Science & Technology

Hundreds of high-velocity stars discovered, many on their way OUT of the Milky Way

Matt Williams
Universe Today
Tue, 05 Jan 2021 18:00 UTC

Within our galaxy, there are thousands of stars that orbit the center of the Milky Way at high velocities. On occasion, some of them pick up so much speed that they break free of our galaxy and become intergalactic objects. Because of the extreme dynamical and astrophysical processes involved, astronomers are most interested in studying these stars - especially those that are able to achieve escape velocity and leave our galaxy.

However, an international team of astronomers led from the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) recently announced the discovery of 591 high-velocity stars. Based on data provided by the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) and the ESA's Gaia Observatory, they indicated that 43 of these stars are fast enough to escape the Milky Way someday.

The study was published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series on Dec. 17^th. The study was led by Dr. LI Yinbi, an NAOC astronomer, and included researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), the Institute for Advanced Study, the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the ExtantFuture Technology Co., the Institute of Statistical Mathematics in Tokyo, and multiple universities.

Comment: SOTT's book review of Planet-X, Comets and Earth Changes by J.M. McCanney may provide some clues as to what's going on:

According to the received wisdom, our solar system formed more or less at one time, four-point-something billion years ago (give or take a day or two). You can read about it on Wikipedia. [...]

According to McCanney's theory (described in the paper in Appendix I), the picture is pretty different, being both logical and accounting for those aforementioned "anomalies", including the "missing mass" problem, the spiral shape and symmetry of galactic arms, and the surplus of twin star systems observed in our galaxy. In this model, stars and planets, as well as smaller comet nuclei, are all formed at the same time from cosmic dust continually emanating from and returning back into the galactic center. Basically, the cosmic dust collapses inward toward the nucleus, and condensed material is ejected outward in a "shotgun effect". (Because all these objects are formed in the same way, this means that stars may actually have solid cores, the source of heavy isotopes ejected in supernovae.)

Ejected bodies will naturally stabilize into dual orbiting systems, explaining the observation that over 80% of star systems are actually twin-star systems, the remainder probably also being twinned, although with more introverted companions of the unlit variety (e.g., brown dwarfs or gas giants). (Incidentally, McCanney believes Jupiter is the Sun's unlit twin, as they alone share the same spin axis among solar system bodies, but we here at SOTT favor the brown dwarf theory, for which Walter Cruttenden gives some evidence in his book Lost Star of Myth and Time.) As these two bodies stabilize in their orbit of one another, they eject smaller bodies to go out into the world and find their own solar system.

Secrets behind sunquakes could lurk beneath solar surface

Mara Johnson-Groh
NASA
Mon, 04 Jan 2021 12:00 UTC

A secret behind the workings of sunquakes - seismic activity on the Sun during solar flares - might be hidden beneath the solar surface.

These earthquake-like events release acoustic energy in the form of waves that ripple along the Sun's surface, like waves on a lake, in the minutes following a solar flare - an outburst of light, energy, and material seen in the Sun's outer atmosphere.

Scientists have long suspected that sunquakes are driven by magnetic forces or heating of the outer atmosphere, where the flare occurs. These waves were thought to dive down through the Sun's surface and deep into its interior. But new results, using data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, have found something different.

Comment: See also:

And check out SOTT radio's:

Chinese Govt: 'Covid-19 began as multiple separate outbreaks globally, we were just the first to report'

RT
Mon, 04 Jan 2021 22:05 UTC

One report among many that supports the Chinese hypothesis

Research suggests that the coronavirus pandemic was likely the result of outbreaks in many places around the globe, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has said, adding that Beijing will resist any attempts at "stigmatization."

"We raced against time and were the first country to report cases to the world," Wang said in an interview with Chinese media published on Friday. He argued that, contrary to prevailing opinion, China's own outbreak of the disease was not exclusively to blame for the global pandemic.

More and more research suggests that the pandemic was likely to have been caused by separate outbreaks in multiple places in the world.

The first cluster of Covid-19 cases was reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan on December 31, 2019; and over the next year the highly contagious virus spread to the rest of the world, resulting in 84.1 million confirmed cases and more than 1.83 million deaths so far.

Comment: That's the 'official story', and it contradicts what the Chinese believe happened. We agree with them, by the way, as we noticed when all this hysteria began that clusters of 'strange new pneumonia-like illnesses' had actually popped up globally in late 2019.

Despite the fact that the precise origins of the coronavirus remain unclear, the outgoing President Donald Trump administration has been blaming the pandemic on China. Accusations leveled against Beijing have ranged from a cover-up of the initial outbreak to claims that the virus was human-made and somehow leaked from a Chinese laboratory.

Comment: This is rank projection for domestic political purposes. Sars-CoV-2 almost certainly originated in an American laboratory.

Comment: That'll be another point for Sott.net, thank you very much.

We said as much at the beginning of all this, that the Wuhan outbreak was just one cluster among many that developed (almost) simultaneously in Italy, Iran, Israel, France, the UK, and the US (that we know of - it was probably spreading elsewhere too but it just wasn't noticed and thus reported by the given country's press).

China's 'fault' is apparently that it cared enough to actually zoom in and look at what was happening, discover a coronavirus they'd never seen before, and crack its genome to see that it contained sequences from HIV and other viruses, thus realizing it was man-made.

This apparently made them freak out that 'the Americans are attacking us', so they pioneered 'lockdown' in one of its provinces (to psychologically calm its 1.5 billion people, NOT to literally 'contain the virus', which its experts would have known full well is scientifically impossible with an aerosolized coronavirus like this).

Then, many weeks later, Western countries began - in lockstep with one another, as if according to some prearranged model or plan - to 'use the Chinese model' and shutter their countries, also for political purposes and NOT to 'contain the virus' - thereby bringing civilization to a halt and ushering in totalitarian hell for many.

And with gene-editing vaccines being rolled out to compound what was already an immune system-distorting genetically modified vaccine virus, the worst is yet to come. So people had better get busy protecting themselves from the coming cytokine storm, or get busy dyin'...

Old-guard scientists reveal their biases as new scientists suggest evidence for God

Robert Arvay
American Thinker
Tue, 29 Dec 2020 00:00 UTC

For many years now, the argument by atheist scientists has seemed reasonable. It goes something like this: we do not claim that there is no God. We simply claim that there is no scientific evidence for Him. If you have such evidence, we will examine it. If the evidence justifies a belief in God, we will accept it. Until then, only the physical can explain the physical. There is no need for God and no room for Him in science. If you say there is a God, then show us the evidence.

That was their argument because, until recent years, there was not, in the strictest sense, the kind of evidence science requires. To be sure, there were claims of such evidence, but however sincere those claims may have been, they were not persuasive enough to convince an honest skeptic. The gold standard of science, stated informally, is that a new paradigm is accepted when the evidence is solid enough to convince an objective, unbiased, and qualified person.

It turns out that scientists are as biased as anyone else. Their biases are being exposed by an increasing number of younger, more open-minded scientists. These newcomers are breaking free of the unscientific philosophy, the doctrine of physicalism, that presently dominates their disciplines. They are willing to challenge the notion that nothing exists except the physical. The old guard is resisting. The entrenched establishment is making ever less credible excuses for holding on to its resolute belief that only the physical exists.

Comment: The floodgates of real science have been opened on the truth, reality and implications of Intelligent Design - but the old guard - and new guard atheists will deny, obfuscate and continue to rationalize their assertions out of willful ignorance, political leanings and a paycheck.

See also:

UK's 'space spider' robot to join NASA moon mission in 2021

Evgeny Mikhaylov
Sputnik
Sat, 02 Jan 2021 09:30 UTC

According to the report, the robot, designed by London-based Spacebit, is expected to join the NASA mission, landing on the lunar surface next summer, which will be the first step towards Britain having a rover on the Moon.

Britain is to launch a little "space spider" Asagumo probe to the Moon in 2021, the Telegraph reported.

The designers opted for multiple legs instead of wheels so that Asagumo can pick its way over rough terrain, and crawl through underground lava tubes, which might provide a shelter for lunar bases or even colonies in the future.

Comment: See also:

Ants and their crucial role as wildflower gardeners

Elizabeth Pennisi
Science Mag
Tue, 11 Aug 2020 12:00 UTC

© Alex Wild
In return for these Aphaenogaster ants dispersing its seeds, bloodroot attaches a tasty “handle” that gives the ants a reward and a way to carry the seed to their nest.

Trilliums, bloodroot, violets — many wildflowers of spring in eastern North America bloom thanks to ants. The tiny six-legged gardeners have partnered with those plants as well as about 11,000 others to disperse their seeds. The plants, in turn, "pay" for the service by attaching a calorie-laden appendage to each seed, much like fleshy fruits reward birds and mammals that discard seeds or poop them out. But there's more to the ant-seed relationship than that exchange, researchers reported last week at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, which was held online.

Far from just transporting the seeds, the ants are active gardeners, preferring some seeds over others and possibly keeping their charges safe from disease. "It's becoming clear that it's not a simple two-way interaction," says Douglas Levey, an ecologist at the National Science Foundation.

Comment: See also:

Study finds intriguing link between iron levels and lifespan

David Nield
Science Alert
Thu, 31 Dec 2020 18:38 UTC

A massive study published in 2020 found evidence that blood iron levels could play a role in influencing how long you live.

It's always important to take longevity studies with a big grain of salt, but the research was impressive in its breadth, covering genetic information from well over 1 million people across three public databases. It also focused on three key measures of ageing: lifespan, years lived free of disease (referred to as healthspan), and making it to an extremely old age (AKA longevity).

Throughout the analysis, 10 key regions of the genome were shown to be related to these measures of long life, as were gene sets linked to how the body metabolises iron.

Put simply, having too much iron in the blood appeared to be linked to an increased risk of dying earlier.

"We are very excited by these findings as they strongly suggest that high levels of iron in the blood reduces our healthy years of life, and keeping these levels in check could prevent age-related damage," said data analyst Paul Timmers, from the University of Edinburgh in the UK.

"We speculate that our findings on iron metabolism might also start to explain why very high levels of iron-rich red meat in the diet has been linked to age-related conditions such as heart disease."

NASA warns rocky start to 2021 begins with unwelcome, 220-meter wide asteroid visitor

RT
Tue, 01 Dec 2020 17:01 UTC

As nations across the globe say 'good riddance' to 2020, NASA has warned that a monstrous 220-meter asteroid is headed Earth's way early in the new year.

Before that, this year's final asteroid, 2020 YB4, measuring just 36 meters in diameter or roughly half the wingspan of a 747, passed by the Earth shortly after 6am UTC at a distance of 6.1 million kilometers. That means, in terms of the threat posed by space rocks at least, the planet made it out of 2020 somewhat intact.

However, in the first days of January, three additional, small Near Earth Objects (NEOs) will grace the Earth with their presence, for a brief time.

Just two days into 2021, the 15-meter asteroid 2019 YB4 will fly by at a safe distance of 6.4 million kilometers. The very next day, it will be followed up by two more chunks of cosmic debris in the form of the 15-meter 2020 YA1 and the 21-meter 2020 YP4, which will pass by at 1.5 and 2.1 million kilometers respectively.

But the biggie will come on January 3, as the relatively mountainous 2003 AF23, measuring an impressive 220m in diameter or about as wide as the Golden Gate Bridge is tall, will shoot past at 6.9 million kilometers.

'We've learned nothing from sci-fi movies': Boston Dynamics' advanced dancing robots both amuse & scare

RT
Wed, 30 Dec 2020 10:55 UTC

American robotics company Boston Dynamics released a video showing off its collection of robots dancing to The Contours' 'Do You Love Me'. But the reactions from the public were quite mixed.

The video - which showed off two robot humanoids, one robot dog-like creature with an extendable snake head, and a tall robot on two wheels doing a group dance - went viral on social media, with users both praising and condemning the robotic advancements.

Comment: See also:

Extinct woolly rhino found in excellent condition after being frozen in Far Eastern Russian permafrost for at least 20,000 years

Jonny Tickle
RT
Wed, 30 Dec 2020 15:40 UTC

With climate change melting more of the world's oldest permafrost, archeologists keep discovering the remains of animals from past millennia. In Russia, researchers have found a woolly rhino that died more than 20,000 years ago.

The carcass appeared in Yakutia, a Far Eastern republic famous for its freezing temperatures. This December, the mercury has dropped as low as minus 40 degrees, meaning the region is completely iced up. According to Valery Plotnikov, a leading researcher in mammoths at the local Academy of Sciences, the woolly rhino is better preserved than any previously found specimen.

The woolly rhinoceros was common throughout Europe and northern Asia, and the species is thought by some to have become extinct around 8,000 BC.

Comment: As Pierre Lescaudron explains in Of Flash Frozen Mammoths and Cosmic Catastrophes it's highly likely that the climatic conditions there were considerably different to our times for the not-so-woolly rhino:

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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Science & Technology

Hundreds of high-velocity stars discovered, many on their way OUT of the Milky Way

Secrets behind sunquakes could lurk beneath solar surface

Chinese Govt: 'Covid-19 began as multiple separate outbreaks globally, we were just the first to report'

Old-guard scientists reveal their biases as new scientists suggest evidence for God

UK's 'space spider' robot to join NASA moon mission in 2021

Ants and their crucial role as wildflower gardeners

Study finds intriguing link between iron levels and lifespan

NASA warns rocky start to 2021 begins with unwelcome, 220-meter wide asteroid visitor

'We've learned nothing from sci-fi movies': Boston Dynamics' advanced dancing robots both amuse & scare

Extinct woolly rhino found in excellent condition after being frozen in Far Eastern Russian permafrost for at least 20,000 years

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