Science & TechnologyS


Mars

Mars Curiosity Rover finds evidence of ancient oasis

Mars Rover
On its latest trek through the Gale Crater on Mars, the Curiosity Rover has discovered evidence that's leading scientists to believe there was an oasis at the base of that 150-kilometer-wide crater.

Curiosity scientists described the scene in an article in "Nature Geoscience" published earlier this week. Researchers analyzing data from the Rover are extrapolating from the data that rocks enriched by mineral salts are evidence of briny ponds that went through periods of drying out and overflowing. Those deposits serve as a watermark made by climate fluctuations as Mars' climate changed from a wet one to the current frigid ice desert it is today.

Better Earth

Mystery of the last mam­moths that died suddenly 4,000 years ago

mammoth
Isolation, extreme weather, and the possible arrival of humans may have killed off the holocene herbivores just 4,000 years ago.
The last woolly mammoths lived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean; they died out 4,000 years ago within a very short time. An international research team from the Universities of Helsinki and Tübingen and the Russian Academy of Sciences has now reconstructed the scenario that could have led to the mammoths' extinction. The researchers believe a combination of isolated habitat and extreme weather events, and even the spread of prehistoric man may have sealed the ancient giants' fate. The study has been published in the latest edition of Quaternary Science Reviews.

During the last ice age - some 100,000 to 15,000 years ago - mammoths were widespread in the northern hemisphere from Spain to Alaska. Due to the global warming that began 15,000 years ago, their habitat in Northern Siberia and Alaska shrank. On Wrangel Island, some mammoths were cut off from the mainland by rising sea levels; that population survived another 7000 years.

Comment: The theories these researchers have about mammoths will be significantly hampered by their misunderstanding of the biology and environment of mammoths; as noted in Of Flash Frozen Mammoths and Cosmic Catastrophes:
Mammoths remains are usually found piled up with other animals, like tiger, antelope, camel, horse, reindeer, giant beaver, giant ox, musk sheep, musk ox, donkey, badger, ibex, woolly rhinoceros, fox, giant bison, lynx, leopard, wolverine, hare, lion, elk, giant wolf, ground squirrel, cave hyena, bear, and many types of birds. Most of those animals could not survive the arctic climate. This is an extra indication that woolly mammoths were not polar creatures.

French prehistorian Henry Neuville conducted the most detailed study of mammoth skin and hair. At the end of his thorough analysis, he wrote the following:
"It appears to me impossible to find, in the anatomical examination of the skin and [hair], any argument in favor of adaptation to the cold."

- H. Neuville, On the Extinction of the Mammoth, Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1919, p. 332.
Last, but not least, the mammoth's diet argues against the creature existing in a polar climate. How could the woolly mammoth sustain its vegetarian diet of hundreds of pounds of daily intake in an arctic region devoid of vegetation for most of the year? How could woolly mammoths find the gallons of water that they had to drink everyday?

To make things worse, the woolly mammoth lived during the ice age, when temperatures were colder than today. Mammoths could not have survived the harsh northern Siberia climate of today, even less so 13,000 years ago when the Siberian climate should have been significantly colder.

The evidence above strongly suggests that the woolly mammoth was not a polar creature but a temperate one. Consequently, at the beginning of the Younger Dryas, 13,000 years ago, Siberia was not an arctic region but a temperate one.
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Arrow Up

Saturn surpasses Jupiter after discovery of 20 new moons

Washington, DC -- Move over Jupiter; Saturn is the new moon king.
Saturn's New Moons
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute. Starry background courtesy of Paolo Sartorio/ShutterstockAn artist’s conception of the 20 newly discovered moons orbiting Saturn. These discoveries bring the planet’s total moon count to 82, surpassing Jupiter for the most in our Solar System. Studying these moons can reveal information about their formation and about the conditions around Saturn at the time. Illustration is courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science.
A team led by Carnegie's Scott S. Sheppard has found 20 new moons orbiting Saturn. This brings the ringed planet's total number of moons to 82, surpassing Jupiter, which has 79. The discovery was announced Monday by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center.

Each of the newly discovered moons is about five kilometers, or three miles, in diameter. Seventeen of them orbit the planet backwards, or in a retrograde direction, meaning their movement is opposite of the planet's rotation around its axis. The other three moons orbit in the prograde--the same direction as Saturn rotates.

Two of the prograde moons are closer to the planet and take about two years to travel once around Saturn. The more-distant retrograde moons and one of the prograde moons each take more than three years to complete an orbit.

"Studying the orbits of these moons can reveal their origins, as well as information about the conditions surrounding Saturn at the time of its formation," Sheppard explained.

Frog

A wormy excuse to sneak evolution into the Cambrian Explosion

Yilingia spiciformis worm evolution cambrian explosion
© Nanjing Institute of Geology and PaleontologyYilingia spiciformis body fossil (left), trace (right), and artist’s reconstruction (middle).
It's dated at 540 million years old. A worm-like bilaterian animal left a track in mud, and this time its body was preserved along with the trail. Is this the proof Darwin needed to show precursors before the Cambrian explosion? Does it show that diversification into bilaterian animals was underway at the end of the Ediacaran? Is Darwin's doubt becoming less dubious?

"Ancient worm fossil rolls back origins of animal life," according to Nature. "Half-a-billion-year-old creature challenges theory that animals burst onto the scene in an abrupt event known as the Cambrian explosion." [Emphasis added.]

"Death march of a segmented and trilobate bilaterian elucidates early animal evolution." This is the primary paper in Nature.

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Microscope 2

2,000 atoms exist in two places at once in unprecedented quantum experiment

molecules
© Yaakov Fein, Universität WienAn illustration suggests the behavior of big, complex molecules spreading out like ripples across space.
The new experiment demonstrated a bizarre quantum effect from the double-slit experiment at an unprecedented scale.

Giant molecules can be in two places at once, thanks to quantum physics.

That's something that scientists have long known is theoretically true based on a few facts: Every particle or group of particles in the universe is also a wave — even large particles, even bacteria, even human beings, even planets and stars. And waves occupy multiple places in space at once. So any chunk of matter can also occupy two places at once. Physicists call this phenomenon "quantum superposition," and for decades, they have demonstrated it using small particles.

But in recent years, physicists have scaled up their experiments, demonstrating quantum superposition using larger and larger particles. Now, in a paper published Sept. 23 in the journal Nature Physics, an international team of researchers has caused molecule made up of up to 2,000 atoms to occupy two places at the same time.

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Attention

Air pollution able to reach the placenta around a developing baby

Womb shots
© Jovannig/ISTOCK/Getty Images PlusThe soot in polluted air may get as far as the inside of the womb, a small study suggests.
Breathing in polluted air may send soot far beyond a pregnant woman's lungs, all the way to the womb surrounding her developing baby.

Samples of placenta collected, after women in Belgium gave birth, revealed soot, or black carbon, embedded within the tissue on the side that faces the baby, researchers report online September 17 in Nature Communications. The amount of black carbon in the placenta correlated with a woman's air pollution exposure, estimated based on emissions of black carbon near her home.

"There's no doubt that air pollution harms a developing baby," says Amy Kalkbrenner, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who was not involved in the new work. Mothers who encounter air pollution regularly may have babies born prematurely or with low birth weight (SN: 5/13/15).

These developmental problems have been tied to an inflammatory response to air pollution in a mother's body, including inflammation within the uterus. But the new study, Kalkbrenner says, suggests that "air pollution itself is getting into the developing baby."

Pocket Knife

Paralysed man walks using mind-controlled exoskeleton

French patient's breakthrough could lead to brain-controlled wheelchairs, say experts
paralyzed man walking with exoskeleton
© Clinatech/AFP/GettyThibault walks using the exoskeleton.
A French man paralysed in a nightclub accident has walked again thanks to a brain-controlled exoskeleton, providing hope to tetraplegics seeking to regain movement.

The patient trained for months, harnessing his brain signals to control a computer-simulated avatar to perform basic movements before using the robot device to walk. Scientists described the trial results as a breakthrough.

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Comet 2

Cyanide gas found in interstellar object 2I/Borisov

Comet 2I/Borisov
© Universe TodayComet 2I/Borisov.
When the mysterious object known as 'Oumuamua passed Earth in October of 2017, astronomers rejoiced. In addition to being the first interstellar object detected in our Solar System, but its arrival opened our eyes to how often such events take place. Since asteroids and comets are believed to be material left over from the formation of a planetary system, it also presented an opportunity to study extrasolar systems.

Unfortunately, 'Oumuamua left our Solar System before any such studies could be conducted. Luckily, the detection of comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) this summer provided renewed opportunities to study material left by outgassing. Using data gathered by the William Herschel Telescope (WHT), an international team of astronomers found that 2I/Borisov contains cyanide. But as Douglas Adams would famously say, "Don't Panic!"

The study, which recently appeared in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, was led by Prof. Alan Fitzsimmons of the Astrophysics Research Centre at Queen's University Belfast. He was joined by members of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the Institute for Astronomy, the STAR Institute, the ESA's NEO Coordination Centre, the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), and multiple universities.

Car Black

The sky's the limit: Siberian scientists set to design Russia's first flying car

Flying car
© Sputnik / Universal Pictures 6A still from the Russian-made movie “Black Lightning” (2009)
Russia has joined the air-taxi craze after scientists from Siberia's largest city, Novosibirsk, were tasked with developing what may become the country's first flying car within the next four years.

A special laboratory was established at the Siberian Aeronautical Research Institute in order to create "a full-scale demonstration model of an ultrashort takeoff and landing transport drone with hybrid propulsion (a flying car)," the Foundation for Advanced Research Projects announced.

Galaxy

Weird repeating signals from deep space may be created by starquakes

neutron
© NASAPowerful vibrations could rock neutron stars after they collide
Strange blasts of radiation from space called fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been puzzling astronomers for years, as we don't know what causes them. Now, we have a fresh clue as to how some of the weirdest kind of FRBs may form. Some of these bursts repeat over a period of years, and it appears they could be caused by starquakes in the aftermath of a collision of two stars.

Most of the nearly 100 FRBs we have detected consist of a single burst. But a few have been found to repeat, which makes it easier to find where they are coming from and determine what is causing them.

One such source, known as FRB 171019, was first detected in 2017, when a relatively bright burst was seen with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder. It was followed by dimmer and dimmer bursts, some nearly 600 times fainter than the initial flash. This is unlike the first and most active repeating FRB, which has produced several bright bursts.

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