Science & TechnologyS


Cassiopaea

Strange motion of neutrons proves nature is fundamentally bizarre

Michelle Starr
Science Alert
Wed, 10 Jul 2024 17:21 UTC
wave particle
© (Yuichiro Chino/Moment/Getty Images)
At the very smallest scales, our intuitive view of reality no longer applies. It's almost as if physics is fundamentally indecisive, a truth that gets harder to ignore as we zoom in on the particles that pixelate our Univerrse.

In order to better understand it, physicists had to devise an entirely new framework to place it in, one based on probability over certainty. This is quantum theory, and it describes all sorts of phenomena, from entanglement to superposition.

Yet in spite of a century of experiments showing just how useful quantum theory is at explaining what we see, it's hard to shake our 'classical' view of the Universe's building blocks as reliable fixtures in time and space. Even Einstein was forced to ask his fellow physicist, "Do you really believe the Moon is not there when you are not looking at it?"

Comment: And it seems it's even more 'bizarre' than that: (2023) Quantum breakthrough reveals reality shaped by context, measurement, system - scientists forced to rethink nature of reality

See also:

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Microscope 2

First fossil chromosomes discovered in freeze-dried mammoth skin

Giorgia Guglielmi
Nature
Thu, 11 Jul 2024 21:11 UTC
fossil chromasomes mammoth
© SciePro/SPLThe 3D structure of chromosomes (artist's impression) was thought not to survive the ravages of time, but scientists examining mammoth skin have shown otherwise.
The 3D arrangement of the DNA in the animal's cells hints at which genes were active.

On the frozen tundra of Siberia some 50,000 years ago, a woolly mammoth met its end under mysterious circumstances. In samples of the animal's skin, researchers have now discovered chromosomes preserved in their original 3D configuration1 — a feat previously thought impossible in ancient-DNA research.

The team also revealed the spatial organization of the mammoth's DNA molecules and the active genes in its skin, including one responsible for giving the animal its fuzzy appearance. The work was published today in Cell.

The study is the first to report the 3D structure of an ancient genome, says Ludovic Orlando, a molecular archaeologist at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, who didn't take part in the research. Because the spatial structure of a genome — the complete set of an organism's genetic material — holds clues to its gene activity, understanding that structure might offer deeper insights into the cell biology of the mammoth's skin than examining the DNA sequence alone, he says. "This work is simply unprecedented."
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Better Earth

Extinction and evolution: Extreme solar blasts coupled with Earth's weakening magnetic field could have dramatic impact on life

Alan Cooper, Pavle Arsenovic
The Conversation
Wed, 03 Jul 2024 18:44 UTC
aurora
© (PhotoLoader/Shutterstock)
The remarkable aurora in early May this year demonstrated the power that solar storms can emit as radiation, but occasionally the Sun does something far more destructive.

Known as "solar particle events", these blasts of protons directly from the surface of the Sun can shoot out like a searchlight into space.

Records show that around every thousand years Earth gets hit by an extreme solar particle event, which could cause severe damage to the ozone layer and increase levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation at the surface.

We analysed what happens during such an extreme event in a paper published today. We also show that at times when Earth's magnetic field is weak, these events could have a dramatic effect on life across the planet.

Comment: History shows that these periods were also accompanied by a myriad of other phenomena, and both in the far distant past, but also as evidenced more recently with the Black Death, the civilisational collapse that occurred in various regions, and the Renaissance. And, indeed, we appear to be on the cusp of that part of the cycle once again:

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Pi

How America's fastest swimmers utilize math to win gold

Jordana Cepelewicz
Quanta Magazine
Wed, 10 Jul 2024 18:26 UTC
math analyze swim patterns competition
© Kristina Armitage/Quanta Magazine; Source: Klubovy/iStock
Number theorist Ken Ono is teaching Olympians to swim more efficiently.

In the fall of 2014, Andrew Wilson took a front-row seat in Ken Ono's number theory class at Emory University in Atlanta. Wilson was not only double majoring in applied math and physics, he was a walk-on member of Emory's swim team. Ono took an interest in Wilson's ambitions. "We thought that together, maybe we could use our interest in mathematics to help him improve as a swimmer," Ono said.

Ono, who typically studies abstract patterns in numbers and special functions called modular forms, began collecting and analyzing acceleration data from Wilson and other Emory swimmers to identify and quantify their weaknesses. "It got to the point where I could just see what an athlete was doing without actually watching them swim," he said.

Within two years, Wilson won a national collegiate championship; he would go on to earn a gold medal at the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo. By then, Ono had moved to the University of Virginia, where he worked alongside Todd DeSorbo — the head coach for both UVA swimming and the U.S. Olympic women's swim team. Ono will join the Olympic team staff in Paris later this summer as a technical consultant. "I feel like we're all in this together, trying to make something new," he said.
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Better Earth

Oldest human genome ever sequenced: 200,000-year-old Denisovan DNA shows repeated interbreeding with Neanderthals

Ann Gibbons
Science Magazine
Fri, 12 Jul 2024 21:07 UTC
Denisova špilja
Denisova Cave: The most ancient human genome yet has been sequenced — and it's a Denisovan's 200,000-year-old DNA from Siberian cave shows our elusive, extinct cousins mated repeatedly with Neanderthals
By the time population geneticist Stéphane Peyrégne gave his talk Tuesday afternoon at a meeting in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, rumors had circulated and the auditorium was packed. He didn't disappoint: "I'm pleased to tell you about a new Denisovan genome from a 200,000-year-old male," said Peyrégne, a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

The genetic sequence he unveiled is the oldest high-quality human genome yet — 80,000 years older than the previous record holder: a Neanderthal that lived about 120,000 years ago. The new results come after more than a decade of effort to find fossilized bones and a second genome of a Denisovan, the mysterious archaic human discovered through its DNA 14 years ago. That first Denisovan genome came from a girl's pinkie finger bone dated between 60,000 to 80,000 years ago. The genomes of both Denisovans and the ancient Neanderthal all came from the same cold, fossil-rich site: Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia.

According to the analysis by Peyrégne and colleagues, the newly sequenced male comes from a distinct population of early Denisovans that interbred multiple times with a group of Neanderthals whose population had not been detected in DNA before.

Comment: See also:

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Palette

A scientist's quest to decode Vermeer's true colours

Adnan R. Khan
The Walrus
Tue, 09 Jul 2024 20:37 UTC
vermeer detail love letter
© CopyrightDetail from Johannes Vermeer's painting The Love Letter, c. 1669/70.
New techniques reveal hidden details in the Dutch master's paintings

When Frederik Vanmeert stands in front of a Johannes Vermeer painting, the temptation to go close is irresistible. In Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, where he works as a heritage scientist, it's not hard to satisfy this craving for intimacy; patrons are free to get personal with the art. Viewers of Rembrandt's The Night Watch can approach within a metre of the canvas, while the museum's four Vermeers, hanging nearby, offer an even more intimate experience. Viewers may, if the moment moves them, lean in within centimetres, though the security guard posted nearby will likely wag a disapproving finger.

Still, even millimetres are an interminable chasm for Vanmeert. He's seen Vermeer's work in finer detail than most — at the microscopic level, down to the crystal latticework of the pigments that structure the language of the seventeenth-century Dutch painter's artistic vision. "These days, because of my work, when I look at a Vermeer, I can't help but wonder: Are we really understanding what he intended?" Vanmeert tells me, approaching The Little Street, one of only two landscapes the artist is known to have painted. "I get drawn closer to, say, this area here — the dark area of the lady's dress. It's difficult to decipher which type of fabric Vermeer meant to depict here, and I wonder if this is the original colour."
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Comet 2

The origins of dark comets


University of Michigan
Wed, 10 Jul 2024 17:54 UTC
Dark Comets
© University of Michigan
Up to 60% of near-Earth objects could be dark comets, mysterious asteroids that orbit the sun in our solar system that likely contain or previously contained ice and could have been one route for delivering water to Earth, according to a University of Michigan study.

The findings suggest that asteroids in the asteroid belt, a region of the solar system roughly between Jupiter and Mars that contains much of the system's rocky asteroids, have subsurface ice, something that has been suspected since the 1980s, according to Aster Taylor, U-M graduate student in astronomy and lead author of the study.

The study also shows a potential pathway for delivering ice into the near-Earth solar system, Taylor says. How Earth got its water is a longstanding question.

"We don't know if these dark comets delivered water to Earth. We can't say that. But we can say that there is still debate over how exactly the Earth's water got here," Taylor said. "The work we've done has shown that this is another pathway to get ice from somewhere in the rest of the solar system to the Earth's environment."

The research further suggests that one large object may come from the Jupiter-family comets, comets whose orbits take them close to the planet Jupiter. The team's results are published in the journal Icarus.
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Biohazard

'World-first' experimental mRNA herpes vaccine to be trialed on Asian elephants

Rachael Funnell
IFL Science
Thu, 11 Jul 2024 14:27 UTC
asian elephant
© Mogens Trolle / Shutterstock.comThe vaccine's development and funding got a helping hand from the company trying to de-extinct mammoths.
A deadly disease for baby Asian elephants is the target for an mRNA vaccine that has been administered to an elephant for the first time. Elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus (EEHV) is the number one killer for Asian elephant calves living under managed care in North America and Europe, and is a significant threat for free-ranging populations. It has also been connected to a number of African elephant deaths in the United States.

EEHV is so deadly because it can cause hemorrhagic disease characterized by damaged blood vessels, bleeding, and organ failure. To prevent this, the EEHV mRNA vaccine exposes elephants to the viral proteins that enable the virus to enter the host's cells, effectively preparing them so that they can launch an immune attack should the same viral proteins come knocking again. This means their bodies can fight off EEHV before it's had a chance to take hold.

The world-first vaccine was developed by Dr Paul Ling of the Baylor College of Medicine in partnership with Houston Zoo, with a helping hand from a few unexpected places. There's Colossal Biosciences, the de-extinction giants trying to bring back mammoths and save a few endangered species along the way, and the COVID-19 vaccine.

Comment: Let's see how the animal recipients of the (non-mRNA) covid jab are doing:
Famous gorilla "Little Joe" has died suddenly from a heart attack in the Saint Louis Zoo. In September 2021, the Director of Animal Health, Sathya Chinnadurai, bragged about how all the zoo animals had been conditioned into 'voluntarily' accepting the experimental Zoetis COVID-19 shot without resistance, even though no animals contracted COVID-19 during the pandemic. Zoetis got its start as a subsidiary of Pfizer
And the mRNA jabs have been shown to be much worse than the non-mRNA.

It's perhaps not too much of a stretch to be concerned as to how this experiment will turn out. More so when one considers the 'success' that is being had with bird flu: EU orders 40 million bird flu vaccines for 15 countries, Finland to start injecting 'select groups'

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Blue Planet

Ancient crystals point to a surprisingly early start for plate tectonics

Paul Voosen
Science
Wed, 10 Jul 2024 20:31 UTC
ancient zircon date earth crust tectonics
© John W. ValleyTiny crystals called zircons, harvested from the Australian outback, suggest plate tectonics may have begun more than 4 billion years ago.
Hardy zircons suggest subduction of ocean crust began 4 billion years ago

After using a form of artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze some of the most ancient crystals on the planet, researchers have concluded that plate tectonics — Earth's geological machinery that floats giant slabs of crust across and sometimes into the mantle — began much earlier than many scientists had assumed.

The group's study finds evidence for its start more than 4 billion years ago, during the Hadean eon — just a few hundred million years after the planet's formation. The work suggests tectonics might have had an early hand in creating the first land and helping life begin, says Ross Mitchell, a geophysicist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who co-authored the new study, which was published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Hadean Earth would have been habitable," he contends.

Plate tectonics is generally accepted to have begun more than 3 billion years ago, after Earth had cooled enough to form a stagnant lid of crust capping an ultrahot mantle. As slabs of ocean crust began to fall into the mantle, they triggered volcanic eruptions, which created chains of islands that eventually bunched up into the first continents. Evidence for this picture comes from the oldest surviving continental interiors, which date to about 3.5 billion years ago. But modeling suggests the crustal movement could have started earlier, says Qian Yuan, a geodynamicist at the California Institute of Technology. "More and more [scientists] are proposing that there could have been Hadean plate tectonics," he says.

Comment: Zircons have proved to be mineral repositories useful in many lines of research, though they aren't without their issues.

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Info

A time crystal made of giant atoms


TU Wien
Mon, 08 Jul 2024 18:37 UTC
Researchers from TU Wien (Vienna, Austria) and Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) have created an extremely exotic state of matter. Its atoms have a diameter a hundred times larger than usual.
Large Atom
© TU Wien
A crystal is an arrangement of atoms that repeats itself in space, in regular intervals: At every point, the crystal looks exactly the same. In 2012, Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek raised the question: Could there also be a time crystal - an object that repeats itself not in space but in time? And could it be possible that a periodic rhythm emerges, even though no specific rhythm is imposed on the system and the interaction between the particles is completely independent of time?

For years, Frank Wilczek's idea has caused much controversy. Some considered time crystals to be impossible in principle, while others tried to find loopholes and realise time crystals under certain special conditions. Now, a particularly spectacular kind of time crystal has successfully been created at Tsinghua University in China, with the support from TU Wien in Austria. The team used laser light and very special types of atoms, namely Rydberg atoms, with a diameter that is several hundred times larger than normal. The results have now been published in the journal Nature Physics.
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