The human genome is much more complex than anyone imagined. In fact, the level of complexity argues directly against any sort of evolutionary origin for the code that makes us.
Science & Technology
© Frank Glaw
With a body size of just 13.5 mm, this Nano-Chameleon (Brookesia nana) is the smallest known male of the roughly 11,500 known reptile species.
With a body size of just 13.5 mm, this Nano-Chameleon (Brookesia nana) is the smallest known male of the roughly 11,500 known reptile species.
On an expedition in the North of Madagascar, a joint team of German and Malagasy scientists came across a new contender for the title of 'world's smallest reptile." They have named the new species Brookesia nana. "At a body length of just 13.5 mm and a total length of just 22 mm including the tail, the male nano-chameleon is the smallest known male of all 'higher vertebrates"' says Frank Glaw, Curator of Herpetology at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology (ZSM-SNSB) and first author on the study. The female is larger at 19 mm body length and 29 mm total length. In spite of intensive efforts, the authors were only able to find two individuals.
© Lt. Steve Smith/U.S. Navy via Getty Images
The U.S. Navy has patents on weird and little understood technology. According to patents filed by the Navy, it is working on a compact fusion reactor that could power cities, an engine that works using "inertial mass reduction," and a "hybrid aerospace-underwater craft." Dubbed the "UFO patents", The War Zone has reported that the Navy had to build prototypes of some of the outlandish tech to prove it worked.
Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais is the man behind the patents and The War Zone has proven the man exists, at least on paper. Pais has worked for a number of different departments in the Navy, including the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAVAIR/NAWCAD) and the Strategic Systems Programs. (SSP) The SSP mission, according to its website, is to "provide credible and affordable strategic solutions to the warfighter." It's responsible for developing the technology behind the Trident class nuclear missiles launched from Submarines.
© University of Bologna
The research group analysed the ancient DNA extracted from 50,000 years old sedimentary faeces (the oldest sample of faecal material available to date). The samples were collected in El Salt (Spain), a site where many Neanderthals lived.
The research group analysed the ancient DNA extracted from 50,000 years old sedimentary faeces (the oldest sample of faecal material available to date). The samples were collected in El Salt (Spain), a site where many Neanderthals lived.
Published in Communication Biology, their paper puts forward the hypothesis of the existence of ancestral components of human microbiota that have been living in the human gastrointestinal tract since before the separation between the Homo sapiens and Neanderthals that occurred more than 700,000 years ago.
© Marion Prévost
Photograph of the bone and the engravings.
Photograph of the bone and the engravings.
A recent discovery by archeologists from the Hebrew University and the University of Haifa alongside a team from the Le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France have uncovered evidence of what may be the earliest-known use of symbols. The symbols were found on a bone fragment in the Ramle region in central Israel and are believed to be approximately 120,000 years old.
Remarkably the fragment remained largely intact and the researchers were able to detect six similar etchings on one side of the bone, leading them to believe that they were in the possession of something which held symbolic or spiritual significance. The find, which was recently published in the scientific journal Quaternary International, was discovered in a trove of flint tools and animal bones exposed at a site during archaeological excavations.
Comment: See also:
- 45,000 year old lion statuette found in Denisova Cave may be world's oldest
- Earliest known cave art by modern humans found in Indonesia
- Ancient European hunters carved human bones into weapons for 'cultural reasons'
- Previously unknown "proto-hominin" species suggests ancestor of humans evolved in Europe not Africa
- MindMatters: America Before: Comets, Catastrophes, Mounds and Mythology
- MindMatters: The Meaning of the World's Mythologies
© Brian Christensen/Stocktrek Images
What blotted out GRS 1915+105's bright light?
What blotted out GRS 1915+105's bright light?
The black hole responsible for creating the lights-out mystery lives in GRS 1915+105, a star system 36,000 light-years from Earth containing both a normal star and the second-heaviest known black hole in the Milky Way. That heavyweight is 10 to 18 times the mass of the sun and second in mass only to Sagittarius A* (or SgrA*), the supermassive black hole in the galactic center. The region around the GRS 1915+105 black hole typically shines with an intense X-ray light, as it feeds on its companion star. As the material circles the cosmic drain, the particles within rub together, generating energy before dropping into the darkness at the black hole's center. That swirling material is the black hole's accretion disk, which lights up with X-rays as the black hole devours more and more sustenance.
Comment: The number of recent unexpected and unexplained events in space further leads one to suspect that mainstream science is missing a significant piece of the puzzle:
- Astronomers observe SIX galaxies undergo sudden, dramatic transitions into super-bright quasars
- Mysterious 'wave' of star-forming gas may be the largest structure in the galaxy
- Black hole's structure possibly glimpsed, as dust ring casts shadows and rays far across space
- Planet-X, Comets and Earth Changes by J.M. McCanney
- The Seven Destructive Earth Passes of Comet Venus
- Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?
- Behind the Headlines: The Electric Universe - An interview with Wallace Thornhill
CBET 4929 & MPEC 2021-C16, issued on 2021, February 04, announce the discovery of a comet (magnitude ~19) in infrared images obtained during Jan. 22 UT with the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (or NEOWISE; formerly the WISE earth-orbiting satellite). The new comet has been designated C/2021 B3 (NEOWISE).
We performed follow-up measurements of this object while it was still on the PCCP webpage.
Stacking of 50 unfiltered exposures, 30 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2021, January 27.1 from X02 (Telescope Live, Chile) through a 0.6-m f/6.5 astrograph + CCD, shows that this object is a comet with a compact coma about 10" arcsecond in diameter. (Observers E. Guido, M. Rocchetto, E. Bryssinck, M. Fulle, G. Milani, C. Nassef, G. Savini, A. Valvasori).
Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version; made with TYCHO software by D. Parrott):
We performed follow-up measurements of this object while it was still on the PCCP webpage.
Stacking of 50 unfiltered exposures, 30 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2021, January 27.1 from X02 (Telescope Live, Chile) through a 0.6-m f/6.5 astrograph + CCD, shows that this object is a comet with a compact coma about 10" arcsecond in diameter. (Observers E. Guido, M. Rocchetto, E. Bryssinck, M. Fulle, G. Milani, C. Nassef, G. Savini, A. Valvasori).
Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version; made with TYCHO software by D. Parrott):
© Remanzacco Blogspot
© IMO/AMS
More than 15 witnesses reported their sighting of the November 7, 2020, 21h27min UT fireball to the IMO.
More than 15 witnesses reported their sighting of the November 7, 2020, 21h27min UT fireball to the IMO.
Comment: For an idea of the sounds fireballs have been making, check out this story from just a week ago: Loud blast recorded on dashcam as meteorite explodes over Sarawak, Indonesia - Locals felt earth shake
The event has been caught on cameras, some associated to a meteor observing network like the Norsk Meteornettwerk or by CCTV video recordings. Those show a slow moving meteor lasting a few seconds and which brightness lit up the ground and the sky. Another video is available here.
Comment: James Gage of VARF.se comments:
[...] It may be of interest to IMO readers that we have confirmation of a find from this meteorite. Several small pieces were recovered 22 november and analysis has confirmed them to be from an iron nickel meteorite. So far, only these have been reported, and they are very small, 1 to 6 mm. We will begin searching again when the snow has melted. The pieces were found within the calculated strewn field, but I have no information as to the exact location as of yet.Activity in our skies certainly appears to be increasing:
- HUGE meteor fireball lights up western China's dark morning skies
- Video shows meteor fireball blazing over Derbyshire, UK
- Chelyabinsk meteorite fragments reveal potential space collision
A recently discovered asteroid appears to be an Earth Trojan, orbiting a gravitationally stable area with only one other known occupant.
Earth has a second Trojan asteroid sharing its orbit, reports amateur Tony Dunn on the Minor Planet Mailing List. The asteroid, dubbed 2020 XL5, is a few hundred meters across and its orbit is tied to a gravitationally stable ahead of the Earth in its orbit.
Trojans are asteroids gravitationally locked to stable Lagrange points either 60° ahead (L4) or behind (L5) the planets in their orbits around the Sun. 2020 XL5 was found around the L4 point. Massive Jupiter has more than 9,000 Trojans. In theory, Trojan orbits would be stable around every planet except Saturn, where Jupiter's gravity pulls them away. So far, Trojans have been found sharing orbits — at least temporarily — with Neptune, Uranus, Mars, Venus, and Earth.
Earth Trojans are hard to find because during most of their orbits, they appear close to the Sun in the sky. Not only that, but the gravitational resonance does not hold them in lockstep at 60° ahead and behind of the Earth, explains Dunn. Instead, the objects trace paths around the L4 and L5 points, which are themselves moving as Earth orbits the Sun.
Earth has a second Trojan asteroid sharing its orbit, reports amateur Tony Dunn on the Minor Planet Mailing List. The asteroid, dubbed 2020 XL5, is a few hundred meters across and its orbit is tied to a gravitationally stable ahead of the Earth in its orbit.
© NASA / WMAP Science Team
This diagram shows the Earth-Sun Lagrange points (not to scale). Trojans orbit near the L4 and L5 regions, though their orbits may stray from those exact points.
This diagram shows the Earth-Sun Lagrange points (not to scale). Trojans orbit near the L4 and L5 regions, though their orbits may stray from those exact points.
Earth Trojans are hard to find because during most of their orbits, they appear close to the Sun in the sky. Not only that, but the gravitational resonance does not hold them in lockstep at 60° ahead and behind of the Earth, explains Dunn. Instead, the objects trace paths around the L4 and L5 points, which are themselves moving as Earth orbits the Sun.
© Wikipedia
Dr James Knight and Prof Thomas Nowotny from the University of Sussex's School of Engineering and Informatics used the latest Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) to give a single desktop PC the capacity to simulate brain models of almost unlimited size.
The researchers believe the innovation, detailed in Nature Computational Science, will make it possible for many more researchers around the world to carry out research on large-scale brain simulation, including the investigation of neurological disorders.
Currently, the cost of supercomputers is so prohibitive they are only affordable to very large institutions and government agencies and so are not accessible for large numbers of researchers.
As well as shaving tens of millions of pounds off the costs of a supercomputer, the simulations run on the desktop PC require approximately 10 times less energy bringing a significant sustainability benefit too.
Dr Knight, Research Fellow in Computer Science at the University of Sussex, said: "I think the main benefit of our research is one of accessibility. Outside of these very large organisations, academics typically have to apply to get even limited time on a supercomputer for a particular scientific purpose. This is quite a high barrier for entry which is potentially holding back a lot of significant research.
Comment: See also: