Science & Technology

Shocking discovery: Electric eels hunt in packs in Amazon rivers

Sofia Moutinho
Science Magazine
Thu, 14 Jan 2021 12:00 UTC

When darkness comes, electric eels emerge from South American river bottoms to attack their prey with up to 860 volts of electricity — enough to kill a person. Now, scientists have revealed the snakelike fish don't always go it alone: They hunt in packs, similar to wolves, orcas, and some species of tuna. The finding, a first among electric fishes, may open the way for new studies to investigate when social predation evolved among fishes.

"I was shocked," says Douglas Bastos, a biologist at the National Institute of Amazonian Research who first saw a group attack in 2012. Usually the eels, which can grow as long as a broomstick and weigh up to 20 kilograms, prey alone at night, targeting single resting fishes, he notes. "This behavior is unprecedented for electrical eels and also rare among freshwater fishes."

Comment: In recent years science has come to discover that there is cross-species hunting cooperation, so, whilst this is an interesting find, some of the comments in the article above also reveal just how limiting the scientific perspective can be sometimes; and particularly that shaped by Darwinian theory:

And check out SOTT radio's:

NASA fails test of mega Moon rocket, unknown issue causes engines to shut down prematurely

Phys.org
Sun, 17 Jan 2021 12:00 UTC

NASA said the 'hot-fire' test of the RS-25 engines that will power the Artemis lunar missions shut down prematurely

NASA said the 'hot-fire' test of the RS-25 engines that will power the Artemis lunar missions shut down prematurely

NASA conducted a test firing of the engines for its giant Space Launch System (SLS) lunar rocket on Saturday but they shut down earlier than planned, the space agency said.

The "hot-fire" test at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi was supposed to last a little over eight minutes — the time the engines would burn in flight — but they shut down just over a minute into the burn.

Comment: See also:

Energy from solar wind favors the north, surprising scientists

The European Space Agency
Tue, 12 Jan 2021 12:00 UTC

© Swarm
Swarm is ESA’s first constellation of Earth observation satellites designed to measure the magnetic signals from Earth’s core, mantle, crust, oceans, ionosphere and magnetosphere, providing data that will allow scientists to study the complexities of our protective magnetic field.

Using information from ESA's Swarm satellite constellation, scientists have made a discovery about how energy generated by electrically-charged particles in the solar wind flows into Earth's atmosphere - surprisingly, more of it heads towards the magnetic north pole than towards the magnetic south pole.

The Sun bathes our planet with the light and heat to sustain life, but it also bombards us with dangerous charged particles in the solar wind. These charged particles have the potential to damage communication networks, navigations systems such as GPS and satellites. Severe solar storms can even cause power outages, such as the major blackout that Quebec in Canada suffered in 1989.

Our magnetic field largely shields us from this onslaught.

Comment: As we enter solar minimum, Earth's magnetic field is weakening, so we can expect any solar storms to have much more of an impact. And research suggests that they may be more common than is often believed: A warning from history: The Carrington event was not unique

Comment: Clues for why this occurs may be found in electric universe theory:

And check out SOTT radio's:

The nuclear energy advancements of the past four years will blow your mind

Jonah Gottschalk
The Federalist
Fri, 15 Jan 2021 21:02 UTC

© NuScale Power
An artist’s rendering shows what NuScale Power’s planned small modular nuclear reactor plant in Idaho would look like.

There are a hundred reasons why nuclear energy can play a massive role in the future of American power and prosperity.

It creates high-paying jobs better than any other energy source. Its fuel sources are abundant. It fuels NASA's most innovative projects. It offers a solution to conservation concerns without devastating the economy. And despite its sensationalist image, it is far safer than fossil fuels, and about the same in safety as solar and wind.

"Nuclear provides 55% of our country's clean energy, and about 20% of our power, and it's one of the most reliable generators that we have on the grid today," says Dr. Rita Baranwal, who this month completed her tenure as assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy in the Trump administration. "Our reactors in the U.S. avoid putting out 470 million metric tons of carbon emissions each year. That number is equivalent to removing 100 million cars off the road."

But the field has been in a hard spot for decades. With high degrees of government regulation and small amounts of government investment, reactors have been shut down across the country, destroying jobs and energy.

Comment: It almost seems as if someone doesn't want cheap, clean energy...

The last four years, however, have seen early signs of what might just be a fission renaissance. After being slashed by President Obama in favor of more image-friendly and less efficient sources, the Trump administration has ramped up American investment in nuclear energy.

NASA's 'Mole' officially fails Mars mission, follows two years of troubleshooting

Evan Gough
Universe Today
Fri, 15 Jan 2021 20:48 UTC

It's always a sad day when a mission comes to an end. And it's even sadder when the mission never really got going in the first place.

That's where we're at with NASA's InSight lander. The entire mission isn't over, but the so-called Mole, the instrument designed and built by Germany's DLR, has been pronounced dead.

The Mole is, of course, the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP³). It's an instrument designed to measure the heat flowing from the Martian interior to the surface. The entire InSight mission (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport) was focused on discovering more about the interior of Mars.

Comment: See also:

Rare 4-stranded DNA has been observed in action for the first time

Nicoletta Lanese
Live Science
Fri, 15 Jan 2021 18:07 UTC

Two thin strands wound together in a spiraling helix: This is the iconic shape of a DNA molecule. But sometimes, DNA can form a rare quadruple-helix, and this odd structure may play a role in diseases like cancer.

Not much is known about these four-stranded DNA, known as G-quadruplexes — but now, scientists have developed a new way to detect these odd molecules and observe how they behave in living cells. In a new study, published Jan. 8 in the journal Nature Communications, the team described how certain proteins cause the G-quadruplex to unravel; in the future, their work could lead to new drugs that grab hold of quadruple-helix DNA and disrupt its activity. Drugs could intervene, for instance, when the odd DNA contributes to cancerous tumor growth.

"Evidence has been mounting that G-quadruplexes play an important role in a wide variety of processes vital for life, and in a range of diseases," study author Ben Lewis, from the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London, said in a statement.

Comment: See also:

Melting icebergs key feature of an ice age, scientists find

Cardiff University
Wed, 13 Jan 2021 12:00 UTC

Scientists claim to have found the 'missing link' in the process that leads to an ice age on Earth.

Melting icebergs in the Antarctic are the key, say the team from Cardiff University, triggering a series of chain reactions that plunges Earth into a prolonged period of cold temperatures.

The findings have been published today in Nature from an international consortium of scientists from universities around the world.

It has long been known that ice age cycles are paced by periodic changes to Earth's orbit of the sun, which subsequently changes the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface.

Comment: There are much more significant drivers of earth's climate, one of those is solar activity, with solar minimums being closely closely correlated with ice ages: Professor Valentina Zharkova: "We entered the 'modern' Grand Solar Minimum on June 8, 2020"

Comment: That melting glaciers impact ocean currents and that they are a key feature in ice ages is significant, but it's clear that the researchers are missing chunks of data and their theories are warped by global warming ideology. Of particular note is that, in recent years, it has been discovered that undersea volcanoes are causing glaciers to melt in Antarctica, and, above ground, the overall temperature in Antarctica has become so cold that living conditions for wildlife are being disrupted. Could this have also been the case in the past?

For insight into the real drivers behind our planet's climate and what our future may have in store, see:

And check out SOTT radio's:

FAIL: A 30 year-old climate prediction of 'rising sea levels' proves to be a load of bunkum

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That?
Wed, 03 Oct 2018 20:32 UTC

In 1988 there was this prediction via an article in the Canberra Times:

'Sea level is threatening to completely cover' Maldives' 1,196 islands within 30 years —

Well, it's 30 years later, and the Maldives is still there, all 1196 islands. Here's the article:

Comment:

Presumed supernova is actually something much rarer

Carnegie Institution for Science
Tue, 12 Jan 2021 18:22 UTC

© Image is courtesy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Screenshot of the NASA-produced animation showing a giant star being slowly devoured as it orbits the galaxy’s central black hole.

Pasadena, CA — In a case of cosmic mistaken identity, an international team of astronomers revealed that what they once thought was a supernova is actually periodic flaring from a galaxy where a supermassive black hole gives off bursts of energy every 114 days as it tears off chunks of an orbiting star.

Six years after its initial discovery — reported in The Astronomer's Telegram by Carnegie's Thomas Holoien — the researchers, led by Anna Payne of University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, can now say that the phenomenon they observed, called ASASSN-14ko, is a periodically recurring flare from the center of a galaxy more than 570 million light-years away in the southern constellation Pictor.

Their findings — based on 20 instances of regular outbursts — will be published in The Astrophysical Journal and presented by Payne at the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting.

Active galaxies, such as the host of ASASSN-14ko, have unusually bright and variable centers. These objects produce much more energy than the combined contribution of all their stars. Astrophysicists think this is due to gravitational and frictional forces heating up a swirling disk of gas and dust that accumulates around the central supermassive black hole. The black hole slowly consumes the material, which creates low-level, random changes in the light emitted by the disk.

'Identical' - twins have small genome differences says new study

Dr. Deborah Devis
Cosmos Magazine
Tue, 12 Jan 2021 18:12 UTC

Identical twins have long been touted as an incredible resource for genetics because they're "genetically identical". But new research suggests that might not be quite true.

Identical twins are called monozygotic because they come from a single zygote that has formed from a single sperm and egg. As the cells multiply, they can split into two individuals before they become embryos that have exactly the same genetic material (or so we thought).

Hákon Jónsson of deCODE genetics, Iceland, and colleagues have found that, on average, identical twins differ by about 5.2 developmental mutations. In around 15% of twins, one twin had a high number of these mutations and the other didn't, they report in their paper, published in Nature Genetics.

The team sequenced the genomes of 387 pairs of identical twins and compared their genes with their parents, siblings and offspring, to track the mutations that may have occurred in the womb.

The mutations detected may seem infinitesimal and inconsequential, but the result requires consideration for those undertaking twin studies, especially in cases where one twin has a trait that the other doesn't have.

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Science & Technology

Shocking discovery: Electric eels hunt in packs in Amazon rivers

NASA fails test of mega Moon rocket, unknown issue causes engines to shut down prematurely

Energy from solar wind favors the north, surprising scientists

The nuclear energy advancements of the past four years will blow your mind

NASA's 'Mole' officially fails Mars mission, follows two years of troubleshooting

Rare 4-stranded DNA has been observed in action for the first time

Melting icebergs key feature of an ice age, scientists find

FAIL: A 30 year-old climate prediction of 'rising sea levels' proves to be a load of bunkum

Presumed supernova is actually something much rarer

'Identical' - twins have small genome differences says new study

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