properties of a light-scattering medium.

"The method of laser speckle analysis is very sensitive to any mechanical influence, even if these changes occur at the micro- and nano-level. All changes in structural and physical properties are recorded by a high-speed digital camera; then a special computer algorithm calculates and restores accurate information about the nature of both the hand and pencil movement in three dimensions over time. We suggest that this method can be used by forensics for system analysis and the study of handwriting properties of criminals, their victims and witnesses", Igor Meglinskiy, the author of the study, Professor at MEPhI and the University of Aston, told Sputnik.
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Cassiopaea

Astronomers capture brightest light ever detected, a mysterious gamma-ray burst that has smashed records

Maddie Bender
Vice
Wed, 20 Nov 2019 18:49 UTC
Gamma-Ray burst.
© GettyArtist's depiction of a Gamma-Ray burst.
For the first time, astrophysicists have observed a cosmic explosion emit particles that are a trillion times more energetic than visible light, a record-setting measurement from a phenomenon that scientists are still seeking to fully understand.

The observation of this powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB), as these explosions are known, adds another layer to what scientists think happens when a star implodes. The findings were published on November 20 in two papers in the journal Nature.

When a star dies, its insides no longer support its own mass, and it crashes upon itself. This self-collision compresses the star's core into a neutron star or a black hole, while generating explosions that produce a supernova. These explosions are GRBs, and they produce short-lived jets of extremely energetic light. GRBs may also occur when two neutron stars collide. They happen on a daily basis, and release as much energy in a few seconds as our Sun will emit in its entire 10 billion years of life. Until now, however, no telescope had observed a GRB emit photons (light particles) on the order of a teraelectronvolt, or TeV.

"Such a strong signal has never been measured in ground-based gamma ray astronomy — this is the first time," said Razmik Mirzoyan, the spokesperson and senior astrophysicist of the MAGIC collaboration, the group that manages the telescopes that made the observation.


Comment: Why? We'll be getting a clear answer soon enough, judging by the rate at which civilization-ending asteroids are daily careening past us...

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Chalkboard

Physicists claim discovery of more evidence of a new force of nature

Mike McRae
Science Alert
Wed, 20 Nov 2019 17:55 UTC
gravity space warping
© Serdarbayraktar/iStock
Everything in our Universe is held together or pushed apart by four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and two nuclear interactions. Physicists now think they've spotted the actions of a fifth physical force emerging from a helium atom.

It's not the first time researchers claim to have caught a glimpse of it, either. A few years ago, they saw it in the decay of an isotope of beryllium. Now the same team has seen a second example of the mysterious force at play - and the particle they think is carrying it, which they're calling X17.

If the discovery is confirmed, not only could learning more about X17 let us better understand the forces that govern our Universe, it could also help scientists solve the dark matter problem once and for all.
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