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Stunning new Hubble images reveal stars gone haywire

ESA/Hubble Information Centre
Phys.org
Thu, 18 Jun 2020 23:20 UTC
Hubble
© NASA, ESA, and J. Kastner (RIT)
These two new images from the Hubble Space Telescope depict two nearby young planetary nebulae, NGC 6302, dubbed the Butterfly Nebula, and NGC 7027, which resembles a jewel bug. Both are among the dustiest planetary nebulae known and both contain unusually large masses of gas.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope demonstrates its full range of imaging capabilities with two new images of planetary nebulae. The images depict two nearby young planetary nebulae, NGC 6302, dubbed the Butterfly Nebula, and NGC 7027. Both are among the dustiest planetary nebulae known and both contain unusually large masses of gas, which made them an interesting pair for study in parallel by a team of researchers.

As nuclear fusion engines, most stars live placid lives for hundreds of millions to billions of years. But near the end of their lives they can turn into crazy whirligigs, puffing off shells and jets of hot gas. Astronomers have used Hubble to dissect such crazy fireworks happening in these two planetary nebulae. The researchers have found unprecedented levels of complexity and rapid changes in the jets and gas bubbles blasting off of the stars at the center of each nebula. Hubble is now allowing the researchers to converge on an understanding of the mechanisms underlying this chaos.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Cow Skull

Coal from Siberian Traps potentially linked to Earth's biggest extinction event


Technology Networks
Thu, 18 Jun 2020 20:53 UTC
lump of coal
© Scott Simper
A lump of coal weathering out from Siberian flood basalts in a quarry near the town of Ust Ilimsk.
A team of researchers led by Arizona State University (ASU) School of Earth and Space Exploration professor Lindy Elkins-Tanton has provided the first ever direct evidence that extensive coal burning in Siberia is a cause of the Permo-Triassic Extinction, the Earth's most severe extinction event. The results of their study have been recently published in the journal Geology.

For this study, the international team led by Elkins-Tanton focused on the volcaniclastic rocks (rocks created by explosive volcanic eruptions) of the Siberian Traps, a region of volcanic rock in Russia. The massive eruptive event that formed the traps is one of the largest known volcanic events in the last 500 million years. The eruptions continued for roughly two million years and spanned the Permian-Triassic boundary. Today, the area is covered by about three million square miles of basaltic rock.

This is ideal ground for researchers seeking an understanding of the Permo-Triassic extinction event, which affected all life on Earth approximately 252 million years ago. During this event, up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species became extinct.

Comment: See also: Permian extinction occurred during low CO2, cooler climate, increasing ice sheets and sea level drop

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Nebula

New organic molecule detected in our galaxy's interstellar space

Michelle Starr
Science Alert
Thu, 18 Jun 2020 16:27 UTC
Central Molecular Zone
© NASA/CXC/UMass/D. Wang et al.; NRF/SARAO/MeerKAT
The Central Molecular Zone.
Near the centre of the Milky Way, in a vast cloud in the space between the stars, astronomers have identified an organic molecule never before detected in the interstellar medium. It's called propargylimine, and it could play a key role in the formation of the amino acids vital for the emergence of life.

"The peculiarity of this chemical species lays in its carbon-nitrogen double bond, which gives it a high reactivity," explained astrochemist Luca Bizzocchi of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany.

"With this double bond, it becomes a fundamental constituent of the chemical chains that lead from the simplest and most abundant molecules in space containing carbon and nitrogen - for example formaldehyde (H2CO) and ammonia (NH3), respectively - to the more complex amino acids, the fundamental building blocks of terrestrial biology."

The region in which the molecule was found is a system of clouds rich in molecular gas. It's called the Central Molecular Zone, an area of intense interest to astrochemists. It's a large repository of astrophysical complex organic molecules, such as ethyl formate, iso-propyl cyanide and propylene oxide.

These are known as prebiotic molecules, since they play a role in the prebiotic processes that create the building blocks of life, such as amino acids, RNA, and DNA.

Comment: Expect more discoveries like this. But don't expect to find any random, mechanical processes that actually lead to a viable life form. For more on the topics, see:

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Info

State of artificial hibernation induced in mice

Masatoshi Toda
The Asahi Shimbun
Wed, 17 Jun 2020 09:52 UTC
Mice Hibernation
© University of Tsukuba
The body temperature of a mouse, right, in a state of “hibernation” is indicated in blue in thermography, meaning it is lower than that of the other, left, in a normal state.
Scientists announced they induced a state of artificial hibernation in mice, potentially paving the way for humans to one day go into some sort of hibernation for space exploration.

Researchers from the University of Tsukuba and the Riken research institute said their artificial hibernation discovery could be adopted in the future for human use. That might lead to advances in areas of medicine such as emergency care and organ preservation, or for use in long space flights where there is not enough food and oxygen--just like in science fiction.

"There are many diseases in which demand for oxygen and nutrition outstrips supply," said Takeshi Sakurai, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Tsukuba who was involved in the study.

"Tissue is further damaged by the time the patients with such diseases can receive treatment. But if they are induced into hibernation, they can be treated before further damage takes place."

Mammals normally maintain a constant body temperature. But some hibernate in cold seasons, or when they are starving due to food shortages, by slowing their metabolism and lowering body temperature to a level that would normally cause tissue damage.

Chipmunks and brown bears hibernate like this, but little is known about how they are able to do it.

The researchers studied a set of special neurons in the hypothalamus region of mice brains. They said those neurons regulate body temperature and metabolism.
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Biohazard

Honeybee lives severely shortened after exposure to two widely used 'bee friendly' pesticides

Chris Branam
Oregon State University
Tue, 16 Jun 2020 19:00 UTC
bee experiment
The lives of honeybees are shortened - with evidence of physiological stress - when they are exposed to the suggested application rates of two commercially available and widely used pesticides, according to new Oregon State University research.

In a study published in the journal PLOS ONE, honeybee researchers in OSU's College of Agricultural Sciences found detrimental effects in bees exposed to Transform and Sivanto, which are both registered for use in the United States and were developed to be more compatible with bee health.

The western honeybee is the major pollinator of fruit, nut, vegetable and seed crops that depend on bee pollination for high quality and yield.

Coupled with other stressors such as varroa mites, viruses and poor nutrition, effects from these pesticides can render honeybees incapable of performing their tasks smoothly. Beekeepers and some environmental groups have raised concerns in recent years about these insecticides and potential negative effects on bees.

Comment: Either toxic agriculture goes or much of the food supply does:

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Beaker

New evolutionary lab experiment confirms Darwin Devolves: The citrate death spiral

Michael Behe
Evolution News
Wed, 17 Jun 2020 18:14 UTC
Richard Lenski
© Zachary Blount [CC BY-SA 4.0], from Wikimedia Commons
Richard Lenski
Michigan State University biologist Richard Lenski and collaborators have just published a terrific new paper in the journal eLife.1 Anyone who wants to see a crystal-clear example of the inherent, unavoidable, fatal difficulties that the Darwinian mechanism itself poses for unguided evolution should read it closely.

The paper concerns the further evolution of a widely discussed mutant strain of the bacterium E. coli discovered during the course of Lenski's Long Term Evolution Experiment (LTEE). The LTEE is his more-than-three-decades-long project in which E. coli was allowed to grow continuously in laboratory flasks simply to observe how it would evolve.2 As I've written before, almost all of the beneficial mutations that were discovered to have spread through the populations of bacteria in the LTEE were ones that either blunted pre-existing genes (decreasing their previous biochemical activity) or outright broke them.3

An Interesting Exception?

There seemed, however, to be one interesting exception.4 One morning after more than 30,000 generations of bacterial growth, one flask of E. coli (out of 12 separate flasks that Lenski maintained for comparison and replication's sake) seemed cloudier than the other 11 flasks. That indicated substantially more bacteria than usual had grown in the nutrient broth. After much hard laboratory work, Lenski's group showed that a region of the prodigious bacterium's DNA that was close to a gene coding for a citrate transporter (that is, a protein whose job is to bring external, dissolved citrate into the cell; citrate is a common chemical that cells metabolize) had duplicated.5 The duplication mutation placed the control region of a different gene next to that of the citrate transporter.
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Comet 2

New Comet C/2020 K8 (CATALINA-ATLAS)

Ernesto Guido
Remanzacco Blogspot
Wed, 17 Jun 2020 17:12 UTC
CBET 4796 & MPEC 2020-L46, issued on 2020, June 12, announce the independent discovery of a comet (magnitude ~19) of an apparently asteroidal object made on CCD images taken with the 0.68-m Schmidt telescope of the Catalina Sky Survey (on May 25, 28, and 29) and the 0.5-m f/2 Schmidt reflector at Haleakala, Hawaii, in the course of the "Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System" (ATLAS) search program (on June 7). Then on June 8, R. Weryk reported the linkage of all of these tracklets, suggesting it might possibly be a comet based upon the astrometry. The object has been found to show cometary appearance subsequently by numerous CCD astrometrists at other observing sites after the object was posted on the Minor Planet Center's PCCP webpage. The new comet has been designated C/2020 K8 (CATALINA-ATLAS).
We performed follow-up measurements of this object while it was still on the PCCP webpage.

Stacking of 29 unfiltered exposures, 60 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2020, June 09.4 from X02 (Telescope Live, Chile) through a 0.6-m f/6.5 astrograph + CCD, shows that this object is a comet with a diffuse irregular coma about 10" in diameter (Observers E. Guido, M. Rocchetto, E. Bryssinck, M. Fulle, G. Milani, C. Nassef, G. Savini).

Stacking of 24 unfiltered exposures, 57 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2020, June 10.4 from U69 (iTelescope, Auberry California) through a 0.61-m f/6.5 astrograph + CCD, shows that this object is a comet with a diffuse coma about 15" in diameter slightly elongated toward PA 358 (Observers A. Valvasori, E. Guido).

Our confirmation images (click here for a bigger version)
Comet C/2020 K8 Catalina-Atlas
© Remanzacco Blogspot
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Blue Planet

There could be up to 6 billion Earth-like planets out there in the Milky Way

Michelle Starr
Science Alert
Wed, 17 Jun 2020 17:03 UTC
solar systems
© ESO/M. Kornmesser
There's only one planet we know of in the entire Universe that's capable of hosting life. That's Earth. So, when we search for exoplanets that might host life, it's pretty much what we look for: a rocky exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star at a distance that is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water on the surface.

To try to figure out the probability of life elsewhere in the Milky Way, one has to start with a reasonable estimate of how many exoplanets are out there that fit such a bill.

Now, with years of exoplanet-hunting data in the bag, astronomers have made a new calculation and determined there could be as many as 6 billion Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars in the Milky Way.

"My calculations place an upper limit of 0.18 Earth-like planets per G-type star," said astronomer Michelle Kunimoto from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada. (You may remember that Kunimoto discovered a whopping 17 exoplanets in Kepler data quite recently.)
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Easter Egg

New study suggests that hard eggshells developed at least three times in the dinosaur family tree


PhysOrg
Wed, 17 Jun 2020 15:43 UTC
fossilized Protoceratops eggs dinosaurs
© M. Ellison/AMNH
The clutch of fossilized Protoceratops eggs and embryos examined in this study was discovered in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia at Ukhaa Tolgod.
New research suggests that the first dinosaurs laid soft-shelled eggs — a finding that contradicts established thought. The study, led by the American Museum of Natural History and Yale University and published today in the journal Nature, applied a suite of sophisticated geochemical methods to analyze the eggs of two vastly different non-avian dinosaurs and found that they resembled those of turtles in their microstructure, composition, and mechanical properties. The research also suggests that hard-shelled eggs evolved at least three times independently in the dinosaur family tree.

"The assumption has always been that the ancestral dinosaur egg was hard-shelled," said lead author Mark Norell, chair and Macaulay Curator in the Museum's Division of Paleontology. "Over the last 20 years, we've found dinosaur eggs around the world. But for the most part, they only represent three groups — theropod dinosaurs, which includes modern birds, advanced hadrosaurs like the duck-bill dinosaurs, and advanced sauropods, the long-necked dinosaurs. At the same time, we've found thousands of skeletal remains of ceratopsian dinosaurs, but almost none of their eggs. So why weren't their eggs preserved? My guess — and what we ended up proving through this study — is that they were soft-shelled."
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Info

Huge circular arc discovered near the Big Dipper

Monica Young
Sky & Telescope
Tue, 16 Jun 2020 08:15 UTC
The 30-degree arc is likely a shock front expanding from a star that exploded some 100,000 years ago.

Circular Arc near Big Dipper
© Sky & Telescope
An oddly perfect puddle of hydrogen gas lies splashed just outside the bowl of the Big Dipper. Yet even though it spans a third of the northern sky, you'd never see it visually through your telescope.

Ultraviolet and narrowband photography have captured the thin and extremely faint trace of hydrogen gas arcing across 30°. The arc, presented at the recent virtual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, is probably the pristine shockwave expanding from a supernova that occurred some 100,000 years ago, and it's a record-holder for its sheer size on the sky.

Andrea Bracco (University of Paris) and colleagues came upon the Ursa Major Arc serendipitously when looking through the ultraviolet images archived by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX). They were looking for signs of a straight, 2° filament that had been observed two decades ago — but they found out that that length of gas was less straight than they thought, forming instead a small piece of a much larger whole. The researchers report the arc in the April issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics.
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