Science & TechnologyS


Nebula

NASA's Hubble captures stunning image of Veil Nebula supernova blast wave

Ryan Morrison
The Daily Mail
Wed, 02 Sep 2020 21:25 UTC
supernova cygnas hubble
© NASA/ESAAppearing like a light veil across the sky, it is actually the outer edge of a supernova remnant from an explosion that blasted apart a dying star up to 20,000 years ago
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures a stunning image of powerful blast wave from a dying star 2,400 light-years from Earth

An image of a 'delicate supernova blast wave' seen draped across the sky 2,400 light years from Earth, has been captured by the NASA Hubble Space Telescope.

Appearing like a light veil across the sky, it is actually the outer edge of a supernova remnant from an explosion that blasted apart a dying star up to 20,000 years ago.

The European Space Agency (ESA), a partner in the Hubble telescope, said the exploding star would have been about 20 times more massive than our Sun.
Read More...
Attention

Invisible quantum tattoo in vaccines for storing vaccination history developed by scientist


Great Game India
Mon, 07 Sep 2020 21:28 UTC
Gates Funded Vaccine
© Great Game India
A project funded by Bill Gates aims to deliver an invisible quantum tattoo hidden in the coronavirus vaccine for storing your vaccination history. The researchers showed that their new dye, which consists of nanocrystals called quantum dots, can remain for at least five years under the skin, where it emits near-infrared light that can be detected by a specially equipped smartphone.

Funded by Bill Gates, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed a clandestine way to record your vaccination history: storing the data in a pattern of dye or tattoo ink, invisible to the naked eye, that is slipped under the skin hidden in your vaccine.
"This technology could enable the rapid and anonymous detection of patient vaccination history to ensure that every child is vaccinated," says Kevin McHugh, a former MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University.

The researchers showed that their new dye, which consists of nanocrystals called quantum dots, can remain for at least five years under the skin, where it emits near-infrared light that can be detected by a specially equipped smartphone.
McHugh and former visiting scientist Lihong Jing are the lead authors of the study, which appears today in Science Translational Medicine. Ana Jaklenec, a research scientist at MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT, are the senior authors of the paper.
Read More...
Seismograph

Ten years on: Darfield earthquake's shaky legacy -15,830 aftershocks and counting


New Zealand Herald
Fri, 04 Sep 2020 20:13 UTC
new zealand earthquake 2010
© Mark MitchellPeter Fitzgerald, left, and his brother Rex, stand in cracks where Highfield Rd was lifted and wrenched sideways by the earthquake, 15km east of Darfield, on September 4, 2010.
It erupted before dawn, with a strange lightning show and a cacophony some Canterbury residents likened to a battle tank rolling down a street.

Ten years and some 15,830 aftershocks later, the magnitude 7.1 Darfield jolt is still offering new lessons to scientists about New Zealand's ever-present earthquake risk.

And they say its legacy could rumble on, pointing to one historic quake that was linked to activity more than 60 years afterward.

A decade ago today, at 4.35am on September 4, 2010, Canterbury residents were shaken awake by a violent, 40-second earthquake accompanied by the bizarre spectacle of lightning streaming not from the sky, but into it from the ground.
Read More...
Better Earth

Seawater chemistry varies throughout ocean, overturning 130 year old theory

Harrison Tasoff
Phys.org
Fri, 04 Sep 2020 20:45 UTC
oceani
© Morgan RavenThe research team lowers a particle collection device into waters off the coast of Manzanillo, Mexico.

Seawater composition in the open ocean is well-studied, yet this research finds larger variability than expected, which questions many other results based on the assumption of constant seawater composition.

There's more to seawater than salt. Ocean chemistry is a complex mixture of particles, ions and nutrients. And for over a century, scientists believed that certain ion ratios held relatively constant over space and time.

But now, following a decade of research, a multinational study has refuted this assumption. Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez, professor and vice chair of UC Santa Barbara's Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, and her colleagues discovered that the seawater ratios of three key elements vary across the ocean, which means scientists will have to re-examine many of their hypotheses and models. The results appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Comment: See also:

Read More...
Galaxy

6 months in space increased dexterity but impaired vision, study on 8 Russian cosmonauts shows

Aria Bendix
Business Insider
Sat, 05 Sep 2020 22:22 UTC
astronaut
© Sergei Ilnitsky/AFP/Getty ImagesUS astronaut Jack Fischer smiles as a NASA medical staff member wipes his face shortly after he landed back on Earth in a Russian Soyuz capsule in Kazakhstan, September 3, 2017.
Imagine you could throw the perfect bullseye, but you'd have to wear glasses to do it. That's a trade-off some space travelers may unwittingly make when they venture off the planet.

A study published Friday examined the brains of eight male Russian cosmonauts roughly seven months after they returned from lengthy missions to the International Space Station. The researchers discovered minor changes in the cosmonauts' brains that suggested the men were more dexterous but had slightly weaker vision.

"They actually acquired some kind of new motor skill, like riding a bike," Steven Jillings, the study's lead author, told Business Insider.
Read More...
Info

Scientists designing experiments to use plants to reveal the location of dead bodies


Cosmos Magazine
Sat, 05 Sep 2020 18:58 UTC
Forest
© Cosmos Magazine
This is still quite a way from reality, but the whole idea is too intriguing to ignore.

A collaborative team of forensic botanists, anthropologists and soil scientists in the US is designing its first set of plant-cadaver experiments to see whether it's feasible for the former to help find the latter.

Search teams looking for human remains, whether on foot or from the air, are often hampered by forest cover. The picture would change, however, in they could use changes in the plants' chemistry as signals of nearby human remains.

The impact of human decomposition on plants has not yet been thoroughly explored but, in a paper in the journal Trends in Plant Science, researchers from the University of Tennessee have set out the steps needed to make body recovery using vegetation a reality.

The research will take place at the university's Anthropology Research Facility, where scientists examine the process of human body decay under different conditions.
Read More...
Snowflake Cold

Math of the penguins

Susan D'Agostino
Quanta Magazine
Mon, 17 Aug 2020 00:00 UTC
Emperor Penguins
© Fred Olivier/Nature Picture Library/Science Photo LibraryEmperor penguins huddle together for warmth with mathematical rigor.
Animals have evolved to protect against the cold in myriad ways. Whales insulate with blubber. Bison congregate near geothermal springs. Black bears shelter in caves. And emperor penguins, facing Antarctica's subzero temperatures and gale-force winds, huddle.

"A penguin huddle looks like organized chaos," said François Blanchette, a mathematician at the University of California, Merced. "Every penguin acts individually, but the end result is an equitable heat distribution for the whole community."

It turns out that penguins execute their huddles with a high degree of mathematical efficiency, as Blanchette and his team discovered. More recently, Daniel Zitterbart, a physicist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, helped develop and install high-resolution cameras to observe undisturbed huddling behavior. Zitterbart's team recently discovered which conditions cause penguins to huddle, and they are investigating the possibility that the penguins' mathematical behavior may reveal secrets about colony health over time.
Read More...
Seismograph

Interaction of deep underground forces help explain quakes on San Andreas Fault


PhysOrg
Fri, 04 Sep 2020 16:53 UTC
San Andreas Fault
A portion of California's San Andreas Fault
Rock-melting forces occurring much deeper in the Earth than previously understood appear to drive tremors along a notorious segment of California's San Andreas Fault, according to new USC research that helps explain how quakes happen.

The study from the emergent field of earthquake physics looks at temblor mechanics from the bottom up, rather than from the top down, with a focus on underground rocks, friction and fluids. On the segment of the San Andreas Fault near Parkfield, Calif., underground excitations — beyond the depths where quakes are typically monitored — lead to instability that ruptures in a quake.

"Most of California seismicity originates from the first 10 miles of the crust, but some tremors on the San Andreas Fault take place much deeper," said Sylvain Barbot, assistant professor of Earth sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "Why and how this happens is largely unknown. We show that a deep section of the San Andreas Fault breaks frequently and melts the host rocks, generating these anomalous seismic waves."The newly published study appears in Science Advances. Barbot, the corresponding author, collaborated with Lifeng Wang of the China Earthquake Administration in China.
Read More...
Moon

The moon is rusting and scientists are trying to figure out why


NASA
Wed, 02 Sep 2020 12:00 UTC
moon
© NASAThis image of the moon is from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 mission. It is a three-color composite of reflected near-infrared radiation from the sun.

This image of the moon is from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 mission. It is a three-color composite of reflected near-infrared radiation from the sun, and illustrates the extent to which different materials are mapped across the side of the moon that faces Earth.

Small amounts of water and hydroxyl (blue) were detected on the surface of the moon at various locations. This image illustrates their distribution at high latitudes toward the poles.

Blue shows the signature of water and hydroxyl molecules as seen by a highly diagnostic absorption of infrared light with a wavelength of three micrometers. Green shows the brightness of the surface as measured by reflected infrared radiation from the sun with a wavelength of 2.4 micrometers, and red shows an iron-bearing mineral called pyroxene, detected by absorption of 2.0-micrometer infrared light.
Mars has long been known for its rust. Iron on its surface, combined with water and oxygen from the ancient past, give the Red Planet its hue. But scientists were recently surprised to find evidence that our airless Moon has rust on it as well.

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

Read More...
SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: MindMatters: Interview with Ken Pedersen: Quarks, DNA, Consciousness - It's All Information, Always Has Been

Harrison Koehli and Elan Martin
Sott.net
Thu, 03 Sep 2020 00:00 UTC
ken pedersen
Evolution vs. intelligent design; scientism vs. science; the accidental-universe worldview vs. the information-system worldview - these are the battle lines for what is perhaps one the most essential scientific/religious and philosophical debates in the world today. Are we the product of a series of accidental mutations, built on top of accidental chemistry, accidental particle physics, and accidental quantum theory? Or were we - and the cosmos - designed? In his book Modern Science Proves Intelligent Design: The Information System Worldview, author and electrical engineer Ken Pedersen asks this question and uses his extensive knowledge of multi-layered information processing systems to provide the answer.

Subatomic particles, biological cells, and whole planetary and cosmic environments could only have been the product of incredibly complex design, all built on the mysteriously non-physical bases of energy and information. Armed with his background in mathematics, and contemporary research about DNA (among other things), Pedersen gives us to understand why the Neo-Darwinists are no longer able to credibly argue their position. At a time when the world is bereft of meaning, when the nihilistic, materialist, relativist and atheist worldview is plaguing the hearts, minds and souls of people everywhere - the profound implications for how we view life, the universe, and ourselves may be revitalized with a true understanding of what science is actually telling us.


Running Time: 01:19:16

Download: MP3 — 72.6 MB

Read More...