What exactly do you suppose they are doing with it?
You have to take a few minutes and watch this. It will change the way you look at "reality" forever.
Science & Technology
What exactly do you suppose they are doing with it?
You have to take a few minutes and watch this. It will change the way you look at "reality" forever.
© NASA Goddard/YouTube
When the sun's solar material begins leaving its atmosphere, also known as the corona, it's a steady and focused stream. But once it reaches the end of the sun's magnetic field, the material's flow becomes scattered and turbulent. The question of why and how this happens was finally answered by scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
The sun is made of plasma that is formed by a mix of oppositely-charged particles that separate at high temperatures. These particles separate and then travel away from the sun through its magnetic field. Once it leaves the magnetic field, it enters the area of solar winds. Solar winds are the constant flow of particles that fill our solar system and the space between planets. But the question that has beleaguered scientists is why the particles leaving the sun's magnetic field go very quickly from being focused to falling apart.
But the recent breakthrough has finally given scientists an idea of what happens between particles being a part of the sun and being solar wind. "Now we have a global picture of solar wind evolution," Nicholeen Viall, a solar scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center told Raw Story. "This is really going to change our understanding of how the space environment develops."
© NASA
The Earth's fuzzy edge and moon's crisp silhouette revealed the sun during this week's eclipse.
The Earth's fuzzy edge and moon's crisp silhouette revealed the sun during this week's eclipse.
Not to be outdone by the spectacular "Ring of Fire" eclipse witnessed earlier in the week across eastern and southern Africa, the SDO captured the brief moment when the Earth revealed the sun to the orbiting satellite just as the moon also blocked its view.
Earth comes between the SDO and the sun briefly on a daily basis as a consequence of following the planet's rotation. On Thursday, both the Earth and the moon's eclipse coincided for a brief, but beautiful moment.
© Fred Dufour / AFP
The record-breaking structure which gives even the most robust adrenaline junkies the chills, was closed on Friday - just 13 days after its grand opening in China's Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon, authorities said.
On Thursday officials posted an announcement on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo, saying the bridge has been closed due to the "urgency to improve and update" the construction. The officials said no damage had been done to the bridge and it just needed upgrading.
© Timothy Rodigas.
This is an illustration of this highly unusual system, which features the smallest-separation binary stars that both host planets ever discovered. Only six other metal-poor binary star systems with exoplanets have ever been found.
This is an illustration of this highly unusual system, which features the smallest-separation binary stars that both host planets ever discovered. Only six other metal-poor binary star systems with exoplanets have ever been found.
New discoveries coming from the study of exoplanetary systems will show us where on the continuum of ordinary to unique our own Solar System's layout falls. So far, planet hunters have revealed populations of planets that are very different from what we see in our Solar System. The most-common exoplanets detected are so-called super-Earths, which are larger than our planet but smaller than Neptune or Uranus. Given current statistics, Jupiter-sized planets seem fairly rare -- having been detected only around a small percentage of stars.
This is of interest because Jupiter's gravitational pull was likely a huge influence on our Solar System's architecture during its formative period. So the scarcity of Jupiter-like planets could explain why our home system is different from all the others found to date.
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
NASA's Juno spacecraft captured this view as it closed in on Jupiter's north pole, about two hours before closest approach on Aug. 27, 2016.
NASA's Juno spacecraft captured this view as it closed in on Jupiter's north pole, about two hours before closest approach on Aug. 27, 2016.
The images show a different side of the planet, Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute said in statement released via NASA on Friday.
"First glimpse of Jupiter's north pole, and it looks like nothing we have seen or imagined before. It's bluer in color up there than other parts of the planet, and there are a lot of storms," Bolton said.
"There is no sign of the latitudinal bands or zone and belts that we are used to - this image is hardly recognizable as Jupiter. We're seeing signs that the clouds have shadows, possibly indicating that the clouds are at a higher altitude than other features," he added.
The southern aurora of Jupiter was captured by June on August 27 along with the other data, giving what the space agency said was a unique look at the planet in detail.
The spaceship's Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) camera acquired the view at wavelengths ranging from 3.3 to 3.6 microns, which is the wavelengths of light emitted by excited hydrogen ions in the polar regions.
© NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth
Earth’s stratosphere lies just above the red-orange troposphere in this photo snapped by International Space Station astronauts in 2011. Late last year, unusual wind behavior interrupted a reliable stratospheric wind pattern known as the quasi-biennial oscillation.
Earth’s stratosphere lies just above the red-orange troposphere in this photo snapped by International Space Station astronauts in 2011. Late last year, unusual wind behavior interrupted a reliable stratospheric wind pattern known as the quasi-biennial oscillation.
The weather we experience on Earth typically occurs in the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere. But the stratosphere, which envelops the planet just above the troposphere, is home to winds of its own. In a new study, Newman et al. report an anomalous interruption in an otherwise reliable stratospheric wind pattern known as the quasi-biennial oscillation.
Each cycle of the quasi-biennial oscillation begins with strong westerly winds that flow through the stratosphere in a belt around the equator. Over the course of about 1 year, these winds gradually weaken and descend in altitude to the lower stratosphere as easterly winds replace them. These easterly winds slowly sink and weaken, too, as westerly winds return. The cycle repeats roughly once every 28 months.
Since 1953, scientists have observed equatorial winds by instruments known as radiosondes, which are carried skyward by weather balloons. The quasi-biennial oscillation was discovered in the early 1960s. Although the timing of each cycle has sometimes varied by a few months, the pattern as a whole has remained uninterrupted—until now.
Host and bacterial ligands that interact with the same cell-surface receptor induce different activities in human macrophages.
Macrophages detect and kill pathogens, but also recognize and repair damage to host tissues. How the cells determine which response is required, however, is somewhat of a mystery. Now, researchers at the University of Oxford studying the macrophage toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), which interacts with both bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and host protein tenascin-C, show that the two molecules trigger different pathways and proteins in the macrophages that govern contrasting responses. The findings were published in Science Signaling.
"This is a very interesting paper. It addresses a big overall question of how does the immune system distinguish between infection and non-infectious tissue damage," said immunologist Cynthia Leifer of Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ithaca, New York, who was not involved in the study. "The overall conclusion is that, through one innate immune receptor, with two different ligands, you can trigger two different types of outcome."
© WIKIMEDIA, NIAID
Macrophage
Macrophage
"This is a very interesting paper. It addresses a big overall question of how does the immune system distinguish between infection and non-infectious tissue damage," said immunologist Cynthia Leifer of Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ithaca, New York, who was not involved in the study. "The overall conclusion is that, through one innate immune receptor, with two different ligands, you can trigger two different types of outcome."
© thefilmstage.com
Scene from the movie "Robot and Frank'
Scene from the movie "Robot and Frank'
Speaking at the IFA tech conference, he said: "I'm happy to report that we are working hard to create a robot for your home that is not only capable of assisting you with everyday needs but is really capable of forming an emotional connection with all of you. "You definitely want to stay tuned."
Of course, many humans will be unsettled by the idea of inviting a machine into their home. Science fiction is full of stories about robots which go rogue and end up killing their owner. Experts have also raised fears about the possibility of artificial intelligence becoming smarter than humans. However, Hirai told Mirror Online this "shouldn't be a concern". He said: "If Sony comes up with a robot for the house, is the AI involved in that going to be dangerous or not? Consumers ultimately decide."
Unfortunately, there's good evidence to suggest robots could make terrifying house guests. You might like the sound of a world where robots do all the work whilst you sit back and sip pina coladas. But Google staff have warned that domestic labour-saving machines could end up attacking their owners. In a research paper, three of the tech giant's top artificial intelligence experts explored what could go wrong when lazy humans let cleaning contraptions do all the hard work around their home.
Comment: So, the AI may be better emotionally adjusted than we are?!! We hardly 'live' our lives now, with all our gadgets and secondary 'real-life' experiences (computers, texting, shop online, etc.). Robots doing the work offers humans a nursing home-style existence. This development is just one more nail in the coffin of human existence in any meaningful way. Are you OK with that?
© Shutterstock
That noise is far more sophisticated than it sounds.
That noise is far more sophisticated than it sounds.
First, it is important to draw a distinction between crying and tears. Many species produce cries, but we appear to be the only animals that send emotional droplets streaming down from our tear ducts. While tears often accompany cry vocalisations in older age, they are by no means a prerequisite of crying - newborns cry from birth but don't produce tears until they are two to three months in age. It also turns out that these early cries have evolutionary roots separate from the more cultural, learned "emotional crying" that we develop in later life.
Crying is a primitive behaviour shared across mammals, whose governing mechanisms are rooted in the evolutionarily ancient brain stem - infant rats, cats, and humans have all been shown to be able to cry even when the forebrain, which evolved much later, is absent. Indeed, the cries of many human and non-human mammal infants are highly similar in both acoustic structure and in the contexts in which they occur - across the mammal kingdom, infants cry primarily when they're hungry, when they're in pain, and when they're alone.
Comment: See also: