Welcome to Sott.net
Tue, 19 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Science & Technology
Map

Mars

China develops miniature helicopter to accompany future Mars missions

mini chopper
© NSSC/CAS
China's mini helicopter
China's National Space Science Center (CAS) has unveiled a newly developed helicopter which could be used in the country's exploration of the Red Planet. The new tool comes months after China landed a robotic rover on Mars. Chinese media released images online of the astronomical equipment.

China's state-affiliated media channel, the Global Times, said that researchers from CAS recently approved the Beijing Science & Technology Commission's examination of their Mars drone prototype.

Galaxy

The Pythagorean revival needed to overthrow today's Standard Model priesthood

big bang timeline standard model

A typical Standard theory model of the universe- 13.7 billion years ago to the present
Part 1:

Today, I would like to say a few words about the suppressed Pythagorean Tradition both as a celebration of a lost art of thinking that gave rise to the greatest revolutions in science and even moral philosophy but also as an antidote to the impotent cult of scientism which has permeated every branch of thought in presently beleaguered age. This cult of scientism masquerading behind peer reviews and a new technocratic priesthood of "experts" professes arrogantly to hold all the answers to the nature of the universe from the "start" of the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, the structure of atoms made up of quarks that have never been observed, fundamental "forces" that are presumed to exist as separate entities and mysterious stuff like "dark matter" mixed with "dark energy" that we are told makes up 95% of existence.

Galaxy

China's Chang'e-5 orbiter is heading back to the moon, new mission not revealed

Chang'e 5 earth moon space
© CNSA/CLEP
The Earth and moon viewed by Chang'e 5 from Sun-Earth Lagrange point 1 in April 2021.
The Chang'e-5 orbiter module which facilitated China's complex lunar sample return last year is on its way to the moon following deep space tests.

The orbiter, one of four distinct Chang'e-5 mission spacecraft, delivered a return module containing 1.731 kilograms of lunar samples to Earth Dec. 16 before firing its engines to deep space for an extended mission.

The Chang'e-5 orbiter later successfully entered an intended orbit around Sun-Earth Lagrange point 1, roughly 1.5 million kilometers, in March. There it carried out tests related to orbit control and observations of the Earth and Sun.

New data from satellite trackers now suggests Chang'e-5 has left its orbit around Sun-Earth L1 and is destined for a lunar flyby early September 9 Eastern time.

Comment: See also:


SOTT Logo Radio

MindMatters: Meaning All the Way Down: The Wonders and Mysteries of Language with Juliana Barembuem

chu language
Language. We use it to speak, obtain information and enrich our minds. We're immersed in it every day and would find it nearly impossible to communicate and exist in the ways that we're used to without it. And yet the use of language - and all its varied and nuanced components - are very largely taken for granted by us until we take a step or two back to think about how language works, how incredibly complex it is, what many languages have in common, what makes language successful (or not), and what some research into the origins of language suggest about how little we truly know about them.

This week on MindMatters we are joined by Juliana Barembuem of Language with Chu, a polyglot and long-time student of language, who presents a number of 'outside of the box' perspectives on language; what do languages have in common with discoveries in biology? Is language a feature of intelligent design? How is the use of language abused and in service of ideas that actually confuse and misinform - to name just a few. One thing to realize is that the deeper we get into this discussion the more we see that these lines of inquiry are really just the beginning of this conversation.


Running Time: 01:43:02

Download: MP3 — 94.3 MB



Info

Algorithm can predict Alzheimer's with 99% accuracy

MRI Scan
© Kaunas University of Technology
Algorithm developed by Lithuanian researchers can predict possible Alzheimer’s with nearly 100 per cent accuracy
Researchers from Kaunas universities in Lithuania developed a deep learning-based method that can predict the possible onset of Alzheimer's disease from brain images with an accuracy of over 99 per cent. The method was developed while analysing functional MRI images obtained from 138 subjects and performed better in terms of accuracy, sensitivity and specificity than previously developed methods.

According to World Health Organisation, Alzheimer's disease is the most frequent cause of dementia, contributing to up to 70 per cent of dementia cases. Worldwide, approximately 24 million people are affected, and this number is expected to double every 20 years. Owing to societal ageing, the disease will become a costly public health burden in the years to come.

"Medical professionals all over the world attempt to raise awareness of an early Alzheimer's diagnosis, which provides the affected with a better chance of benefiting from treatment. This was one of the most important issues for choosing a topic for Modupe Odusami, a PhD student from Nigeria", says Rytis Maskeliūnas, a researcher at the Department of Multimedia Engineering, Faculty of Informatics, Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), Odusami's PhD supervisor.

Microscope 1

Scientists watch bacteria fix broken DNA in real time to see exactly how it's done

RecA filament
© David Goodsell
Illustration of the RecA filament
Fixing breaks in genes with speed and perfection can be a matter of life and death for most organisms. Even the simplest changes in a sequence risk catastrophe, especially if the altered code is responsible for a critical function.

Over the past half a century, biologists have studied the mechanisms involved to piece together most of the major steps involved in making faithful repairs in DNA. Yet, one part of the process has remained frustratingly unclear.

By marking key enzymes and DNA with fluorescent tags and watching the repair process unfold in real-time in an Escherichia coli model, researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden have filled in missing details on how bacteria find the templates they rely on to keep genetic repairs error-free.

One trick most living things use to keep their code in order is the process of homologous recombination, the biological equivalent of comparing two distinct versions of a script to make sure a copy hasn't mistakenly introduced any errors.

Cassiopaea

Supernova event triggered by collision with compact object, first time ever observed

supernova
© Bill Saxton / NRAO / AUI / NSF
Fast-moving debris from a supernova explosion triggered by a stellar collision in the VT 1210+4956 system crashes into material thrown out earlier, and the shocks cause bright radio emission seen by the VLA.
Using data collected by the Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS), astronomers have found evidence that a compact object — a black hole or neutron star — spiraled its way into the core of a companion star in the VT 1210+4956 system and caused it to explode as a supernova.

"Theorists had predicted that this could happen, but this is the first time we've actually seen such an event," said Dillon Dong, a graduate student at Caltech.

Dong and colleagues first detected radio emission from VT 1210+4956 in VLASS data.

Comment: At least two other nova events have been reported recently: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:


Igloo

Texas cold snap linked to 40 years of increasing snowfall in Arctic & disruptions in stratospheric polar vortex - increase in extreme cold events likely - study

Arctic air mass global cooling ice age
© Goddard Earth Observing System/NASA
Map showing the extreme cold associated with the Arctic air mass, with the darkest blue regions indicating surface temperatures of -35°C
The extreme cold snap that left millions of people in Texas without power last winter appears to have been made more likely by melting Arctic sea ice thousands of kilometres away, research suggests.

For the past decade, evidence has been building in support of the counterintuitive idea that some of the recent cold winter spells at mid-latitudes in North America and Eurasia are linked to the Arctic warming faster than the rest of the world due to climate change.


Comment: In 2019, snowfall in the Arctic reached record levels and then devastated wildlife because it failed to melt by summer, and in 2018 Arctic and Antarctic sea ice also reached record levels; this, and a wealth of other data, demonstrate that, overall, the Arctic is not 'warming'.


Comment: What is important to note is that scientists appear to be no longer able to ignore the global cooling occurring on our planet. As for what's causing it: The rise in polar vortex events - a term unknown to most people 20 years ago - appears to be related to the increasingly meandering jet stream, the stalling Gulf Stream, Earth's weakening magnetosphere, and all of this and more is thought to be connected to our quieting Sun: For more on the shift occurring on our planet, check out SOTT radio's:


Beaker

'Return of the God Hypothesis' explains why science can no longer ignore intelligent design

meyer god
When the emperor Napoleon asked the great French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace why the Creator was never mentioned in his manuscript "A Treatise of Celestial Mechanics," Laplace is alleged to have replied, "I had no need of that hypothesis."

Philosopher of science Stephen Meyer's new book, Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe, documents the history of the fall of the God hypothesis in science during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. But the hypothesis is back, Meyer explains, detailing three scientific discoveries of the last 100 years that are fueling its "return."

The three are: 1) the discovery that the secret of life is the information contained in living things, 2) the discovery that the laws and constants of physics in our universe are extremely "fine-tuned" for life and 3) the discovery that the universe had a beginning.

While no one today claims it is needed to explain celestial mechanics, the "God hypothesis" was never truly replaced by plausible explanations for the origin and evolution of life. It was simply banished from science by arbitrary fiat, fueled by the successes of science in other areas.

Charles Darwin's extremely implausible explanation for the origin of species, which becomes more implausible with every new biological and biochemical discovery, remains popular in the scientific world today only because — no matter how implausible and how inconsistent with the evidence — it must be true because it is the only alternative anyone can imagine to the "unscientific" theory of intelligent design.

Nebula

Genes can respond to coded information in light signals - or filter them out entirely

gene dna helix
New research from North Carolina State University demonstrates that genes are capable of identifying and responding to coded information in light signals, as well as filtering out some signals entirely. The study shows how a single mechanism can trigger different behaviors from the same gene -- and has applications in the biotechnology sector.

"The fundamental idea here is that you can encode information in the dynamics of a signal that a gene is receiving," says Albert Keung, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State. "So, rather than a signal simply being present or absent, the way in which the signal is being presented matters."

For this study, researchers modified a yeast cell so that it has a gene that produces fluorescent proteins when the cell is exposed to blue light.

Comment: One wonders whether other stimuli, such as sound, could also be used to elicit controlled responses: And check out SOTT radio's: