Science & TechnologyS


Mars

China's latest venture could be key to human activity on Mars

Jon Michael Raasch
Fox News
Wed, 15 Nov 2023 21:30 UTC
China Mars rover Zhurong
© CNSA via APChina's Mars rover, Zhurong, is seen near its landing platform during a mission to the planet in 2021.
Commercial spaceflight companies like SpaceX have made space travel more accessible, and allow more research for future missions to the moon and Mars, astronauts said.

A robotic space chemist could create oxygen on Mars using materials from the planet's surface, Chinese researchers behind the project say.

A refrigerator-sized machine equipped with artificial intelligence and a robotic arm broke down material from five meteorites and analyzed it to identify a chemical formula that creates a substance that can cause oxygen to separate from water. Researchers said it would have taken a human 2,000 years to find that formula.
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Comet 2

Comets that 'bounce' from planet to planet could spread life across the universe

Megan I. Gannon
Space.com
Tue, 14 Nov 2023 16:05 UTC
comet graphic
© Getty Images/Lev SavitskiyArtist's impression ofa comet soaring through space near two exoplanets.
New research shows how comets could be a source of extraterrestrial life in planets outside of our solar system.

Scientists suspect that comets may have delivered the organic ingredients necessary to cook up life on Earth, and new research shows how exoplanets could have received these special deliveries from comets, too.

In its early history, Earth was bombarded with impacts from asteroids, comets and other cosmic bodies leftover from the formation of the solar system. Scientists still debate how the planet got its water and the molecules needed to form life, but comets are likely candidates.

But if comets could have potentially delivered the seeds of life to Earth, could they do the same for exoplanets elsewhere in the universe? With that question in mind, a team of researchers from University of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy developed mathematical models that helped them show how comets could theoretically deliver similar building blocks of life to other planets in the Milky Way galaxy.

While the research is far from conclusive evidence for life on other worlds, the team's findings could help narrow down the search for life-hosting exoplanets.

Comment: Comets bring more than just the 'building blocks of life'. They bring the code telling what to do with those blocks:

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Comet

Asteroid with cometary tail quasi-Hilda 2009 DQ puzzles scientists

Bob Yirka
Phys.org
Wed, 15 Nov 2023 11:15 UTC
quasi-Hilda 2009 DQ
© The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2023). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/acfcbc[Image text] 118 (green dashed arrows) displaying a cometary tail (white arrows). Frames (a) and (b) are from the first activity epoch and resulted from our Active Asteroids citizen scientist project and archival search. Frame (c) is an APO follow-up image showing faint signs of activity resulting in the tentative discovery of the second epoch of activity. In frames (a) through (c), the negative heliocentric velocity (black arrow outlined in red) and antisolar (yellow arrow) directions projected to the on-sky plane coincide with each other and the direction of the tail. Frame (d) is a stack of our Magellan follow-up observations confirming the discovery of the second activity epoch. In this frame, the tail is oriented between the antisolar (yellow arrow) and negative heliocentric velocity (black arrow outlined in red) directions projected to the on-sky plane. North is up, and east is left in each image (solid green arrows), and all directions are referenced to the ephemeris location of 2009 DQ118 (which is centered in each image) at the time of observation as given by JPL Horizons (Giorgini et al. 1996). (a) 300 s VR-band Dark Energy Camera (DECam) image taken with the 4 m Blanco Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), Chile, on UT 2016 March 8 (Prop. ID 2016A-0189; PI: Rest; observers: A. Rest, DJJ). (b) 200 s r-band DECam image, UT 2016 March 9 (Prop. ID 2015A-0121; PI: von der Linden; observer: A. von der Linden). (c) 300 s VR-band image taken with the Astrophysical Research Consortium Telescope Imaging Camera (ARCTIC) on the APO 3.5 m Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC) Telescope, UT 2023 February 24 (Prop. ID 2Q2023-UW08; PI: Chandler; observer: C. Chandler). (d) A co-added stack of four 150 s WB4800-7800-band images taken with the Inamori-Magellan Areal Camera and Spectrograph (IMACS) on the 6.5 m Magellan Baade Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile, on UT 2023 April 22 (PI: S. Sheppard; observer: S. Sheppard).
A team of space scientists, astronomers and astrophysicists affiliated with multiple institutions across the U.S., working with a colleague from Italy, has determined that a celestial object spotted by citizen scientists back in 2016 is neither a comet nor an asteroid, but an object that lies on the boundary between both. In their paper published in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the group describes the multiple tests they did to determine the nature of the object and what they learned about it as a result.

While much space science is conducted by professionals in the field, much is also done by so-called citizen scientists — people with an interest in space who participate by using amateur telescopes to peer at the night sky.

Comment: Regarding the difference between asteroids and comets, Pierre Lescaudron wrote in Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection:
Traces of this movement can be found in the late 19th century,when Scientific American published an article stating that Professor Zollner of Leipzig ascribed the 'self-luminosity' of comets to 'electrical excitement.' Zollner proposed that:
...the nuclei of comets, as masses, are subject to gravitation, while the vapors developed from them, which consist of very small particles, yield to the action of the free electricity of the sun
Then, regarding comet tails, the August 11th 1882 issue of English Mechanic and World of Science included the following:
There seems to be a rapidly growing feeling amongst physicists that both the self-light of comets and the phenomena of their tails belong to the order of electrical phenomena.
In 1896, Nature published an article stating:
It has long been imagined that the phenomenon of comet's tails are in some way due to a solar electrical repulsion, and additional light is thrown on this subject by recent physical researches.
[...]

So, comets don't seem to be dirty snowballs after all. From the data presented above, they are glowing chunks of rock. On the other side, asteroids don't seem to be the non-glowing chunks of rocks posited by mainstream science. For example asteroids P/2013 P5 recently puzzled the whole scientific community when it started exhibiting a million miles long glowing tail. To rationalize this oddity official science claimed the asteroid was spinning so fast that it was ejecting tons of dust, while acknowledging that finally the difference between 'comets' and 'asteroids' might not be so clear-cut.1

The fundamental difference between asteroids and comets is not their chemical composition, i.e. dirty, fluffy icy comets vs. rocky asteroids. Rather, as has long been put forward by plasma theorists, what differentiates 'comets' from 'asteroids' is their electric activity.

When the electric potential difference between an asteroid and the surrounding plasma is not too high, the asteroid exhibits a dark discharge mode2 or no discharge at all. But when the potential difference is high enough, the asteroid switches to a glowing discharge mode.3 At this point the asteroid is a comet. From this perspective, a comet is simply a glowing asteroid and an asteroid is a non-glowing comet. Thus the very same body can, successively, be a comet, then an asteroid, then a comet, etc., depending on variation in the ambient electric field it is subjected to.4

Note that a comet can also exhibit the third plasma discharge mode, namely lightning or 'arc discharge mode', which is probably what happened when Comet Shoemaker-Levy entered the vicinity of Jupiter in July 1994:
The following article by Mr Lescaudron sheds more light on the topic: The Seven Destructive Earth Passes of Comet Venus

See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Microscope 1

Using dust to bust crime scene DNA forensics

Flinders University
Phys.org
Wed, 15 Nov 2023 08:09 UTC
crime scene tape
An airborne fraction of soil, or dust, contains biological and chemical "signatures" that act as a fingerprint to a specific location. Australian forensic science experts, led by Flinders University, have highlighted the usefulness of the latest technology by testing a series of field sites in South Australia for their unique chemical and biological profiles.

This work is strong evidence for including dust as a medium in forensic intelligence gathering to incorporate as a standard tool in future forensic casework, the scientists say in a new study published in Forensic Science International: Genetics.

Previous research, that including experts at the Forensic DNA Laboratory at Flinders University, has established the viability of testing even the smallest trace of dust, down to only 3 mg, as potential evidence of the location or source of material, personal effect or an object.

"Dust is found everywhere. It stays on clothing and items after you have traveled and leaves a trace for where you have been," says Flinders University forensic science researcher Dr. Nicole Foster, who currently is a researcher at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Institute in the U.S.

"Armed with this knowledge, we undertook a field experiment, leaving items at various locations in South Australia to collect dust and observe whether these chemical and biological (bacteria and fungi) signatures were distinct between sites.
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Blue Planet

Finding Argoland: How a lost continent resurfaced


PhysOrg
Tue, 14 Nov 2023 15:33 UTC
argoland australia lost continent geology
© Utrecht UniversityWhat happened to Argoland, the continent that broke off western Australia 155 million years ago? Geologists at Utrecht University have now managed to reconstruct the history of the lost continent.
Geologists have long known that around 155 million years ago, a 5,000 km long piece of continent broke off western Australia and drifted away. They can see that by the 'void' it left behind: a basin hidden deep below the ocean known as the Argo Abyssal Plain. The underwater feature also lends its name to the newly formed continent: Argoland. The structure of the seafloor shows that this continent must have drifted off to the northwest, and must have ended up where the islands of Southeast Asia are located today.

But surprisingly, there is no large continent hidden beneath those islands, only the remnants of small continental fragments that are also surrounded by much older oceanic basins. So what happened to Argoland? Geologists at Utrecht University have now managed to reconstruct the history of the lost continent. As it turns out, Argoland is in fragments, but is still there. "Otherwise, we would have been faced with a major scientific problem." The work is published in the journal Gondwana Research.
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Arrow Up

An amateur astronomer discovered one-of-a-kind supernova remnant in Cassiopeia

Jon Voisey
Universe Today
Tue, 14 Nov 2023 16:33 UTC
PA 30 Images
© Fesen et al. 2023PA 30 imaged in O III by KPNO (left) and in S II by Fesen et al. 2023.
In 2023, amateur astronomer Dana Patchick was looking through images from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer archive and discovered a diffuse, circular object in the constellation of Cassiopeia. He found this apparent nebula was interesting because it was bright in the infrared portion of the spectrum, but virtually invisible in the colors of light visible to our eyes. Dana added this item to the database of the Deep Sky Hunters amateur astronomers group, believing it was a planetary nebula - the quiet remnant of stars in mass similar to the sun. He named it PA 30.

However, professional astronomers who picked it up from there realized that this object is far more than it first seemed. It is, they now believe, the remnant of a lost supernova observed in 1181. And an extremely rare type at that.

The Guest Star

In early August of 1181 CE, a "guest star" appeared in the constellation we now know as Cassiopeia. To the Chinese astronomers of the time, it was known as Chuanshe. They, and Japanese astronomers recorded the appearance of the star and state that it remained visible for 185 days, unmoving with respect to other stars.

In 1971, astronomers first realized that this "guest star" was almost certainly a supernova due to how long it remained visible in the night sky. This made the initial observation an extremely rare reporting of a historical supernova.

Supernovae are believed to occur, on average, about once per century in galaxies like the Milky Way but, because they may be obscured if they are on the far side of the galaxy and obscured by the heavy dust lanes, not all will be visible to us. Ultimately, this made SN 1181 one of less than a dozen suspected supernovae in recorded history prior to the rise of modern astronomy. And of those, only four had been conclusively tied to an observational remnant. While astronomers are confident that these historical supernovae were indeed supernovae, without having an identified remnant, it is impossible to determine the type of supernovae.

Previously, SN 1181 had been potentially associated with a pulsar known as 3C 58, but attempts at determining the age of this object suggested it was far too old to be associated with the Chinese records.
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Info

New study reveals evidence of recurring ancient supereruption

Tatyana Woodall
The Ohio State University
Tue, 14 Nov 2023 16:24 UTC
The Marsili Basin
© Geology (2023). DOI: 10.1130/G51198.1(A) The Marsili Basin lies in ~3000 m water depth in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Ocean Drilling Program Leg 107 Sites 650 and 651 marked as red circles. Red box shows map in (B). Campi Flegrei (CF) fields (source of 39.8 ka Campanian Ignimbrite and 14.9 ka Neapolitan Yellow Tuff) shown with nearby submarine canyons (Dohrm [DC] and Magnaghi [MC]) as yellow lines. Ve—Vesuvius; SC—Stromboli Canyon. (B) CHIRP subbottom profiles shown as white dashed lines. Continuous white lines involved the acquisition of additional airgun seismic data. Bathymetry is a merged dataset of a 40-m grid CHIANTI multibeam bathymetry together with EMODNET bathymetry. Contour interval is 1000 meters.
Researchers have discovered a series of large undersea sediment deposits in a region near Italy that were likely formed by an ancient volcanic supereruption.

These deposits, known as megabeds, were found in the western Marsili Basin, an area at the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea that surrounds the Marsili Seamount, a large undersea volcano.

By combining geophysical data acquired from a Spanish research project and data from sediment cores collected from a nearby Ocean Drilling program site, scientists were able to show that three deposits are made up of alternating beds of volcaniclastic sand and mud, while the fourth is a volcaniclastic debris flow, a more dense mixture of volcanic sediment and water.

The study's findings, published in the Journal Geology, suggest that these structures were deposited during a volatile time when the Campi Flegrei caldera and the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff supereruption were active.

The new study suggests that these megabeds originated not from nearby volcanoes, but from a volcanic province to the north. That province, researchers think, was an area once near the Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) supereruption of Campi Flegrei, the largest one of its volcanic eruptions since the caldera's formation nearly 50,000 years ago.

This still volcanically active region could pose immense danger in the future, said Derek Sawyer, lead author of the study and an associate professor of earth sciences at The Ohio State University. The discovery of these previously unknown megabeds is pivotal for understanding and measuring the impact of such recurring geohazards over time.
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Comet 2

The Oort Cloud might be more active than we thought

Brian Koberlein
Universe Today
Mon, 13 Nov 2023 22:09 UTC
Comets Inbound
© NAOJThe paths of hyperbolic-orbit comets.
Every now and then a comet or asteroid comes to our solar system from interstellar space. We have observed two interstellar objects in recent years, Oumuamua in 2017, and Borisov in 2019. One would assume then that in the past at least some interstellar objects have struck Earth. But we've never found an interstellar meteorite. A new study argues that this is because the Oort cloud is much more active than we thought.

The Oort cloud is a halo of icy material on the outermost edge of the solar system, where the Sun's gravity is barely strong enough to hold them in a stellar orbit. When another star passes somewhat near the Sun, members of the Oort cloud can be nudged toward the inner solar system, where they can become long-period comets. We have never observed the Oort cloud, but we know it's there because comets can approach the Sun from every direction, not just the orbital plane of the planets.

Astronomers can distinguish between Oort cloud objects and interstellar objects by their orbits. Interstellar objects have a hyperbolic orbit, meaning that if you traced their path purely under the gravitational influence of the Sun, it would continue on to interstellar space, never to return. Oort cloud objects, on the other hand, have an orbital path that is closed. They may travel to the most distant region of space, but they are gravitationally bound to the Sun.

Comment: See also: Something Wicked This Way Comes

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Info

Scientists uncover aurora-like radio emission above a sunspot

Jesse Jenkins
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Mon, 13 Nov 2023 22:02 UTC
radio emissions above a sunspot
© Sijie YuScientists uncover prolonged radio emissions above a sunspot, akin to those previously seen in the polar regions of planets and certain stars, which may reshape our understanding of intense stellar radio bursts.
In a study published in Nature Astronomy, astronomers from New Jersey Institute of Technology's Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research (NJIT-CSTR) have detailed radio observations of an extraordinary aurora-like display — occurring 40,000 km above a relatively dark and cold patch on the Sun, known as a sunspot.

Researchers say the novel radio emission shares characteristics with the auroral radio emissions commonly seen in planetary magnetospheres such as those around Earth, Jupiter and Saturn, as well as certain low-mass stars.

The discovery offers new insights into the origin of such intense solar radio bursts and potentially opens new avenues for understanding similar phenomena in distant stars with large starspots, according to the study's lead author and NJIT-CSTR scientist, Sijie Yu.

"We've detected a peculiar type of long-lasting polarized radio bursts emanating from a sunspot, persisting for over a week," said Yu. "This is quite unlike the typical, transient solar radio bursts typically lasting minutes or hours. It's an exciting discovery that has the potential to alter our comprehension of stellar magnetic processes."

Famous auroral light shows that are visible across the sky of Earth's polar regions, like the Aurora Borealis or Aurora Australis, occur as solar activities disturb Earth's magnetosphere, which facilitates the precipitation of charged particles to the Earth's polar region where the magnetic field converges, and interacts with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the high atmosphere. Accelerating toward the north and south poles, such electrons can generate intense radio emissions at frequencies around a few hundred kHz.
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Galaxy

NASA spacecraft discovers asteroid sporting tiny moon

Marcia Dunn
Associated Press
Mon, 13 Nov 2023 18:39 UTC
asteroid dinkinesh tiny moon
© NASA via APThis photo provided by NASA shows a photo taken by the Lucy spacecraft during Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023 flyby of asteroid Dinkinesh, 300 million miles from Earth.
The little asteroid visited by NASA's Lucy spacecraft this week had a big surprise for scientists.

It turns out that the asteroid Dinkinesh has a dinky sidekick — a mini moon.

The discovery was made during Wednesday's flyby of Dinkinesh, 300 million miles (480 million kilometers) away in the main asteroid belt beyond Mars. The spacecraft snapped a picture of the pair when it was about 270 miles out (435 kilometers).
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