Welcome to Sott.net
Mon, 27 Sep 2021
The World for People who Think

Science & Technology
Map

Mars

China's 1st Mars rover 'Zhurong' lands on the Red Planet

Hanneke Weitering
Live Science
Sat, 15 May 2021 01:59 UTC
Tianwen-1 mars rover
© CCTV/China National Space Administration
An artist's concept of China's first Mars rover mission, Tianwen-1, at the Red Planet.
China just successfully landed its first rover on Mars, becoming only the second nation to do so.

The Tianwen-1 mission, China's first interplanetary endeavor, reached the surface of the Red Planet Friday (May 14) at approximately 7:11 p.m. EDT (2311 GMT), though Chinese space officials have not yet confirmed the exact time and location of touchdown. Tianwen-1 (which translates to "Heavenly Questions") arrived in Mars' orbit in February after launching to the Red Planet on a Long March 5 rocket in July 2020.

After circling the Red Planet for more than three months, the Tianwen-1 lander, with the rover attached, separated from the orbiter to begin its plunge toward the planet's surface. Once the lander and rover entered Mars' atmosphere, the spacecraft endured a similar procedure to the "seven minutes of terror" that NASA's Mars rovers have experienced when attempting soft landings on Mars.

A heat shield protected the spacecraft during the fiery descent, after which the mission safely parachuted down to the Utopia Planitia region, a plain inside of an enormous impact basin in the planet's northern hemisphere. Much like during NASA's Perseverance rover landing, Tianwen-1's landing platform fired some small, downward-facing rocket engines to slow down during the last few seconds of its descent.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has not yet officially confirmed the successful landing, but it has been announced on social media by the state-run China Global Television Network (CGTN) and by researchers at Macau University of Science and Technology in China.
      Read More...
Microscope 2

Covid-19 may insert itself into human genome, strongest evidence to date suggests

Mike McRae
Science Alert
Wed, 12 May 2021 12:00 UTC
covid
Our genome is a graveyard littered with genetic fragments of viruses that once plagued our ancestors. If a controversial claim by MIT researchers withstands the criticisms being leveled at it, the virus behind the current pandemic has a fair chance of joining them.

Having a few chunks of virus code scattered among our genes doesn't necessarily mean the pandemic is here to stay. It could even go some way towards explaining why a handful of patients continue to test positive for COVID-19 long after recovery.

But SARS-CoV-2 simply isn't equipped with the tools to bury itself in our genetic library, meaning it would need a way to convince our own bodies to manage the job on its behalf.

Comment: For insight into the likely origins of the coronavirus and its workings, check out SOTT's Compelling Evidence That SARS-CoV-2 Was Man-Made

See also: The Inanity of RNA Vaccines For COVID-19

      Read More...
Clock

Measuring time accurately increases the entropy in the universe

Leah Crane
New Scientist
Fri, 07 May 2021 07:36 UTC
world clock
© Bruce Rolff/Alamy
The most accurate clocks create the most disorder

Bruce Rolff/Alamy
Keeping time accurately comes with a price. The maximum accuracy of a clock is directly related to how much disorder, or entropy, it creates every time it ticks.

Natalia Ares at the University of Oxford and her colleagues made this discovery using a tiny clock with accuracy that can be controlled. The clock consisted of a 50-nanometre-thick membrane of silicon nitride, vibrated by an electric current. Each time the membrane moved up and down once and then returned to its original position, the researchers counted a tick, and the regularity of the spacing between the ticks represented the accuracy of the clock.

They found that as they increased the clock's accuracy, the heat produced in the system grew, increasing the entropy of its surroundings by jostling nearby particles. "If a clock is more accurate, you are paying for it somehow," says Ares.

In this case, you pay for it by pouring more ordered energy into the clock, which is then converted into entropy. "By measuring time, we are increasing the entropy of the universe," says Ares. The more entropy there is in the universe, the closer it may be to its eventual demise. "Maybe we should stop measuring time." The scale of the additional entropy is so small, though, that there's no need to worry, she says.
      Read More...
Fireball 5

Geologists identify rare meteorite impact site in Dakota County

Cathy Wurzer
Minnesota Public Radio News
Thu, 13 May 2021 23:54 UTC
Shocked Quartz
© Courtesy of Julia Steenberg
Small grains of shocked quartz buried deep under ground in Inver Grove Heights, Minn., are evidence of an ancient meteorite impact in the area
An area around Inver Grove Heights, Minn., is the site of an ancient meteorite crash, according to recent analysis by the Minnesota Geological Survey.

The discovery came as scientists were updating geologic maps of Dakota County. They identified anomalies in the rock record — certain layers appeared out of order or irregularly sized. This led to further examination and the identification of small grains of shocked quartz, which is known to be produced only by the extreme shock and compression of a meteorite impact or nuclear explosion.

"It's really exciting and new," geologist Julia Steenberg told MPR News host Cathy Wurzer. Steenberg and her colleagues are hoping to do more research to better understand the age of the impact and the size of the meteorite involved.

Globally, known meteorite impact sites are exceptionally rare. This is the first identified in Minnesota and one of fewer than 200 in the world.
      Read More...
Info

Scientists decode the 'language' of immune cells

Stuart Wolpert
University of California
Wed, 12 May 2021 19:03 UTC
Immune Cells
© Brooks Taylor/UCLA
In this image from a microscopy video, scientists “listen” to macrophages as they responded to an immune threat.
UCLA life scientists have identified six "words" that specific immune cells use to call up immune defense genes — an important step toward understanding the language the body uses to marshal responses to threats.

In addition, they discovered that the incorrect use of two of these words can activate the wrong genes, resulting in the autoimmune disease known as Sjögren's syndrome. The research, conducted in mice, is published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Immunity (Cell Press).

"Cells have evolved an immune response code, or language," said senior author Alexander Hoffmann, the Thomas M. Asher Professor of Microbiology and director of the Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciences at UCLA. "We have identified some words in that language, and we know these words are important because of what happens when they are misused. Now we need to understand the meaning of the words, and we are making rapid progress. It's as exciting as when archaeologists discovered the Rosetta stone and could begin to read Egyptian hieroglyphs."

Immune cells in the body constantly assess their environment and coordinate their defense functions by using words — or signaling codons, in scientific parlance — to tell the cell's nucleus which genes to turn on in response to invaders like pathogenic bacteria and viruses. Each signaling codon consists of several successive actions of a DNA binding protein that, when combined, elicit the proper gene activation, in much the same way that successive electrical signals through a telephone wire combine to produce the words of a conversation.
      Read More...
Nuke

Chernobyl's molten guts are warming up, and scientists don't know why

Mike Mcrae
Science Alert
Wed, 12 May 2021 09:39 UTC
Chernobyl
© Zheka-Boss/iStock/Getty Images
Over the past five years, a sensor keeping count of neutron emissions deep within the rubble of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has kept track of a gradual spike in activity.

The rising count might be nothing. It might even drop back down again, given time. Scientists aren't exactly keen on taking any chances, as the potential for a runaway nuclear fission reaction in the future can't be ruled out until we know what's going on.

Unfortunately, the precise location of the decaying material beneath debris and heavy slabs of concrete makes detailed investigations and potential fixes all that more challenging.

As reported by Science Magazine's Richard Stone, researchers at the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv, Ukraine, are yet to determine whether the noted rise in neutrons heralds pending disaster, or is more of a storm in a nuclear tea-cup.

"There are many uncertainties," ISPNPP's Maxim Saveliev told Stone. "But we can't rule out the possibility of [an] accident."

Comment: See also:

      Read More...
Magnify

MIT researchers find that 'skeptics' value data literacy and scientific rigour

Noah Carl
Lockdown Sceptics
Wed, 12 May 2021 11:15 UTC
Massachusetts institute of Technology
© Unknown
Massachusetts institute of Technology
Throughout the pandemic, governments have claimed to be following "the science". But of course, many aspects of "the science" were never settled.

The WHO, as well as the UK Government, initially told us not to wear face masks. They then decided that face masks were essential. Countries like Australia and New Zealand introduced border controls in early February. Meanwhile, UK scientists were advising against port-of-entry screening. Researchers predicted there would be 96,000 deaths in Sweden by July. But as it turned out, there were less than 6,000.

Of course, many people have been sceptical of "the science" (by which I mean the officially endorsed science) from the very beginning. And of course, they've formed communities online with other like-minded persons. (Lockdown Sceptics would be one example of such a community.)

In an unpublished paper, researchers from MIT sought to understand how the users of these communities obtain, analyse, share and curate information. Surprisingly (to them), they found that users place a premium on data literacy and scientific rigour.

Comment: Some seek and face the truth. Others refute and mask it.

      Read More...
Microscope 1

Researchers unravel mystery of why and for how long animals, including humans, yawn


RT
Tue, 11 May 2021 19:30 UTC
lion
© Rachel Claire from Pexels
Following a painstaking, large-scale animal study, researchers in the Netherlands now claim that, when it comes to yawning vertebrates, the larger and denser the brain, the longer the yawn.

In what could be considered the biological research equivalent of watching paint dry, the scientists collected data on 1,291 separate yawns by visiting zoos and poring over videos online, observing some 55 mammals and 46 species of bird.

"We went to several zoos with a camera and waited by the animal enclosures for the animals to yawn," says ethologist Jorg Massen, of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "That was a pretty long haul."
      Read More...
Cassiopaea

Hum of plasma waves in the 'void' of interstellar space detected by Voyager 1

Michelle Starr
Science Alert
Mon, 10 May 2021 12:00 UTC
solar system space
© Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Getty Images
Illustration of Voyager leaving the Solar System.
Voyager 1, having spent over 43 years zooming away from Earth since its 1977 launch, is now a very long way away indeed.

Its distance from the Sun is over 150 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. It takes over 21 hours for transmissions traveling at light speed to arrive at Earth. It officially passed the heliopause - the boundary at which pressure from the solar wind is no longer sufficient to push into the wind from interstellar space - in 2012.

Voyager 1 has left the Solar System - and it's finding that the void of space is not quite so void-like, after all.

In the latest analysis of data from the intrepid probe, from a distance of nearly 23 billion kilometers (over 14 billion miles), astronomers have discovered, from 2017 onwards, a constant hum from plasma waves in the interstellar medium, the diffuse gas that lurks between the stars.

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

      Read More...
Chalkboard

Mathematicians find core mechanism to calculate tipping points


Technical University of Munich
Mon, 10 May 2021 18:26 UTC
Tipping Point
© MonicaVolpin / pixaby
At a tipping point, the system state can change slowly or abruptly - for example, when the complete melting of a glacier can no longer be stopped.
Climate change, a pandemic or the coordinated activity of neurons in the brain: In all of these examples, a transition takes place at a certain point from the base state to a new state. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have discovered a universal mathematical structure at these so-called tipping points. It creates the basis for a better understanding of the behavior of networked systems.

It is an essential question for scientists in every field: How can we predict and influence changes in a networked system? "In biology, one example is the modelling of coordinated neuron activity," says Christian Kühn, professor of multiscale and stochastic dynamics at TUM. Models of this kind are also used in other disciplines, for example when studying the spread of diseases or climate change.

All critical changes in networked systems have one thing in common: a tipping point where the system makes a transition from a base state to a new state. This may be a smooth shift, where the system can easily return to the base state. Or it can be a sharp, difficult-to-reverse transition where the system state can change abruptly or "explosively." Transitions of this kind also occur in climate change, for example with the melting of the polar ice caps. In many cases, the transitions result from the variation of a single parameter, such as the rise in concentrations of greenhouse gases behind climate change.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts