Science & TechnologyS


Saturn

Saturn's Death Star-looking moon may have vast underground ocean

Robert Lea
Space.com
Wed, 07 Feb 2024 17:51 UTC
Mimas saturn moon death star
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute via APThis Feb. 13, 2010 image provided by NASA shows Saturn’s moon Mimas and it’s large Herschel Crater, captured by the Cassini spacecraft.
"The major finding is to discover habitability conditions on a solar system object which we would never, never expect to have liquid water. It's really astonishing."

Astronomers have discovered that a tiny moon of Saturn, named Mimas, may harbor a hidden liquid ocean beneath its thick icy shell and may thus have the conditions for habitability.

This shocking finding radically changes the definition of what an ocean moon can be, and could ultimately redefine our search for alien life on moons in the solar system. That's because, at first appearance, Mimas — nicknamed the 'Death Star' because a large crater means it resembles the Empire's space station in Star Wars — doesn't look like the kind of body scientists would expect to support an ocean. In fact, it doesn't even look capable of supporting such a vast body of liquid at all.
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Cloud Grey

Clouds disappear quickly during a solar eclipse, study shows


Delft University of Technology
Mon, 12 Feb 2024 16:10 UTC
Disappearing Clouds
© Delft University of TechnologyThe removal of sunlight can lead to cooling of the ground. The rising air, responsible for forming cumulus clouds, is slowed down so that cumulus clouds disappear. When the solar eclipse is over, the ground warms up again and new cumulus clouds often form.
Stack clouds over land begin to disappear almost immediately during a partial solar eclipse. This shows new research from KNMI and TU Delft. Until recently, satellite measurements during the eclipse resulted in dark spots in the cloud map. Thanks to a new method, the measurements could be restored. The results may have consequences for climate engineering. Disappearing clouds could partly nullify the cooling effect of an artificial solar eclipse. The results were published today in Nature Communications Earth and Environment.

Although the effects of solar eclipses have been studied for centuries, it was never known exactly how strongly clouds react. " From Earth you can count the clouds and see them disappear, but that only gives anecdotal evidence ", explains PhD student Victor Trees. " Clouds change constantly even without solar eclipse. "

Measure solar eclipses from space

Satellites in a geostationary orbit around the Earth can continuously measure many clouds at the same time, in large areas including impassable terrain. In the case of a solar eclipse, the measurements were previously not reliable. The algorithms of the satellites did not take into account the decrease in sunlight during solar eclipses. This resulted in large dark spots in the cloud maps of the earth.

We have now managed to restore the satellite measurements during solar eclipses by accurately calculating the percentage of the sun darkened for each location and time on Earth. " By far the majority of the solar eclipse consists of a partial eclipse, in which it is usually still full of light outside ", says Trees. The satellites still receive enough reflected sunlight there to reliably measure the clouds after the correction for the eclipse.
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Shamrock

Irish student wins BT Young Scientist Prize 2018 for powerful Blackberry antibiotic

Kevin O'Sullivan
The Irish Times
Fri, 12 Jan 2018 10:13 UTC
blackerry brambles
© N/AFor centuries, herbalists have used the juice of the fruit as an iron tonic and the leaves for dysentery and other bacterial infections of the stomach and elimination pathways.
A 15-year-old student from Co Cork who discovered a natural antibiotic in a blackberry bramble plant in his back garden has won the top prize at the 54th BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition.

Simon Meehan of Coláiste Choilm, Ballincollig, who was declared BT Young Scientist and Technologist of the Year at an awards ceremony in Dublin's RDS on Friday night, found the "non toxic, organic, original antibiotic" after analysing 10 plants widely available in his locality.

"People are going deep into the Amazon rainforest looking for new antibiotics. But I'm a 15-year-old boy who found this down his own back garden. That has got to be amazing," he told The Irish Times.

Comment: The research is ongoing, but a quick glance on the studies done so far displays an array of potential health benefits of the widespread and common Blackberry plant. One example:
Health-promoting effects and immunity-boosting properties have been attributed to blackberry leaves since long ago. Hippocrates recommended blackberry stems and leaves soaked in white wine for facilitating childbirth [16]. Zia-UI-Haq et al. [25], in their review of the traditional uses of Rubus fruticosus leaves, reported that the decoction of the leaves has been used as tonic and a mouthwash; gargles help treating thrush, gum inflammation, sore throat, and mouth ulcers. The leaves are also chewed in order to strengthen the gums and to cure thrush. A poultice of the leaves is applied to abscesses and skin ulcers as an astringent. In addition, blackberry leaves and roots are a long-standing home remedy for anemia and menses, diarrhea, dysentery, cystitis, and hemorrhoids. Finally, they have traditionally been used against several respiratory problems [19].

Indeed, it has been demonstrated that the leaves of blackberry possess significant antimicrobial activity, higher than the fruit, against several bacterial strains, such as Salmonella typhi, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Micrococcus luteus, Proteus mirabilis, Bacillus subtilis, Citrobacteri sp., and Pseudomonas aeruginosa [25].


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Rose

What plants 'hear'

Caspar Henderson
Nautilus
Tue, 06 Feb 2024 22:12 UTC
flower headphones graphic plant hearing
© Eroshka / Shutterstock
They sense the buzzing sounds of pollinators, the vibrations of the wind.

It is not the trees ... that make a wood," the author J.A. Baker once suggested, "but the shape and disposition of the remaining light, of the sky that descends between the trees." Something similar may be true in relation to sound, because the forest also becomes apparent to many sentient creatures through the resonances in the spaces between the trees. The tap of raindrops on leaves, the clack of branches, and the rustle of vegetation shape our sense of what surrounds us. According to the botanist Diana Beresford-Kroeger, the xylem and phloem that transport vital fluids inside trees may be especially long in old-growth forests, and resonate in ways that birds find attractive, encouraging them to nest.

Plants reverberate both literally and figuratively. Literally, there is a vine in the Cuban rainforest that has evolved bowl-shaped leaves that act as sound reflectors. The leaves help echolocating bats home in on the vine's flowers twice as fast as they do those of other plants, and in return for a drink of nectar the bats pollinate the vine. Figuratively, the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō imagines that he hears the sound of temple bells continuing in the flowers after the bells themselves have stopped.
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Brain

What your brain is doing when you're not doing anything

Nora Bradford
Quanta Magazine
Mon, 05 Feb 2024 17:14 UTC
brain at rest graphic
© Kristina Armitage/Quanta Magazine
Whenever you're actively performing a task — say, lifting weights at the gym or taking a hard exam — the parts of your brain required to carry it out become "active" when neurons step up their electrical activity. But is your brain active even when you're zoning out on the couch?

The answer, researchers have found, is yes. Over the past two decades they've defined what's known as the default mode network, a collection of seemingly unrelated areas of the brain that activate when you're not doing much at all. Its discovery has offered insights into how the brain functions outside of well-defined tasks and has also prompted research into the role of brain networks — not just brain regions — in managing our internal experience.

In the late 20th century, neuroscientists began using new techniques to take images of people's brains as they performed tasks in scanning machines. As expected, activity in certain brain areas increased during tasks — and to the researchers' surprise, activity in other brain areas declined simultaneously. The neuroscientists were intrigued that during a wide variety of tasks, the very same brain areas consistently dialed back their activity.
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Die

China betting on next-generation chip production despite US curbs - FT


RT
Sun, 11 Feb 2024 14:22 UTC
CPU, electronics, chips
© Getty Images
Chinese chipmakers expect to make next-generation smartphone processors as early as this year despite US attempts to hinder the Asian nation's technological advancement, the Financial Times reported this week.

According to the report, citing people familiar with the matter, China's top chipmaker SMIC has put together new semiconductor production lines in Shanghai to mass produce chips designed by Huawei. SMIC plans to use its existing stock of US and Dutch-made equipment to produce five-nanometer chips, the sources said.

"With the new 5nm node, Huawei is well on track to upgrade its new flagship handset and data center chips," one of the sources told FT. In September 2023, the sanctions-hit Chinese tech giant started successfully selling its Mate 60 Pro smartphone that uses high-end seven-nanometer chips.

Faced with mounting restrictions, the Chinese government has been investing heavily to develop a self-reliant semiconductor supply chain. The administration of US President Joe Biden introduced a sweeping set of export controls in 2022 aimed at slowing China's technological advance, claiming national security concerns. Among the measures was a ban on sales to China of certain semiconductor chips made anywhere in the world with US equipment, and a block on shipments of chips for supercomputing systems and artificial intelligence.

China has repeatedly criticized the export curbs, claiming that they run counter to globally recognized market rules. Last month, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Washington's restrictions go beyond the concept of national security and destroy supply chains.

Comment: See also: China aims to boost chip production despite US restrictions - FT

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Info

Colossal underwater canyon discovered near seamount deep in the Mediterranean Sea

Sascsha Pare
Live Science
Thu, 08 Feb 2024 16:51 UTC
Researchers have discovered a 33,000-foot-wide (10 kilometers) underwater canyon that was carved out of the Mediterranean seabed shortly before the sea dried up around 6 million years ago.
Underwater Canyon
© Jason Edwards via Getty ImagesA newly discovered underwater canyon was carved out of the seabed by extremely salty currents.
Scientists have discovered a giant underwater canyon in the eastern Mediterranean Sea that likely formed just before the sea transformed to a mile-high salt field.

The canyon formed around 6 million years ago, at the onset of the Messinian salinity crisis (MSC), when the Gibraltar gateway between the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea narrowed and eventually pinched shut due to shifts in tectonic plates. The Mediterranean Sea became isolated from the world's oceans and dried up for roughly 700,000 years, leaving behind a vast expanse of salt up to 2 miles (3 kilometers) thick in some places.

As sea levels dropped, increasingly salty currents eroded the seabed and incised gullies several hundred feet deep along the steepest edges of the Mediterranean Sea. In a study published in the January issue of the journal Global and Planetary Change, researchers now describe a giant U-shaped canyon located 75 miles (120 km) south of Cyprus, in the depths of the Mediterranean's Levant Basin.

The 1,640-foot-deep (500 meters) and 33,000-foot-wide (10 km) canyon, which the researchers named after the nearby Eratosthenes seamount, likely formed underwater shortly before salt piled onto the seabed. Unlike the more coastal gullies, the canyon had no older "pre-salt" roots, according to the study.
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Nebula

New findings from JWST: How black holes switched from creating to quenching stars

Kenna Hughes-Castleberry
Phys.org
Tue, 06 Feb 2024 00:00 UTC
transition
© Steven Burrows/Rosemary Wyse/Mitch BegelmaThe transition in star formation rates and black hole growth as redshift decreases from regimes where positive feedback dominates to a later epoch when feedback is largely negative.
Astronomers have long sought to understand the early universe, and thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a critical piece of the puzzle has emerged. The telescope's infrared detecting "eyes" have spotted an array of small, red dots, identified as some of the earliest galaxies formed in the universe.

This surprising discovery is not just a visual marvel, it's a clue that could unlock the secrets of how galaxies and their enigmatic black holes began their cosmic journey.

JILA Fellow and University of Colorado Boulder astrophysics professor Mitch Begelman, explains:
"The astonishing discovery from James Webb is that not only does the universe have these very compact and infrared bright objects, but they're probably regions where huge black holes already exist. That was thought to be impossible."
Begelman and a team of other astronomers, including Joe Silk, a professor of astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, published their findings in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggesting that new theories of galactic creation are needed to explain the existence of these huge black holes.

"Something new is needed to reconcile the theory of galaxy formation with the new data," elaborates Silk, the lead author of the potentially groundbreaking study.
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Nuke

Nuclear fusion reaction releases almost twice the energy put in

Matthew Sparkes
New Scientist
Mon, 05 Feb 2024 19:39 UTC
nuclear fusion
© Fusion experiments at the US National Ignition Facility have achieved a significant milestoneFusion experiments at the US National Ignition Facility have achieved a significant milestone
The US National Ignition Facility has achieved even higher energy yields since breaking even for the first time in 2022, but a practical fusion reactor is still a long way off

Scientists have confirmed that a fusion reaction in 2022 reached a historic milestone by unleashing more energy than was put into it - and subsequent trials have produced even better results, they say. The findings, now published in a series of papers, give encouragement that fusion reactors will one day create clean, plentiful energy.

Today's nuclear power plants rely on fission reactions, where atoms are smashed apart to release energy and smaller particles. Fusion works in reverse, squeezing smaller particles together into larger atoms; the same process powers our sun.

Fusion can create more energy with none of the radioactive waste involved in fission, but finding a way to contain and control this process, let alone extract energy from it, has eluded scientists and engineers for decades.

Comment:

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PCI card

China aims to boost chip production despite US restrictions - FT


Reuters
Tue, 06 Feb 2024 10:44 UTC
Semiconductor chips, printed circuit board
© REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration/File PhotoSemiconductor chips are seen on a printed circuit board in this illustration picture taken February 17, 2023.
Chinese chipmakers expect to make next-generation smartphone processors as early as this year despite U.S. efforts to curb their development of advanced technologies, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), the country's top chipmaker, has put together new semiconductor production lines in Shanghai to mass produce chips designed by Huawei, the report said, citing people familiar with the move.

SMIC is aiming to use its existing stock of U.S. and Dutch-made equipment to produce 5-nanometre chips, it added.

Huawei and SMIC did not immediately reply to Reuters' request for comment.
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