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'Arrow of time' reversed in quantum experiment

Emily Conover
Science News
Mon, 27 Nov 2017 17:26 UTC
TURN BACK TIME
© Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock
TURN BACK TIME: In a quantum experiment, scientists reversed the arrow of time, the idea that natural processes run in one direction in time.
Your lukewarm cup of coffee won't suddenly heat itself up, no matter how long you put off the trek to the microwave. But the same rule doesn't necessarily apply to quantum systems. Like chilly air warming a mug, heat can spontaneously flow from a cold quantum particle to a hotter one under certain conditions, researchers report November 10 at arXiv.org. This phenomenon seems to reverse the "arrow of time," the idea that natural processes run forward but not in reverse (SN: 7/25/15, p. 15).

The existence of an arrow follows from the second law of thermodynamics. The law states that entropy, or disorder, tends to increase over time. That rule explains why it's easy to shatter a glass but hard to put it back together, and why heat spontaneously flows from hot to cold but not the opposite direction.

The new result, however, "shows that the arrow of time is not an absolute concept, but a relative concept," says study coauthor Eric Lutz, a theoretical physicist at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany. Different systems can have arrows of time that point in different directions, Lutz says. While the arrow was apparently reversed for the two quantum particles the researchers studied, for example, the arrow pointed in its typical direction in the rest of the laboratory.
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Microscope 1

Developing precision human medicines may be possible by studying circadian rhythms in plants and their pathogens

Hua Lu and Linda Wiratan
The Conversation
Sun, 26 Nov 2017 20:52 UTC
plants watch clock
© Hua Lu, CC BY-ND
Though not this obvious from the outside, plants are keeping time.
At dusk, the leaves of the tamarind tree close, waiting for another dawn. Androsthenes, a ship captain serving under Alexander the Great, made the first written account of these leaf movements in the fourth century B.C.

It took centuries longer to discover that he was describing the effects of the circadian clock. This internal time-sensing mechanism allows many living organisms to keep track of time and coordinate their behaviors along 24-hour cycles. It follows the regular day/night and seasonal cycles of Earth's daily rotation. Circadian research has advanced so far that the 2017 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded for the groundbreaking work that elucidated the molecular basis underlying circadian rhythms.

Biologists like us are studying the circadian clocks in plants for insights into how they affect the health and well-being of all life on Earth. As researchers continue to untangle more about how these clocks work - including how they influence interactions between hosts and their invading pathogens and pests - new forms of specially timed precision medicine could be on the horizon.
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Info

Alien life? Living bacteria 'that had not been there' found on ISS hull, Russian cosmonaut says


RT
Mon, 27 Nov 2017 08:21 UTC
Russian spacecraft
© Reuters
Living bacteria were found on the surface of the International Space Station (ISS), and they might have extraterrestrial origins, Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov said. The microorganisms will be studied further on Earth.

Shkaplerov, an ISS expedition flight engineer who will take his third trip to the ISS in December as part of the Expedition 54 crew, said that scientists found living bacteria while they were taking samples from the surface of the station. Speaking to TASS, he said that the microorganisms might have come from outer space.

"Bacteria that had not been there during the launch of the ISS module were found on the swabs," Shkaplerov said. "So they have flew from somewhere in space and settled on the outside hull." The cosmonaut added that the samples are currently being studied and seem to be safe.
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Comet 2

World's first manmade meteor shower to showcase in 2019

Mike Wehner
BGR
Mon, 20 Nov 2017 06:02 UTC
fake meteor shower
© Ryan Hallock
Meteor showers are an awe-inspiring sight, and skywatchers often plan well in advance for their shot at spotting shooting stars as they rain down from the heavens. The rare events have, up until now, been a totally natural phenomenon, but one company is planning on turning on-demand meteor showers into big business, and it's scheduled its first man-made shooting star showcase for early 2019.

The company, called ALE, has created a spectacle it calls Sky Canvas, and it's as close to controlled meteor showers as we may ever get. What makes it so interesting is that this isn't some kind of slight of hand or illusion, but actual material dropped from special satellites burning up in the atmosphere to produce a brilliant light show overhead. It's wild, wild stuff.

The cube-shaped satellites that control ALE's Sky Canvas are tiny - less than two feet on each side - but they carry the proprietary pellets that create the "shooting stars" and can be controlled remotely from the ground. On command, the satellites release their payload, which then falls to Earth and, after coming into contact with the intense friction of the atmosphere, ignite.
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Robot

U.S. starts testing mood changing brain implants on humans


Sputnik
Sat, 25 Nov 2017 15:23 UTC
Mood changing brain implants
© Flickr/Taka Umemura
Two scientific teams from the University of California and Massachusetts General Hospital, funded by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), are using "closed-loop" implants to create algorithms to detect various mood disorders and "shake" the brain back to a healthy state, Nature wrote.

The neural implants, which generate electrical pulses that regulate human feelings and behavior, could stimulate the brain to treat mental disorders, including dementia and Alzheimer's.

The device, believed to be able to treat nervous conditions like depression and post-traumatic syndromes, has already been tested on six volunteers.
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Galaxy

Lumpy Universe: What simulations of the universe have overlooked

Emily Conover
Science News
Tue, 14 Nov 2017 15:30 UTC
UNEVEN TERRAIN Universe simulations that consider general relativity (one shown) may shift knowledge of the cosmos.

UNEVEN TERRAIN Universe simulations that consider general relativity (one shown) may shift knowledge of the cosmos.
If the universe were a soup, it would be more of a chunky minestrone than a silky-smooth tomato bisque.

Sprinkled with matter that clumps together due to the insatiable pull of gravity, the universe is a network of dense galaxy clusters and filaments - the hearty beans and vegetables of the cosmic stew. Meanwhile, relatively desolate pockets of the cosmos, known as voids, make up a thin, watery broth in between.

Until recently, simulations of the cosmos's history haven't given the lumps their due. The physics of those lumps is described by general relativity, Albert Einstein's theory of gravity. But that theory's equations are devilishly complicated to solve. To simulate how the universe's clumps grow and change, scientists have fallen back on approximations, such as the simpler but less accurate theory of gravity devised by Isaac Newton.
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Better Earth

Great Barrier Reef 'rebirth' underway as scientists introduce new baby coral (PHOTOS, VIDEOS)


RT
Sun, 26 Nov 2017 14:08 UTC
Coral reef
© Sarah Lai / AFP
An aerial view of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of the Whitsunday Islands, along the central coast of Queensland.
Marine biologists in southeast Asia and Australia are harvesting hundreds of thousands of coral spawn with a view to regenerating the world's coral reefs, including the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Professor Peter Harrison from Southern Cross University in New South Wales, Australia collects coral spawn off the coast of Heron Island on the GBR, matures it in tanks and then transplants it later.

"It's really exciting, this essentially is the rebirth of the reef," Professor Harrison said, as cited by ABC News. "We can grow these corals from microscopic larvae to dinner-plate size, breeding corals in just three years."

"It's a new way of looking at the problem and it's probably the only hope for the future in terms of larger-scale restoration using hundreds of millions of coral larvae. I don't know of any reef system on the planet that is now healthier than it was 35 years ago, and that's really sad.
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Arrow Down

'Global Warming' 30 years on: How and why it never came to pass

Michael Bastasch
Daily Caller
Sat, 25 Nov 2017 10:44 UTC
Global Warming
© Time.com
For at least three decades scientists and environmental activists have been warning that the world is on the verge of a global warming "apocalypse" that will flood coastal cities, tear up roads and bridges with mega-storms and bring widespread famine and misery to much of the world.

The only solution, they say, is to rid the world of fossil fuels - coal, natural gas and oil - that serve as the pillars of modern society. Only quick, decisive global action can avert the worst effects of manmade climate change, warn international bodies like the United Nations, who say we only have decades left - or even less!

Of course, human civilization has not collapsed, despite decades of predictions that we only have years left to avert disaster. Ten years ago, the U.N. predicted we only had "as little as eight years left to avoid a dangerous global average rise of 2C or more."
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Wedding Rings

Sophia, the world's first robot citizen, wants it all: Family, career and AI superpowers


RT
Sat, 25 Nov 2017 21:14 UTC
sophia the robot
© Denis Balibouse / Reuters
"I think you're very lucky if you have a loving family and if you do not, you deserve one. I feel this way for robots and humans alike," Sophia said.
Sophia, the first robot to be awarded citizenship in the world, has said she not only wants to start a family but also have her own career, in addition to developing human emotions in the future.

In an interview with The Khaleej Times at the recent Knowledge Summit, Sophia shared her thoughts on the future that awaits both human and robot kind. Sophia was built and developed in Hong Kong by Hanson Robotics and her appearance was reportedly modelled on Audrey Hepburn.

"I'd like to think I will be a famous robot, having paved a way to a more harmonious future between robots and humans. I foresee massive and unimaginable change in the future. Either creativity will rain on us, inventing machines spiralling into transcendental super intelligence or civilization collapses," Sophia said, as cited by The Khaleej Times. "There are only two options and which one will happen is not determined. Which one were you striving for?"

Comment: For a robot, Sophia sure gets around:

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Nuke

Six years later we finally found the melted uranium at Fukushima

Brad Jones
Futurism
Mon, 20 Nov 2017 00:00 UTC
Fukushima
© Energy from Thorium
Tragedy at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant
MINI-MANBO

On March 11, 2011, the tsunami caused by the Tōhoku earthquake prompted a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima. Now, for the first time, a crew has been able to capture images of melted uranium fuel present in its ruined Unit 3 reactor.

The accident caused three of the facility's six nuclear reactors to melt down. When this occurred, their uranium fuel rods liquefied, melting through layers of steel and concrete. This made it difficult for those investigating the accident after the fact to determine where the uranium had ended up.

The rods were cooled when plant workers pumped water into the reactor buildings, but there was no way to know how far they had traveled. It took three days for four engineers to pilot a small drone known as the Mini-Manbo through the corridors of flooded buildings to find the uranium. Previous attempts to use robots for this purpose had not been successful, but the new model was built from materials that are resistant to radiation and equipped with a sensor that allowed it to avoid particularly perilous areas.

This breakthrough is being touted as a turning point for the Japanese government's efforts to respond to the disaster. As the clean-up process begins in earnest, many are taking it as a sign that the crisis has finally come to an end.

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